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[Byakuya769]

He doesn't sound like an independent to me.

And you can't "suburb" up the phrase "He gon get dis work" replacing dis with dat would also be acceptable. You churched it up.

Oh, you know the type. It always starts as the disinterested arbiter of "truth" and as the election looms closer, crazy ultra partisan bullshit.

To your other point: I'm an avid rap listener, I take license to do that.

 

[AlteredBeast]

Welp, epic fail on my part. I've not lived up to my old username.

Side note: What ever happened to Mina anyway?

I can't remember exactly, but didn't she end up being a dude? She is legendary GAF, but that was so long ago, I am sure that 90% of GAFfer have never even heard of her and her escapades. That was like ezboards GAF!

 

[AlteredBeast]

Oh, you know the type. It always starts as the disinterested arbiter of "truth" and as the election looms closer, crazy ultra partisan bullshit.

I have been accused of as much

I won't let you guys down, I promise! Maybe have to take a picture of my ballot in the booth to prove it.


EDIT: and to tell you the truth, I just heard that asinine phrase in a thread like 2 days ago.

 

[ErasureAcer]

But if they do, it will let us Minnesotans feel even more superior.

Yes. We're going to put up a blockade on Lake Superior surrounding Wisconsin if they vote for Romney. Wisconsin has no right to be connected with the word superior if they vote for Romney.

 

[Link]

I can't remember exactly, but didn't she end up being a dude? She is legendary GAF, but that was so long ago, I am sure that 90% of GAFfer have never even heard of her and her escapades. That was like ezboards GAF!

Probably was a guy. Wouldn't surprise me, anyway. Fun to talk to either way. And I think you underestimate how many people are still here from back then.

 

[HylianTom]

Don't really care about him. I hit him with this.

"The same year he sent seals into the borders of an uncooperative "ally" to take out the mastermind of an attack that killed thousands? Come on, man. Take a deep breath and reflect."

He responded:

So he had to get this work.

Your friend's ranting is like chicken soup for the liberal's soul. This is just an appetizer for what's to come. We'll be having an all-you-can-eat buffet shortly. Yum.

 

[Officerrob]

Don't really care about him. I hit him with this.

"The same year he sent seals into the borders of an uncooperative "ally" to take out the mastermind of an attack that killed thousands? Come on, man. Take a deep breath and reflect."

He responded:


So he had to get this work.

Damn nice work there. I hate mixing it up with those who only spout talking points or vague statements, but you handled that very well.

 

[Frank the Great]

nate has obama up slightly today, to 65.7% from 64.8%, in spite of the terrible gallup and marquette polls.

the wisconsin polls scare me a bit. but i just realized . . . obama does not technically even need wisconsin. NV/IA/OH/NH gets him to 271. if colorado starts coming over to the good side as PPP hinted at, even better. then obama could win without WI, IA, or NH, with exactly 270.

ohio is so awesome. what a great firewall.

 

[Salazar]

Man, I loved Big Fish.

You oughta read Little, Big.

 

[Link]

You oughta read Little, Big.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely check it out.

 

[isoquant]

This faux-outrage over the binder comment is absolutely mystifying to me.

An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.

And I – and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are – are all men." They said: "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications."

And I said: "Well, gosh, can't we – can't we find some – some women that are also qualified?"

And – and so we – we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women's groups and said: "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.

What on earth is offensive about that story?

There's a thread in OT suggesting that the claim is completely false - which is a fair point of attack - but that's not what the outrage is all about. Apparently the phrase 'binder full of women' is itself derogatory. The fuck?

 

[B-Dubs]

This faux-outrage over the binder comment is absolutely mystifying to me.



What on earth is offensive about that story?

There's a thread in OT suggesting that the claim is completely false - which is a fair point of attack - but that's not what the outrage is all about. Apparently the phrase 'binder full of women' is itself derogatory. The fuck?

The fact that it is a lie, he didn't have his people put together a list of qualified women candidates. An outside group had made one for whoever was going to win the election and he's taking credit for their work which he had nothing to do with.

Is the official story

Romney’s story isn’t entirely accurate.

Those “binders full of women” actually came from a coalition called Massachusetts Government Appointments Project, or MassGAP, that had formed in August 2002 to address the shortage of women in high-ranking government positions. They had started assembling groups of applicants, taking several months to reach out to women’s organizations around the state and preparing to present potential hires to whichever candidate won the election.

“We contacted both candidates before the final election,” said Liz Levin, who was chairman of MassGAP until 2010. “This was an effort that we put our hearts in. We wanted to make sure that people knew how many good, qualified, terrific ladies there were.”

 

[AlteredBeast]

Feminism. Don't even bring it up. I am also mystified, but I figured it was just because Romney said it and he is kind of awkward.

