On the left is one of my cute little Australorp chicks at one week old, and on the right is that same chick eight weeks later:
Every morning I ask her the same question: Where are my goddamned eggs?!?
In other news, the Vetting the Bed* process continues apace at Big Dead, where cub reporter Joel B. Pollak reckons President Obama must have entered Columbia as an Affirmative Action student with SAT scores even lower than the famously dumb George W. Bush.
His evidence? A 1981 newspaper article about the average score of the Columbia transfer class:
Breitbart News has learned that the transfer class that entered Columbia College in the fall of 1981 with Obama was one of the worst in recent memory, according to Columbia officials at the time…If Obama’s SAT scores were near the average of the transfer students entering Columbia in the fall of 1981, he would have scored significantly lower than George W. Bush…
Yeah, and if my granny had wheels, she’d be a go-cart. These are painfully stupid people.
(Reuters) - ATLANTA - When he entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination in May 2011, Newt Gingrich was the prosperous head of a small empire commonly known as Newt Inc, which included both for-profit consultancies and nonprofit foundations.
Altogether, these entwined ventures pulled in more than $110 million over the past decade. Now the vestiges of this empire are mired in debt, as is Gingrich’s campaign fund.
I find this sad, in a way. When Griftrich started with the whole “I know, let’s run for President!” scam, I’m pretty sure he was just looking on it as a nice way to see the country and eat out a lot and sell books. It was all going to be kind of like a working vacation. The problem was probably South Carolina. You know what I mean. Never believe your own bullshit. Once he started actually campaigning….that was it. Real campaigns are expensive. Even more than Tiffany’s kind of expensive.
He even owes his good friend Herman Cain money. I wouldn’t want to owe Herman Cain money, would you? Those weird ads with the animals—they’re kind of like a warning of….something.
Anyway, even I, a person who has disliked Newt since, oh, the early ‘90’s, feels bad enough to want to do something. Probably toss quarters at his big old head if I ever see him, but you get the idea.
(You know, I was thinking of posting some more nonsense from the Breitbartlets’ Vettenings , but honestly, how dumb is this thing gonna get before it’s over? Obama might have had lower test scores than Bush? Wake me up when they get to “Is this gum wrapper on the ground Obama’s? Is he a stone-cold litterbug?”)
(Sorry about the Boeing advert up-front—it’s part of the clip. But if you were possibly in the market, for say, a small jet, I hope that was helpful to you.)
Now that we’re in the second day of foofaraw over Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s oddly off-message statement on Meet the Press, I feel comfortable saying: Meh. I know. Some people are saying he’s trashed the Obama campaign’s line of attack regarding Romney’s record at Bain. I think that on the merits of Romney actually not having a damn thing else he’s running on, it’s still a good line of attack, as these things go, especially when you look at things like the amazingly lop-sided profits to creditor repayment ratio in the Ampad deal (that looks like a Mafia bust-out, seriously). It’s still a valid line of questioning regarding Romney’s involvement with job-creation (or destruction, as the case may be), as Booker himself has pointed out in his walk-back.
The “both sides do it” part of his comments is what I found more distasteful. There just isn’t an equivalence between Obama’s attendance at Trinity United Church being used as a smear (“Black! Liberation! Theology!”) against him, versus a critical look at just what Mitt Romney is putting forward as his claim to understanding the economy. The former tactic is a device to try and make President Obama responsible for every out of context thing another person may have said in his presence to present him as a dubiously American “other”. The latter is, I would say, the thing Mitt Romney’s campaign has invited us to do by making his record as businessman the central rationale for his campaign.
I just don’t think there’s really a long-term harm coming from a muddled message, here. Honestly, although there’s going to be some waving of Booker’s statement around in a “even Obama Surrogate Cory Booker said….” fashion, it’s still early in the campaign. It’ll pass. And actually, I’m more interested in some ways with the degree of push-back Booker has gotten from Obama defenders (I’m kind of glad to see it, actually). It tells me people are fed up with false equivalence and fired up to set the record straight.
