Tag: MSM

Kevin Drum supplies us with a graph that does more to explain the McDonalds thing than anything else I’ve seen. Red bar is current Mini-Med plan. As you can see, under ACA, the vast majority of McDonalds workers get a better deal; those earning minimum wage get a vastly better deal, in that far more comprehensive healthcare is now free for them.
In fact, only those making more than $12/hr, a tiny minority of McDonalds workers, will pay about what they pay now…and but also get a hell of a lot more useful health insurance.

Indeed: what a failure for the ACA. Yet this failure narrative, unintended consequences, and so forth is precisely what we hear from Our Liberal Media. Again and again.

This is just the sort of graph that needs to be trotted out every time this comes up. Simple and easy to understand. But isn’t. And now even self-identified Democrats are turning against a plan they most likely have no idea about other than what they’ve heard on FOXnews. Because those anchors are at least trying to tell the truth of the story, right?
If you don’t think this is a serious problem you haven’t been paying attention. This is why they fail.

The Narrative Is the Narrative

Assuming big Republican gains this November, the media narrative will claim Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. Yet actual progressive policies polled well and continue to poll well. If anything, it’s been failure to act on popular legislation that helped put them in this hole.

–Markos “The Orange Menace” Moulitsas

Not sure how many times we’re going to have to cover this one, but let’s have at it again:

  1. GOP landslide, Senate and House change hands: Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. The only solution is a far-right governing philosophy. Obama is a seat-warmer for the next GOP president, nothing more, nothing less. He is not even entitled to his Constitutionally mandated veto power and the GOP exhibits this by shutting down the government every time he uses it and investigating the composting patterns of the WH garden when he’s not.
  2. GOP gains, Senate Democratic, House barely or even marginally GOP-held: Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. The only solution is a far-right governing philosophy. Obama is a seat-warmer for the next GOP president, nothing more, nothing less. He is not even entitled to his Constitutionally mandated veto power; Democratic Senate pressured to cooperate with whatever inane policy the GOP House wants in name of “bipartisanship,” this pressure is then extended against Obama: “why won’t he work across the aisle??!?!” Obama vetoes said bill: The Democrat just can’t govern/circular firing squad! Signs it: Another Democrat failure that is destroying the country. This, by the way, would be the best possible outcome for the GOP (as it is currently figured) heading into 2012. Just sayin’.
  3. GOP nets some gains, but The Democrat holds House and Senate: Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. Their gradually diminishing majority clearly shows that the only solution is a far-right governing philosophy. Obama is a seat-warmer for the next GOP president, nothing more, nothing less. He is not even entitled to his Constitutionally mandated veto power; clearly the fact that the Democrat held historic majorities and has essentially “won” the last four Congressional elections (in terms of the majority either switching or staying) is beside the point. America demands a far-right governing philosophy and will get it just as soon as ACORN stops stealing elections.
  4. Democrats win every seat, hotly contested or otherwise: Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. The only solution is a far-right governing philosophy. Obama is a seat-warmer for the next GOP president, nothing more, nothing less. He is not even entitled to his Constitutionally mandated veto power. The rise of the Tea Klan proves this; it just hasn’t shown up at the electoral polls yet, so we should ignore the electorate and govern far-right. Likewise the failure of the TARP, which I’m pretty sure was a dismal failure, right? Also: Hitler.

The Hamster Wheel

CJR details the modern media’s inability to say “Pass.” This paragraph more or less encapsulates everything you need to know about Village reporters too:

The Hamster Wheel isn’t speed; it’s motion for motion’s sake. The Hamster Wheel is volume without thought. It is news panic, a lack of discipline, an inability to say no. It is copy produced to meet arbitrary productivity metrics (Bloomberg!). It is “Sheriff plans no car purchases in 2011,” (Kokomo Tribune, 7/5/10). […] It’s live-blogging the [Winter Olympics] opening ceremonies [with seven reporters], matching stories that don’t matter, and fifty-five seconds of video of a movie theater screen being built: “Wallingford cinema adding 3 screens (video),” (New Haven Register, 6/1/10).

The Hamster Wheel

S is for Senate

Steve Benen hears Boehner say this:

If the only option I have is to vote for some of those tax reductions, I’ll vote for them.

and, like seemingly everyone with a mountaintop large or small, inexplicably takes this away:

Boehner, in other words, appears to be on board with the Obama proposal

Can we just not think in this country anymore?

