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March 06, 2012

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nancy

I agree that Ohio will be the story. Three days ago Kasich intended to turn away disaster funds for responding to the tornado damage in Ohio -- he may have reversed himself yesterday when officials in Cincinnati made it clear they would assist even without guarantee of FEMA reimbursement. In tiny Moscow, Ohio, the small machine shop where my brother worked with a four-man crew was flattened. Not terribly political, the bro will be remembering this next fall. Until then, he'll be trying to figure out what to do about his tools which are nowhere to be found.

These places in southern Ohio are filled with people struggling to stay above water and Kasich wants to Tea Party grandstand? Good luck Governor. 'Hole in the soul' is the phrase I believe. Ohioans seem to be getting the message. City of Cincinnati will help you out while your Governor essentially says 'tough luck.' Another GOP winning strategy. Goons.

Sir Charles

The Kasich thing is unbelievable. I have literally never seen anything like it.

With 67% of the vote in, Santorum is up by 14,000 votes in Ohio.

kathy a.

jeez, ohio. and i cannot believe santorum is even competitive, anywhere. he has no chance of winning the general, but damn.

kathy a.

nancy, hope your brother and his are ok. hope they end up with the help they need.

nancy

Sorry I didn't make myself clear. Primary results in Ohio right now should be somewhat discounted I think -- I can't see any of these people capturing the general in Ohio. Not any more, by the party of 'We have way more than we need. And too bad you don't.'

Corvus9

Damn it, you know, this last election cycle has really driven home how powerful and dangerous governors can be for the citizens of their state. I have been really thankful lately that in the last election our Dem Governor got election while our Repub Senate candidate was elected. (of course, our Republican Senator preceded to have a stroke which I have seen almost no one notice). Before now I have not really considered how important the Statehouse was.

Sir Charles

Man, Santorum is hanging on by a thread -- but it seems likely that Romney will overtake him in the end.

Santorum has a lead of 3,000 votes with 86% of the vote counted.

nancy,

I, too, wish your brother well.

If no Republican can carry Ohio in the general then the Republicans cannot win the election. As I noted before (and probably will many many times again), no Republican has ever won the presidency without carrying Ohio and I am pretty sure that the electoral math remains the same.

Santorum must be cursing Gingrich, who is taking 15% of the vote in Ohio, and, probably deprived Santorum of a win in Georgia by not getting out of the race. Gingrich is performing pretty poorly everywhere else.

Sir Charles

Corvus,

The other thing about governors (and state houses) is redistricting. Had the Dems not gotten killed in 2010 we would have a far better chance of taking back the House this time. But we are going to get gerrymandered to death this time around.

Fortunately 2020 will be a presidential year, which means we will have far better turn out and much better results in the next round of redistricting.

nancy

Thanks all -- I'll pass it on. He's the forever-struggling and admirable working man. Friday, when the tornado hit, was a down day off. Normally he'd have been in that shop.

Corvus9

At this point I am happy Ginrich is still in this. I think in many way Romney is a weaker general election candidate than Santorum. He is an even bigger charisma void, and the positions he is being forced to take this primary will make him just as unlikable as Santorum, plus the flip-flop factor... At this point I just want S and G to draw out the primary as long as possible to damage Romney for the general, so Obama can run circles of charisma around him.

Sir Charles

Corvus,

I think you might be right.

And Romney now has to go to Mississippi and Alabama -- places where he is likely to finish third, which I think will be one more black eye for his campaign.

KN

I boldly predict that Ron Paul will win Alaska, he showed up there yesterday.

For the rest of it I am unable to do political calculus. So I will simply say that the more clowns stay aboard the clown car the better. I'm not sure clown is the right characterization as some of these creaters are very funny, well, actually, none of them are funny. But I do think the longer it drags out the better overall for the dems come Nov.

nancy - sorry to hear that your brother's shop was destroyed, that is a hard blow and the loss of the tools, well they may be impossible to replace with items of the same quality. I hope he comes through in the end.

