Walter Kirn and I thought it might get weird last night. It did. A live recap, plus intro to tonight's Bernie-and-Barack program at the Democratic National Convention
As every Stalinist knows, no matter how vast the government bureaucratic power one possesses, all failures can be attributed to the saboteurs. If not for them, the desired society would already be upon us. Hence the need for more power to deal with them-even more expediently.
do not underwstimate the conditioning thats been going on for decades. about 40% of the country is conditioned to do what the media directs them to do, without thought or question.
The loyal Democrat voters will buy just about anything they're told. It's hard at this point in time to tell how well it's landing with non-partisans, but I think there's a segment of the population that is content merely to be done with these way too old to be in public office politicians, even if the shitty policies are the same.
You loyal republicans need to explain iraq and Afghanistan to me then because I’m wholly marooned politically. I was political then and saw the same slavish voting and thought from republicans. . Before you cast the stones clean your own house out.
I saw exactly what you saw back in the W/Cheney days and hated Republicans then. But Trump actually did clean the house out. He threw the warmongers out of the party like Jesus threw the moneychangers off the temple steps. The Republicans HAVE changed. Democrats are now just like the Republicans were pre-Obama.
I like the idea of cleaning out the house by throwing the moneychangers out. (Has all kinds of allusions to Christianity and also throwing out the bureaucrats.) Trump has started a new party by taking over an old party. For years, I and many others thought that building up a third party was the best way, but that was fruitless with a name like "Green". I also tried changing "the Democratic Party from within. Ha. Ha. Ha. So if Trump can make an alliance with the Libertarians, we have ourselves a new party. The "New Republicans" . Romney, Bush, Cheney et al can go join the Dems who, starting in the late 1970s, were taken over by Hamiltonians, Blue Dogs, and Rockefeller Republicans.
I’m watching. They are going have to get almost revolutionary and make the differences and case very very clear. All of them. My GOP congresscritter seems a wimp. I have no idea if they are able to counter this horrific lie machine from Dems, enabled by every media and branch and alphabet agency of this malicious government. It was different during trumps term. I was a long time democrat. I watched the GOP very closely. But yes, my issues most align with the GOP now. Maybe they always did but at my age, I’m sure about them now. But still wary. Hang tough. 👍🏻
"The Republicans" you say? And just who might they be? RINOS , Bushes, Cheneys & never-Trumpers play the false flag for "the Dems" who all have more in common than not.
Yes there are some strong ones like Paul, Lee, Kennedy & Jordon and _____ (enter your fave).
Those wedded to the Corp. Kleptocracy, war mongering overseas, ignoring massive illegal immigration are on both sides Just check their prev. hidden $$$ disclosures of stock earnings.
I'm as politically homeless as you are and have no regard for Republican politicians. I would say on the whole though that Republican voters are far more skeptical about their politicians than Democratic voters. The rise of Trump never could have happened if Republican voters hadn't felt sold out by the Bushes and Cheneys of the world. And that's not to say Trump is good - he obviously isn't, but Republican voters have realized far quicker than Democrats that the status quo isn't working.
The good news is the neo-con war mongers have ways less influence on the right now. I honestly don't care all that much about Trump as individual, but the new America First non interventionist populist right movement has real potential IMO.
Not sure what you mean but I have little faith in him either but he may be my only choice. Listen, I’m 76. I’ve seen a lot and figured out a long time ago most politicians are all hat and no cattle. I’ve been republican and democrat and had years I didn’t give a crap. Something is very wrong here and trump wont cure it. He won’t have time. They will get him.
The old guard republicans, Bush/Romney were all the acceptable ones who supported and caused these disasters. GOP voters woke p in 2016 and said screw it were going with the real estate guy.
Probably so. You'd think people might question such tropes as "Pro-democracy movement," when that has amounted to making sure every Democrat has a vote cast in their name, and then those votes are thrown away in favor of the preferred candidate.
When you have been berated that you and your ideas that you were raised with make you a POS and a threat to democracy? Hell, yes! The media is just taking care of Democrat Facist business.
