Got a ton of white boy guilt, that’s my problem
Obstacle of joy, one reason to use some drugs.
Slept on a Mexican beach — slept in trash
American trash! Thinking too much can ruin a good time.
I asked a Mexican who ran a bar for Americans
“Who won,” I said “The election?”
He laughed, I felt like a gringo
They played a song and they had some fun with us.
Why can’t you buy a good time? Why are there soldiers in the street?
Why’d I spend the fourth in someone else’s country?
—Mike Watt
I Felt Like a Gringo
Every lending contract in America has the potential for bankruptcy lurking in the background. Lenders — who as Trump said “aren’t babies” but “total killers” — are sophisticated enough to know about this option when they lend people money. In fact, they not only assume the risk of bankruptcy, but price it into the deal when they lend Donald Trump or anyone else money.
Tom Kiley, my pollster, turned up some findings that seemed crazy to me. For example, less than one quarter of the likely Republican primary voters believed that Barack Obama had been born in the United States. These were the voters who could help tip a Republican primary to an archconservative, but that conservative would have a hard time winning the state. Yes, it was a three-way primary of equally viable candidates, but a subset of energized people with strong religious convictions and serious aversion to gay people, public schools, immigrants, and reproductive choice could help elect someone like [Todd] Akin…
The right didn’t care when Trump attacked Rosie O’Donnell or others savaged Candy Crowley, but Megyn Kelly is the sexual fantasy of every male conservative in the country and they all secretly believe that they can have sex with her if they can just impress her enough with their chivalric defenses of her honor.
Donald Trump has dominated the early phase of the Republican campaign. The Republican Party needs to put an end to it. The question going into the first debate was which candidate would take it upon himself to take down Trump. The answer is that none of them did. Fox News did the work itself, a division of labor that made sense for both sides. The candidates could refrain from alienating the Donald’s loyalists; and the moderators, who don’t need Iowans to tromp through the snow for them, can peel the bark off him. The Fox News moderators brutalized Trump with questions about his partisan loyalty he could not answer because there is no answer. Trump is in this race for himself, not for the party…
It’s always a pig in a poke. So why not a pig who pokes?
I will agree that lawns are dumb. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a lawn if you want one, but the idea that you are somehow awful if you let your yard go wild and attract a variety of wildlife instead of conforming to a chemically-induced monoculture of grass that serves no real purpose is ridiculous. But people freak out if they see a yard that doesn’t conform to the norm. So they crack down to the point of using law enforcement against the hippies who want frogs and snakes and other natural creatures on their property.
America has long had a ruling class but the public was willing to tolerate it during the three decades after World War II, when prosperity was widely shared and when the Soviet Union posed a palpable threat. Then, the ruling class seemed benevolent and wise. 
The Democratic National Committee and MSNBC announced Wednesday afternoon the name of the 10 candidates who will be participating in the first Democratic presidential debate of the 2016 electoral season. Only the top 10 candidates in the five most recent polls will be allowed to participate in the debate, which will be moderated by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, and PBS’s Gwen Ifill.
You can boil my claim about mathiness down to two assertions:
It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and US senators and congressmembers. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over… The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody’s who’s already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody’s who’s just a challenger.