Liberal democrat Maureen Dowd is not exactly thrilled with her party’s impending nominee. Hey! why should we be the only ones with a crappy, hideously undesirable candidate?
[T]he email transgression is not a one off. It’s part of a long pattern of ethical slipping and sliding, obsessive secrecy and paranoia, and collateral damage.
Comey’s verdict that Hillary was “negligent†was met with sighs rather than shock. We know who Hillary and Bill are now. We’ve been held hostage to their predilections and braided intrigues for a long time. (On the Hill, Comey refused to confirm or deny that he’s investigating the Clinton Foundation, with its unseemly tangle of donors and people doing business with State.)
We’re resigned to the Clintons focusing on their viability and disregarding the consequences of their heedless actions on others. They’re always offering a Faustian deal. This year’s election bargain: Put up with our iniquities or get Trump’s short fingers on the nuclear button.
Now she’s complaining. I don’t exactly remember, but I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that Maureen Dowd was a staunch MoveOn.org supporter, back when Republicans were trying to bring Bill to justice.
My wife and I bought a new BMW in the early 1980s (Our first new car!). It was terrific, fun to drive, luxurious and reliable. We sold it about ten years later. It had over 350,000 miles on the original engine.
We bought another new Beemer more recently. I discovered, too late, that it came with run-flat tires (no traction at all on gravel roads –Virginia Horse Country is full of gravel roads, and we lived on one–, accompanied by constant false electronic warnings of low tire pressure) which proved good for 10,000 miles. The run-flat tires were used because BMW (encouraged by government bureaucrats to save energy by reducing weight) had chosen to eliminate the spare tire.
What really burned my cork, though, was the discovery that the engine had no dipstick, no way to check the oil. The owner is intended to rely entirely on the dashboard computer, the same computer that issues “The World Is Ending! The Sky Is Falling! Your Engine Has Blown Up!” warnings in very cold weather, or anytime (easily) blocked engine or trunk compartment drains cause wiring to get wet.
I’ve recognized myself the same characteristics of modern consumer products Oilman2 inveighs against. I agree with him. I’ve been swearing lately that my next automobile is going to have been made on the other side of 1960, back when cars were made out of steel, not plastic, and had distributors and carburetors you could adjust yourself and no goddamned computers or emissions crap.
When you buy a car, it is designed for a maximum lifespan of about 10 years, but many are designed with even less. This gives the “design engineer†a window of materials within which he can operate. As an example, cars from the 1950’s used metal dashboards. Now, many reasons are given for why plastic and foam dashboards are currently used, including safety. But I will posit here that the safety was secondary and a great sales driver for using a lower cost material. …
Have you ever owned a car you wanted to keep, only to have the dashboard crack? The air conditioning vents crack? The control knobs crack? That is UV light doing what it does, breaking things down by shattering chemical bonds. …
As a long term material, plastic… well, it just sucks. …
My buddy George was lamenting to me just the other day that the starter on his tractor has a plastic gear that contacts and spins the flywheel. Yep – it goes out very regularly. He asked them why they no longer made a metal one, and was told that the plastic design “put less stress and wear on the flywheelâ€. Seriously? Really? A part that is truly designed to fail regularly, to protect another metal part that rarely, if ever, fails? I have replaced ONE (1) flywheel in my almost 60 years, and it was damaged by an idiot that just kept cranking a worn out starter. …
In a world where things cost what they are actually worth, it is nuts to knowingly buy anything you will be forced to purchase again in a few years. Today, things do not cost what they are worth – they are cheap, built cheaply with minimal cost materials and minimal standards. They are built in what I term ‘justenuf’ style – justenuf to work for a job or two. They are cheap in America due to the strong dollar as well, further fueling this morass of planned obsolescence, cheap plastic junk and ‘justenuf construction’. …
So my advice is pretty simple:
Buy items that you can repair
This may mean buying older things and restoring them to service. A 1960’s or earlier vehicle will be restorable for a cost of around $10-20,000. What does a new vehicle cost? Can you work on it yourself? Nope, so how much does a trip to the shop cost you? Minimum $500 for the easy things – easily 2x or 3x that for more difficult parts replacement.
What about a lawn mower? Easily $500 or more for something reliable like a Honda or a Husqvarna. A rebuilt one with fresh motor can be had for $300 or less – I see them at the same shops I used to take my mower to for service.
Buy items that have simple, reliable designs
Anything with an ECU (electronic control unit or computer control) is not normally fixable by a guy with some tools. This is intentional, to force you back to the dealer system for service. Anything with computer or digital controls is likely designed in similar vein. Is it really necessary to have touchpad controls and a logic board on a washing machine? To have a refrigerator that has a grocery list linked to your I-phone?
Every time digital is added to a device, the cost goes up for the initial purchase, but the maintenance and repair costs skyrocket. There is little difference in the mechanics internally – freon and compressor for a fridge or freezer and timing circuits and solenoids for the washer. The ‘digital’ end is another level of complexity tacked on to make a common item appear more “tech-ish†and new again.