Don't allow them to co-opt another normal word for their nefarious purposes. Also, that tactic will be extremely short-lived. Have you seen Gen Z? They're all weird.
Forgetting is a useful tool when you have nothing to show for. Blowing lots of smoke in both eyes & ears amplified by renowned songs gets the audience every time!
Many high school teachers organize student trips to foreign countries. Many church youth groups have a 20-something youth pastor taking dozens of extremely horny pubescent teens to secluded weekend retreats. Boy Scout leaders and priests and children's theater directors fuck children all the time. What have you got on Walz? Nothing there.
Simply false. Most sexual assault and abuse in K-12 schools is student-on-student sexual assault and harassment. Proportionally, the number of all incidents of sexual assault and violence in schools is considerably smaller when compared to religious organizations and similar secular groups.
Always prudent policy to give Father McFeely a hard pass at Sunday School.
I was forced to participate in a Christian confirmation lockup weekend sojourn at age 15. It was an absolutely horrible experience from which I was able to escape unharmed if not undamaged. I'm not saying anything else that isn't very widely known. Sorry if you're a church lover.
Having grown up in a completely unreligious family, as a 15-year-old I was lured to a church function by the promise of a free spaghetti dinner.
Nothing sexual, I hasten to add, but for over an hour I was locked in a room with two men insisting that I "accept Jesus in my heart", which I refused to do, while crying copiously at the bewildering treatment.
Maybe that's what traumatized me against religion…
True. But the people I know who sponsored or chaperoned trips to Europe did not get married on Hitler's birthdate, or honeymooned at Bergen-Belsen. Just sayin'.
Walz selected his wedding date to commemorate the Tianamon Square massacre. Everyone has to do something every year on Hitler's birthday. I've voted Walz for governor but without a miraculous Harris turnaround on Palestine, he won't get my vote for VP. Also, the campaign is making a fool out of him just to buy more time before the It Girl is Ready For Her Closeup, i.e., attempts a substantive hard news and issues interview by a real journalist.
There are real journalists still. I can’t imagine Kamala sitting down with one. Matt Taibbi? Glen Greenwald? Her handlers wouldn’t let her get without 100 miles of them.
George Stephanopolis? Would he actually ask hard questions or just be a platform for her?
Pretty disgraceful since he is an accomplished journalist with Pulitzer Prize work. Vetting journalists to admit only those likely to praise your unelected candidate is very shoddy!
Does Xi know about this? I fail to see how a group of American kids costumed up as liberal American progressives will be of any use to either the CCP or any Foggy Bottom-adjacent spy agency. Really, I don't.
Given my own recent experience with America's youth, I can't imagine they would be viewed as anything other than a nuisance by either side.
They come back indoctrinated -foot soldiers full of vim and vigour for their new-found communist ideology and then go thought the system and presto! they are bureaucrats in charge of Hell.
Why, the important appointment is right here, Mr. Reflections-on-culture-from-an-anti-establishment-post-cyberpunk-worldview.
"Reflections." "Cyberpunk." Uh-huh. One immediately thinks of Johnny Rotten and Johnny Silverhand quarreling through pissy tweets on X, perhaps one moderated by Our Man Musk himself.
I always considered the devotees of the "cyberpunk" genre to be an uneasy admixture of thick New Age fundamentalists and borderline sexual deviants who are also hardcore Trekkies. True? Yes? No?
Go read you the bridge trilogy, or maybe The Peripheral. Then get back to us after you've got a clue re: cyberpunk? And realize Gibbons wrote Neuromancer, the first SF novel in what later would be called the "cyberpunk" genre on a manual typewriter & before ever owning a computer.
Or just keep slanging ineffectively. Kirk is my Captain but I've never gone to a convention. "New Age" spiritualism is a sadly human thing, a security blanket against the scary realities of a largely uncaring and unresponsive universe (so are nearly all present mainstream religious belief systems if you get to know them).
As far as sexual deviance, that's no fun at "borderline", anything worth doing is worth OVERdoing! Wallow in it!! USE THE WHOLE DAMN CHICKEN, NOT JUST A FEATHER!!!
