Made for TV
They look on us as a nation of ingrates,
As a bunch of bumpkins and jackanapes.
But just wait till the Brits
Get a look at their own twits
During the prime minister debates.
Month: April 2010
FL 19: Dem Trounces Tea Bagger Favorite in U.S. House Special Election
Ted Deutch handily beat his Republican opponent Ed Lynch, 62 percent to 35 percent, retaining the seat held by Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler, who retired to join a think tank.
The district is home to many seniors, and Lynch vigorously campaigned against health care reform law, hoping to make the election a referendum on it, which he claimed was unpopular in the district.
Earlier this week, a tea bagger blogger predicted that a win by Lynch would send a signal that tea baggers were set to “take back” the House:
The TEA Party’s clout may be felt this week in the race for the open Congressional seat in Florida’s 19th District on April 13th. This may be the first shot across the bow of Republicans running for national, state wide, and local offices.
Tow the conservative line or else may be the message sent if TEA Party favorite Edward Lynch wins this special election.
I just received an e-mail from a friend saying that TEA Party members have made over 10,000 phone calls in support of conservative Edward Lynch for Congress. Edward is running against Florida Senator Ted Deutch a Democrat who embraced President Obama’s healthcare bill, anti-Israel posturing, and stimulus package. Edward won a special Republican primary election in February and now will use that momentum to turn a Democrat seat into a Republican seat – the first in Florida.
This special election may turn out to be the first in a wave of elections to take back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010. Florida may be set to take three Congressional seats currently held by Democrats – FL8, FL19 and FL22. Patricia Sullivan is running in District 8 and Allen West in District 22. Sullivan and West are both TEA Party favorites.
Lynch was a big hit at CPAC in February:
“He is a candidate for the next House election that’s going to occur…It’s the seat vacated by that loudmouth Robert Wexler in Florida that you might remember from cable television,” said Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund in his introduction of Lynch.
Lynch, who is Hispanic and head of the Latin American Republican Club in Palm Beach County, was part of a four-member panel discussing immigration reform. He spoke for six minutes and got big applause when he called for making English the official language of the United States.
“One of the most racist things we do in our country is not make English the official language,” Lynch said. Failure to learn English limits opportunities for Hispanics, Lynch said.
Lynch also got a big response when he suggested a phone-answering system that says “push 1 for English and push 2 to go home.”
Lynch faces long odds in Palm Beach-Broward congressional District 19, where Democrats hold more than a 2-to-1 voter registration advantage and Democratic rival Ted Deutch has raised more than $1 million. Wexler left office in January to head a Middle East think tank.
Lynch is hoping his appearance before the nation’s premiere gathering of conservatives will nationalize the race.
“Let’s Do This Together!” says a flyer handed out by the Lynch campaign to CPAC attendees. “Just like the Scott Brown race in Massachusetts, this race will have national implications. As the first House race of 2010, it will set the tone for all of the November elections!”
Lynch, who came to Washington this week with six campaign staffers, has spent a few hours getting issue briefings from the conservative Heritage Foundation, meeting with representatives of the National Rifle Association and other PACs and visiting Wexler’s old office on Capitol Hill.
Of course, despite the crowing from the tea bag set about the momentous signal a win by Lynch would send, purveyors of inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom are downplaying the significance of Deutch’s win in this heavily Democratic district. But even as Chris Cillizza, for examples, tamps down the significance of the win in a post titled, “Why FL-19 Isn’t a Health Care Referendum,” (even though the tea baggers said it was) he acknowledges that “Democrats point out — rightly — that had they lost this race (or even narrowly won it), the national press would have painted it as an electoral Armageddon. True enough.”
Limbaugh Blames Unions for Deaths at West Va. Mine – But Mine in Question Was Not Unionized
LIMBAUGH: “Was there no union responsibility for improving mine safety? Where was the union here? Where was the union? The union is generally holding these companies up demanding all kinds of safety. Why were these miners continuing to work in what apparently was an unsafe atmosphere?”
