So far, 14 Republicans are running for president, and five Democrats are. The NYT lists two more probable Republican candidates and no more probable Democratic candidates.
Why are so many more Republicans running than Democrats? My original guess was that it’s mostly that right-wing media provides more platforms, but there’s only a few real Fox/radio creations in there — Carson, Huckabee, and Santorum (and it may even be a stretch to call the last two Fox/radio creations). Is it the lack of a real frontrunner among Republicans?
I’m sure that the media will claim it’s because of greater ideological diversity among Republicans, the free market of ideas is strong! There may even be some truth to this: even the hippie Sanders’ ideas aren’t that far from the center IMHO, I mean he doesn’t perform exorcisms or believe all Mexicans are rapsts. If he gets the nomination, the media will caricature him as a left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographer, but I bet if you put many of his proposal to a plebiscite, they’d do fine.
In the final analysis, this idiotic bit of Both Sides Do it is more unfair to the Republican party than anyone else:
Keith P.
They left off Mark Everson (R-WHO).
WereBear
It’s because Republican “governing” is so easy, even a tantrum throwing, mentally challenged, Calvinist neurotic consumed by greed can do it.
It’s a role. It’s why their greatest President was, indeed, an actor.
Germy Shoemangler
Getting Mighty Crowded is right.
They saw a black guy with a funny name and “no experience” (in their opinion) win twice! And it drove them crazy. So naturally they all believe they have a chance, if they can only raise enough money and avoid pesky questions about their “opinions” and weird “stuff they said”
RepubAnon
I’d say follow the money – there’s lots more big money funding available to Republicans, so anyone with a big enough checkbook can buy their own vanity candidate. As the Party no longer has much ability to restrict entry into the field, we see “astroturf” candidates with donor’s cash but little party backing enter into the sweepstakes. Besides, the losers can get good-paying jobs at Fox.
Elizabelle
Charles Lane is vile.
Wrong again, Chuck.
Germy Shoemangler
@WereBear:
He was the smiley face stuck onto the cruel evil of their policies. And they’ve been looking for a smiley face ever since. Rubio (young! charismatic! ethnic!) George W (a regular guy! plain-spoken!) Mitt (a real businessman! A loving husband and father!) Sarah Palin (lady parts! soccer mom! pretty!)
But it’s the same ugly, evil policies. Most of their behind-the-scenes people are visibly ugly and disturbing.
Was Reagan their greatest president? I thought he was horrible and we’re living with the damage he caused to this day.
scav
Then again, having failed to directly control those noisy little tea-pated, shouty, whiney, but alas still technically necessary voters, the money-bagged amuse themselves by funding preliminary bug-races both to distract and to dilute the beteastained polloi impact on the actual choice of the next suited heir-apparent.
Redshift
Aw, c’mon, that’s easy! It’s because of wingnut welfare. Being an unsuccessful GOP candidate is likely to raise your profile in a very lucrative way. Being an unsuccessful Democratic candidate is only likely to add to your wikipedia entry.
shell
Obama is right…there’s enough GOP candidates to have their own Hunger Games.
Matt McIrvin
It’s nothing inherent to the Republicans vs. the Democrats; it’s just that the Democrats have a high-profile “heir apparent” candidate this year getting most of the attention and driving away other contenders.
Other cycles have been very different. The Republicans had a reputation for coalescing early behind an heir apparent for a long time.
The number of candidates wasn’t quite so extreme, but there were a lot of Democratic names being thrown about at this point in the 2004 cycle. The major players were Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and Dick Gephardt; Kerry and Edwards, the two big contenders once primary season really got rolling, were down in the weeds somewhere. 1992 was another one: Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown, Tom Harkin and Bob Kerrey were all big, and Bill Clinton emerged as dominant relatively late.
Germy Shoemangler
Rather than debates (because who wants to hear what they have to say?) why not a sandy arena; an amphitheater? Each candidate is given a dung-filled sock and a spray bottle of ammonia. Let them bash each other and squirt eyes. Kicking and biting is of course allowed.
Whoever is left standing moves on to the next challenge: fellating both Koch brothers and Sheldon while singing “god bless america”
JPL
@shell: I just hope they eat their own, or what Gerry said @Germy Shoemangler:
Hunter Gathers
Enjoy the clown car while it lasts. One the asylum picks it’s Alpha, it’s going to be a 24-7 tongue bath by the MSM to keep the margin under points against Vince Foster’s murderer.
“Tonight on CNN, Wolf Blitzer asks Jim Webb ‘So how much of a ball busting bitch is Hillary Clinton? And how can she appeal to working class male white voters in Alabama?'”
NonyNony
For a variety of reasons:
a) The GOP seems to encourage delusional weirdos and narcissists who have no shot of actually getting the nomination more than the Dems do. On the Dem side I see ONE delusional weirdo (Webb) and one delusional narcissist (Chaffee). On the GOP side it’s almost all delusional weirdos and narcissists. I think a lot of this has to do with “raising their profile” so that they can get more speaking gigs once their presidential run is finished.
b) Hillary Clinton is clearly the frontrunner and she has a lot of allies. To go up against her means that you want to put yourself in opposition to her, and there aren’t a lot of people who want to do that. They’d rather help her win and reap the bennies after she’s in office. Meanwhile nobody on the GOP side is the political powerhouse that Clinton is, and so you get plenty of people who are willing to take potshots at Jeb! or Walker.
c) Related a bit to b) – the GOP is not unified anymore. 8 years of W in office undid a whole lot of what 12 years of Reagan/Bush and 8 years of Clinton had done to unify them around a single goal. During my lifetime the GOP has felt like an unstoppable unified machine of conservatism – W’s failure unraveled that, and Obama’s ability to pick up the pieces and keep things limping along has left them unhinged and unable to cope. The transition from W to Obama is completely different than the transition from Bush the Elder to Clinton was – the narrative that the GOP had for Bush the Elder was a “he stabbed us in the back/he failed conservatism” narrative. They rejected HIM because of his breaking of his no new taxes pledge (whether that’s true or not, that’s what they tell themselves). They could tell themselves that Clinton was inheriting the success of Reagan and that he didn’t anything really – he was a placeholder until another Republican came along.
