Money isn't everything, and when it comes to being President, money isn't ANYTHING.
There's the massive ego stroke is getting the most votes. There's the massive ego stroke of being the most powerful person on the planet. There's the utterly seductive aspect of having and wielding power.
Some kind of deep-seated personality disorder is required to even want the job in the first place. But grubbing after money definitely ain't part of it!
The reason that real, sane republican billionaires don't seek nomination is that they have better things to do. Trump didn't. Even losing the primary would have been OK with him.
Most of these gents don't want their dealings probed. Why Trump thought he could withstand that level of scrutiny is unclear. He's always gotten away with stuff, but why tempt fate?
I do think his public statements around the fraud case show that he drinks his own urine. He's convinced that saying Mar-a-Lago was undervalued helps his case.
Right now, Wisconsin Republicans are looking for someone to run against Tammy Baldwin. Naturally, they look to our state's pool of available millionaires, where else would you go? But if you're a Wisconsin millionaire (your millions go farther up here) why waste your time and money on something that's far short of a sure thing?
Van Nest Polglase rolls off the tongue like white silk used for the draperies in an all-white hotel room in Hollywood's fantasy version of Venice. Van Lingle Mungo, on the other hand...
For me the lyric needs the lovingly enunciated names of the usual version. Though even with that, for the longest time I heard the name as, "Van Lingo Mungo"
Re: my last comment, "mc/mac" runs neck and neck. They can be prefixed to anything. However, trying to use "van" and "mc" in the same name would be humoristic hubris. I doubt even Roy could pull it off, and I wouldn't want to see the wax fall from his wings.
OK, “former street mime” made me spit out my coffee, lol.
I’m sure we all saw the interviews with potential voters in the Times or maybe the Post, with the woman who said she wasn’t voting for Biden because she supported abortion rights and Roe had been overturned when Biden was President. It had to be explained to her how Supreme Court appointments work, and how the Supreme Court works in relation to the Executive Branch. I read that and was strongly tempted to put my affairs in order and walk into the sea.
Which is all by way of saying every third party whack-a-doo who seems like a joke to us, be it RFK Jr, Cornell West, Jill Stein, or even Joe Manchin, may not look so preposterous to the idiot on the street. We really need to get civics lessons back in schools, but since the trend has been to remove books not add them, I can’t say I’m especially hopeful.
Somehow it's only fitting that the overwhelming stupidity of the American people should result in the ending of democracy by their voting for the stupidest man ever to hold the office. America ending in a great crescendo of stupid, as the Good Lard intended.
This point has been made before, but one thing I impress on my sons is that voting is a chess move, not a love letter.
I think young people around the same age as my kids who were children or teenagers in 2008 when Obama ran for President are particularly susceptible to the idea that you shouldn't vote for someone you don’t view as aspirational and completely reflective of your own values.
I’ve told them that before Obama, Dems didn’t have a candidate who was that charismatic and who appeared to be poised to usher in a sea change in the Old Guard since JFK nearly 50 years earlier. About 95% of the time voting is a *strategy* and not a ringing endorsement of everything a politician stands for.
1. Progressives make a lot of noise, it's kinda our thing, but then the election comes and the Greens get a whopping 0.3% of the vote.
2. Yeah, 0.3% can swing an election in a close state like Wisconsin (ask me about it if you want to see a grown man burst into tears) but meanwhile there's about 40% just sittin' there, people who didn't vote at all. Dip into that pool, and it's possible to make up the losses. And it's a lot easier that talking with Greens about Corporate Personhood.
3. Every election about ten times that 0.3% goes to people who'd probably be perfectly happy with the Republicans, but inexplicably vote Libertarian.
Republicans keep getting us in wars, they don't understand the organic miracle that is hemp, and they won't make a thoughtful re-evaluation of age of consent laws.
My only self-consolation when I think of 2024 is that voters will usually cast their ballot for the candidate who scares them the least. Granted, that's a pretty thin reed to cling to, but it's what I've got.
Yeah, what the hell do I know, but I'm pretty confident more than 90% of complaining lefties will eventually come around to voting for Old Joe, because Trump is just that awful. Arguing with 'em now just makes people dig in their heels more.
