FIRST DRAFT

Saturday Night Music: You're Going To Need Somebody

 

Hey Guys

We have no time for your shenanigans.

President Barack Obama jokingly mimics U.S. Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney's "not impressed" look while greeting members of the 2012 U.S. Olympic gymnastics teams in the Oval Office, Nov. 15, 2012. Steve Penny, USA Gymnastics President, and Savannah Vinsant laugh at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

I don't know if you've noticed or not, but the President of the United States is kind of cool.

Weekend Question Thread

It's getting cold out, and turtlenecks make us look like sausages. I keep buying them, because the Anne Hathaway types in the ads look so cozy and svelte, and then I get them on and I realize I look like a bag of meat. A warm bag of meat, but still: Bag. Of meat. Granted, I'm no little lamb, but I'm not that much bigger than average so it's starting to feel like a design flaw that these things are force-fed to a populace that generally doesn't look good in them. I vote for a turtleneck-less winter. Also death to the mock-neck. WTF. 

What item of clothing would you ban from production if you could? 

A. 

Friday Night Music: A Song For You

Time to pour a snifter full of Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown. Hmm, that sounded weird but the song is swell:

 

Friday Ferretblogging: Claire Fail Edition

Because she's been an absolute monster all week, chewing on my shoes and making a pest of herself, I present to you a film entitled Claire Is A Less Than Stellar Judge of Distance: 

Silly mini-pet. 

(Yes, she's fine, she misjudges a jump like that at least once an hour, and yes, that's me laughing at her fail, because I'm a terrible parent.)

A. 

Malaka Of The Week: Walter Shapiro

Athenae took a whack at the veteran hack, Walter Shapiro earlier in the week. It's my turn to play whack-a-hack by making Shapiro malaka of the week. Shapiro is a competent political reporter who has been around the block a time or three but he 's also one of the avatars of the Beltway conventional wisdom, which means that he's nuts for Senator Walnuts and that's why he wrote this tripe:

Before the initials CIA came to stand for Covert Intimate Affairs, the battle over the next secretary of state would have been the main event of post-election November. Normally, it doesn’t get better than a brand-name Washington struggle pitting the newly reelected president against the Republican senator he defeated in 2008 over filling the Cabinet post soon to be vacated by an ex-president’s wife. 

Barack Obama’s ill-camouflaged inclination to name Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, as Hillary Clinton’s successor would normally be about as contentious as, well, a confirmation hearing for David Petraeus in 2011. Rice, an undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration, has by most accounts performed well in a job that pivots around the micro-wording of Security Council resolutions rather than grand geopolitical visions.

But all that good will evaporated when Rice, drawing the short straw as Obama’s designated foreign-policy spinner, dutifully made the rounds of the Sunday shows on Sept. 16, five days after the Libyan attacks. Repeating the White House line, Rice argued that, based on “the best information,” a “spontaneous protest” outside the American consulate in Benghazi attracted heavily armed “extremist elements” who murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. 

In John McCain’s splenetic view, Rice’s TV commentary smacks of a White House cover-up, since subsequent reporting has shown that initial accounts of a triggering protest were incorrect. As McCain put it Wednesday on Fox News, threatening to filibuster the nomination, “Susan Rice should have known better and if she didn’t know better, she is not qualified.”

All of this shit has largely been discredited by McCain's overweening malakatude when he skipped a briefing about what happened at Behghazi in order to go on teevee to complain about being kept in the dark about what "really" happened. It led to this classic Walnutty moment:

 

Sorry for posting dipshit Wolfie but this was a classic Walnuts temper tantrum. Malakas like Walter Shapiro would *never* dare to pose such an impertinent question to Saint McCain whose inconsistencies are treated like charming idiosyncrasies. The only thing I find charming about Senator Walnuts is his daughter, Meghan.

The oddest thing about Shapiro's piece is that he doesn't *really* believe McCain's conspiratorial bluster but he thinks it could kill Rice's chances:

As should be obvious, the U.N. ambassador has nothing directly to do with embassy security, American covert operations in the Middle East or the flow of intelligence about terrorism. All Rice was doing in her television appearances on September 16 was reciting from talking points presumably prepared by the White House national security team based on information provided by the CIA and other agencies. According to reporting by Washington Post national security columnist David Ignatius, the CIA was still clinging to its belief that the Benghazi attacks began with a spontaneous protest when Rice made her ill-fated rounds of the Sunday shows.

So, Mr. CW agrees that Ms. Rice was using CIA talking points but that Obama should duck a fight over a possible nomination because otherwise McCain will hold his breath until he turns blue? Sheesh.

I don't know about you but I like the new look Democratic leadership style. Both the Prez and Leader Reid seem ready to kick ass and take no prisoners after the election. They've been as feisty as hell and I think it rocks. Mind you, I think John Kerry should be Secretary of State BUT if the Big O wants Susan Rice, he should fight for her and it looks as if he will. He seems to have learned something important from the Denver debate debacle: people love a fighter, the MSM may not but the people do.

