Monthly Archives: February 2016

#NeverTrump

Conservatives are freaking out.

Awww... I'm almost sad for them. Who coulda knowd that decades of culturing racist/xenophobic/nationalist ignorance would create a place where a racist/xenophobic/nationalist ignoramus would thrive?

Not Really A Terrible Situation

Last week, I wrote this about the Supreme Court's vacancy:

assuming Kennedy swings the same way, decisions that would've swung liberal will still swing liberal. decisions that would've swing conservative will go back to the lower court; but that is not necessarily a conservative victory - that depends on what the lower court said in the first place. sometimes conservatives challenge lower court rulings, after all.

and, since conservatives have one fewer solid vote, the likelihood of conservative-friendly cases even being accepted to be heard is reduced (takes 4 votes to hear a case)

Today,
TPM wrote this:

The Supreme Court has only been in session without Justice Antonin Scalia for a week. But already, his death is affecting cases, and particularly decisions not to take certain cases to the Supreme Court without the guarantee of his vote. Last week, Dow Chemical made headlines by opting for a $835 million settlement in a class action lawsuit rather than risk having the case heard by a Scalia-less Supreme Court. A lower court had already ruled against the company for allegedly conspiring to fix prices for industrial chemicals, and prior to the settlement, Dow had appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.

...

But it's not just corporate interests that are quickly recalibrating their legal strategy with the loss of Scalia. A guns right groups decided to forgo a Supreme Court petition last week because the court had lost its conservative tilt.

What the GOP is fighting against is having a 5-3-1 situation in favor of liberal judges, instead of the 4-4-1 situation that existed before Scalia died. But a 4-3-1 situation in favor of liberals isn't such a great place for the GOP to be, either.

Not that this excuses the GOP's latest tantrum.

Daddy's Gonna Kill Ralphie

Looks like Rubio finally grew a pair.

Let me tell you something, last night in the debate, during one of the breaks — two of the breaks — he [Trump] went backstage, he was having a meltdown. First he had this little makeup thing applying, like, makeup around his mustache because he had one of those sweat mustaches. Then, then he asked for a full-length mirror. I don't know why, because the podium goes up to here. But he wanted a full-length mirror. Maybe to make sure his pants weren't wet — I don't know."

Oof.

A Christmas Story - Ralphie Beats Up Bully

He's still a child, though.

[adj. noun|noun] : [lib|cons]

The researchers found conservatives, more than liberals, tend to refer to things by names, instead of describing them in terms of features.

Examples of this would be saying someone is an idealist rather than describing them as idealistic, or that someone is a pessimist rather than calling them pessimistic.

If you describe someone as 'a homosexual' you're more likely to be conservative, while calling someone 'homosexual' - without the 'a' - makes you more liberal.

This use of nouns, rather than adjectives, is thought to preserve stability, familiarity and tradition, all of which appear to be valued more highly by conservatives than liberals.

You First

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) has asked his fellow Republican congressmen to sign onto a letter urging either Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to drop out of the presidential race so that one of them can defeat Donald Trump."Through rivalry, disunity, and baseless hatred in our ranks, conservatives are now in danger of splintering our voice and ensuring that the Republican Party’s nominee in the general election is Mr. Trump who is incontrovertibly, the weakest General Election candidate in the Republican field with the strongest probability of allowing Hillary Clinton to become President," Franks wrote in the letter, according to a copy obtained by the Huffington Post.

Game theory must have a name for this situation. It's very close to a game of chicken, but not exactly right. Winning a game of chicken happens as soon as your opponent swerves. In this, if Rubio or Cruz swerves (drops out), the other doesn't get the win; the other gets the chance to go up against Trump for the win. The actual game here isn't between Rubio and Cruz it's between Rubio, Cruz and Trump. Rubio and Cruz each want the other to drop out ASAP because every state Trump wins puts him farther and farther ahead of the both of them. The longer they both stay in, the bigger Trump's lead becomes. But Trump wants Rubio and Cruz both to stay in and split their votes, and will presumably work to see that that happens. And I want them all to drop out and join rival plushophilia gangs.

Field

Artist's Statement

By exposing the flatness and debating the topsoil, "field" removes all ambiguity from the geography and indeed sows seeds of quiescence where later flowers of combinatorial analyses will wilt in the sun. Through this fluoridation and catechism, the uniquely rotund and confloundering ministrations embolden the frisson (and at what expense!) of a single guitar talking to itself across time. And realizing this, then we look down. We have come to the stream running through the middle which is the hydration and the sewer and the catheter, the mouth, the blood, the rectal dispensation, and dipping our naive toes two by two into the muck, we discover the leeches, the manifold rotifers and the pastoral pleasure of "field".