— You can’t actually be serious.

This isn’t verbatim, but it’s pretty close to an actual conversation I had over the holidays. I’d said I hadn’t yet completely decided who I was going to support in the Iowa Democratic Caucus. Which is true. I’m leaning toward Bernie, but I won’t rule out supporting Hillary. I like them both, though in different ways and for different reasons.

— You can NOT vote for Hillary. You just can’t.
— Well, yeah, I actually can. And I might.
— No, be serious. She’s a puppet of the oligarchy.
— Six weeks ago you didn’t even know what ‘oligarchy’ meant.
— I know now, and voting for Hillary is like willfully voting to destroy democracy.
— Oh, well there’s nothing completely fucking insane about that comment.
— She’s in Wall Street’s pocket. She’s as bad as the Republicans.
— Oh? As bad as Trump?
— Well…
— Rubio? Cruz? She’s as bad as Bush Three or Fiorina. Or Christie. Or Carson?
— Almost. You can’t trust her.
— You can’t trust any politician a hundred percent.
— You can trust Bernie.

Young Bernie Sanders

— I like Bernie, but c’mon. It’s not like he’s the Chosen One. He’s a good man, but he’s not necessarily the guy I’d pick to carry the One Ring to Mount Doom and chuck it into the fire.
— Hillary would use the One Ring. In place of a Dark Lord, she would set up a Queen, and…wait, what I’m saying is she’ll say or promise anything to get elected. Totally untrustworthy. Her policies suck.
— What does that even mean, ‘her policies suck’? Which policies suck?
— Her policy on the TPP. Bernie is opposed to it, and so is Elizabeth Warren.
— Do you even know what the TPP is? Or what it does?
— You’re telling me you support the TPP?
— Parts of it, sure. I like that it requires other nations to give more respect to copyright law. Other parts, not so much. And by the way, Hillary doesn’t support the final version of the TPP. She supported an earlier version of it. She changed her mind because the new version gives too much protection to pharmaceutical corporations.
— Bernie has always opposed it. That’s the thing. Hillary supported the invasion of Iraq, now she doesn’t. She was against gay marriage, now she supports it. She supported the TTP, now she doesn’t. She doesn’t have any core beliefs. Bernie’s always consistent.
— Not always. He’s slowly changing his views on guns.
— Well, guns.
— And pot. He changed his views on legalizing marijuana.
— Did he? Well, that’s different.
— And his political affiliation. First he was a Socialist, then an Independent, now he’s a Democrat.
— Well, you know, times change, you get new information, and sometimes you have to…you know.
— Exactly.
— But that doesn’t justify supporting Hillary.
— I haven’t said I am supporting Hillary. I said I haven’t decided. Times change, new information, all that. I could support either of them. Or Martin O’Malley, for that matter.
— O’Malley doesn’t have a chance.
— People said Bernie didn’t have a chance.
— That’s different.
— Look, Democrats have three candidates, all of whom are better prepared to lead the nation than any of the Republicans.
— Yeah, but Bernie is the only one who can change the system. He’s the only candidate that doesn’t accept corporate money. He’s the only one who has any hope of keeping the big banks honest.
— Because he’s pure of heart.
— Well, yeah, sort of.
— My good blade carves the casques of men, my tough lance thrusteth sure, my strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.
— What?
— Galahad. The poem? Galahad achieved the Grail, and all that because his heart was pure.
— What the hell are you talking about?
— I’m talking about the most annoying trait of Hillary-haters, and that seems to include a growing number of Bernie supporters. I’m talking about the tendency to attribute Hillary’s policy positions malevolence and corruption, while attributing Bernie’s to virtue and integrity.
— Bernie’s a good man.
— Yes, he is, and he might make a good president. Jimmy Carter was also a good man..Hell, he’s still a good man…but he wasn’t a very effective president, was he.
— I’d rather have a good man in the White House than…don’t do that gender thing on me; you know what I mean. I’d rather have a good person in the White House than an effective corrupt one. Wouldn’t you?
— I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. But it’s easier to remain a good person when you’re representing a state that has the population of Nashville, Tennessee. When you represent six hundred thousand people in a nation of three hundred and twenty million, you don’t get challenged to make as many political compromises. Hillary has been dealing with international issues for decades. She’s had to make lots of compromises. Is her heart as pure as Bernie’s? No, of course not, how could it be? Does that mean she’s corrupt? No, it doesn’t.
— So you think Hillary Clinton is pure as snow?

