By liberal japonicus
The title is a hangover from the detour into Portnoy’s complaint. I didn’t see it and I’m now at a a retreat with students. I caught a small bit of one commentator saying that Romnet behaved like an alpha male and that this might hurt him. Given the amount of testosterone that gets tossed aroun here, I’m not sure if we will any dent, but have at it.
I’ve already enjoyed testosterone “release” regarding the debate on the “shiny toys” thread, but now we also have the erstwhile former GE CEO Jack Welch becoming an employment statistics “truther” via Twitter.
If you Google “Jack Welch massages quarterly earning numbers at GE”, you’ll find plenty about Welch’s close knowledge and extensive experience of funky numbers.
I imagine Welch will be on Joe Kernan’s morning show this week on CNBC to double-down on his charges, and Kernan no doubt will be happy to play Mary Jane Reed, the Monkey, to Alexander Portnoy Welch’s right-wing ejaculations.
Didn’t Jon Stewart once joke that “Portnoy’s Complaint”, and not the Old Testament or the Talmud, was the fundamental Jewish text?
Yes, I should have gotten this up sooner.
I just caught one thing on MSNBC where one commenter said that Romney came across like the alpha dog and Obama’s was less in your face which might make a difference with those mythical undecided women voters. Any thoughts on that?
I saw that nth dimensional chess was referenced, but I never had the impression that Obama was a super debater and the only reason people were predicting a rout was because it looked like mitt was going to trip over his d**k.
Blogviagra?
What’s a “super debater”, exactly?
Anyone who’s had the misfortune to watch Ann Coulter “debate” would surely agree that her … uhm … vivacity is more like Debate Romney’s than Debate Obama’s. Should Obama have been more Coulter-like in the debate?
Does truth — or even Truthiness — factor into the “super”-ness of a debater’s performance? Or does enthusiastic prevarication outweigh sober explanation every time?
Or does it take a good zinger to make a great debate? If so, does “… now, 5 weeks before the election, his big idea seems to be ‘Never mind'” count?
I understand that the working definition of superiority in political debates is such that Romney out-debated Obama on Wednesday night. But I suspect that the same working definition, applied to a debate over global warming between the lissome Ms Coulter and some dorky PhD physicist, would lead to a similar conclusion: the PhD was a lousy debater.
–TP
Good point, Tony. It was just that as I was leaving for this retreat, I saw the bashing of teeth over the debate. I should also note that this is on my new iPhone which is why the post got doubled. God, my fingers are fat…
Gnashing…
It seems to me that Obama’s pattern is to let the other side go first. This is a strategy that has its dangers, but (I wish I could remember where this quote comes from…)
“Obama’s was less in your face which might make a difference with those mythical undecided women voters. Any thoughts on that?”
Umm, which way? In fact, the question occurred to me.
If we want to be scornful of low-information voters, then maybe the ladies will all be overawed by the SOB’s sheer aggressive maleness. And it would have worked that way 40 or 50 years ago.
Take a concrete example: You could surely count on nearly all the Catholic women to embrace, pardon the expression, the givers of commands. Back then. Today? Hey, do think Mitt won over the nuns by this performance?
Just guessing, but I think the swing among all undecideds may not be strongly plus.
Thanks Porlock, I thought it was a interesting point but wondered if anyone else did
Brett and I watched in dismay as our candidates tacked to the black hole known as “The Center” where the magic pixie dust of zero marginal rates raises economic output to infinity and shattering the New Deal is the sin qua non of Liberalism. Breaching the event horizon leads inevitably to the singularity of The Grand Bargain.
Via Balloon Juice — Rick Santorum, yesterday:
“I’ve voted to kill Big Bird in the past. So, I have a record there that I have to disclose. That doesn’t mean I don’t like Big Bird. I mean, you can kill things and still like them, maybe to eat them, I don’t know.”
Setting aside that slaughtering Big Bird and feeding his carcass to the 47% as a sort of “free cheese” transitional measure as the New Deal is dismantled IS Rmoneys deficit reduction plan (Matt Taibbi said he didn’t understand why conservatives didn’t hurl bags of dog sh*t on stage at Rmoney for pulling out the old “cutting NPR will solve the deficit” chestnut), I am at one with bobbyp’s dismay in noticing Barack Obama in the background preparing Big Bird gravy from the Bowles-Simpson CookedBooks.
More seriously, the prospect of an Avignon Presidency is being raised by some wags. Certainly the groundwork of doubt in the legitimacy of a second Obama term is being laid (end to end; no surprise) in the voter fraud arena by the ever-victimized Republican Party (despite THEIR remarkable success at stealing elections) and if you throw in the ever-present specter of Strom Thurmond’s now completely unsheathed Mandingo obsession which has invaded the very bowels of the vermin, racist Republican Party, that would seem a logical next step in the developing second American Civil War.
This is where I begin to like Barack Obama’s growing facility with armed drone technology.
General Sherman with a domestic Drone Air Force.
I think that for many people, the sound might as well be off during the debate. “Winning” is determined by body language. I’d put a lot of reporters and pundits in the cartagory of those who dod not need to hear nythig to determine the winner except they do sometimes listen for tow things: obvious gaffes and zingers.
I think Romney’s attack oon Big Bird is a gaffe that will over time nutralize any votes he got by appearing to be macho. What’s macho about attacking Big BIrd? It’s just …ridiculous.
Wel this shows how deeply cynical I am about politica discourse in the US of A.
Considering how much trouble Romney made for himself over the past six months, just by running his mouth, Obama may have been using a “give him enough rope” strategy.
It might be working, too.
“What’s macho about attacking Big Bird?”
The part where Rmoney and the entire swaggering machismo Republican clown show and bullsh*t caucus cancels Big Bird’s unemployment insurance and health insurance and then rolls down the window at the stop light in their stretch mini-Cooper clown car and tells Big Bird to get a minimum-wage job at the poultry farm.
Firing Jim Lehrer mid-debate was a deft touch too to somehow prove the macho bona-fides.
It’s a species of sadism endemic to the hormonal type. It’s not enough to do the supposed job on the Other for these scum, but some trash-talking sand in the face action is required to be part of the towel-snapping in the locker room afterwards.
NPR, for these tough guys, is just the meek faggot in the high school locker room who gets the first goosing.
You see it in male sports particularly.
I can always tell when I’m in a game against a Republican baseball player or players.
There’s the sneering trash talk right up front with these people. You could almost see Ann Coulter grabbing her package and spitting at the catcher’s feet in appreciation of Rmoney’s plucking of Big Bird’s tail feathers.
These are the types for which the high hard one, the spikes-up hard slide, the f*ck you, and if they want to go, the cold-cock kick in the nuts, where both their testosterone and their brains live, were created.
Yes, it’s ridiculous.
Until you get the hang of it, like for example John Adams and Thomas Jefferson did back in the day.
Discourse?
That’s what Mrs. Lincoln was trying to hear over the gunfire.
Well, this is the testosterone thread, right?
To belabor the baseball analogy, Obama needs to lose the Pumpsie Green* act and bring on his Jackie Robinson game.
Was he just dancing off third during this first debate.
It doesn’t count if you don’t score.
Ignore Branch Rickey’s counsel regarding the angry black man improprieties and go into home with spikes flying and, for good measure, on the way back to the dugout flip the bird to white trash Solly Hemus in the other dugout, who’s leading the racist chorus in the cheap seats.
*Completely unfair to Pumpsie Green, who was a solid ballplayer and a good man. It’s just that Pumpsie, or Rochester, or Sabu, is the kind of name that Dinesh D’Souza fancies for himself, the punk.
I suppose basketball would fit better, wouldn’t it?
Maybe Obama is biding his time down court and planning on passing the ball to himself late in the game for his patented three pointer at the buzzer.
Ignore Branch Rickey’s counsel regarding the angry black man improprieties and go into home with spikes flying..
Absolutely. The whole “Don’t be an Angry Black Man” business is very annoying. I don’t know who started that, but it’s a mistake.
I’d love a President, black or white, who got angry at some of the crap going on.
I think there are two flavors to that argument. The first, as above, counsels that Obama not be angry. The second, I think, simply acknowledges that this stricture operates on the way the president comports himself. I suppose that the two arguments could be seen to overlap, but the latter one is more like noting it as a frame rather than a recommendation.
LJ,
I don’t understand your comment, really.
Could you clarify?
Thanks.
Countme-in,
Completely unfair to Pumpsie Green, who was a solid ballplayer and a good man.
Whether Green was a good man or not I don’t know, but “solid ballplayer” is a stretch. Give him credit though, for being the first black player on the Red Sox (in 1959!!) and enduring the extraordinary stresses that no doubt entailed.
If I didn’t know better, and I don’t, I’d think Romney did a couple lines before the debate.
Well, I guess I should say, given the logic of that statement, which leads to my thinking that Romney was powdering his nose, that I don’t actually think Romney did any blow, whether I have any way of knowing that or not, but that he definitely acted like someone who was zooted, maybe not to the nth, but to some non-zero degree, what with the red face and bulging blood vessels and sweaty upper lip and the I-can’t-shut-up-so-fnck-you-Jim-Lehrer, rapid-fire, talking-out-his-ass sort of verbosity that often precedes by only a few short hours the oh-sh1t-it’s-starting-to-be-daytime-and-I’m-nowhere-close-to-being-able-to-fall-asleep-and-I’m-out-of-weed-and-beer heebie-geebies that I don’t imagine him experiencing but do wish upon him because that sh1t’s no fun and I don’t like him a little bit.
I mean, right?
This is from my iPhone so I can’t do much right now. I’ll try and get a comment explaining this evening.
byomtov:
I guess I should supply context, in this case, any guy who can play major league ball for four years is a solid ballplayer in my book, though error-prone defensively.
But, yeah, he wasn’t Brooks Robinson, or even Lenny, Dick, or Gene Green.
But he had a decent on base percentage in his four years. I could see Billy Beane picking him up for today’s Oakland A’s based on that stat alone.
Then, of course, he accompanied pitcher Gene Conley off the team bus for one of the great drunks in baseball history, with Conley gone for 68 hours and even trying to catch a plane to Israel.
Google that. 😉
Hairshirthedonist:
Maybe Romney spent his debate practice time with Hunter Thompson and William F. Burroughs.
Then there was that odd, simpering, condescending smile he cast at Obama while the latter was speaking, like maybe Romney had broken down and given his houseboy some book-learning and then the boy had become uppity and now was being sold at auction below the market rate because of his contrary nature and insistence on being called Mista Tibbs when what the hedge fund groupies really wanted was to be served another plate of canapies.
The Big Bird comment is already generating some responses. Of which, I must confess that I find this one, comparing taking out Big Bird with taking out bin Laden, quite biting.
Big Bird, and Ernie, and Miss Piggy are much greater enemies of the American Volk than bin Laden was.
Mark Steyn, on the editorial page of today’s Investors Business Daily, which gesticulates like a cartoon Mussolini from its First Amendment balcony every day, said that Sesame Street is responsible for the “infantilization of America”.
Kermit the Other brought out the inner child in all of us and taught our children to spell and share — grievous, never to be forgiven sins.
But bin Laden made men of the down-trodden filth on the American Right.
He gave them a Homeland Uber Puppetry.
Keeping bin Laden alive was important to the Right, much like they still disinter Ronald Reagan periodically to refresh the dye in his hair.
If Jim Henson had not died a natural death, Dick Cheney would have mobilized the Navy Seals.
This is why I’ve always believed puppets should be heavily armed.
The victim right, the flaccid dummies between their legs unresponsive to self puppetry, haven’t been so victimized since Charley Horse mounted Sari Lewis’ hand and in a rare children’s TV editorial moment, told the John Birch Society to go f*ck itself, back when they were a ragtag lumpen mob of scum instead of the clear and present danger they are now.
