Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has issued a pair of demands before he will agree to debate his opponent, Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren. The first is that the debate not be carried by MSNBC. Given that the network has become known for hosting mostly left-of-center political opinion shows, this demand could be seen as, perhaps not entirely unreasonable. Just as a Democratic politician might balk at the idea of Fox News broadcasting a debate (imagine your performance being judged by a round-table consisting of half a dozen right-wing demagogues and Juan Williams) one could see a Republican pol. expressing unease at a the post-debate analysis that would immediately follow featuring Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Dylan Ratigan and Michael Steele.

However, it is the second of Brown’s demands that has raised the most eyebrows and for which he receives the title and crown of Stinque’s Douchebag of the Day, for Wednesday, June 20th:

The senator himself was silent on the proposal until Monday, when his campaign manager said Brown would participate only if Vicki Kennedy [wife of former MA, Senator Ted Kennedy] agreed “that she will not endorse or otherwise get involved in this race.”

Demanding a private citizen refrain from endorsing a candidate for political office as a pre-condition for debating your opponent? Congratulations, Scott Brown. You just made yourself look like a frightened little puppy.

Source: Boston.com

If you’d flipped though the pages of the Washington Post earlier today, you might have stumbled upon an article concerning the firing of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan. And if you’d read through the article you might have learned that Sullivan was ousted by a cadre of plutocrats appointed to the Board of Regents by the governor and tasked with the mission of cutting the University’s budget to the bone. And in the budgetary battle that pits academic excellence and integrity against a philosophy of Government that sees no room for public spending outside the Defense Department, Ms. Sullivan was seen as favoring the former at the expense of the latter. And if you’d scanned the aforementioned article for an example of Ms. Sullivan’s profligacy you would have come upon the following paragraphs:

The campaign to remove Sullivan began around October, the sources said. The Dragas group coalesced around a consensus that Sullivan was moving too slowly. Besides broad philosophical differences, they had at least one specific quibble: They felt Sullivan lacked the mettle to trim or shut down programs that couldn’t sustain themselves financially, such as obscure academic departments in classics and German.

And for a moment you’d scratch your head and wonder “obscure academic departments in classics and German?” And then it would dawn on you: My God.. The Washington Post actually seems to think I’m dumber than a bag of bricks, and what’s more, they seem to believe that even that’s too smart.

But you didn’t of course. Because, I mean, fuck’s sake: who reads so pathetic an excuse for a newspaper as the Washington Post? If you wanted to give yourself a lobotomy, you’d shove an ice-pick through the roof of your mouth and wiggle it around, back and forth and side to side, a few times. Much less painful and frustrating an experience than flipping through the pages of the fucking Washington Post.

So, with Rush Limbaugh insisting that any woman who would like to see her health insurance include contraceptive coverage is a prostitute, the state of Virginia legislating forcible sodomy for any woman who would seek an abortion, and GOP candidates seeking to ban contraception altogether, conservative bloggers have been working harder than ever to do what they do best: draw false equivalences to argue that “the other side does it, too… and they’re just as bad.”

And yet, like a student who read the Cliff notes version of women’s lib rather than the actual text, right-wing bloggers continue to show that they just don’t get it. The latest pathetic example of false equivalence comes from Slate managing editor, conservative columnist Rachel Larimore. In a rather lame attempt to draw parallels between Limbaugh, Santorum, the state of Virginia, et al and the Left, Larimore draws our attention to two incidents that supposedly prove that Liberals are just as prone to misogyny as Conservatives:

With two incidents that were reported yesterday, the left is showing that it’s just fine with misogyny and violence against women as long as the women in question aren’t card-carrying liberal feminists. As David Weigel mentioned on his Slate blog, Donna Dewitt, the outgoing president of AFL-CIO South Carolina, bashed a piñata bearing a photograph of Gov. Nikki Haley, while men and women in the crowd shouted “Whack her harder” and “hit her again.” Dewitt continues to smack the piñata long after it’s knocked down, which is a nice touch.

Read more »

It wasn’t too long ago that Mitt Romney surprised political observers by abruptly reversing course on his criticism of the Obama Administration’s rescue of the U.S. automotive industry to begin, instead, taking credit for it.

Well now, in a similar vein, Mitt Romney is promising voters that if elected president, he will reduce unemployment to 6% by the end of his first term. How does that constitute taking credit for the hard work of others, you might ask? Well, according to the Congressional Budget Office, unemployment is currently on track to being at 5.5% by 2017 anyway.

Maybe what Mitt Romney should have said is: “If the American people put me in the White House, I will see to it that my administration continues the amazingly successful economic policies of our current president.”

(Hat Tip: Talking Points Memo)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzK3ZX7hvzg

So, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is out with what is being described as his first television ad of the general election (as opposed to the primaries). You can see it embedded above. And although the ad has been met with generally favorable reviews among the commenting classes, I would submit that this fact says less about the ad itself than about just how vacuous our politics has become and how toothless and irrelevant the fourth estate has become.

Because an honest appraisal of what the ad says can only leave the informed viewer shaking his head at a 30 second video that is, at heart, little more than a agglomeration of nonsense, deliberately hollow vagueness and political farce. Promising to describe what a Romney presidency would look like from “day one” the ad describes three policies that Mitt Romney would take that would distinguish him from the President. Let’s take a look at these proposals one by one: Read more »

Remember the scandalous government bailout of the auto industry that saved General Motors from bankruptcy and liquidation, saw the storied carmaker restructured and restored to profitability, and saved well over a million U.S. jobs? The Right threw a shit fit, derided GM as “government motors” and Mitt Romney proclaimed it “crony capitalism on a grand scale.”

Well apparently the American people aren’t buying the Right’s critique of President Obama’s handling of the auto industry, and so now the Mitt Romney campaign has a new strategy for dealing with it. Said strategy can basically be summed up: “well duh, of course the auto bailout worked. It was Mitt Romney’s idea in the first place.” Read more »

In addition to his more confrontational tone with Obama this week, Romney has also sought to be a bit more personable.

Earlier this week he sat down with four married couples for a staged outdoor picnic in Bethel Park, Pa., and suggested that Obama should do the same.

“This is a president who doesn’t understand what the American people are experiencing,” Romney said. “He needs to sit down with folks and understand how difficult these years have been and take responsibility.”

Am I reading too much into the above excerpt, or is it evidence that, at least on reporter at the Washington Post, thinks that Mitt Romney is as much of a douchebag as the rest of us do?

Then again, I guess sitting down to a staged picnic with four carefully screened couples is no less valid a way of learning about the economic travails of the unwashed than turning to his wife for insight on the day to day struggles and hardships of ordinary women whose husbands aren’t worth $250 million.