UNLIMITED GOP 2012 PRIMARY CANDIDATE THREAD

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Interesting tidbit...

They scored the speeches given by the First Lady and Ann Romney at their respective conventions.

Ann Romney's speech at the RNC came in at the lowest grade level for the wife of the candidate in the history of conventions.  Fifth grade level.

Michelle Obama's speech at the DNC came in at the HIGHEST grade level for the wife of the candidate, at 12th grade.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2012/09/michelle_obamas_dnc_speech_wri.php

Dems are already excitedly talking about Hillary Clinton/Michelle Obama in 2016.

OMG, I hope hope hope that happens! The anti-woman rhetoric the Republicans will trot out will make this year pale by comparison!

[Cain]

True, that would be amusing.

I just think this fetish for hereditary rule is getting somewhat out of control.  If the US is going to go all aristocratic, I at least want to see it go in a Game of Thrones direction.  The House of Bush betraying the House of Clinton and allying with them to attack the upstart House of Obama and slaughtering all their bannermen.  Joe Liberman owning a brothel.  Castrating the Director of National Intelligence.  That kind of thing.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hm.  Point.  So, are these actions unpatriotic?  Do tax shelters make people "Bad Americans"?

Yes. Refusing to contribute into the system that makes up the functioning infrastructure of your country is pretty much, by definition, unpatriotic.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

True, that would be amusing.

I just think this fetish for hereditary rule is getting somewhat out of control.  If the US is going to go all aristocratic, I at least want to see it go in a Game of Thrones direction.  The House of Bush betraying the House of Clinton and allying with them to attack the upstart House of Obama and slaughtering all their bannermen.  Joe Liberman owning a brothel.  Castrating the Director of National Intelligence.  That kind of thing.

Yeah, if we're going to be ruled by a hereditary aristocracy (and we are) it better get funny up in there. I want some drama.

[Luna]

Heh.  Seen the ad with the hispanic woman saying she voted for Obama last time, but she's "breaking up" with him this year?

RNC staffer...

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/rnc-staffer-plays-obama-supporter-in-gop-ad.php?ref=fpa

[Luna]

A lot of that article wasn't fact-checking so much as debating provisions.

Interesting article on that, here:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/09/true_but_also_lewinsky.php?ref=fpblg

Essentially, "if that's all you've got to bitch about, then it was mostly accurate, yes?"

[Golden Applesauce]

Interesting tidbit...

They scored the speeches given by the First Lady and Ann Romney at their respective conventions.

Ann Romney's speech at the RNC came in at the lowest grade level for the wife of the candidate in the history of conventions.  Fifth grade level.

Michelle Obama's speech at the DNC came in at the HIGHEST grade level for the wife of the candidate, at 12th grade.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2012/09/michelle_obamas_dnc_speech_wri.php

Obligatory mention that reading level metrics don't mean a whole lot when applied to speeches, and that being able to produce works that score highly on these metrics is not a mark of intelligence, sophistication, or skill. The harder something is to read, the higher it scores, which means that worse communicators will naturally tend to score "higher."

The mark of a skilled communicator is the ability to target a specific reading level range. Assuming both parties can afford to hire competent speechwriters, this says more about who they intend their target audience to be.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Interesting tidbit...

They scored the speeches given by the First Lady and Ann Romney at their respective conventions.

Ann Romney's speech at the RNC came in at the lowest grade level for the wife of the candidate in the history of conventions.  Fifth grade level.

Michelle Obama's speech at the DNC came in at the HIGHEST grade level for the wife of the candidate, at 12th grade.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2012/09/michelle_obamas_dnc_speech_wri.php

Obligatory mention that reading level metrics don't mean a whole lot when applied to speeches, and that being able to produce works that score highly on these metrics is not a mark of intelligence, sophistication, or skill. The harder something is to read, the higher it scores, which means that worse communicators will naturally tend to score "higher."

The mark of a skilled communicator is the ability to target a specific reading level range. Assuming both parties can afford to hire competent speechwriters, this says more about who they intend their target audience to be.

