Sunday Evening Open Thread: Idle Curiosity

(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)

So Betty has covered this already, but I’m still curious, although not curious enough to wade back through a week’s worth of wingnuttery. Does Eric the RedState’s latest Squidcloud of Butthurt...

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
Several media outlets have run stories about a rumored gathering of conservative bloggers, writers, and others last week. You can find pictures on Facebook. You can find a list of names. The words “off the record” seemingly have little value. Much of the information came from invitees…

While I do not claim to be a traditional journalist or reporter, many of the traditional rules of the media have always applied to blogs since I started and even now as I and others move on to television and radio. Off the record means off the record. If some breach the trust, others should not….

Here now nine years after I started blogging, let me tell you something I have noticed. The people who are the loudest haphazard voices and bitterest voices among the longest serving crop of bloggers on left and right are the ones who never grew up. They hold proudly to the standards and cavalier attitude many of us possessed when we first got started and are angry when they see their peers doing more and having more influence and impact than they are. They wonder why they don’t get invited to meetings, conventions, and the like when others do and instead of realizing it is them, they conclude everyone else is selling out…

... indicate that the Romney campaign actually failed to invite the proud Leader of the Red State Strike Farce (mailers of rock salt to Maine Senators) to their not-very-”secret” blogger conclave? Surely box coffee and bulk donuts can’t be that expensive for a campaign sitting on a warchest of UNLIMITED CORPORATE DOLLARS!, although it would be in line with established MBA vulture capitalist best practice to have eyeballed Infinite Erick’s mighty corpus and chosen to cheap out…

Or is Erickson just desperate to hoard his hard-acquired Credibility Capital, and trying to warn his less fortunate fellow Wingnut Welfare recipients against using the N-word in public… prematurely?

Dispatch from a Very Sincere Pumpkin Patch

It turns out Erick Erickson is more limber than generally suspected, fully capable of bending over and blowing himself on his own blog (hey, somebody has to do it):

As I’ve grown up online, I’m one of the uncommon few who has moved on to both television and radio. I have been blessed. Along the way, I find others who are making the transition too, but still others who have been toiling away in the blogosphere for years who have refused to make the transition, or been unable to despite their hopes, and they may look at me and others like me and think we’ve sold out or decided to go along to get along. But I look at them and think what a waste of talent and energy.

Erickson notes that more wingnut bloggers get “respectable” gigs like CNN analyst spots than lefties:

Though there are a few exceptions, I think more conservatives have moved into television and radio directly from blogs and new media websites than the left.

Hint: It’s not because y’all don’t suck: It’s because Fox News is eating CNN’s lunch with an all-wingnut, all-the-time format. The other media corporations want a piece of that sweet wingnut action, and they found you all tarted up on your street corner. Meritocracy!

But Erickson, having become all respectable, notes that “others” on the right could fuck the dealio up for the lot of them:

But there are others who are dragging those folks down and the rest of us too.

Sadly for them and the rest of us who get invited to nice places to meet nice people off the record, as long as the rest of us keep humoring them and their antics, those invites won’t come for any of us.

I don’t follow the wingnutosphere closely enough to know who pissed in Erickson’s cornflakes. Does anyone know?

BONUS: I hate opening the RedState page, not only because of the suckage contained within—hell, that’s what I’m there for—but because of the stupid newsletter popup that features a graphic of Erickson’s grinning melon rising from the bottom of the page like the Great Pumpkin. But all is forgiven, RedState, because this is the best wingnut website ad ever:

Hahahaha!

[X-posted at Rumproast]

Profiles in Courage (Not)

Willard is taking some flak from folks who observed the way he left the rabid neo-con he’d hired as a foreign policy spokesman twisting in the wind when the rabid anti-gay bigots in Willard’s party hung a “NO FAGS!” sign on the GOP clubhouse.

One of the several Sears mannequins deployed by the Romney campaign argued that Willard does TOO have the balls to push back against wingnut bigotry:

“Mitt Romney has confronted those voices of intolerance,” Fehrnstrom said. “He did it last October on stage at the Values Voters summit and denounced some of the poisonous language that is being used by some of the same people that had criticized Ric Grennel’s appointment.”

Yeah, when the talibangelicals go after Willard as a heretic for his Mormonism, he can be arsed to fire back. But when they go after someone on his staff for being gay, Willard regretfully accepts the man’s resignation. Face it, centrists: Martin Niemöller he ain’t.