Lewis would have been banned from TV but the American Right, ever vigilant, was too busy taking Soupy Sales off the air for causing our bananas to cream, which Portnoy took to heart.
Puppets have had to lay low ever since, with the exception of Republicans in the House and Senate who have the busy, soiled hands of Grover Norquist, Rush Limbaugh, and Ralph Reed up the backs of their brownshirts, when they aren’t down the front of their pants.
Ayn Rand ventriloquized some wonderfully wooden puppets.
They f*cked each other selfishly for thousands of pages and called it architecture, or industry, or job creation …or something.
What’s macho about attacking Big Bird?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_10/daylight_video_romney_gangnam040335.php
just got back from the retreat and am about to crash (tomorrow is a holiday here), so I’ll try to explain.
While I don’t know of any pundit types saying that Obama shouldn’t be an Angry Black Man (ABM), there was an anecdote from the campaign about Obama’s walk and how, at one point in the primary contest after notching up some victories, Obama’s walk became a strut and Axelrod was reported to have said that he had to tell Obama to ratchet it down. (trying to find the anecdote with the search terms Obama+Axelrod+strut led to a number of sites that seem to be less than Obama friendly, if you know what I mean)
On the other hand, the other stories I have read are not advising Obama to not be the ABM, but simply noting that this is the dynamic. The best of these is Coates Fear of a Black President
For most of American history, our political system was premised on two conflicting facts—one, an oft-stated love of democracy; the other, an undemocratic white supremacy inscribed at every level of government. In warring against that paradox, African Americans have historically been restricted to the realm of protest and agitation. But when President Barack Obama pledged to “get to the bottom of exactly what happened,” he was not protesting or agitating. He was not appealing to federal power—he was employing it. The power was black—and, in certain quarters, was received as such.
No amount of rhetorical moderation could change this. It did not matter that the president addressed himself to “every parent in America.” His insistence that “everybody [pull] together” was irrelevant. It meant nothing that he declined to cast aspersions on the investigating authorities, or to speculate on events. Even the fact that Obama expressed his own connection to Martin in the quietest way imaginable—“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”—would not mollify his opposition. It is, after all, one thing to hear “I am Trayvon Martin” from the usual placard-waving rabble-rousers. Hearing it from the commander of the greatest military machine in human history is another.
Coates’ point, I believe, is not that he is advising Obama to not be angry, it is explaining why he can’t be angry. Perhaps this is distinction without a difference, but I don’t think that the problem is people telling Obama to not act angry, it is a societal fact that if he does do so, he’s going to be in trouble. I understand that at some point, explaining it becomes excusing it, but as Coates says
But when President Obama addressed the tragedy of Trayvon Martin, he demonstrated integration’s great limitation—that acceptance depends not just on being twice as good but on being half as black. And even then, full acceptance is still withheld. The larger effects of this withholding constrict Obama’s presidential potential in areas affected tangentially—or seemingly not at all—by race. Meanwhile, across the country, the community in which Obama is rooted sees this fraudulent equality, and quietly seethes.
This comes across as if I am lecturing you and I don’t mean to. I’m sure that you are well aware of how many people couch their complaints about the Obamas in a way that suggests a double standard, from complaints about sleeveless dresses, dishonoring the Resolute desk, Obama’s tux all of which point to the fact that Obama is, in many ways, hemmed in, which makes me think that many of the people talking about Obama not being an Angry Black Man are actually just pointing to the way things are rather, which is different than saying he has to avoid being an ABM.
I don’t know if that is clearer, but if it isn’t, I’m happy to make another run at it if you tell me where it doesn’t make sense.
“If I didn’t know better, and I don’t, I’d think Romney did a couple lines before the debate.”
Far more likely of his opponent, seeing as Obama is the one with a history of drug use.
If we are to believe PBS, only about 15 percent of their budget comes from the government. Add a day to each pledge drive, and they ought to be able to get that down to zero. Big Bird? I think that avian is actually a profit center for PBS, carrying some of the rest of the load.
So the question isn’t whether Big Bird should die, it’s whether Big Bird should be kicked off welfare.
I say, yes. Sure, PBS is keen. We’re in debt, and getting deeper in debt all the time. Under such circumstances you stop doing a lot of things that are nice.
Under such circumstances you stop doing a lot of things that are nice.
but never, under any circumstances, may you reduce “defense” spending, nor increase taxes to the non-disastrous rates of the past.
show me a “conservative” who would allow for new income and a reduced “defense” budget and i’ll have seen my first financial conservative.
That’s like the ur-Bellmore comment right there. Starts with a little “I’m rubber, you’re glue,” goes on to conflate PBS with Sesame Workshop (formerly the Children’s Television Workshop) and includes I bunch of “I think” with no cititations whatsoever. Victory!
I’d love to cut “defense” spending, most of which isn’t spent on defense. The bipartisan consensus against doing so doesn’t imply you have to continue wasting money elsewhere.
So PBS is a waste of money then, rather than being nice? …just so we’re clear.
That, Brett, and one generally doesn’t look like he’d rather be taking a nap than debating just after doing a couple lines. Now, if I’d mentioned anything about being up all of the previous night doing lines, you might be onto something.
Here’s another go at the Rmoney going gangnam video.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/videos/2012/10/02/gangnam-style-goes-political.html
It’s funny, and macho.
Even if one thought PBS and Big Bird weren’t “nice”, it’s ridiculous to bring them into a serious discussion about the Federal budget. Romney should be telling people what tax loopholes he’d close and where the serious budgetary savings are supposed to come from.
Not that I think our economic discussions should be centered on the deficit anyway.
Attacking Big Bird as a way of addressing budget problems just doesn’t resonate in the electorate like attacking “nig–bums on welfare.” Big Bird just doesn’t work as the evil Other to blame things on.
And, of course, no Repubican politician has any intention of working toward a balanced budget in the short term or the long term.
If you can’t cut the little stuff, how the heck can you ever expect to cut the big stuff?
Ahh, the old economy is like a household budget mistake. Might want to check out this and this
But since this analogy is invoked so often, I hope that the next time you hear it used you will challenge the speaker to explain exactly why a government’s budget is like a household’s budget. If the speaker claims that government budget deficits are unsustainable, that government must eventually pay back all that debt, ask him or her why we have managed to avoid retiring debt since 1837-is 173 years long enough to establish a “sustainable” pattern?
Ah, the old economy isn’t like a household budget rationalization for borrowing endlessly for day to day expenses.
A household can, of course, remain in debt indefinitely, if care is taken to keep the debt from growing. Pay the minimum on the card, put a restaurant tab on it once in a while, the balance just sits there, never getting out of hand, and the fact that you never do pay it off entirely does not ruin you. Just leaves you a little poorer. Sometimes the balance goes up quite a bit, when an emergency comes up, and then you live a bit poorer for a few years paying it back down.
A household can also get into the habit of using the credit card for regular day to day expenses, so as to be able to live above it’s means. The interest on the Visa is paid with the Mastercharge, and visa versa. This, of course, can NOT go on indefinitely, though it can go for a remarkably long time before the house of cards falls down around you.
Governments do, of course, go bust from time to time. Rather spectacularly. So it’s not as though they’re immune from getting over their heads in debt. Usually this is preceded by supposedly wise men explaining why government borrowing is fundamentally different from private. More and more vehemently, in fact, as the debt mounts higher. And then, suddenly, everything starts falling apart, interest rates start skyrocketing, the cost of carrying the debt becomes impossible to sustain. When only a few years earlier all the wise men were declaring it was madness to worry.
Frankly, “If the speaker claims that government budget deficits are unsustainable, that government must eventually pay back all that debt,”, then the speaker is a straw man. Since a real world speaker will assert that the government will more likely repudiate the debt eventually, either openly or by hyperinflation.
But go on helping the administration rationalize buying votes today by piling up debts to impoverish our children. Maybe you’ll be lucky, and get hit by a car before it all falls down.
But go on helping the administration rationalize buying votes today…
name a decade in which that wouldn’t apply. feel free to go as far back as the word “administration” has a meaning in the English language.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. At some point, frugality becomes idiocy. Picking some small, isolated part of the budget like PBS to prove how serious you are about reducing the debt is BS to me, but to you, it proves that Mitt means what he says. Whatever.
If you can’t cut the little stuff, how the heck can you ever expect to cut the big stuff?
Isn’t this just transparently silly? Just because I spend a few extra bucks each day buying a slightly fancier lunch than the minimum I can tolerate (say, tossing some rice and beans into a rice cooker), it doesn’t follow that I have absolutely no control of my finances and that I’ll empty my life savings to buy a ferarri tomorrow just because I drove by a ferarri dealer.
I mean, some sentences seem contradicted by the most basic observations of human beings around us.
Yes, Turb, reality has a well-known…
Ah, never mind. You already know it.
By the way, trying to get to LJ’s new post about crooked timber vs LGM just gets me a blank page. Is that just me?
Shane, I got a blank page initially, when I posted it, but reloading made it come up, so there might be some funkiness there. I’ve just made a few small changes and republished it. Please let me know if you still get a blank page.
Subsidies are something one can discuss in a serious way but I think it shows total lack of seriousness to start with something completely insignificant. If one is talking about deficits in the trillion $ range, any discussion below the billion $ level is silly. You may say that taken together the small stuff adds up too but then please lump together the small stuff first. It’s like the cliche that the first step a company facing bankruptcy takes is to investigate the overuse of paperclips by the office staff. If there is an indication that there is massive theft of office supplies that may be a point worthy of discussion but otherwise it looks more like the management trying to shift the blame for catastrophic performance away and down on those with the least power to resist. A discussion of subsidies is necessary and should play a part in a presidential debate but it should be a) concentrating on relevant sums and cases and b) honest. The case of PBS violated the first and that of energy the second.
It’s not like we’re dismantling the military, you know. This isn’t a case of not sweating the small stuff while going after the big stuff. This is a case of not even being able to do the small stuff. Not even being able to get started on cutting.
“Men who had voted for the losing presidential candidate, John McCain, suffered a big drop in their testosterone after hearing of his defeat.The scientists reported that the male McCain voters “felt significantly more controlled, submissive, unhappy and unpleasant.” The testosterone effect was “as if they directly engaged head-to-head in a contest for dominance” and lost, one researcher told a reporter when the study was published in 2009. The men who voted for Obama fared better. The researchers speculated that there might be an Obama baby boom.”
Via Washington Monthly.
The results of too much master debating.
Portney …. horns up on a dilemma.
Our mothers warned us, having done our laundry.
I suppose I should go read the original study because I fear what I’m going to learn about its methodology.
After all, Erick Erickson et al seemed to maintain a maximum frequency level of jagoffery and wankery throughout with one hand tied behind their backs.
Since a real world speaker will assert that the government will more likely repudiate the debt eventually, either openly or by hyperinflation.
Argument by assertion, and an incorrect one at that. Major double fault.
Also, debt does not “impoverish our children”. We carried a tremendous debt burden following WWII….were we “impoverished” during the 50’s and 60’s? If you give your kid a T-bill is that an asset or a liability?
“Were we impoverished during the 50’s and 60’s?”
We had 91 to 93 percent marginal tax rates at the high end for the entire 1950s and 70% at the high end after Kennedy, with marginal rates even at the lowest levels of income far above where they are now.
That burden, combined with the debt hangover from World War II, caused our annual GDP to crater by double digits every year, given the enervation of the job creators and the cutting and finally the removal of allowances from the children of that time.
I know this, because my Dad sat us down at the kitchen table and gave us a choice of receiving our weekly allowance OR making up the shortfall by removing our troops from West Germany.
