Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktCan’t embed it, but I do recommend Full Metal Disney. Very strange, but well-executed.
If you’re not listening to the My History Can Beat up Your Politics by Bruce Carlson, you’re making a profound error. Here, he discusses the effectiveness of stimulus spending in a historical context.
He quotes Herbert Hoover as saying: “No one is starving. The hobo eats better than ever before.”
That Herbert Hoover was a man after my own heart. If you’ve never read it, you should consult John Hodgman’s Compleat List of Hobo Names. Myself, I am partial to Chicken Nugget Will and Persuasive Fredrick. And Cthulhu Carl. Then, you too, will be an expert on hobos.
Steve Jobs new biography includes a bit on warning Obama that he was going to be a one-term president. It also included the interesting observation that it’s too damned hard to build factories in America, while it’s easy to do in China.
Louisiana law bans cash transactions for second hand goods. Holy crap, why does every politician want to make me a frothing-at-the-mouth libertarian?
According to The Transom, David Frum is not a serious person. You have to scroll down to read it. But it’s there.
— KW
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
Marco Rubio lays waste to the WaPo hit piece.I'm trying to remember whether WaPo attacked Barack Obama for misstating the history behind his own birth and his father's coming to America. Probably not.
LikeLike
And here I was thinking WaPo was a right wing rag. I know I've been told it was by others . . . ;)I mean, I expect hit pieces. It's really much, much better now than it was, say, 150 years ago, where newspapers political coverage was mostly hyper-partisan hatchet jobs. But the Rubio bit seems sloppy, to me. Really? That's the best they can do? Why didn't they just say he was lying about being Cuban . . . (ppssssst: our records say he's really from Florida!)
LikeLike
Hit piece? Please. His purported family history was fleeing from Castro. Tough to do when they arrived while he was plotting in exile. They have an honorable family history of immigrants making good by migrating to America. Exile by Castro adds romance and political weight, but isn't necessarily so. Rubio's outrage is authentic. It is also expedient and politically necessary.I have limited standing to talk about Latinos immigrating to the U.S. (including my wife, though she is a US citizen by birth). The Cuban exile community is something else, so I'll pass.I would note that an op-ed in the Post did call into question Obama's story about his dying mother fighting for healthcare. Her cancer treatments were covered by her employer’s insurance policy. She was denied disability insurance, not treatment. I know it doesn't fit into your narrative of the MSM being out to get conservatives. Reality isn't black and white.http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-not-quite-true-story/2011/07/15/gIQAzpVwGI_story.htmlWhat I can't figure out QB is if you ever want to convince someone or just rile them up? Throwing bombs for political reasons is a prestigious line of work, with a long and honorable tradition. BB
LikeLike
Perhaps a soft-hit piece? A toe-in-the-water can-this-be-a-trumped-up-controversy-but-we're-not-so-committed-we-can't-back-out piece? That's more of a mouthful.Kathryn Lopez says the WaPo piece misses the point of Rubio's story, and also that the liberal establishment (whatever that is) has a vested interest in neutering Rubio. I suspect there's something to that. More of the Politico on the Rubio issues moving from birther blog to mainstream news story.The WaPo opinion piece on Obama's story about his dying mother was from Kathleen Parker (one of the folks certain liberals have, in the past, pointed to as proof of the WaPo being a rightwing rag, btw). She is also the author of Save the Males, which is about the destructiveness of our increasingly anti-male culture. I'm sympathetic with that position–although real men save themselves.
LikeLike
The Rubio story sounds like another one of those explosive non-stories to me. If he was born in FL he's a citizen and embellishing his story is pretty typical of politicians. I thought it was kind of weird to have a birther blog break the story. I think this stuff is mostly red meat for the base and I just can't get too worked up about it when there's so much else to discuss and worry about.
LikeLike
"I think this stuff is mostly red meat for the base and I just can't get too worked up about it when there's so much else to discuss and worry about."That's entirely too sensible. You're supposed to stay distracted and make all your decisions based on talking point memes and getting angry about something for some reason.