It really, really does, doesn't it? 

[Luna]

Interesting tidbit...

They scored the speeches given by the First Lady and Ann Romney at their respective conventions.

Ann Romney's speech at the RNC came in at the lowest grade level for the wife of the candidate in the history of conventions.  Fifth grade level.

Michelle Obama's speech at the DNC came in at the HIGHEST grade level for the wife of the candidate, at 12th grade.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2012/09/michelle_obamas_dnc_speech_wri.php

Obligatory mention that reading level metrics don't mean a whole lot when applied to speeches, and that being able to produce works that score highly on these metrics is not a mark of intelligence, sophistication, or skill. The harder something is to read, the higher it scores, which means that worse communicators will naturally tend to score "higher."

The mark of a skilled communicator is the ability to target a specific reading level range. Assuming both parties can afford to hire competent speechwriters, this says more about who they intend their target audience to be.

It really, really does, doesn't it? 

Pretty much exactly what I was thinking... 

[Bu🤠ns]

This is really just for the purposes of not being able to UNsee it.

[LMNO]

I found this amusing:

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I found this amusing:

Uhhhh whoa, yes it is!

[Cain]

In terms of organization and doctrine, the Republicans have been stealing notes from the Bolsheviks since the 1980s.  They got all so excited about mostly imaginary Leninist and Gramscian conspiracies, they went ahead and invented their own to push their particular agenda.

That the Republicans also act as the extreme vanguard of capitalism, much in the way the Bolsheviks were the extreme vanguard of Marxism, helps explain other similarities between the two.

And that they're now using Soviet Realism to idolise party leaders is an excellent data point in the direction of them being entirely unoringinal.

[LMNO]

What I love about Cain's posts is that his insightful, interesting, and concise posts make the picture even funnier for me.

Plus, I learned something, too!

[Cain]

Wow, the RNC really is looking to piss off journalists...

http://exiledonline.com/journalists-at-the-rnc-either-suck-up-to-power-or-risk-attack/

Another incident that was caught on tape but never made it to the mainstream news involved an unidentified daughter of casino multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson. The young oligarch-heiress went on a rampage against Democracy Now! senior producer Mike Burke as he attempted to interview her father in a crowded backstage hallway. She body-checked Burke, threatened to hit him, grabbed his partner's video camera, threw it to the ground and then brazenly attempted to seize the evidence of her attack by hiding the camera in her billionaire father's private RNC skybox. Realizing his camera had been knocked out of commission, Burke whipped out his Android and started recording what was going. But even then, one of Adelson's guards tried to grab it out of his hand.

It's not clear which one of Adelson's daughters she is (he has at least three), but judging by the video it could  be Sivan Ochshorn. Not much is known about her, other than she "studied astrophysics and business administration" and gave a cool half a mil to Newt Gingrich's super PAC.

Burke had been doing an amazing journalistic job throughout the convention, trolling the RNC backstage, asking hard questions about the corrupting influence of the oligarchy and even managing to snatch a quick, uncomfortable interview with David Koch, before the libertarian billionaire scuttled into a side passage for safety. Burke was doing what real journalists are supposed to do—challenge power, make the powerful squirm, and reveal to the American public what was really happening behind the PR curtain of the RNC show. Burke was just about the only journalist of the thousands who showed up who was actually doing his job, and a great job it was—right up until the moment Adelson's daughter psychically assaulted him and his camera operator.

Good for us, the whole episode was caught on tape. It clearly shows Adelson's daughter assaulting Burke unprovoked. And yet despite the hard video evidence, the news majors buried it. It never made it to print, TV or cable broadcast news. The only coverage, to the extent that there's been any, was restricted to a couple of short blog posts. New York Magazine, Politico, New York Times and a couple of other outlets blogged the incident, but their reporting was so shallow and "balanced" that it ended it up trivializing the attack and letting Adelson and his petulant oligarch heiress off the hook.