Saturday Open Thread [8.22.15]
I am enjoying the whole Ashley Madison thing. All these Christofascist hypocrites are getting caught up in it. All these bigots preaching that gay marriage would ruin the sanctity of marriage all the while they were looking for some strange on their own. But one Louisiana Republican has an excuse.
The director of the statewide Republican Party said via text message that an account was created under his name and his former personal credit card billing address in connection with the work of his law firm, Doré Jeansonne. He declined to say who he was using the account for.
“As the state’s leading opposition research firm, our law office routinely searches public records, online databases and websites of all types to provide clients with comprehensive reports,” Doré said via text message. “Our utilization of this site was for standard opposition research. Unfortunately, it ended up being a waste of money and time.”
At least Josh Duggar admitted it. I have more respect for a liar who admitted he lied and cheated that for a sniveling little excuse for a man trying yet another excuse. But if it works, look for more to use it.
“You know, if this were another country, we could maybe call for an expedited election, right? I would love that. Can we do that? I’d like to have the election tomorrow, I don’t want to wait.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by The Hill. OMG. The man’s stupidity is staggering. There is no such thing as calling for an expedieted election in other countries. In some other countries, they have parliamentary systems rather than presidential systems, and elections are sometimes held earlier than scheduled because sometimes the government elected in the prior election loses a vote of no confidence, or for some other reason parliament is dissolved by the head of state (usually a constitutional monarch like Queen Elizabeth II, but also like President Reuven Rivlin of Israel). The point is, an earlier election is provided for by that country’s constitution or charter.
Our Constitution does not provide for earlier elections. It seems the Donald doesn’t care much for our Constitution. Which is odd considering he is being supported by the Constitution-loving Tea Party, which of course tells me what I have always known: the tea party never cared about the Constitution. They only cared about the color of the President’s skin.
Watch this…
He will be President after Hillary. He will defeat Rand Paul next year for the Senate.
Let me share with you a deep truth: The nuclear stuff is complicated. Einstein said that. It doesn’t necessarily work in the way your everyday life experience would suggest. So it’s important to consult the people who know about the nuclear stuff, people called scientists. Particularly, nuclear scientists. And here we have another case where tendentious malefactors leak seemingly damning details to reporters who in the most basic sense do not know what they are talking about and write a story which can and often does dramatically affect the public debate over a critical issue. It’s already happened with the 24 days nonsense and it may with this. The AP has to scrub its story and pull a New York Times pretending the gist somehow isn’t changed when there is barely a story there in the first place. It really is a replay of how reporters — often acting in good faith — get played by malicious leaks. There are lots of reporters unfortunately who are in on the scam but they shall remain nameless for the moment. And it’s all a replay of the tragic nonsense parade which preceded the Iraq War — with lots of the same easy-mark reporters.
Again, basic premise: The nuclear stuff is complicated. The nuclear scientists understand it better than Hannity or even Wolf Blitzer. Listen to the nuclear scientists.
Both parties are drawn to populist appeals, but they come in different variants. The Democratic version tends to be both performative and substantive — they’ll rail against the top one percent, but also offer policy ideas like upper-income tax increases and minimum wage hikes that are intended to serve the interests of regular people. Democratic populism says that the problem is largely about power: who has it, who doesn’t, and on whose behalf it’s wielded.
Republican populism, on the other hand, is aimed against “elites” that are decidedly not economic. It’s the egghead professors, the Hollywood liberals, the government bureaucrats whom they tell their voters to resent and despise. And part of that argument is that despite what those know-it-all experts would have you believe, all our problems have simple and easy solutions. All you need is “common sense” to know how we should reform our health care system, fix the VA, or control undocumented immigration. Understanding how government works isn’t just unnecessary, it’s actually a hindrance to getting things done.
