If there was a way to short our entire civilization, I would do it.
Friedman, on how he wants both campaigns to run on a platform that is 90% what Democrats are already running on and 10% his own Chinese dreams:
And, if by some miracle, both run that campaign, and the 2012 contest is about two such competing visions, then put every dollar you own in the U.S. stock market. It will go up a gazillion points.
Here’s where the movie (the new Batman movie) syncs to the election. The supervillain, played by Hardy, is the Bat’s comic book adversary, Bane, who is mega-strong based on a mysterious drug. One hundred million Americans are about to see a guy named Bane as the personification of badness.
Of course most people will be clear that Bane, the comic book character, and Bain Capital, named for management consultant William Bain, have nothing to do with each other. But in the 2000 presidential election, popular vote winner Al Gore lost because a few thousand people became confused by a hard-to-read ballot in Florida. In the 2004 presidential election, popular vote winner George W. Bush would have lost if about 100,000 votes in Ohio had swung the other way. Suppose 100 million people see the new “Dark Knight” movie, and one-half of 1 percent come away confused about the Bane/Bain distinction. Elections have been decided by less.
Once Official Discourse becomes this stupid, there’s no where to go but down.
Mark S.
My god, that third paragraph in the Easterbrook excerpt might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever read in my life.
Mark S.
So what’s Gregg’s conclusion, that Christopher Nolan should change the bad guy’s name to Alinsky?
Yutsano
My money’s on the meteor. It’s really the only way to be sure.
Mark S.
Oh sure, Doug can edit but we can’t!
aimai
Yes, if bush had lost some votes, he would have lost some votes. Why is Easterbrook still alive? Doesn’t “being too stupid to breathe” usually kill you?
aimai
Angry DougJ
@Mark S.:
Don’t blame me, I just work here.
General Stuck
Tom Friedman is the tinker bill of modern pundity, using his high perch to recommend everyone invest in fairy dust stock
blahblah
Yeah, I don’t think Easterbrook is that far off. I could give a fuck about his politics or predictions or whatever, but it seems like a lot of people are just stupid enough to associate Bain/Bane.
Steeplejack
@Angry DougJ:
Think your second graf should start: “Friedman, on how he wants both campaigns to run [. . .].”
@Mark S.:
Amen. Just wow.
Cat Lady
Easterbrook’s been wanking away about random stupid shit for years,and no one pays any attention to him. His Belichick hate has turned him into a weird crank, but the only thing he’s ever turned me on to is going for it on 4th and short as a winning strategy more often than not, and not to blitz good quarterbacks. Other than that, I write in my notebook game over.
General Stuck
I’m officially in the don’t bring the edit function back caucus. I can’t spell none too good with or without it, and no edit provides plausible deniability
Angry DougJ
@Steeplejack:
Thanks, I fixed it.
Angry DougJ
@Cat Lady:
Why does he hate Belichick so much? There’s plenty of good reasons, but what are his?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
Well, in defense of Easterbrook there’s a lot of stupid out there. In 2004, canvassing for Kerry, I talked to one guy who didn’t know anything about the election. He eventually said something about liking JFK, and when I told him that was Kerry’s initials, too, he decided he’d vote for him.
Or, in the immortal words of George Carlin (more or less): “You know how stupid the average American is? Half the country is dumber than that.”
wasabi gasp
Like how Osama lost to McCain.
b-psycho
…why the fuck is Easterbrook writing that much about politics on a fucking ESPN post?
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
I’d pay money to see Romney in a black cape hurtling through the air towards the ground. Failing that, I don’t see the Rombat Theory going much of anywhere.
West of the Cascades
@blahblah: and there’s no doubt that the Obama campaign or the DNC will make a few commercials helping voters make that very association … partly because they’ll get to laugh their asses off doing it … but Easterbrook is still an idiot.
Satanicpanic
He’s setting up an ethical dilemna for ABC about whether to run ads for the new Batman movie- it might swing the election!
