drsmooth wrote:from dailykos FWIW

....And what is the dupe du jour?

Officials of both parties are sharply criticizing a fundraising mailing from Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele they say could be confused with official correspondence regarding this year’s Census.

The fundraising letter comes in the form of a "survey," a frequently used device for partisan fundraising, but this one has a twist: calling itself the "Congressional District Census," the letter comes in an envelope starkly printed with the words, "DO NOT DESTROY OFFICIAL DOCUMENT" and describes itself, on the outside of the envelope, as a "census document."

Sounds illegal, doesn't it? But because it doesn't "use the full name of the Census Bureau or the seal of any government agency," it apparently manages to stay just this side of legal.

And naturally, since it's goal is to dupe its supporters, it is expected to be "among the RNC’s most lucrative fundraising initiatives."

apparently an "unnamed Republican operative" supplied this tidbit to a kos poster.

illegal, i dunno - cheesy, definitely

I don't see the problem here. Are people really so illiterate that they don't know what a census is? The RNC is simply trying to identify all Republican supporters here. Hence, they're taking a census. Lots of organizations do this.

pacino wrote:The teabaggers are coming, the teabaggers are coming (hehe)

Hahahaha, Enemy of Liberty column

They also spell Senator Bennet's last name wrong

Yeah, Harold Ford's gonna win:

Ford: “I’m a little country. I apologize…It’s “smear”, s-m-e-a-r. Y’all talk funny.”

Yes, they's talk funny.

pacino wrote:Lt Governor of South Carolina sez:

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed," Bauer said, according to the Greenville News. "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

The comments on that comment are fun. Why did news sites start allowing people to comment on stories?

Bauer's mom certainly should have been denied nourishment

TenuredVulture wrote:

drsmooth wrote:from dailykos FWIW

....And what is the dupe du jour?

Officials of both parties are sharply criticizing a fundraising mailing from Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele they say could be confused with official correspondence regarding this year’s Census.

The fundraising letter comes in the form of a "survey," a frequently used device for partisan fundraising, but this one has a twist: calling itself the "Congressional District Census," the letter comes in an envelope starkly printed with the words, "DO NOT DESTROY OFFICIAL DOCUMENT" and describes itself, on the outside of the envelope, as a "census document."

Sounds illegal, doesn't it? But because it doesn't "use the full name of the Census Bureau or the seal of any government agency," it apparently manages to stay just this side of legal.

And naturally, since it's goal is to dupe its supporters, it is expected to be "among the RNC’s most lucrative fundraising initiatives."

apparently an "unnamed Republican operative" supplied this tidbit to a kos poster.

illegal, i dunno - cheesy, definitely

I don't see the problem here. Are people really so illiterate that they don't know what a census is? The RNC is simply trying to identify all Republican supporters here. Hence, they're taking a census. Lots of organizations do this.

:rolleyes:

I don't care whether the republican party loots the unwary dupes on its mailing lists. but you really don't see the tacky in those tactics?

The Economist ruminates on the re-emergence of the Big State: Leviathan Stirs Again

cows ruminate, FWIW

Pop(ulist), Pop, Fizz, Fizz, Oh What a Fiasco It Is (or "Is This Any Way to Steer a Gummint?"):

NYTimes wrote:Tea Party Disputes Take Toll On Convention

...Philip Glass, the national director of the National Precinct Alliance, announced late Sunday that “amid growing controversy” around the convention, his organization would no longer participate....

“We are very concerned about the appearance of T.P.N. profiteering and exploitation of the grass-roots movement,” he said in a statement....

Mr. Glass said he was also concerned about the role in the convention of groups like Tea Party Express, which has held rallies across the country through two bus tours, and FreedomWorks, a Tea Party umbrella. He called them “Republican National Committee-related groups,” and added, “At best, it creates the appearance of an R.N.C. hijacking; at worst, it is one.”

Erick Erickson, the editor of the influential conservative blog RedState.com, wrote this month that something seemed “scammy” about the convention. And the American Liberty Alliance withdrew as a sponsor after its members expressed concerns about the convention’s finances being channeled through private bank accounts and its organizer being “for profit.”

"the teahugger orgy organizer is for profit? wtf!?!" haha

drsmooth wrote:Pop(ulist), Pop, Fizz, Fizz, Oh What a Fiasco It Is (or "Is This Any Way to Steer a Gummint?"):

NYTimes wrote:Tea Party Disputes Take Toll On Convention

...Philip Glass, the national director of the National Precinct Alliance, announced late Sunday that “amid growing controversy” around the convention, his organization would no longer participate....

“We are very concerned about the appearance of T.P.N. profiteering and exploitation of the grass-roots movement,” he said in a statement....

Mr. Glass said he was also concerned about the role in the convention of groups like Tea Party Express, which has held rallies across the country through two bus tours, and FreedomWorks, a Tea Party umbrella. He called them “Republican National Committee-related groups,” and added, “At best, it creates the appearance of an R.N.C. hijacking; at worst, it is one.”

Erick Erickson, the editor of the influential conservative blog RedState.com, wrote this month that something seemed “scammy” about the convention. And the American Liberty Alliance withdrew as a sponsor after its members expressed concerns about the convention’s finances being channeled through private bank accounts and its organizer being “for profit.”

"the teahugger orgy organizer is for profit? wtf!?!" haha

The teabagger organization is merely a front for Republican elites and power brokers? The hell you say???

