I understand why they’re doing it, but I don’t see what’s being called an “apology tour” as a winner for Romney:
“We’re going to finally have to do something that Republicans have spoken about for a long time and for a while we didn’t do it. When we had the lead, we let people down,” Mr. Romney told a crowd in this important swing state. “We need to make sure” they are not let down again. “I will cut the deficit and get us on track to a balanced budget.”
But, either you acknowledge the elephant in the room, or you’re left with happy horseshit that even the conservative American Conservative knows won’t work:
But, quite plainly, Mitt Romney has no intention of saying anything that his audience doesn’t want to hear, and what he thinks his audience wants to hear is that America is great, and the only reason everything isn’t hunky dory is that we are led by a man who doesn’t understand that America is great. So believe in Mitt Romney, who believes in America, and trust that he will do the right things to steer America toward brighter shores.
That’s the whole speech, and it’s the whole campaign. It’s really that infantilizing.
quannlace
I thought the ‘apology tour’ is what the R’s accused Obama of doing.
Jeffrey Kramer
“When we had the lead, we let people down…”
And if he’s ever asked to elaborate — “In what ways did the previous Administration fail, Mr. Romney?” — he will respond “we didn’t have the courage of our convictions; we didn’t cut taxes enough, we didn’t deregulate enough, we didn’t cut welfare rolls enough.” Guaranteed.
Chris
Um, every Republican campaign since Reagan at least has been that infantalizing.
Violet
Romney’s adopting that “disappointed dad” persona. He had it during his speech at the convention and it sounds like it’s continuing now. You know, the dad who loves you, but is soooooo disappointed that you took the car for a joyride and tanked the economy.
Citizen_X
Somewhere inside the Beltway, Karl Rove’s head is about to explode, as he screams, “NEVER APOLOGIZE! NEVER APOLOGIZE!”
Which makes me happy.
Kane
Wasn’t the apology tour part of the Republican congressional campaign strategy for 2010? I seem to remember many Republicans offering a mea culpa for the last time they were in power and promising that this time would be different.
Violet
LOL. ABLCranky2012 tour update:
J.D. Rhoades
It’s like those weird Domino’s Pizza ads a little while back: “We don’t suck any more! Really!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH5R56jILag
gnomedad
You’re not a Real Conservative nowadays unless you drink every last drop of the koolaid.
arguingwithsignposts
Is he talking about when he was leading in the polls? Or when the republicans were leading the country (into the ditch)?
Chris
@gnomedad:
If you drink EVERY last drop of the kool aid, then there’s no kool aid left for the other conservatives, is there?
Which is awesome, because
1) It fulfills the conservative zero-sum logic in which you have to grab everything before someone else does,
2) Since no one ELSE can drink every last drop of kool aid, as there’s none left, that leaves you the only Real Conservative in the world.
Success!
Citizen_X
@Violet: Oh gawd, that’s awesome.
WaterGirl
@arguingwithsignposts: My first thought was that he was talking about his campaign. It was only in the second paragraph that it became clear that he was talking about when they had the presidency.
Shorter Mitt: “Vote for us – we fucked it up last time!”
Edited to fix incorrect verb tense.
Linda Featheringill
The American Conservative article is interesting. The author has no intention of becoming a liberal but he does address the issue of a political party offering nothing but empty words designed to make the voter feel better.
ETA:
I think the author is saying that the emperor is wearing no clothes.
The Dangerman
Romney’s just tossing melanin and sees what sticks.
Paul
It is rather strange considering how Romney apologized to the Brits after claiming they weren’t ready for the Olympics.
I guess it is OK to apologize to foreigners as long as it is not the black man doing it.
WaterGirl
@Violet: Who among us has not yelled at their GPS lady?
Anyone? Really? I didn’t think so. I not only yell at her, I routinely make fun of her.
“Turn right. Turn right. Turn right.” She does not handle it well if you don’t do what she says.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kane:
Are you sure you have that right? I don’t recall any mea culpas. The 2010 theme was ‘Obamacare is going to kill Gramma, and you’d better elect a hyperconservative who knows how to put a black man back in his place!’ It was a complete backlash election. George Bush had been carefully excised from conservative history, and everything he fucked up blamed on Obama or Clinton.
arguingwithsignposts
@WaterGirl: So it’s the “give me one more chance, I promise I won’t fuck around on you again” campaign. Good to know.
BudP
Hey Mitt ¡Courage! Romney, por favor, point out one contemporaneous public criticism that you made of Bush administration policies
…
…
Crickets
Hoodie
Does the Romney campaign have a singular gift for incompetent messaging, or does it have a profound understanding of the abused-spouse syndrome of the American public? “Just trust us when we promise we won’t lie to you again . . . “
WaterGirl
@arguingwithsignposts: Good one. But maybe a bit more like:
“Come back to me baby, I promise I won’t fuck around on you again like I did for that 8 years when we were together before.”
quannlace
Uh, has anybody else remarked that Romney wrote a 2010 book called ‘No Apology.”
Is irony dead?
Anoniminous
@arguingwithsignposts:
Think it’s more like, “give me one more chance honey and I promise I won’t smack you around.”
slag
@WaterGirl: I hate that my GPS lady seems to have given up almost entirely on street names and just says, “Turn right in 1000 feet”. As if I’m running around measuring my goddamned journey in feet all the time. GOOOOOOOOGLE! (shakes fist at Cloud)
JGabriel
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mistermix @ top:
Romney’s not even President yet, and he’s already apologizing for America?
