The Russians can’t seem to grasp the idea why an American political party, purely to deny their leader an administrative accomplishment, would try to kill an international treaty that makes utmost sense.
Welcome to Right-wing Politics 101. Country Last, Beat Obama First.
I didn’t think I’d be posting another so quickly, but I went to the site and found another White Board mini-lecture that explains exactly what I have been writing on this blog about for the past year or so: the Stimulus Act and its effect on jobs. Goolsbee does a fantastic job of laying it out:
Again, they should have started these long ago. Just this one should have been the Democrats’ primary campaign ad, despite its 4-minute length–the extended buys would have been an unusual move, attention-getting, and very, very smart politically. It would have shown millions of Americans how Obama did focus on the economy, how he did save millions of jobs, how the Stimulus did work, and why it is a smart idea to invest a lot more.
If you are able to spread these around, do so. They need to be shown and seen as much as possible.
I had heard people talking about The White House White Board, but had not seen one before this. And now I want to go back and look at the previous ones. This is what should have happened more than a year ago, and should have been–and should be now–publicized as much as possible.
In the video below, Austan Goolsbee, the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, describes the astonishing success of the GM bailout, using nothing but a simple whiteboard and a plain, down-to-earth mini-lecture format. View the video full-screen to get the most of the HD quality:
As you can see, it’s about as low-budget as you can get–but it’s also very effective. Succinct, educational, and not boring–a straightforward telling of an economic success story in terms anyone can understand. No flashy effects, no smarmy music, no ham-handed political demagoguery–just a guy in a shirt and tie giving a lecture, and you come away feeling like you just attended a really good college class. It almost reminds me of something you might have seen on The West Wing back when Sorkin was writing the show.
And this particular episode clears up so much of the lies and obfuscation about the auto industry bailout–how it was done fairly, how it challenged the odds, and how it became a rousing success–that so many Americans need to hear because they probably still believe that the money was wasted somehow, or that the bailout and its terms were socialist and destructive somehow.
I’ll be look at these things more often and posting some here from time to time.
I guess they felt that they had to have “balance”: MSNBC has suspended Joe Scarborough for making campaign contributions without alerting MSNBC brass first. It even makes sense in a “We’ve Been Stupid, Now We Have to Stick with It” kind of way. If the public found out that Scarborough had made campaign contributions in the same election as Olbermann but did not penalize the right-leaning guy, they would have been attacked for more than just stupidity.
It also seems clear that before Olbermann, their policy was a vague, unclear thing which had no application to real-world events, but one which they hastily decided to execute when they discovered Olbermann’s actions–thus the lack of clarity in its first application. This time, they’re more clear from the get-go: Scarborough gets a two-day suspension without pay. That pattern–sudden, rash execution with a hastily reduced penalty which quickly became the rule despite its arbitrary nature–has all the earmarks of a policy no one paid attention to until someone got upset all a sudden and groped for some rationale to act it out with.
In Scarborough’s case, the policy makes even less sense than it did with Olbermann: Scarborough gave money to family and friends in local races which were not competitive, the contributions being more for personal reasons than political ones.
To be quite honest, I would have respected MSNBC a lot more if, after the Olbermann affair, they had simply announced that a review of the policy found that it was a bad idea in the first place, and simply scrapped it. Now, instead, they doubled down and stuck with it no matter how idiotic it comes across as.
Sorry to have been quiet for several days; we’re at a very busy time in the semester right now. But it’s been a pretty busy week for conservatives, too. So instead of ten posts, here’s an all-in-one.
This has been a pretty typical week for conservative politics–and yet we see more crazy crap in a one-week span now than we used to see in months way back when. like so much else in politics, the goal posts keep moving.
So, what is O’Keefe up to this time? He wanted to embarrass another popular conservative target, the teacher’s unions. So he hired an attractive young man to approach 38-year-old New Jersey special-ed teacher Alissa Ploshnick, ply her with drinks, and use leading conversation to try to get her to say embarrassing things on tape so it could be heavily edited and used to discredit her and the unions. They were successful: in response to O’Keefe’s operative’s attempts to steer the conversation, she said it was hard to get a tenured teacher fired (that’s not exactly standard date talk), and gave an example of one teacher who had used the N-word. The edited tape was then made public, the teacher disgraced (she was suspended and lost thousands of dollars in salary), and Republican governor Chris Christie used to to attack the teacher’s unions in a fight to cut teacher salaries, benefits, and tenure.
But what stands out about this sordid smear is the target O’Keefe chose. Ploshnick was not just a random teacher, she is a hero in a very real sense. In 1997, a careening van threatened to run over a dozen schoolchildren; Ploshnick saved them:
Alissa Ploshnick risked her life to save the lives of a dozen Passaic schoolchildren. She threw herself in front of a careening van to protect her students and landed in the hospital with broken ribs, a fractured wrist, a badly bruised pelvis and glass cuts in her eyes. She could have died.
I can only assume O’Keefe will next target Captain Sullenberger in order to attack the pilot’s unions. That’s just the classy kind of guy he is.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t see liberals going around snubbing others for their lowbrow tastes. Stupidity, yes–believing Glenn Beck, voting against their interests, thinking Fox is balanced journalism, thinking Sarah Palin is presidential material. But that’s judging people by demonstrably poor judgment, and not for where they live, what religion they belong to, what sports they like, or what TV entertainment they enjoy. As many people with bad judgment live in cities as they do farmland, just as many smart and reasonable people live in rural areas as do in cities. As for backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas and gushing about exquisite B&Bs, that’s more hackneyed a stereotype than the drunk, wife-beating, pickup-driving redneck bigot.
