(Tony Auth via GoComics.com)
__
Romney’s misbegotten “47%” meme looks to be the next ‘We Are the 99%’. Dave Weigel at Slate:
WOODBRIDGE, Va. — Presidential events are tightly controlled festivals of messaging, security, and cant. A crowd full of people holding home-made signs looks nice, but incoherent. Better to give all of the faithful identical banners, so the cameras capture nothing else.
In the overflow section of today’s Obama rally, some wily supporters got past the strictures by messaging on their hands and event tickets. The preferred message: WE ARE THE 47%. Basu Shrestha and his wife arrived early at the rally, then stuck “WE ARE THE 47%” tickets above their eyeglasses.
“I pay income tax,” said Shrestha, “but I’m holding this up out of solidarity. The president’s looking out for a lot of people.”…
Standing at the other side of the baseball diamond, I met a voter who introduced herself as “Beverly Reader, M.D.,” and wanted everyone to know that she was one of the 53 percent. “I make $300,000, and I’m ready to pay more taxes. I don’t think people who make less than me are lazy.”
Apart from waiting, as Mr. Pierce phrases it, for “smarter people than me… to pick through the 2011 return, pointing out all the little ways that smart rich people can game the system… as further reinforcement of everything that’s causing virtually the entire political system to cough up a hairball at the mention of your candidate’s name”, what’s on the agenda for the start of the weekend and tomorrow’s autumnal equinox?
gogol's wife
I was very cheered by Paul Ryan’s reception at the AARP. Go oldsters!
sublime33
They are making Mitt sound like one hell of a guy for not taking all of the deductions he could claim. But what is to stop Romney from filing an amended 2011 Tax Return after the election to claim these extra deductions? Nothing.
trollhattan
Hard not to keep citing Pierce today:
The WMR Failboat has turned around, is taking another aim at the iceberg. They’re gonna keep doing it ’til they get it right. Right dead center.
shoutingattherain
Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear.
I thought that you’d want what I want…
Sorry, my dear!
And where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here.
washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/09/20/romney-on-new-campaign-strategy/
Ben Franklin
For a change, I request a thread where we can all kick Romney in the nutz.
We need a break.
? Martin
And who paid for the moochers at the FAA who cleared that runway and redirected other flights away? Or the looter firemen rushing in to put the fire out and administer medical care? Or the Secret Service who were on the plane to protect Lady Antoinette?
Yes, the rich shouldn’t pay any more than the rest of us, because we all routinely have the FCC ensuring that our private jets don’t turn into kerosene powered aluminum meteors.
At least tip the firemen, Ann. It’s okay – that bit of charity will be applied to your 2012 tax return where nobody will know about it if it lowers your effective rate to 11%.
Cris (without an H)
About that AARP speech: the recap video on dKos struck me as ambiguous. Much of the time, he was saying “Obama wants to do this thing I think is bad” which was followed by boos. Couldn’t this be interpreted not as the audience booing Paul Ryan, but booing the strawman villain he’s depicting?
Mnemosyne
My cousin is one of those “looters and moochers” in the 47%. Not only has she gotten government services her whole life, she still gets Medicaid even though she has a job, just because she’s developmentally disabled (or, as we used to say, “retarded”) and has been her entire life.
I guess she was supposed to pull herself up by her bootstraps and become a CEO despite her disabilities, and if she didn’t, she was supposed to starve in the street for making the bad decision to be born with brain damage.
When does Sarah Palin’s son with Down Syndrome get thrown off the public dole and told to stand on his own two feet, anyway?
trollhattan
@? Martin:
Also, too, customary to slip the pilot a sawbuck and the copilot, a fiver.
“There’s a good fellow.”
maya
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Mitt Romney is an Obama double agent hired to sabotage the republican party. The only thing left to consider is how much is he getting for performing this dangerous undercover assignment?
I think he’s well into bonus money territory by now.
SarahT
@? Martin: BINGO !
