Meet The New GOP

Repubs love to pretend they've been listening to us and that they want very much to be the Big Tent Party.  Except it's bullshit.  And at the risk of sounding way too centrist, I can say the Dems aren't much better...but there it is: "The Dems aren't much better".  Right.  The Dems aren't much better, but they are better.  A little, anyway - and that's kinda the whole fucking point, ain't it?  To look at it from as many angles as possible and then to make some kind of value judgment, in order to decide which buncha gumbahs, goobers or goat-ropers we want runnin' the joint for us?

So, hey - great work on the whole re-branding thing, guys, but there's not much in the way of improvement when I look at your "Platform" - which of course sounds cool if you just read the bullet points.  But when you open it up, it's still nothing but Anti-Gay, Anti-Woman, Anti-Poor, Anti-Middle Class, Anti-School, Anti-Healthcare, Anti-Immigrant, at the same time being all Yay God, Yay Pentagon Boondoggle, Yay MegaCorp, Yay 1955, blah blah fucking blah.

Jesus, I get sick o' this shit.

Smart

Many many times, Rachel Maddow is just really annoying.  Just as many times, she shows herself to be among the smartest political analysts anywhere; and why it's a good idea for me to listen to people who frequently annoy me.

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The Horse Race

It hasta get harder to sell The Horse Race at some point, doesn't it?

Well, maybe not so much at The National Journal:

After a series of overseas gaffes and a barrage of attack ads, Romney now trails the president by nine points, with 40 percent. This is the biggest lead yet for the president in Fox polls.

Obama holds an 11-point advantage over Romney among independent voters, a seven-point increase over last month. Still, only some 30 percent of those voters are undecided.

The president’s lead also jumped among women, blacks and Democrats.

But I think it's pretty interesting that DumFux News has been bashing Romney for at least several days now -

if not bashing, ala Ann (Bone Smuggler) Coulter



--and--

Chuckles Krauthammer


- then certainly they've been something less than their usual full-throated supportive selves; and now it seems rather suddenly, Romney's falling farther behind Obama just as he needs to be making up some ground to build momentum as he heads for the convention in Tampa.

From DumFux News website:

We'll see I guess, but we hafta be getting closer to where enough people are hip to the Centrism Trick, and don't buy the crap about everybody does it; they're all guilty of something; ya can't just blame one side or the other; blah blah bah.  We have to be able to look at whatever happens and make a smart decision about who's likely to be that one tiny bit better than the other guy when it comes to representation in government.  

You take enough small steps and before you know it, you've gone a good long way.

Imagine That

A new study from The Chicano Studies bunch at UCLA, saying DumFux News and Rodeo Clown Radio are filled with hate speech and racism:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This study analyzes how social networks that form around the hosts of commercial talk radio shows can propagate messages targeting vulnerable groups. Working with recorded broadcasts from five shows gathered over a six-week period, involving 102 scheduled guests and covering 88 topics, researchers determined hosts’ and guests’ ideological alignment on the topics discussed most frequently — including immigration and terrorism — through a content analysis of on-air statements and website content.  The findings reveal that the hosts promoted an insular discourse that focused on, for example, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, and pro-Tea Party positions and that this discourse found repetition and amplification through social media.  Of the 21 guests who appeared more than once, media personalities (57 percent) and political figures (19 percent) accounted for 76 percent.  Fox News accounted for nearly one-fourth (24 percent) of appearances by guests representing an organization.  Political figures accounted for 27 percent of all guests, and the Republican Party and the Tea Party accounted for 93 percent and 89 percent, respectively, of all political figures appearing on the shows. Eighty-nine percent of the scheduled guests were white, and 81 percent were male.

I'm fairly certain Rachel Maddow covered this on her show a year or more ago (it was back when I was a pretty regular viewer so it was at least a year ago), but this starts to look like there's mounting evidence of a multiple-screws-loose situation "on the right".

