"When He Is Not Delusional, He Is Simply Hypocritical"
Don't feel the Bern; pour some water on it.

The website of Entrepreneur magazine asked me to quickly sketch the case against Bernie Sanders, the very candidate whose praises I semi-sang at Reason.com just a few hours ago.
Here's my take, limited to around 100 words:
"When he is not delusional, he is simply hypocritical. More than any other candidate, he's attacked Uber, one of the great American success stories in recent years, as having 'serious problems' because it undermines taxicab cartels. Yet according to the National Journal, his campaign uses the service 100 percent of the time when it needs rides. The one thing Sanders does want to cut spending on? Elections, naturally, because he pays for his campaigns out of his own pocket. He believes in publicly funded elections. Meaning that you'd be forced to support him (and Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton!) even if you didn't want to. But don't worry, because here, too, the Vermonter is full of Ben & Jerry's: Sanders opted out of public funds in 2016 because 'it just doesn't work.' A government solution that 'just doesn't work'? Sure, let's have more of that."
For the feature, Bill Schulz—you loved him on Fox News Channel's Red Eye and dig him at The New York Times—also dragooned Ann Coulter to pee on Ted Cruz, S.E. Cupp to throw a drink in the face of Donald J. Trump, and Marc Lamont Hill to scald her Holy Empress Hillary Clinton. They all get some great lines off and are well worth checking out.
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No! NO!
Doe and his accuser, "Jane Roe," met during an impromptu gathering at a mutual friend's cocktail party on August 22, 2014. They first had sex that very night. They exchanged friendly text messages the next day, which were later provided as evidence in Doe's favor at his hearing, according to the judge's decision. They eventually had sex a second time.
At the actual hearing?which was attended by both Doe and Roe?Roe's jacket testified that she did not believe "Roe was drunk or otherwise incapacitated when she saw her shortly after her sexual encounter."
Just get married already.
Coulter thinks it's a putdown to call Cruz boring?
Even I wouldn't praise him that much.
Whats the inverse of "Damning with faint praise"? "Lauding with weak derision?"
Boring is possibly the best possible thing one could ask from a candidate in our current state. Remember when everyone thought the "Worst Possible Outcome" was Jeb?
Where's our "Silent Cal?"
If we could inflict every western executive with crippling depression early on in their first term, the world might be a safer, happier place.
Maybe not for them, but creative destruction and all.
I still think Jeb would have been worse than almost any other Republican running.
Hillary, in my opinion, holds the title of "Worst Possible Outcome", with no challengers in view.
The only redeeming aspect of Hillary is that no one likes or even respects her. She would ensure that the GOP maintains control of the Senate and House as well as most of the govs' mansions, which should give us blessed gridlock as well as at least four years of blistering, hilarious hatred of the latest democracy-inflicted travesty.
That cartoon and the related article's comment thread are gold. Before my time but damn, it looked like a fun event!
Tulpa. Also, this:
NEVER FORGET!
That was 4 years ago, brah. Isn't there a statute of limitations on comments?!?!
Absolutely not.
This is personal.
I agree with that, but then I am attracted to men
Just so you are aware, I am man.
So..... Nick fucked Ann Coulter?
This can't be repeated enough: Never put it in crazy.
No, Nick *is* Ann Coulter in a wig and platform shoes.
I think the worst part is that it appears Nick carries a copy of Atlas Shrugged in some kind of bizarre form of peacocking.
Well, The God of the Machine and The Discovery of Freedom are kind of obscure.
No, no, no. Sticking it in crazy is fine. Best sex I've ever had was with crazy. Just give her a fake number afterwards.
And use a condom.
I always figure that went without saying. My wife is the only woman I ever slept with without a condom. My father may be an idiot when it comes to politics and economics, but he wisely told me to always wrap the rascal, even if she says she is on the pill. Then he showed me a picture of a half-brother I have never met. I took his words to heart.