Young Hillary Rodham

— No, of course not. I’m pretty sure she’s pulled some shady shit as Secretary of State. That’s part of the gig, pulling shady shit. What I’m saying is that she’s been playing on a much larger and much more complex stage, and that necessarily means she’s had to wade in more shit than Bernie has.
— Which makes her dirtier.
— Yeah, it does. It also means she has more experience in handling shit, and being president is a job where experience can really matter.
— But I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. I want to vote for somebody I respect.
— Then support Bernie. I’m probably going to.
— Then why are you arguing for Hillary?
— I’m not. I’m arguing against a false dichotomy. I’m arguing against the way Bernie and Hillary are being represented by a lot of Bernie supporters. I’m saying this isn’t a choice between Good and Evil. It’s more a choice between Good, Better, and Best.
— Yeah, I don’t know about that. How can Bernie be Best if Hillary is Better?
— Okay, forget that metaphor. Try this. Hillary has been around the block a few times. She knows her way around the block. Bernie might not be as familiar with the block, but maybe he can find a better, straighter path. Does that work for you?
— Maybe. I’ll have to think about it.
— All I’m saying is that they’d both get us around the block. I’m saying we can see Bernie as a hero without making Hillary a villain. I’m saying Bernie can be Frodo without Hillary being Saruman.
— Sauron.
— What?
— Sauron. Sauron’s totally evil. Saruman was once good. He was the head of the White Council, who…
— Jeebus on toast. This is exactly what I’m talking about. Hillary is NOT Sauron.
— Saruman then.
— No. Are you fucking kidding me?
— How about Bill Ferny?
— Who?
— That guy from Bree? You remember, the one who sold the hobbits the half-starved pony?
— Oh yeah. I always liked that pony. I always feel bad when I read that part where it gets chased away by that thing with the tentacles.
— He was a good pony.
— But you’re still doing it. You’re saying Hillary would be cruel to animals and snitch on the hobbits to the Nazgûl.
— Okay. Yeah, Hillary probably wouldn’t snitch to the Nazgûl.
— That’s a start.
— But Bernie would fight to get a living wage for the orcs.
— I need a drink.

Did you see the GOP bun-fight Tuesday night? I did. And I was reminded of Aristotle. No, seriously, I was. Aristotle, you see, believed the brain’s function was to cool the blood, and wasn’t involved in the thought process at all. The Republican presidential candidates seemed to supply supporting evidence for that.

Did you ever see such an astonishing display of hubris and ignorance? Well, yeah, if you’ve watched earlier GOP debates, you probably have. And if you lived through the George W. Bush presidency, you definitely have. But still, damn. It wasn’t just the depth of their ignorance, it was the grand scope of it. They were deeply and profoundly ignorant about SO many things.

Republican Presidential Debate

I mean, Trump — no, wait, I’ll come back to Trump. Let’s talk about Carly Fiorina first. She said this (and I’m not making this up):

Soon after 9/11, I got a phone call from the NSA. They needed help. I gave them help. I stopped a truckload of equipment. I had it turned around. It was escorted by the NSA into headquarters.

Equipment! A whole truckload of it! She had it turned around! Vote for Carly! She has the experience a leader needs. If that leader needs to turn around a truckload of equipment. Did Obama ever turn around a truckload of equipment? Hell no.

Carly Fiorina Intercepts a Truck filled with Equipment.

Carly also revealed her strategy to fight ISIL — just get the right generals.

One of the things I would immediately do, in addition to defeating them here at home, is bring back the warrior class — Petraeus, McChrystal, Mattis, Keane, Flynn. Every single one of these generals I know. Every one was retired early because they told President Obama things that he didn’t want to hear.

Every single one of those generals retired early — because they said things Obama didn’t want to hear. Every single one. Except General Petraeus, who was forced to resign after an investigation revealed he’d given classified material to a reporter. A reporter he was enthusiastically boinking. And except Gen. McChrystal, who resigned when he was found to have violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is a court-martial offense. And then there’s Gen. Keane, who resigned five years before President Obama took office. The other two generals? Well, two out of five ain’t bad.