The elitism that conservatives constantly whine about supposedly concerns arrogant people who look down on others because they believe themselves to be better than the ones they disdain. Well, guess what: conservatives have cornered that particular market. And Murray is simply exemplifying that in classic style. People like him and Palin go around telling conservatives that they are more patriotic, more hard-working, more deserving, and just plain better, that they’re the real Americans. Which is what elitism is all about–thinking you’re better than others because of who you are, not because of how you treat other people.
Sarah Palin, meanwhile, makes an overture to run for president in 2012–and conservatives in government and the media now seem to be mocking her, with Palin foe Murkowski, winning the “No Shit Sherlock” award for November, saying Palin just isn’t presidential material.
The roots of the partisan standoff that led to the postponement of the bipartisan White House summit scheduled for Thursday date back to January, when President Barack Obama crashed a GOP meeting in Baltimore to deliver a humiliating rebuke of House Republicans.
Obama’s last-minute decision to address the House GOP retreat – and the one-sided televised presidential lecture many Republicans decried as a political ambush – has left a lingering distrust of Obama invitations and a wariness about accommodating every scheduling request emanating from the West Wing, aides tell POLITICO.
“He has a ways to go to rebuild the trust,” said a top Republican Hill staffer. “The Baltimore thing was unbelievable. There were [House Republicans] who only knew Obama was coming when they saw Secret Service guys scouting out the place.”
That’s what The Politico originally printed. Since then, they have rewritten the post without note of the revision–considered dishonest by Internet-reporting standards–and in so doing, removing some of the more outrageous claims by conservatives.
Josh Marshall had an excellent rundown of this. Obama did not crash, he was invited. He did not ambush, he was expected well in advance. Conservatives were, in fact, salivating at the opportunity to make Obama look bad, and Fox News broadcast the event–until Obama was doing so well they couldn’t bear it any more, and they cut away early. Obama came with his usual bipartisan outreach, complimenting the Republicans and trying to find common ground; the Republicans asked him sharply partisan questions, sounding like asses; and Obama handled the questions adroitly, making excellent points and sounding reasonable. That’s why Republicans hate him so much for it. They weren’t “ambushed” because they didn’t expect him to come. They were ambushed because they expected to humiliate him, and were shocked to find that this backfired when Obama was reasonable and rational, making the politically motivated Republicans look like dicks.
McCain (2009): That’s not good enough. We need to study it. OK. Study it is. They did the study, and it supports the repeal of DADT.
McCain (2010): We shouldn’t depend on a study, we should depend on the military leaders and what they say. Um, we went over that already. The top military leaders support the repeal.
McCain (2010): We need a different study. We need a study on the effects of openly gay soldiers on morale and battle effectiveness. That’s exactly what they study was.
McCain: We need more study. Maybe some committee meetings and whatever else we can throw in the way. Now, uproot that goalpost and set it back another ten yards. That’s it.
As usual, Jon Stewart laid it out best:
Crown [Bush’s publisher] also got a mash-up of worn-out anecdotes from previously published memoirs written by his subordinates, from which Bush lifts quotes word for word, passing them off as his own recollections. He took equal license in lifting from nonfiction books about his presidency or newspaper or magazine articles from the time. Far from shedding light on how the president approached the crucial “decision points” of his presidency, the clip jobs illuminate something shallower and less surprising about Bush’s character: He’s too lazy to write his own memoir.
Why am I not surprised?
Remember when Republicans said that an American, while overseas, speaking against the American president was verging on treason, as we saw with the Dixie Chicks? That for an American politician to do so while abroad was traitorous, like Democratic congressmen did before the Iraq War? Or that even just disagreeing with the president’s policies in the U.S. while the president was on foreign soil was anti-American, as the Republicans accused Murtha of when he suggested a withdrawal from Iraq? Or when Daschle criticized Bush while Bush was in Europe? Or with local California Democrats while Bush was in Central America? Or that even criticizing the president at all while our troops were on the ground was tantamount to giving aid and comfort to our enemies? And let’s not forget the idea of members of Congress making policy promises to foreign leaders which oppose the president’s, something the Republicans have scalded Democrats for even coming close to doing, like they did with Nancy Pelosi while in Syria (where not only Republican lawmakers were also visiting, but where Pelosi did not oppose the president).
Would you be even in the least bit surprised were you to discover the Republicans to be utterly hypocritical in attacking Democrats for these things?
Probably not. If you have been watching the news, then you might be aware of the fact that Eric Cantor, current Minority Whip and likely Majority Leader next year, had a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In this meeting with a foreign leader, Cantor expressed his opposition to President Obama’s policies regarding the Middle East, promising to side with the foreign leader against the President of the United States. Cantor’s office later publicly announced what he said in the meeting.
Disagreeing with the president’s foreign policy. In a meeting with a foreign leader. While the president is on foreign soil. While there are troops on the ground. The only one Cantor missed was that he was not on foreign soil at the time–this took place in New York–but Cantor managed to breach every other rule that Republicans claimed were unacceptable for any American to violate.
Now, you might say that it was other Republicans who said these things were unacceptable, and Cantor wasn’t being hypocritical. Except that when Nancy Pelosi went to Syria–even though she made no statements about foreign policy and did not criticize Bush while she was there–Cantor himself wrote an article insinuating the opposite and suggesting she was guilty of a federal felony:
Presenting Assad with “a new Democratic alternative” — code for making President Bush look feckless — Mrs. Pelosi usurped the executive branch’s time-honored foreign-policy authority. Her message to Assad was that congressional Democrats will forbid the president from increasing pressure on Damascus to stop its murderous way. Several leading legal authorities have made the case that her recent diplomatic overtures ran afoul of the Logan Act, which makes it a felony for any American “without authority of the United States” to communicate with a foreign government to influence that government’s behavior on any disputes with the United States.