Fucking wimp.
.
Chris
@Paul:
I think we can all agree that apologizing is the right thing to do when you’ve done something as seriously wrong as shit-talking the Olympics. But look, we’re not going to just go around apologizing for every few thousand people we kill in order to get Bush re-elected, okay? That’s just ridiculous.
GregB
Romney/Ryan 2012:
Believe in America, invest in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland and the Bahamas.
arguingwithsignposts
@quannlace:
Been dead for quite a while now.
Davis X. Machina
“It is right to struggle against an unjust economic system that does not uphold the priority of the human being over capital and land.” — Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year) #35, John Paul II, 1991
Happy Labor Day. Deus lo vult.
On an unrelated note, if you don’t like your GPS lady, you can pay extra to the TomTomGo people and have Brian Blessed give you directions.
Jennifer
I’d love it if Obama would stage a stalking tour – following up Rmoney’s every stop the following day, saying things like, “it’s funny, they’re saying things like “trust us, this time we won’t screw it up” right after they say the same things they said in 2000 – “vote for me, I’m a businessman” and “we need to cut taxes on the wealthy and get rid of regulations.” We tried that. It led to the biggest deficits in American history, the biggest wealth and income gaps in 100 years, and a near Depression. But they say, “take it on faith, THIS time, it will work!” There’s that old saying about the definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. Now, I don’t want our Republican friends crying about me calling them insane; that’s not what I’m doing here. But if they aren’t insane, and they continue proposing things that we’ve all seen don’t work, then they’ve got to have SOME reason for doing it, besides trying to make America better for you…because we already know that what they want to do won’t make this country work better for you. It’ll make it work better for people who don’t really need any help, but it won’t make it better for you. So…if you’re thinking about voting for them because they’ve pledged that “this time, it will be different, it will work,” I want you to remember that old saying about the definition of insanity, and don’t expect that doing the same thing again – voting for them – is going to produce a different outcome. And ask yourself how many times you can afford to live through the fallout of the failure of their ideas. Life is short; how much of it do you want to let pass while you wait around for ideas that don’t work, that have never worked, to start working?”
I’d really like to see some more fine knifework from our president…he’s so very good at saying the kind of thing I’ve outlined above.
Hal
Such utter nonsense. My personal opinion of Republican voters as a whole is that they are completely and totally incapable of admitting how fucked up the George W Bush administration really was. Instead they just blame it on not living up to conservative ideals (though they supported Bush 1000 percent) and claim that now they will make things better.
Republican voters have the same strategy year after year: you voted for Bush twice, he fucked things up. You don’t acknowledge that fuck up and pass all the blame to the incoming Democrat. +points cause he black and that means you can really argue he’s the true cause and in over his head because we all know only white men are really good at their jobs. Now that you have successfully transferred all blame to the Kenyan in Chief, you turn around and vote for the next Republican ticker talking the same fucking bullshit that Bush did, only this time you’ll get it right.
Wash, rinse, repeat until their aren’t enough cranky old white men left in the party to sustain it any longer. Should be another oh, 10 to 20 years.
shortstop
I actually think this will work just fine. I mean, he’s not going to win the election, but the base that’s still unsure (on Labor Day! LABOR DAY!) of his conservative bona fides loves nothing better than hearing that the reason they don’t yet control 100 percent of the world is that Someone Failed the Unfailable Conservatism. He’s telling them they can wallow in their florid but unspecified patriotism, continue to do bad math, blame Bush for their own bad judgments–basically not change a single stupid thing they’ve ever thought or done. They’ll eat it up.
Dennis SGMM
Happy Labor Day, kids.
JGabriel
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Davis X. Machina:
__
As I seem to do every May Day and Labor Day, I will remind everyone that:
Haymarket Square : USA :: Tiananmen Square : China.
Each year on May Day, the rest of the world celebrates labor by commemorating the deaths of workers in the Haymarket Massacre, a peaceful 1886 pro-labor rally that was bombed.
And each year on Labor Day, we in the US celebrate Labor by forgetting Haymarket Square, as was intended. When Labor Day was instituted, in the wake of the 1894 Pullman Strike, our corporate
leechesleaders didn’t want us using the day to remember the Haymarket Massacre or to communicate with fellow workers in the rest of the world. So the first Monday in September was set aside for Labor Day, rather than the May Day the rest of the world celebrates.And it worked. Like the Chinese who have forgotten or never learned of the Tiananmen Massacre, few of us in America remember the Haymarket Massacre. In a day set aside to remember labor, we shop.
So. When you’re celebrating Labor Day today, piss off the spirits and magnates of capitalism: Remember Haymarket Square. Teach your children.
(Yes, I know that much of the commentariat here already knows this history. It’s simply a reminder.)
.
Chris
@Hal:
Yeah, that’s the richest part of it: all those Noble Principled Conservatives who’re suddenly claiming that “well I was totally disagreeing with Bush on many points, and I totally said so at the time.” It’s funny, you know, because, asshole, I was there in the 2000s and I sure as hell don’t remember you disagreeing with him about shit.
Taibbi – “Every one of them [the teabaggers] is that exceptional conservative who DID protest the spending in the Bush years, and not one of them is the hypocrite who took to the streets after a black liberal launched an emergency stimulus program.”
Dennis SGMM
@JGabriel:
River Rouge, 1932.
