I've suggested this sort of thing for conservative media. I'm not sure it works for the party itself to do this sort of thing, but I guess we'll see.

What do cat pictures and GIFs have to do with Republican politics? Not a whole lot, at least right now. But beginning next week, that'll change.

Staffers at the National Republican Congressional Committee are finishing up a site redesign that'll likely be rolled out this weekend. The new NRCC.org does away with all the typical features of a political website, emulating instead the style of the Web juggernaut whose top headlines currently include "10 Easter Bunnies Straight From Hell" and "14 Photos Of George W. Bush Touching Bald Men's Heads."

Yes. The committee that elects Republicans to the House is taking BuzzFeed's advice to heart... by copying BuzzFeed itself.

"BuzzFeed's eating everyone's lunch," said NRCC spokesman Gerrit Lansing. "They're making people want to read and be cognizant of politics in a different way."

Buzzfeed had previously offered just this advice to the GOP. (And that's not actually an overly-snarky bit of Advice Trolling, either: Much of it is not-so-bad messaging advice.)

Previously: I think I've got this incident in mind: Then-RNC-chair Michael Steele titling his blog "What Up?"

Soon after it was not titled "What Up?" He got a lot of grief for it.

There's always a problem when an organization which is basically un-hip (and should be un-hip) tries to be hip. It often looks pretty silly and contrived.

Posted by: Ace at 09:34 AM | Comments (265)
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Note that the materials don't say "Islam" broadly; in the case of Islam, the religion itself appears to be "non-extremist." The materials do name a specific political expression of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, to be extreme. But not the whole religion, certainly; Just A Few Bad Apples.

I suppose I understand the reasons for that.

But then I'm having trouble understanding why "Evangelical Christianity" and "Catholicism" are listed as "extreme." Not just some fringe political groups which might adhere to those religions (though a few of those are also named), but the whole of the religions.

Note that while "Islam" is not listed as a broadly-extremist religion (though Sunnism is-- ?), "Islamaphobia" is cited as an "extremist religion."

Social privilege is what I call (probably others call it this too) the general unthinking positive treatment that some statements are granted. Some statements are socially privileged -- politically correct -- and thus are a very good guide for the stupid, because you can generally not lose your job for saying incredibly stupid things, so long as those incredibly stupid things are socially privileged stupid things.

In drafting this idiot-show, the dummies figured, correctly, that it attacking all of Christianity as a bunch of raving lunatics is a socially privileged position in a way that attacking all of Islam is quite clearly not.

So long as your stupidities are directed against the correct socially-disfavored group ("God I hate white people, we're so lame!"), you can generally say whatever stupid thing that pops into your head, without fear of consequence.

We'll see if that general rule holds here.

Posted by: Ace at 09:04 AM | Comments (303)
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So much bad stuff in here it's hard to parse it all out.

One basic thing: This idea of "shared responsibility" doesn't work. In practice, if one person (or two, in a two parent family) is responsible, then stuff gets taken care of.

If "we're all responsible," then actually no one is responsible, and stuff doesn't get taken care of.

"We're all responsible" is not a slogan for increasing the responsibility of all; it's a formula for decreasing everyone's responsibility, and, unfortunately, chiefly reducing the responsibility of those who are actually responsible.

Liberal plans are always premised on shifting responsibility from those parties who naturally care (or should care) to those who don't -- that is, complete strangers -- and always fail because of this.
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Posted by: Ace at 07:43 AM | Comments (477)
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Somewhere, Arlen Specter is smiling.

Two influential senators, one from each party, are working on an agreement that could expand background checks on firearms sales to include gun shows and online transactions, Senate aides said Sunday.

If completed, the effort could represent a major breakthrough in the effort by President Barack Obama and his allies to restrict guns following last December's massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn.

Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., could nail down an accord early this week, said the aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private talks.

...

A united front by the two lawmakers would make it easier for gun control advocates to attract support from moderate Democrats who have been wary of supporting the effort and from Republicans who have largely opposed it so far.

Ok, the Specter jab is a unfair (a little) but this does highlight something that I think is frustrating to a lot of conservatives and RepublicansÂ….GOP politicians donÂ’t just occasionally vote against the majority party opinion, some are always willing to help lead the charge against it.

Whenever there’s a “Gang” in the Senate, it’s always Republicans joining with Democrats to manage the GOP’s surrender on less unfavorable terms (immigration, judicial nominees, guns). You never see Democrats joining a “Gang” to help Republicans push something they want by most Democrats don’t.

Sure a Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu or whoever will throw out a vote against the Democratic majority (but only if Reid doesnÂ’t need their vote). They never openly defy their party to help Republicans.

Now, Toomey may really believe this is good policy or maybe he needs some moderate cred in Pennsylvania. Either way itÂ’s really a problem for conservatives and Americans across the country.

This episode and this kind of behavior relates to a post I wrote last month about the lack of cohesion in the GOP coalition, though I thought gun rights were a unifying exception. At the time, Jim Geraghty responded in his Morning Jolt newsletterÂ…

Let's try to keep complaining about other state's primary choices to a minimum, and trust that Iowa Republicans know the best candidate to run for Senate in their state, and the same applies to Republican primary voters in West Virginia, Louisiana, Iowa, North Carolina, and so on. The people who live in those states know who would be best to represent their interests. Yes, out-of-state super PACs will spend oodles of money trying to influence the choices.

But this is exactly why party primaries (especially in the GOP) are of national interest. Granted, conservatives around the country were big supporters of Toomey but that interest, support or criticism doesnÂ’t stop after the primary or general election.

Senators and Congressmen no longer simply represent their states or districts in DC. The growing beast that is the federal government affects us all in more and more spheres of our lives. If your Republican representative is going to be working with Democrats to pass legislation that intrudes on my life, then yes, I will want a say in who you select.