But Carly was a Rhodes scholar compared to Trump, who said — no, not yet. I’ll come back to Trump. Let’s talk about Chris Christie, who (honest, I’m not making this up) said:

I’d say to (Vladimir Putin), “Listen, Mr. President, there’s a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.” And yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that [I] was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now.

It’s that easy, if you’re the Governor of New Jersey. Just tell folks “Hey, no-fly zone, clear your ass outa here.” Except that there are a LOT of different national air forces banging around in the sky over Syria. The U.S. and Russians, of course, but also the French, the British, the Turks, and the Saudis, as well as occasional raids by aircraft from the U.A.E. and Qatar and Bahrain and Jordan. Most of these are nations are near-neighbors of Syria, but Christie think all he has to do is stroll over and tell them where to fly.

As stupid as his comment was, at least Christie was referring to somebody who actually exists in the natural world. He wasn’t that careful during the entire debate:

I will tell you this, when I stand across from King Hussein of Jordan and I say to him, “You have a friend again sir, who will stand with you to fight this fight,” he’ll change his mind.

King Hussein of Jordan, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, has been dead since 1999. Chris Christie, if elected, will speak firmly to dead people. And Michael Jackson will teach him to do the moonwalk.

Chris Christie Speaks with King Hussein of Jordan.

Still, I have to say Christie wasn’t as idiotic as Trump, who…no, let’s just hold off on Trump for a bit. Let’s talk about Ted Fuckin’ Cruz. Now there’s a piece of work. Cruz has said that if he were the Commander-in-Chief he’d “carpet bomb ISIS into oblivion,” and find out whether “sand can glow in the dark.” That glowing in the dark business is suggestive. It means Cruz 1) would use nuclear weapons against ISIL or 2) doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. With him, either is possible. Or both. And in response to a more direct question about carpet bombing, he said this:

You would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops. You use air power directed — and you have embedded special forces to direction the air power. But the object isn’t to level a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists.

Maybe Ted Fuckin’ Cruz has access to secret precision carpet bombing technology, because historically carpet bombing has basically meant blowing the shit out of every goddamn thing in the way. Or near the way. Or in the same general vicinity of the way. Carpet bombing is saturation bombing. It’s indiscriminate. It’s also pretty much considered a war crime.

The Ted Cruz Version of Carpet Bombing.

But the staggering military ignorance of Cruz is nothing compared to the ignorance of Trump. Trump was asked what his priorities would be in regard to the nuclear triad. Now, I’m going to guess you probably don’t know what the nuclear triad is. You don’t need to know, because you’re not campaigning to be the next President of These United States. Essentially, the term refers to the three methods of delivering (and there’s a fine use of the term deliver) nuclear weapons: strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Trump, who IS running for president, didn’t have a clue.

[W]e have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ball game. Frankly, I would have said get out of Syria; get out — if we didn’t have the power of weaponry today. The power is so massive that we can’t just leave areas that 50 years ago or 75 years ago we wouldn’t care. It was hand-to-hand combat.

That response got applause, believe it or not. I call it a ‘response’ because it was a series of words strung together in reaction to a question. But it’s not really a response because it had nothing to do with the question. There’s no coherent connection between the sentences. Hell, there’s no coherent connection between the beginning of some sentences and the end.

Trump Groks Devastation.

Then it got worse. Trump was asked to clarify.

I think — I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.

Jeebus wept. And is still weeping. None of these tunaheads is capable of running These United States. I’m not convinced any of them would be capable of running a lawn care service. But one of them will be the Republican candidate.

All is confounded, all!
Reproach and everlasting shame
Sits mocking in our plumes.

Let us all join in mocking their plumes.

Among the many things the modern Republican party gets wrong is this: the notion that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. In other words, there’s another Republican presidential candidate debate tonight.

Tonight’s debate is about the economy. Now you may be thinking Wasn’t the last debate about the economy? Yes, it was. But nobody tunes in to watch these GOP candidates debate. They tune in to 1) see the candidates bark at Hillary and 2) to see them bark at each other. People tune in for the same reason they watch NASCAR races on television; they want to see the accidents.

