Rachel Maddow responds: Ha ha!

Transcript via NewsBusters:

MADDOW: I was thinking about that as we see Eric Cantor and these other Republican Congressmen denouncing the Occupy Wall Street people as, you know, an angry mob and somehow dangerous to the country. I wonder if a sense of dangerousness is what gives them power.

BILL MAHER: Well, yeah, I think so. I don’t think anyone feels that we’re in a country like so many in the world. Let’s remember we are luckier than most where violence is really going to rule the day and effect policy. But, yeah, people can be intimidated by that kind of thing. I mean, this idea that they’re marching now on millionaires’ homes, I couldn’t help but think of that scene in the Martin Scorsese movie “Gangs of New York” where the riots break out in New York and Martin Scorsese has that cameo where he plays the rich guy. You know, he’s in his Fifth Avenue apartment and a brick comes through the window. Well, you know, if a brick came through Rupert Murdoch’s apartment, yes, I have a feeling Fox News would be a lot more gentle on the Wall Street people.

MADDOW: [Laughs]

Bookmark this for future reference the next time you see crocodile tears cried over violent language such as “targeting” a political opponent.

P.S. Y’all are aware that Neal Rauhauser has a role in this OccupyWallStreet movement, right? And that he is working closely these days with convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin?

OK. Just wanted to make sure you knew that.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

From the official Playstation blog:

We want to let you know that we have detected attempts on Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment (“Networks”) [abbreviated as “SOE”] services to test a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database. These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources. In this case, given that the data tested against our network consisted of sign-in ID-password pairs, and that the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, it is likely the data came from another source and not from our Networks. We have taken steps to mitigate the activity.

Less than one tenth of one percent (0.1%) of our PSN, SEN and SOE audience may have been affected. There were approximately 93,000 accounts globally (PSN/SEN: approximately 60,000 accounts; SOE: approximately 33,000) where the attempts succeeded in verifying those accounts’ valid sign-in IDs and passwords, and we have temporarily locked these accounts. Only a small fraction of these 93,000 accounts showed additional activity prior to being locked. We are currently reviewing those accounts for unauthorized access, and will provide more updates as we have them. Please note, if you have a credit card associated with your account, your credit card number is not at risk. We will work with any users whom we confirm have had unauthorized purchases made to restore amounts in the PSN/SEN or SOE wallet.

Read the whole thing.  You will know if you were one of the targeted ID’s because you will get an email from Sony.

Personally with that PSN outage a few months back, I have decided not to keep any credit card information associated with my account.  Instead I buy physical Playstation gift cards when I want to download something, limiting my exposure.  So as of right now, if someone hacked my PSN account, they could buy a whole whopping $0.96 cents of crap.  Don’t spend it all in one place, hackers!  And while surely those who use Xboxes will have a snicker, let’s face it, sooner or later it could happen to you, too, and it might be wise to follow the same approach, with this and other online accounts.

H/t: Joystiq.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Via Pajamas Media we get video of a man saying the following:

One of the speakers said the solution is nonviolent movement. No, my friend. I’ll give you two examples: French Revolution, and Indian so-called Revolution.

Gandhi, Gandhi today is, with respect to all of you, Gandhi today is a tumor that the ruling class is using constantly to mislead us. French Revolution made fundamental transformation. But it was bloody.

India, the result of Gandhi, is 600 million people living in maximum poverty.

So, ultimately, the bourgeosie won’t go without violent means. Revolution! Yes, revolution that is led by the working class.

Long live revolution! Long live socialism!

Yeah, you are right.  Mind you, we are nowhere near true revolutionary violence like you fantasize about, but if it comes down to that, you are not going to take our property, our freedom and our right to pursue happiness.  As William Wallace didn’t actually say: “they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!”

And let me clue you into something else, Marxy-boy: there are more of us than there are of you.  And we practice our Second Amendment rights.  We are nowhere near any situation where there is any need for private violence, but let me suggest that you in the Occupy Wall Street movement adopt a non-violent approach if for no other reason than the fact you will lose.  Badly.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Posted by Karl]

The obvious answer is we don’t know, but allow me to reverse-engineer the question.

Ramesh Ponnuru’s latest column for Bloomberg purports to offer two reasons why Romney beats Not Romney:

[T]he Republican establishment almost always wins presidential-nomination contests, and conservative insurgents almost never do. Since 1984, nobody substantially to the right of the party establishment has won the nomination. Make a mental list of the last four Republican nominees — George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain — and the notion of a Romney victory in the primaries becomes less surprising.

Establishment-oriented candidates keep winning for two reasons. The first is that the party establishment has moved to the right, too, co-opting conservatives who might otherwise have overthrown it. ***

***

The second reason the establishment wins is that its opponents never unify behind another candidate.

Although there is something to both points, I started a straightforward critique focusing on the first.  Ponnuru’s argument discounts not only the value of prior experience running for president, but also the roles resume and regionalism play alongside ideology in selecting a GOP nominee.  Reviewing the GOP candidates for the nomination in 1988, 1996, 2000, and 2008, it is difficult to find a non-nominee who was substantially to the right of the eventual nominee with experience running a national campaign or an equal to better resume. 

For example, in 2008, Mike Huckabee had been a southern governor, but had less experience running for president than John McCain.  Also, Huck may have seemed more socially conservative than McCain, but he was arguably less fiscally conservative.  In 2000, George W. Bush could draw upon the national experience of his father’s team, was the chief executive of a southern state, and — whatever the right may grumble now — seemed more conservative than McCain.

But what about 1996?  Bob Dole was the vice-presidential nominee, and ran unsuccessfully for the GOP presidential nomination twice — losing to Reagan in 1980 and (sitting veep) George H. W. Bush in 1988.  But he was a Senator from the plains, as opposed to the south or the sunbelt.  On paper, Phil Gramm should have been a formidable rival.  Gramm was a Senator from Texas — a party-switcher, but more conservative than Dole.  He entered the race with big buzz and even bigger bucks.  Gramm ultimately fizzled due to image problems (which is saying something when the competition is Bob Dole) and because social conservatives favored Pat Buchanan, particularly in the early Louisiana caucus.  The 1996 campaign may be the best example where the establishment candidate won the nomination due to disunited conservatives.

Phil Gramm would likely be the first to concede that Rick Perry is a better-looking candidate than he was, but parallels remain.  Perry is from Texas — a party-switcher, but with a more conservative record than Romney.  Perry has been painted by Romney as overly harsh on spending issues, while more hardcore conservatives are offended by his tone and positions on issues like the Texas Dream Act and find him to be a crony capitalist.  His early debate performances contributed to a bad image with the base that watched them.  Thus, after a splashy entrance, Perry finds himself struggling for the Not Romney vote with Herman Cain.

Speaking of Cain, if you review those past GOP candidate lineups, you will find he fills two familiar slots: Fiery Talk Show Guy and Unelected Businessguy With a Tax Plan (presumably to compensate for the lack of political resume).  If Rick Perry has to worry about being Phil Gramm, Herman Cain has to worry about being the lovechild of Pat Buchanan and Steve Forbes.

Update:  Ponnuru responds, but it seems he views this post as more of a critique than it is.  I “started” that way, but his column was ultimately a springboard for the Perry-Gramm comparison.  He also argues that resume is a third reason establishment candidates tend to win.  Again, he has a point, although by restricting his analysis to post-1984, he gets to take as a given that Reagan shifted the entire GOP to the right after gaining experience running against Nixon in 1968 and Ford in 1976.  Reagan showed that a less-establishment conservative can win, given the right resume and prior experience running… but Reagan was a much better candidate than Gramm or Perry so far.

–Karl