We compromised by sending our two sisters into prostitution, the men being required at home for the hard productive work of whining and wankery.
Nevertheless, we lost the Cold War to the Russkies and Chinese restaurants proliferated on both coasts.
Black anchor babies of suspicious and uncertain provenance eventually found their way today to the highest levels of our government when we weren’t looking.
By God, man, read your alternative history!
Via TPM, this is funny:
http://blogs.ajc.com/mike-luckovich/2012/10/05/107-mike-luckovich-cartoon-big-bird/
The footage was later altered by elements of the Christian Right by photo-shopping out the females in the Big Bird situation room.
Well, the Dems were willing to agree to quite large cuts to the social safety net (remember the cat food commission?) but the GOP refused to take yes for an answer (which made many on the left rather happy since it blocked the massive sell-out of the spineless to the Right). Just a few years ago the Right would have opened the champagne bottles for a double (or even triple) victory: a step forward to dismantle the New Deal, the Dems cutting into their own flesh (and sticking it to the poor while being able to at minimum share the blame because it was bipartisan not just GOPism).
Sorry to go back to the original question of the post. I didn’t read any “alpha male” into the debate performance nor do I think the “tone” of Romney’s performance hurt him in any way with the voters both are going after. Maybe since I “debate” a lot as an attorney confidence and command of the message doesn’t seem necessarily “alpha male” to me?
Interestingly (to me at least), I didn’t think the difference was as great as most observers. Yes, I thought it was a clear win for Romney. Cleek’s “Completely disinterested” is a description of Obama I’d mostly agree with but I don’t know if I would have gone with “completely,” frex. Did Obama’s campaign not watch the primary debates? Did they think this was going to be an easy walk?
And, IMO, trying not to be the “angry black man” had nothing to do with the debate except to show that race is going to be brought in by some no matter what happens. See Countme-in’s interpretation of Romney’s “smile.” Really? Obama’s performance had nothing to do with him trying not to be “angry black.”
As for Big Bird, the fact that the statement can be read so different means it wasn’t the best analogy. lj has it right about budget cutting seriousness. Good argument. And Belmore has it right, too. So IMHO, Romney shouldn’t have made his point using Big Bird, not to mention it’s a program that could actually survive in a free market. Antiques Roadshow would have made a better target (but what do I know?).
BTW, I did appreciate what seemed to me to be some genuine engagement after the debate by the families. The President showed a lot of class in engaging beyond the usual “good job see you next time.”
“Obama’s performance had nothing to do with him trying not to be “angry black.”
For the record, in another comment on this thread I also counseled Big Bird and his fellow puppets to carry concealed weaponry and try to be “angry Muppet”, when the occasion arises.
I know it’s counter-intuitive when I’m deadly serious with an accompanying laugh track.
I would also note that Allen West’s crazy angry black guy act has gone over swimmingly among the Redstate crowd.
He makes the anti-Semite Al Sharpton look like Urkel.
Given West’s dicey murderous behavior while serving in Iraq, believe me, if he were a Democrat and expressed himself as he does now, you’d be seeing right-wing ads profiling him as a swarthy gangbanger.
I haven’t seen Democrats go after West’s slutty mother either, because we’ve been brainwashed all these years by Big Bird to be too f*cking “nice”.
I want Obama to be “angry liberal”, as in sneezing “Bullsh*t” into his hand as Romney is mid-sentence into some crapulous policy caterwauling and whipsawing.
Fox News ridiculed the Obamas for not bringing their daughters on stage after the debate, as the Romney’s did with theirs.
I’d like to think it was because the Obama kids told their parents they would take the face time opportunity to ask the Romney’s to tell their Republican surrogates publicly to stop characterizing their grandmother as a slut in a sling and their father as a Commie Kenyan.
The kids stayed home, to their credit.
If I were one of the Obama daughters, I’d have gotten all up in there on stage with Mr. Romney.
Jim Lehrer and Big Bird would have quit PBS right then and there, because they would seen that the era of “niceness” is over.
No more federal taxes poured down the rat hole of niceness.
Nope, from now on we’re subsidizing a**kicking and taking names.
We have seen muppets with guns: Meet the Feebles.
Got it. Thanks for the clarification countme-in. You actually had me laughing with the “bs” under-the-breath angry liberal picture. Oh, wait, you were serious?
Erick Erickson admits to attempting credit card fraud and impersonating a Russian as part of his ratf*cking operation.
via Eschaton:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/10/08/let-cnns-erick-erickson-bore-you-with-his-attem/190462
I wish I had shot Erickson in self-defense when he waved his wife’s shotgun in my face during the 2010 Census.
I turned the other cheek, feeling sorry for white trash.
That’s what I get for watching too much Sesame Street with my son when he was a kid.
Then I could have married Erickson’s desperately neglected wife and raised his little cracker vermin children as Americans.
We could have Justice Souter and goat f*cker Moe Lane over to dinner and see how that goes, the punk.
As a debate prep, President Obama should watch this video of the liberal Australian Prime Minister tearing a new one in the lying vermin conservative leadership in her country.
Watch the smirking piece of sh*t’s face as his expression changes as the Prime Minister wields her verbal machetes.
The Aussie Prime Minister’s speech is worth a link
“Erick Erickson admits to attempting credit card fraud and impersonating a Russian as part of his ratf*cking operation.”
I think the technical term for this is “investigative journalism”. At least, that’s what they used to call it, back when journalists were interested in actually verifying whether stuff like this was true, instead of taking a campaign’s word for it.
And, as it turns out:
Only Erickson could try to present the story of how his fraudulent donation to Obama’s campaign *failed to go through* as proof that the campaign fundraising operation is corrupt.
The man is a clown.
And back in the day, when they “used to call it” investigative reporting, the report would be “Hey, guess what, we tried to catch them out in fraud, and we failed”.
Brett, don’t hitch your wagon to the clown car.
the report would be
the report would be canned by any self-respecting editor because what the hell kind of publication wants to be associated with that kind of nonsensical nonstory?
come on guys, Erickson had to get come cover story for the russian porn download sites he put on his credit card. Or at least be able to take them as a business expense…
Yes, yes, I know: Any time an allegation of easily verified criminality on the part of a Democrat surfaces, it’s madness to lift a finger to check it out. The only reasonable thing to do is to dismiss it out of hand.
His point was that the donation wasn’t blocked by Obama’s campaign, it was blocked by his own bank. While it never would have gotten that far at Romney’s site, the CVS check would have halted the transaction immediately.
But you’re right, most editors would can that story, because most editors are Democrats, and stories that make Democrats look bad get routinely spiked.
it’s madness to lift a finger to check it out.
and once the conspiracy theory is disproven, there is no story – well, not the story the intrepid investigative journalist / partisan hack wanted to tell, at least.
His point was that the donation wasn’t blocked by Obama’s campaign, it was blocked by his own bank.
odds are, Romney’s bank is blocking the transactions, too; but they’re processing the transactions in real time instead of batch processing them like Obama is apparently doing.
but yes, more attention should be paid to foreign money in our elections.
odds are, Romney’s bank is blocking the transactions, too; but they’re processing the transactions in real time instead of batch processing them like Obama is apparently doing.
Yes, well, Romney being A FISCAL CONSERVATIVE!!11!! he wants to be sure he can waste his donors’ money as quickly as possible on the most expensive and inefficient television ad buy strategy:
Meanwhile I notice that all the choads who spent last election bleating “ACORN ACORN ACORN!!!11!”! didn’t appear to have a word to say about this.
Caputo manages to mention that this voter-registration contractor has been fired by the RNC while managing to pretend for the rest of the article that it hasn’t.
Baffling article. Republicans are playing defense…by performing an apparently (as far as you can tell from this shoddy article, which is not far at all) universal disassociation from and disavowal of the firm in question. That sounds a lot like circling the wagons to me. Not.
Voter-registration fraud is just as illegal and immoral when done by Republicans as when it is done by Democrats. No one should have to say this, but there it is.
Actually, I think all the people who fought for and passed what was essentially an unconsitutional bill of attainder against ACORN — who, lets recall, were the ones who pointed out all the probably-fraudulent registration forms to elections officials in the first place — should, in fact, have to say it. Out loud, on television, at gunpoint if necessary.
Republicans are playing defense…
after getting caught. the RNC knew exactly who they were hiring (Sproul was the former head of the AZ GOP), and they knew his reputation (hence the request for Sproul to create new company(s) to DBA).
but they got caught, red-handed.
OK, so I did the Erick Erickson experiment. Went to both Obama’s and Romney’s websites, made a donation to both in the name of Rufus T Firefly, 1313 Mockingbird Lane, in a real city but not the one I live in.
The donation was made with my personal credit card.
Romney’s campaign required the CVV, Obama’s did not.
Romney’s website kicked the donation out immediately, Obama’s did not.
More signficantly, IMO, Romney’s campaign included the following legalese, which Obama’s did not:
So, I agree with Erickson that Romney’s verification procedures are tighter than Obama’s.
Above and beyond Erickson’s statements, I strongly suggest that the Obama campaign add the legal sign-off to its donation page.
So, so far, no strong disagreement.
To go from there to a claim (which is the claim that Erickson is seeking to prove) that Obama is actively accepting and/or soliciting illegal donations from non US nationals is a pretty big jump. Something a little stronger than “you didn’t use CVV verification on your website” seems in order.
Because, as it turns out, Obama’s verification procedures were sufficient to *actually tag the donor as bogus*.
I have no problem with Erickson doing the legwork to see what was what, and I have no problem with him writing up what he found.
I have a very large problem with Erickson presenting what he found as evidence of illegal or unethical activity. Because no illegal or unethical activity appears to have occurred.
In fact, the results Erickson saw are consistent with the policies and procedures described by an Obama spokesperson in this piece, cited in Erickson’s article.
I won’t cut and paste, if you are interested click through, it’s paragraphs 11-13.
Long story short, Erickson’s donation was not accepted, and no evidence of illegal activity has been shown.
Long story even shorter, once again Erickson is full of crap.
russell, that legalese (and much more) is at the bottom of the final page of the Obama donation form:
By submitting the form above you confirm that the following statements are true and accurate:
I am a United States citizen or a lawfully admitted permanent resident of the United States.
This contribution is not made from the general treasury funds of a corporation, labor organization or national bank.
This contribution is not made from the treasury of an entity or person who is a federal contractor.
This contribution is not made from the funds of a political action committee.
This contribution is not made from the funds of an individual registered as a federal lobbyist or a foreign agent, or an entity that is a federally registered lobbying firm or foreign agent.
I am not a minor under the age of 16.
The funds I am donating are not being provided to me by another person or entity for the purpose of making this contribution.
also, i’d like to thank Erick Erickson for spurring me to donate another $50 to Obama.
i’ll take russell’s word that Romney’s page works as described 🙂
Erickson is committing journalism like I’m committing Olympic ski-jumping by commenting at Obsidian Wings.
That the profession of journalism is shot through these days with crapola (at the behest of the hallowed market) doesn’t in any way give me the impression that my commentary at Obsidian Wings is practicing journalism.
I was trained and worked in journalism for awhile and this ain’t it. My first editor was a free-market straight-arrow Republican and a solid editor, but liable to bias creep. My second editor was a hippie freak and a solid editor, but liable to bias creep.
But, neither of them were creeps on the scale of Erickson, who gives professional creeps a bad name.
No doubt Erickson and others of his ilk would, in a fabulous leap of the imagination (I’m committing citizen politeness with that wording), call themselves citizen-journalists, in which case they should have their heads examined by citizen-psychiatrists named Lucy in a van down by the river.
The term for what Erickson does is political ratf*cking. The term for what Daily Kos does is political ratf*cking.
Andrew Breitbart was merely a rat and a
f*cker, and a dead one at that.
