Couple Politico stories, since you guys are probably too sensible to go there. As he decamps from his regular rotation, Bob Schieffer explains to Howie that they’re not reporters, they’re stenographers:
CBS’ Bob Schieffer says that perhaps reporters in the media “were not skeptical enough” of President Barack Obama as a presidential candidate in 2008, telling Fox News’ Howard Kurtz that the whole political world was struck by the sudden rise of the senator from Illinois…
“I don’t know. Maybe we were not skeptical enough. It was a campaign,” Schieffer said in the interview, which aired Sunday, adding that it is the role of the opponents to “make the campaign.”
“I think, as journalists, basically what we do is watch the campaign and report what the two sides are doing,” he said.
Or at least “what the two sides say the other side is doing”, because any more strenuous investigation would take Schieffer too far from the greenroom aura that keeps his ancient corpus from crumbling… Jack Schaefer, high priest in the Cult of the Savvy, spells out the Media Village Idiots’ joint position more concretely:
… Like any multi-headed beast, the press can fall in love, but its love is difficult to measure and tends toward the fickle… It may be hard to remember now, but during the primary season, the press did not churn a relentlessly positive wave of coverage for Obama to surf. Reporters capitalized on the controversial sermons of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to publish many stories graded as negative by Pew. Likewise, the press filed much negative copy about Obama’s dismissive comment about small-town Americans clinging to guns and religion and his association with former Weather Undergrounder Bill Ayers. Where Obama held the unbreakable advantage in the 2008 primary season from January through May was total press coverage. This total press coverage translated into higher public visibility for Obama for most of the primary season. In late May 2008, for example, 54 percent of the public said they had heard most about Obama in the last week compared to 27 percent for Clinton and just 5 percent for McCain…
In the early going of the 2008 campaign, Obama’s newcomer halo and his unique personal history sent many stories on an affirmative, Obamamania course. The most negative it ever got for Obama during the primaries season was that he was too young, too inexperienced and too unaccomplished of a backbencher to be president. But even those “negatives” were interpreted as positives by many voters.
The Obama numbers do, however, suggest that campaign reporters tend to give more positive coverage to presidential candidates with that new-car smell (Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, et al.) than it does to candidates with an excess of miles on them (Hillary Clinton, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee). The high-mileage candidates, having been in the arena longer and having generated bigger paper trails, almost always make better subjects for negative stories. And as a rule, journalists prefer a negative story over a positive one any day…
And ‘journalists’ prefer blank slates and/or pre-digested oppo handouts over having to do our own homework, you betcha!
Myiq2xu
Still nothing about NSA reform.
Valdivia
I believe they’re stenographers alright but the idea that the media didn’t vet Obama is a FOX/derp talking point. Really? This is the example he gives of the Village being mindless idiots?
Redshift
Speaking of gaping media idiots, the NYT has a story on our old pal BinP’s probable employer.
Lee
There was a post here (or somewhere else) about a Republican candidate (Rubio?) that wants to increase the child credit (which would help lower & middle income folks).
Does anyone have that link? My Google-fu is weak .
ruemara
@Myiq2xu: if I could reform it sand bag your internet connection, I would.
Corner Stone
@Lee:
That’s fairly standard across the GOP talking points. Pataki says the same thing and so do a few others running. It’s crap.
Corner Stone
@Myiq2xu: What about the 67-32 vote to theoretically reform the NSA do you want to talk about?
fuckwit
That makes no fucking sense, it’s just bullshit! Fuck!
Walks off stage like Bill Nye.
So… reporters love negative stories, and well-worn candidates have more of those, so reporters cover them LESS than they do the new candidates.
There’s not a word of that entire post that isn’t completely incomprehensible, inconsistent, meaningless bullshit. Natter natter grommish grommish blah blah blah whatever.
Lee
@Corner Stone:
I do realize that as it was scorned by other Republicans, but I was looking for the specific current article.
Bystander
I love that the MSM steers clear of even mentioning the unprecedented nature of the weather ripping through the middle of the country, lest such reference leads anyone to wonder why.
I even heard some guest idiot today suggesting that both sides do what Rand Paul is currently doing, obstructing vital legislation as a campaign stunt. Leave it to our media for treating Baby Doc as anything other than the childish sociopath he is.
Corner Stone
@Lee: Be warned, it’s National Review:
Assessing the GOP Candidates’ Plans on Poverty
“Rubio would also revamp the earned-income tax credit (EITC) to make it a better wage enhancement.”
Redshift
Since I am indeed too sensible to go there, does Schieffer or his interviewer suggest anything about Obama we know now that we would have known them if they had been “more skeptical”? That seems like the only context where a remark like that would mean anything other than “sorry we didn’t attack him more for no reason.”
In contrast, I can easily think of several areas where, if the press had been “more skeptical” with Bush, it not only would have told us things we ought to know, it literally could have changed the course of history.
MomSense
Not skeptical enough about Barack Obama? How about not skeptical enough about Iraq? How about not skeptical enough about all the bullshit death panel ACA scare mongering?
I could come up with an exhaustive list of things the press failed to be skeptical enough about and this is what Schieffer picks?
Corner Stone
@Lee: “Republicans are the ones who typically broach the subject of expanding the EITC in lieu of raising the minimum wage, particularly in response to anyone on the left proposing an increase. And some top GOPers have proposed plans to expand the EITC independently. Senator Marco Rubio’s antipoverty plan, for instance, would convert the EITC into a similar program, called a wage enhancement, which would apply equally to working parents and childless workers. Representative Paul Ryan has also proposed expanding the EITC.
