No one in Trump campaign expected Melania to get caught

By Dan Brooks in 2016 Election 0 Comment
Classy

Classy

It would be unfair to ask Melania Trump to write her own speech for the Republican convention. As the third wife of a billionaire 25 years her senior, she was not selected for her oratory skills. And can you imagine what it would be like to start in a Slovenian village and go on to marry the loudest asshole in America? Between Sevnica and Cleveland, she probably did some things she did not at first enjoy. My point is that Melania is through working, and we should leave her to peacefully wait out this last year of her husband’s life. In the meantime, hire a ghostwriter. Newt Gingrich would do it for lunch, I bet, and you could get somebody really good for money. This brings us to the question of whom the Trump campaign got—because, as you’ve no doubt heard, a portion of Melania’s speech sounded just like Michelle Obama’s speech from 2008.

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Friday links! Pleiotropy edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment
A male guppy you totally want to bang because he looks like an orange fruit

A male guppy you totally want to bang because he looks like an orange fruit

Pleiotropy is the scientific term for when a single gene produces two unrelated effects. For example, male guppies like the one pictured above tend to be orange and have that spot on their tale—possibly because that color and pattern are sexually attractive to females, but mostly because they look like a piece of fruit. Props for the link to my girlfriend Lucretia, who can read and understand scientific articles much better than me. Nature has made wild male guppies orange not because it’s useful or sexy, but because breeding females mistake them for food. Today is Friday, and cause precedes motive in such a way that sense comes only after effect. Won’t you explore some terrifying coincidences with me?

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Killin’ it!

By Dan Brooks in representative democracy 2 Comments

Michelle Obama’s speech was almost exactly twice as good as Mitt Romney’s, at least according to Twitter. It’s possible that points to a difference in the media habits of people who watch the DNC and the RNC, respectively, but I’m going to say it’s because she was twice as good. Lots of people agree with me, even if Charles Krauthammer issued a formal bah, humbug. “And the brilliance of it is this,” he said: “It drained Obama of any, either, ideological motivation, or any having to do with self-interest or ambition, which I think is sort of a more plausible explanation.” You saw through it, Krauthammer: the president is ambitious.

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An unfair rant about Rick Perry before we all forget him

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 6 Comments

A white millionaire with normal-sized ears.

Despite its manifest limitations, Combat! blog strives to appear fair and reasonable. Our discussions here may be colored by liberal bias, occasional smug atheism and captions about seagulls swooping at Anne Coulter’s vagina, but we try to maintain at least a pose of circumspection. Nobody wants to read blog posts by a person who already knows what he thinks about everything. That being said: today I read about Rick Perry’s declaration that President Obama “grew up in a privileged way” and that “that mentality of ‘I’m the smartest guy in the room and therefore it couldn’t be my fault’ is really hurting America.” And I thought to myself, you craven little ponce. Only for once, I was thinking that about someone else. So today’s Combat! blog post is basically just a rant. Rick Perry is a mediocre man and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd. His campaign for the presidency is important only insofar as it warns us against the legions of men exactly like him who will come after, and who will also be too dishonest and stupid to do us any good.

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