You may believe Dan Rather engaged in political ratf*cking and not professional journalism too, but that doesn’t make Erickson a journalist anymore than medical malpractice by one professional brain surgeon accords you a medical degree.
I will give Erickson, the thick-necked, red-faced citizen ratf*cker cracker c*cksucker poseur, credit for consulting an attorney (citizen as*s-covering is what that is called) before his credit card fraud stunt, though a citizen-skeptic might wonder, in a purely unprofessional sense, whether his “attorney” is credentialed in any way whatsoever, given Erickson’s penchant for citizen reverse elitism.
I would ask who Erickson’s editors were, but who gives a f*ck, because his mother doesn’t count.
Brett, the frequent exchanges regarding Constitutional law on this site are interesting and your input is valued but you do know that McTX, and Sebastian, and Von and others here are professional attorneys and you’re not, right.
The First Amendment gives you and me the right to play attorneys on the internet. The professionals humor us, and I thank them for their gentleness, though they pretty much have to be polite given your interpretation of the Second Amendment.
I mean, you don’t really think that political internet blogging of the Erickson variety is any more that amateur bullsh*t artistry, do you?
Now, if you have any engineering advice you’d like to proffer, I’m all ears.
Slart, I have a few words to say about the specifications on your latest aeronautical payload project, if you’d like to step into my office.
Sure, of course they knew who he was. They hired him.
Whether they hired him to commit fraud is a claim of yours that you could substantiate if you felt the need. I’d be happy to read any link you might post to that effect.
Slarti: Whether they hired him to commit fraud is a claim of yours that you could substantiate if you felt the need.
Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?
russell, that legalese (and much more) is at the bottom of the final page of the Obama donation form:
I stand corrected, and my measure of the load of crap contained by Erick Erickson has just increased by a hundredweight.
Whether they hired him to commit fraud is a claim of yours that you could substantiate if you felt the need.
the benefit of the doubt can really only cover so much. Sproul has long had a reputation of unsavory practices w/r/t voter registration – the very job they hired him to do.
the surprise one experiences when discovering that someone like Nathan Sproul is playing fast and loose with voter registrations is the same kind of surprise one experiences upon learning that the documentary you hired James O’Keefe to produce is not actually an accurate portrayal of his subject.
i mean, come. on.
Sure. But there’s some difference between building a bridge to conclusions and jumping to them that you might want to examine some more. Or: what the hell; you don’t need to convince me, after all.
Isn’t this the same crowd that drubs Brett for argument by assertion? Imagine if Brett had made that kind of statement.
“you”?
But there’s some difference between building a bridge to conclusions and jumping to them that you might want to examine some more.
based on everything i’ve read, he’s a crook. i haven’t seen much to the contrary.
and my guess is that the RNC knows there’s serious trouble ahead should more of his shenanigans come to light. they’d be defending him and making money off the “liberals are trying to deter our vote sanctity efforts!” fauxrage, if they didn’t.
in other words: i see nothing in this that points to innocence on anyone’s part.
“you”?
:s/”you”?/one
:wq
err…. s/you/one
I think that if someone hires a person with a history of a certain kind of behavior it is reasonable to assume that they approve of the behavior. Either that or the individual that did the hiring is pretty incompetent.
I have the same opinion about an organization that hires a business with a well established negatie history.
Why don’t they make him piss in a cup?
Pissing hot is a prerequisite for that job.
Or should be.
Erickson is committing journalism like I’m committing Olympic ski-jumping by commenting at Obsidian Wings.
I couldn’t comment all day for whatever reason, so it took me until now to mention how fncking funny I found this. So thanks.
Based on everything I’ve read, ACORN was acting criminally through several election cycles before the Democratic party finally cut loose from them. Sure, they had an excuse for turning in the fraudulent registrations, but nothing required them to keep generating them, election after election. (And, remember, fraudulent registrations weren’t the only election crimes ACORN was involved in, they also got convicted of vote buying, among other crimes.)
Whereas this guy gets dropped almost instantly after he’s caught. Big contrast, and it’s not a contrast in which the GOP looks bad. Except in the eyes of Democrats, who see an excuse for anything a Democrat does, and nothing a Republican does.
In the meanwhile, I see O’Keefe has drawn blood again. Quite entertaining watching the response.
ACORN was acting criminally through several election cycles
Cite?
they also got convicted of vote buying
Cite?
Whereas this guy gets dropped almost instantly after he’s caught.
Uh, no, he got HIRED after he got caught. He got FIRED after doing it again.
Cites would be good.
It’s a long way down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKEDD1i4oGk
But, I’d venture to guess, Brett, based on my own ski-jumping warm-up on the intertubes this morning, that you could even cite the New York Times in support of some of your thesis, if you can bear to admit that it was among “everything that I’ve read”.
It may be true that most “editors” are registered Democrats, but I suspect O’Keefe has registered his video tape editing machine as a Republican.
We may even find more gaps from Nixon’s tapes on his cutting room floor.
In the meanwhile, I see O’Keefe has drawn blood again.
With all due respect, seriously, who gives a crap?
O’Keefe is a professional ankle-biter. Anything he does or says is immediately suspect. He has been caught out as a straight-up liar on every festering turd he has ever put in front of the public.
To say nothing of being, personally, a creepy weirdo.
There must be somebody, somewhere making an intelligent case for the conservative point of view. Larison’s pretty good. There must be some others.
O’Keefe is a punk.
Don’t hitch your wagon to the clown car.
“Anything he does or says is immediately suspect.”
With all due respect, (A great deal more than is due, since I don’t want to violate the civility rules here.) that’s just epistemic closure speaking.
Somebody on your side produces a secret recording with a gaping hole in it right at a crucial point, and it’s all, “Just a few seconds, an unavoidable accident, couldn’t be anything important in the gap.”
Somebody on my side produces recordings of multiple DNC employees facilitating felonies, and it’s a “clown show”.
Only the clown got somebody fired, because not everybody on your side is so drunk on the koolaid that they ignore what’s in front of their faces, and think they don’t have to respond to evidence of this nature.
… Somebody on my side …
Heh. Brett The Libertarian calls the loony right wing of the GOP his “side”. No surprise to anybody, I suppose — Brett himself possibly excepted.
–TP
So why did the keefer supposedly discover now? No one seems to be willing to say.
Somebody on your side produces a secret recording with a gaping hole in it right at a crucial point,
you can tell it’s crucial by the way Romney goes on and on about it, over and over, in interview after interview, even as it tanked his numbers, insisting that it puts all the rest of the video into context, right?
and what’s with all the “side” shit? i thought “conservatives” believed in moral absolutes ?
So why did the keefer supposedly discover now?
apparently he has a vid of some voter registration worker registering a person who says he wants to vote in two states, or something.
“you can tell it’s crucial by the way Romney goes on and on about it, over and over, in interview after interview, even as it tanked his numbers, insisting that it puts all the rest of the video into context, right?”
As I recall, he did go on for a bit about it, demanding the entire tape be released, then moved on when it became obvious Democrats were never going to release a complete version.
And O’Keefe has vids of multiple voter registration workers doing this.
A great deal more than is due, since I don’t want to violate the civility rules here.
Hey man, don’t hold back.
that’s just epistemic closure speaking.
No, it’s a freaking simple observation about O’Keefe’s history as a “journalist”.
Serial lying and misrepresentation earns immediate suspicion.
Seriously, O’Keefe is the guy you’re going to go to the mat for?
I don’t think there is much point in discussing things with Brett. He’s quite right about his epistemic closure.
But for thhe record for voting fraud to be effective at the state level it has to amount to thousands of votes in very close elections. Like the five thousand votes “found” by a Republican elections offical who used her personal computer to process voting data, the five thousand being just waht was needed to change the outcome of a Supreme Court election in WIsconsin.
Or thousands of robocalls to block the Democratic voter turn out efforts in New Hampshire. Or the thousands of illegal robocalls in multiple states in the 2008 election.
Or the multiple state effort to make it hard for people who don’t have cars to vote.
Or True the Votes organized efforts to intimidate people and keep them away from the polls.
But Brell will rationalize that all away. The rest of us need to see it for what it is: thuggery with the intention of undermining democracy on behalf of a political party.
And O’Keefe has vids of multiple voter registration workers doing this.
i would be willing to believe that O’Keefe has videos of people who may or may not be who he claims they are edited to look like they’re doing what he claims they are doing in a nonetheless completely artificial situation.
that’s all the trust he deserves. maybe more.
“i would be willing to believe”
Like I said, epistemic closure. What’s a better guide to reality, film footage, or what you feel like believing?
Are DNC employees double registering enough people to swing the election? Frankly, I’d be shocked if they were.
Are they offended by the idea of ballot fraud, if they think it’s fraud by their side? Evidently not, and that doesn’t trouble you?
Here is O’Keefe’s video.
Click through, take a look, and decide for yourselves if you think it presents iron-clad proof of voter registration fraud by OFA.
It shouldn’t need pointing out, but O’Keefe has been caught out, repeatedly, editing his video ‘gotchas’ in creative ways to misrepresent the actual exchanges he claims to be documenting.
And for “repeatedly”, please read “every freaking time”.
And guess what? These videos are *obviously* edited. Not even smoothly.
In only one of the videos do we even see the “investigative reporter” speaking the words we hear.
Do the words “voice over” mean anything to you?
But by all means, assume that my or anyone’s disinclination to take anything the man chooses to publish seriously is nothing but “epistemic closure”.
Seriously, I rarely agree with you on matters of substance, but you usually show more sense than this.
O’Keefe is a clown. An ankle-biter. A penny-ante jerk. A smart-ass punk milking his 15 minutes for whatever nickels he can con out of the Breitbart fan club.
Contra the Count, he is not even a ratf**ker, real ratf**kers are better at it than O’Keefe is.
But by all means, feel free to get his back.
Enjoy your ride in the clown car.
O’keefe’s a sex pervert, too.
“What’s a better guide to reality, film footage, or what you feel like believing?
Which film footage?
That presented for public consumption or the many minutes, probably hours, of footage that ended up on the cutting room floor, which presumably, together with Erick Erickson, the two of you making up the internet version of the Columbia Journalism Review, have viewed.
I’m a little surprised, given O’Keefe’s/Breitbart’s known history of funky, prevaricating sound and visual editing, AND the hard-headed grasp on reality you portray in your commentary here, that your eyes grant the word “reality” so readily to their product.
I read the New York Times on occasion, but my opinion of the reality they “report” took a header during the Judith Miller fiasco regarding her reporting on Iraq leading up the war.
Here’s how it worked. Her anonymous sources regarding what turned out to be non-existent weapons of mass destruction all turned out to have the last name “Cheney”. Then “Cheney”, when asked by other reporters to defend his intelligence about weapons in Iraq, would wave around the Judith Miller articles and ask “What’s a better guide to reality, the New York Times, or what your lying eyes choose to believe?”
I’m wondering, at the time, what took a bigger hit, Brett, your epistemic closure regarding the monolithic evil of Saddam Hussein or your epistemic closure regarding the monolithic liberal Democratic bias of the New York Times.
All within, of course, your context of apriori libertarian beliefs regarding the wisdom of intervention of any kind abroad.
In case you’re wondering if I’m changing the subject, ask Shirley Sherrod which is a better guide to reality?
Her own words, or her words edited by a political operative?
If you decide the latter, than you’re as clueless as the cowardly political operatives in the Obama Administration who fired her.
When whomever the female public figure was who boarded that boat that O’Keefe Enterprises had festooned with sexual toys, etc., if I recall correctly, for an “interview”, she made a wise decision upfront about possible “footage” (you and Erickson have the journalistic lingo down, I’ll give you that, like a couple of boy reporters) that might result and decided to believe what she wanted to believe about what was about to transpire, and it wasn’t journalism.