They can’t use the same narrative for Bush – Bush objectively fucked up the country in ways that undeniable even to a conservative. That Obama came along and not only kept things running but turned the ship around so completely has them lost for a narrative. Had he been a white Southerner (or even a white dude in general) they might have been able to compensate for it, but the fact that this black guy has been a successful President given the disaster that the country was when he came to office has them unhinged (and has for years – first they were unhinged that he won at all, then they were unhinged that he was good at the job, then they were unhinged that he remained good at the job despite the massive opposition that would have crushed most other Presidential agendas).
So they’re completely at sea and don’t have a unified vision of what it means to be a conservative anymore – the coalition of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and outright racists has busted. And so there are a dozens plus candidates all looking to be the new face of conservatism. (And this is why Trump is so fucking popular with them right now – the angry retrogressive racist shitheads really like him because they think he pissess off liberals like Reagan did. They’re rallying around what their id wants the future of conservatism to be – and that future is Donald Trump’s pet head-badger yapping at your face forever.)
Keith G
A reason for a large number of candidates is pent up demand. The out of power party usually fieilds a larger number of primary candidates than the party of the president, be the president running again or retiring.
I think that would explain at least the first eight or nine candidates The excess is due to other reasons mentioned above, primary among them are changes in campaign spending behaviour and the ability of micro targeting.
WereBear
@Germy Shoemangler: Reagan is the one they revere. I thought he was the beginning of the end.
srv
ixnay alktay on teh onaldday.
These people are ruining a good thing.
MattF
There are a large number of Republicans in the race because 1) they’re all convinced they can win, 2) the barriers to entry are low, 3) historical patterns of Presidential elections favor Republicans in 2016.
ruemara
Far more delusional ego on the GOP side. That’s why.
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
What you’ve recommended is not all that far from what will actually happen.
wasabi gasp
Hard to say no to Jesus.
pete
@WereBear: It’s a generational thing, I suspect. I tend to think Nixon was the beginning of the end, and a bunch of millennials will probably think Shrub was, and great-grandpa in the corner still has nightmares about Joe McCarthy, while his cryogenically preserved mamma blames Hoover … they come and we hope they go but they always seem to come back. Happy holidays!
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
Charles Lanes tweet makes me think of Noonan’s “Let us savor” comment.
Yes, Bernie V Trump would be my dream matchup.
Germy Shoemangler
My town inexplicably legalized the sale of certain fireworks; I’ve been seeing tents set up all over the place and citizens buying boxes of the stuff. The local firehouse and EMT personnel are somewhat uneasy expecting more emergency calls than usual.
Here’s what I assume tomorrow will be like in my neck of the woods:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-M1sA1jm-o#t=44
White Trash Liberal
Money = protected speech
Lots of money, lots of speech. All speaking in the money dialect.
Freud postulated that money is the sublimation of excretion. Given the stench these money candidates give off, I agree.
Germy Shoemangler
@Cervantes:
I can see both parties doing the dung-filled sock thing, but spraying ammonia in each others eyes would be more of a GOP thing.
Punchy
Why are ao many running? Pure grift. Get a Sugar Daddy to drop $10 very large in the campaign and suddenly you’re stumping in Maui, Fiji, Sydney, and HookersandBlowVille, ID.
MomSense
@pete:
My first impression of Nixon was formed the day he resigned as that is my first real memory or awareness of him. His name had been sort of a curse word in our house but I never really put a face to the name until that breaking news moment came on our tv.
Reagan killed me though. I could not understand what people liked about him although I did recognize that they saw some sort of bizarre father figure strong leader being leadery. Every damn thing he said was so trite but for some people it harkened back to some non existent time in America that people seemed to long for even though it never actually existed.
I think I was about 12 when Reagan was elected and was shocked at how people seemed to be so mesmerized by him. My grandmother, who had given up being polite about 30 years prior to 1980, called him a “slicker” and a phony and would tell people they were “damn fools” to their faces if they said they liked him. Only the W administration surpassed the amount of damage Reagan did to our country.
WereBear
@pete: It’s a good point. In the late ’70’s there were careers to pick from, and I got a corporate job with incredible bennies and they were going to pay for me to go to college.
Then Reagan came in, and two years later I was ushered into a conference room to watch a video about managing employees that degenerated into a foaming at the mouth minister screaming about the eeeeevils of Pink Floyd.
And things have been downhill, for me, ever since.
Germy Shoemangler
@WereBear: I started working full-time in 1978. I saw a definite change in the workplace from 1978 to 1983… management got more abusive, more demanding, there were more layoffs and economic “funny business” from bosses. In the late ’70s, companies paid for your training, helped pay if you wanted to continue your college education, there were more opportunities. After Reagan, the not-so-subtle message from management was “fuck you, be glad you have a job, now get back to work and give us 110%”
MomSense
@WereBear:
We had an all school assembly in high school to watch Ronald and Nancy tell us to just say no to drugs. The school administrators and some of the teachers spoke to us about what a great man he was and I wanted to puke. I’ve said this before but I sported a Jane Wyman was right pin every day he was in office.
WaterGirl
I think there are so many is that the “republican party” has lost control of the process. Any idiot who can get his own billionaire can not only run but can also stay in the race long after the party would have cut off their support in the past.
Germy Shoemangler
@MomSense: There is a scene in the Oliver Sacks book; I think it is “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat” where some stroke victims are watching a Ronnie Reagan speech. There are some who only understand words but not visual cues and others who only perceive visual cues but not words. All the patients stare at Reagan in horror.
It’s obvious to them he’s a liar.
Germy Shoemangler
@MomSense: And soon after that mandatory drug testing. Now there are frequent lock-downs in high schools. Cops come in with drug-sniffing dogs and check all the lockers while students hunker down. It’s like a prison.
This would have been UNTHINKABLE when I was in high school in the mid-70s.
Fair Economist
@NonyNony: Webb isn’t a delusional wierdo. He’s a passed-by-by-time Blue Dog with a anti-war streak. Ten years ago his faction was running the show.
Oh, and Sanders-Trump? Can I dream? I’d be dancing in the streets celebrating. My main concern about Sanders is going to the general with all the Hillary supporters feeling crushed by losing against the odds *twice*. But against Trump? No worries.
WaterGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: I think that many people who set off their own fireworks are not very good at risk assessment. Unless you really know what you’re doing, it’s just not worth the risk.
It doesn’t take that long to do the math: I can make my own cool fireworks display, but I could lose my hand or fingers in the process.
