Just when I thought I'd have nothing better to do, but be bored with Mad Men all over again. Thank Jeebus for ass-hats.
That guy makes even a misanthrope like me wonder whether I give humanity too much credit.
Who could have expected that the ratfuckers would end up ratfucking each other? It's not like that dynamic has ever played out in the Republican/conservative community before!
OT: I have no opinion on The Hunger Games, except that it is richly comedic to watch critics and celebrity profile writers try to spin panegyric profundities out of a woman's (i.e., Jennifer Lawrence's) sullen affect, rather than a man's.
I just don't understand how this guy ever got any traction at all. If you were the kind of person who bought his other shit, I can't really see this bothering you either. Either you believe in ratfucking or you don't.
Either you believe in ratfucking or you don't.
Is the standard rat-orgasms or mouse-orgasms?
6: A certain subset of Republicans is not very bright?
8 is doubtless true, but incredibly inadequate as an answer to Blume's question.
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I'm currently pondering the eternal question, why do so many idiots get promoted?
I just heard a story about the service director I hate for being a jackass and backdating documents. We had a social worker who had been a lawyer and wanted out of family law. She had just graduated and got an agency job because you need to be supervised for 2 years before you get an independent license. She got a better opportunity after a reorganization and chose to take that job.
The lawyer turned social worker is gay. She was meeting with the service director and one of the rehabilitation specialists (someone who does what I do) came in. When the woman left, he said "Isn't it great we have so many good looking, young women walking around?"
WTF???!!!
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9: I wasn't really taking Blume's question seriously, it's true. But all right, I'll read the Gawker story.
Maybe it's a publicity stunt.
Having read this, it's just pretty fucked up. My answer to 6, with respect to the this-is-war declaration, is that no, she really didn't know. Not very bright.
8: A certain subset of Republicans is not very bright?
It was certainly more than that with regard to the ACORN thing. The NYTimes and WaPo and many others in the media totally debased themselves.
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Dept. of my family's TV priorities do not reflect my own.
Got home late and walked in wondering whether they were watching the NCAAs or the Pens' hockey. Answer: Project Runway.
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I'd bet you'd like it JP. Project Runway is great, though I haven't seen it in a while.
Why does no one respond to my plaintive cries?
13: I was talking about Nadia. O'Keefe worked in conjunction with Breitbart, as I recall, to make the ACORN thing a huge deal; apparently people -- the mainstream -- felt they needed to do damage control.
Kudos to Nadia for this, in any case. The mainstream may well ignore it. It is so ugly, and frankly embarrassing (and the vast majority of the country has never heard of O'Keefe in the first place). Sarah Palin and others have apparently declared Breitbart 2.0, to carry on his name; I don't know if they can disassociate themselves from O'Keefe, or if they even need to. Just a bad apple, perhaps.
In any event. They probably don't need any help from us leftists on this one.
16: It was too early in a nascent thread for a pause/play threadjack. Maybe.
It feels a little prurient / pervy, but I'm curious to an extent about the "Emma" whose story Nadia references in passing in her exchange with O'Keefe. What was Emma's story? Did she know it previously, and instantly recognize the barn when she was taken to it? Did she make the connection afterwards? How much do I care? (Not much, to the latter... but a little. Yeah.)
Also: "Karma Hammer, Swing!" would be a great band name. Albeit Totally Hipster. Perhaps it is already?
You picked up your penny loafers and stormed out of the room like a 10-year old boy having a tantrum. You called me on the phone moments later demanding to know why I was talking on the phone with someone else in your presence.
It's the penny loafers that do it.
... no, she really didn't know. Not very bright.
And yet, she is a Harvard grad student.
Then again, George W Bush was a Harvard grad student....
Let me get this straight: Nadia Naffe is a young black female grad student Republican? Statistically speaking, there might be one such person in the country; what are the odds she'd end up working with O'Keefe? (Well, relatively high once you grant her existence, but still.) I'm calling it now: either she's a deliberate agent provocateur from our side for once, or she's insane. Not just voting-against-her-interests, misunderstands-the-role-of-government insane, but literally, should-be-on-medication-or-in-therapy, doesn't-perceive-the-world-like-the-rest-of-us insane.
Either way, she's not very credible. Sorry, I'd love to see karma hit O'Keefe, but the story's ludicrous in the basic premise.
As for BG's 10, sorry I didn't respond, but I wasn't on at the time. Weird story. Definitely an obtuse, sexist, tone-deaf thing for him to say. And I don't remember exactly what you do but just judging by "rehabilitation specialist" I'd assume it's a job where being tone-deaf and sexist is especially bad, right? (Also, I wasn't sure what the point was of all the backstory in there. Forgive the nitpicking of an off-the-cuff comment, but I might not have responded without clarification.)
either she's a deliberate agent provocateur from our side
Nadia Naffe is a blogger and conservative activist. She has served as Tampa editor of Red County since 2009. Naffe began her career in politics as a field director with the Republican Party of Florida. Following that assignment, Naffe was appointed to serve as a regional field director for Bush/Cheney '04. In this role, she was responsible for establishing strategic relationships among various coalitions in 12 of the most vote-rich counties in South West and Central Florida.
