Categories: Michele Bachmann, Photo of the day, Sarah Palin, Tea Party
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That famous quote by Mythbuster Adam Savage is, simply, the reason why the Republicans were handed their lunch on Tuesday.
Here are two essays which address the issue in a sane, rational manner. The videos that follow, from last night's Daily Show, are a bit more... bombastic.
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Ohio really did go to President Obama last night, and he really did win. And really was born in Hawaii. And he really is legitimately President of the United States. Again. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not skewed to over sample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes. And evolution is a thing. And Benghazi was an attack on us. It was not a scandal by us. And nobody is taking away anyone's guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction. And the moon landing was real, and FEMA is not building concentration camps. And UN election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in the country are not the same things as Communism.
Listen. Last night was a good night for Democrats and liberals for very obvious reasons. But it was also possibly a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country we have a two party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing this country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff. And if the Republican party and the conservative movement and the conservative media are stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good, and denying the factual lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate between competing feasible ideas about real problems.
Last night the Republicans got shellacked. And they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in real time, in real humiliating time, not believe it as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they've been so happy living inside... if they do not want to get shellacked again. And that will be a painful process for them, I'm sure, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right and center. You guys, we're counting on you. Wake up. There are real problems in the world. There are real knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there. If the Republican party and the conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we'll all be better off as a nation.
And in that spirit, congratulations everybody.
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If You're Surprised By The Election Results, You're The Reason You Lost, Or: A Plea for Useful Republicans.
Dear Republicans:
I know the despair you feel this morning, and sympathize, because I've been there. In 2004 my stiff, robotic millionaire lost to a President he should have soundly thumped, and I was so hurt I took a week off from the Internet afterwards. I am completely sympathetic with that slow terror that the country is now in the hands of an incompetent, and the voters don't even know it.
But I noticed a weird difference between the way Republicans and Democrats reacted to a losing candidate. In 2004, when the polls turned against Kerry and it was obvious he was going to lose, the Democrats asked "How can we fix that?" Oh, they asked in their glum, incompetent way, but when I personally talked to other Democrats both in real life and online, we were all pretty cognizant of the fact that Kerry was the underdog.
The Republicans of 2012, however, became increasingly convinced that Romney was going to win.
Everywhere I looked on Twitter and Facebook, I saw my Republican friends- not straw men, but actual people- talking about how terrible Nate Silver's methods were, how these Rasmussen polls showed Romney's real strength, and eventually you got the travesty of UnSkewedPolls.com, which cherry-picked the data and even today has their prediction of not just a Romney win but a landslide, Romney 311 to Obama 227. (Actual result: Obama 332, Romney 206.)
It all crystallized for me when my friend Brad Torgerson said, "Liberals and Democrats have Nate Silver and his 538 blog. Conservatives and Republicans have the U of CO guys. It's an epic cage match of predictive numbers geekery!"
Look there. Right at that post- one not too dissimilar from a thousand other dismissals of Nate Silver and the other aggregated polls. See what Brad did there? The way the guy bringing you news he didn't like was automatically assigned a partisan bias, and the only rational solution was to get a guy on your side with better numbers? As if reality was merely a function of getting enough guys on your side?
That's why you lost.
Stop confusing hard reality for partisan opposition.
It's time to step out of the bubble, dear Republicans, because we fucking need you. I don't trust the Democratic party to run the country single-handedly. I want a Republican party I can rely on for real solutions- and you've become lazy, voodoo-like, dismissing any data you don't like as partisan opposition.
Jay Lake is fond of saying, "Reality has a liberal bias." That's not because reality inevitably verifies liberal thinking, but because the Republican response to anything that challenges them is now to write off the data.
