Margaret Doris, reporting for Esquire at the DNC:
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Stella Adams came to the Democratic convention so full of hope that she’d sprinkled her face with red, white, and blue stars, swabbed on blue-glitter eye shadow, and topped it all off with a stars-and-streamers USA tiara. But after another in a stream of “surprise” delegate visits here from Michelle Obama on Thursday morning, this one to the Women’s Caucus, the alternate delegate from North Carolina found herself fighting back tears.
“We worked so hard to build a just, moral society,” Adams said, after the First Lady reminded the delegates and guests that the election was not just about issues, but “how we want our democracy to function for decades.”
Michelle Obama’s words were a grim foreshadowing of a future that Adams, a fair-housing advocate from Durham, had already begun to fear. “And I’m going to live to see it — see it go back,” she worried.
Adams says it’s hard to motivate young women to understand what’s at stake in this election. “I’m 53. I was a kid when we got these rights,” like Title IX and the right to contraceptives and abortion. “I grew up seeing women not allowed full participation in American life. My daughter is 28. My nieces are 17, 15, 16. They have never known when girls had to play half-court ball because it was thought women were too fragile to play otherwise.” And as young black women, the segregated world of their grandmothers seems to be the stuff of the Brothers Grimm….
“I’ve really been motivated… to protect my daughter’s future,” Adams said, with a hint of new resolve in her voice. Her daughter, Danielle, a graduate student at Appalachian State University, is also a North Carolina delegate. “We will win this election, or we will lose our future.”
I’m 56, and I fully endorse this message.
Teri
One of the reasons this “Rockefeller Republican” is for Obama. A great many local parties have been taken over by the Christianist factions and have driven us moderates out. I can’t remember which pundit said that Obama sounds more like an Eisenhower Republican that the “socialist, Marxist” that those idiots try to project onto him.
dance around in your bones
Ok, since everybody seems to be watching the foozball, I just thought I’d relate this story:
A couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses ladies came to our door with a pamphlet titled “Does God Care About Women?”
And I said to them, you know, you should be asking if Republicans care about women – ’cause Gawd has fuck-all to do in our everyday lives, but those political fuckheads have a whole lot more to do in our everyday lives.
Jeez-fucking-a-hos-a-fucking-phat.
ETA: cuz it’s an Open Thread and my 3 grandboys have kept me up since 6am and I am cranky!
phoebes-in-santa fe
Hell, I’m a 61 year old white lady with no daughters, but nieces, and hopefully someday, granddaughters, and I also fully endorse this message.
Teri
@dance around in your bones: I do a lot of charity work with a bunch of Mormon woman and they all have grave doubts about Romney. We disagree on many issues but on this we do agree, he is a bully and a phony.
The Ancient Randonneur
I am a few years older than you AND I have two young daughters, AND I fully endorse this message.
Drunken hausfrau
Put that one on bumper stickers! WE WILL WIN THIS ELECTION OR WE WILL LOSE OUR FUTURE
lamh35
Good Morning guys!
Romney Got a Negative Bounce
Big Bounce Coming for Obama?
Yutsano
@Teri: They DARE not speak of this in their own homes or their church. They’re fully aware of the White Horse prophecy, and the elders in Salt Lake are determined to have Willard fill that role. But Mormons do not tolerate dissent very well at all.
Anoniminous
@Teri:
Obama acts and sounds like a “Eisenhower Republican” because he is an Eisenhower Republican. It was that pinko-commie Eisenhower that warned of the rise of the plutocracy (= Military-Industrial Complex,) after all.
WereBear
@dance around in your bones: I love your approach :)
My own tactic for repelling JH’s is one I call Responsible Hedonism. The minute they start out, I respond with a little talk about God’s love and how he wants us to be happy and he made us all different so we should respect the freedom and ability to be happy he gave us and we should strive to be happy…
About five minutes in they are tripping all over themselves to drag the young one away, lest they be corrupted. Because the young one is nodding their head and smiling and ready to be converted by me.
And perhaps some of what I say will stick.
Anne Laurie is right on with this post. Young people don’t even know what it’s like to have only three channels on the television and having to search for a payphone.
Likewise, they don’t realize how fragile the gains are. To them, it has always been this way.
Valdivia
Can someone explain to me why Mittens is bringing his wife to Meet the Press?
dance around in your bones
@Teri:
Well, I am glad to hear that. These Jehovah ladies just looked flummoxed when I mentioned the Republicans and they beat a cool retreat once they heard all the kid noise in the house (“We see that you’ve got your hands full” – Me, fucking, NO SHIT!!??)
Have the oldest grandkid in my room at the moment watching videos in Japanese.
What a weird world. Now we are listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks, even though I tried to interest them in the Nortec Collective instead.
Fucking kids.
Ben Franklin
““We will win this election, or we will lose our future.”
Counter to ‘Let’s take our Country back”?……”Let us have the Country; just once”
Gin & Tonic
I’m an old-ish guy, but I have two adult daughters whom I have always told that “you can do anything you want to do” and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that slip backwards. I also endorse this message.
Villago Delenda Est
@Teri:
You have to remember that Eisenhower was suspect by the wingtards back in the 50’s, and with good reason. He fully supported much of the New Deal agenda, which made him tantamount to a Leninist as far as the fascist vermin of the John Birch Society were concerned.
