I didn’t watch the RNC. Not a minute.
Wait! To avoid a Kessler spanking, I should admit that when I turned the TV on Wednesday night looking for a west coast ball game, I found the cable set to one of the network stations. So there was that glimpse of the convention floor — maybe a few seconds while fumbled for the mute button, and a few more while I tried to punch in the channel I wanted. There’s that…
But, after I got back from the dinner welcoming our new victims graduate students to campus last night, I had a great time following the comment threads here and elsewhere on the trainwreck of Romney’s big night. And as the hilarity over the Eastwood fiasco played out — a little sadly for me, because he’s done some great work on both sides of the camera — and as the clock relentlessly ticked on and as Rubio made it at least 3 if not more in the list of prime time speakers beginning now in their primary campaigns for 2016 and then as Romney finally tumbled onto stage with only 20 minutes or so left in prime time, and bumbled through much of that precious time before apparently finding his rhythm a bit after at least a chunk of his audience had been switched to local news, or the last beer, or bed — and then to face that fact that when all was said and done on this evening that was supposed to build a bond between the last three true swing voters in the United States and the remarkably sophisticated simulacrum of a human being operating under the code name Willard Mitt Romney, the only thing anyone actually remembered was a kind of recognizable weird old guy channeling the signals picked up by the filling in tooth 31 to drive his argument with an empty chair…
…as all that took place, I thought, W. Mitt Romney has just crashed the last remaining claim he has to the notion that he could do the presidency, even should he (FSM forbid!) manage to occupy it.
Consider: when one runs for President there are only a few things over which the nominee has true total control. Really there are only two: the choice of a running mate, and the production of the wholly staged kabuki of the nominating convention. The Ryan selection was botched, just from a technical point of view – a Friday evening news dump, the awkward pas de deux in which Romney and Ryan both tried to assert that the Ryan plan wasn’t really the Romney one and so on. Leave aside the merits or not of Ryan as a running mate, just the way that the choice oozed out into public discussion was weak.
And now this. The convention was rough from the start — and while you surely can’t blame the Romneybots for Hurricane Isaac, Chris Christie’s giant raspberry, spraying Jersey bluster all over Ann Romney’s red dress was not exactly what the Cyborg/Grannie Starver ticket had in mind. Then you get to the mostly forgettable second day, made extraordinary by Paul Ryan’s delivery of a speech that was, in the end, an indigestible bolus of falsehood . As someone pointed out at a link I’ve now lost, you’d think a properly run convention would have given Ryan sufficient guidance to make the lies just a little less obvious — just enough to provide cover to the both-sides-do-it/boys-will-be-boys school of coverage. But noooo…with the result that what was supposed to be a day of media praise for Ryan’s extraordinary powers of intellect and his courageous embrace of hard truths…and of anticipation of the launch of the Romnoid’s Human Emulation software update…became instead a chorus of disdain — one that even reached the Fox News website!
Amazingly, all that pales before the my-eyes-deceive-me spectacle of Clint Eastwood trading implied obscenties with an empty chair…dragged out so long that the nominee himself was forced into that one true sin of convention production values: crossing over out of prime time into the local news slot.
Holy Rotini, FSM! that’s just elementary. Incredibly bad planning. Grotesque management. A failure not of ideas or character or of policy analysis or even emotional persuasion…but of the pure, basic demand that someone who wants to run something should, you know, actually do so.
And that for me is the lasting message of this convention. Mitt Romney presents himself as the controlling intelligence whose experience as a top manager prepares him to run a more effective government than that of slacker/community organizer/government hack/oh, by the way – President Obama.
Remember, Romney isn’t running on his record in Massachusetts because it (a) largely sucked and (b) because the point at which it didn’t — with the passage of Romneycare — is the one that he just doesn’t seem to recall. He isn’t running on Bain directly, because that record has messy details in it that accompany exercises in vampire capitalism. He can’t do much with the Olympics because, you know, he didn’t build that. So all that’s left is this general claim that he’s got the leader stuff down, that he can run things, that he’s a deciderer, and what he decides goes, and goes right.
And now this convention.
Seriously: you can’t put on a three hour television show, you can’t run the country. It’s as simple as that.
Images: Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh’s Chair, 1888.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Apotheosis of the Spanish Royal Family, 1762-1766
chopper
i think the invisible chair is going to be even bigger than the etch-a-sketch.
this guy is comedy gold, i tells ya.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So did Clint Eastwood
This this was a moment a genius and would show those damn liberals?
Or
Did the Convention organizers ignore all the statements from Eastwood about his dislike for the current GOP, so Eastwood went sure and mocked them by rambling at an empty chair?
Personally I am inclined to the later.
BGinCHI
Tom, you should read Charlie Pierce’s take on Romney’s speech. It’s insightful and a bit counter-intuitive. Pierce thinks Romney made a leap forward last night, not because it was a great speech, but because he started to at least own a few things that make him more human. I think he’s being generous, but it’s a point well taken. The convention and the party are making Romney a worse candidate, and he’s already a bad one.
ETA: This post is not meant to suggest Romney is in any way a decent human being or anything like that; it’s just a political observation.
Gozer (Galaxy SII)
I too watched not a minute of coverage of this cockup, but when I heard of the Eastwood “speech” I had to go clip hunting to see if it was real.
I still don’t know what to make of it.
black onion
I am loving this so much. This meme is making my weekend.
http://media-cache0.pinterest.com/upload/24840235415693729_cnTDuF5N_c.jpg
Mark S.
Great analysis. The only thing I’d add is the stupidity of trying to turn Ryan into the great defender of Medicare. It rings completely hollow and convinces no one.
Oh, and David Koch supports gay marriage, higher taxes, and cuts in defense spending, but still is going to funnel hundreds of millions to Republicans. What a fuckface.
Tom Levenson
@BGinCHI: Did read that, and I do understand Pierce’s point. But (a) I think he’s filtering his view through his affection for William Weld, and (b) I think he’s making the mistake of thinking that the convention was directed at those within the hall, where a human presence is, in fact, human.
So he might be right, but perhaps in the same way that those in the debating venue thought Nixon had defeated Kennedy, only to be shocked by the reaction of the TV audience.
When you think about what the convention actually put out to the broadcast/cable/twitter/blog/youtube world, I think the impression for someone in that space is very different from what Pierce experienced.
And, of course, that “analysis” (sic!) is worth exactly what you paid for it.
TS
@BGinCHI:
I heard nothing last night that “humanized” Mitt. I found nothing of interest in his family events – I wanted to know what his sons are doing now – how has he encouraged them to live their American dream. He cannot demonstrate anything he has done that would encourage people to think he knows how to be President of the country. His ambition comes across as about him – not the American people. I think Charles got it wrong.
I also wanted to hear some policies – nothing – absolutely nothing other than creating millions of jobs – by going on a “Job tour”??
Steve
More than anyone else at the RNC, Clint Eastwood did not give a shit about Mitt Romney. It was sublime.
MikeBoyScout
No Apologies bitches!
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: Yeah, I hear you. Bonhomie run wild (or Weld).
I just thought the counter-intuitive political point was one worth reading, since of course it’s easy to write Mitt off. It’s all going to come down to how this plays out in the swing states and not to the base.