IV. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The data demonstrate the mutual referencing among a relatively small cluster of nodes that include hosts, guests, and other affiliated individuals and groups. The findings reveal that these individuals and groups were connected by certain ideological sentiments targeting vulnerable groups. For example, discus- sions around immigration and Islam were framed in oppositional and absolutist terms: immigrants as “ille- gal” and law breaking, and Islam as the context of terrorism.

If talk radio and social media sustain a social net- work, they do so within a narrow range of ideological positions reflected by the hosts and guests. What’s more, the predominance of guests that represent media organizations not only minimizes alternate voices but also facilitates the mass broadcast and echoing of the shared ideologies that are discussed on the air. What emerges is a discourse that remains insular rather than open and that finds alignment, repetition, and amplifi- cation through social media. This becomes even more significant in light of the fact that social networks, rather than search engines, increasingly becoming “gateways” to the Internet; in this scenario, network members are more likely to be directed to sites, and therefore connect with nodes, with similar points of view (Jones 2011, 127).

What is surprising about this insularity is the extent to which it is dominated by political figures and media personalities, and less so by issue-driven organizations, advocacy groups, and experts. The 28 political figures listed in table 9 account for 27 percent of all guests, and among them there is an almost complete overlap between Republican Party membership (93 percent) and Tea Party affiliation (89 percent). Among the 21 guests appearing two or

more times, political figures (19 percent) and media personalities (57 percent) account for 76 percent of the total. There is also overlap between these two categories, with a number of former elected officials and candidates working as media commentators. In contrast, the frequency of pro-religion discussions and the number of representatives of religious organiza- tions were relatively minimal on these talk shows. While we have focused on program hosts as the cen- tral nodes in this social network, Fox News plays a notable role with regard to the centrality of program hosts and guests. The data showed that Fox News accounted for 24 percent of the talk radio appearances by guests representing an organization (data from the program-based analysis) and 35 percent of the ties to the programs by way of Pamela Geller (data from the guest-based analysis). Further study can expand on the role of Fox News and other organizations identi- fied in the program-based study with regard to the catalytic role of commercial talk radio in the develop- ment of social networks.28 Of particular interest to us is how biomedical research into physiological and psychological effects can provide indicators of the impact of hate speech targeting vulnerable groups as it circulates through social networks sustained by commercial talk radio.

(Paraphrasing driftglass and BlueGal):  When you come to know that somebody's been lying to you over a significant length of time - especially about things that are Mission-Critical regarding the continued health of a properly functioning democracy - what do your senses of Duty and Morality call on you to do about it?

Just wonderin': how long before the wingnuts start screaming for somebody to put an immediate end to all Chicano Studies programs - because they do nothing but promote the kind of race hatred that Obama feels deep within his anti-colonial Kenyan heart?

Today's Quote

"Every man has a right to an opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts." --Bernard Baruch

Buh Bye, Newt

I'm gonna miss ol' Newt.  The guy's been a consistent source of entertainment, running the gamut of content from his deadpan "Yes" when asked if he was calling Willard a liar, to the way he projects himself into the future and talks about how all the numbers make it impossible for him not to get the nomination, or how we'll have a permanent moon base by the end of his 2nd term.  There's nobody more fun to watch - kinda like some kid on YouTube who does a ballstand when he tries to jump his bike off his mom's porch - it's a little retch-inducing, but I just can't turn away.

It's pretty easy to see why this guy gets 50 large for a speech.  It's a polished performance, and it doesn't matter that it's the classic sales-y yarn that any good huckster learns how to spin - if you do it right, you can get 'em to believe almost anything.  Just make sure you put plenty of plausible sounding goals together with some techno-jargon, place it all far enough in the "future" so the vision is a bit misty and soft-focus, but not so far as to be out of reach.

The message: "Newt has this vision because he's amazing.  I do not have this vision (because I am not amazing), so I need to work really hard to make up for not being amazing like him."

