.
Or: What if they announced a horse race & nobody came? Dylan Byers, Politico‘s most gullible staffer, prayerfully calls upon the mighty powers of social media:
Let’s be honest with ourselves for a second: This is Hillary Clinton’s election to lose. On Nov. 8, 2016, Clinton will start — start — with a minimum 247 of the 270 electoral votes she needs to win…
The conventional wisdom among Clinton’s supporters is that Clinton is invincible, because she has already weathered all the storms of media scrutiny… This argument overlooks two important factors: First, the national media have never been more primed to take down Hillary Clinton (and, by the same token, elevate a Republican candidate)…
Second, the media environment is radically different from the 1990s or even the 2000s. The power and volume of social media means that controversies can be both disseminated and elevated to unprecedented levels. In today’s media environment, nothing with even a whiff of gunpowder comes across the transom without blowing up, because blowing stuff up is what the media do. Or, as Daniel Henninger notes in today’s Wall Street Journal, the “electronic elements have reached critical mass … [and] the new political media that will drive the 2016 presidential contest are like the surface of the oceans — huge, always moving, unpredictable and potentially destructive.”…
And right on cue (creative disruption!), a Washington Post exclusive: arising from the political depths…
Mitt Romney, who earlier this year decided against a third presidential bid after briefly flirting with a run, will jump back into the national political scene next month when he hosts GOP presidential hopefuls and some of the party’s biggest donors in Utah…
Confirmed speakers from the likely 2016 Republican field include Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.).
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, long seen as a Romney rival due to tensions between their camps, was invited but will not attend…
Yeah, ’cause somebody has so much dough of his own that he needn’t risk getting the luzer stink on him, not to mention the best advisors…
One of Jeb Bush’s top advisers on Israel: George W. Bush
After spending months distancing himself from his family’s political legacy, Jeb Bush surprised a group of Manhattan financiers this week by naming his brother, former president George W. Bush, as his most influential counselor on U.S.-Israel policy.“If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it’s him,” Bush said Tuesday, speaking to a crowd of high-powered investors at the Metropolitan Club, according to four people present. The Republicans in the room spoke on the condition of anonymity to divulge information about the private meeting….
Oh, c’mon — if it weren’t for nepotism, John Ellis Bush would be, at best, a mid-level vice-president in a Miami real estate development empire.
***********
Apart from SODH (shaking our damn heads), what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?
Hal
Wow. Really? To be a rich white man in America.
Baud
I hope that advice was “Don’t listen to Cheney.”
David Koch
If ¡Jeb wasn’t born with on third base, he’d be Joe the Plumber.
Obama and Bill Clinton came from dirt. Broken families, without a dime in their pockets or legacy connects and worked their way to become President. That took fucking unimaginable talent and guts. Neither of which a doughy loser like ¡Jeb possess.
Poor ¡Jeb – he’s not a welfare queen, no he was a “victim”. How many regular people get a $4,565,000 million dollar taxpayer bailout?
Keith G
Allow me to posit that there is a collection of left-leaning political types who aren’t SODH because we see no point in following/caring what is happening right now on the other side of the continuum.
The guys and gals over yonder are going to do what they are going to do. Meanwhile over here, we have our own place to put in order. We have Democratic office holders whom we have to convince to stop acting like Milton Freedman. We have a whole generation of voters (millennials) whose only received messaging about “Safety Net” policies and programs has been, at best, mixed.
Splitting Image
Notwithstanding Jeb’s admission that he and his brother are joined at the hip, and the fact that he hired 15 or 20 of the people who goaded George W. into the Iraq War as foreign policy advisors, and the fact that most of those guys were Jeb’s cronies anyway from the PNAC days, the media will continue to do its dual jobs of portraying Jeb as a moderate Republican and talking about “Clinton fatigue”.
David Koch
It actually was his fourth attempt (just because he was rejected by the donor class doesn’t mean he didn’t attempt to run). His first attempt to run for President was in the mid 90s. He ran for the Senate in Massachusetts in 1994. If he had won, he would have run for president in 2000. That was really his first attempt.
