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Ghost of LL

Burnt Ends
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Posts posted by Ghost of LL

  1. Short of Blankenship, Morrisey winning in West Virginia was the preferable option for Democrats.  Jenkins coming from the southern part of the state would have made it really tough for Manchin to win those coal-country voters who vote for him but who also vote for Trump.

    I think the same is true of Braun in Indiana.  It's just a lot harder to go against someone who's already been elected to federal office.

    That's not to say that either Morrisey or Braun are bad candidates--they're not.  They're just not as formidable as I suspect their opponents would have been.  And for Donneley, it probably doesn't matter--he's probably screwed either way.

  2. Are we all in agreement that Braun is probably the best-case scenario for Donnelly in Indiana?  I mean, I don't think he's a bad candidate.  He's just not as an experienced a campaigner as Messer and Rokita, and those types of candidates often make mistakes when the spotlight shines on them.

  3. 2 minutes ago, Spankytoes said:

    I don’t disagree. But the timing is usually suspect in these type of cases. If she was uncomfortable with the BDSM aspect, or did not want to continue that sort of relationship, why did she continue voluntarily sleeping with him? This isn’t a case of someone threatening a life or forcibly raping a woman. He likes it rough, she apparently did not. Why does this come out publically in a year where he is up for re-election and they are no longer intimate partners? No police report was ever filed by anybody, from what I can tell. It was only when the opportunity to get publicity and $ arose that we heard anything about it. And now a pack of women have all been suddenly liberated all at the same time. It’s awfully convenient timing.

    The nefarious explanation you imply is one possibility.

    Another is that they were afraid, thought they were the only person affected and that they wouldn't be believed.  They may have anticipated that if they came forward, they would be attacked by people arguing that they're only making these allegations for money.  And, after all--these are accomplished professional women, and who wants to make this type of thing public unnecessarily?  It was only after (1) Schneiderman ran around acting all virtuous and (2) Farrow put these stories together and told these women that they weren't alone that they decided to come forward.

  4. 3 minutes ago, Hornius Emeritus said:

    Well, there are several remarkable foundations ---- the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, for example ----- that are pouring billions of dollars into solving serious problems around the world. 

    And I pointed out Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as notable exceptions.

  5. 3 hours ago, Spankytoes said:

    It must be brutal when you keep voluntarily screwing a guy that gets abusive with you in the bedroom over and over again for a year and calls you a "turnip". It's almost as if it was perfectly fine when they were together but somehow became not OK when he ended the relationship and money was being offered for the story in an election year.

    I think you need to walk a mile.  There are some strange psychological and power dynamics at issue in such a relationship that I wouldn't feel comfortable speculating about or trying to unpack.

    Regardless--if you're a person who's into BDSM, then there are certain protocols that you have to follow.  You need to get express consent.  And if you want to have running consent, then you need to get that with the acknowledgement of a safe word.  If you don't get that consent by running through those protocols, then you're an abuser and possibly a rapist (depending on the action taken)--it's really as simple as that.

    • Like 1
  6. 1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

    We are governed by a man and movement that is stridently anti-facts, lies at a rate that massively eclipses any political behavior in modern times, that enjoys being cruel and vindictive and publicly celebrates it, that acts without considering facts, evidence, or consequences, that happily demeans the most vulnerable among us, that courts racism and xenophobia, that is part of a global movement venomously rejecting the (small “l”) liberal world order of the past 75 years that has brought unprecedented peace and prosperity, and come the fuck on, do I need to go on?

     

    The only insanity is to NOT be alarmed by this turn of events.

     

    Irrespective of what you may think of Brisket more generally, is there anything in these two paragraphs with which one can disagree?  Anything?

    As others have pointed out, and as I have discussed at length on the Trump thread, I think there are fewer "conservative" posters because conservatism is dead.  The conservative ethos that goes back to William F. Buckley and was brought into a governing coalition by Ronald Reagan doesn't exist anymore.  

    We've just had this conservative/liberal nomenclature for so long that we don't know how to characterize politics without it.  So we fall back on those terms, even though they have nothing to do with our current politics.  There's nothing "conservative" about Trump and Trumpism.