Looking forward to y’all’s take. I’m figuring that Biden’s speech will be like Tom Sawyer watching his own funeral. If this version of ‘politics’ is successful, I shudder to imagine what the future will look like. Within a few more election cycles, there won’t be many people who remember what expectations we Americans held for our country. If we lose free speech, it is hard to imagine us getting it back.
I am 74, and before I attempted to escape America, by moving to the Colorado mountains in 1971, (long ago ruined and overtaken) I was a serious protestor of the Vietnam War... I support Jilll Stein and believe that until the Democrats are deposited in history's dustbin, there is no hope for America... and probably no hope anyway. Watching you guys, I was as appalled as you were, maybe even more so. I felt like some traveling Gulliver who had arrived in the land of the brain dead. Please provide directions to the Vomitorium in your next broadcast.
Best watch out for nasty Ned, the wolves are really rather innocuous. Ned ate one of my friends in Glacier years ago & has been having lots of children since.
Matt, I have a request: once you & Walter are done with the DNC bs, can you please go cover some campaign events for candidates who aren't Trump or Harris?
I've been a fan of your work since Spanking the Donkey. In those campaign-trail essays, you'd go to some mainstream campaign rally and make fun of the "journalists" solemnly telling us how the candidate threw a football or pretended to hunt. Then you'd go to the ghetto neighborhood a mile away and listen to regular Americans talk about how their water is polluted and their neighbors are addicted to hard drugs. Then you'd go to rallies for candidates the media called "fringe" and invariably find them much smarter, more sincere, more thoughtful, and more concerned with our actual problems than the stuffed suits the rest of the "journalists" were giving all their attention to.
This campaign season, I've seen lots of well-deserved mockery of the "candidate throws a football" stuff, but very little of the part where you step away and refocus on what the rest of the media leaves out. I'd love to see you go back out on the trail, not to cover the clown show, but to go to some RFK Jr and Stein events etc and just talk and listen to people.
The campaigns for those who theoretically "represent" their constituents (c. f. House of Representatives) or "represent" their state (aka "Senators") are dominated by donations from tens of thousands of "voters" (theoretically) who are reported to live out of state. Walter must have some cogent remarks on what's going on in Montana. With about 750,000 voters, and with the turnout likely to total 500,000, the incumbent Democrat has raised over $38 million. The margin between winner and loser is likely to be less that 4% of the vote. This is 20,000 voters. $38 million divided by 20,000 is about $2,000 per voter. Where does it go? What are the campaigns focusing on? A lot of interesting material here.
One, this is has been the politicking and fund raising template for most Congressional elections, especially tight and crucial ones, for the last 40 years. The template has metastasized since the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.
And two, I doubt if Walter has any cogent remarks about anything or anybody, anywhere.
Why do you have a bug up your ass over Walter Kirn, yet spend all these words in the comment section over HIS words? Seems an odd pastime (unless you were programmed to behave like a self hating masochist?)
I disagree. Sheehy has raised enough money that he could be waging a campaign to educate the voters. I'm thinking of the old "Wall Drug" signs that used to line the freeways headed into the Dakotas. Walter may have some interesting thoughts on what could be done with a few million dollars. By the way, a significant number of Tester's donors who have donated in the high three-digit range list "unemployed" for both their vocation and their employer. Most of the rest are employed by various levels of government or by legal- and medical service providers.
I changed my mind you are so irritating and low IQ even the Feds wouldn't have you. I'd say you have a room temperature IQ, but I don't like to keep my house that cold.
Honestly they both suck, but I will concede Trump is slightly less likely to get us into WWIII, and slightly more likely to make gas and food affordable.
Yes Jew tools, both are funded by AIPAC and support us sending tens of billions of dollars to Israel to mass murder women and children, and bomb hospitals, schools, apartment buildings and refugee camps, and to use starvation as a weapon of war.
