The OFFICIAL "Throw Rahm Under the Bus" Betting Pool - Page 8

Sad.


Most of the policies he brought about were ineffective. Letting communism literally knock on your doorstep isn't going to help your case with the press. Finally while he may have been the first candidate that television helped, I don't think the press understood their power at that time.


I think the vitroil for Reagan was based on the fact that as a person familiar with how presentation works, he was really the first Republican to beat them at their own game. While the media still had a slant, they still wanted to been seen as objective. This means if you managed your message right, they had no choice but to at least give it an airing. I see this the opposite of you. There were fewer media outlets then. CNN was founded and around in the time of Reagan but could not and did not have the effect multiple cable news outlets have now. In short with enough discipline, enough money and with the media leaning but not actively advocating, you could get out your message.

I would say that prime examples of this with regard to Republicans, and part of their learning process related to it were Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The difference between Bork and Thomas showed that media attacks could be overcome.


It doesn't have to be good and evil. The media can simple report the facts. They spend more time spinning and analyzing it than reporting it at this stage.

This morning MTP had Rahm Emanual on. I would rather watch him for an entire hour or have two or three segments with different interviewees. Why do I need half an hour of him being asked questions and then another half hour of the talking heads telling us what to think about it? This trend is getting much worse.


I don't watch FoxNews 24/7. When I go to aggregator sources, I do not see Fox News cited anymore than most news sites. I'm sure since I read conservative blogs, I would see their in depth investigations being used to discredit Democratic politician after Democratic politician. If anything, I would say they have gotten as lazy as the others in that they no longer question, just take the talking points and add their spin and thoughts to them. Journalism is more than reading press releases and talking points, no matter the source.


You are right in that I probably "watch" less of my news than 90% of everyone and even you. The flow of information is just too slow most of the time. I get roughly 95% of my news from reading. I'd say 3% video clips and finally 2% actual watching of news.


That isn't news. Those are gaffes and images used to craft caricatures so that you will ignore the news. He didn't guide himself any better than anyone else. The media simply didn't want to create a caricature of him and so they didn't use his gaffes and their images of him for that purpose. This is part of why Obama still isn't "funny" and why people can't crack a joke about him. The media refuses to touch him. There are no endless jokes about his inability to count 57 states. There is no talking heads going on over and over about how incompetent he must be now that his vetting process has missed issues with two picks. There is no discussion about how he can't kick his smoking habit or any other nonsense. No one has counted his "uh's."

I honestly don't want the news to be about whether Obama has kicked the smoking habit. However why is there no discussion of whether a spending a trillion dollars is "stimulus" or just pigs feeding at a trough. The is just no questioning at all going on.


Regardless of interviews, there is eventually this thing called reality. You dont have to like her interview but the reality is that her record is good. No record is perfect but hers is good. When I am reading crap like "Oh she raised sales taxes to pay for infrastructure" and doubts are cast about with that, it just comes off ridiculous.


The reason the media left the sidelines and clearly jumped into the game so quickly with her is two-fold. One, she has the same traits Obama has with regard to campaigning. Secondly, the media remember Reagan and knows what a media savvy Republican can do. She clearly wasn't and hasn't been savvy enough, but there is still fear there because like most bubbles, there is a sort of collective waking up and I suspect that soon this will happen after we have spent a few trillion and not watched anything improve.


We are as educated as we have ever been as a populace. I've noted multiple times that it isn't a coincidence in my view that the closer you are to a major media center, the bluer your politics. The media though is going broke as an institution. Propaganda isn't profitable. People declare it is just newspapers but it is weekly periodicals, network news and several cable channels.

The problem now isn't information, but disinformation. People tune out when they don't have five hours a day to sort out the crap from the news. When a news program promises 60 minutes of news and instead delivers 15 minutes of news with 45 minutes of "analysis." Most people don't have the extra three hours to get the full news because the signal to noise ratio is so bad.

As with the "who elected Obama" bit, people understood every caricature the media created. They were "informed" but not with news.


I'll wait to see that guarantee.


Even I can understand why he wasnt asked and wouldn't answer that. The reality though is we had the entire campaign to inform ourselves to how we believe Obama would hande this. If you can't answer that and instead know that Palin is a bimbo with a pregnant daughter, then you are part of the problem because instead of rewarding that, we need to reward who asks the hard questions.

Sorry if the typing is killing you but this is much more enjoyable for me than the pictures. Your thoughts are good ones when I get to read them.


We don't know because Palin would never have been given the softballs.


You are so funny suggesting that Palin would be allowed to speak for several sentences without continual interruption by the interviewer challenging every word out of her mouth.

Last I checked every major media source had a website. What about reading print versus looking a pretty moving pictures screams "blogs" to you?


No I haven't watched the Colbert Report or Daily Show at all thank you.


