;)
The Commentariat -- Oct. 22, 2012
Presidential Race
Anne Gearan & David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "when President Obama meets Republican challenger Mitt Romney in Boca Raton, Fla., he will face an opponent who has already made up tremendous ground on the subject by criticizing Obama as weak, waffling and distracted by his reelection goals."
Matt Spetalnick & Steve Holland of Reuters: "When President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney face off on Monday in their third and final debate, it will be the Republican challenger's last best chance to recover from his botched 'Libya moment' and exploit vulnerabilities in his opponent's foreign policy record. But Romney has an uphill struggle to make his case against Obama, who will be buoyed by the advantages of incumbency as well as polls showing him with an edge -- though a shrinking one -- on the question of who is more trusted in global affairs."
A new Obama ad highlights the contrasts between Romney's foreign policy views & Obama's accomplishments:
CW: I think this American Bridge ad is just a Web video. I hope they run it -- or a 30-second version -- on the teevee:
Mark Murray of NBC News: "Heading into Monday's final debate and with just over two weeks until Election Day, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney are now tied nationally, according the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll." ...
... James Hohmann of Politico: "A new Politico/George Washington University Battleground Tracking Poll of 1,000 likely voters -- taken from Sunday through Thursday of last week -- shows Romney ahead of Obama by two points, 49 to 47 percent. That represents a three-point swing in the GOP nominee's direction from a week ago but is still within the margin of error. Obama led 49 percent to 48 percent the week before." ...
... CW: John Cassidy of the New Yorker has more on polling results, but it's too depressing for me to read. ...
... Nate Silver 2: "The bad news for President Obama: it's been almost a week since the second presidential debate.... But there is little sign that this has translated into a bounce for Mr. Obama.... Instead, the presidential race may have settled into a period of relative stability. There is bad news for Mr. Romney as well, however. The 'new normal' ... is considerably more favorable for him than the environment before the first debate, in Denver. However, it is one in which he still seems to be trailing, by perhaps 2 percentage points, in the states that are most vital in the Electoral College." ...
... Nate Silver 1: "The biggest gender gap to date in the exit polls came in 2000, when Al Gore won by 11 points among women, but George W. Bush won by 9 points among men -- a 20-point difference. The numbers this year look very close to that." ...
... Here's some better news. Sarah Dutton, et al., of CBS News: "President Obama is holding on to a five-point lead over Republican Mitt Romney in Ohio, but that margin has been cut in half since September, according to a new Quinnipiac University/CBS News poll.... A gender gap persists: ... The president enjoys a 15-point lead with women, while Romney is ahead by seven points among men, 51 to 44 percent." Yesterday I linked to a poll that had Obama up in Ohio by only one point, which is to say -- zip.
E. J. Dionne: "There is every reason to wish that Obama would pull [his second-term agenda] together in a more inspiring way. Some of us would like him to be much bolder in addressing income inequality, the huge roadblocks to upward mobility, and the persistence of poverty. But is there is an Obama second-term agenda? Yes, there is."
New Yorker Editors: "The reëlection of Barack Obama is a matter of great urgency. Not only are we in broad agreement with his policy directions; we also see in him what is absent in Mitt Romney -- a first-rate political temperament and a deep sense of fairness and integrity."
Paul Krugman: "Over the past few months advisers to the Romney campaign have mounted a furious assault on the notion that financial-crisis recessions are different.... A white paper from Romney advisers argues that the only thing preventing a rip-roaring boom is the uncertainty created by President Obama.... Nobody should believe them.... The Romney team is willfully, nakedly, distorting the record...."
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "A new Romney ad puts in one place five claims that have been previously debunked." CW: Wow! Five big lies in 30 seconds! Could this be a record? Probably not.
Oh, great. Bill Keller tells Mitt Romney what to say in the debate tonight. The usefulness of Keller's advice column is to remind us of how many ways Romney is a foreign-policy jackass. Nonetheless, I expect he will take some of Keller's advice. It's up to Obama -- oh, will he do it? -- to remind viewers of Romney's many stupid, bellicose positions & remarks & suggest -- accurately -- that Romney is a ticking timebomb. Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy" ad seems almost appropriate.
