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Friday Open Thread

by afew Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 01:03:29 PM EST

Wot no open thread?


Display:
Here's one.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 01:03:50 PM EST
Not the audience response you want when you're down by 5 points:



Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

by ATinNM on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 01:54:34 PM EST
Do you get the AARP mailings? They are pissed.
by asdf on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 02:12:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Got them.  Have been so busy over the past two months haven't read them.

Good to hear they're up in arms.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

by ATinNM on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 02:35:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Also, when you're running as the candidate of the angry old white men, and then you give a speech at the angry old white men's club and get booed, you've got a big problem.
by asdf on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 02:14:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]
This election is turning into a GOP death march.  

Polling has the Dem candidate - can't remember his name & too lazy to look it up - leading in Arizona at the moment. (!)  They've pulled out of the New Mexico open seat Senate race to shore-up their efforts in North Dakota.  

The good thing is they went into this election thinking they had a lock on winning the Presidency, keeping the House, and winning the Senate.  Now that reality is hitting they are starting an internal squabble that I'm hoping will turn vicious as their changes fade.

 

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

by ATinNM on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 02:44:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]
This is why the Repubs need to get back into the WH. If they had the tiller they could go to their RED-ORANGE-BLAH BLAH threat code system, scare the crap out of the cowardly/ignorant (plenty of those out there ... all FOX viewers), and gain the upper hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wp4O7v5320
by THE Twank (yatta blah blah @ blah.com) on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 03:51:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Did you see the discussions about how the campaign money is distributed?

  • Apparently Obama's is mostly in his own campaign account, which means he controls it for the duration.
  • Romney's is mostly in SuperPAC accounts, not under his direct control, which, if it starts to look like he's losing, can shift that money to other races.

That would be a serious disaster for Romney, who apparently is already short of funds (comparatively speaking). He's started giving bonuses to his staff--probably retention bonuses--to the tune of $200,000, which will probably get his small supporters mad.

Of course one can never be certain until the last lawsuit is over in December...

by asdf on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 07:22:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]
So Romney is being outsourced?

:-)

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

by ATinNM on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 09:05:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Jesus Christ.  Talk about a loon.  Romney on new campaign strategy:

As Romney walked back to the plane to shake hands with the five individuals who drove vans in the motorcade, your pooler asked Romney if he was going to be campaigning a little harder from here on out.

"Ha ha. We're in the stretch aren't we? Look at those clouds. It's beautiful," he said, pointing to the sky. "Look at those things."



Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere
by ATinNM on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 02:52:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]
If that's not an endorsement of recreational marijuana use, I don't know what is.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman
by dvx (dvx.clt ät gmail dotcom) on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 04:15:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You know he was at Stanford in 1966, right? Mr clean-cut Mormon. Hah! I bet he didn't inhale.
by asdf on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 07:31:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You've lived next door to Utah for a while.  Wouldn't you?

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2012 at 07:55:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
MJ...or maybe something else.



you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Sat Sep 22nd, 2012 at 10:36:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]
they must be in trouble, Romney has released some form of tax details. Haven't seen the reviews yet. no doubt the media are saying it's still too close to call

keep to the Fen Causeway
by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sat Sep 22nd, 2012 at 08:45:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
For 2011. I think previous years might be more interesting.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Sep 22nd, 2012 at 08:59:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
TPM:

    What We Learned
  • Harry Reid Was Wrong: Sen. Harry Reid's notoriously unsubstantiated claim that Romney paid no taxes for 10 years is not true.

  • Romney Is Not The 47 Percent:  Romney is not a member of the "47 percent" of Americans who don't pay income tax.

  • What We Didn't Learn
  • Did Romney Change Anything?: Did Romney artificially inflate his tax rate using the same strategy in other returns? That's the biggest question raised by the disclosure of his move to take fewer deductions in 2011.

  • Romney's IRA: Mitt Romney has reported an IRA valued at upwards of $100 million, a huge number that's especially difficult to achieve since there's a $6,000 legal annual contribution limit.