The notion that’s there no such thing as bad publicity has been around for a while. Oscar Wilde, who knew a thing or two about publicity, said “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” But it was the brilliant and gloriously intoxicated, Brendan Behan who said “There’s no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.”

Vote for Oscar Wilde

But ask yourself this question: Why did Wilde and Behan make that claim? Actually, you needn’t bother to ask yourself that question, on account of I’m going to tell you why. This is why: Wilde and Behan actually had something intellectually substantial to say.

If either of those guys did or said something scandalous, it would draw people to look at their work. And that was a good thing for this reason: their work was serious. They might have been entertaining and said outrageous shit, but they were serious when it came to doing their work. Their work had substance and weight.

No, not this guy

That’s just not true of the people who’ll be on the debate stage tonight. The candidates who are actually leading in the polls are the ones who are completely lacking in serious work. Ben Carson and Donald Trump aren’t just political lightweights, they’re totally weightless. Policy gravity has no effect on them. Carson, for example, wants the U.S. to give weapons to the Ukraine in order to keep Putin “on the run.” And Trump? He wants to build an actual, physical wall along the Mexican border. These aren’t policies; they’re the plot lines of bad movies.

The GOP candidates who actually have policies — folks like Rand Paul or John Kasich or even the Jeb! — are tanking in the polls, hovering in the low single digits. Admittedly, the policies they promote are bad policies, but they’re actual policies. But the reason their poll numbers are so wretched isn’t because they have bad policies; they’re tanking because they’re wasting their time coming up with policies at all. The modern GOP just isn’t about policies or governance.

Not this guy either.

Over the last couple of decades the Republican party has devolved into three groups. There are the folks who are filled with frustration and fear and rage, and all they want to do is howl at the moon. Trump voters, in other words. And there are the folks who want to shut their eyes, shut their minds, shut their borders, and hope Jeebus will save them. Carson’s folks. And finally, there are those Republicans who are actually interested in running a government based on conservative economic and social principles. There are probably some of them left, but nobody pays them any attention.

So tonight will be more bad publicity for Republicans. And even though there will be some discussion of who won and who scored points and who pissed the bed, it won’t really matter. In the end, it’s just noise.

The only hope any of those fuckwits have in next year’s election lies in promoting apathy among the voters and suppressing the votes of those who care enough to go to the polls.

Vote for Brendan Behan

Me, I’d rather vote for Oscar Wilde or Brendan Behan. Even though they’re dead.

Back in July Bernie Sanders said folks need to “stop shouting at each other” about gun control legislation. A few weeks later, in a speech, he said this about gun control: “[P]eople shouting at each other is not doing anybody any good.” Earlier this month Bernie said that as a nation we need to “get beyond the shouting” when it came to gun legislation. And at the first Democratic debate, he said this:

“As a senator from a rural state, what I can tell Secretary Clinton, is that all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want, and that is keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have those guns and end this horrible violence that we are seeing.”

And hey, Bernie’s right. Shouting at each other does more harm than good. Once the shouting starts, brains shut down.

Last Friday, while speaking at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum, Hillary Clinton said this:

“I’ve been told to stop — and I quote — shouting about gun violence. Well, first of all, I’m not shouting. It’s just that when women talk, people think we’re shouting.”

And hey, Hillary’s right. Women who take a strong position on a subject — almost any subject — and speak forcefully about it, are often accused of shouting and being ‘hysterical’. Well, more accurately, women are usually accused of shrieking. It’s a tactic intended to keep women quiet.

Her comment has created something of a fuss. The news media have turned this into a Hillary versus Bernie story. He said this, she said that, and it becomes all about the spat. Any actual difference in their policy positions on gun safety gets lost.

Did Bernie accuse Hillary of shouting? No, he didn’t, not directly. But during the debate, his comment about shouting was aimed at her. Did Hillary accuse Bernie of being sexist? No, she didn’t, not directly. But her comment about being told to stop shouting was aimed in his direction.

Here’s the thing: they’re both mostly right. Bernie’s comments about people who shout failing to communicate are germane, though there was no need for him to mansplain it to Hillary. Her comments about women being accused of shouting are spot on, though it’s inaccurate to suggest Bernie is sexist. Bernie tends to be blunt — which is usually a good thing, though certainly not the best default approach for a politician who needs to get things done. Hillary tends to be politic — which is great for diplomacy, but isn’t necessarily completely honest.