TooManyJens
Does Easterbrook realize that the name “Bain” is not actually going to be on the ballot?
Roger Moore
@TooManyJens:
And anyone who knows enough to associate Bain with Romney is likely to know enough not to let a Batman movie be the deciding factor in how they vote for President.
Gustopher
Oh the stupid. The election may well be decided by people even dumber than Easterbrook.
The deciding factor in 2000 and 2004 was “Who would you rather have a beer with?”, and America chose the guy who didn’t drink.
Nom de Plume
Oh well, hell, “popular culture” has been gradually coalescing into one giant blob for some time now. Politics, sports, entertainment, you name it, it’s all merged into one.
Think about it: roughly 99% of the post titles on this site are some cultural reference or other. Our only touchstone for anything anymore is song titles or movie quotes.
wasabi gasp
But you get to watch’m eat pretzels.
The Dangerman
I wonder if Obama’s speechwriter’s can work Romney’s tax return in his speech on Tuesday night; a little assist for the Gingrich.
Satanicpanic
@Gustopher: We don’t have real drinkers as president anymore. I’d be happier if I knew the president got shitfaced every now and then.
jrg
Never gets old, does it? I swear, every Friedman article is exactly the same.
The Other Chuck
@Gustopher:
There’s numerous photos of W drinking, and god knows he acted like a drunk in public. I suspect we’ll find out he was constantly hammered.
MikeJ
@Satanicpanic: Nixon was the last who did. Is that really what you want?
I do recall that half of the village got the vapours when Obama took office and had a weekly Wednesday night cocktail party.
MariedeGournay
Until Romney sticks tubes into the back of his head and starts tearing men apart with his bare hands, Easterbrook should STFU.
Roger Moore
@Nom de Plume:
But that’s a major point of having a culture. We use references to cultural objects as a shorthand to the full story or idea the object represents. So we can say “sour grapes” and expect everyone knows that it means an attempt to mask our disappointment with failure by pretending success was less valuable than we claimed. There’s nothing wrong with doing it with contemporary culture rather than old culture, since people are more likely to be familiar with the contemporary version.
butler
TMQ wrote “election over” in his notebook.
And then he went back to fapping to the stat lines of guys who weren’t drafted out of college.
Svensker
@MariedeGournay:
Fixedy.
MariedeGournay
@Svensker: Hah!
R Johnston
I’d really rather not think about Tom Friedman or Gregg Easterbrook going down on anyone or anything. Thank you very much for my nightmares to come.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gustopher:
Well, who claimed he didn’t drink.
“Oh, that was me choking on a pretzel!”
Right, sure, asshole. We believe you.
scav
It’d be really really weird if the post titles came from some culture none of us were a part of. Granted, I nearly hyperventilated the one one time I instantly knew where one came from, so I’m pretty much in the really weird state alluded to earlier. But at least I know it’s just me — I might actually be slightly better at some of the odder saints. Isn’t Lucy the one carrying her own eyeballs?
Jennifer
Shorter Tom Friedman:
“If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs.
If we had some eggs.”
wasabi gasp
If only Santorum was a chocolate treat.
scav
@wasabi gasp: shudder
Lol
The Bane/Bain thing *is* going to be a touchstone for a million lazy pundits and cartoonists.
R Johnston
@wasabi gasp: It is simple enough to make santorum a chocolate treat is you try. Although “treat” might be in doubt.
Spaghetti Lee
It’s always a competitive field, but that Easterbrook piece might be the single stupidest argument I’ve ever heard. Yes, Gregg, Christopher Nolan cast an already-existing Batman character in his big budget sequel years before the Bain story even broke, in a sneaky ninja attempt to take down Romney by controlling people’s minds! You, sir, can see the fnords.
Satanicpanic
@MikeJ: FDR!
Spaghetti Lee
Upon reflection, I think the most insulting thing is that Easterbrook is assuming voters are that stupid. Oh, what a pity we’re not all as bright as him and can’t see how we’re being played. What a wankah.
