An early death and a short trip to hell, hopefully. RT @politicalwire: What's Next for Frank Luntz? http://t.co/J5VbDBH4PO
— billmon (@billmon1) January 6, 2014
What kind of moron moves to Las Vegas to be "intellectually challenged"? Wait, I know the answer: http://t.co/00Z7S1ORq8
— billmon (@billmon1) January 6, 2014
On the other hand, I can SO see Frank Luntz hanging in the lizard lounge with the other lizards. pic.twitter.com/owtyc5y0s6
— billmon (@billmon1) January 6, 2014
Frank Luntz is a professional liar who’s been cheerfully ratfvcking for the GOP since Pat Buchanan’s last presidential run. Molly Ball (whose stuff is always worth reading) wrote a wonderful tiny-violins piece about him for the Atlantic, and I’m sure it was a genuine consolation to Frank Luntz:
… Frank Luntz, the master political manipulator, a man who has always evinced a cheery certainty about who’s right and who’s winning and how it all works, is a mess.
And yet, over the hour and a half I spend talking with him—the first time he has spoken publicly about his current state of mind—it’s hard to grasp what the crisis is about. Luntz hasn’t renounced his conservative worldview. His belief in unfettered capitalism and individual self-reliance appears stronger than ever. He hasn’t become disillusioned with his very profitable career or his nomadic, solitary lifestyle. His complaints—that America is too divided, President Obama too partisan, and the country in the grip of an entitlement mentality that is out of control—seem pretty run-of-the-mill. But his anguish is too deeply felt not to be real. Frank Luntz is having some kind of crisis. I just can’t quite get my head around it.
A few weeks after our lunch, Luntz tells me he’s made a move. He has changed his principal residence from Northern Virginia to a condo overlooking the Las Vegas Strip, and he’s contemplating a sale of his company, Luntz Global LLC, the details of which he is not at liberty to discuss. Las Vegas, he says, represents “my chance to be intellectually challenged again” by a place that is “the closest thing to a melting pot America has to offer.” As fresh starts go, it’s not much, but Luntz hopes it will bring some new clarity….
Because I’m a cynic, my first impulse was to assume Luntz had been caught servicing a live goat or a dead human, but that would imply carnal impulses of which I’m not sure Luntz is capable. Probably he’s just about to roll out some new iteration of ‘words don’t have meanings, they just have effects‘ for the One Percenters.
***********
Apart from schadenfreude, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
raven
Oh I don’t know, some national championship.
ranchandsyrup
Atrios pointed out on the twitters that back in the dark days of the early 2000’s that Luntzy was viewed as “non-partisan” in the media.
My blogging counterpart does some mommy blogging on the tribalism of stay at home v working moms.
ruemara
Hang on, Las Vegas is a melting pot? Unlike, say, D.C., NYC & L.A.? Hopefully, he’ll discover gambling and lose everything before disappearing into the desert.
Keith P.
Moving to Vegas and selling his business? Sounds more like he’s got a major gambling problem.
srv
I hope he took his wetsuits.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
@ruemara: I was hoping he’d discover meth.
Aji
@ruemara: You caught that, too, huh? Most telling bit in the whole pile of crap.
Melting pot. Veeeery diverse: Those who gamble in hopes of bettering their fortunes (i.e., the suckers), and those who take the suckers’ last penny and put it toward their next yacht, worthless IPO, or silo of pink Himalayan salts.
Like Wall Street, but with polyester.
kc
His complaints—that America is too divided, President Obama too partisan
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!
rikyrah
Wonderful comment about Lunz on another blog:
http://pragmaticobotsunite.com/monday-open-thread-the-underground-railroad/#comment-1189353881
muddy
Possibly the goat is sitting atop his head?
dmsilev
All that money and influence, and he’s just an empty shell of a man. Shakespeare could work with this.
? Martin
Luntz doesn’t hear what Obama is saying, he hears what he expects a black president would say, or he hears what the polling sample expects a black president would say. He can’t even heed his own oft-repeated slogan.
Shortstop
Just skimming the comments tells me I must not read this story lest my head explode. What a hideous, hideous creature.
p.a.
“…you can fool some of the people all of the time…” but Luntz’ ‘some’ is shrinking, a demographic dead end. And on the main issue that keeps the pig people (h/t drift glass) yowling, well that’s the NRA’s territory. They don’t need Luntz; they’re fine without him. Most of his stuff is a generation old. Threadbare. And possibly he sees the retaliban party as now run by people too stupid to take ‘yes’ for an answer. Real murcans don’t need framing and such. The last two elections were stoled. They’re already the majority. Don’t need Luntz to convince no one.
