As IF Times

link War on Women Is 2012 Democrat Rallying Cry – Bloomberg.

People may know that when junkies are deep down the road of addiction, they will do anything to get their next fix.  They will betray friends, family and even themselves just to get the next hit of drugs.  Others can see how disheveled and desperate these poor individuals have become and seek to avoid contact with them.  “Poor So and So, he used to be such a nice person”.  Now they reek of desperation and are pitiful souls.  Nothing can be done with them until they hit bottom.

This behaviour has been the operating tactic of the Democratic Party for ages and now they are desperately trying a new front.  The so called “Big Tent” party has over the years divided society up into identifiable segments and pandered to their supposed disenfranchisement from the rest of society.  It is by isolating blacks, Hispanics, gays, union members, immigrants, religious minorities, students, the elderly, the young, the poor, animal lovers and of course climate nuts,  that they hope to draw upon as their support base.  Now, when it looks as if their specious messages have faltered with their core constituency, they want to target women in general and include them in the list of oppressed people. 

This is truly ironic as the blatant misogyny of the party has been on full display,  particularly over the past few years.   When it was all but a shoe in for Hilary to take over the leadership of the Dems, they instead marginalized her and chose someone with no experience, credibility or apparent skill set.  The ongoing vulgar ad hominem attacks hurled against Sarah Palin and now even Michele Bachmann are embarrassingly contradictory to their supposed support of women.  In essence, they are saying, “we support women, except her, her and her”.

Pretty soon, the message can’t be us against them, because there will be no them.  While the Democratic slogan may be characterized as “divide and conquer”, their actions really are more of a “stoop to conquer” strategy.  It will be amusing to watch them try to pull this off as a campaign platform.  If it fails, the pool of oppressed to which they can pander to gets smaller and smaller.  They can always champion left handed people, bald people, double jointed people, those with Rosacea, as well as those who can’t break 100 on the golf course.  They haven’t hit bottom yet.

link AOL INSIDER: Here Are 12 Reasons Why The AOL-Huffington Post Merger Is Going Down In Flames AOL.

Future business and culture students will be dissecting this for years.  In the annals of business combinations, this isn’t exactly merging chocolate with peanut butter.  As we have commented earlier,  http://asiftimes.com/2011/04/12/i-thought-we-were-friends/  the idea that AOL had to hitch their  name brand wagon, albeit a fading one,  to that of a cult graffiti blog was ill conceived at best and epic in stupidity at worst.   As this article seems to show, the only ones who couldn’t see this disaster coming was the guy running AOL, CEO Tim Armstrong.

Absent a bailout from government, this exercise will be a clinical demonstration of the mechanics of capitalism.  Someone comes up with a ‘brilliant’ idea, spends money to forward it and then, when it turns out to have no basis in business sense at all, collapses, or will collapse and everyone loses money.  That’s the way it is.  Of course, someone’s going to make some money out of this; someone always does.  There will be two conspicuous losers.  Obviously, the investors in the failed enterprise lose and secondly, the architect of the fiasco, Armstrong, who will likely have trouble convincing people that he can run a lemonade stand in the future.  Even now, his old business school is scrambling to take down any pictures and evidence of his attendance there and working on a public denial.  

Assuming there was a business model to be acquired beyond the siren call of Arianna Huffington’s annoying personality, the spending of over $300 million dollars of other people’s money must have accomplished something.  Turns out the simple answer is NOT.  Upon closer inspection,  the juvenile and crass scratchings of the Post scribers were not just part of the package, they WERE the package. Having a byline on the Post was the equivalent of flashing your breasts during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  Discovering that the contributors to the Post had as much contempt and hatred for their fellow staffers as for sane people must have been a jolt however.   OH NO!!  Maybe Armstrong made the deal after the 4th martini during a 5 martini lunch when anything would have sounded reasonable.  I’m sure he now feels like the guy in the Vegas commercials who wakes up in the morning with tattoos and nipple rings on his body. 

Ironically, Arianna, despite her anti-capitalist and anti-American sensibilities has realized the quintessential American dream.  You can’t make this up.