I see Russell has mentioned, better than I, other instances of O’Keefe’s pathetic malpractice.
But let me ask you this: political advertising contains hundreds of minutes of craftily edited “footage” of words pouring out of candidate’s mouths.
Do you believe this footage, or do you believe your ears, or does your latter source of reality calibrate and edit the degree of believability according to your apriori beliefs about the candidates?
I’m assuming you are completely objective, free of all bias, a slate wiped clean between each “data” point that enters your sensory field?
Right? Right?
Well, than I don’t know how it is that James O’Keefe became your standard for journalism?
You must make quite a mark for three-card monte and the pea under the cup while walking the streets.
I don’t really believe that about you though.
Despite your crack reporting (when Breitbart called O’Keefe his crack reporter, what he meant was “Jim, here, is on the case, and will report just about anything that emerges from his crack”), here, I think you’re more like me.
I think your favorite broadcast reporter is the guy who told it like it is ——-
Howard Beale.
He was the best guide to reality.
He had a fully open epistomy and it killed him.
O’Keefe’s editing habits remind me of Professor Irwin Corey’s professorial lectures from the dias at comedy clubs, wherein he would start his lectures in the middle or near the end.
Opening words:
“Furthermore, ..”
or
“In closing …”
All conclusions with no context.
Furthermore and in closing, Brett, given your pristinely objective journalistic sensibilities, can we expect a rousing defense of Dan Rather’s reportage over his career.
That man had footage.
Or did you believe what you wanted to believe regarding your side vis a vis the other side.
Or, are you waving O’Keefe’s flag around because Rather’s journalistic malpractice hasn’t been sufficiently addressed here, if at all?
Would you say Rather’s editing habits were in the service of keeping the senior George Bush out of the Presidency?
Would you say O’Keefe’s editing habits are in the service of keeping Barack Obama out of the Presidency.
Or, were their editing and reporting habits in the service of reporting reality.
If you answer “yes” to the first two and “no” to the second, you’re just a regular C-Span is what you are.
Although I notice C-Span has to have, what is it now, three call-in lines to handle the epistemic closure on all sides and the middle, despite the same sensory input presented ad nauseum?
That’s your point, right, not that O’Keefe’s reporting is anywhere near accurate and professional?
Then again, maybe C-Span requires a fourth call-in line — from you.
Epistemic closure keeps me from drinking gasoline and stomping barefoot on upright roofing nails. I tend not to strike the fingers on my left hand with a hand ax held in my right because of it, too. I’m still sort of open to snorting Draino, though, so maybe I’ll check out the latest from O’Keefe.
Seriously, though, of all the sources in the world of evidence of voter-registration fraud, O’Keefe’s your go-to guy.
And what the hell could Romney possibly have said in the missing minute or two that would provide greater (or significantly mitigating!) context to what he spoke of at great length in clear, unambiguous terms?
Mote meets beam on epistemic closure on this thread, it seems.
…that’s just epistemic closure speaking.
COMMUNIST!!!!
I think it is quite likely that the thug party will succeed in turning us into a pretense of a democracy. We may have to go through a period like the 1890 to Great Depression period again. The thug party does have a broad appeal in this country. To some extent it’s the appeal to the worst in human nature–always plenty of that around!–combined with a talent for manipulating low information voters. But there’s also an appeal to some deeply embedded myths such as the myth of the independent selfmade American which is so handy for people who want to justify selfishness. Thug party lies are so blatant that the only way anyone can believe them is through an act of will.
Like I said, epistemic closure. What’s a better guide to reality, film footage, or what you feel like believing?
why, what a lovely and false dilemma. but, i’m going with “past experience” for this one.
Again, this from the people who were so confident that gap in the Romney footage was of absolutely no consequence.
How about it being of little consequence? The thing is, Brett, there was nothing incomplete or ambiguous about what Romney said. What was caught on video was contextually robust. We’re not talking about some unfortunate turn of phrase that, without a preceding or subsequent sentence or two, might sound like something completely different from what he was actually trying to say. And, again, he’s had plenty of time to tell the world what said during the missing minute or two and how that would change his message significantly. What’s the big secret?
who were so confident
when did it become a “were” ?
what could this missing footage possibly contain that would change what he said? is it the part where he says “all those paragraph-long statements i made about Israel and the Palestinians and poor people: JUST KIDDING! GOTCHA! just another flip-flop from ol’ Flip-floppy Romney!”
the full romney video. enjoy.
We’re not talking about some unfortunate turn of phrase…
which was Ryan’s defense of Romney’s statements, during the debate.
he didn’t say “MISSING FOOTAGE!” he said Romney misspoke.
From a guy who blurts out a phrase like ‘the mask slips’, it is not really surprising that he would be the type to send a mash note to O’Keefe. The underlying assumption is that everyone who disagrees with you has some deep dark motives to hide, so the only way to prove that is to trick people. Sad, but unsurprising
I just entered info all the way up to and including “submit” and I NEVER saw the language cleek says is at the bottom of the page. Even after submit, it just told me to correct my card number (not my name, Donald Duck, or my address, or anything else). And nowhere did it ask me for my cvv number.
Contrast that to Romney’s site. The language is front and center. It asks for the cvv number.
Ask yourself the most basic question: why? Why would Obama’s campaign refuse to use the most basic fraud detection methods available? Does the answer “to not inhibit small donations” make any sense when to you have to input your cvv for the simplest online transaction? I guess it does if the answer is “to not inhibit small donations from foreign donors.”
Because, as it turns out, Obama’s verification procedures were sufficient to *actually tag the donor as bogus*.
I don’t think that is the case at all. Erickson’s bank rejected the transaction. Compare the Obama campaign “finding” John Hinderaker’s “contribution” only after he posted on Powerline about it.
When a campaign doesn’t have to keep records of donations under $50 it becomes, let us say, problematic. Obama’s huge haul in September was mostly in amounts that don’t have to be reported. 98% was under $250. 1.7 million of these averaged $53. Obviously, a lot of September donations were under $50. But why worry?
And here is a president protecting his “brand,” but nary a peep about Obama.com.
To buy any merchandise on the campaign website requires cvv. The “our vendor makes us do it” excuse doesn’t fly. This is a deliberate choice by the campaign.
This goes beyond this race. Too many house and senate candidates do the same (Pelosi and Feinstien here in CA, frex). It’s not limited to Democrats. But in the Presidential race? More here
I don’t think that is the case at all. Erickson’s bank rejected the transaction.
First and foremost, good on you for going and finding out for yourself.
Having said that:
If folks want to claim that Obama’s campaign is soliciting and accepting donations from foreign nationals, it behooves them to demonstrate that *donations from foreign nationals are actually being accepted*.
The “why would they do XXXX if they didn’t intend YYYY” stuff does not, in my mind, hold much water.
I have some small amount of experience working with consumer-facing applications that involve credit or other personal verification. In *most cases*, folks fielding those applications don’t roll their own verification. They partner with any of a variety of third parties – banks or others – who do that.
My guess is that both Obama’s and Romney’s campaign sites do the same. I guess that because it would be drop-dead stupid to do otherwise. It would be like building your own washing machine, rather than going out and buying one.
The difference between what Obama’s site and Romney’s site do may be as simple as what cleek suggests, i.e., real-time vs batch submittal to the verification service.
It’s not impossible that Obama is illegally accepting donations from foreign nationals. But it’s not in evidence.
Perhaps one of the non-US nationals who participate here would like to attempt a donation to either Romney or Obama’s campaigns and let us know how they make out.
I’m glad my direct $50 dollar pittance of a campaign donation is attracting so much scrutiny.
I should have routed it through Sheldon Adelson or Karl Rove and then all would have been copacetic.
Meanwhile, waiters and waitresses keep their tip chits for three years in case the IRS comes a sleuthing while vaults in Switzerland and the Barbados fill up with, what is it, Obama’s daughters’ Education IRA contributions?
That must be it.
I just entered info all the way up to and including “submit” and I NEVER saw the language cleek says is at the bottom of the page.
i just tried on obama.com, with totally bogus info (except for a valid CC#) and didn’t see the text. and, the pages looked a bit different from what i saw last time. i wonder if there are multiple donation paths.
Weird.
I just gave $100 to the Romney campaign and my health insurance was immediately canceled.
Can they do that? He’s not even elected yet.
Hinderaker and Erickson remind me of the Chevy Chase/SNL airport customs inspector rifling through passenger luggage and, through great clouds of kicked-up cocaine powder from the Citizens United steamer trunk just passed through inspection, nabbing the next poor schmuck for transporting Tylenol.
it behooves them to demonstrate that *donations from foreign nationals are actually being accepted*.
The “why would they do XXXX if they didn’t intend YYYY” stuff does not, in my mind, hold much water.
. . .
It’s not impossible that Obama is illegally accepting donations from foreign nationals. But it’s not in evidence.
And my problem russell, is that it never will be if we keep exempting any record keeping requirements for donations under $50. None, nada. Completely up to the campaigns to police themselves. A huge portion of funds received in September is free from audit or other scrutiny. Effectively immune even from criminal prosecution under the law requiring campaigns to ensure they don’t receive foreign donations because they don’t have to keep records. How are we supposed to know?
But as for no evidence, look at my link above on the GAI report (“more here”). The Obama campaign is soliciting donations from foreign nationals by simply not verifying whether or not those signing up at the campaign’s social media site are U.S. nationals (because after you sign up they send you solicitations for donations). 43% of the traffic to the main website is of foreign origin. 68% of the traffic to Obama.com, the one cleek went to and was redirected from to the main donation page, is a site owned by Obama bundler based in China, Robert Roche. The Obama campaign owns 392 websites using various permutations of his name or initiatives. Why not Obama.com?
And while the campaign says it has “sophisticated techniques” it employs based on the alleged batch processing referenced earlier, those techniques are not disclosed. Why not simply use the same techniques used for online purchases at the campaign website?
It apparently costs more to NOT use cvv (there is some dispute on this, but my own experience is that this is so and the GAI report got quotes from Cybersource). Why pay higher rates and higher charge back fees unless you have some other motivation?
Btw, I’m also in favor of disclosing bundlers, especially where the potential of foreign donations comes into play.
Perhaps one of the non-US nationals who participate here would like to attempt a donation to either Romney or Obama’s campaigns and let us know how they make out.
I’d be interested in this.
Completely up to the campaigns to police themselves.
In a world where presidential candidates hold fund-raisers in other countries hosted by foreign nationals, and receive large sums of money from the Chamber of Commerce, and have advertisements run on their behalf by PACs whose donors are completely anonymous, depending on the campaigns to police themselves is a way of life.
I don’t really care if Obama.com is visible worldwide, or if the automated email responders hosted by that site don’t vet email addresses for country of origin (not sure how you’d do that in any kind of reliable way, anyway).
It doesn’t bother me if people all around the world support Obama, or Romney for that matter, and demonstrate that support and interest by visiting a website.
If the check doesn’t clear, as far as I’m concerned it’s all good. I donated $15 as Rufus T Firefly of 1313 Mockingbird Lane, which everyone knows is clearly bogus because the Munsters, not Groucho Marx, live at that address. The donation did not clear.
If somebody can show me ACTUAL MONEY FROM A FOREIGN NATIONAL being accepted by the Obama campaign, there’s a story. Otherwise, not.
And for the record, “using the CVV” is basically just guaranteeing that the person who is using the card actually has the card in their possession, i.e., is not using stolen card information. AFAIK there is no “this person is who they say they are” magic attached to it.
Again, as I understand it, name / address verification is done through some AVS service, typically hosted by a third party. And whether that is done in real time, as with Romney, or not, as with Obama, based on both my direct personal experience and on all evidence presented by anyone opining on this topic, it is in fact being done by both campaigns.
