I didn't give much credence to anecdotes from Not-Romney commentators suggesting that the Tea Partiers would sit out if Romney became the candidate (and I was right), and I don't give much credence to anecdotes from journalists that "rank-and-file Republicans" are having trouble accepting Romney.

A WaPo columnist gathered a group of Floridian Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to ask them how they feel about Romney. Their comments, claims the columnist, "illuminate the conflicting issues that many voters are sorting out as the general-election campaign begins."

You get that? The following quotation is supposed to "illuminate" the issues that voters are sorting out right now. And it is also the first thing in the article (and therefore the thing the writer believes to be most important for readers to read) that the writer cites as a "conflicting issue[] that many voters are sorting out."

The former Massachusetts governor’s personal wealth is a big barrier to them. Even these sympathetic voters can’t relate personally to the man who wants to lead their party and the country. “He’s not coming across as a regular guy,” said Bruno Kazenas, a school music teacher.

“It’s hard to be around a guy with that much money,” said Jonathan Rosa, a deputy police officer. He added that it would take a lot to get him to support Obama but that he might back a third-party candidate over Romney.

Ron Romonchuk, a retired consultant, called Romney “a 1 percenter” who has never gotten his hands dirty. He recalled former president George H.W. Bush going to a “hole in the wall” restaurant while in office. “I don’t ever see Mitt Romney doing that,” Romonchuk said.

Wait, wait, wait. There are so many things fundamentally wrong with this picture, it's hard to know where to start. But, the obvious:

It is utterly untrue that the Republican rank-and-file are having or are going to have a hard time accepting Romney's wealth. How do I know? Because there is a man in the Oval Office right now who complained about arugula. Because JFK. Actually, because of the JFKs (Kennedy and Kerry). Because the net worth of every president for at least the past two generations (and a notable founder, too) has exceeded by at least two, and often three, orders of magnitude the average net worth of a voter.

You know what Republican rank-and-file are struggling with right now? Paying for gas. Keeping their job or finding a replacement in the Obama Economy. Worrying about their retirement savings and going prematurely gray over whether their children will have the same opportunities that they did.

The Republican rank-and-file is not, I guarantee you, spending a lot of time wringing their hands over Romney's money. These folks also, I guaran-damn-tee you, are not using phrases like "he's a 1 percenter." (Even if they were, the President doesn't fall in the so-called 99 percent either; he spent the past week suggesting that the Buffett Rule---the tax for millionaires---would fall on him and that he can afford it.)

By the way, if you click to the second page of the article, you'd find that at least one of these "rank-and-file Republicans" voted for Obama in 2008. Another is supporting Obama this time around. As you would expect, though, he's not very bright. Here's his comment about Romney:

“He has a hard time being a regular guy,” he said. “He makes it very obvious by putting jeans on. He picks up phrases from the particular parts of the country heÂ’s in. . . . He tries to fit in too hard.”

He thinks that President Momjeans "Can I Get Arugula On My Cheeseburger?" Obama is "a regular guy"? Get. The. Frak. Out. Of. Here.

Other "conflicting issues" cited in the column: where Romney would sit at a basketball game, and is he "cool or buttoned down?" Maybe it's just me, but I'm sort of getting the impression that these anecdotes from supposed "Republican rank-and-file" are just fodder for a vague and frivolous attempt to write yet another column accusing Romney of being weird. What do you think?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 12:00 PM | Comments (196)
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Fake boobs? Check.

Tan? Check.

Hot?

Let's say, "Fit," and leave it at that.

First pictures.

I mean, obviously, she's attractive.

It's just, you know, when someone's career is destroyed, you kind of hope that it was over something spectacular. Something so hot that he'd cry out, "I'd do it all over again!!!"

Posted by: Ace at 11:53 AM | Comments (136)
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It's called "teasing." People do it.

If someone talks about how no real pie has anything but a homemade crust, and how she'd never call a pie with a store-bought crust a real pie, and you eat some, and you say, "Mmm, this is good, where did you buy the crust?" newsflash, media: This is called teasing.

But apparently it's now "CookieGate.

Romney’s Comment Sparks ‘CookieGate,’ Democrats Add It to ‘Foot in Mouth’ List

...

The former governor met with local residents at an outdoor roundtable lunch in Bethel Park, Pa., during which he joked about a batch of cookies.

“I’m not sure about these cookies,” Romney said, and continued teasing a woman at the table: “They don’t look like you made them. No, no. They came from the local 7-11, bakery, or whatever.”

But the cookies came from Bethel Bakery, a local hot-spot since 1955.
“We are a local landmark in Bethel Park,” Julie Lytle, the bakery’s sales and marketing assistant, told ABC. “When we found out the governor was coming, we sent him cookies to welcome him. We didn’t realize what a big ordeal it was going to become.”

