It’s in my living will, if I ever start to sound as demented as Michael Barone, my next-of-kin are under strict orders to euthanize me. Via Steve M:
Jim Webb versus Barack Obama?
My friend Paul Rahe, professor of history at Hillsdale College, was among the first to see through the David Brooks depiction (now withdrawn with the confession “I’m an Obama sap”) of Barack Obama as a pragmatic centrist compromiser. In his most recent blogpost, Rahe calls for Senator Jim Webb, the Virginia Democrat elected in 2006 who is not running for reelection in 2012, to give a speech denouncing Obama’s latest economic program and to run against him in the Democratic primaries. In the past Webb has placed principle above party, resigning as Ronald Reagan’s Navy secretary because of policy differences, leaving the Republican party for the Democrats because of his opposition to the war in Iraq. Why not again? Over to you, Senator.
What’s the dumbest thing you’ve read today?
burnspbesq
Try this. I think I’ve got you beat.
http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/ww/ww110920corporate_marketing_
Spaghetti Lee
Japanese porn site. Couldn’t understand a word of it, but then I can’t understand Barone either.
Corner Stone
Well, I was just reading back through Dengre’s recent piece of awesome. I’m going to nominate that.
ppcli
As an academic in southern Michigan, I run across Hillsdale College types from time to time. And let’s just say that when I read: “My friend xx, professor of yy at Hillsdale College” I know as surely as night follows day that what is about to follow will be weapons-grade dumbass bullshit.
russ
That!
Erlking
Not dumbest but definitely the saddest thing: http://boingboing.net/2011/09/20/gay-teen-bullying-victim-who-recorded-an-it-gets-better-video-commits-suicide.html
beltane
Wow, even the slightest hint that “shared sacrifice” actually means shared sacrifice and these people are besides themselves with fear and rage. If push came to shove, I think the Galtians would be too busy peeing their pants to actually go Galt.
I also think this means that Obama’s new economic plan is a winner with actual humans.
Linkmeister
@burnspbesq: That certainly qualifies as “what on earth were they thinking?”
Ian
I read this earlier today. I thought the same thing, it is the dumbest thing I have read since politico’s dogs are democrats cats are republicans article.
Webb does like to buck party, but he isn’t stupid enough to go through with this. (even remotely assuming he wanted too)
1. Getting on the ballot- running real low for time to get on primary ballots
2. Fundraising.
3. Level of AA support for Obama. The only demographic that would even conceivably break for Webb would be white christian southerners, and those states would still go for Obama due to AA vote.
4. It would ruin any chance of future elections for Webb.
Bruce S
Uh…THIS Jim Webb?
http://www.jameswebb.com/editorials/wsj-classstruggle.html
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Did Barone finally get too crazy even for Mort Zuckerman? I used to read US News in the early 90s, and he was a crank then. I think some time after the impeachment he caught up to and then actually pulled ahead of Krauthammer.
HIllsdale is, IIRC, George Will’s favorite college.
Frankensteinbeck
@beltane:
I was really, REALLY delighted when Obama gave his Deficit speech and redefined ‘shared sacrifice’ as ‘the rich need to pay their fair share’. The message actually seems to be sticking. For the first time in 30 years, raising taxes on the rich might be a popular platform.
OzoneR
but the bully pulpit!
jeff
@Erlking:
Oh god that is horrible. Fuck.
Linkmeister
Bill O’Reilly threatening to quit if his tax rate goes above 50%.
First, I don’t think anyone’s suggesting a 50% rate.
Second, I don’t think BillO understands how marginal tax rates work.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Bruce S: No, this Jim Webb:
burnspbesq
Bobo put up a fine effort, but he didn’t win.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/opinion/brooks-obama-rejects-obamaism.html?_r=1&ref=davidbrooks
General Stuck
Aside from mixed metaphor hell, I have no idea what Paul Ryan is talking about here
Maybe it’s some new kind of tea tard wingnut code, or maybe Obama has driven these loony motherfuckers into some kind of group mental crackup.
ADD – I’ve largely staying away from reading much on the web today, while doing other stuff, and resting my delicate nerves, but I just want to mark the occasion of DADT officially coming down in the Army.
And note, that it is easy to just say and think BFD that it happened, but it is a big fucking deal, and was planned and carried out by a very smart and patient president, jumping through all the hoops required to bring this bigoted law to an end.
