Month: January 2008

151,000

by dday

NPR was trying to spin this as somehow a LOW number of Iraqi civilian casualties in the last three and a half years, because it comes in lower than the Lancet study. But it remains 150,000 human lives, dead, senselessly, for an unnecessary war of choice. And that only goes up to June 2006, and the authors of the study admitted they were unable to reach certain areas that were “too violent.”

Not to mention the 3,900-plus soldiers, including 9 in the last two days. And the numbers of wounded are incalculable.

All to remove a dictator who wasn’t nearly as efficient at killing Iraqis.

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Memo To The Next President Of The United States

by tristero

To: POTUS
From: Tristero

Subject: Returning Simple Common Sense To Government

Please immediately fire all those who came up with and approved this utterly dildo plan:

A old friend of my [sic] just deployed to Iraq. His unit will be carrying out a mission that involves psychological operations. Guess how many Arabic speakers are in the unit? None. Guess how many weeks of training they received on Iraq, Islam, and Arabic cultural sensitivities? NONE!! But we want these soldiers to go into a foreign combat theater and help shape the hearts and minds of a foreign people. This, in a nutshell, highlights why we are making so little progress in Iraq.

Oh, and while you’re at it, would you mind removing all that goddamn creationist bullshit from sale in the Grand Canyon? It’s kind of embarassing, you know.

Push It A Little

by digby

The progressive phone network, Working Assets, has put together a petition that’s worth signing. There is a moment here, where the media has egg on its face after wrongly calling the Democratic race over (although all the polls were dicey) and they are being criticized so heavily for their repulsive coverage in New Hampshire, that we might make a tiny impact.

It’s unlikely that they will change their tune (it’s ingrained village behavior) but it couldn’t hurt to put a little pressure on them right now, before they set the next nonsensical narrative, to try a little dry old-fashioned reporting for a while and give the voters a breather from their useless prognostication.

“Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?”

That was the headline of a Maureen Dowd column in today’s New York Times.

Hillary Clinton’s win in New Hampshire was shocking. The performance of the national press corps in the days preceding the vote, unfortunately, was not.

Journalists have been replaced by a punditocracy that makes its living (and gets its kicks) by perverting our democratic process. The misogyny that was unleashed by the media’s feeding frenzy on the video of an exhausted Clinton tearing up at a small New Hampshire roundtable of voters was just the tip of the iceberg.

To be clear, we are not endorsing any candidate. This is not about who we choose for president, but rather how we choose our leader. Voting based on sexist logic propagated by media monopolies is no way to select a candidate.

Sign our petition and tell the major media outlets: Stop pimping prejudice.

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Meanwhile, On The Court

by dday

Two major Supreme Court cases have been heard this week, and on each of them, it does not appear that the side of justice and the Constitution will be victorious. In the Kentucky case opposing the use of the lethal injection method in capital punishment, the conservative block was skeptical:

“This is an execution, not surgery,” Justice Antonin Scalia told the attorney who was representing two Kentucky inmates who say the use of the three-drug compound poses “an unnecessary risk of pain” to the dying man.

“Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?” Scalia continued. “We have approved electrocution. We have approved death by firing squad. I expect both of those have more possibilities of painful death than the protocol here.”

Yes, where the hell does that come from, this idea that punishment should not be cruel or unusual? What first-year law student pulled that out of their ass?

So, it appears that we’ll continue with a process that has been invalidated for the euthanizing of dogs.

In the other big case, the ruling on Indiana’s voter ID law, the Court again appeared unswayed by arguments about equal protection and the deliberate efforts to suppress voter turnout.

Only two Justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens — even hinted at the real-world fact that the photo ID law in Indiana is at the heart of a bitter, ongoing contest reaching well beyond Indiana. It is a dispute between Republicans worried over election fraud supposedly generated by Democrats to pad their votes, and Democrats worried over voter suppression supposedly promoted by Republicans to cut down their opposition. The abiding question at the end: can a decision be written that does not itself sound like a political, rather than a judicial, tract? Can the Court, in short, avoid at least the appearance of another Bush v. Gore? […]

