Current polls seem to show Romney's basically got it sewn up at this point, but yeah. Santorum would have been awesome.
I had dinner with my best friend from college and his boyfriend tonight, and expressed exactly the same sentiment, but they were too perturbed to join in my enthusiasm. "Have you actually met any Americans recently?" they quizzed me, plaintively.
Yglesias has consistently argued that liberals should want Romney to get the nomination, because while he probably wouldn't be a good president he would almost certainly be the best president of any of the plausible Republican options, and since elections are so strongly driven by economic conditions there's a substantial chance that the Republican will win regardless of who it is, so it would be best to hedge our bets against that option. I'm not sure I buy this in total, but it's something to consider.
Could he get out of it somehow? Is there some bullshit line walking it back that the media would buy? Because otherwise, yes, he would get killed.
Is there some bullshit line walking it back that the media would buy?
From a Republican? Yes, always already.
no dudes, he reaffirmed his belief that griswold was wrongly decided like two weeks ago.
I'm not saying he would actually try to walk it back; he's too committed to Teh Crazy to do that. But if he did try, I bet the media would buy it.
Santorum's not even on the ballot in Virginia, right? I thought only Romney and Paul had campaigns competent enough to meet the VA signature requirements.
that just means the media won't take the VA results seriously, to my mind.
The media takes all results seriously. They take Iowa seriously, for Christ's sake. If they didn't, they'd have to find something else to talk about.
At this rate Romney's going to have it all wrapped up long before VA, though, so it won't matter anyway.
I just don't believe evangelical southerners are going to pull the lever for a mormon, economy or no. an insanely conservative catholic, maybe, but a mormon?! a lot of people regard them as non-christian.
And yet, here we are. I think part of the story is that with Newt still in the race he and Santorum are now basically splitting the anti-Romney vote.
Basically it seems like anyone who's willing to vote for a Mormon will vote for Romney, anyone who isn't but will vote for a Catholic will vote for Santorum, everyone else will vote for Gingrich, and Romney will win.
No one will vote for Perry, whose decision to stay in the race only adds further support to the already strong case that he's an idiot.
If the Republican establishment is really good at strategy and want Romney to win, I'd think they'd want to keep Santorum in as long as Gingrich is in so that the vote-splitting will continue.
I think Yggles is a bit biased about Romnney. I do think that batshit crazy, even if it loses, pulls the Dems who do win inexorably right.
I think Yggles is a bit biased about Romnney.
Quite possible; he does seem to genuinely like the guy, and he did of course vote for him for governor of MA.
the appearance of the word "genuinely" in a sentence also containing the name "romney" is jarring and may be illegal in some states.
The problem with Yggles' reasoning is that GWB ran as a compassionate conservative. The sanest Republican is still a willing participant in all the crazy. If there were a Republican pointing fingers at the rest of the loons and saying we need to clean house and stop being maniacs, that would count as preferable by reason of sanity, but Romney's nowhere near that, and there's no way of telling what freakish excesses he'd commit in office.
The average Republicans aren't crazy enough to oppose the pill? It's never clear to me how crazy they are.
Recently I encountered a real, in-the-wild example of a person who thinks that someone working a job that doesn't provide health insurance, who can't afford to buy it on their own, who has cancer, should just die rather than have any form of government assistance with medical bills. "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!," they shouted.
If Santorum wanted to walk back his Griswold comments, there's a time-honored fashion for doing so. He'd just say that Griswold was constitutional overreach, and he wants the states to be able to decide.
Of course, there's the question of what Santorum thinks the states should decide, but he'd never have to answer that question because the media's attention span doesn't extend to followup questions.
On the other hand, Santorum has been pretty darn clear on his position on contraception itself. If nothing else, there's video out that that would make for some juicy campaign commercials.
Those of you who scoff at the notion that Obama is the antichrist will have to come up with some alternative explanation for the opponents he draws in every single election.
Is there some bullshit line walking it back that the media would buy?
"What I actually said is that I oppose blah control."
Santorum and his wife, Karen Garver Santorum, have six living children. Karen Santorum was a neonatal intensive care unit nurse for nine years. One child was diagnosed with Edwards syndrome (Trisomy 18), a serious genetic disorder. In 1996, after Karen developed a life-threatening infection, a son, Gabriel, was born prematurely and lived for only two hours. While pregnant, Karen Santorum developed a life-threatening intrauterine infection and a fever that reached nearly 105 degrees. She went into labor when she was 20 weeks pregnant and allowed doctors to give her Pitocin to speed the birth.
well, she practices what he preaches.
While pregnant, Karen Santorum developed a life-threatening intrauterine infection and a fever that reached nearly 105 degrees. She went into labor when she was 20 weeks pregnant and allowed doctors to give her Pitocin to speed the birth.
Wait, isn't that an abortion?
She wasn't the one that killed her baby, she sent her letters from the country. She was an animal, she was a bloody disgrace.
"PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!," they shouted.
... as I repeatedly kicked their prone body.
beat him like a red-headed stepchild
a brother just can't get a break with all these bloody racists around.
27: I should work on becoming more violent.
