Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Another American icon dead:
Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90.
My memory of Paul Harvey is listening to him every day in the car on the rides to and from school. I feel old.
Tim’s point that the protests are all irrelevant notwithstanding, the Santelli/Koch conspiracy theory seems to be picking up, and at this point, I just don’t think there is really much there to support it. As I noted last night in the comments, sure, it is interesting, but so are all conspiracy theories. The JFK conspiracy theories are so interesting that Hollywood spent a record (at the time) amount of money creating Oliver Stone’s JFK. The conspiracy theories about 9/11 being an inside job are all interesting, but they are nutty as hell.
So far, looking at the report, the evidence appears to be not very compelling. Basically, it is that there is a right-wing structure founded by the Koch foundation willing to fund opposition to Obama’s plan, that some guy registered a domain name in August 2008, that Rick Santelli is up for a new contract this summer, and that many of the tea party web pages look familiar.
To the first point, regarding the Koch family and right-wing structures willing to fight the Obama initiatives, my only response is: “No kidding.” Similar structures, perhaps not as well-funded, exist throughout every sphere of politics.
As to the “coincidence” of some guy registering the domain name chicagoteaparty.com in August of lats year, that too is not very surprising. As I noted last night, it didn’t exactly take Nostradamus to figure out that the tax cuts for the top tier would be allowed to expire, as during the campaign, if I remember correctly, the debate was not whether or not those tax rates would go up, but would they be phased out early or merely allowed to expire? There was no debate about whether any of the Democratic candidates would end the tax cuts or not, it was a matter of when. Folks register domain names all the times in anticipation they will pay off (you can go visit Ronpaul2012.com and you can almost bet that someone has snapped up all sorts of domain names for Hillary). And in case you missed the debate among Democrats over whether to end the Bush tax cuts or just let them out, the McCain campaign was out there every single day telling you they were going to raise your taxes. The entire Joe the Plumber phenomenon was created out of the erroneous notion that Obama was going to raise taxes on Joe.
In regards to Santelli, maybe his rant is surprising to someone who has never been exposed to him before, but as someone who has watched him a good bit, his tea party rant was part of a schtick he has had for a long time. If it feels fake to you, you haven’t watched him before- they all seem fake. I remember watching similar rants from him all through the meltdown last fall- back when the comments section at Calculated Risk were all renaming themselves Comrade, there were daily links in the comments section there to similar rants by Santelli. The idea that this tea party thing was something out of character for Santelli just ignores the fact that he has been doing this for years, and it has always been the same- the same smirk, the same body language, the same rant and the odd quirks of turning away from the camera while it is on him- it is all there. Here is a video of him from September of last year.
As to the rest of it, it just seems like the simplest answer is the easiest. Drudge puts up a siren, the usual suspects react, and it is no surprise that these spread wildly through social networking websites and look similar. THEY ARE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES. This is why political movements have adopted the technology- for this kind of rapid response. All the people in these social networks presumably think alike, or think alike to the degree that they belong. Thus, it makes sense they would all quickly adopt the same meme and spread it, and given the limitations of facebook and what not, it makes sense to me they all adopted similar looks. No one suggests a conspiracy when everyone in the facebook network puts up the same application asking 25 questions about themselves. Ask yourself- how long after Michelle Malkin suggested that Obama was responsible for all the stock market losses since November 4th did it take before you heard the same thing on literally every right-wing website? Was that a conspiracy, too?
Look, it would not surprise me if there is a well-funded organization and network out there waiting to pounce on something. Opportunism is not, in my book, the same as a deep conspiracy to penetrate the ranks of CNBC with a sleeper cell to stage fake rants which can then be used as the basis of a “popular” grass-roots uprising (and they just aren’t that popular). Maybe there is more to it- I have been wrong before, and as we all know, my instincts suck, so by all means, keep looking at it. But right now, it just seems like there are simpler answers for everything out there.
Have at it.
“If you said to me that I could only consult with one individual, and my job was to bring the party back, Newt Gingrich would be the guy,” says Frank Luntz, the pollster who has worked with Gingrich going back to the 1994 Contract With America, the 10-point agenda that Republicans waved around on their way to the majority. “This guy would be the perfect ‘Behind the Music’ story, because he was on top, and then he lost it all, and now he’s back and bigger than ever. It’s perfect.”
[….]“I don’t actually build oppositions,” Gingrich told me, as if this business of salvaging a lost party were something he undertook every couple of months. “I build the next governing majority. I have no interest in being an opposition party.”
Remember when Joe Gibbs came out of retirement to lead the Redskins back to greatness? Mutatis mutandis.
My name is Newt, I build governing majoritiesPost + Comments (56)
For the sake of argument let’s grant Playboy that Rick Santelli’s now famous rant came from an authentic, absolutely genuine outrage that wealthy Republican backers might pay someone else to rant on TV instead of him. Obviously Santelli and the CNBC network would have some egg face but, other than that, who gives a crap? Did Santelli or any of his lame tea parties break out of rightwing blogs? If they did I missed it.
The point is larger than just that these anemic protests had less of an impact than a local WalMart closing. Obama’s stimulus is overwhelmingly popular with the average American. The idea that the trader asshats who caused this mess deserve some special concern or sympathy rightly strikes anyone who isn’t a freep as comically dumb. This isn’t the Clinton blowjob or even Terri Schiavo; the message just doesn’t have any resonance at all. The only people who give a rat’s ass long ago drank the kool-aid and passed out in the dirt.
The question boils down to whether Republicans planned this for weeks with extravagant financial backing, in which case they’re out of touch schmucks. Alternatively rightwing activists spontaneously decided that people would rise up against rescuing the economy. That would make them tone deaf schmucks. Rick Santelli obviously has some personal cred riding on the matter. For the rest of us, though, you’d need a degree in yiddish to tell the difference.
***Update***
This photo (via) will indeed soon eclipse the Moran image as the awesomest summary of rightwingerism ever.
An almost live action shot from the Tunch Cam™:
In other words, Saturday night is looking an awful lot like Sunday through Friday night around here.
On to something different, this paragraph in a story about pears confused me:
The Bartlett pear was the principal ingredient of fruit cocktail, which my generation back home had been raised on. But as the fruit cocktail died a well-earned death, the market for the Bartlett pear swooned. And that’s how I got into trouble. I came home and set out to rescue the Bartlett pear market, save orchard farmland from development for tract homes, provide myself with a decent supply of good poire williams, which was impossible to get in Oregon at that time, and maybe make a buck or two.
Since when did fruit cocktail die a well-earned death? I just had some a couple weeks ago. And why would the demise of fruit cocktail be “well-earned?” What is wrong with cutting up a bunch of fruit and chilling it? Is this just a snobby NY yuppie thing? Is fruit cocktail déclassé and I never knew it?
At any rate, doesn’t appear to be much on the boob tube tonight. I am either going to watch “W” on pay per view, do some gaming, or read. Can’t figure out which yet.
*** Update ***
Link deleted because I just don’t feel like dealing with 100 morons accusing me of buying into this crap.
Bankers have discovered the dirty secret of modern finance. If one guy loses a little money he gets fired. If a firm loses a lot of money its position suffers and, if the loss is great enough, the desks and property get sold off piecemeal. But if enough firms make shitty investments and lose enough money, the government has to give out money so everyone can start over!
It really does boil down to something like a hostage crisis. If we don’t fix the regulatory framework to the point that “too big to fail” becomes an anachronism then we will deserve it when it happens again.