Teri
@Yutsano: Well we chatter quite a bit about social issues as we fill shoe boxes to go to our troops, flood relief buckets, paper bags of food for different food pantries. Many of them as well as my fellow Catholics work to live the teachings of our faith. They have a sincere belief in their tenets of faith, but have grave and serious questions regarding Romney.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ben Franklin:
The country the teatards want back was crushed by Union armies 147 years ago this past spring.
Svensker
I’m old enough to remember going with my girlfriend when she got her “back alley” abortion. And I remember the apartment building we lived in was raided by the cops late one night and 3 half naked girls ran out screaming and crying — there was an abortion doctor working in one of the apartments and the cops had busted in.
I don’t want to go back to those days. I want to see lots of contraception so abortions are rarely needed, and I want to see safe, dignified abortions for women who want them and need them. And I don’t want a bunch of crazy old men making the rules about any of it, either.
Violet
I’m telling anyone who will listen this same thing. Men who care about the women in their lives need to hear this too.
Anya
Anne Laurie @ top ~~ I am 26, and I fully endorse this message.
@lamh35: I really don’t believe that the polls are this tight. If you look at registered voters the president is way ahead but when you look at likely voters, then the race is very tight. I think the difference is due to pollsters use of a likely voter model from 2010.
Linda Featheringill
To my younger sisters, to be considered if we do lose this election:
I finally realized that I would rather die than submit to bullies. A life of being dominated is just not worth living.
The second realization was that I would kill to keep from being killed, or to avoid a situation where I would kill myself.
Ergo, I would fight to the death to keep from being dominated.
Once I realized all of that, the bullies have left me alone. I haven’t had to engage in physical battle. I probably put off different vibes or something.
So . . remember that disobedience is not necessarily immoral. Do what you need to do in order to be you.
Hill Dweller
I just saw one of the new Willard political ads, which is nothing more than an attempt to hide his own weaknesses. How did Obama send jobs to China, as the ad claims? How is Willard going to create 12 millions jobs? It also ignores the fact that current projections say there will be 12 million jobs created in the next 4 years under current policy.
Willard is an awful candidate running an inept campaign.
Teri
@dance around in your bones: I have a sticker on my door from my church, from 2000, that says “Open wide your doors to Christ”. That has a tendency to have them get to the door, look at the sticker (and the small sign that says, spoiled rotten attack chihuahua lives here, they turn around and leave. Although when my 80 year old Dad is here, he invites them to sit on the porch and debates them. (He almost became a priest) You would think they would let new ones know about our house.
Anya
@Violet: You know who else needs to hear this? Liberals who are angry with the president because of lack of tangible progress in areas like the environment, civil liberties, and other issues. They really need to pay attention to the level of destruction a Mitt Romney presidency will do to women’s rights and voter rights.
Teri
@Villago Delenda Est: He also supported integration of the Army, expanding the educational system. Even Nixon, would be too liberal for this bunch.
Villago Delenda Est
@Teri:
Are you kidding? They send the noobies to your house on purpose!
Linda Featheringill
@dance around in your bones:
Dance, you do realize that the JWs don’t keep up with politics? These poor ladies may have been confused by your tirade and perceived only your hostility.
And they may not have understood your hostility, either. I know I don’t.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Valdivia: I…. um… are you kidding….? What the fuck? Willard can’t even face David Gregory’s coiffe without Mrs Mitt to hide behind?
Seems to me in the 90s, I suppose because of Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court was a huge issue for three cycles, and for the last three, it’s really faded. I don’t get it, not just choice but Citizens United, now voting rights, fercrissake, how the hell are people not talking the USSC?
Violet
@Svensker:
Exactly. The birth control issue is how you know that the forced birthers are really about slut punishing than “protecting the life of the baby”. Because if they say they’re against abortion, if you respond with, “then why not make birth control free so more women don’t get pregnant?” they don’t have a good counter. If they launch into “birth control murders babies” or something, you go to condoms–“why aren’t condoms available everywhere for free?” and then they’re really lost.
The large majority of forced birthers are for punishing the slut and not for protecting any fetuses, especially not after they’re born and become actual living humans.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anya: I don’t know if they invented it, but my recollection is that “likely voters” became a media talking point on CNN in ’92 when the election was clearly over in mid-October but they needed something to talk about on Inside Politics, which is where my political junkie-dom began.
Valdivia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Not kidding. Just saw it all over twitter apparently reported by BuzzFeed.
@Anya:
Amen! I was at a dinner party yesterday where I found–in the wild!–a totebagger firebragger if that is possible. After she kept saying both sides do it I simply let it rip for close to 45 minutes with the passion of a thousand suns. Today i feel guilty because everyone looked terrified of me, but hey I wasn’t going to let that stuff pass.