Scott Shane of the New York Times: intelligence officers routinely take several days to prepare public statements to describe intelligence gathered in the field. "The gap between the talking points prepared for [U.N. Ambassador Susan] Rice and the contemporaneous field reports that seemed to paint a much different picture illustrates how the process of turning raw field reports, which officials say need to be vetted and assessed, into polished intelligence assessments can take days, long enough to make them outdated by the time senior American officials utter them."
New York Times Editors: Mitt Romney & President Obama agree: "Government does not create jobs. Except that it does, millions of them.... Public-sector job loss means trouble for everyone.... If not for state and local budget austerity, [a] report found, the economy would have 2.3 million more jobs today, half of which would be in the private sector." CW: I really don't think Obama fundamentally understands macroeconomics. He would be a lot smarter if he read Krugman regularly.
Worse Than You Thought. Contributor Haley S. noticed an important correction to a New York Times editorial I linked yesterday, one which discussed the dire consequences of the Romney-Ryan plan for healthcare coverage: "An earlier version of this editorial misstated the additional amounts Medicare beneficiaries would pay if the health care reform act is repealed. The average beneficiary would pay about $5,000 more through 2022, not $4,200 more over the 2011-2012 period. Heavy prescription drug users, on average, would pay about $18,000 more through 2022, not $16,000 more over 2011-2012." (No link.)
Congressional Races
The New York Times Editors endorse candidates in Congressional races in New York state & Connecticut.
AND Rep. Todd Akin (RTP-Missouri), who is running to unseat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D), likens her to a dog.
A Democrat Self-Destructs. Alex Altman of Time: "During a testy exchange in a Thursday night [Arizona Senate] debate, moderator Brahm Resnik quipped, 'Now I know how Candy Crowley felt.' he said. To which [Democratic candidate Richard] Carmona replied: 'You're prettier than her,' and patted the moderator's hand. 'Not sure how to take that,' Resnik said. Nor should women in Arizona."
Other Stuff
Washington Post Editors: "George McGovern was a product of some of this country's best traditions -- religious and political -- and also of a long, grinding economic Depression that shaped the ideas and behavior of much of his generation. He was a patriot, a war hero and, as most who met or knew him would testify, a remarkably civil and pleasant man." ...
... Former Sen. & Republican Leader Bob Dole (R-Kansas) writes a very affecting remembrance of George McGovern.
... Joan Walsh of Salon writes a very informative post on the career of George McGovern. ...
... Joshua Rothman calls up some old New Yorker stories about McGovern.
** Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog: the lack of public oversight -- in all 50 states -- of privately-owned voting machines is a serious problem that throws into question the integrity & accuracy of election results. For Chuck Todd of NBC News to dismiss this issue as a "conspiracy theory" does a great disservice to NBC viewers. Friedman includes numerous instances of voting machine error or purposeful manipulation of the tally. CW: I don't say often enough that Chuck Todd is a Class A (& you know what the "A" stands for) idiot. ...
Photo by Irene Tanabe.... Audrey McAvoy of the AP: "A photograph of a 93-year-old World War II veteran casting what will likely be his last ballot has captured the hearts of tens of thousands of Internet users. The photo shows Frank Tanabe lying in a hospital bed at home as his daughter Barbara Tanabe helps him fill out his absentee ballot. A half-million people saw the picture on the website Reddit after his grandson posted it there on Thursday, making it one of the most popular items on the social media network for a day after.... Tanabe volunteered to join the Army from behind barbed wire at the Tule Lake internment camp in California.... The Army assigned Tanabe to the Military Intelligence Service, a classified unit whose members were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal last year...."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Tens of thousands of people with chronic conditions and disabilities may find it easier to qualify for Medicare coverage of potentially costly home health care, skilled nursing home stays and outpatient therapy under policy changes planned by the Obama administration. In a proposed settlement of a nationwide class-action lawsuit, the administration has agreed to scrap a decades-old practice that required many beneficiaries to show a likelihood of medical or functional improvement before Medicare would pay for skilled nursing and therapy services."