And let me repeat: we need you. I want a counterweight to Democratic power, not a deadweight that refuses to acknowledge the issues. I want a Republican party that will look at the numbers for climate change and not go, "I don't like what those scientists are saying, so I'll call it a silly liberal bias!" but say, "We're business experts, we know how to motivate rich people to do what we want, how do we fix this?" I want a Republican party that will realize while yes, we're spending far too much and should cut down, the results of thirty years of trickle-down theory and tax cuts won't actually provide enough revenue, because we are at the lowest effective tax rates we've had in thirty years.
And yes, you can argue all my statements here. But in that, smart person, you're like a driver with an SUV in Alaska. A person with a car in Alaska is going to get stuck in the snow eventually; that's a fact. But if you have an SUV, you're gonna get stuck way the heck out in the woods where no one can get at you, because you have the strength to do it and won't stop when common sense tells you to. I had a ton of Very Smart friends dissecting all the reasons why Nate Silver was wrong, why his methodology sucked, why these pollsters who said what they liked over here had better ways of slicing the data- and all that flurry of so-called "facts" amounted to was an elaborate justification of personal biases that had no basis in reality.
It's time to stop fighting the obvious. It's time to stop assuming that anyone who presents contradictory data is out to get you.
You should have won, guys. You had a President with an economy in the doldrums, a guy who'd lost a lot of his electoral mojo in the realities of politics. But instead of rising from the grave, you chose a candidate who never actually gave us firm numbers on what expenses he'd cut to fix the economy. You chose a candidate who said he'd get rid of Obamacare, but never actually named the parts he'd destroy. You chose someone who, though all politicians lie, lied a lot more than almost any modern Presidential candidate.
You had a guy who should have sliced Obama to ribbons- and he lost, in large part, because he said, "Trust me" instead of giving us a plan. And you let him get away with it.
You let him get away with it because you're indulging in a great deal of magical thinking. You let him get away with it because facts have ceased to matter; as long as someone tells you something you want to hear, you'll find a way to justify it with pseudo-science and trust and spit and baling wire. You don't like to hear how bad a candidate Mitt was, because you came so close this year, but it's true; the problem is that so much of the country has abandoned listening to reality that you can get massive votes and never touch a fact.
If you can't be honest today, in the aftermath of this great defeat, then you're never going to see the truth.
If you seriously thought that Romney had a good chance of winning, then you're part of the problem. Wake up. I implore you: learn from this. Look at your deepest beliefs, and see whether the numbers support them. Start thinking, maybe those people with data I don't like are right.
If you think the lesson to be learned is "We weren't conservative enough," then you're handing me a great victory in 2016. I want to have a real choice then.
Love,
T.F. (The
Ferret)
---
Megyn Kelly teaches Karl Rove the power of scientific gobbledygook.
"If only President Bush could have been so lucky as to have a massive hurricane on his watch, then... oh, right..."
It's just arithmetic.
Categories: Barack Obama, Bill O'Reilly, Chick-fil-A, Daily Show, Elections, Fox News, Hypocrisy, Jon Stewart, Karl Rove, Megyn Kelly, Mitt Romney, Nate Silver, News Media, Politics, Rachel Maddow, Sarah Palin, The Ferret, YouTube
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Experts say the entire 2012 election could come down to just eight
states. The states are: confusion, dismay, depression, apathy, shock,
disbelief, despair, and anxiety.
-Jay Leno
After the debate... experts agreed that President Obama won on substance
and I thought: Well, big deal, Lance Armstrong won on several
substances.
-David Letterman
In fairness to Sarah Palin, "shuck" and "jive" are just two of the many
thousands of words she doesn't know the meaning of.
-Andy Borowitz
One week after Election Day, the banks will be closed and the military
will be marching in the street.
It's called Veterans Day.
I'm tired of every Republican politician being a medical supergenius on
vaginas. I want to hear gynecologists talk about the national debt.
-Bill
Maher
This campaign has dragged on so long Newt Gingrich is abandoning it for
a younger, hotter, healthier campaign.
-John Fugelsang
Karl Rove said the Tea Party is “not sophisticated;” which is sort of
like saying the Jonas Brothers are “not black.'