If I were to hazard a guess as to why Obama’s campaign uses CVV for merchandise, but not donations, I would guess that they use a different platform for merch fulfillment vs donations, and CVV checks are built into the merch platform.
I don’t know why CVV is seen as inhibiting small donations. It would be interesting to hear that explained. But unless I’m missing something very important about CVV verification, it is immaterial to the “foreign donor” issue.
Long story short, when people start taking “foreign money” seriously at the millions-of-dollars level, I’ll start worrying about at the $15 level.
The Obama campaign is soliciting donations from foreign nationals by simply not verifying
seems like you’re using a strange definition of “soliciting”.
solicitation is an active plea. it’s not the same as accepting, and definitely not the same as appearing to allow, but really just has a delayed rejection process.
Among the remarkable, magical traits of leftist vaginas, besides being able to tell the difference between legitimate and illegitimate rape and take appropriate spermicidal action, is the ability to solicit illegal “donations” without showing even a little solicitous leg.
43% of the traffic to the main website is of foreign origin.
There is no reason to believe that this is true.
I looked at the GAI “report” and the only cite it has for this number is a web analytics firm’s wild guess. The data behind it is garbage. But ignorant people who don’t know anything about how the internet works might find it plausible.
The people who wrote that report are either:
(1) so ignorant that you should ignore everything they have to say or
(2) so dishonest that you should ignore them
I don’t know why CVV is seen as inhibiting small donations. It would be interesting to hear that explained.
I think there are two different issues at play here:
First, fraud risks for CC transactions donating to a political campaign are much much lower than for CC transactions buying a physical good. If my CC is stolen and used to make a bunch of political campaign donations, that’s really easy for Visa to deal with: just notify the campaign and money can move back them instantly. In contrast, once the warehouse has shipped out a purchase or once the thief has picked up the new TV at Best Buy, things get a lot tougher to undo: there are middle men involved and someone is going to lose.
Second, you expect people buying internet merch to be more experienced with online CC purchases than people just making donations: the donator pool is going to include way more people who never buy online. For those people, every extra step you require them to do reduces the odds that they’ll successfully complete a transaction. And that means less money for the campaign. Since CVV verification is an extra unnecessary step that increases the odds your donors won’t complete their donations and since it only reduces the already trivially low CC fraud rate for donations, there’s probably no good reason to turn it on.
But unless I’m missing something very important about CVV verification, it is immaterial to the “foreign donor” issue.
Absolutely. Requiring CVV can only reduce the number of fraudulent transactions (at the cost of preventing non-fraudulent transactions). But whether you require it or not is market driven: your payment processor may offer you a better rate if you require CVV. But if your fraud profile is low enough (and I bet political donation sites are), then they’ll probably waive the requirement because the fraud rate is so low and the recovery costs are trivial.
But if your fraud profile is low enough (and I bet political donation sites are), then they’ll probably waive the requirement because the fraud rate is so low and the recovery costs are trivial.
Ah ha! So what it really means is the the fraud profile for donations to Romney was actually higher than that for donations to Obama. Payment processors don’t trust republicans, for some reason. Neither do I! 😉
Yes. The black market for stolen credit card info in order to make fraudulent political contributions is so ‘effing HUGE that I dare not speculate….maybe bigger than the illegal drug market.
Brett needs to get little Jimmy O’Keefe on this one right now.
So what it really means is the the fraud profile for donations to Romney was actually higher than that for donations to Obama.
Or maybe Romney’s campaign had the option of turning off CVV to get more donations but never bothered because they’re a hyper-centralized team that doesn’t enough expertise in the field; that’s how they ended up paying much more for air-time than the Obama campaign.
I would think that prerequisites for donations influencing the political system would be the following
1. they are large
2. the campaign knows who is behind it
These donations are all small donations. I can understand that ‘your side’ (to use Brett O’Keefe’s terminology) is upset that most of the rest of the world would prefer Obama to Romney, and perhaps folks from around the world are reaching into their mattresses where they keep their greenbacks stuffed to then figure out how to donate to Obama thru fradulent credit cards, thus tilting the election towards ‘the other side’, but I tend to doubt it.
“First, fraud risks for CC transactions donating to a political campaign are much much lower than for CC transactions buying a physical good.”
Your analysis seems to exclude the concept of donations which are illegal because the donor can’t legally donate, rather than because it’s somebody else’s money. There is no particular reason to suppose the risk of that latter form of fraud is low, and the fraudster in this case will want the transaction to go through.
I believe that, if we’re going to have laws dictating who can and can’t donate, there should be no exception to the record keeping for small electronic transactions. The only reason there was a record keeping exception for small transactions in the first place, was to permit campaigns to accept small donations of cash at rallies, where generating the records would be onerous.
But electronic transactions inherently generate records, which current law invites the campaigns to dispose of rather than retain. Obama’s campaign merely goes a little further, in avoiding ever having the data in the first place.
“I would think that prerequisites for donations influencing the political system would be the following
1. they are large
2. the campaign knows who is behind it”
It is perfectly feasible to automatically generate, in any desired sum total, small transactions via credit card. The cards need not ever physically exist, numbers can be purchased in blocks. Having generated a series of such transactions, it is no more difficult to provide a campaign with details of the series of transactions sufficient for them to verify that you’re responsible for them.
Small electronic transactions quite clearly satisfy both your conditions.
Are we so bored that we want to engage irrational conspiracy theorists such as Brett?
Yeah, I guess. But there is a hermetically sealed, dare I say, epistemically closed, beauty to Brett’s concerns. It’s like the Roswell folks, or those who were convinced that Vince Foster was murdered, where every person in on the conspiracy is totally silent, so there is no proof until Brett O’Keefe logically outlines why it is the case, which therefore makes it so. So there is some shadowy Mr Big, perhaps named Wo Too Fat or the illegitimate love-child of Yuri Andropov, who has vowed vengence on the West, who is manipulating thousands of small donations from foreign countries, which are of course, known to the Obama campaign, perhaps to a tight inner sanctum, who are going to carry out the Big Man’s bidding. He’s mad, I tell you, mad! Pretty soon, Brett will be telling us that only G. Gordon Liddy can stop him (#4 on the list)
Bored, maybe. Amused, hell yeah.
solicitation is an active plea. it’s not the same as accepting, and definitely not the same as appearing to allow, but really just has a delayed rejection process.
Criminals everywhere rejoice with this new definition! Officer, I was just APPEARING to allow, but really I was just headed towards a delayed rejection of the proposed criminal enterprise.
But seriously, knowingly sending a email soliciting donations, or recklessly disregarding the fact that your solicitation emails are going to foreigners is the same thing as soliciting, IMHO.
Turbulence: I bow to your greater knowledge on internet traffic statistics. I’m not saying I fall into the completely ignorant, but please enlighten me. What data are you referencing? I didn’t see the backup data, just the statistic and the cite to the web analytics company. I’m trying to figure out why you would discount the statistic out of hand. I don’t pay for web analytics, so I can’t independently verify.
And I disagree with your comment about fraud. There is fraud in the sense that someone is using a credit card not belonging to them and there is fraud in the sense of an illegal foreign donation. The ccv/AVS debate is about the latter. No doubt this is market driven. If a campaign doesn’t think there is a legal penalty to doing so, it is going to use the method most likely to gain greater donations. That is the point. Cvv/AVS, and, as the GSI report proposes, geo-location tools would greatly reduce the latter.
Oops. Didn’t refresh before posting. So, yeah, lj and sapient, I’ll join Belmore’s “irrational conspiracy theory.” So irrational that Obama received donations in the 2008 campaign from foreign nationals. Remember Doodad Pro? The Palestinian brothers? Can’t prove exactly how much, because . . . hold on. . . wait for it . . . there are no records for the donations under $50! You have to have your head in the sand, IMHO, to believe irregular small donations are not regularly happening.
It is perfectly feasible to automatically generate, in any desired sum total, small transactions via credit card. The cards need not ever physically exist, numbers can be purchased in blocks.
Brett, you expert fraudster, you! I bow to your greater knowledge of the manifold ways of cheaters. Whether you are “projecting” is not for me to say.
What IS for me to say is that I dimly remember you being perfectly comfortable with corporate officers writing campaign checks on corporate funds. Given the international nature of corporations, I wonder how you can stomach THAT kind of foreign campaign contribution.
Never mind. I get it: “your side” good, my side bad is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
–TP
there is fraud in the sense of an illegal foreign donation. The ccv/AVS debate is about the latter
This is not quite correct.
Some folks assert that the Obama campaign’s non-use of CCV verification is evidence that they accept foreign donations. That’s not a debate, it’s an assertion. And, it’s false.
CCV doesn’t verify your nationality. It demonstrates that you have physical possession of the card.
AVS matches the card to your name and address (and possibly other) information. The Obama campaign appears to use AVS, otherwise my bogus donation would have been processed. It was not.
It doesn’t do so in real time. The Romney campaign does. That’s the only difference that has been demonstrated.
There may be a reasonable point to be made about the lack of records held for small donations, but if I understand correctly that is a matter of law, and thus applies to both campaigns.
Romney’s campaign also receives substantial unitemized donations, where “substantial” means double-digit percentages of their total haul. Where’s the outrage about that?
I’ll ask the question again:
Where is the freaking fraud?
And seriously bc, you are disturbed that automatically generated emails sent by a server are making their way to foreign nationals, but you’re OK with candidates conducting fund-raising events in foreign countries, hosted by foreign nationals, at undisclosed locations, not open to the press?
Are you OK with the Chamber of Commerce’s statement that their donations are OK because they keep the foreign money in a different bucket, and we can just trust them?
Are you OK with either the Romney or Obama campaign’s assertions that their relationship will SuperPACs funded by *totally anonymous donors* are purely arms-length?
Obama’s online website doesn’t use the CVV code to verify credit card donations. Instead, they appear to rely on standard back-office AVS verification based on name and address. Unlike the Romney campaign, that verification isn’t done in real time.
That’s pretty much what everyone is worked up about. It’s ridiculous.
So irrational that Obama received donations in the 2008 campaign from foreign nationals. Remember Doodad Pro? The Palestinian brothers?
Sorry, I forgot to include Sheik Yerbouti and Buffalo Bob in the list of criminal masterminds.
The likelihood of such a strategy is implausible beyond belief. Brett O’Keefe suggests that someone, presumably paying their own money to bribe Obama by funding his reelection effort, has enough juice to rig the credit card payment system to flood Obama with donations under $50 bucks. (If they had the chops to make false payments, I would have thought that they would have put their effort into mansions and waterboats. And then, presumably our Dr. Evil will sidle up to Obama at the inauguration and say ‘you know that $20 million that you got from all those people that with funky names, all me, and you owe me Barack baby’. Unless you think that Obama and his inner circle know this is going on and are waiting for Feb when they can force Americans to kill themselves by eating broccoli in front of Death Panels.
This is all of a sort with “lazy voter registration volunteers fill out slips with fake names to meet quotas, therefore people with those names are actually showing up to steal the election,” despite the fact that in-person voter fraud almost never happens (almost being statistically equal to zero) and that the amount necessary to sway any election of consequence would be so large and expensive as to be unfeasible under any circumstances.
There is no conspiracy theory so stupid that these dolts don’t think it’s happening right now.
Turbulence: I bow to your greater knowledge on internet traffic statistics. I’m not saying I fall into the completely ignorant, but please enlighten me. What data are you referencing?
Note that the report cited this page, specifically the “Country Map” section.
I know how the internet works. And I know that the ‘SmartViper’ analytics service does not have any relationship with the Obama campaign. Which means that it did not get visitor data from the campaign website. So how exactly does it determine the country of origin of millions of visitors to the Obama website?