West of the Cascades
The last week has been (as Pierce might put it) a delicious, creamy ball of fk from the Romney campaign. They’re down due to unforced errors, and the President’s campaign is, I think (and hope) ready to keep kicking the crap out of them. This release of a single year’s taxes is another unforced error.
Also, re: Cris at # 7 – I bet the AARP audience was smart enough that they were booing obvious lies. AARP, after all, supported the Affordable Care Act. They know grifters when they come to speak to them.
West of the Cascades
@maya: I think he gets one of the Northern Marianas Islands for this performance, so he can fire and rehire and refire the locals over and over and over from their little sweatshops.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@sublime33: it’s all too neat, isn’t it? How he/they apparently put so much thought into making sure his 2011 rate was just a smidge higher than 2010?
also, too, this looks like something, but some people here seem to have a better grasp on this than I do, so I’d be interested in what you smart elites think
lamh35
Damn I sure wouldn’t want to have to be against Harry Reid in his boxing days! politicalwire.com/archives/2012/09/21/reid_still_not_satisfied_with_romney_tax_disclosure.html
maya
@West of the Cascades: I figured he gets his own triple-kayman island.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@maya:
__
Oh come now. You make it sounds as if he’s been brainwashed, or something.
Amir Khalid
Mitt doesn’t seem to understand how offensive his 47% message is to a person with any compassion in them. He keeps doubling down on it. In fact he seems have a talent for gratuitously offending people and then being utterly oblivious to their anger. I think that’s creepy. And Paul Ryan wants to be like Mitt when he grows up.
Violet
@lamh35: From Reid at your link:
He’s good. Very, very good.
Hill Dweller
During that speech in Woodbridge, Obama unveiled the new ‘inside job’ talking point, turning Willard’s attack against him.
Willard, in a desperate attempt to change the subject yesterday, attacked the President for saying he can’t change Washington solely from the inside(he needed the American people). Willard, leading with his chin, said he would go to D.C. and “change Washington from the inside”. Hence, Obama’s “inside job” jokes.
It feels like Obama set Willard up, knowing he’d attack anything.
Willard is an awful candidate running an inept campaign.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@lamh35: Harry Reid gets a lot of shit, mostly I think because he’s shackled to that herd of peculiar cats he nominally leads, but he does seem to be enjoying the fuck out of himself, doesn’t he? Seems to me I read this leads back to some intra-mormon beef. Harry Reid IIRC grew up in a house with no electricity or plumbing and a two-holer out back. I’m guessing he doesn’t have a lot of love for Prince Willard.
arguingwithsignposts
@Violet: @lamh35: That’s because Reid knows that every punch counts until the ref calls the fight.
gnomedad
@maya:
I wonder if we’ll be hearing this for reals after the election once they get tired of “wasn’t conservative enough”.
muddy
@Cris (without an H): You can tell the AARP audience was booing Mittens by his own reaction in the video.
Xecky Gilchrist
@gnomedad: I wonder if we’ll be hearing this for reals after the election
I’d be pretty surprised if some of the less prominent wingnuts aren’t saying it already.
maya
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Are you suggesting a Mittchurian Candidate?
lamh35
“Expert: Romney may have paid less in taxes over 20 years than it appears”
washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/expert-romney-may-have-paid-less-in-taxes-over-20-years-than…
SarahT
Posted about this last night, but please spare a moment to remember Troy Davis on the one year annniversary of his execution. And if you get moment, please have a look at these petitions from Amnesty International and consider signing to try and get some measure of justice for Troy Davis, and to prevent this happening again.
takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=…
takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=…;
Sincere thanks.
maya
@gnomedad: Why wait until after the election. Starting spreading the word now.
Zifnab
@gnomedad: I still haven’t seen Mitt Romney’s birth certificate. Mighty suspicious if you ask me.
Hill Dweller
@Violet: That statement comes a day after Harry cut off voting in the Senate to prevent Scott Brown from using it as an excuse to skip the debate with Warren.
Harry Smash.
gelfling545
@gogol’s wife: I am so proud of my fellow oldies.
muddy
@gnomedad: The part I’m waiting for is when they lose everything, and then demand that their “ideas” be implemented because, “You *said* you wanted to be bipartisan!!11!!”
