Ocasio-Cortez for president…
Hey, why not? What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, and if she’s not old enough—and she’s not—it’s time to “fix” the Constitution. Writes Yglesias:
The constitutional prohibition on people under the age of 35 serving as president is just one of these weird lacuna that was handed down to us from the 18th century but that nobody would seriously propose creating today if not for status quo bias. Realistically, most people that young would simply have a hard time winning an election. But if you can pull it off, you should be allowed. And I kind of think she should run for president.
Yglesias acknowledges that it’s difficult to do the “fixing” via constitutional amendment. But he thinks we should try, so that hosts of young people who’ve never done much of anything in life except be students should get to head a country.
I wonder, though, why Yglesias is so keen on Ocasio-Cortez herself running. Does he think she would win? Does he hope she would win? Wouldn’t it be nice if she actually took some sort of office first? The new Congress hasn’t even been sworn in yet.
At least Obama had had a career as state senator and a couple of years as US senator before becoming president. And although Donald Trump never held office prior to becoming president, no one can deny that he had a long long career being in charge of many things in the business world.
However, it’s no surprise that Yglesias would champion the cause of youth doing whatever it wants in terms of running for office with no restrictions. A Harvard alum who majored in philosophy, Yglesias began his own career as a blogger while still a college undergrad. And he’s done nothing but write ever since. He’s now reached the advanced age of 37, making him almost geriatric—and able to run for president under the present rules.
But there’s more. Yglesias went further in a tweet than he did in his Vox article:
AOC should run for president and dare the Supreme Court to stop her imo. https://t.co/TSviLpL1qJ
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 12, 2018
And of course Ocasio-Cortez—about whom one can say many things, but one of them wouldn’t be that she’s too humble—had already weighed in on the topic:
PHOTOG: “You can’t even run for president for another six years.”
AOC: “No, not for a long time. Thank God. Although we’ve been joking that because the Equal Rights Amendment hasn’t been passed yet, the Constitution technically says he cannot run unless he’s 35. … So what we’ll do is we’ll force the Republican Party to pass the Equal Rights Amendment by threatening to run for president.”
PHOTOG: “That is awesome. All the people who say a literal interpretation of the Constitution is the only thing you should be paying attention to.”
AOC: “Exactly, all those Constitutionalists, I will keep vigilance.”
— NOTE: The Constitution does not say “he”. It says “any person.”
That exchange appears to be some sort of joke by Ocasio-Cortez. But I have little doubt that if she thought there was a chance of her running she would do so. Ocasio-Cortez is a potent combination of overwhelming ego, attractive physicality, ignorant youth, and doctrinaire ends-justify-means leftism, and if she ever did have much power I believe she would happily and enthusiastically take her administration in the direction of Venezuela’s Chavez or worse.
It would be worse than Chavez, because she has never read a Marxist book in her life. Her form of socialism is the kind you get from Monterey Bay bumper stickers. An ignorant but intense socialist is actually worse than one who has waded through Das Kapital or puzzled over Lenin’s essays.
“Ocasio-Cortez is a potent combination of overwhelming ego, attractive physicality, ignorant youth, and doctrinaire ends-justify-means leftism”
Though I enjoy her nickname given around the web: “Ocaasional Cortex”, I think Neo has caught her essence. Many people say that she is dumb, but I disagree. She seems quite smart, but is the product of our current higher ed system. Believe me, there are many more AOC’s on campuses just waiting to show up in your town. There are also many who are doing things like CS, engineering, etc, but they also tend to lean left as that’s all they hear from humanities,social science side of campus.
all she needs is a pudenda..
even men make better women than women – see spain
so, all ya need is a pudenda or not if you are a woman with a penis
i wonder if you talked to the original feminists and said what happened now
what would they say?
what would the ladies of the 1960s buring their bra’s say their grandaughters will be reading articles on anal leakage from trying to keep on of the few available males away from the others (or else, they may not be able to quit early as they do)
On the question of letting non citizens run for president
• Stalin was from Georgia, not Russia, technically he wasn’t killing his own people…
• Hitler was from Austria, not Germany, technically he wasn’t killing his own people…
• Fidel Castro was from Spain, not Cuba, technically he wasn’t killing his own people…
Watching Ocasional Cortex is some of the best popcorn entertainment!!
now i dont care, i can have fun…
Is AOC just another Miaze Hirano only 40 years younger? Maize is old enough to run in 2020….., just as bright.