 

[AlteredBeast]

The fact that it is a lie, he didn't have his people put together a list of qualified women candidates. An outside group had made one for whoever was going to win the election and he's taking credit for their work which he had nothing to do with.

That is not what the story says, nor what the outrage is about. It is exactly what Obama needs, but it is so manufactured, you would swear it was on Hannity, regarding something Obama mumbled.

 

[B-Dubs]

That is not what the story says, nor what the outrage is about. It is exactly what Obama needs, but it is so manufactured, you would swear it was on Hannity, regarding something Obama mumbled.

I know, but that's the part I'm annoyed about. He took credit for an project that an outside group started. He did agree to work with them when contacted, but it was not his idea like he made it out to be.

 

[East Lake]

It's a badly worded quote in an election season. It's about as mystifying as you didn't build that.

 

[SmokeMaxX]

This faux-outrage over the binder comment is absolutely mystifying to me.

What on earth is offensive about that story?

There's a thread in OT suggesting that the claim is completely false - which is a fair point of attack - but that's not what the outrage is all about. Apparently the phrase 'binder full of women' is itself derogatory. The fuck?

It's not really fair to Romney, but Romney really needs to think before he speaks. He's trying to connect with women so he tells an anecdote about hiring women... in the least personal way possible. First he went all affirmative action on their asses and THEN he didn't even meet them face to face (to interview, to meet, etc.). He just picked some random people out of a binder. It just rubbed people the wrong way.

 

[Chumly]

This faux-outrage over the binder comment is absolutely mystifying to me.



What on earth is offensive about that story?

There's a thread in OT suggesting that the claim is completely false - which is a fair point of attack - but that's not what the outrage is all about. Apparently the phrase 'binder full of women' is itself derogatory. The fuck?

The fact that it had nothing to do with the question? The fact that they had to go to women's group to find qualified women? The fact that he basically wanted women on his team to look good? I mean the question was about equal pay and Romney goes I have binders of women lol.

At the time I didn't think it was that big of a deal but its really blown up.

 

[RPGamer92]

I don't know if this has been posted yet it got leaked that Romney told company CEOs to tell their employees to vote for him or face potential firings:
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/10/17/1037881/leaked-audio-romney-employers/?mobile=nc

 

[soul creator]

Don't really care about him. I hit him with this.

"The same year he sent seals into the borders of an uncooperative "ally" to take out the mastermind of an attack that killed thousands? Come on, man. Take a deep breath and reflect."

He responded:


So he had to get this work.

sounds like his mind was already plagued

 

[Byakuya769]

sounds like his mind was already plagued

Nice.

 

[ryutaro's mama]

MAH GAWD KANG, the Right is crying about the refs.

They sure weren't complaining about the refs in the first debate.

Out of control.

 

[Forever]

Obama up to 65.7% on 538.

 

[isoquant]

The fact that it had nothing to do with the question?

Candidate uses specific question to deliver prepared, generalized spiel. What's new?

The fact that they had to go to women's group to find qualified women?

According to the story, very few women had put their hand up - or, at least, had been suggested to him by staff. (Once again, it is possibly false, but on the face of it the reasoning is sound)

The fact that he basically wanted women on his team to look good?

You made that part up.

 

[eBay Huckster]

so romney was in business for as long as he was and he still needed outside groups to help him out regarding hiring women?

i feel like that just makes it more hilarious.

 

[speculawyer]

MAH GAWD KANG, the Right is crying about the refs.

They sure weren't complaining about the refs in the first debate.

Out of control.

Complaining about the ref is one thing. But when you are complaining about a flat out lie being debunked as the problem with the ref? LOL, I can't do anything but laugh at that.

Waaah! You have to let our guy lie! Whaa! How is he supposed to win if he can't lie? Whaa


If they are complaining about how much time to talk . . . well fair enough.

 

[Piecake]

Candidate uses specific question to deliver prepared, generalized spiel. What's new?



According to the story, very few women had put their hand up - or, at least, had been suggested to him by staff. (Once again, it is possibly false, but on the face of it the reasoning is sound)



You made that part up.

I think the binders full of women is just funny.

What is definitely concerning though is his remarks after that, since he insinuated that women need flex-time so that they can go home early to cook and take care of the kids. And that companies prefer men because they don't need flex-time, but that he will create such a booming economy that Companies will even want to hire women

His attitude towards women seem stuck in the 1950s, and i cant imagine that undecided women voters appreciated Romney not saying anything about equal pay, and basically saying that companies prefer men over women, but its okay, since we will need everyone working in my booming economy!

Copy pasted from the OT debate thread. im lazy. sue me

 

[isoquant]

Is it outrage? I was under the impression--and I may be behind--that it was being cited and passed around simply because it was funny.

The memes featuring Clinton are legitimately funny.