After locals expressed outrage through fiery comments on Twitter and the bakeryÂ’s Facebook page...

I've lost track -- now this outrage is real and not manufactured by Democrats, right?

I know that half of these are "manufactured outrage" and half are genuine and newsworthy but I can't remember which is which.

You know, here's one of the funniest bits of teasing I can remember. ABCNews should make this into a national story.

steve_in_hb had just bought a big high-def tv. A Samsung (I mention this so they know to be outraged by it). He was very proud of it, and amazed by the clarity of picture (it was his first HDTV). So he's bragging about it for a week or two.

So, I'm over there, and neither_steve_in_hb_nor_not_steve_in_hb shows up. I'll call him "Neither" for brevity. He looks at the TV and says, "Nice TV. Did it not come in HD?"

So steve gives him a look and says "It is HD." Neither shrugs, like "If you say so."

Ten minutes later we're watching it and steve asks if the volume is okay. "The volume is fine," Neither says. "It's the focus that's bothering me. Can you make it clearer?"

Steve gives him a look.

Ten minutes more and now Neither is rubbing his temples and saying, "This TV's giving me a headache. Why is it so blurry? Is it supposed to be 3D? Are there special glasses?"

I don't know how to explain "teasing" to someone who actually knows exactly what it is but wants to play dumb to gin up an Obama-loving story out of nothing.

And by the way -- Tied in Pennsylvania. So, suck it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (334)
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The deuce you say, Sir.

A new book by Robert Draper called “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the US House of Representatives" reveals Weiner's swollen, throbbing ego poking out of his underwear.

That doesn't make sense but anyway:

Weiner “would enter his office in the Rayburn Building screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘Why the f--k am I not on MSNBC?!’”...

He finally got his wish, Draper wrote, when Weiner pushed to become the liberal spokesman for ObamaCare.

“He was now on MSNBC every week, sometimes every day — to the point where he was carrying his own makeup kit. (Or rather, his press guy was.)” Draper wrote.

In a way, it's understandable. This was not a guy who had ever commanded attention as a younger man. Now he's King Sh*t of F*** Mountain and he goes a little crazy. It's not like he's had the time to learn how handle prominence gracefully.

Or, he's just a total dick.

Posted by: Ace at 10:22 AM | Comments (131)
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Maybe I'm just drinking the Kool-Aid, but I think Romney is becoming a good candidate. Here, his responses are relentlessly disciplined -- this is the exact narrative he's crafted and practiced -- but he does not seem robotic in repeating it. He seems more or less natural.

And as far as natural -- look, he's engaging in a very atypical and unnatural thing. He's on TV all the time, running for President. So he's not going to come off as natural as I do when I scratch my butt and then pick my nose and then wince in disgust at my own sloven stupidity and cry out "Dear Lord, why have you made me thus?!?!"

That's natural. It's also not going to win over married women aged 30-45.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 AM | Comments (291)
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This is old (the forum I got it from dates it from 2009), but it's new to me.

Certain natural conditions produce natural mummification -- cold, dry air. Desert air (which is dry and cold at night).

Bogs do too. A combination of acid in the water (which I guess doesn't support the bacteria and bugs which would decompose a body) and lack of air.

Bogs are wetlands covered with decomposing plant life and they are abundant in our Northern Hemisphere. The lack of air below the surface makes it ideal for preserving corpses. The water is acidic and the decomposition process is very slow.

Bodies of human's preserved in bogs have been found all over Northwestern Europe; namely Britain, Denmark, Northern Germany and the Netherlands. Some of these bodies date back to 8,000 B.C.

During the Roman Iron Age many of these bodies were and dumped in the bogs after military victories, or for punishment for violent crimes, including homosexuality. Some of these bodies were sacrificed as a cure for illness and many of these once living individuals died a violent death.

On February 1, 1943, a Hurricane piloted by a Russian Lieutenant was shot down by a Nazi pilot and crashed into a bog.

The plane, and his well-preserved body, has been recovered. Mild Content Warning for a Russian Mummy from WW2.

More on bog mummies from Archaeology.org.

Thanks to Walrus Rex.

I'll add some Uncategorizable Trivia.

You know in Raiders of the Lost Ark? When you see that picture of the Ark of the Covenant? When Indy says, "I've got a picture of it here in this book"?

From Here, from where you can buy the print

That drawing is by the great, and, sadly, recently late Ralph McQuarrie ( he died last month), but seems directly derived from an old Gustav Dore drawing in an illustrated Bible. He was a 19th century French artist. Illustrated a lot of classics, like The Raven.

From this site

And check out Old Gustav's close-up depiction of the Ark. Look familiar?

From here

Many of you probably already knew this. I didn't. So, it's old, but again, it's new to me.

War is how American learn about geography, and Raiders is how I learn about the Bible.

"Didn't you guys ever go to Sunday School?"

