…in the G.O.P.: “Some of the images from the run-up to Sunday’s landmark health care vote in the House of Representatives should be seared into the nation’s consciousness. We are so far, in so many ways, from being a class act.” — Bob Herbert (New York Times op-ed)
‘Sorry, Michael Steele, but it’s going to be a while before you’re anything more than the figurehead frontman of a shipwrecked Republican National Committee. Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh remain the leaders of your party, and most Republicans are happy that way. A Rasmussen poll out today found that fully 55 percent of Republicans polled think their party should be “more like” Palin.’ — Joan Walsh via Salon.
‘In an “urgent message” to supporters, the Republican National Lawyer Association accuses Franken and his “liberal allies” of “working feverishingly [sic] to steal the Minnesota Senate election.” ‘
via Huffington Post.
I had seen the headline and initially found it only moderately interesting. Poor guy ran out of gas and crashed short of his landing in Ohio. However, it turns out to be a connect-the-dots story for you conspiracy theorists.
Michael Connell, a Republican IT operative who had created websites for Bush and McCain, was associated with a firm hired by the Ohio secretary of state to set up the state’s official election results website in the 2004 election. It happened to be hosted on the servers of a Chattanooga-based company which also provided hosting for a long list of Republican domains and was arguably the matrix for the GOP cabal.
When the scandal about the Justice Dept’s politically-motivated firings of US Attorneys erupted several months later, other researchers found that the email domains used by White House staffers to evade FOIA law by communicating outside official White House channels was provided by the same company. And… they were set up for the White House by Mike Connell. This roused suspicions about the GOP’s use of this same infrastructure to tabulate the votes which gave Bush the final electoral college margin he needed to secure his reelection in 2004.
The Raw Story investigator working on these connections (atlargely.com) says that Connell was frightened and that he was being threatened (ePluribus Media). The alleged threats appear to be the result of the re-opening, through the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim, of the stalled investigation into the 2004 Ohio Elections. Connell was reportedly getting ready to talk.
[As an IT pro, did he make backups of his data, especially if he was frightened that people might kill him for what he knew?]
‘Thanks. I got it,’ I say.
One of his pals chimes in.
‘Gov. Palin is hot, dude,’ he says, collapsing onto a bench in front of the hotel entrance.
Even in their lusty, alcohol-fueled swoons, these young politicos still call Palin ‘governor.’ In a way, this reverential horniness is sort of endearing. But mostly it’s just creepy. Sitting on the bench, the young man leans his head back and squeezes his eyes shut, trying, and failing, to stave off vertigo. ‘Total MILF.’
‘All right, gentlemen,’ I say, wielding the word ‘gentlemen’ like a prison guard. ‘Get out of here. Time to go to sleep.’
The right-wing youth resurgence is taking shape here before my eyes and it has a strong erotic undercurrent. For the first time in American politics there is a strong alpha woman with whom mothers identify, and after whom sons lust. The GOP is playing the Oedipal card. And it could mean bloody war, fought house to house.
…I’m developing a purely anecdotal theory about Republican drunkenness: that it’s related to ideology. The less ideological arrive back at the headquarters earlier in the evening, between midnight and 1 a.m. These are, in chronological order, the Romney and the Giuliani supporters. Both are East Coast, urban college grad, corporate types. They like to drink and reminisce about the Harvard-Yale game, but they also like to wake up early, shave and not smell like booze at committee meetings. The Giuliani people are secular and more openly lecherous. So they tend to drink a bit harder and stay out closer to 1 a.m. The Ron Paul people party past 1 a.m., but not much. And they shave but they don’t showboat.
The ones who stay out the latest and come back the drunkest, I notice, are the Huckabee folks, the party’s rural conservatives. They believe in Jesus, in the hard-bitten way of the true alcoholic. If they ever sober up, it’ll be by the grace of the Lord; and if they intend to stay on the sauce and continue living, then they’ll really need His loving kindness. If you intend to be drinking heavily until closing time — 4 a.m. in the Twin Cities during the RNC — you had better walk home with Jesus.
I can’t place true McCainites on the alcohol-ideology matrix. I think they were all asleep by 9:30 p.m.” (Salon)
‘Thanks. I got it,’ I say.
One of his pals chimes in.
‘Gov. Palin is hot, dude,’ he says, collapsing onto a bench in front of the hotel entrance.
Even in their lusty, alcohol-fueled swoons, these young politicos still call Palin ‘governor.’ In a way, this reverential horniness is sort of endearing. But mostly it’s just creepy. Sitting on the bench, the young man leans his head back and squeezes his eyes shut, trying, and failing, to stave off vertigo. ‘Total MILF.’
‘All right, gentlemen,’ I say, wielding the word ‘gentlemen’ like a prison guard. ‘Get out of here. Time to go to sleep.’
The right-wing youth resurgence is taking shape here before my eyes and it has a strong erotic undercurrent. For the first time in American politics there is a strong alpha woman with whom mothers identify, and after whom sons lust. The GOP is playing the Oedipal card. And it could mean bloody war, fought house to house.
…I’m developing a purely anecdotal theory about Republican drunkenness: that it’s related to ideology. The less ideological arrive back at the headquarters earlier in the evening, between midnight and 1 a.m. These are, in chronological order, the Romney and the Giuliani supporters. Both are East Coast, urban college grad, corporate types. They like to drink and reminisce about the Harvard-Yale game, but they also like to wake up early, shave and not smell like booze at committee meetings. The Giuliani people are secular and more openly lecherous. So they tend to drink a bit harder and stay out closer to 1 a.m. The Ron Paul people party past 1 a.m., but not much. And they shave but they don’t showboat.
The ones who stay out the latest and come back the drunkest, I notice, are the Huckabee folks, the party’s rural conservatives. They believe in Jesus, in the hard-bitten way of the true alcoholic. If they ever sober up, it’ll be by the grace of the Lord; and if they intend to stay on the sauce and continue living, then they’ll really need His loving kindness. If you intend to be drinking heavily until closing time — 4 a.m. in the Twin Cities during the RNC — you had better walk home with Jesus.
I can’t place true McCainites on the alcohol-ideology matrix. I think they were all asleep by 9:30 p.m.” (Salon)
