That fact that Team Romney is a pack of lying weasels cannot be a surprise to anybody paying even mild attention to current events. Joe was right to call it malarky. Over at the Maddow Blog, Brother Benen has published his latest installment of his weekly series breaking down the lies of Mitt Romney. He points to a new article in The Onion to show how the Mitt-Always-Lies meme is seeping into our popular culture. The Onion headline is ripped from reality:
Romney Proudly Explains How He’s Turned Campaign Around
‘I’m Lying More,’ He Says
There is a lot here that rings true. Towards the end, the article even explains why it is so easy for Romney to bamboozle a lazy media:
According to Romney, amidst all the lies, there is only one thing that remains true.
“I literally have no clue where I stand on any single issue at this point,” said Romney, adding that when it comes to women’s rights, gay rights, health care, the middle class, the economy, or the U.S. military, all he knows is how to lie about them. “I understand what other people want. And what I’ve learned, especially in the past week, is that in order to be a viable candidate for the White House, that’s all you really need to know.”
Following the interview, Romney told various reporters that, if elected, he would save the newspaper industry.
And with that, how about an open thread.
Cheers
Derelict
Now if only some actual MSM outlet would start noticing and reporting that Romney and Ryan are both lying constantly, we might see some positive change in the election.
Schlemizel
Seems like OfA needs to get surrogates out there every day harping on the continuing series of lies being peddled and the every shifting positions. They need to be pounding every day on just this one subject with the constant theme that Rmoney/rAyn are liars who can’t explain their position on anything. Drill it in so that the media can’t ignore the charge.
beltane
@Schlemizel: Romney needs to be painted as the smarmy MLM scammer he is
Anibundel
Romneys next promise should be that he’ll get Starbucks to deliver. That way all us suburbanites will never have to leave our fortresses.
karen marie
I’m surprised at how quiet Romney’s been. He hasn’t said anything noticeably stupid for several days. In fact, I haven’t noticed him getting any press at all. What’s up with that?
PreservedKillick
@Schlemizel:
Amen to that.
Except maybe the ever shifting positions. It implies that they’ve ever actually *taken* a position. Hard to claim that. They certainly borrow positions as required, I’ll give you that.
Enhanced Voting techniques
I would like to opinion that taking a break and doing something vaguely constrictive, like playing Skyrim has done wonders for my spirits.
Really, at the end of the day a lot of this election is out of our control so fretting about it everyday isn’t going to help. You can donate, help with the get the vote out (if you live in a swing state), and punch the winguts in the face at work, but beyond that, what else?
gbear
We shouldn’t laugh too hard when the Onion does a piece like this. Their story about what a Bush presidency would be like was scary in how well they predicted what happened.
Bendal
@karen marie:
Oh, he’s been busy. He swung through WNC right after the VP debate, and he was recorded as once again saying a national healthcare system was unnecessary, people should just go to the ER for treatment. He also told the whopper that no one has ever died for lack of health insurance.
But, the media wants a tight Presidential race, so they declare the VP debate a “tie” and call Biden “mean” and “rude”, and ignore Romney’s lies, and trumpet Romney’s poll numbers increasing, so that sweet sweet campaign ad money can continue to flow into their corporate media coffers.
It’s just good business, you know.
dr. bloor
@Derelict: OFA will have to do this themselves. There’s no reason to expect the media will do their jobs.
c u n d gulag
After seeing Paulie working out, with his lil’ baseball cap on backwards, I’ve got a new nickname for him:
“The Fresh Prince of Hot Air.”
You likey?
dr. bloor
@karen marie: Apparently he’s realized that the more he talks, the less people like him.
Also, too, preparing for the second debate, I would imagine. He’s got to know about a little more of the world beyond the Caymans, Switzerland and Israel.
jwb
@karen marie: Whenever Romney does anything, he screws things up. I think he basically disappeared after the abortion comments. My guess is that so long as the race maintains its current unsettled state, we won’t see Romney aside from the debates so as to avoid gaffe opportunities.
1badbaba3
Oh, it’s out there in the real world. The MSM, however, is too busy speculating about whether or not Obama wants to keep his job based upon the first debate, to talk about Willard’s font of lies. I mean, imagine them thinking we would throw away five years just like that, because THEY say he “lost”. Lost? To that cretin? In your wet dreams, motherfrakkers.
blingee
@dr. bloor: What you are proposing is basicially impossible unfortunately. You cannot win a presidency in this day and age with out the MSM helping you unfortunately. People are saying that with the internet that is not so true anymore but I think it’s more true than ever. All the internet does is give the money’d interests more ways to inject their narrative into the mainstream. If Mitt wins it will be because the MSM didn’t do anything besides report every lie he said as fact without questioning it.
If anyone still thinks this is about that one debate and that another debate could fix it they are kidding themselves.
Bobby Thomson
Remember when the Onion used to be funny?
General Stuck
As we all know, republicans are afforded way more leeway to lie to voters than democrats are. That is just the prevailing state of tribal reality. But I can’t help but wonder if there is some kind of threshold point for indie swing voters and maybe some moderate republicans, to where that has a sinking in effect. It is sort of like the droning of the wurlitzer on trumped up bullshit that the nutters use to indoctrinate the public that liberals are fetus killing drug addled communists out to steal your shit. The lying mantra coming from not only the left, but others as well, has and is becoming fairly pervasive and unabashed. And it has the added umph of being true.
Though obviously it hasn’t sunk in yet, as we see with the polling of whitest man alive, daring Obama to take the bait with the audacity of a black man calling a white man running for potus a floor flush liar. It is a delicate matter, and the Romney campaign knows it with this lowlife tactic. And Obama is going to have to figure out how to confront the brazen lying without getting trapped in ancient racial stereotypes. Biden can get away with it, though barely, with mostly just the guilty screaming foul. But mano a mano on the debate stage, Obama is going to have to deal with it himself, in some way. The gauntlet has been thrown. My money is on the skinny usurper pulling another wabbit out of his big ears.