Teri
@Linda Featheringill: Part of the dichotomy of being a Catholic. I would never have an abortion because of my belief that life begins at conception. But being a good citizen (why don’t they teach Civics anymore?) is that I can not impose my religious beliefs upon any one else. I also grew up in a a household who parents (both medical professionals and Catholics)volunteered at Planned Parenthood. I will support your fight, (mine too) and hope to instill those same values to my sons.
trollhattan
@dance around in your bones:
Most of the JWs who make it to my door (and there are a bunch) are black folks. I confess I have no idea what voting marching orders they may receive from the church versus, say, the Baptists, but they’re reflexively “conservative” in the broader sense of the word. The church itself tolerates no questioning of doctrine (from what I understand) so if they do issue voting “suggestions” I presume they expect it to be followed.
What I keep forgetting to ask–if only 144,000 folks get into heaven, why are you still recruiting? Aren’t you kicking others out if you keep finding new members? Seems…unChristian.
Ben Franklin
@Linda Featheringill:
Not only do they ‘not keep up with it’, they shun politics, for scriptural reasons. But they are used to being treated badly, and welcome it as part of their mission.
dance around in your bones
@Teri:
Oh Gawd, in MY experience if you EVER engage with Jehovah’s Witnesses, they will come back EVERY weekend until the end of Gawd-damn time…..my daughter came out (whilst hearing me talking to THEM) with the most horrified look on her face…..like I had invited the zombies through the door.
Sorry!!
@WereBear:
To me, it depends on how much time I have got (to waste) – the quickest way to get rid of them is to claim you belong to another religion, like Islam or being Jewish. We used to do that alternately when bothered by Jehovah’s or Mormons .
Hell, I would have pretended to be a Gawd-dang Scientologist or a Whirling Dervish to get them off my stoop.
Actually, I like the Whirling Dervish idea :)
Teri
@Villago Delenda Est: Probably, I sold books for Southwestern, so I am generous to door to door encounters. (That is the way I paid for 2 awesome spring breaks and a lovely ski trip during college)
dance around in your bones
@Linda Featheringill:
Linda, I didn’t say it with hostility in my voice – more like bewilderment. I swear.
I am rarely rude to the proselytizers, only counter with logic. Which, hopefully, gives them something to think about in the wee small hours of the morning.
karen marie
@Teri: You only get your address on the JW “do not call” list if you react to their presence by screaming obscenities, grabbing a mop or a broom to swing and threaten them with the police if they don’t get off your fucking property. Has worked for me everywhere I’ve lived.
As for the post subject: totes agree. I was 21 years old, a month into a one-year secretarial program, living on my own (albeit in the dorm) in a city where I knew no one, when I discovered I was pregnant from a summer fling. Thank FSM it was 1977, not 1967, because I was able to easily find a nearby abortion clinic. Without it, I couldn’t have finished the program (due date was May, finish was June) and either I or the child (or both) would have ended up dead. Not everyone should be a parent, and I knew that about myself. I was truly grateful for my ability to get a safe abortion. It has sickened me to watch as the ability of others has been compromised and slowly eliminated over the last 20 years.
That’s why I tell my friends, family, anyone who will listen, vote as if your life depends upon it, because it does.
Svensker
@Linda Featheringill:
We have an elderly Quaker friend who is so sweet and fluffy — she looks exactly like Miss Marple — and she always invites the JWs in. She gives them tea and cookies and has a nice chat about Jesus and Quakers with them and they always get so confused. When tea is done she loads them down Quaker pamphlets and thanks them profusely for coming. She says they always back out the door with panic in their faces and the whites of their eyes showing.
dance around in your bones
@trollhattan:
I have ALWAYS wondered about this little factoid.
FWIW, the JW’s at our door today were one black, one white. They both looked a bit embarrassed when I brought up the Republicans, heh.
ETA: I forgot to mention that when we lived in Mexico, when the JW’s came around? my husband would say I’ll listen to your pamphlets after you listen to AC/DC on my stereo machine.
Anoniminous
@Valdivia:
Because it “proves,” to a certain section of voters, he knows all about women’s issues because — LOOK! — he’s married to one!
And I wish that was snark.
Violet
One year I was visiting friends over the Easter weekend. They weren’t religious–I was there because I had a long weekend so used the holiday. Anyway, on the Sunday the doorbell rang and it was Mormon missionaries. On Easter Sunday! I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t they have a Mormon home where they were spending Easter Sunday?
My friend was too nice to say anything, but another friend who was there just started shouting at them about proselytizing and trying to convert people and how wrong that was. It was hilarious. Those poor boys. They just stood there with their mouths open and then politely left. I felt bad for them out working on Easter Sunday.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I once read an article by a woman who was raised JW, and she says if you say to a door knocker “I’m apostate”, ex-JW, they turn and scurry away like you’ve got the plague. DIdn’t have the guts to try it, myself. I was curious to see the reaction, but it seemed cruel somehow.
Valdivia
@Anoniminous:
I simply have no words for this. It’s ridiculous. Has a candidate ever done that? After not being on a Sunday show for 3 or 4 years he goes for an interview and brings the wifey?
Davis X. Machina
No, no, no, if we win this election, we will lose our future.
It’s all so logical, so simple — if people would just grasp the logic.
Anya
I don’t know about the circulation of this newspaper or its political leaning, but the cover of today’s Portsmouth Herald newspaper, published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire is awesome!
Linda Featheringill
@Svensker:
Your Quaker friend:
LOL! Hey, turn about is fair play.
lamh35
Hmm, so Ann Romney will be on MTP with Mittens tomorrow.