So, no irony there.
But not to worry–Cantor violated the remaining rule a little over a year ago, criticizing Obama from Israel. Just so you know he has covered all the bases. Just not all at one time–Cantor is only human, you know.
Okay, national crisis settled. Kanye West backed down from his statement five years ago about Bush not caring about black people, and Bush magnanimously forgave West his horrific sin. Goody.
For something slightly more relevant than whether or not a under-inhibited rapper hurt the feelings of a former president, why not go down to New Orleans and ask the families of the more than one and a half thousand people who died in the predominantly African-American city whether or not they forgive Bush for dawdling for five days before finally sending national guard troops to rescue and assist people and bring materials and support?
It speaks a great deal to the man’s judgment and humanity that he perceives his greatest mistake was to fly over New Orleans and publish a PR image of him looking out the window, and his greatest heartbreak was a rapper’s insult and not the people who suffered and died in the storm and flood.
In the photograph, he said, he looked “detached and uncaring,” as if that was really anything to be concerned about. As if staying on vacation to celebrate his birthday while the crisis raged was an understandable delay, or that waiting for five days before deploying the national guard was a minor technical detail.
Though he repeated it in his current book-selling tour, it was at his final press conference as president that he came up with this insipidly self-serving idea that he could have shown his concern more effectively by landing in the area and having a photo op. In what can only be called an astonishingly heartless attempt to spin the reality, he then acts out painful realization that landing his jet would just have distracted from the rescue effort. The rescue efforts he failed to begin for another three days.
Setting aside the fact that his failure to act, which caused hundreds of Americans to die in neglect, was his greatest blunder, Bush’s humanitarian concern over the potential disruption of rescue efforts is transparently dishonest. Remember the whole “Heckuva job, Brownie” incident? The irony of that unearned compliment is what caught the headlines, but what went largely unreported was that Bush’s photo op halted rescue efforts at a time when dozens of people were still dying every day. Instead, Bush commandeered the nice, shiny helicopters (not being used or serviced during his photo op in front of them) to serve as a backdrop for his heroic PR campaign where he lauded a criminally incompetent crony. Remember, that photo op came just as the guard troops began to arrive and were needed most urgently. Nor was it the only time he held things up. Bush made repeated trips to the area, each time diverting and delaying rescue efforts while lives were still being lost.
Worse, when Bush “came to the rescue” with supplies and equipment, these things tended to stay only slightly longer than Bush did. After he left, the supplies and equipment were pulled out after him, showing that they were for show, not for helping people. Flash but no depth.
And yet, even with all of this clearly recorded and easily available to anyone who cared to look back at it, we still allow ourselves to have the narrative hijacked by irrelevant bullshit like the story of Kanye West hurting Bush’s feelings.
Not too long ago, I saw a talk show with a liberal and a conservative where the liberal used the term “Teabagger,” and the conservative got all riled up and accused the liberal of name-calling–at which point, the liberal conceded and said, OK, I won’t use that term. Now, I thought this was proper: even though the Tea Party crowd used the term themselves before they caught on to the double-entendre, now that they don’t like the term any more, we shouldn’t use it. We can still talk about how they used to use it and took so long to catch on, but it’s not kosher to continue referring to them that way.
The thing is, I don’t think that right-wingers have any right to call out liberals on this until they stop using the term “Democrat” as an adjective. It’s a noun–go ahead, look it up. Now, this has been around for a while–certainly since the 50’s, when McCarthy used it against liberals of the time. It was renewed in 1984 when William Safire had the gall to question to Democrats’ right to use the term “Democratic.” The use came into wide use again recently since the airing of a political attack ad in 2000 where the word “DEMOCRATS” was being flashed around the screen, and one time, only the last three letters, “RATS” was visible. Conservatives thought this was hilarious, and started using “Democrat” as an adjective far more often and far more consistently–“the Democrat senator,” or “the Democrat Party,” and so on–as a subtle way of perpetuating that jibe.
The thing is, it has not just been a sometimes phrase. Virtually every conservative politician, including people like Bush, McCain, senators, governors, and a host of other top-level conservatives now use the term universally, and have for years.
I mention this because I was shocked when Jon Stewart, on the Rachel Maddow show, criticized the use of the term “Teabagger,” and said, “didn’t you hate it when the Republicans used to use the phrase ‘Democrat’?”
“Used to”?
Jesus, Stewart. Governor Rick Perry of Texas was just on your show 4 or 5 days ago and he used that exact term, referring to Anne Richards as “the Democrat governor.” I remember when I saw that, I bridled and wished that Stewart would take the opportunity to call him out on it and maybe call attention to the widespread practice. But Stewart just let it slide by. To hear him act like it’s no longer used was kind of jarring to me.
Maybe we don’t get to use an improper name used in a derogatory manner, but neither do you–and you don’t get to lecture others on crap that you make a practice out of.
Did you hear that Obama is blowing $200 million a day on his trip to Asia, wasting massive amounts of money in a vain mega-entourage of historic proportions, and that strapped U.S. taxpayers will be left to foot the eventual $2 billion bill for his opulent vacation? He has an entourage that consists of 2000 to 3000 people, who occupy between 500 and 870 five-star hotel rooms, with 34 warships–10% of the whole U.S. navy–and 40 aircraft for security.