If I had to wait for a candidate I loved, I’d almost never vote at all. In Our Fair State we’re lucky even to have a Democrat on the ballot in every race. And, back when we sent Democrats to Congress, calling them center-left would’ve been a stretch—but that’s what we had, and that’s what I voted for. Unnecessarily centrist though they were, they were much better than the Repub alternative. Nowadays I have to content myself with voting as a futile gesture while the Repub majority sends lunatics and craven opportunists to office.
I'm ancient enough to remember the Presidential campaigns of Dukakis and Kerry, so when anyone says Biden is a lackluster candidate, there are whole levels of luster-lacking that they must be unfamiliar with.
Oof. I like John Kerry but yeah. And remember the convention, saluting and saying “John Kerry reporting for duty” like that was checkmate? Followed by repugs wearing Purple Heart band-aids? I think I’ve been triggered by the memory.
"There's just NO WAY they'd DARE to attack the patriotism and integrity of a war hero like John Kerry!" OK, now I'm triggered too. Self-triggering, that's me.
The guy who made those bandaids in the first place runs a training facility for future swiftboaters, and one of them recently astroturfed a "viral" video being cussed at by a Democrat in front of an election location, thus showing something something Dems are all unhinged and the REAL potentially violent ones. Apparently it went nowhere in the new regime of the press fretting over how the Left is making people on college campuses feel bad with their challenging opinions and that's not at all what being at college is about. (We were unable to contact Bari Weiss for a comment.)
The Richest Man in the World assures me they'll just be rollin' in dough soon. Probably when the wheelbarrow tips over on the way to the market to buy a loaf of bread.
It's amazing Whassface there is deciding on pinning his economy to foul fiat money American dollars, instead of opting for the liberty and security of Bitcoin.
I wonder how many of his voters think their Pesos are just going to convert into Dollars once he takes office. Let's consult the Invisible Hand on this one: What happens to the value of a particular currency when millions of people holding that currency all attempt to convert over to some other currency, all at the same time? They get a good deal in the exchange?
That illustration at the top reminds of the early attempts to use the modern industrial capabilities offered by the firearms makers to kill every damn bird. That gun he's holding was puny compared to the long shotguns used in marshes like that. So heavy they had to be mounted in long boats. Killed dozens or hundreds of birds with each firing. Led eventually to one of the very first laws prohibiting mass slaughter of wildlife.
America, where any child can grow up to be a Presidential campaign spoiler. Anyway, tomorrow is our national day of giving thanks, so let me thank Roy and the many clever commentators here for making five mornings a week more bearable as we await the destruction of democracy and the establishment of a Christofascist autocracy, now with fewer rights for women (and soon, gays and fornicators of all persuasions).
When Roy has to go old-school and circulate his musings on smeared copier paper, how will the subscription service work?
Blind drop box?
I recommend a bogus christian herbal healing ministry. It can be pretty blatant, once the FDA is abolished: SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER AND LEARN THE SECRETS BIG MEDICINE TRIED TO HIDE FOR OVER A CENTURY!
but the fifth-generation cornhusker says his town is a “cross-section of the American people — we got schoolteachers and farmers and car salesman, not too many blacks, and enough women to keep the menfolk happy.”
Just enough blacks to play basketball, and hands off the women-they're for us.
Maybe I've mentioned this here before, but there's a Jimmy Stewart movie called "Magic Town" where Jimmy's a pollster who hits on the idea of finding the ONE town in American whose opinions exactly track the opinions of the whole damn nation. Think of the effort saved! (If you're a pollster, that is.) So he finds the town, and it's just exactly what you'd expect out of 1947 Hollywood. If there's a single black person in the town, it's probably Hattie McDaniel, and she's hidin' in someone's kitchen. Just a beautiful example of mass blindness.
Sorry Roy, although another Trump term would mean complete anarchy and the end of democracy as we know it, Trump has already killed satire in America, so your newsletter is a hard pill to swallow!...::)
I was very confused as to why Wallbanger, a state senator in Tennessee, was coming to bars in Raleigh, some 6 hours away. Then I found out there’s one that’s a suburb of Memphis, and that made a lot more sense.