A fun drinking game I came up with after working the 2016 DNC convention is to take a shot every time they cut to a POC audience member that is obviously incredibly uninterested in what is going on. The goal of the director of the TV program is to show as many POC as possible to show how diverse the DNC is, but there are so few black and brown people in the audience that they are stuck showing bored people. Every once in a while, the camera crew will find a POC who looks excited, but you have to drink double shots if the director keeps cutting back to that person more than once.
The only way I can watch this convention is with you and Walter, Matt, so thank you! After last night and hanging in there for Biden's speech (I had to mute some portions to make it to the end), my med of choice will be bourbon old fashioneds.
You have a sea of young bright people that have to get enthusiastic about this disgusting pile of inauthentic actors that are truly vegetables and cardboard cutouts because what else is there? The GOP Party... and no it is not Trump's fault as he is basically carrying the GOP... a feckless, useless, unliked, out-of-touch, uncoordinated, unattractive, pile of authentic vegetables and cardboard cutouts. Nope, that does not fly.
70 or so days for the GOP to get it's collective head out of its collective ass. Stop pushing the Handmaiden's Tale and start telling young people how it is cool to be a capitalist, patriot and hard-working family dude and dudette. And that we don't give a feather if you are gay, straight, bisexual, trans, non-binary, black, brown, purple, pink or .... As long as you are a proud being an American or a legal immigrant that wants to be American... and you subscribe to the founding values of the country... WHICH INCLUDES LOTS OF CIVIL DISAGREEMENT AND DEBATE ABOUT THE DETAILS!... then you are not only cool, you are the best in the world... by far!!!!
I confess that I don’t have the emotional energy to endure the puppet show tonight. All I’m able to commit to at present are reruns of Hollywood Squares.
To me the weirdest thing about the DNC is that they're pretending they haven't been in power the past 4 years. Are people buying that?
As every Stalinist knows, no matter how vast the government bureaucratic power one possesses, all failures can be attributed to the saboteurs. If not for them, the desired society would already be upon us. Hence the need for more power to deal with them-even more expediently.
Kulaks and wreckers!!!
Ominous, very.
do not underwstimate the conditioning thats been going on for decades. about 40% of the country is conditioned to do what the media directs them to do, without thought or question.
Voted up for "underwstimate."
The loyal Democrat voters will buy just about anything they're told. It's hard at this point in time to tell how well it's landing with non-partisans, but I think there's a segment of the population that is content merely to be done with these way too old to be in public office politicians, even if the shitty policies are the same.
You loyal republicans need to explain iraq and Afghanistan to me then because I’m wholly marooned politically. I was political then and saw the same slavish voting and thought from republicans. . Before you cast the stones clean your own house out.
I saw exactly what you saw back in the W/Cheney days and hated Republicans then. But Trump actually did clean the house out. He threw the warmongers out of the party like Jesus threw the moneychangers off the temple steps. The Republicans HAVE changed. Democrats are now just like the Republicans were pre-Obama.
I like the idea of cleaning out the house by throwing the moneychangers out. (Has all kinds of allusions to Christianity and also throwing out the bureaucrats.) Trump has started a new party by taking over an old party. For years, I and many others thought that building up a third party was the best way, but that was fruitless with a name like "Green". I also tried changing "the Democratic Party from within. Ha. Ha. Ha. So if Trump can make an alliance with the Libertarians, we have ourselves a new party. The "New Republicans" . Romney, Bush, Cheney et al can go join the Dems who, starting in the late 1970s, were taken over by Hamiltonians, Blue Dogs, and Rockefeller Republicans.
I’m watching. They are going have to get almost revolutionary and make the differences and case very very clear. All of them. My GOP congresscritter seems a wimp. I have no idea if they are able to counter this horrific lie machine from Dems, enabled by every media and branch and alphabet agency of this malicious government. It was different during trumps term. I was a long time democrat. I watched the GOP very closely. But yes, my issues most align with the GOP now. Maybe they always did but at my age, I’m sure about them now. But still wary. Hang tough. 👍🏻
"The Republicans" you say? And just who might they be? RINOS , Bushes, Cheneys & never-Trumpers play the false flag for "the Dems" who all have more in common than not.