Hey you never know. I'm the one stuck giving the never stick it in crazy speeches to my brother. His Dad is too old and so-con to think about warning him and his step-dad jumped the same crazy half prog/half dem train as my mother, so he can't vocalize that there are women out there who will exploit someone as naive and going into a money making field as my brother.
Good luck to you both. I can't relate being that I have no siblings and was always the guy exploiting the women. Got one to let me live with her for free while I did most of my college. Now she's a spinster. Ha ha!
She lied to me about being on the pill at least once, but I didn't fall for it. Bitch tried to get me to knock her up but I didn't let her. So I don't feel at all guilty about using up her late 20s and early 30s.
Coulter has man hands and an adam's apple. If you're into that more power to you, but that's not my bag, baby.
Coulter?! I thought that was a picture of Jane Goodall and one of her chimps.
OMG!!! austin powers reference! that movie was pretty bad, but people talking like him was unbearable
OMG!!! austin powers reference! that movie was pretty bad, but people talking like him was unbearable
YEAH, BABY, YEAH!
Oh, behave!
This can't be repeated enough: Never put it in crazy.
First of all, it's "never fuck crazier than you".
Second, it's hard to unfuck that which you retroactively realize is crazier than you.
Third, crazy good in bed usually means the crazy doesn't stay in bed.
I speak from experience.
YOU'RE Michael Douglas?????
+1 Play Misty For Me.
Last time I went to the ballot box, someone was collecting signatures for a citizen initiative aimed at increasing the so-called "Clean Election" fund.
In a disruptively loud voice I said something along the lines of "So you support using tax dollars to force people to finance candidates that they don't like rather than candidates relying upon people voluntarily giving them money?"
The guy hesitantly said "Yes." Meanwhile a couple people who were in the process of signing the paper stopped, said "I never thought of it that way," and crossed off their names.
They initiative got the necessary signatures anyway and will no doubt pass (I plan to vote against it and can correctly gauge the outcome of an election by taking the inverse of my ballot), but I did my part.
After the proper vetting of the candidates by committee appointed by the government I'm sure.
And a few people saw the light, if only on that subject. Good.
Sick burn, Nick. Sick.
"If you're feeling the Bern, get some penicillin."
On NPR the other day they were interviewing someone who was organizing Latinos for Bernie. The interviewer asked how "Feel the Bern" translated into Spanish, and she said "That would be inappropriate."
Cochino...
Es TD?
Was that what it was? because i thought it was actually an interesting explication of just how *especially batshit crazy* Sanders is relative to his well-established batshit-crazy competition.
I think one of Nick's points was that Sanders and Trump have exposed the two main parties for what they are. And I think that was the good thing he sees in their campaigns. At least that's how I read it (personally I just see it as the two parties getting even more batshit crazy).
Gillespie can think of something good to say about Bernie and something to slag him for, too. All this bunch could.
Is Rachel Maddow still trying to think of something she disagrees with Barack Obama on?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZcGSfwpdd8
I bet Marc Lamont Hill can think of something he doesn't like about Barack Obama--but Rachel Maddow still can't.
If Coulter can slag Cruz but Maddow still can't slag Obama, that makes Maddow worse than Coulter, right?
And Coulter is pond scum.
Or course Maddow can't think of anything to disagree with Obama on. That would be racist. Straight up.
Coulter wants a place on Trump's staff...
...is the kind of vulgar sexist joke which shows what's wrong with politics in our country today.
So does Christie
Merle Haggard is dead. I was just listening to him the other day.
Merle is squarely in Jesse Walker's beat, so I'm sure there will be a post up today about it.
You don't have to call me Merle Haggard...
About an hour ago I saw Uncle Jesse drive by in an ancient pickup truck.
Is there a libertarian take on Merle Haggard?
I could see David Allan Coe.
Pot?
Steve Earle wrote one tremendous song with a libertarian bent. Then he got clean and became Bubbles' sponsor. Not cool.
+2 turrs of duty in Viet NAM
Don't forget his curse that he put on Buddy Holly's plane ("I hope yer plane crashes").