They don’t know the definition of democracy, for all their cowing about the Constitution. Fucking hypocrites.
NonyNony
@maya:
The truly amazing thing to me is that Republicans are quite willing to sabotage the Republican party without paying them a penny to do it.
I watched them do it when they decided that George W Bush was presidential material. Seriously? George W Bush? Who could possibly have thought THAT was a good idea even in 2000? There’s a faction of the party that is bound and determined to destroy themselves and take the rest of the country with them, and they wrested control for themselves sometime after 1996. (I mean hell, I never would have voted for Bob Dole but at least I believed that he knew what he was talking about.)
I remember a conspiracy theory I read back in the early 90s or late 80s. The conspiracy was that Ronald Reagan and a number of other Republicans were actually deep cover Soviet plants embedded into the US to destroy the capitalist system from the inside. As time passes, the theory starts to look less and less nutty to me. I mean it’s completely crazy, and yet if you look at the damage that Reagan managed to do to California as governor, and the long-term damage that’s been done to the GOP since Reagan …
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@maya:
Google the words George Romney brainwashed 1968 election and tell me what you find.
Felanius Kootea
Usually, foreign leaders/politicians try to keep their opinions of US politics to themselves but Australia’s Deputy PM said today that “the greatest threat to the U.S. economy are “cranks and crazies” in the Republican Party.” He is also finance minister; Australia got through the financial crisis without experiencing a recession. Fortunately, the Republicans don’t pay much attention to what the rest of the world thinks of them and will dismiss his ability to get his country through the financial crisis without comment.
Dennis SGMM
@maya:
The Secret Service has been slipping him fluoridated water. That has sapped and impurified his precious bodily fluids.
Jewish Steel
I’m not sure I understand the continuing existence of the Friday afternoon news dump. Now that news is in our little phones and ipads that go with us everywhere, a few minutes wait in line at the bank, or waiting for the movie to start is all folks need to catch up. You just can’t “hide” information anymore.
Violet
@Hill Dweller:
I really want both the Smash twins back in their proper roles after this election.
Harry Reid is one of those wiry, wily fighters. Not that big, tends to be underestimated, and then BAM. He’s been relentless on this issue. And as someone said, it seems like he’s having fun. I know I’m having fun watching him!
FlipYrWhig
@Amir Khalid: I have known many people who would wholeheartedly accept the idea that half the country skates on paying no taxes while they themselves get played like chumps, working hard and footing the bill. So that part plays with a Republican audience.
IMHO where it takes a different turn is when Romney says he doesn’t particularly care what happens to the freeloaders. Even people who think they’re the hardworking saps getting rooked by the freeloaders don’t really want the freeloaders to be punished or ignored. _That’s_ where the empathy even contemporary Republicans still have, vestigial though it may be, can flicker back to life.
MattF
@Zifnab: Birth certificate? Ha. ‘Serial Number’, ‘Power-Train Warranty’, or maybe ‘Sell-By Date’
Midnight Marauder
@maya:
Nay. As my favorite bullet point from The Romney Book notes:
There is nothing surprising about the flameout we are witnessing.
maya
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Well, then. It runs in the family.
Teddy's Person
The Texas hayseed who hung a chair in his yard took it down and explained that it was “the only place [he] had to put the damn thing” while he mowed his lawn.
gelfling545
@Cris (without an H): I understand that at one point they were shouting “You lie.”
Linda Featheringill
AARP:
I saw the announcement this morning about Ryan addressing the AARP and was delighted. I knew they would be a tough crowd. But I had no idea just how tough! Wow!
Go! Go! Go!
[I especially like “You lie!”] :-)
gwangung
@Jewish Steel:
20th Century thinking in a 21st Century world.
maya
@Midnight Marauder:
Maybe. Maybe not. I still think it’s a wonderful idea to spread the rumor which would have a cleansing effect,(as in internal pogrom), on the republican party. We see how ‘not-conservative-enough’ it tends to get when faced with defeat. The only ones left standing at the end will be the craziest mofos with the still smoking guns.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@maya: I’m not much for conspiracy theories, but if we find out in ten or twenty years that Jon Huntsman resigned as ambassador and came back to be an Obaman double agent in the GOP, I won’t be shocked. It just turned out they didn’t need him.