Los Angeles Times: "Radcliffe Haughton, a 45-year-old Wisconsin man suspected of killing three people and wounding four others in a Sunday morning shooting at a spa, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot, police said. Police said they found Haughton's body inside the Azana Salon and Spa in the western Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, where the shooting erupted shortly after 11 a.m." The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story is here.
Washington Post: "Authorities in Jordan have disrupted a major terrorist plot by al-Qaeda-linked operatives to launch near-simultaneous attacks on multiple civilian and government targets, reportedly including the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Amman, Western and Middle Eastern officials said Sunday. The Jordanian government issued a statement describing the plot and saying that 11 people with connections to al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq have been arrested."
Washington Post: "As the number of people sickened with meningitis after receiving contaminated steroid injections continues to rise, lawsuits are starting to pile up. At least 12 people have filed separate complaints in federal and state courts seeking damages from the compounding pharmacy that produced the steroids, New England Compounding Center of Framingham, Mass."
Reuters: "Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France< titles and banned for life on Monday after the International Cycling Union (UCI) ratified the United States Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) sanctions against the American. 'Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling,' UCI President Pat McQuaid told a news conference as he outlined how cycling would have to start again." AP story here.
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Reader Comments (24)
Remember, the history of black candidates is that they do better in polls than they do in the voting booth. Some people are reluctant to admit they will vote against a black man. President Obama will probably lose the popular vote big and the Electoral College by a little bit.
Romney is going to be in a box. No matter what he has promised, he will probably have a Democratic Senate. Many of the the Ryan & Romney plans were not understood and when the R&R administration starts to hurt lots of people their Representatives will have to decide how badly they want to be reelected.
Romney&Ryan's tax plan and spending cuts will send the economy spinning down and God only knows what is going to happen with medical care. It will be a mess on the Republicans head as insurance rates and gap rates shoot up.
There will be enough buyer's remorse to have Democrats in control of both houses if they are still letting everyone vote after two years of Willard.
CW's written worry yesterday and Akil's silence, speak volumes.
If we get mittens ...we'll have answered Benjamin Franklin's challenge to someone in the crowd at the continental convention- We've made a democracy, if you can hang onto it.-(that's the gist)-
The answer will be no. We couldn't hang on to it.
mae finch
I just finished reading a tribute to George McGovern by Chris Hedges on Truthdig. I want to share these two paragraphs with all of you:
..."The history books will tell you Richard Nixon won the 1972 election, that George McGovern went down to the worst defeat of any presidential candidate in history. But those who write history do not take into account the moral or the good, what is right or what is wrong, what endures and what does not. And even the historians have to acknowledge that Nixon’s victory was attained by lies and fraudulent propaganda, by dirty tricks, by state crimes and acts of theft and burglary. Nixon, as Hunter S. Thompson wrote, may have embodied the “successful” politician but he “was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions.”
“George McGovern, for all his mistakes… ,” Thompson went on, “understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose…. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”
I think we are finding out once again in 2012 how low the riches are willing to stoop! We, as a country, seem incapable of learning from our horrendous mistakes. Back to the future. Sad.
That said....sigh...Remember the Supremes!
My first presidential election in which to vote was 1972. I lived in Massachusetts at the time ~ rest in peace George McGovern, you served us well.
It's amazing to think about the vast changes oscillating our country since 2000. Once the economy nearly exploded under Bush and we began to hear rumblings about the Great Bail Out of our 'Too Big to Fail' banks, me being my naïve self thought "Wow, finally we'll get some real reform because any institution 'Too Big to Fail' should be considered an extreme danger to national security and therefore rectified." With finance at the heart of economics, it seemed quite obvious that the risk of a deadly heart attack couldn't be overlooked. Little ol' me, misunderstanding the authoritarian power of the Oligarchs.