Splitting Image
@Schlemizel:
The problem is that the media isn’t really ignoring Romney’s lies. The industry is fully supportive of his methods. If Obama really tries to hammer home the extent of Romney’s deceit, the villagers will see it as an attack on them as well.
The standards that prevail in the mainstream media are those of advertising, not reporting. This is because the bulk of the revenue comes from advertising. Give them a lucrative horse race down to the wire or give them death.
Villago Delenda Est
Expecting 1% parasites to report accurately on another 1% parasite is wishful thinking, at best.
The MSM is well paid not to notice what a serial liar Rmoney is. They will continue to be well paid.
Don’t try to shame them. Like Rmoney, they have no shame.
Villago Delenda Est
@Splitting Image:
Oh, by all means, let’s give them the latter.
And their spawn as well.
Todd
@Villago Delenda Est:
This is why third world leftist anarchists abduct and kill journalists.
c u n d gulag
@Bobby Thomson:
Remember when The Onion wasn’t the go-to source for real news, along with Stewart and Colbert?
Flying Squirrel Girl
Crap crap crap. Airline refused to allow old dog to fly this morning. I’m in Costa Rica moving back to the states. What now? Put him down because he’s too feisty? Can’t do that. But no one will want a 13 year old dog. Crap crap crap. Just need to vent to some animal lovers.
kay
@blingee:
Well, it’s 1 or 2 points, so while that is nerve-wracking I do think it’s too soon to throw in the towel, unless a close race just isn’t your thing which I could see.
We can’t do anything about media coverage, or Dem surrogates, or people who are perceived as Dem surrogates although they aren’t, and that is also frustrating, but I do think if this had been a 50/50 race all along we would take those odds.
I do agree with you that this doesn’t make ‘sense’ in terms if what has happened before, so we’ll have to drop all the historical comparisons.
What’s amazing is, people really know nothing about Romney. I keep thinking back to 2008 and the WaPo doing an entire story on Obama’s mortgage. An ordinary mortgage. I don’t even know where Romney lives. California, New Hampshire, hell if I know.
Amir Khalid
I see from a promotion at my local mall that Givenchy has named its latest perfume “Dahlia Noir”. The first thing I thought of when I saw that name was Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short, the victim of a notoriously gruesome murder. It’s not a name I would pick for a perfume, or indeed anything, to be sold to women.
RaflW
Even if Romney loses, he’s inflicting serious damage. Future campaigns will know that they can lie with abandon in the face of a supine press. If Romney loses, the GOP won’t blame his lies, they’ll say he was too moderate.
It’s insane.
I do note that Soledad O’Brien and Martha Raddatz seem much less willing than most high-profile male TV journos to accept bullshit from politicians.
Yes, there’s the ultra-embarrassing crew of women at Fox, but O’Brien, Raddatz, and in 2008 I’d even say (to a lesser degree but usefully) Katie Couric just don’t allow themselves to get rolled the way men do.
dr. bloor
@Amir Khalid: I suspect more people think of The Blue Dahlia.
c u n d gulag
@Flying Squirrel Girl:
I’m very, very sorry to hear about your dog.
But why on Earth would you want to move back to the states?
Unless you lived in Somalia, or some masogyinistic theocratic state, what’s the point of moving back here?
We may soon end up more Third World than Haiti.
Lolis
Our media is worthless. They don’t look out for Americans anymore. They cover everything from a PR point of view.
RaflW
@blingee:
More or less. I noticed on Thursday night just after the debate ended that I think it was Greg Sargent who remarked along the lines of “wow, watching the right wing meme-making in real time on Twitter.”
vtr
Speaking of news coverage, I saw this headline yesterday:
Love him or hate him, Biden scores big.
vtr
Speaking of news coverage, I saw this headline yesterday:
Love him or hate him, Biden scores big.
Flying Squirrel Girl
@c u n d gulag: Ha! Everyone asks the same thing! I’ve been here for 5 years as a perpetual tourist, and I don’t have enough money to buy residency here. Even if I could, the US govt is making it more and more difficult for expats to live here without paying into the system in the US, privilege of being a US citizen and all. It is really hard to make a living here that would allow paying into the CR system while keeping Uncle Sam happy too. Just haven’t found a way.
jwb
@General Stuck: IMHO, It was very close to a tipping point before the first debate, when Romney was close to a complete collapse. Romney’s numbers had begun to recover a little bit just before the debate, but a poor performance in the debate would have sunk his campaign. The debate, then, seemed to have allowed a significant reset among a certain set of voters—it’s hard for me to get a good line on who these voters are. If you accept that Obama lost about 6% after the debate, that’s roughly 3% of the voters moving from him to Romney; the fact that the Senate races in many states have not moved much while the presidential race has suggests the movement is more a shift of some voter set than a marked shift in enthusiasm, though there was undoubtedly some portion of that 6% that is also enthusiasm.
In any case, I very much doubt that the opinions of anyone who moved from Obama to Romney have much settled, so a good performance by the President in the next debate should fix the problem. For me, the worry is that I have yet to hear a good strategy to defend the Romney play of the Gish Gallop—Biden did a good job neutralizing Ryan’s deployment of the gambit, but Romney is actually a far superior player. (There’s not much that Romney is good at, but throwing out a thousand pieces of disinformation while looking like he believes it is one of them.) And Obama’s team is going to have to decide whether countering the Gallop by playing to the enthusiasm of his base—basically the strategy Biden used—is sufficient at this point to pull some of that 3% back in his column.
Amir Khalid
I have a hunch that Mitt isn’t doing quite as well as the current polling says. Obama’s unspectacular but not disastrous debate performance just shouldn’t have shifted things so far so quickly; the majority of voters have already chosen their side, and the more enthused Republican voters would still surely not out number Democratic voters, right? Also too, something seems hinky about how the polls are being weighted to favor Republican voters.
I remain convinced it is very important for Earth, not just for America, that Mitt Romney not become POTUS. If we on the rest of the planet could vote in this election, Obama would still win in an overwhelming landslide. Don’t let us down.