@Amir Khalid: It’s the anger, I think, that offends even people who think they’re part of the 53%. Romney is a half-billionaire, he has a beautiful wife, five sons he apparently likes even if the rest of us think they need a good beating, and I’m sure his grandchildren are still adorable as their sense of entitlement hasn’t hardened yet, and on top of that, some of the finest residential real estate on the planet. And he’s still bitter, resentful and feels put upon. Then The Lady Ann comes out and tells people to stop picking on him/them. Romney family Thanksgivings are gonna be dark, seething resentment fests from now on, I think. One of them will take to drink. My money’s on that goofy-looking youngest one.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@maya:
__
Oh it gets better. Mitt has run his campaign this year as if he was the reincarnation of Richard Nixon. Every classic Nixonian tactic, from bald-faced lying and vague “secret plans” to fix thing, to mind boggling two-faced policy reversals, Mitt has covered them all. And just who exactly was the beneficiary back in 1968 of George Romney’s mind boggling drop in the polls (he went from the consensus frontrunner for the GOP nomination to who dat? in a matter of weeks) after his “brainwashed” gaffe? Richard Nixon.
SarahT
@Linda Featheringill: Al Sharpton just aired a clip of what seemed to be a few dozen AARP members walking out on Ryan’s speech – Go Team Old !
muddy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker: I think the goofy looking youngest one looks like an Osmond. Are they Mormon-related, or was it Ann and Donny that one time?
muddy
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Maybe Romney is possessed by the spirit of Nixon, but not the intellect. Only feelings can come through from the otherworld.
Patricia Kayden
On Al Sharpton’s show “Politics Nation”, he showed a video of Seniors walking out of Ryan’s speech at the AARP. Priceless!
Violet
@muddy: Which is the one that doesn’t look like he belongs? I think it’s the doctor one. All the others look related and that one looks like someone else is the dad.
TG Chicago
Just heard E.J. Dionne and David Brooks on NPR. Here’s a shocker: Bobo said at least one really stupid thing and one provably wrong thing.
STUPID: He said Romney is having trouble because he’s “a non-ideological candidate in an ideological age”. Where’s the proof that Romney is non-ideological? And where’s the proof that, outside of the Republican party, America is in an ideological age? Obama certainly isn’t ideological.
WRONG: Bobo claimed that voters want to throw Obama out of office, but they’re not willing to vote Romney in. Nope. Pollster’s average shows Obama’s job approval rating in the positive territory. Heck, the latest Rasmussen poll (which normally skews Republican) has Obama at +3 approval.
I’ll grant that the numbers don’t show a country that’s terribly excited about re-electing Obama, and he has been underwater more than not for the past 18 months or so. If this was a year ago when Obama getting dangerously close to -10 in approval, I’d have had to agree. But today, Bobo is just wrong when he claims that voters want to throw the president out. The polls just don’t bear that out.
Jewish Steel
@gwangung: Right. What else could it be?
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@muddy: @Violet: Is it irresponsible to speculate…? The doctor one is the one who went birther a while back. So much for “the smart one”
Watching John Sununu bluster about “I wouldn’t hire Peggy Noonan to run a campaign!” Well, Snarls Barkly, I despise the Dolphin Lady, but I bet she’d be smart enough to keep your ragey puss the fuck away from the TeeVee cameras.
Howard Beale IV
This incident in Libya is important.
nellcote
Homer Simpson 2012 casts his vote:
youtube.com/watch?v=ArC7XarwnWI&feature=player_embedded
Howard Beale IV
@Felanius Kootea: Austraila isn’t out of the woods yet-they’re near the peak in their own housing bubble, and when exports to China blow up, stand back.
gwangung
@Howard Beale IV: Yup. It is.
