School lunch controversy is not new. Remember Ronnie Reagan's dictum that ketchup counts as a vegetable. Look out for an announcement (a tweet) that Big Macs are also a vegetable. The Trump could claim that loading up on Big Macs keeps his physical conditioning at the peak of excellence. And, that it would be great for our economy, too.
I haven't watched any of the Super Bowl ads yet. I may watch them later online. But if the other SB ads are as creative as they generally are, I can't think of anything he and/or his ad people could do to compare.
And I don't recall any previous campaign ads at the SB.
I am so against the glorification of advertising, which I regard as an evil necessity in a free society with a market economy. I think my feelings stem from having a TV station that only advertises upcoming shows. That said, I still sing songs and catchphrases from my childhood. "Two all beef patties et al."
I haven't watched any of the Super Bowl ads yet. I may watch them later online. But if the other SB ads are as creative as they generally are, I can't think of anything he and/or his ad people could do to compare.
And I don't recall any previous campaign ads at the SB.
I agree that political ads would be doomed to rate poorly in such an environment, but what I do find interesting is that Bloomberg's campaign ad (which is in a similar niche with Trump's ad) charted distinctly higher. It also is doing much better in terms of YouTube views (Trump's ad is viewed in the thousands while Bloomberg's ad is in the millions).
Not sure about "the Chiefs", but "the R word" is an insult just as bad as the N word, per a show I saw on an indigenous TV channel here. I'll look up the show, when I can.
Yeah I was trying to think of an asian abusive name that would be an equivalent for the 49ers. I decided in the end not to post it, in a rare show of restraint and discretion.
I listened to parts of his State of the Union speech. A lot of tripe. I thought it telling Nancy Pelosi tore up her copy of his speech and tossed it aside right after he had given it. Of course, it did not help he did not shake her hand at the beginning of the speech.
I tuned in accidentally on the drive home from a late-night class: five minutes. That brief snippet contained 3 lies. If that ratio accurately represents the full 78 minutes (or so I heard), that means nearly 47 lies. Doesn't seem like a worthwhile invest of my time.
Brian Stelter
Trump has now tweeted/retweeted more about Pelosi's reaction to his speech than about the content of his own speech. Four times more.
5 Feb 2020
No wonder Trump properties kept going bankrupt. He's letting Nancy Pelosi live in his head rent free.
Forget the racial overtones. Where are they located? Trump does not seem to know.
To be fair, there is a Kansas City in Kansas. It's right over the state border from Kansas City, Missouri. It's just not where the football team plays. Amusingly, the one in Missouri is the original, and the Kansas one named itself after its bigger neighbour in the hope of piggybacking on its success.
--As much as I disagree with his speech, someone did a good job putting the whole spectacle together, as least as a campaign ploy. He was trying to impress certain demographics (e.g., African Americans, single moms, Rush Limbaugh fans (are they still called "dittoheads"?), possibly military families).
--I watched on PBS. At one point, the camera found the Joint Chiefs of Staff (heads of each military branch) sitting together. They did not look like happy campers. I don't remember when it was. Maybe they were just trying to look neutral.
--Much is being made of the possible message of Melania's clothing. Republicans generally wore dark suits with a splash of red (e.g. a tie), and some R women wore red jackets or dresses. Democratic women mostly wore shades of white, to commemorate the anniversary of women getting the vote. M wore a simple, black, 2-piece dress--rather shapeless, IMHO. Don't know what the message might be, except that she's neutral or not playing the game.
--The only reason I can think of to give Limbaugh a medal is to play to their shared base. I'm sorry about his cancer and his hearing loss. But he's put a lot of filth into the world.
.--I'm glad the girl got a scholarship. But...if there's any truth to what T said, she was in line with other kids to qualify. Did someone make her skip the line? Did T et al provide the money? Will the scholarship continue? Will she get trouble from other kids and parents?
. . . keynote speaker and Harvard professor Arthur Brooks, who had described a “crisis of contempt and polarization” in the nation and urged those gathered to "love your enemies."