There are various editorials flying around about how the quote shows Romney is a raging misogynist though. This quote has been all over my facebook (from the Guardian, originally):

Why did the phrase resonate? Because it was tone deaf, condescending and out of touch with the actual economic issues that women are so bothered about. The phrase objectified and dehumanized women. It played right into the perception that so many women have feared about a Romney administration – that a president Romney would be sexist and set women back.

 

[Forever]

Go ask Devo and I'm sure you'll get a nice long explanation, more than you could ever want.

 

[speculawyer]

There's a thread in OT suggesting that the claim is completely false - which is a fair point of attack - but that's not what the outrage is all about. Apparently the phrase 'binder full of women' is itself derogatory. The fuck?

This was discussed in the debate thread. I don't think the binder full of women story was so bad. Actually conservatives should be kinda pissed because Mitt Romney just endorsed Affirmative Action!

But the phrase "binder full of women" is quite goofy and brings up a weird visual. And I think they are using it to encapsulate other things such as flex-time so they can go home & cook dinner, single moms cause gun violence, anti-choice policy view, did not support Lilly Ledbetter act, etc.

 

[isoquant]

I see, so it sort of hooked onto the existing War on Women narrative.

I think so. It's a fairly valid narrative too; focusing on the quote just seems strange.

 

[pigeon]

I think so. It's a fairly valid narrative too; focusing on the quote just seems strange.

Women don't fit in binders.

I mean, seriously. If he had said "binders full of RESUMES" there wouldn't be a meme. "Binders full of women" reduces women to what they can fit on an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper with three holes in it. People aren't their CVs -- only employers, very WEALTHY employers who don't interact with most of their staff, think of them that way.

For the record, it would've been just as bad to say "binders full of people," but the way he said it fit with the narrative of his answer as being basically inhospitable to women in the workforce, since his solution to fair pay is "I pay women fairly!" rather than, say, how he might ensure others do so. A consistent theme of Mitt's responses to problems is that, instead of explaining how society might solve it, he explains how HE had solved it previously with his millions of dollars -- this is the same thing that happened with Paul Ryan's line about the car accident and Mitt paying for that guy's bills. If Mitt's proposing to hire every woman in America, then his willingness to pay them fairly resolves the problem, but if not then he needs an actual policy solution.

Most Americans have spent almost all their time on the other side of the interview desk. They don't think of themselves as a resume -- in fact, most of them probably resent the fact that their resume is such an important factor in getting an interview, because making a resume is a frustrating process with unclear but important rules to follow, and Americans mostly went to American schools. I suspect almost everybody believes that there are jobs they would get if they could get an interview, but they wouldn't be able to because the boss would throw their resume in the trash immediately. So Romney's comment falls right into that resentment of corporate hiring practices -- which are, no offense, fundamentally dehumanizing. People can't be reduced to their accomplishments.

(And yes, as others have noted, it's also a lie, but I don't think that's critical to why the phrase caught on.)

.

 

[RDreamer]

I think some of the analyses of the Binders thing take it a bit far, though I can kind of see where they're coming from. It does seem like just an awkward phrase to encapsulate things.

I kind of thought the phrase itself just reminded me of awkward as hell pandering that Ann Romney did at the RNC. "I love you women!" Oh, well since you say that, I guess we'll vote for Mitt! It's like that's what she wanted them to think afterwards, but there's really no substance to that. It's kind of the same thing here. Mitt loves women so much, he looked through binders of 'em in order to get them jobs! It's just this try-too-hard awkward anecdote that doesn't really reflect real policy and mindfulness on his part. It's like he's just saying "Hey, I love women!" but not saying what he'd actually do for them around the country while in office.

All politicians like to bring up weird anecdotes to kind of connect with voters. Romney did it earlier with a student, I think, too. Well, I think this was that same sort of concept. Bring up this anecdote of a situation that relates to this and you can just sidestep the policy while gathering some sort of connection and sympathy from voters. Well, his phrasing is just so out there that it pretty much jumps the shark.

Edit: Pigeon's analysis makes a lot of sense, too.

 

[Piecake]

I think so. It's a fairly valid narrative too; focusing on the quote just seems strange.

If it was just that, meaning "Binders full of Women" i think that anyone suggesting that that is misogynistic is reaching and reading too much into it since he simply could have spoken poorly and committed a silly gaffe.

But take that with his following statements about flex-time and companies even wanting to hire women, well, I think Romney has 1950's view on gender roles. "Binders full of Women" simply became a catchy phrase that encapsulates that sentiment

 

[thezerofire]

I thought the point behind the Binders thing was that he'd been in business for so long and he didn't know a single qualified woman and he had to go ask around for them

 

[Chumly]

Candidate uses specific question to deliver prepared, generalized spiel. What's new?



According to the story, very few women had put their hand up - or, at least, had been suggested to him by staff. (Once again, it is possibly false, but on the face of it the reasoning is sound)



You made that part up.