    The real question now is between people who believe we should have an open society (i.e., open to new ideas, people, trade, and lifestyles) and those who believe we should have a closed society.  The parties haven't yet shaken out that dichotomy, but they're starting to do so.

    Since this is an educated board, most of us fall on the side of the openers.  I'm solidly on that side.

    • Like 2
  7. 56 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

    I don't think having a smaller government keeps this stuff from happening in the first place, it just changes how it happens. While Ghost of LL has made some very good posts, I think he's a bit off in his take on the robber barons' opposition to using government to enrich themselves. There wasn't as much use of the government for self-enrichment because there was much less government, so less need to do so. When there's no regulatory system to speak of, you don't need to capture that system to enrich yourself. You just do your dirty work directly. But they had no problem using the government when it benefited them. Just look at their history of hiring police and even enlisting the aid of the US Army as strikebreakers.

    There have always been people who want everything and will do anything to get it. How they obtain everything they get their hands on may vary based on their environments, but at the end of the day their only goal is more. However, I do think Ghost of LL is right that that sense of noblesse oblige some of them had is now mostly gone, and the hatred for the poor is new (most robber barons probably used to essentially ignore the poor until they went to church on Sundays and were reminded that the people they were crushing were actually people like them). I'm not fully sure what explains that, but I think the writings of Ayn Rand certainly contributed.

    I think these are both very good critiques of my comments.  You're exactly right that the robber barons of the Gilded Age didn't leverage the government to increase their wealth primarily (solely?) because there wasn't much government to leverage.  So I don't think I should leave the impression that their failure to do so was out of some sense of democratic propriety or altruism.  I'm sure it wasn't.  I think my only point in that regard should be that, whatever the reason, they didn't leverage the government in the way the current robber barons do.  And that bodes very ill for the government as an institution.

    As to your Ayn Rand point, I would posit that the current form of evangelical Christianity, which has become the official religion of the GOP, has a lot more to do with it.  Under that perverse heresy, the rich are rich because God wants them to be rich (presumably because of some spiritual superiority), and the poor are poor because God wants that, too.  And so the poor aren't just materially lacking--they're somehow spiritually infirm.  Indeed, they're probably damned.  That damnation reflects some spiritual failing that is worthy not of sympathy, but of condemnation and disdain.

    But at the end of the day--KE has it right.  It's all about avarice.  The prosperity-gospel heresy is just a way to justify their greed; to cloak their wickedness in righteousness.  To the extent such wickedness even needs a justification in an era when nothing matters.

    • Like 3
  8. I hope that's not true.  There's a way to prevent it at the ballot box starting this November.  

    And I've come increasingly to believe that doing so is a matter of national survival.

  9. 2 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

    used to be we got institutions like vanderbilt university. now we get trump university.

    Or Carnegie Mellon University or Stanford University.  Or for that matter any number of hospitals, libraries, and parks.

    When was the last time you heard of that kind of philanthropy?

     

     

     

    And no--paying the difference between a utilitarian TXDOT-funded bridge over the Trinity River and one designed by an overrated Spaniard doesn't count.

    • Like 1
  10. 13 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

    I think there is something to be said about how the post-WWII era confiscatory tax rates helped shape cultural norms that stigmatized extreme wealth, but the rich being rapacious being a new thing?  When you take the shackles off, that’s what they do - the more they get the wetter their appetite becomes.  Look at the gilded age and the Victorian era. We’ve seen this shit before. 

    From what I understand we're now approaching (and may have exceeded) Gilded Age levels of wealth inequality.  

    But regardless, I disagree with your conclusion.  The robber barons were indeed rapacious.  But there is are two critical differences:

    1) The Gilded Age rich used their enterprises to feed their greed.  The desperately wanted the government not to interfere with their fleecing of the masses (whether it be by breaking up trusts or imposing safety/workplace standards or permitting labor organization).  

    In contrast, the rich today use the government directly to increase their wealth by transferring it from the poor, instituting subsidies (both direct and indirect), and regulating out competition.  

    2) Both out of a belief in American meritocracy and out of a sense of self-preservation, the robber barons spent more on philanthropic endeavors and supported some limited progressive public policies.  For the most part, we don't see that today.  

