1. Bacon Shake — 3 things I’m sure that it probably doesn’t include: 1. Bacon 2. Milk 3. Ice Cream
2. Gratuitous OOTP Link — You can still pre0rder v13 for a week. My league will be switching to it… just sayin.
That’s all I really have. I just didn’t wanna have all the youtube embeds destroying my browser.
Does this page get a yespams tag?
no(pams)
Thanks, and go As.
Kraut disaster of the day
1.
ChristKraut, what a Hesse load2. ICIP scheitholt for Frözen Kräut Jäm
2a. Christ, what a scheitholt
2b. ICIP recorder for the Famous Gorillas
Also: I added this to mike’s post and KOTD’ed it.
Don’t FK with the kraut truck.
tagline!
1. Shake your bacon maker
The tuxedo shirt with bacon bowtie is clever.
Hi all.
Popping in again with not much to say.
Ready for SF Beer Week?
No, I’ll be fine with being at home on Saturday at 9am. For Pliny. The Younger.
Thanks, and go As.
Hey, I like the grimace show on KSCU
Don’t blame me, I voted for Muhammad, Jugdish, Sidney, and Clayton
Slusser reports out some more details on the Beane/Crowley extensions. Tap your brakes, ML — the road looks slippery.
the kraut has adhezied to the road.
We don’t do that any more in this modern era of anti-lock brakes. What’s that? You say the A’s franchise is still driving a 1983 Chevy Citation? Aieeeeeeee!!!! (sounds of crumpling metal and shattering glass).
Your daily SGK jaw-dropper
To be fair, the SGK response is exactly what any halfway-competent lawyer would tell them to say.
… which is why you have the PR person work with the lawyer to craft an ass-covering yet plausible/palatable response.
And some help to avoid the pinkwashing.
Because… there isn’t a breast cancer vaccine?
(Also… the reading voice in my head always pronounces “Komen” as if it rhymes with “women.”)
Science!
Thanks, and go As.
1. According to their web site: Made with real vanilla ice cream, bacon flavored syrup, whipped topping and a maraschino cherry.
Do they define “real vanilla ice cream” the same way Taco Bell defines “ground beef”?
Our Culinary and Scientific Affairs team has thoroughly reviewed and evaluated current research about the bacon shake ingredients…and concluded that these ingredients do not elevate consumption of not-real-ice-cream risk in humans. Despite this position, however, we also agreed to reformulate the bacon shake to remove any doubt about the ingredients.
Furthermore
what does “real” modify?
So the 24oz (large) size has:
54% of the daily recommended intake of calories
83% DRI total fat
185% DRI saturated fat
61% DRI cholesterol
Ouch.
I don’t drink your milkshake
It brings all the fat boys to the yard.
As a bacon lover I’m going to “Build a Meal” and have a Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger and a side of Bacon Cheddar Potato Wedges with that Bacon Shake.
2667 calories
151 g fat
71 g saturated fat
383 mg cholesterol
3920 mg sodium
So just slightly worse for you than eating a bloomin’ onion.
Naw… Blooms have really cut the fat out in recent editions, so their much better for your health.
Is there a problem with that? NOMNOMNOM
It’s FKing disgusting?
Thanks, and go As.
FKing discusting = makin’ bacon?
I’d eat the meat baby. There, I said it.
My nurse says its ok!
Yeah. If you’re logging the long-ass shi
fts, it’s inefficient food to get you through.It’s great after-shift coma bait, but whiskey can do the same job for far less calories!
unattributed correction…
five yard penalty…
repeat first down.
My arteries all slammed shut just from me reading that.
So titled because the Lounge a-been Laden, one presumes.
gotta do it once in a while…
Not a criticism, just attempting a “been Laden” joke. If only the word Lounge rhymed with Osama I’d have nailed it.
I tried to find a suitable photo on teh Interwebs to match the joke. The best I could find was a poorly foto-snipped pic of OBL with Britney Spears in a bra.
Did Free Kraut FK up my ordered list?
Odd.
My initial reaction too, but I think it only looks like it because there are no markers for the items in the list.
Oh. We have default styling that kills bullets/numbers.
I just tried to dump in a style statement but it doesn’t appear to work.
Am I supposed to use ‘#’ signs in front of each item, rather than <ol> <li> </li> </ol>?
Nope, the html markup is right but for some reason the local style definition I slapped on isn’t winning against wherever we kill bullets for ordered lists.
More discussion of the change in weighting over at Tango’s.
I find the new formula with more weight placed on older seasons quite surprising, but at first glance their argument for how they came up with it seems sound, so I guess I need to think about it some more.
Beane’s still a great GM that way!
