Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Decline and Fall
CNN has Peter King on as the chyron screams about the terror threat, just in case you worried that the media would stop doing that
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) September 8, 2014
Hey, who knows more about making a profit off ginning up terror-hysteria than Rep. Peter “NORAID” King?
On the bright side, at least he’s not a Democrat, has never been a Democrat, and doesn’t pretend to be a Democrat for the media…
Anything on the agenda this evening that doesn’t completely drain the soul?
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUDS, Our Failed Media Experiment
Because I am already in a bad mood right now, I decided to read the Meet the Press transcript and get it out of the way (Up next, I am checking the last few days of the WaPo editorial page, and I am just going to get all my self-inflicted pain out of the way while I am already pissed off) before my mood changes. Makes no sense to irritate myself when I am in a good mood. Think I’ll go clean the bathroom next.
At any rate, I’ve read the transcript of yeserday’s debut, and I guess I just can’t tell any real difference between Dancing Dave and Chuckie T. and the face mullet of concern. It’s all uniformly awful, but gets worse when the bobbleheads have their panel discussion. My personal favorites:
CHUCK TODD: You’ve not said the word, “Syria,” so far in our conversation. Obviously, if you’re going to defeat ISIS, you have used very much stronger language. It’s gone through the week during your trip to Wales. You have got to go to Syria in some form or another.
Zing, Boom, Pow! GOTCHA! Except, two pages and five minutes earlier, this had happened:
PRES. OBAMA: I’m preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from ISIL. Keep in mind that this is something that we know how to do. We’ve been dealing with terrorist threats for quite some time. This administration has systematically dismantled Al Qaeda in the FATA.
ISIL poses a broader threat because of its territorial ambitions in Iraq and Syria. But the good news is coming back from the most recent NATO meeting is the entire international community understands that this is something that has to be dealt with.
Todd later on notes that the President did in fact mention Syria, but not the WAY he wanted him to mention it.
CHUCK TODD: Part one of my interview there. Some of you may have noted that I said the president hadn’t mentioned the word “Syria” at all in one of my questions. He had mentioned it, but he hadn’t said whether he was taking military action there.
And then there was this, which makes no sense to me and maybe I missed something contextually by reading the transcript and not watching it:
CHUCK TODD: You think he’s downplaying the 9/11 threat too much?
Seems to me the time to have been worried about the 9/11 threat was thirteen and a half years ago. Or is the “9/11 threat” just beltway speak for a generic terrorist strike on the “homeland?” To get a real feel for just how bad Todd was, Joe Scarborough at times came through as the voice of reason:
CHUCK TODD: Obviously we refer to it at NBC News as ISIS. The Obama administration, president says the word ISIL. The last S stands for Syria, the last L they don’t want to have stand for Syria. Joe, he’s going to give a speech, American public. What does he need to say, do you think, that will rally the public to his strategy?
JOE SCARBOROUGH: I think he laid it out pretty well. I mean, we have other remember, you look at the polls, and six months ago, three months ago, the American people said they didn’t want to get involved. They didn’t want the hyperactive foreign policy. We are an exhausted nation. And I think this president’s taking a fairly reasonable, measured response. Now we obsess–
CHUCK TODD: Do you think he’s been poll-driven about it? Do you think that’s why the delayed any action?
JOE SCARBOROUGH: I don’t think he’s been poll-driven enough for a lot of Democratic senators who this past week started breaking and suddenly they’re sounding a lot more like John McCain than you would expect Democratic senators to sound.
CHUCK TODD: Yes, they are.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: But we obsess over things like the “JV team,” which I obsess over. Everybody, we all do. The brown suit. The “I don’t have a strategy yet.” The American people aren’t there. It’s about safety, it’s about security. And again, this president’s taking a fairly measured approach. And that’s not only where Democrats are, that’s where a lot of conservatives are.
And the band played on…
by John Cole| 49 Comments
This post is in: Election 2014, Assholes, Democratic Stupidity
If it weren’t for the great social media campaign of Zephyr Teachout and the postings by Mistermix about how awful Cuomo is and how he has basically acted like an Emperor, I wouldn’t have known what a total asshole Governor Cuomo is. And I certainly didn’t realize he was this much of an asshole:
For Cuomo, the disdain goes even deeper. If this campaign has shown us anything, it has shown us Andrew Cuomo as Richard Nixon. Like Nixon, he believes the word “independent” only ever appears in scare quotes: Nixon appointed an “independent” prosecutor, and then demanded the special prosecutor take direction from Nixon; Cuomo appointed an “independent” corruption commission and then insisted it was “absurd” to say the governor had no power to stop it from investigating him.