I cannot fathom what logic must be operating for the Gov. to not declare a disaster. Does he not have a dictionary? Does he not understand the principle of distributed burden in such situations? Is he just mean spirited? Or is it that his brain is so adled by the feverish contemplation of pandering to his narrow base that he thinks none of his other constituents will notice that he just gave the shaft to a small number who were very roughly handled and lucky to be alive.

I think one of the key things in all of this neocon thinking centers on this idea of privatization. Republicans want to privatize as much as government as they can because when government provides services they don't do so for profit. All that uncaptured profit gives them the willies.

I haven't seen much in the way of turnout numbers for these elections. I think in a sense those are more telling for the general than who wins where. Turnout on the order of 5% - 10% of registered voters would be a good sign.

I will not couch this as a prediction, but shall we say a hint of an omen. The three solid years of animus towards Obama was a major blunder by the GOPers. You can get your base riled up, perhaps you can keep them riled up for a while, but to sustain a relentlessly negative negative drumbeat for so long has got to fatigue even the fanatics.

I know, I should stick to the optics in my microscopes.

Pass the bottle.

KN

Do I know how to do a double negative or what?

Corvus9

The hilarious thing about this race is that as soon as Romney starts to build some inevitability momentum back up, he has to go to a state that is just wrong for him. Look at his huge delegate lead! Oh no wait he just lost three straight southern states.

The weird thing about there being four candidates still in the race (I think by Super Tuesday there was just Obama and Clinton left, right?) is that while it seems to be making Romney inevitable (no consolidation of the anti-Romney vote) it also destroys any aura of inevitability. Four guys still think they have a shot! It must really be up for grabs! So while Romney is probably going to win because he has three opponents splitting the vote, he also looks incredibly weak, because each of these guys still think they can beat him.

By the way, I don't think anyone has talked about it around here, (and if so forgive me) but Arpaio went birther recently, and he is a wingnut folk hero. That has to just be a ticking time bomb for any Republican campaign. Many members of the village have been perfectly willing to describe birtherism as racist, and if a candidate fails to extricate themselves from such talk, the Village response could be brutal.

low-tech cyclist

What Corvus said: while Romney's nomination is more inevitable than it was two days ago, there's no question that he's looking weak, having to outspend his opponents several times over to squeak out wins in states like Michigan and Ohio, and winning a rather underwhelming victory in Virginia, where two of his three opponents weren't even on the ballot.

Santorum's and Newt's wins last night are more than enough to keep them in the race a bit longer.

The clown car rolls on. :^)

oddjob

Will Evangelicals Vote for Mitt?

That really is the question. So far it appears the answer is a firm "No."

Hat tip, Sully.

oddjob

I daresay the reason for the underwhelming win in Virginia was the evangelical Christian antipathy to Romney.

low-tech cyclist

oddjob - can't seem them voting for Ron Paul, either.

Most evangelicals will vote for Mitt in the fall; they'll largely find a Mormon more palatable than a black Kenyan Muslim socialist.

I think Mitt will hurt GOP prospects in two ways: first, a lack of enthusiasm for him will translate into a weak grassroots organization - fewer people working phone banks, knocking on doors, giving rides to the polls. This will translate into a reduced vote among people who would vote Republican if you can get them to the polls, but aren't very politically interested.

The second thing is that a small fraction of evangelicals who would have otherwise voted Republican will still find the idea of voting for a Mormon to be more than they can stomach, and they will stay home.

I think the first group will be more significant than the second. I suspect that most people in the second group will be from states we're not going to win anyway.

oddjob

can't seem them voting for Ron Paul, either

If feeling compelled to vote, sooner Paul than Romney.

oddjob

(Virginia with either Gingrich or Santorum on the ballet would have been a much more interesting primary.)

oddjob

(ballot)

Joe S

A couple things on gerrymandering: Most of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio were in complete Republican control in 2000 and Texas had a mid-decade redistricting, so it's going to be hard to get more Republican than those districts were. On the other hand, California and Illinois are much more Dem friendly, and the maps were specifically gerrymandered on behalf of the Dems. The 2010 wipeout sucked, but it mostly froze GOP advantages into place (a stalemate instead of a Democratic advantage).