Walter Shapiro is essentially a stand-in for the longstanding malakatude of the MSM punditocracy. It's time for them to kiss-off Senator Walnuts and his diminutive sidekick, Lindsey Graham, but that's unlikely. The CW will continue to see them as "moderates" but I think that McCain should zip his lip and zip up his pants because his Grumpy Old Man/Walter Matthau routine isn't wearing very well, and the idea of casting Graham in the Jack Lemmon role makes we want to, uh, retch up my rice...

A deeper look at Herald-free Fridays

I spent the better part of the week digesting this item: One of the student newspapers at my alma mater is dropping its Friday edition for a “digital-first” approach. I obviously have some bias toward the dead-tree edition of publications but I also obviously have a bias toward the Internet. Both have been good to me for different reasons: I love advising the kids in our newsroom as they gather on deadline to pump out the paper. Conversely, without the Web, I’d just be a crank writing missives in a “Avengers” notebook.

The Badger Herald isn’t the first to do this and it won’t be the last. The Minnesota Daily dropped its Friday edition a few years back and hasn’t looked back since. The Shorthorn at Texas-Arlington has moved to a digital platform and TCU has launched TCU360 in place of a daily pile of pulp.

Perhaps the biggest gambler was the Daily Emerald in Oregon, which took a profitable print publication and blew it up. The Emerald now publishes as a primarily Web-based medium, despite making money in the print world (a rare feat these days to say the least). In that case, the publishers saw changing shifts in their readership and despite remaining relatively healthy, they took a chance that if they wanted to survive long term, they would need to get while the getting was good. At the time, it seemed akin to a healthy woman in her early 30s getting a double mastectomy because she had the breast cancer gene: a radical choice but one that was theirs to make. As is the case with most of these things, the jury is still out.

However, in the case of the Herald, deconstructing their approach and their argumentation gave me the sense that this was more about triage than it was about trailblazing. Consider the following:

 

• In an interview with College Media Matters, Herald EIC Ryan Rainey noted that the paper was going to create a “voluntary sandbox” where digital first ideas would come about and potentially be implemented as a substitute for the print edition. When considering how to move to a digital-first model, whether you’re doing it one day or every day, you need to have some semblance of a structure. If this move were for the purpose of doing SOMETHING, Rainey would have likely been more specific as to what that something would be. Instead, it felt very free-form. Don’t get me wrong: Good things can come of that free-form approach, but more often than not, it’s like having a task to do that lacks a concrete deadline. It rarely gets done.
  
  
• Rainey noted a lack of revenue and concerns with the drop in advertising over the past few years at multiple points in his interview with CMM’s Dan Reimold. He explained that the move isn’t indicative of any major problems at the paper from a financial standpoint. That said, the Herald’s most recent 990 form shows the paper lost about $33,000 over the previous year (Download it here). For the past several years, the paper has shown a downward trend in its financial health. That said, the “voluntary sandbox” wasn’t in any way linked to a revenue-making process, which is a concern. In other words, it’s not enough to cut spending. You have to increase revenue. It’s unclear how this move does both.
  
  
• When the other papers moved to a digital model, the proposals had been in the works for months. This included heavy revamping of the workflow to better accommodate the 24/7 aspect of digital-first, the reconfiguring (or redesign) of the website to show new and exciting things and an overall set of financial and editorial projections to outline some good markers to assess the success or failure of the venture. Although I am in no way privy to the inner workings of the Herald, the nebulous nature of this project would concern me. The interview was one thing: Reimold appeared to catch Rainey before he was ready to do a full roll out of this idea. However, Rainey’s own words, published three days later in the Herald, do nothing to disabuse me of this concern. He relies on some serious buzzword bingo and that’s about it.
  
  
• When you say you value something and you want others to believe you value it, you actually have to value it. In most cases, what you are willing to pay for will demonstrate that value. I’m not say it’s always that way (I love FD the most and I do it for free), but when you set up a paid/unpaid tier system, you run the risk of telling people, “Put more time here and less time there.”
  To wit:
  
  He said salary levels for the paper’s roughly 55 paid staffers are being adjusted, simply due to the fact that “there’s going to be one less print edition, which means one less day of revenue.”
  
  Essentially, the staffers are taking a pay cut, the new enterprise is going to be revenue-free and no one is being forced/paid to work in the “voluntary sandbox.” What that indicates at a basic level is a) the paper remains the most important enterprise, b) we value the “sandbox” less both in terms of resources we are putting into it and the revenue we expect to receive from it and c) we have no cudgel to hold over you in order to get work out of you to help make this enterprise a success.
• Why now? Today is the first “Herald-free Friday,” which means that with Thanksgiving break and upcoming finals, the Herald is essentially killing (at most) five issues. The financial savings isn’t enough to make that a rational choice. In addition, this is the most stressful part of any college semester. The Thanksgiving break usually means a boatload of stress, travel and catching up on the homework students have been blowing off all term. Then, it’s upcoming final projects, final exams and packing up for the holiday break. It’s not exactly a time period most conducive to thoughtful discourse, innovation and radical change. Students are lucky if they can get laundry done. One of the best advantages student news outlets have over their professional counterparts is the presence of extended school-year breaks. Summer, Christmas, Spring Break and more give student media operations a chance to stop the daily grind and regroup. Why not push this off to the middle of December and use that dedicated group of staffers that will be responsible for launching this thing to figure out what exactly will be happening.

