By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Oct 24, 2012 at 4:00 PM ET
I feel compelled to interrupt this site’s bi-partisan coverage of the impending 2012 election to address a rumor that has much greater implications that any silly political race:
I am NOT having an affair with soccer star David Beckham.
Let me say it another way to make myself clear, so that there is no room for misinterpreting my statement, and to fully protect the privacy of my family and of David, his Spice Girl wife and his beautiful children:
I have NEVER had sexual relations with that man, Mr. Beckham.
And I beg you to please share this post with all of your friends (Facebook and real), Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram– hell even MySpace, Friendster, fax, and mimeograph (sniff first) the story to everyone you know.
Of course, please be sure to spell my name correctly — there are two ‘A’s and only one ‘O’ and one ‘H’ in Jonathan — and please, please, please be sure to remember the ‘the’ in my Web site TheRecoveringPolitician.com.
Oh, and here’s another poor soul who knows exactly how I am suffering from the false rumors, innuendo, and lack of full public inspection of the issues at hand:
By Jason Atkinson, on Wed Oct 24, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
We did it. You did it.
Last night our indiegogo site closed and we raised $35,000.
Thank you- Thank you everyone- This project has 89 supporters from across the globe who want to see this happen. – From my close friends the Browns being first to two generations of river guides – the Borg family – being last. Thank you.
Every nickel you helped us raise in the last month gave the project credibility.
Now what? Spread the good word and help us find investor partners in philanthropy, institutional investors, business partners and our friends in the tribal community.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Oct 24, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Sometimes on a late work night when I stop off at Thornton’s to reward myself with something utterly non-nutritious, I sit in my car wolfing at down and watch the nice clerk inside and ask myself, “If someone robbed Thornton’s now while I was watching, would I try to help stop the robbery?
So far that question has remained a hypothetical one. And so far, I have answered “yes.”
I would come to the rescue and save the day in every hypothetical instance I have imagined—dashing out of my gray Honda Accord that went unnoticed because the robbers saw 16 others just like it driving there.
I rush inside, slide across the floor to avoid bullets (really just for effect since there are never any bullets), grab a pot of scalding hot coffee, and throw it on the would be assailants just like the scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
I then call the cops, do a couple of quick live interview,s and the clerk tosses me an extra Krispy Kreme doughnut “on the house” as I turn an wave a cavalier goodbye.
It’s exhausting.
Even though it’s all hypothetical.
But heck, because the heroics are so impressive in my hypothetical, I think I am probably excused for having to do anything now in reality if a real robbery ever does take place. You know?
Many voters are frustrated and outraged by the $6 billion being spent in deceptive political advertising, attack ads, and robo calls. Unfortunately, there is only a meager counter balance to this massive expenditure.
Only three organizations — Project Vote Smart, League of Women Voters, and Vote USA — currently are available to provide voters with non-partisan information. A fourth, eVoter.com, recently terminated due to lack of money. The three still standing attempt to provide voters what they need to vote their interests, not those of special interests groups spending the $6 Billion. Unfortunately, all three are grossly underfunded and out gunned. Yes, voters may only have a sling shot against this Moneyed Goliath but, if they use it well, it may make a substantial difference.
The first, League of Women Voters (LWV.org) is a league of 51 different LWV organizations, one for each state and DC. It was founded in 1920 to ratify the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution providing women the right to vote at the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. League members were encouraged to be political themselves, by educating citizens about, and lobbying for, government and social reform legislation. Another objective is to provide non-partisan voter information and, for decades, LWV has been mailing sample ballots to voters. With the advent of the Internet, LWV developed a single Vote411 website where it attempts to provide voters with targeted information about the candidates in each voter’s various Federal and State contests. When this information is not available on its website (probably due to redistricting), it provides links to State and county voter guides.
Read the rest of… Ron Kahlow: The Meager Counter Balance to Money in Politics
Joe Biden’s alternately snarling, eye-rolling, interrupting, grinning, occasionally weird performance seems to have traded off two conflicting outcomes: temporarily motivating Democrats who were unsettled by Barack Obama’s passivity in the first debate while repelling independents who got a florid reminder of just what it is they find distasteful about political combat.
But Biden unleashed revealed something about what has happened to the liberal political mood in this season. Beneath the back and forth over the quality of Obama’s economic stewardship, and the predictable jabs at the wealth and tax records of the first nominee since 1940 who has substantial private sector experience, there has been another context to this campaign, that is both retrograde and novel at the same time: namely, the left’s strategy of attack by caricature and ridicule, and the implicit worldview that conservatism is an oddball blend of plutocracy, racial resentment, sexual backwardness, and selfishness.
The backward leaning part of the theme is the resemblance to Franklin Roosevelt’s and Harry Truman’s exuberant Republican bashing, at least in the brutal depiction of the GOP agenda. But FDR’s tongue-lashing had a notable high-mindedness: the broadside in his 1936 acceptance speech about mastering the forces of greed in a second term was exquisite rhetorical theater of a kind Barack Obama as president has utterly failed to master. Moreover, the New Deal’s anti-Republican barbs were accompanied by a raft of prospective domestic legislation.
The core of the modern liberal sneer strategy, and Biden made it fairer than ever to describe it that way, is much more novel, not terribly high-flown, and not at all forward-looking. The technique unfurls itself daily behind the desks in MSNBC’s studio, where all but a select few anchors (Joe Scarborough, Chuck Todd) moderate rolling denunciations of all things Republican, without much pretense at balance, in the august editorial pages of the New York Times, which has traded in its vanishing profits as the paper of record for the mantle of intellectual enforcer of the left, and in a coherent, organized blogosphere which ritualistically strikes at every conservative pretense imaginable. Missing is any sustained rationale for what an Obama second term might look like, beyond the standard fare hike in upper income tax rates and a generalized commitment to more “investments” in conventional Democratic objectives.