And when you add his father’s failed attempts in 1964 and 1968, the Romneys have run 6 times for President.
Talk about overcompensating.
David Koch
Ya know, it was ¡Jeb not Dubya who was a part of PNAC in 1998.
¡Jeb was for invading Iraq before anyone else. You could say ¡Jeb has bigger daddy issues than his brother. Which is frightening.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Open Thread, so, I’ll post that my Kickstarter made it’s initial goal. I’m pretty excited. But don’t fear, you can still participate. My first stretch goal is to get to $10,000, which I estimate will be enough to have a print edition as well as an ebook.
BillinGlendaleCA
I just finished reading “The Hunting of the President”, this is bunk.
OzarkHillbilly
@David Koch:
Nyuk nyuk nyuk…
ThresherK
@David Koch: So many Bushes were born on third base by this point that the family is starting to resemble the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Bystander
@Hal: and, evidently his English advisor is Mortimer Snerd.
mtiffany
And the complement of that statement being that social media can just as quickly debunk the manufactured controversies that are the stock-in-trade of Tiger Beat on the Potomac and then publicly mock and chide the purveyors of such nonsense. If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail; so I guess it naturally follows that if you’re a hacky, entitled douche that works for Bullshitico, every story looks like “Good News For John McCain and His Secret Plan to Capture and Kill Osama Bin Laden.”
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
It’s starting to get warm, so I’m looking for short sleeved dress shirts to wear to work. It’s not going well. Basically, everything is listed as “slim fit.” I don’t really know much about fashion terminology, but it’s a pretty safe bet that I shouldn’t go with slim fit.
Schlemazel
@OzarkHillbilly:
I wonder how many leeches attach themselves to the Bushes because they figure there is an entire industry built to ensure they don’t suffer a bit from continuous failure? Not that that means he was a victim but he could see himself that way. Floating along as some smooth talker stumbles through a bad investment/business not paying any attention to the difficult bits and then suddenly he finds things have gone to crap & he has no idea why or how to get out so he calls on daddy’s friends to bail him out. Poor baby had no idea!
That sounds like W’s entire Presidency.
ThresherK
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Everything? I don’t know where you live, or if you’re brick and mortaring it, but in my New England suburban shopping area the fits are usually three, with mixed up terms. “Full or Regular”, “slightly fitted”, “trim”, and “slim” are all out there but they vary from store to store.
I’m usually “the middle one” if there are three, but if there are only two, it’s a crapshoot.
At least since you’re shopping for short sleeves you don’t have to play the game of one maker’s 35″ sleeve is another’s 34″.
henqiguai
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (#14):
Look at some online sites (e.g. LandsEnd.com or even Penney’s) for sizing. “Traditional” fit is probably what you want. At least, that’s what I look for, what with all the excess (good) karma I got to carry around.<ahem>
FlipYrWhig
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Unsolicited fashion critique: short sleeve dress shirts make men look like Dwight Schrute. Wear a long sleeve dress shirt and roll up the sleeves. HTH.
ThresherK
Love the Kinsleyesque gaffe by Dylan Byers, saying “conventional wisdom among Clinton supporters” is revealing. The phrase “conventional wisdom” about the right never needs qualification; it’s simply something that everyone Dylan Byers knows holds to be true. It sounds really #SlatePitch to squeeze the term CW into someplace a Byers would never put it; you are guaranteed he’s just strawmanning it.
That he breathlessly reports on “the media” is too funny. Imagine a twelve-year-old throwing a rock at a window in an old building, getting caught out by a grownup, saying “all these kids are making trouble”.
