Oops.

 Or, Trump, no.  Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.

Trump. Yes.

 Trump Yes.

Interesting.

That Hunter Biden Story Thing.

How About That?

 OK, I'm watching the RNC liveblog of the last night of the RNC convention.

Pretty much only reading transcripts (the only way to fly IMO).

But I did fire up the "intro video" for the Trumpster, and it's got the SAME cadence as the Tony Stark intro in the first Iron Man movie. I bet you a pizza that ain't an accident.

I love seeing competence in action.

"That's good, but we need more of a Tony Stark vibe..."

Vive la Différence!

"But Smasher, there's no palpable difference between the GOP and the DNC!"

They're both full of poltroons and thuggery to be sure, and I'd trust none of them behind me in a dark alley, as a rule.

But.

Reading this Hayward post, I'm reminded of one stark difference:

The GOP expects and accepts questions from the Left.  The converse is never ever ever true.

Politician Control

(Ran across this old post of mine from a forum I used to participate in frequently.  Made me laugh a little, reposting it here for funsies.)

I listened to 10 seconds of Cuomo's rant last night NY Gov. Cuomo pushes strict gun-control measures in wake of shootings - NYPOST.com and his "Nobody NEEDS 10 bullets to kill a deer!" line got me thinking that, well, nobody NEEDS 10 politicians to pass a law. So I'm thinking that I might start a politician control movement to limit the horrifying things politicians do to ourselves, our children, and our society:

1. No more than 5 politicians allowed per state.
2. All bad politicians are banned, and may be confiscated by the state for disposal. Bad politicians are defined by such criteria as
   
   • Any politician having hair that does not move in a high wind.
   • Any politician that owns a blue suit.
   • Any politician with the letter "F" in their name.
3. No politician may express more than 3 different positions on the same topic within a year's time.

Now, for those folks that are worried that my criteria are arbitrary and uninformed, I can only say that you must hate children and that the time has come to put an end to this sick culture where people feel the need to disagree with me. No one should be able to keep hundreds of politicians with thousands of power ties for any reason.

Who's with me?

This is What It Sounds Like, When Banshees Howl

Hillary Clinton acting indignant at being thought of as corrupt is like John Waters acting indignant at being thought of as creepy.

You reap the reputation you sow, Shrillary.

Rally Check

Thanks.  I needed that.

4. We are outworking, outthinking and outbreeding our withered, hateful, failed opponents. They are defending the status quo, and who is happy with that? The trends go our way. Look at the loser they are wheeling out in 2016 – an elderly, hypocritical cryptolibfascist email-shredder reeking of corruption and decay, whose satyr of a husband will undermine her by nailing every tramp he can get his gnarled paws on from now until election day. Bring her on. Oh yeah, we’re ready for Hillary.

Cardinal Envy, Your Party is Holding Your Table

Yes, Jon Stewart is an uber liberal.  Yes, it's a disgrace and a lens on Our Times that the Daily Show is an actual source of "news" for bajillions of Americans.

But you know what?

Jon Stewart is effing hilarious.  The Daily Show is, most times (IMO), effing hilarious.

And when, that 1 time out of 100 when he/they turn their lens on non-conservative ... things?

I laugh my head off.  Because it's effing hilarious.

So let's be honest with ourselves, fellow travelers - we don't dislike Jon Stewart and his platform.

We envy it.

Here's another one I like from the beforetimes.

If Jon Stewart and his Daily Show were 100 to 1 in our corner?  We'd be making fun of anyone and everyone who didn't "get it".

Get it?

Wave at the Wave

Just finished my 2nd cigar and putting this night to bed.

Planned on drinking lots of bourbon, but actually didn't - just a couple of glasses of the good stuff.  Finished off the last of the current bottle of Buffalo Trace Single Oak.  Maybe if it was a Friday, maybe if I still didn't have to be at work until 3pm like the last few years instead of on a conf call at 8am with my new schedule, maybe if I didn't actually have to spend 3 hours tonight logged in finishing up work I couldn't get to earlier today...

