I agree with Steve M. that this reduces conservatism to its true essence:
Rich Lowry told Megyn Kelly that the reason Trump is going after Carly Fiorina is that ‘she cut his balls off with the precision of a surgeon‘ in the last debate and thus she has become a much bigger target for Trump to take aim at.
That’s what it’s all about: quien es mas macho?
Update. This email a reader sent young Conor is amazing:
Trump fights. Trump wins. I want an Alpha Male who is going to take it to the enemy. I am tired of supporting losers. I used to vote for President based on their positions. Now I am going to vote for President based on emotion. I want a strong man to be president, an Alpha male, somebody who is going to rip the other side a new one. I am tired of losing the fight before we even have a fight. That is why I support Donald Trump. Ted Cruz is my second choice. Never Jeb!
Baud
No likeable characters in that story.
When your entirely ideology is based on privilege, it’s critical to be the top dog.
beltane
@Baud: I’m just rooting for injuries for all concerned.
Amir Khalid
This isn’t presidential politics. This is a schoolyard free-for-all.
I love the Australian music reference.
Hildebrand
Jeez, Starbursts Lowry really wants a female politician to have sex with him.
sm*t cl*de
I don’t understand. Did she swallow them or something, causing her to swell up like Violet Beauregarde?
beltane
I can’t believe people like Fiorina and Trump are even serious contenders for the presidency. At this rate, the 2020 Republican field may feature a few animated characters in the mix.
WereBear
When all you are is a dick, everything looks like a measuring contest.
beltane
The way Rich Lowry words this makes me think of that Gawker piece about the fatal threesome at Yale involving Young Conservatives.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
I am so stealing that.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
This is what the GOP has become. An endless locker room sword fight.
boatboy_srq
@sm*t cl*de: “Trump’s Blueberries” is now a thing.
Culture of Truth
Maybe he should stay away from her then.
Baud
C’mon, we all know that was you, Doug.
Rook
It’s basically the bar pounding voter rant.
Doug!
@Baud:
I didn’t drop any of my usual hints, no Burkean, no post-punk, etc.
beltane
I almost feel sorry for Jeb? and Jeb’s troll.
bystander
@debbie: Trump v. Bush: Toothpicks at dawn.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: It’s the highest compliment!
Elizabelle
Listening to C-Span. Only congresscritter who’s announced he’s boycotting the Pope’s speech remains Paul Gosar, the Jesuit-educated dentist with self-proclaimed critical thinking skills.
Do you think Gosar will pay an electoral price? It was a pretty shabby stunt. Yes, he’s from Arizona, but how well will his snub go over? Arizona’s not all Arpaiao fanbois. Lot of retirees from other places.
Elizabelle
@Doug!: That may just mean: scrutinize the other comments!
Some of them may be parody. How is a clickbait journalist to tell?
PS: appears Andrew Sullivan may be writing the occasional post for The Atlantic. Think I saw his byline while scrolling through for a Fallows item …
PPS: Good morning all!
Snarkworth
@Rook: They’re not even trying anymore. They’re just rollin’ coal.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
My god is that hilarious. He claims to be educated all his arguments are based on feelings with no examples.
gene108
@beltane:
Animated characters no. Zombie Reagan Yes.
Edit: If Republicans are going to run undead Reagan, I think they will bring him back as a Lich or Vampire.
beltane
@Elizabelle: Boehner seems pretty excited about the speech http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/sep/24/pope-francis-historic-address-congress-expectations-high-live-coverage#block-5603de38e4b0dad8168403c3 Paul Gosar has made himself appear very small and very silly. He did get his name out there so there’s that at least.
JPL
@beltane: I’m glad that you said almost.. His son George is next in line so the Bushes will be around for a long, long, time.
@WereBear: We need a warning on this site… Put down you coffee before reading this.
Booger
Yeah, also, the whole “Alpha male” thing has been pretty much discredited, IIRC. In the wild, wolves are cooperative and matriarchal; the “alpha” bullshit came from studying wolves in captivity. Ergo, wolves in the wild are more rational than we are as an electorate.
Just One More Canuck
@beltane: Aren’t all the GOP candidates essentially a live action version of Snidely Whiplash?
Morzer
@Booger:
The scientist who originally came up with the theory has said that it’s completely wrong, which ought to have been enough. I suspect we have Hollywood to blame for its persistence.
Elizabelle
@beltane: The Guardian’s photographs are stunning.
