Aside: On The Decoy Effect

People are deliberately inducing anxiety in you in order to manipulate your decisions.  You’re already aware of this, at least subconsciously; consider:
How many coffee sizes are there?

If you answered three — either small, medium, and large or tall, grande, and venti depending on where you get your caffeine — then (more…)

Fear and Loathing 2020: Some 4 A.M. Thoughts On Mike Bloomberg

NOTE:  The following transcription has been heavily edited to reduce profanity.  Nevertheless, reader discretion is advised.

The cesspit that is modern politics has surpassed itself.

Scene:  It’s the middle of the night and I just now finished fixing my writeup on Sanders and Yang after a couple of hours of desperately needed sleep.  Some of that was not fit to read; glad I got to it.  Sleeplessness and politics should never mix; this is how we got Eagleton in ’72, after all.  I’m just about to go back to bed when (more…)

F&L: Warren Out West, Lebanon N.H.

It’s easy to forget, but there’s a big chunk of New Hampshire that exists cheek-by-jowl with Vermonters that live on opposite sides of the Connecticut River valley.  It’s a demographic the state doesn’t quite know what to do with; the urban centers (such as they are) are lumped in with mountain recluse compound-dwellers to form the Fifth State Senate District.  Fifty thousand people live right along here; two thirds are Pantsuit Nation loyalists and the rest vote MAGA.  There might be a moderate somewhere but if so he’s in hiding.  The only reason there isn’t open war is only the MAGA faction is armed — and they just want to be left the hell alone.

You couldn’t pay me enough to canvass for a Democrat outside city limits. (more…)

Vignette: Random Panera East of… Somewhere Or Other

(Full disclosure:  Fatigue poisoning had long since set in, so some of this I’m cobbling together from garbled recorded rants.  This is as close as I can come to making sense out of it without losing the sense of who I was at the time.  Not sure whether to include this or not, to be honest — but there’s no way to know until I get it transcribed, is there?  Read on at your own risk.)

I think this is the fourth event I’ll have attended today, but I’m not sure.  I was up writing until past 2 this morning, and back at the keyboard at 6.  There’s so much caffeine in me, my fingers are vibrating too much to type, so this is going into the pocket recorder straight and God help us all. (more…)

F&L: Tulsi at the VFW / Tulsi Revisited

It’s a miserable night in a way only New Hampshire can provide.  Water is falling out of the air not as snow or ice but in actual lumps of slush.  I can hear it going *splat* all around me as we slip and slither up to the door of the VFW hall where Tulsi is scheduled to speak.  We’ve tried for her and missed twice now; as I understand it her defense committee needed her on the Hill — but of course the campaign doesn’t talk about that sort of thing; I had to (more…)

Fear & Loathing 2020: Tom Steyer Live

“Come away, come away if you’re going; Leave the sinking ship behind!”

It’s no random choice that selected CCR’s “Around The Bend” as Tom Steyer’s theme song.  On the face of it, his candidacy is absolutely insane; he’s an honest-to-God billionaire running on a platform of “Get Money Out Of Politics”; I’ve never (more…)

Interlude: Pigeons in South Station

“Mr. Lion, Mr. Lion!” says the monkey.  “If you’re the king of the jungle, why is it you’re down there and I’m up here?”
-Joel, at South Station

Editor’s Note:  Read while listening to Jethro Tull’s Aqualung.

Too much caffeine; too little sleep.  South Station in Boston, just coming back from the New Hampshire primaries.  Nice guy, name of Joel.  Don’t know his story, but he likes a good joke.  We got to talking.

Joel was worried about me; saw me dozing off (more…)

Fear and Loathing 2020: A Step Back

I’ve got upwards of 37,000 words assembled thus far and there’s an end in sight.  So far so good, right?  Time to take a quick step back from the task and survey the whole, to see if there’s any major adjustments that ought to be made before it goes too far to recover.  On any other project I might instead be looking to see if it’s worth finishing, but this one’s gone too far for that.  It’s got momentum of its own, and I wouldn’t dare try to stop; the book would devour me.

Which is a problem, because I’m thinking book, and events are going too fast (more…)

Fanfare For “The Common Man”, Concord, NH

It seems like everywhere you turn in New Hampshire, there’s another Common Man property.  There’s restaurants, diners, at least one honest-to-goodness pub, a couple of resorts, and on and on.  And yet, for some reason, it never occurred to me that I might stop.  After all, there were other places with better neon; McDonald’s may be crap but it’s familiar crap.  But then random chance took a hand, and I stopped.

And then I went back.  And did it again the next day.

Right.  So, first and foremost:  Cracker Barrel?  A bunch of poseurs.  You only think they (more…)