Yet, expanding the EITC costs money—and that’s where problems with those plans arise. Rubio just ignores this altogether. His plan would somehow increase benefits for childless workers, keep benefits constant for everyone else, and still be deficit neutral. That’s mathematically impossible.”
That’s all a quote.
Lee
@Corner Stone:
Found it (had to swap a couple words around in search).
Here
The money quote I was looking for:
So jeb is looking to LOWER the child credit as much as possible!
Corner Stone
@Lee:
No, that’s actually a fairly standard GOP go to talking point anytime someone suggests raising the min wage.
The key part there was, “It’s crap.”
Lee
@Corner Stone:
Did it ever occur to you to actually be helpful? Or was that not really an option?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I do believe Bob Schieffer, over the last five plus years, regularly asked Condi Rice and Newt Gingrich to speak their wisdom on national politics, and last week had the Magic Dolphin Queen on for that same purpose, so he can shut the fuck up and fuck the fuck off.
@Redshift: I’d bet this month’s mortgage that Schieffer thinks we needed to re-invade Iraq.
@Corner Stone: I suspect s/he wants to echo Spencer Ackerman, who on MSNBC just pointed out HRC’s total silence on the matter.
Corner Stone
@Lee: GFY, you lazy jerk. I put two links to two different places and excerpted them for a casual review.
Which is fuckall compared to your too lazy and stupid to enter three fucking terms into Google, hit submit, then click News.
Fuck you.
JPL
@Corner Stone: When Bush increased the child credit, it added more families into the 47 percent who don’t pay taxes. What is it, do they want everyone to pay taxes or not.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I saw that. She gains nothing by saying anything about it at this time. That’s just true.
People here keep saying she better fucking not diss Obama if she wants a chance in Hell at any part of his coalition. Well, Obama lobbied and quite blatantly fearmongered for the previous NSA bill to go through.
So what is gained by her saying anything at this point?
trollhattan
@Redshift:
I do believe you’ve nailed it/him with pretty high odds.
The fact that “he” pivoted from “The CIA created AIDS” to “It’s all about Ukrainian Patriots(tm) versus Ukrainian nazis” so distinctively reminded me of a Ford production line retooling from the Focus to the F150. “Okay, this is the thing I have to think about now…got it.”
Valdivia
@MomSense:
Amen.
jl
Only watched the clip of courtly gracious pillar of national affairs journalism, crazed prissy ancient hick and sometime GOP hack Schieffer. He pulled down a lot of money for repeating stuff he saw on the campaign trails.
Thank goodness his replacement, Dickerson will do much more than that… Oh, wait…not sure Dick will move in the right direction on that front.
Edit: the schnooks at CBS actually played a clip of ol’ Schieff flipping out at the Bill Clinton sex scandal news as part of some tribute thing (Thayat’s Baid, Ain’t thayat baiyyyyyddd!? That’s Baiiiyyyyd!). I would think the press failure on Iraq invasion or Dub blowing off intelligence report would merit something similar at least, but I never heard it from ol’ Schieff)
gene108
I can’t blame Scheiffer. Obama paid damn near no political price for his longtime association with Rezko.
I mean, if the media cannot take a candidate or politician down a peg, through guilt by association rumor mongering, how can they feel like they did their job?
They damaged Clinton’s reputation over Whitewater, but they couldn’t even dint the “rock star” personna of Obama, in 2008, over Rezko.
I’m sure they are shaking their heads at their collective failure to bring the “boy” down in 2008.
Corner Stone
@JPL: To be clear, I am for something like the EITC. But, as usual, we should not consider the GOP talking points advocating for “increasing” the EITC at face value.
They don’t really want to expand or increase the EITC, or anything like it. They just want to use it to deflect against actual wages for working people. Take a look at the link I put up to the TNR (I know). But it pretty much spells out the naked lying hypocrisy of the GOP on the EITC and wages.
JPL
@Valdivia: Me too!
The McCain/Obama campaign touched upon all the important issues and the differences were highlighted. Romney didn’t really discuss anything except to diss those not in the top 1 percent.
trollhattan
@fuckwit:
I would certainly like them to bring the “Straight Talk Express” and tireswings into the discussion if they’d like me to pay the slightest mind to their supposed misgivings.
“Why, Governor Palin, you’re so refreshingly engaging and you really rock those pumps. How do you do it!”
Germy Shoemangler
@gene108:
They’re making up for it by leaving no stone unturned with the Hillary. They’ll raise a toast to themselves if they can help Jeb or Walker into the whitehouse.
And we’ll just be toast.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was surprised to hear Charlie Pierce speak optimistically of Dickerson today. I’ve gotten nothing against him, it’s been years since I read him regularly, but I’ll be shocked if he meaningfully de-Village-izes FTN
Baud
@MomSense:
I agree wholeheartedly, but the article suggests that Schieffer was asked a highly leading wingnut question by Howie Kurtz, to which Schieffer gave his tepid response, rather than Schieffer going off against Obama on his own. So it is lame, but a couple of points lower on the outrage meter for me.
Major Major Major Major
Who the hell writes these acronyms?
Valdivia
@JPL: Also Paul Ryan got to be the serious wonk (not) all through that campaign. No one ever really challenged him, except Biden during that debate.
Chris
The Narrative says (has said since pretty much 2008) that Obama was the darling of the media (left unstated… most of the time… is the implication that he only got where he was because the media was carrying his water), so I suppose it was inevitable that media figures would at some point start doing a mea culpa for this, in the same way they constantly apologize for and try to “make up for” being Too Liberally Biased.