It was apparent from the outset that the Court’s more conservative members were most interested in (a) finding that no one had a right to bring the constitutional challenge, at least at this stage, (b) putting off a challenge until the law has actually been enforced or at least until just before election day, or (c) salvaging as much as possible of the Indiana photo ID requirement on the theory that voter fraud is a problem that states have a legitimate right to try to solve. There was some hand-wringing, particularly by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., over how difficult it is for a judge to “draw the line” on when a voting requirement would or would not pass a constitutional test […]

In a notable way, therefore, it appeared that — once more — Justice Anthony M. Kennedy may hold the vote that controls the outcome. He displayed some skepticism about the challenge to Indiana’s law, somewhat impatiently suggesting at one point that the challengers would oppose any kind of voter ID requirement other than a simple signature match at the polling place. Kennedy seemed ultimately to be looking for ways to assure voters who demonstrably would be significantly burdened by the law that they could challenge it, perhaps even before election day came around.

Count me as not sanguine that Alito’s handwringing will hold up. And Kennedy appears lost.

As has been said many times, this is a solution without a problem. The Indiana secretary of state, when pressed, could not come up with one documented instance of voter fraud in his state. Never has so much attention been paid to a crime that has not been proven to be committed. The agenda is as transparent as tissue paper.

These two cases reveal just how partisan, and really cowardly, the Court has become, as the arguments showed an unwillingness to engage on the Constitutional questions, while looking to uphold the rulings on narrower, more technical grounds. This has been the Roberts Court agenda since he rose to Chief Justice.

The revolution that many commentators predicted when President Bush appointed two ultra-right-wing Supreme Court justices is proceeding with breathtaking impatience, and it is a revolution Jacobin in its disdain for tradition and precedent. Bush’s choices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, have joined the two previously most right-wing justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, in an unbreakable phalanx bent on remaking constitutional law by overruling, most often by stealth, the central constitutional doctrines that generations of past justices, conservative as well as liberal, had constructed.

That article by Ronald Dworkin is important. Go read it. (I’ll be here.)

And let’s be very clear about what each and every Republican candidate has said, with total unanimity, on the subject of judges.

Rudy Giuliani

“I will nominate strict constructionist judges with respect for the rule of law and a proven fidelity to the Constitution — judges in the mold of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts.”

Mitt Romney

“I think the justices that President Bush has appointed are exactly spot-on. I think Justice Roberts and Justice Alito are exactly the kind of justices America needs.”

Fred Thompson

“I like Roberts and Alito and Scalia and Thomas. One of the best things that I got to do as a private citizen was to help get Justice Roberts through the confirmation process… We’re in a heck of a lot better shape because of Roberts and Alito, and one more gain would put us in even better shape.”

Mike Huckabee

“My own personal hero on the court is Scalia, not least because I duck-hunted with him.”

John McCain

“One of our greatest problems in America today is justices that legislate from the bench, activist judges. I’m proud that we have Justice Alito and Roberts on the United States Supreme Court. … [When asked whether he admires any Supreme Court justice in particular] Of course, Antonin Scalia… I admire how articulate he is, but I also from everything I’ve seen admire Roberts as well.”

The two parties have more than a dime’s worth of difference on this, and the Supremes had better be right at the top of the issues that we talk about in the fall.

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Let’s Hope Not

by digby

Can I just say how skeptical I am that the Bradley Effect was a factor in yesterday’s primary? I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but the modern Democratic party showed nearly 25 years ago that being African American isn’t necessarily an impediment to winning primaries and I would hope it’s become even more accepted since then:

In the [1984]primaries, [Jesse] Jackson, who had been written off by pundits as a fringe candidate with little chance at winning the nomination, surprised many when he took third place behind Senator Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale, who eventually won the nomination. Jackson garnered 3.5 million votes and won five primaries and caucuses, including Louisiana, the District of Columbia, South Carolina, Virginia and one of two separate contests in Mississippi,

[…]

Four years later, in 1988, Jackson once again offered himself as a candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. This time, his successes in the past made him a more credible candidate, and he was both better financed and better organized. Although most people did not seem to believe he had a serious chance at winning, Jackson once again exceeded expectations as he more than doubled his previous results, prompting R.W. Apple of the New York Times to call 1988 “the Year of Jackson”. [13]

He captured 6.9 million votes and won 11 contests; seven primaries (Alabama, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Puerto Rico and Virginia) and four caucuses (Delaware, Michigan, South Carolina and Vermont). Jackson also scored March victories in Alaska’s caucuses and Texas’s local conventions, despite losing the Texas primary.[1] [2] Some news accounts credit him with 13 wins. [3] Briefly, after he won 55% of the vote in the Michigan Democrat caucus, he was considered the frontrunner for the nomination, as he surpassed all the other candidates in total number of pledged delegates.