JR in WV
Pretty good summary of a failed convention. They were pretty lucky that Issac didn’t hit Tampa dead center, they would have been up the creek without a paddle, and the creek would have been becoming a flash flood.
I didn’t watch any of the RNC – I have developed an allergy-like repulsion to watching politicians. The last speech I watched was President Obama’s Inauguration 3 years ago. I didn’t see much of it for the blurred vision problem I sudddenly encountered, but it sounded great, and the crowds were swell too.
I’ve contributed all I can to the candidates that touched me personally over the past couple or years. I suppose I’ll try to get involved in a phone operation, we have unlimited calling here.
I wish I felt good about the future, but there it is… hard times come again.
Elizabelle
@BGinCHI:
I think Romney does have some good qualities, and is in some parts a decent human being. He’s wooden, but probably not in smaller groups, or with people he likes and respects.
It’s just that he doesn’t use those good qualities in pursuing his vulture capitalism. He honestly hasn’t built much of anything, save a family and his personal wealth.
He’s cannibalized and capitalized. He is a financier and opportunist, not a builder.
Romney’s having to be a caricature to fit today’s Republican party is a type of tragedy, happening in real time.
Just hope it ends with a trouncing in November.
JPL
Empty chair did start the war in Afghanistan without consulting with Russia first so there’s that.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
Hi Tom.
I don’t understand your title. I didn’t find a single question mark in your entire post.
=)
maya
Mitt’s blundering into the news hour demonstrates that he definitely will be ready for that
3 AM3:15 AM call.jibeaux
@chopper: Ahem. The chair is very visible. The bit totally doesn’t work without the chair!
Tom Levenson
@danah gaz (fka gaz): well…let me say the end of the post is an answer to an implied question.
Yeah! That’s my story.
I’m sticking to it.
#titlechosenbeforeasinglewordwaswrittenfail
LanceThruster
Dad-gummit! (a “curse” the mom of my childhood Mormon neighbors used). I couldn’t watch any of this wankfest because my cable, net, and phone were all out (thank you Time Warner Cable!). My cell gets crap reception in the sticks so I was forced to hang with the neighbor (who’s actually a really great guy, so there’s that).
So what’d I miss?
Did R-Money’s head split open and reveal the alien cyborg beneath the mask, or did something less probable occur?
kindness
Clint had usually come across as a reasonable Republican previously. Not wingnut at all.
Guess he’s approaching the ‘Get off my lawn’ phase.
Elizabelle
From Pierce’s column today:
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/#ixzz258aPApVl
But they don’t really feel that way.
Witness the voter suppression and obstruction. Witness the constant lying, of unprecedented scale and frequency.
What else is Weld going to say?
Pierce had some kind words for Mark Sanford, too, in an earlier post.
I think he’s looking for any remnants of decency he can find. And they’re, for the most part, historic.
geg6
This the most amazingly incompetent campaign organization I’ve ever seen. And since Rmoney had been all over the credit for this trainwreck before it became a trainwreck does not exactly match his claims that businessmen (and how the hell W didn’t smash this meme into a mllion pie es, I’ll never fathom) are the best organizers and managers. Shit, I have more business and marketing savvy than anyone in this bunch, including Mr. Bain himself.
How, oh how, do you fuck up the candidates’s big night with horrible timing, major speakers whose “speeches” are not vetted or even, apparently, outlined to the staff, and the candidate so unrehearsed (or over rehearsed, I can’t decide) that you can tell when he reaches the end of a line on the TelePrompTer? I have detested the GOP my entire adult life, but I never thought of them as incompetent at this sort of thing. In fact, just the opposite, they were better at this than Dems could ever dream of being.
The 2012 RNC will forever go down in history as the one where an old, white, past his prime actor yelled “get off my lawn” at an empty chair. Seriously. I just don’t know what to say or think about that. Just wow.
the Conster
@kindness:
I only saw a couple of clips, but did he say anything about putting an onion on his belt?
Dennis SGMM
Great post. You do raise an interesting point about competence, or the lack thereof. The days of cutting deals in smoke-filled rooms are long gone. All the Republicans had to do was make a series of feel-good commercials for their brand. From what I’ve read here, they couldn’t even accomplish that. Now I’m wondering if the years they’ve spent embracing the counter-factual stupid are at last taking their toll. I’m also wondering if that will actually matter to the great unwashed public.
MikeBoyScout
Old Man Yells At Chair
via Attaturk
Violet
Bingo. This is it exactly.
Culture of Truth
Obama’s in over his head, but you can’t stage manage a 3 man and a movie without fucking it up. What exactly is that you’re good at, again?
LanceThruster
@the Conster:
…which was the style at the time.
mdblanche
From a offline source: “This painting is from the ceiling of the Royal Palace in Madrid. Giovanni Tiepolo depicted the Spanish Empire as the self-assured champion of Christian cultural values in Europe and America. Completed a century after the empire had gone into irrevocable decline, it represents only an illusion of grandeur.”
Are you trying to tell us something, Tom?
smintheus
On top of everything else, Eastwood’s speech trumped Romney’s because (a) though just as rambling, it was much more daring or innovative than anything the candidate attempted; and (b) it summed up Romney’s entire campaign all too starkly (an irritated old rich man arguing against a purely imaginary version of Obama).
In both ways and with both speeches, the implicit contrast with Obama…his straightforwardness, his specificity and command of detail, his groundedness, his dignity, his thoughtfulness, his willingness to offer solutions to big problems rather than just striking poses…was sort of devastating to impression left by the RNC show.
Citizen_X
Response from George Takei:
George Takei @GeorgeTakei
Clint Eastwood’s RNC speech was to imaginary Obama in an empty chair. I’m drafting a DNC speech to imaginary Romney in an empty factory.
JasonF
Of course Romney thought Eastwood would be the perfect speaker. Who better than the star of “A Fistful of Dollars?”
Culture of Truth
I heard more humanizing of Mitt than I’d ever heard, from his wife, his kids, members of his church, friends, a woman who served in his cabinet, and that movie.
We forgot about that and everything else BC (Before Clint) and while Mitt did mention his Dad, or something, all I remember from the speech were some lame swipes at Obama and I think I promise to declare war on Russia.
Tom Levenson
@mdblanche:
;)
Dennis SGMM
@Citizen_X:
The Department of Redundancy Department has issued a stern warning to you and George Takei on the grounds that Romney is imaginary in the first place.
Cassidy
@Dennis SGMM: The biggest problem I see, fo rthe future, is the younger generation(s) who have embraced the “both sides do it” meme. I have one friend who is a glibertarian and intends on voting for Gary Johnson and another who’s a Green Liberal who will vote for Obama, but thinks all this silly fussing about women and minority rights, etc. is distracting us from the looming environmental catastrophes and food shortages and that both parties are actively engaged in keeping us distracted. Oddly enough, he was defending a mutual acquaitance who was saying Obama should be shitcanned because he’s ineffective. After the usual patient explanantion of the obstruction, his response is “so he couldn’t get anything done? He’s ineffetive.”.
Then there is the middle group that is trying to do the young, reasonable adult thing and be moderate and centrist and objective, etc.