Other problems are always around the corner, but these appear to be the biggest question marks in an industry filled with them. The one thing that remains the elephant in the room is that for the most part student newspapers (the dead-tree editions) are still popular with students. Reimold did some earlier analysis on this topic and found that, yes, people still pick these up, they still read them and they still like them as a free, quick way to catch up on the news of the campus. By being ever-present on the campus, the papers lack competition in many ways (although the Herald does have a competing daily on its campus, it is the only paper in the country with this concern). However, when you flip the switch to digital, you find yourself fighting for air against millions of other sites, ranging from daily newspapers to Facebook and Twitter. If I’m online, I’m not going to look for my student paper, unless I have REALLY developed an online reading habit associated with that site. The days of “If you build it, they will come” are over and have been for many years.  

What will happen next to the Herald and their Friday experiment? That’s just one more question in a long line of them.

Friday Catblogging: Oscar Flashback

Oscar is our internet hookup cat. We saw his picture online at a rescue site and it was all over. Before joining us, he spent some of his time roaming a vet's office, and doing a bit of social climbing:

Boardwalk Empire Thread: Remus doesn't get arrested

I'm late with this so I'm going to try something different and more concise. Hey, stop laughing out there, I can be positively terse at times. Anyway, here's a list of things that we-or the characters-learned from the latest episode of Boardwalk Empire:

Remus learns that corrupt politcians don't always stay bought. He still hasn't learned that referring to yourself in the third person makes you sound crazy or like Bob Dole.

Nucky learns that you shouldn't have important meetings with gangster gonniffs when you have a concusssion. It leads to mistaking your awesome ally Chalky White for a bootblack. Oops.

Gyp Rosetti learns that it would have been cool if Mad Anthony Wayne were Italian. He also learns that Sicilian wise guys look silly in a tri-corner hat.

We learn that, while Richard Harrow may not have taught Arthur Murray how to dance, he can still cut a mean rug at the Legion Hall.

Richard learns that everything that goes wrong at Madam Mommie Dearest Jillian's cathouse is his fault.

Young Tommy learns the true meaning of doggystyle.

IRA Man Owen learns that Margaret may want to run away with him but hasn't thought through pesky details such as: how do you flee in the company of your pyromaniac son and polio afflcted daughter.

Finally, I learned that I want to see more of Chalky White. Actually, I already knew that but I am actively campaigning for his Chalkiness. Repeat after me: MORE CHALKY. MORE CHALKY.

That is all.

Apologies

Either you're slingin' crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot.

So at some point between unloading our last, shitty domain company and taking on the new, hopefully less shitty domain company, the chinchillas who run our servers saw a sliver of daylight under the door and made a run for Tijuana. When Jude caught up to them they were blind on the cheap shit and one of them was nuzzling Karl Rove's leather slave. 

Jude sobered them up, I posted their bail, and the best road trip ever would have ensued but for the border patrol, who objected to what they deemed "a mobile petting zoo that smells like four days of tequila-piss and ball sweat" rolling into the great US of A. We agreed we should go on ahead and we'll send for the chinches later, assuming they haven't been rolled into the Minutemen by now. 

All of which is to say for now, we have a bunny running the server wheels and he seems to be doing just fine. Apologies for the inconvenience, and if anybody sees a chinchilla by the side of the road with his thumb out, bring him straight to my place. 

A. 

Pulp Fiction Thursday: Born To Kill

It's film noir time at First Draft. Born To Kill is a personal favorite of mine. Lawrence Tierney is the chillingly heartless villain and Claire Trevor is awesome as the socialite femme fatale. It's a must see, y'all. Great tag line and fabulous supporting cast; especially Walter Slezak as a sleazy PI and Elisha Cook Jr as Tierney's toady.

Another notable name in the credits is director Robert Wise. In 1947 when Born To Kill was released, and into the 1950's, Wise specialized in hardboiled and dark filmic fare. He is now best known for <sigh> The Sound Of Music. The hills are fucking alive with the sound of motherfucking music...

Here's a clip wherein Tierney proves that he was indeed, Born To Kill:

 

A Visit From The Ghost Of Wingnut Past

From Album4

It's fitting that on the same day Mitt doubles-down -- and doubles-back -- to the "Obama's giving those people free stuff" excuse for why he lost, The Nation and James Carter IV offer definitive proof that Lee Atwater actally did utter the now infamous lines that are his sorry legacy:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

The messenger might change, but the message remains the same.

They really do think they own the country, they assume they own or at least have purchased the government, and that anyone less wealthy is less worthy of the benefits of democracy if not civil society. 

Are there no prisons?  And the union workhouses -- are they still in operation? Is their actual position on how to deal with the rest of us...

 

PBJ: Get Smart?