Suffern Ace
They rely on people not believing that they’ll do the things they say that they’ll do. They rely on people believing “oh, they’re just saying that.” so the apology for not following through in the past reminds people of how untrustworthy they’ve been in their shameless pandering. People need to believe that those platform planks won’t hit them in the ass, and the best way for that to happen is to remind people that everything that is said by the party is meaningless. Heck no one even bothers to talk about the platform any more. Or Romneys ridiculous tax and slash plan. The meaninglessness of what they say and write is their 14th dimensional chess gambit. Mr. Loot and Scoot wouldn’t want it any other way.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jeffrey Kramer:
Obviously did not kill or make homeless enough brown people.
FAIL!
Davis X. Machina
@Suffern Ace:
It’s worse than that. Last go-round in the UK, the Tories basically went to the nation and said “We promise, in advance, to do things we know, and that you know, will not only not help, they will make matters worse. You know that, and we know that, because we did the same things within the adult memory of most voters.”
And running on that platform they got within a Nick-Clegg’s-ego’s length of the finish line anyways.
And the GOP is essentially running the same campaign, here, now.
Take the stupid and give the points. The stupid doesn’t always win, but it reliably covers the point spread.
Chris
@Suffern Ace:
You’re supposed to be very concerned that Democrats might do things they’ve never tried to do (e.g. confiscate every handgun in America, put Grandma’s life or death to a vote by death panel, establish a One-World Government dedicated to Gay Feminist Sharia Law). But you’re a wide-eyed fucking lunatic if you suggest that conservatives might do exactly what they’ve been saying they’ll do and trying to do for the last thirty years.
Our liberal media, ladies and gentlemen.
Roger Moore
@Hal:
They’re barely able to admit that there was such a thing as the George W. Bush administration. He’s about 90% of the way down the Republican memory hole. They clearly remember some events from 2001-2008, but they’re loath to talk about who was in office at the time.
quannlace
And Lucy keeps promising Charlie Brown that THIS time she won’t yank away the football
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
DING DING DING DING DING
JGabriel
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Dennis SGMM:
__
Thanks, Dennis. I did not know about that one.
.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
It’s not a fresh comparison I imagine, but Romney (and the Repubs) are like Lucy, promising us that this time they won’t pull the damn football away and deposit us on our backs (the better to screw us, I suppose).
I’ve not encountered The American Conservative before, but if this column is fairly typical, it gives me hope that at least a small fraction of conservatives realize their approach is flawed. (David Frum is another example, though he bounces back-and-forth between honest assessment and slurping up the Koo-Aid.
Litlebritdifrnt
@WaterGirl:
The DH and I play a game in the car to keep ourselves amused. He has his GPS on and I put the GPS on my Android phone on to see it we can get the two ladies disagreeing. I keep hoping that at some point they will become sentient and start arguing “no its turn left, you stay out of this bitch!”
I often wonder as to the wisdom of choosing a woman’s voice at all, I mean how many men willingly take directions from a woman? (My DH aside).
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
This is easy. Clinton’s third term and Obama’s first.
Of course, they can’t even get that right…they blame Obama for getting us into Afghanistan, even though that happened during Clinton’s third term.
Citizen_X
@slag:
Hah! The old man yelling at the Cloud doesn’t look so funny now, does he?
Dennis SGMM
@Chris:
I was there too and I can remember pols voting away their constitutional responsibility to declare war even after the Nigerian Yellowcake letter was proven to be complete bullshit. Even after Saddam opened up his entire country, including the presidential palaces, to inspection by Hans Blix’s core of UN observers.
e.e. cummings said it best in “Buffalo Bill’s”
Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
Mnemosyne
@JGabriel:
I didn’t realize that the original memorial is located in Forest Park, which is near where my husband grew up. (He grew up in Oak Park, one of the three interrelated suburbs of Oak Park, River Forest, and Forest Park.)
Dennis SGMM
@JGabriel:
You’re more than welcome. One of my forebears was there and that’s the only reason that I know anything about it. It’s not like that was one of our shining hours.
trollhattan
O/T The odious Charles Krauthammer, sullying my local rag, informs me Israel is a “one bomb” country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-deterrence-works-fantasy/2012/08/30/20c0a3ea-f2d8-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html
Interesting that Willard was silent on bombing Iran during the convention. Hell, did he mention international politics at all, other than the whole phantom apology thing?
Judy in SD
There once was a Republican who got Labor Day right, even before there was a Labor Day, sad to see where his party has gone since.
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” A. Lincoln
BudP
Republican hindsight formula
Republican administration + 10 years = secretly betrayed conservatism
Democratic administration + 10 years = secretly embraced conservatism
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Sorry to repeat you, quannlace (@ #43) — your “Peanuts” reference wasn’t up when I started my comment.
Suffern Ace
@Litlebritdifrnt: I’m actually more polite to my gps because she’s a woman. So yesterday when she got confused and wanted to deposit me in a traffic jam, I politely laughed at her and reminded her of all those other times where she’s announced “traffic ahead” after I’ve already been stalled in a jam for twenty minutes. She’s a trickster that one. I’m on to her, but why she wants to manipulate things so I’m stuck in the car with her for long periods of time, I don’t know. I ask her if she’s lonely when the car isn’t running and that’s why she lures me to congested areas. Her silence in the matter leads me to believe I’m on to something. But she’s not opening up yet. She doesn’t trust me, as one shouldn’t trust a man who takes away your power and locks you in a glove compartment I suppose.