Here’s why:
There’s a simple reason the union didn’t protect the miners: the Upper Big Branch Mine, like nearly all of the mines under Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s control, is non-union. In fact, the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) “tried three times to organize the Upper Big Branch mine, but even with getting nearly 70 percent of workers to sign cards saying they wanted to vote for a union, Blankenship personally met with workers to threaten them with closing down the mine and losing their jobs if they voted for a union.”
Palin Has Become The Very Thing She Sneered at in ’08: A Celebrity
One of the McCain-Palin campaign’s strangest moves in the 2008 campaign was the release of an attack ad against Barack Obama that attempted to marginalize him by casting him as a celebrity. It even made visual references to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
Since then Sarah Palin has been on a long strange trip — from losing the United States vice presidency to quitting halfway through her term as governor of Alaska, from landing a phone-it-in gig as a propagandist on Fox News to publishing a best-selling ghost-written memoir, and from making $125,000 per year as governor to charging $100,000 per gig on the rubber chicken circuit.
Now ABC News is reporting that since she walked away from her job as governor in July 2009, Palin has raked in $12 million.
Sarah Palin is not the only failed politician out there cashing in on political stardom, of course. She has largely co-opted Newt Gingrich’s playbook. After being forced out as House Speaker because he was having an extramarital affair with a staffer at the same time he was leading the charge to impeach Pres. Clinton for having an affair with a staffer, Gingrich has built a lucrative career writing books, giving speeches and as a Fox on-air propagandist based entirely on a perpetual tease that he might run for president — despite the fact he has a less than zero chance of winning.
Like Gingrich, Palin is unelectable, and like Gingrich, she is manipulating the media by dangling the possibility out there that one day she might just give it a go, and run for the big chair. What the heck.
But she is no longer a politician. She’s too dense, incurious and inarticulate to be a real pundit. To call her an author defiles the word. So, besides “half-term governor,” what should we call her?
Simple. Sarah Palin is a celebrity.
For example, a copy of the celebrity rider to Palin’s speaking contract that ennumerates her demands and requirements from event hosts was found in a trash can and released to the media. According to the rider (PDF), Palin requires:
- First-class airfare or a “private aircraft [that] MUST BE a Lear 60 or larger (as defined by interior cabin space) for West Coast Events; or, a Hawker 800 or larger (as defined by interior cabin space) for East Coast Events and both are subject to the [Sarah Palin’s] approval. [Palin] reserves the right to change the flight plans at any time.
- Ground transportation must be “SUV(s) from a professionally licensed and insured car service. lf SUV(s) are not available, black town cars may be substituted. WSB [Washington Speakers Bureau] will arrange all of [Palin’s] ground transportation. Only representatives of [Sarah Palin] or WSB are to meet [her] at the arriving/departing airport.
- [Palin] reserves the right to participate in private business including but not limited to book or political events during their visit. For any other event which is subject to media coverage, the [event host] will be advised of such event. For international events, [Palin] also reserves the right to visit privately with the host government’s Head of State, Head of Government, Ministerial-level officials, the U.S. Embassy and others as necessary. [Sarah Palin] reserves the right to accept the invitation of host government to overnight at an official residence.”
- Unopened bottled still water (2 bottles) and bendable straws are to be placed in or near the wooden lectern. A representative of WSB or [Palin’s] party will open the water at an appropriate time prior to [Palin’s] participation in the program. No Plexiglas or thin lecterns please. If [Palin] is seated on-stage at a table customer to ensure that the table is skirted
- Questions from the audience must be pre-screened.
- No autographs.
One possible omission: Palin also requires a teleprompter, which she likely requires to be hidden from view — unlike the 20 or so photos of Palin with teleprompters we dug up.
Tina Fey caught the spirit of Palin’s new status in a parody on Saturnight Live last week, in which she, as Palin, announced that she was starting her own broadcast channel, similar to Oprah’s.