Aimai
@dmsilev: its only a tragedy if the character has some virtues as well as a tragic flaw. Does luntz have any virtues?
Roger Moore
@p.a.:
Where “some” means 27%.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I’ll be waiting for a tow truck, just I have been for the last five hours. Last night when I tried to drive home my car started screaming at me that it had no oil pressure and I needed to stop. So I did and took a cab home. I took another cab back here this morning and called AAA to get a tow to the place I have the car serviced. They told me that they are prioritizing people who are stranded on the roadside and don’t have shelter. I can understand that, but at some point I NEED A TOW.
There is no indication that it is going to happen today. The place I’m taking it closes in about a half hour and if I can’t get it there by then it will have been a whole day wasted trying to deal with this. I’ll have to pay for another cab ride home (they’re about $16 a pop) and then do it again tomorrow. I paid AAA a membership fee in order to get service when I needed it and I’m feeling ripped off.
Hopefully the actual problem is just something frozen in this cold and it will be fine once it thaws out. I don’t want to have to do major maintenance on it right now.
LanceThruster
An early death and a short trip to hell, hopefully.
Lines like this make me laugh even though I wish Luntz no ill that I initiated or condoned.
However…
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. ~ Clarence Darrow
rikyrah
This is what I mean when I say that working class White folks clinging to that Whiteness.
I’ll say it again….they wanna cling to that Whiteness..
FUCK THEM.
………………………………..
The Return of the Welfare Queen
Republicans are launching a class war with racial undertones—and hurting the poor whites they’ll need to win in 2014.
By Beth Reinhard
December 12, 2013
The welfare queen, she has risen.
Spawned by Ronald Reagan to turn blue-collar whites against the Democratic Party, then buried by Bill Clinton with a law “ending welfare as we know it,” she’s been excavated under the first African-American president as Republicans inveigh against the costs of health insurance and food stamps for the poor.
Twenty-five Republican-led states have—astoundingly—rebuffed billions of federal dollars under Barack Obama’s signature health care law to offer Medicaid insurance to more poor people. To justify this unprecedented rejection of federal relief, these governors and state lawmakers say they just do not believe Washington will keep its promise to pick up the tab. Republicans in Congress are egging them on, denouncing Obamacare’s disastrous launch as proof of the arrogance and folly of big government.
But all of this opposition carries an unmistakable undertone of class warfare, a theme easy to exploit in states such as Kentucky, packed with low-income white voters who have a strong distaste for the federal government. To hear the rhetoric coming from Capitol Hill and the campaign trail, Medicaid and food-stamp recipients are a bunch of shiftless freeloaders living high on king crab legs and free health care, all on the backs of hardworking Americans.
Medicaid expansion is “the principal reason your kids’ college tuition is going up,” Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky charged at a press conference here.
New Medicaid recipients “have no personal responsibility for their health,” said state Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate, in a memo from the state capital.
And in Louisiana, Senate candidate and Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy hypothesized about a single woman forced to pay high premiums under Obamacare who thinks her neighbor could make more money. “But he would rather work fewer hours or work for cash or, perhaps, live out of wedlock so that he and his girlfriend both qualify for the taxpayer-provided free insurance,” Cassidy wrote in a newspaper column.
The tirades don’t stop at Medicaid.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-return-of-the-welfare-queen-20131212
Anne Laurie
@raven: Is it something Cole will be paying attention to, or do you wanna tell me what/when I’m supposed to give you a post to discuss it?
Jeremy
@? Martin: I think the 2012 election really disturbed the right wingers to their core, I’ve never seen such a negative, gloomy reaction to a presidential election loss. Democrats were devastated during the 1984 landslide but they knew it was going to be a challenge taking down Reagan. The right wing really thought 2008 was a fluke and they believed in their own BS. All we have to do is look at Luntz’s reaction to understand how distraught they are.
raven
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): What weight oil do you have in it?
kc
@rikyrah:
I hate these bastards.
rikyrah
GOP’s ulterior motive on unemployment: Economic sabotage?
There’s more to Republican opposition to extending unemployment benefits than conservative principles
Brian Beutler
Congress returns from the holidays in earnest today, more than a week after allowing emergency unemployment compensation to lapse for millions of jobless Americans, which raises the critical question of what lies behind the GOP’s reluctance to do the obviously correct thing.
Senate Democrats hope just a handful of Republicans will break away from the opposition later today, to pass legislation that would renew the lapsed benefits, and pressure John Boehner to follow suit, but they’re having a hard time finding the votes.
What gives?
It’s tempting to attribute the GOP’s skittishness to the right’s broader aversion to subsidizing poor people, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. At least not entirely.