No, Indy, I didn't. Stop trying to make me feel like a dick.

Maybe I Should Have Gone To Sunday School: Gustav's depiction is pretty much derived straight from Exodus, which is pretty specific about what the Ark looks like.

Posted by: Ace at 08:54 AM | Comments (124)
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There's good eatin' by the haunches.

Maybe.

The respective base of each side is locked up. What remains is those folks in the middle who claim to care but who canÂ’t be bothered to read about politics and policy. So what ends up influencing the decisions of these low-information voters? All kinds of factors, including appearances . . .

The looks of political candidates are a key factor influencing voters, a phenomenon identified by a number of scholars in recent years. Now, a new study by MIT political scientists adds to this body of research by detailing which types of citizens are most influenced by candidate appearances, and why: The tendency is most prevalent among low-information voters who watch a lot of television.

Using data from the 2006 U.S. Senate and governorsÂ’ races, the study shows that for every 10-point increase in the advantage a candidate has when rated by voters on his or her looks, there will be a nearly 5 percent increase in the vote for that candidate by the uninformed voters who are most firmly planted on their couches. Yet that same advantage in loo ks is worth only about a 1 percent increase among low-information voters who watch little television.

The dueling dog stories represent each campaign making Hail Mary passes to reach these low-information voters.

Streiff agrees with Geraghty.

Some of the small things will wind up mattering. You don't know which ones will matter, so might as well make mention of them all.

@onefinejay on Twitter put it well, rebutting a No Fun Allowed prig's assertion that we shouldn't waste our time on, um, enjoyable things.

we'll have a few laughs, affect the zeitgeist a little, and keep being happy warriors. We'll win.

GMan, posting in the comments yesterday, quoted Alinksy's Rules for Radicals:

RULE 5: Ridicule is manÂ’s most potent weapon. ItÂ’s hard to counter attack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

RULE 6: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people arenÂ’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.

Reaching low-information voters isn't the only goal. Another goal is solidarity within the cause.

We just exited a long, bruising primary, in which some won and some lost, and in which a lot of insults flew, and a lot of anger was vented.

Stuff like this dog meme creates, unavoidably, a shared cultural reference among us. Just like two Children of the Eighties may find a rapport by discussing their past love of Dark Tower, so too can political partisans find a bit of human connection over silly jokes about Obama, Devourer of Dogs.

Right now -- as anger over the primary remains raw -- stuff like Hilary Rosen's attack on Ann Romney -- and our collective defense of her -- and Jim Treacher's dogged research (ahem) helps unify, emotionally, a movement which cannot and never will be completely unified in terms of policy preference.

That's useful.

Plus, you know, eating dogs is a ghastly practice of foreign barbarians. As the Obama campaign struggles to portray Romney as a weirdo and The Other, we can always note Dude Ate a F***in' Dog.

Moe Lane wonders what form Obama's next attempt to portray Romney as The Other will take -- but questions whether such an attempt is advisable.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:14 AM | Comments (293)
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The good news for Mel Gibson is that there's nothing antisemitic on it.

The bad news is that he seems like a very angry, very out-of-control guy.

Previously I ignored this because Joe Eszterhas has never struck me as a credible or ethical person, and the allegations he laid on Mel Gibson seemed motivated by a business dispute. Gibson had hired him to write a script for The Maccabees, and now Eszterhas wants the script back (but I didn't see any offer to pay Gibson back the money he'd laid out for the script).

Everything Eszterhas says may be true. And yet, given his bad intent here (pressure Gibson into giving this script up), I wouldn't want to put money on his claims.

But there definitely is tape of Gibson ranting. In an out-of-control way. Content warning for language.

Here's a bunch of things Eszterhas claims Gibson said, but there's no tape of it. (At least none that I know of.)

I always thought that South Park episode portraying Gibson as a lunatic was a cheap shot and a nasty invention on the part of Matt Stone and Trey Parker. I don't think that anymore.

But as to Eszterhas -- here's why I don't trust him. He has always been a terrible, terrible hack, filling his dumb scripts with the most obvious sort of Exploitation Film pandering imaginable. I suppose he must do some things right, as he sold a lot of (B-movie exploitation) scripts, but not many things right.

Plus, he's sort of been out of work for a while. He hasn't worked much -- at least only a pair of produced screenplays -- since people caught on in 1997 that he wasn't very good at all. Like, after the Showgirls debacle. He wrote a script containing these (Content Warning) atrocious lines?

So, to give Gibson every benefit of the doubt: This guy could be desperate and be very angry that his would-be comeback is now scuttled by the rejection of this script.

Crap Script? I tend to believe Gibson's stated reasons for rejecting the script:

"Both Warner Brothers and I were extraordinarily disappointed with the draft. In 25 years of script development I have never seen a more substandard first draft or a more significant waste of time. The decision not to proceed with you was based on the quality of your script, not on any other factor."