Not that I expected any hard-hitting journalism from David Gregory, but we can surely NOT expect anything now, unless Gregory has the balls to ask Romney hard questions even if Ann is sitting next to him.
But I doubt. I expect softball questions from David and then having all the MSNBC crew, yes even Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz, all saying how Gregory did a “hard-hiting” interview.
I expect nothing less than the worse from Gregory..ugh
Davis X. Machina
It’s gotten so farcical that TBogg is trolling his own front-pagers.
lamh35
Mitt romney on the stump today said “I will not take God off our coins.”
Ok, who the hell is threatening to take “God” off our coins???
Teri
@karen marie: I don’t mind the visits, but we probably are a “training the newbie” house.
When my parents sat me down for the “talk”, my mother talked very frankly about being one of 13 kids, the 7 miscarriages she had in the 4 years between my oldest sister and myself and why if I ever wanted to have sex, it had better be with a condom! And gave me a bag she brought home from the clinic. She then showed me some very graphic photographs of various STDS. My Dad then told me that yes our faith was against birth control but he reminded me that life was sacred and that creating life took serious thought, commitment and dedication and unless I wanted to have a child I should “not have sex” and that “hot hormones” was not an excuse to run wild. (This was in the 70’s)
When I had the talk with my sons I used the same terms,(Adding that oral sex also transmits STDS) and told them that there would be condoms to be found in the bathroom linen closet.
dance around in your bones
Also, we used to get The Mormon Twins regularly on our property (several hundred acres on an old farm – rented) pulling up on their bicycles to proselytize.
We would always smile pleasantly, and suggest they enjoy the view as they left.
We were much more accommodating to the Mexican immigrants who would show up on our land, white crusts around their lips from thirst, needing water and food.
I have to admit to feeding many of them to a family dinner on our porch and then driving them past the next checkpoint.
So sue me.
gogol's wife
@Teri:
I wish I still had time to debate Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s fun.
Anoniminous
@Valdivia:
Why do you think he brought the wifey? Subliminals work to reassure, below conscious cognitive data processing. All smart politicians do it.
I concede RomIdiot bringing wifey to a Meet the Press taping ‘jumps the shark’ in the original context and meaning of the phrase.
PurpleGirl
A little research can be summed this way:
(1) The 144,000 will be picked by God to become spirits with him in heaven for eternity.
(2) The rest of the religious people will continued to live in a paradise on earth after the apocalypse for a thousand years.
This is a very brief summary because there are lots caveats about time periods and the original 12 tribes of Israel, etc.
Clearly it’s a problem for them which they try to explain, however full of spin that explanation is.
Teri
@gogol’s wife: I work at home editing medical texts so I love interruptions especially when I am trying to format chemotherapy trial tables!
PurpleGirl
@dance around in your bones: In the past I’ve told them I’m a happy pagan, wish them well, and close the door or walk away.
Valdivia
@Anoniminous:
Exactly. I think it is stupid that he always campaigns with her, but I get it. But an actual taping of a policy interview? This isn’t the Today show.
Anya
@Valdivia: Recently, my cousin went insane when her brother in-law spouted some firebagger crap about how both sides are the same and “the only thing that will save the soul of the Democratic Party might be the defeat of President Obama in this election.” Yes, truly he said that. My cousin was like, “easy for you to say, since you’re an affluent white man who will be least affected by the insane policies the republicans will enact.” She also pointed out that a Romney wins means that it’s more likely that the republicans will get the Senate and maintain the House.
I think a lot of liberal households are having these kinds of discussions. But I hope our idealistic idiots will come to their senses before it’s too late.
gogol's wife
@Teri:
Yes, it was when I was in grad school and home trying to write a dissertation that I used to get into long interesting chats with them.
f space that
@lamh35: The inference, of course, is that the godless, muslim, communist wants to. In their world they all know this to be true, they are running against an Obama that actually does not exist.
JoyfulA
The funny part is that when I lived in the city, I’d get Jehovah’s Witness visitors and never a Mormon in 30 years. When I moved back to the suburbs, I got Mormon visitors but no JWs.
(Now I’m in the exurbs, and I get no religious proselytizers.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Joe Conason earned my undying admiration when he made this point, in a column, to Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins et al.
@lamh35: Christ, there really is no denominator too low for Willard’s Dumb-down America Tour. He may be worse than Palin.
Valdivia
@Anya:
I can imagine it. And I think, as bad as I felt afterward, that it is necessary to drop some truth on these people. Wake up and smell what the future would look with Romney in charge.
Ben Franklin
@PurpleGirl:
Sort of. The Patriarch’s (Moses etc) who died before Christ was crucified and arose, will fulfill the promise to make Earth a Paradise when they are resurrected to corporeal bodies again. The 144,000 are selected individuals who will fill the void of angels who have fallen. They say there is no inconsistency, save the rebellion in Eden, which temporarily (in God years) derailed, but still his purpose.
Davis X. Machina
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Palin didn’t have the same contempt for the rubes — she was of them, even while she’s transparently grifting them. Romney’s not even pretending…
Suffern Ace
@lamh35: There is a Petition going around my FB regarding stopping someone from banning God and the Flag from public events that has a few folks in a tizzy. So yeah, I’m sure the idea there’s a plan to change the coins has a certain currency.