(The fact that this Narrative is itself a product of the media goes unsaid).
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: USAFREEDOMA?
I thought we already freed the USA of DOMA?
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
We can begin by graphing the frequency of President McCain appearances.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
The official Congressional acronymetor.
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
Perhaps a slight misspelling?
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: the preferred “compassionate conservative” way of addressing poverty is the EITC, historically. That is, addressing a liberal goal by conservative means, like Romneycare. But they stopped doing that years ago…
JPL
@Corner Stone: I assume the repubs want to increase the child credit for votes. My point is that more people would not pay income taxes. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but they then turn around and complain about people not paying taxes.
Buffett thinks increasing EITC, is a better approach that increasing the minimum wage. I’m not completely clear on that but I suppose the increase in minimum wage could decrease government assistance and cause a negative affect. I don’t know that for sure though.
Brachiator
What the fvck does this mean, that they should have demanded to see his long form birth certificate?
Damn, this is just stupid. It pretends to be a claim of critical thinking, I guess (use of the talisman “skeptical”), but just fvcking stupid.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: the ‘Act’ is a word :P
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: Someone who deserves to be slow-roasted on Satan’s rotisserie for all eternity — that’s who!
Corner Stone
I’m sorry, y’all. But this bum shilling for Trivago just totes creeps me right the F out.
jl
OK, I read the rest of it. The whole issue of some ‘campaign romance’ or taking on candidates critically as some objective exogenous test of press performing its function has a whiff of the old KGB saying ‘give me the man and I’ll give you the case’. Candidates to a great extent can do or say things that merit more or less critical coverage during a campaign.
As an example, if that damn Obama wanted critical coverage during 2008, he could have gotten involved in murky Marx Brothers Duck Soup style war intrigue in some little country next to Russia and tried to politicize an outbreak of violence during the campaign right? He could have had his chief campaign foreign policy adviser involved up to his neck in the sketchy war scare BS, with evidence it was done along with the current administration, right?
Or, Obama could have pulled empty but dramatic campaign stunts over the financial panic and then stared in dumb puzzlement when someone asked him anything about what was going on and what should be done regarding the financial markets. Obama could have gone to a very high profile policy meeting in DC about the panic and sat their staring dumb as a post through the whole thing.
So, as in all things, I blame Obama. Thanks Obama!
Or, I guess the media could have tackled the debate between Obama and HRC on their policy differences on proposed health care reform. Mandate or no mandate, that was a big debate between the two candidates in the primary for awhile. But I am sure people like ol’ Schieff and Todd and especially dingbats like Pelley wanted dive into that and report out the policy issues in detail, but somehow they just couldn’t do it. Why not? Probably because they were not ‘critical enough’ of Obama, or skeered of criticizing HRC, and it is obviously the candidates fault. Especially, of course always, Obama.
I admit I am bitter. Why could not fate have handed me a fat gig reporting gossip and BSing all day long, and sitting by the phone waiting for bigshots to call me with important story leads that I could investigate by repeating whatever they say?
Tree With Water
“The in-stadium NFL experience is remarkably unappealing, especially when up against the comfort and convenience of just watching the games at home. There needs to be a damned good reason to go to a football game, and sitting in the top rows on a windy December afternoon to watch Washington lose their 10th game no longer cuts it”.
That’s from a post over at Deadspin.com, one that casts a light beneath the rock that is the Washington Redskins. Throw in Roger Goodell, and pity the golden goose. I suppose the NFL it is what it is, and always has been. Still, the game of my youth that has been all-but-utterly corrupted by black hearted whores. In his forthcoming meeting with that grand poobah of boobs, I hope Tom Brady tells Roger Goodell to shove his suspension where the sun don’t shine, and walks away while he still possesses his good health.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: But we need to understand who it does, and does not, help. It’s useful to the extent we can keep it funded. But, just like mortgages, why are we still in the business of encouraging low income working class and lower middle class (I think the cutoff is in the mid $30Ks), and not doing anything for non-head of household poor?
MomSense
@Baud:
I bet you can watch the Sunday news shows without having to banish all heavy objects from the room.
Wouldn’t it be nice if he had called BS on the question? And how in the world does someone like Kurtz get to have a tv show? This is proof that shit is fucked up and bullshit.
Major Major Major Major
@JPL: The EITC is fine enough, and traditionally the economic consensus has been that cash handouts are the best way to get money to the poor, rather than earmarked stuff. This is why food stamps are so stimulative.
The problem with the EITC is that it requires a certain level of sophistication to get. For the growing number of low-paid contractors, for instance, doing your taxes is a massive pain in the ass, and under-the-table workers are of course not eligible. Stuff like that. It’s imperfect but as far as conservative (not Republican, I mean actual conservative) economic ideas go, it’s a pretty decent way to get money to the poor.
There’s a saying in econ, I forget exactly what it is, but the idea is that economists have the least influence on the issues they have the most consensus on, and vice-versa. Rent control? Bad. But everybody has it because nobody listens to economists when it’s such a political winner. The 2009 stimulus? Economists all over the map, but economists were definitely being listened to.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: When I’m queen bitch of the universe, we’ll just bring back Eisenhower-era (maybe JFK-era) tax rates, institute a wealth tax and a financial transaction tax, a land value tax, possibly a VAT, cut the military in half, and just fucking give every adult thirty grand a year. Don’t ask me.
