…
Romney: “You know that if the President is re-elected, he will still be unable to work with the people in Congress. He has ignored them, attacked them, blamed them. The debt ceiling will come up again, and shutdown and default will be threatened, chilling the economy.”
Charlie Pierce on Romney’s closing argument: “Willard Romney, who has tried on every argument for making him our president that can be conceived by the mind of mortal man, seems to have settled on simple blackmail. [...] I don’t think this is the kind of uplifting message that the storm-tossed nation is seeking. I could be wrong about that. There may be a substantial portion of the electorate out there waiting for a man on a white horse to come riding in and hand over the rest of us as ransom. There may be a substantial portion of the electorate that is looking for a Stalwart Man of Business in order to make the drop in precisely the spot where the kidnappers have instructed…”
dailydot: That awkward moment when the Senior Vice President of Design at Chrysler (which owns Jeep) calls you out on Twitter.
Detroit Free Press: “The larger question is: Why is this coming up at all at this late stage of the campaign? The answer is simple, political experts say. Both sides have known from Day One that this campaign would hinge, in large part, on the saving of Detroit’s signature business, and it’s still in Romney’s eleventh-hour interests to change the narrative that Obama gets the credit, especially in blue-collar parts of the battleground state of Ohio. No Republican president has ever won the White House without winning Ohio, and Romney — in most polls — trails there. [...] Melissa Miller, a political science professor at Bowling Green State University south of Toledo, said she doesn’t think the Romney campaign would be making the claim if they didn’t think it was going to help them, though she thinks its effectiveness is very much in doubt. “He’s probably put some fear in the minds of some people who work for Jeep, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re being told right there on the factory floor — by management — that this is a false claim,” she said.”
Romney Style: How to Destroy Your Campaign’s Credibility in Five Easy Steps:
“A reminder: Mitt Romney has had to absolutely kowtow to this man. [...] Does Mitt Romney—or any Republican, for that matter—care in the slightest that Trump is a rotten boil on the political landscape? Do they give a damn that the Republican brand has so thoroughly been reduced to pandering to the least common denominator of their base, all the rest of reality be damned? Of course not. No matter how big a fool this dimwitted, Palinesque publicity hound makes himself, Mitt Romney will still shake his hand, and Paul Ryan will still hold private fundraisers with the man. [...] Welcome to the modern Republican Party. These are the people who are chosen not to be shunned, but to speak for the party, and guide the party, and raise money for the party, and appear on television for the party, and hold the reins of party leadership. Congratulations, Republican Party. Whatever depths of vapidity and grifting you might have been aiming for, I’d say you’ve managed to get there and then some.”
“For Mitt Romney, it’s the laugh. I’m sure that at times Romney laughs with genuine mirth, but you know the laugh I’m talking about. It’s the one he delivers when he gets asked a question he doesn’t want to answer, or is confronted with a demand to explain a flip-flop or a lie. It’s the phoniest laugh in the world, the one New York Times reporter Ashley Parker wrote ‘sounds like someone stating the sounds of laughter, a staccato Ha. Ha. Ha.‘ Everything Mitt Romney is as a candidate is distilled within that laugh — his insincerity, his ambition, his awkwardness, and above all his fear. When Mitt laughs that way, he is not amused. He is terrified. Because he knows that what he’s saying is utter baloney, and he knows that we know it.” — Paul Waldman
The idea that several people shooting in a dark, crowded, tear gassed theater is better than one, because everyone who can get a gun is obviously an expert marksman with crisis intervention training and nerves of steal.
“If only people would have had guns to fire back!”- Fuck off with this argument. It’s a complete fantasy.
Agreed — the ‘everyone should carry a gun’ argument is completely stupid. For the reasons you say and also because just like Ta-Nehisi Coates is arguing in that post by azspot this morning, James Holmes was wearing body armor. Are we all supposed to wear body armor now too?
I wouldn’t trust 98% of the people around me to be able to identify the correct target, let alone hit it in a dark theater, with people screaming and running, alarms blaring, and their blood pressure skyrocketing. There’s good reason for use of force / tactical training.