The least of which was guiding a bunch of 4 star macho generallies through the legal and political minefields, bitterly opposed in some quarters, the flushing down the waste pipe of history, a very dark policy and law. I think nobody else could have done it, that I can imagine, staying focused on the prize despite a maelstrom of political flak from all corners. Well done, Mr. President. Well done!
Some folks want a lectern pounding emo presnit. I kind of like the cool cat kind, that touches all the bases before home plate.
Anne Laurie
As others have mentioned, Hillsdale College is where “Good Christian men” go to learn why those Ten Commandment thingies are for women & other lessers.
Blackwater / Xe founder Erik Prince, also a proud alum!
Short Bus Bully
I have a real love/hate relationship with Jim Webb and his eccentricities. To be sure, the guy is outspoken and follows through on his beliefs (win), but then he goes and shoots his friends in the face all the time (not so win). All in all I like the guy but I would feel very confident also telling him that he’s fucking stupid to his face from time to time and I think he’s the kind of guy who would appreciate the candor. If not, fuck off anyway.
As for primarying Obama? Fix bayonets and charge that windmill!
burnspbesq
Oops; used a naughty word and got sent to the FYWP penalty box.
Let’s try this again.
If you do a mashup of Rick Perry, and Preet Bharara, you learn that Social Security and Full Tilt Pocur are the same thing.
http://espn.go.com/poker/story/_/id/6996703/howard-lederer-chris-ferguson-rafe-furst-named-manhattan-us-attorney-amended-black-friday-civil-complaint
clayton
. . . been a Republican and called Vietnamese people who run around in pajamas.
No telling what he thinks of his non-Scot-whatever fellow citizens these days.
That the primary types are not looking at the obvious next ones is telling.
Oh, and it looks like AL has stolen either one of your or Cole’s titles.
No biggie, right?
Brian S
Dumbest thing I read today was the trivia answer that put Jimmy Schuyler as a member of the Harlem Renaissance, but this probably beats it.
General Stuck
Linky fixed for
@General Stuck:
Cacti
@clayton:
Penned an op-ed about how there’s no such thing as white privilege.
Spaghetti Lee
I think what he wants to do is set up those of us on the other side of the aisle as some caricature and assign policies to us that we don’t have and then defeat those arguments.”
But Paulie, baby, you already are a caricature. If they ever remake American Psycho, you’ll be cast as Patrick Bateman.
—Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), in an interview with Laura Ingraham.
“Representative Ryan-and this is a tough question, so feel free to take some notes-does it ever make you despair of your fellow man’s intellectual shortcomings when others talk down your obvious brilliance?”
soonergrunt
We had a full semi truck load of the concentrated stupid earlier in the 0, 8, and 10 thread.
PurpleGirl
@Linkmeister: Probably doesn’t understand marginal rates but then he has accountants do figure the tax for him. But it’s a great thing to say and breed fear and loathing in the teapartiers.
eemom
You must not have read the comments on ABL’s earlier “primary” thread.
Or the comments on TBogg’s Nader thread.
It has been a very competitive day for “the dumbest.”
jeffreyw
`Comment on one of my food pr0n sammich pictures over at Reddit (r/eatsandwiches):
NonyNony
@Linkmeister:
Hell if it’ll get BillO to quit? I’ll propose it!
Can we get Limbaugh to quit if the top marginal tax rate goes that high too? Man if we could get him to Go Galt I might finally be able to surf the goddamn AM dial for sports radio stations in peace again.
We are talking about the man who said “tides go in, tides go out – you can’t explain that” and thought he’d made a point. There are a LOT of things that BillO doesn’t understand.
ppcli
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’ve no doubt he says so, to talk up a crucible of true believers. But Will himself did his postgrad work at Magdalene College Oxford and Princeton. His dad was a decently regarded philosophy professor at U. of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign. Will knows what genuine intellectual depth looks like and I’d be astonished if he viewed the third-rate ideologues at Hillsdale as possessing it. I don’t actually know where Will sent his own kids to school (one, I know, has Downs, but the other two presumably went to college). I’d be staggered to learn that either kid went to Hillsdale.
Cacti
@Linkmeister:
That pretty much goes without saying.
This is the guy who defied those smarty pants scientists to explain why the tides come in and go out.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Linkmeister: I think he’s just trying to trick Obama into setting the top rate to 50%.
ppcli
@efgoldman: Yes, that is the one. Actually, there is another: Grove City College. Both are beloved by the wingnuterati.