Congress has never cut off these benefits when unemployment has been as high as it is right now, and the long-term unemployed and the chronically poor aren’t equivalent populations. So there’s got to be more going on than just conservative indifference.
Some Republicans would claim the deficit is too high to renew benefits, but we know that’s not true because the deficit is shrinking fast, and there are myriad, painless ways to defray the cost (which, for a year-long extension, runs north of $20 billion) over a decade. The Senate bill, authored by Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Dean Heller, R-Nev., would last for only three months.
Other Republicans argue incorrectly that the benefits create a significant work disincentive, and claim to believe that allowing them to lapse will stimulate the labor market — even though the problem isn’t complacency but rather that there are three unemployed workers for every job opening in the country right now.
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/06/gops_ulterior_motive_on_unemployment_economic_sabotage/
raven
@Anne Laurie: It’s hard to say but I don’t think you need to bother with a special thread. It’s funny, this game is the cheapest ticket in the history of the BCS and the first one where both teams are more than 2000 miles from the site.
rikyrah
Man gets eight months in prison for slapping toddler on plane
By David Beasley, Reuters
ATLANTA — A former aerospace executive who slapped a crying toddler on an airplane and used a racial slur against the child, who is black, received an eight-month prison sentence on Monday for an incident his attorney blamed on his alcoholism.
Joe Rickey Hundley, who apologized in court to the child’s mother, was accused of striking the 19-month-old boy in the face on board a Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta last February.
Hundley pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge in October. Prosecutors had sought a six-month prison sentence, but the federal judge opted for a stiffer punishment.
“I’m very sorry,” Hundley told the child’s mother during the court hearing in Atlanta. “I made the most terrible day in my life much worse for myself and others.”
Hundley’s attorney has said her client had flown to Atlanta to remove his dying son from life support after an insulin overdose and was emotionally distraught. She also blamed his alcoholism for his behavior on the flight.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/06/22203402-man-gets-eight-months-in-prison-for-slapping-toddler-on-plane?lite
Seanly
Some of the stuff in the article sounds like a guy who might take a header off a casino roof. Enough said on that…
I never liked him when he used to be portrayed as a non-partisan pollster on CNN.
WaterGirl
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): My car won’t start today, but it is 15 degrees below zero – oh wait, we’re a balmy 8 below zero now – but at least it’s stuck in my driveway. Hoping it will just start in a couple of days when the temperature is less obscene.
Can’t help with your car problems, but I’ll bet AAA would consider a refund or partial rebate if they can’t service you for days. Small consolation, but at least it’s something?
boatboy_srq
@Keith P.: McCain/Palin ’08, Romney/Ryan ’12 and now Cuccinelli/Jackson ’13. Damned straight he has a gambling problem – and now all his bad bets are starting to look like bad bets and not the Grand Product of Unskewed Polling.
No goats in northern Virginia. Plenty of horses, though…
boatboy_srq
@dmsilev: Not Shakespeare. Aristophanes.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: wow, that’s a sad story all around.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@raven: No idea. I use the shop to do oil changes because they look at a lot of other things at the same time.
kindness
Maybe it was something simpler, something sweeter, something innocent.
Maybe they caught him with a little boy in other words.
The Pale Scot
“You should not expect a handout,” he tells me. “You should not even expect a safety net. When my house burns down, I should not go to the government to rebuild it. I should have the savings, and if I don’t, my neighbors should pitch in for me, because I would do that for them.”
The man suffers from actually believing his own bullshit, like we all live quaint villages nestled in the English countryside. And it’s all just a matter of getting a few extra hands to re-thatch the barn roof (which is very cool to watch, by the way).
Poor sod, I guess a death spiral into his cups is too much to hope for.
rikyrah
Family Values Republican Congressman Hid His Out-of-Wedlock Child and First Family
By: Sarah Jones
Monday, January, 6th, 2014, 2:09 pm
First wife (and by many accounts, the woman behind the man) Marion Young got a $2,000-a-month lifetime alimony in exchange for her silence, so that Bill Young could play Family Values Patriarch for his Party.
Republican Congressman Bill Young was much revered in Republican circles. When he died, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and others waxed poetic about legendary “family man” Bill Young.
The Republican Congressman was awarded the Family and Freedom Award from the Christian Voice, a conservative Christian right political advocacy group and the biggest religious lobby. Indeed, the Christian Voice used to be housed at the Heritage Foundation back in the 70s and 80s
No one mentioned that Young received this award just a year after he left his first wife and family, amid a scandalous but unreported affair that included the birth of a child. Out-of-wedlock.