And it’s something that wouldn’t have happened under the neo-con’s watch. And it’s something that would be killed by their heavy handed approach to foreign relations.
WereBear
Ah, that’s the beauty of the bottom of the barrel.
If Romney hadn’t existed, who would they have picked? The Base flirted with ALL of them, giving each one their moment in the sun; obviously the self-hypnosis is strong with them.
They so didn’t want Romney; yet, that is who they are running. I’ve never seen a clearer example of how they fall in line.
And when it goes bad, they always complain about it, and claim they never were on board in the first place. Our esteemed host, John Cole, might be that last person in the US to admit he did vote for George W Bush, once upon a time.
spudvol
A Conservative History of the United States
Nylund
Does no one seem to remember that Erick Erickson already tried to turn the 47% into the new “we are the 99%” when he started the “We are the 53%” Tumblr?
the53.tumblr.com/
danielx
Looking for changing leaves…..and waiting for the next episode of Romney Fail Parade. I’ve gotten to the point where I kind of look forward to reading the news in the morning so I can get the dirt on Willard’s latest self inflicted catastrophe. Kind of like I used to dread reading the news during the Cheney Administration…
beltane
@Nylund: I remember it well. It was a dud then and it is a dud now.
Turgidson
@Felanius Kootea:
The right wing economic “minds,” if they even learn of this, will take it as a badge of honor and ask why they should listen to someone from a place that was originally a colony for convicts. And be all self-satisfied with how clever that was.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@TG Chicago:
__
Bobo wants to throw the president out but can’t bring himself to vote Romney in. Mr Applebees Salad Bar is projecting his own conflicts and desires onto the electorate in order to claim an authority his personal views don’t merit.
__
I’d like to see Bobo’s head on a pike minus the rest of his torso but you don’t see me going around claiming that Mr and Mrs Middle America see things the same way.
danielx
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Well played, sir/madame.
lamh35
I love Dr Jill and VP Biden.
This video is cute. Only a bunch of college kids ses a penis joke in everything. Loved Dr Jill and the audience and of course VP Biden’s reaction
youtu.be/ArC7XarwnWI
gelfling545
@SarahT: I’m hoping we can now see an end to the loose talk about how all we boomers will be voting republican and blah, blah blah? It would be nice.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
Satire can’t keep up with these people
PurpleGirl
@Teddy’s Person: I have a bridge I can sell anyone who believes that.
The Lodger
@Mnemosyne: WRT developmentally disabled people and CEOs, I’ve been to meetings where I’ve heard the CEO say some rather amazing things. Let’s just say those two circles on the Venn diagram may not be as far apart as you’d hope.
Dennis SGMM
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Knifely done.
S. Holland
@maya: BINGO!!!
Chris
@Howard Beale IV:
And that also just went up on my facebook.
Holy shit, these people have balls of fucking steel. FSM bless you, Libya, and smile upon your future.
Felanius Kootea
@Howard Beale IV: Ah — didn’t know that. Makes even more sense that he’s agitated by what happens — or doesn’t happen — with the US economy.
@Turgidson: Yup. And yet they’ll turn a blind eye to the fact that someone from that “penal colony” created and runs the propaganda arm of the GOP: Fox News.
danielx
@gwangung:
Actually, what the both of you should remember is that there are a hell of a lot of people out there who have neither smartphones nor IPads. Because they can’t afford them, can’t/don’t want to pay for the data plan(s) necessary to use them, or (perish the thought!) don’t feel the need to be constantly connected at all times. Then there are those who have jobs where it is not possible to be checking on the rest of the wide world every half hour or so, which would include just about every manufacturing job left in America and a hell of a lot of jobs held by those folks in the 47%. Remember them?
A lot pf people still get most of their news from evening television news shows, hence the Friday night news drop. Don’t assume your 21st century reality is the same as everybody else’s.