Astonishing! And it would be even more astonishing it it were actually true!
That didn’t stop the top stars of the right wing from howling about Obama the spendthrift; Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, and Glenn Beck all flew off the handle among a host of guests and second-tier right-wing bloggers.
The problem, of course, is that the story, on its face, is laughably absurd. So much so that any rational human being would stop for a moment and ask, “Is that really true? Maybe we should check this before running with it.” At the very least, check the source.
And what was the source? An Indian news agency quoting a single, anonymous Indian government official. That article gave the $200 million figure and the 3000-person number. The next day, the same source reported on 800 hotel rooms, 40 cars, 13-heavy-lift aircraft and other goodies–this time none of it attributed to any source.
The story was then picked up–as is often the case–by Drudge, and that was all that was needed. Within hours, right-wing pundits were aflame in outrage, and the right-wing blogosphere was experiencing righteous indignation.
Among all those people going crazy and shouting all this to the world, apparently not one stopped to ask themselves if an anonymous Indian government official and other unidentified people could really be reliable sources of information about this. Certainly no one thought to, say, call up someone to check it out.
The thing is, to them, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know if they know it’s not true and don’t care, or if they actually believe it, and I don’t think that’s really relevant to these people. It’s all about smearing what they don’t like. And they are probably well aware, even meticulously aware of the fact that if something is shouted from the rooftops from many, many sources, then it will be accepted as fact by a great many people.
I have no doubt that–even after a thorough debunking in the media–if you were to poll Republicans next week, more than half–maybe even more than two-thirds–would cite the $200 million figure as truth. And a good many independents would probably be just as convinced, and maybe even some Democrats.
Think I’m going overboard? Look at how many people still think that there are Obama Death Panels, something that was demonstrably false from Day One. Think about the 52% of Republicans who believe that ACORN stole more votes than they registered.
No, this story is the perfect example of what you often hear called “the right-wing echo chamber,” where one of them makes a ludicrous claim, and then they all pick up on it and it reverberates and amplifies.
But conservatives are even more astonishing in their willingness to accept crap like this. To still embrace politicians who regularly spew out some of the most absurd crap imaginable, like headless torsos littering the Arizona desert. Or Sarah Palin claiming that she was skilled in foreign policy because one part of Alaska is within sight of one part of Russia, and Putin’s plane maybe flew over Alaska once.
This is why it is so hard for many on the left to understand what’s going on: we simply cannot empathize. If a Democrat were to repeatedly claim in media interviews that they were a diplomatic wonder because they were within eyesight of a foreign country once, we would laugh them out. Sure, Biden says stupid crap from time to time, but (a) nothing that idiotic, and (b) we give him a hard time for it, pretty universally. We don’t make him a media darling and put him up on a pedestal.
And if Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow started reporting obviously crazy nonsense like the $200 million story, they would quickly lose their audiences.
So what make right-wingers so tolerant of blatant bullshit? Is it that they don’t care, or that they can’t tell?
To close, here’s Maddow’s debunking of the story:
…this is an excellent example of misleading reporting. It may be that when the total numbers are tallied after a few weeks and sales have leveled out, the Galaxy may still be outselling the iPhone. The point is, don’t jump the gun, and question whatever news stories you see.
And, right on cue, the new week’s sales rankings for smartphones in Japan are out–and the 16GB iPhone is now #1. The 32 GB iPhone is now #2.
The Galaxy S? Dropped to #5.
Like I said, jumping the gun with partial figures out of the full context is, to say the least, not a safe or accurate thing to do.
Again–as with the previous posting–I am not making any statement about the superiority or quality of either phone. I’m just saying, question stories that you see in the news. They’re not always accurate.
Update / Side Note: Samsung released the 7-inch Galaxy Tab along with the Galaxy S. The Tab was supposed to be the first serious tablet rival to the iPad, despite charging $600 for a 7“ tablet relative to Apple’s $630 for a 10” tablet. And it’s getting kinda panned in the press. The best reviews say it’s likable but still has “a ways to go,” while the less-generous reviews call it “unfit for humans.”
There’s always the next time.
The big story in Japan’s smartphone world this week: the brand-new Android-driven Galaxy-S phone outsold the iPhone! The news is being trumpeted all over the place, especially on Android sites. The problem: it’s not true, or at it’s very best, it’s highly misleading.
It’s kind of like the story that you see pop up from time to time about how the Sony Walkman outsells the iPod–but then you read more carefully and see that it’s only an aberration caused by a refresh in the iPod line, which is marked by both depletion of iPod stock and customers holding off on buying an iPod until the new model is released. At which time the Walkman fades back into its normal spot.
The Galaxy S is currently being marketed extremely heavily in Japan. You see the ads everywhere, the ones with Darth Vader and Imperial Stormtroopers hawking the device. I can’t say how many times I’ve seen the commercial, which heavily advertises the ability to play Flash video (not only becoming less meaningful as so many sites transition to H264, but also a battery-drainer), and the touchscreen with pinch-and-zoom capabilities (wow, that’s new).
So one would expect that it sells well initially, but even that doesn’t propel it above the iPhone, primarily because the iPhone, in the rankings being referred to, is divided into two “products” by capacity (16 GB version and 32 GB version), whereas the Galaxy is rated as a single product. As the Chosun Ilbo points out, the two iPhones taken as a single product outrank the Galaxy S–despite the fact that the iPhone 4 has been out for 18 weeks (during which time it has occupied to top two spots on the chart) and the Galaxy S is experiencing debut-week numbers.