The novelty is in the reversal of a generation of Democratic attempts to soften Republican/conservative opposition through persuasion. During the Clinton era, Democrats regularly sought to co-opt Republicans by shifting right on welfare and budgets, and moved back and forth between partisanship and outreach. Nor is there much trace of the feints liberals made a decade ago toward evangelicals, much less Obama’s 2004/2008 emphasis on reducing partisanship.
Spared the tactical imperative of persuading even mainstream conservatives, or crafting a legislative portfolio that could overcome gridlock, liberalism circa 2012 is largely a negative project aimed at dismissing the Right’s substantive and intellectual credibility. Nancy Pelosi’s eye-rolling at doubts about the constitutionality of the healthcare law, the establishment media’s persistent denunciations of the Tea Party as Neanderthal relics of George Wallace, the African American media’s trope that conservatism is racial backlash are all of a piece with Biden’s tactic of describing conservative economic policies as discredited claptrap.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Oct 23, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
For those readers who are either over 30 or don’t have teenagers who can explain it to us, internet memes are concepts or images that spread quickly online. While memes can include random humor (LOL Cats) or celebrity references (the Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” series), they’ve also started to pop up in politics. (Google ‘Big Bird’ or ‘You Didn’t Build That’ and you’ll get the general idea.)
The most recent meme to catch on like wildfire was “Binders Full Of Women”, from a comment made by Governor Romney in the 2nd Presidential Debate – even if you didn’t watch the debate, even if you had no interest in it, you’ve probably heard about this one, which inspired dozens of Facebook groups (with thousands of fans) before the debate was even over. Part of what gave this unfortunate turn of phrase such legs was that it had all the aspects of a great meme – vast public exposure, a simple, clear visual image, and a huge variety of humorous interpretations.
Next came the backlash, commentators complaining that people were making a mountain out of a molehill, or accusing Obama voters of focusing on picky word choices rather than the real issues. But I believe part of why the image caught on so quickly was that it wasn’t just a verbal gaffe, it was emblematic of why Romney has such trouble connecting with women:
– His positions are vague (the anecdote about ‘they brought us binders of women’ was what he told instead of answering a direct question about whether he’d support the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act)
– He’s patronizing (trying to impress us with how hard he worked to actually find some qualified women, as if he’d never met one in all his years in business?)
– He likes to bend the truth (turns out he didn’t actually go out and ask women’s groups, the groups came to him with resumes)
At any rate, it’s hard to resist an on-fire meme, so here’s this week’s song!
We’ve all heard about the KLOUT hype-mania with employers asking job applicants about their KLOUT scores and using it to decide who gets hired….but this is going too far.
Depression symptoms include:
Feelings of sadness or unhappiness
Irritability or frustration, even over small matters
Loss of interest or pleasure in normal activities
Reduced sex drive
Insomnia or excessive sleeping
Changes in appetite
Feelings of worthlessness or guilt,
Trouble thinking, concentrating, making decisions and remembering things
A lowered KLOUT score
For some people, depression symptoms are so severe that it’s obvious something isn’t right. Other people feel generally miserable or unhappy without really knowing why.
But a drop in one’s KLOUT score of 3 or more points within a few weeks is usually an unambiguous sign of major depression—or at least should be!
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Tue Oct 23, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
This week the Recovering Politician Bowl became the height of parity 8 (!) teams settling in at 4-3, 3 other teams at 3-4, and finally the lowly Bandits bringing up the rear at 1-6. However, in the interest of fairness and honesty, I would be remiss without highlighting the fact that the Bandits have faced the toughest opposition in the league with 714 points scored against them.
Will anyone be able to pull away from the pack in the coming weeks? Stay tuned!
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Oct 23, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
One of my husband’s favorite movies is True Lies. (You must say it with the Ahrnold accent.) Of course the irony of the casting of that film didn’t become so readily apparent until recently. I saw Arnold interviewed about how he lied about his audio malfunctioning when Matt Lauer once asked him a question that he didn’t want to answer. Even though he admitted to this lie in his recent memoir, he still didn’t want to own up to the lie when asked about it on Meet the Press. And they had video footage! A lie wrapped in an enigma wrapped in fudge factor. It’s called acting I guess.
Of course, everyone lies in some form or another. I had this conversation with my 7 year old the other day. (yes, Mom, I flossed my teeth.) But when someone flat out lies about everything, blanketly denying things that they have already admitted to be true, then that is someone you don’t want to date. Or vote for, in my opinion.
How can you tell? If someone like Maria Shriver, an extremely smart and astute woman, can be fooled, then how on earth can the rest of us figure it out?
Well, you can start by avoiding the worst kind of lie- lying to yourself. A first date can tell you about 80% of what you need to know about a person if you pay attention. And a month of dating someone bumps it up to 90%. But how well can you listen when they tell?
You get this feeling, in the pit of your stomach and you can’t make sense of it. So you ignore it and do what feels good. We all do this and I’m not trying to say that you can’t be human and act on impulse. But before you do, try to make sense of that sinking feeling- it has 2 distinct heads to it that you can try to decipher. And then when you act, act deliberately with the cognizance of whether you are making a decision for 4 hours or 4 years.