LikeLike
It doesn't make me think the less of Rubio and I do think he's a gutsy politician. Crist was a shoe-in for the position. Popular governor of the state running for senator. Rubio ran a great campaign against him.My search was less than thorough. I specifically remembered that Obama's story about his dying mother's struggles didn't hold up. A quick web search found evidence of it. I added Washington Post and the Parker editorial was a top hit. In case anyone wonders that it was just on the op-ed page, I suggest you go to:http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-mother-had-health-insurance-according-to-biography/2011/07/14/gIQAUFm7EI_story.htmlCan we now dispense with the canard that only Republicans receive skeptical coverage? As I have said in the past, working the ref does not impress me.In the case of Rubio, I'm sure that it is embedded in his psyche that Castro forced them out of Cuba and kept them out. The former is demonstrably untrue. The latter is impossible to prove. Would they have ever returned? Impossible to say. My wife is an interpreter and I'm a physicist. As such, we have many friends and acquaintances who emigrated to the United States. Their story is no less honorable than those who have been forced into exile. Marco Rubio sought identification with that group. He's simply too proud to admit that wasn't the case.BB
LikeLike
"What I can't figure out QB is if you ever want to convince someone or just rile them up?"If you don't think my comments are worth reading, then you are more than welcome not to read them. "Can we now dispense with the canard that only Republicans receive skeptical coverage?"Laughter probably is the best response to that. If you think that WaPo (or NYT, or CBS, etc.) gave Obama, for example, scrutiny like this, there's nothing worth discussing, because that position isn't even remotely defensible. "Reality isn't black and white."Luckily, I never said it was.
LikeLike
FB: "Can we now dispense with the canard that only Republicans receive skeptical coverage?"We're victims! Victims, I tell you.qb: "Laughter probably is the best response to that. If you think that WaPo (or NYT, or CBS, etc.) gave Obama, for example, scrutiny like this, there's nothing worth discussing, because that position isn't even remotely defensible."Here we go. Well, it was fun while it lasted. 😉
LikeLike
I've got a class to teach this morning, but I will say that I think most positions are at least remotely defensible, and clearly the WaPo gives at least somewhat equal scrutiny (otherwise certain lefty commenters wouldn't refer to it as a right wing rag). My additional argument would be that CBS and NYT no longer represent a monopoly on the mainstream of news. Foxs ratings, and the ratings of conservative talk radio, demonstrate that. Just because they don't cover a story to my satisfaction on CBS doesn't mean they won't on Fox (although I don't much care for either news source).
LikeLike
kw,"Here we go. Well, it was fun while it lasted. ;)"Just curious why you wouldn't instead have said that in response to this:"What I can't figure out QB is if you ever want to convince someone or just rile them up?"Do you feel an obligation to police the righties?"I've got a class to teach this morning, but I will say that I think most positions are at least remotely defensible, and clearly the WaPo gives at least somewhat equal scrutiny (otherwise certain lefty commenters wouldn't refer to it as a right wing rag)."I don't know how one would enumerate the positions that are remotely defensible and those that aren't, but a position that WaPo gives equal scrutiny isn't, albeit it is probably less biased than, say, good ole Dan Rather was. The last part of your statement is a logical fallacy. Claims of lefty commenters that WaPo is a right-wing rag don't prove a thing about WaPo. (Nor is the concept of "at least some equal scrutiny" very persuasive if the question is whether it is neutral.)Finally, I didn't deny that other media sources now exist nor say anything about them. Lord knows the lefties (not to mention the Obama WH) spend enough time trashing Fox and the WSJ editorial page as illegitimate. At least you don't hear me saying that about WaPo.
LikeLike
The more interesting story re Rubio is that the birthers have turned their sights on him and Jindal. I don't think the fact that he exaggerated his parents "escape" from Cuba is all that big of a deal, although I'm sure we'll be hearing about it for a few days. What's more interesting is that while Republicans gave a bit of a nod and a wink to the birthers during all the speculation about Obama's place of birth and parents, now who's going to go up against the birthers claims re Rubio and Jindal. I doubt many Dems will go out on much of a limb on this one. I figure they're on their own.
LikeLike
Btw, Pointing out double standards and unequal treatment isn't "working the ref." It's just pointing out reality. I don't claim WaPo can't be biased. But it's totally appropriate to point out and remind that it is what it is. It's an establishment Democratic paper. That's how it sees the world, and that's the general slant it gives the public. More power to it. For people to claim it is even handed is no more a privileged claim than mine that it isn't.
LikeLike
"The more interesting story re Rubio is that the birthers have turned their sights on him and Jindal."What do you mean by birthers? I don't think I've heard of the site that beat WaPo to the punch (or if I have I haven't remembered it), but is anyone claiming Rubio was born in Cuba? Or are you referring to birthres as anyone who questions the contemporary conventional wisdom that the citizenship of parents is irrelevant to eligibility for holding the office of President?
