Sean Hannity finds his market niche

Yep, Conservative Victory is right between the douches. Via.

What's it like living near Roger Ailes? Not. Fun.

Jacob Weisberg writes about his experience living in the same town as the head of Fox News:

Twenty years ago, my wife and I bought a weekend house in the town of Garrison, N.Y... We love the place for its scenic beauty, its peace and quiet, and its old-fashioned sense of community... 

A few years ago, we found ourselves with a new neighbor. Roger Ailes, the chief executive of Fox News, seemed to be looking for something different when he moved to Garrison: not an escape, but a new arena for conflict. He bought the soothing local weekly, The Putnam County News & Recorder; named his wife, Elizabeth, publisher; and set about transforming it into The New York Post with field hockey scores. He fortified his hilltop property by buying up surrounding homes and installing an underground bunker with six months of survival rations. He began appearing at local meetings...with bodyguard and lawyer in tow, demanding to be heard in opposition to a zoning plan intended to limit future development. He drafted Republican candidates to run for town offices. 

...Ailes dealt with Richard Shea, the well-liked and, as it turned out, ­impossible-to-intimidate supervisor of the small encompassing jurisdiction of Philips­town, by threatening, “I will destroy your life.” Shea is a born-and-bred local who runs a contracting business — precisely the kind of “little guy” Ailes claimed to be representing against environmental elitists. Others who crossed the Aileses...reported being threatened with lawsuits or Fox News trucks at their doorsteps, or in one case, being trailed by News Corporation security officers. Without the restraining influences of his parent company, Ailes has acted out in ways that terrified even his minions. Sherman says a young conservative who was imported to edit The News & Recorder became so frightened by Ailes’s surveillance of the staff and creepy personal comments that he quit and fled town. His replacement as editor, a destitute man’s Sean Hannity, continues to denounce critics as “anarchists” and “anti-Christian.” 

Garrison is the key to understanding Ailes because it’s a microcosm of what he’s spent his career doing to the country. He could have moved there to live and let live. Instead...he recapitulated the culture war he was already busily inciting at a national level. Within a short time of his arrival, town meetings turned ugly. Issues of patriotism, religion and political correctness overtook the normal debates about road paving and property taxes. Single-handedly and almost instantaneously, he injected a peaceable civic space with an aggression and unpleasantness that weren’t there before.
 

Randy Neugebauer is the Small Mind of the Day

What can I say about Congressman Randy Neugebauer (Republican, Texas)? He shows up at a WWII memorial to tell a park ranger she should be "ashamed" for doing her job. (This is the same Randy Neugebauer who yelled "baby killer!" at Rep. Bart Stupak as he spoke on the floor of the House.)

See the video of this sad encounter at NPR.

Meet Art Robinson, the Batshit Insane Head of Oregon’s GOP

Art Robinson is the new chair of the Oregon Republican Party. What are his qualifications? Well, he is a climate change denier. And of course, he’s a loose cannon. Hey, I’m just quoting him: “I'm an American. We’re all loose cannons.”

How loose is Art’s cannon? Here he is on nuclear waste:

“All we need do with nuclear waste is dilute it to a low radiation level and sprinkle it over the ocean — or even over America after hormesis is better understood and verified with respect to more diseases.”

On public schools:

“Public education (tax-financed socialism) has become the most widespread and devastating form of child abuse and racism in the United States. Can it be corrected by improving the public schools? No—only by abolishing them.”

When three of his kids went to Oregon State University and failed to get their doctoral work in nuclear engineering (!) approved, it was because “liberal socialist” school “dances to the tune of the Democratic machine.”

That doesn’t even make sense.

You must be wondering the same thing as me: How could Oregon’s Republicans be this desperate? Answer: Hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer. (Check his political contributions here.) And Mercer LOVES Robinson; witness his near million-dollar contribution to the Robinson’s “science foundation” two years ago. (Mercer is currently being sued by his employees, BTW.)

What have we learned? Republicans are batshit crazy—and they have some serious coin backing up their madness. 

Ted Cruz isn't playing chess with all his marbles.

Yep, that's from the unesteemed senator's twitter feed. Via.

Science proves it: BMW drivers are the worst!

Via.

Like you, I've long heard stories about how BMW drivers in the U.S. tend to be jerks. But since the evidence was all anecdotal, I tended to dismiss it.

But then today came news of a study that shows that luxury car drivers, especially of BMWs, ARE jerks. And I'm not just extrapolating from the data. Researcher Paul K. Piff actually said, "BMW drivers were the worst."

Why did they regularly threaten pedestrians and fail to take turns at intersections? Do only asshats buy these cars? Bill Appledorf theorizes: "People in the eyes of rich people fall into two categories: competitors to impress or become richer than, and nonentities whose function, if they don't just get in the way or threaten rich people's wealth, is to make rich people richer."

Mr. Appledorf is probably onto something; after all, science also shows that powerful people lack empathy!

Heroes and Villains on the Road

Via.

People typically ride bikes for any (or all) of the following reasons:

1. They care about the environment.
2. They want to get some exercise.
3. (A distant third): They're looking to save money on gas and/or it's a style choice. "Hey, all the other hipsters are doing it!"

In short, bikers are usually responsible, civic-minded individuals. So it was with pride that I read this New York Times article about Bill Hewitt. I often see his B-Line Sustainable Delivery cargo bikes around Portland. More power to him.

Via.

But we wish less power to Mailand King. According to this Oregonian article, the gentleman backed his Camaro right into a passing cargo bike in a Home Depot parking lot the other day. And then Mr. King got out of his car and was less than gracious to his victim—but this isn't what merits his award today.

No, it was when the cargo-biker, Mike Cobb, tried to get a photo of the Camaro's license plate that King's behavior veered to the churlish. See, Mailand King has his 15-year old daughter stand in FRONT of the license plate so no photo was possible.

As Cobb himself notes in the article's comments: "Identification, contact info. I was happy to supply. I got backed into by a car traveling at 10-15 MPH. I was traveling safely and legally. Clear-cut fault. No need to hide anything."

So to review King's actions: First, hit a biker. Then, refuse to share information about yourself and coerce your kid into the cover-up? Ugh.