Mixed Martial Arts Albany
Courtesy Marquil at EmpireWire.com
Newt Gingrich: Incredibly Disliked
Today, Carl Paladino will host a campaign rally for all-but-dropped-out Newt Gingrich. Gingrich is the preferred choice of the right wing of the Republican Party who can no longer vote for theocratic lunatic Rick Santorum.
A recent poll shows this about Gingrich:
That’s a close match with George W. Bush’s final favorability rating of 25%. In other words, about the same number of people who like Gingrich still liked Bush as the world financial meltdown of 2008 was underway. True believer right-wing Obama-hating people who probably forward loads of false “N0bama” chain emails that they didn’t first run through Snopes.
This sounds less like a campaign stop – because really, there’s no campaign left – and much more like a paid personal appearance. And no one ever voted for Newt Gingrich ever again. The end.
Food for Thought
Two additional items I came across this morning:
1. Rod Watson’s column in the Buffalo News is fantastic. It succinctly breaks down our civic outrage, and how we prioritize nonsense and largely ignore really important stuff.
2. This story from the BBC details how Jewish composers imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II wrote music in cabaret style – music that has been largely forgotten, until now. A show in Tel Aviv features that music, which was recovered almost archeologically through interviews and demonstrations the organizers conducted with about 20 survivors from that camp. The survivors say that the finished product faithfully recreates what the music sounded like at the time. It’s a testament to the human spirit even at its most hopeless.
When Abuse Becomes Murder
I can’t wrap my head around a parent doing this to a child:
The boy was tied to a chair with duct tape, a sock stuffed in his mouth, and he was beaten with a stick or blunt object in the basement of their Guilford Street home, near the Broadway Market, authorities said.
The stepfather was angry because the boy, a fifth-grader at the International Preparatory School on Clinton Street, had fallen behind in his homework, law enforcement officials said.
The Buffalo News’ report reveals that a neighbor encountered the boy literally running for his life, on the street, from his father. The neighbor is wracked with guilt because she intervened and the father caught up with the boy, who was brutally murdered just a few hours later.
I look forward to Buffalo’s right-wing commentariat blaming the perpetrator’s heritage or religion; he has an Islamic name, so they’ll suggest that it’s Jihadism to blame, and snidely refer to the “religion of peace”. (Of course, the man’s religion didn’t swing the blunt object that killed Abdifatah Mohamud, and not every Muslim father beats his kids to death or beheads his wife). Sometimes, people like Ali Mohamed Mohamud are simply monsters, without regard to their faith.
Contamination, USA
The problem with weak environmental regulation is that yesterday’s pollution is today’s contamination.
The long-gone lead smelters in Buffalo and Niagara Falls are still poisoning people, to this day. This is an important report from USA Today and Gannett stations like WGRZ, and should hopefully open up a national conversation about remediating contaminated properties such as these. USA Today’s interactive feature is here.
Andrew & His Legendary Prowess
Andrew & His Legendary Prowess
Oh, My God
Photo by Flickr user W Alex Fisher
Consider this scenario:
Antoine Thompson returns to Albany, replacing Tim Kennedy.
Byron Brown goes to Washington, replacing Brian Higgins.
Tim Kennedy moves into the 2nd floor of City Hall, replacing Byron Brown.
All of these rumors are floating around town, gaining steam. So my question is, are we living a Stephen King novel?
Palin's Crosshairs Revisited
A few weeks ago, Santorum SuperPAC sugardaddy Foster Friess said he hopes President Obama’s “TelePrompTer is bulletproof”. He says he meant it figuratively, as part of a context whereby Santorum and Romney had now “trained their barrels” on the President, rather than each other.
This week, a Michigan gun fetishist whose most prominent kill was his own music career, Ted Nugent, said, “if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” Nugent has endorsed Mitt Romney, who actively sought it.
(It’s a common tactic among the right commentariat that whenever a leftist says something idiotic, that every Democrat is assumed to support it unless they expressly condemn it, and are routinely called upon to denounce something someone said. This tactic, fortunately, works in two directions.)
When Hilary Rosen said something rude about Ann Romney, the White House immediately and unequivocally repudiated her words and sentiments.
When Ted Nugent and Foster Friess suggest that President Obama be killed, you get absolute silence from almost the entire Republican establishment – most notably Romney, who merely said we should all be “civil”, which misses the point that no one should be suggesting or hoping for anyone’s assassination in domestic politics – it’s beyond the pale.
Nugent’s never seen a gun he didn’t want to have sex with, and he’s never seen a thing he didn’t want to shoot – except the Viet Cong – so, the Secret Service is taking his threat rather seriously. The Republican mainstream’s lurch to the right has it coddling insane lunatics far more dangerous than any ACORN activist or other Fox News bogeyman.
Maybe someday the Republicans will walk back their tacit (sometimes vocal) support of nihilist terroristic statements from lunatics living on the right’s fringes, but apparently that day isn’t today.
Palin’s Crosshairs Revisited
A few weeks ago, Santorum SuperPAC sugardaddy Foster Friess said he hopes President Obama’s “TelePrompTer is bulletproof”. He says he meant it figuratively, as part of a context whereby Santorum and Romney had now “trained their barrels” on the President, rather than each other.
This week, a Michigan gun fetishist whose most prominent kill was his own music career, Ted Nugent, said, “if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” Nugent has endorsed Mitt Romney, who actively sought it.
(It’s a common tactic among the right commentariat that whenever a leftist says something idiotic, that every Democrat is assumed to support it unless they expressly condemn it, and are routinely called upon to denounce something someone said. This tactic, fortunately, works in two directions.)
When Hilary Rosen said something rude about Ann Romney, the White House immediately and unequivocally repudiated her words and sentiments.
When Ted Nugent and Foster Friess suggest that President Obama be killed, you get absolute silence from almost the entire Republican establishment – most notably Romney, who merely said we should all be “civil”, which misses the point that no one should be suggesting or hoping for anyone’s assassination in domestic politics – it’s beyond the pale.
Nugent’s never seen a gun he didn’t want to have sex with, and he’s never seen a thing he didn’t want to shoot – except the Viet Cong – so, the Secret Service is taking his threat rather seriously. The Republican mainstream’s lurch to the right has it coddling insane lunatics far more dangerous than any ACORN activist or other Fox News bogeyman.
Maybe someday the Republicans will walk back their tacit (sometimes vocal) support of nihilist terroristic statements from lunatics living on the right’s fringes, but apparently that day isn’t today.
//