Prior to that, Naffe served as the founding Chairwoman, of the University of Tampa College Republicans, helping to build student chapters across the state. After the 2004 elections, Naffe returned to the private sector where she led the internet marketing division for an automotive dealership. Most recently, she was responsible for fiber-optic data sales for a Fortune 500 telecom company.
Naffe holds a bachelor's degree in marketing from the Sykes College of Business at the University of Tampa. She has served as a volunteer or advisor on numerous statewide and local campaigns, dating back to Jeb Bush's successful campaign for governor of Florida in 1999, when Naffe coordinated student volunteers to promote Bush's "A+ Plan" education reforms and advocated state funding for charter schools.
she's not very credible
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
19: What was Emma's story?
From Naffe's twitter feed:
--Not only does O'keefe think he's entitled to sex, he secretly filmed his ex Emma stripteasing, then emailed pics to buddies
--James sent pics of this poor girl to at least 3 dozen people, bragged abt her oral abilities
young black female grad student Republican? Statistically speaking, there might be one such person in the country
I would estimate it's more on the order of a hundred/
We're not going to get to 1,000 comments with just wingnut v wingnut, so I'll pick up the gauntlet. It is objectively awesome to live, as I do, surrounded by good looking women. Young is relative, and while not completely irrelevant -- it's not the point of the utterance. (I had lunch with a very attractive 58 year old woman yesterday, and dinner with an attractive 57 year old woman (in town visiting with 17 year old daughter)). I'll grant that saying such a thing in a workplace is tacky, but, really, how much attention is it worth paying to stupidities of that kind?
Obviously, one can take this kind of thing to a huge extreme, and in so doing create a hostile environment. But this seems an awfully long way from that.
I'm gonna go ahead and say two thousand, even.
I don't think it's quite that incendiary.
Sorry, I'd love to see karma hit O'Keefe, but the story's ludicrous in the basic premise.
Ludicrous of course: this is O'Keefe we're talking about. Also quite easy to believe, since this is O'Keefe we're talking about.
Further to 24: FLORIDA! Once we grant the Florida connection, it all becomes beautifully clear. (Yes I do plan on riding this hobby horse til the damn thing catches fire, thanks for asking.)
Seriously, though, of course it requires industrial strength crazy to take down this guy. Harsh times demand harsh medicine. I can only hope everyone involved gets what they deserve.
32: Ah, dumb of me to miss that connection. Fair enough.
Following that assignment, Naffe was appointed to serve as a regional field director for Bush/Cheney '04. In this role, she was responsible for establishing strategic relationships among various coalitions in 12 of the most vote-rich counties in South West and Central Florida.
Fuck, she's the person responsible for the "election day is really tomorrow" flyers. Is there any way they can both lose?
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
We are really forever in Peggy Noonan's debt for lowering the bar this way.
You say it's cheapening public discourse. I say it's just making it more interesting!
24: Well, that greatly increases my respect for the liberals' organizational abilities. Going so far to get an agent embedded! Impressive!
23: The man's a social worker, for christ's sake. A rehabilitation specialist is like a case manager who is also supposed to provide psycho-education to help people with mental illness learn skills to become more independent. This is called psychiatric rehabilitation.
23: Oh, I just wanted validation, because I'm going through a rough time and this asshole is a thorn in my side, and I learned more about his asshole-ishness which boggles my mind.
There were 243,600 black, female graduate students in 2009, twice as many as in 2000. If 10% of those are Republican, that's 24,000 black, female Republicans grad students. (I ignore the percentage who aren't young and whatever growth there's been in numbers since 2009.)
10% may be a bit high. Apparently Obama won 96% of the black vote in 2008. (My apologies for linking to Politico.)
I used 1% in my estimate, I think, just to be on the low side. And then I lopped off 400 from that because sure. But if somebody wants to take the over they should go for it.
Apparently Obama won 96% of the black vote in 2008.
Yeah, ok, though the democrats were more popular in 2008 and black republicans might vote for a black democrat. This survey has 8% of blacks considering themselves Republican in 2011, with women being more likely to be democrats than men. So, my current best guess is 7% of black women are republicans. Multiplying by the number of black female graduate students in 2009 gives you 17,000 republicans. I bet that's low, because of the dramatic upward trend in female black graduate students, but there's a lot of room for error.
One thing the statistics can't easily illuminate is the degree to which a professional contrarian playing "outlier in the genre" can enhance their employability out of all proportion to their talent. In a world that pays the mind it does to Glen Loury, Andrew Sullivan and Michelle Malkin, I'd be astonished if there weren't one single ambitious and aspirational female black graduate student in America who hadn't weighed up their career options playing for the other side.
So it turns out there was at least one; and it also turns out the plan unravelled as quickly as you'd expect (for exactly the reasons you'd expect).
10 et al. A lot of problems come up because dudes feel the need to somehow signal that they would hit that in each and every situation when they would like to imagine themselves hitting that.