257 Comments

Arrogance, stupidity, a bloated ego, and a wife who resembles Lady Macbeth and has ambitions.

Expand full comment

You're referring to her aspirations to be Evita, I think.

Expand full comment

A cross between Evita Peron and Eva Braun, wearing Jackie Kennedy's gloves. What a nightmare.

Expand full comment

I live in DeSantistan, the Summer of Ron's monstrous demise was a blessing to Florida Dems, oh have we rejoiced!!! He is the epitome of a famous insult...an empty car pulled up to the curb, Ron DeSantis got out. A local joke last year followed his attack on drag shows...he immediately became Rhonda Santis! Sadly, he will infect the local scene again, and, provide material for the wags.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Jan 22
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Yes, she most certainly did. Casey DeSantis thinks that by trying to imitate Jackie she will somehow accrue class. Later for that. What a stupid woman.

Expand full comment

Not unlike Melania tried in vain to do. You've either got it or you ain't!!

Expand full comment

melanomas last act as first lady was to steal the rec room curtains to make her departure dress.

Expand full comment

I think Melaria's take on it is life is all a fashion shoot. I missed whatever she chose for her (also purportedly fashionable) mother's funeral. Her F.L. photos are as burned into memory for being twisted as Jackie's are for class..

Expand full comment

Yes, in other words, Linds, a thoroughly unlikable person. Of course Trump is unlikable too - revolting actually, and yet just as with DeSantis they attract supporters. Hard to fathom. There has to be serious psychological issues with the kind of people who whoop and holler and cheer them on. Either that or they are under a kind of hypnotic spell.

Expand full comment

There’s a certain credulous, malleable, insecure, not-very-smart chunk of humanity (homo “sapiens”) that is attracted to someone like Dump and craves what they believe (oh so wrongly)is a “strong leader.” Look at Germany in the 1930s.

Expand full comment

es, I think that's it, Arthur, f th same exact elements that cause some people to join cults, perhaps looking for a father figure too that will take care of all their problems and make them feel safe and secure from all those bad people out there. As you say, not too bright overall, gullible, easily influenced, prone to believing every word their guru says no matter how improbable, like the whole world is conspiring against you, falsifying poll results, etc., but I will save you and make everything okay again.

Expand full comment

Exactly. The benighted souls who followed Jim Jones and David Koresh and Charles Manson. There are many others, no two exactly the same, but all possess a toxic power of persuasion that infects certain gullible, fearful, resentful people. And don’t bother talking sense to the latter type. I’ve tried, and they just dig their heels in. They wrap the bullshit and false promises of the cult leader around them like a security blanket and won’t let go. (Religion works the same way, IMHO.) They want quick, easy answers to their problems and fears, and clever demagogues —Trump is a perfect example—understand and exploit this.

Expand full comment

If you are a racist, Trump 's your boy. He proved that with his birth certificate lie in 2011...74,000,000 followers voted for him later, scary times.

After his recent mental issues spouted forth, hope he agrees to debate! You could Pay Per View that potential disaster.

Expand full comment

He’ll never debate. Why should he? He’s preening in the catbird’s seat right now. He will win in NH, so he’s got the nomination locked up… he thinks. He probably knows that they (the moderators and organizers) will be tougher on him after he stalked behind Hillary in 2016. He gets by on bullshit and innuendo and interrupting and obfuscation, which his brain-dead worshippers lap up. He knows virtually nothing and might actually be asked a hard question in a debate. He can spout his verbal crap ad nauseam, freely, 24/7, with no restrictions. So I’d be gobsmacked if he agreed to a debate.

Expand full comment

Great summation, Arthur. One example I saw the other day on TV was a woman who had spent time behind bars for J6 and she was as defiant as ever, even still believing all of Trump's BS about the election. Trump had to know a certain percentage of any population is going to fall in this category. I even know a lawyer I used to have coffee with and he believed it all too. He insisted that mainstream media and every liberal organization including the entire Democratic party was in a big conspiracy together to rig the election and spread disinformation, so it's not just uneducated people that get caught up in this altered reality.

Expand full comment

Yup. Sad. I’ve terminated two longstanding friendships over their stunning acceptance, nay embrace, of that sort of harebrained crap. Both are college grads. One is also a lawyer. Stunning.

Expand full comment

Mass psychosis and the utter ignorance and bigotry of too many members of the American public. "Nobody ever went broke ujnderestimating the American public."