Yes there are some strong ones like Paul, Lee, Kennedy & Jordon and _____ (enter your fave).
Those wedded to the Corp. Kleptocracy, war mongering overseas, ignoring massive illegal immigration are on both sides Just check their prev. hidden $$$ disclosures of stock earnings.
Agreed Janet 💯
I'm as politically homeless as you are and have no regard for Republican politicians. I would say on the whole though that Republican voters are far more skeptical about their politicians than Democratic voters. The rise of Trump never could have happened if Republican voters hadn't felt sold out by the Bushes and Cheneys of the world. And that's not to say Trump is good - he obviously isn't, but Republican voters have realized far quicker than Democrats that the status quo isn't working.
Agree, Mike. Good observations.
The good news is the neo-con war mongers have ways less influence on the right now. I honestly don't care all that much about Trump as individual, but the new America First non interventionist populist right movement has real potential IMO.
Hoping here.
What do you think Trump is for ?
Not sure what you mean but I have little faith in him either but he may be my only choice. Listen, I’m 76. I’ve seen a lot and figured out a long time ago most politicians are all hat and no cattle. I’ve been republican and democrat and had years I didn’t give a crap. Something is very wrong here and trump wont cure it. He won’t have time. They will get him.
The old guard republicans, Bush/Romney were all the acceptable ones who supported and caused these disasters. GOP voters woke p in 2016 and said screw it were going with the real estate guy.
We did. We elected Trump.
Probably so. You'd think people might question such tropes as "Pro-democracy movement," when that has amounted to making sure every Democrat has a vote cast in their name, and then those votes are thrown away in favor of the preferred candidate.
When you have been berated that you and your ideas that you were raised with make you a POS and a threat to democracy? Hell, yes! The media is just taking care of Democrat Facist business.
All those threats to "our drmocracy" out there.
'pretending they haven't been in power the past 4 years.'
Only on the occasions they want to claim the greatest economy and prosperity ever.
Mike I like your question except stop using the word weird! That’s the word demorats like to use!
Don't allow them to co-opt another normal word for their nefarious purposes. Also, that tactic will be extremely short-lived. Have you seen Gen Z? They're all weird.
Forgetting is a useful tool when you have nothing to show for. Blowing lots of smoke in both eyes & ears amplified by renowned songs gets the audience every time!
I don't buy it for a second, I'm just wondering why the DNC running a commercial for the Trump campaign.
The only way I can stand any of this is with you and Walter using high end humor against these asshats.
Agreed.
Including a professional ironist!
“Asshats” Thanks for the new one. Racket just keeps on giving. (&/or whispering)
Like JD Vance weird? Or guy who takes 20 underagers to China every year weird?
Many high school teachers organize student trips to foreign countries. Many church youth groups have a 20-something youth pastor taking dozens of extremely horny pubescent teens to secluded weekend retreats. Boy Scout leaders and priests and children's theater directors fuck children all the time. What have you got on Walz? Nothing there.
You seem experienced and knowledgeable on this subject.
Except far more children are molested at schools. I would guess your experience was some time ago
Simply false. Most sexual assault and abuse in K-12 schools is student-on-student sexual assault and harassment. Proportionally, the number of all incidents of sexual assault and violence in schools is considerably smaller when compared to religious organizations and similar secular groups.
Always prudent policy to give Father McFeely a hard pass at Sunday School.
I was forced to participate in a Christian confirmation lockup weekend sojourn at age 15. It was an absolutely horrible experience from which I was able to escape unharmed if not undamaged. I'm not saying anything else that isn't very widely known. Sorry if you're a church lover.
Having grown up in a completely unreligious family, as a 15-year-old I was lured to a church function by the promise of a free spaghetti dinner.
Nothing sexual, I hasten to add, but for over an hour I was locked in a room with two men insisting that I "accept Jesus in my heart", which I refused to do, while crying copiously at the bewildering treatment.
Maybe that's what traumatized me against religion…
True. But the people I know who sponsored or chaperoned trips to Europe did not get married on Hitler's birthdate, or honeymooned at Bergen-Belsen. Just sayin'.
