I need to unite this party.

I think we can all agree that Chris Matthews is a dummy.

So what's he babbling about? Oh, he thinks Obama has to do more "Tough Guy" isht like George Bush, which means, in his moist brain, a Commitment to Military Might, like just shooting missiles into Damascus without asking Congress or even the UN, and then refusing to compromise on the debt ceiling, and other Simian Dominance Displays as are favored by Obama's Friends on the Right.

Exit quote: "We all sophisticated here," but we have to shed all this damned nuance and be more thuggish and crude Because We're So Smart People Hold It Against Us.

Another exit quote: "Be a little demagogic," advises a different Progressive Tough Guy, apparently unaware that 2009-2013 happened.
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Posted by: Ace at 11:18 AM | Comments (283)
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Obama's "hope and change" slogan was simple, but it worked.

What does every out-coalition seek in an election, if they seek anything at all? Change.

What is necessary to animate a coalition to do the work necessary to win an election -- even if that work is as minor a simply showing up a fire house to cast a vote? Hope that things can Change.

Here's the political problem with the GOP: They can take all the polls they like, and compose all the spreadsheets they can, and can have expert consultants (Caveat: consultants are not experts in anything except consultation) type up white papers explaining all the reasons the base can't have what the base wishes to have.

But at the end of the day, people need Hope that things will actually Change if they undertake the efforts the party asks them to undertake.

Without that Hope of Change, what is the point, ultimately?

There is none.

I think the GOP believes -- believes? too small a word; is metaphysically certain -- that their cagey, political-positioning rope-a-dope strategy is a good one.

What I think they're failing to take into account is the effect that removing almost all Hope of actual Change will do to the morale of a party.

Barack Obama can do a lot of things, but he can't tear the heart out of the party. He can't make the party roll over and die. He can't make the party tear itself into pieces and fragment into a number of losing rump-parties and regional parties.

Only the party itself can do that.

And I think they're doing that.

This is why I split with the party, over ObamaCare. One day I just said, "I can't sell this, I can't support this, I can't be a party to this."

You can't spell "ideologue" without three quarters of "idea," and you can't spell "idea" without "idealism." (Caveat: You can spell idea without "idealism." All you really need is "idea" and then you're done.)

Is idealism stupid? It is stupid. I frequently fulminate against idealism. I think it's silly.

I also think that idealism -- and its frequent dance partner, Optimism -- is, as stupid as it is, absolutely essential for a winning electoral coalition.

Optimism is a kind of a dumb thing. We have no reason to be optimistic, really. If we were more level-headed about things, we'd be more pessimistic, and understand that we're going to get older, and pieces of us will stop working, and then we'll die.

And yet optimism is built into the human mind-- specifically in the Survival Instincts part of the mind. The "drive" part of the mind. The "fight" part of the mind. The part of the mind that actually animates the rest of the mind.

The Animal Spirits of the mind.

No matter how clever you think your arguments are, and no matter how tight your statistical analysis is, if your strategy does not include some sort of pathway by which people can continue to cling to the illusion of Hope, it's an unsound strategy.

People will find such a pathway if it is permitted to exist at all. Just as people's minds naturally find patterns in unrelated events, people's minds are programmed by their Survival Instincts to find a pathway of hope.

But you have to actually leave that possibility open. If you slam tight every door in every plausible pathway to hope, people just start giving up.

Again, hope and optimism are key parts of the Survival Instinct. Without those, where is the Survival Instinct? Might as well pick a nice patch of sand and beach oneself and wait for the seagulls to start picking at the blubber.

I think this is where some of the anger is coming from: The GOP is not even permitting its True Believers to believe. It's not even leaving them the illusion of hope.

I don't think this is a sound strategy. You always have to let people believe. The GOP's analysis may be statistically sound, but it's psychologically infirm.

This is why the Tea Party continues to inspire passion while the GOP inspires little else but resignation. The Tea Party might be wrong about most things. I believe the GOP thinks they are wrong about most things, especially strategy. (And, honestly, the Tea Party's strategic thinking is not its strongest attribute.)

But one thing the Tea Party understands, on a gut level, is that there must be a sense of idealism and optimism about the future, and idea that things could change if we just make them change.

The GOP needs to understand why the Tea Party has the heart of the party, or its own heart will begin failing.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:03 AM | Comments (555)
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Whoa! It got late quick as I was editing this week's soon-to-be-posted superb podcast, featuring Breitbart.com's John Sexton (a/k/a Verum Serum).

Happy Friday! I'll get this thing posted around 4pm as usual, and I can't imagine what we'll be talking about this week, comrades.

[ RSS]

[iTunes]

Posted by: andy at 03:18 AM | Comments (302)
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Symbolic gestures won't fix a real problem.

