Coming to terms with the gripping prospect of five more primaries today, in New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, Politico got me off to a rocky start this morning with a mental image I didn’t welcome and couldn’t stomach Photoshopping (no need for thanks, really):
With Mitt Romney and the national press corps now focused on the general election, Gingrich is hoping to become the Christine O’Donnell of the 2012 race ....
Apparently, Newt may pull off a surprise and win Delaware; then again, he may well not. If he doesn’t, he may suspend his campaign by the end of the week; then again, he may well not. Go sit on the naughty step if you thought he already had. I’ll budge up to make room for you.
Ron Paul’s campaign is still working on its convention strategy to gain some primary delegates to add to caucus ones he’s managed to finagle in order to cement his place in history by nailing the underpants gnome vote.
Zombie Rick Santorum is still on the ballot, and may gain some votes from diehard supporters or folks who just don’t follow the news.
Meanwhile, Mitt plans to shake up his Etch A Sketch, hitch up his pants, and segue from being the presumptive to the presumptious nominee:
Voters in New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania will cast ballots Tuesday. But Romney won’t be in any of those states Tuesday night. Instead, he’ll return to New Hampshire, the state where a sweeping primary victory in January set him down the path to the GOP presidential nomination.
From the Radisson Hotel downtown, Romney plans a speech he’s titled “A Better America Begins Tonight.” The general election speech, aides say, will represent a definitive pivot away from the primary contest and toward Democratic President Barack Obama and the general election
So what will you be focusing on to distract yourself/try to cope with the suspense on this most auspicious of days?
We’re waiting agog over here in Scotland for Mitt Romney’s BFF Donald Trump to come and “give evidence” to the Scottish Parliament’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee on Wednesday.
I covered the background to Trump’s efforts to develop a “world-class” golf resort on the Menie Estate near Aberdeen in an earlier post, along with his threats that the proposed installation of the Vattenfall experimental offshore windfarm some miles from his new gated golfing community meant that he wouldn’t go ahead with the second phase—the construction of a hotel and major housing development. As I pointed out at the time, this is all utter humbug since back in June 2011, we saw the announcement:
Donald Trump has been forced to postpone his plan to create the “world’s greatest” golf resort in Scotland, complete with five-star hotel and luxury villas, because of the global financial crisis.
The billionaire property developer flew into Aberdeen on Monday on his latest luxury jet, a Boeing 757-200 fitted out with a master bedroom and five kitchens, to announce that his championship standard 18-hole golf course overlooking the North Sea would open for play in July next year.
... the tycoon said that the full scheme, a £750m complex featuring a luxury hotel, Trump Boulevard, a golf academy, a second course and timeshare apartments, had been bunkered by the recession.
Trump said “the world has crashed” since he first bought the Menie estate and dunes in 2005, provoking a long-running battle with local residents, councillors and environmental groups about his proposals, which has involved heavily altering the legally protected rare dunes.
In fact, as early as December 2008 there had been persistent rumors that Trump’s extravagant scheme would have to be scaled back because of economic considerations. When he proclaimed plans to build a mansion for himself on the land:
The announcements follow strenuous denials yesterday by the businessman’s company that they were scaling back the development in the face of the economic downturn and a series of legal and financial dismissals.
George Sorial, the manager of the Menie project, reiterated Mr Trump’s commitment, stating that any rumours of cutbacks were “just not true”.
Earlier this year, though, Trump had changed his tune and began a characteristically blustery vendetta against the Scottish Government’s drive for renewable energy, claiming that this was the reason he might shelve his plans.
Or: Don’t knock Republican theocracy. It’s sex with someone I love. (possibly obscure allusion explained here.)
The title of this post is lightly stolen from the movie Broadcast News. A favorite movie for me, and the source of the most important political monologue outside Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. I’m talking, of course, about the Tom is the Devil speech:
Aaron Altman: I know you care about him. I’ve never seen you like this about anyone, so please don’t take it wrong when I tell you that I believe that Tom, while a very nice guy, is the Devil.
Jane Craig: This isn’t friendship.
Aaron Altman: What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he’s around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I’m semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing… he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance… Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he’ll get all the great women.