[X-posted at Rumproast]

Samba de Uma Nota Só

I have no idea about what’s going on with Chen Guangcheng, the blind dissident who escaped from house arrest in China, but one thing that’s certain is that we don’t know all the details or the subtleties of his case. Neither does Mitt Romney, but after Chen left the Chinese embassy, Romney called it a “Day of Shame” for the Obama Administration, based on media reports that Chen was pressured to leave by embassy officials.

Now it turns out that Chen is angry at Chinese officials—not Americans—because the Chinese reneged on the deal they made with him.

That’s today’s news. Tomorrow’s may change, but it won’t erase the fact that that Romney’s one-note samba strategy bit him in the ass again. If your only trick is to pick the most negative thing about Obama you can find that day, put some salt and pepper on it, and throw it back into the maw of the media beast, you’re going to fuck up the way Romney did yesterday. And your inexperience and lack of judgment, especially in foreign policy, will be the story, just as it was with the Grenell resignation.

Update: It looks like Chen will be coming to the US. Who’s ashamed now?

Look Who’s Running the Show

I love this:

In an effort to reach out to conservative media, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney and wife Ann met for two hours Wednesday with several dozen conservative bloggers, reporters and columnists in an off-the-record gathering at a private Washington, D.C., club, according to attendees.

Romney, who struggled with some members of the conservative media during the Republican primary, is banking on their support in his campaign against President Barack Obama, regardless of whether they were previously in his corner or not.

The attendees came from numerous conservative sites and right-of-center publications, including National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator, Washington Examiner, Right Wing News, Powerline, Townhall, Ace of Spades, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier, and PJ Media. RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended.

How dysfunctional is the Republican party that their nominee needs to get the approval of a guy who thinks vaginas remind him of play-doh and a guy who is afraid of imaginary black people.

Ladies and gentlemen, the GOP Base.

Someone’s Gotta Do It

Here’s John Stewart, once again stepping up and doing what the media won’t:

Never in a million years did I think the GOP would freak out this much over killing Osama. On the other hand, every time one of these pencil-necked whiners like Gillespie goes in front of a camera whining about Obama spiking the ball, all they are really accomplishing is reminding everyone in the country that Obama, not Republicans, hunted down and killed America’s #1 enemy.

I’m ok with that kind of press.

Locked and Loaded

I’m not a huge fan of Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn (he’s no Pam Iorio). But to his credit, he was able to imagine tens of thousands of pissed-off citizens, drunken yahoos, strip-club happy-hour ejectees, belligerent teabaggers, endlessly circling Hoveround grannies and assorted other malcontents milling around the RNC —with guns!—and recognize that it might be a problem.

So he asked state seal-embossed ambulatory dildo and future one-term Governor Rick Scott for an exception to the area’s concealed carry laws, which basically require everyone over the age of five to pack a 9mm, and received an NRA-drafted missive by return post:

The short answer to your request is found in the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution…You note that the City’s temporary ordinance regulates “sticks, poles and water guns,” but that firearms are a “noticeable item missing from the City’s temporary ordinance.” Firearms are noticeably included, however, in the 2nd Amendment.

Sweet bandoliered Jeebus, what a condescending prick. Well, at least Buckhorn covered his ass. If there’s a shoot-out at the No Gay Corral this August, no one can pin it on him.

Yet The Log Cabin Republicans Continue On

Not surprising:

Richard Grenell, the openly gay spokesman recently hired to sharpen the foreign policy message of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, has resigned in the wake of a full-court press by anti-gay conservatives.

In a statement obtained by Right Turn, Grenell says:

I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman. While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign. I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.

According to sources familiar with the situation, Grenell decided to resign after being kept under wraps during a time when national security issues, including the president’s ad concerning Osama bin Laden, had emerged front and center in the campaign.

Why any gay man would be a member of the GOP is just beyond me.

(via)

One-Note Samba

Political messaging is hard in the details but the overall plan is simple enough that an eighth-grade pep squad could articulate it: tell us why you rock, and why your opponent sucks. Sometimes circumstances dictate that “rox” or “sux” alone have to carry the day, but over the long span of the campaign, you need a mix of both. This latest Obama ad is a good example. Obama’s clean energy initiative rocks, Romney’s lies and Swiss bank account suck, the end.