General Stuck
@jwb:
sounds about right to me
edit – gotta give the Mittster credit where its due. He is a pretty good shark salesman. But that is about it.
kay
@RaflW:
I was driving a lot of yesterday afternoon and I listened to a “fact check” on Ryan’s stimulus claim.
The news anchors decided ‘hypocrisy’ doesn’t matter to voters, and besides, Ryan was in a tough spot because he’s a fiscal conservative who has to bring home ‘green pork’, which is their new phrase for stimulus money that went to alternative energy.
It was a 6 minute Romney ad, basically.
Bendal
The corporate media wants nothing more than a close, down to the wire Presidential campaign. It generates viewer interest and it means lots of sweet, sweet campaign ad money gets poured into their bank accounts.
It’s telling that prior to the 1st debate, most of the Republican PAC money was shifting towards local and Congressional races and away from Romney, meaning less megabucks going to the big corporate media companies. Then the debate happened, Obama had a poor showing, and every single one of the media corporations picked up on that and ran as hard as they could with it. Suddenly Romney’s campaign is energized, and GOP PAC money starts flowing back into his campaign (and into the big media companies’ bank accounts).
I predict that no matter how well Obama does in the last two debates, or whatever Romney says that causes yet another facepalm among intelligent voters, the media will keep pushing the “this race will come down to the wire” agenda. They’ll say Obama “tied” Romney in the debates like Biden “tied” Ryan in his, and ignore Romney’s offensive comments like when he said “no one dies in the US for lack of health insurance”, right up to the very end of the campaigns.
RaflW
@Splitting Image:
At the core of the rot is this very succinct insight, Image. You’ve nailed it.
I think a lot of decent folks, people like James Fallows, have not quite noticed this seismic shift in news rooms. He’s at a magazine/web site.
But lemme tell ya, as the partner of a recently-former journalist (he took a buyout and ran), the shift in journalism is as you say.
The top editors were daily worrying about who from their suburban subscriber base wanted to read what story. And often insinuated an angle to cover it.
Not what news is the most interesting in our news judgement, but what news sells best. I know papers have always had an eye to selling copy. Of course, no one wants a boring or obtuse paper.
But the shift to frantically worried story-picking is real. The dying revenue model is key: papers used to be able to cover and report whatever they wanted, pretty much. Classified ads were a gushing well of cash. Most retailers saw print as a key vehicle.
So as long as a paper didn’t massively f-up, they had the cash and staff to do journalism. Now they have to market-test their stories. And it is utterly killing truth in our culture.
c u n d gulag
@Flying Squirrel Girl:
Well, best of luck to you – and your little dog, too! ;-)
General Stuck
@jwb:
Just googled Gish Gallop, a spot on reference.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@jwb: IMHO, there are a lot of white people who were waiting for ANY reason to support Mitt. Otherwise it too obviously because they didn’t like having a nigger in their White House.
The debate performance became that excuse.
Flying Squirrel Girl
Question for anyone: United airlines PetSafe policy says that if your animal is not alert or appears to be drugged, they can refuse to allow them to fly. They refused to let my dog fly this morning because he was so worked up. Anyone have any experience flying with animals on anxiety meds? He’s 13 years old, so anything he’s given is likely to have a HUGE effect on him. Just how strict are the airlines about this? Any info is appreciated!
MikeJ
Doooooooooooooooomed. We’re dooooooooooooomed.
All because politicians who have raised a billion dollars from mostly small donations didn’t listen to me and address nothing but my pet ideas.
blingee
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: I sort of agree with the theory that the debate was a catalyst and it wasn’t so much about the debate itself. The bad news there is that it means Obama probably cannot reverse that even if he hits it out of the park next time. But the MSM really amped it up with all the hype and I guess they were so starving to report something Obama did wrong they went way overboard with it. I still think he did fine.
c u n d gulag
@RaflW:
Yeah, but whooodathunk that President’s Day mattress sales, and end-of-year-model car dump, ads were what fueled our Fouth Estate?
What you guys wrote is true.
But don’t forget to add in the “People Magazine-ation” of the network news.
And the 24 hour cable news channels endless need for ANYTHING – be it real news, or infor-tainment and enter-mation.
weaselone
@jwb:
I’m not so certain. It took Obama the entire summer to shift those voters to his side of the column. They jumped to Romney after a single debate. I see these people as wanting to vote for someone other than Obama, but not really having any other choice. The bandwagon voters might shift back to Obama after a solid debate, but most would only come back to Obama in the same manner they were brought over in the first place, slowly and with great effort. I don’t think we can really count on getting them back with less than a month remaining until the election. It’s going to depend on getting out the democratic base.
Todd
Given the complete failure of progressives to make a case for policy and governance for the past 35 years I may have to go “All In” in right wing douchebaggery should Romney win. More wars, recriminalizing gayness, anti-abortion, the whole enchilada, just to preserve my place in tribe AND to smack the living fuck out of people who were too busy sitting around in leftist circle jerks to go out and inform the low informed.
FFS, even when I was a GOPer, I was ripe for the picking – pro-choice, not hung up on race or gays, it would have taken only a little competent advocacy to bring me home to a progressive mindset. Now, if I point out in some progressive circles that Roe wasn’t about some ephemeral choice, but instead about fundamental liberty to not have the government interfere with intimate medical decisions and that BOTH sexes benefit from the opinion, I get shrieked down by the Catherine MacKinnons in training over the criticism that their 30 year history in advocacy wrote off garnering support from a broader segment of men.
Fuck ’em. They can’t inform the low informed and do backstabbing, I won’t crutch them along…
lamh35
@jwb: I am formally in the camp that those voters are white voters who may have voted for Obama cause ya know history and all, but hey, they’ve done tgheur duty for racial equality and they wanna go back to having their white Presidents. They see one ago is not old looking like McCain and next to Obama, Romney looks like the white Presidents of old who they are more comfortable with.