This one struck a chord or three. I had a stretch of high grief and anxiety after tangling with a couple of sovereign citizens in print some years back. Are they still around? I guess they never go away.
And pretty sure I backed up Djalikakik/Wallbanger at the Lakeside in Raleigh.
The sovereign citizen types are disturbingly common. Anywhere there’s a crank who wants something for nothing, who believes he owes no taxes, and believes his debts should never be collected… there you will find a sovereign citizen chanting the magic words to make rules disappear.
Nov 22, 2023·edited Nov 22, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
With the bottom end of the economy so precarious these days, their bullshit "turn your bills into payments by writing on them" grift seems to be spreading beyond the dopes with lower case names with too many colons to "just folks". The Quatloos! site where I used to get my info on whackjob money grifts is pretty much defunct, but just search for "V4A" on YouTube.
EDIT: fuck, it's actually "A4V", or "accepted for value". Stupid brain!
I do not know who his attorney was. I'll ask our neighbor the public defender who took some of their cases. His opinion of his clients is, shall we say, bemused.
"Nebraska's name is the result of anglicization of the archaic Otoe Ñí Brásge (contemporary Otoe: Ñíbrahge; pronounced [ɲĩbɾasꜜkɛ]), or the Omaha Ní Btháska, (pronounced [nĩbɫᶞasꜜka]), meaning "flat water", after the Platte River which flows through the state.[16]"
Well, except for that last one who's risen above the restrictive categories of "Left" and "Right" to forge a truly independent path to unite the people - the folk, if you will - into God's crusade for traditional values, order, obedience, and purity. And her campaign ads are just fourteen words long!
"McGillicuddy" is the best of all names.
That's an obvious fact.
One of the big things wrong is presidential campaigns cost billions of dollars and last several years. No wonder it's all fucked up
The grift that keeps on griving.
Spending millions and millions of dollars to get a job that pays a couple hundred thousand a year -
How is that not some shady bullshit?
Hmmm. You'd almost think there was a long-game ulterior motivation...
To Serve Man?
Topspin or backspin?
ITS A BOOK OF TENNIS INSTRUCTION
Money isn't everything, and when it comes to being President, money isn't ANYTHING.
There's the massive ego stroke is getting the most votes. There's the massive ego stroke of being the most powerful person on the planet. There's the utterly seductive aspect of having and wielding power.
Some kind of deep-seated personality disorder is required to even want the job in the first place. But grubbing after money definitely ain't part of it!
Power & money equate. Up to individual power-wielders to determine how much moolah to self-hoover.
The reason that real, sane republican billionaires don't seek nomination is that they have better things to do. Trump didn't. Even losing the primary would have been OK with him.
Most of these gents don't want their dealings probed. Why Trump thought he could withstand that level of scrutiny is unclear. He's always gotten away with stuff, but why tempt fate?
I do think his public statements around the fraud case show that he drinks his own urine. He's convinced that saying Mar-a-Lago was undervalued helps his case.
Right now, Wisconsin Republicans are looking for someone to run against Tammy Baldwin. Naturally, they look to our state's pool of available millionaires, where else would you go? But if you're a Wisconsin millionaire (your millions go farther up here) why waste your time and money on something that's far short of a sure thing?
His name is Ron Johnson
He comes from Wisconsin.
I'd amend that to "McGillicuddy" is the best of all COMMON names, but that's just because there's only one Van Nest Polglase.
Van Lingle Mungo. I rest his case.
Van Nest Polglase rolls off the tongue like white silk used for the draperies in an all-white hotel room in Hollywood's fantasy version of Venice. Van Lingle Mungo, on the other hand...
Am with you on the associated silkiness, though VLM's name is smooth in another medium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=TOvvJTv_E_w
Dave Frishberg's great!
I love that a guy with THAT voice thought he could make a career as a singer, and then did.
Dave Does VLM Bossa Nova style!
Reportedly this is the orginal version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX5OH6Khyds
For me the lyric needs the lovingly enunciated names of the usual version. Though even with that, for the longest time I heard the name as, "Van Lingo Mungo"
I'm partial to Mario Van Peebles.
