Absolutely love your Incel-To-Crypto-Dork-Pipeline analogy, Roy. I agree these guys will fork off on any path except the correct one that would actually demand they engage in some personal growth.
So you may be right about Musk. After Trump, I’m through making predictions that would put any potential candidate beyond the pale. And Musk has already been on the Joe Rogan show, which is not something that should make any man proud of himself. But Rogan is apparently a kind of kingmaker for the absolutely dumbest men in the country.
I absolutely blame the inability of the sci-fi industry & fandom to interrogate its basis in white exceptionalism & libertarian foot-worship until like five minutes ago
“Musk for President” sounds like a deer hunter’s aid. Meanwhile, what will happen if (when? please, please, please) Trump loses to Biden again? Trump himself of course will cry foul and move into full Harold Stassen mode, prepping for 2028, but will the Racistfascist Party move past him or will they give him the full Franco treatment? Will the Proud Buttheads invade the Capitol again and maybe also the US Mint? How many Red State governors will move to secede? And what variant of the coronavirus will be ravaging Florida and sending oldsters fleeing north, bringing the germ with them? All this is more likely than Musk running for president, a task which can’t be handed off to a bunch of engineers.
Trump will not lose to Biden again. Oh, the vote totals might make it seem like Trump lost. But the newly revamped voting and elections laws in all the red states will allow the Republican legislatures to simply declare those vote totals "defective" and send their slate of Trump electors to Congress.
So Trump may get trounced in the popular vote, losing by 30 or 40 percentage points. But he'll win the electoral college and that's all that counts, so to speak.
But VP Harris will reject those Electors and declare Biden the winner and then Biden will step down after January 20th and she’ll assume the presidency and select Letitia James as AG and James will issue “dead or alive” warrants on the Republican Party leadership. All will be well until Florida and half the eastern seaboard vanishes under the rising Atlantic Ocean. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Janelle Monáe.
…and all the 'state election mechanisms are independent' decisions that allowed us to get through it decently this time will induce wailing and gnashing-of-brains.
'Musk for President'—well, I bought will admit that I never read Jeff Lemire's "Sweet Tooth", but the image of the lead character immediately comes to mind.
They'd have to make sure the rubes know he's not some kind of Frenchy French fairy or something but comes from South Africa which makes Alabama look like pikers when it comes to
" managing" the Black population. They'll like that.
DeSantis is a hard match, but I’m getting kind of a Steve Brodie vibe from Out of the Past—that is, if Fisher were even cheaper, dumber, and meaner. Maybe Tom Neal (again with less genuine talent or charisma).
Republicans 2003: "Look! Arnold Schwarzenegger is now governor of California! That whole thing in the Constitution about the president having to have been born here is just an anachronism. It doesn't apply any more. We need to change it or ignore it or something so Arnold can run for President!"
Republicans 2008: "Look! Obama was born in Kenya. Or Indonesia. Or someplace not America! He can't be president! Says so right here in the Constitution! [Pssst: John McCain was born in Panama, but that's like, totally different because, um, reasons, and uh, there's a squirrel outside!]"
Republicans 2012: Look, Obama was STILL born in not America, and he not American, and he's not my president. Now, to demonstrate our seriousness, Clint Eastwood will talk to this chair while Paul Ryan drinks all your Medicare."
Republicans 2032: "Look! Elon Musk wants to buy the presidency! That whole thing in the Constitution about the president having to have been born here is just an anachronism. It doesn't apply any more. We need to change it or ignore it or something so Elon can run for President!"
Christ, yes, Clint Eastwood and the chair. A good reminder that every time you think Republicans have hit rock bottom in terms of self-parody, they find a way to keep digging.
Your Party of Conservative Stability and Personal Responsibility, ladies and gentlemen.
To be fair, the requirement that Presidents be native-born is a stupid anachronism that should have been done away with long ago. I could see Republicans pushing this just to watch the Democrats - the supposedly pro-immigrant party - tie themselves in knots trying to explain why we shouldn't.
And, as usual, pointing out that the Republicans used to say the opposite of the thing they're saying now will have all the force of a mild fart in a stiff wind.