But the likeness is even deeper. There’s a meanness that wasn’t as obvious before. And a pettiness. If there’s one thing great politicians are great at, it is the ability to step outside the fight, and treat each other decently. Watch this from the Labor Day Parade:
The man can’t even look her in the face. She’s smiling and open, persistent in her effort to engage him. He acts as if he doesn’t even see her — forgetting that as humans, and all recognize the ‘I’m pretending I don’t see you’ look.
I really hope Zephyr pulls this out, despite the fact that Zephyr/Wu sounds like a really bad Indie band. Was there a meanness like this to Mario Cuomo? Or did the apple just fall very far from the tree?
This post is in: Sports, Clown Shoes
As Betty noted and updated earlier, the Ray Rice video of him knocking out his now wife has been released, and the Ravens have cut Rice. In addition to that, this happened:
Roger Goodell has announced that based on new video evidence that became available today he has
indefinitely suspended Ray Rice.
— Greg Aiello (@gregaiello) September 8, 2014
Before the trolls and pc police flay me alive, as a human being and a brother and son, I am not going to spend one nanosecond concerned about the welfare of Ray Rice, and he could choke to death on his mouthpiece for all I care. This is not a defense of Ray Rice, this is not making excuses for what that asshole did to that woman, and I’m not going to lose any sleep over what happens to Rice.
Having said that, I feel obligated to note what a gutless crapweasel Roger Goodell is. This whole bullshit about the new video being released as the pretext for suspending him indefinitely is such a load of nonsense I can’t believe anyone with two firing synapses would fall for it. Did he not see the video in which a motionless Janay Palmer was dragged out of an elevator? Did he not realize that when 220 lbs of muscle punches a defenseless woman in the face it would be traumatic and awful? It wasn’t a secret what happened, and that is why Rice was charged with domestic abuse, suspended for two days, etc. And Goodell blew it with a two game suspension.
Since then, he has been supplicating in front of the media, begging forgiveness for being a moron and not taking this issue seriously. They have instituted stronger new policies (6 games 1st domestic abuse, lifetime ban for second), and that is a good thing. But what irritates me about Goodell’s indefinite suspension of Rice today is that there is nothing at all sincere about it. He’s just making stuff up as he goes along. We knew Ray Rice punched her, we saw her motionless body- did Goodell think he punched her lightly? Yes, the video was shocking and awful, but so is every domestic abuse incident that isn’t filmed. It’s why it’s called domestic “VIOLENCE.” This just smacks of insincere ass-covering, and the message he is sending is that domestic abuse is serious enough to ban for two (and now six) games, but if we catch it on film, well, then, that’s way worser.
Additionally, why the hell did the NFL put in the new six game suspension policy if they aren’t going to follow it? This was Rice’s first incident and Goodell gave him two games sitting before the new policy came out. How do you re-punish? And even then, if you are going to just wing this and you are going to go about and re-punish him, shouldn’t it be either four more games or a lifetime ban? It just makes no sense to me. What is Goodell doing or thinking? Is he just going to wait until the furor dies down and then decide to reinstate him- will that be four, five, ten games? Is he going to string him along for a year and then ban him permanently? Again, Goodell is just making shit up as he goes along, and I have no idea how anyone can think he or the NFL is sincere.
If you take a crime seriously, and domestic abuse is one that really should be taken seriously, you need to address it seriously. You need to set out a clear guideline for what is and what is not acceptable and what the punishment will be. In this case, Goodell has failed in almost every aspect discussed here, and some that were not. The initial punishment was too lenient, the second punishment is not clearly defined, and he still has never addressed the odious tweets that came from the Ravens organization (now deleted):
Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.
— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) May 23, 2014
Like I said, he’s just making shit up as he goes along, and that’s no way to run a small store let alone a multi-billion high profile business. Not to mention, the Players Union should and probably will have a legal field day with this illogical behavior, which will then be portrayed as the Players Union supporting domestic violence when what they are really doing is defending their union members from arbitrary justice. That will give the NFL another pr disaster and counts, in my book, as “conduct detrimental to the league,” and if you think for one second the owners won’t use that in the long run to further weaken the union, you’re on glue.
I have no love for Ray Rice (not only as a human being, but as a WVU and Steelers fan, as a player), but I gotta say I’ll be as happy if he never plays another down as I will if Goodell is kicked out of the league for gross incompetence and generally being a gutless, clueless coward. Gawd, I miss Paul Tagliabue. The entire NFL response has just been a shitshow fail parade from day one, and it is transparently obvious that Goodell is not acting because of actual concern about Rice’s behavior, but about the financial harm this is causing the NFL. And, as always, there is nothing on the planet that Goodell can’t make worse with his special reverse Midas touch.
