The stupid! It scathes!

Happy Memorial Day! Another bloody long one—mostly because of all the quotes. I'd have made it shorter but I didn't want to take the extra time.

I vote for Gene too. Mara's honest-and-trustworthy numbers are going through the floor. Image tweeted sometime in late March by Stacy Smallwood.

Mara Liasson on NPR yesterday morning:

This was a bad week for Hillary Clinton. The State Department inspector general released a report that was very scathing. And it contradicted a couple of assertions she's made in the past about her using a private server for her emails. She'd said in the past that the arrangement was allowed. Now, she never said she asked for permission and got it. But she did say it was allowed. And the inspector general said no, it wasn't allowed. And if she had asked us, we wouldn't have let her do it, or we would've told her not to do it.

The report was "very scathing"? What was the thing about it that "scathed", "scorched", "seared", or "assailed with withering denunciation"? The next sentence begins with "And", indicating that it's about something in addition to the scathe factor, which remains unexplained. The report's conclusion, in full, states:

Annals of derp: Troll poll

Mara's troll face. Via commenter jimmyk at justoneminute.

Report with Mara Liasson at NPR this morning:

In the key battleground states that will decide control of the Senate this November, President Obama's approval numbers are lower than they are nationally – but not much lower.

That's the key finding in a new poll, conducted by Democrat Stan Greenberg of Democracy Corps and Republican Whit Ayres of Resurgent Republic, that sampled likely voters for NPR.

In the 12 states with competitive Senate races this fall, only 38 percent of likely voters said they approved of the way the president is handling his job. An index of all national polls shows the president's approval rating about four percentage points higher nationwide.

NPR's list of battleground states:

Insider poopology

Time Saving Truth from Falsehood. By François Lemoyne, 1737.

Just about the same time as I got the message from Mara Liasson that the new rules on insurance coverage for family planning were all part of Obama's 11-dimensional election strategy which involves getting Rick Santorum the Republican nomination—actually it's not her fault, I made most of it up—the august Markos was coming up with a similar idea: that Democrats should go vote for Santorum in the upcoming primaries and caucuses that allow it, starting with Michigan, by way of, if not actually nominating Santorum, at least making Romney's victory as painful and exhausting as possible; he called it Operation Hilarity.

High-minded Kossacks rose, however, in protest against the plan, which smacked [jump]

Insider Poop Watch

NPR sports analyst Mara Liasson, covering the "caucus-race" trial heats in the coveted White House Stakes competition, said something unexpected--I guess that's news in itself:

Talking Head Makes Original Observation

Effects on Market Uncertain

Anyway, she said President Obama is responsible for the recent froth in the candidacy of Rick Santorum; the announcement of new regulations on health coverage of birth control has brought the "social conservatives" to a boil and they're out in force, with their mistrust of the Mormon and longing for purity. So I'm like whoa, as the young folk say, could Obama be doing this on purpose? Keeping the Republicans undecided, or worse, trying to get Santorum the nomination? Some of that 11-dimensional chess?

The attention he desperately needs

The phrase was used by Mara Liasson on NPR this morning, and to be understood as horse race language--for the attention that will come to a candidate if he gets more votes relative to some other candidate than she was expecting him to, which will apparently contribute to his getting still more votes somewhere else; the desperation would be at the thought of not getting those votes, of being no longer "in the running", and it doesn't sound like the right word, at least as long as you don't think about the money at stake, and I don't think these very high rollers habitually do.

But it made me think of a humbler context,[jump]