Expand full comment

yes, LF.

was it barnum or bailey who said theres a sucker born every minute.

apropos considering we're talking about political clowns and circus, no?

Expand full comment

P.T. Barnum.

Expand full comment

thanx

Expand full comment

Attributed to P. T. Barnum. I’ve often said he was almost right, he just got the interval wrong.

Expand full comment

Love the H L Mencken quote!

Expand full comment

I actually accidentally abbreviated it. It should read: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Expand full comment

Why do simpletons like Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" & "Atlas Shrugged", or "I"?

Expand full comment

(1) Mainly young men who fall for the ultra-libertarian egocentric selfish line that runs all through it and (2) Men "stuck" at an adolescent stage of psychological development - my training is in philosophy and law but I'll venture a bit further on the "pop psychology" road - (3) Ayn Rand provides a "one size fits all" club membership in adolescent rebellion against parental and school authority, too, something that can be vitally valuable when deployed to actually learn via intense critical scrutiny of comfortable myths, inane but widely accepted dogmas of all kinds, so it is double-edged, but for the AR cult, the critical thinking is almost never turned for a moment on Rand's assumptions, sweeping generalities asserted with little or no evidence, demonizing the Left tout court so that the most harmlessly benign urges to better the commons are conflated with Stalinism - "What's next after our city council votes to fix up Martin Luther King Park with a new playground slide, show trials for the dissenters on the council and expulsion for not being woke enough! That's what! And another thing" blah blah blah.

There are some really interesting libertarian thinkers, like Murray Rothbard, whose book on libertarian strains in the American Revolution's precursors and development is worth study, but he makes serious historical arguments with empirical data. Rarely get any of that from Ayn Rand or her devoted followers, or when you do, it's tendentious tripe all too often.

First cup of coffee and my move-out for maybe 12 days in a hotel is tomorrow, while they renovate this apt., yowza!!!

Expand full comment

Hope the renovation goes well with the results you want!!!

Expand full comment

Thanks, new windows alone in the Minnesota roller coaster climate is big, new carpeting, kitchen cabinets, the works, this apt has its own moderately sizeable storage area with

five sturdy shelves, also another area with similar shelves in a hallway, it's all of three blocks

to the Mississippi River "St. Anthony Main / Riverplace" and Stone Arch Bridge across into

downtown, two blocks to a Tibetan-Nepali-India restaurant, one block to El Diablo Music

(guitars! amps! strings! etc.) one block to Lunds & Byerly's grocery with a huge deli and in-store

butcher (I am practically vegetarian but even so - also tons of fresh seafood & fish), the usual

coffee shops, Brueggers, Conga Latin Bistro, Ground Zero nightclub, what was once named by

Esquire as "the greatest bar in the country," Nye's Polonaise Room,* then featuring "The World's

Most Dangerous Polka Band," but that got sold and isn't the same as when long-time GF and I had are first "date" there years ago, sadly.

That requires a link, as I spend twenty minutes wallowing in nostalgia before I call her!

https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/bars/reviews/a255/esq1006bestbars-147/

The Best Bar in America

Following a four-month search, this is the one. (But don't go--you'll just ruin it.)

By Chris Jones Published: Sep 30, 2006

THE BEST BAR IN AMERICA isn't Irish. It isn't in a strip mall. It isn't the sort of place that charges an outrageous cover for people to stand around in black light pushing back shooters out of test tubes. It isn't a fight club or a meat market. There is no snobbery, and there is no tonic-water drinking. There are gimlets and manhattans, bottles of Zywiec, and a first-rate pissoir.

The best bar in America occupies a corner where the path to righteousness and the road to perdition run parallel, east to west, perpendicular to the muddy river that cuts this country in two, north to south. The best bar in America has occupied this physical and spiritual intersection since 1950. The best bar in America lies across the Mississippi from downtown Minneapolis over a bridge named for Father Louis Hennepin, and it has a sign on its yellow-brick exterior that points the way to Our Lady of Lourdes, cast in the red-neon glow of another that reads LIQUORS. The best bar in America also saw one of its doormen murdered last summer.

The best bar in America is Nye's Polonaise.

More accurately, it is the two best bars in America--Nye's Bar, known as the "Old Side" to its ancient staff and unshifting regulars, and the upscale bordello kitsch of the Polonaise Room--connected through their shared fire wall by a pair of swinging doors. When it comes right down to it, you're either Nye's or you're Polonaise, making this place a kind of crossroads inside and out.

