Motley Moose – Archive

My day job precludes me from writing too long a diary on this, but happy to comment, and let the subject in question speak for himself.

The editor of Libertarian Republican has resigned in the wake of the thorough trashing of the GOP on Tuesday. And what he says by way of goodbye is downright interesting.

Today starts a new course for my life. I’ve soured on electoral politics given what happened last night. I believe now the best course of action is outright revolt. What do I mean by that?

Well, to each his own. Some may choose to push secession in their state legislatures. Others may choose to leave the U.S. for good (Costa Rica, Switzerland, Italy, Argentina, Hong Kong, Israel). Still others may want to personally separate themselves from the United States here in North America while still living under communist rule’ the Glenn Beck, grab your guns, food storage, build bunkers, survivalist route. I heartily endorse all these efforts.

Elated, exhausted and still wired up and fired up from last night’s electoral and popular vote victory for our POTUS, the first thoughts I had this morning were about the unending meme steam those of us in communities of color had to endure through-out the entire election season.  

Yeah. I am sittin’ here gloatin’.

All the TM lame-stream concern trolls masquerading as pundits have now proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they suffer from anal-rectalitis.

Let’s see.

Remember all the “black people were gonna abandon the President” themes?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Yea, those Latinos sure don’t show up to the polls.  

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Don’t forget the ignored Asian-Americans and Native Americans.

More very loud guffaws from my mouth.

As a Sistah, want to thank all those Republican legi-rapers for motivating women of all colors to say NO WAY to Willard.

Too tired to do a sophisticated analysis of the numbers right now. I’m sure there will be plenty time in the days to come, and the yapping class has already started their inane babble this morning, so I have turned off the teevee, and sit here chortling with glee.

Thank you and muchisimas gracias to every single person who got out and voted against a solid wall of Tea-Republican efforts at voter repression and chicanery.  

Yo Romney…I know you are a religious dude.

Well, so are many of us and there is an old saying in the black community:

“God don’t like ugly”.

That’s right.

She doesn’t.

(cross-posted at Daily Kos)

Ummm, I guess I haz been volunteered?

Well who says the Republican National Convention was lacking in entertainment value?  The convention organisers, who had been touting their “mystery guest” for a week, placed Clint Eastwood in their precious few hours of prime-time just one slot away from Mitt’s big speech.  Little did they know.

In what has now become a piece of American political legend Clint used more than double his allotted time of five minutes to have a marginally coherent dialogue with an empty chair, clearly meant to represent the incumbent President.  That this was great television had more to do, as usual, with the jaw-dropping bizarreness of the stunt rather than the actual content; though it played well enough to the live audience, as you might imagine; not to mention the reckless optics of showcasing a cranky, old, white guy having an incoherent argument with an imaginary Obama.  By all accounts the campaign never saw any sign of the train wreck headed their way.

Within minutes after this amazing presentation, even before the apparatchiks of Romney’s campaign could be reached for comment and vainly attempt to spin the whole thing away, an Internet meme #eastwooding was born and a Twitter account appeared for @invisibleobama.  “Eastwooding” involves having a conversation with an empty chair, of course, or at least a photograph of one and @invisibleobama has a satisfyingly dry wit:

I’m behind Mitt! No seriously. I’m right behind him. @invisibleobama

Needless to say the @invisibleobama account acquired twenty thousand or so followers and #eastwooding was trending exponentially within hours.  Sometimes the effort and diligence of following the daily frustrations and vicissitudes of day-to-day political baseball is amply rewarded.

There’s plenty wrong, but this is in my craw today: People who think that the poor and middle class are too ignorant to think for themselves.

Exhibit P:

The line of Range Rovers, BMWs, Porsche roadsters and one gleaming cherry red Ferrari began queuing outside of Revlon Chairman Ronald Perelman’s estate off Montauk Highway long before Romney arrived, as campaign aides and staffers in white polo shirts emblazoned with the logo of Perelman’s property — the Creeks — checked off names under tight security.

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

“We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”

Exhibit Q:

A woman in a blue chiffon dress poked her head out of a black Range Rover here on Sunday afternoon and yelled to an aide to Mitt Romney. “Is there a V.I.P. entrance? We are V.I.P.” ….

A few cars back, Ted Conklin, the owner of the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, long a favorite of the Hamptons’ well-off and well-known, could barely contain his displeasure with Mr. Obama. “He is a socialist. His idea is find a problem that doesn’t exist and get government to intervene,” Mr. Conklin said from inside a gold Mercedes, as his wife, Carol Simmons, nodded in agreement.

These people spent more on dinner than I make in a year. Look, I’m a capatalist (mostly), but SRSLY? Since Romney’s money has more foreign policy experience than he does, shouldn’t he be Running for President of the Caymans?  