I am a subscriber and I’m happy to give the lines for specific players if people are curious. Just tell me who you want.
outmans would be great
Outman: 23 G, 24 IP, 27 H, 11 BB, 5.20 ERA, -0.1 WARP
Are the Rockies planning on using Outman as a reliever, or is PECOTA just projecting him as one?
I believe that he is in competition for the 5th starter spot but there are a couple other guys so he very well might end up in the pen.
How could we let Jai Miller go? His top three PECOTA comps are Eric Davis, Dale Murphy, and Reggie Jackson!
(this is from Grant’s rundown of the most ridiculous PECOTA comps of 2012)
Pecota weighted mean projections were released today. No A’s players project to have an OPS over .775 and the only non-first base regular projected to be over .725 is Seth Smith.
Brandon Allen tops the HR projections with 20.
Coliseum City. Scott Haggerty likes Hail Mary; you can fill in your desperation metaphor of choice.
That column also features an item about someone with the same name as me, and a different item about someone with the same name as my office mate.
I like how they ask us to “check out you tube” and fail to provide a link
You have to physically press your finger down on the printed newspaper page. They ain’t giving away links for free, ya know!
RIP, guy who tried in vain to stop the Challenger launch.
colin/ec bait
West of the South Pole?
They define a separate coordinate system for Antarctica because pilots like using north/south/east/west. If you look at a map of Antarctica in the “usual orientation” (see below), then up corresponds to “grid north”. The part of the continent that is “grid west” is in the Western hemisphere while “grid east” gets you to the Eastern hemisphere (more or less).
OK – that makes sense. The language fail of that sentence is still amusing.
Yeah, they generally use the terms “grid north”, “grid west”, etc, when describing directions at pole.
yeah, I don’t care what the explanation is, its a funny sentence.
Yes, technically everywhere is north of the South Pole, but that’s not very useful for orientation.
So “along the 90 degree W meridian”.
One crazy thing about Vostok station is that they have coldest temperature ever recorded (-128°F according to that article, which matches what I’ve heard elsewhere). If it wasn’t for the high elevation (11000 ft), you would actually be freezing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at that temperature.
You know who else may be at Lake Vostok?
tagline!
oldham bait (sigh, he’ll never see it).
what are your people saying about this? is it even in the news, are people talking about it at the water cooler? or is it yet another international nonissue being totally overplayed in the argentine press?
btw, the NYT article makes cristina seem nearly… rational. i don’t know where they’re getting that from.
There isn’t much to debate. The Falklands (and the oil) are ours.
Plus we already fucked you guys up once over them. It’d be tiresome for us to do so again.
Yeah, fuck them, they didn’t have a flag
double sigh. a little bit of argentina could be just an hour away from me, in one of the most beautiful shores of california, if only…
http://www.mchsmuseum.com/bouchard.html
not wondering about what’s right or not. i’m wondering if it’s in the public eye as much as it is in argentina.
’cause, just in case you’re wondering… it’s got nothing to do with the islands, or inglan for that matter (i don’t mean to hurt your pride!). it’s political maneuvering by the argentine politicos to not deal with other more important things. it’s what happened in 81 just like now. so i’m wondering if the press/populace in the UK is taking the bait too.
There was a slight fuss made about it, until we remembered who Argentina are and what happened last time.
It’s all about the oil, or at least it is according to the English press.
the oil would be the gravy. it’s really all about: because cristina is a cunt. tip of the iceberg, she gave utilities subsidies to everybody to get elected. she got elected and immediately eliminated some subsidies and launched a propaganda campaign to get people to voluntarily reject the others. then she decreed laws that left the middle class and the poor waving in the wind.
if her regime was a movie, it’d be the awesomest docuhorrorfest about a vampire mafia draining the blood of an entire country. they do whatever they want, spin it with a smile on the nationally owned soccer/propaganda channel—cause that was another thing she did, took away the TV contracts to all soccer games and started a channel that airs her commercials at half time.
so to distract from that, she picked some illogical BS and keeps raising the stakes (just now she intimated that the UK is sending nuke capabilities down there? what is she talking about???), which makes a lot of sense because in argentina, if something is illogical, then you can bet everybody will sink into a deep passionate and long shouting match to complicate it even further.
She’s probably referring to the nuclear (powered) submarine that’s
on its waybeing pushed overland by Nazis toward them.It’d give us a better chance to win the World Cup. I’m all for it.
Can we nuke Brazil while we’re down there?
It would take a lot more than that.
I’m not sure we could get away with nuking Spain and Germany…
And Portugal and Italy and France and Croatia.
(ptbnl means uruguay and holland, maybe ghana and paraguay…)
I’m happy to add them to the list, but I also stick by mine – English national team football is truly horrible.
‘Arry’ll sort it out. Just you watch.
I hope he stays with Spurs.
and Clint Dempsey.