He'd just say that Griswold was constitutional overreach, and he wants the states to be able to decide.
He's already done this, with all of the accompanying evasions you discuss.
Wait, isn't that an abortion?
The procedure is allowed in these circumstances Catholic bioethics under the doctrine of double effect. Part of the doctrine specifically involves denying that the procedure counts as an "abortion."
Basically it seems like anyone who's willing to vote for a Mormon will vote for Romney, anyone who isn't but will vote for a Catholic will vote for Santorum, everyone else will vote for Gingrich, and Romney will win.
Newt converted to Catholicism when he married his third wife. I think he needed to do something dramatic to convince the Christianist right that he had really repented this time, even if the dramatic move does mean alienating some hardcore sectarians.
This post brought to you by the male urge to explain things.
Saying that Romney is the least wacky of the bunch isn't the same as saying he's fit to be president.
Isn't Santorum effectively running for VP now? He's not really saying negative things about Romney, and is just demonstrating that he brings needed enthusiasm from the batshit wing. Perry has been running for VP since his boomlet ended, and has a better geographical case for it than Santorum. Gingrich is not running for VP, but is running for vanity, as he has been doing all along. He probably had the best chance at VP of anyone in the field, but his boomlet -- which he did nothing to cause -- got out of control.
David Brooks is santorum-curious.
Warning: Actual David Brooks column at link.
24: Their reaction to that was rather interesting (discussed here before):
she [Karen Santorum] writes that the couple brought the deceased infant home from the hospital and introduced the dead child to their living children as "your brother Gabriel" and slept with the body overnight before returning it to the hospital.
12: And yet, here we are.
Those TPM poll charts are a very nice graphic, but I don't know why the hell they remove the candidates who have dropped out. They are actively misleading without showing the Bachmann and Cain curves.
33: Man, I think he's a raving loon, but I really hate harping on how his family dealt with a stillborn child weirdly. People act weird in weird situations.
35: Yes, I thought of adding something to reinforce that I find their reaction actually interesting not necessarily "interesting" in the harshly judgmental way. However, I will confess that having been a resident his state (and his locale (sort of, see my next comment)) through his whole political career inclines me towards giving him zero benefit of the doubt on anything. So attach a "this man hates Santorum" flag to everything I write.
I thought this comment went through, so sorry if it double-posts: I have to say that if they felt like that was the best way for their family to grieve, I'm not going to judge them. I might be distraught and unwilling to surrender the body immediately in that position; I have no idea. I started having unexplained bleeding when I was at 20 weeks with girl y, and I cannot begin to tell you the horror of turning around to flush the toilet and seeing the water all pink with fresh blood. I was terrified I would lose the baby and spent the next 30 weeks in a state of constant anxiety, counting how many fetal motions I could feel within a 15-minute period, over and over and over. so, I feel like however people want to deal with that is cool, and also approve of home burials where the family just keeps and dresses the body themselves. I almost would rather have done that than send my grandmother's body off on a gurney and see it returned as ash.
Being terribly, terribly sad after a stillbirth, and taking time to grieve with the poor child's body, seems the most normal thing I've ever read about Santorum.
In contrast, and lest I seem too generous, incorporating that tragedy into one's stump speech about throttling the liberties of others is not normal, except in the Klein-bottle world of Republican primaries.
Carp is right, this is simply Santorum's turn to be the anti-Romney candidate and it fortuitously came right at the start of the actual voting. (And he is also a more practiced and conventional politician than most of the others who had their little poll bubbles.)
However, that said, the issue that I would really like to stay quiet and then come out in the national was his being registered as living in a small house in a working class suburb (actually occupied by a relative) here while actually living in a McMansion* in Virginia. The thing that really burned** was that his children got their cyberschool tuition paid by the visibly struggling school district. The perfect antidote to his "family" rhetoric. A bonus was that the upset victory that got him into the House in 1990 was "Santorum's charge that Walgren really lived in McLean Va., and was out of touch with his district".
*Since replaced by a more substantive McMansion based on his series of standard post-Congress wealth-enhancing program-related activities.
**Maybe it would not resonate since it was a past issue and the national audience not suffering as much from general Santorum-fatigue as people in Pa. were at the time. But it really defines the package that is Rick Santorum.
The procedure is allowed in these circumstances Catholic bioethics under the doctrine of double effect. Part of the doctrine specifically involves denying that the procedure counts as an "abortion.
During the 50s my father (who was anti-abortion) worked as an MD in Catholic hospitals in what is now a strongly or rabidly pro-life area, and they had a firm policy of saving the mother at the expense of the fetus. The way he expressed it was that if the mother was at risk of death, they'd assume that the fetus was already dead. (He was aware that that was fishy logic.) He didn't mention double effect.
I don't know how high up the Catholic hierarchy that policy went. It may have been a local policy locally decided, or a Catholic MD decision independent of the Church. It's an indication, though, that the US has regressed in some ways during the last 50 years.
Is Santorum actually deeply-closeted? I have had two different local but distinctly secondhand sources say "absolutely yes". I only pass this on because I am a man who hates Rick Santorum and am probably less sensitive than I should be to the potentially negative effects of spreading rumors about sexuality on the LGBT community.