Kids these days! 🙂
The level of ignorance on the left is discouraging but it is solace in my old age. When the Constitution was written the average life expectancy for males was about 40 but, of course, that was influenced by infant mortality. Benjamin Franklin lived to 84 but Washington died at 67.
Given what college has turned into, I might favor a ban on college graduates. Buckley preferred the first 500 names in the Cambridge telephone directory.
I say lets change the voting age to 40. And, no Senator can serve if they are over 75. I kid my wife about women’s right to vote being a mistake, but after the midterms when urban/suburban woman voting Dem maybe I am not joking after all.
By the way Castro was born in Cuba, to a wealthy Spanish farmer.
I’ll say it to whoever sits still long enough to listen…Don’t take that young lady lightly. Oh…she’s dumber than a bag of hammers…but that didn’t stop 0. Ego, inexhaustible hubris, & a cause…coupled with what Neo rightly describes as “end-justify-the-means leftism.” That’s one damn dangerous witch’s brew. Gets people killed in fact….by the millions.
I welcome my young, loopy overlords
Her philosophy is emblematic of the Democratic motto: we punish success and subsidize sloth.
What I don’t understand is the rush. Maybe Ocasio-Cortez will be able to win a presidential election in the future. Why not have her get some seasoning in Congress and maybe the Senate? Perhaps she could build a solid record. Why rush your rookies and potentially damage their future?
I kind of want to blame George W Bush. In hindsight, selecting Dick Cheney as VP broke the pattern that the president picks a potential future president as a VP, to help the younger politician gain experience.
In hindsight, selecting Dick Cheney as VP broke the pattern that the president picks a potential future president as a VP, to help the younger politician gain experience.
I was not a fan of Bush. I worked for McCain in the primary. OK OK.
Cheney was a great VP and I am a big fan. I do think he might have egged Bush oil in Iraq but we will probably never know.
Artfldgr:
• Fidel Castro was from Spain, not Cuba, technically he wasn’t killing his own people…
Not so. Fidel was born in Cuba. Fidel’s mother was Cuban. Fidel’s father was from Galicia province, in Spain- as was Franco. Galicia- cradle of dictators. 🙂
Fidel’s father was born in poverty. One way he became a big landowner in Cuba was by becoming a bigger landowner- moving the fences of his property at night.
Franco and Fidel, contrary to ideological expectations, got along quite well.
RohanV:
The big rush is quite simple, I think: they want someone who gets their juices flowing and who they think can win, a sexy and attractive young socialist, preferably of some minority group. Could be Beto the honorary Hispanic or Ocasio-Cortez the actual Hispanic. Can’t be Warren, the elderly fake Native-American. Sanders has the proper socialist credentials, but certainly isn’t young, and besides, “Jewish” is NOT the correct minority.
Therefore, Ocasio-Cortez, the sooner the better. Talking about it in advance, helps, too, just as Obama was regarded as a promising contender for the nomination as early as 2004 after he gave his big speech at the convention.
I keep wondering if these people are auditioning for a character in a Kurt Schlicer novel. They sound just like them.
“Franco and Fidel, contrary to ideological expectations, got along quite well.” Fascists began as leftists, so why not?
Who the heck voted for this clown? Heh, the same can be said for those who have pure hatred for Trump.
If y’all are disinclined to lower the Presidential minimum age, have a gander at this posting by Ilya Somin at Volokh:
“Should We Let Children Vote? The Troubling Implications of Standard Reasons for Rejecting a Flawed Idea”
http://reason.com/volokh/ — Dec. 7 at 11:40 p.m.
Dear lord!