Roger Moore
@Litlebritdifrnt:
On a lot of stand-alone GPS units, you have your choice of voices, including male and female. My assumption for the logic is that, especially when GPS navigation was new and less sophisticated, they thought there would be cases where the driver knew better than the machine and would deliberately ignore its directions. That’s easier to do if people see the GPS as an adviser rather than a commander, which means using a woman’s voice rather than a man’s. I’ve read that there are some countries where the manufacturers concluded men would completely refuse to follow a woman’s directions, and the voice in those places defaults to a man. These companies don’t make any big decision, like the default voice, without thinking about it.
arguingwithsignposts
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.):
If you lie down for a few moments, that fevered hallucination will pass. Conservatism cannot fail. It can only be failed.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: I don’t have an iPhone, but isn’t Siri’s voice in the US a female-sounding voice? I get the impression from listening to some of the BBC’s comedy stuff that Siri’s voice in the UK is a male-sounding voice.
J.D. Rhoades
@Chris:
63% of voters in my county voted for George W. I now cannot find a single one of those people who’ll admit in public to doing so. You can’t even mention his name without them snapping back with a Pavlovian “you can’t keep blaming Bush!”
Paul
@Chris:
Amen. As I recall, EVERY SINGLE Republican in Congress (including Ryan) voted for the costly Iraq war. Not only that, they voted for the cost to be part of the supplemental budget so it wouldn’t hit the official budget.
Fiscally conservative? Funny stuff, indeed!
Litlebritdifrnt
Been waiting for an open thread so sorry for the OT but here is my old pal Prince Andrew abseiling down The Shard for charity.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/royalfamilyvideo/9516734/Prince-Andrew-completes-charity-abseil-down-the-Shard.html
*sigh* he is still an incredibly good looking man and it reminds me why I had such a crush on him back in the day when we served together in the RN.
J.D. Rhoades
@Roger Moore:
When a British friend and her husband came over to do some book events with me, they had a GPS programmed with a working class male British accent: “Turn roight ‘ere, geezer”; “Roight, you’re ‘ere then, well done,” etc. It was a hoot.
Ben Franklin
@Suffern Ace:
It’s just payback for making her do all those ‘recalculations’.
quannlace
Ypu’ve obviously been watching Joe Scarborough.
The Ancient Randonneur
New campaign slogan:
Dennis SGMM
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Are you the person who, long ago on this blog, enabled me to delude myself that you were a big shot in the RN? IIRC, you cleared things up very quickly, but not before I had once again made a fool of myself.
Violet
@J.D. Rhoades: The people who voted for W the first time I have a slight bit more sympathy for. Not much sympathy, but a bit. We didn’t quite know the level of his complete incompetence at that point. You could find the info if you looked–there was Molly Ivins’ book, and his record in Texas, and his terrible business sense–but so much was swept under the rug. And the media was shilling for him.
But voting for him again in 2004? WTF? Those people have no excuse.
LanceThruster
@Violet:
GPS lady is in the tank for the Rethuglicurs.
Litlebritdifrnt
At last what we have all been asking for, a handy dandy chart showing the “ground game” the amount of OFA offices in all battle ground states compared to Romney’s field offices.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/03/13638162-testing-the-efficacy-of-a-ground-game?lite
It is not even close (you will be delighted to know)
Comrade Dread
Awesome! Then you’re going to show us your math as to how you can cut income taxes for the upper class, capital gains taxes, and corporate taxes, increase defense spending, start a war with Iran and still balance the budget?
Or… you’ll just say, trust us this time we promise our voodoo witch doctor cure will heal the economy…
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: That’s very cool. I’m impressed. I don’t think I could have done it.
Chris
@J.D. Rhoades:
LMAO! Can’t keep blaming Bush? Why the fuck not? It’s not like they’re not still blaming Jimmy Carter.
Davis X. Machina
@Violet:
Staving off — for a few years — the horrors of gay marriage and a slightly higher top marginal rate of income tax doesn’t count, I take it?
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: A non-negligible number of them are still blaming Abraham Lincoln….
Violet
@Comrade Dread:
Voodoo Witch Doctor/Rosie Ruiz 2012!
LanceThruster
Cole was tank crew, nu? Why isn’t he always wearing “Oddball” headgear like in “Kelly’s Heroes”?
Oddball: [groans] Don’t hit me with them negative waves so early in the morning.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Dennis SGMM:
Dennis I cannot remember but the dizzying heights to which I rose topped out to being the PA for the Chief of Staff for the NATO HQ in Scotland and then being interviewed for a position in the Office of Princess Anne at Buckingham Palace, very cool.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Violet:
Ha! Me neither, I used to go parachuting but as I got older I seemed to have developed a genuine fear of heights. I would have passed out from sheer terror as soon as I got to the top and looked down.
LanceThruster
@Chris:
Though in fairness to President Carter, Bush is actually guilty.
aimai
Fascinating Dkos diary from a guy whose brother is right in the sweet spot that Romney was trying to attract–a registered older white republican who voted for Obama last time. I can’t find the link but it was up awhile ago. Basically the brother and a bunch of other “lean Obama but unsure” voters were rounded up and shown Romney’s speech and asked to rate it 0 to 100 on a dial. In the brother’s case he “never got above 12” and was filled with rage and loathing at the evasions of Romney’s speech and in an after action discussion with the other participants in the parking lot afterwards found that most of them were agreeing with him and were revolted by the speech–especially the women.
