Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, isn’t holding back when expressing his opinion of Donald Trump.
With all due disrespect, the editor of Vanity Fair sneering at Donald Trump as a tacky “carny act” who “lives off crowd approval” is an irony too far. Conde Nast would have pink-slipped Carter years ago (and shut the magazine down) if there wasn’t a market niche for people who want high society sleaze, celebrity puff pieces and grotesque crime but wouldn’t be caught dead buying a gossip rag in a convenience store. And yes, dear reader, I’m one of them.
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I bet the original writers never thought for one moment that years in the future she would be looked on as bisexual.
Even if this was true (and it isn’t), I can say with near total confidence that two hundred years ago Jane Austen would have thrown up into her reticule if you’d explained what a “porn parody” is.
OTOH, I’m sure Shakespeare would have been tickled pink to see women playing his female roles – which was illegal in London during his lifetime.
So, yeah. Intentional Fallacy still stupid and dubiously relevant to Wonder Woman being canonically bi- in 2016.
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Hard News: DNC 2016: Beyond weird, most…, in reply to Tristan,
They don't see a difference between Trump and Clinton because for them nothing personally changes for them if either of them get elected. They can afford a protest vote and don't much care about those that can't
Bazinga! And dare I say it, the same people who were most vociferously sneering at women who apparently "voted with their vaginas" (I still can't figure out how that works) and "low-information" black and Hispanic voters who didn't come to Progressive Jesus from the whitest state in the Union.
So the hierarchy of the Democrat Party has been proven to have been actively subverting their pseudo-democratic electoral process. I suppose the left feels obliged to prove that they can do moral corruption as well as the right, because that's the new normal and they feel they must compete accordingly?
Dennis: Please consider my imaginary pearls firmly clutched that the disdain Sanders and his surrogates feel towards people they happily accused of active voter suppression and outright fraud was entirely mutual. At least they had the decency not to do it in public.
As for your "pseudo-democratic" sneer, I'd apply that to caucuses that very obviously exclude a lot of people who can't afford to take a working day off to hang around in a hall. But I guess they're OK for BernieBros when you win those, right?
A primary is exactly that -- and if you're participating in closed primaries with registration deadlines, then the thing to do is organize a competent registration/turnout operation, AKA campaigning 101. Not scream "corruption" when you lose.
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Speaker: Darkness in New York, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Errrr… 2010 called and it wants it’s outburst back.
And I'm sure your "decadence of the elites" thesis got a really great grade in a first-year pols course, circa 1990.
Look, in the end we can sit on the other side of the Pacific Basin playing our ever-so-sophisticated, world-weary games of false equivalence bingo. But if you really think Kaine and Pence are virtually indistinguishable, then I"d like you to explain that to the women only one of them wants to charge with "feticide" if they have a miscarriage. Who is obsessed with shutting down Planned Parenthood -- which, BTW, is the only way an awful lot of low-income and rural women get potentially life-saving health services like mammograms and cervical smears. Tell that to the victims of yet another mass shooting, because I see who is offering "thoughts and prayers" then casting the votes the NRA paid for and who isn't. Who respects judicial independence and who doesn't. Who actually has job and infrastructure policy, and who doesn't give a detectable fuck.
And the list goes on and on and on.
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Speaker: Darkness in New York, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Clinton’s VP pick is dull. Trump’s odds just shortened.
I'm just astounding anyone who hasn't been in a fucking coma for the last week could say that with a straight face.
How would you like Kaine to amuse you, Tom? Pull a violent crime epidemic out of his arse like a pornographic kiddie party magician? Declare war on the imaginary menace of trans rapists lurking around public bathrooms while public schools are being closed down -- because I'm pretty sure Mike Pence has that shtick covered. Respond to mass murders in Nice and Munich by declaring "extreme vetting" (whatever the fuck that means) of all French and German citizens because they "brought it on themselves"?
I'm going to shout so apologies in advance.
THIS IS NOT A FUCKING GAME. THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS NOT THE WORLD'S CREEPY RACIST DRUNK UNCLE WHO RUINS EVERY FAMILY GATHERING EVER. AND IT IS NOT HILARY CLINTON AND TIM KAINE'S JOB TO GET INTO A DOUCHE-OFF WITH TRUMP AND PENCE.
And frankly, people, it's more than a little condescending to those poor benighted flyover country rubes to assume that all they can respond to is pandering lies.
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Hard News: RNC 2016: A literal shitshow, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yes, there’s a little preface where Alinsky makes a wry reference to Lucifer as “the original radical”, but that was enough for Dr Ben. It was hilarious
OK, my first reaction was to snark Tweet along the lines that at least you know what Satan stands for and he does make a point of keeping his promises.
But what's not at all funny is in that room -- where a large number of the delegates are extreme Protestant fundamentalists -- that dog whistle is as clear as it is terrifying. Remember this was the same day when the Trump Campaign had to "clarify" that off course they don't agree with various campaign advisors Hillary Clinton should be executed by firing squad.
Think about that for a moment.
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The very real possibility is that Trump will ease ahead in some polls this week or next.
Well, yes... if you can't do that off the back of massive convention media coverage then you really have a problem. But elections aren't won or lost off convention week dead cat poll bounces. They're won on the ground, and I'm not seeing any evidence that Trump's ground game isn't (to use one of his favourite sneers) "low energy."
If all the GOP has is chanting "Hillary's a witch" I don't think that's going to get the job done.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
That this is now all being blamed on Labour,
Which is so dizzyingly absurd, I'm sure David Cameron will be mirthlessly amused if he ever drops by.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
I’d also point out that disproportionate support for “leave” in Labour strongholds isn’t the same thing as Labour supporters voting leave. By and large, these voters probably weren’t Labour. Instead, they were largely habitual non-voters or what used to be called the “Tory working class,” largely invisible under First Past the Post and used to their votes not counting in national elections.
And that is really spectacularly disingenuous. Sunderland voted leave by 61-39 on a 65% turn out. The City of Sunderland Council has been controlled by Labour literally for my entire lifetime. Last year, Labour won absolute majorities in all three electorates the city covers, with majorities of 11-13,000.
By and large, you’re really reaching to find eighty thousand ghost Tories Nigel Farage raised by black magic.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
Claims that Labour’s campaign was singularly inept simply don’t hold up in the light of those figures. The fact that Freedland and his Guardian colleagues aren’t laying into Sturgeon and Farron for failing to mobilise their bases indicates that there’s a certain degree of bad faith in this reporting, as there is with most Guardian coverage of Corbyn and his faction.
I don't think Freedland is prone to throwing around words like "deliberate sabotage" lightly, and if you seriously think he and Laura Kuenssberg are fabricating quotes from reporting they didn't do and documents that don't exist, I'm sure The Guardian and the BBC would love to hear from you. That's not acting "in bad faith", that's outright fraud and a sacking offense.
The lesson that the Labour leadership seems to have taken from that turn of events is that coordinating too closely with the Tories toxifies the Labour brand and reinforces the “they’re all the same” strain of cynicism that has been eroding the Labour vote since Blair.
So, you're saying Sadiq Kahn is going to be a one-term Mayor of London for sharing a stage with Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson? Precisely nobody was urging Corbyn and Cameron go on a national snog-a-thon, but Corbyn is reported as refusing to do any co-ordinated campaigning with former Labour leaders.
That's a legitimate news story, not "bad faith" Corbyn bashing.