Spaghetti Lee
@efgoldman:
the golden age of local news. (That’s the 1970s, chillun.)
Where’d you get those clothes, at the Toilet…Store?
Cacti
@NonyNony:
Beat me to it. Ha ha.
Even better was Bill-O’s follow up when he gotten beaten over the head with the tides being easily explained as the result of the moon’s gravitational pull…
“How’d da Moon get dere?”
You can always count on Bill-O to come up with a more idiotic question than the one that was just answered.
Bruce S
#16 – Raven
Or maybe THIS Jim Webb, who co-exists in the same 2004 column you quote impugning Kerry:
.
Webb is a complicated character to say the least, but he’s not a fool who would fall for Barone’s stupid crap.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@soonergrunt:
1) First, let me get this out of the way, killer, cuz I know it gets you off – “Please don’t kill me or my children, Sir! Please! You are most powerful and we do not deserve the honor of death by your American hand!”
2) Agreed on the ABL post stupidity quotient.
.
.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Bruce S: I still don’t like him.
Turgidson
That waste of space campaigned on economic fairness for fucks sake. Why does he choose now to be a preening douchebag? This is exhibit infinity plus a billion why I don’t register as a democrat
Aristotle
@Linkmeister:
Well, now I am.
Hal
I was always thrilled Webb won, defeating asshat George Allen was one of the sweetest victories I’ve seen in Politics, but there’s always been something about his macho attitude I don’t find appealing. Plus, didn’t the guy barely win his seat? Not much appeal in those odds on a national level.
Spaghetti Lee
We should be careful, though. If the tax rate goes above 50%, Billo and Rush might resort to streetwalking to make up that lost income.
General Stuck
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
You are a festering pustule on the buttocks of humanity and this blog. That is all.
Spaghetti Lee
It’s fun to judge colleges by their alums. Take Mercer University, for example: Nancy Grace, Nathan Deal, Jay Sekulow, and Erick Erickson. Must be something in the water.
handy
Umm…not to spoil the emobagger spit fight in progress but once again the Sadlies deliver dumbnosity times eleven.
To think I used to look up to this douche bag 20 years. He takes ham-handedness to a new level.
Culture of Truth
Dumbest thing I read today was this confused gibberish word salad on the alliance between the class war hating Left and Dick Cheney, or something.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Spaghetti Lee: But that would make them awesome targets.
burnspbesq
Anyone who asks, in a blog post about Guv Goodhair’s Middle East presser, “Why is there no penalty for fraternizing with Israeli extremists?,” isn’t dumb in the sense we’re using the term here. But that is somewhere between unintentionally hilarious and sadly ironic.
http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2011/09/rick-perry-israel-and-palestinians.html
burnspbesq
@Spaghetti Lee:
Couldn’t have anything to do with where Mercer is located, could it?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@burnspbesq: Home of Little Richard and burial ground of Duane Allman and Barry Oakley!
burnspbesq
Well this is pretty fucking dumb:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44601008
soonergrunt
@Spaghetti Lee: Brick killed a guy with a trident!
handy
@burnspbesq:
Republicans like to dance?
I got nuffin.
FlipYrWhig
Jim Webb is an ornery sumbitch — pretty much defines the “Reagan Democrat”: strong defense, lukewarm at best on issues of race and gender, fierce about the need to help the white underclass, over the moon on unsexy issues like reforming the prison system. And, for Virginia, he’s (sadly) left of center, to go with dull technowonk Mark Warner, choirboy-ish Tim Kaine, and diffident Martha-Coakley-ish Creigh Deeds.
And the Republican alternatives are people like Allen, McDonnell, and Cuccinelli. Virginians sure as shit aren’t waiting for Liberal Godot — not Virginia Republicans, and not even Virginia Democrats. I count my lucky stars that we elected Webb, because otherwise we’d be arguing about how liberal outrage against Obama might get Republican frontrunner George Allen elected president. [blargf]
eemom
I read the dumb today, oh boy…..
SamR
From Webb’s 2006 op-ed entitled “Class Struggle:
“The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.
Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic’s range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.”
http://emergent79.wordpress.com/sen-elect-jim-webbs-wall-street-j-op-ed-class-struggle/
In short, Barone urging Webb to challenge Obama from the right on this issue makes about as much sense as me urging John McCain to enter the GOP race and challenge them on war from the left.
beltane
@burnspbesq: OK, you win. That really is the dumbest thing I’ve read today.