I think it's been obvious since Perry went down that Romney would win. I let my hopes get raised by Gingrich but I refuse to be sucked in by sweater-vest Santorum and his goofy grins. All you need is one look at a photo and know he's not getting out of the primary. He's a very low rent, charisma-deficient non-Romney, as shown by the fact that they took this long to work around to him.
President Romney with a Republican House and Senate would be a very bad thing, don't kid yourself. Some of the outwardly more extreme ideas wouldn't happen, but there would be changes that would effectively finish the job of gutting the New Deal, the regulatory state, and a chunk of Medicare. The party is as important as Romney.
I think it's been obvious since Perry went down that Romney would win. I let my hopes get raised by Gingrich but I refuse to be sucked in by sweater-vest Santorum and his goofy grins. All you need is one look at a photo and know he's not getting out of the primary. He's a very low rent, charisma-deficient non-Romney, as shown by the fact that they took this long to work around to him.
President Romney with a Republican House and Senate would be a very bad thing, don't kid yourself. Some of the outwardly more extreme ideas wouldn't happen, but there would be changes that would effectively finish the job of gutting the New Deal, the regulatory state, and a chunk of Medicare. The party is as important as Romney.
Santorum seems like he got stuck at the phase of a nerdy little 12 year old politics geek who is very bright and well informed but has no experience or reality sense (like that little prodigy that Newsmax was pushing a few years back, Virgin Ben), with his geeky politics all wrapped up in his weird 12-year-old sexual aversions and intensities of fear and self-doubt.
Then overlaid on that is his grateful admiration for certain kinds of authority figures, which is how he justifies being one of the most corrupt K Street Senators of all. (Charles Pierce harps on his blatant corruption). Corruption isn't corruption, it's these nice, idealistic, right-minded adults helping little Ricky do the right thing.
Gratitude has a lot to do with winger politics. Reagan was a nobody from a trashy family who was grateful for his opportunites. That's the Horatio Alger story -- not hard work and perseverance, but being a good boy and waiting for a rich man to discover you.
yes! he is a grown-up virgin ben, totally.
38: Yeah, an acquaintance of mine was forced, by stupid anti-abortion laws, to carry to term a non-viable fetus (I forget what the precise condition was, but it was 100% not viable). So she delivered it and then she and her husband and their little daughter and some close friends stayed with it for some hours after the delivery to grieve and say goodbye. That seemed totally reasonable to me.
9:
VA is on Super Tuesday and there will be a lot of results coming in. If Romney is doing well overall then the comment will be, "This one was expected, but another Romney win." If he isn't then the comment will be, "A bright spot in the gloom: Romney wins VA, but it was expected since he was only facing Paul." In either case, they'll move on to something more interesting.
Iowa, for the media, had the double attraction of being a surprise and a three-way between Romney, Paul and Santorum (I apologize for the image). Man bites dog stuff (or man on dog bites).
26: The Sex Pistols' right-to-life song reminds me that the thinking of angry gut thinkers is pretty erratic, so you shouldn't expect them to make sense all the time.
||
samidare ya
kenkyushitsu no
marukisuto
|>
|?
Dirty limerick
50 was written by Tatehito ribbing Uno Kozo for his academic isolation from politics in the late 30s
the rains of early summer come
while the Marxist
remains in his study
Uno himself wrote a terrific haiku from jail (his apolitical stance did not save him) which alludes to a Basho
as spring bestirs itself
I wonder what
my neighbor is in for
Can't find it, I thought it was in the Crooked Timber Lilla vs Robin thread, but somebody over there said that just as reactionary modernism (so-called conservatism) defines itself in opposition to liberalism/Social Democrats, so any decent leftism must define itself and understand itself also as a relating to liberalism/Social Democrats
Fuck all Republicans. Not interested
|>
45: which is how he justifies being one of the most corrupt K Street Senators of all.
Yep. You know who should hate Santorum more than I do, actual 'family values" people.
One of *my* favorites was his introducing a bill that the National Weather Service should not be able to directly inform the public with regard to the weather (but would be required to do all of the back-end collecting). Shockingly, one of the largest private weather services, AccuWeather, is located in Pennsylvania and was a big supporter of his.
I propose that JP be designated the official Unfogged spokesman on things Santorum and be authorized to speak in the name of the blog.
49: Yeah, some of the Sex Pistols stuff has, I would argue, better politics than some of the Clash's stuff, but on the whole it is definitely incoherent.
Sous le pavé -- la pistols!
I'd be most curious to learn whether Santorum, as a Pennsylvania-associated public figure, had addressed for the record whether every adult within ten or twenty leagues of Penn State ought to be horsewhipped raw and then shoved into a small stonewalled room containing nothing but an axe-wielding Andrew Vachss.
I had never heard of Andrew Vachss until just now. The picture that accompanies his Wikipedia profile evokes a certain je ne sais quoi that practically screams, "I won't need the ax, buddy. I've got this with my bare hands."
Also, pray pardon my ignorance. Unfogged never stops pointing out my blind spots.