ETA: But since I’m against rent control that still makes me Hitler out here in SF.
jl
@Major Major Major Major: Warren Buffet thinks raising federal minimum wage a bad idea that will reduce employment (I think he is wrong, at least for current proposals in current economic climate). Buffet wants greatly expanded EITC, with vastly simplified application process, get the money monthly, kind of like reverse withholding, and make more generous.
Buffet might have an OK idea, not sure I like it, but I think at least it might be a serious proposal. I wonder how the GOP proposals stack up against Buffet’s.
Brachiator
Since a lot of this inevitably gets into dissatisfaction with the media, I’d like to throw in again the recent PEW study on how different generations consume media. The youngest, and the ones who will push the rest of us to the curb, are the Millennial generation (those born between 1981 and 1996). And they are a different breed of cat. A few tidbits.
This group gets about 60 percent of its political news from Facebook.
A little more:
How all this might impact the 2016 elections is unclear, because no one understands Facebook’s curation and use of algorithms.
Among other highlights of the report:
— Millennials, Gen Xers and baby boomers place trust in about 40 percent of news sources on the 36-source list and distrust about 20 percent.
— Twenty-six percent of millennials rank political news among their top-three interests.
— Eighteen percent of Facebooking millennials find news that aligns with their political views, compared with 31 percent of baby boomers who do so.
The full study can be found here: http://www.journalism.org/2015/06/01/millennials-political-news/
Brave new world, people.
Baud
@MomSense:
I don’t watch any of those shows. Schieffer is a McCain fanboy. No way he would call anyone out in the Village.
piratedan
well thank the FSM that Schieffer is retiring if he thinks that was a media failing in regards to not “vetting” Obama hard enough. Hey Bob, how about just vetting what the probable end result might be of GOP policy might mean to anyone under 50, making less than 35k a year and is a person of color… how about connecting a few of those dots.
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, you might have an epiphany or something….
Redshift
@trollhattan: I was pretty surprised at the industrial scale of it, especially since I was on the fence about whether I believed BinP was actually on Putin’s payroll or just a dupe.
Sadly, Billmon seems to have completely bought into the “Ukrainian rebels are all Nazis” line. It’s the one subject where I find him completely unreadable. It seems like his cynicism betrayed him (or more specifically, was too one-sided in this case.)
Major Major Major Major
@jl: The EITC is a great, pre-existing corridor for giving cash to the poor. We’ve got the infrastructure to support processing and writing the checks in place, so switching from once a year to twelve times a year would be easy enough. It’s far from perfect, but tweaking existing programs is a hell of a lot easier politically than making new ones.
David Koch
yeah, nobody in the media ever focused on Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky and whether he was a mooslim
free pass.
Patricia Kayden
@Redshift: Good point. What do we know about Obama now that we didn’t know in 2008 which would have made us go “Hell naw”? And why didn’t the media bring “it” out in 2012 to avoid a second term? Schieffer needs to understand that if President Obama was allowed to run again, he’d beat any and all Clown Car Occupants handily.
Corner Stone
@jl:
One of the problems I have with the EITC, at least so far as genuine offerings go, is that it can be changed in an instant. It’s there, then *poof* it isn’t by act of next Congress. Increasing a wage makes it far stickier and “somewhat” more dependable. Yes, they can terminate you at will to change that stability but if that happens the EITC isn’t going to keep you in your abode or feeding your kids.
Patricia Kayden
@gene108: Who the hell is Rezko? (I know — stop being lazy and google him/her). I believe the media made a good faith effort to tar President Obama with Pastor Wright and Bill Ayers. Didn’t work though.
Mike in NC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was delighted to see old Bob Schlepper sign off for good on Sunday. Now I’ll be using a lot less profanity on the Lord’s Day.
However, I expect him to keep popping up like fellow Republican Tom Brokaw for special assignments honoring the top 1%ers once in a while (unless he has a tee time with Dubya).
Redshift
@Lee:
As I read that, Jeb! wants to lower tax rates instead of raising the child credit, not lower the child credit. Because why just pretend to help poor people when you can give away lots of tax revenue to rich people and pretend to help poor people?
MomSense
@Baud:
Life is too short for Sunday snooze shows.
raven
Cranky buncha mofo’s.
Major Major Major Major
@Patricia Kayden: Obama had some legit shady real estate and fundraising connections with Rezko, who is now in prison for demanding kickbacks from politicians.
It’s not a damning connection by any stretch of the imagination, but much more tangible than say the Ayers one. Wright just had such horrible optics because of the videos that they ran with it even though it was kind of a nothingburger.
D58826
A bit more skepticism in 2002 and early 2003 might have avoided a world of hurt in Iraq but that would have been unpatriotic to question a GOOPER
David Koch
eta: nobody in the media ever focused on whether he was really born in Kenya and whether his mom faked his birth announcements in 1961.
free pass.
JPL
@Redshift: He’s already said he’s like his brother on foreign policy, so why not be like him on tax cuts. Tax cuts pay for themselves after all.
Patricia Kayden
@Major Major Major Major: I’m going to have to google Rezko since this is the first time I’m even hearing that name.
@David Koch: Or didn’t vet that his real father was Malcolm X as some nutty Rightwinger claimed in a book.
Baud
@MomSense:
A tortoise’s life is too short for that crap.
trollhattan
@Redshift:
I’d start by inviting all the True Believers to speak with 193 Dutch families of MH17, followed by 43 Malaysian families, 27 Australian families…
Vlad gives the “rebels” a fancy SAM system, they bag a Ukrainian transport and are quite proud, then the second transport kill turns out to not be that at all. Some “false flag.”