No one talked about the fact that Bill Young abandoned the three children, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren from his first marriage to Marian Ford Young. No one even mentioned their names at his funeral on October 18, until one person took a brazen stand.
How did such a public figure stand for family values while he had an entire family he kept in the shadows and a very un-family values start to his second marriage?
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/06/family-values-republican-congressman-hid-out-of-wedlock-child-family.html
srv
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Well, you could be stuck out in field like John’s Subaru for weeks.
schrodinger's cat
My review of yesterday’s episode of Downton Abbey.
Comrade Jake
Anyone spot this Coates piece on how Melissa-Harris Perry is America’s foremost intellectual? Normally Coates is dead-on, but I think he missed the mark here by quite a bit.
It’s a strange piece from him, nominally about the BS that went on between MHP and Romney’s family last week. That stuff he argues quite well, but MHP as our foremost intellectual? I’m not buying it. I mean, she’s easily second to Maddow, just on her own network.
raven
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): That probably isn’t it. Back in the day a straight-weight oil could really drag a cold engine down. I suspect it’s your oil pump and it depends on what kind of car it is how much it would be. This kind of weather will bring the weak point of any vehicle into focus.
Baud
I’m suddenly struck by how many posts here are about people I couldn’t care less about.
boatboy_srq
@WaterGirl: Even intoxicated bigoted wingnuts experience grief and loss. Just look at what’s happened to the GOP.
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: Did you see this?
Tough Justice with Michelle Dockery Really cool that she would do something this edgey (sp?).
Yatsuno
@ruemara: The FSM doth not loveth me enough for this.
Almost to the ranch. I just have a few prescriptions to fill and stuff for the dinner. Mmm…homemade fried chicken!
srv
@Baud: But it’s more exciting than your Facebook, amirite?
boatboy_srq
@rikyrah: Two words: Newt Gingrich.
lamh36
Alright enough of Fringe for the night (even after already seeing the first season it still has me caught up). Gonna finally watch the first season of BBC Sherlock Holmes series since it’s free in Amazon Prime. See having no cable already broadening my horizons
gogol's wife
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yep, pretty much. Too bad. But I’ll keep watching! I like the purple velvet numbers. I guess you were supposed to wear purple after you stopped wearing black.
raven
@gogol’s wife: Please watch the vid I posted.
gogol's wife
@raven:
Have you ever heard her speak in her real voice? She isn’t really posh, she’s just a good actress.
gogol's wife
@raven:
My ancient computer sometimes won’t play videos. I’ll try again.
raven
@gogol’s wife: Yea, good stuff.
Baud
@srv:
Since I haven’t looked at my Facebook in over 2 years, I’d have to agree.
Roger Moore
@The Pale Scot:
And when your whole city drowns in a hurricane, or is destroyed by a tornado or earthquake, who helps to rebuild it? Your neighbors do then, but it’s your neighbors from a bit further afield, and the implement they choose to do it with is called the government.
rikyrah
Darrell Issa Has Sleazy Plan to Restore Veterans’ Pensions By Privatizing the Post Office
By: Rmuse
Monday, January, 6th, 2014, 10:18 am
The concept behind the idiom “every cloud has a silver lining” is that there is always something good in unpleasant situations, and Republicans are notorious for finding something good for their corporate supporters in unpleasant situations they created. Darrell Issa created a so-called scandal with the Internal Revenue Service when he directed them to target teabagger groups seeking 501(C) tax-exemptions, and then turned it into something good for him and dark money groups by investigating the IRS for targeting teabaggers that filled his campaign coffers. Late last week, Issa found a silver lining in another unpleasant situation for military retirees whose pensions are being raided by Republicans in their two-year austerity budget and is turning it into an opportunity to kill Veterans’ jobs, harm the United States Postal Service, and give two corporations control of a government program.
When Republicans demanded payment for relieving 4/10ths of one percent of sequestration cuts for the next two years, they raided government employee’s pensions instead of closing tax loopholes that benefit the richest 1% of income earners. Forcing the middle class, working poor, and elderly Americans to pay for the debt the 1% blew up when Republicans gave them unfunded tax cuts has been a recurring practice over the past five years so it was little surprise Republicans took aim at government employees’ pensions to cover sequestration cuts. However, when they robbed government employees they were also stealing from military retirees and after pressure from veterans, they are seeking another program to slash to restore military retirees’ pensions. All other government employees will continue paying the wealthys’ share of sequester relief and Issa targeted a government program he hates to pay for restoring military pensions; the United States Postal Service.