That, to my ears, describes Paul Ryan. A good looking guy, and arguably one of the most slightly less-than-Hitler people on the planet. But, very polite, and as he reduces the more sensible teachings of Christianity to pablum, he does so with a certain élan: (my emphasis in the text)
Over the past few days, professional rabid wingnut blabbermouth Dana “Drop Trou” Loesch has been working herself into even more of a frenzy than usual. This time, it’s over allegations that somebody at the DOJ referred an enquiry from credibility-starved hack-hive startupThe Washington Beacon to a “site accused of antisemitism.”
The Beacon‘s edited by Bill Kristol’s underemployed son-in-law Matthew Continetti, the alleged “journalist” whose back copy includes The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star. It’s quite possible that the DOJ has better things to do than help feed the Beacon‘s hysteria mill by responding to its request for a comment about a book with the transparently impartial title Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover Up, but Loesch needs the page hits and something to do with her days now the boss is six feet under and evidently staying there. Her subliterate headline reads:
Loesch and her crew have been trying desperately to link the words “antisemitism”—a favorite of the Breitbartlets, an antidote to “raaaaacism,” if you will—and “Media Matters” in the same way that Jim Hoft loves to pair “thugs” with “union” or “OWS.”
Subsequently, Loesch enlists the help of “P.J. Salvatore,” the inhouse sockpuppet charged with defending her honor when she hasn’t got the guts or hutzpah to put her own name to her whining:
The “misrepresentation”—and yet again hilarious accusations of “selective editing”—in this case concerned Loesch’s remarks that Martin Bashir, being a furriner and all, should go back to jolly old England and keep his nose out of American politics. Loesch doesn’t seem to feel this advice should apply to her colleague, South African-born Joel Pollak, but then you may be gaining the impression that consistency isn’t really part of her makeup.
And now, dick-obsessed Lee Stranahan steps into the breach:
It’s been apparent for a while now that despite the vast wealth at his disposal, Mittens’ campaign is a few sammitches short of a picnic. Heck, all that money doesn’t even buy you any new ideas.
Witness the shameless “borrowing” of a legendary UK Conservative Party poster from way back in 1979—the fateful election that brought Margaret Thatcher to power. Here’s Mittens’ minions’ version above the original one:
The repurposed poster misses a few tricks in the original: the pun on “Labour” not “working” is replaced by a bland personalization and a revisiting of Romney’s recent theme that President Obama should forgo playing golf and family vacations at the locations of his family’s choice because too many Americans—Mitt Romney being one—are currently unemployed.
The original poster has been credited with winning the election for Thatcher, and Campaign magazine voted it “poster advertisement of the century.”
But there’s one little detail Mittens’ team has overlooked. What happened to unemployment in the UK once this magnificently clever ad won the election for the Conservatives? Here’s a little graph:
Oops.
Anyway, this is all so last century, Mitt. The word on the street in swinging London nowadays is “Austerity isn’t working.”
I’m hauling myself out of the phlegmy slough of a joyful spring dose of 24-hour flu here and desperately playing catch-up on work and breathing and stuff like that, so consider yourselves apologized to for the lack of bloggy goings-on. Anyway, I decide to check out what’s eating the blogosphere at the moment, and yup—it’s that dog again.
The old adage goes, “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.” But it seems Mitt and Ann Romney just can’t stop doubling down on that infamous dog on roof incident from way back in 1983. I’ve known a few Irish setters in my time, and they’ve by and large been soft old things, albeit bonkers. Judging by the Romneys’ response when ABC’s Diane Sawyer used an “exclusive” interview to raise the issue yet again, that may be a family trait:
Mitt Romney told Sawyer that the Seamus attacks were the most wounding of the campaign “so far” ...
Well, Mitt, it’s only April. Buckle up.
“The dog loved it,” Ann Romney said. “He would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation.”
Yeah, so you’ve both been saying since the story first emerged. Look, it’s an Irish setter—its threshold for “loving it” is pretty damn low. As for “going crazy,” from my experience with the breed, how the heck could you tell?
And here comes the usual TMI:
Adding to the left’s narrative that Romney had little compassion for the animal is a detail from the 1983 trip that Ann Romney confirmed to Sawyer. The dog became sick, defecating all over itself and the windshield of the car, leading Romney to hose them both off before they continued on the drive to Canada.
