How can any recount (in the traditional sense of the term) be performed given such inherent limitations?

Republican party honchos call Diebold (or whoever), say they don't like the results, and ask that some better results be calculated from the same data. Nobody can tell what results are valid anyway, and nobody can check because the companies that build the machines regard the raw vote data as proprietary information.

In the anti-meritocracy that is the GOP, Fleischer is sure to be rewarded with another cushy post, but let's celebrate small victories.

Or maybe he'll get an important GOP post and then we can celebrate TWO victories.

I also understand the concept of "Peach through strength", and I don't think it includes bankrupting the country so badly that we have to beg other countries for money just to keep going.

"Hey Sheik, could ya lend us a trillion so we can invade another one of your neighbors?".

Reich-wing scumbags have implemented newspeak. "Support the troops" means sending them someplace dangerous, and does NOT mean taking take care of them when they get hurt.

Let's treat Garrison's column the way Washington treats Detroit.

Detroit would be in much better shape, as would the rest of the country, if Washington had given some of that "Detroit" treatment to the finance industry.

I think American car companies go out of their way to make their "economy" models look frumpy so that people who can afford more (if only by way of 'trick' financing) will be embarrassed to buy them. The damn things practically scream THIS IS A CHEAP CAR.

The prudent use of blood sacrifice sounds pretty good, especially if you started with all the Reaganite trickle-down "the market is god" morons ...

Oh no, not that. Don't you know that offering garbage as sacrifices is a surefire way to infuriate the gods?

Perhaps instead they could be "repurposed" as fertilizer.

Call it socialism, government interference in the markets, whatever you want, but America needs it.

I'm still trying to figure out how "capitalism" acquired so many good connotations. Perhaps it was a side effect of the McCarty era paranoia about communism: If communism was bad, than capitalism must have been good.

In any case, capitalism and communism have one thing in common: They both sound a lot better in theory than they work in practice.

...I will require more edification in what precisely is meant by the "socialist view of honor and shame" before I am convinced.

I think it's exactly the same as the U.S. conservative view: It's honorable if we do it, otherwise it's shameful.

If Republican losses are not attributable to the political philosophies of the voters, then how else can they explain the election results? Are they admitting that the current crop of Republican candidates are a bunch of jerks?

Clearly, the Founders were brilliant and visionary. They knew that religion would spawn nutballs like DeMint and the rest of the Xtian Right, and knew how corrosive and destructive they could be. Hence the establishment clause right there in Amendment Numero Uno.

And let's not forget something that "conservatives" seem compelled to repeat ad nauseum: Many of those founders were christians.

I think it particularly compelling that they saw fit to prohibit the government they created from having any connection with religion, including their own.

I don't think I've ever seen one off-road, however.

No kidding. There's a few hummers in my neighborhood, and all of them are driven by people who would go a mile out of their way to avoid a mud puddle. The funniest thing is watching them slow to a dead crawl when they encounter speed bumps in parking lots.

$7.50 gets you a copy.

Which you will denounce because it is "only a copy".

I don't think the correct diagnosis here is Psychosis or even Schizophrenia. No, I think Paranoia fits here.

Maybe it's even simper than that: Some people are a pain in the ass just because they get a kick out of being a pain in the ass. Conspiracy theories provide nice, ready-made formulas that allow such people to be a pain in the ass without having to really work at it.

Americans were FOOLED. Almost everything about Obama is FAKE, including possibly his birth certificate. ..

Oh please get real. This country has an abundance of natural-born dirtbags who would stand in line for a chance to be the chosen tool of "the enemy", whoever that might be. There's no need to attract attention by importing an outside dirtbag.

We can all go home now. It is officially the apocalypse.

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

The single most common complaint about the new media landscape is that no one will pay for costly investigative reporting...

Perhaps people would be willing to buy newspapers for that if they actually did it. Passing on whatever anonymous "sources" say as if it were fact is NOT reporting.

Saying that Obama was unelectable was a political strategy they considered...

That seems easy enough to say. Why didn't Penn say it instead of stammering out an awkward non-response?

Great investigation in Detroit: Our criminal idiot Mayor and his paramour are in jail right now due to Detroit Free Press (old media) investigations of their text messages (new media).

How is Detroit Free Press doing financially?

IMO, the difference is that Penn sounded like he actually believed the "unelectable" line, and he ran a campaign that seemed to reflect such a belief. I also think his response during the interview we are discussing was that of someone called out on an embarrassing mistake, rather than someone who was merely considering a possible campaign strategy.

I don't see anything comparable in any of Obama's statements about Hillary.