“attractive physicality”
Sure, if you’re turned on by crossed eyes and teeth that make a barracuda look like Snoopy.
physicsguy on December 13, 2018 at 4:40 pm at 4:40 pm said:
…Believe me, there are many more AOC’s on campuses just waiting to show up in your town.
* * *
But but don’t they all deserve representation too??
The new order—meretricious, amoral, idiotic, and corrosive as it is–goes from victory to victory and, meanwhile, the old order is fading away, with hardly even a whimper.
I note the sad news out today that the Boy Scouts–an organization that for more than a hundred years did a tremendous job of educating, enlightening, and forming the value structure of generations of boys, and teaching them the things they needed to be good citizens and men–is very likely to declare bankruptcy.
This is another example of “get woke, go broke,” as they attempted to put their figurative finger in the air, and to remake themselves to fit every new shift in the wind.
Their last, most fatal mistake was in admitting girls to the program, at the same time discarding their traditional name Boy Scouts for just ScoutsBSA.
Once a very traditional, conservative organization, but now drifting more and more Leftward, each new change to try to become more “relevant,” and in tune with the times prompted the exodus of more and more members, and the Mormon church—the Boy Scouts biggest supporter over these last hundred years—which reportedly pulled 185,000 Mormon members ages 14 to 18 out last year, will, according to reports, be pulling the remaining 485,000 younger Mormon members out this year, and thereafter running their own Mormon version of a Boy Scout program.
As all this “transformation” was taking place, the Boy Scouts were also hit with a large number of lawsuits, from people who were reportedly the victims of all sorts of sexual abuse that the BSA had reportedly been covering up for many decades.
An ignominious end for an organization that had been an important, bedrock institution of American culture for more than a hundred years.
I’ve begun to think of her as one of those people who is too dumb to realize how dumb she is.
Patrick:
That would be Ms, Dunning-Kreuger in the flesh,
FOAF, wrt Ms. Alexandria O-C:
John van Druten wrote a play called I am a Camera. I nominate you to play the Camera! :>)!
. . .
Snow, the fate of the Boy Scouts should be seen as a national, perhaps an international, tragedy.
Yglesias is a fool.
Candidacy for any supralocal office should have a rigorous age screen. Our country is injured by the excess population of career politicians who have no accomplishments beyond cadging public offices. In Congress, quite a number of them have decided we must have their services until they’re so old they don’t know whether they are coming or going.
Look at who runs Congress. Only John Cornyn ever had much of a work life outside of electoral politics. AM McConnell, Richard Durbin, and Steny Hoyer practiced law (fitfully, not continuously) between 1964 and 1983. Patty Murray was once a day care supervisor (> 35 years ago). Nancy Pelosi had a brief stint as a schoolteacher (fifty-odd years ago). upChuck Schumer worked (intermittently) for the Kaplan test-prep firm. He never practiced law. The departed and unlamented Paul Ryan was on the staff of an organization in the pedigree of FreedomWorks – essentially a speechwriter. Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise have issued biographical sketches which do not admit to any pre-political occupation. Remember Trent Lott? His entire employment history from age 25 to age 64 was spent on the payroll of the United States Congress. Then he left Congress to work for a lobbying firm. Robert Dole was in Congress for 37 years and in elective office for 44 years. His time in law practice was entirely consumed by the six years he spent as corporation counsel for a county with 12,000 residents. Enough of these people.
There are turning or pivot points in history like the French Revolution in the late 1700’s, mechanical changes in the first part of the 1800’s with the steam engine and trains and ships along with communication the telegraph. Between the US Civil War and WWI guns and artillery changed international politics and after the First World War with entertainment, radio and movies along with automobiles for the common folks and short dresses for the flappers followed by bath tub gin then the Depression and WWII, these were all changes in perception and behavior spanning a bit over 100 years following thousands of years of horse and sail transportation and communication.