Not that it’s any big deal, but this is an excellent example of misleading reporting. It may be that when the total numbers are tallied after a few weeks and sales have leveled out, the Galaxy may still be outselling the iPhone. The point is, don’t jump the gun, and question whatever news stories you see.
I have to admit, Olbermann’s show is the commentary show that I watch the most (save for “The Daily Show”), although I stopped watching for a while back when he was going too far over the top. Snarky and informative (in partisan, tidbit form) is OK, but it’s too easy to “go Fox News,” if you know what I mean. As liberal as I am, I consistently find myself taking Olbermann’s claims with a grain of salt, or even sometimes just discounting a lot of what he says, knowing it for hyperbole or enthusiasm (if it can be called that). But it is snarky and often fun, and though filled with stuff that goes too far, it also covers much which is spot on. Like any other opinionated source, you simply have to check more unbiased sources first to substantiate what was said before accepting them as fact.
All that said, Olbermann’s suspension was a bit of a shock. You usually do not just yank your #1 primetime host off the air unless it is a damned important reason, and contributing to three midterm races does not seem to rise to that level. Yes, it’s a network policy, but it’s a questionable one at best. Yes, he did violate it–but immediate indefinite suspension makes you wonder if no intermediate penalties even exist. A one-week suspension, an on-air admission and apology, a fine, or something else along those lines might seem more in line. But doing what MSNBC did (a) seems over the top, (b) makes both Olbermann and the network look worse than need be, and (c) gives delicious fodder, not to mention “aid and comfort” to their chief competitor, Fox News. It doesn’t seem to make sense.
Let’s take a look at the policy itself. It is, in theory, intended to apply to journalists. Their policy says, “Anyone working for NBC News who takes part in civic or other outside activities may find that these activities jeopardize his or her standing as an impartial journalist because they may create the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Now, as far as that does, penalizing Olbermann is just stupid–everyone knows that he is not impartial. For the serious reporting that Olbermann sometimes does, I don’t think many people mistake Olbermann for a journalist. He’s a commentator, an opinionated pundit, and to a certain degree a comedian. Yes, he appears on MSNBC’s election broadcasts, but so do lots of people who are partisan pundits.
The policy does not forbid political activity, but it does go on to say that anyone who participates in politics, including donations, “should” inform the network before doing so–and Olbermann didn’t. So, he’s caught, yes? Well, aside from the “should” part of that policy making the solidity of the policy questionable, we come to a point of reasonableness here: the policy is supposed to be there so the network can avoid embarrassment if a supposedly impartial journalist is caught making partisan campaign contributions–but in this case, MSNBC knew full well that Olbermann is anything but an “impartial” journalist. It’s like Comedy Central yanking Jon Stewart off his show because he was funny off the air as well.
Many are pointing to what Fox News does as justification for Olbermann, but as far as I am concerned, that’s irrelevant. Fox is Fox, and it does not apply to Olbermann and what MSNBC does. Many point to contributions made by right-wing MSNBC personalities Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan, but I can find no mention that they failed to inform the network of their contributions, supposedly the main reason Olbermann was suspended.
Instead, the central point is that even though Olbermann did break the rules, it was a pro forma thing–a matter of form and not substance, like spelling correctly but forgetting to cross your “t”s and dot your “i”s. In which case, immediate and indefinite suspension is way over the top in terms of punishment. It is simply out of scale with the infraction.
That, in turn, suggests that there is more to the story than we know about. And that may become clearer when one begins to learn about the fact that MSNBC is in the process of changing hands, being bought by Comcast–an organization with distinctly right-wing ties. That the head people at MSNBC who have cultivated Olbermann are no longer there, and the new heads may not be as enthusiastic about their primetime lead as the old ones were, and may be angling for a reason to demote or slap him down some. That, of course, is conjecture, but that’s what we’re left with in trying to figure out this overblown and self-injurious act of bizarreness.
On a side note, Kevin Drum tweeted that this was bringing the left and the right together, and while there do seem to be some on the right defending Olbermann–most notably Bill Kristol–most of the commentary I have seen from the right is simply smug and happy.
A few minutes ago, a 4.5 or 4.7 magnitude quake hit about 45 km. north-north-east of us here in Nishi-Tokyo. It was fairly strong here and rolled for about a half minute. The epicenter was just north of Saitama in Ibaraki.
Obama, in some ways, is admirable, but in other ways, you just want to punch the guy out. I mean, seriously–after all the times he gave Republicans what they wanted and then began to compromise, and as many times as others criticized him and even told him to his face that this was not the way to deal with obstinacy, and here he is, doing it yet again–telling Republicans that he’s OK with giving in on the Bush tax cuts before the negotiations even start. I mean, a facepalm doesn’t even begin to cover it. Maybe the massive facepalm from Naked Gun 3.33 would be a good start. Contrast this with Bush in 2006, after having lost both houses of the Congress, interpreting the results as an indication that the voters wanted more of the same from him. Obama is going a bit too far in the opposite direction.
And here’s another little tidbit from 4 years ago:
As part of their campaigning, Republicans warned America that if Democrats won the election, they would use their control of the Congress to investigate the Bush administration, and even try to impeach him. They painted this as an unacceptable outcome.
Crooks & Liars reminds us that twelve years ago, Newt Gingrich promised that if Republicans took control of Congress, that is exactly what they would do: investigate Clinton to death. And that is one promise he kept, right up to the impeachment.