Per Wiki, Vachss has actually constructed a pit bull ethic for humans. Absolute loyalty to your own, and attack anyone who hurts them. (A little like Mediterranean clan war too). It's surprising he hasn't killed anyone. He seems to be manic, too, with about 40 published books and multiple adventures.
Andrew Vachss* is a hanging judge:
* "I always tell people I don't love kids.... I hate their predators. It's a burning hatred I feel to this day."
It's interesting how noir writers seem to be either hard left or reactionary right. On the left you've got Hammet, Thompson and Ellroy, right is Spillane and somebody obvious that I'm forgetting as I rush out the door to get something in the mail.
Maybe I don't ever want to have a job that requires dealing with college students.
61: I was talking about that on FB, but now feel a little bad about it, since it really probably is a really terrible manic episode (even if she does say vile shit, and the most vile of it isn't in those emails).
Chandler seems to have leaned right but been relatively apolitical. For instance.
...although I have no sympathy with them [the Hollywood Ten] and don't think anything very awful will happen to them, other than spending a lot of money on lawyers, and the worst kind of lawyers, I reserve my real contempt for the movie moguls who in conference decided to expel them from the industry.
62: Yeah, it does seem like that. I forgot whether the recent thread reached a conclusion about whether it's okay to call someone an asshole if their behavior is partly explicable by mental illness. Still, she seems like an entitled asshole, ill or not.
53: I propose that JP be designated the official Unfogged spokesman on things Santorum and be authorized to speak in the name of the blog.
I'll let Robert Byrd (primarily referring to Santorum, in 1995) do it for me:
There have been giants in this Senate, and I have seen some of them. Little did I know when I came here that I would live to see pygmies stride like colossuses while marveling, like Aesop's fly, sitting on the axle of a chariot, 'My, what a dust I do raise!'
I speculate that the consistency of the corruption (or, at best, crippling compromise) of authority, institution and establishment in noir settings makes left-right classification of the works, if not the authors, a little tricky. I mean, a man's got to have a code, but following a code makes negotiation of the democratic, collective or other generally-applicable regime's demands difficult at best.
38.2: In contrast, and lest I seem too generous, incorporating that tragedy into one's stump speech about throttling the liberties of others is not normal, except in the Klein-bottle world of Republican primaries.
He has always incorporated his family in his politicking. Perhaps most notoriously when his sobbing children were on the podium with him for his 2006 concession speech. And I'm actually maybe sorta willing to give him a break on that one if 20 years from now the kids talk about how nice it was to be included in everything. But no, he's such a petty little bully that I am not going to give him the benefit of doubt on that one.
69: For Christ's sake, Rick, lose with a little dignity.
Hammett was pretty leftwing in the end, but he had a considerable career with the Pinkertons which included some strikebreaking activity.
According to this, the Pinkertons were taught that a.) they were fighting for the forces of good, and b.) any means whatsoever were legitimate when fighting against evil.
This is the same kind of thing that Communists are accused of, but because the Pinkertons were fighting for Good rather than Evil, it was OK.
71.1: Yes, but I think it is the general view of most commentators, supported by Hammet's and Hellman's own writings, that the Pinkertons were an escapade of his callow youth, and that the Continental Op stories are, to some extent, an attempt to atone for that. Certainly you can't read Red Harvest and feel like he's pro-capital.
Essear, are you looking forward to House of Lies? I am! Kristin Bell back on the small screen! (Though I guess it's not Veronica Mars Goes To Wall Street, sadly.)
Oh, that should have an OT in front of it. Obviously.
Yeah, I was kinda thinking of Chandler, but he certainly never swung as far off center as the other biggies. I've only read one Andrew Vachss* book, and it was inconclusive, politically. The minor noir guys -- Goodis and them -- don't seem super political either.
* "Vachss? We ain't got no Vachss. We don't need no Vachss! I don't have to show you any stinkin' Vachss!"
At the link, his last Pinkerton works seems to be at age 27 or so, and his leftwing committment at age 40 or so.
Like B. Traven, he seems to be a guy who actually did see the hard side of life he wrote about and was lucky to survive it.
Vachss seems highly authoritarian and more right than left wing.
Except that, in Vachss' novels, authority, whether civil or criminal (in the person of "The Boss"/"The Brain"/"The Employer") is invariably corrupt and neither able nor willing even to acknowledge, much less remedy, its or its representatives' offenses against the common good (unfairness) or the putative code (hypocrisy).
Vachss seems highly authoritarian and more right than left wing.
He's right about pitbulls, though. And child abuse, I suppose.
Yeah, but vigilantes always say that, and they're authoritarians outside the law.
79: I would feel more comfortable taking issue with that if I weren't wearing a Batman t-shirt.
I saw an interview with Vachss awhile back by a worshipful interviewer who seemed awed by his tough-guy act, and it turned me against the gut. But if any of you want to devote your lives to the fight against evil, I'm not going to stand in your way. Because I'm not evil.
I'm going to devote my life to the fight against weevils. First step: Tightly fitting lids for all grain containers!
You might be evil and unaware, John. Wickedness is insidious, after all.
