Luke...I was Bain's CEO from 1999 until 2002. You KNOW it to be true!
- This doesn't happen too often, but it's still funny:
An Iowa woman who was running for a state Senate seat has dropped that bid after deciding the U.S. government is a sham, and has instead unilaterally declared herself a U.S. Senator from the Republic of Iowa in an alternative government, the Republic for the United States of America.
As Jason Noble of the Des Moines Register first reported, the candidate, Randi Shannon, had been running for the state’s 34th Senate district. However, she recently came to believe that the real U.S. government was replaced with an illegal one after the Civil War so, rather than continue her state-level pursuit, she dropped that bid and named herself a Senator of the what she thinks is the true government.
I'm just going to declare myself as supreme sovereign of the independent republic of myself and be done with it.
- A fantastic essay from a comedian that could help men understand exactly why Daniel Tosh was so horribly wrong. It's a revolutionary perspective.
- In case you weren't disgusted already by the conservative movement, here's a sampling of various conservative merchandise available for sale. But no, it has nothing to do with President Obama's race.
- Asher Huey, with the American Federation of Teachers writes about the importance of public education:
Change.org's decision marks an important point in our fight for public education, and for America's best interests more generally. When astroturf groups undermine schools and workers, they are not acting in the best interests of children, parents, teachers or the community. This action, and others like it, show that clever names and rhetoric are no longer enough to hide corporate interests from communities determined to protect the common good.
- Campaign optics: Obama vs. Romney. Obama wins this round. The photo of him in the rain in Virginia is particularly powerful.
- digby, on the attention paid to Mitt Romney's scandals compared to those of Hillary Clinton:
Dave's got a point about the media double standards. When the futures trades scandal broke the press corps went nuts. But I think there are some other factors at work here as well.
The first is that what made the Clinton cattle futures trade so exciting was the fact that it was a mere woman who had been dabbling in high finance and it was ridiculous to believe that she could have done it herself. Moreover, it was a woman the Villagers all considered to be a bitch, so they were happy to see her her alleged intelligence assailed as phony. It's taken for granted that Mitt, on the other hand, is considered to be some sort of financial genius so it's to be expected that he'd make zillions even in the most ludicrous situations. He's a Master of the Universe after all.
Second, the numbers are so big that nobody can wrap their mind around them. Hillary's little venture into trading was something everyone could relate to and presented a simple scenario. Mitt's shenanigans are complicated and, frankly, kind of awe-inspiring to the Villagers. These are not gothic, southern small town intrigues --- it's the Big Time featuring the Very Important Rich People. They are impressed by the grandeur of it all.
Finally, the country has changed. Over the course of the last two decades we've seen a rather dramatic degradation of political norms, generally. We've had partisan impeachments, stolen elections, bogus wars and massive financial failure. People are a lot more cynical. There was a time when it would have been a reckless act of chutzpah to nominate a Vulture capitalist in the wake of the 2008 meltdown, but now it's just par for the course.