Tuesday Open Thread

Filed in National by on August 2, 2011

Welcome to your Tuesday open thread. The thread is open, so come on it. Just remember not to track mud all over the place and be sure to put the toilet seat down.

The D.B. Cooper case has a new lead:

Forty years after parachuting into folklore, the mysterious skyjacker identified as D.B. Cooper may soon be identified.

“We do actually have a new suspect we’re looking at,” says FBI spokeswoman Ayn Sandolo Dietrich in a story in the British newspaper, The Telegraph. “And it comes from a credible lead who came to our attention recently via a law enforcement colleague.”

The hijacker left behind DNA and fingerprints on a magazine he handled during the hijacking, on a cigarette and on portions of the plane. Dietrich is not specific about the new piece of evidence but she told The Telegraph, “We’re hoping there are fingerprints they can take off of it. It would be a significant lead,” she continued, “And this is looking like our most promising one to date.”

Reading between the lines, it sounds like this new suspect would have survived the jump from the plane. It sure would be an interesting story if true!

New York magazine did a profile of would-be presidential candidate Jon Huntsman. It’s really quite interesting. It’s basically trying to pit Huntsman vs Romney for the successful businessman candidate.

Neither Romney nor his aides have yet to utter a harsh word about Huntsman—on the record, that is. But privately, their scorn for him is withering and total. Huntsman’s bid, they say, is a vanity candidacy, with zero logic or rationale behind it. He has no base in the GOP and absolutely no hope of building one; as an Obama appointee seeking to lead a virulently anti-Obama party, he is terminally toxic.

I have to agree here. Why is Jon Huntsman running for president? For a Republican Huntsman is saber but he still has some reflexive problems. Look at how he characterizes Michele Bachmann’s popularity:

Until recently, the most obvious beneficiary of such a development would have been Bachmann. But even before her recent troubles with migraines and missed congressional votes, she was always a candidate unlikely to draw sufficient mainstream Republican support to go the distance, more an object of media fascination than a plausible nominee. As Huntsman puts it, somewhat indelicately, “She makes for good copy—and good photography.”

She’s popular because she’s pretty. I guess that’s what Republicans are going with. I don’t think it will work but I think Perry’s their biggest threat right now.

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Comments (11)

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  1. puck says:

    I am not an economist but this is viscerally true to me:

    Income disparity is so severe that its actually putting a brake on demand

    income disparity… is so severe that consumer demand is incapable of stimulating the economy. At this point in time income disparity is a brake on economic growth.

  2. Jason330 says:

    I was in a bar right now (go figure, right?) and heard about 45 minutes of Fox News. 100% of which was all out trashing of Obama for trying to get rid of the mortgage tax deduction.

    I wish I could assume Fox News was full of shit on this, but in view of recent events…. ?

  3. Jason330 says:

    I’m looking at the employment numbers and realizing that the first thing the next President is going to do is put a HUGE public works project in place to tear down libraries, pave over parks and burn huge piles of coal for the sake of burning something.

  4. puck says:

    Cutting taxes and cutting spending IS the Republican jobs policy. That is the marker that Obama will negotiate with and eventually capitulate to on a jobs bill. Coons, Carper, and Carney will vote Yes.

    Oh, and busting unions too.

  5. MJ says:

    I’d like to do this with some of the tourists’ cars in Rehoboth – http://jalopnik.com/5826496/mayor-crushes-misparked-luxury-car-with-troop-carrier

  6. Jefferson says:

    I agree that Perry is the biggest threat to Obama at the moment. He has broad appeal that could vault him immediately to front-runner status in the GOP field. The contrast between poor national jobs growth and Texas’ economic growth would be difficult to run against for Obama. (Perry had little to do with it–the Texas governor is notoriously constitutionally weak.) Still, it remains to be seen whether he can withstand the scrutiny a presidential campaign receives–particularly when a “new” candidate enters late at the top or near the top of the field. Wesley Clark in 04′ and Fred Thompson in 08′ were both hailed as saviors by many but ultimately had minimal impact on the race. Of course, Clark was a rookie politician who had no rationale for his candidacy other than being a former general and Thompson simply was not willing to put in the work being a presidential candidate requires. I presume Perry will wage a stronger campaign than these two but Romney and co. will come out with guns blazing to strangle his candidacy in the crib after he announces.

  7. Geezer says:

    Perry is just like Texas — broad and shallow. Shallow also describes his support. Last I saw he wasn’t polling first among Texas Republicans in the GOP presidential race.

  8. Rusty Dils says:

    Anyone who does not think Mitt Romney is going to hit the ground running once he is elected, please read below.

    Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released the names of his new justice advisory committee today, which will be co-chaired by former Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork.

    According to the Romney campaign, the 63-member committee will advise Romney on issues of the Constitution, judicial matters, law enforcement, homeland security and regulatory issues, and will provide legal counsel to his campaign. In addition to Bork, the committee will be co-chaired by Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law School professor and former ambassador to the Vatican, and Richard Wiley, a communications attorney and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Bork is a conservative legal scholar who was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan, but his nomination was rejected by the Senate.

    This comes 15 months before the election.
    This is how a business man gets ready for a big project.

  9. puck says:

    A Mormon, a Vatican ambassador, a judge, and a professor walk into a bar. They run up a big tab but when it is time to pay for their drinks, they give the bartender a tax cut and tell him to hand their bill to the other patrons. The bar patrons erupt into cheers and boost the group onto their shoulders. The bartender smiles and pours them all another round and says “You can stay as long as you like, boys!”

  10. anon40 says:

    @puck–

    A priest, a rabbi and a duck walk into a bar. The bartender looks at them and says, “Is this a joke?”