The GOP is dying off, I truly believe that, but I’m not getting a warm and fuzzy about the others.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Citizen_X: ooooh. ouch!
that’s super awesome. maybe the best tweet out of this whole mess. =)
Jamey
I can’t wait for DNC, when we’ll have Ed Asner yelling at an empty throne!!
? Martin
The whole show was so sad that I can’t really even find it in myself to mock it. It’s like cracking jokes about crippled kids. There’s endless material to work with, but each joke just makes you sadder. The only way to win is not to play the game.
soonergrunt (nexus 7)
@geg6: Following on what you said, if Rmoney wins, it will be in spite of, and not because of the candidate. I don’t think that they’re going to find enough people who are motivated to vote against Obama to make up for the lack of people motivated to vote for Romney.
SatanicPanic
@BGinCHI: Pierce is funny and very insightful in some ways, but on presidential politics he reminds me of Digby- they don’t “get” Obama and Pierce seems to think the race is a tie. The first I just chalk up to a generation thing, the second, I don’t understand at all. Romney only appears competitive in national polls.
mechwarrior online
The chair bit was amazing, by far the best speech of the entire process.
I watched that bit a few times, and everybody should. Once you get over the shock of what was going on, it makes sense. Taking to a person that isn’t there is a classic bit, but Clint is old and rambling (my father is 83 and that reminded me of how he rambles when he is pissed) and not a comedian. But his points were epic, and valid.
The problem for Republicans is he didn’t exactly endorse their platform. They shouldn’t have been shocked. Clint is more of an independent with a libertarian bent than a Republican. He went up there and raged against politics and politicians, and criticized the standard issues both parties have failed on, Afghanistan among other things.
His whole speech was “lawyers suck, politicians suck, politics suck, and you don’t have to vote for people just because you like them because that’s dumb” and then left the stage.
That might have been one of the best political trolls of all time.
Erik
Don’t forget the mis-managed european tour – & this is what passes as corporate competence.
Violet
I loved this comment by Applejinx in a late night thread last night:
If so, best trolling EVER.
Davis X. Machina
@mechwarrior online: The Democrats should respond by getting Bob Newhart to do one of his one-sided phone call bits. The Abe Lincoln one would be best…
? Martin
@mechwarrior online:
And yet they invited him into a prime speaking slot and left him unattended. You think Obama would invite Kayne West to give an extemporaneous speech on the last night of the DNC? No? Might that speak to their competence to lead?
JR in WV
I do suspect that the actual problem is one of the management fact that some people can’t stand to hire people that are smarter than themselves. This is a common problem when you get someone who isn’t too smart in charge, which fits the class of people afraid that someone smarter than themselves will make them look bad, or try to take over, or whatever.
Obviously, there are quite a few not-that-smart people in charge of things in the Republican party.
And it looks like most of them are very reluctant to hire the smartest folks they can find. Heck, there may not be that many really smart people trying to get jobs with the party by now.
The party doesn’t believe in science anymore. It doesn’t believe in progress toward more freedom at all; it wants to take away most of the freedoms fought for and won over the past 50 years or so. Most of the prominent professional conservatives appear to have deep psychological problems, and have trouble telling truth from falsehood.
So should we be surprised that they have trouble organizing a 3-car funeral parade? They destroyed FEMA, a government organization that was in fine shape when the R’s took over, and one that is crucial to saving lives when large scale emergencies happen all over the country.
So then they couldn’t organize a response to a serious emergency named Katrina.
Why would we expect them to be able to organize a complicated 3 or 4 day event, even with all the time in the world for planning?
Do they even have someone in charge of convention planning that has done it before? Who was in charge of that dog-and-pony show anyway? Rmoney? Now we sneak up on an interesting fact – if Rmoney can’t organize his own coronation, how can we expect him to organize the federal government better than the guy with 4 years experience at it and doing a good job as we move forward?
It becomes obvious that Rmoney won’t hire people smarter than he is. He hired a speech coach, who helped a little, for a while. But when people found out that Mittens had hired a coach, Willard fired him! So he turns out to be stupid enough to be afraid of smart people showing him up.
That’s the best news since election day 4 years ago.
Now I’m beginning to feel better about the election, at least at the top of the ticket.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Cassidy: “The GOP is dying off, I truly believe that”
At some point, it’s going to consist entirely of old white guys yelling at chairs.
KG
um, question… I check the wikipedia page on statewide polls for president every couple of days and just noticed there’s one for Georgia that shows Romney up 3… so my question is:
WTF, are the Republicans so incompetent that they’ve put Georgia in play?
raven
@danah gaz (fka gaz): And this douchebag explaining it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cassidy:
They don’t want a US President. They want a Führer or a Generalissimo
gogol's wife
Great art selections. I love Tiepolo!
KG
@? Martin: from what I’ve read of what happened last night (was watching college football instead), I’m actually surprised Kayne didn’t step in front of Romney and do his “I’mma let you finish…” bit
Ben Franklin
@mechwarrior online:
The problem for Republicans is he didn’t exactly endorse their platform
He endorsed Romney, quite publicly, weeks ago. That is really the crux. Whether or not he supports the entire platform is beside the point.
‘A pox on BOTH your Houses, but mostly on Obama’ does not provide a cache of credibility for the babbling brook of halting, dismembered speechifying known as Clint.
gogol's wife
@Davis X. Machina:
Someone mentioned this on an earlier thread. I would so love to see a young Bob Newhart do something with this. No one can beat him at representing one side of a conversation.
Violet
Has The Internet done anything with this Clint song yet? “I Talk to The Trees”
ed_finnerty
Obama should go on stage and apologize for making his own speech,
“Sorry I have to make the speech, the chair was busy tonight’
SatanicPanic
@Cassidy: If it makes you feel any better, I believed a lot of the same things when I was in my 20’s. I grew out of it.
Villago Delenda Est
@JR in WV:
FEMA undergoes this process every time there’s a change of party in the WH. It goes from being an organization devoted to dealing with probable, natural emergencies, like floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes, to one that frets about man-made catastrophes like “winnable” nuclear wars.
When the Dems are in charge, FEMA is all about the former. When the GOP is going, it’s about that later, but furthermore, it’s about patronage, not about service to the citizens. So you get utterly incompetent political hacks in charge, and the result are things like the Andrew catastrophe in Florida that cost Bush I that state in 1992, and Katrina which helped doom McCain in 2008.
The Rethugs do not take FEMA’s mission seriously. Fuck the help in the path of a hurricane, or in a flood zone, or who have just been buried in a lahar. Let them fend for themselves. That tornado was trying to tell you something, peasants.
salacious crumb
im waiting for ABL to give her imaginary Glenn Greenwald on a chair speech at the 2012 Democrat’s Convention.
Poopyman
@Villago Delenda Est: Actually, I think they’re looking for an Ayatollah.
mechwarrior online
@Ben Franklin:
Of course he endorsed Romney, he’s a small government type of person. The modern GOP sure as shit is not small government in it’s actions, but it’s at least in it’s platform and accepting of small government types. He’s also old enough to remember the old GOP before it went insane.