There is just no way one debate caused so much movement towards Romney. I sincerely susoect that middle of the road voters were looking for an alternative to the Black guy who looks & acts Presendential even before the debates, but Romney was coming off as gaffe machine and the 47% remarks, so they fold pollsters theyd vote for Obama over Romney. Romney lies his way ro mod status in debate & the now find that Romney fits the usual Presidential mold they are comfortable with.
Todd
@Amir Khalid:
Cell phone effect is even greater now. A full 80% of my clientele has dropped landlines, and this includes folks with higher incomes. Those who keep landlines tend to be older and whiter.
jwb
@RaflW: Well, yes, and I think conservative opinion makers game out these things well beforehand and have planned lines of attack all set to go. I don’t see anything like that coordination on the left, at least at the top of the food chain. Instead, our top media folks proudly claim that they are going to turn off twitter and social media so they can give their “honest” opinion of the performance outside the media bubble or they live blog and shoot from the hip without any sense of larger political strategy for their comments. They are the most naive political tools, and the whole thing ends up being an incoherent mess rather than a quick coalescing around a central meme that supports the narrative. I do have hope, however, because the second tier of liberal media (primarily bloggers and twitterfeeds) seems to recognize the need for coordination, and many of them made a good effort after the first debate—they just got drowned out.
Davis X. Machina
People like being lied to.
How many people when asked ‘Does this make my ass look fat?’ are actually canvassing for unbiased information?
Soylent Green
We keep proving that Romney is a liar and a scoundrel as though this will change people’s minds.
The other side knows perfectly well that he is a liar, and they don’t care as long as it gets them back in power. They know that he has no core principles and no spine, and that’s a feature not a bug. It means that once in office he will do what he is told. They know that he wants the title, not the job, and will be easy to manipulate. They know that Romney is a bully, and were energized by how he used that trait to put the uppity Negro in his place. At election time they will all fall into line as they always do.
Meanwhile, the idiots in the middle who were swayed by his performance and lies will not be easy to bring back. They saw what they had been waiting to see, an entertaining act, and heard what they had been waiting to hear, a flashy sales pitch.
I wish I could be more sanguine about the outcome.
Irony Abounds
The Onion article would be more amusing if it weren’t so rooted in the truth. Romney knows he can lie and get away with it without the media calling him out, and the low information voters who will decide the election will go along like sheep. Obama’s chances rest on Romney either committing a huge gaffe, which is possible, or people finally looking at the slow but steady improvement in the economy and deciding to give him another four years.
General Stuck
@lamh35:
I agree with this, but we are talking one or two percent likely deciding the election. Even some left leaning indies are ripe to be plucked from the dem camp, from just being worn out thinking about race all the time. And a white face in the white house makes that go away, as compared to now. The effort to keep them, or as many as possible on the dem reservation, is worth it, with another very close election probable.
John PM
@Amir Khalid:
I agree with your sentiment. I believe that a Romney presidency will lead to WW III. Also, if I believed in the Anti-Christ, that pwrson would be Romney.
piratedan
well when someone like Nancy Grace gets her two or four hour slot every night to talk about the latest outrage du juor as opposed two someone actually breaking down the issues of the day fairly……well, that’s why Casey Anthony is more well known than Janet Napolitano
Amir Khalid
@dr. bloor:
Givenchy named their new perfume Dahlia Noir, not Dahlia Bleu.
RaflW
@c u n d gulag: TeeVee news has generally sucked for decades. It could be That’s Real Incredible, People! in 22 minutes (yes I’m that age to remember Sarah Purcell).
Because print journalism was the long-form, the corrective, the investigator.
BTW I actually think online individual selling – Craig’s List but also Cars.com and all the rest – have done far more damage to newsroom budgets than the shift in display advertising.
Anyway, not much value in diagnosing that terminal patient.
weaselone
@lamh35:
I don’t necessarily think that race is the major driver here. Look at Bush v. Gore and Bush v. Kerry. There is just a chunk of the electorate that really wants to vote for a Republican and will do so if given the slimmest of reasons. Hopefully, demographics have shifted to the point where they aren’t enough to flip the election. They wouldn’t have a chance if minorities and youth turned out in the numbers that old white people do.
jwb
@kay: I’m really beginning to despise the whole fact check industry because it’s having the effect of turning facts into “facts,” so they can just throw up their hands and say who knows? I’ve found it very corrosive to the political coverage in general. The basic problem seems to be that fact checking can’t work so long as you are not willing to admit that one side lies more than the other. The GOP knows that there is a general belief in “balance”—that most people believe that each side distorts the facts some of the time, that that most people also believe these distortions roughly balance out, and that the media will for various reasons reproduce this belief in balance—so the GOP know they can exploit this situation to their advantage. Like the Gish Gallop, it’s not clear what the best strategy for countering the GOP lying, but fact checking isn’t it.
Elmo
@Flying Squirrel Girl:
Ah crap, I am so sorry. Have you tried Benadryl? Has a nice calming effect on most dogs without making them loopy.
Todd
@John PM:
There isn’t enough money to pay me to work in lower Manhattan or Washington DC if Romney wins. He is going to inspire huge retaliation.
SiubhanDuinne
@c u n d gulag:
Perfect!
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t know, there was a HUGE media consensus that it was some sort of Waterloo for Obama. That might have helped – when you hear “the sky is falling” as such a universal message.
JohnK
@Flying Squirrel Girl: Sorry, no experience with pet meds. You could take him to the airport and go through the motions maybe he wil settle down on his own. Some medication might be good for him anyway. Are they going to put him in a cargo hold? How many hours?
Beeb
@Flying Squirrel Girl: Is there some way you can talk to whoever it is at the airport who will be making the decision? If you explain the problem and ask that person for advice, you will have insured his or her approval for what you do. If that person agrees that a tranquilizer is the way to go, you might then want your vet to give you something to prove the dog is doped and not sick. Just a suggestion.
Maude
@Flying Squirrel Girl:
I used to ship birds though a freight carrier.
You don’t want your dog on a regular airline in the cargo hold.
See if you can ship pooch. You’d need someone to pick him up at the other end of the trip.