Shut up. Croatia, Portugal and Italy? C’mon now.
watch how you speak about your betters!
Brazil will never be better than Great Britain.
https://twitter.com/#!/jaysonst/status/167364296068702208
Well, shit. We probably could have just sent them Cardenas and assumed Cupcakes’ salary.
Day 3 of the quasi-Bark Mittman-esque don’t-call-it-a-diet unplanned plan: banana and mango for breakfast; almonds, edamame, carrots, and radishes for lunch. Probably have a salad later for a snack with Jim’s sprouts, arugula, and an avocado.
MEME MOTHERLODE!!!
1. Christ, what an IIASA role
2. TWHS: “activity shrunk at the beginning of transition” #spwc
3. In former Soviet Union, lessons of transition are asked to comment on you
4. ICIP balalaika for the Heavily Statist Economies
5. DFWAS: “These declines contradicted at least the simple economic theory that a move to free prices should immediately improve resource allocation.”
6. asvd: “This list might be useful to future reformers, although there are not so many communist countries left.”
And all that’s from just the first two paragraphs!
They were unhappy in a box. They were unhappy with a fox. They were unhappy with the inherent and pervasive change and socioeconomic upheaval introduced to their existence.
I’m more of a mosey man, myself.
In former Soviet Union, democracy eventually slouches toward you.
I disagree wrt Uzbekistan. I’d replace it with Tajikistan and maybe Moldova.
That’s all.
This keeps puzzling me: what is “ICIP”?
I’ve seen a lot of internet jargon before, but that one’s a new one.
“In College I Played” (some obscure musical instrument) for (some ridiculously-named band referring to the prior comment). It’s analogous to TWSS.
In college I played
its a monkeyball original.
unless it’s also a badly-acronymed juggalo set.
It’s not a monkeyball original, is it? Dave Barry had a similar running gag.
I think I probably did lift it from DB.
Ah.
I thought it was some kind of scatology. Well, live and learn!
1. freewhat?
https://twitter.com/#!/mattyglesias/status/167373652281663488
I continue to read it as freebacon.
This is so FKing awesome. I really can’t wait for Fat Tony to guest in a trashcan next to Oscar.
I can’t believe Maria is still on Sesame Street. How old is she now, about 140?
Thanks, and go As.
Also: sorry to Laden your Grill with that
meh.
I’m not sure what the tipping point is, but that other thread certainly hurt load times. I’ve never had issues on other pages.
Thanks, and go As.
it didn’t really hurt the load times as much as just break my browser outright.
The Bloodhound gang: I get the poon from Judy Bloom; Mr. Hooper’s dead so why don’t you give me his broom..
Nine. Hundred. Trillion. Dollars.
Thanks, and go As.
I’m surprised all tort suits don’t ask for nine hundred trillion dollars, since asking for an amount has no legal effect other than to make it so that you can’t ask for MORE than that amount…
ML definitely getting a bit testy:
Uh-hunh. Because no one on the pro-SJ side has gotten their hopes up for
the shiny new A’s stadiumgroundbreaking for Cisco fieldSJ referendumBRC reportpayoff to the GiantsSelugworth’s ukase telling the Giants to pound sandLew’s craven begging in the public forum of the media.Hes so far beyond being close to objective that I don’t even read what he has to say anymore.
https://twitter.com/#!/joestiglich/status/167373508010184704
You know, the best liars are the ones who can maintain a cherubic smile while doing so.
Also the ones who run their lies by their lawyers.
The A’s simply could have been told the payment amount, with no “discussion.” Or the payout could be being framed in such a way as to not be a “payout”/payoff, but of (more likely) MLB assuming some (large) portion of the Giants’ WWP debt-service payments the next couple of years (probably easier for Crywolffisher to get loans for the stadium than for a
bribepayoutdebt-service-sharing check to the Giants).It’s been 3 years and no movement. Is it really that surprising no one at MLB has actually told Wolff what’s going on? Or for that matter, MLB deciding to take on the full costs themselves (okay, I couldn’t say that last one without rolling my eyes at the absurdity, but the former is still valid).
Shoulda held out for umpteen gazillion.
Ooh, a reply fail
Fortunately, it works for any of the last few posts.
It does!
https://twitter.com/#!/hankschulman/status/167381561862402048
1. He left out the y’s
2. He has urinals in his car?
I know. Hasn’t Mychael Urban suffered enough?
“If there’s ever been anyone who fairly well defines joyless fking, it’s this guy.”
fking? Pix or it didn’t happen.
batgirl bait:
https://twitter.com/#!/MTAYinh/status/167398955112595457
also … tagline!
He must have forgotten his 40% off coupon!
Or maybe he’s at the El Cerrito one and is sick of trying to jam a quarter into the FKing cart handle to get a M-FKing cart.