Now in the lifetime of us older folks in our 70’s born during WWII the acceleration of change has been logarithmic, we take our little phones for granted that are capable of so many things that were not foreseen at the turn of the last century in 2000. Ocasio-Cortez is just one symptom of this accelerated desire to find a suitable leader to make us ‘feel good’ about our rapidly changing world because now it appears that ‘feeling good’ and being politically virtuous is our national driving goal, driving a stake through anything that smacks of privilege and accomplishment like the Boy Scouts of America where each boy sets his goals and if he applies himself earns merit badges which lead to advancement in rank, with enough time and hard work over the years he (I use the pronoun he on purpose) can become and Eagle Scout which is a big deal and even falling short of that the hard work goes into shaping a young man who has practical knowledge, skills and responsibility for himself and others.
This time the pivot point is smashing a good organization that builds men and that, as they say, is that. I am thinking this time leading up to 2020 is going to be a pivot point in history as we replace the goals of merit and responsibility with the goals of ‘Feeling Good & Looking Good’ for the good of all except those that don’t agree with ‘Good Feelings’ and then every flaw will be used to destroy those disagreeable, deplorables.
In hindsight, selecting Dick Cheney as VP broke the pattern that the president picks a potential future president as a VP, to help the younger politician gain experience.
What pattern?
Between 1804 and 1956, only one VP who hadn’t succeeded to the office was subsequently elected to it (Martin van Buren) and only two others were ever even candidates for it in a general election (John Breckenridge, who ran as the candidate of a party faction, not the main body of the Democratic Party; and Henry Wallace, who ran as a 3d party candidate). In fact, prior to 1890, vice presidents who succeeded to the office were discarded by party sachems if they had any mind to seek a full term; Theodore Roosevelt was the first who managed to cadge the party nomination. The vice presidency simply was not a stepping stone to the office of President except in the case of death.
Republican power brokers unaccountably handed the Presidential nomination to Richard Nixon in 1960 on a platter. He had no opposition. It was something quite novel and it has never been precisely repeated, but it was the first of several instances of the vice presidency providing the stature and exposure for a vigorous presidential campaign. Aside from Richard Nixon in 1960, you had Richard Nixon in 1968, Hubert Humphrey (1968, 1972 nomination donnybrook), Walter Mondale (1984), George Bush the Elder (1988), Albert Gore (2000),
The vice presidency is a ceremonial position whose actual work assignments are fuzzy and at the discretion of the president. Beyond learning about the daily rubrics of the Presidency (recall Walter Mondale’s hand gestures indicating the ‘Red Phone’ was actually a teletype, something he knew and Gary Hart did not), there’s not much ‘experience’ you gain. It’s doubtful Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 conceived of Richard Nixon as a ‘potential future president’ (he later offered that Nixon was satisfactory at delineating options and boiling down the opinions of others, but offered nothing of his own to policy discussions). Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and Albert Gore were not ‘younger politicians’ but contemporaries of their patrons, and only Humphrey among them had had less time in elective office than said patron. Humphrey was a name coast-to-coast in the Democratic Party ‘ere he was tapped for the vice presidency; if anything, the office was a step down. George Bush actually was a younger politician. He’d also held federal offices for 10 years, something Reagan had not.
Art Deco – in re the dead-end position of VPs, courtesy of Tom Lehrer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUnHZAUR6hE
I say lets change the voting age to 40. And, no Senator can serve if they are over 75.
Mandatory retirement is the rule for judges in New York, and has been since 1846. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the rule for surgeons as well. It should be the rule for elected officials generally, with some qualification for those serving on local conciliar bodies and as small town executives. I don’t think the voting age is much of a problem. I think were we to institute a token payroll tax (say 0.1%) and condition suffrage among those under 25 to a certain minimum payroll tax payment, that might be agreeable. If you graph the employment-to-population ratio, it has an upward slope from age 16 to age 25 and a milder downward slope from age 55 onward. In between, it’s a plateau. That’s close to the median age at which one bears or sires one’s first child and close to the median age at first marriage. It’s also a developmental milestone inasmuch as a tendency toward risk-taking behavior declines markedly around then.
A minimum age to stand as a candidate for a supralocal office set at about 39 would require people do other things with their life before they sought presumptively full-time offices. In regard to local offices, you could set the minimum age of eligibility to run for a given office at some point between age 25 and age 39 contingent on the nature of the office (executive, conciliar, judicial) and the population of the jurisdiction in question.