73: Yeah, it looks potentially fun. I'm not sure how or when I'll watch it, though, since I'm temporarily DVRless.
The go-to profile on Rick Santorum is this one from the Philly City Paper back in 2005. One interesting twist (echoing a theme that came up in the spawns thread) concerns his wife (he was a lawyer (WWF was a client--he did the "wrestling not a sport so steroids are OK" defense) and she was a candidate to be an intern).
When she met Rick, Karen was living with Tom Allen, an OBGYN who in the early-1970s cofounded Pittsburgh's first abortion clinic. It was a somewhat unusual pairing. Allen was the doctor who delivered Karen. She began living with him while an undergraduate nursing student at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University. She was in her early 20s, he was in his 60s.
"When she moved out to go be with Rick, she told me I'd like him, that he was pro-choice and a humanist," said Allen, an elderly but vibrant man, during a brief conversation on the porch of his Pittsburgh row home. "But I don't think there's a humanist bone in that man's body."He has spoken about the evolution of his own abortion views.
"When I make decisions from a public policy point of view ... I try not to cloud it with emotion," he says. "While I've seen the impact, I try to look beyond that to what is rationally in the best interest of our society. There are a lot of bad things that happen, and you can't just let the bad things that happen give you a knee-jerk response to change policy." He goes on, "My responsibility as a legislator is not to impose some emotional reaction to a situation."
Typical heartless technocrat.
The republican debate so far is nicely vicious.
I'm also enjoying the terrible lighting, which is randomly highlighting places on these mooks' faces to make them look unpredictably bulbous.
Awesome: Ron Paul on the attack against Santorum sounds more and more doddering. Two birds! (Unfortunately, Paul's weird ineffectual attacks are allowing Santorum an easy opportunity to "address" the issue of corruption.)
I was just looking at Richard Adams' liveblog at the Guardian, and saw this:
Yes, squabble among yourself, foolish earthlings. Soon the RomneyBot 2000 will seize power.
Heh. I'm curious about this thing, but NPR isn't playing it, I can't imagine why. Maybe I'll watch.
This also from the Balloon Juice comment thread was amusing:
We have OtherMormon, Mad Dwarf, Replicant, UnfortunateGoogleProblem, FootInMouth, and OverInflated Ego. CrazyEyes, you'll be missed.
Jesus. Perry just committed to sending troops back into Iraq.
The Washington Post ran a horrible editorial today worrying that Obama was going too far in cutting defense spending. It was full of No one wants war with Iran or North Korea, but...and To be sure, if hard budget choices must be made, it is probably wiser to reduce troop levels than to curtail investments in new planes and ships or in new weapons technology. But this raises the question of whether the scale of the defense cuts the president is considering is appropriate.
Are they setting up to endorse Romney?
There was a link to the damned thing.
93: Yeah, this is sort of interesting: they're being driven to increasingly plain talk in order to distinguish themselves from one another. Thank god for Huntsman and Paul, actually.
93: Maybe I should look at the Mayan calendar thing again.
55: an excellent proposal. he should be asked about it, at the very least.
"There are no classes in America.... 'Middle class' should not be part of the Republican lexicon."
99.--That was a jaw-dropper for me, too.
I love watching Huntsman and Romney hate on each other.
99: That was weird, wasn't it? A tense moment! Ohhhh, I see ... we should say "middle income" ... none of this class warfare business that democrats embrace.
94: Are they setting up to endorse Romney?
Uh. Who did you think the WaPo was going to endorse? Since the OpEd page has been establishment Republican central for months. (In particular, the carpet-bombing Gingrich endured in Iowa was signaled by everyone on the OpEd page going after Gingrich like a switch had been flipped.)
max
['The fix is in and has been for awhile - the only question is if it works.']
I wanted Huntsman to all-out yell at Romney about China. He was pinching his mouth and let loose with what I assume was some Mandarin -- the debate moderators shouldn't have let Romney interrupt to the extent he did.
Great moment earlier when Ron Paul stopped an attempted Romney interruption with a flat "Don't interrupt me [jackass]."
Once again, I'm back at wondering whether Ron Paul is some sort of stalking horse.
93: Jesus. Perry just committed to sending troops back into Iraq.
But I like Frank Coniff's tweet on that: To be fair, Rick Perry sending troops back into Iraq isn't as stupid as Bush sending them there in the first place.
Like many of us who in our inimitable pioneering way discovered Twitter a few months back, I rarely use it; but I am finding it to be the best only tolerable medium for following the Republican debates. So I will inflict you with my favorites from this one:
I worry that all the jokes about Santorum's sweater vests are distracting us from the fact that he's a fucking asshat. - Borowitz
While denying he's a lobbyist, Santorum looks snazzy in pricy suit he bought with shit-load of money he made lobbying. - Conniff
Was the Bachmann woman executed? - KimJongNumberUn
Since it's now been whittled down to only rich white men, this is the most republican republican debate yet. - Conniff
At moments like this it terrifies me that the US has nuclear weapons. - KimJongNumberUn
Wouldn't it be weird to wake up from Unfogged one day and realize that it had all been a bizarre dream involving analogues of people you knew in real life? Like The Wizard of Oz meets Newhart.
