All the news, views, and filtered excellence fit to consume during your morning grumpy.
1. Why not start talking about 2016?
Rick Perry may consider another run, though questions surround that.
Understatement of the year. What’s clear is that the Democrat bench of potential candidates runs deep while the Republican bench is wanting.
2. Bad news for the artificially tanned girls of Chip Strip bars. Uggs are over. So, please, just stop.
It may be an object of derision throughout the fashion industry, but the Ugg boot – a bit like the bootcut jean, or the square-toed office-boy shoes – has refused to die. Over the past 10 years, sales continued to rise, and their squat, solid, shearling-lined shapes became the footwear of young Britons nationwide.
Until now. The newest sales figures from Deckers, the Ugg parent group, are down 31%.
While you’re at it, stop crisping your skin in tanning beds like it’s a Thanksgiving turkey and give your eyebrows a rest from the pernicious effects of over-tweezing.
3. Cheer up Republicans, in many ways, you just elected a moderate Republican as President.
I know how stupid that sounds. Barack Obama is the head of the Democratic Party. For five years, conservative politicians and media told you he was a raving socialist. But now that the campaign is over and you’re staring at a second Obama term, the falsity of the propaganda may come as a relief. By and large, Obama’s instincts are the instincts of a moderate Republican.
Once the economy began to revive, Obama offered a $4-trillion debt reduction framework that would have cut $3 to $6 of spending for every $1 in tax hikes. That’s a higher ratio of cuts to hikes than Republican voters, in a Gallup poll, said they preferred. It’s way more conservative than the ratio George H. W. Bush accepted in 1990. In last year’s debt-ceiling talks, Obama offered cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in exchange for revenue that didn’t even come from higher tax rates. Now he’s proposing to lower corporate tax rates, and Republicans are whining that he hacked $716 billion out of Medicare. Some socialist.
The duality of Obama. Not liberal enough for the left, yet we defend him against allegations that he is one of us.
4. Red states responsible for most of the growth in food stamp utilization.
Seventy percent of counties with the fastest-growth in food-stamp aid during the last four years voted for the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data compiled by Bloomberg. They include Republican strongholds like King County, Texas, which in 2008 backed Republican John McCain by 92.6 percent, his largest share in the nation; and fast-growing Douglas County, Colorado.
Just an interesting data point in the emerging story of red state cognitive dissonance.
5. Why frightened white men loved Mitt Romney.
All of which leads to the most depressing conclusion of all: older white males remain the most terrified, lopsided, confused demographic in all of America, perhaps even more acutely – and more embarrassingly – in this election than any other in modern history.
Upshot: confused middle-aged white guys of every height and state are looking around in increasing terror/desperation for some hint of stability, someone to validate – however wrongly, however dishonestly – their waning powers, and finding only charlatan mushball Mitt Romney and the sneering misogyny of the GOP. Hey, better than nothing, right? Here you go, bro, have a beer and a layoff and some Glenn Beck jeans to go with your sexist binder full of women, courtesy the Bush worldview and Romney’s promise of more of same. Hey, at least he hates the gays!
A snarky take, but still valid.
Fact Of The Day: America’s 50-state flag was designed for a school project and was graded “B-“
Quote Of The Day: What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on Earth, the belief that our destiny is shared…that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations, so that the freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights, and among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great. – Barack Obama
Springsteen Of The Day: “Death To My Hometown”
Song Of The Day: “Welcome Home” – Radical Face
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