An ignominious end for an organization that had been an important, bedrock institution of American culture for more than a hundred years.
The Girl Scouts has also been destroyed. I read most of Peter Drucker’s books some years ago. He wrote one titled, “Managing the Non-profit Organization.”
In it he uses as his example of the best managed non-profit, the Girl Scouts. The reason, as he explains, is that they managed the transition from a time when stay at home mothers wanted something to do, to an era of working mothers who wanted “quality time” with their daughters.
That is all gone, destroyed by the present insanity,
Since the career Scouts who run the organization have betrayed its mission in deference (it’s a reasonable inference) to their lawyers and in deference to extortion from corporate donors and foundations, I’m looking forward to seeing the organization liquidated in bankruptcy. It has no proper institutional purpose as we speak and its traditions have been trashed. Liquidation would be a warning to like organizations that they don’t stand up to the extortion, they won’t live to fight another day.
Whatever development you might want to single out as the ultimate cause of what appears to be it’s impending demise, in the larger sense, the demise of the Boy Scouts will be just another scalp taken by the “toxic masculinity” mob that currently stalks the land.
AOC, as Ronald Reagan said, “Knows a lot. Her problem is that so much of what she knows is wrong.”
She is attractive and energetic. An appealing combination. IMO, she is a also very dangerous person. Most tyrants are deeply convinced that they know what’s best for the people and seldom ever change their minds, no matter the evidence before their eyes. She fits the mold well.
Most young’uns her age ought to be getting their first job learning to master the skills necessary to prosper in the working world, learning to take and follow orders, getting disabused of the notion that they know it all, and learning to accept that there are no magic socialist solutions to the ills of humanity. Another suggestion for her would be to find a nice young man and have some children. Nothing grounds young adults like having children. Alas, she will do none of this. Instead she will be a highly visible activist for the left as long a she can maintain even a shred of attractiveness and credibility.
To us she is mind numbingly naïve and misguided. That doesn’t bother her or the left. The Governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, has just released his budget proposal for the next fiscal year. He proposes to spend 25% (Yes, one fourth or $1.1 billion. Yikes!) of the state’s budget on saving the Southern Orca pod of 75 whales that live in Puget Sound. Among the proposals are to tear down four hydro-electric dams on the Snake River to increase salmon (the preferred Orca food) runs. Since the Snake flows into the Columbia, which flows into the Pacific some 250 miles south of the Strait of Juan De Fuca there is no connection between the salmon that spawn there and the salmon that spawn in the rivers that flow into Puget Sound. But that doesn’t matter. Have.To.Get.Rid.Of.ThoseDams! Certifiably insane conclusion, but it doesn’t matter to Inslee, who is a career leftist politician in the same mode as AOC. He’s a bit older, but just as dangerous.
Remember when Ben Rhodes criticized journalists by saying they were a bunch of twenty-seven year olds who literally [sic] knew nothing?
He was right.
We get memos now and then from the president of the Univ of California, and I’ve seen more than once mention that “UC is producing the next generation of leaders”.
I can assure you that the next generation of leaders, then, has very little practical experience or knowledge. I doubt many have even fixed a flat tire on their bikes, and very few have worked a real job.
So expect many more Ocasio-Cortezes, full of nice sounding ideas and ready to right the wrongs of this world.
I, for one, was disheartened with this past election’s results. Where the simple majority wins – unlike the electoral college – conservatives made no headway. IOW, the past two years of Trump seems to have changed few minds. And with the popularity of the Ocasio-Cortezes of the world, I’m less confident about the future than I was 6 months ago.
“Ocasio-Cortez is a potent combination of overwhelming ego, attractive physicality, ignorant youth, and doctrinaire ends-justify-means leftism”
I don’t find her attractive and she is as dumb as a box of bricks. That’s a bad combination. I used to know a gorgeous, red haired young lady who wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but with her face and figure, nobody cared that she wasn’t Einstein.