 The GOP post-mortems are coming fast and furious. This unintentionally funny one comes from my rabidly ambitious erstwhile Governor, Bobby Jindal:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Monday called on Republicans to “stop being the stupid party” and make a concerted effort to reach a broader swath of voters with an inclusive economic message that pre-empts efforts to caricature the GOP as the party of the rich.

In his first interview since his party’s electoral thumping last week, Jindal urged Republicans to both reject anti-intellectualism and embrace a populist-tinged reform approach that he said would mitigate what exit polls show was one of President Barack Obama’s most effective lines of attack against Mitt Romney.

“We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything,” Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. “We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”

This is,uh, rich coming from PBJ who as Governor has waged war on public education, and is so taxophobic that he wouldn't originally sign off on keeping tobacco taxes high enough to discourage smoking. In fact, his entire political philosophy-if you want to call it that-boils down to this: Taxes bad; creationism good; Jindal awesome.

On the rare occasions he was in Baton Rouge in 2012, PBJ ran roughshod over the LSU Board of Supervisors, fired recalcitrant system President John Lombardi and voucherized primary and secondary public education. It's what happens when you have a Governor who spent his school days strictly in private schools. When it comes to education, PBJ is Shiva the destroyer or perhaps even Kalki.

The mere fact that this cut-rate version of Willard the weathervane feels free to depart from *some* teawad dogma means that some changes will actually be coming to the Republican message but not its substance.

Jindal is clearly positioning himself for 2016 and he fits the GOP model for the perfect minority candidate. The party that froths at the mouth over affirmative action, practices it when it comes to candidates. True tokenism is the rule of the party: PBJ is way to the right but he has dark skin, ergo the GOP is enlightened, not racist. Whatever, dude.

The pol Jindal most reminds me of is-get ready-Willard Mittbot Romney. He's robotic, awkward and dull, dull, dull. Willard is at least good-looking whereas PBJ is the guy who could turn the nasty party into the ugly party.

Jindal has relentlessly pandered to the religious right and *that* part of his message will not change. While he criticizes the Akins and Mourdocks of his party, it's more about their verbal table manners than anything else:

“It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that,” Jindal said. “It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

Again, this is fascinating coming from a man who talks down to his state's electorate. PBJ tends to speak at the 4^th or 5^th grade level when addressing the people of the Gret Stet. Hence, the comparisons to Kenneth the page from 30 Rock. Kenneth has subsequently been demoted to janitor, it's a pity that the same won't happen to PBJ…

There is also no way in hell that PBJ will abandon his party's insanely retrograde positions on social issues. I think their (wide?) stances on gay rights, women's issues and tattoos and piercings are dragging them down with younger voters. I made the bit up about tattoos and piercings but PBJ would pierce his pencil dick if he thought it would get him elected without alienating his confederate base.

The coming war within the GOP should be most amusing. I'm going to sit back, pour myself a beverage and enjoy watching the freak show.

Obama's Massive Victory Means Obama is Hosed

First, the credentials for the following stupidity: 

Walter Shapiro's Yahoo! News column examines what we know about the character and personalities of the 2012 candidates. Shapiro, who is covering his ninth presidential campaign, is also a special correspondent for the New Republic.

Wow, what a pedigree. I bet he's got some seriously interesting things to say about how Obama will govern: 

Dating back to Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 failure to bring the United States into the League of Nations, second presidential terms have almost always been disappointing and sad. There have been successes: Ronald Reagan passing tax reform in 1986 and Bill Clinton balancing the budget. But far more common are thwarted ambitions, scandal and a slow slide towards political irrelevance. 

“This time it’s different” would be the likely response from Obama’s true believers. And these acolytes could be correct since historical patterns are merely suggestive rather than Marxist Iron Laws. 

In other words, here is some stuff that might happen. Or it might not! The world is unpredictable! Pay me my golden ducats! 

No modern president has been immune from scandal in his second term. Unless history has failed us completely, the sagas of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton do not require elaboration. 

I have never ever met anyone who wanted to give Nixon a blowjob. 

George W. Bush came close to hitting 25 percent approval in the waning days of his presidency partly because of an aura of incompetence dating back to the heck-of-a-job-Browniefederal response to Hurricane Katrina.

An aura of incompetence. Wow. What color was it? Did it glow? 

Or, you know, Bush's approval sucked because of ACTUAL INCOMPETENCE that got thousands of people dead. Plus he started a couple of wars America decided were bullshit, and then the economy imploded. Little things. 

Given Obama’s heavy reliance on drone attacks, perhaps the most relevant cautionary lesson comes from a beloved second-term president. It was stubborn resistance to congressional oversight and impatience with the stodgy norms of national-security decision-making that led to Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Iran-contra scandal. 

Right. See, Reagan had to orchestrate that clusterfuck because of "stodgy norms" and how Congress kept checking his homework. So rude. 

The Petraeus love triangle (or was it a rhombus?) is a reminder that a president cannot know everything about his appointees. It also underscores the dangers inherent in erecting marble statues for esteemed public officials prematurely. 

Obama built Petraeus a statue? Where is it? I think we should lay boxes of condoms at its feet and pray to it for virilty. 

After six years of anyone in the White House (even FDR or Reagan), the act begins to grow stale and voters crave a different kind of change. 

