Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

mittens u sly dog

The GOP presidential candidate said he did not mean to write off nearly half the electorate. Instead, he was merely stating the fact that they support the president's "more European than American" outlook on wealth redistribution.

unabomber not paying any income tax, fer sure

must be an obama supporter

some of the coverage is beginning to read like one of Didion's 80s/early-90s political pieces

At an airport in Salt Lake City, Kevin Madden, a senior adviser, waved a group of reporters over to look at his iPhone. It displayed a headline in the Romney-friendly Drudge Report about a poll that showed the presidential race tightening.

A few hours later, Mr. Romney’s staff members summoned a handful of reporters to watch him carry four of his young grandchildren across a tarmac here and onto his plane for a tour.

But the video kept coming up anyway. When pressed, Mr. Madden offered a relentlessly on-message reply to questions about the candidate’s mood and reaction to the drip-drip-drip release of the fund-raiser footage by Mother Jones magazine.

“We’re still focused,” he said. “This is an election that is focused on the economy. It’s focused on the direction of the country.”

Political fictions.

i'm surprised there's so little furore over the line about how he'd be doing better in this campaign if his dad were mexican, that is just such an insane thing to say

This x1000

― O_o-O_O-o_O (jjjusten), Tuesday, September 18, 2012 8:10 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

I would wager that most white americans, even if it was just a lil' tiny bit, have considered themselves the victim of 'reverse racism' in the past

yeah, but most americans are idiots. more than half the country at least. if not more.

i love them all though.

"I'm not saying that you and your family are a piece of shit. I'm saying that if you and your family aren't a piece of shit, then the family next door is."

Saying that he has "two perspectives on the peace process," Romney elaborates:

"One is the one which I've had for some time, which is that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish."

http://i.imgur.com/2igdf.jpg

I saved a copy of that pic, in case it vanishes once the originator understands she looks like a complete fool.

that picture should be on the dollar bill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvLeQbwuKys

Has this been out long? Didn't know about it until just now. I've never been much of a Randy Newman fan--I tried--and truthfully, this doesn't hold much interest for me as music. But it does get at something--if it's new, I'm sure it will get some attention.

^^ It doesn't seem especially fresh or keen to me, certainly not enough to make a dime's worth of difference to the election.

ugh. he shouldn't post stuff when he's drunk.

sail away 2012. he's the worst. wish he would sail away.

his voice sucks and the music sucks and the lyrics are trite but other than that i really like his "sly" "subtle" message that he hits me over the head with until my brains are leaking out my ears.

It's "Sail Away" in a different context, so no, it's not new, but the sentiment's out there, and since no one else has put it to song yet--or at least not in those words--I give him credit.

Many of us make the same point on here every day, more or less--why can't he?

Most of us are better singers!

Most of us don't write songs about these obvious points

he just offends me. don't mind me. he's like a one-man minstrel show for white liberals.

I mean, clem -- really

he should make an album with cocorosie.

Sail Away is good

You make me like the song better. No offense, but it does amuse me that if David Brooks or David Gergen or the "punditocracy" says something, it will be automatically ridiculed, but if the exact same point gets made here, that's okay.

There was a moment when Sail Away was good, but that moment passed.

People here don't get paid six figures to say things!

http://wearethe47percent.tumblr.com/

Besides the obvious differences in backgrounds and employers of the Honorable Gergen and the Honorable Mr. Brooks and the average ILXer, there's also something called context.

idg what the 'point' or 'sentiment' of that song is, Romney is white?

Also, despite Morbs' best hopes, not many here -- you're one of them -- discusses politics in Gergen terms.

but i can't stand david brooks or david gergen or randy newman and i like most people here because they don't sing in faux-darktown voices to me and they aren't asshole conservative talking heads who make me want to scream.

I am available for that six-figure pundit job, as long as I don't have to travel, wake up early, or attend cocktail parties more than once a month.

wait, do i hate david gergen? i might not actually hate him.

of course you do

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/files/original/img-david-gergen-_142308819606.jpg

he actually didn't disgust me when i used to watch cnn. don't have cable anymore so my hate-levels have dropped. didn't know about this though. this is pretty hateful:

"In July 2012, Mr. Gergen appeared on CNN and defended Bain Capital's practices, without disclosing the fact that he had been on Bain's payroll for various activities over the years. A week later, he admitted to his financial ties to Bain Capital. The Daily Beast's Andrew Sullivan wrote "buck-rakers like Gergen, knee deep in corporate cash, defend the men who helped them get rich. Gergen is part of the problem, not the solution"."

True, but I was referring more to the content of what gets said, not the context. Anyway, forget it. Like I say, Randy Newman always been a blind spot with me for stylistic reasons--his music-hall style or whatever--and obviously his voice is barely hanging on here. But I find the sentiment of the song sad, accurate, and strangely moving. (Please don't misinterpret that.)

yeah this song isn't that great but the sentiment is hardly different from "Rednecks"

(full disclosure: I love Randy Newman)

I like him too but I've no interest in him now, especially during campaign season.

its cool. if you find it moving. i don't. i don't think songs like that do anything for anybody. they preach to the converted. they make the converted shake their heads and sigh deep converted sighs. and then that's it. if they were great songs i wouldn't care.

Peggy Noonan is worried.

Romney’s staff used to brag they had a lower burn rate, they were saving it up. For what? For the moment when Americans would rather poke out their eyeballs and stomp on the goo than listen to another ad?

Also, Mr. Romney’s ads are mostly boring. It’s kind of an achievement to be boring at a moment in history like this, so credit where it’s due: That musta taken effort!

Well, you'd know.

Romney should go out there every day surrounded with the most persuasive, interesting and articulate members of his party, the old ones, and I say this with pain as they’re my age, like Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush, and the young ones, like Susana Martinez and Chris Christie and Marco Rubio—and even Paul Ryan. I don’t mean one of them should travel with him next Thursday, I mean he should be surrounded by a posse of them every day.

Uh.

dis!

Romney is known to be loyal. He sticks with you when you’re going through a hard time, he rides it down with you. That’s a real personal quality, a virtue. My old boss Reagan was a little colder. The night before he won the crucial 1980 New Hampshire primary—the night before he wonit—he fired his campaign manager, John Sears. Reagan thought he wasn’t cutting it, so he was gone. The economist Martin Anderson once called Reagan genially ruthless, and he was. But then it wasn’t about John Sears’s feelings or Ronald Reagan’s feelings, it was about America. You can be pretty tough when it’s about America.

You can be pretty, Mitt Romney, when it's about America.

What I find moving--and I'm sure the exact same thing was written about "Rednecks" at the time (I'm not even sure if I have that, or if I've heard it--I've got three or four of his early albums)--is that it's like he's struggling to understand the 30% of the country who despises Obama, especially the part of that 30% that's from an earlier generation. I don't hear it as preaching to the converted, or as a smarmy joke; I think he's working something out in his mind, and the song isn't even meant for anyone else. "Someone who we can understand"--that's a great line. Anyway, that's that--I'm surprised to find myself writing about Randy Newman this way.

Romney’s staff used to brag they had a lower burn rate, they were saving it up. For what?

See the conspiracy theory about Romney losing the election and walking away with tons of money.