Here’s some typical Romney campaign imagery, and at least for this biased and simpleminded observer, the 24/7 “he sucks” is wearing thin, and it’s also getting him into trouble. The latest dust-up over the Bin Laden killing is a good example. Some things are just better left untouched by the candidate, and the right response to Obama’s Bin Laden celebration would have been to let surrogates handle the sniping and to have Romney highlight what he would be doing differently to make America stronger. But he lacks the “I rock” portion of his campaign, so his “all sux no rox” campaign had to chew up the bait that Obama laid down for him, and after they did, Obama made them look like chumps. (BTW, the often criticized Josh Marshall is right that Obama did the bitch-slapping here and even this Morning Joe regular agrees).

Even the “sux” portion of Romney’s program is just hollow reliance on right-wing tropes. The Jimmy Carter example was a good one, because anyone who’s over 40 remembers how much that raid hurt Carter. If you remember that, then you know how the Bin Laden raid could have turned to shit, and if it had, we’d have ended up with years of Rove-style messaging about Obama’s weakness.

These guys have been living in a Beavis and Butthead world where just saying “Barack Hussein Obama”, “Michelle is Fat” or “Just Like Jimmy Carter” gets a high-five from the other idiots in the room, and it’s starting to show.

Into the mystic

I’m fascinated by Watergate. I don’t think there’s anyway the establishment media would go after a Republican White House that way today. The story would be broken by a free weekly type publication and then everyone would ignore it. Serious people would agree that this was just “criminalizing politics”, that you should just keep on walking, and so on. Also too, what Hillary Rosen did was just as bad, remember the time that anonymous MoveOn member put a Hitler mustache on a picture of W, and the hypocrisy of liberals wanting an investigation when many of them watch Bill Maher. Howie Kurtz would certainly think this was a terrible breach of journamalistic ethics:

The secret source that legendary journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein referred to as a “mystic” in their investigation that brought down President Nixon turns out to have been a grand juror who spoke to them in a likely violation of the law.

Don’t Player Hate, Player Appreciate

Now that the primary is over, James Joyner has to put on his big velvet hat, platform shoes and grillz and start working the streets for his man Romney:

But, of course, Romney is a veritable Henry Kissinger compared to the Barack Obama we elected in 2008. Hell, just running the 2002 Olympics gives him more foreign policy experience than Obama had coming in to the Oval Office. As it turns out, it doesn’t much matter. Obama committed a ridiculous number of minor gaffes in his handling of foreign affairs early on and his administration continues to botch the roll-outs of otherwise well-crafted policy decisions. But he’s done a good job of managing key decisions, even in cases (like the Libya intervention) where I disagree with them.

I’ll let Daniel Larison do the heavy lifting taking down the Olympics nonsense, as he points out, correctly, that Romney is the most inexperienced GOP candidate on foreign policy in recent memory. Not to mention what many of Romney’s pimps seem to forget, that he’s running against Obama in 2012, not 2008.

But what’s this about minor gaffes? There was the recent hot mic incident, but other than that, it seems to me that the Obama’s in-person diplomacy has been remarkably gaffe-free. Can anyone who’s got a stronger stomach for the Fox Nation give us a heads-up on what, exactly, these guys think Obama has fucked up?

Wednesday Night Open Thread: Schadenfreude Buffet

(Jim Morin via GoComics.com)

Big Hollywood, Big Politics, Big Hypocrites: According to NYMag’s Joe Coscarelli, the Breitbrats are very, very offended:

Not only did Breitbart.com call President Obama’s “slow-jam the news” segment with Jimmy Fallon last night “possibly the worst ‘comedy’ segment in the history of mankind,” the site decreed that it violated a campaign-finance law: “Obama should be ashamed of himself (though, of course, he has no capacity for shame).” The FCC’s equal-opportunity rule states that if a broadcaster affords airtime to a candidate, equal time must be granted to “all other such candidates for that office.”...

But a recent FCC ruling sets a different precedent that would almost certainly include Late Night: Talk shows — in this case Anderson Cooper’s daytime chatfest, Anderson — qualify as bona fide newscasts. Furthermore, in a precedent set by Entertainment Tonight, the FCC noted that its role “is not to decide, by some qualitative analysis, whether one kind of news story is more bona fide than another.”

To which, of course, two immediate reactions:

(a) When did the self-described small-government-conservative Breitbrats fall in love with the heavy hand of the socialistic FCC?

(b) After what happened when Michele Bachmann appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s show, what deeply offensive & personally hurtful pop song would the Roots use for a Mitt Romney spot?