Mustang Bobby
And stuck on the Palmetto Expressway like every other schlub.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@FlipYrWhig: Sorry, but no. The ventilation isn’t very good in the office I work in. Short sleeves are going to be an absolute essential. Rolling them up doesn’t cut it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel: Failing upwards.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@henqiguai: I’ve been through Lend’s End. I should expand: the only short sleeve dress shirts are either slim fit, or they are utterly boring colors. Land’s End has white, basic blue, or checked white and basic blue.
Baud
@ThresherK:
Some say…
ThresherK
@Baud: Is it too soon in the cycle to play the game of “Most Conventional Wisdom Election Night Headline” yet?
I am trying to perfect my Beltway Inbred passive agressive voice, and have “Hillary squeaks by with 380 EV. Some say momentum is already turning against her”.
Southern Beale
GunFAIL, Extra Special Law Enforcement Edition.
If police officers, who ostensibly have all sorts of training and more daily interaction with firearms than your regular Second Amendment Hero, can’t avoid gun fail, nobody can.
Baud
@ThresherK:
Is the Honeymoon Already Over?
kindness
We liberals may share the same planet with conservatives but we don’t share the same world. That should be taken as a given in any conversation.
ThresherK
@Baud: You’re the leader in the clubhouse! Some say.
dmsilev
@Baud: Is Hillary Clinton’s Presidency Doomed Without the Support Of White Men?
Baud
@dmsilev:
My favorite right-wing complaint from Bill’s election was that he wouldn’t have won without the black vote. That was serious media analysis back in the day.
MattF
Starting with “Let’s be honest with ourselves for a second.” Well, sure. Why the hell not. There are, believe it or not, people who try to be honest with themselves more often than not. It’s not always easy, but– ‘Politico’s most gullible staffer’ is like ‘The most drowned person on the Titanic.’
Gene108
Social media has done more to kill trumped up right-wing scandals dead in their tracks than anything else. Sure a bunch of right-wing dead-enders can communicate to their hearts content about Obama’s birth certificate, but Obama’s Press Secretaries never had to deal with Q&A’s about causing a four hour delay at LAX because a hair stylist gave the President a hair cut on Air Force One.
The truth gets shot out to counter the right-wing lies in real time, and does not linger as a “fact” in the media for weeks, until so no name independent reporter unearths the truth.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: In other words, if Bill Clinton had run against Andrew Jackson he would have lost.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Sitting at one of the budget hotels at Walt Disney World eating an omelet to fortify myself for the day ahead: two parks, two pre-teen girls, my cancer-ridden brother and his bickering girlfriend, and my mother, who informed me last night that the enema worked and she’s feeling better.
I probably should have Irished my coffee.
(Regarding the hotel, I’ve taken to referring to it as “Walt Disney’s Motel 6.” But, hey, we’re just sleeping in it.)
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): You picked a hell of a day to stop shooting smack.
satby
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I feel for you! And it’s getting hot down there too. Hang tough, later the bad bits will fade and you’ll be happy you had this time together. Or at least sleep at night knowing you did your best for them.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Looks like you picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
ThresherK
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Is it the one the monorail goes through? That is the favorite one of my Dad’s, and no, he’s never lived anywhere with a subway, let alone the stereotypical El passing by a second-floor bedroom window.
(Myself? I’ve never been to FL, but the idea seems cool if the monorail is quiet enough.)
Guess it’s the time to learn when the bars open up in Walt Disney World. Hang in there.
OzarkHillbilly
The mystery behind radio signals that have baffled scientists at Australia’s most famous radio telescope for 17 years has finally been solved.
……..
The signals’ source? A microwave oven in the kitchen at the Parkes observatory used by staff members to heat up their lunch.
Germy Shoemangler
@Gene108:
I wish I shared your optimism. I still encounter people (in person and on-line) who believe in death panels and Al Gore lying about inventing the internet and a cabal of climate scientists’ profit-seeking hoax. All stuff that has been disproved again and again and again.
And they vote.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Now that mystery is solved; they should try to find Cole’s mustard. That’ll probably take another 17 years.
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: Okay, that’s way too “On The Beach” for me.
