Kudos for subjecting yourself to that bilge shower, Roy.
The most interesting takeaway for me was most observers were left with the impression Ramaswamy was one of the most obnoxious individuals they'd ever seen on a debate stage. So of course he won the post-debate poll among Republicans. Same planet, different worlds.
I will give Ramaswamy this much credit: it really takes some doing to come off as the weirdest guy on stage when you are sharing it with Ron DeSantis. Yet somehow Young Vivek managed just that.
I know you’re joking, but amazingly enough there is some chatter this morning that Trump will pick Ramaswamy as his Veep. I couldn’t disagree more. I think Trump will go with Tim Scott because he has a Mike Pence vibe – sounds like a preacher, is dull and not quick off the mark.
Trump is unlikely to pick a running mate who has the same skillset he does of spewing non-stop bullshit, or who he perceives as an up-and-coming threat. Plus, Scott is Black and will provide a fig leaf against accusations of racism for the same people who are dumb and racist enough to vote for Trump in the first place: “He has a Black running mate so how can he be racist?”
I was actually only half joking. I think Trump will just love the little rat. As for Scott I agree it makes sense for just the reasons you cite but I don’t think Donald could bring himself to pick a Black guy.
You could well be right -- my own political prognostications have a very mixed track record. Ramaswamy did enthusiastically promise to pardon Trump on day one. And Trump has a penchant for recognizing and rewarding (temporarily, conditionally) loyalty. We'll see, I guess.
As I've said before, Trump would love a POC running mate to rouse the You're The Real Racist ™ crowd; Byron Donalds fits his vicious profile better but Scott would be an amiable punching bag. Hell, the next time Tubby's goons attack the Capitol I bet Scott allows himself to be killed. https://alicublog.blogspot.com/2023/05/friday-round-horn-memorial-day-2023.html
Recognizing and rewarding until the not-so-very-far-off sad day, when he clues us in to what a pity hire it was, he/she begged him for the job on their knees! With tears! But the Deep State got to him/her, what a disappointment after all I've done, good thing I never gave him/her any role more important than fetching my Diet Coke.
110%. Pharma Bro is a threat in the For Real Crazy department. I take your point about Scott, and he seems submissive enough. But at this point he can't do anything to alienate the base, so why not Ivanka? Dynastic-tastic. Or just eliminate the position altogether.
I think VIvek is the Andrew Yang of 2024 - he'll excite the small part of the Republican base that consists of gamers, incels, and NFT enthusiasts, but he won't get enough primary votes to be a factor. I think he'll scare the large, aging majority of the base, especially when he flashes that toothy smile.
Mike Milquetoast Pence turned positively pit bull in responding to Vivacious VIvek. If he gets higher in the polls, I expect the attacks in the next debate to be even more vicious. There's plenty of fodder, especially for the people who think that failing upward into wealth maybe isn't exactly a way to appeal to voters (the sui generis Trump notwithstanding).
>>Mr. Ramaswamy’s enterprise is best known for a spectacular failure. As a 29-year-old with a bold idea and Ivy League connections, he engineered what was at the time the largest initial public offering in the biotechnology industry’s history — only to see the Alzheimer’s drug at its center fail two years later and the company’s value tank.
But Mr. Ramaswamy, now 37, made a fortune anyway. He took his first payout in 2015 after stirring investor excitement about his growing pharmaceutical empire. He reaped a second five years later when he sold off its most promising pieces to a Japanese conglomerate.<<
Didn’t watch, too busy working on my “Mugshots of Treason” collectible trading cards. Gonna get The Don later today but the big one will be “Meadows in Cuffs” on or after Friday.
I turned off everything but the music, as is my custom, at 7: could not get interested in sitting through two hours of GOP, I won’t call it sparring,or debate, 'cause I’ve set through zoning meeting with more real information. Various AM clips left me noticing this:
The weakness of opposition to the orange excrescence, and the rise of promise of pardons was what stood out to me. This is a radical position, and if the Dems don’t stuff it back down their craw, they are missing a bet.
Ramaswamy is a hollow man, who’ll say anything, and stake out radical positions. He’s becoming a joke: which means he’ll stay in the running.
Haley tried to distinguish herself; and will remain a factor.
Surprised at how weak Christie was: Hutchinson predictably moral, and the plays badly: Scott playing to trans idiocy is just gross...and the rest trying to play to MAGA and stay safe, and scripted.