Don’t FK with the
kraut truckM-FKing cart.I’ve had it with these muthaFKin quarters in the muthaFKin cart.
Mine too, Michael. Mine too.
How to demonstrate your fears are irrational in 10 words or less:
Were they also abortion docs working for ACORN/PP?
Yeah, this reeks of self-promotion.
Although:
Huh. By the headline you’d think he’s a lounger.
It’s such a fantasy. But I am waiting for a CPAC attendee to boast about his concealed weapons permit.
https://twitter.com/#!/RattoCSN/status/167396375066198016
The swallows returned to Capistrano earlier than usual this year.
Do A’s still have Harden? I don’t care enough to keep track of the roster any more.
#finallycheeringforlaundry
He was a free agent, the A’s had reportedly been talking to him.
Pretty sure they’ll sign him now.
Aww. Rich.
How did this happen at this time of year? Was throwing bullpen sessions too much for his arm?
Sneezed while turning off the alarm clock.
I could tell you what happened, but I’ve been sworn to secrecy! sorry!!
call me.
Gammons claims that it is a long time problem that is only getting fixed now.
http://twitter.com/#!/pgammo/status/167558260008816640
I’ve heard that before.
I was feeling like the A’s had some pretty good promos this year (better than last year’s anyway) until I saw this and got jealous.
If the A’s gave away garden gnomes it’d have to be Gallego.
First one to the ballpark, gets him!
Wolff’s bringing out the big guns.
I wonder how much pruno it took to talk him into that one.
Bwaha!
Does this mean 2012 or 2013? Aren’t they still at like $40 million now?
The A’s are determined not to lose out on Manny.
or Matsui
Isn’t signing Manny the same as losing out?
Soler? Cespedes? Oswalt?
So we’re short about 20 – 30 mil. The A’s chunk of the buying off the Gnats by way of taking on shitty contracts?
Tone, tone, tone. Lew is going places he’s never gone before. Think everyone’s getting nervous.
Tony Toni Tone?
Lew wouldn’t have anything to with them. They’re from Oakland.
Hmm… who comes from San Jose?
Nikki Sixx!
I prefer Number Six from BSG.
He cackled evilly, twirling the tip of his handlebar mustache.
You know who else said “Vee haff vays …”?
Very curious whether the SJ Stomper doll was a serious professional job, or one of the stupid Stomper puppets they have now, with a cheap green felt shirt sewn on. I’ve long predicted that Stomper would not be a part of the new ballpark Athletics.
I hadn’t noticed “stuffed” til now — I think he killed Stomper and taxidermed him!
(Which, of course, given the years of pruno abuse, was entirely unnecessary. The taxiderming, that is.)
It was not a Stomper per se, it was a stuffed toy elephant but it wasn’t at all like Stomper. The uniform looked handmade.
Thanks!
I posted a pic of it in the other thread, but here it is again….
Dude is getting a bit hands-y.
He’s just impressed by Stomper’s trunk.
The positioning of that “E” looks a little haphazard.
Peter O’Malley is buying the team?
That’s FKing ugly.
Now I know what I’m going to set on fire when the A’s move, at least.
Excuse me, but have we met?
No, we’ll always think of Stomper and sigh. He’ll be like our Youppi.
I don’t care how good the song is, never try to dance while peeing.
Or vice versa.
That’s what adult diapers are for.
It’s tragic that the underlying article summarized in this deadspin post is now 404. Because I did want to read more about the theory that Madonna’s halftime show was really a Satanic ritual.
Facts be damned. If you can put something out on the internet, it becomes true.
Only if you go to great lengths to make it seem plausible.
Oh sure, but I list Ozzwife on the Wikipedia page for her hometown and suddenly I lose my editing privileges. FK’in’ bastards.
You mean it wasn’t a Satanic ritual?
Well now I feel cheated.
The Giants were playing the Patriots. EVERYTHING was part of a Satanic ritual.
Oh good. I was a little worried there!
I think you should be more concerned about the bill in the Oklahoma legislature that would make a fertilized egg a person. One state senator proposed an amendment to make it illegal for a man to ejaculate anywhere except into a vagina.
I think babies and infants have too many rights as it is.
I like our Democratic Oklahoman’s sabotage attempt, tho.
I love that another Dem proposed an amendment that would make the father financially responsible for the mother, but the amendment was rejected.
That actually makes me very very angry.
Stupid ass hypocrites.
The world went to hell when men had to start taking responsibility for their behavior.
My masculine side agrees, and wants multiple wives, slaves, property, and the ability to eschew following distasteful laws.
My feminine side says to my masculine side: I’m going to enjoy painting your half of the brain in pretty vibrant colors after you leave.