That was in Virginia somewhere. I found the diary fascinating in light of the clear marketing decision the Romney campaign made to swing publicly “centrist” and tone down the anger at the convention. This was their target market and it was patently unsatisfying to them while also pissing off true conservatives and anger marchers.
aimai
JGabriel
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J.D. Rhoades:
My father does that. I remind him that:
A) He still bitches about Jimmy Carter
B) Carter left office 32 years ago
C) Bush left office 4 years ago
D) And that if, from this point forward, he never bitches about Jimmy Carter again …
E) I will be happy to stop blaming Bush — in 28 years.
.
Amir Khalid
@Suffern Ace:
This is an intriguing story, rich with potential future complexities. Do keep us all posted.
PurpleGirl
@J.D. Rhoades: Yeah, they increased the amount of cheese they used and tweaked their recipes, IIRC, AFTER getting help (paid for by the government) from the Dept. of Agriculture.
scav
@LanceThruster: GPS Lady isn’t necessarily in the tank for anyone. GPS Lady obeys nobody. GPS Lady enjoys watching idiots ignore the world around them and follow her instructions devotedly into lakes and rivers but also enjoys those that put up a good fight, yell at her and use their freaking brains. Harsh Mistress and all that. So, yes, aspects of recent Gooperism in the blind obedience being drowned but I think GPS Lady has more of the divine caprice of the Greek GoDs. Also, knowing which GPS mistress to play against one another can provide the amusement of not only different routes but entirely different end-points for the routes and I’ve played that game for paychecks.
Yell at maps you are given, it’s good for the brain and cheap fun. Interesting take here at the Guard. Oh, and twitter is going still more targeted ads so JC should be deluged with pants info soon.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Violet:
Thanks to changing demographics and the manufactured pop culture aesthetic, we live in a post-politics era of presidential elections. The winner of the Oval Office is the candidate with the most swag. It just so happens that the best politician in the Democratic Party this time around also was the guy with the most swag.
Paul Ryan’s bodacious lies would not be receiving heavy scrutiny if Romney was running against a weaker candidate. But they’re running against Mr. I Got This so it just makes them look desperate. I suspect by 2016 that Paul Ryan will learn how to construct plausible half-truths instead of bold-faced lies. And since the kid does have swag, at least what passes for it in the midwest, that makes him dangerous.
I’ve been paying a lot of attention to Martin O’Malley the last 6 months. Maybe east coasters can weigh in here, but is lightning about to strike the Democratic Party twice? The man is full of swag and a helluva politician to boot.
LanceThruster
@scav:
Thank you for the elucidation. The capriciousness of the GoDs puts it in perspective.
muddy
@Violet:
It’s Cole’s not-secret shame…
geg6
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Martin O’Malley is the real deal. I have a friend who worked for his mayoral campaign and who said back then that he would be a superstar. Really cool guy, really smart, has the common touch. He’s heading to Iowa for some event that typically signals a presidential run is being considered.
lacp
@trollhattan: Those crazy ayatollahs, just itching to nuke the third holiest city in Islam.
YoohooCthulhu
@Chris:
For some reason, I’m getting an image of that True Blood season finale where Bill drinks every last drop of sacred vampire blood and turns into a monster. Strangely apt metaphor for Republicans these days, actually.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Hey, Shawn in ShowMe (@ #87)… I’m not sure that Ryan is capable of such vast improvement in just four years. Palin showed zero ability to improve her credibility, intelligence, or likeability. And though it is quite unfair, as a woman, she is now four years older and not quite the starburst-producer she once perhaps was (to some) when she took the stage in her red Naughty Monkey do-me shoes.
Someone (maybe this blog) referred to Ryan as (I paraphrase) “an insincere Irish mortician attempting to offer his condolences”. I’m astonished that more people don’t see that he is a fairly obvious phony, with his condescending voice, and “doesn’t-it-look-like-I-really-care!” manner of addressing an audience. I guess when your party is composed of Yertle McConnell and a few hundred yahoos with good ol’ boy accents , you take what you get.
kdaug
@slag:
As someone who lives on a street with 28 characters and a hyphen, I tend to give the programmers a break. If new homeowners can’t pronounce it, I can’t expect the robots to.
*(OTOH, maybe we’re all pronouncing it “wrong”, too – in which case, fuck it, it has a new pronunciation.)
hoppipolla
@Dennis SGMM: hey man, how are you feeling? any advancing on the new-residence front? been thinking about you.
kdaug
@arguingwithsignposts:
Been dead for quite a while now.
Verified. I smelled it.
lacp
So we as Republicans say to all good Americans: you fucked up – you trusted us. Now we’d like you to do it again.
I’m Willard Romney and I approve this message.
Violet
@Shawn in ShowMe:
He’s the one who yesterday, when one of the Sunday Showers (was it Scheiffer?) asked him, “Are we better off than four years ago?” started his answer with “No.” The Republicans are having a field day with that.
Maybe that was an unusual flub, but it certainly wasn’t helpful.
Edited to fix typos.
Shalimar
@WaterGirl: I never yell at the GPS lady, but I do make fun of her when she’s wrong. It is hilarious when you go another way from her directions and instead of adjusting to the location, she always first wants to take you back to the spot you turned incorrectly.
