This analysis of the political affiliations of blogs mentioned in memeorandum is kind of cool.
Open Thread
by John Cole| 72 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
by John Cole| 72 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
This analysis of the political affiliations of blogs mentioned in memeorandum is kind of cool.
This post is in: Open Threads
A cabbie in Jakarta had the final say, when he pointed out that cabbies in cities all over the world don’t talk to Tom Friedman in their cabs because they all think the same thing when gets in: “Oh. THIS asshole. He didn’t tip that guy in Buenos Aires good at all.”
Friedman possesses all of the qualities that make a pundit truly wankerific. He fetishizes a false “centrism” which is basically whatever Tom Friedman likes, imagining the Friedman agenda is both incredibly popular in the country and lacking any support from our current politicians, when in fact the opposite is usually true. Washington worships at the altar of the agenda of false centrism, and people often hate it. Problems abroad, even ones which really have nothing to do with us, should be solved by war, and problems at home should be solved by increasing the suffering of poor and middle class people. Even though one political party is pretty much implementing, or trying to implement, 99.999999% of the Friedman agenda, what we really need is a third party catering precisely to this silent majority of Friedmanites.
Open Thread
Suggested topic–if Ted Nugent wasn’t a loudmouth coward (does ANYBODY think he actually has to balls to try well…anything?) who pops up from time to time with some stupid conservative shit (but I repeat myself), would he be totally forgotten, or only remembered as a drug addict and sexual predator?
Wanker of the Decade: The Mustache of Understanding, Tom FriedmanPost + Comments (104)
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Assholes, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To, Our Failed Media Experiment, Romney of the Uncanny Valley
On the advice of the medical professional who monitors my blood pressure, I try to avoid reading Richard “Caligula’s Horse” Cohen, but Trickster preserve us this is Truly Special:
Among the attributes I most envy in a public man (or woman) is the ability to lie. If that ability is coupled with no sense of humor, you have the sort of man who can be a successful football coach, a CEO or, when you come right down to it, a presidential candidate. Such a man is Mitt Romney.
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Time and time again, Romney has been called a liar during this campaign. (The various fact-checking organizations have had to work overtime on him alone.)…
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… I admire a smooth liar, and Romney is among the best. His technique is to explain — that bit about not knowing what was in the ads — and then counterattack. He maintains the bulletproof demeanor of a man who is barely suffering fools, in this case Gingrich. His message is not so much what he says, but what he is: You cannot touch me. I have the organization and the money. Especially the money. (Even the hair.) You’re a loser…
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A marathon of debates and an eon of campaigning have toughened and honed Romney. He commands the heights of great assurance, and he knows, as some of us learn too late in life, that the truth is not always a moral obligation but sometimes merely what works. He often cites his business background as commending him for the presidency. That’s his forgivable absurdity. Instead, what his career has given him is the businessman’s concept of self — that what he does is not who he is. This is what enables the slumlord to be a charitable man. This is what enables the corporate raider to endow his university. Business is business. It’s what you do. It is not who you are. Lying isn’t a sin. It’s a business plan.
(Omitted, in consideration of your health, the pander that George Will keeps calling President Obama a liar, and therefore both sides do it!)
Perhaps this is meant to be an example of the “funny” Cohen keeps citing as one of his gifts, on the word of his mom and his third-grade teacher back in the 1840s, but it reads like genuine friggin’ admiration for Romney’s unparalleled ability to look Truth in the eye and still like lie like a finely crafted Persian carpet. Gems like this are why I refer to Cohen as “Caligula’s Horse”. He’s as clueless but basically well-intentioned as any highly-bred beast of burden — the insult to the rest of us is that this trophy horse occupies a position of public visibility that might otherwise be filled by someone competent. The career of Richard Cohen is a seamless decades-long “fuck you, DFH peasants” message from the Media Village courtiers and the “elite” they serve with such dedication.
This post is in: Excellent Links, Republican Venality, Assholes, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?, Our Awesome Meritocracy, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
Via Jesse Singal at the Washington Monthly, the Texas Monthly‘s Joe Hagan does a longform retelling of George W. Bush’s first big signature screwup (and the blowback that’s distorted American politics ever since):
… It was the 1988 presidential campaign of Bush’s father that first raised the issue of a privileged son from Texas getting special access to the National Guard—only the privileged son wasn’t a Bush. Michael Dukakis, the elder Bush’s opponent, had recently chosen Senator Lloyd Bentsen, of Houston, as his running mate. One Sunday morning in August of that year, George H. W. Bush’s campaign co-chairman, New Hampshire governor John Sununu, went on TV to attack Bentsen for allegedly helping his son, Lloyd Bentsen III, enter the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. “Someone called Senator Bentsen to point out to him that this special slot, which was rare, came open,” said Sununu, and Bentsen “ran to get his son to fill that.”