Do you really think Dems would be opposed, in large numbers? I mean, you and I agree that the native-born requirement could go away (I'd be happy with the same standards that senators have to meet, as a starting point, without the particular state residence requirement, obvs.), so that is a sample of two! One more and it's a trend! ;)
I just think getting anything over the really high hurdles of amending the Constitution these days is doomed to failure. I have mixed feelings about that.
No, I don't see how the Dems could oppose it. It sickens me to think of Elon Musk as the motivation and beneficiary, but there's no principled reason to oppose it.
I don't see Elon being taken seriously as a candidate for pres, at least not in 2024. I also don't see him being interested in running, come to that.
Yes, people will make the comparison to Trump, but come on. Elon is, by contrast, legitimately rich, successful, and happy, and has many paths forward to continued success. He's not, by any appearances, bitter, desperate to remain relevant, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and so on.
"By contrast" is doing A LOT of work there, and "legitimate" is laughable: his wealth mostly derives from his parents' ill-gotten fortunes, & how he makes money now is not that different than DJT: con someone with money into investing in a flashy project that somehow never materializes.
I don't dispute that he started off on third base and sometimes acts like he hit a triple. But I dispute this: "flashy project that somehow never materializes." Both Tesla and SpaceX are legitimate companies that make and sell useful, tangible things, and both have bright futures. Also, he bankrolled these two companies, in part, due to previous actual successes: he started and grew two dot-com companies that he was able to sell for a considerable profit.
I don't mean to come off as a fanboy. I certainly don't want him to be president, just for starters. And I'll agree that he's often full of hype. But I maintain that it is no stretch to say that it's night and day, comparing him and Trump.
"I think there will be a serious push over the next twelve years..."
Put like that, it won't matter. POTUS will be a figurehead, a puppet more than ever of a de facto if not de jury one party state.
"Since he’s not a native-born American this would require the amendment of Article II of the Constitution..."
Only gonna be a problem if anyone with power or agency make it a problem of which, within that time frame, there will be none.
"You may wonder why the Republicans would bother to elevate someone whose nomination would require all that extra groundwork. First of all, amending the Constitution would not be that big a deal..."
Au contraire; given GOP dominance and control of state governments, it would be easy-peavy if even needed.
"My contention is that... policy no longer has anything to do with their decisions..."
Again au contraire. My contention is the GOP does what their special interests pay them to do while the latter spew or even do whatever idiocy excites the base into providing electoral power.
"...Trump, who was so inept at this game that he had to cease his “inspirational” addresses to the nation on the subject and let Jared Kushner more quietly mismanage the crisis."
That's one way of putting it and is correct enough.
All that said and whatever, of course were he to run, Musk would easily elected. He has the same attraction, if not more, than Donnie himself. And he even one ups Killer Donnie by having a father who knocked up his stepdaughter (I know; just fucking her would be disgusting enough but, no, it isn't).
As for President Hawley, got a brain worm of his bemoaning the state of masculinity given that, to put it in MRA terms, castration has been GOP policy for years.
As for DeathSantis®, of course he knows to and how to ape Donnie; he's an Ivy League grad.
I remember when the constitution used to say the Prez and VP couldn’t be from the same state, until it was inconvenient for Cheney and then [airy hand wave]. I mean, it’s a pointless anachronism, but it’s sitting right there for any Originalist Konstitooshunal Scholars out there.
Can't we all agree that Build Back Better should include an annual stipend for Roy, so he can be a National Resource, shared freely with all Americans, like the Interstate Highway System?
Republicans have always had this internal contradiction where Government Is The Enemy but 95% of the people they nominate have done nothing else but government (see Walker, Scott). Trump's rise shows the base is through with that shit, at least at the top level, and probably at all the other levels too, soon enough.
So yeah, biznessmen and celebrities, that's all they're going with from now on. Musk is both, so he's a shoo-in, unless he's beaten out by some Duck Dynasty guy.
Yeah, he'd be perfect for GOP; he already has a rich corrupt foreigner's contempt for American democracy and a legion of self-propelled publicists. So basically a younger, crasser and more venal Rupert Murdoch.