I would love to see party affiliations for the people who come in with injuries.
Stella B
@WereBear: I thought their greatest president was the one who had so much trouble getting George McClellan to get his act together and do something.
Josie
@MomSense: The year Nixon resigned was my first year out of college. Some friends gathered at my little one bedroom house and watched the resignation speech and then had drinks to celebrate. Needless to say, I felt the same way you did about Reagan.
Ruckus
Republicans got nothing. They had this fiscal conservative mime going but they’ve now had time to prove that that’s a bust, their social conservative mime has worn thin for a long time and is wearing out rapidly, especially as of late. So all they have left is bullshit. Of course is always was bullshit but more people have noticed that that’s the extent of it. And so of course they like ferret head, he’s their most prolific bullshitter.
But not one of them has anything positive to say or believe in, not one iota, not a smidgeon, not even one atom of positive. They have long passed the point of where they could make their bullshit sound positive so all they have left is to raise the level of bullshit.
So you get delusional/disillusioned people who have bought the entire package and have nothing but that to show for it or bullshit artists who are, as always, selling to the highest bidder. In either case they are not fit to work in government, let alone run it.
MomSense
@Germy Shoemangler:
I don’t even know if he was a liar per se or if he was just a bad actor playing a role he believed in or some combination. The scariest part about it was that all the racism and tough talk and bullshit in his message was exactly what people wanted to hear. That is what terrified me about it. I looked around and saw almost everyone I knew who wasn’t in my immediate family revealed. These were people who loved being told it was cool to be racist, greedy, and mean. His morning in America was a fucking nightmare for people of conscience.
Gindy51
@RepubAnon: I agree but what is in it for the donors if their dupe doesn’t win? Wouldn’t they be labeled a fool who is soon parted with his or her cash? Most rich folks don’t get rich throwing money after garbage.
Mike in NC
Citizens United means that anybody can run for president. 30 Republicans running seems like a nice round number. The more the merrier, right?
Bobby B.
The Visigoths didn’t worry too much about media strategies when they sacked Rome. The more the merrier!
Mike in NC
Rafael Cruz is reported to be appearing at a local restaurant next week to stump for his lunatic son. I hope five people show up to pay the $20 grifting fee.
Redshift
@Matt McIrvin: I have to disagree with your analysis. In the cycles you cute where there were a lot of Democratic candidates, you list five – the same number as this year. Additional candidates being talked about don’t count; there are fourteen declared Republican candidates so far. This is not business as usual, or something that has happened in the past with both parties.
MomSense
@Josie:
I remember watching Nixon as he boarded Marine One (our tv was tiny and black and white so it could have been a plane) with my two grandmothers. One said “there goes a great man” while the other was standing behind her making rude gestures at the tv. It made an impression.
WereBear
@Stella B: That’s the one WE like. That not the one THEY treasure, is it?
MomSense
@Germy Shoemangler:
Oh yeah, you could see that the War on Drugs was going to be turned up to 11 with Reagan. I was a teacher for 20 years so I saw the damage first hand.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
These were people who loved being told it was cool to be racist, greedy, and mean.
Many people would be these things even if no one told them it was OK. But having an entire political party, someone you could elect to agree with you and tell you that is normal, that’s nirvana, that makes you normal, and not an asshole. What could be better for an asshole to aspire to?
chopper
because crazy conservative billionaires are making it rain. who wouldn’t stuff themselves in the clown car for a chance at some of that sweet, sweet koch money?
cmorenc
The biggest problem for the GOP in having such a large field of candidates, without any clear front-runner – is that even the relatively less extreme among them (that is, relative to each other) are being forced to explicitly speak and take positions to appeal to enough of the party’s hard-core wingnut base (the ones who reliably turn out for primaries and caucuses) in order to stay viable long enough to have a shot at winning the nomination – that it’s going to be very difficult for even slick Jeb! to convincingly tack back enough toward the middle in the general election.
Scott Walker actually has the best chance to pull off this trick, should he win the nomination – as destructively toxic an asshole as he’s been in Wisconsin, he has pulled off the Jedi-mind-trick of convincing just-enough voters who bother to turn out that the nasty medicine he’s serving is good for them, what’s good for Koch enterprises is good for the USA hey-hey. His big downside is that he is far more vulnerable to his appeal imploding under more intense national exposure – such as his own version of a 47% mark.
Jeb is squishy enough to get away with corrupt insider dealings and issue positions that would be toxic to other candidates, because the media will stubbornly stick with its longstanding meme that he’s the “moderate” Republican in the field – what will do him in vs Hillary is the strong likelihood that enough voters in enough critical states will decide that if the available choice is between family dynasties, they more favorably remember the Clinton version than the Bush version. If only Bill Clinton was eligible to run again, he’d beat any candidate the GOP could put up, in a cakewalk. As much as the GOP core hat him, the majority of Americans see him as a lovable rascal, and an extremely smart rascal at that under whom America prospered (notwithstanding NAFTA) – and that since 2000, Hillary has tamed him enough to keep his pants on when he’s out of her sight.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: My best day of the Reagan administration was when a folk singer came to perform here and he added a new song about Nancy Reagan and her tiny little gun. That lifted my spirits somehow.
Baud
Another factor is that every Republican is treated by the press as a rising star or a great statesman. How many Dems are fluffed in that way?
Germy Shoemangler
Here’s the original beautiful version of “Getting Mighty Crowded” by the late, great Betty Everett:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AmwoK6uw5Q
Aleta
Running a candidate is the new Sport of Kings. More backers can afford to run their own lately. Maybe it’s fun, a competitive sport. And manipulation is a draw in itself for some wealthy sociopaths.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
Those were dark days. We had to look for good cheer anywhere we could find it.
Baud
@MomSense:
Now we have Balloon Juice!
gf120581
I think it’s pretty obvious why the disparate numbers. On one side you have a very strong frontrunner who scared most everyone else off. On the other side you have a very weak frontrunner who has only encouraged others to get in (John Kasich openly said that JEB!’s weakness was a big reason he got in; he saw opportunity, as did others no doubt).
Joseph Nobles
So the Times doesn’t think Biden will throw his hat in? OK.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: @Germy Shoemangler: That’s really interesting about the stroke victims. Ugh.
Which movie was it where they had the pretty boy nightly news star and they just spoke the words into his earpiece while he was on air and he repeated them for the broadcast?