Hopeless, I know, but the killing continues today.
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
Maybe Obummer was taking advice from Nixon’s old buddy. At seances, of course.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I was thinking congressional staffers in Capitol Hill watering holes, but your answer works as well.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Corner Stone: We agree on that.
Redshift
@Major Major Major Major: Or more properly, I think, historically the “compassionate conservative” way of pretending to address a problem in order to head off the the more effective but less “conservative” (but I repeat myself) liberal program while avoiding appearing completely heartless. Just like Romneycare.
The tell in both cases is that liberals started supporting the program once it appeared to be working, and conservatives turned against both once they appeared to be working.
Corner Stone
@Patricia Kayden:
See? The media failed you, or else you would know all about the scams Obama pulled with the incarcerated Rezko.
He was proved fucking right!
nellcote
PBO’s comment about small towns wasn’t dismissive, it was prescient!
EriktheRed
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Whodafuck’s “the Magic Dolphin Queen”?
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
The EITC is crappy on a number of levels. The Democrats need a comprehensive tax policy instead of continuing to piece meal this sh*t. And people understand the EITC very well, and know how to game the system, especially if they report just enough Schedule C income to max out EITC, but omit or under-report business expenses.
One of the biggest problems with EITC is that it over-focuses on poor people with children. A poor single worker, male or female, barely gets squat from EITC. And the credit is not marriage neutral. A person getting EITC might do better off remaining single rather than marrying his or her partner and losing out on the credit or seeing it reduced.
EITC keeps people poor. You lose out if you have too much investment income, so you get penalized from pulling yourself out of poverty.
EITC increases with the number of dependents, but so does the child tax credit. You have a heap of over-lapping credits here. And again, if you are poor without qualifying dependents, you are SOL as far as these credits go.
And obviously (or maybe not to some), the GOP wants to lower the hammer on undocumented workers who presently qualify for the child tax credit.
Lastly, as an aside, the stimulative effects of food stamps are overrated, especially with the new system of debit cards.
Tree With Water
@Patricia Kayden: Implicit is Scheiffer’s chuckle-headed observation is that such scrutiny was brought to bear on GW in 2000. Bye, Bob…
trollhattan
@EriktheRed:
That would be Peggy I-love-vodka-and-Ronald-Reagan’s-soiled-boxers-more-than-life-itself Noonan.
boatboy_srq
@Valdivia: Why, yes. Yes, it is. It’s derp, and Schieffer is falling into derpor in his dotage. You are surprised? Cronkite is dead; Brinkley is dead; Schorr is dead; Murrow is dead; Rather is retired; Woodward has become a Reichwing crank; Blitzer was a Reichwing crank from the beginning; etc etc. Expecting more from 21st century broadcast infotainers is — I’m trying to find a better word than “foolish,” but it’s escaping me.
raven
@Brachiator: “Lastly, as an aside, the stimulative effects of food stamps are overrated, especially with the new system of debit cards.”
Meaning what, it was easier to scam an buy shit other than food the old way?
Baud
@Brachiator:
Is there any evidence that Dems can put forward a comprehensive policy on anything without pissing off everyone in the world?
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: You may be right about that! LOL
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: In the last 24 hours, the official Russian propaganda line has switched. Now they are no longer saying MH-17 may have been taken down by a missile fired by a Ukrainian fighter, they are clearly saying only a BUK (i.e. SAM system) missile could have taken it down, and it was fired from Ukrainian territory. Left open is the fact that *at the time* there were no Ukrainian forces within 40 km of that location, and the Ukr government would have had *no reason* to fire a SAM, since their opponent (the pro-Russian rebels) had no air support whatsoever.
jl
@David Koch:
” eta: nobody in the media ever focused on whether he was really born in Kenya and whether his mom faked his birth announcements in 1961. ”
Hell, if the media had really tried just a little O’Keefe style sting action,they could have gotten fake birth announcements into every HI newspaper, and shot of proud mom, and pillar of the national derp community, ol’ Shieff and pa Todd standing in front of some hospital holding a fake birth certificate with Chris Wallace lying below in swaddling clothes.
They didn’t even try.
Edit: Charlie Rose could have been the fake doc. I’ve read on this blog he has access to lots of ‘medicine’.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Sure didn’t expect that. Why the change, I wonder?
Did the investigation and recovery team find missile bits in the wreckage, or had it all been scrubbed? Am guessing it would have been tough to erase all evidence but likewise don’t think the investigators had unfettered site access, either.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@EriktheRed: Oh, I do relish every chance to repeat this story, if it weren’t for the fact that this boozy old crackpot is still in every Very Serious Person’s rolodex:
“reasonable assumption” I don’t remember if at the time it had been established that the dolphin thing was invented by some hanger-on who knew the fisherman who actually pulled the kid out of the water. Said fisherman said, IIRC, ‘no, there were no fuckin’ dolphins’, or words to that effect.
Further on in the same column, re Reagan:
Valdivia
@boatboy_srq: you are right, I don’t expect any better from them, it just gets me hot under the collar how awful they are.
jl
@efgoldman: Ogayy myaannnn, I guess a Caluhfornen like me shoun’n mock accens.
” That’s Bad, Isn’t that’s bad? That’s Bad! ”
Never heard him go off like that about several worse things that happened after the WJC scandal.