So I'm going to be tired tomorrow, but not hung over.

Oh well.  My intentions were sound. :)

MN looks bad unless we really did take the MN House as it looked like we might a couple of hours ago, and Mills over Nolan (MN) and Brown over Shaheen (non-MN) would've been nice, but... pretty awesome overall.  Truth is most of the key MN Repub candidates just weren't that great.  "I'm not the other guy" just doesn't cut it, most nights, it seems.  Maybe we'll learn.

Ortho followup 11/11, and hopefully I can start using my left arm for real again after that.

This is Some "Look at What I Almost Stepped In!" Dumb

Haven't done a ton of politics here lately, but I read this today and simply could not resist. It's such a dumb, vapid - and, if you've ever read anything by a liberal before - utterly predictable essay that it will take me longer to format the post than to comment on the content.

From the NYT comes some superdumb, and I'll translate each graf because it's easy: I speak jive.

DURHAM, N.C. — By Tuesday night about 90 million Americans will have cast ballots in an election that’s almost certain to create greater partisan divisions, increase gridlock and render governance of our complex nation even more difficult. Ninety million sounds like a lot, but that means that less than 40 percent of the electorate will bother to vote, even though candidates, advocacy groups and shadowy “super PACs” will have spent more than $1 billion to air more than two million ads to influence the election.

Election money bad.

There was a time when midterm elections made sense — at our nation’s founding, the Constitution represented a new form of republican government, and it was important for at least one body of Congress to be closely accountable to the people. But especially at a time when Americans’ confidence in the ability of their government to address pressing concerns is at a record low, two-year House terms no longer make any sense. We should get rid of federal midterm elections entirely.

Don't like your medicine?  Have more of it then, rube.

There are few offices, at any level of government, with two-year terms. Here in Durham, we elect members of the school board and the county sheriff to terms that are double that length. Moreover, Twitter, ubiquitous video cameras, 24-hour cable news and a host of other technologies provide a level of hyper-accountability the framers could not possibly have imagined. In the modern age, we do not need an election every two years to communicate voters’ desires to their elected officials.

Modern life is so fast and full, accountability can't keep up, so we ditch it.

 

But the two-year cycle isn’t just unnecessary; it’s harmful to American politics.

Politics and the bedbugs that populate it would be less shitty if we just lie back and count ceiling tiles until it's over.

The main impact of the midterm election in the modern era has been to weaken the president, the only government official (other than the powerless vice president) elected by the entire nation. Since the end of World War II, the president’s party has on average lost 25 seats in the House and about 4 in the Senate as a result of the midterms. This is a bipartisan phenomenon — Democratic presidents have lost an average of 31 House seats and between 4 to 5 Senate seats in midterms; Republican presidents have lost 20 and 3 seats, respectively.

Leave Britney alone!

 

The realities of the modern election cycle are that we spend almost two years selecting a president with a well-developed agenda, but then, less than two years after the inauguration, the midterm election cripples that same president’s ability to advance that agenda.

If you don't like your president's agenda, you get to keep your president's agenda.

 

These effects are compounded by our grotesque campaign finance system. House members in competitive races have raised, on average, $2.6 million for the 2014 midterm. That amounts to $3,600 raised a day — seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. Surveys show that members spend up to 70 percent of their time fund-raising during an election year. Two years later, they’ll have to do it all again.

Market economics bad.

Much of this money is sought from either highly partisan wealthy individuals or entities with vested interests before Congress. Eliminating midterms would double the amount of time House members could focus on governing and make them less dependent on their donor base.

As time increases, time to raise money does not increase.

Another quirk is that, during midterm elections, the electorate has been whiter, wealthier, older and more educated than during presidential elections. Biennial elections require our representatives to take this into account, appealing to one set of voters for two years, then a very different electorate two years later.

Racism!