The act. You know, that little entertainment routine known as BEING THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD. 

What this means is that Obama probably has until the summer of 2014 to operate with maximum political leverage. After the 2014 congressional elections, he may begin to experience the first debilitating signs of lame-duckism. By the summer of 2015, Americans may find the early skirmishing for the presidential nomination more riveting than the seventh year of the Obama presidency.  

Surely it won't be the vaunted political press, above such trivial matters, that will be sick of all this boring-ass governance bullshit by then, and creating self-fulfilling prophecies about when "maximum political leverage" will be exhausted, as if it's a bowl of sugar or something. 

Maybe by the summer of 2015 all these idiots will be retired. 

A. 

A Quick Thought

This picture has nothing to do with the post. It just cracks me up.

I'm no political strategist, but telling people that they're too stupid to understand why their lazy, mooching, female, "urban," or entitled asses should vote for the party that has pledged to destroy the things that those people are supposedly dependent on is probably not a good plan to increase that party's share of the vote totals.  Discuss.

Oops

I don't think the tale of the bat-eared former General/CIA director and his hot, toned mistress is the most significant story around but it's getting funnier by the minute. In the latest non-development, a teevee station aired a graphic with an addition to the Broadwell hagiography's title:

Temper, Temper

Jeez, it would be better if this wingnutty woman was "shellshocked" instead of OTT loony. This, however, is funnier:

An Arizona woman, in despair at the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama, ran down her husband with the family car in suburban Phoenix on Saturday because he failed to vote in the election, police said on Monday.

Holly Solomon, 28, was arrested after running over husband Daniel Solomon following a wild chase that left him pinned underneath the vehicle.

Daniel Solomon, 36, was in critical condition at a local hospital, but is expected to survive, Gilbert police spokesman Sergeant Jesse Sanger said.

Police said Daniel Solomon told them his wife became angry over his "lack of voter participation" in last Tuesday's presidential election and believed her family would face hardship as a result of Obama winning another term.

Witnesses reported the argument broke out on Saturday morning in a parking lot and escalated. Mrs Solomon then chased her husband around the lot with the car, yelling at him as he tried to hide behind a light pole, police said. He was struck after attempting to flee to a nearby street.

Obama won the national election with 332 electoral votes compared with 206 for Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Arizona's 11 electoral votes were won by Romney.

Um, um, um, Obama won Arizona and she's blaming her husband? Sounds like a pretext to me. Hmm, maybe he's the shirtless photo texting Feeb in the Petraeus thing?

Proud to Promote

Soon Allen West will be out of office, and we will not have to listen to his stupid comments anymore: 

In an e-mail to supporters on Monday, Representative Allen B. West, a Florida Republican, called the increase in food stamp use a “highly disturbing trend.” He said that he had noticed a sign outside a gas station in his district over the weekend alerting customers that food stamps were accepted.

“This is not something we should be proud to promote,” he said.

Yes. What we ought to do is keep secret all the locations where poor people can get food, forcing them to go up to each cashier at each potential source of nutrition for their children and ask loudly, "IS THIS WHERE THE LAZY SHIFTLESS WELFARE TYPES CAN PURCHASE T-BONE STEAKS PLEASE?" Because that, as we all know, will make people less poor. It will also make them full. Humiliation is magic in the way that it improves people. 

A. 

It's Always Good News For Republicans

Pardon my kvetch but Jesus, the media's hand-wringing over the demise of the Republican Party is starting to annoy the shit out of me. Yes, it was amusing the first four days, but enough already. I'm really tired of every single news channel and cable program trotting out this or that Republican to discuss what's wrong with their party, why they lost, how they can make a comeback, what they need to do, etc.

You know what? I sure don't remember Democrats dominating every news program when they lost the 2010 midterms, or when they lost in 2004. I really don't. Do you? I think what we saw then was the same group of Republicans paraded out to discuss how wonderful they are and that's why they won. 

Christ. 

I mean, seriously, CBS This Morning? Now you've got Mike Huckabee on to talk about how the GOP needs to reach out to minorities? Like I give a shit at this point? This is news? How about we have a Democrat on there to talk about how wonderful they are. No? Why not? Oh, I forgot, it's always good news for Republicans.

Look, we've been hearing about Republicans being the party of old white men since forever. This is not news. Seems like last time the GOP decided they needed to reach out to minorities what that really meant was tokenism -- putting Michael Steele in charge of the RNC and combing the land for every conservative African American to appear on the TeeVee box spouting the glories of the free market and the dangers of the deficit. 

This does not work. This is image over substance.  Hearing that Voter ID is necessary to prevent imaginary voter fraud does not go down better when it comes from Ron Christie's mouth. The Republicans don't get it, the problem is their ideas, not the color of the skin of those spouting them. And the media doesn't get it if they think we're all so fascinated with the Republican Party that we want to hear about how it can be nursed back to health. There's a reason these people lost the election. We are tired of them and they got shown the door. So, enough.

Forward, people. The election is over. Let's get back to work fixing this country.