Issa has made no secret that, like all Republicans, dismantling the Postal Service to give UPS and Federal Express control over delivering the mail is a major step towards privatizing the entire U.S. government. It is not that privatizing the Postal Service will improve mail and parcel delivery; the recent holiday debacle disabused conservatives of the notion that private companies outperform government agencies. UPS botched last-minute holiday deliveries, and Federal Express (FedEx) was forced to apologize for late-arriving packages; the U.S. Postal Service had a stellar performance record over the holidays. Still, Republicans are Hell-bent on destroying the USPS and Issa came up with a solution that hastens privatizing the Postal Service and restoring military pensions Republicans raided to protect the rich from tax loophole reform.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/06/darrell-issa-sleazy-plan-restore-veterans-pensions-privatizing-post-office.html
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
Because “family values” really means “one of us”, and doesn’t have anything to do with families or values. SATSQ.
Violet
@rikyrah: That’s incredibly sad. There’s no excuse for what he did, but it’s easy to understand the grief and stress he was under. Sad all around.
CaseyL
Feeling a little low today – either because I have no interviews scheduled, or because Seattle has taken away the sun and brought back the clouds. (Plus it’s pretty damn cold out there!)
Do any Seattle BJers work for the University of Washington? If so, may I contact you? I want to work there; I’m starting to think it’s easier to win the Lotto.
@raven: Thanks, raven! I knew there was some special thing on TV I wanted to see tonight but couldn’t remember what it was.
gogol's wife
@raven:
Hilarious! That’s even better than the Breaking Bad spoof that Lord Grantham, Thomas, and Carson did.
mai naem
The comments on the Atlantic site are pretty funny. Luntz ‘s dad was a pioneer in the field of dental forensics. I a guessing he didn’t pull himself up by his bootstraps. Amazing how he doesn’t want to take responsibility for the incivility in politics nowadays when he along with the Newtster was responsible for Congress becoming as polarized as it has. I’ve listened to many interviews from old timers who were there when the Dems and GOP used to play baseball and socialize outside work. That all stopped when the Newtster took over. The party of personal responsibility indeed.
raven
@gogol’s wife: Seen “The Wire, the Musical”?
MomSense
@lamh36:
I’ve been bingeing on The Good Wife the last few days. Looking forward to Sherlock season 3 in a few weeks.
Stillwater
Wow, thanks for that link to the Agony of Frank L. An amazing piece. Well written, excellent balance, and the Lutz-inflicted dagger wound (or is it a jab?) at the end. Awesome.
Petorado
@lamh36: If you download the Hola plug-in to a Firefox browser, you can by-pass the BBC One filters and stream the first two episodes directly from them. I couldn’t wait to watch it through other means.
Yatsuno
@CaseyL: Gwangung does, maybe you can drop him an e-mail via AL or we can send up a bat signal or something.
ranchandsyrup
Jake Tapper is such a baby.
Anne Laurie
@gogol’s wife:
By the 1920s, any dark colors for ‘half mourning’:
My first introduction to ‘half mourning’ was Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins, where little orphan Rose’s wardrobe choices are severely restricted by her maiden aunts’ ideas of proper mourning wear…
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
He’s talking about the BCS national championship football game between Auburn and Florida State. It’s on ESPN at 8:30 p.m. EST.
rikyrah
@schrodinger’s cat:
thanks
Botsplainer
Here are pics of Luntz’ future.
http://www.sadanduseless.com/image.php?n=2590
CaseyL
@Yatsuno: Good to know; thanks!
Are you doing laps around the hospital yet?
lamh36
@MomSense: [email protected]Petorado
I’m probably already based since I own and have read every Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Author Conan Doyle, but i will say I’m not even half way in the 1 ep of season 1 and I kinda already love it…lol
Brian R.
His complaints—that America is too divided, President Obama too partisan
Man, it’s always a bad move when the guy who’s dealing the toxic shit starts consuming it himself.
rikyrah
Two Unaccountable Guys, All The Power
By Charles P. Pierce at 12:15PM
Some days, you read something and you think to yourself, you know, there’s the Pacific Ocean right over there, I could start walking and keep going because what in the name of god is the point any more?
This is two guys — TWO FREAKING GUYS! — and they have more power within the American political system than a million earnest volunteers knocking on doors. They have more influence than millions of people writing letters to the editors, protesting outside school boards, or organizing online. This is two guys — TWO FREAKING GUYS! — whose politics were formed on what was still considered the Republican fringe in the 1950s and 1960s, and they have more power within the American political system than what’s left of the entire infrastructure of organized labor.
Two freaking guys.
Amazing.
Two freaking unaccountable guys.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/koch-brothers-political-network-010614
Petorado
@lamh36: Sherlock’s oddly addictive. It’s that British affinity for character development over the usual emphasis on plot fireworks. Season three is a change from the first two so far. Waiting to see where episode 3 goes.