"I don't know if I agree with you," Trump said as he took the microphone, and then he proceeded to demonstrate it.
You can see why all those serious evangelical and fundamentalist voters love him. Finally a president who takes the Bible literally! (Or is that "seriously but not literally"? It's hard to keep up.)
Prayer Breakfast? PRAYER BREAKFAST ??? Ye gods. I just hope they had a puke bag at every table setting. I pray that God was tending to some other planet during that time.
I can't help but think that anybody with the poor judgment to attend a prayer breakfast with the man at this point had it coming. I mean, how predictable was that?
My Nomination
For A 2020
PROFILE IN COURAGE
Medal: Mitt Romney
That's ridiculous. That's not courage.
To go against your party leadership? To vote your conscience in spite of what your constituents may feel?
Profiles in Courage is a 1956 volume of short biographies describing acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States Senators, written by then-Senator John F. Kennedy, who won the Pulitzer Prize for the work. The book profiles senators who defied the opinions of their party and constituents to do what they felt was right and suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity because of their actions.
Seems like he fits everyone of the criteria that JFK established.
If I may ask, what do you hate about Romney? I'm no fan, but IMHO he did a good thing in voting "guilty" on Article 1 in the impeachment vote.
He said it's due to his faith. (He's a Mormon.) It could be that, or not liking T, or (vainly) hoping that evicting T might leave room for him himself to run for president again.
In this particular situation, I'm not really worrying about the reasons. Just glad that he was one of the few Republicans who voted T "guilty".
Simply stating and following your personal principles isn't courage, it's simply being principled and is the minimum that anyone in general should do. For politicians particularly so. To say it's courage means rare, extraordinary, unexpected. All of which goes to show how horrible and denigrated politics has morphed into. And the lack of character of those elected. It's not courageous to behave as you should. Particularly when there's really no cost to your safety, when you're rich.
No mate, you have that wrong. Courage is standing up for your principles when everybody else is telling you not to. As a moral coward, I know how hard it is to resist your peers.
Errrr...doing the right thing *often* takes courage. It can cost you in all sorts of ways, large and small, inside yourself and in the outside world. You may disappoint friends and colleagues who, for whatever reasons, see thing differently than you. You might be laughed at by someone, ignored, bullied. You might lose opportunities--even your job. You might be arrested or sued, and worse.
Plus learning to do good takes time, for all sorts of reasons. And sometimes people do a good thing for the wrong reasons. As I said, I don't know why Romney did what he did--I'm just glad he did.
To say it's courage means rare, extraordinary, unexpected.
I don't think so. Courage is a virtue term, like generous and kind. Neither of those should be rare or unexpected.
One might say that the consequences of his action are not such as to require courage to face, though that seems to me to play down the force of social rejection by one's circle.
Also, unless one believes in the unity of the virtues, one doesn't need to believe that he is particularly virtuous in every or any other respect.
Courage would have been supporting the ACA or Merrick Garland. Courage would have been working against the cult of Trump long before now. Romney's re-election is safe. It's courage that costs him nothing.
Courage would have been supporting the ACA or Merrick Garland. Courage would have been working against the cult of Trump long before now. Romney's re-election is safe. It's courage that costs him nothing.
Not so sure about Garland. The Garland nomination to the Supreme Court expired on January 3, 2017, along with the 114th Congress. Mitt Romney became a Senator on January 3, 2019, at the beginning of the 116th Congress. I suppose private citizen Mitt Romney could have said something, but I'm not sure it would have done much more than the whole bunch of other private citizens who commented on Mitch McConnell's outright theft of a Supreme Court seat.
Hang about... doesn't that mean he wasn't there for the ACA stuff either, when McCain saved the day?
Romney wasn’t a Senator during that particular vote, but I haven’t kept track of all Senate votes on the ACA. It wouldn’t surprise me if Romney had voted against the ACA on some other occasion. The main difference is that during Romney’s entire Senate tenure (so far) there has been a Democratic majority in the House, rendering any Senate votes to repeal the ACA purely symbolic.