I think I sense a pattern here. Van Johnson, anyone?
"Van" is the salt of funny names. It enhances any flavor, but one is enough.
Two postulates:
1. Anyone with "Van" in their name is better than anyone without "Van" in their name.
2. Van Nest Polglase is still the best of all the Vans.
I stand in awe of the name V.N.P.
Re: my last comment, "mc/mac" runs neck and neck. They can be prefixed to anything. However, trying to use "van" and "mc" in the same name would be humoristic hubris. I doubt even Roy could pull it off, and I wouldn't want to see the wax fall from his wings.
There was a track & field athlete by the name of Jack Van Riper.
(And his late father, Melvin Van Peebles. . . )
OK, “former street mime” made me spit out my coffee, lol.
I’m sure we all saw the interviews with potential voters in the Times or maybe the Post, with the woman who said she wasn’t voting for Biden because she supported abortion rights and Roe had been overturned when Biden was President. It had to be explained to her how Supreme Court appointments work, and how the Supreme Court works in relation to the Executive Branch. I read that and was strongly tempted to put my affairs in order and walk into the sea.
Which is all by way of saying every third party whack-a-doo who seems like a joke to us, be it RFK Jr, Cornell West, Jill Stein, or even Joe Manchin, may not look so preposterous to the idiot on the street. We really need to get civics lessons back in schools, but since the trend has been to remove books not add them, I can’t say I’m especially hopeful.
Somehow it's only fitting that the overwhelming stupidity of the American people should result in the ending of democracy by their voting for the stupidest man ever to hold the office. America ending in a great crescendo of stupid, as the Good Lard intended.
Cue Dizzy screaming "MANTECA!"
This point has been made before, but one thing I impress on my sons is that voting is a chess move, not a love letter.
I think young people around the same age as my kids who were children or teenagers in 2008 when Obama ran for President are particularly susceptible to the idea that you shouldn't vote for someone you don’t view as aspirational and completely reflective of your own values.
I’ve told them that before Obama, Dems didn’t have a candidate who was that charismatic and who appeared to be poised to usher in a sea change in the Old Guard since JFK nearly 50 years earlier. About 95% of the time voting is a *strategy* and not a ringing endorsement of everything a politician stands for.
And speaking of JFK, today marks sixty years since the last time a US president rode in an open limousine.
Too bad. It was pretty awesome, waving and smiling
Few things:
1. Progressives make a lot of noise, it's kinda our thing, but then the election comes and the Greens get a whopping 0.3% of the vote.
2. Yeah, 0.3% can swing an election in a close state like Wisconsin (ask me about it if you want to see a grown man burst into tears) but meanwhile there's about 40% just sittin' there, people who didn't vote at all. Dip into that pool, and it's possible to make up the losses. And it's a lot easier that talking with Greens about Corporate Personhood.
3. Every election about ten times that 0.3% goes to people who'd probably be perfectly happy with the Republicans, but inexplicably vote Libertarian.
Republicans keep getting us in wars, they don't understand the organic miracle that is hemp, and they won't make a thoughtful re-evaluation of age of consent laws.
My only self-consolation when I think of 2024 is that voters will usually cast their ballot for the candidate who scares them the least. Granted, that's a pretty thin reed to cling to, but it's what I've got.
Yeah, what the hell do I know, but I'm pretty confident more than 90% of complaining lefties will eventually come around to voting for Old Joe, because Trump is just that awful. Arguing with 'em now just makes people dig in their heels more.
If I had to wait for a candidate I loved, I’d almost never vote at all. In Our Fair State we’re lucky even to have a Democrat on the ballot in every race. And, back when we sent Democrats to Congress, calling them center-left would’ve been a stretch—but that’s what we had, and that’s what I voted for. Unnecessarily centrist though they were, they were much better than the Repub alternative. Nowadays I have to content myself with voting as a futile gesture while the Repub majority sends lunatics and craven opportunists to office.
I'm ancient enough to remember the Presidential campaigns of Dukakis and Kerry, so when anyone says Biden is a lackluster candidate, there are whole levels of luster-lacking that they must be unfamiliar with.