Anoniminous
@Teri:
As one who is approaching the stage in his life when cancer becomes an ever increasing possibility: disconnect your damn doorbell.
Thank you.
@Valdivia:
In order to continue the discussion I need some direction.
What part of “Romney is a moronic doofus with the political skills of a hamster” do I need to explain?
:-)
Valdivia
@Anoniminous:
:D
that is all.
WaterGirl
@Davis X. Machina: I’m not sure you’re helping when you make their case for them, day after day. Even if it is snark.
lamh35
here’s the exact quote: Romney: “I will not take God out of our platform, I will not take God off our coins, & I will not take God out of my heart.”
Then he led the crowd into an impromptu reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Jeez, the polling must be bad for Romney that now they are playing the cultural stuff?
WereBear
If you are a fan of Rumi (Sufi mystic) you might like this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPEjJ2YMpU4
Mr WereBear wrote the music, an original composition, and a friend of ours did the art.
Enjoy!
karen marie
@Anya: Awesome!
I recently discovered the “snipping” tool that comes with Windows 7. I have now “snipped” the pertinent part of that front page for posterity.
Villago Delenda Est
@PurpleGirl:
Easy answer: it’s all pure bullshit, and leave it at that.
Has the virtue of simplicity.
JoyfulA
@Teri: Me, too! I work at home editing academic books. It’s a great life.
Schlemizel
@Davis X. Machina: I’m not sure. I get a strong Lonesome Rhodes sense out of Palin. I think she really is laughing at them behind her curtains. She is stupid but not crazy.
With the Marquis du Mittens the masses are so beneath him he wouldn’t even laugh.
Villago Delenda Est
@Valdivia:
Because if he brought his teddy bear, even Dancin’ Dave would be compelled to burst into uncontrollable rolling on the floor?
Teri
@Anoniminous:One of the reasons I do the work I do, because my Mom, 3 Aunts, 2 female cousins all died of the same Uterine cancer. But, joy needs to be found in small ways, and the deadlines are always met. Most of the stuff I do is for text books, teaching protocols and long established therapies. I rarely get anything “next generation” or “cutting edge”.
Schlemizel
Just got final word back from the vet. There is nothing wrong with the cat as far as he can tell. All the organics “look great for a cat of her age”.
So it could be a disk issue or a stroke. If we want we can spend $1700 for an MRI & then know if it is one of those but there is no treatment for either.
So at 17 she may spend the rest of her days falling down when she walks.
Teri
@JoyfulA: I have been doing that since my youngest was born, so I could be home full-time. Started off with Word Star and 5 1/4 floppys.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Schlemizel: it’s been a long time since I saw that movie, so I can’t remember if Lonesome had the same very genuine sense of grievance that Palin has. I don’t watch Fox, but from the little clips and blurbs I’ve seen, she knows her fifteen minutes is ticking and her audience is shrinking. In two more years, she’ll be on Fox’s August B-list
TK421
Vote Obama or reproductive rights will be curtailed. Well, um…
Obama Backs Limit on Sale to Teenagers of Morning-After Pill
http://www.jillstein.org/
lamh35
@Valdivia: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: One of the guys at TPM asked and it seems that they will both interview together and then Romney is also supposed to have a one on one interview.
So expect the whole hour to be a Romney soft-sell.
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The difference is Palin believed the crap she was spouting. Willard on the other hand is deliberately whipping the wingnuts into a frenzy with talking points from email forwards because he needs them. If the crazies bail out on him he might have to defend places like Texas, Arizona and Georgia. So, he needs the crazies riled up.
Chris
@Anya:
Yeah, I think that’s about right.
JoyfulA
@Teri: I started when my late husband became disabled. He needed someone around more (I had a job with a lot of travel), and we needed more money than his disability, so I taught myself to proofread and took a lot of tests.
But I didn’t start off with floppies; I started off with colored pencils and paper manuscripts, huge stacks of paper going back and forth via UPS.
Valdivia
@lamh35:
After Anne went on and on about how she doesn’t answer policy questions why are they doing an interview with her? Since when is Meet the Press that kind of show?
This should earn him a round of mocking from the Village. I know it won’t but a girl can dream.
@Villago Delenda Est:
Maybe he will hold on to her skirts? Is he going to take her to his meetings with Putin?
Chris
@Anya:
Like I’ve said before though – the obsession with guarding his right flank and not giving them a reason to desert him ignores the simple facts that
1) You’re running against an Islamo-Fascist Socialist Kenyan Usurper Seeking To Impose Death Panels And UN One-World Government. How many of those wingnuts do you think will really stay home when push comes to shove?
2) When you piss off your base by being too moderate, the worst they can do is stay home. When you piss off moderates by being too extreme, they’ll actually defect and go for the other guy. So the smart move is actually to piss off your base, at least once you’ve won the primary.
But they’ve been brainwashed for so long with the notion that their Angry White Conservative base is the only one that matters and that it’s sufficient to win elections that even those simple truths elude them.
dance around in your bones
@PurpleGirl:
Ooooooooooooo ! A happy pagan I like! Will add this to my repertoire…..only, this was the only JW visit I have had since I’ve lived here.