Iowa Old Lady
The thing about Peggy Noonan is that she still has a job and people at least pretend to take her seriously. So much of what’s on the news is “let’s pretend.” Let’s pretend Carly Fiorina or Ted Cruz might be elected president. Let’s pretend this current event might meant we’re being invaded by martians. What is that about?
fleeting expletive
I have a federal death penalty question. As far as I can tell, the means of execution is to be that which is specified in the state where the trial/offense occurred. With the Boston marathon dp convictithon, and the illegality of drugs used for lethal injection, and MA being a non-death penalty state, how will the DoJ proceed on executing him? Of course there will be probably ten years of appeals before the issue comes up, and also the death penalty could be eliminated federally by then.
JPL
@fleeting expletive: Why couldn’t they execute him in a death friendly state. After sentencing, he’ll be moved probably to the supermax anyway. At that point he’ll be in Federal custody, not state custody.
Omnes Omnibus
@fleeting expletive: If a state has no death penalty, the judge has to choose a state does and specify that state’s method.
smintheus
Heard Schieffer give a commencement address in 2002, the stupidest and most obnoxious speech I’ve ever witnessed. His subject, in it’s entirety, was: What I was doing on the morning of 9/11/01 and how difficult it was for me to get across town in Washington to the TV studio.
Students at our college had lost relatives in the Twin Towers.
Brachiator
@raven:
Hell, no. It’s when you gave people scrip that was discounted, it was not the same as cash money. Even so, when people have to spend money for food and have no extra disposable income, the stimulative value of what they get is diminished.
Also, under the old system, so people would trade food stamps for cash, and obviously lose out on the deal. They needed money, and the freedom to make choices about how to spend that money, not scrip that could only be used for what social workers and government agencies thought was appropriate.
I have no patience with people who want to simply make poor people comfortable, no matter how noble their intentions might be. I know the poor areas of Southern California and other places. I have not seen any stimulus from many of the supposed poverty fighting efforts.
rea
@Corner Stone: Increasing the child credit wouldn’t be bad, except that the proposal is to make that the saving sop for the middle class in a program of tax changes that would otherwise screw everyone except the very rich.
fleeting expletive
Thanks, all.
Brachiator
@Baud:
When Dubya was elected, he declared, here’s my tax plan. Pass it. And Democrats fell over themselves to comply.
If Democrats are more concerned about whether they are pissing people off rather than actually doing something to help the people they claim to be so concerned about, then fvck them twice with a twisted stick.
As it is, the Democrats end up giving away too much to the Republicans. We still have a stupid capital gains break that results in some people paying zero in taxes. Then, Republicans (and some people here) whine about how a possible increase to the EITC is going to be paid for. This is madness.
Tommy
@efgoldman:
Amen. I grew up and now live back in the midwest but lived many other places. I have been told many times “I speak funny.”
Also pains me this is going away. Back in the early 90s when I lived in Southern Louisiana it was an open conversation that nobody on TV had a Creole accent. That he was something going away along with their Candian french Creole language.
We are a nation of immigrants. In the town I live in now it is so German I have to explain when I give my name it is Young with a Y. Not Jung. A mandatory class in high school was German.
I think this is all cool shit.
smintheus
Stupid comment by Schafer. In late May Obama had sewn up the nomination and was attracting huge crowds. Clinton was left hoping a whitey tape would miraculously appear to force him to stand aside; and McCain was doing nothing much in public apart from looking feckless.
different-church-lady
SO WHY YOU CIRCUMVENTING THIS STRATEGY ON OUR BEHALF?
Baud
@Brachiator:
Let’s make it three times for good measure. Because I’ve seen little evidence so far that people will respond positively to anything comprehensive the Dems might propose.
But tomorrow is another day, and hope springs eternal, etc.
Redshift
@Brachiator: Stimulus effects aren’t particularly local. They’re a worthwhile side effect of such benefits, and helpful overall in helping a bad economy recover, but they definitely shouldn’t be considered a benefit to the recipients.
In general, though, I entirely agree with you. The one kernel of truth in conservatives’ deceitful argument that welfare “traps” people in poverty is that nearly all benefits have a hard cutoff, forcing people to make themselves definitely worse off in order to take a chance that they may do well enough to emerge out the other side. If we actually wanted period to get it of poverty, everything would ramp down so while you got lower benefits, you were never worse off. But of course that would involve giving money to people who don’t “really need it” (i.e., are not completely destitute), and we can’t have that.
David Koch
maybe if the media starts vetting obama now, they can deny him a 3rd term.
Howard Beale IV
@Tommy:
I went down to Dallas for some training in 1984, and I ran across a guy who wrote a book that I pimped ina magazine I wrote for, and we went out to dinner one night. He said, with a straight face: “Damn, you got a midwestern accent.”
shell
@Redshift: Jeb also said he wants to raise the eligibility age for SS from 65. Somebody should tell him that it’s already been raised to 66. Does this guy have any staff at all?
MomSense
@Baud:
True. I don’t think I’ve actually learned anything from watching those shows with the exception of Sunday Morning. They do some interesting pieces and the last 30 seconds of nature footage is always lovely.
raven
@shell: What are you talking about?
“You can start your Social Security retirement benefits as early as age 62, but the benefit amount you receive will be less than your full retirement benefit amount.
If you start your benefits early, they will be reduced based on the number of months you receive benefits before you reach your full retirement age. If your:
full retirement age is 66, the reduction of your benefits at age 62 is 25 percent; at age 63, it is about 20 percent; at age 64, it is about 13.3 percent; and at age 65, it is about 6.7 percent.
full retirement age is older than 66 (that is, you were born after 1954), you can still start your retirement benefits at 62 but the reduction in your benefit amount will be greater, up to a maximum of 30 percent at age 62 for people born in 1960 and later.”