Main street got no assistance. Can you imagine the shananigans had they directed the massive bail out at the citizens? Give each person $2 million dollars, with a string attached saying priorities go to paying off all personal debt. After that, your free to do as you please. That would've cost only $630 million dollars. We would have had real welfare queens riding around in limos! Imagine the folie... I'm guessing that would just push the can farther down the road while irresponsible spending would reload the citizenry with even more debt. But maybe a middle-of-the-road policy could have been possible?
One of Obama's biggest disappointments has to be his treatment of Main Street in this whole chaotic post-recession process. Sure he's lowered a few taxes here and there and slightly helped students on their student loans ($1 trillion in student debt nationwide? This is the future?) and gave many access to Medical insurance, but none of these things have significantly touched the 'middle class' in a direct and conclusive way. A top-down turnaround is finally showing its fruit, but it's yet to reach those on the bottom in a significant way. Voilà raison numero uno all of Obama's attempts to connect with the self-interested low information voter have stagnated. Romney repeats economy jobs economy jobs and those voters see no visible difference in their conditions under Obama, so why not this other fuckin' guy, right?
The fact that polls are nearly tied toward the end of this horrid election cycle, I can't quite grasp what this says about us as a nation. If the Repug was a decent candidate, with a proven, transparent record, mehh ok. I understand people are frustrated. But to see this shady Wall Street Rep. trotted out in from of the nation as the solution to our problems, WTF?! Any non-partisan biography is ultimately going to paint a picture of personality disconnect, of drunken, irresponsible Capitalism, and life-long convert methods on his quest for GOLD.
All of those who are not ideologically Tea Party and who still believe Rmoney is a better overall pick must have either disregarded all of the hard evidence exposing his true persona, or have in fact finally found their re-awakening of America's true religion: Money. The indoctrination process has been achieved.
Follow the Money to your Savior! He'll take you to the GREEN grass, hallaluyah!
I created a simpler comic to explain this idea for those low-info.'s who can't read beyond 100 words.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/stripgenerator/strip/02/96/56/00/00/full.png
On a much more pleasant note, I highly recommend this documentary for those who are linguistically capable (in French with German subtitles). It's the latest work of Marie Monique-Robin, who if you don't know you should most def. check out. Her most famous work was a video called "The World According to Monsanto" which you can find online in English. Her latest documentary travels the world looking for innovative ways to feed the 9 billion people expected by 2050 WITHOUT pesticides. Very uplifting documentary which will make you forget about everyday troubles (at least for 2 hours) :o)
It's called "Les moissons du futur" (Harvests of the future)
http://videos.arte.tv/fr/videos/les-moissons-du-futur--6985970.html
Safari: May I repeat my friend Maynard,"Raise the American voter's IQ ten points and there would never be another Republican elected."
Three reasons to be exceedingly concerned for the outcome of this election and, ergo, the fate of the country.
Lies, theft, and ignorance.
Romney and Ryan lie with the ease of well practiced confidence men which, in fact, they are. Romney has made hundreds of millions for himself selling snake oil. Ryan has made thousands of millions for his masters in the oligarchy by taking money away from average Americans and shoveling it furiously into the coffers of billionaires. Oh, but not before he got his.
They will continue to lie and no one will call them on it. Since the last debate, and since the "binders of women" gaffe, I cannot count all the reports which explain away that clear window into Romney's dead soul by stating something along the lines of "Governor Romney was on a mission to find qualified women. What's wrong with that? His statement was awkward but he's a fine man."
So, a restatement of Romney's lie about asking someone to bring him "binders" of qualified women. He did no such thing but even this lie, which was fact-checked before the Romney clan had a chance to start talking smack (the usual tough guy Republican dumb show) about punching out the President of the United States (this above-the-law and beyond-courtesy reaction demonstrates the arrogant, plutocratic, princely bubble these privileged punks inhabit. And the silence on the right gives the lie to whatever pieties they typically spout about respect. Just IMAGINE the screams if candidate Obama had had a son who threatened to punch out a white president...). Nonetheless, the Romney lie about his earnest search to find good women was repeated over and over. This only reinforces what Romney and Ryan already knew. They can say any fucking thing they want and no one will care. Chuck Todd will call anyone who does investigate his lies "conspiracy nuts."