Maude
@lamh35:
71 Sounds like 1980 all over again.
Schlemizel
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It really is a great movie, I’d highly recommend it no matter your politics.
Larry knows he is conning the rubes & laughs at them behind their back. Its what finally brings him down (don’t want to give it all away).
Palin knows she is playing them.
Schlemizel
@Anya:
I used to say Palin = stupid but not crazy, Bachmann = crazy but not stupid. Now I’ll add Willard, Marquis du Mittens Rmoney = evil, not crazy or stupid.
Pick your poison.
? Martin
@Chris:
There’s another dynamic, that I admit I don’t fully understand.
The GOP base, when presented with ‘personhood’ or ‘bombing Iran’ often wave that stuff away as “Oh, they’re not serious about that.” and assume that they’ll move left on the issues that they disagree with. Many in the GOP disagree with at least some angle – taxes, abortion, etc. They see it more as a strong negotiating point to move left from and trust that their guys will seek the consensus policy.
But when presenting Democrats plans, they also assume the Dems aren’t serious either, that the Dems also want to move left from their stated policies. They assume that the Dems are lying in order to win over moderates and then go all Kenyan Socialist Usurper on the country.
If you say “Let’s just take the GOP at their word here”, they’ll honestly respond with “Well, why would you do such a thing?” It’s impossible to find common ground under such rules.
Teri
@JoyfulA: Used to get the stuff messengered to me and then send them back to be printed and approved, sent back to be formatted for publishing and then sent on to publisher. Now it is all email, flash drives etc. Much easier but still have to do the galley proofs. (Auto correct drives everyone wild)
Suffern Ace
@Valdivia: It’s odd. I know one of the things that people like about Obama is that he appears to be not just married, but happily so. But. Don’t think you counter that with your wife on meet the press. I remember Clintons on 60 minutes in 92, but that was to answer questions about his affair with Jennifer Flowers. The press and the right worked overtime to cover up Bush’s affair and then worked to make everyone they could hate the Clintons as a couple-not just the people, but the idea that they were still married. But this isn’t that situation. There isn’t any indication that the Romneys have a rocky relationship they need to cover up or come clean about.
Since Romney doesn’t want to talk about his policies, maybe bringing the wife along is his only substantive point he wants to make.
Chris
@? Martin:
And yet they repeatedly freak the fuck out whenever their candidates deviate from the party line, and now they’ve even taken to primarying them whenever they do?
dance around in your bones
@WereBear:
Thanks, WereBear – I like the whirling part, but as somebody once said – I don’t want to look into my soul – I expect it looks like an old boot.
Tried but can’t remember who said it.
Ok, OMG! P.G. Wodehouse.
JoyfulA
@Teri: It sounds like you work mostly for one publisher and do much of the process for them. I have several clients and do only copyediting and sometimes cleanup. I try to steer clear of proofreading because my clients use pdfs, and proofreading pdfs drives me nuts.
Someone else here—I think “freelancer”—is a self-employed copyeditor, too.
Dennis SGMM
Years back I was plagued by JWs. They seemed to have focused on my neck of the woods. Tried at first to be polite and just brush them off and I asked them politely to take my addy off of the ones that they would visit.
So there I was, sitting on the porch reading and there they were again, coming up the sidewalk with their copies of The Watchtower. This time I told them that I was a diabolist and that the next time any of ’em appeared at my door I would roast them over a fire made of their own pamphlets and then eat them. That worked.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Martin:
This in itself is not necessarily irrational, at least for people with long political memories. Both Nixon and Reagan signed legislation or implemented policies a good deal more moderate than their public images and rhetoric suggested. This really changed with George W Bush who swung the opposite direction by talking about “compassionate conservatism” during the 2000 campaign and then governing more conservatively than he had talked. These folks are behind the times regarding the nature of the current GOP. What really is crazy is them assuming that the Dems would go further left than they campaigned; there is no basis in fact for assuming that, at all.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Davis X. Machina: He really just needs to move over to here. We’d like his dog pictures, too.
Maude
@JoyfulA:
Why do pdfs drive you nuts?
Teri
@JoyfulA: a university hospital press. I worked often with the medical education department (med students, residents)so when I wanted to work at home they found me stuff and so off I went. Now I am going to burn stuff for dinner. Have a good evening.
Amir Khalid
@Valdivia:
I think this is the presidential campaign ritual they call The First-Couple Interview. If I recall, every US presidential candidate must go through this: he and his wife must present as an appealing couple, even if no election ever actually comes down to Mrs R vs. Mrs D. A bit of a sideshow, really; but understandable, with all the media attention given to any FLOTUS throughout her husband’s presidency.
But in this instance, I don’t see it helping Mitt much. Ann just doesn’t come across as any more empathic, sincere or likeable than he. And if people don’t much like either Romney, I don’t see how they’ll like them as a couple.
Michael Bersin
@lamh35:
Obviously one of Francis Bellamy’s soshulist followers.
Valdivia
@Suffern Ace:
wait. rewind. Bush had an affair? That was news to me.