Honestly, I haven no idea why he'd think Joe Eszterhas -- Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Flashdance -- could credibly write a story of 2nd century Jewish revolutionaries.

This guy writes about the script, and notes it's very "bloody," but I don't see him saying it's any good. He seems to not say anything about the quality of it, as if he's protecting his source (Eszterhas, who talks a lot to The Wrap).

Just because it's "bloody" doesn't mean it's any good, of course, and it doesn't mean Gibson would think it's good. Braveheart was bloody-- but also a good script. He doesn't shoot shit just because it has decapitations in it.

This passage from the script suggests it's pure hackery.

“We will be free! The day will come when we’ll be free! We will be free to pray to our God! We will be free to educate our children! We will never have to bend our knee to anyone but our Lord! The day will come when we’ll be strong and mighty, strong enough to defeat anyone - anyone! - who wants to wipe us off the face of the earth. (He puts his clenched fist up into the air and bows his head.)”

Oh dear. This is, uh, on-the-nose, as they say. It's what you want to communicate, true, but your characters shouldn't say the things you've decided the scene is meant to communicate. They shouldn't just read aloud the Moral of the Tale.

These sorts of things are hard to write but dude, you have to do better than this.

Braveheart had some tough things to write. But the writer came up with good ways to say the embarrassing sloganistic stuff.

William: Sons of Scotland, I am William Wallace.

Short soldier: William Wallace is 7 feet tall.

William: Yes, I've heard. Kills men by the hundreds, and if he were here he'd consume the English with fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his ass. I am William Wallace, and I see before me an army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You have come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What would you do without freedom? Will you fight?

Tall soldier: Fight against that? No, we will run, and we will live.

William: Ay, fight and you may die, run and you'll live. At least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom.

See, that's not the Very First Thing That Pops Into Your Head, as Eszterhas' "freedom to educate our children" thing is, now is it? "And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that..." is an unexpected way and interesting way to preface the Tough Sledding part about freedom.

Imagine if Wallace just yelled "We shall fight for our freedom! Freedom! Yah, freedom! Whoo-Hoo! We shall have freedom, and we shall lay the groundwork for the moderal social welfare state!"

Yeah, see? Not quite as good.

I guess it's a first draft, so you can chalk that up as "placeholder" dialogue, stuff you write just to get the story beats down, knowing that there's no way in hell that crap will survive to the actual filming script.

Still. Not a good sign. A first draft is not supposed to be just pure crap. You're supposed to have figured out how to handle the bulk of the problems in the script, whether about pacing or structure or dialogue or exposition.

You can't just take the position "We'll figure it all out in the second, third and fourth drafts." Then, um, just skip directly to those drafts. No one profits from a waste of time script in which there are no problems solved and no insights or cool parts.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:44 AM | Comments (283)
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Happy Thursday. No news items from me this morning and, FYI, you'll be in Andy's capable hands tomorrow. Be good. Video I saw at the Hostages below the fold. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (437)
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How Far Back Does Your Memory Go?

Most people can only recall back to maybe age 4 or 5 or so and it's long been the conventional wisdom that children aren't able to form permanent useful memories until nearly 5 years old.

But I have definite memories going back to when I was just 2 years old - one of my father standing next to his Karmann Ghia in the garage one morning and another of an ivy patch on the hill behind our house.

Now these are more like mental snapshots than full situational memories but since no photographs of these exist and I've verified the details with my parents, I'm quite sure these are coming from my own memories - and not say the Tyrell Corporation.

But it now turns out that I'm probably not as abby-normal as I assumed:

Up until the 1980s, almost no one would have believed that Isaiah still remembers Iris. It was thought that babies and young toddlers lived in a perpetual present: All that existed was the world in front of them at that moment. When Jean Piaget conducted his famous experiments on object permanence-in which once an object was covered up, the baby seemed to forget about it-Piaget concluded that the baby had been unable to store the memory of the object: out of sight, out of mind.

...According to Patricia Bauer, a professor of psychology at Emory who studies early memory, the general consensus was that a 3-year-old child's memory was a jumble of disorganized information, like your email inbox without any sorting function: "You can't sort them by name, you can't sort them by date, it's just all your email messages."

The past gets stickier, too: Memories no longer slip away after a couple of months. Children a few months under 2 retain memories of experiences a year earlier-half their lifetime ago. But they won't retain those memories into adulthood: No one remembers their second birthday party. For a few reasons-nascent neural structures, the lack of knowledge to make sense of early experiences, the lack of language to represent those experiences-it may be impossible for any part of our lives before, say, 24 months to stick around into adulthood. The average earliest memory-fragmented and lonely, but real-doesn't date until around 3½ years of age.

So what's your earliest memory?

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:26 PM | Comments (802)
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