  1. Is Boehner in the Senate?

There is no second thing. If the answer to Question 1 is “No,” then his opinion matters fuck-all. He said this to put a patina of reasonableness on the GOP’s entirely unreasonable and indefensible position that billionaires desperately need an extra $100k come tax-time. They know this meaningless statement will get wide play, much wider (read: vastly wider) than their ultimate actions to bottle this thing up in the Senate (and even that’s assuming the feckless Democrat bothers to bring it to the floor, itself a gigantic and likely foolhardy assumption).
If and when that all happens, the GOP will simply point to (meaningless) statements like this one as examples of their genteel nature and broad willingness to “work across the aisle.” The MSM will report the whole thing as “a Democrat failure to achieve 60 votes needed in the Senate” and Broder will pronounce himself suitably delighted that the GOP tried so very hard. Truly, they are the serious adults up to DC.

Is this so very hard to understand? Apparently it is.

Brian Williams, Fucktard

“Jon [Stewart] has chronicled the death of shame in politics and journalism,” says Brian Williams, the NBC Nightly News anchor who is a frequent Daily Show guest. “Many of us on this side of the journalism tracks often wish we were on Jon’s side. I envy his platform to shout from the mountaintop. He’s a necessary branch of government.

I see, so being the Nightly News anchor for a major network, which recently drew 8,040,000 viewers and regularly leads the "National Nightly News” pack, doesn’t actually constitute a “platform” to “shout from the mountaintop.” Then what the fuck is it for? I’d seriously like to know.

Stewart, on the other hand, gets “about 1.8 million viewers each night.” What a mountaintop he has. Truly the envy of someone with more than 8 times as many viewers; more than Stewart, CNN, FOXnews, msnbc, and probably a few other notables combined in that time slot. Every night. But that doesn’t constitute a “mountaintop” from which to do silly things like inform people with rigor and insight. Oh my no. That sort of thing only happens over on Comedy Central where the corporate overlords apparently aren’t quite so twitchy about letting a little actual information seep into the nightly colorcast. Which is fine by Williams, if these quotes are to be believed.

This attitude, this ceaseless and unstoppable form of pseudo-intellectual nihilism is killing the country. Measurably. It’s what Krugman calls “Invincible Ignorance.” Oh, and that kooky rube Stewart knows about it and has long recognized it:

The pettiness of it, the strange lack of passion for any kind of moral or editorial authority [from the MSM], always struck me as weird. We felt like, we’re serious people doing an unserious thing, and they’re unserious people doing a very serious thing.

Brian Williams, case in point. Pettiness and lack of passion of any kind incarnate. Tonight on NBC Nightly News!

[All quotes from this excellent profile]

Mind: Blown

among those who have an unfavorable view of Islam, an overwhelming 87 percent say the [not at Ground Zero, not a mosque] project shouldn’t be built, with 74 percent strongly opposed. [Fifty-five percent of those who have favorable views of Islam say it should be built.]

This ranks right up there with the most shocking things ever. No one could have expected that the non-mosque project opposition was, in fact, deeply rooted in anti-Islamic muckraking on the part of FOXnews, Drudge, Rush, Beck, and the GOP at large and is not some Grand Effort to preserve the Sanctity of Ground Zero and the victims of 9/11/01.
But, by all means media, keep reporting as if that list is entirely made up of sober and serious information sources. After all, the sooner Tashtego drowns the sooner that flag will get fixed. Tap tap tap.

Mind: Blown

Republicans Slip From Unprecedented Lead to a Tie in Gallup Survey

jasencomstock:

notthatkindagay:

Democrats and Republicans are now tied in Gallup’s weekly tracking of voter preferences, just a week after Republicans took an unprecedented l0-point lead.

[…] I think Gallup did this on purpose to tell Washington DC to get off Gallup’s nuts about the generic ballot.

I think we just need better cross-tabs. “Among likely voters who are sure Obama is a US citizen…” and “among likely voters who believe Iraq attacked America on 9/11” would be two very interesting ones. That or sample size needs to go up considerably. When you have subgroups as dutifully uninformed as we do, you have to make serious allowances or change your methodology.

Republicans Slip From Unprecedented Lead to a Tie in Gallup Survey

If the GOP wins the House, the probability that this “liberal-overreach” narrative will be Beltway CW is roughly 100%

Glenn Greenwald, basically right but forgetting that this will be the narrative if Dems hold the House but lose seats, lose no seats, or win every seat contested in 2010. This IS the narrative. Period.

Five Easy Tweets(es)

Looking at how Ruth Marcus addresses Boehner’s nonsensical output in her column this morning, dare I say that I see signs of actual progress. Perhaps even the Villagers are growing tired (and maybe even a little afraid) of the GOP’s shtick?