The “empowerment” of the Right since the election of President Obama has brought new relevance to old arguments for xenophobia, bigotry and prejudice.  In a few short years our public discourse has declined, one might say devolved, into a number of unbelievably petty and small issues which exercise our emotions more than our reason.  As much as this reinforces “end-of-empire” theorising it has to be wondered what legislative Republicans, among others, could possibly be thinking:

The right’s singularly intelligent strategy is, I guess, to drive all of us as mad as the right is – to embroil us all in the right’s juvenile distractions, its adolescent food fights, its infantile diversions from whatever is truly important. In time, or so the strategy goes, the civilized intelligentsia will walk away in resigned disgust, as will barely interested independent and moderate voters, leaving the political arena almost entirely to the right.

P M Carpenter – To Michelle Goldberg, I tip my hat 15 May 12

Is that it?  If so one fails to see the distinction from a drunken adolescent who threatens to burn down the house because they’re denied the keys to the family car.

Recently the infamous Heartland Institute, who commissioned billboards associating climate science with the Unabomber, decided to “spin off its insurance research project effective May 31.”  The reason?  Climate change scepticism makes impossible meaningful actuarial work on insurance.  Sheesh.  Brace yourselves for another summer of diligent hammering away at the ethical and social foundations of the Republic.

The delegate math says that Romney gets a boost today; Santorum failed to qualify for delegates in some districts of Ohio and is not even on the ballot in Virginia.  But lacking the clear wins he desperately needs in Ohio and Tennessee, where polling indicates statistical ties, will Romney see his own shadow and retreat back to more weeks of interminable campaigning?  

Unless Santorum squeaks out wins in both states, probably not:

…once the Death Star got focused, Santorum’s numbers began to bleed. Tennessee would appear to be the key. If Santorum holds on there, he can argue plausibly that Romney still cannot close the deal with the voters he needs the most in the fall. A Republican candidate with a demonstrable weakness in the South is every Republican playa’s worst nightmare. But this still remains a contest between an actual campaign and three cults of personality. ‘Twas ever thus.

Charles P Pierce – How Romneybot 2.0 Built His Super Tuesday Death Star Esquire 6 Mar 12

Now this is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Friday, 2 March 2012 the Iranian parliamentary elections take place, but unlike 2009 the reform movement is not taking part.  It is a contest among conservatives and this time around Ahmadinejad is taking on the Supreme Leader and the clerics:

The real competition in this election is among the so-called principalists – the various conservative forces that have fought so fiercely to control Iran’s government.

In that context, some see this election as fundamentally a fight between supporters of President Ahmadinejad and loyalists of the Supreme Leader.

“There is an attempt to rally people around the Ahmadinejad faction,” says Hashemi, the analyst at the University of Denver. “And one of the things that the Ahmadinejad faction has been doing is to try and play off of the peoples’ general antipathy toward clerical rule.”

Mike Schuster – In Iran’s Election, Not All Candidates Are Welcome NPR 1 Mar 12

Yeah, that’s right, this time Ahmadinejad is the moderate.

It seems the Republican circus has now gotten to the trapeze act with no net.  Recent polling for Arizona and Michigan suggests both are statistical ties with Michigan poised to be an all-night cliffhanger.  Romney faces a potentially disastrous defeat and Santorum, well, any momentum he wins or loses is unlikely to change his clear intention to wage electoral jihad.  

And they are both clearly doing themselves no favours:

Both Willard Romney and Rick Santorum – and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick the latter is? – ought to thank their personal deities that they’re not racehorses. Because, if they were, and given the way they’re both limping towards the finish line in Michigan and Arizona today, we’d already have the screen up, the syringe at the ready, and the veterinary ambulance discreetly parked off to one side.

Charles P Pierce – The Michigan Primary and the GOP’s Bloody Uprising Esquire 28 Feb 12

At this point it is hard to imagine how a win or loss for either changes the fundamentals of an increasingly toxic and historically damaging nomination for the GOP.  Pass the popcorn, please, and make it the good stuff.

The Republican primary continues to lurch forward with three contests today; Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.  None of these are binding in the allocation of delegates:

It is not a pretty image, believe you me.

Now, as the latest chapter in this drama, the Republican National Committee felt obliged to send out an e-mail reminding reporters that today’s voting in Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota will mean sweet fk-all, despite what you may hear from John King and my man Chuck Todd.

Charles P Pierce – The RNC Clusterfk Esquire 7 Feb 12

Notwithstanding, there may be something at stake here for the Romney campaign which lit up recently with an unusual objection to the methodology of a specific poll, largely on the grounds of this little nugget:

According to ABC’s poll out this morning, by a 2 to 1 margin voters say the more they learn about Mitt Romney, the less they like him.

Josh Marshall – Taking a Toll TPM 6 Feb 12

Romney’s favourability is declining nationally as Obama’s enjoys a modest rise.  Not to mention that with Santorum leading in Missouri and competitive elsewhere the Romney juggernaut just might lose two out of three; a concern further evident by their pivot to attacking Santorum in recent days.

So, as far as delegates are concerned these events don’t amount to much but as a potential deflation of the Romney campaign with an upset or two it may be worth watching.