Unexpected Endorsement for Hillary

I see that T. Boone (Swift Boat Liar) Pickens has said that Hillary Clinton doesn't know what she's talking about and that he is kinda supporting Trump for president.  Seeing as how this is coming from someone so lacking in honesty and integrity, I can't think of a better endorsement for Hillary Clinton for President.

The Best and Worst of the Bad

It seems to have become sort of conventional wisdom among my fellow leftists that Donald Trump is the worst disaster as a presidential possibility since the founding of the Republic. It seems a little odd to even be talking about this, since the last thing I want to do is "defend" Donald Trump. But I disagree emphatically with this conventional wisdom.

Let's back up....There has also been a sort of unchallenged conventional wisdom among the mainstream media that the Republican Party had a "deep bench" of presidential candidates. Well, the 2016 campaign has shown how ridiculous this idea is. Intellectual lightweights like Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, et al, have all fallen by the wayside, and for good reason.

It's also silly to pretend--like some on the left--that all of these folks are equally bad. John Kasich is a conservative to be sure, but make no mistake about it: he would be a far superior president to the other two who remain, and most of those who have left the race.

Anyway, as I see it, here is my personal list--from most dangerous to least--of the long list of disastrous GOP candidates (my apologies to any that I forgot):

1. Ben Carson
2. Ted Cruz
3. Carly Fiorina
4. Bobby Jindahl
5. Mike Huckabee
6. Rick Santorum
7. Scott Walker
8. Donald Trump
9. Marco Rubio
10. Rick Perry
11. Lindsay Graham
12. George Pataki
13. John Kasich
14. Rand Paul
15. Chris Christy

It's really difficult bringing myself to actually rank this crowd, but there really is a big difference between those on the top of the list and those on the bottom, even if one could quibble about the exact spot each belongs. Some are definitely scarier than the others. As you can see, I only put The Donald in the middle of this list. That is even scarier!! Quite a "deep bench", huh?  This crowd is something to lose sleep over.

Unsolicited Advice from Me

Some advice to a few people:

• To the GOP legislators in North Carolina, trying to defend their anti-LGBT law:  Your argument might be on thin ice if it relies on comparing your state to Sudan.
• To Charlie Sykes and the other talk radio right wingers in Wisconsin:  Your lament that Donald Trump lacks the civility that Wisconsinites love (expect maybe for the ones that listen to you!) might have some credibility if you weren't using it to contrast with Ted "Mr. Civility" Cruz.
• To Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana:  I recommend a moratorium on signing any new laws in your state until you get get some new advisers whose only job is to keep you from making a fool of yourself.
• To the Religious Right:  If you are going to rely on bogusly manufactured and edited videos to make your case, you might want to at least have someone produce them without committing a felony.

A Few Things That I Thought Were Interesting

• I don't think I have read a single newspaper article about Ben Carson that didn't contain the phrase "soft-spoken". Talk about cliches...
• Interesting article in the New York Times today about K-12 students and internet access. It said that 70% of teachers assign homework that requires internet access but that one-third of K-12 students in the country don't have broadband access.
• I read another article in the New Yorker that was speculating about why Bernie Sanders is as popular as he is even with the "socialist" label, which would have been a disqualifier just a few years ago. One of the ideas she suggested is that the Fox News crowd has been mischaracterizing Obama as a socialist for seven years, so the stigma has kind of been removed. If we've already had a socialist president, what's the big deal? Finally something to thank Fox News for!
• The astonishing tax plans of the Republican candidates (reminiscent of Paul Ryan's various hoax plans) show that the GOP has never really interested in reducing the deficit or the debt. The plans of Trump, Rubio, and Cruz would add somewhere between $12 and $16 trillion to the debt over ten years.

Some Opinions

• It has taken Scott Walker and the current Republican three-ring-circus legislature only a few years to change Wisconsin from the poster child for honest and open government to one of the most corrupt.
• It is comical to watch all the Don't-Tread-on-Me constitutional scholar Senators creating their own faux-Constitution out of whole cloth to justify ignoring a still-nonexistent Supreme Court nominee.
• I saw a post on Facebook or somewhere that said people get the President/Governor/Senator they deserve, and I'm afraid he is right. The reason Brownback (insert any other name you choose) is governor is that a lot more people voted for him than his opponent. The same is true for Bevin in Kentucky, Walker in Wisconsin, Pence in Indiana, etc. They were who the people wanted and now they pay the price.
• Carson and Cruz are the scariest candidates of a scary bunch.

Quote of the Day

"Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed."

Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker


 

Quote of the Day

"If Karl Marx had lived long enough to see Carly Fiorina’s failed GOP campaign, he might’ve been impressed with the former Hewlett-Packard CEO. After all, Marx only preached about the overthrow of capitalism—Fiorina had actual hands-on experience bringing a major corporation to its knees."

Branco Marcetic, article in In These Times