Ben Franklin
@muddy:
No shit? What did comments look like in 2004? Holy Moly.
Mino
@Shalimar: GPS lady got me lost in my home town. I didn’t even know what direction was north!
Violet
@aimai: Here’s the GOS link to that diary about the guy’s brother in Virginia who did the focus group on Romney’s speech. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/03/1127155/-Inside-a-Romney-speech-focus-group-slammin-to-the-left
quannlace
Fascinating Dkos diary from a guy whose brother is right in the sweet spot that Romney was trying to attract
WaterGirl
@Shawn in ShowMe: I was completely confused during your entire post, until I realized you meant swagger, not swag. Then I re-read what you’d written, and it made perfect sense!
Shawn in ShowMe
@Violet
It’s best that O’Malley takes his lumps as a surrogate now than as a presidential candidate four years from now. The enemy would be running with his comments regardless of whether his answer was “Yes” (is the man blind!?) or “No” (see, even the liberal O’Malley agrees with us!)
The correct answer of course, is to give examples of ways our lives are better off and how we still have a lot of work to do without actually saying the words “Yes” or “No.” O’Malley’s a smart guy. He’ll get it.
WaterGirl
@geg6: I also read that O’Malley has a meeting set with the Iowa delegates at the convention, which also signals a possible/likely run. I still have no idea who he is, but I’ll bet that won’t be true by the end of the week. :-)
At least with Obama, I live in IL and had met him before, so I was not at all surprised by his convention speech in 2004.
Ann Rynd
“Gee is’is dumb.” Jean Hagen in Singin’ in the Rain
trollhattan
@lacp:
Yeah, you just can’t trust ’em. Plus hey, a few hundred thousand Palestinians incinerated–collateral damage or as the fishing industry puts it–by-catch.
Perhaps instead of moving the capital to Jerusalem, they can build a new city named “One Bomb.”
hoppipolla
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.): that’s what i’ve never been able to figure out about Mittbot. i lived in Cambridge (six-year parenthesis in the middle of my endless nyc sentence) when he was elected gov., and i never saw the guy’s appeal. he was such a blatant phony, and the way he shoved aside the GOP incumbent (granted, she was Jane “Not So” Swift, but still…) was downright thuggish, and unapologetically so (No Apologies!). people caught on eventually, of course, and he approval ratings were in the low 30s during his last year in office, but what took everybody so long?
Suffern Ace
@lacp: And honestly think that if they dropped that one bomb we wouldn’t respond by leveling every one of their cities. And that would be day one.
Elizabelle
@geg6:
I would vote for Martin O’Malley, and work some states for him, in a heartbeat.
Violet
@Shawn in ShowMe: He’s already pivoting. I think it’s great to explore that question and actually works in the Democrats favor. “Remember how crappy things were in late 2008? Remember how bad the stock market was failing? We’re on the right track, but not there yet. Help us keep going in the right direction.”
muddy
@Ben Franklin: Terri Schiavo happened. I believe also the lovely commentariat here was instrumental in helping him see the light.
Randiego
An ABL sighting on MSNBC just now? Cheering Tweety Mattthews ranting away?
LanceThruster
@muddy:
Any of the commentariat who remained true to GOP “values” still drop by here?
celticdragonchick
@Roger Moore:
The Air Force looked into this back in the 50’s and 60’s on what kind of voice to use in cockpit alarms (like stall warning etc)
Female voice was found to be more effective in getting attention.
RandyH
Didn’t he start his campaign with a book called No Apology?
Now the Apology Tour.
Wow.
scav
@Violet: Thinking there’s a question to be explored and that it would be worthwhile and valuable to explore it is already putting you into the yelling at GPS and maps camp. One can but hope the campsite is big enough to make this work. Still, learning to recover and recalculate mid-course is a good skill to pick up though. It was a stupid question both to ask and answer though.
divF
@quannlace:
“Oh, ho, ho, irony! Oh, no, no, we don’t get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony’s not really a, a high priority. We haven’t had any irony here since about, uh, ’83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at.” – Steve Martin, as C. D. Bales, in “Roxanne”
scav
@celticdragonchick: That might depend on context though. Given a bunch of all-male crews on flight decks, female voice would probably be the stand-out.
Chris
@celticdragonchick:
GPS Lady: “Velcome, Commander Bond!”
Q: “We thought you’d pay more attention to a female voice.”
James Bond: “I think we’ve met!”
Mnemosyne
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I remember reading somewhere that the “emergency alert” voice in the cockpit on American airliners is female because they found that the male pilots were more likely to stop and pay attention to a calm female voice than a male one, possibly because many airliners still have all-male crews in the cockpit so the unaccustomed sound made it more noticeable. Not sure how they do it in other countries, though.
ETA: D’oh! celticdragonchick beat me to it.
@kdaug:
We ended up buying a GPS because we had one on a trip to Kauai and it cracked us up to hear it trying to pronounce all of the names. It gives us plenty of amusement here in Los Angeles as well since it ain’t too good with Spanish names like “La Cienega.”
That’s a very Chicagoan state of mind. Don’t ever try to find Goethe St. by pronouncing the poet’s name correctly.
Though, again, every city has its little quirks. There’s nothing that marks someone as a visitor to Los Angeles more quickly than pronouncing “San Pedro” correctly (locally, it’s “San Pee-dro,” not “San Pay-dro.”)
karen marie
@Roger Moore: What? You mean, it wasn’t Obama? I could have sworn …
Seanly
@LanceThruster:
best combo war/heist movie evah
I should give the Blu Ray a spin today.