Support Independent Journalism

My friend Erin is working on an amazing project in the American Arab communities in Michigan and New York. She's an outstanding reporter of the kind we should nurture, if we ever want to get better at understanding the world around us. 

Go, read, and contribute if you can. 

A. 

Call Me Ishmael, or, the Romney Fail Whale

Good CHRIST: 

The Romney high command had cloaked the system in secrecy to maintain what it hoped would be a true competitive turnout advantage. But by limiting the number of people with access to Orca, the campaign was not able to train its field operatives to use it or do the necessary beta-testing to work out the kinks that typically plague new software.

“It did not work perfectly,” said Rich Beeson, the Romney campaign’s political director, in an interview. He acknowledged that Orca crashed in the morning on Election Day. At first the campaign thought the system had been hacked, he said. Passwords and user names for the 34,000 volunteers using the program had to be reset.

I once started a job at a florist's shop on Valentine's Day. I was in high school, there was no Internet, and I didn't know a Peruvian lily from a bromeliad. It was a fucking disaster. My training consisted of being taught how to open the register drawer. The phone never stopped ringing. People were coming in asking for things I had no idea if we could give them. Clueless assholes who apparently never HEARD of Valentine's Day were begging us to make arrangements with the "my wife's gonna kill me" plea and I wanted to brand a calendar onto their arms, like it's the same day every year, geniuses. We ran out of roses and then we ran out of everything else, to the point where the last guy who wandered in at 9 p.m. looking like he'd been run over by a bus got a green plant for which we charged him $50 and I wanted to include a card for a relationship counselor. 

You know what I learned from that experience? Ninety percent of emergencies are the result of piss-poor planning and managerial laziness. Who the fuck starts a high school kid employee with no training at a florist on Valentine's Day? It irritates me just thinking about it now, like there was no reason that day had to be that stressful for everyone involved. I thought of that when I read this: 

But Beeson also said Orca was able to provide voting data on 91 percent of the precincts and accounted for turning out some 14.3 million voters. “At the end of the day I can look any donor in the eye and say we used our resources effectively,” he said. “This is the first time we have attempted to do anything on this scale. By no means was it an abject failure.”

Actually, it kind of was, given that your candidate lost resoundingly. A victory is not that your program is shiny. A victory is that it does what it's supposed to do. 

Who the fuck rolls out a brand-new operation on fucking ELECTION DAY? Who does this? This is the world's most easily preventable clusterfuck, and they managed not to prevent it. Was there nobody in the room screaming that "let's take a bash at this and see if it works, Biff" is a terrible way to handle the days when things matter.

After watching the RNC I'm not surprised things went down this way, but if I was a donor and this guy looked me in the eye and said they used their resources effectively, I'd kick him in the dick. You've got to be kidding me. Mr. A and I rehearsed our wedding more seriously than this, and neither of us was in the running for leadership of the free world at the end of that day. 

A. 

Today on Tommy T's Obsession with the Freeperati - Great White Fail edition - Vol 2

Good morning, gentle people!

Well, Jude, Michael, Adrastos, Scout, Southern Beale, et.al. did yeoman's work Sunday scrubbing the scorch-marks and Freeper cranial matter off the walls and ceiling - I thank you all.

OK - after the shock wears off a little, the Freeperati start the finger-pointing and wrong-conclusion-jumping we've been seeing everywhere, but only in Freeperville will you see them unleash their inner Joker.

I give you - Our only hope now is real economic collapse!

Vanity: Myths Destroyed

Posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:07:58 AM by over3Owithabrain

Unskewed polls.com Nate Silver is clueless GOP vote underestimated/DEM vote overestimated Anything Dick Morris says Groundswell of anger at Obama Bradley effect Romney had momentum PA was winnable WI was winnable

Anything else??

1 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:07:59 AM by over3Owithabrain

.

.

To: over3Owithabrain

Nate Silver is clueless. He’d be happier if he slit his wrists

2 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:10:51 AM by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)

You're just sore because he predicted your ass-whuppin' down to the last State. And I daresay that you're the one who'd be happier if he slit his wrists, since you have to watch Nate Silver bask in the aprobation he's so justly receiving.

To: over3Owithabrain

Nobody can predict what trojan horse can do, except G-d!

4 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:13:43 AM by hamboy

And what's with you nimrods leaving out God's middle letter all the time? Does this automaticaly get you into Heaven or something? Or is it like not saying Voldemort's name out loud, or only saying "Candyman" four times?  Do you think that He'll be so miffed by your typing "God" instead of "G-d" that he'll manifest himself and smite you?

To: over3Owithabrain

I really hope people stop obsessively trying to discredit polls. They aren't gospel, but in the last two elections they have been fairly accurate, and if anything, slightly republican leaning.

Go back and check the RCP final poll average for the 2010 Senate races - 20 of 23 correctly senate seats picked correctly. Of the the 3 that were incorrect, 2 dems won instead of the predicted republican, and the last was Murkowski beating Miller in Alaska. And obviously, polls were better than GOP cheerleaders this time as well.

The dumbest thing I hear around here is "no one polled me."

5 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:14:06 AM by MrShoop

Commie.

