A Fairly Simple Concept

I've been wondering pretty hard about how to articulate the basic shoot-yourself-in-the-foot strategy the GOP is trying to make work when it comes to winning elections and being able to "govern"*.

It just doesn't make any sense to alienate up to 95% of any given (eg: black) demographic if you expect to win - unless of course if you have a solid handle on ways to keep a sizable portion of those demographics from voting in the first place.  And that's what all the Voter Suppression - I mean Election Integrity efforts were all about - fucking duh.  (How many times do we have to hear about it from Maddow and every commentator left of Fred Barnes before we get it?).

Anyway, the GOP's real problem is this:


(hat tip = Balloon Juice)

...and the real real problem is that yes, actually it is indeed possible to fool some of the people all of the time.  But we can hope that the "some of the people" demographic is finally starting to shrink a bit.

*is it really "governing" if you're elected by a self-selecting minority?  I think there's a different word for that.

Deficit And Debt

No really - all your talk about your horrible tax burden and your right to keep the money you (haven't really) earned on your investments, and all the rest of the crap Repubs are always on about means precisely dick.

Today's Pix

It's Not A Cliff

First off, it's never about what they tell us it's about - almost exactly what Chris Hayes is saying here.

And I'll say this again - there's nothing better than listening to smart people talking about important stuff.

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The Bass Player

Hat tip = Little Green Footballs

We Are So Fucked

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Say It Ain't So, Peaches

David Petraeus (nicknamed Peaches as a teenager) has seen a good bit of shittiness in his career, but I get the feeling he ain't seen nothin' compared with the enormity of what's coming down on him now.

So far, it's been just kind of interesting to watch the Villagers as they cluck their tongues and wag their fingers at him, acting shocked that he'd let himself in for something like this.  I get the feeling that a bunch of 'em knew about it (or at least suspected it - because they go to the same parties as all of the players in this High School Fuck-Around Melodrama) and now they get to pretend they're not just jumping up and down on the guy's head yelling, "See?  I told you this'd blow up in your face, and you'd end up helping us sell a shitoad of diapers and deodorant".  For the Press Poodles, this is way better than the standard Dead White Girl story any day.

My take: unless there's a serious threat to People or Mission, I don't care if he's fucking frogs.  Everything else is just Reality Porn you can get on basic cable 24/7.

Not that this is related - well maybe, but barely:

Connections

Last Tuesday, in some places, voters legalized Gay Marriage and Pot.  This is exactly what they needed to do because it's what The Bible demands:

Leviticus 20:13 --"If a man should lie with another man, they should be stoned".

We've just been reading it wrong.

Today's Pix

The Sphere, The Fog, And The Ark

God love The Onion.



hat tip = Little Green Footballs

What We Learned

The majority of Political Punditry since last Tuesday has been about how Romney &/or Winger Media &/or GOP Voters blew the election.  But I think what needs to be addressed here - and hammered home until it's accepted as Gospel - is that the Republican party leaders decided the core of their strategy was to make Obama a one-term POTUS.  Nothing else - just that.

It failed miserably - and why anybody has to take any time to point that out to anybody is beyond the understanding of the Swamis.  C'mon, when you lose a general election by almost 3 points and 126 Electoral Votes, you can't make any credible claims to having worked out anything that even remotely resembles good policy alternatives.

Your "policy" failed.

Your party failed.

You failed.

And when you lose the election among the various demographic subsets by 30 or 40 or 90 points, you have to acknowledge that your "policy" has been repudiated by the voters in terms of certainty greater than what we use to describe the local effects of Gravity, or to predict that the sun will rise tomorrow morning somewhere to the east of wherever the fuck we're standing right now.

So here's the thing, Mr Senate Minority Leader:  Get up off your dead brown-eyed ass and start helping.  Step up or step aside.

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

The Baby Whisperer

Add that to Obama's résumé.

via Democratic Underground:

Last Friday (11/2/12) President Obama was speaking at our local high school. I took my 10wk old son with me. I did pack some formula in the bag as I knew the place would be packed and was unsure about breastfeeding in front of thousands.

My son is an eater and seeing as we were there about 4hrs he had no problem devouring the 8oz I packed. So there I was front row with a hungry baby. I knew I didn't want him to start crying, as the President had just begun to speak, so I covered him up with his blanket and let him go to town.

I noticed the President glance at me while speaking and give a little smile. I thought surely I imagined it. Then, when he was done speaking he came down to do the usual crowd greeting, shaking hands and whatnot. As soon as he got close enough, he pointed to me and gestured his hands in the "hand me the baby" manner. So I handed my son over! He danced with him a second and kissed him on his forehead. As he was handing him back he smiled, nodded at me, and said good job. Everyone has been asking why he told me good job and I just giggle. Here I was worried about breastfeeding in front of all those people and the only person who noticed was The President of the United States, and he supports it! Best feeling EVER!

A golden oldie:




The Prez has some skills and he's gotten lots of practice.  Maybe this time, he can get the House Repubs to gentle down enough to give him a chance to work his magic.

I guess sometimes, the people who really just need a good hug are the ones who're most resistant to kindness.

Watch out, Mr Speaker - The Baby Whisperer is coming.  And if you're not careful, he will comfort you.