There’s something very wrong about a world without double standards.
Is that how you see your thought processes? That you have two competing thoughts based on the gender inkelings for that side.
30% yes, 70% it’s my ICIP meme.
thats what I was trying to figure out.
The google cache is still available, comments (!) and all.
Thanks! I did not realize this:
As my rabbi said on Sunday morning, Yahweh/Ba’al/Jesus/Buddha has better things to do than worry about the outcome of a football game. I expect that the same is true for Satan.
Put in another way, even Satan hates the Yankees.
You beat me.
But do watch the video too … it’s extraordinary.
Suck it, righties!
Or watch the video, which also explains how the winning touchdown foretells the birth of the Obama-Antichrist. Seriously.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=kMyDsaBmiYI%3Frel%3D0” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>
Um, wow.
There’s an empty bottle of Evan Williams in my bathroom.
There’s a steakknife in my fridge.
Dude, that’s just weird.
#goodnightswithozz
I would love it if Vitale would just tear a vocal cord. Apparently the ACC Network (Ch. 36 in the Bay Area) broadcast has different announcers but I don’t have that as an available option.
Vitale has worn me down. I’ve heard his shtick so much, for so long, unrelenting, omnipresent, that I’ve just given up and can’t get too upset by him anymore.
I am watching on 36. The ACC guys have much better flow.
I mostly watch the Pac-12 and WCC which don’t get Vitale. He must do, what, 6-8 UNC games a season. Late in the first half I finally did my baseball season thing and turned on the UNC feed on XM. They’re already easier to take despite some obvious one-sidedness.
Ozzwife just caught an Ikea bowl on a table in a Rooms To Go commercial.
FKing Firefox has crashed twice tonight.
Heels lead by three at half. They’ve played really well; if they can close out the 3-pointers a little better in the second half they’ll be in great shape.
And it didn’t take me long to hate Austintatious Rivers in that special way one can hate the smuggest Duke dickheads.
Heels lead by only three. That’s easy for the faces to recover from, especially if someone throws one of our heroes a folding chair.
I’m glad they’ve started giving points in pro wrestling to have it more mimic the amateur game.
Every toddler’s dream
I wish they’d had this at the restaurant we had dinner in tonight.
Fuck!
seconded, on general principles.
heh
Economist on the potential impact of the draft on the DR.
Thank you thank you for posting this.
I think MLB doesn’t give a shit if it dries up the DomRep talent pool.
So they say of Puerto Rico’s experience:
“In theory, this should not have affected the number of Puerto Ricans signed, since undrafted players become free agents, who can sign with any team they wish. But in practice, MLB clubs rarely sign them.”
I’m curious why this is, but more importantly regarding the Dominican, I would think the signing of undrafted talent would be a huge potential opportunity for some teams.
The problem is developing talent. There isn’t a structure that rewards developing talent in PR anymore because if you build an academy school a kid, teach him the game, give him food, and hes awesome someone else drafts him. Also the opportunity cost of a draftpick makes the resources used to acquire talent higher in PR than somewhere like the DR or Venezuela.
I wonder if American amateur baseball would re-flourish if the draft was completely abolished.
It’d help, that’s for sure.
yup We might even get academies to educate the kids.
Heh heh.
I would be ok with this.
Boy, that was choketastic.
The downside of the pace Carolina plays at, of course, is that the lead can turn fast with a few opponent stops on D and successful ensuing possessions. Can’t blame Zeller on the shot at the end, though. If Duke’s gonna hit 50% of their fallaway NBA-range 3’s they’re gonna beat almost anyone.
You can blame Zeller for missing 2 of 4 free throws in the final minute. Two Carolina turnovers late in the game didn’t help either.
In college I played gutbucket for Repulsive Progressive Hypocrisy.
He’s not wrong.
On the other hand, this is not new, either. American foreign policy since 1945 has been essentially identical under either political party. The closest president to what he identifies as the “non-hypocritical” progressive foreign policy was Dwight Eisenhower– a Republican.
And he sent “advisors” into Vietnam.
Noam Chomsky has been talking about this uniformity among the political elites for decades, but of course essentially no one listens to him. The politicians will take cheap shots at each other to distinguish themselves to their tribalist followings, but put them in office and the result is identical. I had not fully grasped this until the Obama administration, but at this point it’s undeniable.
Before the ’08 election, my cousin made a comment about how no matter who won the election, it wouldn’t make a significant difference in our lives. I vehemently disagreed, but now I realize he’s right.
Also, I’m 99% sure that Truman sent troops to Vietnam first, although Eisenhower may have escalated it.
No, Ike sent the first US troops. Truman supported the French-backed govts with military aid. Which is actually the best rebuttal for Paul’s case for arming client states: rather than substituting for direct US intervention, it tends result in the exact opposite outcome.