And, and, lest I forget – try not to sound so fucking condescending.
pseudonymous in nc
Mittens’ returns (and his sick note from the accountants) basically show that when you’re that rich, and your money comes from something other than actual work, you can pick your own effective tax rate. It’s just a matter of which pots you instruct your money managers to distribute your riches.
arguingwithsignposts
@gwangung: TPM still mostly takes the weekends off. So does Wonkette. Nobody is full-staffed over the weekends, even most blogs, except this one.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: Well, to be fair, few blogs pay as well as this one.
Dennis SGMM
@danielx:
You’re quite correct. During the years that I worked for an ISP I carried one of those nasty little radio phones and two pagers everywhere I went. One of the pagers would page me every time a server glitched. Being constantly connected became indelibly oppressive.
Now I just have a cell phone. Three people have the number. Two of those three are my wife and son.
Nothing against all of the nifty portable devices. They’re just not for me.
mai naem
You know Rmoney’s just going to restate his taxes if he loses and take the charity deductions. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if he restated his income tax from 2009 or 2010 to make the averages come up. Also, also, I noticed they say average of each year, not a total average. So he could have had a low income single year(maybe 2009? unless that’s the tax amnesty but he could have done an amnesty and upped the numbers anyway)where he did pay 20 percent. Additionally, I heard one of the Romney surrogates say he paid payroll taxes. Maybe, I’m wrong but you don’t have to contribute until you’re 65 to get money out of social security. You just have to have 10 years to get money out later and he had already been maxing his contributions for at least twenty years so he had payroll taxes covered.
Boudica
@muddy: Don’t you besmirch my first love, Donny Osmond. Blame it on Wayne or Alan or Merrill or Jay, but never Donny!
SarahT
@gelfling545: Not sure if I’m a Boomer or not (does 52 count ?), but HELL yeah, let’s hope. And same for seniors : My 79-year-old Mom lives in PA and enjoys giving hell to GOP pollsters – and has all her friends from synagogue do the same !
Linda Featheringill
@Chris:
Libya:
Those people are nation building.
Live long and prosper.
nellcote
@Dennis SGMM:
I carry a cell phone to call out because of the lack of public pay phones these days. I don’t even know my own number :)
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m not sure the Democratic party carrying the “we are the 47%” mantle is a winning message.
mai naem
@danielx: Yes, yes yes!!! I am amazed at people on blogs who assume everybody has a smartphone. I know a few people who don’t have regular cell phones and I know a bunch of people who don’t have smartphones. Not everybody has $100-$200 to fork out for a smart phone and then another $50-60 a month for service if you get the paygo plans. Heck, I know a lot of people who don’t have computers/and or internet. When Al Gore said there’s a digital divide, there is a huge one. I know I it sounds socialistic but I don’t freaking understand why cities/towns can’t set up wifi everywhere and make it a municipal service. There’s a bunch of jobs you can’t get even apply to unless you do it online. You have to have email address to recieve emails from the prospective employer. Its a freaking necessity to get ahead in todays world.
Steeplejack
Equinox at 10:49 a.m. EDT tomorrow! Even though autumn started September 1 on the Steep simplified calendar, I do like to observe the astronomical niceties. I will probably go outside, stare pensively into the sky and possibly hug a tree.
Tonight I am geeking out on my new cable modem (Cisco DPC3010). Looks like I’m getting a 20% speed improvement (to 30 Mbps) and, more important, no dropped connections. Ever since moving to this apartment in August my old cable modem was dropping the connection anywhere from a few times a day to three or four times in an hour, whereas before it dropped literally once or twice a year. Maddening.
I did some research and realized that the old modem was really old–almost seven years, which is either two or four years past its actuarial drop-dead date, depending on which Cox drone I talked to. And I needed to upgrade to a DOCSIS 3.0 modem anyway to get the most from the über-fast service level I’m paying Cox for. Discovered that the Cisco modem was a couple of dollars cheaper at the Cox Solutions store than on Amazon, so I motored out there and picked it up. I let the 47-percenter yoot at the store remotely configure my connection so all I had to do when I got home was unplug the old modem and plug in the new one. It has been working like a dream for a couple of hours now.
Wasting time on Balloon Juice has never been so sweet. And this is inspiring me to find the router in the still unpacked boxes so I can stream some video to the big-ass TV.