    Instead, the very rich today are dead set against any change.  They act as though they can keep a hold of this pressure cooker by just tightening down the clamps further.  It's the same thing the Russian aristocracy thought in 1910.  They were wrong.

    • Like 3
  11. There is no Tahoe wing of the Republican party. There WAS a Tahoe wing of the party. Brisket, GoLL, longhornmatt and others were in it, but they have a sense of decency and propriety and have abandoned ship rather than sink with the mutated shitrats.
    Now it's just Tahoe and a bunch of racist shitheads he says he doesn't support, but will reliably bring donuts for and volunteer 3 1/2 full work weeks a year to help further their anti-American agenda. 
     

    Aww—that’s the first time anybody ever said I have a sense of decency.

    Thanks, man.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    • Like 1
  12. 1 minute ago, David Dennison said:

    It's amazing how stupid this White House thinks the people who voted for Donald Trump are.

    Well, at least I agree with them on something.

  13. This Don Blankenship thing is completely hilarious.  If you were to come to me and say, "Ghost--who would be the absolute worst fucking candidate in the world for the Republicans to put up against one of the endangered Democratic senators," I'd say "well, that's hard to say, since I don't know every person in North Dakota, Missouri, Montana, Indiana, and West Virginia, but I'm sure there are a lot of abysmal people."

    "But Ghost--if you had to choose . . . ."

    Well--it'd be hard to go against that asshole mine owner who killed a bunch of mine workers in West Virginia.

  14. Wait--Tahoe has a "wing" of the party?  I don't think that's right--"blind loyalist" isn't a wing of any party.  Anatomically speaking, he's the appendix of the party.  Nobody's sure why he'd still be there, but there is he is anyway and damned if he's going to leave willingly. 

    • Like 1
  15. 1 hour ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

    Newish here, SKJ. Not sure if you shared, but I'd be interested to know what the heck is going on with this post. Former LEO? Military?

    Former house painter.

  16. On 5/4/2018 at 8:42 AM, Burt said:

    Tester in Montana will be almost a dead heat.  If the western dems turn out he'll eek out a win.  If not, he's done.  He has no support at all in the eastern counties other than rez counties.

    Heitkamp isn't winning ND.  That's still Trump country.  

    I'm curious to know your basis on Heitkamp, because my understanding is that she is a lot safer than Tester, Donnelly, or McCaskill.

    North Dakota is unique in several respects, all of which favor Heitkamp in this election:

    1) North Dakota is a small state from a population standpoint, but a very large state from a geographic standpoint.  That means that it is easy enough to meet all of the voters in North Dakota, but the travel time involved makes it time-consuming.  

    That's a feature of North Dakota politics that really favors the incumbent more so than other states.  For that reason, incumbents just don't lose that often in North Dakota, irrespective of party.  It's been 30 years since a sitting senator lost reelection; 34 years since a sitting governor lost reelection.

    And say what you want about Heidi Heitkamp--she's a damned good retail campaigner.  That she won in 2012 was something of a miracle, and it was based entirely on how hard she worked at retail campaigning.  That hasn't changed over the last six years--if anything, she's gotten better.

    2) North Dakota has a tradition of agriculture-based socialism that you don't see in states like Montana or Missouri.  It also has a large Native American population that votes fairly reliably Democratic (though not as reliably as some other minority groups).  For that reason, Heitkamp's seat has been in Democratic-NPL hands since 1960, and both of North Dakota's senators were Democratic-NPL as recently as 2010.

    3) Hand-in-hand with that agricultural-based socialistic political culture is a(n over-)reliance on government and constituent services.  And everything I've heard is that Heitkamp is a champ at constituent services.  And in a state that size, helping out one family is going to get a shocking percentage of the electorate on your side.

    At exactly the same time she's doing good constituent services work, Trump is starting a trade war that is going to hammer North Dakota's exports of soybeans to China.  That's going to be a real tough environment for Cramer to run in.

  17. So disappointing—a whole evening in London and not a single stabbing. And don’t think there weren’t people worth stabbing. Like that fat fuck in the Chelsea jersey. Or the hot brunette in the leather skirt—I’d like to have stabbed her. In her butt. With my dick.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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    • Haha 1
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