The first American troops landed in Vietnam on May 1, 1950.
“Arming imperialists hanging on by a thread at the extreme limits of their force projection capacity” is not really what I’m arguing for.
Hell, I’d probably have favored arming the Viet Cong to fight the Chinese! (Though, admittedly, that’s hindsight.)
Millions of people have health care today that never would have if Obama had lost.
Wed still be in Iraq if McCain had his way. No Stimulus. No Dodd Frank. No Student loan reform. No ending DADT
There would have been stimulus, and it would have been basically non-controversial and passed with bipartisan support.
Agree about the rest.
like the 01 tax cuts? thats not a stimulus
I think McCain would have kept the vast majority of what was in the stimulus package – $$ to states, most of the infrastructure projects. Some of the energy/environmental work might have been re-directed elsewhere. I don’t think there was much choice to do something. As much as talk of austerity wins votes, McCain or his advisors are hopefully smart enough to know that something had to be done.
Disagree about infrastructure projects. Definitely no green energy.
Also disagree that McCain would have abandoned his loud austerity / government-spending-is-stupid beliefs.
I don’t think he would have had a choice; the country was on the brink of a collapse. The size of the package might have been smaller, but the infrastructure projects (especially roads) are non-controversial and are greatly needed. Austerity talk is good, but a lot of that talk is quickly abandoned when you’re sitting in the big chair and looking at the big pile of shit that you just inherited.
This, basically.
It probably would have been more tax cuts/less spending, but that’s still stimulative (just less so, according to the Keynesians). McCain isn’t dumb, wouldn’t want to be Herbert Hoover, and, most importantly, doesn’t actually care about deficits.
I don’t think as highly of him as you guys do.
I’m sure he would have spent a bunch of money because all president do, just in the form of mistargeted tax cuts, but I think he wouldn’t have done any infrastructure spending at the same time because “government is too big already”
Except there are plenty of Republican Congressman whose districts/business owners/campaign funds benefit from infrastructure spending.
But would prefer tax cuts.
If I’m a smart business owner and have to choose between having my taxes cut or having an opportunity to win millions of dollars in contracts when there is no money anywhere else, I’m choosing the contracts.
If you’re a smart business owner, then, you vote for Democrats.
While we’ve been debating, I examined stimulus awards for Arizona companies. Biggest beneficiary I found was Sundt Construction,w hich got a nex of $54 million or so. Looking at political donations from their executives via Huffington, there was no clear preference in R vs. D. Most of the donations were to Associated General Contractors of Arizona, who list, among the political issues they work on:
Who knows what the AGC-A does in terms of political donations, but I’m guessing they play both sides.
No, they’d prefer both.
OK, yeah, well, THIS.
Sure.
@nm
Which is why, if you’re a really smart (and huge) business owner, you
buyvote Republican.nm runs a highly successful web based business, He is thinking of planning on thing about hiring someone to write some code, if he could just get a tax cut on his PERSONAL income taxes
I’m not sure I agree. I happen to think things like single-payer health care would do more for huge business bottom-lines (and thus, owners) than trimming tax rates they avoid anyway.
@mb: If you’re a smart business owner, you pay the Republicans before the election to try to get them elected, and then pay the Democrats off after the election if your attempts to elect the Republicans failed!
this
John Richardson appears to side with NM/DFA on this debate. I still think that the reality of the situation and Congressional pressure would eventually have trumped ideology.
Well if McCain wins its unlikely there are the large dem majorities there were.
Maybe, maybe not. In 1988, the last time a Republican president was elected after 8 years of another Republic president, the Dems gained seats, despite already having a significant majority.
Look at the coatails that Obama had in a lot of states, I don’t agree with that.
Possibly the majority wouldn’t have been as strong. But I think that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, there was enough pressure for stimulus from both sides of the aisle. The beneficiaries (i.e., federal contractors) certainly came from both sides.
Plus, he’s a demented volatile asshole who might likely react to a bunch of pointyheaded poindexter economists/advisers by blowing up and doubling down on austerity.
This.
Eh, that’s not true for domestic policy. There are actual differences there (even if the political spectrum here is remarkably constricted as compared to every other civilized nation).
And it sure as hell ain’t true for my job!
Were there significant party differences before 1945?
Yes (see: Woodrow Wilson’s policies vs. Warren Harding’s; also Charles Lindbergh’s near-run for the presidency on an “America First” ticket vs. Roosevelt’s overt interventionism).
Since the war, the parties have become more separate (though still very close) on domestic policy and more similar on foreign policy.
Well, the classic recent example of that not always being true is of course Bush II rather than Gore. Unlikely Gore goes so badly wrong in Iraq.
Though maybe 9/11 would have propelled him into something similar in Afghanistan instead.