“Once, he—we traveled all the time—and he ate the turkey on the counter. I mean, he had the runs,” Ann Romney said, laughing as she explained how the dog got diarrhea.
In a 2007 blog written during Romney’s first campaign for the presidency, Ann Romney said the dog rode “in an enclosed kennel, not in the open air” and compared the experience with a person riding on a motorcycle or roller coaster.
Remind me never to visit Disney World when the Romneys are there.
Mitt Romney, when asked by Sawyer if he would do such a thing again, said “Certainly not…,” which would have been a fantastic answer had he not been compelled to add a totally narcissistic qualifier, “...with all the attention its received.”
I repeat: “Certainly not with all the attention its received.”
North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx went on convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy’s wingnut talk radio show last week to denounce all these students and recent college grads who are bitching about their student loans:
I went through school, I worked my way through, it took me seven years, I never borrowed a dime of money. He borrowed a little bit because we both were totally on our own when we went to college, totally. [...] I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that. We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that. I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You don’t have it dumped in your lap.
Of course, the expense today’s students incur is a bit more steep than the cost of obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Dinosaur Husbandry during Foxx’s youth, even spread out across seven years. How much more? It’s hard to do a direct comparison since not all of the chiseled stone tablets used to record educational expenses in Foxx’s day have been digitalized. But here’s a chart that illustrates how tuition costs have risen since 1985:
Could a near 600% increase have something to do with ballooning student indebtedness? Possibly! Here’s the punchline: Foxx chairs the House Subcommittee on Higher Education. Hahahaha!
My Rumproast co-blogger StrangeAppar8us used to do anoccasionalseries on One-Scoop Wonder Matt Drudge. I thought of Strange when I saw the OOGA BOOGA headline below, so I decided I’d revive Strange’s regular feature.
Here’s the story it links to, which covers Mittens’ NRA speech. In that speech, Mittens regurgitated the NRA’s own paranoid fantasy about Obama, which goes something like this: Obama does fuck-all about guns for four years as part of a fiendishly clever scheme to lull gun owners into a false sense of security and win a second term. And then, just as quick as his hand leaves the bible on his Second Inauguration Day, Obama orders jack-booted ATF agents to go door-to-door to forcibly disarm the populace.
Of course, Mittens himself was all for sensible gun control measures when he was running for and serving as governor of Massachusetts, and unlike the president, Mittens has actually signed gun control legislation. If the NRA were a bipartisan interest group, it would support the president over Romney for that reason.
But the NRA is actually a dismal, dishonest collection of Republican hacks and barrel-stroking, pinwheel-eyed lunatics who believe open-carry permits are required to protect them from rogue turkeys, so it’s entirely in the bag for Gun-Grabber Willard.
As for Mittens himself, who the hell knows what he really believes on the gun issue. He believes he should be president, and he believes there’s no lie too shameless to utter in pursuit of that goal. And his lies will be swallowed, digested and excreted as truth by fellow liars and hacks like Drudge, and the resulting turds will be polished to a high gloss by bottom-feeders like Halperin.
With Rick Santorum’s suspension of his campaign and effective withdrawal from the primary, where does that leave those Republicans who remain bitterly unconvinced of Mitt Romney’s ability to win the election, let alone govern in a sufficiently wingnutty way to pass muster among the base?
Most of the attention I’ve seen has focused on Newt Gingrich, last seen screwing up yet another state campaign by bouncing a check for $500 at Utah’s Elections Board and leaving nobody home to answer the subequent enquiries about it. Thus demonstrably clueless, reportedly at least $4.5 million in debt, with no sugardaddy to bail him out nowadays and next to no ground game, but still pledging to run all the way to Tampa, Gingrich claims the suitably ironic mantle of “the last conservative standing.”
After Rick Santorum ended his White House bid on Tuesday, Ron Paul’s campaign praised the former Pennsylvania senator, but said Paul did not have plans to follow suit.
“Congratulations to Senator Santorum on running such a spirited campaign. Dr. Paul is now the last – and real – conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign chairman, said in a statement.
The oldest swinger in town still has game, as his campaign airs a new ad in Texas which is a bit of a hoot.