If we’re going to change the requirements for Congress, the first should be — No Lawyers!
> Many people say that she is dumb, but I disagree. She seems quite smart, but is the product of our current higher ed system.
I strongly disagree. She says dumb things. Constantly. It never seems like she’s actually thought about what she’s saying. She always sounds like she’s making up the answers to questions on the spot, and that’s probably because that’s exactly what she’s doing.
The have been smart politicians that I disagree with (even strongly), like Bill Clinton or Daniel Patrick Moynhan, but she’s just someone who was probably Affirmative Actioned through university and never had a real job in her life. There are plenty of them in Congress. Not just ignorant, but stupid.
I mean, Nancy Pelosi, even before she was senile, constantly said a lot of really stupid things, but I never got the impression she actually believed anything she was saying, but Ocasio-Cortez has that wide-eyed look of someone who deeply believes everything that comes out of her mouth, in as much as she’s actually put any thought to it at all. Maybe because she’s young and pretty, but I think she’s really speaking out of ignorance and the idealism of someone who’s been exposed to just a little bit of education and suddenly thinks she’s an expert on everything.
In contrast, Nancy Pelosi is pretty, for someone who’s 140 years old and has more botox in her than a bowl of tuna salad left in the sun for a week, but I always thought that everything she said was very cynically calculated to take advantage of her gullible constituents, rather than something she actually believes.
I can assure you that the next generation of leaders, then, has very little practical experience or knowledge. I doubt many have even fixed a flat tire on their bikes, and very few have worked a real job.
I’m afraid you are as much as a generation out of date there. Has Paul Ryan or did Trent Lott, both leaders in Congress, ever hold a job outside politics ? We have a professional political class. It’s bad enough that they are all lawyers. They are lawyers who have never practiced law.
The Governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, has just released his budget proposal for the next fiscal year. He proposes to spend 25% (Yes, one fourth or $1.1 billion. Yikes!) of the state’s budget on saving the Southern Orca pod of 75 whales that live in Puget Sound.
Kind of makes me happy that I sold the 10 acres I had on Vashon Island as a retirement spot. I don’t mind the rain but goofy Democrats are a bit much.
If we’re going to change the requirements for Congress, the first should be — no Congressmen!
I’m talking Term Limits. Let’s Article V that one in.
Kate:
“Franco and Fidel, contrary to ideological expectations, got along quite well.” Fascists began as leftists, so why not?
Mussolini began as a Marxist. Hitler’s party was named the National Socialist Workers’ Party. Franco, as far as I can tell, never leaned left. Hitler was not a monarchist. Franco, on the other hand, left Spain as a monarchy.Hitler’s Table Talk His Private Conversations- 1941-44.
In addition, during World War II, Franco’s policies towards Jews were rather different from Hitler’s.Jewish Press:The Truth About Franco And The Jews.
In addition, Hitler scorned religion, while Franco was a devout Catholic. The Hitler-Franco alliance was one of convenience. There was a fair amount of divergence between the two.
What did Franco and Castro see in common? Franco was a Galician/Gallego; Castro was the son of a Galician/Gallego. Both were dictators. Georgie Ann Geyer, in her biography of Castro (Guerrilla Prince- can read at Google Books),pointed out that during World War 2, the adolescent Fidel had an affinity for Fascism and for Fascist dictators.
ConceptJunkie:
Depends what you mean by “smart.” Ocasio-Cortez is wrong on many facts, but she’s smart in the political sense. Politically smart, street smart, and articulate enough to appeal to her particular constituents and to topple an established pol.
And to Ray and others: whether you find her attractive or not is irrelevant, in the larger sense. Plenty of people find her attractive, and I believe she is attractive in the objective sense. That doesn’t mean she is like a movie star or model or flawless. But she is young and she is attractive.
Hitler once told one of his staff that negotiating with Franco was the worst experience he had ever had.
Franco and Pinochet had some things in common. Both saved their countries from disaster.