Mr. Stagger Lee
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): And Otis Redding is from there I believe.
eemom
@FlipYrWhig:
preach it brotha. I was ecstatic when Webb beat that racist assclown.
Truth be told though, it was him who beat himself with “macaca,” the fortunate filming of which captured, Portrait of Dorian Gray-like, his whole hideous, hateful, ignorant essence for all the world to see.
And doesn’t it speak volumes about our fair state that the republicans have hauled his political corpse out of the freezer to run against Tim Kaine next year, and that he’s their FRONTRUNNER.
Shit. What IS a nice New Yorker like me doing in a place like this?
Linda Featheringill
@Spaghetti Lee: #47
Except that Bill and Rush would have to do the paying.
Spaghetti Lee
Photoshop magic: John McCain with Michele Bachmann’s eyes: http://i.imgur.com/rrnjI.jpg
cokane
The David Brooks NYT column.
Not original to say but yeah
handy
@Culture of Truth:
Can that guy hurry up and enter the last throes of drawing breath? He’s depriving more deserving organisms of oxygen, like the ebola virus or Chlamydia.
Naive and Sentimental
It’s nutpicking and not the most factually inaccurate or logically broken thing thing I read today, but what stuck me in the gut was a comment from an opinion artcle a friend linked me
as an afterthought, Fox New’s comment section could be put up next to Redstate’s and I think you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference except for one having occasional comments about how fair and balanced everything is.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
“What IS a nice New Yorker like me doing in a place like this?”
Simple solution: 66 east to the inner loop, cross the Potomac and turn right. Churchill is as good as Madison, and you’ll be in Solidly Democratic Montgomery County.
moe99
@ppcli: Exactly right.
fleeting expletive
#65,that is pretty dadgum creepy.
Spaghetti Lee
@Naive and Sentimental:
All the raging at Buffett shows pretty starkly just how stupid and vicious they all are. How many times have you heard it: “We don’t need no pointyheaded liberals! We need a BIZNESSMAN to run this country! That’ll get us back on track!” Well, I got yer businessman right here, fucktards, one of the most successful of all time, and he thinks your tax policy is bullshit. So, of course, you turn on him. The moral (an obvious one, but one that bears repeating) is that wingnuts don’t think anyone who thinks slightly differently than them should have any power. At all. No exceptions.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
omg dude, surely you know as well as I that after living in Virginia for all these years, I could no more survive in Maryland than I could in the Australian Outback.
Those roads they have there…….they don’t make any SENSE.
OzoneR
Boy that AOL merger sure moved Huffington Post right fast.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/20/obama-buffett-rich-taxes_n_971388.html?icid=maing-grid7|aim|dl1|sec1_lnk2|97521
JWL
The dumbest thing I’ve read today is this particular post.
It’s another Balloon Juice Special, an idiot’s straw man, created by an Obama partisan, and constructed in order to attack those who have dared criticize the current president during the past few years.
Roger Moore
@Linkmeister:
By all means, then, let’s raise his rate to 51%. We’ll either get more money or he’ll quit. We win no matter which he decides.
Short Bus Bully
@JWL:
Sounds like you have found a blog you don’t agree with. Plenty of other intertron sites out there for you to dirty up. Feel free to use the window or the door as you leave.
OzoneR
@JWL:
so you agree with Jim Webb that we need to keep taxes low for rich people?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@efgoldman:
Not even close. More like a Normandy Invasion level of stupid in ABL’s thread.
It’s clear that a lot of the anti-Obama fervor is being fed by the third party crazies who think they can drive people over to their ‘side’. The invasion of ‘Nader’s Raiders’ today is proof of that.
It’s a third party membership drive.
Spaghetti Lee
@JWL:
‘dared’? Tell me, what sort of consequences befall people who ‘dare’ to criticize the president?
khead
@eemom:
Here’s the thing about the macaca comment. It’s something I never saw mentioned anywhere. Maybe it was but I never caught it.
The comment was made in Buchanan County, which was known in the past for having sundown towns. My Dad used the term to describe Grundy when I was a kid and I had no clue what the hell he was talking about until years later.
