– If Iowa taught me anything, it should be that I’m not the person on this blog to make predictions. But fuck that, here are my uninformed New Hampshire predictions:
Win: Mittens
Place: Paul
Show: Huntsman
But more space between Mittens and Paul than 8 votes.
– Speaking of Romney.
– Saying CE instead of AD is anti-Christian now. So tough to keep up.
– Vietnamese Cultural Center to dedicate Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial
– I couldn’t decide what of these two pieces to use as a goof on creationists. So I’ve included both.
– Gregoire’s B&O proposal looks bad for cities, especially Seattle.
Re the CE vs AD thing. It amazes me how rabidly anti-semitic TeaBaggers are under the surface. All the Jewish folks I know are watching the “movement” with a fair amount of apprehension. They’ve seen this before, in Germany and Austria during the 1920’s and 30’s, and it still remains in Poland and Russia to this day. Get them talking in a one on one conversation, where they feel safe to really speak their minds, and the subject of the “jewish” owned media and the “jewish” owned banks are ruining this country and turning it into a bastion of homosexual liberal communism or some such thing.
I have yet to actually meet a TeaBagger who can demonstrate anything above a 2nd graders understanding of science and philosophy. Flagrant ignorance of history, flagrant disregard for Constitutional law, and absolute willful disregard for basic facts when trying to illustrate to them that the Constitution is not a static, sacred document to be held up as a pure symbol while they ignore the words contained in it.
They’re crazy people.
I think it’s great that we’ve finally got to the point where the media, and even the other Republican candidates, are willing to examine and discuss a politician’s claim that he was a “successful businessman”, and that somehow makes him a better candidate.
The mainstream media had largly avoided doing so by the late 1990’s. Perhaps they did this in part because a lot of political journalists don’t really understand business, or how to investigate businesses. Perhaps because a lot of Republican businessmen insulate themselves rather well behind privately owned companies (which aren’t required to publish financial statements) and a lot of loyal cronies who will support the candidates’ version of events, and bail them out if things start to go south. Perhaps it’s because businessmen in the upper levels have gotten so good at publicising their resume’ and perfecting the two-minute “elevator speech” extolling their virtues. Perhaps it’s because they have gotten lazy, and using the candidate’s own resume’ for their articles is easier than trying to go through the details of business ventures.
But let’s face it: after the disaster of George W. Bush’s presidency, and the scandal of “Brownie’s” tenure at FEMA, we can’t afford to simply accept a candidate’s own proclamation that they are a “successful businessman”.
@ 2
The only measure of “success” conservatives recognize is the ability to gather and hoard money. Everything else is secondary. An artist isn’t successful unless they made millions of dollars. An author cannot be considered successful unless they got rich. They apply they same idea to politicians, that a politician isn’t truly successful unless they got rich while in office, or came from a family background of wealth. The method does not matter, the source of the wealth does not matter, only the wealth itself is the measure of success.
Conservatives do not recognize any talent at all other than the talent for making money and aquiring huge amounts of personal possessions. It is an entirely materialistic mindset. Ayn Rand would be very pleased to know that she created an utterly selfish, materialistic religion with her monotribes. That to strive for perfection in anything other than the ability to gather wealth is considered subversive and a major source of fear in the timid, whiny little minds of the common American conservative. EST training and its imitators during the 1970s solidified the technique, and codified the philosophy into the mainstream of conservative thought. The phony white bread plastic Hinduism that became so popular during the same period sanctified it in religious terms, and the other phony religions quickly followed suit.
L. Ron Hubbard based much of his thesis of Scientology on her work, and in retrospect, it is no surprise that his artificial religion has become so wealthy and successful.
# 3: I knew a guy who said he went to Japan to study Buddism. His studies somehow convinced him that the object of life is to attain and accumulate material wealth. How he got that from living in a Buddist temple is beyond me.
Of course, he was a Republican from Eastern Washington.
@2 Why would any successful businessman want a thankless goldfish-bowl job paying in the low six figures? It must be the perks (e.g., hearing a band play “Kiss My Ass” every time you step off a plane or onto a military tarmac). Or maybe it’s having the power to blow up little countries. Yeah, ego must figure into it somehow.
GOP’s Willie Horton Moment
Quick, which party is soft on crime?
If you said “Democrats,” you guessed wrong:
“Outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has pardoned at least four convicted killers who worked at the Governor’s Mansion, including a man who was denied parole less than two weeks ago. … The Barbour administration did not publicize the pardons, which became public when family members notified the media.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45.....nd_courts/
There’s a theory floating among the punditry that a “New Hampshire moment” may propel Huntsman to his 15 minutes of glory. Huntsman has worked the state hard, and NH is a place where hand-shaking, baby-kissing retail politics often pays off. And then there’s the “who else is there to vote for?” mood of NH’s politics.
Btw, in case you missed it last night, the winner of the wee-hours voting in Dixville Notch was … drum roll … President Obama. Nobody else got more than two votes.
@1 The right has long been all lovey-dovey with judaism when it’s about Israel and a great war-by-proxy with the Islamic Gog du jour as a prelude to the “Rapture” (not to mention as a justification for strangely Kosher military pork)…but not so much in other circumstances.
Meanwhile, all the talk about cutting corporate taxes is a chimera, because the vast majority of companies already pay zero federal income taxes.
http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.co.....n-the-rise
@1
Re the CE vs AD thing. It amazes me how rabidly anti-semitic TeaBaggers are under the surface. All the Jewish folks I know are watching the “movement” with a fair amount of apprehension. T
you fucking retard
I like this asshole already.
A real “moran”!!
Does anyone doubt that Romney’s going to be the Republican nominee? Romney’s going to pickup up the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination and the rest of the delegates are going to be spread out and not willing to work with each other. Can you see Santorum’s and Paul’s folks working together? I’m thinking it’s going to be Romney and there wont be any brokering at the convention.
Wow. This bears a striking resemblance to the right wing nutjobs we see here in the threads.
@10 Is this manofcrap again?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....or-America
From the same link in 15:
Wow!
@9 You think that’s going to stop them? Hell, next they’ll be lobbying for bigger subsidies. Oh, wait…they’re already doing that, aren’t they? Maybe they’ll start charging employees for the privilege of working instead of paying them.
@12 Well, don’t take anything for granted. Things could get interesting if the GOP leadership allows delegates to bring firearms to the convention floor.
Very true.
@3, @13 – “The only measure of “success” conservatives recognize is the ability to gather and hoard money.”
Actually, I don’t think this is entirely correct. There’s little evidence they hoard money; all the evidence indicates they spend it as fast as they can. I suspect most of them, despite possessing trophy homes and trophy cars and trophy wives, have little or no actual net worth.
Sounds like some of my neighbors.
@20/@21 As a matter of fact, here in Seattle a certain chiropractor and his Russian wife (or is it “tenant”?) appear to have taken that whole bit to the next level.
@20/@21 This is, of course, differentiating “conservatives” from “one-percenters”. Or do any of you really believe that, for instance, two guys with master’s degrees from MIT and more money in their own coffers than quite a few countries actually believe all that nonsense?
# 20 & 21: “House rich, cash poor”.
I also know some people like that, with expensive MacMansions and yearly trips to the condo in Maui, but with little more than an upper-middle class income. Maybe that’s why they complain about taxes so much – a tax reduction is the only way they can see of keeping their head above water. A slight problem – a car requires expensive repairs, one of them is out of work for a month or two – and the house of cards collapses. Their real problem is unrealistic expectations and too much debt load.
On the other hand, it’s hard to figure out how the mega-rich could reasonably spend their fortunes. If you are bringing in eight-figure incomes every year, and already have expensive homes, cars, and boats, then the more you buy just becomes another investment. A person can “consume” only so much in food, clothing, travel. If you were to get 20 million dollars every year for the rest of your life, you might be able to spend the first twenty million pretty fast. But the next year you would have a hard time spending the next 20 million. And the year after that even harder. It’s the “Brewster’s Millions” delimma. Eventually you can give it away or hoard it – most choose to give away enough to stroke their ego, and then hoard the rest (in investments of some sort) to give away to the kids and grandkids as an inheritance.
As for “trophy wives” – that might be the biggest potential source of consumption. Expensive to keep, and more expensive to get rid of. Nothing like a divorce to cut your assets down to size, pre-nup or not. As for me, no matter what lottery I might win, I’m sticking with the wife I have. She’s pretty and smart, and I know she didn’t marry me for my money (we were both dirt poor when we were married).