Something in Afghanistan was definitely going to happen. Only Bush goes to Iraq, though.
And this is where I part company with folks who say it doesn’t matter who wins. It doesn’t matter as much as we would like, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. The Iraq war is Exhibit A.
That said, the cynical side of me wholeheartedly agrees with Paul, as the elites are never discredited. It doesn’t matter how badly they screw up. They still run things, get fancy jobs, know the right people, and never have to apologize. Being right doesn’t matter nearly as much as we would like to think.
It will matter once we integrate the internet and cloud storage access into our brains.
/Krugman
We’ve argued this before. Given 9/11, the perfect storm for PNAC, JOE LIEBERMAN AS VP, and the they’re-all-the-same thesis, I think Gore invades Iraq.
I don’t necessarily disagree.
We have, it’s true. But Lieberman wasn’t nearly the crank he is now before he lost that election.
He certainly was w/r/t foreign policy, specifically Iraq and Israel.
Oh, he’s militantly pro-Israel, that’s for sure. That’s different from urging unprovoked invasions.
Also, too: he should have been VP, not P.
Dude. He was one of the signatories of that pre-9/11 crank PNAC ad.
I know this puts me in spwc/truther territory, but I’m not at all convinced that some aspects of All The Events Surrounding 9/11 And Our National Response To It weren’t coordinated in part by Israeli and Iranian psyops.
look at that cat. it is so… so sick of friday night is “funny selfportraits at home night.”
I got a more “my evil plans have been… foiled” vibe.
See, I’m getting a “I’m gonna shit on his pillow and then chew on his carotid while he sleeps” vibe.
“I don’t find this cute one bit. I’m only here because when the apocalypse comes, I’m going to eat (him) like a fucking king.”
… and, as I’ve mentioned before, with a D president and an R congress, no way in hell Gore doesn’t get impeached after 9/11, and possibly even kicked out.
President Lieberman sure as hell invades Iraq.
No chance in hell he would have been removed. The Rs would have had 51 seats, and you need 67 to convict.
His approval would have been through the roof anyway. Even the House Rs wouldn’t do something so stupid as to impeach a popular “wartime” president.
I don’t think he would have been popular. I think in particular FOX News and the VRWC noise machine would have ramped up and gone after him — particularly after the 2000 election, which they would still have been contesting/litigating.
I guess that depends partly on the particulars of this counter-factual. Their ability to sustain outrage depends on how Gore gets in. For example, if the butterfly ballot never existed, Gore wins Florida clean plus the popular vote and they’ve got nothing to bitch about.
A scenario where Gore gets in due to a sketchy recount is tougher to predict, because then the right would have been going nuts for 9 months, probably including street protests and even some measure of violence, by the time 9/11 happened (assuming Gore didn’t read the “Bin Laden Determined to Strike” memo and do something about it). Even so, I think 9/11 suddenly takes the wind out of the right’s sails. The unity thing wouldn’t have been so pronounced, and the “truther” movement would have been much larger, but I still think the Republicans would have been FKed.
Fair argument, but I disagree.
Your parenthetic is the key to the strongest argument against my counterfactual — it’s probably pretty likely that Gore, having been part of the previous admin going after ObL, and someone who actually, y’know, gave a shit about doing his job, would have taken at least some steps to act on that PDB.
Yeah, I agree on that. I was just playing by the rules of your scenario.
Had a Gore administration snuffed out 9/11, though, he probably gets no “bump” from it and he ends up losing to Bush or McCain in 2004. At which point: The Simpsons are Going to Iraq!
Dammit, shouldn’t have let myself go down this road this morning … just thinking about that “OK, now you’ve covered your ass” thing re the PDB is probably worse for my BP than drinking a bacon shake.
I know. It’s amazing how angry this still makes me.
Gore does that, and it gets out, he gets impeached for sure.
Yes.
I don’t think you can get to Iraq without 9/11 making the country pliable for the we need to stop the evildooers argument.
Probably, but I think a lot of those guys were determined to get there and they would have found a way to do it when they gained power. Hell, we were already enforcing two no-fly zones over Iraq. It’s not hard to imagine a pretext for an invasion arising out of that. They also would have tried to tie other al Qaeda attacks (the USS Cole, Spain, Bali, whatever else would have happened without the Afghanistan invasion) to Saddam.
There was an article in the New Yorker pre-inauguration about how there would be a war in Iraq.
And they were right.
Interesting to see so different takes on this counterfactual/alt-history. My version:
1) 9/11 still happens. Yes, there was the “OBL determined to strike” memo, and an administration already bizarrely obsessed with Iraq to the exclusion of other, more real threats. But there were also structural failures of various intelligence bureaucracies not coordinating that surely dated back (at least) to the Clinton years. I’m not convinced that enough would have been different in that area. Plus, for the sake of argument, changing this one renders much of the rest irrelevant.
