CNN’s politics section headline right now:
Conservative North Florida voters: Romney’s too rich
So how much fail is Romney if he can’t even pull off being rich as a Republican?
Open Thread, now with Cayman Islands tax shelters for everyone.
by Zandar| 75 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Romney of the Uncanny Valley
CNN’s politics section headline right now:
Conservative North Florida voters: Romney’s too rich
So how much fail is Romney if he can’t even pull off being rich as a Republican?
Open Thread, now with Cayman Islands tax shelters for everyone.
This post is in: Music, Open Threads
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Of course our Antipodean readers are well into their various celebrations by now, so: Cheers!
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Other than the next installment of the pig-wrestling travelling freakshow otherwise known as the GOP primary debates, what’s on the agenda today?
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Early Morning Open Thread: Happy Australia Day!Post + Comments (58)
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Election 2012, Open Threads, Assholes
Jonathan Chait, at NYMag’s Daily Intel, on “How Citizens United Created Newt“:
…Money is the primary mechanism that parties use to herd voters toward the choices the elites would prefer them to make. The nomination of George W. Bush offers a classic example. Bush and his network had organized so many Republicans to donate so much money that the contest was essentially over well before a vote had been cast. The Bush fund-raising network didn’t involve a handful of billionaires in a room. It required thousands of fairly affluent people working together.
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In 2000, the Bush network froze challenger John McCain out of party fund-raising networks. Now, the GOP is trying to do this again on behalf of Romney:If Gingrich does win, veteran GOP strategists tell CNN to expect pressure on Senate Minority Leaders Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders to call key GOP donors and ask them not to contribute to Gingrich’s campaign.
Ten years ago, this sort of edict would have suffocated Gingrich. But under the present system, Gingrich can simply have a single extremely wealthy supporter, Sheldon Adelson, write a series of $5 million checks. “Winning Our Future” is Gingrich’s “independent” PAC, and it’s an entire shadow campaign, complete with a ground operation in addition to advertising. Adelson’s money isn’t enough for Gingrich to attain parity with Romney – he’s probably being outspent at least two to one – but it is keeping him alive…
Click the link — but not if you’ve just eaten — for today’s scariest news photo, demonstrating that there may be more than geopolitical reasons why Adelson has ten-million-dollars-and-counting’s worth of fellow-feeling for the Swollen Amphibian. (It’s a terrible thing when Gingers go wrong.)
Late Night Open Thread: Pointing & LaughingPost + Comments (60)
This post is in: Open Threads
This post is in: Books, KULCHA!, Open Threads, Science & Technology
A bit more self-aggrandizement, for which I apologize, but I thought (hoped) y’all might want to know about the conversation I’m going to have with Alan Lightman this afternoon.
It will be on the occasion of the publication (yesterday!) of Alan’s latest book, Mr. g: A Novel About The Creation. This is my monthly Virtually Speaking Science web/Second-Life cast, and you can listen here. Here’s where to go in Second Life for a “live audience” view.
Alan, as many of you know, is both a theoretical physicist and an essayist and novelist of great accomplishment. He’s best known for his marvelous fiction-of-ideas, Einstein’s Dreams, but I’d also point you to his non-fiction, especially his recent, The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th Century Science, Including the Original Papers. That’s a work of both great depth and great fun, even if I’ve argued with Alan about his omission of Wegener’s continental drift paper.
But back to the matter at hand: Mr. g is a novel in the spirit of Einstein’s Dreams, deeply engaged in ideas, specifically, (at least as I read it), what is the maximum amount of God you can get in a universe that obeys the physical laws we now recognize. To tackle this there are familiar figures: Mr. g himself, and his questioner (the interlocutor from Job, much more than the fallen angel of Paradise Lost). And there are some not-so usual folks, specifically Mr. g’s uncle and aunt. And then there is, after a bit, space and time, universes and the Universe, and an account of what feels to me to be the tragic nature of any possible conception of a deity.
We’ll be talking about that, about what makes a work a novel, about the science-religion argument as it plays out in popular culture, and maybe even about what it takes to convey something of scientific lives and thinking to broad audiences, all in more or less an hour. If you’re interested, come on down (or download the podcast once it becomes available–within hours or the day).
Image: Michealangelo, The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, c. 1511. Inevitable — a cliché, I know. But what are you going to do?
Program Notes: Alan Lightman and Me EditionPost + Comments (13)
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes
Snoozy has-been Fred Thompson was supposed to cut an endorsement vid for his pal Newt Gingrich. But as Fred did so often during his short-lived campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, he plopped down in his recliner with a glass of scotch and was soon swept away by the sandman.
The Gingrich people called about the delay, but no matter how hard trophy spouse Jeri Thompson shoved the old fart, shouted in his face or shook him by the lapels of his green, crushed-velvet smoking jacket, Fred snored on. This is what poor Jeri spliced together to get the Gingrich campaign off her back:
The Gingrich people didn’t even notice the difference! Well, not really. But Fred has an interesting “Mirror Universe” Spock vibe in this Hannity clip.
[X-POSTED at Rumproast]by John Cole| 63 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Not sure when it happened, but at some point in the last 10-15 years, I became supremely sensitive to caffeine after 6pm. Long story short, I had a cup of joe before the SOTU, and now, several hours later, still can not fall asleep. I honestly don’t understand it, because I know so many folks who can drink coffee while in bed, roll over, and be snoring 20 seconds later.
I hate them.