After the senseless killing of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in Central Florida, some black people were incensed enough by the prospect of their own progeny being gunned down for walking through a residential neighborhood while black that they revealed the existence of “The Talk”—a conversation they have with their youngsters to help the kids avoid Trayvon’s fate. This didn’t set well with certain white grievance mongers.
After breakfasting on “Birth of a Nation,” masticating The Bell Curve and washing it all down with a 151-proof bottle of Ye Olde Imperial Wizard, NRO’s resident white supremacist, John Derbyshire, vomited up a screed in the guise of his own version of “The Talk,” which ABL eviscerated here. Derbyshire’s column on “The Talk” was overt enough in its racism to attract condemnation from “conservatives” who prefer dog whistles to white linens, a dishonesty that Freddie deBoer ably vaporized here.
I can now reveal the existence of yet another version of “The Talk”—this one a heart-to-heart we liberal white women who are raising daughters in Dixie have to help our children navigate life among ignorant bigots, religious fanatics and Derbyshire-class assholes in the rural South:
1) Some 41% of our fellow Americans identify as “conservative;” this is why we can’t have nice things. By “nice things,” I mean things like universal health care, marriage equality and a sane foreign policy. “Conservatives” believe despite all evidence to the contrary that it makes more sense to invade foreign countries, kill tens of thousands of people and spend trillions of dollars in a fruitless effort to convert Baghdad and Kabul into Arlington, Virginia than it does to ensure that American families aren’t one diagnosis away from medical bankruptcy and homelessness.
2) Despite the fact that “conservatives” and “Christians” have dominated civic life in America for centuries and even today ritualistically require candidates for practically any elected office to declare fealty to Jesus, “conservatives” always behave as though they are the victims of anti-religious bigotry. Even though your entire holiday choir program was devoted to Christian-themed songs (well, I think they did the dreidel song too) and that you and your classmates are free to engage in private prayer the entire time you are at school, “conservatives” will insist that the country is going downhill because radical atheists gave Jesus the bum’s rush. You can point out reality and make enemies or privately roll your eyes. The result will be the same. This is what’s called “an article of faith.”
3) Being able to look down on gays makes “conservatives” feel better about their own dumb life choices and misery. That’s why your aunties can’t get married and enjoy the special tax treatment and societal status your father and I enjoy, even though they’ve been in a monogamous relationship for just as long.
In the interests of snark development, I hand you over this morning to Frank J. Fleming at Pajamas Media, whose credentials are impeccable: “Frank J. Fleming is the author of the ebook ‘Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything’ published by HarperCollins, writes columns for PJ Media and the New York Post, blogs at IMAO.us, and comes up with his best jokes after his captain takes his humor badge away.”
Fleming has taken exception to Alf LaMont’s article at HuffPo, “Turn Left? The Lack of Right-Wing Comedians,” and has much sage advice to offer we on the humor-deficited left. Here is a summary of Fleming’s manifesto “Face It: Liberals Just Aren’t Very Funny,” along with some key quotes and worked examples to illustrate his RW principles of humor. Read and learn.
1. Comedy requires detachment and the ability to be self-effacing.
Key quote: “While conservatives let their religion influence their politics, to liberals, politics is their religion and is thus sacred and can’t be joked about. They don’t find anything funny about the current political atmosphere, because they intensely fear that racist Republicans are going to lynch the president and then rape everybody with ultrasounds.”
Worked examples from this very article of Fleming’s
A.
Now, I know liberals think conservatives don’t tell jokes and only find humor in laughing at poor people. (Actually, that gives me a good show idea: “Poor People Falling Down Stairs.” It’s funny because it’s poor people getting hurt and also because you’re thinking to yourself, “How did these poor people afford a place with stairs?”)
B.
Take me, for example. I’m certified funny by all the national authorities. In fact, doctors often use my material as a diagnostic tool. If someone reads something I’ve written and doesn’t laugh, that probably means he has a brain tumor.
Last week, I showed off one of my Australorp chicks. This week’s pullet is a Rhode Island Red:
As you can see, she’s sprouting tail feathers, and her wing feathers have developed sufficiently to allow her to briefly achieve liftoff.