Second, and more importantly, does anybody have good recommendations for cheap, good bars (with good bar food) in D.C. ?? It must be close to the Metro line (preferably the yellow line- I need to get to the airport quickly). I got out of my hearing early yesterday (1:30 p.m.) and had until 9:00 in D.C. I was all prepared for a long afternoon of drinking beer and eating bbq, and it cost me $40.00.

oddjob

(History trivia, apropos of nothing:

yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Nabisco's introduction of the Oreo cookie.)

jeanne marie

oddjob

Ballet? (visions of sugar plums danced in my head)

Oreo? Sunday Morning had an interesting piece on the Oreo this past week. Did you know that the erstwhile copy-cat Hydrox cookie preceded the Oreo by two years?

oddjob

Yes, I did know that. I also prefer the Hydrox (but being overweight and mildly diabetic I abstain from cookies generally - I have absolutely no self-control when it comes to cookies - I don't "eat" cookies so much as inhale them when they're in front of me... ;) )

nancy

Hmm. Are you a slut?

oddjob

Not being female, the answer (according to linked flow chart) would be "no". ;)

kathy a.

my dad, the connoisseur in these matters, also preferred hydrox, although he was not picky enough to turn down an oreo. girl scout thin mints are the drug of choice for most of the clan, though.

nancy -- HA!

Paula B

Another vote here for GSA mints! Yummm.

So, if the candidates are, in fact, Romney and Obama, the evangelicals are left out in the cold. Too bad they have such a hard time accepting the fact that they're minority in this country and can't call the shots, just like orthodox Jews, Seventh Day Adventists, UUs, etc.

jeanne marie

Slut? And proud of it.

I'm not much of an Oreo (nor Hydrox) fan, but GS Thin Mints. Oh yeah!

Hubby's a die-hard Chips Ahoy inhaler.

jeanne marie

oddjob - maybe this is a Spartacus moment?

We are all sluts now.

oddjob

Well, yes, the thin mints are really quite addictive.....

oddjob

Since I'm a dedicated inhaler of even store brand cheapo stuff I don't really count, but if you're going to talk about drugs of choice, in the chocolate chip category my particular favorite has always been Keebler's Chips Deluxe chocolate chip cookies.

nancy

jeanne marie -- We are all sluts now.

Rather what I thought. If the answer to the sex for non-procreative purposes question is in the affirmative.

After the recent pastoral letter on such matters was read out, in a private meeting, my husband asked the bishop how the Church managed to justify the use of Viagra with regard to natural law. The bishop maintained that there's not a problem because Viagra is pro-life -- used for making more babies.

So now you know.

Paula B

clever tweet from pourmecoffee:
Playing Romney Monopoly. Bought up all the properties, fired the people working in hotels, and turned everything in for cash

Sir Charles

Joe,

Sorry I missed your comment. My office internet was down all day. (I actually got some painfully boring work done -- although I couldn't get email all day, which is a bit frustrating.

Cheap is not really DC's best attribute, but if I were going to hang out for a short while along the yellow line, I would opt for the area around Gallery Place -- where the red and yellow lines meet. I like Matchbox and Zengo, which are both right around 7th and H. There's a boatload of choices in that area and then it's a quick ride to the airport.

Next time you are in town, I'd love to give you a quick tour.

Sir Charles

I have a serious weakness for thin mints.

I can remember consuming an entire sleeve of them one day while writing a brief. Mmmmmmmmmm.

kathy a.