Why hasn't anyone developed my Log Cabin idea yet, where mcmanus and Emerson try to infiltrate an RNC type event. And get pursued by a bear.
wow. ok. that's hard-core. it's kind of blowing my mind a little.
107: That unfogged had all been a bizarre dream involving analogues?
Maybe when I was in grad school that might have made sense.
I don't know what to make of this. I suppose if people in real life spoke out a bit more, I could make them out to be unfoggetarians in some way, but you know, there is no ogged but ogged, no DS but DS, no Emerson but Emerson, no Natilo but, well, Natilo.
I think the people at my job are deliberately trying to give me a heart attack. I should have been an accountant or something.
So I'm unwinding.
Which one of them is Shearer? Which is bob?
Have we ever discussed whether anyone finds Newhart's stand up routine, with the one-sided phone calls, funny? It's not like they're really offensive or anything, it just seems like the kind of humor that only square parents of young children like. I mean, maybe they're brilliant and I'm just totally stupid or nekulturni, but every time I see them, I'm like "this launched a long career in comedy?!
Shearer is a retired lawyer and bob is the founder.
(I feel like I should open the gift bottle of Southern Comfort that showed up here a month or so ago, but I think it might be yucky tasting.)
Natilo! You're working for an organization that bob founded?! No wonder you're tearing your hair out.
112: The man found a style that suited him perfectly.
Bob Newhart is pretty funny in those The Librarian movies on TNT.
114: don't open it parsi. it will be yucky-tasting. drink something else.
What bugs me is that Santorum is clearly a Latin genitive plural, but I can't work out whether the underlying word is "Santus" (2nd declension), which is a French circus working in England, or "Santor" (3rd declension), which is a French medical information website. It's all very strange.
Have we ever discussed whether anyone finds Newhart's stand up routine, with the one-sided phone calls, funny?
That was a different era, kids. Newhart went national 51 years ago when I was 14. I thought he was funny. He was a pop version of the Greenwich Village sick comics like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, the way the Kingston Trio, Bob Dylan, et. al. were pop versions of Greenwich Village folk, and Hubert Humphrey was a pop version of Gus Hall.
Screw the ban.
Here's a skit he did on Mad TV that I like a lot.
114, 118: It is super yucky-tasting.
After the war [Newhart] got a job as an accountant for United States Gypsum. He later claimed that his motto, "That's close enough," and his habit of adjusting petty cash imbalances with his own money shows he didn't have the temperament to be an accountant.[6] He also claimed to have been a clerk in the unemployment office who made $55 a week but who quit upon learning weekly unemployment benefits were $45 a week and he "only had to come in to the office one day a week to collect it."[9]
Southern Comfort, per a recent link here, is the least dense alcoholic drink other than everclear. What's up with that?
Most of the densest drinks are Crème de X type drinks.
You could make a layered drink with 95% Everclear, 75% Everclear, Southern Comfort, water, and crème de menthe in that order. That would be the worst drink ever.
Wake up, people! It's almost noon, for those of you in Greenland!
The Koreans are taking over classical music from The Hebrews.
Actually, many of the best classical musicians have always been untermenschen. The Übermenschen (Texans and Bill Kristol) tend to go into manlier fields involving money and/or bloodshed.
Back when I was unsuccessfully studying music at the U. of Minnesota the music department was thick with Asians. When I was in Taiwan in 1984 every middle class family pushed its daughters into music. Just walking through a nice neighborhood was flat-out Complainte des pianos qu'on entend dans les quartiers aisés. And my son's top ranked youth symphony likewise.
Wake up, people!
Per the "about", the author above is a Canadian winger lady, probably of Ethiopian descent, who writes for "Front Page". So you see, even the lucrative bigot sector of the cultural market is increasingly being dominated by untermenschen and unterfrauen.
Wake up!! It may be too late!!
||
Caroline [Looking over my shoulder at unfogged]: "What does "frothy" mean?"
Me [switching to salon.com]: It means foamy or bubbly.
Caroline [now looking at Salon.com]: Who's that?
Me: Santorum.
I feel like I've almost taught my daughter an extremely dirty word.
|>
126: I think that would, indeed be an awful drink, but that if chartreuse and cynar were added it would be worse. something other than a tequila sunrise. ciudad juárez sunset maybe? just the thing to get you ready for a long night murdering women who work in those maquiladoras and walk past deserted areas.
Thanks for trying, Rob. The rest of you mofos can bite me.
My sleep schedule seems to have become the mirror of the Unfoggetarian sleep schedule. Rest easy, children, while I watch over you.
yeah, where the fuck is everybody? I'm up late watching lame crime shows, but I have an excuse from the doctor.
what if suddenly everyone at once on unfogged got jobs they truly loved and were interested in, and made lots of friends, and went out all the time, but also went for runs, and did yoga, and they never came back to the blog? not likely though.
They'd never do that, alameida. They're not that kind of people, and anyway, jobs that people love and are interested in are like unicorns.
If, per impossibile, the scenario you described did take place, I would be overcome by feelings of abandonment and betrayal.