There’s an obvious, simple fix, though. The government should, through a constitutional amendment, extend the term of House members to four years and adjust the term of senators to either four or eight years, so that all elected federal officials would be chosen during presidential election years. Doing so would relieve some (though, of course, not all) of the systemic gridlock afflicting the federal government and provide members of Congress with the ability to focus more time and energy on governance instead of electioneering.

Our Federal government was not designed by the Founding Fathers, it was sneezed onto a sleeve by accident.

This adjustment would also give Congress the breathing space to consider longer-term challenges facing the nation — such as entitlement spending, immigration and climate change — that are either too complex or politically toxic to tackle within a two-year election cycle.

Government should do more.

To offset the impact of longer congressional terms, this reform might be coupled with term limits that would cap an individual’s total congressional service at, say, 24 years, about the average for a member of Congress today. This would provide members enough time to build experience in the job, but also limit the effects of incumbency and ensure the circulation of new blood in the system.

Giving politicians more time and power to dig in combined with decreasing the number of elections will increase turnover.

 

The framers included an amendment process in the Constitution so our nation could adjust the system to meet the demands of a changing world. Surely they would not be pleased with the dysfunction, partisan acrimony and public dissatisfaction that plague modern politics. Eliminating the midterm elections would be one small step to fixing our broken system.

That amendment part is still pretty cool though.

Told Ya.

Yep, Jonah pretty much says it all.

If you can’t take some joy, some modicum of relief and mirth, in the unprecedentedly spectacular beclowning of the president, his administration, its enablers, and, to no small degree, liberalism itself, then you need to ask yourself why you’re following politics in the first place.

Ouch.

I'm not a fence-sitter, and that means bruises sometimes.

Ouch.

Gonna be a rough 4 more years of El Presidente punk.

May we all survive to pick up the pieces.

We're Winning

Hard to believe, but THIS was a linked article on Powerline's top menu bar:

A for-real article about boomsticks.

Now, if it had been NRO's the Corner, I would have to dig up a "wha- wha- WHAAAAT?" graphic from somewhere.

"Great, Kid! Now Don't Get Cocky!"

Okay. We're what, 3 weeks out? I've been a Romney guy since 2007, and certainly I've been pretty bullish about his chances this cycle. He's got a resume Obama can't compete with, we've all known that, and over the last several months he's shown he's got the abilities Obama can't compete with. He's smart enough, successful beyond most people's dreams, hard-working, good at managing and troubleshooting problems, generous, and willing to talk about the hard choices we're facing as a country. He's not perfect, doesn't pretend to be, enjoys politics and its facets, and doesn't let stumbles turn into pratfalls.

(Now, all that being said, assuming he wins, the next thought me and all the other conservatives will have is "alright, R2-Romney2 - prove to us you're not a run of the mill dipshit.")

I said "assuming he wins". Well, I've been assuming he wins for months now and for good reason, and absolutely nothing that's happened over the last few months has moved me one iota off of that position. In fact, the better Romney looks against the increasingly confused and desperate Obama, the more his chances increase. Do they even MAKE 40 state blowouts anymore? I don't know, but I can say safely as of now that Nov 6th 2012 is the best place to look for one.

Now, are there scenarios where Obama can pull out a win? Sure. But none of them are likely. The American people have taken his measure and found him wanting. Some people are disgusted by him, as I am; others simply have seen enough and will be willing to give the RomneyBot a chance or even stay home. And barring one of those weird edge-case scenarios (war, all the money blowing up, Romney pulling off his mask to reveal himself as a pig-nosed death alien from Aldeberan V) Romney's going to win, and most probably win big.

So for me that's a good bottle of bourbon to put in the cabinet and a really nice cigar or two for the humidor. November 6th will see TVs and radios on up and downstairs - TV's muted, radios loud - a fire in the downstairs fireplace, and the home project (I always try and schedule a home project for election night - keeps me from sitting down at my desk drinking and clicking refresh all night. I've done that before. It hurts the next day) will be putting in a new bookshelf.

In the end, predictions, feelings, and bluster all aside, all I can do is what everyone else who follows this crap does: cast my vote (hardly relevant in the presidential sense here in MN), cross my fingers, and hope.