On this summer night, it feels as if all that ties the two halves together is their shared floral carpet and their nearly pitch-blackness. Nye's has the only window in the entire complex, but it has turned opaque with time and pierogi smoke. Apart from a few stained-glass lanterns and a small TV with the Twins game on, the only light that penetrates this joint's darkest corners comes from the accordion display over those swinging doors.

Everybody says that stepping into Nye's Polonaise is like stepping back in time, and, for once, it's true--to a time before even electricity.

MINNEAPOLIS IS A CITY built on its institutions--the falls at Minnehaha, the Institute of Arts, Kirby Puckett, and Fran Tarkenton--but the best and sturdiest of them hang out here, wrapped in the darkness and surroundings that have remained perfectly preserved since the 1960s. The walls are paneled, the tables are Formica, and there are people who have worked at Nye's for forty years. Their stories are each the same: One otherwise unexceptional day, they ducked in from the street, waited for their eyes to adjust, and never found reason to head back out into the sun.

Sweet Lou Snider was thirty-one years old when she first sat behind the piano in the Polonaise Room; she's seventy-one today. Every Friday and Saturday night, as regular as rain, pint-size Lou boosts herself up onto her bench, a smoke-stained oil portrait of Chopin staring over her shoulder, and begins banging out songs precisely at the stroke of nine. Lou will take requests. She will also sing for you, but if you would like to sing, that would be just fine, too. It doesn't take long for a chorus to surround her--including warbling, bickering twin brothers Dan and Dean Oberpriller, one singing high, one singing low--passing around the microphone and rounds of drinks, belting out "When I Fall in Love." Although she is too modest to announce the truth herself, Lou is believed to have thousands of songs ready to dance from her fingers, and she smiles warmly at just about every request, as though she hasn't already played "Unforgettable" eight million times, and wouldn't that be nice? (You might want to reconsider asking for "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," however. It's kind of a long story.)

****** The review continues...

Expand full comment

Because they believe it's 'intellectual' to read it although I tried once and gave up because the woman confused communism with being a human being. Total dreck.

Which is highly ironic because she was born in Russia before the Revolution and grew up during it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

I've never figured out what "objectivism" was supposed to be except a code word for selfishness at the expense of others. A made up word meaning nothing, she conned a lot of people just like Trump does.

Expand full comment

As Richard says below, arrested development. It’s what I’ve thought for some time. Ego above all, but an embryonic version.

Expand full comment

Forgot to say comment right on target.

Expand full comment

RE,

the serious psychological issue is just that the rabid horde simply hates what ronny and donny hate. they whoop and holler like casting aspirants for deliverance because they think those two are just like them but are seated in high places. with real plumbing, even gold toilets.

Expand full comment

Shared paranoid disorder

Expand full comment

Trump says he is like them...they buy it. His biggest lie.

Expand full comment

All I can say, Leigh, is that there's an awful lot of gullible people in thus country and their votes for Trump and others like him in the Red states could bring an end to this great democratic experiment before it is 300 years old. .Every single Democrat must vote. What is worrying is the election deniers who have been elected to office and have control over polling stations what they might try to do like void certain votes; remove people from voting rolls on some flimsy excuse. R They are so totally without ethics that they won't hesitate to do what they accuse the Democrats of doing. .

Expand full comment

Right on the nose! If he could have run a "remote" campaign...he would have done much better. As soon as folks got a sample of his awkward ways, he became toast. DeSantis is quite simply very uncomfortable around people that he has to "make nice" to...and it really shows. His foolish decision to lurch to the right, with his anti-woke silliness and book banning, isn't even popular in Floriduh--let alone the rest of the country.

Expand full comment

He's a nasty little shit. Everyone who had to deal with him earlier in his life hates his guts.

Expand full comment

Your comment gave me a laugh--thanks for the chuckle!

Expand full comment

You said it. In a nutshell.

Expand full comment

I dunno. Positioning himself for 2028? He clearly listens to the wife, Casey, who alienated everyone and made all the wrong calls. The upside is that for his remaining three years as Governor he will be the next thing to a gelding because the R. legislators are trying to clean up being pushed into all kinds of anti-woke legislation. Having shown what a lame candidate he is, I don't think 2028 will work out for him. Lovely, though, that he's made so many enemies. One can hope that in four years the MAGA crackpots will have sobered up and decided to be Republicans again. Anyway, ding dong.