JPL
@Violet: Yesterday a friend who leans repub wasn’t going to vote until she heard Romney’s speech. She’s voting for Obama because it’s important not to let this man be elected. Her brother who sends out every quack email possible, isn’t voting.
celticdragonchick
@scav:
Possibly so.
@Chris:
LOL! I remember that!
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
hoppipolla (@ 109)… you got me regarding how Mitt got elected gov (though I’m a west-coaster). Of course, even without any charisma, Romney has ascended to the top of the heap of the Lord of the Flies party. We’re seeing pundits tell us we don’t have to like Mitt, but that we should trust his AWE-some business sense. Man, I thought that McCain and Dole were pretty stiff, but Romney, by comparison, appears to have been bloody embalmed.
PurpleGirl
@Shawn in ShowMe: What do you mean by swag?
raven
@PurpleGirl: They mean swagger.
Jennifer
I got a new Labor Day post up at my joint, if’n anyone wants to give it a gander.
Ben Franklin
@LanceThruster:
Hmmmmm. I see what your saying…*>)
PurpleGirl
@celticdragonchick: But it has to be the right female voice…. remember Star Trek used a female voice for the computer in all their shows. But during the original show, the first female voice was too sexy and Captain Kirk made them change it to something more neutral.
slag
@kdaug:
I think they’re dealing with that problem and a lack of posted street signs, in general. (Insert my standard “This is the price we pay for a weak public sector” complaint here.) Nonetheless, “1000 feet” isn’t the easiest descriptor to work with when you’re driving (or even walking, sometimes), especially in areas where the scale of division is the “block”. Whenever I hear it, I want to pull out the notepad and start performing a bunch of velocity/distance/time calculations.
Jackie
I haven’t checked in quite awhile but at one point tom tom offered a porno voice. It was hysterical in the free snippet. “You’re almost there, YES YES YES!!’ I’d have paid for it but I was afraid I would laugh too hard and wreck my car.
Dennis SGMM
In other news, the Williams fire is burning away a few miles from us. Our little town is filled with firefighters from all over the state and they’re trying to work up a strategy to fight the thing. I spoke with some of them because I wanted to say “Thank you,” and they told me that the fire has burned 3600 acres and that, because of the terrain and the amount of fuel on the ground, containing the blaze is out of the question at the moment. There are hotshot crews cutting firebreaks and one of the chiefs told me that there are a thousand firefighters en route.
FlipYrWhig
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.):
That’s the Mitt As Fifties Dad strategy. He’s not fun to be around but he works hard at his incomprehensible job to take care of your needs, and he’s willing to whip you with a switch if you get out of line, so go put on a clean shirt and scrub behind your ears, it’s time for dinner in America.
different-church-lady
Wait… that was actually published through an outfit called The American Conservative?
Romney is that bad? So bad that even conservatives can’t choke the bullshit down?
raven
@Dennis SGMM: We used to go up there when I was a kid living in Whittier in the late 50’s.
Xecky Gilchrist
@different-church-lady: I wonder if it’s not getting to be a faction fight between the wingnut “conservatives” and the other kinds. They might end up making the word “conservative” as meaningless as they’ve made “liberal.”
trollhattan
@JPL:
I don’t get the whole “I’m not voting” thing but in the case of greater wingnuttia, I’m all a-for it. By all means, “show us” by staying home, sitting on your hands.
My presumption is the Ryan selection is aimed at stay-at-home goobers, and it may be the case there are more of those than “centrists” who might have voted for a Romney/can’t-think-of-a-centrist-Republican ticket.
BTW, Huntsman was very pointedly anti-current Republican Party on Colbert last week. He and Willard won’t be having any Family Home Evenings together.
Dennis SGMM
@FlipYrWhig:
Paging Ozzie Nelson! Paging Ward Cleaver!
scav
@Dennis SGMM: Which direction is it burning? I grew up slightly to the east of you in Baldy so would rather it went the other way, or better still, went pure back-country / north.
Dennis SGMM
@scav:
The folks with whom I spoke told me that it’s burning up and back to the north at the moment. They are very concerned that the wind may shift or that it will start creating its own weather.
jeffreyw
Fire his ass.
slag
@FlipYrWhig:
Maybe. But I don’t recall ever staring at Ward Cleaver during any of his speeches to the Beave and wondering, “Is that man using Botox?”.
To paraphrase a line from Ugly Betty, Rmoney is starting to look as dead on the outside as he is on the inside.
Ash Can
@different-church-lady: The American Conservative is probably the last bastion of punditry that describes itself as “conservative” but is not reliably sociopathic, brain-dead, or foaming-at-the-mouth, padded-cell insane.
trollhattan
@Dennis SGMM:
He’d love to be Ward Cleaver but he’s clearly Eddie Haskell. And Ryan is Whitey.
scav
@Dennis SGMM: Thanks. They should have a good official site up somewhere, will go looking. Does seem to have blown up rather quickly.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Good analogy, FlipYrWhig! Mitt’s the man in the gray flannel suit with just the right touch of salt-and-pepper hair. Briefcase in hand, he oozes Daddly authority and will spank us if we get out of hand, but also might just whip out a penny if we’re appropriately doting upon his return home from work. Bleh… Is that what we’ll settle for?