Tonight the bottle let me down
And let your memory come around
The one true friend I thought I'd found
Tonight the bottle let me down
Goddamit
Which one is beauty is which one is the beast?
She's been an insider for over three decades while doing crazy shit and then pretending it didn't happen. All the money she's taken from questionable sources for the Clinton Foundation and fossil fuel people? Egregious. Meanwhile, we're all like Charlie Brown with the damn football.
i thought that was the best of the bunch.
That would actually make a pretty good Friday Funnies toon.
Of course, Universal Uclick would probably shut it down.
possibly the dumbest of the bunch =
""It would be crazy to vote for Donald Trump because, among many other reasons, 'Nukes for Everyone!' is quite possibly the single dumbest foreign policy proposal ever conjured by a human. Anyone who thinks that peeling back our relatively inexpensive aid and military support to our foreign allies and allowing them to nuclear arm instead is an idea worth voicing out loud shouldn't be allowed within 100 miles of our own nukes""
(me mentioning this will be spun as "Defense of Trump" obviously)
i wasn't aware Trump actually even proposed such a thing, but the way Cupp is here describing it is that "forcing allies to take responsibility for their own security" is tantamount to insisting "Everyone have Nukes"
Its a non-sequitur. If other countries were responsible for their own security, they'd be *far more likely* to engage in direct negotiations with their neighbors and adversaries to ensure better relations than when they've got Big Sugar Daddy USA With Guns backing up their every move.
Also, 'having nukes' isn't something most (or many) countries need or want or could actually use in any practical way. Iran or Pakistan might be problems, but nothing we do will really stop them. We're hardly making their relations with their neighbors any better by pretending to have some interest in defending Saudi Arabia, Israel or India from them.
S.E Cupp, tho. C'mon, bro.
I don't know him really. I've heard the name.
Isn't it cute when Gilmore pretends he is not a creep?
What?
(looks up Cupp)
Oh, its a woman. And she's kind of hot.
How does that make me a creep?
It doesn't.
Trump has mentioned Japan and South Korea arming themselves with nukes several times. Here is just one instance.
great.
That still has almost nothing to do with what i said = which is that what was described ("nukes for everyone") isn't either practical or possible, and that the idea of ""peeling back our relatively inexpensive aid and military support to our foreign allies and allowing them to nuclear arm"" isn't necessarily de-facto a bad thing anyway.
And not that it should need re-stating, but that's *NOT FUCKING DEFENDING TRUMP*
its pointing out that the criticism SE Cupp makes is stupid. whether trump said it, or anyone else said it - "peeling back our military support for X-group of allies" would necessarily result in Europe, Israel, India, Saudi Arabia, etc. taking greater responsibility for their own security, and would necessitate more-direct engagement between themselves in their adversaries. Would some conflicts likely erupt? possibly.
But the de-facto assumption that 'everyone would just nuke-up' is stupid by itself; and if some in fact did (like Japan or SK) I'm not sure why that's supposed to be a bad thing.
your cited 'source' is most notable for its headline - which is that trump's "foreign policy" is like every other aspect of his campaign = a conceptual mush that hardly has any internal consistency in a given moment, much less as time passes.
If someone were to write a good 100-word criticism, they'd be better off pointing THAT out, and nailing him for being an empty bubble that people project their own angst onto. Trying to pin down his Foreign Policy views and extrapolate some major shift in global national security from it is epic-stupid.
"and if some in fact did (like Japan or SK) I'm not sure why that's supposed to be a bad thing."
I saw someone claiming that Japan or SK having nukes instead of the US having nukes is bad in case SK or Japan suddenly go dictatorship on us. So pretty much just irrational fears.
It's not like he is proposing anything that wouldn't happen naturally.
South Korea has built itself into a state of readiness, and is at a point where they can create nuclear weapons in about a year if they find themselves needing too. And two thirds of their population want nukes of their own instead of relying on America. South Korea is already ready to take over their own defense and has a nuclear weapons program ready to start building.