JPL
@Just Some Fuckhead: fyi.. the pres gave a speech today about who are the 47% and it was quite good. The 47% are hard working Americans, retired folks and vets. Unfortunately, there are lots of folks who don’t realize they don’t pay income taxes. I blame ignorance.
Amir Khalid
It has just struck me*: What we are seeing with Mitt can be summed up very simply: he is the Pointy-Haired Manager, come to life and running for president.
*Ouch.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
It’s great to see that they’re standing up to bullies, but it’s well to remember that this is primarily an internal Libyan dispute. We’re involved because we’re around, but the US is not the central issue.
PurpleGirl
@SarahT: The years of the Baby Boom are taken as 1946 to 1964. What year were you born?
gwangung
@danielx: I don’t think I said anything about smart phones or data devices.
On the other hand, now that you mention it, a) that’s an assumption that applies less and less, the younger you are and b) it apples less and less if you consider that people often have friends who do have one and most importantly, c) the mass news media are now running on a 24-hour/7 days a week basis.
Friday afternoon new dumps are increasingly making less sense with these factors.
magurakurin
@SarahT:
The generation masters would pop you (and me) in the baby boomer generation, but we have a very special place there, Generation Jones
and there was a disturbing graph the other week with a voting breakdown by age. I only saved the chart. I think I found it at Steve Bennen’s blog, but I don’t remember. Age breakdown vote Obama-Rmoney
I saw that and was all, WTF, over?
SarahT
@PurpleGirl: Thanks – can never remember that
Paula
I find it funny that the bog-standard journalism being done in the Univision town hall w/ Obama is now called “tough questioning”.
I also find it funny that conservatives think that town hall was a loss for Obama because he admitted to failing comprehensive immigration reform. What was he supposed to do, lie?
Oh, wait …
Steeplejack
@PurpleGirl:
If she’s 52, she was born in ’59 or ’60. A boomer!
Steeplejack
@magurakurin:
Second linky no work. You fix.
magurakurin
@Steeplejack:
okay, I found it. It was over at Charles Pierce’s place at Esquire. The number just stood out to me. But, then again, I did go to school with a lot of dickheads.
esquire.com/blogs/politics/romney-obama-poll-2012
Howard Beale IV
@Roger Moore: Don’t forget that we provided material support but unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, we did not INVADE.
Steeplejack
@magurakurin:
Arrgh, thankee, matey!
(I missed Talk Like a Pirate Day earlier this week.)
gelfling545
@PurpleGirl: My personal rule of thumb is that you were too young to go to Woodstock = not a boomer. Not that you went, just that you would have been aware.
arguingwithsignposts
@gwangung:
Someone would have to drop out of the race to get MSNBC to break into their Saturday Prison line-up with news. And the Sunday shows are usually filmed on Friday or Saturday at the latest.
magurakurin
@gelfling545: and that, my friends, is why we are in Generation Jones. I cannot express enough, how sick and tired I quickly became of my older “brothers and sisters,” telling me just this….”too bad you didn’t get any of those cookies…they were really good.”
But we’re in the driver’s seat now…Obama is a Generation Joneser.
ericblair
@mai naem:
Because every time they try, the nice people from Verizon, Cox, and their ilk come stomping into town with approximately four thousand lawyers and lobbyists to shut the mofo down medieval style. This tends to be fairly effective in getting the local pols either nicely bought off, buried in pleadings, or run out of town and hiding under rocks.
General Stuck
for fans of Bill Murray
Downpuppy
The interesting take from the PWC letter is the state rate of 8.36%, when MA has mostly had a 5-6% flat rate. Sounds like he was filing in California while voting in Massachusetts.
SarahT
@magurakurin: Gah ! I hope not ! Those Joneses I really don’t want to keep up with.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@General Stuck: I am, and I liked it. Really looking forward to that FDR movie. I may even have to go the movie house for that one.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@gelfling545: My personal generational rule of thumb is Vietnam. If you were draft age (18) when the war was active, you’re a boomer. Or maybe an early boomer.
