Via Josh Marshall:
If Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe had a life of its own, it would get a tax cut from a President Obama.
Vent.
If You Can
I know times are tough, but if you are so inclined to toss a few bucks to a good friend of this blog, I would appreciate it.
A present:
Rhode Island in the fall, sent in by a reader. The colors mirror what we see all over West Virginia this time of year (but with more mountains!).
Open Thread
For the record, I really do not care about Joe the Plumber’s background. All he did was ask a candidate for President a question, something I wish everyone got the chance to do at least once in their life. More power to him, and Obama seemed to enjoy the conversation, to boot. If I have the background right, Obama was right near his house, so he was not a plant, and then McCain foolishly thrust the poor SOB into the middle of a heated election. If anything, it makes me think less of the idiots in the McCain campaign, something I thought impossible. Now there are actual MSM reporters going all through his shit and posting it everywhere, and quite frankly, it sucks. Leave him alone. I am not saying you all have done anything wrong because I have not had time to check the comments today, but I looked at memeorandum and saw that mess and wanted to preempt any of it here.
Granted, the right-wing whinging is particularly rich after the Beauchamp/Schiavo/Graeme Frost incidents, and the attempts to blame media conduct in regards to Joe the Plumber on the Obama campaign are stupid and predictable, but just leave the guy alone. I don’t agree with him on a lot of issues, but the guy deserves the privacy I would want for myself and for the rest of you. And this, from the Counter-Sniffer in Chief, is just ridiculous.
On the other hand, it seems I have once again failed to be cynical enough in the Verizon/McCain thing.
At any rate, I may or may not be back later today, so here is a thread for you to talk about something other than that poor guy from Ohio who now has people digging all through his shit. Show some god damned decency, everyone.
*** Update ***
Folks, there is a marked difference between reacting to stupid things he tells the press and rooting through shit on the internet speculating about him. Comment all you want to any idiotic things he says.
*** Update #2 ***
And I have to say that this, coming from the Counter Sniffer in Chief and high priestess of the wingnut lynch mob, is just ridiculous.
Tuesday Thread
Thread it like you mean it.
His KungFu Is Still Strong
The Kung Fu Monkey reacts to Rich Lowry’s sparklevision:
Modern American Conservatives have sunk to the intellectual and emotional level of the guy who thinks the stripper really likes him.
Palin terrifies me. She is Warren Ellis’ Smiler, in a way Bush never was. I cannot sense any core beliefs except … well except nothing. All I can see is the winking, giggling folksy void. They tell her to spew some bullshit, and she salutes smartly and sells the hell out of it. Asked to go forth and spread old canards about Senator Obama being a “friend of terrorists”, something she never seemed to show any interest in before, she does so not just efficiently but with a perky glee. The proper human response, when asked to say things like this about a political opponent and Senator of the United States is so fundamentally “fuck no” that it is the unheard test question immediately following “You’re in the desert, you see a tortoise lying on its back, struggling, and you’re not helping — why is that?”
There’s no shame, no consideration, no apparent native curiousity … but even more creepily no resentment at being treated like a prop, no chafing at her handlers assuming she’ll say absolutely anything they put in front of her. How can a human exist so fueled by hubris but without an ego? My lizard brain is screaming.
Bladerunner reference FTW.
BTW- Atonement on HBO tonight- worth watching?
Brooks Nails It
David Brooks has passed on a bunch of nonsense over the years, but he nails it today:
But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.
Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.
***The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.
Conservatives are as rare in elite universities and the mainstream media as they were 30 years ago. The smartest young Americans are now educated in an overwhelmingly liberal environment.
***And so, politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission — because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.
Read the whole thing. Should the Republicans lose in a landslide next month, it really was their own doing.
Also, Larison.
A Lot of This Going Around
When I was a teenager, Keating came to my Catholic girls high school in Cincinnati in his capacity as the founder of Citizens for Decent Literature, an anti-pornography group. His theme was the evil of wearing shorts in the summertime.
Keating said he knew a young mother who took her child for a walk while wearing Bermuda shorts. A motorist, overwhelmed with lust at the sight of the back of her uncovered calves, lost control of his car and slammed into them. Everybody was killed, and it was all her fault. We were then asked to sign pledge cards promising to conform to standards of modesty that would have satisfied the Taliban.
True, none of this really proves that I was responsible for the banking scandals of the 1980s. But if Barack Obama is responsible for the Weather Underground, and if the mother in Bermuda shorts was responsible for the car crash, I am pretty sure that I am on the hook as well.
Michael Smerconish:
Like others, I’m troubled by Ayers. If he were indeed a close friend of Obama, it would be a deal breaker. I couldn’t cast my presidential vote for a man who befriended a bomber. It’s bad enough for Obama to sit passively through the ravings of a guy like Rev. Wright. But to befriend – or even associate with for the purpose of political advancement – a man who actually attacked the country is entirely another.
But if the facts suggest that Ayers is on the periphery of Obama’s public life, it raises a different question: Should candidates be held accountable for the conduct of their acquaintances?
Because if we begin to judge people’s character based on those in their orbit with whom they have no real relationship, I may as well surrender my pen.
While no one in any circle of my life has bombed a building in the U.S., there are some real characters – a few have done time, some have probably cheated on their wives, one I suspect of tax fraud and quite a number are in the DUI club. Should my acquaintances hinder my ability to be a journalist?
There’s even a guy I know who is 50ish and still smokes pot. A better concert companion you will not find.
I have a distant relative who relishes paying the IRS far less than his fair share of taxes.
I remember when a onetime neighbor attempted to off herself. And another who, unfortunately, was successful.
Some guys I went to high school with ran a big bookmaking ring. One former public servant writes to me from prison and I write back.
Terrorists, all of them.