Prepared spiel? You better complain to Romney then for giving such a god awful answer.

 

[AniHawk]

'binders full of women' reminds me of that comic with the guy saying he was full of owls.

it's just an absurd statement. the local news here in los angeles was all about playing fair to both sides, but then they showed the biden rally and had that segue into twitter talk and meme pictures including the most interesting man in the world (and the reporter did her impression of his speech pattern when she read the meme).

at the very least, it paints romney as an out-of-touch weirdo.

 

[Black Mamba]

As I posted from that tweet earlier, what if Romney said "binders full of blacks?"

 

[B-Dubs]

As I posted from that tweet earlier, what if Romney said "binders full of blacks?"

His campaign would be over. There would be no recovery from that. If that is fair or not is another story all together.

 

[soul creator]

As I posted from that tweet earlier, what if Romney said "binders full of blacks?"

"I meant map pencils!"

 

[AniHawk]

I thought the point behind the Binders thing was that he'd been in business for so long and he didn't know a single qualified woman and he had to go ask around for them

there's a lot of points behind the binders comment:

-he's such a great businessman who has done business for decades and doesn't know any qualified women
-reducing women (or anyone) to a piece of paper
-it came on the back of 'yeah well companies will be hiring so much, they'll want to hire women!
-it's an absurd fucking statement
-'binders' isn't the best word to bring up about a group that's being discriminated against. especially the 'bind' part

i think the general absurdity is what people are latching onto the most, and from there they can jump to a number of different topics.

 

[bananas]

It's just an awkward thing to say. It's also subtlety misogynistic, whether intentional or not.

Ultimately it plays into the existing "War on Women" the Obama camp has been hammering Romney on.

And it wasn't even true. I mean, how bad of a politician do you have to be?

"I meant map pencils!"

"I meant black binders! I don't use those blue or red ones!"

 

[speculawyer]

His campaign would be over. There would be no recovery from that. If that is fair or not is another story all together.

I don't think it would be much more over than it is right now. It is not like he is getting much more than a percent or two of the black vote anyway. And they'd just brush it off as a bad phrasing. Pretty much as this one is being treated.

 

[ryutaro's mama]

Yo Mamba, tell me why the Gallup poll is so counter to everything else right now.

Is it the dirty dirty South driving the numbers wacky or something more?

 

[PhoenixDark]

This faux-outrage over the binder comment is absolutely mystifying to me.



What on earth is offensive about that story?

There's a thread in OT suggesting that the claim is completely false - which is a fair point of attack - but that's not what the outrage is all about. Apparently the phrase 'binder full of women' is itself derogatory. The fuck?

I must say the "binders of women" thing didn't stand out to me at all, then after the debate I saw people had been talking about it for like 20 minutes. Didn't cross my mind. The comment that stuck out to me was Romney's "if you're going to have women in the work force..." comment, and I suppose even that could be explained as poor phrasing (but to be fair, it's hard to defend someone who can't come out and say women should get payed as much as men).

 

[Trakdown]

Obama up to 65.7% on 538.

Hmm....I'll say that he'll probably stay at about that level, maybe go as high as 70 if the debate performances start affecting the polls. Not bad, and Nate's map has Colorado leaning blue again so there's that (very slim margin though).

Also, unless that PPP poll for Ohio on Saturday show significant improvement for Romney, I think we can shut the door on it. I doubt there's a bunch of voters waiting with baited breath for the outcome of the last election to make a choice in a state that's already been early voting for a while.

So that's Ohio and Nevada, which is pretty much game over, right?

 

[jiggle]

but to be fair, it's hard to defend someone who can't come out and say women should get payed as much as men

a simple yes would've suffice instead of the pandering shit

 

[SmokeMaxX]

I also find it pretty funny that Big Bird blew up. It wasn't really even a big deal but when you mess with a childhood icon, all hell breaks loose haha.

 

[Tamanon]

I think the binders comment is just a quick way to reference what was a horrible answer to the equal pay question.

Instead of addressing pay, he seemed to address employers not wanting to hire women because they spend too much time taking care of the family. It was a really odd tactic. I mean that whole nonsense about making employers feel more comfortable with flex schedules....

 

[bananas]

Yo Mamba, tell me why the Gallup poll is so counter to everything else right now.

Is it the dirty dirty South driving the numbers wacky or something more?

Obama's leading 5-10 pts. in every region, except the sound where Romney leads by a whopping 22 pts.

So, most of those people who disapprove, are in states that weren't going to go for Obama anyway.

I also find it pretty funny that Big Bird blew up. It wasn't really even a big deal but when you mess with a childhood icon, all hell breaks loose haha.

Big Bird blew up because it was the only thing the left had to really hammer Romney on from the first debate.