Walz selected his wedding date to commemorate the Tianamon Square massacre. Everyone has to do something every year on Hitler's birthday. I've voted Walz for governor but without a miraculous Harris turnaround on Palestine, he won't get my vote for VP. Also, the campaign is making a fool out of him just to buy more time before the It Girl is Ready For Her Closeup, i.e., attempts a substantive hard news and issues interview by a real journalist.
There are real journalists still. I can’t imagine Kamala sitting down with one. Matt Taibbi? Glen Greenwald? Her handlers wouldn’t let her get without 100 miles of them.
George Stephanopolis? Would he actually ask hard questions or just be a platform for her?
Glen Greenwald just wrote is not given press access to Dems Gala.
Pretty disgraceful since he is an accomplished journalist with Pulitzer Prize work. Vetting journalists to admit only those likely to praise your unelected candidate is very shoddy!
Richard Medhurst & George Galloway would be my dream choices. How about Chris Wallace?
Well, a Tianamon Square wedding celebration is just as weird.
It's even weirder. Walz rooted for the CCP and put his bet on the tanks for the win!
Citation needed.
Actually yeah. As Minnesotans say, without expressing judgment, "That's different!".
@Undiagnosed Ex~Cube Farmer
Not as different as Bob's B-17 Park.
You're morally implicated by even KNOWING people who sponsored or chaperoned trips to Europe. Ewwww.
DEar Ai. (I typed it intentionally). You are not welcome here.
Obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEHUzNWnh5M
Priest~Off©, designed by atheists 😂
Weird.
Easy Helen.
China, China, China like a broken record...groomed at an early age !
maybe he just likes the smell of teen spirit.
That’s how he masks the smell from the crawl space
Democrats and Liberals grooming the young by taking them to China to prepare to become CCP foot soldiers-disguised as progressives
Does Xi know about this? I fail to see how a group of American kids costumed up as liberal American progressives will be of any use to either the CCP or any Foggy Bottom-adjacent spy agency. Really, I don't.
Given my own recent experience with America's youth, I can't imagine they would be viewed as anything other than a nuisance by either side.
They come back indoctrinated -foot soldiers full of vim and vigour for their new-found communist ideology and then go thought the system and presto! they are bureaucrats in charge of Hell.
@Hele
You need to add some emojis to that?
@feldspar
Have you ever BEEN to China? Known any Chinese nationals well enough to get drunk with them??? Been there. Done that.
maybe he just likes the smell of teen spirit.
JD Vance weird. Which scales.
Don't you have an important appointment to go play in the road or something, so tired of you glowie bot.
Why, the important appointment is right here, Mr. Reflections-on-culture-from-an-anti-establishment-post-cyberpunk-worldview.
"Reflections." "Cyberpunk." Uh-huh. One immediately thinks of Johnny Rotten and Johnny Silverhand quarreling through pissy tweets on X, perhaps one moderated by Our Man Musk himself.
I always considered the devotees of the "cyberpunk" genre to be an uneasy admixture of thick New Age fundamentalists and borderline sexual deviants who are also hardcore Trekkies. True? Yes? No?
@feldspar
Go read you the bridge trilogy, or maybe The Peripheral. Then get back to us after you've got a clue re: cyberpunk? And realize Gibbons wrote Neuromancer, the first SF novel in what later would be called the "cyberpunk" genre on a manual typewriter & before ever owning a computer.
Or just keep slanging ineffectively. Kirk is my Captain but I've never gone to a convention. "New Age" spiritualism is a sadly human thing, a security blanket against the scary realities of a largely uncaring and unresponsive universe (so are nearly all present mainstream religious belief systems if you get to know them).
As far as sexual deviance, that's no fun at "borderline", anything worth doing is worth OVERdoing! Wallow in it!! USE THE WHOLE DAMN CHICKEN, NOT JUST A FEATHER!!!
You are an idiot as well as a Fedbot.
