Friday links! Second best team in Tampa edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 6 Comments

The Republican National Convention has blown out of Tampa with a whoosh of salt air, leaving behind it only litter and fact checkers. By all accounts, it was a fine affair that Combat! blog covered not at all. I don’t go in for political kabuki. I only like political Noh, on which the RNC verged several times. A bunch of crazy stuff happened in Florida this week, and none of it was true. Super PAC and campaign operatives stayed in the same hotel, not coordinating at all. Paul Ryan blamed Obama for a bunch of stuff that happened before he was president, and Clint Eastwood did a ventriloquist act with no dummy. Also, a Montana man was killed while impersonating Bigfoot, in what for now seems to be an unrelated story. At this point, though, I woud believe anything.

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Against which machine, exactly?

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 3 Comments

Rage Against the Machine and guitarist Tom Morello’s extremely bad t-shirt idea

Charming Charlie sent me this nuanced—and equally ranty, so buckle up—assessment of what it means that Paul Ryan likes Rage Against the Machine. I know that tidbit came out a few weeks ago, but you know it was the most important reveal of the 2012 election. Either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will be our next president; such details pale in comparison to the knowledge that the man who wants to end Medicare rocks out to “Killing in the Name.” The Last Psychologist, if that is his real name, believes that the whole thing is a setup—the question that brought this information to light, the co-opting of little- and big-r Rage by MTV, the faux media outrage, everything. I think he is exactly half right.

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Is this the handsomest GOP ticket ever?

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 3 Comments

Paul Ryan addresses a journalist who was mean to Mitt Romney last week.

Paul Ryan was a high school prom king. Also his dad died when he was young, which is sad and uncool, and now he wants your dad to die too. Mitt Romney picked this guy to be his running mate Saturday morning, in a clever bid to capture a bloc of voters who might otherwise have gone to Obama: Tea Party members. Actually Ryan is a respected representative whose traction among the conservative wing of his party would help President Romney corral a potentially rebellious Congress. Or Candidate Romney decided he was going to lose in November unless he did something crazy. It depends whom you ask.

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