What I Wouldn’t Do For You, Paul TagliabuePost + Comments (126)
This post is in: Election 2014, Excellent Links
Elizabeth Drew– who’s been doing smart reporting since Watergate — in the NY Review of Books, on ‘Obama & the Upcoming Elections‘:
Thus far, interest in this year’s midterm elections is in almost inverse proportion to their importance….
Probably not since Richard Nixon have so many candidates shied away from being in the presence of their party’s president when he shows up in their states—though they welcome his strenuous fund-raising efforts on their behalf. It’s often said that the president should socialize more with Republicans, but they, too, don’t want to be seen in his presence and often turn down White House invitations; John Boehner has been forbidden by the House Republican caucus to negotiate with Obama on his own. Yet the public perception is that the failure of Washington to solve major problems during the past six years falls on the president as well as on those actually responsible—the Republicans. In fact, no president in history has faced such intransigence from the opposition party. It’s undeniable that the president’s race has a significant part in the destructive ways in which he is talked about and opposed.
Obama has on occasion fretted aloud that the focus in the news on the gridlock and dysfunction in Washington diverts attention from what he’s been able to achieve. When he’s long gone from the White House it could well become apparent that despite the odds Obama was responsible for notable achievements, among them Obamacare; getting gay marriage widely accepted; beginning to turn federal energy policy toward a more environmentally conscious set of policies; the Dodd-Frank bill’s restraints on Wall Street, however limited, with its rules still being argued over; and the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency championed by Elizabeth Warren….
It’s been evident for quite a while that a certain chilliness on Obama’s part has affected his relations with Congress, but it’s also questionable how much substantive difference this has made. A Cabinet officer said to me, “He’s a loner, and one result is that few Democrats are willing to take the hill for him.” Obama rose swiftly in politics and essentially on his own—he’d been on his own for most of his life—and political camaraderie is of little interest to him. His golfing foursomes are most often made up of junior White House staff and close nonpolitical friends from Chicago. This might not make much difference in the number of bills passed but it has had one very serious effect on his presidency: the Democrats’ unwillingness to praise, defend, much less celebrate the president has left the field clear to his multitude of attackers.
Obama tended to proceed on the theory that if he made some concessions to the Republicans—say, by speeding up deportations of undocumented immigrants—they might be more cooperative; but this hasn’t worked out. It’s true that he is innately cautious, and it’s also true that it is a lot easier to declare what he should have done than to show how he could actually have gotten the votes for that. Little is as simple in the Oval Office as it is to outside critics…
The Republicans are so uncertain of victory in elections to federal offices that they’re still resorting in several states to passing laws that make voting more difficult for minorities and other groups who would ordinarily vote for the Democrats. Some of these laws are even stricter than those adopted in 2012. Democrats might appear to have issues that could drive their voters to the polls. These would include Republican efforts to deprive women of their own reproductive decisions and opposition to such measures as raising the minimum wage and making unemployment insurance last longer.
Still, largely because of the president’s unpopularity, the Democratic candidates have been having problems finding their voice. Most of their races are focused on the vulnerabilities of their opponents, making for a thus far unedifying election. The result is that a midterm election with national implications so far has no overall national theme.
Unknown at this point is the effect of the unprecedented amounts of outside money being poured into many of the races. It’s estimated that the Kentucky race alone will cost $100 million, the highest amount ever for a state contest. In addition, numerous members of the more militantly liberal Democratic wing have been holding back support of their party’s candidate because of impurities they find in the president’s or candidate’s positions. Democrats “disappointed” in Obama could help elect a Republican Senate. The odds may be stacked against the Democrats this November, but whether they can stave off a loss of control of one half of Congress is still up to them and their would-be supporters.
Long(ish) Read: Elizabeth Drew, “Obama & the Upcoming Elections”Post + Comments (54)
by David Anderson| 17 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, Free Markets Solve Everything, Fuck The Middle-Class, Fuck The Poor, Glibertarianism, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
A friend of mine who first met me in college always laughs her ass off when she sees me with my kids. She is not laughing because I have long and in-depth discussions with my son as to why Team Umizoomi is better than Wonder Pets (it is all about the Umi-Car being so much cooler than the Fly Boat), or how freely I give out amazingly curative boo-boo kisses. She does not laugh when I put on a pretty princess tiara with my daughter. She does not laugh (too much at least) as I become the jungle gym for an entire horde of pre-schoolers.
