Tag: yep

Historically, Obama’s lowest ratings are higher than the lowest of any President since John F. Kennedy. That’s right. At Saint Ronnie Reagan’s lowest, he was at just 35 percent. George W. Bush once hit 19 percent. Back to the present, Congress has an approval rating of below 13 percent, yet somehow, it’s Obama’s approval ratings, at more than triple that, that makes headlines and makes congressional candidates turn tail and run.

The Big Lie The Media’s Telling You About Obama’s Approval Rating (via azspot).

Likewise, exit polling yesterday showed voters disliked GOP Congress more than they disliked Obama. But let’s not mess with good The Narrative; this way the stories damned near write themselves!

Source: addictinginfo.org

Remember how Howard Dean put together a 50-state strategy and everybody laughed at him, and then when the wave election hit in 2006, all the credit went to Rahm Emanuel because so many of our elite pundits admire unapologetic dickheads most of all?
Anyway, I was thinking of that last night when I realized that Eric Cantor had lost his primary to a religio-Randian economics prof and the Democratic alternative was a place-holder named Jack Trammell, who […] this morning finds himself in a more winnable race than existed at six o’clock last night. Why, I thought, hasn’t Trammell, or someone like him – or a couple of someones like him – been out there for six months beating more hell out of Cantor than Dave Brat was? Why did his website look like it was designed by Jukt Micronics?
The Republicans never shied away from going after Tom Daschle, or Tom Foley before him. Why were national Democrats caught flat-footed by last night’s results? It’s their job not to be surprised by this kind of thing. The primary benefit of Dean’s approach was that it presumed that progressive ideas could sell anywhere, and that it was part of the mandate of a national party not to concede any race anywhere.

Charlie Pierce is exactly right. You run in 50 states. All the time. Every race. Worst case scenario, somebody is out there talking about your issues, day in and day out. Best case scenario, an unexpectedly competitive race falls in your lap. Nothing summarizes the consummate failure of The Democrat to affect policy even (or especially) when they hold the White House more than the simple inability to tell the general public clearly and succinctly what they stand for as a party, how that differs from what the GOP is offering, and then to clearly and consistently run on that in all races.
Instead, they stay in the defensive crouch, hand the GOP legislative victory after legislative victory, and then when the GOP still demands more, they say “well, okay, but can we at least slow the systematic dismantlement of government down just a bit?” and call it a ringing bipartisan victory.

This has to stop. In fact, it had to stop a couple of decades ago but still hasn’t been addressed save for that one Dean-lead cycle Pierce mentions. It’s a simple fact that you have to be running candidates in every race and are out there every day talking about a few key facets of Your Plan for America. Preferably the ones that are polling about 80% in your favor and that your local Tea Klan candidate is required to be most vociferously against. Like allowing women to drive. That sort of thing. It certainly helps that the major issues of the day are polling in your favor, sometimes dramatically so, but a political operation still needs to let people know about that.

The government is too afraid to say it, but the internet is a utility. The data that flows to your home is just like water and electricity: it’s not a luxury or an option in 2014. The FCC’s original Open Internet rules failed precisely because it was too timid to say that out loud, and instead erected rules on a sketchy legal sinkhole that was destined to fail. As the WSJ reports, the FCC has once again decided against reclassifying broadband as a public utility. To declare the internet a public utility would go against the wishes of companies like Comcast and AT&T, which don’t want to be dumb pipes. It’s more lucrative to be cunning.

It’s time for the FCC to stand up for Americans instead of ruining the internet (via thisistheverge)
Source: theverge.com

I just want one prominent Democrat to say that our problem isn’t “partisanship,” it’s Republicans. Or it’s conservatism. Blaming “partisanship” reinforces the apparently unkillable conventional-wisdom notion that the two parties are equally responsible for our political system’s failure because neither one will compromise.

Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog. Be for things. Be clear about what those things are. Explain why and how the GOP and only the GOP is standing in the way of that goal. Don’t be afraid to say so if a Democrat is in the way too. Repeat for 20 years. Then you can get somewhere.

“Context” is not a safe word that makes all your other horse-shit statements disappear. And horse-shit is the context in which Richard Cohen has, for all these years, wallowed. It is horse-shit to claim that store owners are right to discriminate against black males. It is horse-shit to claim Trayvon Martin was wearing the uniform of criminals. It is horse-shit to subject your young female co-workers to “a hostile work environment.” It is horse-shit to expend precious newsprint lamenting the days when slovenly old dudes had their pick of 20-year-old women. It is horse-shit to defend a rapist on the run because you like The Pianist. And it is horse-shit for Katharine Weymouth, the Post’s publisher, to praise a column with the kind of factual error that would embarrass a j-school student.

Richard Cohen’s unfortunate career is the proper context to understand his column today and the wide outrage that’s greeted it. We are being told that Cohen finds it “hurtful” to be called racist. I am sorry that people on the Internet have hurt Richard Cohen’s feelings. I find it “hurtful” that Cohen endorses the police profiling my son. I find it eternally “hurtful” that the police, following that same logic, killed one of my friends. I find it hurtful to tell my students that, even in this modern age, vending horse-shit is still an esteemed and lucrative profession.

Ta-Nehisi Coates puts Richard Cohen and a lot of other bullshit into crystalline context in 245 words. That, ladies and gentlemen, is writing.