I mean, really, how could it possibly do that? There are two options: either (1) they’re using spyware on millions of computers logging what sites people visit or (2) they’re just making random guesses based on “similar” customer sites for which they do have direct access. (1) is illegal or at least highly unethical (show me the form where all those millions of users gave clear consent to have all their web visits tracked by a third party). (2) is much more likely; they do have detailed visitor data for a few thousand sites that pay them money and offer them all their visitor logs.
I mean, think about it: how could a third party know how often you visited the Obama campaign website, or any other website for that matter? Either you told them or the website told them. Those are the only options. But this same service offers national origin distribution of visitors for basically any site in the world. They can’t have relationships with every website on the planet. And they don’t have a large enough sample of users to tell me the distribution of some tiny sites I looked at. So they fake it by analyzing the keywords that show up in public pages of the site in order to find customer sites that are “similar” and then just use the visit data for those sites.
They’re a web analytics company and the free stuff they offer to everyone is supposed to hook you into buying their service. They know that stuff is garbage but that doesn’t matter to them; they’re just trying to hook gullible website owners who get blown away by the cool graphics and authority of faux data. The company has zero obligation to provide correct data to people who aren’t paying them money, but once people start paying they get real data and can give them a real analysis.
I didn’t see the backup data, just the statistic and the cite to the web analytics company. I’m trying to figure out why you would discount the statistic out of hand. I don’t pay for web analytics, so I can’t independently verify.
Look, I do data analytics for a very large web company. I’m going to work this morning to do an analysis that will cover, let’s say, tens of millions of web visitors. Big data. Lots of users. I know something about this industry. Getting data about users is difficult. And expensive. And is full of limitations on what you can do with it and how you can use it. This data is a joke.
There is fraud in the sense that someone is using a credit card not belonging to them and there is fraud in the sense of an illegal foreign donation.
Indeed, these are two distinct things.
The ccv/AVS debate is about the latter.
And you’re completely wrong. CVV can’t tell you a damn thing about whether a transaction complies with federal election laws. It can only hint at whether or not a transaction is being made by someone who is not the card owner. That’s it.
Look, the CC industry doesn’t really care about federal election laws. They care about fraud that costs them money. That’s their big problem and CVV is (one of) the solution they’ve adopted to deal with that problem. You can’t take a security mechanism intended to address threat A and just assume that it protects you against threat B. I have a lock on my front door. It protects me against some threats. But it does not protect me against nuclear weapons. And I’d be dumb to presume that it does.
Look, imagine a foreign national living in the US. He gets a credit card. Totally legal. Heck, maybe he buys a prepaid Visa card at the drug store and fills it with $50 cash. He goes to obama.com and donates $50 using that card. Will CVV verification stop him? No. Of course not. Because from Visa’s perspective, the transaction is not fraudulent: he is the card owner and he fully intends to make the transaction. That’s all the Visa cares about and so that’s all that their security measures will ensure.
I’m still a little peeved that my check didn’t go through and Sheldon Adelson’s off the Macau account did.
“Where’s my secretary?”
“Here I am”
“Take a letter”
“Who to?”
“To my dentist. Dear dentist: enclosed find check for $500 Yours very truly. Send that off immediately!”
“I’ll have to enclose the check first.”
“You do, and I’ll fire ya.”
Watch, for details:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsw9jYU_rJI
Mrs. Brett Teasdale, if you don’t like it, you can leave in a huff. If that’s too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.
does Romney’s site accept pre-paid cards?
i don’t have one to try, and Google fails to inform since the search results are flooded with “conservatives” complaining about Obama.com.
I don’t see any $50 foreign donations, do you?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/16/florida-obama-and-israel.html
Oh, that’s right, it’s the ballot box donations from the American “foreigners” living in our midst that we’re concerned about:
http://aintnogod.com/ipb/topic/8088-urban-ohio-billboards-warn-voter-fraud-channeling-kkk/
i’m really liking that “conservatives” are apparently cool with Romney telling employers to tell their employees how to vote.
Wonder what would happen to an employee if he or she emailed the upper echelon management and Board of Directors telling them how to vote and what may, you know, happen to the latter’s jobs if they vote for Romney.
More unions.
More armed unions.
“urban-ohio-billboards-warn-voter-fraud-channeling-kkk”
Right… Because accurately stating that something is a crime is exactly the same as riding around in white robes and masks murdering people. No difference.
And when I think of all those speed limit signs in black neighborhoods, intimidating anybody who dares to drive a car, my blood boils. It’s like Bull Connor has risen from the dead to stride the Earth again.
Seriously? Parody is dead when this sort of garbage passes for political argument.
The parody hasn’t started yet, so you’re putting the intergalactic horse before the plasma-pushing light sail (by the way, cool idea).
I’m still trying to figure out why the engine light has been on in my Toyota Tercel since 2003.
Turns out the billboards are owned by Clear Channel Communications, bought out by Bain Capital, post Romney (Rmoney’s definition of “post” is still hazy, as in weaselly).
A Clear Channel Communications spokesman, while refusing to name the “family” organization which purchased the ads, admitted that signing a contract with an ad buyer while also granting anonymity was against company policy, but refused to name the buyer anywho and has refused requests by public interest groups to take the billboards down.
The spokesman couldn’t explain why, if anonymity was against company policy, they also granted the same to mysterious and similar billboard ads leading up to the 2010 election.
As to references to white-robed and masked murderers and Bull Conner, the GOP advances in racial subtlety and divisiveness were explained decades ago by Lee Atwater, who, if I’m not mistaken, was on “your side”, in your words, before his deeply unfortunate but fortuitously painful and expensive death from brain cancer.
As to references to speed limit signs, we’s all got those, baby. There might even be one on Mitt Romney’s street, though if he wins, fasten your seat belts, until you don’t have to do that either.
The billboards, unlike universal speed limit signs, are limited almost exclusively to poor urban neighborhoods in Ohio and Milwaukee, and I’ll let you wonder why, considering that in-person voter fraud is virtually and universally non-existent.
I don’t believe Karl Rove can see one of those billboards from his bedroom window, even on a clear night with a full moon reflecting off of his lilly-white brow.
As to when the parody starts, how about now.
When Citizens United is overturned, either judicially or through necessary violence, billboards will begin appearing in solid Republican neighborhoods (what the heck, let’s blanket the country with them), right next to the speed limit signs, which state “It is a felony for corporations and unions to give money to political campaigns (and furthermore, go f*ck yourselves)”
We’ll edit for excessive wordiness to reduce the advertising costs.
Right next to your house (and directly adjacent to the nuclear power plant I’m building), lit up like Manhattan on a clear winter night, a billboard will read “It is a felony to buy, sell, or possess any type of drum clip for your weapon!”, soon as Obama gets around to making good on the promises Wayne LaPierre made for him regarding weapon confiscation.
The location was chosen randomly, so don’t take it personal-like.
So was the one to the other side of your house.
And don’t mind the plane circling overhead trailing the same message.
It’s just a friendly reminder. It’s not because your not swarthy.
Drive carefully and vote more than once.
Love, Your inveterate boy reporter, Tom Swift.
“you’re” will be spelled correctly on the billboards, just like the Clear Channel billboards spell “nigger” correctly.
While I’m at it, what the heck, I was going to save this for the Friday open thread, but given the title of this post “A Master Debater”, I can’t help it.
Our recently discussed friend Dinesh D’Souza is back in the news, after his recent bile disgorgement on 35 mm film regarding Barack Obama, including references to the latter’s slut mother, or was that the other Republican movie, or was it the film adaptation of “Atlas Shrugged” wherein Dagny Taggert shagged King Kong to get a better look at the Paul Ryan gargoyles on the Chrysler Building.
It’s all running together in this the latter days of the parody of the Republic.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/10/18/it-gets-better-3/
Glossing over the details, which now include that D’Souza’s (family name from the State of Goa, the Portuguese (I kid you not) colony on the west coast of India, where the Catholic Dinesh forgot to grow up) girlfriend is married, too, Jesus Christ goes to college on a pogo stick.
If you’ve been keeping up with D’Souza’s latest, he said “nothing happened” between married him and his married fiancee in the hotel room where they “cohabitated”, as his superiors like to delicately call it when Obama’s mother is photoshopped f*cking every black, anti-colonialist insurgent to either side of the Equator.
I picture “nothing happened” as the lady on question, who happens to be a like-minded scold to Dinesh when it comes to the intersection of morality and everyone else’s nether regions, reclining and perhaps restrained somehow to the bedposts, with Obama porn running on the pay TV, and Dinesh emerging from the water closet wearing little more than some Bollywood Milton Berle boxer shorts, one leg raised Shiva-like and twirling for her anticipatory foreplay kinks in his four hands at the end of spinning arms, a variety of battery-operated sexual apparati that combined could power Brett’s spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, and nursing, between his lips which are hardly changed from that expression he wears at all times of a man who is biting into a wedge of bitter lemon as he explains to the fascist FOX blondes that they should keep their legs closed around liberals, a butt plug, last seen dangling, in another work of fiction by a vermin Republican from election years past, on the Clinton’s White House Christmas tree.
I know, but always forget to expect, that when what passes for the bug filth that now inhabit the Republican Party (I’m so nice; they’ve always been like this) is right in the middle of a sermon about where I put my dick and which door of Planned Parenthood I choose to use, sure enough, it’s their dicks that are getting wet and their vaginas that are singing the Naomi Klein Vagina rag.
I hope the two of them were using birth control while nothing was happening.
Well, the Republican version of birth control, which is washing their mouths out with soap.
Shouldn’t the ObWi “community” be discussing things like this?
sapient, if you want to write up a guest post, I’d be happy to front page it. libjpn*at*gmail
For NYTimes articles specifically, I have found that in the past few months, I’ve been running up against the free view limit, which has me avoiding clicking on them unless I am positive that I want to read. I’ve also just gotten an iphone, so I’m still trying to figure out which sites I want to read and on what device, so it will take me another month or so to figure out, so I may miss things that I would have normally caught.
Thanks for the invitation, lj. I will do that tomorrow.
Pat Lang (yes, the guy Blackhawk quoted) seems to think the Republican criticisms of Benghazi are inappropriate–
Link1
link2
Donald, I didn’t get into the Blackhawk controversy, so don’t have an ad hominem complaint against him/her. Thanks for the links though. I’ll take a look before I post my thing tomorrow
By the way, my guest post (assuming that lj approves it) isn’t going to be a masterpiece in political opinion writing. I’d like to begin an earnest discussion of the situation in Libya (including the political wrangling over the consulate murders). It’s an opportunity for us, who usually do the Monday Morning Quarterbacking (if that’s what they call it – not being a football person), to actually make the calls on what we should be doing now, and next.
“”It is a felony to buy, sell, or possess any type of drum clip for your weapon!””
??? Unlike the Clear Channel billboards, that’s not accurate. Let me state for the record I have two of them, purchased legally while the ’94 ban was in effect.
“”you’re” will be spelled correctly on the billboards, just like the Clear Channel billboards spell “nigger” correctly.”
Again, ??? Have you actually seen the billboards in question, and are lying for rhetorical effect? Or just opining in an utter vacuum of facts?
Here ya go; maybe you can point out where it says “nigger”.
Do you have any political views which *aren’t* based on (charitably) mistakes?
vote fraud?
that’s for liberals! amiright?
That is from the first SST link posted by Donald.
Statements of this kind should come linked to State Department budget histories over the last decade to decade and a half. State security budgets have nearly tripled since 2000. State total budgets have more than quadrupled.
Also worth noting: the so-called “security” budget requests are actually for security, embassy construction and maintenance and operations. So a goodly chunk of that $1.8 billion for security is spent on construction and other things.