Poor Rondo Hatton. Even his lack of charisma had a kind of pathos DeSantis could never achieve. DeSantis is so despicable and morally repellent I don’t think he could even be satirized enough to achieve bathos.
Ron DeSantis is what you would get if you gave a sponge-bath to the most belligerently-mediocre & unreflective person imaginable and then wrung that sponge out into a glass & then poured the glass into a vaguely human-shaped mold & put it in a freezer -- and then said "there's our president."
I expect to be retired and sailing the world here in the next few years - don't plan on being anywhere near this shithole of a country. That this country would elect Elon Musk, and it would - you are correct - is a sign of the fucking apocalypse.
Just hope shit doesn't blow up too badly before I can make my escape to the open sea.
Mike Mazurki would take Sheldon Leonard 10 times out of 10.
And then get promptly knocked on his can by Slapsy Maxie Rosenbloom.
Or Roland LaStarza!
Paging Primo Carnera... Primo Carnera to the white courtesy phone please. Primo Carnera...
"...they might make “Let’s Go Brandon” the National Anthem while they’re at it."
I thought "God Bless the USA"was already the National Anthem.
2 marks for Rondo Hatton.
Actually had to look him up. Well played sir, well played.
I had to look him up too. When life gives you acromegaly, make acromegaly-aide.
I’m a Sheldon Leonard fan myself.
both Sheldon and Leonard are Ok TV characters
I have this thing where, whenever the name of Mike Mazurki is mentioned, I'm obligated to watch "Murder, My Sweet."
Absolutely love your Incel-To-Crypto-Dork-Pipeline analogy, Roy. I agree these guys will fork off on any path except the correct one that would actually demand they engage in some personal growth.
So you may be right about Musk. After Trump, I’m through making predictions that would put any potential candidate beyond the pale. And Musk has already been on the Joe Rogan show, which is not something that should make any man proud of himself. But Rogan is apparently a kind of kingmaker for the absolutely dumbest men in the country.
I absolutely blame the inability of the sci-fi industry & fandom to interrogate its basis in white exceptionalism & libertarian foot-worship until like five minutes ago
Kill me now.
“Musk for President” sounds like a deer hunter’s aid. Meanwhile, what will happen if (when? please, please, please) Trump loses to Biden again? Trump himself of course will cry foul and move into full Harold Stassen mode, prepping for 2028, but will the Racistfascist Party move past him or will they give him the full Franco treatment? Will the Proud Buttheads invade the Capitol again and maybe also the US Mint? How many Red State governors will move to secede? And what variant of the coronavirus will be ravaging Florida and sending oldsters fleeing north, bringing the germ with them? All this is more likely than Musk running for president, a task which can’t be handed off to a bunch of engineers.
Trump will not lose to Biden again. Oh, the vote totals might make it seem like Trump lost. But the newly revamped voting and elections laws in all the red states will allow the Republican legislatures to simply declare those vote totals "defective" and send their slate of Trump electors to Congress.
So Trump may get trounced in the popular vote, losing by 30 or 40 percentage points. But he'll win the electoral college and that's all that counts, so to speak.
But VP Harris will reject those Electors and declare Biden the winner and then Biden will step down after January 20th and she’ll assume the presidency and select Letitia James as AG and James will issue “dead or alive” warrants on the Republican Party leadership. All will be well until Florida and half the eastern seaboard vanishes under the rising Atlantic Ocean. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Janelle Monáe.
Actually I'm OK with all this.
Yeah, I'll buy advance tix
…and all the 'state election mechanisms are independent' decisions that allowed us to get through it decently this time will induce wailing and gnashing-of-brains.
"Elon Musk" is a brand-name for some kind of All-in-One Body Wash that gives its users the farm-fresh scent of blood emeralds and mediocrity
'Musk for President'—well, I bought will admit that I never read Jeff Lemire's "Sweet Tooth", but the image of the lead character immediately comes to mind.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665320/IMG_C7DBD651DEFD_1.jpeg
The kid who plays Sweettooth won my heart
s/I bought will admit/I bought but will admit/1
They'd have to make sure the rubes know he's not some kind of Frenchy French fairy or something but comes from South Africa which makes Alabama look like pikers when it comes to
" managing" the Black population. They'll like that.
