Ten Things I Learned from the GOP Debate

1. The GOP can't even walk onto a stage without screwing it up.

(Dr. Ben Carson, calm center of the storm, stands around for a while offstage after his name is called. Logjam ensues.)









2. Marco Rubio needs to find a new line of work.  Get out now, that's all one can advise.  Otherwise we'll hear about him hunkered in a corner of a padded cell muttering "Barack Obama knows exactly what he's doing" over and over and over.  He's a well-groomed young self-starter type and will land on his feet.  Opening act at a Tony Robbins seminar seems about right.

3.  Donald Trump is really several small children inside a suit made in China.  Look at his hands.  He has the tiniest hands of any grown man I've ever seen.  IT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING.  It's why he whines all the time.  It's why he can't answer a question. What is your health care plan?  "It will be so great!"  How will you build your wall?  "It will be so huge!"  How will you pay for it?  "Mexico!"  Only the infantile base of the right wing of the GOP could love such a toddler.

4.  Jeb Bush can't do much, but he can navigate his way onto a debate stage.  I'm sure his mother was very proud.

5.  Can anybody track what John Kasich says?  Does it turn into white noise after a few seconds for you, too?  Has 90 seconds ever lasted so long?

6.  If Republicans had a brain in their head they'd get behind Chris Christie immediately and ride that Clydesdale all the way to the finish line.  He's the only natural politician up there.  He can debate, he can work a rope-line, he has a certain weird charisma.  If the other "establishment" candidates bailed out IMMEDIATELY and supported him, he could compete in a three-way with Trump and Cruz (ew), and it would be handed to him at a brokered convention.  They won't, and he won't, so it's a moot point.  He committed the cardinal sin: He got along with the President JUST ONCE (Hurricane Sandy, the HUG), and said sin cannot be forgiven in the weirdly eschatolgical theology that strangles today's Republican Party.

7.  Cruz is a shitbird.  Everybody knows it.  He can lie about the CNN/Ben Carson-dropping-out thing knowing perfectly well everybody will find out it's a lie and he just doesn't care.  He's pathological that way, and his supporters love him for it.

8.  It doesn't matter how much money Jeb Bush has in the warchest.  Nobody likes him, not the left, not the right, not the center.  Who doesn't enjoy seeing him get shushed by the other toddler on the stage?  Bring Mom out again, Jeb.  Nothing says commander-in-chief more.

9.  "Barack Obama knows exactly what he's doing."  I kind of already knew that, but it's good to have it confirmed by the Republicans.  "Barack Obama knows exactly what he is doing."

10.  So why is anybody still voting Republican?  Tax breaks?  White Nationalism?  A mythic sense of the grandeur of this country, rooted not so much in the past as in Hollywood's re-creation of the past?  That's it. Or as Hellboy would say:

Murica.

Fiorina Banned From The Arena

Carly Fiorina won't make the A stage at the next GOP debate, prompting such questions as, Who will she kick around on the B stage now that Rick Santorum is gone?  The Gilmore guy?  And another question: Why does she keep trying?

Every election she's been involved in has lost.  She was an adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008, which he lost.  She ran against Barbara Boxer for U.S. Senator from California in 2010 and lost, even after her campaign outspent Boxer's by a factor of some 48,000-1. Approximately.

Perhaps she's still not accustomed to failure, what with all the massive success in the high-tech sector (printers) she experienced prior to getting fired by HP, the famous high tech (printer) giant.

(One of HP's many high-tech items, features anti-gravity generator upper left, next to "print 2-sided" button.)










Fiorina is justifiably angry about being excluded from the debate.

(Former high tech-industry titan [printers] Carly Fiorina indicating anger at a recent GOP debate.)








ABC's rules for debate participation require landing in the top three in the Iowa vote, or the top six in recent New Hampshire polling, though it is rumored that the A-stage candidates also had to sign an affidavit swearing they would not show up wearing anything stitched from the fur of 101 Dalmatians.

We for one want to see Ms. Fiorina in the debate.  The high-tech world of Silicon Valley (printers) is underrepresented in politics. And as annoying as this liberal blogger finds Ms. Fiorina, he must acknowledge that there is something inarguably grown-up about her, as opposed to one of her primary challengers, who recently began campaigning with his mother:

 And Ms. Fiorina encapsulates the essence of the Republican Party, from her wholesale firing of employees during her tenure at HP to her incessant lying about Planned Parenthood, even after her comments radicalized a demented wingnut.  Or, as Hellboy would say:

Murica!

Post-Iowa, Santorum is All Over Everything

Post-Iowa, the lightweights are falling like (insert simile here) and everything smells of Santorum.  What the fuck happened to him?

Just four years ago he seemed to be on the cutting edge of GOP insanity, wanting to define life as beginning at the moment of flirtation, but this year he just didn't bring it.  Or time has passed him by.  Sweater vests don't cut it.  The extreme right is moving toward camo.  In a Duck Dynasty world, he's Father Flanagan's bent-over altar boy.