Maybe because I am already programmed to think of Romney as an entitled whiny guy, this seems like he truly is hiding behind her skirt. Again, I can imagine a 60 minute interview because they have done presidential couples before (I remember they did with Obama and Michelle after the election). But MTP? The traditional supposedly premier forum for policy discussion and you bring your wife?
Valdivia
@Amir Khalid:
Never, ever on MTP. They have done tons of those couples interviews together. Today, Goodmorning America. News at night. That never happens on a policy show. It’s ridiculous. Even if I don’t respect the shows, there used to be at least a standard. Obviously that is too much for Romney.
lamh35
The OBama camps response to Romney’s God and coins remark today:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/romney-implies-obama-will-remove-god-from-coins
R-Jud
@Valdivia: Bush Sr., not the Shrub.
Chris
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Circumstances dictated that. I think Bush tried to project a moderate, “compassionate” image in 2000 in order to distance himself from the hardcore conservatives in the Gingrich Congress, whom people had really gotten sick and tired of with all the obstructionism and gridlock culminating into turning the U.S. government into a shit-show over a sex scandal, all in defense of unpopular policies to boot (the government shutdown was about a budget Gingrich wanted to use to strangle Medicare).
So it wasn’t the best time to be seen as a hardcore rightist. Then 9/11 happened and gave Bush the opportunity to go farther than any president ever had before.
That, I’d say, was Bush being adaptable and responding to political realities. But that’s not what I was seeing with McCain and that’s not what I’m seeing with Romney… they both seem to really believe that being seen as a hardcore rightist is the only way to get elected.
Maude
@Valdivia:
I liked the Clinton 60 minutes when he said that he wanted to watch movies in the White House.
That was before the policy wonk image got cranked up.
The first Clinton 1992 campaign theme during the primaries was Putting People First. Bill Clinton couldn’t get the words of the speech out of his mouth. He kept stumbling.
They then changed it to work hard play by the rules. And that brought us NAFTA.
JoyfulA
@Maude: A pdf is hard to mark up for proofreading. At least, it’s harder for me than proofreading on paper. Maybe if I did a lot of it, I’d get more comfortable and skilled.
danah gaz
@Chris: “they both seem to really believe that being seen as a hardcore rightist is the only way to get elected.”
I think there’s more than a little epistemic closure at work in this respect. I’ve gotten the distinct impression that the Republican party is really working with an entirely different data set and different rules than the rest of us (both democrats, and non-politically-involved citizens). They’ve walled themselves off in their own little garden, governed by their own reality. Nearly all of them have become zealots and “true-believers”. It’s frightening, strange, and more than a little sad. Hopefully, it spells doom for the current incarnation of the GOP. I have a feeling we’re reliving JBS and Goldwater all over again.
JoyfulA
@Valdivia: Taking your wife to MTP is like taking your boyfriend to a job interview.
Fort Geek
@dance around in your bones: You’re a big damn hero and a good human being, and I say that without snark.
Maude
@JoyfulA:
To go over something, I have to use a print out. The computer screen doesn’t cut the mustard.
I don’t proof read or anything like that. I don’t have those skills.
bemused
@lamh35:
How people can’t see by now that he is an outrageous phony and con man, I have no clue.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Valdivia:
Maybe he is bringing her along just so that by being there in person she can keep track of his latest 180 degree reversals on policy without having to watch the show after the taping and getting briefed on whatever it is that Mitt is saying now. Time is short and they have campaign stops to get to.
Dennis SGMM
@danah gaz:
This. It is frightening because the more they fail the more they double down. It is sad because they are the other effective political party and instead of proposing ideas they’ve descended into proposing something very like madness.
Chris
@danah gaz:
I worry sometimes that I do the same thing by reading only liberal blogs and trying to keep the conservative shit out of my life… and that I’m the one going crazy when reading all this stuff saying Obama’s a slam-dunk, because there’s quite a few of them who feel with a near-religious certainty the same thing about Romney.
(Only sometimes, though).
It’s very strange when two halves of the country seem to be inhabiting completely different universes to the extent that they do today.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Chris:
Welcome to Lincoln’s world.
gogol's wife
@Chris:
I get this feeling just by going out to dinner with my friends (this past Thursday, for example). They seem convinced that Romney is going to win. It depresses the hell out of me.
lamh35
Maybe this explains Romney’s desperation:
“Bill Clinton to campaign for Obama in Florida”
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/bill-clinton-to-campaign-in-florida-for-obama
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chris: Me too, I sometimes wonder if I’m just confirming my biases> Then shit like this “take god off our money” crap hits (and thirty per cent of the country will say Obama has done that by Wednesday), the welfare ads, Donald Trump, and I see Erin Burnett on CNN, home of real unbiased journalism! spouting Tea Bagger claptrap… we’re right, they’re lying, and Villagers are stupid.
Dennis SGMM
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Would you, or anyone else, be good enough to point me at some books or essays that explain what Lincoln’s thinking was in forcing the CSA back into the Union? He seems to me to have been in any ways a brilliant man and yet that terribly costly use of force seems not to have awakened the better angels of some people’s nature.
Valdivia
@R-Jud:
had no idea! Thanks.
@JoyfulA:
Amen! Exactly. Who does that?
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Maybe she will tug at his shirt to remind him what to say.