Don't get good jobs and make real-world friends, people! That would just be wrong.
131: I think you need to add Clamato for that.
I watched a few minutes of the Sunday morning "debate" and now I'm scarred. And the worst was that fuckpig of Washington insiderism David Gregory with his "name three ways the American people will have to suffer pain" questions (something like that). No wonder the media establishment rolled over on torture pron, they're sadistic people who do not even have a conception of themselves as members of society. Can we figure out a way to get Iran and North Korea to take over the national political media? They'd do it better.
Apparently Romney faltering a bit in New Hampshire polls. He's going to win in the end, but they're going to make him suffer for it a bit to atone for past sins like this.
Spiro Agnew was a moderate like Romney. So was George H. W. Bush and maybe even George W. Bush for awhile. Moderation fits with extreme opportunism -- its more like the absence of principles than it's like a moderation principle.
Oh yeah, the item in 138 was issued in the spirit of pure political opportunism. In fact the Republicans often embrace those who demonstrate conclusively that they have no actual principles. McCain also comes to mind.
Republicans and Democrats both, alas. "Pragmatism". I like James and Dewey in many respects, but American political pragmatism is crap.
OK now, noon in Nova Scotia. Rise and shine.
IOZ ...is a great poet.
That above on the Think Pinkster (did someone mention Farren?) This on the spectacle
142: liquid morphine will float on alcohol if poured carefully.
It's so hard to get good liquid morphine any more.
Churchgoing motherfuckers. Hate 'em.
It's weird because Sifu makes a pousse-café joke in another thread. We're apparently all about density cocktails here.
don't open it parsi. it will be yucky-tasting
My god, it was. I took a sip -- really just a wet your lips kind of thing -- from a half-shot I'd poured into a small pretty glass that I otherwise never use, and immediately felt: uhhhh, wow. Then I took an actual sip and argued with myself for a second: this tastes/smells like cough syrup (sickly sweet), but if that's true, how on earth do people drink it, indeed prefer it? I must be overreacting. After a second actual sip, I decided it was even worse: tastes/smells like butterscotch, or maybe caramel, cough syrup.
Just an acquired taste? Or are you supposed to mix it with something, or have it on ice or something? Maybe the rest of the rather large bottle will have to live in the back of the cupboard for strictly emergency purposes.
148: It's for alcoholics and high school kids, pretty much. Horrible.
Okay, backing up the conversation. I love Bob Newhart's comedy. His driving instructor bit is just great.
Now for the caveats - he reminds me of my dad both in looks and way of talking and I joke semi-seriously about growing up in the 1950s. My parents were older and more conservative than everyone else's (of my age) so I grew up listening to Patsy Cline and Marty Robbins rather than like The Beatles or Bob Dylan. Also I'm from the East Coast and there is something rural East Coast about Newhart's comedy - very understated, not particularly mean or envelope pushing. Maybe he's like the Garrison Keillor of the East?
150: Thought he was from Chicago? And went to Loyola Chicago, but perhaps I am confusing him with someone else.
148: mix it with orange juice and it'll be semi-drinkable.
151: Yep -- a St. Ignatius boy, in fact.
Just an acquired taste?
The reverse. I think people's tolerance for sickly sweet drinks diminishes with age. People enjoy Southern Comfort a couple of years after they enjoy Amaretto and a couple of years before they enjoy Drambuie. By the time they reach 30 they're drinking proper drinks.
151: I don't actually know where he's from. He has that inoffensive comedy style that seems very Canadian but because of the Bob Newhart Show (is that the one set in the hotel?), he seems more eastern than western.
Southern Comfort Sweet Tea is even more Southern and even more comfortable. Home delivery available.
Southern Comfort smells like puke to me, because so often my preppy friends the shitheads puked it up at high school parties.
I would add the obligatory "good times", but such profligate use of a finite resource might create an irony shortage elsewhere in the world. I can't be held accountable if some adolescent finds herself short on irony, left with nothing but earnestness, in a pinch.
154 True, but it can be nice once in a while. The other night I sat up chatting with my cousin and drinking tons of Grand Marnier and then some Baileys after the GM ended, and it was sort of nice in a nostalgic way.
My"the Kingston Trio, Bob Dylan, et. al. " was wasted on an empty room. Fuck.
I was too enthralled by the notion of Hubert as the pop version of Gus Hall to notice that bit.
137: I watched a few minutes of the Sunday morning "debate" and now I'm scarred
I honestly can't remember whether past Republican primary debates were this strangely shocking yet idiotic. They must have been; I must not have been as much a political junkie as I am now.
I still say it's interesting the extent to which the more viable candidates are driving each other further right: in agreement on some variant of the Ryan plan, on the dastardly nature of the socialist welfare state, on the soundness of Bowles-Simpson, on cutting or entirely eliminating (!) corporate taxation, on saber-rattling toward Iran/Islamism/China. (Huntsman and Ron Paul are only partial exceptions.)
What bothers me most about this is not the seeming depravity of the press, so frequently decried, but rather that the sheer repetition of these policy ideas gives them the sheen of respectability: it's turning voters' heads. It wasn't long ago that the Ryan plan was roundly rejected in the public imagination.