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Sad Trombone

(Steve Sack via GoComics.com)

Paul Constant reminds us that Repubican primaries are still, technically, happening:

This is as good a place as any to officially announce that we will not be live-Slogging the primaries tonight. Even if Gingrich were to win Delaware—which I doubt, but I suppose it could happen—nothing would change. If there’s any news at all about the primary, I’ll be sure to post it here on Slog, but Romney winning all the states in tonight’s Republican primary is the opposite of news.

Apart from the warm glow of schadenfreude, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

Huntsman Can’t Take a Spanking After Wanking

John Huntsman ran his mouth on Morning Joe a few weeks ago:

Panelist John Heilemann, in hopes of clarifying, asked point blank: “You basically called for a third party, right?”

“I think that’s the healthy thing,” Huntsman replied.

After that, he was disinvited from a Republican fundraiser in Florida, because (duh) you can’t raise money using a guy who’s threatening to leave the party. Showing his centrist seriousness, Huntsman then said “this is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script” in an interview at the 92nd Street Y with journalist Jeff Greenfield. After that blows up, he bitches about his remarks being taken out of context.

Is there a bigger serial pants-pooper than Huntsman, in either party? This guy could fuck up a ham sandwich.

Monday Morning Open Thread: Impacts

(“Pickles“, Brian Crane, via GoComics.com)

Keeping Democrats in good order is like herding cats, but the current crop of Repubs hasn’t exactly fallen in line for its putative leaders either. The Washington Post is abuzz that Roland Hedley Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: the Presidency of G.W. Bush, has a new book coming out:

Time and again last year, House Republican leaders faced a nearly in­trac­table opponent: the very freshman class that propelled them into the majority with the historic 2010 midterm elections. Rebelling from the outset of the 112th Congress and later wreaking internal havoc during talks to increase the Treasury Department’s ability to borrow funds, the freshman class repeatedly created problems for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), according to a new book.

The freshman resistance caused feuds among Boehner and his lieutenants that led some to fear a mutiny, heightened several showdowns with President Obama and eventually led to fissures among the rookies, pitting those who seldom trusted the leaders against those who reflexively did, according to “Do Not Ask What Good We Do,” an account of the freshman class’s impact by Robert Draper….

“You’ve created a monster,” Rep. Renee L. Ellmers (R-N.C.), a former nurse elected in 2010, warned House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), according to Draper’s book…

The book, which will be released Tuesday, shows just how much energy had to be expended on the 87 freshmen who took their oath in January 2011, many of them holding office for the first time. Accounting for nearly 40 percent of Boehner’s conference, the freshmen exercised their clout early and often, imposing their will on the rest of the House Republicans.

Many freshmen viewed GOP leaders warily from the outset and compelled Boehner’s team to make the rookies the constant focus of its attention.

“I didn’t come to Washington to be part of a team,” Rep. Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho) told the book’s author….

During the debt-ceiling fight, some freshmen were ready to push the government into default. Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.), a first-time politician who was a surprise winner of a West Texas district, wrote Boehner to express his fear that the debt ceiling was “very possibly a hostage that we’re unwilling to shoot.”

In an interview Friday, Farenthold said he has some regret that he eventually agreed, under pressure from local businessmen, to support the compromise, because it brought only $2.1 trillion in savings.

“I think we could have survived it,” he said Friday of a federal default…

Also bound to make an impact (h/t commentor PZ), at least upon the delicate sensibilities of its subject, is Michael Sean Winters’ latest TNR review of “The Accommodator“:

ROSS DOUTHAT’S ANALYSIS of religion in America is more sophisticated than the analysis of, say, Rick Santorum—but not by much. There are many ways to be simplistic and coarse. In contending against what he sees as an America afflicted with too many heresies, Douthat’s book, like Santorum’s speeches, is riddled with mistakes of fact and interpretation that would make any learned person blush…

My problem with Douthat’s book is not that his opinions differ from my own. My problem is that he does not seem to have any idea what he is talking about. In the West, there has been no universally accepted authoritative voice on orthodoxy since the Reformation. “What am I to do when many persons allege different interpretations, each one of whom swears to have the Spirit?” asked Erasmus in 1524. But Douthat does not see the larger picture that he aims to explain, and his treatment of his subject is so pitifully mistaken in things large and small that what we are left with is a meandering, self-serving screed…

Apart from being duly grateful that one is neither a member of the House of Representatives or Ross Doubthat, what’s on the agenda for the start of another week?