Why is that mump-addled gorilla staring lasciviously at slutty Mother Theresa?
+1,000 internets
""Even if he won the nomination, Cruz is a stiffer, cornier, less likable version of Romney. He couldn't pick up one state Romney won, and might lose a few. And even if none of that were true, the Supreme Court will rule that Cruz [a Canadian] is ineligible to be president. They've already ruled nearly a dozen times on what constitutes a 'natural born citizen' ? a legal term of art going back a few centuries in British Common law, and a constitutional requirement to be president. Cruz isn't that, he was indisputably born in Canada to non-military, non-ambassador parents. He's also easily the most boring candidate of my lifetime.""
Can we just agree that Ann Coulter is actually Trump in drag?
If he's stiffer, maybe Coulter would rather be on his staff.
Even if he won the nomination, Cruz is a stiffer, cornier, less likable version of Romney.
I honestly don't think Cruz has much of anything in common with Romney.
Delusions of Yahweh and eternal life.
And, she's a terrible lawyer. Cruz is a natural-born citizen.
http://harvardlawreview.org/20.....n-citizen/
I have no idea what any of you are talking about.
Except, of course, for the part where Sanders is nuts.
What are you, his defense attorney?
He's not nuts, he's plain old wrong.
Red Eye really went downhill after Schulz bailed. I like Gutfeld and Levy and most of their guests, but Bill had the magic touch.
Gutfeld left Red Eye a while ago.
Agreed. The show was entertaining when they had someone who would cross the line, or push the envelope, or just be strange. Breitbart was good at that, too.
About the same time Fox finally got hdcontentdump03 banned from youtube, so I haven't seen an episode in ages.
Oops, that was aimed at Dissident.
And yeah, it was the perfect answer to the liberal claim on humor.
I've got a couple coworkers who think Coulter is hot. I don't get it. Between the shrill voice and the Adam's apple... No. Just... no.
They must be looking at her hair. A hot girl is hot no matter what she does with her hair. Picture Coulter with short, frizzy, dark hair -- and then tell me you think she's pretty.
Yes, this is really Ann Coulter
What's hypocritical is a Marxist complaining about a business model that allows workers to own their capital and make up their own hours, in defense of an entrenched union that charges workers hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of driving a cab.
Did you bother to read the next sentence?
Yes, hence I'm explaining what's really hypocritical. Especially since Sanders can wriggle out of Nick's charge in the same way Trump wriggles out of the eminent domain point.
There's more than one way to be hypocritical about Uber, and Bernie manages to do that.
I think it's usually the city that charges for the privilege of driving a cab and artificially limits the number of licenses.
I did mean to say cartel, not union. But Nick used the word cartel, and I didn't want to be a biter. And the established cab companies were involved with the medallion system.
Innovation is unDemocratic.
Tonight the bottle let me down
And let your memory come around
The one true friend I thought I'd found
Tonight the bottle let me down
Elvis Costello did the absolute bestest version of this song. I kid you not.
Agree to disagree.
Ah yeah. I don't even know what to say to Brooks' contention.
He must be looking for a little peace, love and understanding.
We all know there is nothing funny about that.
Can someone explain the birther argument on Cruz? It seems like it might be the only such argument that makes sense or doesn't require believing in a vast conspiracy. McCain was born to a Military father on US soil in Panama. So, it never made sense to say he wasn't a natural born US citizen. Obama claimed to be born in Hawaii. So believing he wasn't a natural born citizen required believing in a vast conspiracy that covered up the fact that he was born in Kenya and that went on for decades long predating his desire to run for President and was created for a reason no one seems to be able to explain.
Cruz admits he was born in Canada and not on a US enclave. Yes, one of his parents was American. But is it s completely settled issue that "natural born" means having a citizen parent? That being born on US soil or to parents who are US citizens and residents at the time of your birth is a requirement? I honestly have no idea. But the issue doesn't seem to want to die (Coulter mentions it). Does it have any merit?