Donut
Doug: thank you very much for lowering my faith in humanity. Again.
policomic
I think Romney is more likely to be confused with Hank Bain, Conrad Bain’s brother.
Donut
I mean, gawd damn, Doug, I just fucking HATE Tom Friedman. I would like Omnes Omnibus’ neighbor to hate-fuck him with a box pack of menthol Benson & Hedges.
Bago
I see nord people.
Roger Moore
@policomic:
I think he’s more likely to be confused with McBain, the movie character on the Simpsons played by Rainier Wolfcastle.
Donut
On my own, I can manage to avoid the whole lot of them at the NYT, save Krugman, and then it’s like, when DougJ posts a link to one of these assholes, I just can’t stop myself. I go read it, and I think, “why did I just fucking waste these moments of my life reading THAT?” and then I hate myself for doing it. The NYT opinion writers are almost to a person just about the most depressing human beings. Ever.
Donut
I rest my case. How often have you read two sentences that top that for vapidity?
But wait, Tommy can do:
Danny
Over Obama’s first term DJ is up about 80% or 6000 points in three years. That’s way better than 15% a year, so I’d like some of what he’s been smoking.
Jon O
Given the actual dictionary meaning of bane, I think Mitt’s got more deep-seated semiotic problems than a comic book character.
jl
Not sure if the Romer quote in the beginning of the Friedman peice (I read the damn thing in the NY Times link) goes all the way to end of the paragraph, or not.
But whether it is Friedman or Romer, the following are not true:
Retirement, particularly social security, payments will not be the cause of long term structural deficits. Health care expenditure will, not retirement benefits.
The US will NOT default, unless Congress decides to not write the check, like they almost did last year.
Narcissus
Tom Friedman is like one of those bets between god and the devil
old testament style for our souls
MikeJ
@Donut:
The team that puts the ball in the goal more is going to win this game!
kwAwk
One could say that perhaps this is a failure of Obama to sell his vision of what needs to be done in this country.
But that might get one branded as a troll…
GregB
It looks like the GOP is deciding their nominee on who’d they rather burn a cross with.
Good God I am not looking forward to the coming deluge of bile.
Michael
OT: first post-SC poll of Florida is out, courtesy of Insider Advantage. Newt +9 (!!) over Romney, 35/26. Mittens back in his ~25% comfort zone.
Source here, H/T to TPM
Hill Dweller
@kwAwk: Actually, this is The Mustache of Understanding being willfully ignorant…again. He knows Obama’s platform/policies, and has been repeatedly called out for pretending he doesn’t. He plays the role to sell more books.
barath
@Michael:
That’s a perfect set up for a Mitt recovery narrative. Newt isn’t going to hold a +9. It sets him up for unreasonably high expectations and lets Mitt close the gap to a near tie for a “win”. Which is perfect, because then the media has a new story to push…
jl
Oh, forgot about Easterbrook. He is so bad, if he wants to spend all his time on US football and humiliating himself with idiotic political commentary based on comic book movies, fine with me. He will do less harm that way.
Will add that a trend seems starting up that these useless, gutless, pundit idiots think they have something non moronic to say about how movies, or songs, or TV comedy shows, might ‘unfairly’, or somehow in a bad way, influence politics.
It just shows you how stupid and ignorant these fetid loons are.
First, it has been going on in societies with any degree of personal freedom for as long as recorded history. Even an oppressive semi police state like Shakespeare’s England.
Second, these wealthy useless corrupt scumheads will be inviting increased ‘interest’ from pissed off comedians, writers and artists that are the target of their concern trolling. And since these pundits are stupider and more ignorant than a pile of rocks, they will ripe targets for increased ridicule.
So, Todd, Easterbrook, keep up the concern trolling. I welcome the increased chances for repeated humiliation and ridicule it will bring.
I am cranky. Many of you may not know it, but The TEAM OF DESTINY lost tonight out here on the left coast, and I am upset. Even if it is weird parochial spectacle like US football, rather than a real sport.
jl
And speaking of weird parochial spectacles, what the hell have they done to overtime.