That’s how I think of Reagan. (except for the fact that he repulsed me) I agree with whoever said upthread that he was the face and someone else was pulling the strings.
Edit: When Reagan was in office, I used to say that it was going to take us 20 years to recover from his residency. What an optimist I was!
MomSense
@Ruckus:
It was powerful validation coming from the POTUS. I still remember the expressions on the faces in the crowd at the GOP convention when that damned video played before he spoke. Don’t even get me started about the production quality. Those fucking videos had to be made by the hollywood people who made the worst movies or orange juice commercials or something. Oh god the music.
Found it. Don’t watch if you are feeling at all shaky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6XDMQPtQKw
Another Holocene Human
@NonyNony: Webb comes off as having more than a touch of narcissism to me. The serial quitting, for one thing. And the inability to see past his tribal nose, even to pander for votes.
Robert Sneddon
@Gindy51: What else are they going to do with their money? The really really really rich don’t care about money per se, it’s what they can do with it, who they can influence with it and how they can make the world conform to their standards.
Some billionaires do charity (Bill Gates, for example), some do expensive toys (Larry Ellison), some do bleeding-edge tech (Elon Musk), some do drugs (McAfee). For some it’s politics and influence, and dropping a billion on the 2016 roulette table and winning a President or a Congress is totally worth it to the Koch brothers. If they lose, well there’s more where that came from. Their total worth has increased by much more than a billion since Obama was first elected, for them it’s like dropping a dollar found down the side of the couch on a lottery ticket.
Even the fact Republican administrations have a proven track record of cratering the economy, big spending and increasing the debt won’t stop them, the knowledge they OWN that administration even if it hacks billions off their total wealth as a result of the policies they follow is what drives them to support such candidates.
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
My MIL, inspired by Nancy, got herself an itty-bitty gun, for what purpose I’m still not clear. Fortunately for all she no longer has either an itty-bitty gun nor a driver’s license.
JadedOptimist
@Germy Shoemangler: I was running a college Financial Aid office during that time period, and saw a similar shift in emphasis in the federal aid programs. When I started, there was a real emphasis on finding students who needed help and helping them. The application was simplified, and the funding discussion was about how much more money was reasonable to add to the programs.
By the end of the Reagan era everything was different. In the application process the emphasis changed from finding ways to help students through the process to eliminating ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’. We were expected to view each application with suspicion and verify everything. Toward the end of my time in that job we got dinged in an audit because of a high rate of inaccurate responses on the question ‘anticipated summer earnings’ – basically, these high school seniors were supposed to know in March how much money they were going to make from a summer job they wouldn’t even be hired for until maybe June. And the fact that they frequently guessed wrong was supposed to put their whole application under suspicion. And once the student got through the application process, what they received shifted from primarily grants with maybe a small loan if needed to a much higher portion of loans relative to grants (and these Stafford loans were really a HUGE giveaway to the banking industry – students were just the vehicle for channeling the funds). When I graduated from a private liberal arts college in 1979, my student loan ‘burden’ totaled $180.00. That was the balance, not the monthly payment. Ten years later, my students were racking up $1,250 in loans per semester. And I moved down the hall and became the Registrar.
MomSense
@Baud:
Thank dog!
trollhattan
@Joseph Nobles:
Has he sent any kind of signal he might? I’ve missed it if he has, nor have I seen any kind of Draft Handsome Joe movement (especially compared to, say Elizabeth Warren).
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler: Same thing happened in GWB administration.
raven
@MomSense: I’d get high as the cost of living.
joel hanes
@MomSense:
These were people who loved being told it was cool to be racist, greedy, and mean.
My parents loved Reagan, and I had fifteen years afterward to talk to them about why, so I can tell you that wasn’t quite the appeal, although it was the ultimate effect.
To a big slice of the electorate, liberalism appears to be about guilt and sacrifice.
To them, Archetypical Liberal seems to demand :
Because of the historical oppression of black people, Voter should feel guilty and also pay extra taxes to help poor black people.
Because the environment is not a pristine national park, Voter should feel guilty and give up things Voter enjoys, such as V8 engines and motor homes.
etc.
Because the Viet Nam war was poorly justified and ultimately futile, Voter should feel guilty and give up the cherished idea that America can do no wrong.
As conservatives, my parents resented the perceived message that they should feel guilty about their relative prosperity and happiness, and that they bore partial responsibility for the lesser fortunes of others.
Reagan reassured them that America was a light unto the nations and that they were exactly the kind of people who made it that way, and that they should be proud of themselves and their country, and that they were not responsible for anyone but themselves
raven
@JadedOptimist: THE BEOG!!!!!
Cervantes
@MomSense:
Do you remember seeing the parrot?
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Broadcast News. William Hurt and Holly Hunter.
Another Holocene Human
@MomSense: My first memory of Ronald Reagan, aside from the Mondale/Reagan debates (I was for Mondale because of Geraldine Ferraro being his running mate) was a political cartoon criticizing the administration for failing to do anything on acid rain. All I knew was that all the cool people (artists, musicians) couldn’t stand Reagan, and my mother, no liberal, voted against him too. As I got a little older, I found out what Reagan had done to the federal budget and started to wonder why “tax and spend” was a slur when Reagan had borrowed and spent, “spend and spend” as it were.
But I didn’t grok the true, personal nasty of the man until much later. Creepy, horrible, insincere and cruel.
trollhattan
@JadedOptimist:
Much of what Reagan did as prez was an echo of his stint as governor; which was a sustained period or ruining formerly functional segments of government. As a random example, our highways are a shambles today in part because of Reagan’s dismantling of the Division of Highways and its funding base. There are many, many others.
It can take decades to build a well-functioning organization and mere months under the wrong kind of leadership to destroy it. Just ask Wisconsin.
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler: Thank that fucking Supreme Court for that shit.
If you’re under 18 you’re chattel. You don’t have rights and the Constitution doesn’t apply.
MomSense
@raven:
I pretty much led a double life. During the school day I was a quiet, A student who only had a few close friends. After school I was in the theater with a community of people who were misfits/subversives.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
No need to watch. I’ve lived through Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan…….
The nightmares are real.
jl
Looked at Chuck Lane’s twitter stream. His tweets read like a GOP trolling operation. Doesn’t look like anyone follows him or pays attention to his pleas for RTs (which I think means retweets, not sure, I don’t do social media}. It was kind of funny in a sad way.