As a matter of fact, certain pollsters and analysts, who shall remain nameless, have consistently posited that it was partly the Party’s willingness to elect Jackson in primaries that ruined everything for the Democrats — and we’ve been chasing white male voters like they’re the Holy Grail ever since. To be sure, Jackson won in places with a large African American population, but the only place where they saw the Bradley Effect (where people lied to pollsters) was possibly in Wisconsin, and that was simply that he lost by a larger number than predicted. (He also won in Delaware, Vermont and Alaska — but they were caucuses, which aren’t subject to the Bradley Effect with their non-secret balloting.)

There is a racist party in America, but it ain’t us, no matter how much the gasbags want to insist it is. It certainly could have happened, but considering that it didn’t develop in Tennessee with Harold Ford, it seems unlikely to me that it happened in New Hampshire with Obama. In New Hampshire, Obama met his expected numbers, so it wasn’t a matter of people lying before the contest. The only way the BE could have happened was if the late deciders were all lying and determined to vote against Obama but afraid to say so. That doesn’t seem likely to me.

In any case, I certainly hope it didn’t happen in a Democratic primary in 2008. That would be too depressing.

On a happier note, after looking these numbers up, I was startled to glance at the front page of the Los Angeles Times and the caption their photograph of Clinton:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton celebrates in New Hampshire, where she became the first woman to win a major party primary for President of the United States.

That seems like a little piece of history worth celebrating. At least it does to me. It’s pretty astonishing that it didn’t happen until 2008.

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The Tweety Effect And Other Things

by digby

From John Judis at TNR:

Here are the groups in which Obama enjoyed a significant margin over Clinton: men, young voters (18-24), voters making more than $50,000, voters with post-graduate education (a good indication of professionals), independents, first time voters, voters without religious affiliation, men without children and single men, voters who said they were getting ahead financially, voters who thought the war in Iraq was the most important issue, who wanted change, and who wanted someone who could unite the country.

Here are Clinton’s groups: women, particularly married women, voters over 40, voters making less than $50,000, voters without a college degree, union voters, Democrats, Catholics (an important constituency for the Democrats), people very worried about the economy, voters who thought the economy was most important, voters who valued experience, and voters who evaluated candidates on whether they “care about people like me.”

There were anomalies. Voters who thought the war in Iraq was the most important issue favored Obama by 46 to 33 percent, while voters who favored our withdrawing all troops “as soon as possible” favored Clinton by 40 to 36 percent. That may reflect Clinton’s higher rating as a potential commander-in-chief, or it may just be a statistical anomaly. Clinton’s support by 38 to 20 percent over Obama on the question of which “one of these candidates “cares about people like me” is also interesting, and suggests that Obama has a different kind of charisma than Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. This was, too, Edwards’ strongest category – the only one where he won more support than his rivals.

Here’s this from Yglesias. I’ll let you all sort all that out.

It’s worth noting that the youth vote was up in New Hampshire, it just didn’t break quite so much in favor of Obama this time. That’s probably an organizational difference of some sort. The big news is that 61% of young voters participated in the Democratic primary vs. 29% 39% in the Republican.

I think it’s also worth noting that both candidates show strengths that can help them in the general and weaknesses that will hurt them. Married women have been a GOP strength in recent years, so maybe Hillary helps bring them over. Obviously, the younger voters are a huge benefit for Obama. As far as I can tell, they are both going to have problems with rural voters and traditional white men — especially if McCain gets the nod. It’s all very interesting.