If you were rich, you could charter or find a charter that allows a dog on board.
Edit, If you see Valdavia in comments ask her if she knows anything. She’s from those parts some time ago.
The Sailor
@c u n d gulag: Me likey so much I stole it.
Todd
@weaselone:
The American doctrine of Conservatism is the reduced essence (id, if you will) of every learned cultural defect of Scots/Irish/Anglo culture over the past 300 years. This disease is tribal, paternalistic and authoritarian, and excludes without any consideration any policies which do not support the socioeconomic status quo.
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: Loud enough to hear it here… God knows how loud it was out there…
kay
I’m just taking it as Bush/Kerry (Obama is Bush) because Bush had a far superior org on the ground and a devoted base, so he won Ohio. Obama has that, here. It exists, and it’s a base and it isn’t going Romney.
We have better numbers than Republicans in OH, in terms of actual people ( putting aside polls) and if we decide to turn out, ‘punch our weight’ as the pros say, we’ll win the state and if we don’t, we won’t.
jwb
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Well, it wasn’t actually that many people, at most 3% overall, but I take your point. I don’t doubt some of those will stay with Romney, but I sincerely believe that a good reaction to the President’s next debate performance from the political left will move a third to half of those back while also ginning up enthusiasm.
With luck the Obama campaign has a little bomb set to go off on Monday to rattle Romney. The one misstep I think the Obama team has made this campaign is not having a shiny object with Mitt’s name on it ready to toss out after the first debate.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
They’re going for a “film noir” reference, I think. It has cachet.
RaflW
@weaselone:
I think this was why Ryan was hammering home the “uniquely qualified Mit Romeny” crap the other night. Not because ppl moved from Obama to Romeny, but from Gary Johnson. Maybe that’s a stretch, but I can see that shift being 1% in post-debate polls.
Which may well be more than the margin of victory.
So we get uniquely qualified several times in the debate, to strongly suggest that Johnson or any other 3rd party vote is dumb.
Micheline
@karen marie: Yup
Chris
@lamh35:
Personally, I don’t think it’s a matter of what they “told pollsters,” or not wanting to “look racist.” I think they actually were on the fence… they just have a much higher standard of what it takes for the rich white Republican to fail, than the black Democrat.
Thus, it took two years of Romney’s omnipresent flip-flopping and proving again and again that he doesn’t give a flying fuck about his voters for them to slowly, sloooowly trickle over to the other side, but only one off night for Obama.
(Your garden variety mostly-white, mostly-male, mostly-middle-class, completely-low-information “moderate” voters).
Villago Delenda Est
@SiubhanDuinne:
Perhaps “The Fresh Fart of Hot Air”?
Or is that just too gauche?
Tyro
@jwb: I am formally in the camp that those voters are white voters who may have voted for Obama cause ya know history and all, but hey, they’ve done tgheur duty for racial equality and they wanna go back to having their white Presidents.
Marketing the election as being about racial reconciliation might have been a mistake then. Then again, Obama was reluctant to make the election about “Democrats kicking the Republicans’ ass back to the cave it belonged in.”
jwb
@weaselone: I see the problem essentially being the reaction of Obama’s supporters rather than his performance per se. The supporters acted like a bunch of whining losers making arguments that only drove people away. Who the fuck wants to join this dysfunctional team that can’t even find a good argument to support their guy but instead turns to ripping him up? How is Obama possibly going to get anything done if he has so little real support on his own side? It’s the health care fight all over again. And if you look at those shifting voters as having moved away from Romney across the summer, it’s largely for the same reason that they first rejected Romney: Romney’s core supporters seemed extremely unhappy with him, so team GOP seemed dysfunctional. In any case, what gives me hope is that the President’s favorability marks have not moved as much as the poll numbers. This suggests to me that people can still be persuaded.
RaflW
@lamh35:
I’ve been wondering what the global track-record is of countries that have elected a woman head of state repeating that with a second woman?
Thatcher broke through, but we’ve had Major, Blair, Brown, and Cameron. I don’t follow the Brits closely, but don’t think I’ve heard of any women in serious contention for a post-Cameron era.
We like our one-offs. And just below CEO, there remains room: I think Hillary after Condi after (earlier) Albright makes a good case for women in high-level global security and policy positions. But maybe having the title Secretary helps? (Only half kidding).
Anyway, I get the sense that the global male hegemony (urp, pretentious!) likes it’s very occasional glass-ceiling-breakers, and then resume business-as-usual for some more decades.
ETA: Condi + Powell also makes space for Blahs at the near-top, too. I’m not blase about progress. But just like in corporate world, the tip-top job is still mostly for white men.
McJulie
@Todd: Pent-up Republican demand is how I’ve come to read it. Romney does well enough in a debate (I hated him, but it was still the best performance from him I’ve seen) and is proclaimed the winner — all those R voters suddenly aren’t ashamed to be Team Romney.
So now I’m wondering if even a much stronger Obama debate performance would have had a similar effect on the polls — because the Biden/Ryan post debate evaluation seems to indicate that would still have been presented as a tie, and everyone would still be talking about how well Romney did.
dr. bloor
@Amir Khalid: Yeah, and the marketers who created the name as well as the target demo are all going to think “film” rather than “black.”. You’re giving the public way too much credit.
kay
@jwb:
I think fact- checking is a disaster for journalists. It’s an admission that they’re not doing that. Why they went along with outsourcing their job to a franchise I will never know.
But, I don’t have any sympathy for professions or trades who don’t have any mechanism to police their own members.
If you want to be trusted, you can’t be running around covering for Fox News
I sometimes listen to POTUS, which is a political radio channel on satelitte. I listen in the car. They have a host who is a former political reporter and she was whining about Jon Stewart debating O’Reilly, because O’Reilly is a former journalist, so not a comic.
O’Reilly is too good to debate a comic. He’s a former ‘newsman’
What a joke. She’s now lost all credibility, and I won’t listen again.
Maude
@kay:
This is why people hate the MSM. They are lazy sloths that are paid way too much money. They also have the nerve to look down on the rest of us.