And has there ever been one situation in modern history where an ‘armed’ citizen (who wasn’t former or current LE) saved the day? Ever?
One last thought: you want to be ‘that guy’ who starts shooting back in a crowd? Good luck with all the lawsuits!
A gun in every cold, dead hand. The NRA is a lobby for firearm manufacturers and gun dealers. Money. That’s what it’s always all about.
Today, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus appeared on Fox Entertainment and told host John Roberts that President Obama is going to “end our way of life,” according to Raw Story:
“It’s an issue that we have to win on. The fact is that it’s not a question of can Mitt Romney win, the question is — the statement is Mitt Romney has to win for the sake of the very idea of America. Mitt Romney has to win for liberty and freedom. And we have to put an end to this Barack Obama presidency before it puts an end to our way of life in America.”
Desperate, much? Vote for Mitt Romney because anything other than Mitt Romney is exactly the opposite of liberty and freedom and hamburgers and your mother and stockcar racing and Jesus and Applebees and the flag and football and apple pie and BBQs and white people and shootin’ and boot scootin’ and pickup trucks and truck nutz and drinking beer and… JUST VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY, OR ELSE!
Because, as Jim Galloway at the AJC observes, white voter registration is steadily moving downward: “In May of 2008, African-Americans made up 28 percent of active registered voters in Georgia while whites made up 65 percent and “other” race… In May of 2012, African-Americans made up 29.4 percent of active registered voters, whites made up 60.2 percent, and “other” race made up 10.4 percent. So the downward trend in the white share of voters in Georgia has continued.”
So while GOP lawmakers will try to disenfranchise the voters who they assume wouldn’t vote Republican anyway (i.e. non-whites), the rightwing media are working overtime to whip up enough FEAR and ANGER to get the whites who have voted Republican before into the voting booths again — despite how they feel about Mitt Romney. How? By victimizing whites, by insinuating there’s a race-war, by reminding their audience that everyone thinks they’re the “R” word (racist), and by evoking the usual tribal reaction from their base. McKay Coppins at Buzzfeed outlined some of the main players on the far-right last month in his article, “In Conservative Media, A “Race War” Rages“:
Bill O’Reilly, Fox “News” — With the Norfolk, VA story, using the narrative: Black-on-white violence is spiking — and the mainstream media is trying to cover it up.
Drudge Report – ”Miami ‘war zone’ during urban weekend;” “Rib fest at Rochester beach turns rowdy;” and “Unruly urban crowd shuts down Nashville water park.”
Tucker Carlson, Daily Caller – ”I was struck by the immediate, uncloaked assumption by the media that Trayvon Martin was innocent.”
Rush Limbaugh – ”In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.”
Dan Riehl, Riehl World News, Breitbart News – ”There are special interest groups on the left that exploit reports of white-on-black crime for political gain.”
But as Coppins fairlyreports: “Indeed, the irony of the race war narrative’s latest flare-up is that it comes at a time when national crime rates have reached historic lows — including reported hate crimes against whites… What’s more, hate crimes against blacks have continued to outstrip those against whites by about four-to-one: In 2010 alone, there were 2,201 reported. Violent crimes across the spectrum reached a four-decade low in 2010.”
Jobs? Health care reform? Tax cuts for the one percent? Austerity for the rest of us? None of that really matters to low-information voters. Reality and facts, once again, are not part of the narrative that’s written and produced by the American conservative media and performed for the American conservative voter’s entertainment. What gets these people to the voting booth is fear and anger: do you want to be attacked by mobs of ‘rib-eating’ ‘urban’ youths? No? Then you’d better vote for Mitt Romney.