As we all know, the Democrats completely laid off the Bush administration in 2006 and 2008, and did not prosecute him or Cheney even though there were several highly legitimate and even demanding reasons to do so.
And here we are again, with Republicans taking over the House, and they can’t wait to start subpoenaing again.
The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.
OK, so the GOP now has control over the House, and the Democrats the Senate. What will that mean?
Some are saying the the GOP will become more reasonable now. That they will not follow people like Issa who want to do nothing in the House but investigate Obama 24/7, using the power to prosecute as a means to dredge up public distrust and hopefully some slime like they did back in the 90’s. These optimists are saying that the Republicans will actually have to deliver something, do something productive in order to stay afloat, which means they may actually have to compromise on a few things.
I desperately hope I am wrong, but I simply cannot imagine that happening. I made that mistake in 2008, naively opining about “Obama Republicans” and how lashing out and going balls-to-the-wall obstructionist would hurt them. Boy, was I wrong. And I have seen nothing to make me believe that Republicans will suddenly change now.
I could be wrong again, but I think it’s a safe bet that we will just see them alter their tactics, not reverse them. I think they will start ramming through legislation in the House just like they did in the Bush years, going back to being far more oppressive to Democrats than the Democrats ever were to them (despite their constant whining that the Dems were worst of all). And the legislation they will pass will be stuff they know will never make it into law–mostly because it will never be intended to become law, but instead will be designed to make them look good and the Dems look bad.
The Republican leadership has already made it clear that their first priority will not be to fix the economy, create jobs, or do anything else constructive. Instead, their number-one priority is to defeat Obama in 2012. That rules out compromise, even if they had not made it crystal clear over the last decade that the last thing they would ever do is compromise. They would sooner scorch the earth.
I think that the first thing they will do is to start in on the tax situation. They know Obama will fight any attempt to reinstate Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, but with control over the House, which they will strictly maintain with harsh discipline (again, as they have in the past), they will only allow tax bills to pass with the Bush cuts included. Then expect a rabid campaign where they will claim that Obama and the Dems are raising your taxes, blocking middle-class tax cuts, because all they want to do is penalize small businesses and tax them into oblivion. Yes, I know that the opposite was clearly demonstrated before the election, but the Republicans excel at remaking reality and rewriting history, and the American people have amply demonstrated that they can be easily fooled in this way. And Democrats will likely again fail to get their point across.
What we may in fact begin to see is big pressure against blue-dog Democrats, maybe even nullifying the Democratic majority in the Senate, even perhaps forcing Democrats to either begin filibustering legislation here and there (which Republicans will inevitably make big noises about), or allowing legislation to pass for Obama to veto.
And the legislation, as I indicated, will be designed to look great–but if passed, would sink the economy. It will be filled with tax cuts and other assorted right-wing goodies that the Republicans know the Dems will never go for, but they will look attractive and the Republicans will use them as cudgels, claiming the Democrats are the obstructionists and the Republicans were prevented from fixing the economy. A lie which they will not hesitate to scream from the rooftops, a claim that would have been true had Democrats run under it this year but they somehow fumbled and cowered into corners as usual.
As I said, I hope I am wrong. I would be happy to see Congress actually address issues in a spirit of actual bipartisanship and compromise. Obama has been all too willing to go there, and the Democrats too weak-kneed to do much else. Republicans, however, by their actions and rhetoric, have given no indication that they would even consider such a thing.
Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to have her around, after all. I am not sure how instrumental Palin was in getting Angle and O’Donnell elected in their primaries, but she definitely helped them both before their primaries unseated mainstream GOP candidates who had real shots at unseating their Democratic opponents. But now, thanks to Angle and O’Donnell, we’re asking whether Democrats will have 52 or 53 seats instead of wondering if Democrats will be able to hold on to control of the Senate at all.
And within the Republican Party, there have been hints of a “Stop Sarah Palin” campaign, lest she secure the Republican candidacy for president in 2012, and then lose badly to Obama.
In all likelihood, we’ll see happen what people like Nate Silver project, and the Republicans will win the House by 30 or so seats, while the Democrats hang on to the Senate by perhaps two seats.
But just as a thought experiment, what would happen if Democrats do better than expected? What if the Democrats are energized by recent events? What if independents feel turned off by the publicity generated by the crazy Tea Partiers? What if people in states like Alaska and Nevada step up to the polls and ask, “Am I really going to vote for an idiot like this just because I’m not fond of the other guy? What if the minority vote is stronger than expected because of anti-immigrant, anti-minority sentiments on the right? What if the polling guesses about ”likely“ voters (as opposed to just ”registered“ voters) is off? What if Democratic turnout is being underestimated because pollsters still favor land-line over cell phone respondents, and did not correct for it enough? Or what if just fate throws a curve ball?
Like I said, I don’t expect all that to happen, I fully expect to be disappointed and glum after this is over. But, what would the reaction from the right wing be if Democrats managed to hold on to control of the House and held more Senate seats than expected?
So far, not one, but two Republican candidates have openly stated that they would favor violent overthrow of the government if elections were lost by Republicans. Already Fox and other conservative outlets are drumming away at the message that minorities are planning to commit massive voter fraud, despite no actual evidence existing to that effect.
Remember, back in 2008, people expected Obama to win, and he did. But since then, half of all Republicans have come to believe that ACORN rigged the election for Obama through voter fraud, despite the fact that it was patently impossible for them to do so.