We are all sluts now. exactly.

there is even a connection with GS cookies! not long ago, there was an effort to boycott my beloved thin mints because a troop in colorado admitted a young transgender girl, and also some noise because a group of high school girl scouts had PP come do a presentation. this is part of how i ended up buying 16 boxes of cookies so far this year. (the other part is my firm belief that one must keep some boxes hidden for emergency purposes later in the year.)

i'm a little speechless about the viagra. especially since fertility treatments (like IVF) are considered a problem by the bishops. further proof that a bunch of old theoretically-celibate dudes should not be getting all up inside women's lady parts.

kathy a.

sir charles recommended matchbox to me when i was getting my daughter settled for an internship. it was great! easy walking from metro. but not really what i'd call cheap. (ymmv -- daughter, sensing she'd better get it while she could, ordered the most expensive entree on the menu...) there are a bunch of decent and reasonably casual restaurant/bars right there, though.

nancy

KN -- Do I know how to do a double negative or what?

Missed that earlier. :)

kathy -- The tag line in the Cialis television ads goes something like 'when the moment is right...'. I'm pretty damn sure that reference isn't to ovulation. Uh. Making more babies? Love to see the stats on that.

Joe S

Sir C and kathy- I went to this place called Hilltop BBQ Market, and I've got to say, the bbq was really good. Smoky brisket with no sauce, tasty sausages spiced with jalapeno, and lots of Shiner beer. The country music wasn't too bad either (old school, very little modern country). The funny thing was I saw Charlie Cook (from the Cook Political Report) on the street and introduced myself. He recommended the place, and I've got to say, it was good bbq. It was just pricey.

nancy

Hendrik Hertzberg on the the Rush. 'Winger as Wanker'.

Ha.

Sir Charles

Joe,

Washington has the greatest unexciting celeberatti anywhere in the universe. I find myself saying things like I saw Alice Rivlin this afternoon. Or I was out walking Stanley and ran into Eleanor Clift. Or Chris Matthews. Or Richard Wolf. My neighborhood is like a who's who of who?

Where is Hilltop BBQ Market? I am a sucker for barbecue anytime.

nancy,

Great piece. I am pissed at Kinsley's defense of that scumbag.

Joe S

Sorry, Hill Country BBQ is the exact name: 410 7th Street, NW. It's right by the Navy Memorial and FTC- Near the Chinatown Yellow Line Stop.

Sir Charles

Joe,

That's the neighborhood I was recommending -- a couple of blocks east from the places I named.

It's funny -- when I first moved here thirty years ago that was a pretty rough area loaded with pornographic book stores and low rent shops; although it also had the city's best rock club, the 9:30 club, which was at 930 F Street.

It's been totally transformed since they built the arena down there. One of the things I like about that area is how totally integrated it is. There's more mixing there than just about any place in the city. (Yglesias lives right around there by the way.)

beckya57

Another vote here for GSA thin mints--my husband and I have already polished off the first box.

Mitt is still the inevitable nominee, but this primary season is wounding him badly. All of his most unattractive aspects have been on display. The only way Obama loses is if (1) Europe craters and takes us down with them, or (2) an Iran-Israel war breaks out and sends oil prices skyrocketing (though I think some of that possibility has been priced in already).

We're in mourning here; we had to put down one of our dogs yesterday. He was at the end of a good long life, but it still hurts.

nancy

Sir C -- Agreed -- Sometimes Kinsley is too cynically amused for his own good. Now that he's living in Seattle, all is more abstract and distant perhaps? If it is he should pipe down. Or be a bit more circumspect anyway.

Even the odious Krauthammer has gotten off the boat with this nonsense.

Finally, the less said about contraception the better, a lesson Santorum refused to learn. It’s a settled question. The country has no real desire for cringe-inducing admonitions from politicians about libertinism and procreative (vs. pleasurable) sex.

Becky -- Oh no. So sorry. Hugs. Gosh, do we love our doggers.


kathy a.

becky, so sorry about the pup. it is so hard to lose a beloved pet, and a little extra-creepy when we have to be the grownups and decide that more suffering is not the answer. xoxo

nancy, i never thought i'd be in favor of anything the odious k wrote, but really. this is a mark of how far off the whole contraception foo-fah is.

Sir Charles

becky,

Also really sorry about the dog.