“Ever since I won the Silver Medal in last year’s vice presidential election,” says Tina Fey in another portrayal of Sarah Palin, she has done her best to connect with everyday Americans.
“It just seemed like the next logical step was to launch my own network,” Fey said on Saturday Night Live — with a premier “network” report about the “Obama death panel” declaring that her daughter’s ankle injury was too costly and that they would have to put her down.
Given she’ll never be president of the United States, maybe Palin’s strategy is go for something bigger: Maybe she wants to become an Oprah Winfrey-style celebrity empath and impresario for the tea-bagger set.
It’s Confirmed — I’m a 2 Percenter!
My wife Kathy and I have a little secret signal we flash between us when we’re out in public and encounter someone who is preternaturally stupid. We hold up our index and middle finger, palm out, like a Cub Scout hand sign or a hippy peace sign.
It refers to the fact that we consider ourselves to be in the upper 2 percentile of intelligence among the general population — possibly even higher here in Miami. Now if you think that sounds elitist, it’s not, because most of our friends are also 2 percenters, so it’s kind of inclusive. Call it a small tent.
I just received confirmation through a simple test that indeed at least 98 percent of the population dwells in the foothills of my intellectual Olympus. See, the people at Pew Research Center devised a 12-question test to assess the political savvy of the average American. You can take the test here, and immediately compare your results with everybody else who has taken it.
The results are pretty much what you’d expect — if you were an intellectual giant like me:
- 66 percent got six or fewer questions correct
- 6 percent got no correct answers
- Demographically, I was destined for excellence because I am male, a college graduate and over 50
- Which makes me really glad I’m not an 18- to 29-year-old female high school dropout
OK, maybe I’m making too much of a test that asks things like what country holds the most U.S. debt or who is Stephen Colbert, but those don’t seem to be asking too much to me. Of course, I read a daily newspaper, subscribe to two weekly news magazines, listen to National Public Radio and pay attention to what Jon and Trish write, so maybe that’s what makes me a 2 percenter.
There you have it — get informed and rule the world.
Wanna Bet on the End of Newspapers?
Thanks to the Philadelphia Inquirer, now you can, kind of. Seems the Inquirer has hatched a brilliant solution to the problem of falling ad revenues and subscriptions — allow sports gambling on your online newspaper site, according to Editor & Publisher. E&P itself could have used a couple of windfall jackpots last year when it was forced to stop publishing until it was partially saved by more traditional means.
But wait, you say, Isn’t online gambling illegal in the United States? Yes, gentle reader, you are correct — except for one small area that was carved out of the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act. Indeed it seems to have been presciently carved out for the sole purpose of saving Philadelphia’s newspaper four years after it was enacted.
Seems you can gamble on line if you are betting on a fantasy sports team. The Inquirer has partnered with FanDuel, which is based in Britain where betting on sports through your favorite fish wrapper is legal.
Usually fantasy sports team managers choose a team and play it for the season. In the Inquirer’s scheme, managers go to the site, pay $5, put together a team of, depending on the season, professional basketball, baseball or football players for one day, and depending on how their team performs, can win up to $90.
In a press release, FanDuel claims that some players make as much as $16,000 per month. The company also claims that British newspapers are raking in the dough on daily fantasy gaming.
So is gambling the answer to what plagues the newspaper business? Probably not, but desperate times require desperate measures. And let’s just skip the morality part. Here in Florida the lottery ostensibly goes to support our education system — ahem!
So who cares if a newspaper gets into the gambling business. After all, living on a daily newsroom deadline is pretty much a 50:50 proposition these days, anyway.
Verbatim
Now, the president, with all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer, as a part-time senator and as a full-time candidate, all that experience, still no accomplishment to date with North Korea and Iran.
— Sarah Palin, practicing her special brand of snark in a speech at the Southern Republican Leadership Council.
The Audacity to Breach Protocol
POTUS:
OK, I ditched them, I confess.
I didn’t think it’d make such a mess.
Hey, I’m watching my daughter
Competing at soccer,
And for that, I don’t need the press.