I'll confess that although I dislike him, Chris Christie has traditionally been pretty good on the debate stage. I will always fondly remember his evisceration of Marco Rubio in 2016. Mind you, an intelligent 12 year old could eviscerate Rubio but still, it was masterfully done.
Christie often displays the combative instincts of old school NY/NJ politicians, and I was seriously hoping he would freeze Robotic Ron DeSantis like a deer in the headlights. But everyone who watched seems to agree Christie delivered little if any impact. And of course at heart he is a coward like all the rest.
I recall Ann Coulter predicting in 2012 that if the GOP didn't nominate Christie they would lose. I think Proto-Tubby would have lost, too, but I believe her insight was that Christie resembled a normal human being and that would make voters warm to him. But as it happened, the Republican Party has since become even less normal-human-being-friendly than before.
Yep. We've come a looong way from 2000 when conventional wisdom had it that voters liked GWB because he seemed like an affable guy to have a beer with. Now the GOP base wants the hater who flies the biggest freak flag.
I was genuinely surprised at how much of a non-entity he was, all the way through the debate. He barely showed any more life than the two somnambulant bookends and Admiral Stockdale stand-ins, Burgum and Hutchinson. Even Mike Pence looked like he could have finally fucked up that fly.
Kudos to Chris Hayes on the after show for saying Pence “upheld the Constitution” because he didn’t want to be another guy with a mugshot. Sanctimonious prig that he is, he was smart enough to know the coup would fail and he didn’t want to be one of the perps. Same with Raffensberger and the AZ guy. “Heroes” in the sense that they chose avoiding crimes, but inviting death threats while doing it.
Saying they still would support Trump now lays bare the practical rather than heroic nature of their acts.
I have a different read on Pence! I don't think he's much smarter than a T-shirt. But I do think he feels tasked by God to do The Right Thing. So when Trump picked him to be VP -- Pence saw God's hand in the opportunity and took it. And if he ever gets power himself, he'll work to give us a more Biblical Way of Life (aka he'll take away rights). But I think the upside of this mindset is that he walked away from the coup not out of fear of getting caught, but due to a sincere belief that God did not want him to violate the Constitution (which he thinks God wrote).
Now, because he's not super bright, and because he's hoping God wants him to thread the needle and end up president, he's having a hard time telling his crazy voters the coup was wrong... but he got it right enough on the day it mattered most and for better reasons (or actually maybe weirder reasons) than cold feet or strictly self-interested practicality.
(Also, ETA: For advice about whether he had the right to reject certain electors, he asked Dan Quayle, who told him in no uncertain terms no. You're just there to ratify, you have no say, don't try it. So here's a sentence I never thought I'd say: Dan Quayle helped Mike Pence save America.)
As I recall, he kept soliciting various opinions (including Quayle's) as to whether or not he could actually do what Trump wanted. So it's not like he wasn't at least open to the idea.
"Dan Quayle helped Mike Pence save America." Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. If we went back to 1990 in a time machine and made the prediction that Quayle would one day play a somewhat significant role in saving America, we'd have been escorted to a rubber room, post haste.
I guess ol' Mike figured out that a rookie president is not such a hot idea after the last one tried to get him killed. Very quick off the mark, that one...
Sure, they've got the "Democrats support abortion up to the very millisecond of birth" rap down, but as with everything else, they're pikers when compared to the master.
>>During a CNN town hall in May, former President Donald Trump said Democrats want to “rip the baby out of the womb at the end of the ninth month.” In June, during a speech to a group of evangelical activists, Trump said falsely that Democrats are “willing to kill the child, after birth, really.”<<
Kudos for subjecting yourself to that bilge shower, Roy.
The most interesting takeaway for me was most observers were left with the impression Ramaswamy was one of the most obnoxious individuals they'd ever seen on a debate stage. So of course he won the post-debate poll among Republicans. Same planet, different worlds.
I will give Ramaswamy this much credit: it really takes some doing to come off as the weirdest guy on stage when you are sharing it with Ron DeSantis. Yet somehow Young Vivek managed just that.
He's a putz.
Did you get this in email, and did you get it twice? Substack's glitching out on me.
I did not. Substack is so unreliable I usually get here via the link in your Twitter account, and that's what I did today.
Phooey!