He didn’t like either option and let everybody know he didn’t really like anyone, he also trolled the hell out of everybody. It was great.
The GOP looks stupid and has pie on it’s face, and for those of us who don’t really like either party, and find the legions of people voting for candidates because they like them rage inducing it was classic. I agree with him, fuck lawyers, fuck politicians, fuck the GOP, and why bother debasing yourself by voting for someone just because you think they are a good person.
It would have only been better if he looked at the chair and said “fuck you” looked at the audience and said “and fuck you to” and then walked off.
Villago Delenda Est
BTW, FYWP was behaving badly when I pressed the submit button for my last post. I expect it to go nuts shortly.
Dennis SGMM
@Cassidy:
I have a number of younger friends (All right; practically everyone is younger than I am these days) and many of them feel that the political parties are equally corrupt and that neither party is willing to do anything innovative or effective. They sit out most elections despite my trying everything short of outright bribery to get them to cast a ballot.
I was hoping that this was some sort of statistical anomaly, but it sounds like it may not be. I volunteer as a poll worker and the last few elections have been geezer fests with young voters being very few and far between.
MollyD
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
O man, I really hope so. I LIKE Clint Eastwood.
Ben Franklin
@mechwarrior online:
He wants it both ways, if such is the case, and to that, I say, fuck him and that Gelding he rides.
Elizabelle
@Dennis SGMM:
Dennis: if I may ask: have not been following most of the threads. Are you moving? Or another life change? Saw some encouragement on other threads; wondering what is up.
And how unfortunate if young people are not voting. Perhaps it’s they’re not voting in person? Absentee, or absentee in person before Election Day? Anyway, they’re maroons if they don’t.
Cheers.
SatanicPanic
@mechwarrior online: Jury duty is debasing too because I don’t believe in our corrupt justice system man. I also refuse to be debased by my son’s school PTA. I told them they’re corrupt as hell and fuck their bake sales.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@JR in WV:
The GOP is the Anti-Enlightenment Party. In a country where at least 45% either hate the Enlightenment, or don’t even know what the fuck that is.
I too had a good laugh at the “Old Man Yells at Chair” routine. But IMO the election’s still a complete toss-up.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@SatanicPanic: “fuck their bake sales”
Fight the power, man!
mechwarrior online
@Dennis SGMM:
That’s my experience as well, but why should they?
For a lot of people Obama is the first Democrat they voted for that go into office, and what happened? Their hopes he would stand up to the banks, gone he fucking cradled them. Their hopes he would fix civil liberties, shit’s worse than it was before, Bush policies were extended and now we are killing our own people. Taxing the rich? Nope shared sacrifice for us all, and the Bush economic team is still in power. Ending wars? We are bombing more people than before casualties are up, and we are in more countries than before. Ending the drug war? LOL we are raiding states with feds ever more than before. Whistle blowers, the biggest crack down ever.
Sorry but Obama burned a lot of people on what Democrats do when in power. Short of voting for him over gay rights (which the major change came from NY and was backed by Republican billionares anyways)or because you like him personally, it’s a wash.
We tried a Democrat, what was promised didn’t happen, many things got worse, Democrats even stopped trying to stop policies they hated under Bush (it’s OK if a Democrat does it I guess), and shit just sucks.
The only argument right now is that Romney will be worse, but we were sold a lot of bullshit on what would happen with a Democrat in office.
Citizen_X
I’m seeing a decided lack of links to Neil Diamond and I Am, I Said.
I know, old song, but anyone have a more prominent yelling-at-chairs cultural reference?
At least Wonkette put up Gorllaz’ Clint Eastwood, along with pics of Editrix Rebecca Schoenkopf w/Eastwood right after his speech. (He probably figured, “Hey, cute chick with big wahoonas; sure I’ll pose for a picture with you.”)
ding dong
The Dem convention is going to use the chair in a tax return bit. I would bet money on it. It. Write
ding dong
The Dem convention is going to use the chair in a tax return bit. I would bet money on it. It. Write
Dennis SGMM
@Elizabelle:
Thank you for asking. The wheels have come off of our marriage of thirty four years. That’s a bitter pill to swallow in part because I didn’t marry until I was thirty. Figured I’d be a lifelong bachelor and then I fooled around and fell in love. Still am. I’m on a fixed income so I need to move to a place where the rents are low. The good folks who comment here were thoughtful enough to suggest places all across the country so I may just become a gypsy and roam the country, living in place or another for a few months at a time.
I play with a band whose members range in age from late twenties to early forties. The forty year old guy votes. The younger guys not so much.
ericblair
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starting to get ads for office chairs on the page.
I really doubt Eastwood intended the reaction he got, or that he meant to sandbag the Rombot. If you’ve got old relatives, you’ll know the first thing to go mentally is the little voice in their heads saying “don’t say that, it’s dumb and offensive.” Ol’ Clint there decided that he’s so smart and shit, he’ll just get up there, wing it, and tell Obama and the rest of the world what’s what, and everybody will cheer.
I’m waiting for Joe Biden to get on stage with an empty chair, mug for a bit and walk around it while the audience laughs, then sit on it theatrically and kick back while everybody cheers. Simple is good.
ChrisNYC
The thing I really really don’t get about the critiques of his speech is — his “five point plan” is completely tired and no one is falling for it.
Drilling for oil, school vouchers, trade agreements, lower taxes, abortion and gay marriage. I don’t get why no one (other than the Dems) is pointing out that the problem is not the he is not human enough, it’s that he has nothing to offer on policy. I mean, for real, school vouchers and trade agreements are salvation?
WereBear
That is the argument!
What, you vote once and everything magically gets done? Do you not understand the political shifts that have taken place over the last thirty years? Do you not get that President Obama managed to avoid another Great Depression and global financial meltdown? That he did it so adroitly a lot of people don’t even realize the giant missile we managed to dodge?
This isn’t about you and your standards and feelings. They mean jacksquaticil in the giant scheme of things. Go back in time and vote for Washington; that’s the only time in the history of the country that we had the perfect guy for the job. Too bad you missed it.
If you don’t vote, you help evil. Flat out.
THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU.
Culture of Truth
Yes, nothing says refusing to debase yourself to a political party by speaking to the faithful on nominating night and rambling incoherently.
SatanicPanic
@danah gaz (fka gaz): You have to fight corruption where you find it.
Culture of Truth
We tried a Democrat, what was promised didn’t happen
totally disagree
Citizen_X
@mechwarrior online:
Yeah, when’s Obama gonna get us out of Iraq already?
quannlace
Don’t forget the 12,000 new jobs he’s going to create….sometime in the future. Oh yeah, he’s going to go on a ‘jobs tour’ the first day of his Presidency. Seriously.
*****
Newhart tweets! In a collection of Twitter responses to Eastwood’s bit, Newhart had one on the lines of ‘I hear Clint Eastwood’s stealing my act. Call my lawyers.’
Dennis SGMM
@mechwarrior online:
I’m not quite as disenchanted as you are. – at least not yet. One aspect of the political dysfunction, as I see it, is that there are only two parties so all one party has to do is fuck over the other one and they’re in like Flynn. Neither party has to do anything courageous or even anything daring, they merely have to beat the other party. I’m not looking to the Greens or the Paulistas to fix this because I’m unsure as to whether anyone once they get a taste of money and power would do better than our current crop.