-John
Fugelsang
I have never been more ashamed for a candidate, Politicizing fallen
Americans is pitiful and unacceptable.
-Colin Powell
Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama. Makes sense. They're both moderate
Republicans.
-@Indecision
There's something wrong with our politics if we can't even agree about
rape anymore.
-Andy Borowitz
I’ll be glad when this election’s over so I’ll know for sure whom I
should have voted for.
-Steve Martin
The audience at the debate was instructed to turn off their cell phones
because they might interfere with Mitt Romney's circuitry.
-Triumph,
The Insult Comic Dog
Categories: Andy Borowitz, Barack Obama, Bill Maher, Colin Powell, David Letterman, Elections, Jay Leno, John Fugelsang, Sarah Palin, Steve Martin
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Mitt Romney is now in London to see his horse compete in the dressage
event. Dressage is kind of like horse ballet. Finally something that
connects Romney with the average American voter.
-Jay Leno
Mitt Romney said while he is in Europe, he won't be apologizing to
anybody. He has nothing to apologize for. A lot of those people overseas
now have good jobs because of him. They are very very grateful.
-Jay
Leno
The Jim Henson company, which created the Muppets, have cut their ties
with Chick-Fil-A because of the company's anti-gay marriage stance.
Insiders say the move came after intense pressure from Bert and Ernie.
-Jay
Leno
To prepare for the Republican Convention, a strip club in Tampa, Florida
has hired a Sarah Palin look-a-like to perform. This stripper is so much
like Sarah Palin, she actually has written on her hand, 'take off top,
shake breasts, swing around pole.'
-Jay Leno
A cyber attack on Iranian nuclear facilities is causing all their
computers to play AC/DC. Today, the attackers said 'If our demands
aren't met, tomorrow we start blasting Nickelback.'
-Conan O'Brien
There's talk that Mitt Romney's campaign is paying for Twitter
followers. Yes, he's paying for people to like him. Or, as it's called
politics.
-Jimmy Fallon
Mitt Romney's search for a vice president continues. As you know, one of
Mitt Romney's problems is that he's never hired an American for a job
before, so this is new.
-Jay Leno
A new study published by The British Medical Journal found that
inactivity can kill you. I mean, these are the kind of findings that
just scare the hell out of Congress.
-Jay Leno
Olympics can inspire American kids to get active. Or it can inspire
American kids to sit on the couch and watch the Olympics.
-Conan
O'Brien
Even though the Olympics take place during Ramadan, some Muslim athletes
said they will not fast during games. Then, after sampling the British
food, they said, on second thought, fasting sounds good.
-Conan
O'Brien
Speaking of Romney, I read that his campaign has raised $10 million in
California over the last two days. One million was from a fundraiser
while $9 million was from Romney checking a pocket in some old khakis.
-Jimmy
Fallon
The European countries are really hoping to do well in the Olympics. If
they win gold medals, they can use them as cash.
-David Letterman
And a collection from the prolific Andy Borowitz:
US politics: the opposite of the Olympics. Every 4 years, billions of dollars are spent to show humans at their worst.
I worry that all the pomp and excitement of the Olympics is making the world forget that Kristen cheated on Rob.
Romney: "The Israelis love me. They've even given me a neat nickname: Mittshugenah."
Dick Cheney says Sarah Palin was not ready to be VP, according to We Know That Already, Dumbass magazine.
Romney: "I don't mind that the British keep saying I'm a banker, but why do they pronounce it with a W?"
Mitt Romney is coming across as an out-of-touch rich person in a country that still has a Queen.
If the Internet is any guide, the two things pro-gun people hate most are 1) background check and 2) spell check.
Categories: Andy Borowitz, Conan O'Brien, David Letterman, Dick Cheney, Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon, Mitt Romney, Olympics, Political Jokes of the Week, Politics, Sarah Palin
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