Brian R.
“I should have the savings, and if I don’t, my neighbors should pitch in for me, because I would do that for them.”
Thank God we live in a country in which all neighborhoods are so economically diverse. Imagine if there were places with just poor people in them! Who’d pitch in then?!
Mike in NC
Frank is simply moving to Vegas for hookers and blow.
Mike E
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Sorry about your predicament, car difficulty in bad weather is the worst. While driving up the road Sat here in Mayberry I was ambushed by rock throwers, and my driver side window behind me shattered like a damn gun blast. Had little Tim Tebow been Aaron Rodgers I wouldn’t be so comfortably pecking out this missive on my droid!
Ash Can
So Frank Luntz is delusional about everything (including Las Vegas) and his inability to grasp and deal with reality is biting him in the ass. Hoodathunkit?
Keith G
@rikyrah: You are certainly bringing the happiness tonight.
sensesfail
@rikyrah: hahaha! Oustanding!
Shortstop
@Petorado: I’m going to finally try it despite strongly disliking Cumberbatch. Have been a Doyle devotee since my teens, and this would hardly be the first series I’ve enjoyed while not caring for the lead actor.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Luckily, my subaru, battery of which has been threatening to die, started up today (after I turned off the fan) so I could drive the last three stranded squatters home from the flash sleepover.
Then I brought my neighbor, who’s battery had also frozen, to the auto parts store for a battery.
I need one too. That brings my $2250 car to $3700. When I replace the steering rack it will bring it to $4200. Cheap cars aren’t cheap, but it should last a million miles.
Smiling Mortician
@raven: That’s awesome. Thanks for both links — I needed to laugh.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Oh, I don’t know rikyrah.
I can read the Lunz piece to mean he’s pissed off not that he lost but because he’s worried about becoming irrelevant. He’s convinced that Obama hoodwinked The People into paying attention to class divisions and inequality, but what if it went the other way? Bottom up? What if The People had a direct, real, lived experience with how the deck is stacked during the financial crisis and got there all by themselves, without believing a “message”?
Lunz sees this as working only one way, from the people (like him) on top to the voters, because Lunz doesn’t have a job if it works any other way.
Maybe The People will stop listening to all this professional marketing bullshit and not “give up” but instead reach decisions that aren’t based on a campaign ad or a focus group tested “message”?
That could happen, too. Maybe we reach Peak Campaign Industrial Complex and go back to basics, ie: thinking for ourselves. They can’t pour ever more money into this forever. At some point it reaches the point of diminishing returns. I think we’re already at that point, myself.
Woodrowfan
Any word on the 2014 Pets of Balloon Juice calendar/?
Anoniminous
Lutz was fairly well tapped into the GOP Thought Monitor operation. If he is saying the electorate has changed I’m wondering if this is an early indication Dems will keep the Senate and flip the House.
lamh36
@Shortstop: Exactly right. There are only a few book a that I have ever read that I’ve actually owned and re bought whenever I lost them & which I actual go back and read at random times and it’s always like I’ve read it for the first time. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is one of those books.
Cumberbatch is actually pretty good.
Petorado
@Shortstop: Sherlock’s role is written like he has Asperger’s and despite his gifts he has some serious personality flaws. It’s the most human take on the character I’ve seen so far, and they have great fun with it. It beats the inscrutable genius take from previous incarnations.
gwangung
@CaseyL: Not sure how much good I can do; it’s mostly a matter of getting by the HR monkeys. I can help in my area (fundraising), but am less useful the further out you go. You can drop a line by using my screen name (AT) uw dot edu.
Steeplejack
@Woodrowfan:
I believe that the person originally doing it ran into problems and they have been trying to get someone else to finish it.
I would a front-pager would do a brief post about this to answer the daily questions.
SiubhanDuinne
@ranchandsyrup:
pointed out on the twitters that back in the dark days of the early 2000′s that Luntzy was viewed as “non-partisan” in the media.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
he’s spent so many years finding the right words to dress up shyt and make it palatable, that he thought it could last forever.
But, here comes President Obama, cutting through all of it.
And no matter how many phrases Luntz comes up with, for the first time, he can’t find the words to dress up shyt.
And, it scares him.
Now, maybe the Great Recession just made obvious to a whole lotta people that thought the GOP was talking about ‘THOSE PEOPLE’ all these years.
Whatever it is, the stuff that the President has been saying, a certain group of folks have been saying for years. But, it’s FINALLY sinking into some working class White people that YOU ARE IN THIS GROUP.
That your WHITENESS isn’t gonna protect you anymore.
And yes, what you and your ancestors have fallen for is complete and utter bullshyt.
