Did you know there was a contingent of Occupy protesters in Tampa last week? No, I didn’t either. Thank goodness.
Just imagine if the protesters had acted up enough to draw attention away from the goings on in the convention center. It would have helped the Republicans by distracting the public from GOP weirdness and made Republicans look more sympathetic.
I say again, when the opposition is voluntarily making a fool of himself in public, stay out of the bleeping way.
There’s some joke with the punchline “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help!” Righties love that one. They’re big on self-reliance, except when they need help themselves. Then they scream bloody murder if the government isn’t there pronto, even though rightie politicians keep cutting funds for whatever it is that is needed. Somehow, the connection between gutting the budget of the National Forest Service and the NFS not putting out forest fires right away doesn’t click together in their brains.
Yesterday the freshly nominated Mitt Romney and his buddy Bobby Jindal toured a town flooded by Hurricane Isaac. Since Mittens doesn’t think the government should do anything to help anybody who doesn’t already hold an investment portfolio worth something in the six figures, I wondered why the hell he bothered. What would he say to the people he met?
Romney shook hands with National Guardsmen outside the U.S. Post Office and talked with a local resident, Jodie Chiarello, 42, who lost her home in Isaac’s flooding.
“He just told me to, um, there’s assistance out there,” Chiarello said of her conversation with Romney. “He said, go home and call 211.” That’s a public service number offered in many states.
Would the government at least provide her with goggles and a snorkel so she can find her submerged phone? Probably not.
Did Mittens say anything else? This is all I could find —
Romney, who chatted with a handful of storm victims and shook hands with first responders, didn’t have too much to say. “I’m here to learn and obviously to draw some attention to what’s going on here,” Romney told Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who he accompanied to the Jean Lafitte town hall to meet with emergency workers. “So that people around the country know that people down here need help.”
That snippet of conversation represented the bulk of Romney’s public remarks in Louisiana on Friday.
Jindal may be a doofus, but he’s a doofus who probably wants to run for public office again someday.
His host, Jindal, is now calling on the federal government to expand the rebuilt flood protection system that prevented serious flooding in New Orleans during this week’s storm. That system, built after flooding from Katrina devastated much of New Orleans, cost the Army Corps of Engineers $14.5 billion. It doesn’t extend as far as Jean Lafitte, which is situated in Jefferson Parish, and has been affected by a series of hurricanes, including Katrina, Rita, Cindy and now Isaac.
“It is absolutely critical that the Corps, and certainly our delegation working them, but that the Corps and the federal government look at those other levees,” Jindal said Thursday. Lafitte is included in a proposed ring levee that the state hopes to build, but there are no concrete plans to build yet.
Romney was silent on whether, as president, he would support paying for such an expansion. Romney’s running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, has proposed eliminating $10 billion a year in disaster spending and requiring Congress to pay for emergencies by cutting from elsewhere in the budget. That proposal was blocked by GOP leaders.
You know that deep inside, Mitt Romney feels much tender pity for those people who lost everything in the flood, and he hopes they can build shelters for themselves from scrap lumber and perhaps get a few hot meals from the local church ladies. But in Mitt’s World it’s not government’s job to help people who are sitting around whining because they just lost everything they own to a storm. Tax money spent on moochers like Jodie Chiarello may threaten his tax cuts. And if people need money to rebuild, they can always borrow from their parents, right, Mitt?
The article that really got my attention this morning — and not in a good way — is “How MSNBC Became Fox’s Liberal Evil Twin” by Alessandra Stanley. Clueless Wonder Stanley slams MSNBC’s coverage of the convention for its bias, preferring much more polite and even-tempered “coverage” by cardboard cutouts on NBC —
NBC and the other broadcast networks cut their live convention coverage to an hour during prime time this year, which leaves barely time to show the main speeches, let alone analyze them. Yet NBC’s chief anchor, Brian Williams, has conspicuously avoided the most fractious MSNBC discussion panels. Those anchors who do make dutiful appearances, like David Gregory and Tom Brokaw, are badly needed but don’t stay long or join the fray — like piano players in a brothel, they don’t go upstairs.