Villago Delenda Est
@kay:
Jake Tapper, you vile little shit, we’re talking about you here.
kindness
We need a Balloon Juice MLB playoff area where we can badger each other about the remaining teams. Politics can’t be our only source of rousing debate & ridicule.
But I would understand if no one was interested. There’s only one team that means anything now (SF Giants cough cough)…
shortstop
@Flying Squirrel Girl: Sorry for your dilemma, FSG. But don’t give up on adoption yet. My husband and I once adopted a 13-year-old dog — there are people who will do it.
Villago Delenda Est
@kindness:
My team, firmly ensconced in the basement of the AL West, is not part of the festivities, so it’s difficult to get my juices flowing on MLB right now :P
weaselone
@jwb:
The media and fainting liberals on the internet are not Obama’s team. They’re just his supporters. The whining losers are not running his ground game and will not have a place in his administration. His actual team is dedicated and competent, a fact which has been demonstrated over the last four years. Romney and his team are actually dysfunctional.
shortstop
@kindness: I’m with you on all points.
WaterGirl
@Flying Squirrel Girl: You must be frantic. I’m sure i would be in that situation, and I’ll bet your dog is picking up on that, too, and then it’s just a vicious circle.
You can get something called Rescue Remedy at the health food store. Get the one for humans, not the one for pets. It will help calm your dog.
You can put a several drops in your hand and then put some on their nose. You dog will lick it off and it will get into his system right away. Also put some more drops in your hand and put it on his pads. You can also put some in your hand and then calmly pet him with long strokes and some will make it in that way.
Once he’s calmer, you can put it in his water.
Okay, now that you’ve done that, take some Rescue Remedy yourself! It’s really good to use any time you are under a lot of stress, are experiencing change, or a loss, etc.
The first time I tried it was years ago after my -ex moved out, and I had to see him because we were still on the same volleyball team. I hate taking anything, but I was desperate because I couldn’t stop crying, so I tried it. A little while later (maybe 15 minutes?) I noticed that I had stopped crying and was calm enough to go, and everything was fine. I went, saw him, played volleyball, I handled it all. It’s good stuff.
You can put 4 drops in a glass of water and drink that. You can also put some drops directly under your tongue.
You could also try a pet tranquilizer at half dose (your dog, not you!) if you want to calm him down but not leave him looking drugged.
Edit: I put some rescue remedy in a water bottle and brought it to my friend when she was at the vet, having to suddenly put her dog down. I could see it helping her and she was able to handle the situation and be calmer for her dog.
shortstop
@Villago Delenda Est: Um, as a Cubs fan, I find it hard to understand how people can’t be interested in playoffs unless their guys are in them. We lead very different lives, you and I.
Detroit, don’t fuck this up. You’re not my guys either, but I still want you to do America’s dirty work.
shortstop
@WaterGirl: Just one point: RR for humans has alcohol in it…not a good plan for a 13-year-old dog. The pet version is alcohol-free.
Sorry if I jumped on the adoption thing too early back there. I hadn’t read through the thread and thought FSG was seriously considering adopting him out. Excuse my inadvertent thoughtlessness.
arguingwithsignposts
Whatever your team is, they suck!
shortstop
@arguingwithsignposts: Effective MLB insults require far more specificity. For example, a friend who doesn’t like the Giants keeps making cougar jokes about me and Timmy Lincicome. At first it stung, but now I’m letting my dirty old girl flag fly.
Villago Delenda Est
@arguingwithsignposts:
With me, alas, that is all too true.
Well, except for the Fighting Fashion Nightmares of the University of Oregon. They rawk!
Amir Khalid
@kay:
It’s entirely appropriate for an organisation like FactCheck.org to verify the accuracy of factual claims made by or reported in the news media. I reckon that when done right, it provides the external policing of news media that we both agree is essential. But such after-the-fact examination of published news and opinion should complement the fact-checking before publication that is a basic part of reporting, not substitute for it. News media that let external fact-checkers do their job for them are forfeiting a big part of their own raison d’etre.
arguingwithsignposts
@shortstop: whoever they are, your team’s cleanup hitter is overrated, the manager is horrid, the rotation is unstable and your closer doesn’t. And this is why they suck!
Better?
WaterGirl
@shortstop: Yeah, I know that about the dog one, but I still use the human version on my pets.
The human one is preserved with alcohol, the dog version with something else that the lady at my health food store doesn’t trust.
The tiny bit of alcohol, in my opinion, doesn’t hurt them at all. I used it on my 13-year old dog.
But everyone can make their own choice on this.
jwb
@weaselone: I take your distinction, but it doesn’t change my assessment: I sincerely believe that what turned off those voters was the actions of those who presented themselves as in Obama’s camp. That made him look far more ineffectual than the debate itself, where he looked at worse mediocre.
The Obama campaign team has generally been outstanding this cycle, as I’ve frequently noted. My only complaint with them is that they evidently did not have contingency plans (like a good distraction) if the debate did not go as planned. They really should have been able to change the conversation in fewer than five days. But at first they seemed to be operating under the assumption that it would blow over and then when the job numbers came out on Friday they seemed to believe that would do the trick. It was an unusually passive response. Now that I’m thinking about it, the campaign has not done much in terms of active intervention at the national media level since the convention. I know they are working furiously on the fundamentals of ground game, but it is a little bit odd. I would have expected a bit more on Mittwit’s taxes, for instance, and more dirt from his time at Bain. I can’t believe they really released all the oppo research during the summer.
LAC
@blingee:” hi, everybody! Blingee here. Offering new ways to off yourself. I will come to your house and offer my depressed view of things. Have hope? Not with blingee! I come fully approved by firedoglake and the concern troll brigade. Get ready to slit your wrists!!”
Jewish Steel
@arguingwithsignposts:
Yes, but! They don’t suck enough to ignore. They suck enough to either barely miss the playoffs (pick your sport) or get bounced out in an early round.
The pain of fandom.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@weaselone:
This.