Gorgeous weather for the Pope. He’s out shaking hands, I guess near the Vatican consulate.
Since it’s pretty much across the street from the VP’s residence, I wonder if Pope Francis has met personally with VP and Dr. Biden? Maybe not, but it would be so comforting, I would think.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Booger:
It’s also weird when you watch “alpha males” among humans – the family patriarch is the reliable male everyone is listening to and expecting to solve their problems, not punch the rest of the family in the face.
rikyrah
Latest FOX GOP Poll:
1. Donald Trump: 26% (up one point from last month)
2. Ben Carson: 18% (up six points)
3. Carly Fiorina: 9% (up four points)
3. Marco Rubio: 9% (up five points)
5. Ted Cruz: 8% (down two points)
6. Jeb Bush: 7% (down two points)
7. Chris Christie: 5% (up two points)
8. John Kasich: 4% (unchanged)
9. Mike Huckabee: 3% (down three points)
10. Rand Paul: 2% (down one point)
11. George Pataki: 1% (unchanged)
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/two-new-national-polls-donald-trump-still-leads-gop-pack
gene108
For whatever his faults, Trump’s turned the huge pile of cash he inherited into YOOOGER and Classier piles of cash; plus cranking out a smoking hot daughter, while Carly’s run two large businesses – Lucent and HP – into the ground.
If you want a CEO President, it’s Donald or bust.
beltane
@Elizabelle: I love how Congress members needed to be told not to sneak extra staffers on to the floor. Almost everyone is excited, even the wingnuts.
SRW1
Makes one sort of wonder what William F. B Jr would have made of the intellectual heft of his successor.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: No Gilmore? As long as he stays in the race, I think news organizations should be required to poll him and Mrs. Gilmore, then do the math and post his % of support.
(LOL – if the .0002% support drops to .0001% support, he’ll know he has lost Mrs. Gilmore and better come on home!)
I guess they will need to do this for Jindal, Santorum, and Graham too.
MattF
@gene108: Last week, on my vacation in NYC, we drove along the West Side Highway several times, getting a view of Trump’s, um, erections on the West Side facing the Hudson. FWIW, they’re basically housing projects for the oligarchy.
AxelFoley
@Amir Khalid:
It’s a donnybrook! A slobberknocker!
Glidwrith
@Booger: I am not up on the recent research. Got a link?
geg6
@MattF:
I want to hug and kiss that sentence.
Woodrowfan
@Jeffro: Feel the Gil-mentum!
raven
Big Ball’s In Cowtown
Bob Wills
IanY77
I think the next Republican debate should be just a giant roshambo contest. Hugh Hewitt and Trump kick each other in the balls, while Marco Rubio kicks Chris Wallace in the balls. Lindsay Graham runs in circle while flapping his hands and shrieks about ISIS agents outside the viewers windows. Fiorina, of course, is exempt, so she just kicks Lindsey in the balls and then tells people she got the idea from the Planned Parenthood videos, and oh by the way, Hillary’s a total b***h.
I’d watch.
FlipYrWhig
@Morzer:
It’s A Thing among pickup artists and men’s-rights-ers too, innit?
PaulW
re-read that email where the voter proudly admits to vote purely on emotion. This is actually how our electoral system has worked over the years. We think we vote on the issues, but we really – and yes, both sides do it – vote on our passions.
I kept the book “The Selling of the President” about the 1968 campaign with Nixon, and it’s a short book but it nails exactly how the parties sell their elections to “buy” the voters’ interest and support. In particular, there’s a passage where the head of Nixon’s marketing campaign revealed that in the modern age of immediate messaging, emotions meant more than facts.
The passage from my blog article:
We are now at the point where the Republicans are driven entirely by emotional gratification than genuine policy or thoughtful planning. This still makes them – and Trump – very dangerous. There is no guarantee that a passion-driven campaign will implode when needed. It may well explode, and take way too many innocents with it.
Cervantes
@Glidwrith:
Here’s an excerpt from David Mech’s “Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs,” Canadian Journal of Zoology, 77:1196-1203 (2000):
You can download the full paper.
Chyron HR
@rikyrah:
The Summer of Trump is over!
JEB! is deliberately dropping in the polls to give himself room for an Amazing Comeback!
THE GREAT CLEANSING OF AMERICA IS IMMINENT!
pete mack
@beltane: Max Headroom for president!