This is a democracy, sweetheart. We need to know what’s going on upstairs.
And that leaves fewer choices for viewers who like their election coverage with informed commentary without a twist of bias.
Telling the truth isn’t “bias,” dear. Politely refraining from saying that someone running for the presidency is basing his entire campaign on lies is not “impartiality”; it’s journalistic malpractice.
For years, as the Republican Party became more and more extreme, mainstream media have attempted to even things out by filming Republicans with softer and softer focus, and with plenty of gauze on the lenses to make the wrinkles disappear. On the other hand, Democrats are placed under a Kleig light without filters and not allowed to wear makeup. And then the narrative accompanying this is “both parties are just as bad.” The polite political commentators dear Ms. Stanley prefers congratulate themselves for being unbiased, when they are nothing of the sort. They are enablers. They are making excuses for the alcoholic uncle by telling people he’s just been under a lot of stress lately. And this kind of enabling does neither the uncle nor the family a bit of good; it’s just socially expedient.
I can agree that Al Sharpton and Ed Schultz come across as Dem Party cheerleaders sometimes, but Chris Matthews has done more than his share of enabling of Republicans over the years. Ms. Stanley tears into Matthews for his recent “bruising harangue against Reince Priebus” — how impolite to point out that Republicans are dog-whistling racists — and finishes the column with this —
Virginia’s governor, Bob McDonnell, who backed, then rescinded, a state bill that would require women seeking an abortion to first have an invasive ultrasound, is a favorite target. After his convention speech, the MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry said sarcastically that Republicans might be nervous “standing next to a governor who represents a vision of small government that is small enough to put on the end of a transvaginal probe.â€
No wonder Brian Williams stays away.
Oh, how crude to bring up Bob McDonnell’s actual record. What do you want to bet that Ms. Stanley really misses David Broder?
Best post-convention analysis I’ve seen so far (via) — “Stuck in a Room With Mitt Romney” by Paul Constant. Just a taste —
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.
Do read the whole piece. You won’t be sorry.
The most significant fact about last night’s GOP convention finale may be that Here Comes Honey Boo Boo got better ratings. Of these two prime time programs, one was a reality show about a tribe of clueless rednecks, and the other starred a mouthy little girl with a pet pig.
Everybody’s talking today about Clint Eastwood’s bizarre stand-up act. I believe it must have been bizarre, because I did a news google for “Eastwood bizarre” and got more than 14,000 hits. I take it the crowd in Tampa ate it up, but it sounds even more cringe-inducing that Honey Boo Boo.
My impression overall is that the whole convention was weirdly unfocused. And IMO this is in large part because Republicans can’t decide who they are running against. Steve Kornacki writes that Romney thinks he is running against Jimmy Carter, for example. His acceptance speech was supposed to cast himself as Reagan versus the bumbling peanut farmer Reagan ran against in 1980. I personally don’t think Jimmy Carter himself was that Jimmy Carter, although it’s a debatable point. But Barack Obama is way not that Jimmy Carter. Not even close.
David Firestone writes that in his speech, Romney addressed the President as if he were a wayward child whose behavior had been disappointing. I can’t imagine that’s going to work on anyone, frankly.
Other parts of the Republican Party, of course, are opposing Barack “Saul Alinsky” Obama, subversive radical. And some are opposing Barack “Stepin Fetchit” Obama, affirmative action hire. Meanwhile, the real Barack Obama probably is feeling pretty good about his chances right now.
Nate Silver says we won’t know how big a bounce Mittens got from the convention until early next week, so just ignore any headlines about a bounce until then. Mittens needs at least a four-point bounce if he’s got a shot at overtaking the President, Nate says. Nate’s graphs currently have the President’s chance of winning getting larger, and Mitt’s smaller.
And then there will be the Dem convention, and the debates. Heh.