I don’t pay much attention to football. But when a set of rules for a game get so complicated and filled with special cases, that it is difficult to keep track of what is going on, things are headed towards roller derby and pro wrestling territory.
I couldn’t figure it out from the refs or the announcers, and what the refs said seem to contradict the announcers’ explanation in the middle of the overtime, sudden death, speed round, double Jeopardy, whatever the hell that was.
If you are going to be so complicated, why no lifeline? The niners players could have had some of their wide receiver friends from other teams come to town, and they could have used a lifeline at the end of the game. That would have been cool. And a good chance I would be in a better mood now.
I hope this weird rule stuff does not infect real, serious, sports like baseball, basketball, and (in some places) hockey.
Mark S.
Patriots are 3 point favorites. Will that hold up over the next two weeks? How will Eli do in the debates? Will Brady finally release his tax returns?
Argive
I knew Easterbrook was a haughty and also kinda racist prick (in his football columns, he really likes undrafted scrappy white dudes as opposed to first round “glory boys” who are generally black) but I didn’t quite know he was this stupid. Goodness.
Donut
@jl @63:
That’s funny, because I thought the team of destiny lost last week at Lambeau Field.
Donut
@ MikeJ @ 57:
I got nothing to add to that. You win.
Argive
Also, this makes me realize that there’s an upside to most of the Republican base hating Romney’s guts. Can you imagine the furor about Bane/Bain if the 27% loved Mitt? It would be truly infuriating (or morbidly hilarious, I suppose).
kwAwk
@Hill Dweller: I never thought of it that way.
Martin
I’ve mentioned this in discussions in the past, but the US manufacturing problems are much deeper and more problematic than people want to accept.
This is just from the other day, NYTimes, but it mirrors what Fallows was saying about China a few years ago when he spent his time there. China isn’t winning because of cheap labor. They’re winning because they have a more suitably educated workforce, better utilized infrastructure, and a much less balkanized economy. There’s plenty of damning evidence against Apple about wages, hours, and so on, but the bottom line can’t be avoided:
The US has completely gutted the mid-range technical schools. Trade education is completely to shit. There are few public trade schools in the US, and few community colleges and 4 year public schools that teach trades or even offer 2 year technical degrees. This is where the millions of non-college educated and retraining workers should be able to go, but they’re all for-profit, and most of them flat-out suck, if not flat-out rip-offs of students. By comparison, China is to mid-range technical education what the US is to advanced degrees – they’re great at it.
And if you do try and get any kind of government backing for projects or expansion in the US, you’re going to have to have it spread out over 435 districts, because that’s the kind of stupid shit that Congress demands. The reason that China can have the enterprise zones is that they don’t have to earmark the fuck out of everything.
Apple has a bit over $50B in cash that they’ve already paid US taxes on. There’s no cost to repatriate those dollars, so US taxes isn’t the problem at all, but to put them to any use for manufacturing in the US, they’d have to start by building a college, waiting 2 years, and then getting themselves a few congressmen and senators elected, or at least state senators.
And the cost of labor isn’t the problem either. The $65 quoted in the article is bullshit. The cost of assembly right now is $6 per iPhone, and Chinese labor isn’t 1/10 the cost of US labor. It’d be no more than $30, and probably closer to $20. If the structural problems could be addressed, I think they’d do it, but we can’t even get a non-hysterical discussion about what’s really the obstacle to these kinds of jobs.
For markets like consumer electronics, time to market is everything. It’s more important than labor costs, because the cost and availability of components happens in such narrow windows to make your product competitive, that you have to be able to move faster than the competition. The US sucks at that. Honestly, we really do. And more and more markets are going to follow suit. At the very moment that we’re waging war on education in this country, industry is fleeing to China who’s doing a better job of providing the kinds of skills and training that US companies need.
Mark S.
@jl:
Well, I for one liked the OT rule change. The only thing different is that if the team that gets the ball first only scores a field goal, the other team gets a possession. This doesn’t apply if the first team with the ball scores a TD or if the defense scores a safety.