Suburban White Americans (esp. the middle-aged men) have this bizarre self-image of themselves as Mall-Shopping, Beer-Pounding Biker Rambos.
But let a Rich Man open his mouth and speak, and you’ll find some of the most servile, pathetic bootlickers on the planet.
Schlemizel
@karen marie:
The press was much more interested in our collective pant shitting over the debate. If people had just shut the fuck up & listened Rmoney did a complete 180 on abortion rights that should have been hammered to death. But instead we wasted time being mean to poor l’il Andy
Schlemizel
@c u n d gulag:
You, sir, or madam, are a genius!
1badbaba3
@Chris: Yeah, but we’ve had those before, several of them in fact. Including the low grade hum that goes on perpetually. And yet he always seems to make it through to the other side none the worse for wear. We always hear how weak he is, how weak WE are, how disorganized, timorous, blah blah blah fuckin’blah – AND IT’S NOT TRUE! ! !
Don’t listen to the whiners until they STOP FUCKING WHINIING! ! ! And don’t listen to the liars until they STOP FUCKING LYING! ! !
We have a very very good team out there. Don’t let them down by getting down or giving up. We can do this.
hep kitty
Sorry I am always late to these things, but just saw the Fox clips. They are foaming at the mouth, wailing about Biden’s disrespect of Ryan Boy. The guys are hysterical fishwives and women sound like they are ready to stab somebody.
Again, they should look to the President debate to see how disrespect and deference to mendacity is really done. And yet then, they accused the President of being angry.
It’s so fun to watch this meltdown. Although I still want the election over, we’ll have this entertainment to savor in the meantime.
I want to know what Rush is saying.
Jewish Steel
@Schlemizel:
Well, this is a story
All about how
Your granny was forced
To eat cat chow
Dee Loralei IPhone
Boomer Sooner! Tuck Fexas!
Todd
@McJulie:
The Republican ALWAYS wins the debate, if you notice the post-event coverage. Gore was dismissive, Bush was “genuine”. Kerry was elitist, Bush was salt of the Earth. McCain was assertive, Obama passive.
This time around, Obama gave quiet policy points, and Romney was an authoritative, commanding presence with his aggressive lies. Yet flip demeanor, and Biden becomes disrespectful and rude. Imagine the coverage if Obama laid down an ass-whoopin’ on the white guy in a suit.
Dennis G.
@gbear: I think about that one all the time.
PreservedKillick
@Todd:
I would note that after booting the first debate, he’s now entirely at liberty to deliver an ass-whoopin’ on the white guy in a suit. And, if he does so, the white guy in the suit will take the blame for it.
A rather interesting dynamic, that.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@hep kitty:
Rush (and ‘nice guy’ Huckabee) spent much of yesterday intimating that Biden was clearly an angry drunk.
He’s been a tea-totaller since that fateful accident took his family, BTW.
Class act, GOP. Class act.
(And may your god turn out to be real, Rev Huckabee. I hear that he’s very jealous, and good at punishing the wicked).
Davis X. Machina
No he won’t. It’ll be the Dean Scream all over again.
PreservedKillick
@Bendal:
There’s a chart floating around showing newspaper ad revenue since about 1950. It goes off a cliff because of the internet.
This is what is happening to broadcast right now.
So, those talking heads are all endangered.
Oddly enough, their only real hope would be to perform actual, you know, journalism. That would add some value. Because if you seriously think that Fox (say) is going to win against Drudge and Red State and that ilk…um? Doubt it.
kindness
I know I’m an oddball here because I want to see a Yankees-Giants Series. As a kid the Yankees were my team. What do you expect from a kid from Tarrytown? But the Giants are my team now and New Yorkers lose so badly it’ll be enormously fun to see them lose a World Series to their previously cross town nemesis The Giants.
Go Giants!
Ruckus
@Flying Squirrel Girl:
I am thinking of moving to CR, living on my SS. I’ve talked to a number of people who are from there or have lived there and you are the first one that I’ve heard that says they can’t live there. My SS is enough to live there as what’s called a pensioner, minimum amount guaranteed monthly.
I’d be interested to discuss if possible.
jwb
@hep kitty: On the other hand, since it’s all about projection and what they fear, it’s clear to me that our side’s attack on Tuesday should be all about Mittwit’s disrespect for Obama.
I’m expecting Obama to be as close to feisty as he can be and still come off as presidential, so I expect this disrespect talk will continue as well. (This stuff about disrespect is not really about Biden, imho, it’s about trying to set down a marker for Obama so that they can feed into a pre-established meme while also diverting attention from their own disrespect.) I’m also expecting Obama to roll the dice—this is precisely the situation in which the normally risk-adverse Obama will understand that it is riskier to play it safe—and mark out some new lines of attack that will outrage the right (better to have them defensively outraged and attacking you where you want them to than play it cautiously and allow them to chose their point of attack). I’m wondering if Obama is finally willing to throw the Bowles-Simpson nonsense overboard and go all in on anti-corporate economic populism.
hep kitty
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: Can’t stand that fucking asshole some of the Dems used to refer to as a decent guy. I just always saw Gomer Pyle without the guiless-ness.
The thought of him even being the nominee just yicked me out totally. His family turned me off too with that animal abuser son of his.
Asshole got bariatric surgery, loses a lotta weight, writes a fucking book, makes a bunch of money and now he’s back to Paula Deen Krispy Kreme Cheeseburgers and Chick-Fil-A.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Davis X. Machina:
Obama needs to find a way to dress down a white CEO with almost 20 years on him, without coming off as angry, defensive, whiny or (this is the hard one) defiant.
Obama can only defeat Romney by making him seem self-apparently ridiculous. And you can only do that with Wit.
We’ll see what ‘energy’ the crowd brings to the town hall. Scary as it sounds, it probably comes down to them.