Some of the reviews of Paul Ryan’s speech last night —
Joan Walsh, “Paul Ryan’s Brazen Lies”
Steve Kornacki, “How Paul Ryan Gets Away With BS”
Brian Beutler, “Top 5 Fibs In Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech”
James Downie, “Paul Ryan’s breathtakingly dishonest speech”
Adele Stan, “Paul Ryan Obscures His Koch-Backed Agenda With a Pack of Lies in Convention Speech”
John Nichols, “They Love the Lies Paul Ryan Tells”
Greg Sargent, “Paul Ryan Fails — the Truth”
Robert Schlesinger, “Paul Ryan Repeats Auto Bailout, Medicare Lies”
Marty Kaplan, “Romney/Ryan and the Lullaby of Lying”
Jonathan Chait, “Paul Ryan’s Large Lies and One Big Truth”
Juan Cole, “Top Ten Repeated Paul Ryan Lies”
Jonathan Cohn, “The Most Dishonest Convention Speech … Ever?”
I detect a theme here —
That’s not even all the headlines I found that declared Paul Ryan a liar. And we haven’t heard from Charles Pierce yet. I could go on and on, but I’ve got other things to do today.
On the other hand, this is how the speech was covered on CNN:
Blitzer: So there he is, the republican vice presidential nominee and his beautiful family there. His mom is up there. This is exactly what this crowd of republicans here certainly republicans all across the country were hoping for. He delivered a powerful speech. Erin, a powerful speech. Although I marked at least seven or eight points I’m sure the fact checkers will have some opportunities to dispute if they want to go forward, I’m sure they will. As far as mitt romney’s campaign is concerned, paul ryan on this night delivered.
Burnett: That’s right. Certainly so. We were jotting down points. There will be issues with some of the facts. But it motivated people. He’s a man who says I care deeply about every single word. I want to do a good job. And he delivered on that. Precise, clear, and passionate.
Issues with some of the facts, yes. Many issues. But isn’t he pretty?
Here’s another potential theme song —
I’ve decided I’d rather follow the convention on Richard Adams’s liveblog than actually watch it on television.
More stuff to read:
Ta-Nahisi Coates, “The Myth of an Affirmative-Action President”
Matt Taibbi, “Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital.” I haven’t read this one yet, but I look forward to it.
Brian Beutler, “A Critical Juncture.” Beutler says that the Romney campaign is taking politics and media into new territory. If Romney continues with his outrageously false charges against President Obama —
… the political establishment will be facing something very new: a candidate — not his surrogates or outside supporters, but the top of the ticket — ignoring fact checkers, traditional campaign reporters, and even a few conservatives, all of whom have determined and publicly declared the attacks false.
That effectively pits the media against the Romney campaign in a test of will and influence. And it’s disconcerting to imagine that a determined media might not be able to effectively neutralize a presidential campaign intent on flooding the airwaves with false attacks. But that’s where we might find ourselves in the next couple weeks.
First, yesterday’s highlights. Nice audience reaction to a Latina speaker from Puerto Rico:
I think the guys in white hats are Ron Paulites. Certainly, an enthusiastic crew. I’m not sure about this, but I believe the Paulites were miffed because Puerto Rican delegates got seated and they didn’t.
In other news, two attendees were removed from the convention after they were seen throwing nuts at an African-American camera woman while shouting, “This is how we feed the animals.” The RNC wants you to know that merely by mentioning that this happened, I am playing the race card.
Remember the coal miners used as a backdrop at a Romney rally? The ones who really really really didn’t seem to want to be there?
Now we know why they were grumpy. Turns out attendance at the rally was both mandatory and unpaid. No wonder they were, um, grumpy.
After a number of miners complained to local news media that they’d been ripped off of several hours’ pay, mine owner Charles Murray claimed he had closed the mine at the request of the Secret Service. And of course he wasn’t going to pay miners to attend a political rally. But the Romney campaign is saying that closing the mine and herding the miners to the rally was Charles Murray’s idea entirely. The photos of the grumpy miners and their families being herded to see Mittens tell them what a great boss they had certainly impressed the mouth-breathing set.
I did some checking and, no surprise, Century is a non-union mine.
