Now the fun starts

I don’t know how to do twitter, but apparently it’s ablaze with gallows humor.  Here’s one example:

screen-shot-2016-10-13-at-12-31-01-am

That’s from Daniel Lin, and there’s lots more good stuff.  I’ll try to do something more serious when I get caught up from my trip.  As usual, my Econlog posts are more respectable.

Matt O’Brien also has some great stuff, including a retweet of Rush wondering why the left makes such a big deal of “consent”.

We are currently in the circular firing squad phase.  I eagerly await the “Hitler was so pissed the generals let him down that he decided to destroy Germany when he knew that he was going to lose” phase.


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36 Responses to “Now the fun starts”

  1. Gravatar of Brett Brett
    12. October 2016 at 21:20

    I just want to get my vote-by-mail ballot so I can vote against Trump and then be done with it for the rest of the time until November 8th.

  2. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    12. October 2016 at 22:44

    Why is writing about monetarism, largely an exercise of being fooled by randomness, be more respectable than writing about being against Trump? If anything, it’s less respectable. There’s scant evidence monetarism works: see Bernanke’s FAVAR paper, and the implications of Baxter and Stockman (1989) (“found that the transition to a freely floating exchange rate regime only led to a substantial upward shift in both nominal and real exchange rate variability but virtually no change in the distributions of conventional macroeconomic fundamentals”). Nominal doing nothing for real variables: red flag?

  3. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    12. October 2016 at 22:54


    Hitler was so pissed the generals let him down that he decided to destroy Germany when he knew that he was going to lose

    From what I heard so far from Trump we might have entered that phase already.

    (Historical note: I don’t think many generals let Hitler down. He thought they let him down in his endless conspiracy theories when in fact most of them were stupid enough to do everything in their power to support him until the very last moments and beyond. If anything then it was the other way round: Hitler oftentimes let the generals down by giving them idiotic orders that made not much to no sense at all. Like 1940 in Dunkirk and then it’s just downhill from there.)

  4. Gravatar of Daniel Daniel
    13. October 2016 at 01:15

    So it’s official – being a heterosexual male with normal testosterone levels automatically makes you a pervert.

    So long, Western civilization. You’ve had a good run, but now it’s time for someone else to run the show.

    Someone with functioning testicles.

  5. Gravatar of Negation of Ideology Negation of Ideology
    13. October 2016 at 02:49

    Circular firing squad indeed. And it won’t end even after Hilary’s inevitable 1980’s scale landslide victory. The recriminations will be flying. Almost everyone will claim to have been NeverTrump. I was from the beginning.

    Jay Cobb has a good article on how we got here, and some ideas on how to prevent it from happening again, including “allow governors, senators, and representatives to narrow down the candidates to the top three or four who could then compete in the primaries”, a sensible proposal.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441030/clashing-republican-interests-individual-politicians-versus-gop-unity

  6. Gravatar of Daniel Daniel
    13. October 2016 at 03:05

    Yeah, how dare those proles choose someone they actually like.
    They should just learn to bend over and take what we give them.

    Liberalism exposed – “we’re all equal, except some (namely, us) are more equal than others”

  7. Gravatar of Negation of Ideology Negation of Ideology
    13. October 2016 at 03:14

    Daniel,

    You are confused. Political Parties are private organizations. They exist for like minded candidates to win elections by privately choosing not to split the vote, and to do joint fundraising, campaigning, mailing lists, etc. They are not there for people to choose someone they like and then get crushed in the general. Private parties are under no obligation to even have primaries.

    Besides, if the “proles” don’t like the elected Congressmen and Governors of the party, why did they elect them?

  8. Gravatar of Saturos Saturos
    13. October 2016 at 03:23

    Hey stop the presses they just gave a Nobel to Bob Dylan!

  9. Gravatar of Saturos Saturos
    13. October 2016 at 03:26

    Btw the Limbaugh quote isn’t surprising to people who read Haidt or know hard conservatives, that’s exactly how they think. There’s a mind-independent list of goods and bads, and you can’t alter it with interpersonal decisions or permission-granting.