Oh. And smoke cigars and drink bourbon. So the night can't be a complete loss.

Self Promotion

Had the night off work so I watched the Veep debate. (Disclosure: I'm a pretty enthusiastic Romney/Ryan guy.)

The big story is going to be the "about even on points but wow, Biden was an absolute creepy fuckstick the whole time, eh?" analysis.  But since Meataxe & I chatted back & forth during the debate I'd like to post the points I made that I'm most enamored of:

Giving Ryan an opportunity to talk about Medicare is like giving Peter North an opportunity to fill a specimen cup.

 and Biden just turned up the cackling prick factor to 11

we did A-gan right.  Pay the shitholes to fuck the worse shitholes with minimal footprint

then some chowdah-head decides we have to surge in the shittiest place on the planet

Ryan should say "Look, the whole REASON I'm on this ticket is because a Trillion is a really big fucking number, people.  You don't run from a Trillion.  Even Hans Gruber said that if you steal $600 you can simply disappear but if you steal 600 MILLION they WILL find you unless you're already dead.  And a trillion is more than 600 million.  Yippe-ki-yay, motherfuckers."

 I want a townhall forum here int he Twin Cities where I can ask Ryan if he has any .45 long Colt he could spare.

They should let me & Meataxe moderate the next one. I think I'd go for the Mark Levin style:

"You're an idiot and that's not an answer!"

"You - Haircut - you say you can do better than the current pack of clowns.  How?!?"

 

I'd enjoy it, anyway.

Tyrannosaur Bites Ceratopsian

So let me get this straight.  The lefty MSM apparently just found out that the RomneyBot 9000 is running as a conservative and so says (and hopefully believes) conservative things about the Palestinian orcs and the difficulty of convincing people to turn down the spigot on their free money faucets?  And they are somehow surprised by this?

Or the lefty MSM is desperate to try and help their Boy King stumble into another four years of kicking this country in the balls.

Which could it be...?

Ouch.

Just ouch. Courtesy Mark Steyn.

Newtonian Fluids Running Down Our Legs

So I'm supposed to not like Romney because he's not a conservative firebrand. Okay, I can understand that as far as it goes, but Newt Gingrich instead? Aside from being no more or no less of a conservative firebrand than the RomneyBot 9000, he's kindof icky-scary to the mushy American middle that actually determines the presidency. We all know that, right?

Newt is a weapon in the holster of a Republican leader, not a leader himself.

As far as I'm concerned, the "make it as bad as possible so we get a Reagan" vote made their point and did enough damage to the country in 2006 and 2008 - do you really need to do it again in 2012? Do you really want another Obama term, because that's the "equal and opposite" reaction we're going to get if we really put this guy at the top of the ticket.

Naughty Tea Party - No Zakaria Biscuit for You!

Did Fareed Zakaria just drop a penny into a fountain, screw his eyes shut, and transcribe his wish into a bunch of words?

WAPO.

In the standoff over the debt crisis, it’s easy to point the finger at the Tea Party.

Right, because it's really annoying when a group of citizens starts getting involved in the democratic processes of our republic by pressuring representatives to do what they were actually elected to do.

And the result - a likely acceptance of the Gang of Six vaporlegislation by an isolated set of sackless Republicans - is exactly the kind of outcome the Evil Tea Partiers heaved themselves out of their day jobs to achieve. So they're really ruining things so far, huh?

And it was the Evil Tea Party folks who ran a gangster congress for two years that cut the Republicans out of every major meeting and negotiation, right? And their Evil Tea Party president?

And there's certainly no pandering to or pressure from the Lefty Progressive lobbyists and narrowcasters and activists. Good thing, that.

I wonder - did idiots like Mr. Zakaria turn Newsweek into a brand worth $1.00 or did constant shilling for a tripe-filled buttrag that was only worth $1.00 turn folks like Mr. Zakaria into hollow, unreadable water carriers?