That, in combination with the non-Whites, who never believed Luntz’s bullshyt coming out to vote..
Yes, I can see why Luntz is depressed.
Sad_Dem
Frank can’t get the love of Hollywood? Poor dear. Hollywood loves a good splash of patriotic gore, but Ayn Rand’s poison always tanks at the theater. Funny how the proles won’t pay to be lectured on their supposed failings.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Tell me what you heard Frank Luntz say. How did he make you feel?
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
It is a sad story. I recall the reporting of the original incident and thought he was a total asshole. The news that he was heading into a devastating personal errand (which I had not heard before now) reminds me that nearly every situation has nuances, if not two sides, and I would be an improved human being if I withheld my judgement until more facts are know. About anything.
SiubhanDuinne
BTW Anne Laurie and perhaps someone else unthread has mentioned his (haven’t read all the cooments yet) but it is Luntz, not Lutz.
Edit: comments, not cooments :-)
Another edit: upthread not unthread. Curse you, autocorrect.
rikyrah
Michelle Obama crashes at Oprah’s Hawaii pad
By Emily Goodin
SUVs, Secret Service agents and Oprah!
Michelle Obama’s extended Hawaii vacation plans have leaked thanks to security sightings reported by locals near Oprah Winfrey’s tropical vacation home.
The Maui News reports residents said saw police cars and black SUVs near Winfrey’s home in Kula on the island of Maui. The talk show host owns several hundred acres on the island.
Other residents told local news outlets that security personnel asked them to leave the area and that paparazzi have been spotted.
President Obama left Hawaii, where the first family spent the holidays, on Saturday with daughters Sasha and Malia. The White House said the first lady would remain behind to spend time with friends ahead of her upcoming birthday.
She turns 50 on Jan. 17. Also on this girls’ getaway: CBS’ Gayle King, White House adviser/Obama friend Valerie Jarrett and Sharon Malone, the wife of Attorney General Eric Holder
http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/194549-michelle-obama-crashes-at-oprahs-hawaii-pad
Kay
@rikyrah:
Because it IS a problem, right? If people are just inundated with this stuff and start to tune it out, what does Mr Frank Luntz do then? He’s otherwise unemployable.
There’s so many grifters in his business, too. Some of the ads that they ran in Ohio in 2012 were just completely incoherent. My favorite was this clanging chisel chipping away at something that looked vaguely like a rock cliff and then a dark picture of Obama. I have no idea what that was about. They’re afraid he’ll end up on Mt Rushmore?
It always reminds me of when birthers bought that billboard where they asked “where’s the birth certificate?” and people thought it was a PSA, like “where IS my birth certificate? I should locate that important document”
I wonder about it, I really do. What happens if people just tune all of it out? I guess that could certainly mean they “give up” but it could also mean they rely on something other than professional campaign people. That might be positive, over all.
mainmata
I did enjoy that article quite a lot. Luntz is a very unself-aware person who thinks he is a “populist” while living the life of a rich, entitled person whose views are entirely informed by a rich, entitled ideology. Yes, he articulated the politics of hate but clearly doesn’t understand the consequences of that radical right wing socio-economic ideology on the American public. He strikes me as really rather stupid, actually.
Woodrowfan
@Steeplejack: thank you. I hope they can get it done. And I hope the person who was working on it is OK….
Matt
@rikyrah:
Given who I imagine Lutz’s inspirations are, he’s probably pissed that C-Plus Augustus didn’t burn down the Reichstag or something.
Karen in GA
@raven: Michelle Dockery was Death’s granddaughter Susan in Hogfather. Michelle Dockery battled the assassin Teatime and won. Do not fuck with Michelle Dockery.
Sorry. Had a Pratchett moment. I’m okay now.
Matt
On a related but off topic note: is there a breaking point for Godwin’s law? Because I feel like you could run op-eds from 1936 Berlin through a machine translator and swap out some key words to get some of the speakers in this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPxv4Aff3IA
Everything from “we’ve got to ROUND THEM UP”, to accusations of sabotage, to “we must preserve our culture”, to gangs of short-haired angry young men harassing, following and intimidating people on the street.
jayboat
Heh.
paparazzi have been spotted.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Hey, I was on Maui a month back and Oprah sure as hell didn’t invite ME over. Darn you, Michele Obama and your connections! Bet there’s surf now, too.
Steeplejack
Test. FYWP has eaten a couple of comments without even the courtesy of dropping me into moderation.