Translation: Newt has some ideas, but no fuckin' clue how to make any of it work, so I get to bust my ass to make it work for all of us.  I also get to pay him large sums of money for the privilege of working my ass off and making him rich, and while I get a little something in return, it'll only be enough to keep me interested, but not enough to make me independent of a guy like Newt, and never enough to be considered his equal."



One other quick note:  At about 16:30, Ol' Newt laments the nastiness of the tone of the rhetoric in congress.  I wonder how it got that way.

The Nexus

...of politics and race in America.  Anybody who's watched politics knows about "The Southern Strategy" and how it's morphed over the last 8 or 9 cycles.  I'm thinking it prob'ly goes a lot farther back than Nixon and Wallace - the Dixiecrats come to mind.  So I'm trying to dig things up that tell me something about the long evolution of race (and religion) in our elections and power politics.

For now, here's a nice bit of turnaround/parody from Bill Maher - a few years back.

The Romneybot

Rachel gets a little preachy and I can do without that, but she's ridiculously diligent and astute about politics and the shit candidates have to pull (or get stuck thinking they have to pull), so she rarely gets this het up.

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I just wanted to get this into the blog so I could find it later.  This is a good breakdown of the kind of stoopid shit our candidates put themselves thru to get elected.  Also a pretty good commentary on how too many of us end up seeming to demand these guys lie to us.

Melissa Harris-Perry

Some of the best TV on TV.  It's like being in Civics class again - which was an extraordinarily great thing as far I'm concerned.

This segment was a bit of departure, but still educational for me.

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Significant If True

This could just as well be a hoax, but even if it is, it's fun to think that this is what the result of solid political action sounds like.

(hat tip = Daily Kos)

Ladies And Gentlemen - President Feckless

From the comments:

Mitt is funny. He's too chicken to stand up to Rush Limbaugh, and he calls Obama feckless? Mitt is an amorphous jellyfish who HAS no actual positions on anything. (I'm seriously starting to wonder if he sleeps in a bucket at night.)

A Small Question

Lots of righteous indignation this week when Darryl Issa (R-Haugpecker) held a committee hearing on the non-troversy over Contraception Coverage, neglecting to invite any women to participate.

Outrage was voiced by the pundits along these lines: "How does Congress debate a Women's Health issue without any women!?!"

I guess I'm wondering why anybody would accept any debate in Congress regarding ANY policy issue that doesn't include women.

You make your point stick a lot better if you can at least make it look a little less obviously political.

Both Sides Do It

But one side ain't been tryin' this shit.

First, take a tweet from an Obama staffer:

Then, ignoring the the actual content (not just the context) of the Milbank piece Messina referred to, pretend that it's the Dems who're insulting Latinos.

And guess what?  Because they never check on anything, the rubes will swallow it whole.  Another bit of "evidence" is manufactured and another "truth" is born.

(hat tip = Wonkette)

Uh-Oh

I've seen a lot of posts in the last several months - on Lefty/Progressive websites mostly - that put up quotes or video clips from some "conservative" or another saying something that seems to be outside the norm for what passes for conservatives these days; asking what's happening to the Right Wing?  Why do these guys sound kinda reasonable all of a sudden?

Judge Napolitano on DumFux News:


Some are saying it's because the freaks that have been created by Rush and Rupert over the years are now out of the lab and threatening the villagers, so the propagandizers are trying to walk it all back a little.  Or maybe it's because Roger Ailes knows how to read, and he sees the polling numbers are softening to the point of meltdown.

Why does a media conglomerate that has no qualms about identifying itself as a proponent of an ideology suddenly veer away from that ideology?  I dunno, but I really do hope it's something mundane like Ad Revenues or Voter Disgust instead of my own little paranoid visions.

It pays to remember that the bad guys don't show up looking like the bad guys.  That's how they get in.  Tyranny and subjugation always arrive draped in a flag, clutching the scared text.