Oh wait, that is kind of complicated.
dirge
“Decline and fall” indeed. This is off-topic here, I know, but I just can’t let it go.
From the “Easy Fix” thread around noon:
Did anybody follow the link and read the damned article? A bunch of Hollywood big wheels said they’d paid good money for this administration, and they’re angry that Obama didn’t stay bought. They’ve gone on the record saying that they don’t feel that they’ve gotten their money’s worth for committing felony bribery of a public official.
The balloon juice commentariat then spends the rest of that thread discussing the price of popcorn.
You know, I’m pretty cynical, and I don’t expect that bitching on blogs about public corruption will accomplish much. But when a clear cut public confession of conspiracy to bribe the president can’t even produce bitching on blogs? We’re so inured that we watch them cross that line without comment? Without even a wink, a sneer, an embarrassed admission of impotence?
Decline and fall indeed.
DanielX
“I see…stupid people.”
Clearly, we are doomed. As always, this is good news for John McCain.
jl
@dirge: I was out doing stuff, in the rain, eagerly awaiting a niners victory later in the afternoon.
So, didn’t see the story.
Yeah, pretty outrageous. Will be interesting to see who notices and if there is any reaction, particularly from the WH.
handsmile
To the best of my recollection, I have never read Gregg Easterbrook though his name is familiar. Thinking surely that this must be an excerpt from a satirical column, I clicked on the link provided by ADJ.
And boy howdy am I glad I did! What a Renaissance Man (and I’m not talking about Danny DeVito)!
Why not only is there paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of football analysis and three separate photographs of football cheerleaders, but this polymath also offers to his devoted readers television criticism, film criticism, a re-write of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and more incisive social and political commentary of the caliber excerpted above. But it was this display of erudition for which I was most grateful:
Roger Moore
@jl:
The new overtime rules aren’t that tricky. They’ve just added an exception to keep a team from winning immediately if they receive the opening kickoff and score a field goal. In that one case, they have to kick the ball to the other team and give them a chance. The second team can win with a touchdown, re-tie it with a field goal (in which case the game continues with the third score being the winner), or lose if they fail to score. Any other score (a touchdown on the first possession, a safety on the first possession, touchdown on a turnover, or any score on a possession after the first one) is an instant winner.
dead existentialist
@Gustopher:
Probably one of the most poignant comments on the American electorate I’ve ever read. Well done!
dirge
@jl: Yes, it appears that the WH will be predictably (and perhaps appropriately) circumspect about the whole thing, but I still find it disturbing that Obama’s “e-election liason to the entertainment community Nicole Avant” most likely has recordings of people committing a crime that will probably never make it over to Justice or the FEC.
dead existentialist
@Roger Moore: Talk about a Pyrrhic victory . . . .
Yutsano
@dirge:
Just out of curiosity, what are you basing this on?
dirge
Perhaps even more disturbing is that there are people who think it’s so normal to call up the WH and demand their money’s worth in services rendered that it doesn’t occur to them that they’re committing a crime on a recorded phone call.
I guess that’s the thing that really blows my mind — not that lobbyists and politicians are corrupt, but that the corruption is so ordinary that it doesn’t occur to them that they should avoid doing it in public or on a recorded phone call.
jl
@dirge: Not sure whether these moneybags giving money, thinking it would influence a specific official decision, is a crime. They did not get what they wanted.
I think that this kind of thing happens all the time, in our corrupt new gilded age.
What is amazing is that these scumbags decide to get on the rooftops and yell that they gave the money and they wuz robbed. Where’d the money go? He took it!
I’d be interested in what some of the BJ lawyers have to say about it, preferably one who is familiar with this kind of bribery and corruption law.
And, popcorn is a healthful high fiber food, if cooked in healthy oil, or air popped. Popcorn always has a place in any serious discussion of national politics.
jl
@dirge:
You a lawyer familiar with this kind of law? If so, please explain in more detail why it is a crime.
