Spotted: Comedian Pauly Shore and former RNC chairman Michael Steele grabbing lunch at Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington on Wednesday. Shore is in D.C. to film “Paulytics: Pauly Shore Goes to Washington,” a Showtime special airing in November.
They ordered a cheeseburger, a beef dog, chili cheese fries and regular fries along with a Sprite and bottled water, according to a spokeswoman for Ben’s, who said they stayed for about an hour and a half. The pair also went shopping together according to Twitter reports.
For any Shore fans out there, he’ll be back in town on June 30, taping more footage for his show at the 9:30 Club.
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Jun 14, 2012 at 5:00 PM ET
This is awesome.
For those of us Boston Red Sox fans who will never forget the Sox collapse in Game Six of the 1986 World Series — most infamously remembered for first baseman Bill Buckner allowing a ground ball pass through his legs — you will appreciate thie video reeenactment. New York Mets fans will find anotgher reason to celebrate:
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jun 14, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Nothing gets my morning off to a good start better than being tailgated for 3/4 of a mile.
Geez.
Never been tailgated so closely for so long.
It felt like part reckless driving; part sexual assault.
Well, it just makes such good sense, though. By tailgating me by seeming millimeters, my friend arrived nearly 0.2 seconds earlier at Starbucks, which apparently was very important to him.
And here’s the beauty part. I was in front of him at Starbucks. And moved ahead very slowly in line.
54 Percent of Voters Say They Will Choose Candidates Who Emphasize Problem-Solving Over Party Affiliation
Problem Solving Voters Also Twice as Likely to Change Mind Before 2012 Elections
According to a new No Labels poll, a majority of American voters can be characterized as problem solving voters (PSVs), defined as individuals more likely to support candidates focused on solving problems than those who align most with their parties. 33 percent of PSVs also say they are likely to change their vote between now and November, compared to only 15 percent of non-PSVs.
A total of 94 percent of independents identify as PSVs, along with 30 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of Republicans. Only 16 percent of PSVs believe current leaders in Washington are able to get things done.
“This poll reveals that there are more than just independent voters up for grabs in this election. Significant percentages of Democrats and Republicans say they value problem-solving over partisanship,” said No Labels Co-Founder Mark McKinnon, who discussed the poll results on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today. “This is a huge voting bloc that absolutely cannot be ignored. Candidates who embrace the message of problem-solving in working across the aisle are likely to find a very receptive audience among voters.”
The poll was taken through a phone survey of 1,004 registered voters with a margin of error of 3.1 percent.
For more information on the poll or to arrange an interview with a No Labels co-founder, please contact Sarah Feldman at press@nolabels.org or (202) 588-1990. To learn more about No Labels, please visit www.NoLabels.org.
Interestingly, Hajnal and Lee don’t view it as distressing. They speculate that there is actually a virtue in this kind of politics, in that it would supplant the alternative of one racialized party matched against one white, homogeneous one. It is also striking that they describe their approach of “tightly packaged appeals to targeted [minority] electorates” as a strategic novelty, when it is anything but: even a cursory glance of modern politics yields, on the right, Richard Nixon’s cultivation of Catholics and white ethics, George W. Bush’s deploying of an anti gay marriage initiative to shift black votes in Ohio in 2004; and of course, what Hajnal and Lee describe is a fair rendition of the current Democratic pattern of wedge politics from the left: courting Hispanics with opposition to restrictive local immigration laws, blacks with protective rhetoric about voter ID requirements and, increasingly, with defenses of affirmative action in higher education (an issue the conservative dominated Supreme Court has committed to revisit in the next term).
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I can cite any number of arguments from both ends of the spectrum why more of the above is hardly a political panacea. From the liberal perspective, there is a quality of cheap symbolism that is really studied avoidance of more contentious ground like African American poverty or citizenship status for illegal immigrants. On the right, policy minded conservatives might lament that the temptation for the GOP to wield gay marriage and perhaps abortion to offset the Democrats’ advantage with blacks and Latinos is at the expense of more substantive initiatives on education and entrepreneurship.
My gut reaction is that the two authors end up in such a curious place—treating old fashioned racial interest group politics as cutting edge and prescribing more of it despite the obvious costs—because they are trying to make sense of a not widely known phenomenon that their research uncovered: the surprisingly high levels of disengagement from among ethnic minorities from both parties. Their data suggests, for example, that among Asian Americans and Latinos, a majority don’t vote, and almost sixty percent of both groups are independent or don’t identify with either party; even within the monolithically Democratic black community, roughly a third express reservations that their interests are not adequately articulated by Democrats or Republicans.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Two Visions of the Multi-Racial Future
This is the most lucid explanation I’ve read of the absurdity of politics these days, from Mark Barabak of the Los Angeles Times:
Comes now the startling news that in 1996, Barack Obama, then a candidate for the Illinois state Senate, became a card-carrying Socialist.
The so-called proof was offered Thursday by the Washington Times, which linked to a National Review Online account involving the community organization ACORN, the Wisconsin Historical Society and something called the New Party.
This, on top of previous “revelations” that Obama is not a natural-born American citizen, is secretly gay and a closet Muslim will surely ensure his defeat in November.
Except none of those statements are true and few, save Donald Trump and the rabid Obama haters of the world, pay much attention to rumors that have eddied for years in the dark, dank corners of the Internet and other gathering holes of the conspiracy-minded.
Spotted: Comedian Pauly Shore and former RNC chairman Michael Steele grabbing lunch at Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington on Wednesday. Shore is in D.C. to film “Paulytics: Pauly Shore Goes to Washington,” a Showtime special airing in November.