[SPOILER ALERT for a 50 year old movie!]
ET
If anyone is out there and interested, there is going to be a fly over of the U.S. Mall today. This is to commemorate VE day. The planes will be all WWII vintage.
Event page
Live Webcast
I am going out to take pictures.
debbie
@Gene108:
I don’t know. Social media may shine a bright light on the goofiness, but it also allows more goofiness into the public arena:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nebraska-lawsuit-homosexuals
Cockroaches no longer scurry from the light.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Check Nordstrom. Their clothes can cost a lot more, but if you look around you can usually find something that doesn’t cost a fortune. And they’re generally better made (and last longer) than many of the mass-market places.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Frankensteinbeck
This could not be more true. They’re barely even pretending to not be Republicans anymore. Ironically, the Teabaggers still think the media is ‘liberal’ because it’s old school ‘we don’t say the n-word in public, dear’ Republican rather than new school ‘OBUMER TAKN OR GUNZ’ Republican. It refuses to tell America such basic truths as how the special forces are training to lock all white people in Walmarts for disposal.
Here is how the article fails:
There is no connection between these two facts. If anything, they are diametrically opposed. People are turning to internet information exactly because they know the media is full of shit.
ET
Photographer Angelica Dass took pictures of people and matched their skin tone to Pantone color swatches. It is part of her exhibit on tumblr.
SuperHrefna
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: LLBean? They have lots of traditional fit button downs – and the sport shirts can come in some nice bright colors.
rikyrah
Big money politics runs amok with FEC in gridlock
Ellen Weintraub, commissioner with the Federal Election Commission, talks with Rachel Maddow about the partisan gridlock within the F.E.C. that prevents it from adequately policing political fundraising and spending, and why the situation isn’t hopeless.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/big-money-politics-rampant-amid-fec-gridlock-441831491975
Sherparick
@David Koch: What do mean born on “third base?” Bush was born in the dugout after the grand slams hit by his Great-Granddad, Granddad, and Dad. The difference between the Bushes and the Roosevelts and Kennedys is that the children of those clans appear to be brought up knowing they won the lottery by accident of birth. The Bushes somehow convince themselves they are Horatio Algers who have risen to the top due to their “exceptional” abilities. I do agree with one thing Dylan wrote, that the MSM has a definite agenda when it comes to Hilary, just as they did her husband and Al Gore. And contrary to the complaints of all Movement Conservatives, the MSM is not full of “liberal” bias. It is now dominated by prep school and Ivy League graduates like Jonathan Martin and John King or right wingers like Ed Henry and Ron Fournier. However, as the push back to the “Clinton Moneyl” book shows, the new media environment can also challenge a MSM media meme far more now then in 2000 and 2004.
p.a.
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Sierra Trading Post- closeouts and sales usually have great deals on limited volume/limited size items. As noted previously, LE. Factory outlets nearby? Men’s Warehouse has excellent service, 2x, 3x sizes, occasional sales.
p.a.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
It’s never too late to Irish your day.
p.a.
An admission!
Another Holocene Human
@David Koch: How many people have “associates” who take out loans on their behalf for shaky RE deals?
That was a shady bribe to dear old dad.
Another Holocene Human
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: They’re not all slim fit. But avoid stores with weak selection in sizes. I found out the hard way that there are some shoe sizes that Target just doesn’t carry. Not in men’s, boy’s, or women’s. :(((
Have you tried JC Penney’s and Kohl’s? I also hit the thrift stores because they have more selection although “the hunt” can be aggravating if you have too much on your to-do list that day. My local Goodwill sorts by color and not size, so….
Another Holocene Human
@ThresherK: Huh, I never realized the sleeve size varied. I just buy by neck size.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Are you in Pop Century? Because I remember that being very Motel 6-y, OTOH they probably have some place that is worse.
My wife and I found some motels in Kissimmee (on the bus line to Disney Transportation Center, 7-days-a-week service!) that were awesome and needless to say insanely cheaper than the cheapest Disney craphole.