See comment @ 70. Except go ’round the other side of the beltway and then up to Anne Arundel Co. where the income taxes and housing prices are lower.
cat48
Well, this oped is the saddest thing I’ve read this year! Byron York can’t believe how ungrateful Dems are so he wrote about it…….
Spaghetti Lee
@cat48:
Democrats in Disarray! Someone get Joe Lieberman in front of a TV camera!
psycholinguist
@Bruce S:
thanks for that. That’s a strait up “fuck you” to these class warfare pricks, and Webb signed his name to it. Good for him, I wish he wasn’t retiring, cause that seat is probably going back to that idiot Allen.
Jebediah
@OzoneR:
Isn’t Breitbart part of Huffpoo now?
Rabble Arouser
This. This is pretty much the stupidest thing I read today. Pretty much.
burnspbesq
Damnedest thing I’ve heard today: “Road Shows, Vol. 2” by Sonny Rollins. The first time Sonny and Ornette Coleman ever shared a stage, at Sonny’s 80th birthday celebration. Jesus H. Fucking Christ.
ETA: Incredibly, there are still tickets available for Sonny’s show at UCLA on Thursday night. If you’ve never seen him play live, get your ass there.
Linnaeus
@ppcli:
Repeated for truth. Hillsdale is nothing more than a right-wing indoctrination factory. We have a state representative here in WA who is a Hillsdale alum. He came back to WA and ran against a decent, hard-working Democratic incumbent; I was in a group of people deputized by the state Democratic Party to do vote-chasing for her because the election was so close and hence there was a recount. Sadly, the right-wing challenger (who said things, for example, to the effect that the Girl Scouts was about recruiting girls to be lesbians) won. The state lost a good legislator.
Redshift
To me, one of the dumbest things about this is that Webb (who I also have a like/hate relationship with as my senator) hates campaigning and fundraising, and that’s apparently a big part of why he’s not running for a second term.
Yutsano
@handy:
I believe the Ebola virus is anaerobic. So it cares not for your precious oxygen.
Tyro
As an academic in southern Michigan, I run across Hillsdale College types from time to time.
To be fair, Hillsdale did attract some pretty decent academics at one point. They were then promptly fired for being good academics rather than being doctrinaire right-wing fundamentalists. You’d think somewhere along the lines, the fundies will realize that good quality professors are incompatible with fundamentalism.
And, really Jim Webb is going to condemn Obama for his tax plans? Jim Webb the economic populist who condemned the concentration of wealth?
handy
@Yutsano:
I was wondering when someone would chime in with that “correction.” Good on you.
Yutsano
@handy: This is what I get for staying awake in microbiology. Which is one of the few sciences dominated by women.
KCinDC
Dumbest thing I’ve read today? Well, there was this tweet from Jonah Goldberg, who’s apparently still in 7th grade:
Uriel
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:It’s amazing how you manage to be both vile and vacuous at the same time. A real gift. I’m not sure Hannity could do it any better, and he’s a pro.
Jebediah
@KCinDC:
Jonah Goldberg is a perfect, shining example of American meritocracy at work.
ETA: I win! I bet myself one sweet potato that I couldn’t type that with a straight face.
JenJen
Yeah, pretty sure that’s the dumbest thing I’ve read today.
Then again, I read this just yesterday:
AP FACT CHECK: Are rich taxed less than secretaries?
There is some seriously whacky sleight-of-hand being practiced in that article. I’m too tired to get all debunky, but, that was the dumbest thing I read on Monday.
Yutsano
@Uriel: How do you know he’s not?
@Jebediah:
I’m making mashed sweet potatoes for work Thursday. Kan I haz urs?
KCinDC
@JenJen, wow, almost none of that article had anything to do with the claim they were supposedly fact-checking, and the few paragraphs that were relevant were misleading.
Uriel
@Jebediah:
Breitbart was part of huffpo from the beginning.
mcd410x
Well, this is sort of the opposite of DougJ’s question. The best thing I’ve read all day!
Each Democrat should repeat this message from Elizabeth Warren every single day. Say it in the mirror, if you need to, but do it!
Do it now!
Jenny
Dumbest thing: has to be Mark Penn and Huffington Post teaming up to denounce Obama over the Buffet rule.
Uriel
@Yutsano: Point well taken.
Jebediah
@Yutsano:
I would love to oblige, but it just got eated. Sry!
Jebediah
@Uriel:
I didn’t know that. Other than Hamsher and Huffington, I wonder how many other “true progressives” are partnered up with toxic rightwing fuckknuckles.