1965 War starts, birth year 1947. OK, let’s use 1945
1975 War ends, birth year 1957
burnspbesq
Listening to records (yes, I know, I are Luddite-what of it?).
What is IMO the best American rock’n’roll record of the 1980s, By the Light of the Moon, has gotten the full audiophile-reissue treatment. Un-forkin-be-lieve-a-bull. Set me free, Rosa Lee!
Original Lee
@gelfling545: Excellent. I’ve been saying for a very long time that I refuse to be a boomer, and now I have a good catchy phrase to justify it.
Incidentally, I seem to remember reading in Science many years ago that demographers changed the Baby Boom years after the early 60s birth years reached adulthood, because even though the birth rate was lower, the mortality rate was also lower, so there ended up being just as many or more adults in that cohort as there were in the original Baby Boom cohort.
muddy
@Violet:
Sorry so late, the dog insisted we go out earlier, I don’t know that you will see this. Here is a helpful guide I found: buzzfeed.com/jpmoore/the-romney-sons-a-guide
The doctor one is Ben, who is the only blond one. The one I think looks like a Mormon is Craig, he’s in real estate. He’s got the teeth and the eyes like an Osmond I think.
@Boudica:
I am the right age to have liked Donny, but my siblings were older and in college, so I liked Jim Morrison. When he was still alive! I have hated Donny since I saw him on Rosie O’Donnell’s show when it started up years ago, and he said to her kindly that he thought it was just great that she was successful even though she was fat. What an asshole. No wonder Marie has an eating disorder.
Steeplejack
@burnspbesq:
Awesome album, but best of the ’80s? Hmm . . .
Now I’m going to have to dig out my substandard CD copy and listen to it.
ETA: I think I am going to sack up and get the new Oppo BDP-103 (mainly for its audio properties).
Anne Laurie
@muddy:
Thanks for that link! Ben is the one I privately expect to come out of the closet — possibly as a furry — as soon as Dad’s campaign crashes to its ungainly end. At which point Dear Ol’ Dad will probably demand a paternity test, Dirty Sexy Money style.
Craig, on the other hand, for all his Osmond teeth, has the eyes of a serial killer. And if should turn out that this is a hobby he shares with his old man, it would not be a total surprise to me, either.
muddy
@Anne Laurie: Me either. I don’t guess any kids of Mitt and Ann would turn out to be good citizens, they have not had a good example.
My son is 30, his comment to people of this ilk (love that word) is, “The problem with them is that they’re sheltered.”
Tax sheltered that is, I say.
magurakurin
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
all of these comments more or less confirm that Generation Jones is indeed a real thing. Older Boomers kick us out of our own generation and the Gen Xers think we’re too old…on the Jones again…and Woodstock, meh, it was one fucking concert. I’m so over hearing about it. Ten years later most of the Woodstock Generation was putting on suits and just all about Wall Street and coke. One sad moment for me, in 1978, was realizing that the same band that had made the album,Volunteers, went on to become the incredibly shitty Jefferson Starship just a decade later. If I hadn’t also happened upon a ticket to a Hot Tuna concert soon after, my disappointment would have been total and complete.
muddy
I’m Jonesing myself. And Hot Tuna, Come back baby I wish you would…
steverino
@Dennis SGMM:
Progress? I work for an ISP. My pager has been replaced by SMS messages to my iPhone, which has a CSV file with the important bits of our customer database and an SSH client so I can do my troubleshooting and fixes from anywhere. On the one hand, oppressive. On the other, beats having to run for home or call around to see who is near a computer.
On the gripping hand, I don’t obsessively check news/twitter/FB on it, nor do I watch TV news. Most of my news is via Internet and newspapers (online and otherwise).
In fact, I get a lot of my news and links to same from here and other lefty blogs (and here I sit, at 11PM). FWIW.
burnspbesq
@Steeplejack:
Because I do most of my listening with headphones, I would be more tempted by the 105.
Steeplejack
@burnspbesq:
Based on their product nomenclature, I presume it will come in at a thousand bucks. That is a bridge too far for me.