And now it's arrived, and it's twice as nice, lol.
I thought it was diplopia, good to know it was only Substack.
I got it in the mail, twice.
Yeah I resent it and then Substack decided it wasn't stupid after all. Frustrating!
I got it twice.
He’s Trump vice presidential timber if I ever saw it!
I know you’re joking, but amazingly enough there is some chatter this morning that Trump will pick Ramaswamy as his Veep. I couldn’t disagree more. I think Trump will go with Tim Scott because he has a Mike Pence vibe – sounds like a preacher, is dull and not quick off the mark.
Trump is unlikely to pick a running mate who has the same skillset he does of spewing non-stop bullshit, or who he perceives as an up-and-coming threat. Plus, Scott is Black and will provide a fig leaf against accusations of racism for the same people who are dumb and racist enough to vote for Trump in the first place: “He has a Black running mate so how can he be racist?”
I was actually only half joking. I think Trump will just love the little rat. As for Scott I agree it makes sense for just the reasons you cite but I don’t think Donald could bring himself to pick a Black guy.
You could well be right -- my own political prognostications have a very mixed track record. Ramaswamy did enthusiastically promise to pardon Trump on day one. And Trump has a penchant for recognizing and rewarding (temporarily, conditionally) loyalty. We'll see, I guess.
As I've said before, Trump would love a POC running mate to rouse the You're The Real Racist ™ crowd; Byron Donalds fits his vicious profile better but Scott would be an amiable punching bag. Hell, the next time Tubby's goons attack the Capitol I bet Scott allows himself to be killed. https://alicublog.blogspot.com/2023/05/friday-round-horn-memorial-day-2023.html
Recognizing and rewarding until the not-so-very-far-off sad day, when he clues us in to what a pity hire it was, he/she begged him for the job on their knees! With tears! But the Deep State got to him/her, what a disappointment after all I've done, good thing I never gave him/her any role more important than fetching my Diet Coke.
110%. Pharma Bro is a threat in the For Real Crazy department. I take your point about Scott, and he seems submissive enough. But at this point he can't do anything to alienate the base, so why not Ivanka? Dynastic-tastic. Or just eliminate the position altogether.
I think VIvek is the Andrew Yang of 2024 - he'll excite the small part of the Republican base that consists of gamers, incels, and NFT enthusiasts, but he won't get enough primary votes to be a factor. I think he'll scare the large, aging majority of the base, especially when he flashes that toothy smile.
Mike Milquetoast Pence turned positively pit bull in responding to Vivacious VIvek. If he gets higher in the polls, I expect the attacks in the next debate to be even more vicious. There's plenty of fodder, especially for the people who think that failing upward into wealth maybe isn't exactly a way to appeal to voters (the sui generis Trump notwithstanding).
>>Mr. Ramaswamy’s enterprise is best known for a spectacular failure. As a 29-year-old with a bold idea and Ivy League connections, he engineered what was at the time the largest initial public offering in the biotechnology industry’s history — only to see the Alzheimer’s drug at its center fail two years later and the company’s value tank.
But Mr. Ramaswamy, now 37, made a fortune anyway. He took his first payout in 2015 after stirring investor excitement about his growing pharmaceutical empire. He reaped a second five years later when he sold off its most promising pieces to a Japanese conglomerate.<<
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/us/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-wealth.html
Didn’t watch, too busy working on my “Mugshots of Treason” collectible trading cards. Gonna get The Don later today but the big one will be “Meadows in Cuffs” on or after Friday.
I read both of them .They are exactly the same,!
I didn't watch. I have no interest in anything they have to say.
I do think there is a Swanee River/Ramaswamy mash up out there, just waiting to be revealed. At its best , it might be momentarily clever, though.
I turned off everything but the music, as is my custom, at 7: could not get interested in sitting through two hours of GOP, I won’t call it sparring,or debate, 'cause I’ve set through zoning meeting with more real information. Various AM clips left me noticing this:
The weakness of opposition to the orange excrescence, and the rise of promise of pardons was what stood out to me. This is a radical position, and if the Dems don’t stuff it back down their craw, they are missing a bet.
Ramaswamy is a hollow man, who’ll say anything, and stake out radical positions. He’s becoming a joke: which means he’ll stay in the running.
Haley tried to distinguish herself; and will remain a factor.