To: Mr. Jeeves; StarFan; Dutchy; alisasny; BobFromNJ; BUNNY2003; Cacique; Clemenza; Coleus; cyborg; ...

The GOP got killed among Asian-Americans, who logically should be strong GOP supporters. The GOP is not even asking itself why.

Can somebody tell me why Asian-Americans vote for democRATS? You're right, Mr. Jeeves... logically they should be strong GOP supporters.

WHY do they vote for 'RATs? I don't understand this...

10 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:16:03 AM by nutmeg

Let me refresh your memory:

"Yellow Peril"

"Gooks"

"Chinks"

"Slants"

Now do your think that Asian-Americans believe that Democrats are more likely to address them as such? Or Republicans?
(or, if that is too complicated for you - Mike Stivic, or Archie Bunker?)

To: over3Owithabrain

We didn’t understand why Obama won in 2008. We thought maybe people wanted to give him a chance, he would be historic first black, post partisan and all that hopey stuff. Then they’d get over it.

Maybe he won because they really wanted a leftist.

13 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:21:44 AM by ari-freedom

And maybe he won because the majority of Americans just don't like you, or what you stand for? YMMV.

To: over3Owithabrain

Our only hope now is real economic collapse (on a catastrophic
scale) that will be so devastating that it will bring about
a huge revolt against the Democrats.

Or it might even bring a military coup.

20 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:32:15 AM by NeverForgetBataan (I am become Barry... destroyer of wealth)

Thought I was kidding, didn't you?

And I love "NeverForgetBataan" chiming in on a discussion of why Asian-Americans don't love the GOP.

To: over3Owithabrain

Myths:

Blacks won’t turn out. Only 80% will vote Obama.

PA was in play.

Ryan will bring a state or two. Not even WI was picked up.

Gender gap is gone.

Dick Morris. Clueless.

Poll watching will help.

29 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:43:41 AM by TigerClaws

.

.

To: wardaddy

Spot on wardaddy. And we only 60% of the white vote. The answer is not to kowtow to the Latino population and open borders and let the country go socialist, but to more or less unify the white vote... well, increase our white vote.

38 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 3:21:00 AM by Hokestuk

.

To: over3Owithabrain

Myths: Ramussen is right, D+6 is delusional, sea of Romney lawn signs, big R&R campaign rallies, Dick Morris, Michael Barone, [your favorite state] is going Romney, incumbents can’t win with >7% unemployment, the Bradley Effect, PA is winnable for the GOP, women like white men, all those “left-leaning” polls are in the tank for Obama, “fraud” won the election, John Roberts and Chris Christie are on our side.

Reality: We are anachronistic outliers in a country we don’t understand and that is going to leave us behind. This type of thing happens every century in many countries since the dawn of time. The US is never going back to what it used to be. Obama will guarantee it. There is nowhere to run.

52 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 4:42:20 AM by BlueStateRightist

Ouch.

.

Rebuttal?

To: GVnana

Obama is black, that is the shift, any white guy with the same record would have been booted from office. He is a brother by another mother, and despite horrible job numbers and a looming financial disaaster for blacks and hispanics they will always back a brother.

55 posted on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 5:11:37 AM by OldGoatCPO

That's what I thought.

.

Well, there's a lot more schaden-whatsis after the paradigm shift.

Snorkels are mandatory due to the water level from Freeper tears.

.

I Didn't Fight For Your Freedom

A re-post from a couple of years ago that I hope, some day, never needs to be said again.

 

Nope. No freedom being defended here.

So it's Veterans Day, which means that the US is awash with mostly obligatory tributes to military personnel. 

I hate this shit.

I didn't fight for your freedoms.  In the six years I was in, I never once defended your right to vote, or to carry a gun, or to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure (that one doesn't really apply anymore, anyway), or any of the other things you enjoy as a citizen of this country.  I just didn't.  Neither did anyone who went to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Vietnam.  It's all bullshit.  It's a fucking lie that we tell ourselves and each other so that we don't have to think about why we send young men and women to serve, suffer, and die for old men's vainglorious ideas and profit margins.

I passed through Burlington, WI on Saturday to visit their annual chocolate festival.  Who could say no to that, right?  Well, while there (this being Wisconsin), I got myself a beer.  To do so, you had to put up with the shitty metal cover band in the beer tent.  There's a 45-year-old lead singer acting a fool--pouring beer on his own goddamned head, making dumb-ass sexist remarks, saying stupid shit about his teen-aged daughter, etc.  Since that wasn't reprehensible enough, he then proceeded to thank all the veterans in the crowd, specifically pointing out one man whose--well, I'll just quote this asshole.

I wanna thank all of our veterans for what they do for us.  Every guy in the band, our fathers were all in the military.  My dad was in Korea!  This guy right here in front--his son is in Iraq right now.  He's over there FIGHTIN' FOR OUR RIGHT TO PARTY!

I wanted to rush the stage and strangle that fuck with a microphone cord. 

It's all bullshit, folks.  We don't do anything for anyone's freedom.  The military hasn't actually deployed en masse to defend your freedom in a long, long time.  Unless you call rich people fucking over the world's poor and powerless a form of freedom.  As you may have guessed, I don't.  It's bullshit.  And it needs to stop. 

