Back when I was deep in the weeds of developing the site that would become Booman Tribune, Time magazine recognized Powerline as the Blog of the Year. Those were the days, with Bush-Cheney fresh off the ratification of the people and reelection to a second four-year term, when Dartmouth assholery was at an apex. I realize that most people don’t know what Dartmouth assholery really means, but it’s a thing.
Don’t get me wrong, any institution that can give us both Dr. Seuss and Mister Rogers can’t be all bad, but Dartmouth also gave us Laura Ingraham, Dinesh D’Souza and the folks that run Powerline. There’s a strain of right-wing obnoxiousness at that university that is an embarrassment to all Ivy League graduates and the people who are supposed to educate them.
Still, John Hinderaker (aka, Assrocket) has a point. If Jeb Bush is going to spend the bulk of his time nitpicking Marco Rubio about his U.S. Senate attendance record, he ought to just give up and go home.
At this point I think I prefer that Jeb waste the Bush friends’ money himself instead of passing it to another candidate or to more capable political hands.
After all, the Democratic strategy this year should be to figure out how to get the GOP to waste so much money in the primary that they are digging deep in the general. The people who want the US to keep the most expensive military in the world might also want to conduct the most expensive campaigns in the world — just because they can as a result of Citizens United. We need to encourage that march of folly on the right.
Is it possible to spend enough to endanger GOP pockets?
Would be an interesting theory to test. How much pain causes the reversal of the Powell Memo doctrine?
Ugh. Forcing me to read that thing again.
As a grad, that leaves a mark…
Hey, David Benioff gave us a Game of Thrones that doesn’t wait ten years between installments! That has to make up for at least Morton Kondracke
Mort is benign and a run-of-the-mill type of conservative that you can find at any elite university. But if you want atonement for his wankery, I’ll give it to you.
Maybe Fred Barnes, then? I dunno. Even giving us GoT may not make up for that.
At this point, the Citizens United revolution is revealing the problems with it. It allows rich people to pay vast sums to elect sympathetic politicians. However, the point is that no one is at this time being elected. Rather, the candidate is being selected. Vast sums are being spent for actually no purpose. Which is good. If all the rich people are so stupid as to spend their money now, on primaries, more power to them. Spend your money, idiots. Not a single dollar spent to this point is influencing a single actual voter, just primary voters.
The stupidity of the super wealthy is rarely spoken on. You must’ve been hit upside your head with a hammer to get played into giving large sums of money to Gingrich or Santorum. Ted Cruz has Super Pacs? Who are the numb nuts that are giving millions to Fiorina’s Super Pacs? Those guys were better off giving their money to dominas. The investments are going to a good cause that way.
Louise Erdrich went there (the first year it was co-ed).
But yeah, lots of assholes. Thing is, it’s more of an asshole finishing school, since most of the rich little pricks who go there are already assholes.
More of a value-added thing. Which is I think right there in their Mission Statement.
Yep: faciens populum in maiores assholes
This actually made me laugh. Because this is essentially tattooed on the ass of pretty much every conservative once they become a made member of the right-wing family. It is the mission statement of modern conservatism.
Daniel Webster was an alumnus.
Many years ago, when I was deciding where to apply for college, there was a guide to college admissions that had an entry for Dartmouth that began, “Daniel Webster once said, ‘Dartmouth is small, but there are those who love it.’ Today, most people would agree that Dartmouth is small.”
Perhaps if Marco were traveling the country, clearing brush…
To the asshole list.
That’s Major Asshole to you! 🙂