Surprised at how weak Christie was: Hutchinson predictably moral, and the plays badly: Scott playing to trans idiocy is just gross...and the rest trying to play to MAGA and stay safe, and scripted.
And I’m not finding Burgum clips.
I'll confess that although I dislike him, Chris Christie has traditionally been pretty good on the debate stage. I will always fondly remember his evisceration of Marco Rubio in 2016. Mind you, an intelligent 12 year old could eviscerate Rubio but still, it was masterfully done.
Christie often displays the combative instincts of old school NY/NJ politicians, and I was seriously hoping he would freeze Robotic Ron DeSantis like a deer in the headlights. But everyone who watched seems to agree Christie delivered little if any impact. And of course at heart he is a coward like all the rest.
I recall Ann Coulter predicting in 2012 that if the GOP didn't nominate Christie they would lose. I think Proto-Tubby would have lost, too, but I believe her insight was that Christie resembled a normal human being and that would make voters warm to him. But as it happened, the Republican Party has since become even less normal-human-being-friendly than before.
Yep. We've come a looong way from 2000 when conventional wisdom had it that voters liked GWB because he seemed like an affable guy to have a beer with. Now the GOP base wants the hater who flies the biggest freak flag.
I was genuinely surprised at how much of a non-entity he was, all the way through the debate. He barely showed any more life than the two somnambulant bookends and Admiral Stockdale stand-ins, Burgum and Hutchinson. Even Mike Pence looked like he could have finally fucked up that fly.
You deserve a Purple Heart AND a Silver Star for your courage and psychic injury!
Just half-assin' my job ma'am.
Kudos to Chris Hayes on the after show for saying Pence “upheld the Constitution” because he didn’t want to be another guy with a mugshot. Sanctimonious prig that he is, he was smart enough to know the coup would fail and he didn’t want to be one of the perps. Same with Raffensberger and the AZ guy. “Heroes” in the sense that they chose avoiding crimes, but inviting death threats while doing it.
Saying they still would support Trump now lays bare the practical rather than heroic nature of their acts.
I have a different read on Pence! I don't think he's much smarter than a T-shirt. But I do think he feels tasked by God to do The Right Thing. So when Trump picked him to be VP -- Pence saw God's hand in the opportunity and took it. And if he ever gets power himself, he'll work to give us a more Biblical Way of Life (aka he'll take away rights). But I think the upside of this mindset is that he walked away from the coup not out of fear of getting caught, but due to a sincere belief that God did not want him to violate the Constitution (which he thinks God wrote).
Now, because he's not super bright, and because he's hoping God wants him to thread the needle and end up president, he's having a hard time telling his crazy voters the coup was wrong... but he got it right enough on the day it mattered most and for better reasons (or actually maybe weirder reasons) than cold feet or strictly self-interested practicality.
(Also, ETA: For advice about whether he had the right to reject certain electors, he asked Dan Quayle, who told him in no uncertain terms no. You're just there to ratify, you have no say, don't try it. So here's a sentence I never thought I'd say: Dan Quayle helped Mike Pence save America.)
I think it's more like he simply could not do it; he was hard-wired to follow the rules and that's what he did.
Well this a good application of Occam's Razor.
As I recall, he kept soliciting various opinions (including Quayle's) as to whether or not he could actually do what Trump wanted. So it's not like he wasn't at least open to the idea.
"Dan Quayle helped Mike Pence save America." Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. If we went back to 1990 in a time machine and made the prediction that Quayle would one day play a somewhat significant role in saving America, we'd have been escorted to a rubber room, post haste.
I guess ol' Mike figured out that a rookie president is not such a hot idea after the last one tried to get him killed. Very quick off the mark, that one...
Sure, they've got the "Democrats support abortion up to the very millisecond of birth" rap down, but as with everything else, they're pikers when compared to the master.
>>During a CNN town hall in May, former President Donald Trump said Democrats want to “rip the baby out of the womb at the end of the ninth month.” In June, during a speech to a group of evangelical activists, Trump said falsely that Democrats are “willing to kill the child, after birth, really.”<<
https://19thnews.org/2023/08/what-are-late-term-abortions-gop-rhetoric-politicians/?fbclid=IwAR2sqIkyXhJ3-DKgXKdLXSMBPppOKilXG8KWVYdggzjNyiRkjX56VtWklbo
Nobody does it better, which is why he's so far ahead of these chumps.