Sometimes this party, of which I am no longer a part, just baffles me. I understand when they chicken out on pushing unpopular stuff -- most people aren't heroes, and I would imagine the Hero Gene is less likely to be found in politicians.

But I don't understand why they chicken out when they actually have the more popular position, and it's part of their core doctrine to boot.

I understand when a guy wants to sleep with a girl but doesn't make a move because he's all a-scared.

But if a guy wants to sleep with a girl and she gives him a small hint about her own interest in such a thing, such as casually dropping the subtle romantic overture...

"Get all up in that! Hit it like you hate it!"

...then I don't understand why he decides to go home and ride his palm. Or I do understand: he's got issues.

Anyway, per CNN, support for ObamaCare is falling.

In January 51% said they favored all or most of the provisions in the new law. Now that figure is down to 39%.

Support has dropped in virtually all demographic categories, but it has fallen the farthest among two core Democratic groups – women and Americans who make less than $50,000.

“Those are also the two groups that are most likely to pay attention to health insurance issues, and possibly the ones most likely to be affected by any changes,” adds Holland. “That may be particularly true for lower-income Americans who are most likely to have part-time jobs, be on Medicaid, or not currently have health insurance and thus be the first to have to navigate the new system.”

The House passed a bill to block the subsidies for ObamaCare until the now-shelved-by-Executive-fiat verification system was up and running.

I don't know what it's going to take, though, to get these guys to actually make a move.

Hit it like you hate it, fellas. She's really not being too coy about this.

Quoting Gabe: I sort of agree with this, but for nonobvious reasons:

You know where I come down on this. Not even conservatives believe Obamacare is actually going to be defunded this month. Even conservatives admit (or lament) that what's going to happen if the House provokes a shutdown is that Republican congressmen from purple districts (aka RINOs, squishes, traitors who just want to keep their seats) will peel away to side with Democrats to avert both the shutdown and, incidentally, Obamacare defunding, which makes conservative insistence that the House try it anyway utterly insane. If we're all agreed that this course of action is doomed to failure and likely to make Republicans look bad, I'd just as soon avoid that course of action. No, "principle" does not require that we publicly shoot ourselves in the face. Neither is that a good strategy for taking back the Senate next year.

I agree with this because the GOP has already announced "We'll fold like a cheap suit." (Caveat: Although cheap suits will fold, so will expensive ones; this metaphor is what we call in the writing business "a mistake.")

The GOP has already pre-announced their failure. It does seem silly to go ahead with the Pantomime under such conditions. They've already said "We're not serious, we're letting ObamaCare remain law, we're too afraid to push hard on the issue."

Under such conditions, what would be the point of a government shut-down? How long would it be in effect? Six hours?

You don't have to call a man's bluff if he's already folded.

Which is the actual problem. Gabe is right, I suppose, as far as going forward: The GOP, having already announced their unwillingness to chance anything to pursue what is allegedly a core promise to their voters, cannot effect any positive outcome by pretending at something they've already disowned.

However, it is worth asking, "How did we come to this point, and is a Party which is so unwilling to fight for even the popular parts of this agenda really deserving of votes?"

The GOP is currently not a viable governing party. Like ObamaCare, it needs to be reformed or replaced.

Posted by: Ace at 09:04 AM | Comments (449)
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President Hollywood.

He loves sequels, he loves formulas, and he loves reboots. And he puts out a crap product that bombs with the public.

The White House is signaling it wants to shift back to the economy after two weeks in which the Syrian crisis has dominated President ObamaÂ’s schedule and workload.

Obama will be “focusing” on issues related to the economy in the coming weeks, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday at his daily briefing.

He said the president wants to push forward with economic policies that the White House believes will grow...

Any guesses?

...the middle class.

...

“I know Americans want all of us in Washington — especially me — to concentrate on the task of building our nation here at home: putting people back to work, educating our kids, growing our..."

Any guesses?

"....middle class,” Obama said.

Biden will be doing his part, too.

...

Vice President Biden pressed the administrationÂ’s economic message with a Monday trip to Baltimore that highlighted a new $10 million federal grant to widen the cityÂ’s port and better connect the shipping center to...

Any guesses?

... nearby rail lines.

You should have gotten that one. That was a charity question. I threw that in there in case you overthought the second Middle Class one and thought "It must be something different, I won't say Middle Class again."

Keep It Pithy Comment Update:

If you Pivot enough times.... it by definition becomes Spin....

-- Romeo13

Like I said, the public has seen these movies before, and they're tired of them.

The conventional wisdom is that when you poll "all adults" as opposed to a tighter screening for "registered voters," Democrats generally do better. If that is the case, the latest poll from The Economist/YouGov is the worse news yet for a president obviously in over his head with the Russians and Syria. Obama currently sits at 38% approve/56% disapprove with all adults.