And, just as an aside, am I the only person who wants to shoot herself in the face if she hears the word “change” from any of the candidates (and the media) one more time? Time to “change” the station guys. (I suggest “the American people want to “open a new door” or “take a different path.”) A commenter yesterday brought up this classic sit-com moment:

“Cheers: One for the Road

[Frasier is helping Woody prepare a speech]

Woody Boyd: “I believe I was elected to the City Council as an agent of change. And I fully intend to live up to that pledge: I will make change.”
Dr. Frasier Crane: Change ‘change’ to ‘a change’.
Woody Boyd: A what?
Dr. Frasier Crane: You see, in here, you make ‘change’. There, you make ‘a change’. So, just make the change. Change ‘make change’ to ‘make *a* change’.
Dr. Frasier Crane: [frustrated and yells] Oh, just change it!
[Frasier storms off]
Woody Boyd: [to Norm] Boy, I think I see why Dr. Crane never cures anybody.

Also, to those who say that there was something wrong with women who may have voted for Hillary Clinton due to the Tweety Effect, keep in mind that only a few people have voted for anyone so far. Iowa is just Iowa. New Hampshire is just New Hampshire. Now we’re going deep south, we’re going to the Florida polyglot, we’re going urban, we’re going west and then we’re going Big Blue and each candidate is going to have to make his and her case to those slices of the electorate.

A political campaign is a process. I have often voted in primaries for people I didn’t think would win, but because I wanted to make a statement about their signature issue or effect the campaign as much as the candidate. It’s the only real voice we have. Primaries occur at a time when the agenda and the platform are being sorted out as well as the candidates. It’s where you can vote your heart. Once the parties pick their candidates, then you have to think about strategic voting and weigh your choices in terms of the other side. (I’m not saying electability isn’t important, just that primaries are the one time when citizens can make an impact on their party — and, nowadays, the media and the culture at large.)

If both of these candidates are going to win in the general, it’s good for them to have to fight for a bit. That’s what primaries are for. I hate it when they are coronations because citizens never get a chance to shape the race. It just happens and you’re stuck with it. This is good for the Democrats. We have to stop being afraid to fight and recover. It’s how you develop the hide you need to take on the Republicans.

And even if the Tweety Effect is overblown (which it probably is) it’s good for the media to take a look at their coverage. Sadly, it seems Tweety himself has immediately embraced the Bradley Effect theory, which means he’s now going to be flogging the idea every day on his show that a black man can’t win. It makes me want to defy him again with the Tweety Blowback Effect, which has white voters coming out in droves to prove that his damned Bradley Effect is bullshit. Jesus… what an ass.

Update: The Hillary bashing continues apace by the newest op-ed columnist for the paper of record. (I suspect he and Maureen Dowd got together over apple martinis last night and compared bon mots.) Apparently, the cold and calculating robot is also the first lady of the American Theatre. Does this make sense? If she were that great an actress, I think she would be a helluva lot better on the stump than she is, don’t you? Wouldn’t she be giving the soaring speeches and choking up on cue every day if she could? Please.

I wrote a long piece about this a couple of months ago, which I ended with this:

I wonder if Chris Matthews realizes that every time he or one of his fellow gasbags blithely reveal their sexist lizard brains like this, another little feminist gets her (or his) wings.

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Here’s that Rachel Maddow moment

by dday

…that I mentioned last night:

Brilliant. You can hear the anger in Tweety’s voice.

Markos:

The more she’s attacked on personal grounds, the more sympathy that real person will generate, the more votes she’ll win from people sending a message to the media and her critics that they’ve gone way over the line of common decency. You underestimate that sympathy at your own peril. If I found myself half-rooting for her given the crap that was being flung at her, is it any wonder that women turned out in droves to send a message that sexist double-standards were unacceptable? Sure, it took one look at Terry McAuliffe’s mug to bring me back down to earth, but most people don’t know or care who McAuliffe is. They see people beating the shit out of Clinton for the wrong reasons, they get angry, and they lash back the only way they can — by voting for her.

In a way, this is ALSO the media deciding the nominee, in reverse. Which is also a bad thing. But it’s important to at least try and deliver the message that the punditocracy is more reviled than the politicians in this country.

Of course, it didn’t work.

Update: from digby (sorry to intrude)

In case anyone thinks Maddow (and TPM) were off base, check this out from Media Matters.

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A Mighty Howl

by tristero

Bob Somerbyy is a treasure. Oh yes, Bob’s howled at me on occasion. I’ve never taken it personally (and he’s also said some kind things). Or rather, I’ve always taken it personally, as a kick in the rear to read carefully what I’m saying for implications I’ve missed or discounted. Even when I conclude that he’s wrong (dammit, Bob, of course I knew Bush was joking about that fish even if I didn’t say so!), he has made me think harder about writing about politics and its effect. Bob is right: the political discourse is so twisted it often takes an effort of will to untwist it. Even if you’re looking out for it.