Glidwrith
@Cervantes: Thankx, will do so.
OzarkHillbilly
@beltane: They aren’t.
boatboy_srq
@JPL: There should at least be a place we can donate to the Balloon Juice Keyboard Replacement Fund…
@beltane: We keep looking for common decency and politesse in our leaders. We keep failing to find it. This – especially now that the wingnut Xtian Id runs the GOTea – is at all surprising?
ETA: politicking has never been a game for the polite, but you’d think that at some point behaving like a douchenozzle would cost people…
beltane
@efgoldman: If Pope Francis publicly called out Justice Scalia I think I would die a happy woman. In any case, those three (Scalia, Alito, and Thomas I’m guessing) are cowards, cafeteria Catholics who only seem to put hate on their trays.
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: “Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.”
ruemara
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: M.M.A.? He has a degree in mixed martial arts? Oooook.
Elizabelle
I keep wondering if Steven Colbert will meet with the Pope at some point, perhaps privately. He is Catholic faith in action.
From rawstory:
I think the Colbert-Francis meeting should take place for Pope Francis’s sake. He needs some comic relief from the gasbags he’s had to meet with in previous days.
rikyrah
They were always forward thinking.
………………
Most Of The Radical Ideas The Black Panthers Had Are Now Totally Mainstream
by Carimah Townes Sep 23, 2015 8:00am
For decades since their inception in the 1960s, members of the liberation group known as the Black Panthers were labeled thugs and hateful extremists who set out to ruin the U.S. They were considered the antithesis to Martin Luther King Jr. — armed and dangerous. And that’s how many people still remember them today.
But a new documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, dives into the rise and fall of the Panthers’ political agenda, offering a counter-narrative that’s more timely than ever.
Combining interviews with former members of the party with archival footage of Panther activity, Stanley Nelson’s documentary explores the white supremacy and state-sanctioned police violence that inspired a revolutionary movement — and how that movement redefined black power and pride.
It talks about the key players — founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, one of the most vocal and recognizable Panthers, and women like Elaine Brown and Kathleen Cleaver who switched up traditional gender roles and actually dominated the party. The party created the Ten Point Program, a platform that served as the blueprint for uplifting the black community through job creation and social services.
The film pulls back the curtain on COINTELPRO, the government-backed FBI campaign initiated by J. Edgar Hoover to destroy the Panthers. By following every move they made (via wire tapping and planting spies in the organization), falsely imprisoning them, and murdering them outright, the counterintelligence program sought “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate-type organizations and groupings.” Hoover, on behalf of the U.S. government, was hellbent on “[preventing] the rise of a messiah who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.”
The film also hones in on what made the organization famous: the Panthers’ militant approach to fighting systemic racism — and their arsenal of weapons.
http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2015/09/23/3704132/how-the-black-panthers-ideology-became-mainstream/
ruemara
@Glidwrith: I can send a lot of research when i get into the office.
Elizabelle
@beltane: Scalia is a bad Catholic. He’s a Ratzinger Catholic in a Francis world. Just plain, a bad dude.
Curious whether John Roberts will attend.
And don’t you think our Chief Justice feels a twinge of shame, every now and then, when he sees Donald Trump up there? He enabled that manner of politics.
I wish Trump would start thanking Roberts and Kennedy and the others who voted for Citizens United for making Trump’s path to the primaries that much easier. Speak it, El Donald.
boatboy_srq
@beltane: I thought Judge Doom was already on the ballot…
Elizabelle
Can we have a fresh thread when Pope Francis starts his remarks?
He’s actually got the biggest balls of all, if we are discussing Trump and Fiorina as serious people. But why not give the Pope a spanking new thread?
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: I thought Scalia was an Urban (II) Catholic.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: Easy prediction: with the news this week that Ta-Nehisi Coates is about to become the new Marvel Comics’ BLACK PANTHER writer and this documentary coming out, expect Glenn Beck to connect dots that aren’t there (Ferguson, the Trump questioner, Pope Francis – why not?, etc) in a flurry of Black Pantherdom related blabber.
Come on Glenn, we know you can outdo your previous paranoid nonsense, you can do it!
Lee
@JPL:
Maybe not. The next Bush in line is so corrupt that even fellow Republicans are shocked.
raven
@rikyrah: Nothing abut Fred or Mark?
Elizabelle
CJ John Roberts does appear. Good for him. I see Kennedy too .. Ginsburg. Sotomayor. That’s it? No Scalia? Hmmmmm.