DeSantis reminds me of Richard Conte.
DeSantis is a hard match, but I’m getting kind of a Steve Brodie vibe from Out of the Past—that is, if Fisher were even cheaper, dumber, and meaner. Maybe Tom Neal (again with less genuine talent or charisma).
Cameron Mitchell could work.
Republicans 2003: "Look! Arnold Schwarzenegger is now governor of California! That whole thing in the Constitution about the president having to have been born here is just an anachronism. It doesn't apply any more. We need to change it or ignore it or something so Arnold can run for President!"
Republicans 2008: "Look! Obama was born in Kenya. Or Indonesia. Or someplace not America! He can't be president! Says so right here in the Constitution! [Pssst: John McCain was born in Panama, but that's like, totally different because, um, reasons, and uh, there's a squirrel outside!]"
Republicans 2012: Look, Obama was STILL born in not America, and he not American, and he's not my president. Now, to demonstrate our seriousness, Clint Eastwood will talk to this chair while Paul Ryan drinks all your Medicare."
Republicans 2032: "Look! Elon Musk wants to buy the presidency! That whole thing in the Constitution about the president having to have been born here is just an anachronism. It doesn't apply any more. We need to change it or ignore it or something so Elon can run for President!"
Christ, yes, Clint Eastwood and the chair. A good reminder that every time you think Republicans have hit rock bottom in terms of self-parody, they find a way to keep digging.
Your Party of Conservative Stability and Personal Responsibility, ladies and gentlemen.
Don't forget Republicans 2020-present: Kamala Harris and Birtherism 2.0
To be fair, the requirement that Presidents be native-born is a stupid anachronism that should have been done away with long ago. I could see Republicans pushing this just to watch the Democrats - the supposedly pro-immigrant party - tie themselves in knots trying to explain why we shouldn't.
And, as usual, pointing out that the Republicans used to say the opposite of the thing they're saying now will have all the force of a mild fart in a stiff wind.
Do you really think Dems would be opposed, in large numbers? I mean, you and I agree that the native-born requirement could go away (I'd be happy with the same standards that senators have to meet, as a starting point, without the particular state residence requirement, obvs.), so that is a sample of two! One more and it's a trend! ;)
I just think getting anything over the really high hurdles of amending the Constitution these days is doomed to failure. I have mixed feelings about that.
No, I don't see how the Dems could oppose it. It sickens me to think of Elon Musk as the motivation and beneficiary, but there's no principled reason to oppose it.
I don't see Elon being taken seriously as a candidate for pres, at least not in 2024. I also don't see him being interested in running, come to that.
Yes, people will make the comparison to Trump, but come on. Elon is, by contrast, legitimately rich, successful, and happy, and has many paths forward to continued success. He's not, by any appearances, bitter, desperate to remain relevant, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and so on.
"By contrast" is doing A LOT of work there, and "legitimate" is laughable: his wealth mostly derives from his parents' ill-gotten fortunes, & how he makes money now is not that different than DJT: con someone with money into investing in a flashy project that somehow never materializes.
I don't dispute that he started off on third base and sometimes acts like he hit a triple. But I dispute this: "flashy project that somehow never materializes." Both Tesla and SpaceX are legitimate companies that make and sell useful, tangible things, and both have bright futures. Also, he bankrolled these two companies, in part, due to previous actual successes: he started and grew two dot-com companies that he was able to sell for a considerable profit.
I don't mean to come off as a fanboy. I certainly don't want him to be president, just for starters. And I'll agree that he's often full of hype. But I maintain that it is no stretch to say that it's night and day, comparing him and Trump.
Bonus points for the style of the Dick and Jane reader of my youth.
“Look, look! See Dick subvert the Constitution! Subvert, Dick, subvert!”
“Look, look! See Jane grift! Grift, Jane, grift!”
What about “Obama was a dirty muslim foreigner and we’re going to elect Elon to own the libs!”?
"Make Apartheid American Again 2024"
Always theBlack guy’s fault. #Heritage
"I think there will be a serious push over the next twelve years..."
Put like that, it won't matter. POTUS will be a figurehead, a puppet more than ever of a de facto if not de jury one party state.