LikeLike
qb, I read this this morning but read something else yesterday that it was ostensibly the "birthers" who first came up with some of the nonsense regarding Rubio. Who knows. Sorry, this is another WaPo link and I can't remember where I was reading about it yesterday. I just find this much more interesting than the fact that Rubio exaggerated his parents flight from Cuba. I don't consider that worthy of much scrutiny personally. But, sure enough, Alex Leary of the St. Petersburg Times reported that various bright lights of the birther community – Mario Apuzzo, Charles Kerchner and Orly Taitz – were casting doubt on Rubio’s eligibility.“Senator Marco Rubio is not a natural born citizen of the United States to constitutional standards,” Kerchner writes on his blog. “He was born a dual citizen of both Cuba and the USA. He is thus not eligible to serve as the president or vice president.” A few months ago, Kerchner used the same logic to proclaim, “Jindal is NOT a natural-born citizen of the United States. His parents were not U.S. citizens when he was born.”
LikeLike
I found that story I was reading yesterday. The way our media operates now, I always read everything with a grain of salt, so who knows what's really going on. I just think it's strange that the "birthers" seem to be bi-partisan or something else more sinister. I think the issue, to me, is that while they spent months and years questioning Obama's legitimacy, Republicans didn't exactly defend him or marginalize them. I hope they won't expect something better from Dems. On May 27th, Charles Kerchner, a retired Navy commander in Pennsylvania who runs a birther blog mostly aimed at President Barack Obama, posted a monster scoop about Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the GOP’s rising star.According to naturalization documents that he had obtained, Rubio’s parents had come to the U.S. from Cuba in 1956, not after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, as Rubio’s Senate biography claimed.“Thus Senator Marco Rubio is not telling the truth when he says in his Senate biography that his parents came to the USA after Castro’s takeover of Cuba,” he wrote. “They were not Cuban refugees escaping communist Cuba as he has said in embellishing his life story in so many of his election campaigns.”It was a potentially explosive story, one that could call into question the credibility and the essential life story of someone the Republican establishment has rallied around with the kind of high hopes not seen since Ronald Reagan.And no one noticed. For almost five months.It was not until buzz that Rubio was the establishment favorite to be the GOP’s vice presidential nominee reached a fevered pitch that St. Petersburg Times reporter Alex Leary reached out to Kerchner and wrote a story on Wednesday about his and other birthers’ concerns that Rubio might not be eligible for higher office because his parents were not citizens when he was born.
LikeLike
I've never understood why the left thinks it was Republicans' job to marginalize critics of Obama or Democrats. I can't recall Democrats ever marginalizing Dan Rather or the representives who lied about Teapartiers's supposedly spitting on them, or truthers, for that matter. Or October Surprisers — heck, Democrats took up the cause of October Surprisers. Why in the world would Republicans ever expect anything reasonable or honorable from the Dems?I don't recall reading any of those "birther" bloggers, but I read some detailed historical accunts and arguments about what "natural born citizen" means, which is quite separate from where Obama was born. The position that parental citizenship is required actually is rather persuasive. If that is what the term was intended to mean, it hardly seems the work of cranks to point it out, despite its inconvenience to a certain part of the political spectrum today. I have not seen any refutations of that argument by its (typically scornful) critics that is very persuasive. They consist of little more than assertions that "of course" Obama is a natural born citizen. Don't you think that we should care what the clause means?
LikeLike
If you want to debate whether Jindal or Rubio are entitled to run for President or Vice-President, be my guest. Since Obama's mother was a citizen we could probably leave him out of the debate. I never expected the Republicans to marginalize the birthers, I'm saying now they can deal with them on their own. They're the ones who made birtherism an accepted fringe element.
LikeLike
"Since Obama's mother was a citizen we could probably leave him out of the debate."Actually, no, that wouldn't satisfy the requirement.
LikeLike
"I never expected the Republicans to marginalize the birthers,"I guess I thought this suggested otherwise:"I think the issue, to me, is that while they spent months and years questioning Obama's legitimacy, Republicans didn't exactly defend him or marginalize them."
LikeLike
I didn't say I expected them to just that they didn't.Like I said, if you guys on the right want to debate the born in America issue in relationship to Rubio, be my guest. My personal opinion is he's every bit as much of a citizen as Obama. It's just an opinion as I don't have enough legal training to debate citizenship by any other means.
LikeLike
I'm curious…do people on the left here believe that Obama was put under the same kind of scrutiny by the NYT and WaPo during the '08 campaign as even Hillary was, much less the kind that they regularly apply to virtually any candidate from the right?