Which is all prelude to saying that the problem with this quote got past me the first time I read it despite it all. The issue is Clinton’s “likeability” vs. Obama. The speaker is a Democratic strategist named Peter Fenn and he’s talking to Tucker Carlson:

[Obama] is very likeable. He has a great smile. He has a great way about him. I tell you, I like Barack Obama. Everybody is liking him. But the problem is you haven’t—you haven’t been—he hasn’t been bashed for fifteen years by the Republicans and Fox News.

Had this not been part of a Howler post, I never would have thought twice about that last sentence. Everyone knows this is true. Clinton has been mercilessly bashed by Republicans and their major media outlet.

Except it isn’t true. Or rather, it’s so far from the whole truth that it grossly distorts what has actually been going on all these years. Somerby incomparably reminds us:

As he spoke, Fenn was appearing on MSNBC, a cable channel on which Clinton has been mercilessly bashed for the past many years. Chris Matthews, the network’s top political figure, has displayed a loathing for Hillary Clinton (and for Bill Clinton and Al Gore before her) that surpasses the boundaries of comprehension; Matthews and his NBC buddies are major opinion leaders of the mainstream, insider press corps. Meanwhile, Carlson himself has often spoken about Clinton’s castrating ways. (And about what a fake, phony asshole Gore is.) In this conduct, MSNBC has reflected the Clinton-Gore hatred that has driven so much of the mainstream press elite over the past sixteen years.

But so what? Fenn, explaining why Clinton isn’t liked, says she’s been beat up by Fox!

And there you see, in all its glory, a central deception of the past sixteen years—a lie that has been handed to voters by a long string of liberals and Dems. To this day, major Dems and major career liberals pretend that it was the “right-wing machine” which led the attacks on the Clintons and Gore. [emphasis added]

He’s absolutely right. But really now, what does it matter? To be charitable towards poor Mr. Fenn, it’s perhaps an error of omission. After all, Fox represents Absolute Evil and the networks aren’t in that league, right?

No. That’s simply not so. And if you think so, take a trip through the Howler’s archives and marvel at the unbelievably nasty and gratuitous lies and distortions in the coverage of Gore, of the Clintons, and of other major Democrats from the major networks, from the major papers, from media outlets who claim to disavow Fox’s biased agenda but whose hateful coverage of leading Democrats is just as bad.

It’s true. Fox is not the problem but only part of it. Whatever the reasons, the major media hated/still hate Gore, hated Kerry, hate the Clintons. By all means read all about it on the Howler. Follow the links. Read what the non-Fox media, the “better” outlets have said and done. That is why Somerby won’t tolerate Fenn’s failure to include the mainstream in the list of Clinton bashers:

If the mainstream press corps turns on the next Dem nominee, will voters understand what they’re seeing? Or will they assume that, since it’s not Fox, the trashing must be well-founded?

The dead of Iraq are in the ground because of the story we liberals wouldn’t tell. Peter Fenn seems like a nice guy. Last night, within the context of insider Washington, he did keep himself highly likeable.

I don’t know the answer to Bob’s rhetorical question, whether viewers today -given the amount of pushback from blogs and a less turgid Democratic party – will think bashing from the mainstream has some foundation. But if I had to answer it, I’d guess they will assume the bashing must have some basis. But even if every reader and viewer in America was savvy enough never to be taken in by the media’s unprofessional coverage of the Clintons and other Democrats, it makes no difference. The media have a job to do and that is to provide us with dispassionate reporting. And, as we’ve recently seen, they are once again failing to do so, acting like sulking children. As they have done for years and years and years.

Again, Somerby is right. We should howl bloody murder at the way the media covers the candidates. The press needs to grow up, stop their addiction to Republican talking points and their lies. They need to report; how the candidates make them feel is, or rather should be, of no one’s concern except to their mommies and daddies.

[UPDATE: Oh, man, if ever I needed something to prove my point above, here it is, courtesy Duncan:

As my somewhat artistocratic aunt once said during a visit, as her ancient hound began avidly licking the intimate parts of our dog, I really don’t know what to say.]