Frankensteinbeck
@trollhattan:
To know Mitt Romney is to hate Mitt Romney. I’m finding it interesting that this is not just an electoral truth. Public figures who should be his closest allies give a sick grin in his presence, make backhanded and poisonous compliments, then edge away never to be seen with him again.
@JPL:
I think this is more than a commentary on Romney itself. It’s SUPPOSED to not be that hard to find a middle where your rabid base is cool but moderates think you’re totally reasonable. Now the GOP base has gone batshit insane, and that’s no longer true. Only a political genius or an utter boob could have gotten through the primaries, and political geniuses are quite rare.
Dennis SGMM
@scav:
I’ve hiked the San Gabes for a bit more than thirty years. The forest Service has a policy of not allowing small fires to burn so there’s just a shitload of fuel up there. It’s been three digit temps here for a few weeks, lower than average rainfall for a long time, so everything was in readiness for a good old fashioned conflagration.
trollhattan
@Dennis SGMM:
Here’s the official incident page. Good luck, and be prepared!
http://inciweb.org/incident/3230/
Ash Can
@jeffreyw: Clive Crook is delightfully shrill. In the unlikely event Glenn Kessler has any self-respect, that will leave a mark.
slag
@trollhattan: Interesting. When I first saw the clips of Ryan’s speech, I thought he reminded me of Eddie Haskell. But your analogy is so much better!
J.D. Rhoades
@Ash Can:
I quote it to wingnuts all the time, and they promptly labeled it “That RINO website you’re always quoting.”
kdaug
@slag:
Probably not the best idea when driving.
Agreed, though – “1000 feet” is meaningless.
“This next street up here” or “Hang a left at the sign” is(will be) rudimentary UI/UX 2.0.
It’s coming along, though, to be fair – we’ve just gotten past singing “Daisy”.
Dennis SGMM
@trollhattan:
Thank you. Living in the foothills commends that you always have your git kit close at hand.
scav
@Dennis SGMM: Oh yeah. What with not letting small fires burn (so near the foothills and housing) but still so near the cities for flatlanders to play with campfires and play at being hikers in flipflops and sledding on avalanche signs (Dad was volunteer firefighter and S&R so I was raised on extreme examples of very dead flatlander stories, sorry. If you’ve got the proper kit, you’re not a flatlander, by the by.) All that’s missing in the Santa Anas. Our worst fires seemed to hit just before Thanksgiving, and that was before the 100 degree temps so ouch ouch ouch.
slag
@kdaug:
No, it’s not the best idea. Which brings up the question: Is having useless information even worse than having no information at all? In my opinion, the answer is yes in most cases, and especially yes when you’re driving and already dealing with a ton of (potentially extraneous, potentially material–you don’t always know ahead of time) variables. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the use of GPS devices cause drivers problems similar to those caused by using cell phones.
Dennis SGMM
@scav:
Flatlanders; slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch…
I’ve happened upon some of those damn fools firing pistols at beer cans set up among the rocks. That’s bad, but not as bad as the ones who are up there setting off bottle rockets.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Leading me once again to wonder if the conservative establishment didn’t decide early on that this election was a loser (or that they didn’t want to be stuck dealing with the mess the country’s in in case the Republican candidate did win), and so they’re simply letting Romney be the fall guy for this time.
Chris
@J.D. Rhoades:
They think Bush and Cheney are RINOs, they think the health care plan they themselves invented is the most socialist thing ever. It can be hard to keep up with who is and isn’t in favor with the Politburo at this particular moment.
Dennis SGMM
@Chris:
That thought occurred to me when I saw the people who threw their hats into the ring this go-round. As time went on I concluded that the Republican party has collectively gone mad.
lacp
@Chris: IIRC, Pat Buchanan was one of the founders of The American Conservative. Apparently even he’s too RINO for the current crop.
Chris
@lacp:
Isn’t he still an isolationist? I can see why that would piss off the current True Conservatives.
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig:
He’s not Robert Young. He’s not Hugh Beaumont.
Forget about it. He’s a lying sack of shit. That’s what he is.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
It seems clear to me that there is no Conservative Establishment at the moment, in the sense that there is no central planning. Replace ‘conservative establishment’ with ‘every Republican leader with half a brain’ and I think it’s quite possible.
Dennis SGMM
@Villago Delenda Est:
The world’s sacks of shit resent your comparing them with Ryan. They demand an apology.
lacp
@Chris: I think so. He pops up out of his hole over at Antiwar.com every so often.
rikyrah
@Hal:
HOW BAD WAS GEORGE W BUSH?
The country elected a BLACK MAN to be President.
I take absolutely nothing away from the brilliant candidate that I believed Barack Obama to be…
But, I’ve been Black in America longer than 3 days..
and Black folks don’t get ‘ opportunities’ when things are going well…
they get handed the job when all else has fucked up and folks say..’ well, can he actually do any worse’?
Mnemosyne
@Dennis SGMM:
We’re nearish the fire (in Glendale) but so far we’re mostly getting the column of smoke and an occasional distant roar of helicopters. At least it’s not windy (yet).
The Station fire was much closer to us and was very nasty, at least in terms of the amount of smoke and ash that was getting blown directly onto us. I was supposed to go on a bike ride in Arcadia during one of those weekends and it ended up being postponed because there was so much junk in the air. My asthmatic lungs were very unhappy with me.