Expand full comment

A gelding who can perform at Disney World with Mickey Mouse. What a joke. I’m sure Bob Eger would accommodate.

Expand full comment

Talk about burning your bridges!!!

Expand full comment

Next stop, Divorce Court?

Expand full comment

I doubt it.

Expand full comment

Nah... she'll probably have an unfortunate accident.

Expand full comment

See, Casey reminds me of Marie Osmond, in her looks. She is another one who exudes “fakeness” with that standard pageant smile and perfect little body. You just know that she’s a bitch.

Expand full comment

Yes, it's a useful lesson for all of us to realize a woman can be astoundingly beautiful AND intelligent as hell AND a "real mensch" for lack of any better term, but it also works the other way: looks overly, meticulously well-dressed and conventionally attractive, but is vapid and even vile. Sadly something really went wrong but it requires maybe years of competent therapy (?) with a willing, cooperating patient, to revive the spark of compassionate humanity all but extinguished.

A kind of obstinate, grasping, penny-pinching "Mrs. Ebenezer Scrooge, widower of the late and not lamented Mr. Scrooge"! only decked out in what she thinks are flattering fashions, I dunno, barely paid any attention to his wife, in fact.

Expand full comment

aiming, as usual, for eloquence and brevity, I'd say "fuck him."

Expand full comment

"One can hope that in four years the MAGA crackpots will have sobered up and decided to be Republicans again." Using AI, put my face into the woman's at Katz's deli, and change the dialogue to, "I'll have what she's smoking." Looking down the screen, I think Janice Stearns is on target, if his wife Casey's ambition factor still burns bright. And looking down a bit further, Marlene Lerner-Bigley attests to Casey's greatest asset ("perfect little body"). In the phrase popularized by comedian Mike Myers ("Wayne's World"), now picked up by bureaucrats at the end of the fiscal year, Casey DeSantis better "Use it or lose it."

Expand full comment

He thought Trump would be convicted before the Convention and Trumps people would turn to him as the second most rabid hater in the pack

Expand full comment

That makes sense to me.

Expand full comment

Not bad, only thing that explains how he extorted millions for bupkis.

Expand full comment

He is so devoid of human attributes so has to constantly stroke his own fragile ego to justify his existence. There is no there there.

Expand full comment

Gertrude Stein, avowed lesbian, patron of the arts and cunning linguist!

Expand full comment

Lol. I see what you did there. ;-)

Expand full comment

She wrote pretty well too, and a very big deal to the Feminist Art Movement of the 60s and 70s. "no there there" hers ? I can't remember.

Expand full comment

Not exclusively feminist. Judson Poets Theater doted on Gertrude. Al Carmines channeled her. Marva Abraham (hope I got that right), Deborah Lee and I played her "Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters" in a show Michael Smith directed at the Sullivan Street Theater as a benefit for Caffe Cino, then as a JPT production. If you look hard enough you can even see photographic proof.

Expand full comment

"No there there" was hers for sure, but there's dispute over whether she was referring to her childhood home in Oakland, CA, or maybe Oakland itself.

Expand full comment

That sounds right. Back in the 60s, she, and so many others to keep up with also. I was deeply involved with the Feminist Art Movement wih Judy Chicago and quite a few serious folks. So many great and seldom acknowledged 19th and early 20th century women were constantly being discussed, evaluated and read deeply. After all this time a lot blends together.

Expand full comment

Rim shot...oops!

Expand full comment

Definition of a psychopath.

Expand full comment

Place holder? Part of a strategy? Told to sit down and shut up? Also possibly. Any chance in hell to begin with? Hell no. But that hasn’t stopped anyone before, so...? My guess is his wife wanted this more than he did.

The question is will Haley also capitulate and leave the deteriorating and demented creamsicle from hell as the only candidate. NH will tell I guess.

Do you think someone with legs not mired in treason step forward? Romney?

Expand full comment

“Demented creamsicle from hell.” Thank you Patris.

Expand full comment

I am trying to use fewer obscenities.

Expand full comment

Oh but the things I’m thinking....

Expand full comment

I use 45 now on FB, algorithm skips right by at my rants.

Expand full comment

Me too.