-----
sapere aude
by Number 6 on Mon Sep 24th, 2012 at 08:20:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]


You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 02:15:29 PM EST
Mount Merde

Should this be angrier, or less angry ?

As the tablets come down from the Mountains of Shit
As even his friends see "Calamity Mitt"
As the clay is perceived not to just fill his shoe
But to reach all the way to his head.. what to do ?

When you said things out loud that you meant to keep quiet
And they have it on tape, so you cannot deny it
When you've written off most of the great middle class
Can you ever extract your head out of your ass ?

And yet, in all the darkness, there is just a glim
Is it forty-percent who say they'll vote for him ?
After all that's been seen, heard, and bandied about
Who are all these devotees, who still vote devout ?

What's the matter with Kansas ? I still want to know.
And those other wide spaces where midwest winds blow
Where the bone of the head is so solid and dense
That Fox News is perceived as just plain common sense

Can they all slumber there, do they dream of the days
When the old values ruled, long before the malaise
Of the modern world came, and wiped out their tradition
And took us all straight down the road to perdition

The old days, that they praise, when the White Man stood tall
When the God and the Gun were not questioned at all
When marriage was marriage, and uppity blacks
Were kept in their place, the far side of the tracks

And today, as they see, it has all gone to hell
Bad enough they took over our white NFL
But now, hell, the White House is no longer White
We have got to go back, and restore things to right

I'm just guessing, of course, I no longer live there
Nor wish to return, I prefer West Coast air
As the finger writes, moves on, a much better day
Can be ours, if those bastards get out of the way

by greatferm (greatferm-at-email.com) on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 02:50:36 PM EST
by Fran (fran at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 03:18:44 PM EST
Google-Dali?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wp4O7v5320
by THE Twank (yatta blah blah @ blah.com) on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 03:45:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
you don't understand, reality is irrelevant. Within the Faith Based Community whatever the User Interface says is The Continuing Revelation of Jobs

keep to the Fen Causeway
by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sat Sep 22nd, 2012 at 08:38:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Virginia just has really bad roads.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2012 at 07:56:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
by gk (g k quattro due due sette "at" gmail.com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2012 at 08:09:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Could we do a 'no Middle East'?
I'm sure a lot of people would sleep better. Not least people in the Middle East.

Lots of opportunities.
For the Eurosceptic: no Brussels.
For Americans fed up with congress: no D.C.
For Westminster: Nothing north of Oxford. Nothing at all.

-----
sapere aude

by Number 6 on Mon Sep 24th, 2012 at 08:24:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
50th Anniversary of the SPIEGEL Affair - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Fifty years ago, police raided SPIEGEL headquarters in Hamburg and arrested some of the magazine's top journalists. The affair, which marked a watershed in postwar German democracy, would cause the government to collapse and the powerful defense minister to resign.

They were given names like Dragonfly, Fly and Wasp. Five teams with codenames like "Pentathlon" and "Einstein" were on their trail in a secret operation by Germany's Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD), one of the country's three federal intelligence agencies, that was dubbed "Sabotage." The hunt had begun.

OAS_RICH('Middle2'); The affair that happened in West Germany in October 1962 sounds like a spy thriller from the pen of John le Carré, who at the time was working on his bestseller "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold." But at the time, the height of the Cold War, German intelligence really believed they were on the trail of a large-scale conspiracy. They thought that SPIEGEL founder Rudolf Augstein (codenamed "Dragonfly"), as well as SPIEGEL reporters including Conrad Ahlers ("Fly") and Hans Schmelz ("Wasp") had betrayed West German military secrets.

The resulting SPIEGEL affair, as it was later dubbed, would cost the defense minister his job, make the magazine famous around the world and mark a watershed moment in the history of West German postwar democracy.

by Fran (fran at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Sep 21st, 2012 at 05:47:55 PM EST


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