Elizabelle
No Kagan. No Scalia, Alito or Thomas. I think Justice Kagan attended the Mass yesterday at the Shrine … could be wrong ….
Betty Cracker
@raven: I love Bob Wills. Here’s another!
David Hopson
Modern Conservatism/Republicanism is all about the lizard brain – flight or fight, feed or fuck. You could lobotomize the average Republican voter without producing any observable difference – certainly no difference in voting behavior.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Indeed. All outdated and pseudo-science ultimately finds its way to that Sargasso sea of the human intellect.
Elizabelle
C-Span is awesome. No blathering, unless it’s the principals. Right now, just the buzz of people at a major Congressional address, where they’re locked in and not so far from finishing all that morning coffee …
bystander
@Elizabelle: Roberts is there, unlike the report I heard yesterday on MSNBC. Glad he took the high(er) road.
Elizabelle
@bystander: Me too. Except, with Kennedy standing there too: if a meteor strike, do we end up with CJ Scalia? Maybe not …
Glidwrith
@ruemara: Awesome. Any luck on finding actors?
Elizabelle
Mr. Speaker. The Pope of the Holy See.
And the congresscritters are staying out of the aisles.
debbie
@Lee:
Right next to your linked article is this:
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/09/marco-rubio-holds-fundraiser-hitler-art
Lovely optics, Marco!
Elizabelle
calls us the land of the free and the home of the brave. applause.
jibeaux
Fortunately I’m no expert on young, insecure men, but I believe all the alpha male talk is straight out of the PUA (pick up artist)/ MRA (men’s rights activist) handbook, isn’t it? There’s definitely overlapping ideologies there, and that language sounds very much the same. He’s naturally drawn to the candidate who wants to slip something in all of our drinks and show us his huuuugeness.
JPL
@Lee: That would only make him more popular. IOKIYR
JPL
@Elizabelle: Boehner is already wiping his eyes. What is wrong with him.
Elizabelle
talks about Congress’s mission to serve the nation, and the common good. Esp those in greater vulnerability and risk.
germy shoemangler
watching the Pope in congress. I bet the repubs are all silently cursing boehner for inviting him. And he’s sitting there blowing his nose thinking “what the fuck was I thinking?”
Elizabelle
@JPL: I think this may be a big occasion for Boehner, and he knows more than most how badly his clowns in Congress have failed. He may revere the Pope; different type of cat from those in his circles…
Elizabelle
an honest day’s work, to bring home the daily bread, so we are talking of Americans not in the chamber … ppl not concerned simply with paying their taxes !!! but in their own quiet way sustain the life of society…
Betty Cracker
Pope thread upstairs!
Elizabelle
elderly persons, a storehouse of wisdom.
Susan Collins is beaming.
shell
Damn, that last email….”Trump fights, Trump wins…”
I was waiting for the music to swell and the writer to break into song!
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Holy cats! Thanks!
FlipYrWhig
@shell: I can’t help hearing “Trump Fights” to the tune of “Love Bites.”
Roger Moore
@PaulW:
I would say that it’s precisely the emotional gratification angle that makes them so dangerous. The Republicans know how to push their voters’ buttons and get them to vote, and they’ve managed to disconnect that voting from the actual policies they’re advocating. That’s how you get a bunch of people who claim they hate the way the big guy is running all over them to vote for a gang of plutocrats.
mattH
I had a lady tell me this about 3 weeks ago. Different wording but the same sentiment. Nice. Old. Little technical know-how. Grew up in a conservative state and I’m sure only supports Republicans, and I’m sure she’s attracted to his grandstanding, bluster, and take-no–shit attitude. Probably mostly the latter. I didn’t have much time to talk to her, but I’m sure she’s representative of large swaths of his supporters.
Amir Khalid
@beltane:
I can’t imagine a candidacy much more frivolous than Trump’s. Herman Cain’s was a bit more frivolous, but short of Ronald McDonald throwing his hat in the ring I think there’s no more room on the frivolous side.
Fiorina affects the manner of a serious candidate, and does that well; but she’s a habitual liar, known to be a poor strategist, and not a person who attracts loyalty. Carson affects a serious manner too, but when you listen to him you realise he’s a kook. Gilmore’s campaign motto is “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
These are my four favourite Republican candidates.
Steeplejack
@Elizabelle:
Susan Collins doesn’t realize that she is not a storehouse of wisdom and the Pope is not talking about her.