Things That Make You Go Hmm…

by tristero

Wall Street Journal January 8, 2008 :

“Over the past 12 months, U.S. troops in Iraq have risen every day and gone to work, dangerous work, implementing Gen. David H. Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy: The surge. Across the political spectrum, observers have announced the surge a success.

McClatchy News January 8 2008

Baghdad

– Around 7 a.m., gunmen assassinated an officer of the ministry of interior “ Mohammad Aziz Al-Gatia in his car in Zafrania neighborhood ( east Baghdad) .

– Around 7 30 a.m., gunmen assassinated the deputy of Mansour taxes department in Diragh district in Mansour neighborhood ( west Baghdad).

– Around 11 a.m., an IED was planted inside the car of the head of Yarmouk council ( Dr.Falah Mansour Hussein ) who was killed in the incident with two other people who were injured .

– Around 3 p.m., a suicide bomber wearing a vest filled with explosives targeted a police check point at Al-Medain district ( south of Baghdad) killing one policeman and injuring three ( one policeman and two civilians).

– Around 3 p.m., two mortars hit Medain district ( south of Baghdad ) injuring 2 people.

– Around 3 .30 p.m., a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Rashid camp neighborhood ( south east Baghdad) . No casualties reported.

– Police found 5 unidentified dead bodies in the following neighborhood in Baghdad: ( 3 ) dead bodies were found in west Baghdad ( Karkh bank ) ; 1 in Doura , 1 in Bayaa and Amil . While ( 2 ) were found in east Baghdad ( Risafa bank) ; 1 in Ubaidi and 1 in Fudhailiyah.

Diyala

– Tuesday morning, a roadside bomb exploded at a house in Jalwla ( east of Baquba) killing a woman who was the owner of the house.

Oh, and McClatchy cautions us, “This is not a comprehensive list of all violence in Iraq, much of which goes unreported.”

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle Eastern Affairs Mark Kimmitt January 8, 2008 :

2008 and beyond will be a success, the surge will be a success, if the gains in security can be translated into gains in stability…if I had to put a number to it, maybe it’s three in 10, maybe it’s 50-50, if we play our cards right.

And of course, “we” will play our cards right.

One final link:US military deaths in Iraq total 3910 as of January 6, 2008. I have to confess that I thought that eventually I’d get somewhat used to the rising toll, but I haven’t. Every death – no matter the nationality – makes me as angry at the sheer insane stupidity of this war as the first.

Ain’t No Hollaback Girl

by digby

Well, it looks like the beeyotch is back and we have a race on our hands. And say what you will, it’s a helluva upset from what we thought was happening just this morning. I have no idea whey the polls were so wrong, but I’m sure we’ll hear plenty of theories over the next few days.

It’s going to be a rough and tumble campaign and we’ll all have to stay mad each other for a while, but it’s good for Democrats to play hard in the playoffs in preparation for the series. They need to be tested and vetted beyond Iowa and New Hampshire. And hey, people like me might even have our primary votes matter this time out!

And nothing could be more satisfying than to see the media and the polls shown to be so off and the voters assert themselves to prove them wrong. All the sickening media sexism we saw over the past couple of days didn’t work and all liberals of good conscience should be relieved by that.

Here’s Tom Brokaw:

BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?

MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.

BROKAW: No, no we don’t stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they’re saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this.

But we don’t have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed. And trying to stampede in effect the process.

Look, I’m not just picking on us, it’s part of the culture in which we live these days. I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding, in many cases, as we learned in New Hampshire when they went into the polling booth today or in the last three days. They were making decisions very late.

I don’t know about you but I really don’t like these assholes telling me what I think.

Update: Pam Spaulding, in a comment over at Pandagon, on the so-called Bradley Effect:

Oh, I just heard NBC’s Brian Williams bring up “The Bradley effect,” (aka the Wilder effect) … I’m not sure that it applies here, given the complicating factor of gender bias, and what we can now call “The Tweety Effect,” where the misogyny of a talking head in the MSM so enrages a demographic that they go out and vote in a manner that will put egg on the face of the talking head.

I dearly hope the Bradley Effect didn’t happen but I think the Tweety Effect might have.

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