Second, theft.
I won't go on too much with this except to say that those election machines owned by Chuck Hagel's company, the ones that got him elected in a stunning turnaround in 1996 and created one of the largest landslides in state history 6 years later--with no capability for paper trails--are still being used. The machines in Ohio and 23 other states that were hacked into by high school students in less than 8 minutes in various tests are still being used. Diebold, whose CEO promised to deliver Ohio to George W. Bush--and did--the ones whose internal security codes were "accidentally" published online--continue to be used. Combined with vote suppression, voter disenfranchisement, voter ID laws, etc, means that Obama will have to get nearly double what he might ordinarily expect to receive in vote counts in order to break even. Not win. Just break even. So if he's expected to win a state by 3 points, he'll now need 6. Which means that Romney can lose a state by 5 points and still win.
Finally voter ignorance is probably at an all-time low. 18th and early 19th century depictions of drunken vote buying and poll shenanigans are nothing compared with the imbecility of many of today's voters who might not be intoxicated with booze but are certainly incapacitated by a 4 second attention span, drive-by news gathering, Fox watching, and Kardashian overload. The fact that Romney has gained in polling on voter faith in his expertise in foreign policy--fucking foreign policy!!--demonstrates this all to scarily. This is like saying a guy who read a couple of articles in Foreign Affairs magazine and some xenophobic war-mongering white papers by former Bush war criminals makes him smarter than a president who has dealt with this stuff on a daily basis for the last three and a half years.
Oh, and speaking of Chuck Todd, Marie might be too polite to say it, but I'm not. He's a class A asshole; a gaping asshole. Last night I saw a spot for this week's Jeopardy shows in which the masterful Toddmeister touts himself as being invited on to quiz the contestants. My immediate thought was that this is exactly like inviting an early hominid ancestor to lecture Manhattan Project scientists on sub-atomic particle physics.
So make that four things to worry about:
Lies, theft, ignorance, and intellectual pygmies in the press.
@carlyle, sorry but raising the IQ will change very little. Intelligence requires two things, IQ and homework. The real problem with America is that the majority of people, regardless of IQ avoid those annoying facts at any cost. Remember, if you are a fan of facts it makes your delusional beliefs difficult it maintain.
Carlyle,
I'm not sure 10 IQ points would do it, at least for the undecideds. 90 is the low end of average. The various mentally defective states (moron, imbecile, idiot -- these are real categories, by the way) are under 60 with idiot being between 20 and 30. I think a 50 point addition to whatever paltry intellectual ability they currently possess is the minimum required for anyone who still can't decide whom to vote for at this point.
A typical Republican voter responds to Barack Obama, followed by a simple explanation for said response:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEdb46IrFDk&feature=player_embedded
I am really worried now. Akhilleus used very little colorful satire and painted a scary portrait of our ill informed electorate.
I am having trouble sleeping but the sober portrait makes them into nightmares. Why have we not corrected the voting machines that were such a big problem in the selection of W?
Stephanie Miller made a salient point this morning, with which I agree: when things get tough for Republican candidates, their base tends to fight back. To wit: RNC recorded a record haul in September, when Romney was slipping precipitously in the polls.
When things get tough for Dems, they tend to panic ....
Let's all remember to GOTV.
Anyone who is intelligent and remains undecided in this election (I don't know if there are any of those) should read the following about Dan Senor (key advisor to Romney on foreign policy) and decide if they want Obama, or Romney, dealing with ANY foreign policy issues. The article is about 10 days old and got buried in all the anguish of the first debate fiasco and the vice presidential debate news.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/washington-spectator/why-is-failed-iraq-neocon_b_1962721.html
Senor is morally bankrupt - withness his continual lieing to the press when he was controlling the television for Bremer and the Provisional Authority - which makes him a perfect Romney and Ryan advisor. I watched him on Morning Joe this morning and actually had to turn the television off.