Chris
@Cassidy:
I agree. I also think “South Park Republican” describes a lot of my generation.
SatanicPanic
@Culture of Truth: I’ve come to the conclusion that campaign promise is a ridiculous way of phrasing it. Should be campaign aspiration. Then we can have a bit more realistic conversation about what candidates intend to do.
Violet
@WereBear: Exactly. Most elections end up being about who the least-worst candidate is. I happen to think Obama is doing a great job, although there are things I wish he’d done differently or sooner or whatever. But I’m old enough to know that the ship of state turns slowly and I’m not going to get my magical rainbow unicorn with one vote, so I’m okay with that.
But for those who don’t get it, who think Obama didn’t gift them their unicorn so he totes suxors, they might want to take a look at the alternative. And then vote for the least-worst.
Things don’t change unless you make them change. Voting is one of the ways we make them change. If, say, Obama the the Democrats win by a landslide all across the country, that will give them the mandate to do those things people might wish they would do.
And I don’t know who you’re talking about, but ANY woman who sits out this election and/or votes for Romney or any Republican is crazy. This election is crucial for women.
Elizabelle
@Dennis SGMM:
Dennis, so sorry. And thank you for telling me.
I think you’re in California, aren’t you?
Shall be thinking about you, and some possible responses to your situation … like a lot of other people here.
gwangung
Volunteering and taking over the party machinery is another.
You’re leaving the job half done if you’re not doing that.
Violet
@gwangung: Yep, the evangelicals figured that out in the 80’s/90’s and look what happened to the GOP–they got a lot of the changes they wanted done.
ThresherK
Back shortly after “give a hoot” and while the “Sagebrush Rebellion” wasn’t realized for the giveaway of public assets it was, I remember Clint on a couple of radio PSAs about not destroying national parks/forests/refuges/wilderness areas (with litter, unauthorized camping/climbing/vehicles, taking flora/fauna).
That was during Reagan’s or Bush I’s time. I thought it distinctly ahead of the curve. And I do remember a tag line about “Make my day” or “Are you feeling lucky?”, putting his tough guy-ness distinctly into the cause.
I liked that fellow. Last night was unfortunate.
geg6
@Culture of Truth:
In his defense, he’s totally right that the Dem president he conjured up in his head and then voted for didn’t deliver his pony that shits gold. But you are right in that, as far as I can see, Obama hs mostly delivered on what he actually, in reality world, promised and what was within his power to do. But if you never paid attention to what Obama actually promised, what the separation of powers says about the executive, or cared about anything or anyone but your own wants and fantasies, he’d have a very good point.
Chris
@WereBear:
Well no it isn’t. It’s about the One-Worlder New World Order Zionist Occupation Government whose Bond Villain plan is to take his guns using the Democrats as a front. (Cattle mutilation may be involved as well).
Didn’t you get the memo?
Randy P
I didn’t see any of it either and today I’m hearing all about Clint and thee Chair. Like you, I like stuff he’s done on both sides of the camera. So I want to find something favorable to say.
What I keep thinking is that he’s an actor, and an argument with an invisible person should work very well on a theatrical stage. Actors get us to see invisible stuff all the time (for instance, “The Elephant Man” with no makeup).
So I keep wondering with such an accomplished actor, why didn’t it work as theater? Keep in mind I haven’t seen any of it.
Reasonable 4ce
Better concern trolls, please.
Dennis SGMM
@Elizabelle:
Ya’ll have been more kind than I have words to express. I’m in SoCal at the moment and there just isn’t anywhere nearby that’s affordable to me. My total income is around $1600/mo and that will just go a lot farther if I do the same.
tybee
@KG:
please let that be true. :)
tybee
@KG:
please let that be true. :)
Tonal Crow
You absolutely can blame the Romneybots for choosing to stage a convention in Tampa in late August — the peak of hurricane season in one of the most hurricane-prone areas in the world. Also you can blame Republicans for doing everything they can to *increase* global warming, which, on average, increases extremes of rainfall.
—
Tag: Romney’s like Palin, except less attractive and more dishonest.
tybee
@KG:
please let that be true. :)
WereBear
@Chris: I guess I gotta check my email more often.
Tonal Crow
You absolutely can blame the Romneybots for choosing to stage a convention in Tampa in late August — the peak of hurricane season in one of the most hurricane-prone areas in the world. Also you can blame Republicans for doing everything they can to *increase* global warming, which, on average, increases extremes of rainfall.
—
Tag: Romney’s like Palin, except less attractive and more dishonest.
tybee
@KG:
please let that be true. :)
tybee
@KG:
please let that be true. :)
Tonal Crow
You absolutely can blame the Romneybots for choosing to stage a convention in Tampa in late August — the peak of hurricane season in one of the most hurricane-prone areas in the world. Also you can blame Republicans for doing everything they can to *increase* global warming, which, on average, increases extremes of rainfall.
—
Tag: Romney’s like Palin, except less attractive and more dishonest.
tybee
@KG:
please let that be true. :)
Tonal Crow
You absolutely can blame the Romneybots for choosing to stage a convention in Tampa in late August — the peak of hurricane season in one of the most hurricane-prone areas in the world. Also you can blame Republicans for doing everything they can to *increase* global warming, which, on average, increases extremes of rainfall.
—
Tag: Romney’s like Palin, except less attractive and more dishonest.
tybee
@KG:
please let that be true. :)
tybee
@KG:
please let that be true. :)
Sophist
Not to mention the five minutes he wasted wandering through the crowd shaking hands and hugging people with all the warmth and spontaneity of one of those robotic welding arms. Also, did anyone else here someone shout “don’t touch me” while that was going on?
Cassidy
@SatanicPanic: Well, yeah. We’re in our 30’s now. That’s what makes me facepalm. We were supposed to grow out of that “I want to play grown up” shit.
@mechwarrior online: You do realize that in the big scheme of things you’re complaining about white people problems, right? Sorry no one shit you a pony.
tony in san diego
@Elizabelle: There are no nice parts of Mitt Romney. He is a pathological liar and a psychopath. I recognize him from two others I have encountered personally and professionally. The tell is his business career. If he were not a pathological liar, none of the businesses who entrusted him to take them over, would have let them near him, if they knew he was going to gut them and rip out their assets, and the carcass rot.
jp7505a
While I tend to be a pessimist in my own life, I always was an optimist that the country was moving toward that more perfect union. But after watching the 2012 campaign I really find it very depressing. That 46% of the electorate can buy this nonsense is just awful.
There are legitimate issues that can be discussed. Obamacare really was not handed down on a third tablet that Mosses simply forgot to bring down from the mountain, so it’s a subject that you can have an honest difference of opinion on. But the GOP/teaparty approach to these types of national problems exists in some alternate dimension.
Ezra Klein has a long piece about the fantasy budgets that R&R have presented. Romany will cut non-medicare/soc. Security/defense by 57% by 2022; this in spite of the fact that the country is aging and the population growing.