Expand full comment

I wish you well in your endeavor. Maybe wait until after the election? Things will be better then.

Expand full comment

Glad we haven't run out of orange references even after all this time!!

Expand full comment

"Morning breath"

Recomend Mexican

Coke a Cola

Expand full comment

I recommend Jose Mujica.

Expand full comment

I think he’s too content in Uruguay.

Expand full comment

Yep

Expand full comment

No Romney is hated more the MAGA crowd than Biden. (He didn’t take back the White House from Mr. Obama.) I’ll let you read between the lines to understand why that was an issue.

Plus he wouldn’t want to associate with the 47%.

Expand full comment

I hope New Hampshire independent voters help Haley win or come close to winning.

Expand full comment

Yes, may sanity prevail. I fear it won’t.

Expand full comment

NH is an interesting state. Voters have surprised in the past

Expand full comment

I hope so. Lived there very briefly a million years ago..

Expand full comment

We need a debate now, but, with Trump blathering like a demented uncle lately, his handlers will avoid...cowards!

Expand full comment

May he overrule them and keep blithering!

Expand full comment

I think that because he won by such a large margin in Florida, people assumed there was something more there. That provided some unearned momentum until he went campaigning nationally and people saw the truth. This emperor has no clothes!

Expand full comment

Florida is where woke goes to die and Stupid comes alive.

Expand full comment

You’ve got to copyright this

Expand full comment

Really makes me wonder about the people of Florida.

Expand full comment

There is a reason that some people use the spelling Floriduh.

Expand full comment

Remember, they live in the sun all the time. Baked brains are a specialty down there..

Expand full comment

DeSantistan has a certain charm...well hidden, though.

Expand full comment

When the emporer wears white boots, no one notices that he's got no clothes..

Expand full comment

He won in Florida because Florida is full of floridiots, racists, fascists, and white nationalists. It truly is the penis of America. If only we could cut it off and let it float away.

Expand full comment

the ocean is in enough jeopardy.

Expand full comment

Third most populist state, sad to say, has no state income tax.

Expand full comment

How do you spell blind ego

Expand full comment

a-m-b-I-t-I-o-n

Expand full comment

His ego and popularity was stoked by the old Republican snowbirds and retirees who live in Florida. Once he left home he found that no one cared or liked him and his woke rants. He also hangs on to Gov. Abbott’s coattails because Abbott is popular for reasons that escape me.

Expand full comment

Hates women?

Expand full comment

Discuss? hmmm.... Can't offer much insight. Delusional. Mentally limited, with unlimited ego. After Citizen's United, there are no brakes left to keep out the crazies.

Expand full comment

Reminds me of Rudy Giuliani's presidential run in money spent per vote and running because they were certain their press clippings and media fanfolk would put them over the top. DeSantis is rooting and tooting for Haley to drop out after New Hampshire as is Trump.

Of course didn't think that wish through. With no candidate to run against he can't use the primary season as an excuse for Court delays. Hello, Judge Cannon.

Expand full comment

"It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man."

H. L. Mencken

Expand full comment

Looked at Drumpf (No experience. No knowledge of history. No policy. No bipartisanship. Just a huge mouth, ego and attitude) and thought - Hey! Anybody can do this!

Sorry Ron - only one cult diktator at a time.

Expand full comment

He wants to be VP. He’ll duke it out with Stefanik. Trump and DeSantis. AKA Bevis and Butthaed.

Expand full comment

and Tim Scott?

Expand full comment

He’s biting someone’s jugular right now I’m guessing

Expand full comment

Trump might choose him just to have the pleasure of tormenting him constantly. On the other hand, Trump is probably thinking of Alina - so pretty, so respectful and big tatas, too.

Expand full comment

I live in DeSantistan, Trump will never let an eager beaver like Rhonda Santis in the White House.

Expand full comment

I agree that he has zero charisma and is so ill at ease in public that he has always creeped me out.I cannot see how he can make any inroads in public life no matter what his party is.Glad he is theirs.Ugh.

Expand full comment

He reminds me of a promoter for an aging, punch drunk boxer.

Expand full comment

Yes and he is the boxer lol

Expand full comment

He blew it 100% with his inept Summer attempt in the Mid Waste, came home whipped.

Expand full comment

just this lololololololololololololololololololololololol............

Expand full comment

$100 million plus, and he finished faster than any client of The Happy Hooker.

Expand full comment