As I explained a year ago, in order for this to have happened, Obama would have to have stolen 935,000 votes minimum. This was the total of votes in the states with the closest margins that would have to have gone to McCain to win him the election. But it’s not just a matter of pure numbers–these 935,000 would have to have been precisely targeted in exactly the right states in exactly the right amounts. Realistically, ACORN would have to have stolen millions to get this effect, or else be gifted with a time machine and godlike accuracy.
ACORN, however, only registered 900,000 voters in only 21 states–meaning that even if every voter ACORN registered were fake, and every state necessary for Obama to win were covered by ACORN, and the fake votes were distributed just right, ACORN would still have been 35,000 votes shy.
In short, there was no mechanism for Obama to steal the election–not even close. It simply just couldn’t have happened. And sorry, but a couple of New Black Panther guys standing outside a single polling place in Philadelphia which was mostly a minority station anyway did not account for all the other votes. And yet, not only do 52% of Republicans think ACORN stole the election, a full 73% believe he did not win legitimately.
Republicans don’t need a workable, real-world mechanism to believe in voter fraud. They just need an tissue-thin excuse.
This is unlike Democrats, who in 2000 did not just have a mechanism, they had a smoking gun. There is no dispute that Katherine Harris disenfranchised tens of thousands of legitimate voters–mostly Democrats–with the ”felons list“ which was constructed not just of felons, but anyone with a similar name to a felon, which would disproportionately target black voters in the state. By any count, far more voters were illegitimately removed from the voter lists than were necessary to throw the election for Bush. And if that’s not enough, 2100 spoiled Republican absentee ballot requests were illegally altered by Republican party workers in Seminole County. In short, there is no question that voter fraud in 2000 won the election for Bush–it could not have done otherwise. We forget this because the courts and the public essentially dropped any action due to the chaos it would have caused–but it did happen. The facts are out in the clear, there is no conspiracy theory required. It just happened.
The 2004 vote was a different deal–the conspiracy theorists insist that Ohio was stolen, but there was no smoking gun. As a result, most Democrats will not say Bush stole that election–but those who do at least have a valid mechanism to explain it. Diebold voting machines of the time were demonstrably open to tampering, the president of the company had openly stated that he would do whatever was necessary to win the election for Bush in Ohio–the single state which swung the election–and analysis of voting data is suspicious to say the least. Nothing can be proved, but at least it was conceivably possible that it could have been done. And yet you will not find 73% or even 52% of Democrats who will say they think Bush stole that election. I would guess that not even 10% remember the issue at all.
A majority of Republicans, on the other hand, seem capable in believing astonishingly impossible conspiracy theories, without any facts or evidence to back them up–just hints and innuendo and a few smear campaigns with carefully edited videos not even directly related, and presto–most Republicans buy a story which is demonstrably false.
So back to the present. What would happen if the Dems, against all expectations, actually won today? Not just lost smaller, but actually held control of both houses?
Obviously, there would be no armed rebellion. I think we all know that whole line is just BS to tickle the extremists. But if 52% of Republicans believe Obama stole his election when the polls predicted he would win, and the story saying he stole it is idiotically thin, how many Republicans would believe the already-circulating stories of voter fraud should the Democratic candidates beat the predictions? And more importantly, how would they react?
Fortunately and/or unfortunately, we will most likely never find out. But it’s a disturbing thought.
One thing though: whatever you think the outcome will be–vote. I sent my absentee ballot off a while ago. Don’t give any excuses. And yes, that includes Geoff and Jon and SteveTV and everyone else. This much is not a partisan conviction. Not voting is plain stupid.
Of course, voting Republican is stupid, too. That much is a partisan conviction. But also one with a pretty solid mechanism behind it.
It’s a fair question. For some, the answer may be “no.” But for a lot more, the answer will be “yes.” For me, I cashed in some Apple stock which got badly beaten down by the Bush housing crisis; this week, I sold it for almost four times what it was worth when Bush left office. If nothing else, it speaks to the health of the stock market, which right-wingers initially tried to blame Obama for just a month or two after he took office (they don’t any more, you will note).
But let’s take a look at a more general picture. Three very meaningful questions asked in a post from DailyKos:
1. What was the average monthly private sector job growth in 2008, the final year of the Bush presidency, and what has it been so far in 2010?
2. What was the Federal deficit for the last fiscal year of the Bush presidency, and what was it for the first full fiscal year of the Obama presidency?
3. What was the stock market at on the last day of the Bush presidency? What is it at today?
There is a fourth question (about Boehner, the next Speaker should Republicans win the House, campaigning with a Nazi re-enactor), but I see it as relatively inconsequential, and meaningless to most voters, so let’s go with those three. The answers:
1. In 2008, we lost an average of 317,250 private sector jobs per month. In 2010, we have gained an average of 95,888 private sector jobs per month. (Source) That’s a difference of nearly five million jobs between Bush’s last year in office and President Obama’s second year.
2. In FY2009, which began on September 1, 2008 and represents the Bush Administration’s final budget, the budget deficit was $1.416 trillion. In FY2010, the first budget of the Obama Administration, the budget deficit was $1.291 trillion, a decline of $125 billion. (Source) Yes, that means President Obama has cut the deficit — there’s a long way to go, but we’re in better shape now than we were under Bush and the GOP.
3. On Bush’s final day in office, the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 closed at 7,949, 1,440, and 805, respectively. Today, as of 10:15AM Pacific, they are at 11,108, 2,512, and 1,183. That means since President Obama took office, the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 have increased 40%, 74%, and 47%, respectively.