Romney is going to the Gulf coast on Monday to view the damage and thank the first responders for their work during the hurricane. These are the same people that two months ago he wanted to lay-off. By the time he cuts 57% from the budget, FEMA would not be able to respond to a downed tree, the Hurricane hunters would be grounded and the ability of the weather service to track these kinds of storms would be crippled by equipment and personnel cuts. The next generation of weather satellites would never fly and the next generation of weather radar would not be built.
Every one, right center and left, has praised the contribution and character of the late Neil Armstrong, but HE DIDN’T build that moon rocket. All of us did with our time, talent or tax money. Exactly where will NASA get the money for the next big thing in space? One conservative blasted Obama as a hypocrite for his comments after Curiosity landed since he was cutting the NASA budget. However she has been raging about all of the money that Obama has been spending and the out of control national debt. If you want a strong space program you have to pay for it; unless you opt for the GOP solution borrow the money from China.
And then we have Mrs. Romney. I know it is considered unfair to criticize her because she has MS. IT is an ugly ugly disease. My wife lost a 22 year battle against MS, stuck in a nursing home because I could no longer care for at home. If I had the Romney fortune I could have re-designed the house and hired first class home health professionals so that she could have spent her last days at home, well cared for. Heck if it would have helped I would have gotten her a dancing horse!! The folks at the nursing home did try but there is only so much one aide can do when she has a dozen residents to care for in a given shift. And for several years I was one of those dead beats paying 0% federal income tax since the $80,000 nursing home bill came from my paycheck and savings account. We were too rich to qualify for medicaid. Besides I had a quaint notion that if I coud afford it, even if it was a struggle, I would pay the bills myself. You know that individual responsibilty that liberals don’t have.
Whether it is the gutting welfare lie, the birther nonsense or being a secret Muslim it is one variation or another on the race card. In an interview this morning Ann Romney said – ‘’I’m hearing from so many women that may not have considered voting for a Republican before, but said, “It’s time for the grown-up to come, the man that’s going to take this seriously, that’s going to take the future of our children very, very seriously.”. ‘GROWN-UP’ ‘ THE Man”! why not just call him boy or better yet cut to the chase and use the N word. It really does save time rather than having to politely tap dance around the fact that an African American has no business being in the White House. She and Mitt have a real marriage as opposed to the Obamas’ what phony marriage. And obviously Obama doesn’t care about the future of the country that he leaves to his daughters.
I truly believe that the GOPPers and the teapartiers and yes even the Koch brothers are patriotic American who wants the best for the country even if I think there solutions are wrong. I just wish they would return the sentiment. I rarely visit my sister and her husband since they are very much into the right wing world. I have committed the two biggest sins a person can commit – I voted for Clinton and Obama. I really don’t need to be told that I’m a traitor and a draft dodger. They complain about tax and spend democrats as they cash their military pension checks, get their heath care paid for by Tricare and work in a nursing home full of old folks on social security/medicare and Medicaid. I don’t think that either one has ever worked in a purely private sector job or a private sector job that didn’t depended on government money.
All in all very depressing. End of sermon
Chyron HR
@Randy P:
I think in terms of theatrical verisimilitude, “Imaginary strawman Obambi” is closer to Jar-Jar Binks than the Elephant Man.
Elie
Did y’all check out Ann Romney’s face during the first several minutes of Mitt’s speech? She was NOT a happy lady. Not at all. I doubt that it was because of Mitt’s speech. I would think that she was FURIOUS about the evening’s eff-ups and the sense of the overall convention. She knows an eff-up when she sees it and she knows that all the Romney team did not live up to the expectations for this extravaganza. There.will.be.hell.to.pay
Violet
@Cassidy: 30’s are the new 20’s.
Cassidy
@jp7505a: This is why you should comment more. We vent every day. :D
SatanicPanic
@Cassidy: Ohh, well, I’m in my 30’s and I only know a handful of people like that. They’re just more vocal and annoying than everyone else so they stick out more. And most of the libertarians are just Republicans who don’t want to admit it because conservative= lame. I know dozens of people who are regular voters, mostly reliable Democrats (most of them are Mexican American) in their 30’s.
Cassidy
@Violet: Well, to dredge up another country singer, I’m much too young to feel this damn old.
Violet
@Elie: Ann Romney strikes me as cold. I don’t understand why they think she’s their secret weapon with women. It’s like the sexism with Palin. “Oh, she’s female. Women will like her!” Uh…no. Women know a Mean Girl (Palin) when they see her. And a dumb one. And women certainly can suss out that Ann Romney is not the sweet, motherly type they keep trying to tell us she is. She may be a great mom, but her style is cold and full of control. Those boys knew who was boss.
Davis X. Machina
@Reasonable 4ce: Mistah Debs, he dead.
Elie
To follow on and again emphasize what Geg6 said upstring — these guys can’t run ANYTHING! What all the eff ups and lies demonstrate is their complete unsuitability to govern — their incompetence. Is this how they would run government? Is this how effective Romney ran his vaunted business? That he selected people who ran this thing into the ditch including the unbelievable selection and lack of vetting of Clint Eastwood? Did anyone ever talk to the man and assess whether he could put a coherent sentence together — much less make a strong case, on the critical night, for Mitt Romney’s bid as President. What a bunch of effups!
Cassidy
@SatanicPanic: Mine are only a handful as well, but they are the most politically involved. I tell my glib friends that they are only Republicans as well and enjoy the freakout, but they’ll pull the lever when it comes time. They are also all white, so that might be a factor. I think part of it is being the “alternative” kids of the 90’s, maybe my group still feels the need to be unique, or something? I don’t know. I know that voting for Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Obama never made punk music sound bad to me, so who the hell knows.
Davis X. Machina
@jp7505a: Thank you, sir or madam. In a fair world, you’d get to read that from the podium at the DNC convention.
Elie
@Violet:
Oh, I totally agree with your assessment of Ann’s winning personality. That said, I would have to agree in part with her anger at how the convention, and especially that night, played out. That said, I am equally sure that she would take no responsibility for the sad turn of events, though surely, given her big mouth on policy issues she should have no part in, she is a big moho decision maker for this campaign.
Mitt is just reinforcing the now baked in stone notion that he is just kind of a hapless screw up at the mercy of events.
jp7505a
@Cassidy: that or take up drinking.
I’m sure I’m not alone but when rich blowhards like limpdick and the R&R twins go on about personal responsibilty and worrying about the country that we will leave to our kids, well these are things we all worry about. It’s easy to talk about rugged individualism when you have a multi-million dollar bank account to fall back on
MS is not easy to deal with. No amount of money will cure it or make the pain, physical and emotional, go away but when you have 250 million dollars you can atleast ameolriate some of the environmental problems like eliminating steps or bathrooms on the first floor. MS and heat do not play well together so the window a/c units in the old house were very important. When due to a change in my job we could move into a house with central air, we gave a couple of the window units to a lady with MS who could not afford to buy one on her own. I really would hate to think of how she would have dealt with the 100+ days of the past few summers without the window unit.
These things are not just some abstract theory or political agends. They affect real people in real , often detrimental, ways
Cassidy
@jp7505a: Absolutely. And they know that. They know their policies will adversely affect people below their income level. They don’t care.