Looking forward to y’all’s take. I’m figuring that Biden’s speech will be like Tom Sawyer watching his own funeral. If this version of ‘politics’ is successful, I shudder to imagine what the future will look like. Within a few more election cycles, there won’t be many people who remember what expectations we Americans held for our country. If we lose free speech, it is hard to imagine us getting it back.
Democrats love Biden so much they forced him to deliver his own eulogy after everyone had gone to bed.
These people are cold.
Not cold enough, in my opinion.
@feldspar
Are you suggesting room temperature? Naughty, naughty! I like it!
I am 74, and before I attempted to escape America, by moving to the Colorado mountains in 1971, (long ago ruined and overtaken) I was a serious protestor of the Vietnam War... I support Jilll Stein and believe that until the Democrats are deposited in history's dustbin, there is no hope for America... and probably no hope anyway. Watching you guys, I was as appalled as you were, maybe even more so. I felt like some traveling Gulliver who had arrived in the land of the brain dead. Please provide directions to the Vomitorium in your next broadcast.
The Vomitorium has been moved out to the Sawatch Range, located at the northwest base of Mt. Ebert. Can't miss it.
Watch out for the wolves.
@5JimBob
Best watch out for nasty Ned, the wolves are really rather innocuous. Ned ate one of my friends in Glacier years ago & has been having lots of children since.
Matt, I have a request: once you & Walter are done with the DNC bs, can you please go cover some campaign events for candidates who aren't Trump or Harris?
I've been a fan of your work since Spanking the Donkey. In those campaign-trail essays, you'd go to some mainstream campaign rally and make fun of the "journalists" solemnly telling us how the candidate threw a football or pretended to hunt. Then you'd go to the ghetto neighborhood a mile away and listen to regular Americans talk about how their water is polluted and their neighbors are addicted to hard drugs. Then you'd go to rallies for candidates the media called "fringe" and invariably find them much smarter, more sincere, more thoughtful, and more concerned with our actual problems than the stuffed suits the rest of the "journalists" were giving all their attention to.
This campaign season, I've seen lots of well-deserved mockery of the "candidate throws a football" stuff, but very little of the part where you step away and refocus on what the rest of the media leaves out. I'd love to see you go back out on the trail, not to cover the clown show, but to go to some RFK Jr and Stein events etc and just talk and listen to people.
The campaigns for those who theoretically "represent" their constituents (c. f. House of Representatives) or "represent" their state (aka "Senators") are dominated by donations from tens of thousands of "voters" (theoretically) who are reported to live out of state. Walter must have some cogent remarks on what's going on in Montana. With about 750,000 voters, and with the turnout likely to total 500,000, the incumbent Democrat has raised over $38 million. The margin between winner and loser is likely to be less that 4% of the vote. This is 20,000 voters. $38 million divided by 20,000 is about $2,000 per voter. Where does it go? What are the campaigns focusing on? A lot of interesting material here.
One, this is has been the politicking and fund raising template for most Congressional elections, especially tight and crucial ones, for the last 40 years. The template has metastasized since the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.
And two, I doubt if Walter has any cogent remarks about anything or anybody, anywhere.
@feldspar
Why do you have a bug up your ass over Walter Kirn, yet spend all these words in the comment section over HIS words? Seems an odd pastime (unless you were programmed to behave like a self hating masochist?)
Lol I would love to see you go one on one with everyone's favorite professional ironist Fedbot.
I disagree. Sheehy has raised enough money that he could be waging a campaign to educate the voters. I'm thinking of the old "Wall Drug" signs that used to line the freeways headed into the Dakotas. Walter may have some interesting thoughts on what could be done with a few million dollars. By the way, a significant number of Tester's donors who have donated in the high three-digit range list "unemployed" for both their vocation and their employer. Most of the rest are employed by various levels of government or by legal- and medical service providers.
'the old "Wall Drug" signs that used to line the freeways headed into the Dakotas'
The signs are still there, as is Wall Drug. I used to stop there every year.
That phase of Taibbi's career ended a few years ago. Memos were issued.