Alex S.
Well, Sanders would defeat Trump, so I’m all up for it.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: That does seem odd, maybe Nancy Reagan having a tiny little gun made it seem glamorous? If that’s where the story ends, it sounds like you all dodged a bullet.
MomSense
@joel hanes:
Yours is a much more accurate and thoughtful explanation. I admit I am still angry and perplexed by the whole Reagan phenomenon.
@Cervantes:
The what?? I think my laptop screen is bigger than our old tv. We kept it in the closet on a metal stand with wheels and only rolled it out occasionally. He had a parrot?
@Another Holocene Human:
It really was creepy and horrible. Remember his cabinet? We could reach TBogg comment level on those bastards.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes! I could see William Hurt in my mind but I couldn’t think of his name so I couldn’t even google it.
Ben
@MomSense:
Sadly, Jane Wyman voted for him…
Patricia Kayden
@NonyNony: Very well said — especially paragraph C. The Kenyan Socialist has really done good. Shocking Republicans every dang day.
bluehill
@joel hanes: good explanation. I always thought of it like the choice Neo is offered in the Matrix. Open your eyes to the real world or continue to live in a dream. Much easier to believe that your country is mighty, you earned all your wealth, and the poor are leeches rather than get into the messy details.
As for Lane, typical R approach. He can’t directly say that Trump is nutjob, because all his followers actually like the guy, so he drags in a Dem for the “both sides do it” argument. I hope he gets his wish, because the resulting Bernie victory would eclipse Reagan/Mondale.
Another Holocene Human
@MomSense: I don’t remember much about his cabinet except the war guys because of Iran-Contra and also I think carryovers to Bush I? I watched a lot of Frontline which covered the Iran Contra stuff (and to think Newt Gingrich blew a gasket over American Playhouse).
Later on I found out about Meese, though. Euuuuuurghhhhhhh.
Didn’t his Surgeon General end up defying socon orthodoxy in the end? Not the guy who’s flogging woo woo all the damn time, the other one.
MomSense
@Ben:
lalalalala I can’t hear you.
Really? Ugh.
Cervantes
@MomSense:
Yes, he had a parrot in the White House.
On that fateful day one of the Filipino servants carried it out in its cage to the helicopter.
Another Holocene Human
@joel hanes: Not once in there do the words “civic responsibility” enter into it.
These are people who were already spoiled and selfish, who felt that the American Dream meant enjoying the fruits of others’ hard work, and never having to lift a finger themselves.
MomSense
@Cervantes:
I’m picturing the parrot saying “I am not a crook” over and over.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: Wikipedia lists 8 and 9 declared Democratic candidates in those campaigns.
1988 is actually a better example: there were 14 Democrats declared that year, including fringe figures like David Duke and Lyndon LaRouche, and not counting the buzz over undeclared candidates.
But there were also 9 Republicans, even though George Bush had the pretty clear heir-apparent slot. 10 if you count Ron Paul switching parties partway through the year. So maybe there is something here.
WaterGirl
OT, but I just got a hummingbird feeder. Some websites says I have to boil the water; others say I do not have to boil the water.
What say you, BJ?
mdblanche
@Mike in NC:
Sounds slightly excessive. I’d dial it back by maybe three candidates or so.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin: Wasn’t it in ’88 that pundits referred to the Democratic field as “Seven Dwarves”?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Has this been covered? Today’s edition of Bill Kristol Leads With His Chin:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, as the great Pat Schroeder made a run. I always liked and admired her.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: I’m a boiler. On top of everything else, it makes the sugar dissolve better.
Roger Moore
@MomSense:
This. Reagan’s genius was that he was able to make people feel comfortable about the worst parts of themselves. You can see why people who have a lot they ought to feel bad about love him so much.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“Always Wrong” still wrong. Bloody Billy can’t get enough of OPB (other people’s blood). Ghoul for him.
FlipYrWhig
@Fair Economist:
I don’t think that’s quite right. 10 years ago was when he picked off the frontrunner in the Virginia senate election by running as a cantankerous economic populist and war critic. That’s not what the Blue Dogs were like. Blue Dogs didn’t have a problem with outsourcing or giveaways to big business. Webb does. I think it was someone around here who said he was kind of like a 1960 vintage Democrat, a throwback to the days before the browning, girl-ing, and gay-ing of the party.
bluehill
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Is he that daft? Why pick 152 years? He’s got to be trolling.
MomSense
@Another Holocene Human:
Yes. I think C. Everett Koop was picked because of his anti-abortion position but “betrayed” Reagan when he didn’t promote the administration’s anti-abortion propaganda. And then there was the AIDS crisis and I think Koop again found himself on Reagan’s bad side.
I freely admit that I am very angry about Reagan. Aside from all the things we have mentioned in this thread, I found acceptance and a place in the artist/dancer/musician/theater world in the 80s in New York and Boston. AIDS was terrifying. We lost so many beautiful human beings and the response to this crisis was silence. The message was received that our country felt the people dying of HIV were expendable or not important or deserved it. The phrase “innocent victim of AIDS” was a thing that people said in polite society all the time.
Sometimes I think I am a bit haunted by the people we lost. I treasure my memories of the friends and idols I lost but I am still haunted by the juxtaposition of the grief and terror we were experiencing which was met with indifference or blame by our government.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
I think more of California’s problems can be laid at the feet of Howard Jarvis than Ronald Reagan. Prop 13 is an ongoing disaster, but enough people think they benefit from it that it’s politically infeasible to fix.
? Martin
Lack of a frontrunner.
The GOP’s demand for purity means that there is little room for market differentiation. I had a doctor once tell me that there were dozens of treatments on the market for the minor condition that I had, which meant that they all worked equally poorly. If there was a clearly good treatment, that one product would quickly shove everyone else out of the market.
I suspect conservatives would argue that the Republicans from JEB! to Trump are equally awesome, but economic theory say that they are equally terrible.
Consider that the socîalist Bernie Sanders has higher favorable/unfavorables than every GOP candidate.
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
I use the simple 1:4 sugar:water ratio and use boiling water. My thought is it’s an ideal bacteria medium so if I begin sterile it will last longer in the feeder, especially in summer. The feeder gets really slimy between fillings, so I wash it each time.