? Martin
@Chris:
Remember, the GOP has 3 fairly distinct branches – the tax cutters, the bombers/xenophobes, and the god-botherers. They oftentimes only care about their own branch, assume it’s the only policies their politicians are serious about, and that the proposals for the other two branches are just pandering for votes.
? Martin
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Exactly. I’m fine assuming the GOP would adopt more moderate stances, so long as conservatives returned the favor. But they even when they agree with the Dems positions, they assume something much worse. And I’d also be okay assuming the GOP would adopt more moderate stances, if they weren’t so hell bent on not compromising at all. We’re a long way from ‘taxes are bad’. We’re now deep in the weeds of ‘We’ll default the country rather than even consider raising any tax at all’. With that behavior, you kinda have to take them at their word.
dance around in your bones
@Fort Geek:
Well, thank you, Fort Geek, It just seemed like the human thing to do, ya know?
eta: I remember coming out one time on the porch in my bikini, and finding an immigrant right there needing water – I went back inside, put some MORE clothes on, and gave him food, water, and oranges; and pointed him in the right direction to avoid the immigracion.
We were VERY close to the border, but we were with those folks100%.
jacy
I have a college-age daughter who’s never known what it’s like to be treated as less than a person with full agency, and come the election I should be welcoming my first granddaughter. (Due date Nov. 6 — and my pregnant daughter-law is a Marine who spent last year in Afghanistan.) I’m amazed whenever I think of anyone who doesnt’ understand the gravity of this upcoming election and especially what it means to women.
Anybody who thinks the Republicans aren’t trying to drag us kicking and screaming back into the dark ages is either an idiot or willfully malevolent.
Chris
@Dennis SGMM:
I don’t know any books or essays that point out what he was actually thinking, but…
… independent C.S.A. = a new heavily armed and quite hostile nation right on our border, powered by an expansionist ideology (pointed at Latin America more than us but that sort of militarism has a way of spilling over against any perceived enemy). Plus the ongoing humanitarian disaster as slavery continued to thrive and spread. And looming over it all the British Empire, which would’ve spent the next hundred years playing the U.S. and C.S. off against each other (like they’d been doing to European nations for centuries).
I don’t know what Lincoln was thinking, but there would’ve been plenty of downsides to allowing the C.S.A. to become an independent nation.
@? Martin:
That’s true.
And every now and then they’ll sit up and notice and go “oh my God, these people [e.g. the other branches of the party] are crazy!” But not enough to actually do something about it…
dance around in your bones
@Schlemizel:
I know this is really late and maybe you will never see it, but …… 17 years is a good long time for a cat.
That said, I have lost cats at ages 2 and 4 and 6 and it hurt just as bad. So {{{hugs}}
You just never know what the hell is gonna happen. And I have yelled at vets before about taking advantage of our love for our pets….Oh, hell, I can’t go on – I’m sure you know what I mean.
Anne Laurie
@? Martin:
Or as I have been known to call them, the Robber Barons, the fReichtards, and the Talibangelicals.
Sometimes I wonder why the Democrats don’t do more to
ratfvckhighliglht the contradictions in the Opposite Party, but then I remember we’re so disaorganized we can’t imagine three factions organized enough to do serious harm to anyone other than themselves.Anne Laurie
@Valdivia: Well, at least the GOP handlers never had to worry about mistress rumors with Dubya. Those rumors about the twins’ conception, however…
Chris
@Anne Laurie:
Push too hard on that front, they’ll just band closer together because they realize you’re trying to divide them.
The Republicans didn’t cause the Democratic split in 1968 and the Democrats didn’t cause the Republican split in 1912. Those things happened organically and the other party just happened to be there to pick up the pieces. I think it’ll happen soon enough in the GOP as well.
Scott Alloway
@PurpleGirl: JWs used to show up at my door until about 10 years ago, That’s when I discovered if you invite them in two times, the third time you discuss space aliens and how we have to deal with them. The more explicit about space aliens and their lives, the better. My wife was horrified at my “playing” but I had a ball.
Matt McIrvin
@Anya: The weird thing about that supposed split between registered voters and likely voters is that it shows up in national polls, but when you look at state-level polling in battleground states, it just isn’t there. Obama does just as well or even better with the likely-voter screens in.
I don’t really understand this. I batted a crazy theory around on Sam Wang’s blog that maybe the enthusiasm gap exists, but only in safe red/blue states, where relatively little state polling is going on. (My Just So story: deep-blue-state progressives disgruntled about drone strikes, Guantanamo and pot are planning to stay home or vote for Jill Stein because they figure Obama will carry the state anyway, whereas the red-state Tea Partiers are still fired up to kick out the Kenyan Usurper. But since this isn’t happening in swing states, it doesn’t actually matter. Except inasmuch as people staying home might cause Republicans to win Congress.)
But Prof. Wang thought it was premature to even speculate about that, and that it was probably some simpler confounding variable.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: The real tragedy was that the CSA was never really subjected to the moral reckoning that, say, Germany had after World War II. Which meant you had the local rough equivalent of the Nazi Party running things again seconds after Reconstruction lifted, and getting reincorporated into the mainstream of American politics, with consequences rippling down to the present day.