2) We still invade Afghanistan.
3) Gore is not impeached, but the country doesn’t rally around him either. Acts that make people want to go to war are always good for the pro-war party, regardless of who the incumbent is. So the narrative becomes that bad things happened because we were not sufficiently belligerent in fighting islamofascism in the prior 9 years. And that includes the PNAC crowd getting louder about Iraq.
4) Nevertheless we do not invade Iraq at that point. No way, no how, even with neocons squawking in the press, and Lieberman in a position of power. The whole case for war basically relied on setting up (and establishing supposed credibility for) Doug Feith’s shadow intelligence agency, and that just can’t happen without control of the executive branch.
5) However, in light of (3), Bush or McCain or someone like them wins easily in 2004 on a platform of getting tough on foreign policy. And then Iraq happens, just a couple of years behind schedule.
Also a viable scenario.
And I would have refused to vote for him in 2004 for his extrajudicial secret evidence killing of OBL
I think either way Fox News’ defense contractor friends would force ’em to rally around a president when he’s launching a major war (but just against Afghanistan).
So you’re saying you were too young to remember the GOP (in particular, McCain’s) response to Clinton in Somalia and Yugoslavia?
Which of those countries attacked NY again?
I think there woulda been (a) a whole lot more “NY /= US” malarkey from the right, and (b) a whole lot more internal blame
A I don’t see, B I could see.
Either way, that’s not how it played out after Pearl Harbor.
Also, you saw the whole world embrace the US (despite hating the president). I bet the reverse would have happened internally, though I’m sure he never would have gotten above 73% approval.
This has always been my contention
Your mistake is in treating the Iraq war as having something to do with foreign policy. It didn’t.
It was just a fantastic opportunity to steal hundreds of billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury and cripple liberalism at the same time, that happened to launder those billions through the mechanism of something that looked like a war.
That’s exactly how I see it too.
The PNAC folks plan was to seize control of the middle east oil fields, which would then be run for the profit of their friends/paymasters in the oil industry. That has to be seen as foreign policy (and policy with a long and inglorious tradition, see United Fruit et al)
Their execution of this plan allowed them to pillage the treasury for the benefit of the private security and construction/engineering industries.
Yeah, making a distinction between plundering riches for elites and US foreign policy generally seems misguided.
Obama on Guantanamo is of course crushingly horribly disappointing. But the polls your writer cites so breathlessly are meaningless. Americans of pretty much every self-assessed stripe want to lock up terrorists everywhere forever.
*My* writer? Glenzilla belongs to *you* FKers!
Obama, of course, did try seriously to close it and move people to Illinois.
Congress stopped him.
this. I don’t like many of his other policies with regard to presidential power/FA but the whole reason why this is suppose to be stopped by the courts due to the a legal framework is because everyone always knew that security over liberty is pretty much always a popular opinion at the time.
The courts? You mean, the ones that rubber-stamped Korematsu? The ones that had nothing relevant to say about the Espionage and Sedition Acts?
Man, you are not nearly cynical enough yet.
The SC has been great on guantanamo issues. Just that Bush ignored ’em.
Suppose to. Im saying that the whole point of having a judiciary is to protect the constitution from popular ideas.
While being entirely unamerican in the process /teabagging teabagger.
Read the link in the first “update.” It’s very clear that Democratic rank-and-file voters have changed their stated positions to become more right-wing on foreign policy beliefs than they were previously.
Would you buy magick jewelry from this guy?
not unless it was made out of a piece of Bo’s original hip bone.
So’s I was walking down J street yesterday and I ran into Kurt Vonnegut. Now, I know that Kurt Vonnegut is dead, so I was racking my brain trying to figure out if I had gone crazy or just who the fuck looks like Kurt Vonnegut that might be walking down J Street on a Wednesday afternoon.
So I tried to get a better look at the guy’s face, but every time I would look, he would look away awkwardly. Hmm… looks like Kurt Vonnegut… socially awkward… doesn’t like people… and then it dawned on me… it was John Burton.
on second thought, at least in this photo he looks like Captain Kangaroo.
Live in person, he’s more Vonnegut.
If he had said “what the $#%& are you looking at, &%@#$%^#$%&!” that would have tipped you off sooner….
Not necessarily; Captain Kangaroo also curses like a sailor.
I was wearing a short skirt and heels at the time, so I very well could have asked him the same question!
He’s such an awkward man and notoriously rude to customer service people. I like a lot of the work he’s done though, and he’s 80 fricking years old and briskly walking through Midtown in the company of a beautiful Yoko Ono-esque artist lady… Something to be said about that…