The definition I've heard (and which makes sense) is that natural born citizen means exactly what it sounds like - that you were a citizen at the instant of birth. Under that definition, Cruz is a citizen because he was born to an American mother and did not have to go through any naturalization process, therefore he is a natural born citizen.
That is what I would think. And I think by current standards and understanding that is exactly what it means. I am, however, less familiar with what the term meant in the 18th Century. It is entirely possible that to the drafters of the Constitution, "natural born" meant "born on US soil". I don't know that they thought that but it is not impossible.
If they did, you have to admit God has one hell of a sense of humor as you watched Mr. Originalist Cruz argue that the original intent doesn't matter all of the time.
I dropped a linky above that goes into detail, but that's basically it.
If you are a citizen when born, you are a natural-born citizen.
If you have to go through a naturalization process, then you are a naturalized citizen.
Its not super-difficult.
Sure it is not, if the terms mean and were meant to mean as you define them. That, however, is hardly a certainty. The 18th Century often defined terms differently than we do today.
From the article above:
While some constitutional issues are truly difficult, with framing-era sources either nonexistent or contradictory, here, the relevant materials clearly indicate that a "natural born Citizen" means a citizen from birth with no need to go through naturalization proceedings.
As to the British practice, laws in force in the 1700s recognized that children born outside of the British Empire to subjects of the Crown were subjects themselves and explicitly used "natural born" to encompass such children.
No doubt informed by this longstanding tradition, just three years after the drafting of the Constitution, the First Congress established that children born abroad to U.S. citizens were U.S. citizens at birth, and explicitly recognized that such children were "natural born Citizens."
Still not super-difficult.
The argument is that Congress is not required to consider children born to American parents abroad to be automatic citizens. The reason you get automatic citizenship being born to an American citizen is that citizenship goes to all who are subject to the laws of the sovereign. This is why someone like McCain is clearly natural born. His father was in the Navy and subject to the laws of the sovereign United States. Cruz's case is however different because his parents were legal residents of Canada at the time of his birth. They were not subject to the laws of the sovereign. The only reason Curz has citizenship is because Congress says he gets it. He didn't get it in the same way someone born on US soil or born to a citizen who resided in the US at the time but was traveling abroad when they gave birth does. Those people get citizenship no matter what The Constitution guarantees it. People like Cruz don't. The Constitution doesn't guarantee it. Congress could change the naturalization laws and say that children born to American citizens not residing abroad and not doing governmental business do not get automatic citizenship if it wanted to.
I don't know that I buy that argument. But it is cogent and the issue hardly as self evident as the people who wrote the Harvard Note pretend it is.
So I'm curious John. Does it make any kind of logical sense to you that an American citizens child born abroad wouldn't be an American citizen? Do you, for instance, see people forced to leave their child on the aircraft when unloading from an airplane because their child was born in Spain and doesn't have a passport?
You're really going the extra mile for Trump on this one.
Just to make an unclear sentence clear, I mean
Congress could change the naturalization laws and say that children born to American citizens residing abroad and not doing governmental business are not automatically considered citizens.
Congress in 1789 said you're considered a natural-born citizen if you're born abroad to an American father.
So, unless we argue that the First Congress misinterpreted the Constitution, we're left with the argument that it was Cruz's *mother,* not his father, who was the American citizen in this situation.
The laws certainly were sexist back then, and one could argue that this sexism was incorporated by implication in the definition of natural-born citizenship.
Of course, since 1789 Congress has acted to provide for the citizenship of persons born abroad to American mothers. But one could argue that modern Congressional legislation is (as it were) trumped by those sexist Founders.
But since the Founders didn't mention sex, I think it would be just inviting trouble to read sex into their terminology, especially when a more economical explanation is available - citizenship at birth - which addresses the Founders' concerns about foreign influence on the Presidency.
Here's Coulter's column on it.
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2016-01-13.html
She's wrong about this:
Because Cruz's citizenship comes from the law, not the Constitution, as late as 1934, he would not have had "any conceivable claim to United States citizenship. For more than a century and a half, no statute was of assistance.