I changed my mind you are so irritating and low IQ even the Feds wouldn't have you. I'd say you have a room temperature IQ, but I don't like to keep my house that cold.
Memos? Citations???
Not sure if I can stand it. Anyone I have spoken to about their support for Harris ends with, “She’s not Trump”.
Response: "You are dumb."
And BTW, what do they even know about Trump?
Honestly they both suck, but I will concede Trump is slightly less likely to get us into WWIII, and slightly more likely to make gas and food affordable.
Trump sucks. The Dems are the End of Times. The Repubs gave us the Weaponization Committee in Congress. Focus, people.
Ring me up when he orders a black Hugo Boss suit.
Wise up dude, both of them are Jew tools, if you think Trump is actually right wing you are a fool.
"Jew tools," quoth Mr. Raven, nevermore.
Yes Jew tools, both are funded by AIPAC and support us sending tens of billions of dollars to Israel to mass murder women and children, and bomb hospitals, schools, apartment buildings and refugee camps, and to use starvation as a weapon of war.
What would you call that glowie?
Walter joy be damned, shine on you crazy diamond.
Caption below the picture:
Kamala: I fucking hate you and your diaper genie and your skank wife.
Joe: Corn Pop?
someone needs to ask her if Joe ever cornered her for a whif of her head.
Or for a quick spritz off in the shower.
No questions allowed! It’s democracy so STFU!
Gosh! So many orators! I bet Michelle and Barack get pushed off to 11:20 EST. Why is Michelle speaking?
Trying out her new adam's apple.
Michelle is to a certain female group like TSwift is. They idolize her. For, why?
gardening chops
She is the "future". Stupid, vapid and consumed with hate.
They gots to motivate their anger by channeling the ABW
A fun drinking game I came up with after working the 2016 DNC convention is to take a shot every time they cut to a POC audience member that is obviously incredibly uninterested in what is going on. The goal of the director of the TV program is to show as many POC as possible to show how diverse the DNC is, but there are so few black and brown people in the audience that they are stuck showing bored people. Every once in a while, the camera crew will find a POC who looks excited, but you have to drink double shots if the director keeps cutting back to that person more than once.
Watch out for alcohol poisoning. I imagine that's a lot of shots.
The only way I can watch this convention is with you and Walter, Matt, so thank you! After last night and hanging in there for Biden's speech (I had to mute some portions to make it to the end), my med of choice will be bourbon old fashioneds.
You have a sea of young bright people that have to get enthusiastic about this disgusting pile of inauthentic actors that are truly vegetables and cardboard cutouts because what else is there? The GOP Party... and no it is not Trump's fault as he is basically carrying the GOP... a feckless, useless, unliked, out-of-touch, uncoordinated, unattractive, pile of authentic vegetables and cardboard cutouts. Nope, that does not fly.
70 or so days for the GOP to get it's collective head out of its collective ass. Stop pushing the Handmaiden's Tale and start telling young people how it is cool to be a capitalist, patriot and hard-working family dude and dudette. And that we don't give a feather if you are gay, straight, bisexual, trans, non-binary, black, brown, purple, pink or .... As long as you are a proud being an American or a legal immigrant that wants to be American... and you subscribe to the founding values of the country... WHICH INCLUDES LOTS OF CIVIL DISAGREEMENT AND DEBATE ABOUT THE DETAILS!... then you are not only cool, you are the best in the world... by far!!!!
I confess that I don’t have the emotional energy to endure the puppet show tonight. All I’m able to commit to at present are reruns of Hollywood Squares.
Those are always fun, especially the '70s ones with the sardonic Paul Lynde. ;)
So true. I think I privately seceded from the union a long time ago.
Who are these people here?
Who cares?
What’s the difference between all them and a town council in Madagascar?
Neither interests me. Why should I give them a nanosecond of my attention?
Is that “selfish” of me? Yes. I’ll get over it, but not yet.
Demonic is the word for their fascination with death.
"Satanic" is the preferred term for the Kremlin factory trolls and Putin propagandists.
You have a mind filled with corporate media clichés. Proud of yourself?