Comments
oh, wait a minute ...
And I don't recall any previous campaign ads at the SB.
No wonder Trump properties kept going bankrupt. He's letting Nancy Pelosi live in his head rent free.
To be fair, there is a Kansas City in Kansas. It's right over the state border from Kansas City, Missouri. It's just not where the football team plays. Amusingly, the one in Missouri is the original, and the Kansas one named itself after its bigger neighbour in the hope of piggybacking on its success.
For A 2020
PROFILE IN COURAGE
Medal:
Mitt Romney
--As much as I disagree with his speech, someone did a good job putting the whole spectacle together, as least as a campaign ploy. He was trying to impress certain demographics (e.g., African Americans, single moms, Rush Limbaugh fans (are they still called "dittoheads"?), possibly military families).
--I watched on PBS. At one point, the camera found the Joint Chiefs of Staff (heads of each military branch) sitting together. They did not look like happy campers. I don't remember when it was. Maybe they were just trying to look neutral.
--Much is being made of the possible message of Melania's clothing. Republicans generally wore dark suits with a splash of red (e.g. a tie), and some R women wore red jackets or dresses. Democratic women mostly wore shades of white, to commemorate the anniversary of women getting the vote. M wore a simple, black, 2-piece dress--rather shapeless, IMHO. Don't know what the message might be, except that she's neutral or not playing the game.
--The only reason I can think of to give Limbaugh a medal is to play to their shared base. I'm sorry about his cancer and his hearing loss. But he's put a lot of filth into the world.
.--I'm glad the girl got a scholarship. But...if there's any truth to what T said, she was in line with other kids to qualify. Did someone make her skip the line? Did T et al provide the money? Will the scholarship continue? Will she get trouble from other kids and parents?
(:votive:)
You can see why all those serious evangelical and fundamentalist voters love him. Finally a president who takes the Bible literally! (Or is that "seriously but not literally"? It's hard to keep up.)
To go against your party leadership? To vote your conscience in spite of what your constituents may feel?
Seems like he fits everyone of the criteria that JFK established.
If I may ask, what do you hate about Romney? I'm no fan, but IMHO he did a good thing in voting "guilty" on Article 1 in the impeachment vote.
He said it's due to his faith. (He's a Mormon.) It could be that, or not liking T, or (vainly) hoping that evicting T might leave room for him himself to run for president again.
In this particular situation, I'm not really worrying about the reasons. Just glad that he was one of the few Republicans who voted T "guilty".
Surely if Thlump says it it's true and therefore not a mistake?
Come on NP, give Romney his due. It is very tough to be the only one standing up when everyone else is sitting down.
Plus learning to do good takes time, for all sorts of reasons. And sometimes people do a good thing for the wrong reasons. As I said, I don't know why Romney did what he did--I'm just glad he did.
One might say that the consequences of his action are not such as to require courage to face, though that seems to me to play down the force of social rejection by one's circle.
Also, unless one believes in the unity of the virtues, one doesn't need to believe that he is particularly virtuous in every or any other respect.
Not so sure about Garland. The Garland nomination to the Supreme Court expired on January 3, 2017, along with the 114th Congress. Mitt Romney became a Senator on January 3, 2019, at the beginning of the 116th Congress. I suppose private citizen Mitt Romney could have said something, but I'm not sure it would have done much more than the whole bunch of other private citizens who commented on Mitch McConnell's outright theft of a Supreme Court seat.
To paraphrase Gandhi, democracy would be a good idea in America.
'
Romney wasn’t a Senator during that particular vote, but I haven’t kept track of all Senate votes on the ACA. It wouldn’t surprise me if Romney had voted against the ACA on some other occasion. The main difference is that during Romney’s entire Senate tenure (so far) there has been a Democratic majority in the House, rendering any Senate votes to repeal the ACA purely symbolic.