I'm starting to think we might get a chance to see Paul's "political parties are actually good" hypothesis tested. The Democrats are in deep trouble, the Republicans (as Vox has noted) aren't exactly seeing a big surge in identification or support for anything other than not being the Democrats (I actually give the Teabaggers credit for seeming to realize as much), and even Michael Steele sees that the CU ruling is going to hurt parties.

I wouldn't be shocked to see an independent win the White House sometime soon-ish, or a surge in non-affiliated Congresspeople. No idea whether any of this would be good or bad, but it's interesting.

dajafi wrote:I'm starting to think we might get a chance to see Paul's "political parties are actually good" hypothesis tested. The Democrats are in deep trouble, the Republicans (as Vox has noted) aren't exactly seeing a big surge in identification or support for anything other than not being the Democrats (I actually give the Teabaggers credit for seeming to realize as much), and even Michael Steele sees that the CU ruling is going to hurt parties.

I wouldn't be shocked to see an independent win the White House sometime soon-ish, or a surge in non-affiliated Congresspeople. No idea whether any of this would be good or bad, but it's interesting.

Depends on the individual candidate. He or she could be perfectly competent and level-headed, or totally bat-s@#$ insane(far left or far right)

The RNC has been sending out fundraiser letters in the form of surveys for ten years, I get at least one a year. The Kos'ite hasn't blown the cover off of anything.

dajafi wrote:I wouldn't be shocked to see an independent win the White House sometime soon-ish, or a surge in non-affiliated Congresspeople. No idea whether any of this would be good or bad, but it's interesting.

I was looking at the Pew research poll that came out this week, and was thinking about how much commonality there is in what Americans want. I don't see a "Bull Moose" candidate becoming president, though I can imagine what you describe in non-affiliated congressfolks (though not in the northeast, party machines are too strong IMO). I think the more likely thing to occur is that one party or the other experiences a significant internal shift, significant enough to be substantively different. The core representations of the two parties are unlikely to change on the hot-button issues. For example, I can't imagine that there won't always be a pro-abortion and an anti-abortion party.

There is a 10% or less R-D-I gap on the following issues: Improving jobs (#2), reducing crime (#13), securing socsec (#4), strengthening economy (#1), global trade (#21), reducing middle-class taxees (no difference between parties - #17)), reducing deficit (#7), dealing with moral breakdown (#14), and defending U.S. against terrorism (#3).

[the number in parens describes the location of the issue on the Top Priorities for 2010 list)

If you review those, they strike me as more typically Republican issues that Democrats can and occasionally do win on. Obama (at year one) doesn't appear to be doing much on those issues to convince Americans that he's a new kind of Democrat (fair or not).

Odds are, a more stable GOP candidate (or candidates) focus on those things and enhances his or her platform to either tone down some issues that independents value more than self identified Republicans on key issues (more concern about securing medicare, healthcare for the ininsured, poverty issues - less concern about strengthening the military and illegal immigration).

The fact that there is no Reagan type out there knocking around hoping to threaten (that's not me being all "Saint Ronald" - I'm just referring to the whole Goldwater/Reagan ethos in the 70's) is good for the Democrats chances. We know that the Republican Party has to change to stay viable, however I think the Democrat party does too, and they don't recognize it at all.

Bought and paid for candidates- but what else is new.
Nobody is getting anything done. Fingerpointing, watching Congress is close to watching kindergarten recess at this point.

I'm checking out, there's got to be a way to do it better somewhere else.

VoxOrion wrote:The RNC has been sending out fundraiser letters in the form of surveys for ten years, I get at least one a year. The Kos'ite hasn't blown the cover off of anything.

Hard to say whether the kos readership took that revelation of cheese as a cover-blowing event.

The evolution over the past month from "Rasmussen's polls have a huge GOP bias" to "Oh shit we're fucked" has been a pleasure to watch.

Obama to propose three year freeze in discretionary spending. It will be interesting to see if he can make something like this hold up. Seems like they're in panic mode at the White House. They'd do well to take a deep breath and realize that the President is still relatively popular, and not give up your whole agenda over one special election, but whatever, they didn't ask me.

VoxOrion wrote:There is a 10% or less R-D-I gap on the following issues: Improving jobs (#2), reducing crime (#13), securing socsec (#4), strengthening economy (#1), global trade (#21), reducing middle-class taxees (no difference between parties - #17)), reducing deficit (#7), dealing with moral breakdown (#14), and defending U.S. against terrorism (#3).

Good reference to the Pew findings, but the difficulty with an issues breakdown like the survey items (other than that it is economics-heavy, a sign of the times more than anything else) is that the real challenge is in lashing together a compelling synthesis rather than dis-integrating people's pain points. Step back from those items and tell me you immediately see a unifying thread, a story to tell.

It's the same as usual; America, the land of irreconcilable tensions, the social/cultural salad bowl, tussles with its internal disharmonies while waiting for (mostly) external events to provide (or compel) a unifying 'direction'. Among the contemporary difficulties with that 'strategy' is that our collective attention span seems to be shrinking faster than any 'new direction' can actually gain successful traction.

Everybody, quick--go read Michael Kammen's People of Paradox. Available at your local university library, probably. Or somewhere on my shelf.

jerseyhoya wrote:Obama to propose three year freeze in discretionary spending. It will be interesting to see if he can make something like this hold up. Seems like they're in panic mode at the White House. They'd do well to take a deep breath and realize that the President is still relatively popular, and not give up your whole agenda over one special election, but whatever, they didn't ask me.

I was reading about that just now on the NYT site, and there's nothing like a good simile to wake you up in the morning.

Republicans were quick to mock the freeze proposal. “Given Washington Democrats’ unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you’re going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.

I guess we'll have to see next week who's going to be complaining.