Oof. I like John Kerry but yeah. And remember the convention, saluting and saying “John Kerry reporting for duty” like that was checkmate? Followed by repugs wearing Purple Heart band-aids? I think I’ve been triggered by the memory.
"There's just NO WAY they'd DARE to attack the patriotism and integrity of a war hero like John Kerry!" OK, now I'm triggered too. Self-triggering, that's me.
The guy who made those bandaids in the first place runs a training facility for future swiftboaters, and one of them recently astroturfed a "viral" video being cussed at by a Democrat in front of an election location, thus showing something something Dems are all unhinged and the REAL potentially violent ones. Apparently it went nowhere in the new regime of the press fretting over how the Left is making people on college campuses feel bad with their challenging opinions and that's not at all what being at college is about. (We were unable to contact Bari Weiss for a comment.)
Eh, voters are voters, the whole world over. The people of Argentina ain't winnin' any Mensa membership either.
Yeah, instead they get a participation trophy with a goofy name.
The Richest Man in the World assures me they'll just be rollin' in dough soon. Probably when the wheelbarrow tips over on the way to the market to buy a loaf of bread.
It's amazing Whassface there is deciding on pinning his economy to foul fiat money American dollars, instead of opting for the liberty and security of Bitcoin.
I wonder how many of his voters think their Pesos are just going to convert into Dollars once he takes office. Let's consult the Invisible Hand on this one: What happens to the value of a particular currency when millions of people holding that currency all attempt to convert over to some other currency, all at the same time? They get a good deal in the exchange?
Wait, "bargained for"? That's what we was doin'? I thought we was just joshin' around...
I appreciate the fact Wallbanger got that church goin' in the tire lot – obvious choice of fuel for the Hellfire Saturday Night fish fry.
Just fuckin' shoot me now ... 🤣
That illustration at the top reminds of the early attempts to use the modern industrial capabilities offered by the firearms makers to kill every damn bird. That gun he's holding was puny compared to the long shotguns used in marshes like that. So heavy they had to be mounted in long boats. Killed dozens or hundreds of birds with each firing. Led eventually to one of the very first laws prohibiting mass slaughter of wildlife.
Martha the passenger pigeon would wave hello if she only could.
America, where any child can grow up to be a Presidential campaign spoiler. Anyway, tomorrow is our national day of giving thanks, so let me thank Roy and the many clever commentators here for making five mornings a week more bearable as we await the destruction of democracy and the establishment of a Christofascist autocracy, now with fewer rights for women (and soon, gays and fornicators of all persuasions).
Seconded.
When Roy has to go old-school and circulate his musings on smeared copier paper, how will the subscription service work?
Blind drop box?
I recommend a bogus christian herbal healing ministry. It can be pretty blatant, once the FDA is abolished: SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER AND LEARN THE SECRETS BIG MEDICINE TRIED TO HIDE FOR OVER A CENTURY!
Every time I read Big Medicine I envision an aspirin the size of Manhattan. Why Manhattan I'll never know.
Miracle Healing Grains, i.e. sand grains coated in sugar. Can't fail.
Where is Vermin Supreme when ya need ‘im?
None of these losers is willing to wear a boot on their head. I do have my standards.
You'd think the fascist rhetoric would have summoned him from the woodwork
but the fifth-generation cornhusker says his town is a “cross-section of the American people — we got schoolteachers and farmers and car salesman, not too many blacks, and enough women to keep the menfolk happy.”
Just enough blacks to play basketball, and hands off the women-they're for us.
Maybe I've mentioned this here before, but there's a Jimmy Stewart movie called "Magic Town" where Jimmy's a pollster who hits on the idea of finding the ONE town in American whose opinions exactly track the opinions of the whole damn nation. Think of the effort saved! (If you're a pollster, that is.) So he finds the town, and it's just exactly what you'd expect out of 1947 Hollywood. If there's a single black person in the town, it's probably Hattie McDaniel, and she's hidin' in someone's kitchen. Just a beautiful example of mass blindness.
Sorry Roy, although another Trump term would mean complete anarchy and the end of democracy as we know it, Trump has already killed satire in America, so your newsletter is a hard pill to swallow!...::)
Another Trump term...