Boycott Frenzie

From Addicting Info:

Fox Business Network reported recently that Zane Tankel, CEO of Apple-Metro, an Applebee’s franchisee group for the New York City area, said that Applebee’s “won’t hire more people” because the Affordable Care Act would cost the company “some millions of dollars.” Consumer anger erupted nearly immediately and brought with it a Twitter hashtag calling on consumers to #boycottApplebees.

Great - now we can add Applebee's to the list.  Not that I need any more good reasons to avoid going out to a phony-looking cookie-cutter franchise joint for some shitty food.  It's just that it gets a little hard to keep it all straight.

Chick-Fil-A
Papa John's
Applebee's

Generally, you shouldn't be punished for speaking your mind, but if you decide to beat up on your employees because of your mis-perception of something that hasn't even happened yet, then you're the one who's got a beat-down coming.

And BTW also too - letting your personal politics make your business decisions for you means you're something of a fucking idiot and you should probably not be in charge anymore.

After Veteran's Day

A different look from a different perspective, only to see the same thing.



hat tip = Wonkette

Good TV

..is supposed to be one of the great oxymorons, but when it's Key&Peele?  Not so much.

God Love The Onion

Florida

A statement from Gov Scott, (R-FL)

“We are glad that so many voters made their voices heard in this election, but as we go forward we must see improvements in our election process,” Scott said in a statement. “I have asked Secretary of State Ken Detzner to review this general election and report on ways we can improve the process after all the races are certified.”

Dear Governor Scott,
FUCK YOU, ya fuckin' jerk.

Yikes (again)

On Saturday, I posted a video with David Frum lambasting the GOP (Yikes).

Well, here's his piece from The Daily Beast yesterday:

Some combative conservatives may wish that Mitt Romney had talked more about the various plots and conspiracies they believed Obama to have launched upon the land: Fast & Furious, ACORN, Pigford, U.N. bike lanes, Obama’s imagined plan to abolish the suburbs. But while this kind of angry talk may gain eyeballs on Hannity, it’s not the stuff that swings undecided voters in Colorado and ­Virginia—­especially not the women voters who formed 53 percent of the electorate on Tuesday; or the moderates, men and women, who formed 41 percent of it; or the nonreligiously observant, who formed three quarters of it. Only 34 percent of the vote Tuesday was made up of white men. The share of the vote that was made up of older, conservative white men must have been much smaller still. Fox Nation never was more than a very tiny slice of the American nation, and it was only sad self-delusion that ever led anyone to think otherwise.

And deep down, we all know it.

Yet if we know that extremism is dangerous, why do we see so much of it?

I think it's easy to see how the GOP policies would've been just as effective at sinking Romney as was the shit-for-brains ding-bat loonies of Fox Nation etc, but at least Frum knows the Republican Party can't go on acting like a bunch of Bag Ladies, Ripple-fueled Oracles and Polyester Prophets if we're ever gonna get back to where we can have a real discussion with each other about real things.

Just Wondering

The Citizens United decision made it possible (some say probable; some say inevitable) for somebody like Karl Rove to push and pull all the levers, moving massive amounts of secret money around the election to manipulate the vote and get a result that was anything but what "the average American voter" wanted to have happen.

Some will now say Obama's win proved that was a false assumption.  I'm not so sure - it has to play out over a few more cycles before we know the full effect.  Hopefully, of course, we can get our shit together enough to change the law and push back against the tides of Plutocracy.  But for now, I have to stop and ask, "Hey, Secret Donors, you dumped a boatload of cash into this thing and you got bupkis - now what?"

Conventional wisdom has Karl Rove being slow-roasted over an open flame by his very rich and powerful clients who really really really hate to lose, but I'm not convinced we're anywhere close to being out of those particular woods.  Not yet anyway.

But last - I'd really like to ask this of all those good folks, mostly in all those deep red precincts who go out and vote in all good faith: You pay hard-earned dollars for energy and food and clothing and everything you need to live your lives - and there're Corporateers who're in charge of those companies you spend all those dollars with - is it right for them to charge you for the money they spend on what amounts to a scheme of legalized bribery?  Do you think you should pay (eg) $3.85 for a gallon of gas so ExxonMobil can take even a few pennies of that to spend on getting some yahoo from Kansas elected to the US Senate where he'll be sure to vote in favor of keeping the Big Oil Subsidies in place?  Do you really think that's a good system?  Really?

You guys are always complaining (and rightly so in some ways) that your government is taking taxes from you with one hand and using the money to buy a club so the other hand can beat you over the head with it.  What if it's Monsanto doing that?  What if it's GE?  Or Wal-Mart?  Or United Airlines?

I should say now that I'm not talking about how The Government used to be the enemy, but now the enemy is The Corporateer.  There are no real enemies in any of this.  There are certainly some people who behave like dastardly villains - I'll give ya that, but the enemy is not a person or even an organizational entity at all.  The enemy is, always has been, and always will be Too Much Power In Too Few Hands.

So Turd Blossom may or may not lose his head over all of this - he played the game and it remains to be seen if he'll pay the price.  I'd venture a casual guess and say that his career as Master Puppeteer is over now, but who knows?  I am pretty sure about a couple of things: one is that there's a giant hole in the GOP machinery right now, and the other is that power vacuums don't stay unfilled for long.

Post Racial My Ass

A few choice tweets from around the cyberverse via Jezebel:

And let's see what happens when we map these little nuggets of wisdom from the "real Americans".

(hat tip = Addicting Info & Floating Sheep)