It’s completely fair for each of them to find fault with the other’s position on gun policy. And the news media would be right to report their different positions. But instead they’ve opted to turn a policy difference into a personal spat.

That’s not news. That’s gossip.

So I’m chatting with a friend, right? About all sorts of stuff, including U.S. politics. And he says to me, he says “I won’t vote for Hillary. It’s Bernie or nobody.”

So I smile, because I think he’s just being dramatic. But he says, “No, I really mean it. If Bernie isn’t the Democrat’s nominee, I just won’t vote.” I politely suggest maybe he’ll change his mind if it comes down to, say, Hillary versus Marco Rubio. Because c’mon, Rubio? But again he says, “No. Fuck it, let Rubio or Trump or whoever fuck up the country. Then maybe people will get motivated to vote for a true progressive.”

I say, “Yeah, but dude? You’re willing to tank the economy? What about poor folks? What about all those wars Republicans want us to fight? What about immigrants and old folks? Dude, what about the fucking Supreme Court?” And he says, “Fuck it. If they wreck it, they’ll own it.” And I’m like “Yeah, they wreck it, they own it. But we’ll still have to live in it.”

We go back and forth for a bit, and he allows there’s one other Democrat he’d consider voting for. Elizabeth Warren. I’m like, “Dude, she’s not running.” He says, “She should.” And I say, “Yeah, maybe she should. But she’s not.”

And that’s when I realize that my friend is living in a Bizarro Liberal Tea Party world. His approach almost exactly mirrored the conservative Tea Party. Ideological purity above all. Operate the government the ‘right’ way or burn it all down. That’s really a pretty fucked up approach. Look at where it got the Republicans. They’ve become a Balkanized political party. The modern GOP is a disorganized collective of small, quarrelsome, ineffective, suspicious, mutually hostile groups. Those fuckwits aren’t only incapable of governing, they’re incapable of being governed.

Let’s not do that to the Democratic party.

My friend says he’s tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, and I totally understand that. It’s discouraging. But the operative term there is lesser. If you refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils, then I think you’re fucking stupid and petty.

I have problems with Hillary. I have problems with Bernie. But they’re nothing like the problems I have with ALL of the Republican candidates. I told my friend I was probably going to join Team Bernie for the Iowa caucus. He said, “Probably? Probably?”

Yeah, probably. Because every so often Hillary does something that makes me lean in her direction. Like her response to the latest development in the Patriot Coal bankruptcy case. I’m going to take a wild guess here and say you probably haven’t paid a lick of attention to Patriot Coal. I’ve written about them before, and you can read that here. Basically, Patriot Coal is a subsidiary of Peabody Energy; it was almost certainly deliberately designed to go bankrupt. But before it went bankrupt, Peabody transferred the costs of the health care and retirement benefits of former coal miners to Patriot Coal. Patriot could go bankrupt, the miners would lose most of their retirement and health benefits, and it wouldn’t have any effect on Peabody.

That’s pretty shitty behavior, even for a coal company. But it gets worse. The bankruptcy court set aside something like US$22 million to help the retired miners. Patriot Coal is attempting to get the court to use $18 million of that money to pay for lawyers fees. Seriously, that’s fucked up on about nine different levels.

This is an issue that almost nobody knows about. It’s not a national election issue. It’s an issue for maybe ten or eleven thousand retired miners, mostly living in West Virginia. But Hillary spoke about it. She issued a statement on Patriot Coal. It wasn’t very widely reported; it wasn’t really considered very newsworthy. But Hillary was aware of the issue and took a stand. She took a stand for miners who almost certainly won’t vote for her (West Virginia voted for Romney by nearly a 2-1 margin). I suspect Bernie would agree with Hillary on this. But I don’t really know, because I haven’t been able to find any news report in which he’s commented on it.

I’m still probably going to caucus for Bernie. But I like Hillary. And any Bernie Sanders supporters who tell me they won’t vote for Hillary if she wins the nomination can go fuck themselves.

By the way, this morning Patriot Coal withdrew their request that lawyers fees should come out of the miners’ retirement benefits. Nobody will probably notice. It won’t have any effect on Hillary’s election chances.