It’s not exactly a matter of a few mouse clicks to find this stuff out at the level of detail I’d like. There’s just no way to quickly find out how much State is spending specifically on security personnel and equipment, or to what extent budget constraints are affecting said activities. The State Department website has a history of expenditures dating back to about 2000, or perhaps earlier, as well as its budget requests for years up to about 2009 (IIRC; it seems as if actuals should be available through at least 2010 and arguably 2011, but I may have missed something) and I urge the curious to go look.
All this is along the lines of addressing claims of budget cuts in State security, which for all I can tell never actually were put into effect. Compound security budget is, when you drill down that far, less than $100M worldwide.
None of this is to dispute that there are legitimate expenses involved in running embassies worldwide; just pointing out that there are certain misrepresentations in the conversation, is all.
And, to be sure: State budget is not the equal of Defense. But neither has Defense grown as quickly as State, in recent times.
It’s not for anyone. Which you already knew, I think.
In the parody version in my above comment, possessing the clips would be illegal in the parody future, and thus the billboard warning parody.
You have two, do ya? Are you expecting a Quentin Tarentino movie to break out?
I have two food processors, and a spittle guard on my ipad. Is this one of those guys-with-gadget competitions?
‘maybe you can point out where it says “nigger”.’
Right between “militia” and “arms”, and in the dependent clause also containing the words “drum clip”. There’s a blizzard of commas in between which might conceal things on a bad punctuation day for the literal-minded.
True, even if you stand on one foot, close one eye and squint with the other, you can’t see the word “nigger” from the better class of neighborhoods surrounding Cleveland, Columbus, and Milwaukee. You have to get into the family station wagon and, observing the speed limits posted at regular intervals along the way in ALL neighborhoods, drive to the other side of the tracks.
I will concede that poor whites caught on the downside of the socioeconomic scale near the billboard locations can’t see where it says “Your Medicaid coverage is terminated” either, but the noses on their faces are a little blurry too.
I’ve spend a lot of my life in Ohio. I know how it works.
If you need help with the reading comprehension, read Lee Atwater’s dead lips.
“Do you have any political views which *aren’t* based on (charitably) mistakes?”
I read the crack reporting over at Redstate first thing every morning. What’s your excuse?
Actually, I have a fresh view as of this morning. Never commit parody, even the sincere sort which can turn on a dime in case sincerity is required, in the presence of an engineer.
Also this. Everyone at OBWI, no exceptions, is a decent enough person, in person.
Even the chickens among us are decent people.
Still, I’m having chicken for dinner tonight. Roasted, with a smoked paprika rub and maybe a butternut squash and leek risotto.
I shot the chicken with a single bullet and will later beat the hell out of the squash.
Two drum clips.
One for target practice and one as parody.
Speaking of weapons, this:
http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=AP&date=20121019&id=15691875
the funny part is this:
‘”Business has been very good,” said Frederick Prehn, who a year ago opened a small gun store above his dentistry practice in Wausau, Wis. In the past year, Prehn has relocated twice to larger spaces and gone from one employee to eight.’
I’m not sure this is wise. Many a times while sitting in a dentist chair, my legs waggling up in the air as my jaw is assaulted, I’ve reached for an imaginary vengeful weapon, although most of the time it’s a machete.
It’s occurred to me that firing off a warning shot over the dental hygienist’s head as he or she, gleaming instruments of torture poised aloft, prepares to cause torrential gum bleeding in my mouth, might be a judicious self-defense maneuver.
You know, it’s funny, maybe not to an engineer, but to your average layman, Obama hasn’t made a move to ban a*sholes, just as he hasn’t made a move to ban guns, but the Republican Party seems all in a panic to recruit as many a*sholes as it can before this imaginary ban.
Let me state for the record I have two of them
Why the f*** does anybody need one drum clip, let alone two?
Those things hold, what, 100 rounds each?
And yeah, I know, “because I want them” is a perfectly good reason.
But seriously, WTF? What scenario do you foresee in which drum clips for personal use makes any kind of sense, at all?
“There’s just no way to quickly find out how much State is spending specifically on security personnel and equipment”
Uh, pat Lang was a Defense Intelligence Agency chief. He still consults. So I kinda feel safe accepting his analysis, a wee bit safer than accepting that of some IT geeks kibitzing on the internet.
“Pat Lang (yes, the guy Blackhawk quoted)….”
Right, well, then again, if I linked to him he must be batsh!t crazy. Far better to be informed by purpled haired 20 something emo chicks with rings in their noses and lips.
What scenario do you foresee in which drum clips for personal use makes any kind of sense, at all?
a lib-zombie apocalypse can happen at any minute.
“But seriously, WTF? What scenario do you foresee in which drum clips for personal use makes any kind of sense, at all?”
The “only have to change magazines once during my plinking session” scenario, naturally. Besides, the larger magazine actually improves the balance of a Calico carbine.
Which I bought to spite my Congressman, “Comrade” David Bonior.
OK, whatever, I guess.
With all respect, to this casual observer “I own two drum magazines” has sort of a “I have a moat filled with crocodiles around my house and a tank in the garage” flavor to it. Maybe it’s just me.
Then again, I own 11 cowbells.
Chacun a son gout.
+11 internets
BTW I don’t take “I own two drum magazines” to be a warning, just a testimony that such things can be had, and legally.
That’s all cool.
I did not, remotely, feel threatened by Brett owning drum magazines, nor would I expect him to use them to do anyone harm.
It just seemed like extraordinary overkill for your average householder who wasn’t expecting a zombie apocalypse or a Viking landing.
Kind of a “wait, what?!?” moment, for me.
But, as noted, we all have something (or several things) that we’re enthusiastic about.
Don’t ask me about Italian hand-hammered cymbals, I’ll bore you to tears. Slide shows might be involved.
Slart nailed it. Could be had, legally, throughout the duration of the ’94 ban.
Gun controllers loved them that ban, but so few had the slightest clue what it did and didn’t do. That’s because it was sold on the basis of lies, and nobody is more credulous about gun control movement lies than the gun controllers themselves.
That’s all cool.
I did not, remotely, feel threatened by Brett owning drum magazines, nor would I expect him to use them to do anyone harm.
It just seemed like extraordinary overkill for your average householder who wasn’t expecting a zombie apocalypse or a Viking landing.
Kind of a “wait, what?!?” moment, for me.
But, as noted, we all have something (or several things) that we’re enthusiastic about.
Don’t ask me about Italian hand-hammered cymbals, I’ll bore you to tears. Slide shows might be involved.
“Right, well, then again, if I linked to him he must be batsh!t crazy.”
Not quite what I meant–I linked to him and without agreeing with him on everything, obviously think he’s worth reading. I meant that IIRC you were citing him against Obama in some thread and here he was saying something in defense of Obama.
On slarti’s point, I got nothing. I assume Lang knows a lot about embassy security but he might be wrong about funding.
So, russell, you don’t own any drum magazines?
The thing is, all the talk about what the assault weapons ban did or did not prohibit aside, the issue regarding the legality of high-capacity magazines isn’t that Brett, specifically, is a threat to anyone. It’s that someone who is a threat might more easily get them, for the sake of people like Brett being able to amuse themselves by plinking – with improved balance, no less.
Maybe banning them wouldn’t help, but that’s not an argument based on a constitutional guarantee of the right to plink with improved balance.
So, russell, you don’t own any drum magazines?
The thing is, all the talk about what the assault weapons ban did or did not prohibit aside, the issue regarding the legality of high-capacity magazines isn’t that Brett, specifically, is a threat to anyone. It’s that someone who is a threat might more easily get them, for the sake of people like Brett being able to amuse themselves by plinking – with improved balance, no less.
Maybe banning them wouldn’t help, but that’s not an argument based on a constitutional guarantee of the right to plink with improved balance.
So, russell, you don’t own any drum magazines?
The thing is, all the talk about what the assault weapons ban did or did not prohibit aside, the issue regarding the legality of high-capacity magazines isn’t that Brett, specifically, is a threat to anyone. It’s that someone who is a threat might more easily get them, for the sake of people like Brett being able to amuse themselves by plinking – with improved balance, no less.
Maybe banning them wouldn’t help, but that’s not an argument based on a constitutional guarantee of the right to plink with improved balance.
Linkified for extra goodness.
the issue regarding the legality of high-capacity magazines isn’t that Brett, specifically, is a threat to anyone. It’s that someone who is a threat might more easily get them
You and I are of one mind on this.
you don’t own any drum magazines?
Oddly enough, I do not.
I used to subscribe to this (the title being a pun on this), mostly for the classifieds, but ebay has kind of made that redundant.
“It’s that someone who is a threat might more easily get them, for the sake of people like Brett being able to amuse themselves by plinking – with improved balance, no less.”
Yes, it really does come down to that: Shall we enact a law to moderately inconvenience a comparatively small number of evildoers, at the cost of moderately inconveniencing a vastly larger number of innocents?
Shall we, (To use an example from bygone days.) rip out phone booths because drug dealers use them?
Shall we put allergy medications which actually work, (My nose is running right now, BTW, for lack of pseudophed.) behind an increasingly onerous layer of barriers, to make things a little harder on people who run meth labs?
Shall we deprive large numbers of innocents of things they will not misuse, in the cause of making it a little harder for the guilty to obtain them?
Whatever the object, I say, “No.” Whether it’s pheudophed, effective encryption, scary looking guns, what have you. You want to deprive the many of liberty to inconvenience the bad apples? Bugger off, I say, until you find measures which are more narrowly tailored.
“It’s that someone who is a threat might more easily get them, for the sake of people like Brett being able to amuse themselves by plinking – with improved balance, no less.”
Yes, it really does come down to that: Shall we enact a law to moderately inconvenience a comparatively small number of evildoers, at the cost of moderately inconveniencing a vastly larger number of innocents?
Shall we, (To use an example from bygone days.) rip out phone booths because drug dealers use them?
Shall we put allergy medications which actually work, (My nose is running right now, BTW, for lack of pseudophed.) behind an increasingly onerous layer of barriers, to make things a little harder on people who run meth labs?
Shall we deprive large numbers of innocents of things they will not misuse, in the cause of making it a little harder for the guilty to obtain them?
Whatever the object, I say, “No.” Whether it’s pheudophed, effective encryption, scary looking guns, what have you. You want to deprive the many of liberty to inconvenience the bad apples? Bugger off, I say, until you find measures which are more narrowly tailored.
How much criminal lethality has actually been enhanced by drum magazines? I count one incident – the Hollywood bank robbery/shootout. Other than that, I don’t see any. The colorado thing doesn’t count because the drum mag failed to function and thus neutralized the 5.56mm weapon entirely. So it worked in the favor of the good citizens and against the perp.
So, one incident in 30 years where drum magazines played a role in enhancing criminal effectiveness and lib.s have their collective panties in a knot and want to outlaw these things?
Find something better – and hopefully more socially beneficial – to do with your time and indignation.
We ripped out phone booths because cell phone users don’t use them.
“Find something better — and hopefully more socially beneficial — to do with your time and indignation.”
Subtract time and indignation, and we could rip out the Intertubes.
Yes, it really does come down to that: Shall we enact a law to moderately inconvenience a comparatively small number of evildoers, at the cost of moderately inconveniencing a vastly larger number of innocents?
. . . Whatever the object, I say, “No.”
Well, golly gee whillikers, Mr. Bellmore, I bet when it comes to voter ID laws, your answer to this question is, in fact , “Yes!”
Please, in a single word answer, tell me whether I am correct or incorrect about that?
Comrade David Bonior.
It’s lucky you got Reichsfuhrer Delay’s right hand Gauleiter, Candace Miller, in there.
Yes, you caught me out. I’ll have to think about that a bit.