...

With registered voters, Obama is doing a little better with 43% approving, 55% disapproving.

Below, the theme to the Lone Ranger, as reinterpreted by Hans Zimmer for Hollywood's latest greatest disaster film. (Though, I have to say, I really want to see this movie... alas, I was one of the few. And also, I didn't want to see it that much, or I would have seen it when it was in theaters for three weeks.)

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Posted by: Ace at 08:11 AM | Comments (433)
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• Obama Ready To Do For The Economy What He Did For Syria
  
• Reports Claim Assad Used Poison Gas In New Attack
  
• The Myth Of Live-And-Let-Live Liberalism
  
• Abrupt Rise Of New Machine Ecology Beyond Human Response Time
  
• Toys R Us Agrees To Drop Evil Sexist Labeling Of Girls And Boys Toys
  
• Assad May Be Losing Control Over His Militias
  
• Reason To Home School Your Kids Part 2,232
  
• Applying For Health Insurance? Homework Involved
  
• Children Celebrate Mother's Death In Obituary
  
• VDH: A Look Back, A Look Forward
  
• Claim:US Can't Prove Assad Launched Chemical Weapons Attacks
  
• Desgined In California Vs. Made In Texas
  
• More Hillary Corruption
  
• The Evil Koch Brothers Have A Secret Bank Or Something
  
• Greek Unemployment Rises To 27.9%
  
• PPP Sat On Poll Showing Colorado Recall Strength
  
• California's Middle Class Faces Slow Death By Green Laws
  
• Island Dispute Still Roils Japan And China
  
• Baseball Player Hits A Fan In The Dick With A Home Run
  

Follow me on twitter. more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:38 AM | Comments (173)
Post contains 238 words, total size 4 kb.

The good news is its a punk-ass wimpy one and probably degrades to a tropical storm by Saturday and punks even further to a depression by Tuesday while ambling aimlessly around the middle of the Atlantic.

The bad news is - there is no bad news...unless your last name is Gore.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:43 AM | Comments (257)
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Happy Thursday.

Where to start? The hits just keep on coming. You have to read the whole thing to get the total, horrifying sense of just how hard Putin has bitchslapped President Obama and the United States, but at the very least be sure to read that last paragraph. One gets the sense that most of the op-ed was written days ago, with the last paragraph tacked on after Obama's big "We Must Hurry Up And Wait" flop of a speech.

FLASHBACK, courtesy JohnE.

Oh, and while folks mull Putin's Potemkin reverence for international law, have a gander at the State Department's latest Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Russia (PDF).

Obama's Syria mess has eclipsed September's domestic concerns, including the CR, immigration reform, and Obamacare, but Congress is slowly getting back to business. In the Senate, Sen. McConnell is attaching individual and employer mandate delays to bipartisan energy legislation. On the House side, the GOP is busy tearing itself apart over how to lock the sequester in place in a CR and approach Obamacare defunding.

The House discord is the same old tune we've come to know over the past few years. Leadership says it wants to pick its battles. Rank-and-file conservatives say we must fight every battle, even ones we'll lose.

You know where I come down on this. Not even conservatives believe Obamacare is actually going to be defunded this month. Even conservatives admit (or lament) that what's going to happen if the House provokes a shutdown is that Republican congressmen from purple districts (aka RINOs, squishes, traitors who just want to keep their seats) will peel away to side with Democrats to avert both the shutdown and, incidentally, Obamacare defunding, which makes conservative insistence that the House try it anyway utterly insane. If we're all agreed that this course of action is doomed to failure and likely to make Republicans look bad, I'd just as soon avoid that course of action. No, "principle" does not require that we publicly shoot ourselves in the face. Neither is that a good strategy for taking back the Senate next year.

Meanwhile, what had been low-level mutterings from disaffected aides spilled over into the politics blogs, something else unlikely to improve the situation. These children need a time-out.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:53 AM | Comments (399)
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Dan McLaughlin on 9/11: On Tuesday They Tried to Kill Me

His essay written just days after the attacks.

On Tuesday, they tried to kill me.

I am ordinarily at my desk between 7:30 and 8:30 in the morning, in my office on the 54th floor of one of the World Trade Center's towers. Tuesday, I was running late - I stopped to vote in the primary election for mayor, an election that has now been postponed indefinitely. Thank God for petty partisan politics.

...I stopped in a few bars, calling to say I was OK, but I still didn't feel safe, and I kept moving north. In one bar I saw the south tower collapse, and had a sick feeling in my stomach, which increased exponentially when I saw Tower Number One, with my office in it and (so far as I knew) many of the people I work with as well, cave in. Official business hours start at 9:30, but I started reeling off in my head all the lawyers who get in early in the morning, and have for years. I thought of the guy who cleans the coffee machines, someone I barely speak to but see every day, who has to be in at that hour. I was still nervous, and decided not to think about anything but getting out alive.

