Don’t mean to overreact and risk boosting everybody’s blood pressure higher than opening offers on Facebook’s upcoming IPO, but this might be a halfway decent time to seek out a nice safe steel bunker to hunker down in or behind, because it’s awards season and heavy metal statuettes are being tossed around [...]]]>

Will Durst

Don’t mean to overreact and risk boosting everybody’s blood pressure higher than opening offers on Facebook’s upcoming IPO, but this might be a halfway decent time to seek out a nice safe steel bunker to hunker down in or behind, because it’s awards season and heavy metal statuettes are being tossed around like dimes at a county fair.

The 2012 Political Animal Awards
Note: No tuxes have been bruised in the creation of these awards

• BEST COSTUME: Rick Santorum for that winning period look — subtly harkening back to a young Mr. Rogers with rabies.
• BAD TIMING AWARD: Tim Pawlenty, for deserting the Presidential line-up before getting his own shot at leading the pack. Runner-Up: Mitch Daniels.
• UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT AWARD: Herman Cain, for continuing to blame the media for finding his fan full of feces.
• THE DUMBER THAN HE ALREADY LOOKS AWARD: In an extremely competitive field, Rick Perry.
• THE NOT AS DUMB AS HIS HAIR LOOKS AWARD: For the 6th consecutive year, Donald Trump.
• THE CLAUDE RAINES INVISIBLE MAN AWARD: George W Bush.
• BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: In a thankless role, Calista Gingrich.
• THE WE CAN’T FIND A MUZZLE BIG ENOUGH AWARD: Joe Biden. May have to retire this award in his name.
• BEST SCORE: Whoever bought Apple at 8.
• THE WHY WON’T ANYONE RETURN MY CALLS AWARD: DEMOCRATIC DIVISION: John Edwards. John Kerry. Anthony Weiner.
• THE WHY WON’T ANYONE RETURN MY CALLS AWARD: REPUBLICAN DIVISION: Dick Cheney. Pat Robertson. Glenn Beck.
• BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS: Industrial Light & Magic for making Mitt Romney appear so lifelike.
• BEST MAKE UP: Newt Gingrich for his very convincing Walking Dead grimace.
• BEST CHOREOGRAPHY: Grover Norquist.
• THE “OH MY GOD, NOT YOU AGAIN” AWARD: Whoever decided contraception made for a good election year wedge issue.
• BEST BOY: Marcus Bachmann.
• BEST ANIMATION: Chris Christie.
• THE OTHER MORMON MEAT AWARD: Jon Huntsman.
• BEST NEWCOMER: Paul Ryan for his highly controversial script, “Roadmap for America’s Future.”
• THE LUCKY IT WASN’T BITTEN OFF AWARD: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.
• MENSA’S SMARTEST MOVE OF THE YEAR: In a huge upset, Sarah Palin picks this one up for refusing to accept another supporting role.
• THE HOW CAN WE MISS YOU IF YOU WON’T GO AWAY AWARD: Ron Paul.
• BEST ENSEMBLE IN A MUSICAL OR COMEDY: The entire Republican Party Presidential Nomination cast.
• BEST ACTOR: Body of work award goes to Speaker of the House John Boehner for various portrayals as outraged defender of fiscal responsibility, obstinate party stalwart and sophisticated gentleman to whom gracious cooperation is of the highest priority and doing it all while orange.
• BEST DIRECTION: The Koch Brothers.
• MISDIRECTION AWARD: Newt Gingrich for his moon base proposal. Always knew his full ambitions could never be contained by Planet Earth.
• COMEBACK OF THE YEAR AWARD: The US economy.
• THE BETTER TO BE LUCKY THAN GOOD AWARD: Barack Obama.

The New York Times says Emmy- nominated comedian and writer Will Durst “is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today.” Check out the website: Redroom.com to buy his book or find out more about upcoming stand- up performances. Or willdurst.com

Obama officials say they’ve doubled annual deportations to nearly 400,000 last year. Critics say those numbers are inflated. If so, why [...]]]> I’m puzzled by this contradiction: The President’s campaign team boasts about his Latino support while his Administration brags about its record deportations, including parents separated from nearly 6,000 children a year.

Obama officials say they’ve doubled annual deportations to nearly 400,000 last year. Critics say those numbers are inflated. If so, why would a President targeting Latino voters even want to goose up deportation statistics to claim that he is twice as tough as his predecessor?

One argument, say Democrats, is that persuading the nation that border enforcement is working paves the way to immigration reform. But while Obama doubles down on deportations he has only paid lip service to seeking reforms.

President Obama has hardly been inspiring on this issue. He has pushed deportations to record levels while failing to reform immigration more humanely. — New York Times editorial, 2/20

Cases of children taken from their deported parents abound. Procedures for reuniting these families are so convoluted that many are permanently separated.

Politically, Obama is aided by a field of Republican challengers who say they would get even tougher. The GOP debate on Wednesday in Arizona will likely feature a rush by candidates to portray themselves as the most anti-immigrant.

Apparently, this is President Obama’s argument to Latino voters: Sure, I’m the worst you’ve seen, but the other guys are far worse.

Borrowed from the world of business marketing, microtargeting is not something campaigns or the companies [...]]]> While Super Pacs get all the attention there’s another much quieter but equally insidious new thing in 2012 politics – campaign organizations spying on your computer to figure out what sort of ads and messages will get you riled up.

Borrowed from the world of business marketing, microtargeting is not something campaigns or the companies they employ to do it are willing to talk about. This article by The New York Times attempts to lift the curtain on a practice so effective that presidential campaigns and others are expected to spend as much as 15 percent of their budgets on it.

The process for targeting a user with political messages takes three steps. The first two are common to any online marketing: a “cookie,” or digital marker, is dropped on a user’s computer after the user visits a Web site or makes a purchase, and that profile is matched with offline data like what charities a person supports, what type of credit card a person has and what type of car he or she drives. The political consultants then take a third step and match that data with voting records, including party registration and how often the person has voted in past election cycles, but not whom that person voted for.

Throughout the process, the targeted consumers are tagged with an alphanumeric code, removing their names and making the data anonymous. So while the campaigns are not aiming at consumers by name — only by the code — the effect is the same. Campaigns are able to aim at specific possible voters across the Web. Instead of buying an ad on, say, The Miami Herald Web site, a campaign can buy an audience.

– New York Times, 2/21

Perhaps a Republican former blue-state governor who can triangulate, obfuscate and, yes, even sacrifice red-state principles [...]]]> The President’s polling uptick makes Mitt Romney’s case to resistant GOP voters better than he can. When Obama looked beatable right wingers felt smug enough to go pure. But now they must rethink.

Perhaps a Republican former blue-state governor who can triangulate, obfuscate and, yes, even sacrifice red-state principles is what it takes to lure enough independents to take the White House.

Such thinking would likely be wrong. In recent years when Republicans wimped out for supposedly electable moderates they lost: Ford, Bush Sr., Dole, McCain.

But there’s not much left for Romney to argue, except to say that a disingenuous conservative who doesn’t frighten independents might eke out a victory. How’s that for a bumper sticker!