That said, their high end hotels are nice. Expensive, but nice. We stayed at the Jambo House (yeah, that’s what they called it) one year for our anniversary. It’s like staying in a fancy Adirondack lodge … with African safari decor … in a zoo … with Disney hospitality. Not bad.
Well, Mnemosyne, I guess you are all using their funhappygoofydisney bus system to get to the parks? I like the bit where they cut the lights out at night, because they’re under private regulation written for OTR coach, but the bus is a frigging transit bus, and you’re jammed up with 20-60 strangers in a bus with no lights. FUN! (Transit buses have a night-time running setting, they’re just not using it, unless it was just that driver being an asshole.)
marduk
naming his brother, former president George W. Bush, as his most influential counselor on U.S.-Israel policy.
“If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it’s him,” Bush said Tuesday, speaking to a crowd of high-powered investors
**awkward silence**
**cough**
Can’t you just hear the soft slap of checkbooks snapping shut?
Another Holocene Human
@Sherparick: Traditional media is all rich kids now. They pushed the middle class out and the poor? Hah. But the internet has allowed new media organizations to appear and also allows peer to peer communication. Radicals used to communicate with shitty, infrequent newsletters but now they have twitter. Massive gamechanger. African Americans cut out of media (“we can’t have TWO Black presenters, that will drive away white viewers”) are reaching viewers directly. Which is why big media co’s had an interest in the end of net neutrality. That’s where Obama’s cleverness comes in. He puts this guy in FCC, big business, establishment, the left is bitching. But the guy came out of the software world, practically views broadband as a human right. Kaboom!
Gene108
@Germy Shoemangler:
But you know it is bullshit. As the-40 something’s, such as myself say, “haters gonna hate.”
Back in 1993, when a right-wing “news” magazine would “break a story” that got picked up by the MSM, non-haters had no easy way to get at the truth.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/21/us/haircut-grounded-clinton-while-the-price-took-off.html
1993 NYT article on the White House Press Corp grilling, then PressSecretary George Stephanopolus, who was “scrambling for answers.” Today the truth will be at the Press Secretaties finger tips. The crazies can reassure each other, but the stories rarely take on a life of their own outside the right-wing Wurlitzer.
It took weeks before any found out the truth.
http://mediamatters.org/research/2007/02/09/ny-times-rehashed-pres-clinton-haircut-myth/138002
Just One More Canuck
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Which resort are you in? We were at Disney World a couple of weeks ago, but our room was quite comfortable (Art of Animation) – to ThresherK’s point, stay away from the Magic Kingdom – there’s only one place to get booze in the entire park, and the line was insanely long. All of the other parks(Hollywood Studios, the water parks, etc) have beer everywhere. The most disgusting thing there are the deep fried turkey legs.
sharl
Mitt Romney back in the game?!? Most excellent if true. Maybe…maybe we can have Morning in America again.
I hope he and Carly Fiorina decide early to join forces. That would be so awesome! The Mittster can do some quality retail politics – show himself as a Man of the People, if you will – by offering rides on his car elevator for modest campaign contributions. And for an extra contribution, donors can be accompanied by Carly’s Demon Sheep. Sure, these wouldn’t provide much of a cash stream, but the campaign optics would be DynOMite! Very exciting!
GERmy Shoemangler
@sharl: I’d buy THAT for a dollar!
boatboy_srq
@Sherparick: Best non-entitled 1%er quote I ever heard, attributed to young Rockefellers faced with a fix-it-or-replace-it choice (and having taken the first option), on being asked why not “just buy another”: “Who do you think we are? Vanderbilts?” Hard work as a virtue was taught early. Clearly not an attitude the Shrubbery shares.
rikyrah
@David Koch:
so true
Fort Geek
@Southern Beale: Which reminds me of this gem from Stephanie Miller fan Rocky Mountain Mike: I Just Fcking Shot Myself!