Monthly Archives: October 2012
Links O’ the Day
There isn’t much to say about the polling or the candidates at this point– you know how I feel, and if you aren’t worried that Mitt Romney completely refuses to explain himself, his history, or his plans for office, is making claims about his tax plan that can’t be verified with any real math, and that in areas where Obama was genuinely disappointing or wrong, he will be even more gung-ho, then I don’t know what else to say to you at this point.
But here are a few good reads from the day:
From Salon, an excerpt from Aaron James’ Assholes: A Theory: How Fox News created a new culture of idiots, with this trenchant analysis on the narcissism and :
In a culture of narcissism, you don’t need any special reason to lay claim to the attention of others; you simply get attention as you can, as anyone else of course would (“if you don’t flaunt it, you don’t got it,” to reverse a familiar saying). On the other hand, if we find our current zeitgeist mistaken, on the grounds that laying claim to the attention of others does require good enough reasons — whether for the sake of modesty or just for the sake of not adding to the deafening contemporary media noise machine — then we can view narcissistic attention seeking as a way of acting like an asshole. Our narcissistic age thus might help explain why assholes seem to be everywhere of late.
I’d never heard of Dylan Byers before today, but apparently he’s a conservative hack, as he uses his ignorance of statistics and math to attempt a hatchet job on Nate Silver that doesn’t even stand up to the thinnest intellectual scrutiny.
And I couldn’t help but commemorate the rare occasion where Thomas Friedman makes sense, as he finally gives voice to an idea we’ve held dear for a while now: You can’t call yourself “pro-life” if you only care about bringing fertilized eggs to birth and then stop caring after that.
Last but not least, Joss Whedon endorses Mitt Romney… as the candidate most likely to bring about the zombie apocalypse.
All your Rolling Stone Mitt Romney pieces collected in one place
Inspired by the cover feature on President Obama in this month’s Rolling Stone (by Rice University’s own Douglas Brinkley), I went looking to see what other articles they’ve published recently that I’ve missed (aside from Matt Taibbi’s blog and his homepage on RS, which I never miss).
It was remarkably easy to find a number of different pieces on Mitt Romney and what he really does and is about, and not just from Taibbi (although everyone should read his cover story from a couple months back, Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital). Here are three pieces from Tim Dickinson:
Why Aaron Sorkin Doesn’t Work, In Brief
It’s been bouncing around my head since The Newsroom debuted, and I’ve been searching for the right explanation to the titular question, and after not thinking about it for a while, the answer seems to have popped up spontaneously in my mind, and I hope that, after so many words on the subject, this is my final answer and I won’t have to revisit this topic. The simplest way I can put it is this: Continue reading
Quick thoughts on the debate
Nothing deep or earth-shattering, just my reactions, plus a couple of hours to consider them.
Links O’ the Day
Rather than posting five or six links to Facebook every day, I’m gonna try to collect them all into one post to make them less intrusive.
Great headline from New York Magazine: “Study Measures Romney Plan to Screw Poor, Sick”
The Republican attempt to suppress votes has officially failed in Pennsylvania (for now). The National Memo has a summary.
The New York Times has published the results of a study that should indicate, in what should be no surprise to anyone, Mitt Romney and Bain’s use of offshore accounts helped him increase his wealth.
The Republican punditry can’t agree what exactly Mitt Romney is doing wrong with his campaign, but they all agree he’s screwing it up.
I didn’t even know there were still such things as “anti-marijuana crusaders”, but Ken Buck, failed Tea Party candidate for Senate and otherwise odious human being, has emerged as one in Colorado. I’m not entirely clear who’s funding his efforts at this point. Who still benefits from keeping marijuana illegal and, almost as importantly, who hasn’t seen the writing on the wall enough to still be throwing money at this?
(That last link will return a dangerous site report if you have security on your browser, but it’s ThinkProgress, and I can assure you it’s fine– according to their Twitter account, a very old post got flagged for something and it’s being cleaned up.)
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