Spaghetti Lee
@KCinDC:
So he’s saying businessmen are as dumb and useless as rocks? I’m getting some mixed messages.
Jenny
Obama already has a primary opponent: Randall Terry
Comrade Luke
Coming late to the party, but how about little Tommy Friedman?
Are We Going to Roll Up Our Sleeves or Limp On?
JenJen
@KCinDC: I know, right? And yet it’s wurlitzing its ass off out there in the machine.
I am almost certain that David Brooks will mention this in his next op/ed.
Yutsano
@JenJen: I expect it to be Teh Narrative by Thursday. At the latest.
JenJen
@Yutsano: I expect Morning Joe to be all over this shit in about three hours, even. I CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR WHAT MARK HALPERIN WILL SAY.
And yes, Lord Stanley and I owe you puppeh pics, we know! Soon, promise.
licensed to kill time
Number of posts on ABL’s 0, 8 and 10 thread: 469.
Number of posts on TBogg’s Nader/Palin thread: 469.
Coinkydink? or Synchronicity? We report, you decide!
Jenny
Obamas fires up NYC with firebrand presentation.
http://theobamadiary.com/2011/09/20/gotham-hall/
Jewish Steel
@licensed to kill time: Quick, get me a lotto ticket!
Yutsano
@JenJen: Morning Hoe starts Teh Narrative. From there it spreads across the MSM like a virus, infecting all with its truthiness.
Teh cute that is Peanut has won you a reprieve. I submit this could be short-lived however. :)
Lysana
I’d have to give it to the trolls in here and elsewhere on BJ. But that was a close second.
mai naem
Hilllsdale College? Isn’t that the college where the president was bonking his wife in the ass(uninivited) and then screwing around with his daughter in law or something? I mean this seriously not as some joke. Also too, Michael Barone is taken seriously because he cowrites that annual American political reference book – can’t remember the name and too lazy to google.
Emma
@OzoneR: I never bothered with the Huffington Post, since I knew what it was from the beginning: Ariana’s way to staying in the Kewl Kids Club and then making a load of money from selling it to a corporation. It was built by allowing anyone pimp their own work while getting them content for free. Now it’s just another cog in the corporate machine.
soonergrunt
@Yutsano: It’s the principle of the thing. Cheney is denying rabid dogs their oxygen, and that’s just wrong, too.
ppcli
@mai naem: I’ve never heard about the backdoor surprise you mention, but yes, the president George Roche III carried on a 19 year-long affair with his daughter-in-law, who worked for the college. Everything came to light when the DIL killed herself (blew her brains out) and the husband blew the whistle.
It wasn’t just any old prez either – Roche had been head of Hillsdale for decades. It was his idea to take the sleepy tenth-tier college and turn it into a high-profile conservative tenth tier college, by refusing Federal funds and replacing the money with donations from paleo-conservatives who loved the idea of refusing Federal funds.
Here’s National Review’s take on the whole thing: the way they bend over backwards to be unsensational in connection with the sleazy downfall of a conservative icon makes the reading all the more compelling:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/220720/horror-hillsdale/john-j-miller
burnspbesq
Is this contest still accepting entries? Reihan Salam would like to enter.
In fairness, I suppose it’s theoretically possible that Mr. Salam is unaware that there is a deep global recession going on. If that were true, one might be able to excuse his total rejection of Keynes, who is once again being proven right. If not, then Mr. Salam is breathtakingly stupid.
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/09/20/092011-opinions-column-buffett-salam-1-3/
(h/t Ezra)
Stefan
In the past Webb has placed principle above party, resigning as Ronald Reagan’s Navy secretary because of policy differences, leaving the Republican party for the Democrats because of his opposition to the war in Iraq.
Way off topic, but I love how it’s always “the war IN Iraq” rather than “the war ON Iraq.” As if there was already a war going on there before we, you know, attacked and invaded them without provocation….
Kris
mai naem sez
The Almanac of American Politics — biannual to time with each new congress. But it has descended into suckiness as Barone’s right-wing-pundit income has put him into “the elites”. No one takes it seriously as an objective source anymore.
Mike G
The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations, indeed.
I wouldn’t say anyone affliliated with Hillsdale, Liberty, Regent, Oral Roberts or Bob Jones universities is an ideological dumbass, but the odds are pretty good.