"Since he’s not a native-born American this would require the amendment of Article II of the Constitution..."
Only gonna be a problem if anyone with power or agency make it a problem of which, within that time frame, there will be none.
"You may wonder why the Republicans would bother to elevate someone whose nomination would require all that extra groundwork. First of all, amending the Constitution would not be that big a deal..."
Au contraire; given GOP dominance and control of state governments, it would be easy-peavy if even needed.
"My contention is that... policy no longer has anything to do with their decisions..."
Again au contraire. My contention is the GOP does what their special interests pay them to do while the latter spew or even do whatever idiocy excites the base into providing electoral power.
"...Trump, who was so inept at this game that he had to cease his “inspirational” addresses to the nation on the subject and let Jared Kushner more quietly mismanage the crisis."
That's one way of putting it and is correct enough.
All that said and whatever, of course were he to run, Musk would easily elected. He has the same attraction, if not more, than Donnie himself. And he even one ups Killer Donnie by having a father who knocked up his stepdaughter (I know; just fucking her would be disgusting enough but, no, it isn't).
As for President Hawley, got a brain worm of his bemoaning the state of masculinity given that, to put it in MRA terms, castration has been GOP policy for years.
As for DeathSantis®, of course he knows to and how to ape Donnie; he's an Ivy League grad.
I remember when the constitution used to say the Prez and VP couldn’t be from the same state, until it was inconvenient for Cheney and then [airy hand wave]. I mean, it’s a pointless anachronism, but it’s sitting right there for any Originalist Konstitooshunal Scholars out there.
If you let them, they will.
If they’re unaccountable, why should they obey the law or any restraints?
Well, that was depressingly accurate.
1. This is another column that should be made public.
2. Found a hilariously appropriate spelling error: "the *prefect* thoughtlessness of his actions."
No don't make it public. Make the swine pay. What are you a commie?
Can't we all agree that Build Back Better should include an annual stipend for Roy, so he can be a National Resource, shared freely with all Americans, like the Interstate Highway System?
keta will write the verses upon this plaque & it shall be designed by Buddy McCue. D Sidhe will glue dinosaurs to it
Republicans have always had this internal contradiction where Government Is The Enemy but 95% of the people they nominate have done nothing else but government (see Walker, Scott). Trump's rise shows the base is through with that shit, at least at the top level, and probably at all the other levels too, soon enough.
So yeah, biznessmen and celebrities, that's all they're going with from now on. Musk is both, so he's a shoo-in, unless he's beaten out by some Duck Dynasty guy.
I, for one, I'm looking ahead to the GOP primary debates between DeSantis, Musk, Joe Rogan, Kid Rock, and Ben Shapiro
Which Ben Shapiro will win, hands-down, by talking three times as fast as any normal human. "See? I said more words! I win!"
Debate me, Rogan!
Yeah, he'd be perfect for GOP; he already has a rich corrupt foreigner's contempt for American democracy and a legion of self-propelled publicists. So basically a younger, crasser and more venal Rupert Murdoch.
Poor Rondo Hatton. Even his lack of charisma had a kind of pathos DeSantis could never achieve. DeSantis is so despicable and morally repellent I don’t think he could even be satirized enough to achieve bathos.
Ron DeSantis is what you would get if you gave a sponge-bath to the most belligerently-mediocre & unreflective person imaginable and then wrung that sponge out into a glass & then poured the glass into a vaguely human-shaped mold & put it in a freezer -- and then said "there's our president."
I lived through eight years of Scott Walker, but DeSantis reaches lows I hadn't thought possible. My fault for lacking imagination, I guess.
Scott Walker was the person so sponge-bathed...
"Why, you're nothing but the drippings off Scott Walker's 'taint!"
There was first Santorum & DeSantis is the one who drank the Santorum...
I expect to be retired and sailing the world here in the next few years - don't plan on being anywhere near this shithole of a country. That this country would elect Elon Musk, and it would - you are correct - is a sign of the fucking apocalypse.
Just hope shit doesn't blow up too badly before I can make my escape to the open sea.
"Muskovites" lol
Yes indeed -- props galore for this one