She laughs because she knew me when I lived my life with minimal regard to my health or safety. I joked that the best advice on surviving a pedestrian-auto accidents was the same advice given to Victorian virgins on their wedding nights — get the knees up and relax — and then proved that advice several times. I barely looked where I was going in the world when I had nothing to drink, and was completely, and loudly, oblivious when I had more than two beers in me. I had minimal regard to my safety and the medical history to prove it.
That changed dramatically when I had kids. Some of the change was an ongoing process of being an idiot at twenty-one, and far less of an idiot as I aged, but my daughter’s birth meant I had to be responsible for her which meant I needed to be in good shape to take care of her. My son’s birth just delayed the moment of my first bungee jump a few more years.
I became far less risk seeking, and far less risk tolerant since I’ve become a dad. I can’t afford a stupid and preventable injury, incapacitation or death. I can’t afford to walk into my bosses’ office and tell them to take a flying leap off a tall bridge as my next best alternative to regular employment (refereeing way too much and finding a job in a field where I have not burned too many bridges) no longer is good enough. I can’t afford to chase a 1 in 50 chance of striking it big when there is a 1 in 2 chance of penury. I can’t even conceptualize betting everything on black. I don’t think this risk aversion behavioral change is uncommon for parents. We become risk averse and minimize maximum regret decision makers to some extent if the initial conditions are good enough for our kids. Starting a new business is risky as hell, and if failure (which is highly probable) means the kids get screwed, then quite a few potentially good ideas will never get beyond the “hmmm, this is interesting” stage.
The Harvard Business Review looks at some research on how health insurance expansion increases economic risk taking:
So does the extension of publicly provisioned health insurance prompt more people to start companies? That’s the question asked by a paper released earlier this year by Gareth Olds of Harvard Business School.
Olds analyzed Census data from before and after the passage of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in the U.S. in 1997 to assess its impact on entrepreneurship. CHIP, or SCHIP as it was previously known, provides publicly funded health insurance to children whose families don’t qualify for Medicare, but whose incomes still fall below a cutoff (typically around 200% of the federal poverty line)…. The rate of ownership of incorporated businesses — a better proxy for sustainable, growth entrepreneurship — increased even more dramatically, from 4.3% to 5.8%, an increase of 31%.
What about all the other factors that might skew this sort of analysis? Olds used several quasi-experimental statistical methods in his research to control for such variables. The basic intuition behind his methods is that a family just above the CHIP cutoff isn’t all that different from a family just below it. Whether you make 199% of the poverty line or 201% doesn’t matter for much, except whether or not you’ll be able to enroll in the program. With that in mind, his methods zero in on this sub-group, in order to confirm that the policy actually caused the increase in firm creation.
The mechanism by which Olds believes CHIP boosts entrepreneurship is relatively straightforward: it reduces the risk of “consumption shocks,” i.e. the possibility of having to pay out a large chunk of cash unexpectedly for a child’s illness. Lower the risk and more people start companies.
I would rephrase it somewhat differently. CHIP made sure that the kids would not be hurt too much by taking a risk and failing at it. They could still get their vaccines, they could get their broken legs repaired correctly instead of cheaply, and if they were diagnosed with cancer, care would be available at great facilities without it being dependent on bake sales and 5K fundraisers. If I can do something risky while isolating the downside effects from my kids, I am far more likely to do that activity than if the downside risk was also splashing on my kids.
This is common sense. We, as a society, should want rational risk taking behavior on new ideas to be encouraged, not held back because the kids could get screwed.
Digital tabloid TMZ obtained the whole elevator surveillance video that shows Ravens star Ray Rice knocking his then-girlfriend-now-wife out with a vicious punch. You can see it at Deadspin if you want to watch it; I’m not posting it.
Prior to the TMZ sleazoids getting ahold of the whole thing, video had surfaced of Rice dragging the unconscious Ms. Rice out of the elevator like a sack of potatoes. Both were charged with domestic violence in the incident, and the NFL originally suspended Rice for two games.
When people complained about the light punishment (players who test positive for weed routinely get much longer suspensions), NFL Commissioner Goodell admitted he fucked up by giving Rice a slap on the wrist, but just how big a cock-up that was is now illustrated for all the world to see with this video, which the NFL and Ravens officials allegedly saw before setting a two-game suspension.
There’s some controversy around that: It’s not 100% clear what Goodell and the team saw. If they didn’t see the whole thing, the TMZ video is a good reason to revisit Rice’s punishment, isn’t it? If they did see it, well, our initial suspicions about how seriously they take domestic violence in the league have been borne out yet again.
What do y’all think?
UPDATE: The Ravens cut Rice.
Have We Talked About the Ray Rice Video?Post + Comments (170)