  10. Gravatar of Daniel Daniel
    13. October 2016 at 04:21

    Negation of Ideology,

    Do you honestly think everyone who’s not a mandarin is an idiot ?

    You’re in for a rude awakening, bro. And it might be at the hands of you pet morlocks.

  11. Gravatar of Jeff Jeff
    13. October 2016 at 04:53

    Professional politicians (and most normal people as well) know that it’s stupid to go out of your way to antagonize people. You can get away with it as a private person if you don’t need the support of those you antagonize, but not if you need their votes, or the votes of people they can influence.

    Romney made the fatal mistake of offending Hispanic voters, and in so doing also lost the support of other immigrant groups like Asians. That was dumb. But rather than learn from this, the Republican base then nominated someone who was even worse. Trump goes out of his way to antagonize everyone who is not a native-born white male like himself.

    Trump has known all along that these true stories about his behavior towards women would eventually come out, and that there was no way he could ever win the general election. But he’s gotten a great deal of publicity out of his campaign, and he will make a fortune from it after he loses next month.

    But what’s really sad is that anyone who has been paying attention at all over the past ten years had good reason to suspect that this would happen. Trump has always been a jerk, and he’s celebrated that openly for years. There have always been stories like these about him. His supporters knew this, and they voted for him anyway. They knew he couldn’t win, and they just didn’t care. The Trump supporters are responsible for this fiasco more than Trump himself is.

  12. Gravatar of bill bill
    13. October 2016 at 05:08

    Many of us were around for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. We had opinions back then. Some of us thought “yes, impeach” and others thought “no, don’t impeach”. If you wanted to impeach Bill Clinton it’s hypocrytical to vote for Trump. If you didn’t want to impeach Bill Clinton, then you can vote for either candidate. I did think Bill Clinton should be impeached, though my logic at the time would no longer apply. I thought Bill Clinton left himself open to blackmail, potentially by a foreign government. Trump doesn’t seem blackmail-able.

  13. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    13. October 2016 at 05:16

    ‘ If you wanted to impeach Bill Clinton it’s hypocrytical to vote for Trump. ‘

    Trump suborned perjury?

  14. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    13. October 2016 at 05:19

    ‘Trump has known all along that these true stories about his behavior towards women would eventually come out, and that there was no way he could ever win the general election.’

    The way the true stories–something that isn’t even close to being verified for Trump, btw–about Bill Clinton and his women kept him from winning?

  15. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    13. October 2016 at 05:22

    Negation, I’ve always favored a parliamentary system. If you look at Jeremy Corbyn, however, I’m no longer confident that even that system can stop this sort of madness.

    Saturos, Interesting, he’s my favorite singer.

  16. Gravatar of John Hall John Hall
    13. October 2016 at 05:37

    I can’t comprehend how none of Trump’s opponents brought up any of these things during the Republican primaries. It’s such a massive failure of opposition research.

  17. Gravatar of Effem Effem
    13. October 2016 at 05:54

    Scott, have you seen the latest Obama video where he is eager to show off how, umm, “excited” he is to female reporters? It is truly appalling. No one can claim this sort of behavior is in any way limited to Trump.

    We’d probably vote Bill in again tomorrow despite knowing the details of his abusive past. No one cares..they just pretend they do when they don’t like someone. 99% of politics is confirmation bias.

  18. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    13. October 2016 at 06:24

    John, If the GOP establishment wasn’t able to stop Trump, they don’t deserve to govern. Unfortunately Hillary will be a disaster–especially if the Dems take the House. We’re screwed.

    Effem, Why are you directing this at me? I’ve said Trump’s policy statements are far worse than this. The outrage should be directed at his statements on stealing Iraq and Libya’s oil, on Putin, on nukes, on torture, on Japanese internment camps, on Muslim immigration, on trade, on illegals, etc., etc., etc.