ETA: In the world that R/R want to create, the only way the middle class and poor people pull themselves up by their bootstraps is when they invade their wealthy enclaves, string up the R/R’s from their balconies and take their wealth. I don’t think they really want what they think they want.
Mnemosyne
@mechwarrior online:
Your friends do realize how cushy their lives are when their main concern is that we assassinated an American member of al-Qaeda in Yemen and not, say, finding a motherfucking job or paying for the mortgage on their underwater house or trying to decide how long they can put off medical treatment because they don’t have insurance, right?
WaterGirl
There were 3 guys sitting nearby in a restaurant at lunch. I could hear that they were talking about the convention and Clint Eastwood, but I couldn’t really hear what they were saying.
When I got up to leave, I said I thought I had heard one of them say something about the convention, had they watched it, what did they think, etc. Here’s what they said:
Clint Eastwood was lame, probably because is is terribly old, and used foul language.
“Romney was awesome.”
Me: “Are you guys republicans?”
Two big nods in response.
Third guy didn’t say a word.
I guess that’s the thing… no matter what they said or did, Obama supporters were not going to be impressed. Apparently republican supports were impressed, at least these guys. What about the 5 people who are undecided? That’s who I want to know about.
jurassicpork
Clint Eastwood proved last night that incipient senility has transcended performance art and has now been elevated into legitimate political commentary.
jurassicpork
Clint Eastwood proved last night that incipient senility has transcended performance art and has now been elevated into legitimate political commentary.
jurassicpork
Clint Eastwood proved last night that incipient senility has transcended performance art and has now been elevated into legitimate political commentary.
Mnemosyne
@JR in WV:
Exactly. What’s the saying? Something about how A-list people hire A-list employees, but B-list people hire C or D-list employees because they’re afraid of being shown up.
I don’t think that Obama (and, to his credit, Clinton) is afraid of delegating important jobs to really bright people. He knows that if they do a good job, then he looks brilliant for hiring such a smart person.
One of the worst qualities a boss can have is to be a micromanager who insists that s/he should personally oversee every single detail of a project. Ask me how I know.
Chris
@jp7505a:
Heh. I think conservatives “love their country” in the same sense that the woman in Solomon’s judgement, who preferred to see “her” baby killed before her eyes rather than let him live and grow up with someone else, “loved” the baby. (The fact that Obama has met them far more than halfway, implementing a bailout whose single biggest piece was tax cuts and a health care plan that they themselves invented and had been pushing for the last two decades… and they reacted by screaming that it was the most left-wing extremist thing ever and Obama should go DIAF… proves that they don’t even give a shit about getting their own policies passed anymore. It’s all about having the power and hating our guts).
As for the overall fate of the country… I have mood swings, but I often share the pessimism. I try to tell myself that progress is two steps forward, one step back, that we’ve gone in the wrong direction as a country before (after Reconstruction we went backwards on civil rights for quite a while, culminating in Woodrow Wilson resegregating the federal government).
At the same time, I can’t help thinking that every country at some point has its luck run out and is faced with a crisis it can’t handle. With half the population living in an alternate reality as delusional as the Soviet Ministry of the Economy, with the richest and most powerful factions in our society backing them, and a government paralyzed by the combination of the two, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we weren’t headed there right now.
jurassicpork
Very sorry for the multiple postings. Pages are pretending not to load.
Bobby Thomson
@Dennis SGMM:
Damn it. Well, I’ll scoot over. Welcome to the Group W bench.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Interesting that you say that because historically, Republican presidents have been the opposite. Whether it was Eisenhower, Reagan or W. Bush, the reputations they had was of being the public face of the administration and otherwise laying back and letting their cabinet do the work (often with not so great consequences, but you’ll have that…)
And yet Romney’s moving away from that model. Huh.
jp7505a
On the other hand a strong ‘live long and prosper’ Vulcan wish to Nate Silver whose model predicts a 71% chance of an Obama win.
SatanicPanic
@Cassidy: Haha, yeah, having been part of the punk scene since the 90’s- most of the settled down and became generic Democrats, but a few never gave up the revolution.
For the Mexican-Americans I know, it tends to be about the fact that they’ve been insulted for years by Republicans, so it’s personal for them. Prop 187 in California may have got Pete Wilson elected, but it created a ton of new, angry Democrats.
Cassidy
@Chris: CUZ HE’S A BIZNESS GEENYUS!
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
It’s always hard to say. My co-worker told me that her low-information sister (who I don’t think has ever voted before) turned the convention on for a few minutes and was horrified at the blatant race-baiting. It looks like she’s now going to register to vote and vote for Obama because she was so turned off by the Republicans.
Of course, she’s living in Mississippi, so voting for Obama will be like spitting into the ocean, but the convention was bad enough that it motivated her to go against the guys who were on her teevee screen. I think true low-information voters are not going to be won over by what they saw, but I could be wrong.
Cassidy
@SatanicPanic: Hehe…Yes, you can wear business casual and still play Fugazi in your office. lol
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
I think it’s the worst of both worlds: the Republican machine wants a figurehead (see Norquist’s comments about wanting a president who will sign anything that Congress gives him without question) but Romney wants a finger in every single pie, or — more importantly — to feel like he has a finger in every pie even if he doesn’t really understand what’s going on.
It’s sort of like the story my husband was telling me this morning about his boss, who’s constantly going on about how G needs to be in control of his staff and know everything that’s going on and blah blah blah. Meanwhile, it turns out that one of her direct reports is refusing to do her job and making everyone else’s life miserable. But you can’t point that out to her because she’s the boss so obviously she knows what’s best. It’s really freaking maddening.
Tokyokie
I got about halfway through Eastwood’s remarks, having been fully warned beforehand, and what I can’t understand is how nobody involved in putting this fiasco on TV seemed to understand that Clint is a TV and movie actor with no background in live theater. Can you imagine somebody like Eli Wallach (to come up with a former Eastwood co-star who’s more than a decade older than he is) stammering his way through obviously unprepared remarks like that? I can’t, because somebody with an extensive background in live theater wouldn’t be so unprepared. Eastwood has demonstrated on-camera charisma in the tightly controlled medium of film while working from a script. But they put him in a situation in which he didn’t get extra takes, they couldn’t finely control the optics and then let him stammer extemporaneously. Wallach, performing onstage, knows how to get the most dramatic mileage out of each of the playwright’s lines. Eastwood, with a script and a director, can sort of do that, but not nearly as well, and last night he had neither. (There’s a reason Wallach has done voiceovers for TV ads and Eastwood hasn’t.) You just don’t send out an action-movie star to perform Lear without rehearsal or even making sure he knows his lines.
bootsy
In a time of healing, we can come together and admit it: Most of his movies other than Unforgiven suck. (His best ones were done by that European.)
SatanicPanic
@Cassidy: hahahaha imagine how The Waiting Room is going to sound when we’re actually old “beeeecause they can’t get up… don’t wanna get up…”
Cassidy
@SatanicPanic: With the popularity of “post punk” I’m looking forward to an oldies station with more distortion than the rock station.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Well, that explains why the Republican establishment seems a bit cranky with Romney lately.