I live in fear of such a day.

jeanne marie

becky, extra hugs, sorry about your pup

Joe S

Sir C, that neighborhood is really neat. Maybe someday I'll see Yglesias down there. Although my desire to speak to him has been lessened greatly by his friendliness to libertarianism. In actuality, I'm starting to think of Yglesias and Ezra Klein like U2 after the Joshua Tree. They both put out good (and sometimes even great) stuff after becoming part of the corporate media, but quite a bit of the edge which made their work so attractive (prior to hitting it big) was gone.

Sir Charles

Joe,

One thing that Yglesias and I do share is our desire to see greater density in DC and better land use around Metro areas. It is very frustrating to live in this NIMBY paradise. The city could easily grow by tens of thousands and greatly enhance its tax base if we could just build five to ten story buildings in places where we currently have one to two story structures.

My favorite U2 record is actually Achtung Baby, which is post-Joshua Tree and I think the record that features both their best songwriting and most sonically compelling stuff.

I do miss Ezra and Matt having their own blogs. I understand why they moved into the big time, but I do feel like it was a loss.

Joe S

Sir C, my favorite U2 album is Achtung Baby as well. And I really liked the Joshua Tree. But the youthful, intensity that made every piece of work by U2 so good just wasn't quite there.

Sir Charles

Joe,

I liked Achtung Baby precisely because it was an adult record and lacked some of the ingenuousness of their earlier efforts, which I sometimes found cloying. I loved songs like "You're So Cruel" "Until the End of the World" "One" and "The Fly" ("it's no secret ambition bites the nails of success"), which were far more cynical and old than anything they had written to that date (and possibly since) -- and "Zoo Station" really sounded like nothing else they had ever done. I give Brian Eno a lot of credit too.

It was an older sounding band and I was (what I thought to be) an older listener -- on the cusp of 32 and on the verge of partner status. (I'm younger than that now.)

Sir Charles

Actually Daniel Lanois probably deserves more credit than Eno.

big bad wolf

i hate to give lanois credit for much of anything. his work with dylan drives me crazy. oh mercy could have been great and time out of mind might have been one of the best records of all time (the songwriting is spectacular; here is where dylan became something much more important than the voice of a generation---he became a voice that will resonate in 100 years as folk song, a voice of love and aloneness and quotidianness and of making meaning temporarily and knowingly out of meaninglessness). lanois, to my ears, made all that drag a bit.

that said, achtung baby is a fine, fine album. i still like the early albums better and i like all that you can't leave behind better also. bono just ain't deep, imo. he works best with his heart and emotions on his sleeve.

missouri is a disturbed state. not cause they want to put rush in the hall of fame. of course i disagree with that, though i recognize his significance in fusing sports radio and politics (KO remains grateful and equally ponderous, if much more right) but becasue HOW THE HELL CAN CHUCK BERRY NOT BE IN THE STATE HALL OF FAME? T.s. eliot too, but he's difficult and unlikeable. well, chuck is too, but only personally, nt artistically

Sir Charles

Doesn't T.S. Eliot belong in the London Hall of Fame?

I think you can not only take the boy out of Missouri, you can take the Missouri out of the boy.

Sir Charles

bbw,

I was just commenting on Dylan's amazing and continuous excellence as a songwriter to someone yesterday. And his underappreciated greatness as a melody writer, and how he had moved out of his comfort zone numerous times over the course of his career.

beckya57

Thanks everyone for the condolences. He'll be missed. Our other dog seems to be handling it better than we are. Sir C, I think all of us pet lovers live in fear of this day, but we all know it will come someday, and I think that gives the relationship a special poignancy. We enter into it knowing that one day we'll lose it and it'll hurt like hell, and we know we need to treasure every day we have with them.

Achtung Baby is my favorite U2 album too, for similar reasons to Sir C's. It was also a more musically complex work than its predecessors. I have to agree with Joe that there isn't anything with the anguished intensity of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" on it though. I like "No Time on the Horizon" better than a lot of people did, though I'd never claim it was one of their top albums, and there's some good stuff on "All You Can't Leave Behind" too.