Also, I don’t think it should do much more for Cory Booker than remind him: there is no such thing as post-partisan in an election year. I can appreciate the point of keeping a positive message as a surrogate for Obama, and he did mention some good points about how Obama’s policies have benefited the economy already—but without pushing back against smears, given how dirty this campaign is shaping up to be with all the PAC money involved—he wasn’t really doing it right.
What a weird, birther-y week it’s been. We’ve had one CO US Representative, Mike Coffman, indicate that he didn’t know where Obama was from, he just wasn’t an American. We’ve had the Secretary of State of, where else, but Arizona, Ken Bennett, imply that President Obama might not be on that state’s ballot because he considers Obama’s birth certificate to be suspect, following in the footsteps of the great detective, one Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose evidence consists of “read a book saying its’ suspect”, “WND”, and “oh look, shiny thing”. And then there was the journalism find of the week from the Breitbartlets (complete with “non-Birther, no really, we’re just raising questions and presenting evidence” disclaimer): the smoking brochure, where apparently someone at the literary agency repping Obama mistakenly indicated that he was born in Kenya.
This is supposed to be proof that people surrounding Barack Obama have been carefully cultivating an Obama myth to obscure the Real Obama. I think it’s proof that agents more or less skim the books their authors put out.
But it’s not a bad theory: there we have Barack Obama, poised to embark on a political career that will ultimately take him to the White House; and there’s the literary agency, conspiring to help him by dishing out a nugget of disqualifying information….Wait, what?
In other news, I took my dogs for a walk this morning. Like the good neighbor that I am, I tucked a plastic grocery bag in my pocket so that if one of the dogs took a dump along the way, I could whisk the turds away. Leave only footprints—that’s my motto.
Sure enough, Daisy Mayhem took a gigantic dump on someone’s lawn, which I scooped into the bag and tied off, and we went on our merry way. It’s trash day, which means there are bins along the edges of the lawns. One was open, so I tossed the turd-bag into it.
My husband thinks this is really rude, but I don’t see the problem. I wouldn’t throw un-bagged dog turds into someone’s trash can, but bagged turds—what’s the issue? I don’t get it.
Anyhoo, away we went, but then Daisy Mayhem decided to take ANOTHER ginormous dump—right on someone’s goddamned driveway! This never happens, so I had not prepared for the eventuality of needing TWO bags. (The other dog, Patsy, never shits outside our yard.)
It was very early, just past dawn. No one else was around. I could have easily just kept going and left that pile of turds right where they were. But I wasn’t raised that way, so I was desperately trying to come up with a solution. Should I just take the dogs home and come back in my car to clean up the mess? Root through some stranger’s trash can to find a receptacle for the shit?
There was a bagged newspaper in the driveway. It wasn’t the paid subscription paper but one of those freebies. I skinned the bag off it and used it to pick up the turds, tied off the bag and deposited the bag and the paper in a nearby bin, hoping the homeowners weren’t peering through a window or on their way outside to confront me.
Did I do the right thing? I don’t know. I hope I don’t encounter any more serious and troubling moral quandaries this weekend.
With Mrs. Polly currently on leave (soon to return rested and reinvigorated, we hope), we’ve been somewhat neglectful of the adventures of everybody’s favorite nitrous-huffing polymath, the lost Gabor sister.
Let me rectify that right now with this current ad from Orly’s Spetsnaz mission to finagle a seat in the California US Senate.
CLICK to marvel then fiddle with your volume control at the voiceover recorded by Darth Vader’s Aunt Bessie through a gimp mask on one of Edison’s original cylinders. STAY for the Pythonic TA-DAAAA typeface incident that heralds the triumphal entrance of The World’s Most Snarkworthy Dentist/Mail-Order JP/Bunny Boiler Extraordinaire/State Senatorial Candidate. SNORK into your morning coffee at winning lines such as “She’s like the Energizer Bunny on steroids.” SPILL said coffee all over yourself and suffer a violent coughing fit at the Gilliamesque cameo from Dianne Feinstein. SPILL SOME MORE at the spectacle of Orly’s lushly lash-lined peepers peering dementedly out of a niqab of armor because Joan of Arc was batshit too, that’s why. CHECK YOUR WATCH to confirm, yes, it’s only four minutes long, though it seems like an ice age. CHUCKLE postcoitally at the Youtube comments.
