Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

There is always a frightening prospect that the convention will indeed be a continuation of these kinds of stories.

A competent politician representing the opposition to the current president would have made Orlando, Brexit, Baton Rouge / Sterling, Minneapolis / Castile, Dallas, Nice and the failed coup in Turkey into a coherent narrative about how feckless and apathetic his opponents are. It doesn't even require a decent amount of self-awareness to pull this off, it just demands a little bit of worldliness and an attention span.

Both of which are basically out of Trump's reach thanks to his apparent addiction to cheap speed diet pills and his phenomenal obsession with how small his own dick is

st paul xp

https://vine.co/v/5Wm7igEpLKX

https://twitter.com/mike_pence/status/754408867912622080

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ohhh so THAT'S where all teh chilis joeks came from today

would be a srs oversight if he didn't get paid for that

tweet was more about exhibiting his bona fides as A Man of The People

"He's a solid, solid person," Trump said.

It is true that Pence neither collapses into a puddle on the floor, nor does he dissipate ethereally into the atmosphere.

Unless he is some sort of non-Newtonian substance, one might reasonably conclude that he is, in fact, solid.

he does look like you could just thump on him

sometimes u just crave chilis. i don't hold this against him as much as his draconian track record on lgbt issues

what's up, my niggas, we're having Applebee's tonight!

not clicking on that thread title

I feel like the "4 hours of sleep each night" as attested by the campaign itself, plus the "funky diet pills regimen" as undenied by key players thing is just waiting to hatch

Pence's wife started a company called That's My Towel!

http://fortune.com/2016/07/16/karen-pence-towel-charms/

My business is called, “That’s My Towel!” Charm, Inc.

Most of us have matching bath and beach towels, so it is easy to get them confused. I have had so many times where I was swimming at a friend’s beach house, pool, or lake house, using their matching beautiful beach towels. Lo and behold, I would go in the water for a dip or up to the house for a beverage, and when I came back to my towel, it was gone! Someone else had grabbed my towel unknowingly…because all of the towels looked the same.

And how many times have you walked into the bathroom and seen multiple towels on the floor and wondered, "Whose towel is whose?" Towel charms solve that problem and eliminate daily unnecessary laundry.

So to solve this, I came up with the idea of a towel charm. They are a fun, environmentally-friendly, and inexpensive way to eliminate unnecessary laundry, make a statement with your unique charm, and solve the problem of “Who took my towel?”

I designed a charm holder that goes through a towel. My company sells the charm holder and your choice of charm. You can attach the charm holder to your bath or beach towel and identify it as your own. The goal is to eliminate having to wash towels every day because no one knows which towel is theirs. It saves time and money and helps get the bathroom organized. And they are adorable!

They are great for everyday use, hostess gifts at a pool party, housewarming gifts, beach vacations, college students, teacher gifts, etc.

Hopefully your new Towel Charm will save you lots of time and money! And from now on you will be able to state with confidence … "That’s My Towel!"

you have to admit that's a great idea

definitely best as a standalone college graduation gift

So what we know from this is: Karen is a lot smarter than her husband. Raise your hand if you're surprised.

The country may not be ready for a vice president whose daughter is a vampire.

https://twitter.com/mike_pence/status/754408867912622080

hahaha

they went to NYC and ate at Chilis

they are from Indiana after all

Hey, come on. Sometimes we eat at Friday's.

speaking as a transplant to new york, whenever one of these "if you're in NYC don't eat at chili's" things comes up it just makes me kinda want some medicore fast-casual restaurant food. i mean every so often i've hit up mcdonald's even. i ain't too proud. the vampire issue is much more concerning to me.

Most of us have matching bath and beach towels

makes me wonder what the 'us' she imagines she is talking to looks like

haha what the fuck is happening with that chilis photo

http://www.sullivansrecords.com/Sullivan/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Dinner-With-Drac.jpg

It's presumably a deliberate choice - the people who look down on people because of where they eat aren't the target demographic.

to Midwesterners in general, eating at chili's in nyc shows that one is "just folks" and not stuck up, plus that one knows the value of a dollar

I imagine it's actually the safe familiar choice when faced with infinite options. Not that any block with a Chili's will have anything else too off the beaten path.

i don't even know what chili's is. is it ersatz mexican?

Big chain restaurant, ersatz tex-mex, more upscale than a Taco Bell, about on a par with Applebees. Its wikipedia blurb.

Baby Back Ribs! Last resort airport food tbh. The last or maybe only time I ever ate there it was for the free Wi-Fi after a long flight delay.

They have passable burgers, but it's pretty hard to fuck up a cheeseburger.

https://twitter.com/PhilipRucker/status/754696163748708352

the photo is one thing.. also font + design looks like it was pulled out of a box from 1990

fwiw they were at the NJ airport chilis

Chili's is also one of those "Food, Fun, and A Ton of Crazy Crap on The Wall" places. They have bar areas inside them that are the kind of places where the term 'White Girl Wasted' may have been coined.

I don't even own a chili's

posted this accidentally on another thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/opinion/sunday/were-helping-deport-kids-to-die.html

this was a powerful piece about the Obama administration's complicity in Mexico's deportation program. basically, they are refusing to give asylum to people who aren't migrants but refugees, fleeing powerful gangs in el salvador and honduras.

i'm not always a big believe in national conversations, but i think America needs to start talking about the moral responsibility we have toward central america. these countries were directly devastated by US policy and not just economically. i don't think anyone here needs the reagan year footnotes

― Treeship, Sunday, July 17, 2016 2:55 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

anyway, i want to see clinton address this. right now the discourse on immigration is kind of beating around the reality of the situation on both sides. the republicans have their own libelous narrative of immigrants as parasites and the democrats talk in vague truisms about how immigrants our hardworking just like you and me. left out is a discussion of the fact that there are a bunch of failed states south of the border and we had a hand in making them that way

i don't even know what a non-failed state looks like anymore

was there really that much calculation behind a visit to chili's

man now i really could go for some kind of platter at chili's. or applebee's. i never was too sure of the difference tbh.

like the mention of 'tex-mex' above was seriously the first time it ever occurred to me that chili's was meant to have a theme beyond "american dinner restaurant staples."

I don't hate on chili's even though they don't have a lot I can eat but I can usually put some kinda plate together and it's all right. this part of the campaign, where the bad guy doing ANYTHING AT ALL gets an "oh my God, who is this chump, thinking he can use an iPhone!" reaction is a special level of the campaign because you might have thought that after the mess of the primary season, people'd leave their worse shit to the side and get focused, but no, it gets worse, "ha ha they ate at some rube restaurant!" goes into the mix and what's it do? win some hearts and minds? no, it makes some guy somewhere think "I'm going to make a point of voting for whoever these dickheads are being such assholes about" and that guy, even though he's voting wrong, is otm

Chili's is not texmex, stop with these lies

Hoping someone opens up part 7 for this thread tonight, taking it through one or both of the conventions. (I don't really have any title ideas myself, else I'd go ahead.)

Jclc otm

I agree, there should probably be a new thread to coincide with the conventions. Especially since we are currently talking about Chili's.

Honestly haven't really thought much about that place one way or the other, like I said outside of airports, but pretty lame that he specifically called attention to it. #pencegotpaid

I have no issue with the choice of chilis , just want to echo dr casino that the real issue is the lack of reflection of a vampiress and that weird kid in the red shirt