LikeLike
Just to be clear what the issue is that has been raised about citizenship and the Presidency: Art. II requires the President to be a "natural born citizen." This term does not appear elsewhere in the Constitution. The question is whether "natural born" means something more than citizen at birth, namely that both parents had to have been citizens. There is some evidence that this could be the case.The 14th Amendment's citizenship clause is relevant but of unclear relevance. The popular interpretation of that clause as conferring citizenship on anyone born within the U.S. is, however, almost certainly wrong, but, again, that isn't quite the same question.
LikeLike
meant to say relevant but of unclear effect, if any
LikeLike
qb: Just curious why you wouldn't instead have said that in response to this:"What I can't figure out QB is if you ever want to convince someone or just rile them up?"Do you feel an obligation to police the righties?This is a good question. My first response is, well, my gut reaction to the two statements is different. And it is. So, rather than try to justify my emotional assumption that your point is more absolutist or confrontational than FBs, I'm going to try and deconstruct the reaction of my reptile brain.There aren't a lot of possibilities.One, I was right, and your statement is a little more anti-dialog than FBs, and that's my visceral reaction. I like the explanation where I'm just right best, but again, I expect there is bias there. Two: like the media, I have a liberal bias.Three: No disrespect to our liberal friends, but perhaps I suffer from what George W. Bush called the soft bigotry of low expectations. I have some unconscious bias that leads me to expect less from commenters I know to be left of center than those I know to be right of center. Thus, if we took two statements from a lefty and righty that, judged in some objective manner for absolutism or verbal crossed-armedness shared identical levels of hyperbole, I may actually perceive the statement from the righty to be more hostile or hyperbolic, though measured by objective standards it would not be. But this assessment is made at a sub-conscious level, and my softly bigoted lower expectations of lefties creates a subconscious bias. Four: I'm just wrong about a lot of things. I don't like this option. Five: The whole RINO thing is a total false flag, and I'm actually a raving lefty. If so, I'm unaware of it, but it's always possible I'm like Arnold Scharzenegger in Total Recall–totally unaware of my true identity. This scenario would probably make the best movie. There may be a sixth option I'm not mentioning, because my bias creates a mental blind spot that prevents me from perceiving it. Note, the not uncommon explanation "I'm full of shit" is, technically, encompassed in option #4.
LikeLike
"I'm curious…do people on the left here believe that Obama was put under the same kind of scrutiny by the NYT and WaPo during the '08 campaign as even Hillary"I don't think Obama was put under that kind of scrutiny by anybody, even the usual scrutiny, in 2008. The only people who deeply scrutinized Obama were right wing pundits and authors. Even Chris Buckley was swept up the reality distortion field. I think he's getting a reasonable amount of scrutiny now. But in 2008? But it is my belief that the mainstream media's liberal bias, such as it is, is inversely proportional to (a) our closeness to an election and (b) the perceived risk that a Republican might win that election. Thus, Obama would be subject to more scrutiny post-victory than pre-victory. They were finding Sarah Palin's high school friends. They were going through her trash. And the trash of her friends. The scrutiny she received as a VP candidate was easily 50 times that of Obama or Biden, and that was because she excited the base and seemed, at first blush, quite the charismatic conservative female politician, and so was given a very high level of scrutiny (perhaps balanced by AM radio's and Fox's entirely uncritical and even elegiac coverage.But the 2008 Obama phenomenon was quite something.
LikeLike
"But the 2008 Obama phenomenon was quite something."As was the media's abdication of responsibility (or maybe their shilling for Obama while digging through Palin's trash and investigating her church was what they felt was their responsibility). Your take is a pretty good one here, imo. Next year the "scrutiny" of Republicans and marketing for Obama will gain speed and intensity. There won't be anyone digging through Obama's driving records or military service (oops, he didn't do that) from 35 years ago, even as the did for incumbent GWB. But the GOP candidates had better be braced against a storm that is coming.