Mike K on December 14, 2018 at 2:54 pm at 2:54 pm said:
I can assure you that the next generation of leaders, then, has very little practical experience or knowledge. I doubt many have even fixed a flat tire on their bikes, and very few have worked a real job.
I’m afraid you are as much as a generation out of date there. Has Paul Ryan or did Trent Lott, both leaders in Congress, ever hold a job outside politics ? We have a professional political class. It’s bad enough that they are all lawyers. They are lawyers who have never practiced law.
* * *
I hadn’t really thought about that wrinkle, of the lawyers not practicing — there isn’t much more dangerous than a law school graduate with only book larnin’ to go by; however, many of them have practiced in the real world (Cruz, for one).
Some of them very badly, of course (Hillary – who should have been disbarred early on; she quit while she was ahead).
However: amended qualifications for elective office: the higher the office, the longer you have to have worked in a real job as employee or employer or both (not: government at any level, NGO, charity, philanthopy, foundation, public service in any way, and definitely not lobbyists; maybe not union leadership and news-persons as well) before you can run.
Also term limits (12-24 years max in one office; 25-30 lifetime limit), but you can come back if you get another real job between leaving and running for the desired office. And no going from one level of government to another unless you satisfy the job length for the new level (can be cumulative, that is, if 5 years for Congress and 8 for Pres, then a Congressman has to leave and work 3 more years before running).
And put teeth in the limits of government-lobbyist revolving doors.
Gringo, yes I have read that about Franco and the Jews. A strikingly underreported historical fact in view of not only Franco’s previous alliance with Hitler but the tragic history of Jews in Spain.
It may also be worth noting with respect to current political debates that Franco was nothing if not a “nationalist”.
@J.J.:Yes, one fourth or $1.1 billion.
Somewhere you lost some zeroes. Washington State’s budget for 2019 is $54.6 billion.
I’m afraid you are as much as a generation out of date there. Has Paul Ryan or did Trent Lott, both leaders in Congress, ever hold a job outside politics ? We have a professional political class.
I think Everett Dirksen worked in his brothers’ business for about 10 years ‘ere being elected to Congress. Sam Rayburn was a schoolteacher for about five years before he was first elected to pubic office. Lyndon Johnson was a schoolteacher for two years ‘ere landing a job as a congressional aide. They’re in the same pigeon hole with Durbin, Hoyer, an McConnell. Not quite up to the Schumer / Lott / Ryan degree of purity.
Frederick, you seem to be correct. Although I can’t seem to nail down an exact figure, it seems to be somewhere over $49 billion. My face is red. I got those figures from a newscast on the telly last night. Either they were confused or I misread the figures they put on the screen. (Could be, I have macular degeneration and don’t always see numbers perfectly.) Still, $1.1 billion seems a lot for saving a group of 75 whales where no one really knows why they aren’t thriving. The latest guess is that they need more salmon for food, but that is only a best guess. Yet they plan to spend only about $176 million on a new mental health initiative to help the population of poor mentally ill who are in need of treatment. Whales are seemingly more important to Jay than his poor, mentally ill constituents.
“Many people say that she is dumb, but I disagree. She seems quite smart, but is the product of our current higher ed system.”
She said a bunch of ignorant things, but that doesn’t have to mean dumb, but then she said the Pentagon had $21 trillion in accounting errors, I decided after that that she is dumb. A little common sense would tell anyone that there couldn’t be that much in waste when the Pentagon budget is, now, $700 billion a year. So she is just regurgitating someone’s liberal nonsense without applying any critical thinking at all. Who knows what other poorly thought out ideas she holds in her noggin.
OC is a perfect example of everything we should be afraid of: a left wing extremist who knows less than nothing, is too young to have any real life experience in pretty much anything, and isn’t bright enough to know the difference. The big problem is that the MSM loves her, and will never challenge her to a degree that will truly demonstrate to the voting public that she is an empty bag. OC will be protected by the MSM, and she will slowly gain support because she offers free goodies. Very dangerous. I am hoping (admittedly a longshot) that OC can be talked into a live debate with Ben Shapiro; this is all that is needed to permanently take the wind out of the sails of this vacuous non-entity.