“Somehow, firing people with jobs became the Republican strategy for job creation. People who taught our children; policed our streets; picked up our garbage; put out our fires; built and maintained our parks, libraries, and roads for a living wage became the scapegoat for the impoverishment the private sector imposed on workers. Instead of organizing to win back their own living wages and lost benefits, people were convinced that taking away those of government workers would somehow make them better off. Divide and conquer politics. The politics of fear, hate, greed, envy and spite. The race to the bottom. Orchestrated by plutocrats, executed by conservatives, allowed by Democrats.” – John Atcheson
Won’t someone think of Republican white men? Oh, wait…
If you feel like the Sunday morning political talk shows are overrun by Republican politicians, their surrogates and other right-wing spinners, you’re actually right, according to a study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog group. FAIR’s magazine, Extra! tracked the breakdown of guests featured in one-on-one interviews and roundtable discussions on the four main Sunday morning talk shows, ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CBS’s “Face the Nation” and “Fox News Sunday” from June 2011 to March 2012. The results skewed heavily Republican, white and male, with only token representation by blacks and Latinos, and virtually no appearances by guests outside of one of the two national political parties.
[...] It’s worth noting, also, that the liberals typically presented on these programs are mostly centrists with very few out-and-out progressives, leading FAIR to quip that “corporate media’s idea of a debate is conservative ideologues matched by centrist-oriented journalists.” Women and persons of color were wildly underrepresented in round tables. Women guests made up a mere 29 percent of panelists. Roundtable guests were 85 percent white, with 11 percent of guests being African-American and 3 percent Latino.
In a diverse nation, with women comprising just over 50% of the population, why do Republican white men dominate our national media — still?
If you’re so inclined to contact the conservative white men who host the Sunday shows that celebrate conservative white menand their many opinions about non-white people and women (among other things), here’s contact information:
The first study concludes empirically that liberals cope better with complex situations while conservatives are quicker to feel threatened. This is because liberals have larger anterior cingulate cortexes while conservatives have larger amygdalas. In other words, the liberal brain tends to be bigger in the section dealing with ambiguity and conflicting ideas, while the conservative brain tends to be bigger in the section related to processing fear.
Now if that isn’t enough to sway you, let’s take a look at another study. This one concludes that low latent inhibition, which is to say a high level of openness to new situations, is associated with greater creativity and intelligence.
In fact, scientists were able to predict with 75% accuracy a person’s political orientation just by looking at scans of their brain. What this means: You’re not stupid because you’re conservative. You’re conservative because you’re stupid.
FUTURE LIBERAL CIRCLED BELOW (coping with a complex situation in the best possible way):
via: think-progress: Someone’s not a fan of Michele Bachmann.
Republicans who are as terrified of a Palin nomination as they are of publicly criticizing her have seized on a new angle: Palin is bigger than the presidency. It would be a step down for her.
I think we could say that her hair is bigger than the presidency. Definitely.
A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives’ brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other “primitive” emotions. At the same time, conservatives’ brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate – the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.
If the study is confirmed, it could give us the first medical explanation for why conservatives tend to be more receptive to threats of terrorism, for example, than liberals. And it may help to explain why conservatives like to plan based on the worst-case scenario, while liberals tend towards rosier outlooks.
The American public likes to watch the fear mongering in the media and believe that all these horrible things are gong to happen to them because “…that’s far more palatable for people to buy than to accept the reality that … nothing of any significance will ever happen to you in your entire, boring life. You’re not going to win the lottery. You’re not going to be caught in gang violence or school shootings….”
“We should not allow this country to live in fear of a word.” — Lawrence O’Donnell .
The Last Word blog: If you’ve paid any close attention to Lawrence, you know this isn’t a new phenomenon. He’s been calling himself a “socialist” for years.
Lawrence dropped the so-called dirty ‘S’-word in an exchange with Glenn Greenwald on Morning Joe last week, which the attracted the attention of Glenn Beck. The TV host — a late-comer to this party — dedicated his own segment to that tape and referred to Lawrence as MSNBC’s “new hot loverboy.”
So last night, Lawrence took this as an opportunity to explain his “socialist” comment, address the deeper meaning behind the word itself and respond to Beck’s hottie observation. Check out his response below.
