cheese it, the cops!

man i'm not sure how to stop the comments spam: very irritating; sorry.

bachmania

sorry for no blogging. been traveling; i'm in boulder with my kids. notes: well i guess i might have been wrong about tim pawlenty ending up as the republican nominee. the bachmann presidency is inevitable, so resign yourself. you might start by cleansing yourself of sin. actually paul almost won that thing, and if he had won, there would be some very different stories being written. now that everyone thinks it's down to the final three (perry, bachmann, and romney), paul will have even less chance to be taken seriously. but he will keep chugging too.

'as president, would you be submissive to your husband?' bachmann just hit this one out. she smiled and thanked byron for the question. 'submission means respect; he's a wonderful, godly man. 37 years etc.'

cain is not casting dispersions on anyone's religion. 

paul vs santorum on iran is really crystallizing this neocon v isolationist moment on the right. and really, like i say, as rollicking a debate as could reeadily be imagined.

only a few of these folks are credible on foreign affairs. pawlenty, surprisingly. also santorum.

bachmann needed a bit longer of a bathroom break. that's why women will never run the world! 

you could convince me of almost anything with the 10th amendment.

bachmann is visibly holding back the crazy in her eyes!

it's straight-up personal between pawlenty and bachmann. faster pussycat kill kill!

newt always shows surprisingly well in this context: a natural debater.

they should ask cain what specifically in sharia law he objects to.

it's kind of hitting a macho rhythm where they're competing to create the most kick-ass, confrontational commander. newt was really throwing down on chris wallace. quite the successful little debate!

very sharp questions aimed at individual candidates, and a very lively debate as pawlenty and bachmann go toe to toe. i hate the focus-grouped phrases: 'unconsitutional individual mandate' is bachmann's mantra. still she gave better than she got i believe.

now pawlenty is just gratuitously trying to look 'strong' and insult romney etc, to make up for new hampshire.

romney and huntsman definitely have weirdness issues.

paul's thing really does entail a nice depression for a while.

mitt has a 7 point plan! 

goin live on repubs

brett's teeth are scary

you've got the look

 

(dylan and michele.) might try to blog the gop debate this evenin.

 

don't mess with america, baby

i know i'm late to the appreciation of the dougherty rampage. awwww redneck girl will kick your ass.

 

"her hands are calloused, but her heart is tender."

the new pace

man if you like extremely furiously-paced news coverage, check out the frenzy on cnbc right now as the dow plummets. they're yelling and going from person to person and place to place: ten talking heads in a frame of graphs and numbers scrolling by at various speeds. stuff is beeping and people are yelling in the background etc.

how you gonna come?

riots spread to brixton, etc.

the infinite process of becoming a bastard

assad's legitimacy continues to leak away asymptotically, imperceptibly, at the rate of an electron-per-corpse.

and adjust tax rates to 100%

the key to fixing the economy is to move from a production to a consumption model. so i would reduce the social security retirement age and the age of medicare eligibility to 0 and prohibit work for everyone except government officials, who are prohibited from working efficiently. well, work sucks. but unemployment benefits, under my program, will double every year forever. we'll fund the government through a program of stimulatory borrowing. of course, your government benefits will also be taxed at 100% in a program i like to call fiscal recycling.

don't like this "balanced" approach? geez, take 'yes' for an answer.

you must change

yo my latest book is the color change, out as an e-book and a paperback. now no doubt you if you were tempted to casually check this out - it is a book devoted to a single magical effect with playing cards - you might be put off by the, um, $40 pricetag. however, the photos, by charlie heidlage, are excellent, copious, color. magic books are expensive and not available on amazon, part of the incredible hermetic mystique. it was quite the little research project and has been percolating here and there publisher to publisher revision to revision for some years. 

 

sovereign debt

this should please those who think i'm a right-winger. i basically believe that what's going to kill the world economy is sovereign debt: the basic idea that government services could be indefinitely expanded in distinction to the basic condition of the economy. it's just not sustainable. i see europe going extremely austere, and then there will be riots. we'll do it here by hook or crook too; we've got to. and i think that if the krugmanian left had had its way and doubled the stimulus, you'd have had a somewhat longer petering out of stimulatory effect, but ultimately a worse crash, even with say getting rid of the bush tax cuts. it does seem like the brink of panic right now. europe could go bad fast, i believe.

almost out of legitimacy

this is getting ridiculous.

ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch

hello daddy. hello mom.

 

the most embarrassing campaign in history, contd

spambots vote too. over and over and over...

constitutional terrorists

so now everyone (including maybe joe biden) is chorusing terrorists! about the tea party. (richard cohen is late to the nihilist party.) nocera says they are "waging jihad on the american people." and you were getting ticked with hints that obama was unamerican? the rhetorical pitch is excruciating; there's no hiigher place to jack it up to. ok, tell you what, you can have these tropes as long as you don't mind at all when i call nancy pelosi a maoist who hates god and is trying to destroy our sacred american way of life. it's true that obama isn't a muslim. he's a satanist, etc. so chill out about that; surely it's a fairly mild criticism. and just don't start appealing to your reasonableness and fact-based opinions. obviously we're all well beyond that.

i'll insist on this: if someone takes a shot at michele bachmann or rand paul, or opens fire at a vbs, i want joe nocera and richard cohen to accept exactly as much responsibility for that as they assigned to right-wing or anti-muslim or anti-immigrant blogs for the norway shootings, or to sarah palin on gabby giffords. remember last time you said 'words have consequences' etc? then think about the idea that tea partiers are terrorists and jihadists and nihilists who are trying to destroy our country and who are beyond the reach of rational discussion.