He won and the media were right there giving his opposition hours of negative ads/reporting per day. Remember the gaffe where he said 10,000 people died in tornadoes when the actual number was.......12. I'm sure he handled that superbly when SNL turned that and the 57 states gaffe into jokes about just getting all numbers wrong.

Oh wait... that didn't happen? I mean that was almost as good as not remembering what committees he was on in the Senate.

Votes don't reflect media objectivity.


Everytime you laugh while Obama spends another 100 billion, a kitten dies.

Isn't that cute? You don't have to work so hard to provide an example of the "non-news" that clutters up the landscape. Two talking heads filling five minutes of time about how to go from "whining to winning" is just the sort of crap we don't need to call news. I'm sure it will be a weekly segment now.


I sample the cable news, say 20 minutes every other week, but the product is just terrible. The scrolls, the 2 minutes of news with 5 minutes of analysis. It just isn't a good way to get information.

Let me ask you Hardee, have you noticed how more and more often no news segment can end on just the news? More and more often the spinner has to come on to end the segment. So good ol'Katie will read the political news for a segment and then instead of leaving it there Bob Schrum has to zoom in and they spend five minutes telling you how to think about it before they sign off. That is just not a good way to present news.

I consider news to be news and not discussion or analysis. What is interesting is that in becoming more like blogs or talk shows, the news has actually become more like the sources you now claim I must get my information from when my complaint is the signal to noise ratio being to low. In short you declare, rather strangely that I must get my information from the types of sources that are the cause for the complaint. How strange is that?

Ever hear of an RSS feed reader? I'm sure you visit some sites like RCP that gather up links from an array of sources. Finally the fact that a source presents an incomplete picture or the fact that the signal to noise ratio is too low is merely a complaint about that site and it doesn't mean I ban, ignore, or refuse to read the site.

Unlike you guys with real or imagined conservative sources, I still read MSNBC, NY Times, etc.


You've made it clear that you own the "never" square. Maybe we should add a poll since others don't see so convinced as you. They enjoy their bus pictures, but they don't seem to be on record.

Well we will have to agree to disagree here. I'm sure they understood their power as the media, but I'm not convinced they thought of their power beyond gate keepers.


Government and graft associated with each other? Oh the horror! I have no doubt that he and every president have handlers. I don't think they needed Reagan to DO SOMETHING to be skeptical. I mean we are talking just a few years after Watergate. No one had to take a president at his word "just because" after that.


I don't think anyone minds it done right but it isn't done right. It should be separate from the news like editorials.


Well I'm going to agree and disagree with you. First his Q&A for his entire interview was just a friendly and soft-ball as the Palin interview you link to below. Second we are watching the Democratic party have loads of scandals occurring right now. When an unquestioning media ignores that scandal or doesn't investigate as they should, merely reports the particulars when they are indicted, it does have a cost. You can say the calls themselves don't amount to much, but really that will make me happy in a way because when you embolden people by granting them permission, it makes the train-wreck that much bigger later.


Well, no double standard on here, but I guess Addabox will soon be along declaring that since you don't admit to getting your news from certain sources, you must only read blogs and I'm sure that Frank will be along declaring that you only read editorials. (Don't worry I know they won't)

We seem to be on the same wavelength, find the sources that can give a better signal to noise ratio.

To address your series of Palin quotes, there are pages that track just as many Obama gaffes but the reality is that the media doesn't use them to craft a caricature and you haven't addressed that bit of information.


You seriously called that grilled? I call it taking a guy completely at his word and not challenging any answers with followups. The only thing they could have done to make it less challenging was to have Gregory give the guy a foot massage. One of the site that a few on here love to quote, Media Matters will declare something biased if it is merely uncritical or doesn't challenge. Gregory goes well beyond that often crafting questions that contain Obama administration assumptions in them that merely need affirmation from the interviewee. It doesn't get more softball than that. Read the transcript and what you see are instances where instead of interrupting to challenge, you just get affirmative little utterances because both are putting forward the same perspective. It isn't an interview, it is a conversation among two like minded people putting out their perspective together. "Mm-hms" and "right" affirmations are not the substance of challenging questions.


Well you start to hit on part of why I'm a conservative. If you can have smarts, good intention and the love of a family member but still cannot be coerced into certain positive actions and choices, then how can the government, which is so much less than that bring about that result?

The money, energy and efforts wind up as wasted. That is why this trillion dollars much that yet again isn't going to infrastructure, will end up wasted. Finally professional and personal just aren't the same thing. People can give their child every opportunity and every bit of support and watch the walls still come crashing down. People are people. As an example I'm sure Obama's grandparents did a fantastic job of raising his mother but the reality is she ended up twice divorced and with two kids from two different marriages. Those aren't terrible things by themselves but are less than ideal.

I mean calling parenting into question when you've got 17 year olds is just hard on everyone. That is right at the age where the kids are a step below adults but in reality can manipulate and control just about every variable they want. It isn't about dictation but is more about negotiation. The best you can hope for is that they don't hurt themselves until they get old enough to reason a little better.