    It’s not me who is obsessed with sex, it’s the GOP conservatives who have been telling us for years about the problem of Trump-like perverts going into girl’s restrooms. Have you seen me post on that issue?

    And wasn’t it GOP conservatives who said Clinton should be impeached? Does that only apply to Dems? I didn’t favor impeachment.

  19. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    13. October 2016 at 08:24

    Internet trolls love Trump because his entire campaign has been a gigantic trolling experiment. As a former campaign insider reported, Trump ran in the primary expecting to come in 2nd and get some free pub to build his brand:

    http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/03/28/Ex-Trump-Insider-Donald-Doesn-t-Want-Be-President#

    Which reminds me, what happened to E Harding? Did Putin stop cutting the checks after the wheels came off Trump’s campaign?

  20. Gravatar of Jeff Jeff
    13. October 2016 at 09:49

    @Patrick,

    Yes, that’s right. There is a double standard of sorts. Democrats can get away with stuff that Republicans lose elections over. Part of it that Republican voters take this stuff more seriously than Democratic voters do, and part is liberal media bias. Complaining about the double standard doesn’t change the fact that it exists. If you want to get elected with a past like Trump’s, you have to do it as a Democrat. That’s just the way it is.

  21. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    13. October 2016 at 09:57

    @Jeff:

    It’s just not possible that Trump can’t get elected because he’s a clowny abrasive unserious buffoon? You think this is just about his past? If past Dem horndogs like Kennedy and Bill Clinton were equally clownish they never would have been president either. The taped piggish behavior is damning because there’s nothing else there. That’s who this guy is.

  22. Gravatar of Jeff Jeff
    13. October 2016 at 10:50

    @msgkings,

    Oh, I agree that Trump and his supporters are mostly idiotic. However, I think media bias is real, and I think that Republican voters care more about traditional morality, especially when it comes to sex, than Democratic voters do. That’s the world we live in, and it’s why someone whose history with women is like Trumps will have a hard time getting elected as a Republican.

  23. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    13. October 2016 at 11:11

    Ray Lopez… Paul volcker showed… that at least on the taming inflation side…monetarism works…

  24. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    13. October 2016 at 11:37

    Negation says… “Almost everyone will claim to have been NeverTrump. I was from the beginning.”

    I don’t know… it seems like the people who are standing by trump now, are not going to be shamed by his loss..They seem to be more For him now than ever. I believe that establishment republicans are going to be in for shock, when, after trump loses…they still have hoards of “deplorables” demanding to pleased.

    Denial of white privilege is not going away… Denial of white privilege is a very powerful force that WILL express itself in politics… if that vehicle is not trump…it will find carriage aplenty in congress…

    The establishment Repubs don’t have anything new to offer. The repub establishment has changed little in decades. What will they have to offer that’s any different from romney ?

    More romney/mcmain/ bush will not satisfy the average white guy who sees his place in american being threatened…

    and it won’t cause much doubt in the Hill/ Warren/ Sanders democrats..

    Establishment repubs are isolated and in trouble.. They need to break with the past and reform… and the key for them ??? Increase taxes on the 1%…stop trying to starve the beast.. Then everything else they argue for… can be argued much better…

    they can argue to make the beast lean and mean…no one really wants the beast dead…and keeping it sick just makes it lash out irrationally…

    establishment repubs are stuck in an intellectual cul de sac of their own making… The defeat of Trump and his cult of deplorables at the ballot box is not going to change that…

  25. Gravatar of Daniel Daniel
    13. October 2016 at 13:02

    white privilege

    Found the moron

  26. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    13. October 2016 at 14:13

    “Trump doesn’t seem blackmail-able.”

    it’s doesn’t matter if trump has no concept of shame.. He might not be black mailable.. but as president he makes america accountable for his deplorability…

  27. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    13. October 2016 at 14:33

    Daniel… You deny White privilege ?
    Everyone who drives a normal amount speeds, and by race white people actually speed a bit more than other people.. but there are not significant differences in speeding between the races…

    But police pull over brown people for speeding at twice the rates of white people… and they pull over black speeders at for times the rate..
    And it doesn’t stop there…once pulled over black and brown people are treated as a threat far more often than white people..