LikeLike
"There aren't a lot of possibilities."Actually, you came up with quite a few.I'm going to go with "Kevin subconsciously obliged to police the righties." Or better, I'll come up with a converse of "hippie bashing." What's the right-wing equivalent of a hippie? Just funning of course. 🙂
LikeLike
Kevin subconsciously FEELS…
LikeLike
I've been solo with the kids for a few days, so didn't get back to the thread. I considered a separate thread as there's some interesting issues.QB commented on the Post not having covered Obama's story of his father coming to the US. To borrow from Herman Cain, I think he's comparing apples to oranges. Rubio's story was one that is politically significant, particularly in Florida. Obama has often drawn upon his mother’s experience of fighting her insurance company while dying of cancer. Turns out she was fighting for disability payments; her medical care was covered.This is the sort of story that has happened and it resonates. Indeed, it was a driving force behind efforts to “reform” health insurance. This story had been investigated and debunked to the same degree that Rubio’s coming to America story had been debunked. By the Washington Post.I think it's pretty clear that QB is unwilling to argue specifics. Retreating into liberal media generalities is a way of getting out of the argument. Oh, and there was a recent analysis. Obama gets more negative coverage nowadays than anyone else. Just the liberal blamestream media (thank you, Ms. Palin) doing its job.BB
LikeLike
"Oh, and there was a recent analysis. Obama gets more negative coverage nowadays than anyone else" . . . running for the presidency. Which is not unusual for an incumbent president, especially these days. But, yes, it does suggest that constantly falling back on liberal media bias does seem a bit cliched.
LikeLike
Fairlington:This story had been investigated and debunked to the same degree that Rubio’s coming to America story had been debunked. By the Washington Post.Not according to the article to which you linked above. According to that article, the story had been investigated and debunked by author Janny Scott in her book A Singular Woman, a biography of Obama's mother. The WaPo simply relayed what Scott had already written, explicitly characterizing the story as "Scott's reporting". Also notable is this, from the article:From his presidential quest in 2007 through the law’s passage in 2010, Obama often shared how his mother spent her last months: trying to get her health insurer to pay for her treatment for uterine and ovarian cancer, which the insurer, said the president, refused to cover because it ruled that her cancer was a preexisting condition.Yet the date on which the above article was published was July 14…..2011. A full 4 years after Obama had started telling the story as part of his campaign, nearly 3 years after he had been elected, and more than 1 year after the ACA, which the story was designed to help become law, was passed. That's some timely "investigating" and reporting by the WaPo! On that model, we would have expected the Rubio "revelations" to have hit the headlines some time post-2016, after Rubio becomes president and after someone else writes a book including the info.Again, I pose the question I posed above: Do you really believe that Obama received in '08 the same kind of media scrutiny that even Hillary received, much less the kind of scrutiny any Republican candidate is routinely given?Oh, and there was a recent analysis. Obama gets more negative coverage nowadays than anyone else.Certainly it is true that, to some degree, the media gild is off the lily. But he's the president. Who else is there? I'd venture to guess that he gets more positive coverage than anyone else too. Because he gets more coverage, period.
LikeLike
Mea cupla. That sounds funnier than mea culpa. Anyway, I totally agree that the information had been sussed out earlier. QB had my back up and I mainly was hunting for an article in which the P O S T actually criticized St. Obama.Here's my view from the primaries. I should note that I was a supporter of Hillary Clinton. I thought of Obama that he was high risk, high reward. Hillary would have been an exceedingly competent president. It took me some time to warm to the historic nature of her campaign. I was disappointed that she lost, though thought the PUMA concept was a Republican wet dream. I was delighted that she was picked for Secretary of State and think that she is the most singularly effective SoS of my life. The only one I think one could touch her in consequence is Kissinger.OK. So, onto coverage of Obama during the campaign. I think his early coverage was overly favorable. Some candidates become media favorites. The same was true of McCain in 2000. The worm turned once he became the front runner. Here's quick question. Who was Ronald Reagan's pastor? It's a trick question, since he didn't attend church regularly. Until last night, I was on the board of my condo association. [We didn't have quorum , so I'm temporarily in limbo.] I've had some open houses. Damned if I know if there's a Unabomber supporter in Fairlington Towne, but I'm sure that Karl Rove would find it out if I threatened Bob McDonnell in some way.Obama got great coverage for awhile, then got a lot of skeptical coverage. That's what the media does. It builds someone up and then knocks them down. As for the coverage that I referenced, the article was on percentages. The fraction of stories that are negative as opposed to positive. The truth is that the economic news is negative right now, so Obama is going to get the collateral damage. If the worm turns, so will the coverage. It'll have little to do with media bias.Also, it's total crapola to ascribe the skeptical coverage of Rubio to anti-conservative bias. If Rubio can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. Other off topic aside. Pat Buchannan was on the Dianne Rehm show for the second hour today. Call me on the carpet when Sean Hannity has Howard Dean (or equivalent) for a full hour and actually lets said guest talk for a minute or so uninterrupted. Rehm is an obvious liberal, but has given large blocks of time to let conservatives (Grover was another recent guest) make their case.Thanks for engaging, Scott. It's appreciated.BB
LikeLike