? Martin
@Roger Moore: Jarvis and Reagan were a team. Prop 13 would not have passed without Reagan providing ideological cover for it.
Roger Moore
@WaterGirl:
Hot water will dissolve sugar faster, but there’s no need to boil it for sanitary reasons. If you make the syrup the recommended strength, it will be fairly resistant to anything growing in it because the osmotic pressure will kill just about anything that tries.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Prop 13 was the nail in the coffin but I know folks who endured the DOH to Caltrans change, who can detail where and how it all began. Same thing goes for the current UC and CSU funding problems.
Germy Shoemangler
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
After she dropped out of the race (and to this day I know she would have been one of our greatest presidents) I was listening to WBAI, and Abbie Hoffman was being interviewed.
He said the reason she dropped out of the race was because republican ratf**kers had found something and were blackmailing her.
Not sure if this is true, of course. Abbie made some outrageous statements. But he claimed someone “in the know” and close to the action revealed that to him.
Davis X. Machina
@Germy Shoemangler: Rumors to that effect were floating around all over the Demo-sphere, and far from the WBAI listening area.
piratedan
@joel hanes: Joel, that was a lucid representation of how the Reagan appeal went. It meant that they could not only have their cake, but they were allowed to enjoy it and even have more cake if they liked. It was the social equivalent of the message of Wall Street. Don’t feel guilty, be proud and pay no attention to what is going on behind the curtain and the majority of Americans, post Vietnam and post Watergate sucked that right up. Instead of rolling up their sleeves and taking on the challenges, they put their shovels in the shed, put up their feet and watched TV. It wasn’t so much a path or road not taken, it was a case of saying “fuck it” and deciding to build the house right there at the fork of the road.
Germy Shoemangler
@MomSense: In the early-to-mid ’80s I was going to school part time in NYC and fell in with musicians, cartoonists and other creative types. We lost so many people to AIDS; and the day I heard about that jocular press conference, Reagan’s press secretary joking about AIDS made me want to put my foot through a wall.
Germy Shoemangler
@Davis X. Machina: any truth to it? I’ve wondered all these years.
When I heard that rumor I assumed some repub operative dug up an old boyfriend from college who said she had (gulp!! gasp!!) sex or took a puff of the devil ganja.
the Conster
OT, but Trayvon Martin’s brother graduated from college today. Happy dad is happy on twitter, but Trayvon shoulda coulda been there.
MomSense
@Germy Shoemangler:
It’s all coming back. The despair, anger, heartbreak.
Davis X. Machina
@joel hanes:
@piratedan:
In his recent The Invisible Bridge Rick Perlstein says that what Reagan was selling, and America buying in job lots, was easy forgiveness and cheap grace.
“It’s not your fault” is a platform with wide electoral appeal.
Mike J
@Germy Shoemangler: Why would a Republican hold it back? If you have something damaging on somebody , why not just release it and let it damage them?
Germy Shoemangler
@MomSense: I think we’ve both got more than a bit of Reagan PTSD.
I was just starting out in life when that fucker got elected. Just starting to find my way. When I think of Reagan I’m reminded of every bad boss I’ve ever had.
Roger Moore
@Davis X. Machina:
No wonder he got along so well with the Evangelicals; that’s what they’re selling, too.
Germy Shoemangler
@the Conster: if not for a little man with a big chip on his shoulder. Is he on probation for his latest incident?
Germy Shoemangler
@Mike J: Maybe it was a different breed of ratfu*ker back then?
I honestly don’t know if the story’s true. But I wish she’d been president.
shell
Slow blog day
piratedan
@Mike J: yeah, but in GOP parlance, it would behoove them to see if they could make a buck off of it too…. i.e. it would be irresponsible NOT to speculate etc etc etc.. there are no rules when it comes to making a buck at someone else’s expense. My guess would be that she had a fling with another woman while in college and America back then wouldn’t have been a fertile place for understanding and acceptance. Unless you’re a bible thumping family values man caught in a diaper with a hooker, America can only forgive so much.
Arclite
Comparing Sanders and Trump is like comparing apples to anthrax. Sanders actually knows how to govern and how politics works. Trump is just a bloviator and clown.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: Wait, correction, I just read that he wants to cut corporate tax rates. That’s pretty Blue Doggish.
muddy
@WaterGirl: @WereBear: I also boil the water. I usually make a 4:1 solution and keep it in the fridge, watering it down when I fill the containers. Sometimes I vary the dilution amongst the feeders to watch them figure out their favorite. I sanitize the feeders themselves frequently too. The birds are really demanding and if I’m on the porch they will buzz me until I get them a refill.
I was having an issue with ants going in the feeders and then drowning, so I put bug spray just carefully on the strings and wires they hang from. Worked great.
WereBear
Same here. It started with eroding my corporate job. My workload literally doubled without hiring anyone new. They had already cut benefits. Then Bush the First started removing tax exemptions on middle class families, and we went from having a few bucks left over to tightening our belts. They kept not regulating the electric company until Long Island was the second most expensive place in the country for it.
I left corporate and started working for small businesses instead, and they were getting squeezed. My wages were stuck in place and I lost one job when a guy had a mental breakdown.
I welcomed the Clinton years.
MomSense
@Germy Shoemangler:
I think I do. If you were in NYC in the early to mid 80s and ever walked by Lincoln Center Plaza, you probably walked past me. I was usually with a group of dancers between classes. I also loved to catch the Philharmonic rehearsals at Avery Fisher. For $3 you could hear some incredible performances and all the interesting behind the music stuff.
WereBear
@WereBear: Not to mention the AIDS thing, because that was beyond the pale. A touch of genocide from the Republicans… thanks for nothing.
jeffreyw
@WaterGirl: I use hot water to dissolve the sugar but have never boiled it. You need to change it out every day or two* to keep fermentation down.
* Depends on how often you need to refill them, of course.
The Thin Black Duke
@WereBear: Yeah, Reagan was tthe gift that kept on giving, huh? George W never would have happened without The Great Communicator paving the highway to hell. Cruel as it sounds, I hope that when Reagan was suffering with dementia, I wished that there was enough awareness left in his head so that he was aware what was happening to him. Reagan was a monster, a Dick Cheney with charisma.
The Thin Black Duke
@WereBear: Reagan was a monster, a Dick Cheney with charisma.
scav
the so-called Moral Majority and AIDS combo was rather a large final clue in developing my heuristic understanding of the general social-political landscape (probably due to my basic generation). That heuristic has held up rather well, all in all (others have suffered — notably my impression of baseline intellectual attainment and curiosity).