There are times when I flirt with the notion that the country would be better off with divided government.

She starts, ominously and predictably enough, with some Serious Person boilerplate: the compromise position on anything is always superior, even when one side’s position is empirically better relative to some definable long-term metric. But, for once, she quickly rights the ship, and this opener proves to be simply Reese’s Pieces for the many Broderians reading her piece on their homeworld:

The man who would be speaker outlined his agenda Tuesday in a speech to the City Club of Cleveland – economic policy reduced to, literally, five easy tweets. The Ohio Republican offered up a depressing blend of tired ideas, tired-er one-liners (“We’ve tried 19 months of government-as-community-organizer”) and cheap attacks. The cheapest: calling for the firing of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and economic adviser Larry Summers.

[…]

[Boehner says “job-killing” twelve] times, actually. As in “job-killing tax hikes,” “job-killing bills,” “job-killing agenda,” “job-killing federal regulations.” This is bumper-sticker politics, not a real economic plan. I’ve been skeptical that Democrats would get much political traction with their argument that the Republican agenda is just George W. Bush recycled, but speeches like Boehner’s make me rethink.

Even those two paragraphs appearing on the WaPo Op/Ed page would be cause enough for a minor celebration. But, being a professional, she saves her best for last:

The argument for immediate spending cuts is hard to square with the argument against tax increases. If the latter is harmful – a disaster, in Boehner’s words – then surely the former is as well. “When Congress returns, we should force Washington to cut non-defense discretionary spending to 2008 levels – before the ‘stimulus’ was put into place,” Boehner says. This would be more convincing if he were willing to identify specific cuts. It is, even more, an enormous dodge. Stimulus spending is a sliver of the long-term fiscal problem.

Democrats – and the country – would benefit from a responsible opposition party. I’m still looking for evidence of one.

So am I. But there are two important points in here, both of which being concepts that almost never see the light of day in the MSM:

  1. That you can’t say that massive non-military spending cuts are critical, but that any and all tax increases are unthinkable.
  2. That tax-hikes would be a disaster, but that we need not ever worry about the fiscal impact of said non-tax-hikes at all, and that we may furthermore consider them “free” is nonsensical on its face.

Getting those two simple concepts into wide and repeated circulation: a big deal. Now, of course, when Obama returns from vacation to fire his cabinet, well, that’s something else.

Pundits blame the victims on Obama Muslim myth

southpol:

[…] Dave Weigel came the closest, writing that “At some point it became acceptable to question Obama’s American-ness, which naturally begged the question of whether he was a secret Muslim… and the WorldNetDailys, tabloids, and Drudge Reports of the world were ready to keep begging that question.”

This is the Overton Window in action. Republicans have a host of beyond-far-right outlets to scream and holler relentlessly about whatever their preferred issue of the day is and Democrats never, ever employ a similar tactic with the left. A year-long, sustained chorus about single payer, for instance, simply didn’t materialize. The left wing is either too pragmatic or too cynical with regard to their chances on these issues. That and the Democratic leadership repeatedly lets the GOP determine the talking points; e.g. Boehner is reportedly going to call for the firing of all Obama economic advisers. When The Democrat engages him on that ground, his ground, and they will, the ultimate outcome will then be that some of the advisers have to go or, at best, take a severe public dressing down. All good outcomes for the GOP in an election year.
Whether or not they should go is quite beside the point. You are allowing your opponent to set the agenda and define the margins that contain what will be viewed by the David Broders of the world as the “sensible and serious” solution. Again and again.
This is precisely why Rep. Alan Grayson is such a valuable and yet underutilized asset. With a dozen people like him talking about Cheney’s blood-drenched teeth (or what have you) and a few media outlets doing likewise, suddenly the true moderate position, or even one (gasp!) marginally to the left of center, looks awfully sensible. Instead of using Grayson in this way, the modern Democrat runs and hides from him and others, going so far as to extract the occasional tearful apology when some genuinely affecting truth leaks out. This is the primary failure of leadership in the Democratic party, and nothing will change until this does.
The facts do not matter; presentation and framing is everything. You, the Democrat, are fighting an organized party, its dedicated propaganda outlet that happens to be a wildly popular source of “news,” and a distributed right-wing noise machine on web and talk radio that reliably sets the discourse for the rest of the MSM. You’d better bring your A-game and act like you’re in a 24/7 campaign for your political life. And they never do.

Pundits blame the victims on Obama Muslim myth