Here’s a high-school kid putting the DC Press Corpse to shame. Substantial questions about important issues, good preparation and persistence are all that it takes. (via)
Dems Seek to Woo ‘New’ Voters; Concern Trolls Are Concerned
Karen Tumulty, professional concern troll WaPo reporter, is not impressed when “Democrats spend big to lure Obama’s minority and young voters back to the polls”:
… The party’s overall budget for reaching new voters is more than twice as big as the $17 million it spent during the tumultuous 2006 midterm, which returned control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats…
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On Thursday, the 2008 presidential campaign’s surviving grassroots operation, now Organizing for America, unveiled a spiffy Web site where supporters can get customized information about voting rules and deadlines in their states. It takes but a few keystrokes to fill in a voter registration form that then requires only a signature and a stamp…
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There does not seem to be a similar effort within the GOP. A spokesman would not discuss its operations and scoffed at the bet that Democrats are making this year. “When that announcement was made, it just wasn’t taken very credibly,” says Republican National Committee spokesman Doug Heye. “Those voters just aren’t going to be there this time.”
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He’s not alone in thinking that.
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Some veteran Democratic Party operatives are also skeptical that the $50 million investment will pay off — except, perhaps, in keeping the grassroots operation alive for Obama’s reelection bid two years from now. Some even suggest that the president’s team has put his long-term interests ahead of his party’s immediate struggle for survival.
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“I have zero confidence that they’re heading in the right direction here,” says one longtime Democratic organizer who didn’t want to be quoted by name criticizing his party’s major midterm election initiative. Added another: “I think they’re going to come in for a very rude awakening. It’s going to be brutal.”
Shorter Ratfvckers Conventional Wisdom: Young punks and the coloreds — what have they ever done for US?
But what will matter more than anything else, many Democrats say, is Obama himself. How effective will he be in convincing those who came to the polls for the first time in 2008 that this election is crucial to accomplishing what he promised then?
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“It is very important to make that case to these voters and that the president be involved in it as well. And he will be at points along the way,” Kaine said. “The president is definitely signed into this plan. He likes the community-organizing aspect of it.”…
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Has Obama indeed reinvented the art and science of winning elections, or will 2008 turn out to have been a unique moment that suited the particular gifts of one politician? The Democrats are about to lay down $50 million to find out.
Shorter Tumulty: If this crazy plan succeeds, it’s because the Democrats are throwing money around; if it fails, it’s because Obama is a nnnn… natural community organizer. (And we all know what that represents in Political Dog-Whistle — right?)
Dems Seek to Woo ‘New’ Voters; Concern Trolls Are ConcernedPost + Comments (157)
What’s Her Angle?
In the comments on the last post about Nevada Republican Sharron Angle, there was some concern that I was overconfident about Harry Reid’s chances in that race. If you don’t believe that being unable to talk to local media isn’t enough to doom Angle’s campaign, this post is for you.
Let’s take a quick trip to the FEC website and follow the money in Nevada. Reid has a mere $9 million in cash as of his last FEC filing. Angle has a whopping $138K in cash, and $170K in debt.
Compare those totals to the last race where a Democratic Senate Majority Leader was knocked off, the Daschle/Thune steel cage death match of 2004. By the same time in that race, Thune had $2.5 million cash on hand. Together, both candidates had spent more than $30 million after all the dust settled. Thune had already been a three-term Member of Congress, South Dakota is more Republican than Nevada (R+9 vs D+2), third parties were not a factor in the South Dakota race (as they may be in Nevada), and, unlike Nevada, SD doesn’t have a “none of the above” choice.
Knocking off a sitting Majority Leader isn’t a wish your heart makes. It takes a few million bucks. There’s no evidence that Angle is on track to raise anything like that kind of money. Put that together with her media savvy, and you have one really shitty candidate.
Red State or CBS News?
So who would finish a story about Obama visiting Ohio to talk about the economy with this paragraph:
The trip Columbus probably cost taxpayers between $500,000 and $1 million.
Air Force One alone bills out at $100,000 per hour, and the round trip is nearly two hours. Adding to the cost are military aircraft to carry limos and secret service vehicles, Marine One on standby, Secret Service, local police and other factors.
Mark Knoller, CBS news journamamalist.
Apparently Obama should remain sequestered at the White House to save taxpayer money. Which makes sense, if you are a complete moron or Mark Knoller. Which might be redundant.
Accountability Makes Us Vaguely Uncomfortable
This morning’s New York Times thumbsucker about Obama’s “arm twisting” of BP is a masterpiece of pussyfooting, takebacks and special pleading for corporations. It’s full of passages like this:
The Wall Street executives who needed the government to prop them up, but still thought their services were worth millions a year, were cast by Mr. Obama as a shameless privileged class. Toyota was described as seeking profits over safety; Wellpoint, the insurance giant, was castigated for seeking to insulate itself from the new health care legislation by taking actions that the law will soon prohibit.
Obviously, Wall Street wasn’t shameless and privileged until Obama called them that. Similarly, the problem with Toyota wasn’t that its cars were killing people, it was his description of how their cars were killing people.
The conclusion of this piece is equally risible. Obama must be very careful about delicate corporate feelings, otherwise we risk the following:
[…][H]e will have to avoid painting with such a broad brush that foreign and domestic investors come to view the United States as a too risky place to do business, a country where big mistakes can lead to vilification and, perhaps, bankruptcy.
In short, our best bet is to act like some third world shithole that bends over backwards to get a little corporate investment, no matter what the cost.
It’s no coincidence that this front-page news analysis piece was written the Times’ chief Washington correspondent, David Sanger. For the DC Press Corpse, the “rule of law” is a quaint notion that went out at the turn of the century.
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Comin’ up next on The Violence Channel: An all-new “Ow, My Balls!”
President Obama’s speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.
Tuesday night’s speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.
Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence “added some difficulty for his target audience,” Payack said.
He singled out this sentence from Obama as unfortunate: “That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge — a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s secretary of energy.”
“A little less professorial, less academic and more ordinary,” Payack recommended. “That’s the type of phraseology that makes you (appear) aloof and out of touch.”
Uttering anything more complicated than “Drill, baby, drill” makes you an elitist. Apparently Obama should have grabbed his balls and said “Don’t worry, ‘Murica. We’re gittin ‘er done!”
And the worst thing is our media is leading the way.
Comin’ up next on The Violence Channel: An all-new “Ow, My Balls!”Post + Comments (85)
The FU Rules
Right on the heels of yesterday’s Times piece on our new riches in Afghanistan, this morning’s story tells us that a Friedman Unit has passed and it’s time for more troops. But the White House says we’re supposed to wait another FU before deciding:
Even before the recent setbacks, the military was highly skeptical of setting a date to start withdrawing, but Mr. Obama insisted on it as a way to bring to conclusion a war now in its ninth year.
For now, the White House has decided to wait until a review, already scheduled for December, to assess whether the target date can still work.
Obviously, the functioning of the FU in Afghanistan is not quite the same as the Iraqi variety. The Iraq FU required that all serious participants keep up the charade that things were working until the last possible minute, when everyone finally conceded that a mere 6 more months would be required to really fix things. Perhaps the Afghani FU has some sort of look-ahead window? Since I’m not a serious person, these little details escape me.