I'm going to go look at Tbogg's Thursday Basset Blogging now and see if I can do it without crying.

Joe S

Sir C, Achtung Baby is my favorite U2 album as well now. However, the sheer youthful energy of Boy, War, and (to a lesser extent) The Unforgettable Fire had a different and more assertive and more earnest feel and seemed to create a more intense relationship with the Fan. Prior to the Joshua Tree, U2 was an intense post punk band that played in smaller clubs. After the Joshua Tree, U2 was an international sensation. As a teenager, the "in your face" qualities of U2 were gone as of the Joshua Tree. Artistically, you're right, Actung Baby is the best album U2 ever produced. Emotionally, though, the band lost something.

Similarly, it seems with Yglesias and Klein, they lost something when they stopped punching the establishment in the wake of the Iraq debacle. The way they both approached the financial crisis lacked the passion and sarcasm that they're writing used to have. I read Klein's defense of Cato and he literally said ". . .I'm a technocrat." That kind of sums it all up.

Joe S

bbw- I have to say that I love Lanois and I do love Time out of Mind as well. Sonically, Lanois is just a genius as far as I'm concerned. I think Lanois takes sounds which hit emotive points beautifully, and when you mix the poetry of Dylan's lyrics (also beautifully designed to cause emotional reactions), the lyrics and music amplified each other.

If any of you are interested, I've been listening to "Tower of Song" a tribute to Leonard Cohen (I picked it up for $4.00 at the used record store). There's a great cover of "Hallelujah" by Bono which has a lot in common with the work on Actung Baby. Cohen's a great poet, but I've always felt his voice took away from the beauty of his words. Having good singers do Leonard Cohen songs really turns them into masterpieces where the music and words amplify one another.

jeanne marie

Joe - I am with you on Lanois! Especially mid 80s U2, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou, and Robbie Robertson. Lanois' "Acadie" is one of my favorite albums.

big bad wolf

i'm not against lanois. he has done fine work with gabriel and U2, and while i wasn't sure of the robbie robertson at first, over time i think he got more out of roberstson than was there. i just don't think lanois works for everyone, and, especially for dylan. lanois is, for me, too atmospheric and dylan, i think, not only doesn't need that, he is hampered by it. dylan i'm listening right now to "trying to get to heaven before they close the door" and thinking that the vocal is a tremendous, evocative, understanding, weary yet unresigned and all those swirls and swells under the vocal sound like they are from a different song, a song about a different guy than the one whose story dylan is telling. or maybe i think that dylan is the book and lanois is the movie version. there have been a lot of great movies made out of so-so books, but few great movies out of great books. dylan's a great book.

big bad wolf

one more example (i don't expect to persuade just to talk; we all agree essentially on the repubicans are insane and dangerous and mean topics so there aint so much for me to discuss about): "most of the time." on "oh mercy," it barely registered. on "tell tale signs" (what a great title), it struck me as affecting and well-drawn. it may be that lanois also produced the tell tale signs version, but if so it, for me, illustrates how dylan doesn't need the framing lanois prefers.

beckya57

Rush may actually be going down. His advertisers are deserting him in droves, and it seems to be affecting right-wing talk radio more generally. We can only hope.

My husband and I can't believe how much the GOP is imploding. We've got Palin saying Obama wants to take us back to before the Civil War, Bachmann claiming that the ACA won't allow insurance coverage for more than one child per family, etc., etc. I think they're smelling defeat, and are getting even more insane in response.

If anyone is interested in seeing pix of our recently departed Molokai, go to tbogg's blog and click on this week's Thursday Night Basset Blogging. Tbogg was kind enough to post 2 pix of Molokai in his honor.

kathy a.

becky -- what a handsome boy he was.

beckya57

Thanks, kathy.

my life sucks

these elections make me think so much, i think am just toooo involved with these democracy and all.. this really makes my life suck.

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