Major Major Major Major
@shell: 67. For me at least.
agorabum
@MomSense: preach. This was the worst example of ‘stenographer’ he could have picked. Vs frankly any right wing cause celebre. But especially Iraq and the election of W…
MomSense
Speaking of terrible media, Chuck Todd tweeted that he spent a whole day in NH with Lindsey Graham. He actually wants people to watch video of that.
Germy Shoemangler
@shell:
He does, but most likely he only half pays attention to them. The Bu$hs are not a family of deep thinkers or close listeners.
trollhattan
@MomSense:
Without a chaperone? I’d never….
Germy Shoemangler
Holy shit.
My wife is in the next room having a LOUD argument with a $pr1nt representative.
Defective phone, they want more money, she’s not backing down.
But my chest is getting tight hearing it. She just mentioned the attorney general.
Corner Stone
@efgoldman: Far as I can tell I was never on your lawn.
It’s social commentary, just like 99% of everything else on this blog.
Just Some Fuckhead
Did Schieffer ever ask that question about Dumbya? Seems to me that some soul-searching oughta start with an actual real live failed President.
Tommy
@Howard Beale IV: Glad I am not the only person that thought/felt/saw that. I guess I have an accent but not clear to me what it is.
When I hear a Brit or Austrian I find their accents the most sexy things around. Accents are not bad.
Tree With Water
@David Koch: Hank’s released that ringing endorsement for a third term from his villa on the shores of Lake Como, just minutes before jetting off to his Tahitian getaway.. or he may as well have. It wouldn’t hurt the rich to shut the fuck up for a while- they might even learn something if they did. Eat cake, hell. Eat the rich..
David Koch
@Tree With Water: hate to tell ya, but people from every class love obama as well. Approval rating among Dems 89-9. Funny how disconnected the vaunted blogosphere is from actual people.
catclub
@shell:
and is still rising. I am in the full SS at 67 class. The last planned rise, so far.
catclub
@Just Some Fuckhead:
In their world, Obama is a huge failure. Never mind the improved economy, the troops have come home and the stock market at all time highs.
David Koch
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Conflict of Interest. Schieffer’s brother was one of Dumbya’s best friends. He gave Bob’s brother a piece of the Texas Rangers and then appointed him Ambassador to Japan. Of course, Bob never pointed that out or recused himself.
eta. can imagine the outcry if Bob’s brother was the best friend and business partner of nancy pelosi or harry reid.
BillinGlendaleCA
@David Koch:
Yes, but the majority of those folk are impure.
Just Some Fuckhead
Thanks for preventing another important conversation, Corner Stone.
Keith G
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Ah, where might that be?
Tree With Water
@David Koch: I’ve always given Obama his just due where I think it’s deserved- always have, always will.. I just feel that rich Americans who pop off about politics (like Hanks in this instance) to be about on par with Donald Trump and his proclamations. They invite contempt, and I guess I’m in the mood to oblige. Sorry Tom (dig your movies, though).
Waspuppet
@nellcote: Yes, I wish one motherfucker would try to tell me he was wrong.
Botsplainer
@Major Major Major Major:
I try looking at Wright’s statements while considering where he’s coming from.
From his viewpoint, he’s not wrong.
Lee
@Corner Stone: So not only unhelpful but a bit low on the reading comprehension.
Good to know.
Major Major Major Major
@Botsplainer: Black man yelling, is what I meant by optics. Like literally, the images that enter your eyeballs.
Corner Stone
@Keith G: He’s just jealous. Being a Thought Leader ™ is a fraction of the power of someone who Prevents Us All From Having The Conversation We Really Wanted To Be Having ™
Corner Stone
@Lee: So you were too lazy to find your own cite to discuss. I bothered to put a couple excerpts with links out there. You decided to just be a fucking jerk about it because that’s what you got.
Now you’re ankle biting because you were called out for the lazy fucking jerk you are on this thread.
Just Some Fuckhead
I blame Obama for the Reverend Wright thing. If he wanted to pretend to be a Christian, he should have chosen a safe white church for the elite like the other pretend-Christian Presidents.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Corner Stone: Thought Leading requires more than a knee-jerk response to external stimuli or a contrarian take on current events. For instance, a Thought Leader would recognize Trivago commercials are aimed at Hispanic-Americans and therefore will appear odd or stilted to real Americans.
Tree With Water
@Just Some Fuckhead: I first knew the status quo was in no danger when Obama didn’t go for a laugh while making a point by inviting the right Reverend Wright to speak at his first inaugural.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tree With Water: So if you have money, you should keep your opinions about politics to yourself? Last time I checked, The Donald is a politician wan-a-be, Tom Hanks isn’t. There’s a big difference.
Davis X. Machina
@David Koch: A tribute to the power of false consciousness….
BillinGlendaleCA
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yes, but the other Presidents weren’t secret Muslims.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: A shabby looking, slightly built middle aged white guy with untucked shirts talking in a gentle, soothing, monotone?
fuckwit
@jl: I need a cigarette now.
Davis X. Machina
@efgoldman:
Were they named “Eddy, Mark and Jim?”
I was always more of a “Sportscope” guy.
Little Boots
why is everyone yelling at cornerstone?
and why is omnes executing people?
Brachiator
@Germy Shoemangler: You have my sympathies. This sounds like a bad customer service experience that should be recorded.