Buy new items with fewer tech features – reduce points of failure.
The dialogue mirrored most sane reader’s thoughts during the issue, but we’re not all monsters. We are just loyal, long-time readers who are sick of our favorite characters being butchered by nose-ringed lesbians for the sake of diversity, and at the apparent expense not just of dialogue, story and creativity but also, it now appears, the commercial success of Marvel’s comic books line. …
Increasing customer frustration at obscure third-wave feminism preoccupations shoehorning their way into Marvel’s comic books is starting to have an effect on sales. It turns out you can’t bully people into caring about “microaggressions.†…
Marvel isn’t getting the message. Its latest comic book character is — wait for it — a fifteen year-old black female Iron Man. That’s right. Tony Stark, the badass, billionaire playboy businessman who has represented the quintessential white American male since the 1960s is to be replaced by a fifteen year-old black girl with an Afro and hooped earrings.
Other comic book publishers are hardly saints, of course. In an issue of DC’s Wonder Woman last year, the popular female superhero complained about a villain “mansplaining†to her before an ally punched him in the face for the crime. “The lasso compels truth, but it can’t stop mansplaining,†declared Wonder Woman as the “bad guy†had his teeth knocked out of his mouth.
The new social political styles seem a weird choice for publishers who have a predominately apolitical — and disproportionately male — audience. …
“We’re seeing the worst falloff of Marvel and DC sales in the store’s 38-year history,†complained one comic book store owner in an industry forum. “Both companies are losing established readers who no longer feel that the company’s output reflects the sort of comics they enjoy.”
On December 1, 1948, two hunters emerged from the cool wetlands of Clarendon, Arkansas, and ambled along a country road. The men—Nash Buckingham and Clifford Green—had spent a long morning in a duck blind and were headed back to Green’s car, on their way home. Buckingham, then sixty-eight years old, was at the time one of the most famous writers in America, a sort of Mark Twain for the hunting set. At Green’s car, they met a warden, who asked to see their hunting licenses. The warden quickly realized that he was in the presence of the celebrated writer. He asked Buckingham if he could see the most famous shotgun in America, Buckingham’s talisman, an inanimate object that the writer had referred to—in loving, animistic terms—in a great number of his stories. The nine-pound, nine-ounce gun was a side-by-side 12-gauge Super Fox custom-made by the A. H. Fox Gun Company in Philadelphia.
The carbon steel plates on the frame were ornately engraved with a leafy scroll. The gun company’s signature fox, nose in the air, was engraved on the floorplate. The barrels had been bored by the renowned barrel maker Burt Becker and delivered 90 percent patterns of shot at 40 feet, an uncharacteristically tight load for a waterfowling shotgun. It was named Bo Whoop. A hunting buddy had designated it so, after the distinct deep, bellowing sound it made upon discharge.
The warden chatted up Buckingham, handling and admiring the writer’s gun, like a kid talking to Babe Ruth while holding the slugger’s bat. At some point during the conversation, the warden laid the gun down on the car’s back fender. Buckingham and Green soon bid the warden farewell and drove off, forgetting about Bo Whoop until many miles into their trip home. In a panic, they turned around and retraced their route, painstakingly eyeing every inch of the road, to no avail.
Buckingham spent the next few years in a desperate hunt for Bo Whoop. He lamented the loss of Bo Whoop in print, likening it to the death of a treasured hunting dog. He took out ads in local newspapers, offering rewards. He befriended local wardens and police, appealing to them to be on the lookout.
He would never find it. …
Sometime in the 1950s a foreman at a sawmill in Savannah, Georgia, was offered an elegant but well-used Fox shotgun with a broken stock. The seller wanted $100. The Savannah foreman took one look at the fractured stock and countered with an offer of $50. The sale was made at that price. The foreman then put the gun in his closet, where it remained for the next three decades.
The foreman’s son, who also lived in Savannah, eventually inherited the gun upon his father’s death. He, too, left the gun in his closet, this time for nearly twenty years. But in 2005, for reasons unknown (the consignor’s family wishes to remain anonymous), he brought the gun to Darlington Gun Works, a South Carolina shop owned by Jim Kelly, a noted gunsmith. The foreman’s son wanted to repair the broken stock. Kelly, a student of hunting history, saw that on the top of the right barrel there was a hand stamp that read: “Made for Nash Buckingham.†On the top of the left barrel: “By Burt Becker Phila. PA.†Kelly was floored. “I couldn’t believe that this gun had walked right in here,â€
Bo Whoop was sold by James D. Julia in 2010 for $201,250. Its purchaser donated the historic shotgun to Ducks Unlimited.
During the eleven years I ran RedState, I worked to actively squash a lot of conspiracy theories. …
My friend Donald Rumsfeld once said that there really are no conspiracies out there because no one can keep a secret. I tend to think he is right.
But there is one conspiracy theory I’m starting to embrace. I’m really coming to believe that Donald Trump is a Bill and Hillary Clinton operation to get Hillary Clinton elected.
