Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

so that tax loophole that enables mitt to get huge loans and buy companies and make the company pay the loan back so that mitt can dump the company and make a huge profit? he built that too because the government is working for us the people and they have to do what we say because they are our employees. i think i've got that right...

as long as you ignore the fact that the government people are also "the people", i guess.

its all so confusing.

I just found out that photo of Romney and the kids with t-shirts spelling out "MONEY" was 'shopped. They really did spell out "OMNEY" the correct way. ;_;

these dummies with their free tv need to get wise...back in the 70s the LA Greyhound station had TVs that you put a quarter in for seven minutes of broadcast glory in radiant black and white usually

^also in airports!

that went into the 90s.

the PA in NYC also had those quarter TVs!

that photo of Romney and the kids with t-shirts spelling out "MONEY" was 'shopped.

but the point still stands -- how is Obama running his campaign with no money?

Romney is obsessed with money that's why it's funny

speeding tix, Indy 500, etc

almost ftt

since Obama shut down Manhattan for fundraisers every 10 days in the spring, i'm glad he's not obsessed.

Obama wants power, money is secondary

So the messaging sounded inoffensive, but when you really think about what is being said at this convention, you realize that all the red, white, and blue bunting and clothing and video imagery is a put-on. All the talk about patriotism, about supporting the troops, is just lip service. This is the most unpatriotic crowd I have ever been a part of. What they are against is community. Every sentence is devoid of empathy. Every finger-wag is aimed directly at an American who can’t afford health insurance, who hasn’t had a raise on their minimum-wage job in four years. Even as they rail against a statement that the president never really made, they are talking about tearing America down and leaving something meaner and greedier in its place. They’re radicals—radicals who’ve gone over the edge and are trying to make their radicalism mainstream.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/stuck-in-a-room-with-mitt-romney/Content?oid=14623016

i know preaching to the converted and all that but it fits my mood.

I don't know this guy seems like a pretty lazy journalist... he pretty much did lie to that prayer room guy and it seems unlikely Idaho delagates would have pins the shape of potatoes and not the AWESOME SHAPE of Idaho! I wonder if he actually saw these pins... or walked downtown, or anything. Basically this guy doesn't seem like he has much credibility. I mean I suppose I am the converted in that I thought the RNC was a weird fascist spectacle that I would not enjoy being at, but I dunno he seemed to think that old white people in and of themselves are terrible.

(Also, how does the Lightening logo look 'white supremacist', its just a lightening bolt ffs -- at least save your ire for ACTUALLY offensive sports logos, I mean there's plenty!)

I think really clean designs of lightning bolts are always going to have that SS association

Of course delagates do trade all kinds of chachkis but...

http://s3images.coroflot.com/user_files/individual_files/431123_2n0YbbO8KNPKDRGm4jJGvLBhn.jpg

I was thinking about the SS thing too, but the TBL logo has like 5 bends in it, it doesn't really look like an S at all.

It is quite an anti-social mindset. But i think if you look at the history of the country as if it were a person, and compare that with how it was founded, treated the former residents of the land, and made big power plays on the rest of the world through the 20th century, you would see some pretty anti-social tendencies.

In fairness there are very few imperial powers that you would kick it with and not keep an eye on the door.

Tchotchkes

thank you max.

heard all about drone planes and the national guard and all that but i didn't hear anything about protesters/protests at the convention.

i don't have cable t.v. though...

The most moving friendship this side of Michael Corleone and Hyman Roth:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/10/120910fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

Would have been awesome if Obama quietly ordered the RNC buzzed by low-flying drones. They could have been dragging "Obama 2012" banners. Or just been all, yo, what's up, Republicans?

Just dronin' around Tampa!

came here to post this photo of joe biden

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1150391.1346686956!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/biden4n-1-web.jpg

hairplug cut!

he's looking for a chair to yell at.

Carnac the Magnificent, minus the hat. "Dolly Parton, Mount Rushmore, and a diseased yak..."

thought about trying to figure out how the fuck half this thread is now about TVs in McDonald's but

Skipping 666 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

A puff Ryan Lizza piece on the Barack-Bill relationship. I laughed out loud at this bit, echoed in today's NYT story about Obama's personality:

Throughout 2008 and 2009, Obama rarely contacted Clinton, a decision that the Clinton circle attributes to Obama’s loner personality. A Democrat deeply familiar with the relationship complained that the press has often made it seem that Clinton harbored “lingering resentments” from the primary battle: “It’s always sort of implied that it’s Clinton’s fault.” The truth, he added, “is that Obama doesn’t really like very many people.” He ticked off the names of some of Obama’s longtime friends: the Whitakers, the Nesbitts, Valerie Jarrett. “And he likes to talk about sports. But other than that he just doesn’t like very many people. Unfortunately, it extends to people who used to have his job.”

http://www.newyorker.com/images/2012/09/10/g290/120910_r22537_g290_crop.jpg

JOLTIN JOE LOOKIN PEAKED

Can't wait to read that New Yorker article. Can you blame the guy? People suck.

Carnac the Magnificent, minus the hat. "Dolly Parton, Mount Rushmore, and a diseased yak..."

"Boobs like mountains, boobs on a mountain, and something you use to throw people off how bad the first two gags in this joke were."

journalism self parody http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/80604.html

after reading this i looked for the satire tag

Reporters feel like both campaigns have decided to run out the clock with limited press avails, distractions, and negative attacks, rather than run confident campaigns with bold policy platforms or lofty notions of hope and change — leaving the media with little to do but grind along covering the latest shallow, sensational item of the day.
“Until the candidates restore joy, it’s impossible for us to be joyful,” NBC News senior White House correspondent Chuck Todd told POLITICO.

I like how the example of big ideas they should be talking about is, "Who will give you a lower marginal tax rate in 2014?"

oh how we long for the days of Al Gore's earth tones

I am sort of curious about what the DNC convention's going to be like, particularly since Obama's mentioned (spoilers) that his second term will involve even more making compromises that the left won't like (and the right won't give credit for).

Like, does he have a platform to argue from as regards "Vote for me and I'll get done all this shit that I've been unable or unwilling to get done so far?", or is the conference just going to be big screens alternating between the ACA logo and Mitt Romney's face?

“It’s fun. It’s funny,” Malkin explained to POLITICO. “Clint Eastwood resonated with voters outside the snotty, derisive NY-DC-Hollywood axis. He braved derision and ridicule for standing on the convention stage. Activists on the right wanted to demonstrate … their appreciation. As always, humor is the best medicine.”

I've read about various antecedents for Clint--Harvey, The Sixth Sense, others--but didn't come across this one:

http://cineawesome.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/King-of-Comedy-2.jpg

I'm not sure if the cardboard cutouts make such conversations more or less surreal.

some dem apparatchik ((c) alfred) on cspan today mentioned something like "buiding our economy from the middle class up" which i thought was just a perfect sad slogan for democrats

It's indictment of our times. You can't even talk about the poor as worth helping if you want to get elected.

I think a lot of technically-poor people probably self-identify as middle class, is the thing

http://asociologist.com/2012/02/03/americans-80-or-45-middle-class-or-response-categories-matter/

I think a lot of technically-poor people probably self-identify as middle class, is the thing

― iatee, Monday, September 3, 2012 9:38 PM (9 minutes ago)

oh totally, it's just sad

dems not trying to help working class