- I wrote this like half an hour ago and then had to talk on the phone, and now I've lost the spirit.
Actually, I can get myself mildly interested in the press's role in all this: David Gregory's questions were, for a while, of the "let's you and him fight" persuasion. Is Romney unelectable? Is he a vulture, a liar? Gingrich, what say you? Is he a divider rather than a uniter: Huntsman, what say you?
What's hilarious is that Romney responds so poorly: he seems to have adopted a permanent smirk, which he may always have had, but god he is so unlikeable.
Listen, though: why would the press be fomenting a "fight amongst yourselves" stage play? Aside from the ratings it likely generates.
The press is worried that Romney has it sacked and that the Republican primary is finished as a news-generator, which is probably true. They want to drag it out.
Gregory's "What sacrifices will the American people have to make?" was his most bullshit move.
Romney just needs to stay standing to get the nomination.
165.2: I'm not sure why I want to defend Gregory, but we should probably realize that he doesn't make these questions up himself. He's part of a network (tm).
It's interesting, when we refer to news organizations that we say "network" when we might just as easily say "syndicate" or "cartel", or even "conspiracy".
OT: Airports are dull. Entertain me, reprobates. Dance! Sing! Pun!
Gregory is stupid all the time. He's the go-to guy for nasty stupidity. His network has groomed him to be very stupid and nasty. Does anyone know anything else about him?
167: "Corporation" works for me. Network, however, goes toward the extent to which most of the major news media are part of such incredible media conglomerates that it boggles the mind.
I've lost track of it all now. I forget who owns what. There was a guy named Mark Crispin Miller who generated a two-page layout chart of the corporate ownership relations among broadcast, print media, film, and advertising companies for The Nation, some 10 or 15 years ago. I'm sure there's a similar updated chart somewhere on the internets now.
Anyway, David Gregory has a job to do, and he's not as much of a toady as he could be, considering.
Dude, Emerson, I don't think Gregory is stupid. I think he has to bite his tongue a lot of the time.
Sure, consider my use of "David Gregory" in 137 as synechdoche.
So he's developed the art of being stupid and nasty while he's really sharp and decent? What a defense.
Gregory has a reputation for inanity and ass-kissing, even compared to other people in the same biz. And he's been training for this position for 20 years or so. Why cut him any slack?
Gregory has a reputation for inanity and ass-kissing
I did not know that. Among which group does he have this reputation? Ass-kissing, sure: that's part of his job, in order to be able to get political higher-ups to agree to be on his show. His job is to try to get the higher-ups to make news, on his show -- which makes Meet the Press quotable, which drives up its ratings, which I assume increases the stock price of NBC or whichever network that is.
Inanity I'm not seeing.
If your complaint is that he's a sell-out, sure. Sure he is. Many other people (not even in the media) are as well.
If you Google "David Gregory" + stupid you'll get about 20-30 people talking about how stupid he is. He doesn't necessarily look especially stupid in context, given the degradation of the commercial newsmedia, but you can always ask yourself "What question would a smart person have asked in that position?" I don't rule out the possibility that he's actually quite bright and is just doing dumb shit for venial reasons, but I have no way of knowing that and it's a more damning description than just "stupid".
Oh, sweet. A malign-the-television-interviewers thread! I feel roughly eight years younger.
I don't rule out the possibility that he's actually quite bright and is just doing dumb shit for venial reasons
I think that's the truth of the matter. He himself, and a lot of other people, probably, would not agree that his reasons are venial, but there it is: it's a job that someone has to do.
You could do a rather shitty job of it, as Christiane Amanpour did before she finally quit because she couldn't stand trying to do it any more. Maybe George Stephanopoulos (sp) will do it better, eh?
I don't see any evidence that Gregory is any better than he seems to be or that he is much different than the rest of his team. "Stupid" isn't exactly the word, I suppose; "deliberately stupified", in the sense of incapable of perceiving reality because of a longstanding need to deny it, is closer.
178: Well, I'm not going to argue about this much further. I don't think Gregory is incapable of perceiving reality; it's just his job to stay within the parameters of a certain panoply of discussion topics, which does have some wiggle-room, and he does go for the wiggle room when time and etiquette permit.
I'm not in love with the guy, but I don't think he's the gawdawfulest mainstream news interviewer on the airwaves, not by a long shot.
I'm talking mostly about his routine weekly Meet the Press stuff; the debate this morning was something different.
I don't believe that I've ever heard anyone say anything good about him.
180: At 6'5", he's probably the best natural rebounder in the press corps.
131: Are you kidding me? Chartreuse makes everything better.
Cynar, however, I can understand disliking.
I got no beef with chartreuse, I was just thinking of something that would layer and help the drink look disgusting. cynar, by contrast is repulsive. no one likes it except neb who will be along shortly to explain it's an excellent digestif.
183: Oh, if you're only claiming it makes the drink look disgusting, then I might agree.
Not with you on Cynar, but I wouldn't judge anyone for disliking it. After all, it's bitter!
Beef with chartreuse, however, might in fact turn out quite strangely...