Or maybe I misunderstood. Did they say when talking about contributions that they wanted a favor on specific legislation?
How could that happen? These corporate crooks are pre lawyered up, and I would assume all the code talk would be arranged before the dollar amounts were discussed.
I sleep now, but will check back to read any lawyer talk that pops up on this here thread about it.
Yutsano
@jl:
No one has given anyone in the Obama Administration money. That sort of direct transaction is relatively easy to sniff out. Giving to his re-election then pouting because you supposedly had an “expectation” because of the gift is pushing election law, but it’s not direct bribery of an official. It is unseemly and after Citizens United will take an act of Congress to change. In other words, don’t hold your breath.
dirge
@Yutsano:
http://www.deadline.com/2012/01/exclusive-hollywood-moguls-stopping-obama-donations-because-of-administrations-piracy-stand/
It seems very likely to me that these conversations are recorded. It seems pretty clear that what’s being communicated is that these Hollywood moguls are offering money in exchange for support on specific legislation.
Of course we all know this sort of thing goes on all the time, but it’s pretty rare that you see it presented in terms so bald as to be straightforwardly prosecutable.
dirge
@jl: No IANAL, I’m just an enthusiastic amateur with a bit of vaguely relevant background.
But I’m fairly certain that withdrawing financial support in response to a specific policy move is not meaningfully different than providing financial support conditioned upon the opposite move.
Of course I know that this sort of thing goes on all the time, and maybe there’s a loophole to squeak through here; I don’t know. In any case, what’s striking to me is that you have a bunch of people being very vocal, both in public and in private conversations with the WH, about an expected quid-pro-quo, which is the usual red-line for this sort of thing.
David Koch
@Mark S.:
Meh. Mitt was a 23 pt favorite going into S.C.
Yutsano
@dirge:
Highly doubtful as that is against California law.
FOR HIS RE-ELECTION. In other words, they are NOT giving to the administration directly. They are just like every other private citizen in that they can express why they are not giving money. That is hardly the same as legal bribery.
Yutsano
@Yutsano: Ignore the legal part in “legal bribery”. I’ve been a bit discombobulated lately.
MikeJ
@Yutsano: Exactly. Based on the Sun Diamond case back in the 90s you damn near need to have a bill number written on the memo line of the check to make any kind of case (and I say that even though I think Sun Diamond was actually right in that case).
dirge
@Yutsano: Ok. Fair enough.
It seems odd to me that you can phone up the White House without the expectation that the call will be recorded, but that may be the case given various state laws.
But look, they’re making it crystal clear that they’re offering substantial financial support for his re-election conditioned on his support for specific legislation. I’ll admit that it’s possible that this isn’t prosecutable, but I have to wonder, what exactly would be? If this isn’t bribery, then are our bribery laws just dead letters?
Yutsano
@dirge:
Unless there is an implied consent recording (“This call will be recorded for security purposes”) then there is a reasonable expectation that the phone conversation is not recorded. I know this because I work for the federal government and we do record our contacts. We don’t necessarily keep the recordings, but we do warn first because legally we have to. If you stay on the line, that’s your consent. If this was bribery, they most likely wouldn’t be initiating contact by phone anyway. Unless they’re stupid.
Martin
@dirge:
You can’t phone up the White House. Govt officials aren’t allowed to campaign on government premises or using official phones. You’re calling a campaign office in a building in Chicago, most likely.
Martin
Oh, and the President didn’t agree to jack shit. There’s never face-to-face discussions about money and policy, exactly to avoid this kind of situation. If you want to talk policy, you talk to the President or one of his staff – and they never talk about money. If you want to talk contributions, you talk to some other staff, but never the one you talked about policy over.