ETA: Okay, now it’s working, when I’m saying nothing. FYWP.
jayboat
@mainmata:
Your modern R in a nutshell…
jonas
@Jeremy: That’s a pretty good summary. The Fox News/Limbaugh epistemic closure loop has meant that conservatives have convinced themselves that they and they alone are “real ‘Muricans”, any vote cast for a Democrat is fraudulent, Obama is a socialist Kenyan usurper and that they don’t have to share the country with anyone who isn’t a Caucasian, evangelical Christian.
WereBear
If this were a play, it could be “Truth Comes for the Wordsmith.”
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: Does he even understand that they make people buy insurance for that kind of thing? Maybe he’s like the people who are ideologically opposed to health insurance, only for fires.
Shortstop
@lamh36: @Petorado: good enough. I’m in.
Shortstop
@Kay: I know you weren’t trying to be funny, but that was hilarious.
Shortstop
@trollhattan: do you surf, Trollie? How cool.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Yes, that is beautiful.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Frank Luntz has a Limbaughian future ahead of him, losing the video remote in the sweaty folds of his belly fat while desperately imploring his small and bruised phallus to react positively to the children on the screen, before ruining everything by belching an eruption of microwaveable chicken parm and bile all over his abused nipples.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: Think I will be using that phrasing and understanding – that whiteness alone won’t save them anymore – much more often in the future. It so succinctly explains the severe fear reaction evident in today’s GOP.
LeftCoastTom
@Kay: Well, Meg Whitman spent over $100 million in CA in an unsuccessful attempt to buy public office. Didn’t do her a damn bit of good, though I’m sure it helped some otherwise unemployable grifters.
Mike G
@rikyrah:
Whatever it is, the stuff that the President has been saying, a certain group of folks have been saying for years. But, it’s FINALLY sinking into some working class White people that YOU ARE IN THIS GROUP.
This. Non-wealthy Repukes who cultivated servile sycophancy because they thought they were the pets of the rich and powerful, are waking up to the fact that they’re really just livestock.
different-church-lady
Wait, let me guess: he just turned 50.
[Checks Wikipedia]
Well, close enough — on the edge of 52. I mean, fuckin’ mid-life crisis, Ms. Ball — how obvious does it have to be?
different-church-lady
@rikyrah:
Yeah, it was pretty disappointing how they got McCain and Romney elected like that.
p
i’ve known several people of high intelligence whose greatest lament wasn’t that their contributions to humanity were lost but that they weren’t glorified simply because they had a high i.q.
“BUT I’M A GENIUS”.
it will never be said that Luntz was an einstein.
he deserves to be absorbed into oblivion far more than Tesla.
p
i wish there was a “fave” button on Balloon Juice.
there are numerous comments here i appreciate but have no reply to.
p
@srv: and dildos?
Paul in KY
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Like I wanted to rip his eyeballs out with a rusty spoon & then make him eat them.
Paul in KY
@p: Those people probably didn’t have any ‘contributions to humanity’.
p
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): wow
cole had his subaru stranded in a farmer’s field for…how long?
your car conked out in a snow storm and you got a cab home…and you’re miffed that your “needs” weren’t immediately met by AAA — because….your self-interest and obliviousness is head spinning.
have you ever driven in a white out on a country “highway” road in the middle of nowhere at 10p.m. — with an AAA membership ?
were you driving a chrysler?
p
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: people who are high on their own egos/ ideologies (ala ayn rand [how many know she was a cocaine addict?]} “god”, eschew drugs.
p
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): that a) you have a car and b) a aaa membership puts you in a category so far above what too many people are experiencing now (makes me wonder if people living in their cars with their families have aaa memberships)…
“tissue thin” indeed.
if there’s one thing the middle class is learning in these times, it’s self-reliance. know your car (you’re really asking people what kind of oil they use?). if you live in the north – blankets, candles, a snow shovel, kitty litter, food + water , should be in your trunk from october thru april.
sometimes the aaa, police, and fire departments have more important situations to deal with than someone who can take a cab home.
p
@Jeremy: the democrats never “took down reagan”, if they had, he wouldn’t be the glorified puppet even the “rights” own present day ideologues would disavow if he ran for any office today.
p
@rikyrah: thomas jefferson, strom thurmond, hyde, vitter, craig….
“DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO”.
Cervantes
“The Agony of Frank Luntz,” even if it is real, is as nothing compared to what he deserves. He and Gingrich ought to be locked up — together, and forever, and far away from human society.
p
dear mr luntz,
while the 1% scramble to get off the planet before the pitchforks come out,
blow back is a bitch.
Cervantes
@Aimai:
Let me know if you discover any.
Cervantes
@The Pale Scot:
Even better would be cirrhosis without the comfort of his cups.
Fred
@Cervantes: Pitch Karl (MC) Rove in there with the bitches.