    Are you saying that people of color are pulled over more because they suck at speeding ? Are you saying that it is not privilege that white people get treated like normal people as a default when pulled over while brown people get treated as a threat by default ?

    probably…

    how about the fact that for offence after offence at every level where discipline is meted out.. black and brown people from cradle to grave get treated far harsher than their white counterparts for the very SAME offences committed at the same RATES…

    How about the fact that babies in preschools are treated hasher for the same “offences” if their skin is dark…

    and the saddest part of the perpetuation of white privlage ? even Black and brown people in positions prescribe discipline…even they mete out harsher punishments for people with dark skin.. for the same offences as white people…

    To not see white privilege when it is literally freaking everywhere… in your face…. you, sir, … are pitifully blind..

    no wonder you think me a moron…

  28. Gravatar of ChacoKevy ChacoKevy
    13. October 2016 at 14:47

    @Jeff “and I think that Republican voters care more about traditional morality, especially when it comes to sex, than Democratic voters do.”

    May I ask you to explain that? Sex scandals ended the careers of John Edwards and Anthony Weiner. Meanwhile, David Vitter and Mark Sanford were able to get re-elected.

  29. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    13. October 2016 at 16:43

    For one of the core constituents of the republican party… the evangelicals…Traditional morality, especially about sex is an especially important issue… without doubt…..

    but it is always a winning issue for conservatives and a losing one for libs when it come to the evangelicals…

    A quirky thing about evangelicals compared to other north american christians is that they are outsized sinners…especially in areas of fidelity…and out sized forgivers…

    the evangelicals have a tradition of public confession in church…And people get some major strokes of approval from the congregation for heartfelt, very personal, confessions….

    Public confession is a way of continually being “Born Again” and if you are “one of them” there is practically nothing you won’t be forgiven for if you confess it and place yourself at god’s mercy in church before all… (people have speculated that the positive Rush form confession actually makes sinning more palatable..hence all the evangelical extramarital boinking…)

    But if you are not one of them (a liberal )…it does not matter how much a person asks for forgiveness… Being born again is not possible for outsiders…
    see…. evangelicals can’t forgive the clintons even if they want to…it’s not up to them…

    and they can’t condemn “one of their own” (a conservative ) either…it’s not up to them..

  30. Gravatar of Daniel Daniel
    14. October 2016 at 00:52

    Bill,

    Did you fall on your hear or were you thrown against a wall ?

  31. Gravatar of Daniel Daniel
    14. October 2016 at 00:53

    *head

  32. Gravatar of Jeff Jeff
    14. October 2016 at 04:25

    @ChacoKevy,

    After reading your comment I did a bit of Googling and found this article which makes your point pretty well. I guess it’s my age showing, as I remember how Bill Clinton was impeached (but not convicted) for perjury, not for sex, but shortly afterward both Newt Gingrich and his successor Bob Livingston were brought down by sex scandals. And I remember Gerry Studds and Barney Frank. But I wasn’t thinking much about Edwards and Weiner. Although you have to admit that at least 50 percent of Weiner’s problem was his unfortunate last name.

    So, I guess you’re right. There’s not much difference across parties in how they respond to sex scandals.

  33. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    14. October 2016 at 06:14

    Bill, Ray thinks the 2% inflation rate since 1990 is some sort of miraculous coincidence, that has nothing to do with Fed policy. He believes in miracles.

  34. Gravatar of Student Student
    14. October 2016 at 06:23

    Daniel,

    Who knew all those guys not trying to grab our wives and daughters by the pussies were just a bunch of low testosterone sissy boys? If only America had leaders with the testosterone levels of Bill Cosby or Roger Ailes…

    Get a grip Pepe. There are plenty of men with abundant testosterone that have self-control. Shoot, dare I say there are even plenty of testosterone oozing men that submit to the the golden rule… To do onto others as you would have them do onto you.

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