It is such a depressing time right now.
Go Obama and remember the Supremes!!!!
Janet,
GOP vote stealing is a scandal, by any measure, moral outrage, illegality, hypocrisy, demoralization and slow destruction of the nation, on a par with the GOP authorized economic meltdown.
Why are these machines still in place? And let's be clear: there's nothing "faulty" about them. They work exactly the way they were designed to work. To turn Republican losses into victories. How do you explain the fact that as the GOP base ages out and loses ground, every year, to other demographic bases, that they keep flipping elections they have no conceivable way to win?
Let me put it another way. Electronic voting machines should be treated with no less security than an ATM machine. We are, as an electorate, depositing our national soul into these machines. They should be a secure as baby's crib and as trustworthy as your mother on her deathbed. Except they ain't. When asked about the slovenly security of the Diebold machines, security experts for financial companies and banks blanch. None of these people, on pain of their professional existence, would ever, EVER countenance such shoddy software or such reliably unreliability. They would be shut down immediately and replaced overnight. An ATM that insecure would be boarded up and replaced. Overnight.
But machines that are trusted with a transfer of the national will?
Ahh....fuggedaboutit.
First, they work fine. For the GOP. For Democrats? Not at all. Bush should never have been elected in 2004. Scott Brown should never have been elected. Many, many, many Republicans should be sitting in some private sector show job right now. Instead, they are inflicting the will of the Kochs and Roves on our asses.
The problem is how crazy it sounds. By the light of the first 200 years of American democracy vote theft on such a scale would be unimaginable. But as we are just getting used to a post-truth political world on the right, we must also understand that there is a post-democratic world running in parallel alongside the world we believe we all inhabit. Anyone who starts a war on these voting machines will be painted as a propeller hat conspiracy nut. Didn't Little Chucky Todd just issue such a blanket proclamation this weekend???
Plus Republicans control an ungodly amount of voting real estate and after spending millions on such machines, states whose budgets have been cut by Republicans in congress have less and less money with which to replace them. A perfect storm, no?
As for From the Heartland's concerns about devil spawn Dan Senor, if you want to see how this guy operates in a real world setting (apart from whispering in the ear of an impressionable C-minus student turned president to start bombing brown people), read Raj Chandrasekaran's Life in the Imperial City, a disgusting look into how Paul Bremer and Bush apparatchiks ran things in Iraq from behind ideological bunkers, a bubble city within a city occupied by specialists whose specialty was bible verses or opposition to abortion or their ability as a Bush fund raiser. Where the concern was how to convince the population to convert to Christianity and reject Islam, not how to turn the fucking lights on. Where there was more concern for the protection of Bush/Cheney soldiers of fortune than for marines.
But this guy routinely pops up on the TV spouting his mantra of Shock and Awe. He should be counting the days of the rest of his life in a cell.
Life in the America of the GOP. Your vote won't count if you don't vote for them. And when they're in charge, it's war, war, war.
Burn down the world.
Early voting: Virginia and NH are the only swing states that don't have it. Here in WA State, I just cast my ballot. It felt good!
(All ballots are mail-in here, thogh you can drop off at designated boxes if you choose, which I did. Taking no chances ....)
Funny, the Chuck-Todd-is-an-AH unFan Club appears to be growing! I vaguely remember when he began appearing (in lieu of David Gregory) rather frequently on Countdown.
No particular feeling right away, but as I watched his 'onstage' confidence grow I was bothered by the unsaid and his sketchy equivocation on various topics when pressed by Olbermann.
But, as time went on...the body language became more telling. Reminded me of Bob Woodward. I used to turn on Larry King if Woodward was named as a guest. But, I found myself turning the show off. Couldn't sit through Woodward's vagueness. Both Todd and Woodward share some of the behaviors. There's the stiff neck position held back and to the side, the uncomfortable body shift, the eye blinks and the none-answer answers that seem to be delivered through clenched teeth. They NEVER respond with a direct, definitive answer. What's wrong with these guys?