Unless the federal government is put back in its box, the expectation will continue to grow that candidates and office holders toe the national line. If they donÂ’t, expect the intra-party warfare to continue for the foreseeable future.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:04 AM | Comments (104)
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CNN contributor and current Vice-Chair of the DNC, Donna Brazile, decided to ask the tough questions about Baroness Thatcher.

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:33 AM | Comments (197)
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• Margaret Thatcher Dies After A Stroke
  
• Margaret Thatcher Calls Out Socialism (video)
  
• Margaret Thatcher Announces The Invasion Of The Falkland Islands (video)
  
• Thatcher On Ceding Powers To Europe (video)
  
• More Video Of Thatcher
  
• Thatcher Pulled The Labour Party To The Right
  
• Thatcher's Campaign Poster
  
• Pretty Awesome Game Of Thrones Themed Craigslist Post
  
• Union Thugs At Jersey City Rally For Illegal Aliens
  
• Anthony Weiner Might Run For Mayor In NYC
  
• Intrade Faces Cash Shortfall
  
• Rhode Island's Tallest Building Goes Dark
  
• Doctors Driven To Bankruptcy
  
• It Looks Like Everyone Is Gearing Up For a Hillary 2016 Run
  
• Democratic Scheme To Gerrymander Florida
  
• Public Sector Unions Reeling In Wisconsin
  
• Youth Unemployment At 22.9%?
  
• McCain Can't Understand Why Republicans Would Filibuster Gun Control
  
• Dumbest Article Of The Day
  
• Times Square Cookie Monster Jailed After Altercation With Toddler
  
• Topless Protestor Confronts Putin And Merkel(SFW)
  
• US Passes Saudis In Oil Output
  
• Pretty Awesome Deer Slap Fight
  
• China Confirms Military Exercise On North Korean Border
  
• China's Local Debt May Be Higher Than We Think
  
• Dogs Wearing Pantyhose Is All The Rage In China Right Now
  

Thanks to Andy for the dumbest article of the day.

Thatcher's campaign poster from Ben Domenech.

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:29 AM | Comments (210)
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RIP Iron Lady.

[Edit by Monty: Bumped]

Rolling coverage is here.

Update: Watch this:

Wow.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:40 AM | Comments (251)
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Happy Monday.

President Obama will travel to Newtown, Connecticut today, where he will stand on the gravestones of dead children to demand that Congress pass a gun law that wouldn't have saved them.

On ABC's This Week, senior White House aide Dan Pfeiffer spouted a lot of obviously canned lines, including the one about "the Romney economic plan." At least these tools aren't still running against President Bush, right?

Sen. John McCain was on CBS' Face the Nation, where he declared that he supports Mayor Bloomberg's right to give unlimited amounts of his own money to a Super PAC that's airing pro-gun control ads in Arizona. You will recall that John McCain blasted the Supreme Court for overturning portion of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and making it possible to put unlimited money towards political advertising. McCain was also his typical jerk self: "I am sure the television and radio stations in my state are appreciative."

The White House is peddling a lie that persistently high unemployment is a feature of demographic changes as the Baby Boomers retire. Did I say "a lie"? I meant a damned lie so easy to disprove only Democrats could possibly fall for it. In that vein, although things are not what you'd call super-good for anyone, the only age group that's experiencing higher unemployment right now than they did last year is 20-24 year-olds.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (93)
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I apologize for not bringing you your Monday DOOM last week, but it turns out that the Turkish authorities are rather less open-minded about certain...activities...than I had been led to believe.

I'm only going to link one story in today's DOOM, because it neatly encapsulates the same themes and issues I've been ranting about for so long.

"Sundown in America" is notable for two reasons. For one, it was not written by some fringe libertarian blogger but by Federal-budget insider David Stockman. For another, it appeared in the New York Times, which has heretofore gone to great lengths to hide the failures of His Imperial Majesty's eonomy from the serfs.

Stockman's main theme is that the economic slowdown is not just an American or even a Western phenomenon -- it's happening all across the developed world. The reasons for the slowdown are many and complex: demographics, institutionalized debt and chronic deficit spending by the governments of the world, weakness in the global banking systems (exacerbated by the basic problems with fiat currency), and the pressure of technology on the labor market.

Here's a sample:

The future is bleak. The greatest construction boom in recorded history — China’s money dump on infrastructure over the last 15 years — is slowing. Brazil, India, Russia, Turkey, South Africa and all the other growing middle-income nations cannot make up for the shortfall in demand. The American machinery of monetary and fiscal stimulus has reached its limits. Japan is sinking into old-age bankruptcy and Europe into welfare-state senescence. The new rulers enthroned in Beijing last year know that after two decades of wild lending, speculation and building, even they will face a day of reckoning, too.

It's easy to dismiss such sentiments as overly-pessimistic, or just sour grapes from opponents of His Majesty the King. Times are hard, but they've been harder. But Stockman and others are asking a frightening but very salient question: if we are wrong and times don't get better, how prepared are we -- government and citizens both -- to make the hard choices?
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Posted by: Monty at 04:30 AM | Comments (43)
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Meet the Merman

Apparently there is a 'merman lifestyle'. And along with the shame there's also money in it.

Next on the Obama Hit List: 401Ks

About $250K a year is where you turn into a class criminal and pretty much anything can be done to you. Because you're a criminal.

President Obama's budget, to be released next week, will limit how much wealthy individuals - like Mitt Romney - can keep in IRAs and other retirement accounts.The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently "accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving."

Under the plan, a taxpayer's tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement - or right around $3 million this year.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:00 PM | Comments (958)
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