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This was the first presidential election in which candidates’ Vietnam-era decisions were resonating among the electorate. The question of who did what in the sixties, when an unpopular war divided the nation, had become a litmus test. (Incidentally, this was also the year that Dan Rather established himself as a Bush family enemy by needling then–vice president Bush with questions about his role in the Iran-Contra affair in an infamous live interview on CBS.) With Democrats attacking the elder Bush’s own running mate, Dan Quayle, for joining the Indiana National Guard during Vietnam, Sununu’s claim was a natural counteroffensive. But it boomeranged. It turned out that George W. Bush, at the time a senior staff member in his father’s campaign, had served in the same Houston unit as Lloyd Bentsen III and was recruited the same year by the same man, Colonel Walter “Buck” Staudt. That unit, the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, tasked with defending the Gulf Coast, was well-known as a “champagne unit” because it housed not only Bentsen and Bush but a number of other sons of the Texas elite, such as John Connally III, son of the former Texas governor and Nixon treasury secretary; Al Hill, the grandson of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt; and several members of the Dallas Cowboys.
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Sununu’s attacks died after Bentsen and Staudt denied the allegations, but the issue had been introduced, and the timing and circumstances of Bush’s entry into the Guard were enough to raise eyebrows. In February 1968, three months before Bush graduated from Yale, the Tet offensive left more than five hundred U.S. soldiers dead in a single week. That same month, Walter Cronkite famously declared the Vietnam War “mired in stalemate” just as President Lyndon Johnson canceled draft deferments for most graduate students. Days before he would become subject to the draft, Bush, whose father was then a U.S. congressman from Houston, won a coveted slot as a pilot in the 147th.
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Bush maintains he simply interviewed with Staudt and was accepted on the spot. That may be true, but it would be hard to argue that there weren’t more-qualified candidates: Bush received the lowest acceptable score on his pilot aptitude test…
As some disappointed commentors have pointed out, there’s nothing really “new” in this story — not even the slapstick sideshow explaining how Harriet Miers made her bones with the Bush crime family — but it’s a nice tight summary of the whole shameful saga. Word is the story goes behind a paywall shortly, so catch it before the Bush minions cripple the website while it’s still available.
by DougJ| 112 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I have nothing special against Mitt Romney, he seems fine as far as heartless, Galtian types go. I don’t think he’s the monster that Rick Santorum is. But we need to keep talking about what a dick he is, because the talk so far is working (via):
Mitt Romney has emerged from the Republican primary season with the weakest favorability rating on record for a presumptive presidential nominee in ABC News/Washington Post polls since 1984, trailing a resurgent Barack Obama in personal popularity by 21 percentage points.
Thirty-five percent of Americans see Romney favorably, while 47 percent have an unfavorable opinion of the former Massachusetts governor. He’s the first likely nominee to be underwater — seen more unfavorably than favorably — in ABC/Post polls in eight presidential primary seasons over the past 28 years.
Romney’s gender gap in vote preferences in an ABC/Post poll last week — he trailed Obama by 19 percentage points among women — is reflected in his new favorability scores as well. Just 27 percent of women see Romney favorably, compared with 44 percent of men — his lowest rating to date among women, and highest among men, in a dozen ABC/Post polls since September.
Pour moi personnellement, just saying “WILLARD” over and over again doesn’t cut it. The Thurston B. Howell stuff may work. And I’m not above making jokes about polygamy and magic underwear. One way or another, we all need to do what we can to make people hate this guy as much as possible.
Kick ’em when they’re up, kick ’em when they’re downPost + Comments (112)
This post is in: Open Threads
Tonight is the season premier the final season of Eureka on SyFy. Also watching The Voice with Soonerwife. The 1.2 update to Star Wars: The Old Republic is OK–not horrible, not great. Special thanks to John for turning me on to Game of Thrones.
This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, Media, Open Threads, I Smell a Pulitzer!, Our Failed Media Experiment
Atrios has posted his 2nd and 1st Runners-Up to Wanker of the Decade.
I suggest that you think of them not as the runners-up, but the first and second losers in that grand competition;
2nd Runner Up: Andrew Sullivan. One wonders if this will net Atrios a Moore Award.
1st Runner Up: Fred Hiatt, more for his elevation of other wankers than anything else.
Open thread.
Wanker of the Decade, 2nd and 1st Runners-Up.Post + Comments (212)