US Senate tries again on SOPA and PIPA.

Michigan's Public Act 4

Both Sides Do It

Except they don't.

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Obamacraft

I'm kinda all over the place when it comes to supporting and/or trashing Obama.  He got elected partly because he had that Keep-Hope-Alive thing goin' on in a way Jesse Jackson  only wishes he could've pulled off back in the 80s.  So it seemed like he was making a lot of promises that "Libruls" love to hear, and anyway, after 8 years of Junior's Play Time Cluster Fuck how can you not vote for a guy like Obama?  But what I liked about him was that he talked about getting things back into a more conservative alignment with the US Constitution - Habeus Corpus, Gitmo, Military Commissions, Wire Taps, Reality-Based Gov't, etc.  I think the main reason he's disappointed me on some issues is that he ran up against a tangle of interlocking bureaucracies and constituencies that went into warp drive because of 9/11, and have no regard for Separation of Powers or State Borders or anything else that's supposed to do the whole Checks and Balances thing.

So anyway, here we are, nearing the end of his 1st term, and Obama's been lambasted by Right Radicals for everything forever; and he gets slammed from his left for being The Evil Centrist, and now with this flap over contraceptives, a lot of the "Lefties" are pissin' and moanin' about "why did he have to go and give those asshole Republicans an issue they can use to rally the rubes!?!"

Look at the numbers (hat tip = JG):

"Giving them an issue" in this case means they're likely to jump up and identify themselves as loud-mouthed bullies who're trying to impose their minority viewpoint against the majority of voters.  And that's exactly what's happening.

And what about the timing?  I have to think Sebelius laid this little land mine on purpose.  She did it just a few days before CPAC, which almost ensures it'll be topic number one, which makes all the big oily turds float to the top of the punch bowl for all the world to see.  I just can't help thinking Obama is pulling a classic Isolate-And-Bypass maneuver on these guys.

Seems to me that while Big O is pulling the body politic back to the left (ie: towards the middle where it belongs), he's finding ways to get the right radicals to help him by pushing from their end as well.

Call me an O-bot if you wanna, but to me this looks like the guy is startin' to roll 'em up pretty good.

Saul Alinsky

And BTW: when somebody sneers about "Obama's just a community organizer", I've taken to asking a couple of clarifying questions.

Does it mean you're against communities in general, or just the ones that are organized? 

--or--

When you say "community organizer" like that, do you really mean "uppity nigger"?

Tweety Speaks

Matthews is almost always going on about the politics of it all, no matter what weird shit's going on.  Maybe I've just not watched him that closely, but I've never heard this from him before.



Seems to fit with this:

Hoping

Maybe the reason the GOP wingnuts are trying all this weird crap now is that they're feeling the heat from an electorate that's finally starting to wise up to their bullshit, and so they feel the need to push a bunch of stupid initiatives before voters throw 'em all out on their bony red butts.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch this morning:

Bill to require ultrasound before abortion advances

A bill that would require a woman seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound took another step toward passage in the Virginia Senate Monday — but not before outnumbered Democrats rose to express their opposition in clinical terms.
Sen. Janet D. Howell, D-Fairfax proposed an amendment — that any man seeking prescription medication for erectile dysfunction must first submit to a digital rectal exam and cardiac stress test.

Virginia has grown more moderate politically over the last several years - Falwell's dead and Crazy Ol' Pat is fading fast, and the DC suburbs are gettin' bluer all the time - so, as their hold on power continues to wane, the last of the die-hard crazies are going back to the well just one more time.

Differences Can Be Legit

Evidence that 'conservatives' and 'liberals' see the world differently.

From BBC (hat tip = Democratic Underground).

Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are studying liberals' and conservatives' reactions to happy or pleasant photographs and scary or sad ones in an effort to learn more about the cognitive underpinnings of political preference.

Watch the video (no embedding available).