In other news, incredibly, it turns out the late Andrew Breitbart really was the brains of his eponymous outfit. His lackeys continued their “Vetting the Bed”* series yesterday with a piece about how President Obama once scandalously colluded with Chicago Cardinal Bernardin to promote universal healthcare:
The law, had it passed, would have forced the state to enact a plan that, in the Orwellian words of the Chicago Tribune, “permits everyone in Illinois to obtain decent health care on a regular basis by 2002.”
Things are hotting up out there as Mitt “Captain Inevitable” Romney plows on toward a primary victory that will no doubt prove as pyrrhic as it will be indecisive.
Ann Romney’s remarks came during an interview with Baltimore radio station WBAL, during which the host asked her, “And one of the things, Ann Romney, that folks talk about with your husband, Mitt Romney, and I’ve seen him in casual conversation-He comes off very smooth and okay. But sometimes he comes off stiff. Do you have to fight back some criticism, like ‘My husband isn’t stiff, OK?’”
Laughing, Ann Romney responded, “Well, you know, I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out because he is not!”
Leaving her listeners feverishly trying to fight off the nausea and work out whether she’d just complimented her husband or cast deep aspersions on his virility, she swept on to praise his wit and sense of fun, but we’ve seen plenty of evidence of that already—like Herman Cain (allegedly no stranger to sexxxytime himself) before him, Mitt really needs to have a clown horn permanently attached so that people can be cued to roar along with him when he cracks wise with a “Corporations are people too,” or “I’m currently unemployed,” or a “my wife drives two Cadillacs” rather than tut-tutting like po-faced scolds because liberals are so famously humorless.
“The tweets have been addressed with Heather and she understands this was a mistake.” – Michael Clemente, Fox News senior vice president for news
Don’t bother looking for Childers’ tweets now unless you’re an old pal or family:
@heatherchilders’s account is protected.
Only confirmed followers have access to @heatherchilders’s Tweets and complete profile. Click the “Follow” button to send a follow request.
Yeah, Hannity et al. have the knack of coloring just inside the lines in their question-mark-punctuated musings about the President’s legitimacy and nefariousness, but since Beck went the way of all bloated flesh, speculating in public whether Obama is a mafioso mofo who can out-Vince Foster the Clintons is beyond the pale. Funny old country you got there: Those closer to Obama’s political views think he’s a wimp who caves in a puff of wind; those diametrically opposed think he’s a cross between Stalin and Dick Cheney.
Most of the media focus in this kerfuffle has been on Childers and Fox News, but what of Godfather Politics, a new kid on the block to me in the overcrowded depths of truth-challenged RW crazy? Since it seems so keen to attract attention, who am I to decline?
Breitbart Big Ho editor / Hollywood flop John Nolte dislikes the film “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” because – get this – it “exploits 9/11:”
The film’s biggest problem is that, to put it bluntly, it exploits 9/11. Thomas could’ve died just as easily in a plane crash or boat accident without a single element of the story having to change. For Daldry (working off a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer) to use one of the biggest crimes ever committed against this country as a “device” is truly repulsive and a symptom of a Hollywood bubble so impenetrable that a group of people with the power to make a multi-million dollar film actually thought it was okay to say 9/11 is all about …. me.
God, that’s funny, in a “Union Carbide Bhopal executive complains about worker flatulence” kind of way. Has there ever been a group that has exploited a national tragedy to silence opponents and enact a radical, ruinous agenda as efficiently as the modern GOP humped 9/11 for fun and profit? If so, I was mercifully not alive for it.
John Nolte, whose writing recalls the elegance of Nick Nolte’s mug shot, goes on:
According to [Director Stephen] Daldry and company, what 9/11 is about, though, is the opportunity for a nine-year-old “amateur inventor, Francophile, and pacifist” to trot off on a narcissistic journey of self-discovery while banging his precious tambourine and providing his precious voice over and meeting all the precious people in the precious city of New York. And in the film’s most racially patronizing scene, meeting a group of precious Christians who are of course, Black.
And there you have it in a nutshell, ladies and gents. Wingnuts despised New York City before 9/11 for the same reasons they hate Hollywood, and their grievances against it would match up point-for-point with the Talibans’. Except the Taliban probably don’t hate “the Blacks” as much.
