RubioBot and Trump's penis

Marco Rubio (R - Borg Cube) has been reprogrammed to sound more like the Trump insult machine. His latest tactic: Insinuating that Trump has a tiny wang. I have to wonder at this strategy. He seems to believe that the way to woo voters is to behave like a twelve-year-old bully on the playground.

I think Rubio needs more beta testing.

Over on the Democratic side, two adults are disagreeing about issues and attempting to make their case to other adults.

Oh well.

Trump wins another debate with clowns

HuffPo has the best analysis of the most recent "debate":

Thursday night's Republican debate reached circus levels of absurdity. Wolf Blitzer lost control. Donald Trump took over. Marco Rubio dripped in sweat. Ted Cruz looked lost at home. Ben Carson seldom spoke but produced the wittiest zinger of the night. "Can someone please attack me," he begged, in an effort to be noticed amidst the massacre.

Chaos

Rubio looks more and more like a small child lost and out of his depth. Cruz may actually be the The Zodiac Killer. 
And, poor Ben Carson seems to be drugged. All in all, a wonderful look into the modern Republican party.

Marco Rubio is a Scandal 'Bot

It seems that Marco Rubio wants to Unseat The TRUMP and become the Republican Nominee in order to face either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. I hope he does. He is an oppo researcher's wet dream. Here are a few links, just for fun!


Marco Rubio has some issues that

should hurt his whitehouse bid.

There's this

and drug lords

and such

and real estate

which isn't going away

and the credit cards

and his arest record

which does not look good for a "values" Republican.

and these are the tip of the Marco Rubio Scandal iceberg

#WhichHillary

#WhichHillary exploded on Twitter after a video of her dismissive behavior toward Black Lives Matter activists went viral.

Now it’s being used to challenge everything from Clinton’s relationship with Wall Street to her record on gay marriage to her record on mass incarceration. But the hashtag isn’t just being fueled by the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s also getting a boost from Bernie Sanders’ army of Twitter supporters.
The hashtag reflects a new reality for political campaigns. Even if Sanders has vowed not to go negative, his followers online haven’t taken the same oath. Social media gives them the microphone to do it. For Clinton, the timing couldn’t be worse, as both she and Sanders have been working to court black voters in the lead up to the South Carolina primary.

Wired on #whichhillary

Zombie Entanglement

Zombies are everywhere these days. The Walking Dead is the biggest thing on TV. Movies are overrun with the undead. Donald Trump's supporters are (mostly) brain dead flesh eaters. So, why not get into some serious zombie fiction.

In the early days of the zombie epidemic a group of survivors band together to escape their decimated city. As they travel through a savage, brutal landscape they encounter terrible brutality, surreal events, and the end of history. Along the way they stumble upon a mystery and attempt to solve it. If they succeed, mankind may be saved. How to make Love Like a Zombie is a dark, brutal, sexually twisted exploration of the depths of man's depravity.

How to Make Love Like a Zombie

Seriously, give it a shot. 

Hot Links

Which candidate is more electable?

Should Posner replace Scalia

and, which of them is more electable?

marco-bot and 9-11

Who again?

part of Hillary's Latino Problem

Bernie and Electability

And this

Bernie's Path to Victory

Five-Thirty-Eight has a great article on a possible path to the nomination for Berni Sanders. It breaks down benchmarks for each state and which states he really "needs" to win.

It starts, of Course, with Nevada

Nevada. Nevada has a fairly high nonwhite population, but it isn’t especially liberal. Clinton was also well ahead of Sanders in the (relatively small sample) of interviews Morning Consult conducted there earlier this year. It’s possible that Clinton will be hurt because the state holds a caucus, although we don’t have a lot of evidence yet about which Democrat that benefits. In other words — and as much as her campaign might try to avoid admitting it — it’s a state that Clinton “should” win. Conversely, a Sanders win would be a sign he has staying power.

I was interested in Kansas (what with living there). I think Kansas will deliver a massive margin for Sanders. 

Piketty on Sanders

Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the 21st Century, has written an article about the Berni Sanders moment. It is well worth reading. Do so here

Kanye West for SCOTUS

Supreme court Justice Antonin Scalia died (no doubt murdered by Donald Trump is a rage over competing comb overs).   Scalia was a dim bulb and an ideologue of the worst sort.A Twitter Egg.   I man who could barely string together a coherent series of ideas, and instead parroted talk radio bromides peppered with anachronistic slang in an attempt to sound interesting. He was a man with no ethical center, and no true judicial core. He ranted about originialism and textualism, then created, out of whole cloth, an individual right to own machine guns. He loved the original text of the constitution in it was useful in oppressing the poor and minorities and ignored it when it got in the way of his corporate gods. None of that I really important here, though.

Scalia’s replacement is what we must be interested in. The Repulicans had an easy path before them:

1.       Pretend to play ball

2.       Go slow

3.       Vote down every nominee that Obama offered.

That is all they needed to do. They would get what they wanted, and it would cost them nothing. Instead, in what can only be called an unforced error, they began (within minutes of Scalia’s demise) screaming that they would defy the constitution, shut down the system and fuck everyone. They threw a tantrum. Now they have to pay the price.

The price will likely be a Democratic Senate.

And, as for Scalia’s replacement? The possibilities are (in Descending order):

Hillary Clinton picks a liberal

Bernie Sanders picks a Super-Liberal

Donald Trump picks Kanye West

Have at it

Sam Jackson Generator

Just need to fill some space on your website or blog? Lorem Ipsum is boring and ugly. How about some Samuel L. Jackson - style ipsum? Try it here

Clinton and Kissinger

Why does Hillary Clinton praise Henry Kissinger? A friend said to me :

“But he was so . . .  wrong . . . “

My friend does not understand.