And ... DONE. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
Those who want to know what the heck else Orly’s been up to can check out Patrick’s masterly stream-of-consciousness compendium of updates at Bad Fiction.
Ambulatory Sears mannequin Mitt Romney made a swing through the Sunshine State this week, kissing ass (“Gosh! The energy. The Cuban American energy and passion is so wonderful!”) and collecting a couple of mill from wizened snowbird socialites for his campaign war chest.
He also delivered speeches containing scads of well-documentedlies. So what does PolitiFact do when a big fat liar comes to its hometown to tell big fat lies?
It sifts through the veritable mountain of bullshit disgorged from the Romney gullet and finds a meaningless, minor pebble of a point to subject to its high-powered scrutiny. It finds Romney wrong in a minor way on the facts and disingenuous in a major way on the substance and renders its verdict: MOSTLY TRUE!
Don’t ever change, PolitiFact: You are the appendix of our political intestines.
You know, I kind of miss the uncertainty of the primaries when it really, just maybe, sort of could be someone other than Mitt. Now that Ron Paul isn’t actively campaigning (just doing what, now, with delegates?), all we’re going to see is Willard running against himself, and that’s sad. His campaign knows he’s too awkward, and it shows:
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The Romney campaign is renowned for its hyper-disciplined approach to the news media. Question-and-answer sessions with reporters are exceedingly rare. Aides avoid on-the-record briefings. And the candidate’s latest outreach to voters, a series of casual meetings with middle class Americans, is shielded from public view.
But on Wednesday morning, the campaign took that restrictiveness to a new level, leading to a brief kerfuffle with reporters and, later, an apologetic clarification.
After Mitt Romney finished delivering a speech, campaign aides told members of the traveling press corps that they could not join the audience or approach the rope line where Mr. Romney shakes voters’ hands and engages in casual conversation with them.
It’s the old “chameleon on plaid” problem. They just can’t be sure what old “Walkbalk Willard” will say in front of the media-types. That’s why he’s also keeping mum on details regarding his foreign policy and what he really means to do for the economy, I’m sure. It couldn’t possibly be because he’s been running for president for something like six years (or his whole life) and has simply never nailed down where he stands on things. Unless, you know, it’s because he hasn’t.
Which is why I’m still holding out for an interesting VP pick, no matter what the experts say. So I’m back looking at some more possibilities for the Veep hunt—or rather, covering two names I missed because….I just wasn’t casting the net out that far, you know?
On the off-chance Ron Paul is using that delegate business for some kind of convention leverage, why not take a second look at Aqua Buddha, I mean, Rand, Son of Ron?
According to the top headline at Memeorandum at the moment, a bunch of folks are either whooping it up or uttering bewildered ZOMGs, depending on their political persuasions, over the latest poll from CBS News/New York Times which shows Romney with “a slight edge” of 46—43 over Obama among registered voters:
Washington Post: Both establishment and tea party could lose in Nebraska
Datechguy / Datechguy’s Blog: Demoralized as Hell: Et Tu CBS/NYT poll?
Steve M. / No More Mister Nice Blog: IS ROMNEY GOING TO WIN THIS THING? I STILL DOUBT IT, BUT…
ZIP / Weasel Zippers: New CBS/NYT Poll Finds One In Four Voters Less Likely To Vote For Obama After Gay Marriage Endorsement…
Maggie Haberman / Politico: Romney leads Obama 46- 43 in new NYT/CBS poll
Allahpundit / Hot Air: NYT/CBS poll: Romney 46, Obama 43
Joe Gandelman / The Moderate Voice: CBS News/New York Times Poll: Romney Takes Slight Lead Over Obama
Katrina Trinko / National Review: Poll: Romney’s Pulling Ahead
It should go without saying (and I certainly don’t want to end up having to point this out every frikkin time people who have their own agendas to shore up or who should know better go apeshit over the next pollster freakout) that one poll in isolation—in particular this far out from election day—indicates very little. Without wishing to totally dampen any motivating angst among Democrats, here’s a few other points that make me less than inclined to panic:
* CBS News itself observes: “Romney’s slight advantage remains within the poll’s margin of error, which is plus or minus four percentage points.”
