Thursday, September 17, 2015

Republican candidates choose their own Secret Service code names

One of the more inane, indulgent and unhelpful questions asked by Jake Tapper at the end evoked one of the liveliest happiest responses from all the candidates. They all answered apparently sincerely. A stupid question, I think, I was discouraged hearing it, here is how they answered.

Chris Christie: True Heart.

John Kasich: Unit One (from Ohio)

Carly Fiorina: Secretariat

Scott Walker: Harley

Jeb Bush" Everready (battery)

Donald Trump: Humble

Ben Carson: One Nation

Ted Cruz: Cohiba (cigar)

Marco Rubio: Gator (Fla. sports team)

Mike Huckabee: Duck Hunter

Rand Paul: Justice Never Sleeps

Sadly we don't know what Jindal, Pataki, Graham and Santorum would pick for their SS handles.

18 comments:

edutcher said...

You'd expect a little better out of Tapper.

rhhardin said...

VJ for Carly. That's what she's running on.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Humble would lead to confusion.

AllenS said...

AllenS: Grand Poobah

chickelit said...

Humble?

How about "terrific" or "radiant" or "some pig"?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The portrait replacement question was rather lame too.

But even there, I thought Fiorina shined.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

You know what would be neat? If someone could edit everybody's answers onto a solo continuous monologue.

That would be an easy way to gauge them.

rhhardin said...

Fiorina strikes me as a Peter Principle feminist.

William said...

I thought Fiorina was impressive. She's mastered the art of the power point presentation. She has a severe face, but its very sharpness tends to emphasize the incisiveness of her comments.......She looks a little like Dana Bash. I can accept severe looks in a Presidential candidate but they're truly poison in a television commentator. If I were Trump, I would have refused to answer questions from her and would have demanded that CNN provide him with Erin Burnett for the questions.

Chip Ahoy said...

She strikes me as really sharp.

I believe candidates like Kasich (sp. whatever) and Christie (sp. whatever) are two good examples of why people hate Republican party reflexively. They both make me a bit ill listening to them. Christie especially seems to claw his way through the party, through everything actually, clawing through baseball hugs, even to clawing through every meal.

Somebody commented something medical, "I was given ____ mm of _____ (a relaxant of some sort) before the dentist and that's how Ben Carson sounded, woozy and droopy, and slightly amused with everything said."

The conservatives I follow can be impossible sometimes. All times, actually, they're wound up as progressives. Intent on mis-comprehending a second time and not just not having a different interpretation, but also not even seeing what actually happened.

Trump said maybe the vaccine thing should be spread out.

Everyone eager for Trump mistake (everyone) jumped at how retarded a thing to say. The whole issue already well-discussed and concluded, there is no connection between vaccines and autism.

They missed the part of the debate, no doubt distracted by their huge get, where Carson agreed with Trump that well, yeah, maybe spacing out vaccines might be a good idea. They got a second doctor's opinion right there, "Hate to admit it, but Trump has a point, there might be good reason to space vaccinations over longer period of time."

And I wasn't even paying attention that much. I did notice that part. And had it off mute since that Christie guy wasn't talking my machines cooperated with sound. I was listening to Dirty Vegas singing about how days go by and still I think of you-hoooo, reading tweets on the s6 and looking up signs for words like "live" and "life" and comparing results in different windows on the laptop.

I knew it already but I wanted it confirmed again. Things change, you know. In ASL there is no difference between the concept of "live" and the concept of "life" the idea clouds completely overlap with "health," "heal" "cure" "vigor" "vitality" "élan vital" what have you.

The song has "live my life" (without you) and that's ridiculously redundant in that language. What to do? Force it. I want desperately to keep the words to the beat but here that desperation must be abandoned because English is bollox sometimes, and for it to make sense and for the signals to not confuse by insisting and forcing a distinction that does not exist in that language. It must be changed to" still I live without you." I think. It could be done, but it's messy, to clean it up you'd reverse, "live life my" so the verb live "Ls" switch to noun life "health" is shown cleanly as a distinction between two senses of life and living with "my" finalizing rather than interrupting. So the word is displaced to the beat. For the second best solution to the problem of English being odd. ("I verb my noun" instead of simply "I verb") The "l verb" is shown clearly, the other one is not.

So all that reading during the debates was productive.

rhhardin said...

Redundancy turns up all over. Rape is rape. (See Wm. Empson, The Structure of Complex Words, "X is X".)

Usually the first is taken broadly and the second is taken narrowly, making a claim that the second is the right handle to take hold of the first.

bagoh20 said...

"Fiorina strikes me as a Peter Principle feminist."

The Presidency is the ultimate Peter Principle promotion. Nobody is up to the job, at least not in it's current form.

I think she is pretty sharp, but it's hard to tell. She is like many executive women, and some men. They get there by hard work and obsessive preparation, so they are well-versed on the facts. The challenge for a President - just like any executive - is how do you react to situations where you can't just study up and collect the facts, but must decide anyway, and fast. This is why I think past performance is the most important qualifier. I'm not sure how she is with that, but it seems from what I have read that she reacted correctly at HP, and probably saved a company from it's own staleness and dead-end culture by seeing the future correctly and reacting as needed, even though it was hard and unpopular.

bagoh20 said...

"...where Carson agreed with Trump that well, yeah, maybe spacing out vaccines might be a good idea. They got a second doctor's opinion right there, "Hate to admit it, but Trump has a point, there might be good reason to space vaccinations over longer period of time."

Carson said it was a bad idea with serious vaccines, but might be worth looking at for less serious ones, but Carson says that about everyone's suggestions: "Hey, it's worth looking at."

Well of course, but that's essentially saying nothing more than "no comment".

Delaying or stretching out full immunity via vaccines has serious risks to the public. Kind of like giving a known criminal one free crime before arresting them.

I want to be a Carson fan. He seems a decent and and capable doctor with good values, and seems to have an open mind and reasons things out, but he is not a leader, a fighter, nor an inspiring speaker, and we need all that in the job.

windbag said...

Jindal's handle would be 7-11, right?

rcocean said...

Supposedly, most of what CF said was based on her "Stump speech" - but I have no idea whether that's true or not.

Of course, the idea we should elect a president based on how well they can talk on TV for 2 minutes is sorta of stupid. I know plenty of middle managers at work who are great at getting up in meetings and gassing away but are terrible at the actual y'know work - i.e. making good decisions and handling people. OTOH, we live in a TV world and you must have some sort of TV presence or Charisma because that's how POTUS' communicate.

That's one reason I don't like Christie, his whole popularity is about yelling at people during

rcocean said...

Carson simply puzzles me. And his fans. There was a man on Rush Limbaugh, an old dude from Boston, who proudly stated he was voting for Carson because he was black. (BTW, he spoke normally but would pronounce Carson like he used to do Pepperidge Farm commercials). He seemed to think that was somehow admirable or cheeky or something.

But after seeing Carson the debates and listening to him on C-span. I just don't get it. Intelligent nice man? Yep. Somewhat conservative? Yep. But why would anyone think he could be POTUS and lead the free world? We already elected one unqualified guy because he was Black, why would we do it again?

rcocean said...

And how did the whole vaccines thing come up? I bailed after two hours.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

For a second I thought Huckleberry's code name said "Dick Hunter".

That would make sense. For Huckleby.