First, off, this is damn funny:
Also of interest is this joint interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. It's nice to hear them talk frankly about the industry without trying to inspire us with their world-changing, "imagineered" stuff (wish I could find a YouTube clip of the original Mr. Show skit that featured the "imagineer" guy, but no luck (thanks, Adem). Instead, I'll (also) link to this, which is one of the funniest concepts ever on Mr. Show. I laughed for days.).
Finally, this story on the Republican National Committee firing their entire fundraising phone bank kind of cracked me up. The story explains that the official reason for the closure is that the equipment was too old. Since when has the GOP not lavished its booty on outreach to its Sturmabteilung troops? Then things clear up:
Several of the solicitors fired at the May 24 meeting reported declining contributions and a donor backlash against the immigration proposals now being pushed by Mr. Bush and Senate Republicans.
"Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue," said a fired phone bank employee who said the severance pay the RNC agreed to pay him was contingent on his not criticizing the national committee.
Heh. Then this:
A spokeswoman for the committee denied any drop-off in fundraising.
"Any assertion that overall donations have gone down is patently false," RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt wrote by e-mail yesterday in response to questions sent by The Times. "We continue to out-raise our Democrat counterpart by a substantive amount (nearly double)."
...
She also said that "the changing ways in which people choose to contribute" meant that the RNC's in-house phone bank "was simply no longer cost effective, although unfortunate."
Now think about that. Bush is pushing for a way to keep low-wage workers in the States, benefiting employers (read: agribusiness and other medium to large business interests). The GOP base rebels. But, somehow - mysteriously - these donations just keep coming in.
Now what would that tell you about the particular way the pattern of contributions have changed? Figured it out yet? In the words of neocon big daddy Bill Kristol, "one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy..."
So get ready for a lot of changes, Mr. and Mrs Average Republican. And just when I thought the progressives were perhaps the bigger suckers for electing Democrats to end the war. This summer, things are going to get interesting.
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