SiubhanDuinne
@MomSense:
I will not watch him with Chuck Todd,
I will not watch him eat a cod,
I do not like this Lindsey Graham,
In fact I hate him, Sam-I-Am.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Little Boots:
Cause Cornerstone, is Cornerstone.
Omnes like executing people, of course.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Corner Stone: It’s amazing how well those people have integrated themselves into polite society.
Patricia Kayden
@MomSense: hahahahaha!! Good one. Talk about torture. How many months before the election, again?
Tree With Water
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, you’ve got a point. In fact, an irrefutable one. But this is true- for some reason upon reading what Hanks had said I thought in terms of rich vs. poor. Which I normally don’t do, especially with a full stomach and a roof over my head. But I did, and I think it might be a harbinger of how I’ll be feeling more and more often. Which would make a certain sense, given the massive shift in wealth upwards that both parties continue to accelerate.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tree With Water: Tom may like the President. Also knowing that there’s the 22’nd Amendment, he could have been trying to be funny. For example, some of us here say(I know I have) that we’ll won’t vote for Obama again…
Little Boots
@Little Boots:
fair enough.
Little Boots
@Little Boots:
um, that was about billin, so, um … billin.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@BillinGlendaleCA: Maybe they are just better at hiding it?
Baud
@efgoldman:
Christie’s still mad at your daughter.
Little Boots
is billin running this joint?
cause I’m kinda okay with that.
Brachiator
@Redshift: I agree with you about the problem of hard cutoffs of credits, etc. This is one of the reasons I would like to see some innovative thinking on tax policy instead of the same tired posturing we usually get.
When you have a good job you spend money where you live and where you work. Disposable income gets spent all over the place. You are unemployed or on welfare you have less money, unpaid bills and most of your income is going for food and shelter and clothing, and more likely spent closer to home. I don’t see any poor neighborhoods thriving from the smaller income shares poor people have. I see people trying desperately to keep their utilities going. This is a greatly muffled stimulus effect, if there is any stimulus at all.
scav
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: That’s what I was thinking. Especially GW — I bet he was wearing a veil under that powdered wig. Yup! Our first trans-cross-dressing Muslim president. The rot goes deep.
Slick Basilisk
The news media is pointless. They’re nothing more than a false advertisement for the dead American Dream. Their research of events and facts are the equivalent of rubber necking car wrecks during rush hour.
Because the press are lazy and at times complicit in telling the lies of the 1%; the American people have lost control over their government. The political system does not support the people and neither do the markets. When the market can’t support the living wage, then the market doesn’t support America. It is that simple. The market does not work in the best interest of the people. The politicians do nothing, but go to campaign dinners and meals with lobbyist, instead of making the American Social Contract function the way it should function. The answers are very clear and obvious, but they ignore, because they are paid to ignore it.
Republicans and Democrats should be called #Greenbacks for exploiting the American people, in their time of need. They aren’t dignified. They are the 21st century Carpetbaggers, who move into districts or move district lines, to exploit the American people. Regardless of what color they say they are, the American people are black and blue from their neglect and abuse.
The American people are powerless, unless they stop voting for incumbents (#Greenbacks). Change.org
Little Boots
@efgoldman:
more like, you probably don’t get it unless with some kind supreme effort you try.
being a bush or a romney who is totally okay with the rich being douchebags means, just shut up.
Little Boots
kind of supreme.
dammit.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@scav: Obama was unlucky to have to run for President the first time when it was important to be a white mainstream Protestant. After Romney, one can run for President as a white adherent to a marginalized cult-like Protestant denomination. If Trump runs and gets some traction, it may someday be possible to run as a white person who has declared Himself to be God.
Baud
@efgoldman:
Moi?
Bill Arnold
@EriktheRed:
Poking around, perhaps Peggy Noonan, this column.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB956526736138049046
(A google search gave me a link that worked in Chrome; when copied to Firefox it was subscription only. Search on “Why Did They Do It”)
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Strange: I thought I read that millennials had abandoned Facebook and it was all old people now. I certainly use it mostly for keeping track of senior-citizen family members.
Carolinus
@Corner Stone:
She actually came out in support of the reform bill back in May:
https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton/status/596394202675675136
Corner Stone
@Carolinus: Nice try.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin: Good point. The study suggests that this group gets 60 percent of their news from Facebook. I am not sure that this represents a majority of millenials on the Internet. Another question might be how many of this group are willfully apolitical, or how they form their political opinions.
Kerry Reid
@jl: I still cringe thinking about Tom Brokaw going on Jon Stewart and bleating about how the problem with the ACA was that “nobody knew what was in it.”
Gosh, if only there were some class of professionals whose job was reading things like that and then “reporting” back to other people, perhaps through some kind of device that would beam into peoples’ houses nightly.
Bill Arnold
@Redshift:
Re the NY Times piece (“The Agency”; paid Russian trolls), that was a disheartening read. I spot checked a few random assertions in the article and they appeared to check out.
Sad to read about extensive paid and probably government-supported pollution of the internet with disinformation.
Aleta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6WskFmOkL0
Holmes Brothers
AxelFoley
@Redshift:
This. All this.
AxelFoley
@MomSense:
And this, too.
AxelFoley
@gene108:
My God, you have ODS almost as bad as Tea Partiers.
They damaged the Clintons because the Clintons didn’t fight back. And because Bill gave his political foes ammo to use against him.
Barack Obama was–and still is–squeaky clean. And when GOPers try to pull some bullshit on him, he fights back and they wind up with egg on their faces.