Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: Fox News: I know, right?, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Taxing someone at 15% instead of 35% is not a subsidy.
No it isn’t. But I’d like to join Mr Seaborn under the couch every time someone like Gov. Romney pretend to be shocked – and outraged – by the idea that someone who earns $400K a year as a lobbyist is – or at least should – be paying considerably more federal income tax than he would if he was an elderly retiree on Social Security.
But I guess the RW political third rail nobody wants to touch in why tax relief and exemptions for the poor are creeping socialism, but larding the tax code with elaborate mechanisms for Sam Seaborn and Mitt Romney to (perfectly legally) avoid tax isn’t. I’d that IS a subsidy and it ISN’T fair.
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Hard News: Fox News: I know, right?, in reply to SteveH,
t seems clear to me that he’s talking about the campaign, not the presidency. And in that respect he’s right – his job is to convince the swing voters, not the entrenched democrats
If that's what he meant to say, he couldn't have fucked himself harder if he'd sat on an elephant dildo. Shall we review the transcript.
And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
First, I'm going to stipulate that I don't believe for a moment Romney's comments were "off the cuff" in any generally used use of the phrase. "Inconveniently candid, because I never thought they'd be made public" would be closer to the truth.
But I digress. If Romney had said there are plenty of "tribal" voters out there who'd never vote for him or any other Republican, I'd give him a cookie for stating the blindingly obvious. Obama could say the same without fear of contradiction from me.
But let's just pretend Obama was recorded at, say, a $50,000 dollar a plate fundraiser at George Clooney's house saying: "And so my job is not to worry about those people -- I'll never convince them to care about anyone else or take responsibility for their actions."
First, if you're standing for the Presidency you better give a fuck about the people, even the ones who don't vote for you or your party. Because that really is your job.
It would also show some presidential gravitas to NEVER talk about people who don't support you as ipso facto feckless, lazy boobs. It's arrogant, condescending and you really shouldn't expect to be thanked for it. Least of all, it's also spectacularly bad politics. I'd don't know of Mitt Romney passed high school civics, but he is aware the United States does not have compulsory suffrage, right? Nor are registered Democrats compelled to vote for any Democratic candidate. Same goes for registered Republicans.
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Hard News: Fox News: I know, right?, in reply to Angus Robertson,
When a politician addresses a potential donor, what will the politician say?
A: the politician will say what he/she "really thinks".
B: the politician will say what he/she thinks the donor wants to hear.
So, the options are:
A. Romney is a hateful fuck-bag who thinks anyone who votes for "the enemy" is a stupid whiny statist tit-sucker he just doesn't care about.
or,
B. Romney doesn't believe any such thing, but boy... his big ticket donors do and he'll say ANYTHING as long as you keep paying for the dirty talk. Like a phone sex operator without the class.
If "Panderer-in-Chief' is the best spin you can come up with, Angus, that's Romney's problem in a nutshell.
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Hard News: Media3: The Maori Media Man, in reply to Danielle,
<i>also a broader analysis of why this sort of ‘hatable’ feminism is the only thing we really get to discuss any more.</i>
And don't forget when two men disagree they're public intellectuals. When women do, it's a bitch-slapping cat fight over feminism's zombie corpse! Or something.
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Hard News: Media3: The Maori Media Man, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Germaine has a go :)
"Wolf is not simply incurably heterosexual" - however accurate, I find it rather ironic seeing Greer complaining anyone else is guilty of seeing the world through heterosexist cis-privileged glasses given her oft-repeated and ghastly attacks on transwomen.
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Hard News: Media3: The Maori Media Man, in reply to Russell Brown,
Very much on display in the Daily Show interview
I don't think Rushdie is the only person who found something farcically surreal -- as well as incredibly sinister -- about it all. Could you imagine John Paul II (who was technically a head of state as well as a religious leader) basically trying to incite American Catholics to murder Rushdie's friend Christopher Hitchens, his publishers and anyone who sold his writings for dissing his home-girl Mother Teresa?
It's also easy to forget while Rushdie himself is alive and well, the novel's Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered in the same month Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator, was seriously injured in another stabbing. In 1993, Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was shot three times in the chest outside his home.
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Hard News: Media3: The Maori Media Man, in reply to Russell Brown,
He was great. It’s a shame he couldn’t speak for longer.
On literary grounds, I'm not Rushdie's biggest fan but as a human being who's lived through that horrendous shit with a damn near-miraculous good grace (and even a sense of dry, black humour)? Nothing but the deepest respect.
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Hard News: Media3: The Maori Media Man, in reply to Russell Brown,
but it’s a rather high-stakes environment to be doing something just because you can.
Quite, and - in tandem with ToplessKateGate - I don't think I'm the only person to note the considerable irony that this meta-trolling is taking place in a nation with not only incredibly strict privacy laws but where, in Alsace and Moselle, blasphemy is still an offense (if one nobody has ever been convicted of) under the local penal code.
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Hard News: Tired and emotional, for reals, in reply to Felix Marwick,
Reporters feel the same way when it happens to them.
And so they should – but “don’t be a dick” and “assume it’s a cock-up until proven otherwise” are good rules of thumb all around. And my case study is (tah dah!) Fran O’Sullivan. Way back in the dark ages when I was a contributor to NZ Pundit, I did a post with a lengthy (but fair-use compliant) quote from one of her columns where I carelessly deleted the attribution and source link during the final edit. I got an e-mail from her pointing that out, and while the tone was (IMO) needlessly hostile it was substantively a fair cop. I explained the circumstances, apologized, and said I'd change the post to what it should have been in the first place. O’Sullivan found that acceptable, and we walked away without a public slanging match.
Can be done.
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Another interesting angle to consider about The Innocence of Muslims is why anyone (including You Tube) would want to touch a movie whose producers are being used by cast members and crew for what can most charitably be described as fraud.
And another rather sad irony, the same day the Rushdie fatwa hit the wires again, the first reviews were appearing of his memoir Joseph Anton. I’m not sure he’d have much time for the “any publicity is good public” school of thought any more.
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