JPL
@jp7505a: It was a beautiful rant. I wish I could share your opinion that Mitt, Koch brothers and a few others love our country. I have trouble believing that. They love their own pocketbook.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne:
Jeff Bezos of Amazon said something like that in an interview.
Made me think twice about ordering from Amazon for many a month.
Not because I don’t believe in merit, but because it was so dismissive of the qualities B and C students might bring to a business.
But point taken about being intelligent and secure enough to delegate and not feel threatened by another intelligent and capable person.
Know your weaknesses as well as your strengths.
Chris
@JPL:
I think they think there’s no difference – they are the country. I mean, the message they’ve been beating into the rest of us all this election season (and for years before that) is that only the country can only prosper if they prosper and that the rest of us serve ourselves best by serving them. It’s Louis XIV’s “I am the state” applied to the modern royalty/aristocracy.
Tokyokie
@gogol’s wife: Newhart’s still doing live shows, mostly because he likes doing them. Nothing grueling, mind you, one or two shows a week, five or six nights at home, but he still has his comedic chops. He’s the same age as Eastwood (Newhart turns 83 next week), and he could deliver 10 minutes of material a hell of a lot better than Eastwood could.
NonyNony
@Tokyokie:
Let’s not forget that Clint Eastwood isn’t just a film star – he’s also a former politician. Sure it was “Mayor of Carmel” and he never went any farther than that, but still – he’s got some experience with how political speeches are supposed to operate and there’s an expectation that that’s what he’d do.
Hell he was apparently recruited for this speech because he gave a great endorsement speech for Romney earlier this year. The expectation seems to have been that he’d do that again – someone either forgot to tell him that or they did and he just decided “FU – I’m Clint Eastwood, I’ll do what I want” and did what he wanted.
jp7505a
@JPL: May be right, but at some point the warring tribes have to find some common ground. Our federal system and the checks and balances built into it will not work in a winner takes all political world. That might work in a parliamentary system, but even there the party out of power has to recognize the legitimacy of the party in power. After all at some point in the future the roles will be reversed.
Democrats were not in the least bit happy with the outcome of Bush v Gore but once SCOTUS reached the decision, it was accepted that Bush was president. The hard right refuses to accept the outcome of the 2008 election just as they refused to accept the outcome in 1992/1996. Obama and Acorn somehow stole the election therefore anything and everything is fair game in attacking the President.
Obviously the party out of power wants to win the next presidential election but it is how you go about doing it that is the key. You can work with the President, up to a point, and build a positive narrative that we went along with the guy for the good of the country but our guy can do better. Or you can follow the limpdick/McConnell scorched earth model of we hope he fails and we will block everything that he attempts to do. The goal of our party is to make him a one term president and if that sends the economy over a cliff then so what. Unfortunately when the president fails on that level the country suffers.
That doesn’t mean that you have to vote for every piece of legislation that is proposed but you don’t use tactics like the filibuster to bring the system to a halt. If Romney wins and the Democrats follow the McConnell model (insert backbone joke here) then we will go four more years without solving the problems that have to be solved. The D’s and the R’s can throw spitballs and water balloons all they want but by 2037, the social security trust fund will run out of money and benefits will have to be cut by 25%. That is a fact and the longer we wait the harder and more painful it will be to fix.
I’m not arguing that ‘both sides do it’, since Clinton election it has been primarily the republicans that are at fault and they are the ones that have to mend their ways. A battle of the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s only leaves losers.
Ruckus
@JR in WV:
I’ve always liked micro managers. They never trust anyone else so they have to have their dicks in everywhere, fucking things up. One person can not run a 3 day event the size of a convention let alone an entire branch of a large government.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU.
It is about all of us.
Finished it for you.
RaflW
Many of the same mega-incompetents that ran Bush’s Katrina, economic policy, etc, are in leadership at MittBot.fail
Republicans who love government and want it to run well are called Blue Dog Democrats, so of course the actual GOP can’t manage it’s way out of a paper bag.
Which bodes very ill for the US of A should one Willard manage to harpoon the Presidency.
Chris
@RaflW:
FTFY
Tokyokie
@bootsy: Well, the European guy and Don Siegel, who was Jewish, which is close enough to European.
different-church-lady
There’s nothing subtle about slabs of red meat.
Villago Delenda Est
@NonyNony:
This is what rather astounds me. Ron Paul was told that unless his speech was vetted by the Rmoney campaign, and he made an enthusiastic endorsement of Rmoney, he would not be given a speaking slot.
So he turned them down, rejecting those two conditions.
Yet they get Clint Eastwood to give a speech on the night the nominee himself launches the general election campaign without the condition of vetting?
This boggles the mind.
But hey, it’s the Rethuglicans. Who knows how the synapses work in their heads, anyways?
NonyNony
@Villago Delenda Est:
Actually, this isn’t that surprising to me.
Ron Paul is a “threat” to Romney directly because Paul is far, far more popular with his tiny core of fanatics than Mitt Romney is with any of his own supporters. Since he is a perceived “threat” Romney wanted to make sure that Paul would not wander off the reservation and fire up supporters for his heir apparent Rand at the expense of Mitt Romney.
Clint Eastwood is not a “threat”. He’s (at least ostensibly) a Romney supporter. A mildly enthusiastic one even from what I read (even if his enthusiasm is, apparently, because he’s mad that Obama didn’t give him the things that Romney hates – I honestly don’t understand the mentality of some of the “Obama disappoints me because he didn’t fix anything so I’m going to support the people who broke it in the first place” crowd). Since he’s not a threat, and he’s an actor and former politician, well, what’s the harm in letting him just give whatever speech he wants? Surely it will be good!
Romney has run an incredibly slipshod, half-assed campaign. The idea that he or his people would think “Eastwood gave me a great endorsement speech – he’ll just do that again” instead of properly vetting it beforehand to make sure surprises me not at all.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
Well, it’s not supposed to be about whether you got B and C grades when you’re a student. The idea is that people who are secure in their own abilities hire people who are very good at their jobs, while people who are insecure in their own abilities hire people who are very good at sucking up to the boss. See also, Obama’s director of FEMA vs. Bush’s director of FEMA, and how each of them reacted to a hurricane heading towards New Orleans.
Think “A-list star,” not “A student.” Two different things.
Matt McIrvin
@SatanicPanic: You need a certain amount of statistical nous not to assume that the race is a tie when you see national polls that sometimes show Obama up and sometimes show Romney up. I wouldn’t expect anyone who isn’t a complete geek about this, or at least a fan of Nate Silver or his fellow aggregators like Sam Wang and Andrew Tanenbaum, to get it.
(News reports on polls often call them a “statistical tie”, a term I hate, if the split between candidates is within the margin of error. Which says both too much and too little, because, on the one hand, the systematic errors in these polls are often significant compared to the reported MoE (which is a pure function of the sample size), and, on the other hand, you can still discern nontrivial patterns within the statistical MoE by aggregating many polls.)
Applejinx
No no no. Magical unicorn. Rainbow *pegasus*. The fact checkers will have your guts for garters ;)
dopey-o
@jp7505a: you should comment here more often. other places, too. also.
Patrick Phelan
@Applejinx:
I wanted the purple unicorn, though the rainbow pegasus is a close second.