JDM
Running for the GOP nomination is a proven road to profitable grift. Running for the Democratic nomination isn’t. It’s that simple.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: I have the ultra fine sugar – that dissolves almost instantly even in cold water. So if we don’t have to worry about dissolving the sugar, do I need to boil?
Poopyman
@Cervantes:
Too bad. I’ll bet it was pining for the Fords.
John Revolta
@MomSense: @Germy Shoemangler: Small Goddamned world. I moved to NYC in fall of ’82 and lived there for the next 20 years. I would bet that we probably crossed paths at some point. It was the best/worst of times!
WaterGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: Holy shit. I have no words. My eyes (literally) got bigger and bigger as I read that.
I guess we’ll have to take un-fucking-believable to the 100th power and see if that will suffice.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: I read about it in Randy Shilts’ book. But it was not widely disseminated at the time.
In the age of Twitter, it would have been a different story.
It doesn’t seem like water boiling is necessary in your case. And sugar is actually not a hospitable germ surface… which is why jam lasts dang near forever.
MomSense
@John Revolta:
It was fantastic. I had so much fun. I’m taking my youngest the week after next for a quick trip. I know a lot has changed but I’m looking forward to it so much.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: Every 45 minutes?
Edit: in your case, not mine! They say it may take 2-3 weeks before I see anybody. I hope not.
divF
Re: Reagan’s cabinet.
Somewhere in my papers, I have a yellowed clipping from the WaPo of an editorial* excoriating Ronald Reagan’s choice for Secretary of Energy – James Edwards, a South Carolina dentist turned politician. This was after Carter’s choices – James Schlesinger and Charles Duncan, both having previously served as Secretary of Defense, and possessed of significant management, policy and technical chops.
Then there was James Watt (Interior) and Anne Gorsuch (EPA) – other paragons of hackishness (and IIRC in Watt’s case, religious wingnuttery).
*Note this was an actual editorial, not an Op-Ed piece. Back in early 1981, the Post still had some remnants of integrity.
Compare this with the Obama Energy Secretaries: Chu (Nobel Laureate in Physics) and Moniz (MIT Physics Professor). At least they are class acts intellectually.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: That is the answer I am hoping for. :-)
I tried hummingbird feeders a few times in years past (many years) and I just wasn’t vigilant enough about filling and cleaning, etc, so I gave it up each time. I know how simple it is to boil water, but then you have to cool it and that was a high enough bar that I was not a responsible hummingbird feeder.
I’m better about stuff like that now and I believe I can stay on top of it if I don’t have to boil and refrigerate the water. The ultra fine sugar dissolves instantly so it should be super simple to make the nectar – I’ll just have to be sure to clean it.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Did you know a Karen Keltner who was a dancer in NYC?
I’m sure there were a million dancers in NYC but I feel compelled to ask!
joel hanes
@WaterGirl:
Some websites says I have to boil the water; others say I do not have to boil the water.
You should clean the feeder very frequently, and sterilize it when you do so (hot dishwasher, boiling water in sink, or bleach, etc.).
Poorly-maintained hummingbird feeders spread disease, and are ultimately bad for the birds, although they provide a show for humans.
Most hummingbird feeders are poorly maintained after the first flush of enthusiasm wears off.
If you’re not going to clean it once a week, take it down.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
Sadly, no.
WaterGirl
@joel hanes: I read that you’re supposed to use vinegar to clean it and not soapy water. Is that what you do?
That’s why I always gave up before, but I have faith that I will do better this time!
Edit: it’s in a spot where I will see it a million times a day, so that should help me stay on top of things. (or guilt me into taking it down if I see that I am not.)
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Darn it!
Edit: Henry has entered the defiant teenage stage. Not to mention the destruction stage. Did you guys go through those, too?
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: We could take that a step further and blame the writers of our state constitution. Damn them all
ETA- specifically, the ones who came up with the ballot system
TheMightyTrowel
@Poopyman: win. OMG.
joel hanes
@WaterGirl:
vinegar
New one on me. I’ll google for the reason.
Is that what you do?
I am not conscientious enough to properly maintain a hummingbird feeder,
so I don’t have one, although IIRC California has more kinds of hummingbirds than anywhere else in the nation.
I know a resort in Wisconsin with a huge deck that has twelve large feeders,
and they’re continually busy. They sterilize them every single night in the institutional dishwasher.
John Revolta
@MomSense: Oh man…………..give my regards to Broadway! East 10th St. also too.
Germy Shoemangler
joel hanes
@joel hanes:
Apparently vinegar and bleach both :
– kill black mold, the main problem in hummer feeders
– evaporate completely with thorough air drying, so that the hummers are not repelled by residue.
Apparently soap and home dish detergent leave scents and or flavors that hummers reject.
This is a good article, I think :
http://www.hummingbirds.net/feeders.html
WaterGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: That always makes my blood boil. Rat fucking your way into the presidency.
joel hanes
@Germy Shoemangler:
Yes. We knew it at the time, but didn’t have proof until this came out.
And then Reagan did the same thing with the Iranians to discredit Carter;
and later sold armaments to the Iranians, even though that was proscribed,
and even though he consistently described the Tehran government,
with whom he twice conspired, as “terrorists”, part of the “Axis of Evil”.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: It was so upsetting reading Perlstein’s Nixon book. I found the man loathsome before, but this plumbed new debts like exploring the Marianas Trench.
In personal good news, I have both my credit & debit card back in my wallet. Pro-tip: when you have a security breach and must cancel a card, pull the correct one from your wallet. Or you’ll lose both of them for over a week.
WaterGirl
@joel hanes: That was one of the sites I found earlier, but this time I bookmarked it for future reference. thanks.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: Yeah, I don’t think I could read that book. My head would surely explode.
Glad your life is back to normal after your security breach.
? Martin
@FlipYrWhig: Corporate rates should be cut, but what and how we tax should be expanded. Profits are being offshore due to the rates. High rates * 0 = 0.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: Thanks, it was horrible! (smile)
I had to use cash for everything! I turned out to be able to hold off ordering stuff online… except my cheap Kindle fixation. I bought one of those gift cards for myself at the drugstore just so I could buy 99 cent books :)
However, the rush priority on the card, which I didn’t take, was $15. Buying a big gift card only cost me $5.
notoriousJRT
@Redshift: bingo!