Since a statute passed in the 1790s was crystal clear that Cruz would have been a natural born citizen.
Perhaps the biggest stolen base is this, though:
A child born to American parents outside of U.S. territory may be a citizen the moment he is born -- but only by "naturalization," i.e., by laws passed by Congress. If Congress has to write a law to make you a citizen, you're not "natural born."
Horseshit. Congress passes laws all the time that explicate what a Constitutional phrase means in application. If a law says that you are natural born within the meaning of the Constitution if you are born abroad to one US citizen, then you are natural born for all purposes.
She basically is arguing that a British case from 1600 concluding that a Scot was a natural born citizen of whatever realms his king ruled, governs US Constitutional interpretation. She's pushing pure jus soli, which none of the Founders adhered to. What we have from the Founders is that being born in the US or abroad of a US citizen counts as "natural born".
Since a statute passed in the 1790s was crystal clear that Cruz would have been a natural born citizen.
Congress has the right to determine who is a citizen. It does not have the right to determine who is a natural born citizen. If it did, the requirement would be a dead letter, since Congress would be free to define "natural born" to mean any citizen.
Congress has never passed a law saying "everyone born on US soil to a US citizen is a citizen". Why? It didn't have to. The Constitution says that. As evidenced by the 1790 statute, is did pass a law saying people in Cruz's position were automatically citizens. Why? Because they are not automatic citizens under the Constitution and Congress had to use its naturalization power to make them so.
The crux of the dispute is whether "natural born" means "a citizen from the moment of birth" as defined by Congress or does it mean "a citizen from the moment of birth by virtue of being a citizen as defined by the Constitution". I don't think the answer is so obvious. The reason why children of English subjects were automatically considered English citizens is because England considered all English citizens who lived abroad to be subjects of the king. It is not clear the founders thought of it that way. If they did, they would have seen no need to pass the 1790 law and Congress would not have the power to deny automatic citizenship to children born to American citizens living abroad.
The whole "Natural Born Citizen" issue boils down, in the end, to two schools of thought about what is meant by "Natural Born Citizen" ("NBC").
The first challenges to Obama's "NBC" status were based on the claim that somehow BHO was born in Kenya rather than Hawaii and that since his mother was only eighteen at the time she did not meet the residency requirements for a lone US citizen parent to have her child be a citizen at birth.
However after those first challenges came up a new one came up based on the writings of a Swiss-French philosopher named Emerich de Vattel which said that in order for someone to be a "Natural Born Citizen" one had to not only be born within the USA but also to have both* parents be citizens (NBC or naturalized, didn't matter) at the time of birth.
So there you have it, do we define a "Natural Born Citizen" according to the writings of some old frog bastard writing in the 17th century, or do we go by what we understand the three words to mean in light of legislation (given that under the COTUS Congress was given power over issues of immigration, naturalization and citizenship) and 17th century common law understanding (as well as the law in most of the 13 colonies)
*Actually some interpretations of Vattel would make it so that only the father needed to be a citizen, but that's another matter. Being a frog in the 18th century, it's easy to imagine that he was a sexist old bastard. 🙂
Time travelling frogs!!
It's not a big deal, we've had a Canadian-born President before.
I suppose it isn't completely settled in that there hasn't been any court case or anything to resolve the question.
I find the argument that "Natural Born" is as opposed to "Naturalized" pretty convincing, though. Seems like the president being a citizen from birth is what the founders were after.
I wonder how this could be settled. Is there any other way besides someone like Cruz getting elected? And in that case, who has standing to challenge it?
Maybe challenge his ballot access?
OT:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....cious.html
Immunity is a bitch.
He looks like every white college student.
Shopkeepers board up their windows, bracing for...did you say *white* college student?
Planet of the Gillesapes
Super-Shitty Attempt at Financial Services Rule-Making by Lizzie Warren Ends Up Slightly Less Shitty
You have got to be kidding me that makes no sense dude.
http://www.Web-Privacy.tk