What?? It was too good to resist...
Joss Whedon on Romney and Zombies
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What?? It was too good to resist...
My daughter is very anxious that Mitt Romney might win the election. Before that she was worried about the European monetary crisis and what might happen if Greece defaults. This suggest that the...
Just like Barack Obama in 2008, Mitt Romney apparently believes the silly theories of partisan preference popular among his base. Or he's craven enough to peddle the argument to his donors. Neither...
Richard Grenell was pushed out as Mitt Romney's national-security spokesman. In The Daily Beast, he attempts to defend his former boss.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got it right. The Middle...
I don't really want to pile on, but the question for me is: how does a major presidential candidate in the 21st century (and a guy who has been running for office now for seven straight years) screw this up so badly? As a resident of Massachusetts, I watched Romney as governor, he wasn't a disaster and I don't think he ever displayed the level of incompetence that we've seen recently. So what's going on? I've been pondering this with various Massachusetts political analysts/friends over the past day, here's what I see:As governor, Romney's staff was small and most decisions were made within...
This is actually a pretty good checklist.I'm busy with other projects--dissertating, researching, and watching Breaking Bad, in ascending order--but I wanted to point out that the problem with Mitt Romney's statement about the attacks on Americans in Libya and Egypt is not what it tells us about foreign policy. We know very little about Romney's foreign policy views, and it is possible that Romney himself hasn't thought deeply about the it. (Indeed, my gut feeling informed intuition has long been that most American presidents simply don't have well-informed views on things like military...
Erik Erikson's full-throated attack on the US media and Obama is getting bounced around the right-wing twitter-verse today.  For those of us who aren't part of that universe, it provides an interesting glimpse inside the bubble. It begins thus: Yesterday, as the American consulate in Libya was smoking and the rioters were returning in Egypt, the President of the United States flew off to Las Vegas for a fundraiser while his spokesman was telling the American press corps that yesterday wasn’t really a normal political day. Had it been George W. Bush, the media would, right now, be marching on...
Robert Golan-Viella reflects on a tectonic shift in partisan foreign-policy debate, i.e., the fact that the Democrats have the upper hand. He chalks this up to campaign politics: the key to a Republican victory runs through the economy. I agree that there are "strong critiques" of Obama foreign policy and that "leading Republicans aren't making them." But I don't think this is "politically smart," insofar as leading Republicans are making attacks on Obama foreign policy--just not very good ones.As Blake Hounshell noted on twitter of the latest broadside from the Romney campaign: I expect...
Here is a word cloud of the speech's foreign-policy content:In this case, the cloud adds virtually nothing to our understanding, as the entire section is only 202 words long.Below is the section itself. It appears that the speechwriters pulled random posts off of PJ Media, stuck them in a blender, and were satisfied with the results. I will begin my presidency with a jobs tour. President Obama began with an apology tour. America, he said, had dictated to other nations. No Mr. President, America has freed other nations from dictators. Every American was relieved the day President Obama gave...
One of the defining features of the current era of globalization is the rise in uncertainty and complexity in global politics. There are more actors, more transactions, and more challenges as a result. In the face of this, the United States continues to spend more on national security – the military, intelligence, and homeland security – than almost all other countries in the world combined. And, yet it’s clear that as the world is becoming increasingly more complex, the United States’ ability to influence outcomes – as demonstrated by the Iraq, Afghanistan, and the global economic crisis...