WaterGirl
@WereBear: Curious… was your security breach something like a Target thing or was it something related to just you?
Either way, what a nightmare. It’s probably like when your water is turned off – happened to us in college when the person in charge of that bill screwed up. You KNOW you don’t have water, so you arrange to shower someplace else. But you still go to the sink to wash your hands when you get something on them. Right, no water. And you still go to the faucet to get water to take an aspirin. Right, now water. It goes on and on. I’m sure it’s like that now with how dependent I am on my debit cards.
Tommy
@notoriousJRT: That is exactly it. Running has the potential to make these folks a lot of money in the future.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: It was my fault, in a way, I got a call saying I needed to lift a security restriction on my card so I could continue using it, pretending to be from my bank. But it was automated, and it wasn’t.
Now they say they will never ask for your PIN, and that’s true of credit cards from my bank (now I know,) but Verizon won’t give you anything if you don’t have your “four digit security code” and I’d just gone through a two week ordeal with them, so reflexively I entered what I thought was the code. When they said they had rejected that code, I got cold feet and hung up.
Which was good, but now I’d given them a code I like to use, so for safety first reasons I canceled the card. I was going to go down to the branch and change my debit code… but accidentally canceled that when I called the bank.
So I changed all my codes anyway, which is good.
Tommy
@WereBear: That sucks but social engineering not hacks to a network is how most things happen. I find most people are very trusting, which I think is a good thing, but evil people can use that against them.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: Oh, no, it went from bad to worse. It’s so easy to goof up stuff like that when we’re flustered, which you surely were once you realized you had given out a code you use.
The silver lining is that you ended up better off than when you started. (glass half full)
trollhattan
@joel hanes:
That was a very informative article, thanks!
Making the syrup has been a fun opportunity to show the kid the magic of a solution, where five cups of ingredients becomes four cups of product.
Chris
@joel hanes:
As a person who’s only read about and not lived through those eras, that was always my impression of Reagan’s ultimate appeal. The sixties and seventies shone a light on everything that was ugly in America. Reagan came along and told everyone not to worry about it and to blame the person holding the light for giving them a fright instead of worrying about what he was showing them. It was what most voters wanted to hear.
Glad to hear it confirmed.
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
The “Lester” in that exchange, and others like it, was Les Kinsolving, an Anglican/Episcopalian minister who used to refer to gay-rights activists as “the sodomy lobby.”
He was once caught filing “positive” stories about apartheid South Africa — for a small fee.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: Yes, I’m telling myself the same thing; it’s good to change up the codes.
sharl
@Germy Shoemangler: I found your anecdote fascinating, and had to find out more (Feb. 2011 post):
Chris
@WaterGirl:
I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever recover.
I honestly think Reagan has a very good claim to being the worst thing that ever happened to the White House. Buchanan and Hoover are mostly blamed for failing to respond adequately to crises that had been building for decades; Reagan actually STARTED the crises, digging up issues that had been dealt with fifty years earlier and putting them back into play. (And even W. was mostly just following in Reagan’s footsteps, to the point that his cabinet was a retread of the Reagan years).
sharl
test
Germy Shoemangler
Someone has entered their dog in the Schenectady mayoral race.
He’ll probably receive more than a few votes.
Another Holocene Human
@MomSense: I remember the notion of a “innocent victim of AIDS”. Just some disgusting Catholic nonsense that if you engage in illicit sex (by their definition) then you earned your fate. There were drug users, too, and nobody gave a shit about them either because the Drugs Kill moral panic was on. I was so shocked when I found out that people had been abusing heroin since the 19th century because the attitude was that this was the new danger that demanded an outsized authoritarian response. (Much like the reaction to 9/11.)
I clearly remember the night when the local news talked about a high school that was refusing to let a boy with AIDS attend school. You know how you know when things are just plain wrong?
boatboy_srq
@Another Holocene Human: I had the same thoughts about “tax and spend”. My dad once repeated to me the old canard: “A Democrat looks at $1 in revenues and says, ‘What shall we do with this $1.75?'” – I responded with “A Republican looks at the same $1, looks at the taxpayer and says, ‘Next year we’ll make sure you only pay 50¢ of this!” He didn’t get it. The GOTea has made an art of only “offsetting” things things they don’t want to spend revenues to provide, and the Reagan administration was the architect of that concept.
boatboy_srq
@Davis X. Machina:
“It’s not your fault” is also the cornerstone of the efforts to dismantle the social safety net: if “it’s not your fault,” then there’s no reason you should have to pay for it.
satby
@WaterGirl: depends on how good your water is, if it’s chlorinated you don’t have to. If it’s well water you may want to. I just use distilled water at room temperature.
WaterGirl
@satby: Good to know. I think we win awards for our water around here, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
I filled my hummingbird feeder and now it feels like waiting for Christmas when you’re a kid. I don’t want to have to wait 2 or 3 weeks. :-)
Edit: I had to get a hummingbird feeder for my new patio area.
stinger
@Poopyman: You’ve won the internets for the next several weeks.
dww44
@WaterGirl: For what it’s worth, I’ve always boiled the water and put the sugar in as soon as the water boils, cover it with a lid, turn the heat down and walk away. I’ve found that boiling the water makes the sugar water last longer before it starts to go bad. I live in the hot and steamy south and change the feeder only when the sugar water goes cloudy. Also, something I picked up at my local bird store: Hang multiple feeders relatively close to each other so that the birds can see the other feeders, and one can’t easily monopolize them all.
Over the years I’ve acquired enough feeders so that when I remove one I replace with a different and clean one. Just makes life a bit easier for one who’s been feeding hummingbirds ( and other birds) for more than a decade. I’d truly recommend having a least 2 feeders so that one is clean and available when the need arises.
yodecat
Betty,
I must say that I enjoy your posts immensely. I love your pictures. I live in Oregon now, in the farthest SW Oregon town, Brookings, where the weather is usually fine (and cool). Your pictures remind me of the pleasures of the South, without the humidity, heat and mosquitos. Makes me a bit homesick but I quickly get over it, here in the cool fir forest where I live.
Y’all could move here, y’know.
jw
WaterGirl
Big thanks to everyone who replied to my hummingbird questions!