Suffern ACE
@Danny: Gazillion. But not a million zillion gazillion. He’s so immodest in his predictions of growth that he makes your average goldbug fiat money doomsday scenario look downright sane.
dirge
Well, that’s the thing that’s kind of blowing my mind about this story. You’ve got these people, publicly and privately spreading it around that they gave Obama a lot of money for his election with the full expectation of quid-pro-quo support on legislative initiatives, and saying that now that he hasn’t come through on this particular law, they’re withdrawing support unless he reverses course. It’s frankly about as clear as you can be without (per MikeJ) putting the bill number on the memo line of a check.
I’m frankly well past getting bent out of shape about corruption in general. What’s driving me nuts about this is that they’re not being stupid. They’re perfectly correct in thinking that they can offer large sums of money to the President of the United States of America in exchange for legislation benefiting themselves, and that they can do so quite publicly, and that the worst that can come of it is an obscure complaint in the backwaters of the comments section of a somewhat popular blog somewhere.
I find it a bit depressing.
LosGatosCA
Guns and gold, baby.
Eat the Eloi you shoot and keep the gold in the cave.
Peak wingnut is coming and you’d better be ready for the thousand year reign of terror.
Suffern ACE
Damn, Gatos. And just when I was about to be a gazillionaire.
Suffern ACE
Maybe I should invest in caves. Or shuttered mines. Just as a hege….
dirge
I guess all I’m trying to say is can we please act like this is not normal, for just a moment?
Guess I’ll count it as a victory that I got a few people to chat about it for a few minutes.
dirge
@Martin: Right, you give one guy the money, the go around the corner to pick up the bag. We all saw The Wire.
Batocchio
Holy fuck, those excerpts were so dumb I think I lost brain cells just reading them.
Schlemizel
Welcome to my world view Dougie – now join me in praying for a massive meteor to come, and soon!
nancydarling
@dead existentialist: In the too stupid to be allowed to vote category, I was listening to CSPAN the other day and a S.C. woman called in to say we shouldn’t elect Santorum or Romney cuz they have too many kids. Something about Secret Service costs going up and too many kids would distract them from their job running the country.
brantl
Bush didn’t take the votes, Ohio was way fucked up, where they used punch card ballots serial number runs were punched for Bush, and some of them were double-punched for Kerry. What’s the obvious simple explanation for that? Somebody ran a rod through a large stack of punch-hole ballots. Bush got all of the ones that aren’t voted differently, and Kerry got none of the ones that the voters voted for him. Also they had precincts that had votes way in excess of any possibly real number they could have had, because they voted on Diebold machines, and Diebold machines use ring counters (unsigned integers)variables for vote counts (they work like your odometer on your car, no problem until you get close to the last number before 0 in all digits rolls over), not real world numbers , (signed integer) variables for vote counts. And they total all votes for an elected position for a zero before starting the voting. If candidate is set above zero by a value for an office, and another is set below zero by the same amount for that same office, it totals to zero. The only problem happens when your guy below zero doesn’t get enough to push him over 0.
Omnes Omnibus
@Donut: Um, wow. What a disturbing thought at this time of the morning.
Emma
@dirge: As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can’t drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against ‘em anyway, you don’t belong in office. Molly Ivin
Emma
@dirge: Ok, I’m going to be serious now. It seems to me bribery goes this way: “Here’s a check and you will vote this way on this specific bill.” If the deal is “we contributed to this politician’s reelection campaign because we thought he would see things our way,” that’s not bribery. That’s a bunch of adult wankers wanking.
And it’s Ivins, dammit. Where’s the edit button? (rhetorical question)
sherparick
@Martin: The NY Times article contains major flaws, especially the failure to discuss the exchange rate and China’s de facto currency union with the United States. I agree the that the underinvestment in education in general, and technical education in particular, hurts, but the business interest that use to lobby for this stuff up to the 1980s were counseled by consultants and their financial backers to outsource overseas to take advantage of the undervalued foreign currencies and the strong dollar. Why invest in a U.S. factory in anything when you can get lower costs and make 10% exchange rate. And this started happening with a vengeance after China entered the WTO. As a result of U.S. labor has been going the “internal devaluation/wage deflation route” the last 12 years.
