“We should start calling this law SCOTUScare” — says Antonin Scalia.

Burn, I’d think.  But… if he wants to personalize it in the way that the reference to “Obamacare” personalizes the law… shouldn’t he call it… Robertscare?

The National Review offers a take-down on Donald Trump.  Whose political campaign will appeal to… the entertainable masses, I suppose.

We started this week with what’s in effect a joke of a story: the White head of the NAACP in Spokane.  For some reason I’m thinking of the “White Rastafarians” in the movie “10 Things I Hate About You”… (a silly but entertaining movie) — though, there’s any number of things you can jump to to fill in the joke…

Mid-way through the week we have a tragedy in South Carolina.  A 21 year old White Supremacist (why not call it terrorism?) — or some dolt kid susceptible to some messages of hate — killed a slew of people in a black church.

The one random thought I have is… the guy really really really would hate the NAACP head in Spokane.

It appears the liberal media has been tapping up Rand Paul’s old time associations with Alex Jones and that ilk.

Alex Jones, worth noting, is so mainstream that…

Jones was invited by ABC News to appear on This Week this past Sunday to discuss Jade Helm; he never showed. He accused the new organization of dirty tricks, like slow car service, that torpedoed his appearance, a claim the ABC News said is patently false. In fact, Mediate  reported that the car for Jones was outside his apartment an hour ahead of schedule–Jones did not answer their phone calls or knock on his door by building security.

One cause they never fail to mention — the Media Matters, the Rachel Maddows, and the so forths, on this part of Rand Paul’s career is the fight against the Bilderbergers.  Put in his mouth here…

In the 2010 taped interview, Paul goes on to describe how the Bilderberg Group “is made up of wealthy people, I think, who manipulate and use government to their own personal advantage. They want to make it out like world government will be good for humanity. But guess what? World government is good for their pocketbook.”

So it comes as a bit of amusement that we see …

Will libertine #PeterThiel convince #Bilderberger group mtg to back #RandPaul for US presidency as best available means for wrecking the US?

We await to see if this line of questioning sways the John Birch Society, or if maybe it’s not necessarily hypocritical to attack those that attack Rand Paul on the Bilderberg matter while fingering the Bilderbergs as enshrining Rand Paul as something of a double agent.

I don’t understand this Thanksgiving comment.

Yes, voters are dumb, corruptible, gullible and selfish, and many candidates are immoral and opportunistic. It is possible to fool most of the people for much of the time. And it is true that the world’s most pressing problems cannot be solved by unaided democracy, because turkeys do not vote for Thanksgiving.

I understand it as the concept that… oh, people will vote for ice cream and won’t vote for broccoli.  … they’ll vote for what they want; not what they need… fair enough and true enough.

But this seems to have the air of the Oligarchy telling turkeys that they need Thanksgiving, which… they don’t.  Maybe the Oligarchs need Thanksgiving, and need turkeys to vote for it, but the turkeys should be voting against it.

Well.  That’s the Wall Street Journal for you… even when taking the sensible editorial policy that China’s government is not one to emulate they botch it and highlight the problem with our governance, or the governance they advocate.

Well la de freaking da.  The Burlington “alt weeky” has compiled the Bernie Sanders material for all to see — and they’re worth a read to see the route taken by one of the more interesting politicians in this country —

And now as they follow the presidential campaign … and to Brooklyn to discover such great tidbits from the old neighborhood.

His eyebrows lifted when a reporter informed him that a candidate for president of the United States used to live in the building. Lopez said he’s never heard of Bernie Sanders, who declined to be interviewed for this story.

And we await to see if Martin O’Malley gets similar treatment in Baltimore.

Lincoln Chafee’s not getting the hometown attention, and has to suffice with fact-checking up on his metric claims.

In 1982, Reagan defunded and abolished the U.S. Metric Board, which was supposed to spearhead conversion. That signaled the beginning of the end for metric conversion, even though Reagan six years later signed an omnibus law that, tucked deep inside, contained a measure stipulating the metric system “be used, to the extent economically feasible, in Federal agency’s’ procurements, grants, and other business-related activities.”

Reagan did talk about it, though.

Worth noting… maybe?  The Democratic field consists of… three ex-Republicans and one ex- sort of still Socialist … and that one always Democrat.  What’s it mean?  Maybe not much.

So.  What’s the big headlines with all these presidential candidates running?

Ben Carson keeps checking his watch.  4 times during an 8 minute speech.  This, if you remember, undid George Herbert Walker Bush.  We’ll see what it does for Ben Carson.

Ted Cruz told a bad joke about Joseph Biden and his dead son.  He will likely never tell jokes about dead sons of politicians ever again.

Jeb Bush is in Europe.  Because Europe loves that family!  We’re also getting that familiar “fictional bad guy” more popular than “politico” — a rubric I never understand because… ask the question about a fictional bad guy and I’m always thinking of how s/he sticks up in the fictional universe and … oh, works dramatically.

The transgendered vote will never go for Mike Huckabee.  (As these things go, and call me insensitive, but… ‘meh’.)  The Duggars will vote for him, I suppose.

Carly Fiorna attacks the Porn-watching Federal Employees… as sited by a … small number of examples, and I suppose the NSA example that liberals were want to huff about when the last guy was in power and forget when this guy is in power.

Rand Paul or Bernie Sanders?  You’ll have plenty of time to decide.  Or not get that decision.

Lindsey Graham solves the “Who’s First Lady” question.

From an article about the Cannes Film festival’s red carpet’s questionable fashion rules (women must wear high heels).

For some reason, every time an injustice unfolds on the Internet, the offended party announces what year it is—as though the wrongdoers are time travellers from a bygone era who will learn the error of their ways the moment they learn the date.

The phrase “this is [the year or decade we are living in]” has always struck me as ahistorical, like all vestiges of a previous time have been eradicated, we are now more enlightened permanently.
The one good thing about it is it is the act of saying it, laying it into various media, makes it apt to become dated.  It becomes comical in the way that you hear “It’s the 80s” in a Karate Kid.

So … she’s right.  I don’t know that she’s right for the reason I think, but it’s a phrase that should be banished as becoming meaningless.  The year is 2015, and something called “stuff” still exists as it did in the 1950s, as it did in the 1830s, as it did in the Hellenistic Period, codified and uncodified, superficial and intrinsic, and on and on.