* For those jumping to draw conclusions about any impact of president Obama’s declaration on marriage equality, or his or Romney’s standing among women or independents or whatever, it also observes: “The error for subgroups is higher.”
* It’s a callback poll, re-polling part of the same sample polled in the last CBS News/NYT poll that no doubt caused heads to explode or jubilation to break out when it was released—read the blurb at the bottom of the article: “This poll was conducted by telephone on May 11-13, 2012 among 615 adults nationwide, including 562 registered voters, who were first interviewed for a CBS News/New York Times Poll conducted April 13-17, 2012.” Aside from the smaller sample size, there’s every possibility that those who bothered to respond to the follow-up call were self-selected to be more exercised about certain issues.
It may or may not be a slight improvement on inspecting entrails or observing the flight paths of geese. Maybe somebody someday should stage a controlled experiment.
Her blog, if for some reason you don’t have it bookmarked, is here. This is good news. To defeat the Republicans we need, as she says, all hands on deck. Make no mistake. If Willard is elected President this is what he and the rest of the Rethuglicans will do to our country.
And I’m really tired of hearing “lesser of two evils” BS. Obama, whatever ponies he failed to deliver or whether you disagree with some of his actions and policies, is not evil. Or incompetent, ineffective or weak. Willard? I think you could make a real argument for his being a basically evil person. We definitely know he’s a bully, he has no empathy for people not in the 1%, he likes to fire people and he luurrves to strip him some assets out of companies to line his pockets and match his silver spoon.
I honestly do believe the future of our country is hanging in the balance here. Time to roll up the shirtsleeves and GOTV. Take back the House while we’re at it!
Many have noted that during the earlier stages of the GOP primary campaign, Mitt Romney seemed to be soft-pedaling his attacks on Ron Paul, while Paul’s supporters have been exploiting their grasp of how the primary and caucus system actually works to gather loyal delegates, mainly through the cunning ploy of not going home once the initial voting has taken place. Judging by events at the weekend’s State Republican Conventions in Norman, Oklahoma and Phoenix, Arizona, that uneasy truce is getting a little uneasier.
David Van Risseghem, Rick Santorum’s Oklahoma state coordinator, sent out an e-mail May 9 to Oklahoma Republicans attempting to get them to turnout in opposition to Ron Paul and therefore presumably for Mitt Romney, the only other candidate in the race. The note was apparently sent from an e-mail address owned by the suspended Santorum campaign.
The vitriolic note from the Santorum campaign stated, ”It’s time for all values voters to work together to keep our communities safe for the next generation. Several Ron Paul activists want to legalize recreational drug use, decimate obscenity laws, and sanction prostitution.”
...
The note from Santorum’s campaign is again another sign of a struggling Romney campaign in the face of Paul surging. It now looks like Paul may win as many as 12 states and may even have ardent Paul loyalists outnumbering Romney loyalists at the Republican National Convention – the highest legislative body of the Republican Party.
Mitt Romney believed and the media has reported that after Santorum left the race the rest of the nomination process would be easy for Romney. To the contrary, it’s become evident to many watching that he is unfit as a leader in the GOP as he can’t inspire convention goers – the most dedicated of Republicans – and he has so far failed at uniting the party.
A Romney nomination spells defeat for the Republicans, as it will no doubt leave Paul’s supporters feeling alienated, perhaps even searching for a candidate outside of the GOP.