Once upon a time he won Iowa.  He fought Romney to the end.  He was the Working Man's Asshole.  Now he's lost that title to a pampered "billionaire."  Faretheewell, Santorum.  Sniff.

.......................................



Rand Paul will leave us now for four years as well, though we will doubtless hear about auditing the Fed again in 2020.

That's a burning issue for the few people old enough to have been at Jekyll Island.  Good-bye, li'l liberty lover, and thanks for all the freedom.

............................

Mike Huckabee...

Him I won't miss.  That picture makes you wonder what's in their basement.  And the dog.  Will the dog be okay?  Go play with Ted Nugent some more, huckster.  GRIFTER.  (Con man.)

And good-bye to Martin O'Malley, one of two Democrats running in the Democratic Primary.  His numbers almost rivaled those of Carly Fiorina's, as did the tenor of his "debate-voice."  Though every sane American admires his brave stance on the NRA, the sooner the Democratic side of things gets down to Hillary Clinton, the better.

So adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.  Someday, soon, I expect to see Fiorina and Jebya! gone, and, the Holy Grail of campaign suspensions, Trump.  We live in hope.

Militia: The Gathering

From the new card game Militia: The Gathering!  Fun for the whole family!  Great for Homeschoolers!  This exciting trading-card game will include such memorable characters as General Fatton:

General Fatton is the most powerful militia member, with 1,000 Hit Points. Must be deployed with a Snack Card.













Captain Continental, aka, "The Judge":

The Judge "mediates" conflict between any militia card and any LEO card, resulting in automatic victory for the militia.  Requires two Pocket Konstitushoon cards to deploy.











King Cliven

King Cliven, playable as a power-up card with any other militia member card; increases that card's Hit Points by a factor of 2.










Included in the game (not pictured here):

Snack Cards
Pocket Konstitushoon Cards
LEO Cards
Zellot Cards (Zellot cards will remain "forthcoming")

and such exciting characters as:

The Great Santilli
Ghost of McVeigh
Smokin' Woman
Smokin' Hot FBI Guy
Small Fry
Ammo Bundy
"Two-Face" Bundy
Baby Bundy
Tarpman

Iowa: All Caucused Up

First: Caucus is an ugly word. Primary is so sweet, but caucus sounds like something that should be done in private, not in the group clusterfuck way Iowa chooses to do it, arcane and complex, which should and does benefit the motivated, the committed, the extremist, the zealot.

And speaking of Bernie Sanders: If this is the best he can do, he might as well hang it up.  Iowa is as white as it's going to get for him and he can't pull better than a tie with HRC.  A tie isn't good enough for the man who's essentially said he's counting on the caucus states and the whiter, whitish, whitesque states to keep him competitive.  It will be all over for him after South Carolina, a winner-take-all state that will crush his hopes like a dialectical antithesis.  Congratulations, President Clinton, on the first step of your inevitable slog to victory.

Regarding the GOP: Trump is a loser.  Trump got schlonged by Ted Cruz's big Canadian schlong.  Or smallish, who knows?  Do we really know anything about the plucky Canuck?  Do we care?  He will be perhaps the least likable major party nominee since...Calvin Coolidge?  He's footnoteworthy only in that he schlonged Donald Trump.

Marco Rubio seemed quite pleased with his overwhelming/unstoppable 3rd place victory.  And of course it was something of a victory.   In a sane world the other so-called "normies" in the GOP would drop out and support him, putting the party above the petty, but Jeb Bush is nothing if not petty and he won't be dropping out soon.  Rand Paul has the warmth of Freedom to keep the cold sting of defeat from his free Texas skin.  Chris Christie is probably just happy for an excuse to be out of New Jersey.  Kasich is, apparently, quietly demented.  None of them will be inclined to drop out, though the one way to stop the Cruz/Trump derailment of their party necessitates they do so, they drop out immediately, endorse Rubio, and turn their side of 2016 into a three-way race.  Who would win such a race?  God, who knows.  Clinton will beat any of them.

What else did we learn?  That polling is absurd, because it had Trump ahead in Iowa most of the way?  No, we didn't learn that.  Polling isn't absurd, Trump supporters are.  They are infantile, clueless White Nationalists who enjoy bellowing about how their Whiteness is not quite as adequately recompensed as in days of yore and then are easily distracted.  A set of car keys jangling-in-the-face distracted.  Too distracted to go out and vote.  Perhaps in non-caucus states a greater percent will make the bother, and Trump still might win the GOP nomination.  Or he could be so devastated by Iowa that he throws in the monogrammed towel.

We can happily say good-bye to Martin O'Malley, who absolutely didn't belong in the last debate, or perhaps should have been placed on a B-stage debate by himself, where his pre-planned responses would have not sounded a note different in stridency or beat.  Without his presence we will see a more focused contrast between HRC and the non-Democrat running in the Democratic primary.  It should be interesting to see if Bernie Sanders has much to say about much of anything beside the billionaire class.  Perhaps he will discuss Hillary Clinton's damn emails.  Stay tuned.