I'm guessing...constipation!
Mushiba,
Thanks for that reminder of the '72 election. That was my first chance to vote against the Republican Forces of Evil. Do you remember the buttons we wore in high school that proclaimed 18x72? Even the Supreme Court gave us the finger until an amendment to the Constitution gave those old enough to be drafted and be sent off as Kissinger/Nixon cannon fodder the right to vote for someone who wasn't an insane war-mongering piece of shit.
I disagreed with Christopher Hitchens as much as I agreed with him, but no amount of intellectual gerrymandering will ever convince me that Henry Kissinger isn't a criminal who makes Augusto Pinochet look like Little Nelly Kelly.
Anyway, thanks for reminding me of a time when our belief in the power of the American electorate wasn't dismissed with a snide chuckle by pigs like Romney, Ryan, Rove, and their communion of oligarchs.
MAG,
Brilliant observation of both Bob Woodward and Tiny Todd.
Their obvious unhappiness with challenges to suspect thought processes and spurious thinking results more from a discomfiture with facts that don't support their facile and/or self-promoting conclusions than with cogitative constipation.
Their tics are tells that provide close readers with a Rosetta Stone with which to interpret their insolvent beltway insularity.
Okay, time for my "one more and that's it" posts,
In 2002, the Grand Old Pricks regained control of the senate through the offices of easily mutable voting results presented by GOP vote stealing.
Polls in GA gave the highly popular Vietnam War hero and triple amputee, Max Cleland a clear victory over GOP avatar Saxby Chambliss who, like Bush, Cheney, and nearly their entire cabinet avoided combat as chicken-hawk cowards. Diebold voting machines, operated and hacked by Republican Santorum Suckers gave the victory to Bush-Cheney gang member and liar, Chambliss.
Chambliss, Bush, and Cheney, none of whom deigned to put their asses on the line in a terrible conflict, screamed that Max Cleland, the American patriot who sacrificed mightily was a traitor, not they who avoided war at all costs.
This is the modern GOP.
Liars and traitors.
And Romney is the worst of all.
@MAG. A symptom of Very Serious Person syndrome, Woodward being a top VSP & Chuckie being a VSP wannabe. Any time there's a hint that a VSP might have to drop the both-sides-do-it-I'm-a-thoughtful-impartial-journalist charade, s/he gets right nervous.
Marie
Akhilleus,
You are a few years younger than I. In 1969 I turned 21 (too late to vote in the '68 election) and, thus, '72 was my first presidential election. I do not remember the button you mentioned (and I tried to find an image of it on Google, to no avail). You are correct, though, it was a grand time to be full of hope for our generation~McGovern and Shriver, who could ask for more?
And, then Nixon poisoned the drinking water of any remaining trust in politicians and it has been down hill since. Barack Obama was the first glimmer of hope and he has been beaten down by the absolutely unconscionable Repugs (your descriptions are far better than mine). However, a small part of those glory days remain in my heart along with the knowledge that The Light Always Wins ~ ultimately!
RTFS.
@CW & Akhilleus, thanks for the diagnostic confirmation!!
By the way, nobody makes my day like Charlie Pierce! Today he had two great posts!
Don't you love it when he calls Lindsay Graham, Senator Huckleberry?
Plus in one of today's blog posts he printed an incoherent statement by Peggy Noonan that defies comprehension. Bizarre. He barbequed Ralphie Reed and Tom Friedman as well.
Then, in addition, tonight's debate moderator got slammed as well:
1. "The essential question of what in the hell more we can possibly hope to achieve in that country will almost surely go unasked by former Van Buren Administration State Department correspondent Bob Schieffer,..."
2. "Rubio also stopped by to visit with former Henry Plantagenet court scribe Bob Schieffer,..."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Gobshites_On_The_Road#ixzz2A4DgQyV8
@ Akhilleus: And the best comment ever on Charlie's piece was this: Is it possible that Peggy Noonan GAVE Reagan Alzheimer's?