"Peggy Noonan is someone who is very, very skilled at making bullshit look like some elegant soufflé," Silver says. "She’s very good at rhetoric and argument, but it’s still not grounded in the truth—it all falls apart every four years, but I don’t think she’ll be out of a job any time soon."
"The next Obama-Romney debate will be different. The same Obama will not show up. He's been embarrassed. He'll bring his LeBron."
Noted without comment: "All right, you know what I think people miss when they look at Washington and our political leadership? They miss old and august. They miss wise and weathered. They miss the presence of bruised and battered veterans of life who've absorbed its facts and lived to tell the tale.
This is a nation-a world-badly in need of adult supervision."
"Decisions based on instinct can have surprisingly positive outcomes, according to new research…. When asked to choose between two options based on instinct alone, volunteers made the right call up to 90 percent of the time, the researchers report." Although other times, they get it pretty badly wrong.
My favorite crazy conservative meme about the President is the idea that, if only some magical white man tricks him into acting angry, America will realize what a monster he actually is.
Do you know what an American looks like? According to Peggy Noonan, it's Massachusetts Republican candidate Scott Brown! You know what an American doesn't look like? I don't know, but I bet he or she has a certain amount of duskiness to him or her. I'm just guessing there, but let's say I've got a pretty good hunch about it. [Via]
somewhere Peggy Noonan is deleting old columns; MT @paulbegala POTUS won Catholics 50-47. He. Won. Catholics.
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) November 7, 2012
(In case you've forgotten: "There are 77.7 million Catholics in the United States. In 2008 they made up 27% of the electorate, about 35 million people. Mr. Obama carried the Catholic vote, 54% to 45%. They helped him win. They won't this year. And guess where a lot of Catholics live? In the battleground states. There was no reason to pick this fight. It reflects political incompetence on a scale so great as to make Mitt Romney's gaffes a little bitty thing. [...]
"He must use humor, for three reasons. One is that wit breaks through and sharpens all points. Another is that it is natural to him. Before the voting in Iowa, he wryly told a friend that the caucuses were like the LaBrea Tar Pits: 'No one comes out the way they went in.' On a conference call recently, he asked a question of his staff. No one answered. Mr. Romney waited. 'Bueller? Bueller?" he said, in a perfect imitation of Ben Stein.'" —He's also good with birther jokes! Anyway, Peggy Noonan picks up another cheerleading check.
Did you know that wordy Republican propagandist Peggy Noonan will be teaching a course at Harvard this fall? Well, she sure will! Hear a dramatic reading of her syllabus-"with a few improvements"-as rendered in the dulcet tones of Awl contributor Chris Lehmann here.