I don't mind honoring sacrifice, but the military doesn't have a monopoly on that, now does it?  I also don't mind remembering military dead and wounded.  But we do it all wrong.  We just fetishize the suffering (like good Catholics, no?) without wondering why it ever happened in the first place.  Remembrance and memorial, it would seem, also involve reflection and assessment.  Just because someone died or was wounded doesn't automatically validate how he or she came to be in that state.  We send our young people overseas to be bored, pull duty, sometimes get shot at, and occasionally get hit.  Then we never ask why they're over there in the first fucking place, because doing so, apparently, does them a disservice.  What kind of jack shit is that? 

A real Veterans/Remembrance Day would involve commitments to cease sacrifices that don't actually, you know, do anything in the name of freedom.  Losing your legs so that Chevron can see higher profit margins is not noble.  It's a god damned shame.  Dying in the service of defense contractors doesn't bestow sainthood on the deceased.  It just means that a life got snuffed out for no good reason.  Reflexive military worship is a cancer on society.  Unscrupulous people use it to justify their actions and avoid any criticism.  That shit makes the act of asking why we should send young people to absorb bullets and get blown to pieces into some kind of subversion and/or sedition.  How fucking ridiculous is that?  Wondering if someone's death was worth the cost doesn't dishonor the person.  I don't know how we've confused evaluating the motives and actions of leaders with spitting on corpses, but we have.  And until we can untangle those things, we're just well and truly fucked when it comes to international affairs.

So this Veterans Day, take a minute to actually reflect on the acts and deeds of people in uniform.  But that involves critical thought instead of blind acceptance of the rightness of our leaders' actions.  Honor the dead and care for the living, but don't think that people in uniform today are actually standing between you and tyranny. 

Remember that.

Maggot Brain

I had a fleeting personal acquaintance with maggots in October, 2005. It happened when Dr. A and I snuck into NOLA from our Red Stick exile. I emptied our fridge and tried but failed miserably to clean it. Back to maggots, when I opened the freezer, flying maggots came zipping out. No longer larvae but living large and post-larval.

I thought of the magggot swarm (band name?) when I saw this piece at Salon:

Peter Morrison, treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party in Texas, suggests in his newsletter that the state should have an “amicable divorce” from the “maggots” who re-elected Obama.

Morrison posted on his Facebook page his post-election thoughts: “We must contest every single inch of ground and delay the baby-murdering, tax-raising socialists at every opportunity. But in due time, the maggots will have eaten every morsel of flesh off of the rotting corpse of the Republic, and therein lies our opportunity.”

“Texas was once its own country, and many Texans already think in nationalist terms about their state,” Morrison continued. “We need to do everything possible to encourage a long-term shift in thinking on this issue. Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government? Let each go her own way in peace, sign a free trade agreement among the states and we can avoid this gut-wrenching spectacle every four years.”

A band of maggots, that's what we are. I think we should celebrate our maggothood or is that maggotry? Seriously, the maggots are gonna start gnawing on the Texas body politic soon enough if the Gopers don't start treating Latins like human beings.

As to the secessionist sentiments, rant on, dude. That issue was settled long ago and I don't think the enlightened minority in the South deserves to be governed solely by cretins like this bozo Morrison. Secession is a flag that wingnuts like to wave to illustrate their purity. I think it merely illustrates their idiocy.

I think malaka Morrison is suffering from maggot brain. They worm their way into your cerebellum and begin living larval. Then, they force you to say stupid things on Facebook and the Tweeter Tube. In short, you should blame George Clinton:

 

Watcha Gonna Do When the Money Runs Out?

I've said for years that Roger Ailes would have been a firebreathing liberal if there had ever been half a buck in it for him: 

Roger Ailes is as paranoid, hysterical and deluded as Jack Welch, but he does grasp that this is unsustainable. He fired Glenn Beck and replaced him with a dumb panel show because he knew Beck was going too far to be useful. “The Nightly Apocalyptic Death Cult Report” is decent for ratings and great for buzz but it doesn’t help Republicans win elections, or at least doesn’t help them remain able to win many elections in the long term.

Pundits and people with books to hawk spend a lot of time purporting to explain the wingnut mindset, which is a long way 'round of describing the way your dog can't do math. Fox Republicans don't have values, they have brand loyalties, which is why they're so fact-free. You can make an objective argument to me about why your football team is better, you could make me watch while they win the Super Bowl in front of me, but you will never, ever convince me that the Bears don't suck. 

They're Republicans because liberals blow, full stop, and that's all you need to give them. 

Trouble is, it's not where the money is. The money is in being an effective thief, not in cheering on Willie Sutton from the sidelines. The pundits that helped build your brand by pretending you were one of them are working for dying media outlets publishing conventional wisdom that's neither. A majority of the electorate is over your bullshit. So now what do you do? 

A. 

Sunday Morning Video: The Best Of Mittbot

The fabulous folks at TPM have compiled this swell highlight reel featuring Willard Mittbot Romney: