But then Donald Drumpf swallowed his soul and spat it back out on TV, and I realized that even bullying villains can feel pain. Watch Christie’s eyes in this short video, and read this tale of shame.
This is what happens when petty, small-minded corruption meets a vaster, more fatuous corruption.
I’m trying to reconcile myself to the likelihood that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, when along comes an announcement from a horrible fellow.
Conservative economist Ben Stein revealed on Wednesday that he was considering voting for Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders because Donald Trump was going to “sink” the Republican Party.
“I went to law school with Ms. Clinton so I’ve always had a kind of fondness for her, she was always a very nice young woman,” Stein told CNN’s Carol Costello. “I admire the fact that Bernie Sanders has a single-payer national health plan.”
I think he’s trying to scuttle everyone.
Just got back from the caucus — the turnout was YUUUUGE. Long lines snaking into the meeting place, crowds of people everywhere. We voted and left instead of staying for all the politicking just because it was standing room only and we felt we had to leave to give more people a chance to come in.
Now we just wait for the returns.
You should watch the election returns on the Guardian. Not so much for the quality coverage, but for the mesmerizing little cartoon candidates zipping back and forth to paint in the county results.
I think it’s super because it’s 8 days until Super Wednesday, which is my birthday. But also because of primary elections, and caucuses. My wife and I will be attending the local precinct caucus, and in case you wonder what’s involved in a Minnesota caucus, here’s a good summary. It’ll be just like that for us, except instead of holding it in a local school, the Morris DFL caucus will at the Old #1 Bar & Grill. Woo hoo! Super!
I must, however, lecture you on more than just the mechanics. Here are some things to do.
John Oliver’s take-down of Trump was hilarious, but will we still be laughing when he wins most of the primaries tomorrow?
Maybe he won’t. Maybe his balloon will finally pop…and he’ll be replaced with Rubio. Or Cruz.
This is a no-win scenario.
When I was a boy, Saturday morning cartoons were a thing. There were no cartoon channels, no every day any day any time access to cartoons, but instead they were all packed into the early morning hours one day a week, on Saturday, when our parents were sleeping in and grateful for distractions that would give them an extra hour or two of rest. So we’d scamper out of bed, fetch ourselves a bowl of sugar-frosted chocolate sugar bombs, and lounge about glassy-eyed watching cats and ducks explode. We weren’t totally vapid, though, we contemplated important questions. Like, why is this ancient Bugs Bunny cartoon so much better animated and funnier than this more recent dreck? Or, this cartoon about a toy seems to have segued into a commercial for the toy in the cartoon…what are boundaries? How do we define the edges of meaning in our existence?
But those days are no more. Now the cartoons have moved to Sunday morning as we get a parade of political pundits, rich old white guys, who sit around and babble about polls and suck up to other rich white guys who have polls done about them. The questions are still the same. I thought the old Hanna-Barbera crap was cheap, badly written, and tiresome, but these guys make them look like Tex Avery. I still wonder where the boundaries are: if rich white guys argue about whether a candidates polls will go up or down if they adopt policy X, is that the same as actually discussing policy X? Is declaring a candidate electable or unelectable identical to discussing the viability of their ideas?
Here’s a sample. It’s unintelligible madness as these guys yell at each other, and meanwhile, off in his own private world Ben Carson talks about the fruit salad of life
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You know, I also hear a lot of nonsense on the Democratic side, about how this candidate or that candidate can’t win against one or the other of these bozos. I don’t care. You can’t say that yet. The serious discussions can’t even begin until the Republican clowns stop with the slapstick and settle down, and then the Democrats can get serious about how to defeat them, and in a pragmatic sense, either of the two Democratic contenders ought to be able to clobber the Republican circus.
“Ought to” does not mean “will.” Democrats have a grand history of screwing up, and Republicans have their catalog of dirty tricks — gerrymandering and voter suppression, to name a few — to claw their way to the top. But we can’t begin to address these problems until the field has been winnowed.
A Texas law is going to allow students to open-carry guns into the classroom, so the University of Houston administration is doing the responsible thing, and informing instructors how to deal with armed students. Tell me if this sounds like good advice to you.
- Be careful discussing sensitive topics
- Drop certain topics from your curriculum
- Not “go there” if you sense anger
- Limit student access off hours
Good thing there are no sensitive topics in biology. No one gets upset about evolution, or reproductive biology, or biotechnology, or vaccines, or chemotherapy, or birth defects, or bioethics, or heritable traits, or…hey! If the administration ever tells me to drop controversial topics from my curriculum, I’ll be on easy street! I’ll just stroll in to every class, say “Let’s rap”, and we’ll just talk about non-stressful events on everyone’s minds, because all the subjects I teach have the potential to be controversial. This being Minnesota, we’ll just talk about the weather every day.
I feel for you people who teach political science, or sociology, or psychology, or any of those harder topics that everyone gets upset about. I’ve got it easy.
I think professors ought to consider some kind of class action lawsuit (with the reservation that I am not a lawyer). It sounds criminal to turn our profession into a dangerous occupation to the point where administrators advise us to not do our jobs.
Let’s hope somebody is listening.
Oh, and to the 19% referenced in the video: fuck off.
Well, this is awkward. I don’t particularly like Hillary Clinton, but most of her supporters seem cool. I very much like Bernie Sanders, but a lot of his supporters seem to be assholes. So what am I to do?
The latest incident is that Sanders’ followers shouted Dolores Huerta off the stage when she offered to help translate at a Nevada caucus. Dolores Huerta? Civil rights and labor leader? The so-called Democratic Socialists chanted “English only!” at a woman who is a prominent activist for unions, equal rights for women and minorities, and for a more just immigration system?
Who the fuck are these people?