FlipYrWhig
@mattH:
The swath of supporters she represents is… the Republicans. All the same people who liked Sarah Palin like Donald Trump.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
One of the most longstanding features of that part of Washington DC is a lone protester hanging out in front of the Vatican consulate with a big banner that reads “VATICAN HIDES PEDOPHILES.”
Apparently, the powers that be managed to have him removed from the area before the Pope’s visit. Which is a shame, because I could actually have seen this Pope treating the man with respect.
Jeffro
@FlipYrWhig: Which “Love Bites” – Judas Priest or Def Leppard?
Jeffro
@Amir Khalid:
…and wait…and wait….and wait…
or
…for the phone to ring. Without a single staffer to answer it.
Good for ol’ .0002%…way to serve!
Poopyman
@OzarkHillbilly: A lack of quotation marks would have helped make the point.
g
Well, sure. Schwarzeneggar worked out so well for California.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: Great comments from Mr. Colbert. However, as long as TV ads cost so freaking much money, I don’t see any elimination of money in politics.
Mike in NC
Local letter to the editor praised Trump for several reasons, including that he had “spunk”. Not sure anybody under the age of 80 would use that expression.
Elizabelle
The Pope out waving from the Capitol balcony. It’s a huge enthusiastic crowd, who watched the words on Jumbotron and are blissfully not watching cable news right now.
Sustained applause and cheers.
Elizabelle
@Paul in KY: I think TV should have to provide free advertising, and no advertising in day or two before the election. Britain is better than us there, I think ….
FlipYrWhig
@Jeffro: I was thinking the Leppard…
Steeplejack
@Mike in NC:
Not sure anyone over the age of 40 has spunk.
Lou Grant on the subject.
Howlin Wolfe
Daddy daddy daddy!!
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: That would be wonderful. We need a Democratic congress to do that, and then have it survive a Supreme Court challenge. Can be done, but a hard slog.
One of problems is that those in congress (including Democrats) have the needed money. Their challengers do not.
Jeffro
@FlipYrWhig: I can work with that one from memory. Priest, I would have to play it a few times.
Pre- and post-debate, I look in the mirror
You know who I think of (is it i-Carly)?
Do you tell lies? I’ve been doing it forever
Do you think twice? Who are you kid-ding?
Ooh, babe
Ohh, Jeb!
When I’m alone, still can’t let go
Picturing that border wall, it’s not just for show
Ooh, c’mon
I don’t wanna disclose too much baby
‘Cos policies n’ details drive me crazy
I know you think that Bush is the one to take it
But I’m gonna be there come C-town and just might break it
No?
Trump bites, Meg bleeds
I’m bringin’ Reps to their knees
Trump lives, irony dies
Hey Reince, surprise!
Ailes begs, FOX pleads
It’s what I need…
FlipYrWhig
@Jeffro: [flicks Bic]
Heliopause
So if we had a candidate with left policy views but the personality of Trump we’d be all set. I wonder how that would go.
“I’m gonna build 5000 Planned Parenthood clinics. Yuuuuge, classy clinics, one in every town. Everybody gets free pills and condoms and pap smears and abortions and I’ll make the Catholic Church pay for it. You know why? Because I cherish dames.”
“You know what, income inequality in this country is a disgrace. We’re a total loser at that. China beats us, Japan beats us, the Mexicans beat us, it’s a disgrace. We’re gonna make sure everybody makes a fair wage, we’re gonna make sure the working classes — and by the way, some of my best friends are workers, The Workers love me — we’re gonna make sure that everybody gets a fair shake and the money gets distributed fairly. Day one, boom, done.”
“The Blacks are totally repressed in this country, it’s a disgrace. The Blacks — and by the way, The Blacks love me — deserve reparations. Yuuuuuge reparations. Day one, you’re black, you get a check. Boom, done.”
“You know what, The Hispanics are a yuuuuuge part — and by the way, The Hispanics love me — a yuuuuuge part of the fabric of this country. If you’re undocumented but basically a good person, you get a path to citizenship Day One. And c’mon, that Sofia Vergara? Am I right, guys?”
The Other Chuck
@IanY77:
So basically, you want a format that’s more rational and thoughtful than what we’re experiencing now.
boatboy_srq
@g: (Dead thread, I know, BUT) Imagine a Governor Issa. In context, the Governator wasn’t all that bad.