While the source of the questions and answers is biased, the facts are not. Once again, under Obama and the Democrats, job numbers have improved markedly, the deficit, while unwieldily, is not Obama’s doing, and business is much better than it was. Compared to two years ago, things are much, much better.
The question any self-interested voter should ask is, do I want to go with the people who made things worse, or do I want to go with the team that made things better?
You can focus on side details as much as you want, try to ignore the mountain for the pebbles, but one thing is inescapable: Obama and the Democrats performed well on the economy–much better than the Republicans, who dropped us into the cesspool Obama and the Dems have subsequently been blamed for.
For those seeking to confirm the job stats, go ahead and visit the Bureau of Labor Statistics site, and download the data tables showing All Employees, Total private; the data you get will show you private sector job standings by month. Use Excel to calculate the month-to-month changes, then (a) add the gains & losses in 2008 and in 2010 (to September), and then (b) chart it out.
The raw table:
Here’s the table after transposing, selecting, and calculations:
And the chart:
Oh, and from a Feb. 2009 NYTimes article about private sector jobs over the past 35 years:
One of the weakest sectors was manufacturing. The number of such jobs peaked in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president, and fell in every administration since, with the exception of a small gain in the Clinton years. The decline in the current administration, at a rate of 3.1 percent a year, is the steepest yet seen.
Carter and Clinton were the best at adding jobs; Reagan and both bushes the worst. How about that. If Obama’s total numbers are low, it’s due to the hole Bush left for him to climb out of.
Here’s their current postage stamp:
When you click on it, the story doesn’t actually focus on the politics; instead, you get this:
In both cases, their focus is based upon picking and choosing a few people out of the crowd, not the entire event–which, frankly was about as non-political as you could get, with as many references against the far left as there were against the far right. In their clips of raging cable news hosts, Olbermann appeared perhaps as often as Beck. Stewart and Colbert raged against fear-mongering and hate, not against Republicans and conservatives. That it attracted and pleased a mostly liberal crowd speaks more to the nature of the crowd than the crowd speaks to the nature of the event. In other words, Fox got it backwards–not that they care or were even paying attention.
Frankly, if you saw it as a get-out-the-vote rally, it would have been greatly disappointing. There was no urging to go to the polls that I remember (I think one guest said so as they left the stage near the end, but nothing planned), no overt calls to defeat the Tea Party–instead there was disapproval hurled at all politicians, exactly the sentiment that is working to the disadvantage of Democrats and liberals in the election so far. I cannot see this by any stretch of the imagination as being a pro-left rally, despite the makeup of the crowd. It was a pro-entertainment rally, perhaps, and a pro-reason rally, for certain. But pro-left? Not really.
Indeed, when Fox covered Beck’s event, they made a big deal about how non-political it was (despite Palin being there, urging people to be engaged and “knowing never to retreat”), not to mention covering the “strong turnout,” a point they studiously ignored (instead focusing on the negatives of a large crowd) in today’s rally (estimates put it at 2-3 times larger than Beck’s) in favor of calling the crowd “insane.” So much for unbiased (not that it was really in question).
That said, I could not pass up the chance to note my admiration for Stewart and Colbert to make such a great Trek reference, from Corbomite in bottled water to Uhura’s command tunic bearing a science insignia in the same episode, #10. Stewart then wondered if they got it right or if they would be picked apart in Trekkie chat rooms–but no, they got it spot on. Here’s even an image of Uhura from that episode:
A few minutes later, they even brought out R2D2. And later still, Colbert made a LOTR reference. Showing our geeky roots, are we?
David Barton, an evangelical Christian minister and Republican political activist from Texas, warns the god-fearing:
For Christians, voting is not a right, it’s a duty. It’s a stewardship that we owe to God and it’s a stewardship for which we’ll answer directly to him. One day we’ll stand before him and he’ll say “what did you do with that vote I gave you?” And we’ll have to answer.
Righteousness must be the issue. It must be the measure to define what we’re for politically and what we’re against. And each of us will answer to God not only for whether we voted, but for how we voted, for what issues drove our vote.
If we stand before God and He says “why did you vote for a leader who’s attempting to redefine my institution of marriage and who wills the unborn children that I knew before they were in the womb?” If He asks us that and our answer is “Because that leader was good on jobs and the economy,” He’s not going to accept that.
One has to wonder if, a century and a half ago, a similar minister in the South preached to his listeners that when they stood before God and defended their voting record, he would ask why they voted for a leader who would redefine his institution of slavery and wills that people of one race may marry with people of another.
Remember, such were the ways of the time; just as he claims that marriage as it is legally defined today is God’s “institution”–the Bible, of course, says differently, but who’s paying attention–so did many preachers in the old South proclaim that slavery was ordained by God in the Bible–something that actually could be defended a lot better.
There were undoubtedly people back then who voted for slavery, being warned by people like Barton that they would go to hell if they voted against God’s will like that. Today, people like Barton would tell you (at least I hope) that trying to enslave others is wrong and that would lead you to hell.
So, what happened to the people who enslaved others a century and a half ago believing it was God’s will? Did God reward them for doing rightly, or did he punish them, sending them to the fires of hell? Or did God change his mind and judges people differently now?
As a result, one has to question the whole idea of whether we should listen to preachers who arrogantly claim to know what God will or will not send us to hell for. Try instead to phrase the question from different perspectives and see how it comes out:
If we stand before God and He says, “why did you vote for a leader who would deny to all the institution of love and remove my mandate of free will, allowing all to choose the righteous path for themselves?” If He asks us that and our answer is, “Because some preacher told me so and he scared me,” He’s not going to accept that.
Amen.