 

The problem is, he wasn’t. Not from where Clinton stands. The Hawkish Neoliberal Corporatists see the world, and history differently than you and I. In their mind, the Vietnam War, the Cambodian excursions, these were necessary. South-East Asia needed to be brought down. Popular regimes had to topple. What little infrastructure there was needed to be destroyed. The fighter needed to be killed. This was the program. The Dominos were real, they just weren’t the dominos we were told about. This needed doing to create (or maintain) the slave labor class the multinational corporations needed to stitch clothes and build bike parts. This was the plan.

From where the Center Right Clinton System stands, Kissinger is a hero. Of course she runs to him.

Vote Together

This is the kind of campaign I like seeing:


Vote Together: Bernie Sanders Ad

Some days I can barely stand it

If this doesn't piss you off and break your heart, then fuck you.


Offered without further commentary because, really, I have no words.

Age and class

Income and age are the real dividers in the race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. In New Hampshire:

The biggest dividing line in the Democratic race here was income. Sanders crushed Hillary Clinton by 30 percentage points among voters with a family income of less than $100,000, but won by just 7 percentage points among those making more than $100,000, according to the exit poll. That divide along income lines is an advantage for Sanders: More Democrats earn below the $100,000 threshold than above it. In 2008, just 17 percent of Democratic primary voters nationally were whites from families earning more than $100,000, compared to 43 percent who were whites from families earning less than $100,000.

(fivethirtyeight)

While in Iowa:

Among voters between the ages of 17 and 29, Bernie Sanders won 84 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton's 14 percent

(WaPo)

 This is fascinating news.

of course, in NH Bernie won every group

And, it makes sense. Occupy Wall Street is dead, but Occupy Wall Street is going to change the nation. The 99% have had enough. They were waiting for Howard Beale. He has arrived.

New Hampshire

I did a terrible job predicting Iowa, but I'm giving New Hampshire a shot anyway. Here's my prediction:

Republican

Trump 31
Kasich 14
Cruz 11
Rubio 10
Christie 5
Bush 3
Fiorina < 1
Carson < 1

Yes, I think Rubio comes in fourth. His dreadful collapse at the debate followed by scathing media attention should have him completely destroyed by now.


Democratic

Sanders 57
Clinton 43

I'm not going too far out on a limb here.  I think these numbers are in line with most prognosticators at this point.

Marco Rubio the Robot

More on Marco Rubio the robot.

Rubio in Collapse

In the most recent GOP debate, Chris Christie demolished Marco Rubio. 

Christie hammered Rubio's replicant-like repetition of memorized talking points when asked any question. He nailed Rubio for being a lightweight, uninformed, kid.  Not bright, is what most viewers thought of Rubio after that exchange. A low wattage intellect .

Some of us already knew that. 

I was quit when I cam in

lawyers, Guns and Money has a hot take:  marco Rubio is a Repicant.

They may be right.

The Best Picture

Five Thirty Eight is dead wrong about the Oscars. Okay, really, their picks are mostly inline with reality and the zeitgeist. But, they are very confused about the Best Picture award.

They list the odds in order:

The Big Short
Spotlight
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
The Martian
Bridge of Spies
Room
Brooklyn


That list is all wrong.  The order, and odds are:

Mad Max: Fury Road 60%
The Revenant 25%
The Martian 10%

Any other movie 5%

Dead Heat

They call this a dead heat:

Clinton garnered 44% to Sanders’ 42%, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Friday. A sizeable 11% say they are undecided.

Q-Poll

Yes, that's a national and yes, nationals are dumb. Still, this speaks to a real change in the dynamic of the race. IF- IF - IF  

Sanders pulls off a blowout in New Hampshire, the media coverage could propel him to a win in Nevada and a narrower than expected loss in South Carolina. If that happens, he may just become the favorite to win the nomination.

Bernie Bros?

Vox joins the Clinton team of RATFUCKERS to push the "berniebro" narrative.  Greenwald tells the truth. I have watched legions of Hillary bots spew anti-semitism, lies and hatred all over the internet - but nobody talks about Hillary Bots. Wonder why?

Art is difficult.

P.Z. Myers does not understand film, or narrative, or emotion, or metaphor, or acting, or much of anything that isn't completely literal. His reaction to The Revenant is not a surprise. He may be a talent biologist, but he has no clue about art.

You say you want a revolution

According to a new poll a majority of Americans want a political revolution to distribute wealth fairly. Yes, we want the rich to give up some so that the rest of us can survive.

Fifty-four percent of respondents to our online poll — which reached a sample of 1,884 registered voters nationally from Friday, January 29, through Sunday, January 31, 2016 — agreed that a "political revolution might be necessary to redistribute money from the wealthiest Americans to the middle class." Just 30 percent said they disagreed.

Robin Hood has always been my hero.

Bernie Ties

Vox has the real stuff:

Imagine telling Bill Clinton in 1992 that 25 years later his wife would be neck and neck with an "independent socialist" in the Democratic primary. This wasn't supposed to be possible.

The Tie

My personal prediction for the Iowa caucus:

Republicans:

Trump 29%
Cruz 22%
Rubio 13%
Paul 5%



Democrats:

Sanders 50%
Clinton 47%