Van Risseghem foresaw trouble ahead:
In the note, Santorum’s campaign theorized that this weekend’s Oklahoma Republican convention might get nasty: “There will assuredly be a passionate struggle for control of the convention, the national delegation, and the party’s future.”
And so it came to pass. KFOR-TV featured eyewitness reports and cellphone footage of a few altercations between Romney and Paul supporters that descended into fisticuffs which spilled out into the parking lot:
The Marquis de Mittens’ former Lt. Governor Kerry Healey went on CNN yesterday to counter charges that her old running mate is a heartless prick. As evidence, she cited his reaction during a GOP debate when a certain goofy bastard could not remember all three of the government agencies he vowed to abolish as president:
In defending Romney as “deeply compassionate” and “unfailingly kind,” she pointed to moments during the GOP primary when Romney was “being attacked from every side.”
“His response was always professional, calm, civil,” she pointed out. “In fact, he even intervened on behalf [of] — to try to help — Gov. Perry when he was stumbling [in attempting to remember a talking point during a debate]. His impulses are very kind impulses and there should be no debate about whether or not Gov. Romney is a bully.”
For some reason, I was reminded of this scene from “There’s Something About Mary:”
Matt Dillon’s character is a lot like Romney, only without the gazillions of dollars. He’s a liar who tries hard to be ingratiating but kind of sucks at it.
NEW YORK – May 11, 2012 – Roiled by a lengthy Republican primary that featured sickly-wife dumper Newt Gingrich in the role of family values advocate, prissy uterus invader Rick Santorum as a small government champion and multimillionaire vulture capitalist Mitt Romney shedding Armani suits in favor of mom jeans and “work” shirts as he positioned himself as a regular guy (with a car elevator), the global parody and satire industries utterly collapsed Friday.
The market sector had teetered on the verge of collapse this week following an accusation from thrice-married four-times-married drug addict Rush Limbaugh that President Obama had attacked the institution of marriage by coming out in favor of same-sex unions. But some analysts had thought the sector was positioned for recovery.
Those hopes were dashed early Friday when parody and satire futures were bludgeoned by the publication of an opinion piece by 21-year-old single mom Bristol Palin. The daughter of failed vice-presidential candidate and serial quitter Sarah Palin criticized the president for allowing his daughters to influence marriage equality policy, decried the persecution of conservative Christians and urged the president to direct his children since “dads should lead their family.”
“Parody and satire were already on life support thanks to Rush,” said analyst Seymour Butts of the Under the Bleachers Report. “But when Bristol let loose, even hard-bitten industry veterans who had survived the Nixon and Reagan years threw in the towel.”
Most experts were unable to articulate a scenario under which parody and satire could recover. However, at least one long-term analyst envisioned a resurgence contingent upon a direct asteroid strike on the earth that wipes out all existing life, after which single-cell organisms might once more emerge and evolve to acquire language skills.
Jason Horowitz’s WaPo piece revealing young Mitt Romney as a “prankster” whose version of pranking involved on one occasion, walking a visually-impaired teacher into a door and on another, involved physically assaulting another student with scissors in the company of a mob, actually turned the screw for me. My original perception of Romney was “clueless”—I thought he suffered from just a bad case of privileged boobery combined with a mild empathy-impairment. I upgraded my estimate to: “and a gutless coward, too” as the only explanation for his squishy weaseling on the issues not long ago. But that article just made me see a sociopath. That wasn’t the behavior of a dumb kid making mistakes. That was a pattern of preying on the weak and thinking their weakness was amusing. It was intolerance of differences. And I don’t think he learned thing one from his experiences because no one bothered to teach him that it was cruel, or wrong.
From the article:
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
(Snip)
The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall. Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.
It’s noted later in the article that Lauber was expelled for smoking. They are very different things, after all. Administering a beating and a haircut at the head of a mob is a very different thing when you are the son of someone very important from smoking while being a victimized kid of someone….probably not quite as important. I think the lesson young Mitt would have really learned is all too clear—
Whether he acknowledges how and what he learned is, of course, not quite a task Mr. Romney is up to.