Hill Dweller
@Schlemizel: I think the wingnuts had planned to claim victory after the first debate, regardless of reality, and use their wingnut pollsters(e.g. Rasmussen, ARG, Gravis, Mason Dixon) to bolster their claims. The unskewed polls nonsense was initially just a stupid conspiracy theory, but I think one of the opportunistic Republican strategists came to see it as a setup. Once they released their absurd post-debate polls, and people pointed out the laughable sampling biases, the wingnuts would scream “hypocrisy!”.
When Obama had his mediocre debate, and the liberal freak out ensued, it supplemented the wingnuts’ strategy and gave the media cover to pile on, effecting the horse race they’d wanted all along. If Obama supporters(especially Matthews, Sullivan and Schultz) had immediately focused on Willard’s lies, the needle still moves in his direction, but the media couldn’t pile on to the extent they did.
I’m still amazed by the standard Obama is held to by the press. He gives them so little, any perceived mistake is relentlessly covered as if it’s Watergate. Juxtapose that with the excuse making during the Bush Presidency. It took a series of historically horrendous decisions for the media to even pretend to be critical. Hell, Obama’s been pummeled for things he didn’t even do(e.g. Fast and Furious, Solyndra, and now Benghazi). And it all leads back to the Village careerists’ fear of being called liberal.
ChrisNYC
I’m watching the first Romney-Kennedy debate. I’ve seen the second, which is apparently the more sedate of the two and that was pretty rough on Romney. So wild that the best evidence of how to slam Romney, get under his skin is from Ted Kennedy. Spooky.
Maude
@Ruckus:
You stay here in the good old US of A. There are cheap places to live and you can ask about them in threads.
hep kitty
@jwb:
I must disagree. I believe you are overthinking this part of what you said. Very delicate fee fees are hurt b/c their little policy wonk genius pretty boy got smacked around and smacked around hard and came out looking like a cartoon character.
So they’re whining about that since they can’t talk about the substance. Because they know exactly what he looked like, sounded like, next to Biden. So all they got is, “he was mean” :(
So many times, Ryan had this look on his face like he was receiving a lecture in foreign policy in a class he was barely passing. It was amazing.
TexasMango
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
Actually it comes down to which questions Candy Crowley picks to be asked?
Gee….I wonder which questions will be asked that are more challenging to which candidate?
The fact that it’s not random questions, but preselected means its already rigged.
On a very good note, early voting looks really good for Democrats and I’ll bet a lot of those voters don’t fit into the LV models.
c u n d gulag
@Schlemizel:
I’m a guy.
And, aww shucks – I ain’t know jeeneeoos! ;-)
I’m just doing my duty to mock the infintely mockable, as I see it.
TexasMango
@Hill Dweller: This. Whatever happens the left has to learn to work the reds like Republicans have. The MSM needs to be accused to bias towards to right by not telling the truth as often as possible.
I also think a little boycotting of certain media outlets along with letters and emails explaining why your aren’t watching or reading them anymore would be helpful as well. The MSM just doesn’t fear the left like they do the right.
hep kitty
@jwb: I also feel the President should still be himself and not try to be like Biden because their styles are just different. Although I love Biden’s style more than ever. He should bring some humor to it, like Biden, in pointing out the absurdities of their so-called plans and contrast them with what the admin has already done and plans to do, with specifics and statistics as weapons. Again, in that way, like Biden did.
I don’t want him to get into any soaring rhetoric or trying to swing the other way. I have to admit my overconfidence was shattered after the 1st debate, so I’m now nervous more than I would have been. But it’s a town hall. Good for Obama. Bad for Mitt.
OzoneR
@RaflW:
New Zealand, Ireland, Bangladesh, the Philippines all come to mind
Mnemosyne
@RaflW:
That hadn’t even occurred to me, but I think you’re on to something. I know that Johnson had pretty strong polling in Virginia (something like 5%) so having 1% or 2% of those people move to the Romney column would make a really big difference.
I know my lifelong Republican dad has been telling pollsters he plans to vote for “Dr. Ron Paul,” so I think Romney has quietly had a major 3rd party problem.
jwb
@hep kitty: Agreed that Obama has to be himself, but he can be feisty without becoming an attack dog. Mostly, I just don’t think he can play it safe at this point. I have confidence that he and his team realize this as well and will come up with an effective strategy that works for Obama.
Gian
@weaselone:
my theory on debate is the likely voter screens.
first GOPers are historically more likely to vote,
post debate the demoralized GOPer who might’ve given a less than certain answer on “will you vote?”
may simply have become certain to vote
thereby making it past the “likely screen” where pre-debate they hadn’t
jwb
@Gian: To some degree, yes, the LV screen may have had an effect. The problem with this interpretation is that there has not been nearly as much movement in the Senate races in the same polls. That suggest some real movement among voters.
Ruckus
@Maude:
Wouldn’t mind staying here.
But just for a little fun, why?
Any examples? I’ve got thee months to move.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Nothing would delight me more than these people Nadering themselves.
Chris T.
@Bobby Thomson: A spokesperson for The Onion said today, “We just report the truth, and people think it’s satire.”
TerryC
@Flying Squirrel Girl: We’ve given our dogs Benadryl for itching in some seasons. It also calms them down.
A moocher
@Todd: well that would be a petty darn good reason, except the real killers of journalists are right wing death squads.
The people who pay for the deaths squads are the same people who own the journalists in North America.
It’s not the journalists that need to be taken out of play.
McJulie
@Hill Dweller:
This. Sooooo much.
McJulie
@TexasMango:
Obviously true, but sometimes I wonder why.
Ruckus
@McJulie:
We don’t pay their salaries.
Ruckus
@McJulie:
We don’t pay their salaries.
Short Bus Bully
@gbear:
Oh MY GOD. That article should be framed and sent to every American household.
Bendal
@dr. bloor: Yes, but Obama runs the risk of being labeled the “angry black man” if he confronts Romney’s lies the wrong way. Biden confronts Ryan and is labeled “mean” and “rude” and “insulting”; imagine what Obama gets called if he challenges Romney’s lies directly.
I’m not sure how Obama can refute Romney without the media claiming he’s being mean, but that’s what he has to figure out or he’s going to lose this election.