You mean, like, "throwback fascist"? "Bloated spongehead"? Or maybe an old chestnut like "greedy bastard"?
I was very confused as to why Wallbanger, a state senator in Tennessee, was coming to bars in Raleigh, some 6 hours away. Then I found out there’s one that’s a suburb of Memphis, and that made a lot more sense.
To maximize the opportunities for drinkin' and drivin'?
He's not driving, he's TRAVELING!
Because he got thrown out of all of the bridal shower venues masquerading as bars on Broadway in Nashville.
Thanks for pointing out the typo, I went in and changed it. Least I think I did!
This one struck a chord or three. I had a stretch of high grief and anxiety after tangling with a couple of sovereign citizens in print some years back. Are they still around? I guess they never go away.
And pretty sure I backed up Djalikakik/Wallbanger at the Lakeside in Raleigh.
The sovereign citizen types are disturbingly common. Anywhere there’s a crank who wants something for nothing, who believes he owes no taxes, and believes his debts should never be collected… there you will find a sovereign citizen chanting the magic words to make rules disappear.
Probly has a pal who claims to be good buddies with the nation's highest authority. You know, the county sheriff.
With the bottom end of the economy so precarious these days, their bullshit "turn your bills into payments by writing on them" grift seems to be spreading beyond the dopes with lower case names with too many colons to "just folks". The Quatloos! site where I used to get my info on whackjob money grifts is pretty much defunct, but just search for "V4A" on YouTube.
EDIT: fuck, it's actually "A4V", or "accepted for value". Stupid brain!
I shudder to think what the YouTube algorithm finds with your search history.
Honestly? At the moment it's analog horror, true crimey type stuff, lefty commentaries, and episodes of Well, There's Your Problem.
There's one less of them among us as of yesterday. Read the account of his court appearances--sad, but in a highly amusing way.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/22/taylor-james-johnatakis-guilty-jan-6-rioter
Takes some effort to get a judge to bust out the word "bullshit" in a courtroom. Well done, soon-to-be-imprisoned multiply-convicted felon!
I do not know who his attorney was. I'll ask our neighbor the public defender who took some of their cases. His opinion of his clients is, shall we say, bemused.
You will be shocked to learn that he represented himself. This NBC report has some amusing quotes that the Guardian inexplicably left out.
www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/jan-6-rioter-used-sovereign-citizen-gobbledygook-trial-found-guilty-rcna126236
All this gurtl can say is: aigh...
In the words of Isaac Brock (less unhinged, more resigned): This plane is definitely crashing!
Sanka, Nebraska, is a perfect place name. It sounds a bit like Native American place names, but also like Swedish instant coffee.
Nebraskans are noted for their ... artful ... place names. The least adorable one is Aksarben, in suburban Omaha. Makes my teeth itch to think on it.
Yes, Ak-sar-ben, the race track and hockey rink area, infamously named by just spelling Nebraska backward.
Spelled-forward Nebraska is already pretty backward.
Dictionary sez:
"Nebraska's name is the result of anglicization of the archaic Otoe Ñí Brásge (contemporary Otoe: Ñíbrahge; pronounced [ɲĩbɾasꜜkɛ]), or the Omaha Ní Btháska, (pronounced [nĩbɫᶞasꜜka]), meaning "flat water", after the Platte River which flows through the state.[16]"
Mile wide, inch deep...
All water is flat, seeking its own level and all that, but Nebraska's water is the flattest.
The water is wide, I can't cross o'er
'Cause I can't stand gettin' my feet wet
Give me a boat that can carry two
And I shall ride
While my love drags the stupid boat across the mudflats and the gravel for half an hour the stupid git
Yeah, ' Sanka' slayed me right out of the gate.
Enough women to keep the men folk happy and weirdo free. My kinda place!
And these are the *Democrats*...
Well, except for that last one who's risen above the restrictive categories of "Left" and "Right" to forge a truly independent path to unite the people - the folk, if you will - into God's crusade for traditional values, order, obedience, and purity. And her campaign ads are just fourteen words long!
The shorter the better.