There's a scene that comes to mind, and I'm placing it in the Lord of the Rings because that's where I remember it, but feel free to let me know if I've mangled it or made it up. Frodo the hobbit has lived all his life in the Shire, where the world of hobbits (short, human-like creatures) revolves around hospitality and particular etiquette and family snobbery and all the silliest little things, silly at least in comparison to the great and dangerous adventure he finds himself embarked on. Aragorn, one of the Men, has been patrolling the area around the Shire for years, warding off invading creatures of all varieties of evil. Frodo asks Aragorn, eventually, whether he isn't frustrated with and contemptuous of hobbits and the small, simple concerns that dominate their existence, when such dangers are all at hand. Aragorn responds that, to the contrary, it is the simpleness and even the pettiness of the hobbits that makes the task worthwhile, because it's proof that he has done his job - kept them so safe and insulated from the horrors all around them that they see no irony, no embarrassment in concerning themselves with such trivial things in such a hazardous world. It has often struck me that you could ask no better description of the role of law enforcement and the military, keeping us so safe that we may while our days on the ups and downs of made-up games.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 04:41 PM | Comments (908)
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I suppose I should write something profound but I don't have anything to say, honestly.

At Mediaite, a writer complains that the public talking about Jimmy Kimmel's Twerk Prank instead of important stuff like Syria, in an article which itself entirely about Jimmy Kimmel's Twerk Prank and not about Syria.

But last night, Avalon, enjoying her well-earned success (keeping up the gag as friends and ex-boyfriends called her about her embarrassing twerk fail couldnÂ’t have been fun), appeared on Entertainment Tonight. Number of twerking references: 7. Number of Miley Cyrus references: 2. Number of Syria references: 0.

Number of Syria references in an article making the point that we're not talking about Syria: 1, right there, you just saw it.

By the way, why would Entertainment Tonight be discussing Syria? Have they changed format secretly? Is the show's format now "The latest from Hollywood... and Foggy Bottom"?

Eh. Writers gotta write, I guess.

And sneerers gotta sneer. Via Hot Air, Kaus notes that Paul Krugman presents himself as a hardworking, deepthinking wonk... in a shamefully lazy and erroneous column in which the greatest effort went into a simple partisan sneer.

Cornell West isn't sure if 9/11 was an Inside Job, but he sure likes "Raising Questions." He likes to keep an Open Mind, you see.

Meanwhile, Ron Paul, who's Raising Some questions of his own tonight at an organization which Questions the Math on the Holocaust (or... Holoclaim), says 9/11 was nothing but blowback for our imperial adventurism.

Um, no, that's the pretext. Islamofascist psychopathy is fundamentally psychological in nature. It is an ideology of the deranged which uses a Hero Fantasy to give succor and meaning to a Soul in Shame. It's not quite true that they hate our freedoms primarily-- they hate those, but not primarily. They hate, in ascending order, our Wealth, our Success, and our Might.

The weak man always secretly hates the strong man, and the deranged weak man sets about doing something about it. And I don't mean "useful steps towards self-improvement."

Crediting Al Qaeda's stated reasons for attacking us is like crediting the stated reasons of a Stalker who shows up at your door with a knife and says "You shouldn't have gone to my supermarket." Yes, that's the stated reason, the pretext, but the real reason is an unreasoning hate and an obsessive thirst for vengeance for slights both real and mostly imagined.

Imagine if the police told you at this point: "He's quite right, you know. You shouldn't have gone to his supermarket. What were you thinking, provoking him like that?"

You'd call that cop an idiot, wouldn't you?

When a murderous organization is citing The Mighty Snubbings of the 11th Century as part of its case in chief against you, you may safely assume that they simply hate you for irrational reasons quite apart from the ones they're offering. Those reasons are only offered to make their lunacy seem a bit more lucid. And perhaps to hide their real reasons from hatred even from themselves. Their egos could not accept the truth.

Anyone still citing the Shame of Vienna as a justification for murder isn't an example of blowback. It's an example of lunacy. And yes, we need to diagnose lunatics... but we don't permit them to self-diagnose and then take their diagnosis as accurate.

Meanwhile, our State and Federal governments are continuing to perform their duties with all the professionalism and intelligence that you've come to expect.

And now, Mishka, who is apparently the most famous dog on the internet. Her owner makes a lot of videos of her, and then they get 500,000 or 6 million or 12 million views each.

Apparently the owner thinks the dog talks. Which I sort of get, as sometimes dogs do seem to talk.

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Posted by: Ace at 03:37 PM | Comments (306)
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