2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[PanzerJaeger]

And the just-as-inevitable response re: the OBL ad.



It's pretty standard partisan stuff, but it did highlight one thing in the Clinton ad that I completely missed at 35 seconds in. "Suppose the Navy Seals had gone in there... suppose they had been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him."

In passing it just sounds like they are spiking the football. When you really think about the mindset behind that statement, though, it is pretty galling even for election year politics and reveals a kind of selfish arrogance that has characterized this presidency.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

The clipping "I..." quotes doesn't jive with the tone of my memory of that speech. iirc there's some idea that obama uses "I" more than other presidents, but I read a debunking of it. The "for him" statement is just the ad script, it doesn't say that obama cares more about the politics than the lives of the seals. The one thing I heard that did concern me was that the white house has been leaking way more details about how the seal teams operate than the military would like.

[a completely inoffensive name]

So uh....apparently the Ron Paul machine is working hard on getting its followers to take the majority of delegate spots in Nevada and Maine. Which they did. The plan apparently is that there is precedent for bound delegates to abstain, so if they get enough of Romney's delegates, they can abstain, force a brokered convention and then on the second voting round many of them are open to vote for who they please.

For the sake of the comedy that will pour out from late night comedians, I hope this actually happens even though I know it won't.

[Lemur]

And now to the gloating: one of the primary figures on the far-right who pushed for Grenell's firing/resignation is now declaring, "If Mitt Romney can be pushed around, intimidated, coerced, coopted by a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America, then how is he going to stand up to the Chinese? How is he going to stand up to Putin? How is he going to stand up to North Korea if he can be pushed around by a yokel like me? I don’t think Romney is realizing the doubts that this begins to raise about his leadership."

Lovely. So Romney gives this buffoon what he wants, and the ungrateful little homunculous turns around and makes it into an argument for why Romney can't be President. Someone explain the logic of this to me, 'cause it looks insane from where I'm standing.

[Tellos Athenaios]

On the contrary, I think this is actually sane. Just because it may or may not have been wrapped up in a saga made of assorted right wing drivel/nonsense/rants/insanity/take-your-pick doesn't mean the basic point still stands:

Mitt Romney doesn't have $0.02 worth of intellectual effort put into coming up with an actual real policy "line". So if you are Republican and looking to further presumed Republican values, what use is electing a pushover who will be bullied into bending over backwards by pretty much anyone?

The concern isn't the Chinese (or shouldn't be), in the sense that he isn't going to be bullied into doing the Chinese bidding (his past suggests he is actually going to believe it's all for the best to let the Chinese do their thing, you know free markets and stuff, and maybe he could be right on that issue to boot). The concern is what will be left of Romney promises to the Republican voter base after the first slaughterhouse round against actual politicians (not merely power brokers) who know how to play the media?

Mitt Romney would make a fine Congressional aide, but he lacks the sharp cutting edge of a campaigner politician -- even by boring Dutch standards.

[Lemur]

I don't agree with this article, but am reposting a bit for the most epic use of Bangkok in an analogy ever.

But this campaign, relatively speaking, will not be fierce or hotly contested. Instead it'll be disappointing, embarrassing, and over very quickly, like a hand job in a Bangkok bathhouse. And everybody knows it. It's just impossible to take Mitt Romney seriously as a presidential candidate. Even the news reporters who are paid to drum up dramatic undertones are having a hard time selling Romney as half of a titanic title bout.

[Lemur]

And now there's Bullygate. We're going back to high school for scandals? Really? Why stop there? Why not scrutinize their pre-K and Kindergarten records? Let's see if there are any fetal scandals they might have had in utero!

Maybe this will, in fact, be the most boring election in the history of mankind.

[Ronin]

Lovely. So Romney gives this buffoon what he wants, and the ungrateful little homunculous turns around and makes it into an argument for why Romney can't be President. Someone explain the logic of this to me, 'cause it looks insane from where I'm standing.

it's right wing talk-radio. isn´t insane par for the course?