ellennelle
gawd, that easterbrook graf is too classic.
ya know, the facts are these:
the conservative SCOTUS determined the 2000 election – which gore clearly won by the popular vote, and was later found to have won FL too anyway -and the 2004 OH results are still being contested (yup, a lawsuit against kenneth blackwell proceeds as we speak). every reason to believe that was stolen by rove, if you followed the facts on the ground at the time, and since.
so, think about this. if we accept the fact that gore won in 2000, and the likelihood kerry did in 2004, this means NO REPUBLICAN HAS ACTUALLY WON THE WHITE HOUSE SINCE 1988!!
think about this. that’s over 20 years since a republican win. there are republicans out there who actually know this. no wonder rove’s ads are so psychotic.
Rafer Janders
@dirge:
But look, they’re making it crystal clear that they’re offering substantial financial support for his re-election conditioned on his support for specific legislation. I’ll admit that it’s possible that this isn’t prosecutable, but I have to wonder, what exactly would be? If this isn’t bribery, then are our bribery laws just dead letters?
Look, EVERYONE who gives money to a presidential campaign does so in the hope and/or expectation that the politician will support laws that they want. This is not the same thing as bribery, which requires an explicit quid pro quo.
Think of it this way — I run around waving a $100 check, telling all and sundry that unless Obama comes out for gay marriage, then I’m not mailing the check. I’m offering substantial financial support conditioned on his support for a particular piece of legislation, am I not? If this is bribery, then basically every US citizen who contributes (or withholds money) from a campaign while letting people know why they are or are not giving money is guilty of it.
Rafer Janders
@dirge:
Well, that’s the thing that’s kind of blowing my mind about this story. You’ve got these people, publicly and privately spreading it around that they gave Obama a lot of money for his election with the full expectation of quid-pro-quo support on legislative initiatives, and saying that now that he hasn’t come through on this particular law, they’re withdrawing support unless he reverses course. It’s frankly about as clear as you can be without (per MikeJ) putting the bill number on the memo line of a check.
Again, no, it’s not. I don’t practice election law, but I am an attorney, and this is nowhere near bribery. This is simply the normal give and take of democratic politics.
You’re completely missing the fact that there has to be an explicit quid pro quo. It requires both a briber and a bribee, and the briber has to explicity offer money to get a particular end, and the bribee — who has to be a public official — has to agree to accept the money on the condition that he will do what the briber wants. What you’re discussing, on the other hand, is simply a private citizen discussing, as he is legally entitled to do, the conditions under which he will or will not give money to support the re-election campaign of the candidate of his choice. There is no contract or consideration there, there’s no one on the other side of the transaction saying “yes, I will take this money and in return I will do what you want.”
Maybe the people who gave money had an “expectation” that they’d get something in exchange for their support, but that’s all they had — an unfounded expectation, not an explicit promise. Merely having an expectation is not a crime — all voters have expectations. I expect that if I donate $100, Obama will support gay marriage — but Obama never told me in person that he’d support gay marriage only in exchange for my $100, so my giving the money to his re-election campaign or not is in no way bribery.
Rafer Janders
@ellennelle:
Even if you give 2004 to Bush, the popular vote count for presidential candidates looks like this:
1992: Democrat.
1996: Democrat.
2000: Democrat.
2004: Republican.
2008: Democrat.
2012: Democrat (expected).
Those aren’t results I’d like if I were a Republican dependent on older white voters in a rapidly more heterogenous country.
Chris
@ellennelle:
And yet look just how much they’ve been able to accomplish in those 20 years…
AA+ Bonds
Easterbrook’s reasoning here is that of a paranoid schizophrenic
AA+ Bonds
@Rafer Janders:
Which is why they’re more than keeping up with the population through re-engineering political technology – elite manipulation of this technology in both parties has almost always outpaced the majority in this country, reflecting a huge head start
AA+ Bonds
Certainly as an attorney you are well aware of how the elite fucks everyone else using this technology and their specialized knowledge of it