A Republican candidate running for office would spend this entire week attacking Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information.
Instead, Trump has attacked Republicans and praised Saddam Hussein.
A Republican candidate running for office would spend lots of time in swing states. Instead, Trump is focused on New York and Scotland.
A Republican candidate, when asked by the New York Times about serving if elected, would mock the reporter and make it clear how he will serve instead of play golf like Barack Obama. Instead, Trump would not commit to actually serving.
Donald Trump managed to get the Republican nomination in a very crowded field by galvanizing only 33% of the Republican vote, a good bit of which was not even Republican, but disaffected, pissed off voters coming into the GOP to support Trump.
Even after all the other candidates dropped out, Trump could not even clear 44% support in the primary.
Trump ran a primary campaign playing to the worst fears and prejudices of a certain set of Americans and was able to consolidate them against 17 other candidates.
Having spent an entire primary on offense, Trump has not spent a single day doing anything other than defense.
I am beginning to believe Trump is a Clinton operation designed to get Hillary elected. Trump is, after all, the only Republican who ran who was a Clinton donor. He is also the only Republican running who called Bill Clinton to discuss running before he even got into the race.
It would take a miracle effectuated by a political genius of the first water to make Hillary electable, especially in this unfavorable year. The Republican presidential nominee in 2016 has the key to the Oval Office in his pocket as long as he is normally presentable and can walk and talk.
Maybe Hillary can win after all, though, because it just so happens that she is married to a political genius of the first water. …
if I were Bill, how on earth could I possibly cause the unamiable, unattractive, scandal-infested, mean old Hillary to win in this most unfavorable year?
Well, what if… what if that slick old Bill actually did think up a way? How could he do it? Well, there is one way, after all. Just suppose it was possible for Bill Clinton to hijack the GOP nomination.
Suppose Bill Clinton figured out the sole, solitary possible way that he could shove a big, fat monkey wrench into the Republican Party’s Presidential Election Campaign’s works.
Let’s say, for instance, that Old Bill knew another feller, that he had a buddy, a good friend, not in politics actually, but a fellow in some respects kind of like himself, brash, shameless, fond of the ladies, appetitive, hugely out-going, and larger-than-life. Bill’s friend, like himself, would be a wealthy and successful person, a celebrity, a performer, and a chap vigorously able to go after what he wants free of ethical inhibitions.
One can picture Bill sitting down with his pal Donald, and saying, “Donald, old boy, I need you to do Hillary and me a solid. The good news is that the whole thing is going to be one of the greatest larks of all time, and together we are going to make history. This is really going to be a hoot! If it works, you get all the billions of dollars of federal contracts, leases, and subsidies you can use, and Hillary will appoint you ambassador to the Court of St. James. If it fails, sheeeit! you get to be president. This is a no-lose operation.â€
And then Bill (behind the scenes) masterminds The Donald’s campaign, knocking out one legitimate GOP candidate after another with shameless insults, abuse, and outright baldfaced lies.
Donald gets the nomination, but it could be that Bill has a plan in mind to sink the Trump campaign right about the end of next September. Photographs of Donald (like Berlusconi) in the sack with some underage girls just happen to fall into the hands of intrepid NY Times reporters in the nick of time. The GOP campaign sinks suddenly in scandal, while Donald smiles over the stories of his sexual prowess, and Hillary coasts in after all.
Donald Trump, last year, is unhappy with the Obama Administration’s mishandling of the economy, foreign policy embarrassments, and the general atmosphere of American decline. He also doesn’t like the Republican emphasis on conservative ideas and he has no sympathy with the rarified idealism of Bush-era Wilsonian Foreign Policy activism. The idea of running in the Republican primaries as a protest candidate has occurred to him.
He would get to ventilate his personal opinions, throw his weight around, and have an impact. Hell, he might win a state or two somewhere. He’d have himself a place in the History books, and as a former presidential candidate he would have a bit more influence and enjoy more respect when he did his business deals. Come to think of it, he would probably even get a little more tail. The aroma of political power does things to chicks.
Trump is reluctant, though, to alienate his pals the Clintons, so he decides to talk it over with Bill. Trump assures Bill that he means Hillary no actual harm, but as Bill thinks about all this, his grin gets wider and wider. Trump running may not really injure Hillary one bit, but it sure could make an unholy mess of the Republican race.
Bill Clinton advises Trump to be himself, and to come out loudly with all the nationalist, protectionist, working-class-hero kind of BS that Jim Webb was peddling in that book of his. What Bill is proposing is, in essence, that Trump should run as a democrat in Republican clothing. The campaign will be all democrat class warfare and promises of special government interventions for Trump’s voters, all served up under a nice Republican sauce made up of flag-waving patriotism.
Obviously, all of this turned out to match the temper of the times, the mood of the low-information voter, perfectly. No one could have predicted that it would sell quite so well, not Bill Clinton, not The Donald himself.
Aren’t all you Trump supporters going to feel dumb, when this is finally confirmed?