I've never seen the media come of the sidelines like they have for Obama. I mean I remember the whole Clinton Camelot routine as well. However this is really the first time I can remember where the media just gave up all pretense of objectivity. We've gone from won't ask the tough followup to the whole basis of the interview and questions associated with it are just the campaign talking points. In short we can't question why he is flying oveseas and meeting with foreign leaders as a candidate when we only have one president at a time and we can't question why he won't comment on Gaza when we only have one president at a time. It signals he can uncritically do whatever he wants.


Hey, you know how I feel about the pics so we both have areas we think the other can improve on. I'm not gushing over Obama because I have principles and they don't involving generating a pile of debt and printed cash to try to solve a problem. I have a memory that notes when the banks have to be bailed out for billions and a few months later Obama is already pressing them to make bad loans again, it will lead to even bigger bailouts.

In short I can't push aside the abandonment of capitalism and especially of moral hazard whereby we declare the reason the economy has stalled because we had winners and losers and the solution to that is the hand the losers a bunch of money and beg them to lose some more and finally not see the rinse and repeat cycle of that.

Obama as a human being is fine. His family is great. He clearly is a good husband and father. His daughters are cute as buttons and hopefully won't be messed up by Washington and the trade-offs of a public life associated with being president. There's nothing to dislike about him on a personal level, the differences are with policy for me.


I didn't see it. I don't watch Hannity. I'll watch the links that you posted though so thanks. Softball goodness is all Obama has had for interviews so I hope that any omissions in his abilities are known and compensated for instead of making us pay for them as a country. The media hasn't done their job but reality will and I hope the result isn't bad for us.


Yeah anyone who has seen Coulter get interviewed understands it. SNL tried to do something about it and I saw it based on the link from their front page. It was pretty much the most unfunny political thing I've seen this year.

Well I did say this....

I didn't see it. I don't watch Hannity. I'll watch the links that you posted though so thanks.



These was once a long argument with me in here when I found a false claim in the Franken book. People declared left and right that I hadn't read it because I didn't want to go RE-READ it to find the error and the man didn't have any index or endnotes. Finally I went and found the page and paragraph and told them to shut the hell up.


I don't think speaking ability, especially with a teleprompter has anything to do with good decision making. I do believe that Barack Obama could be profoundly less competent than Bush because he is not saying he will radically alter the actions of Bush, but instead will do them much more stridently. Obama as an example is not the candidate of peace. He is the candidate of a better war. So for example he hasn't said bring the troops home, but instead bring them to Afghanistan.

Even though I disagree with what Bush is doing, I can see the point of the nation building. We did it in Japan and Germany and those countries have helped stablize regions of the world. My view is that we still have a massive military and big presence there so it isn't so much peace as lack of war when someone has a big stick. That sort of cost we cannot afford anymore but the claim is that if we don't somehow sustain that effort the world will fall to shit.

I may be heartless but my view is, let the world fall to shit. Let Europe worry about their own backyard. Let Japan rearm and police the Pacific. Focus us on alternative energy and stop giving cash to inferior societal models.

I am especially worried about Obama with regard to spending. I'm going to use an analogy for two reasons, one it will make what I am saying clearer and two, it will drive Midwinter nuts and perhaps he will go punch someone over at Sundance. I'm personally rooting for the latter.

Suppose you got yourself deep into debt. Let's say you are close to bankrupt. You are 30, and have 50,000£ of debt while earning 60,000£ a year. It is a deep hole and so you decide that you need to "change" and go do something that radically adds to your debt, but you hope it will also radically alter your earning ability. You decide to go to law school and immediately take on another 100,000£ of debt.

Now the question is, if you actually use the money wisely, go to school and graduate, then you will end up in a better place. With so much debt it wouldn't be incredibly, life-changing better but you will have a better upward path, more money to address your problems, more opportunities, etc.

However suppose you don't "change" and instead you don't pass the bar, fail several classes and now have the same earnings potential as before, but now have triple the debt.

You are completely and totally fucked.

People are spending sums in the U.S. that are on par with what it took to fight a two front war during WWII and help rebuild all of Europe afterward.

If that were guaranteed to go for infrastructure and true improvements, say funding alternative energy source, getting us several nuclear power plants, etc. say a war to end our dependence on foreign oil, then I would be happy about rolling the dice.

Instead though the house draft of this bill has come out and it contains token spending on those types of issues and huge chunks of it are just giveaways and income redistribution done even bigger.

That won't fix anything and the U.S. is bad enough off financially that there isn't a strike one or two. This is strike three. We will be done.

As for preferring Palin, I don't know if she has enough to get it done either. I'm actually very glad to have Democrats in power because with the media being on their side, you can't defeat their ideas in the realm of discussion. You have to let the fuck-ups occur and let people see reality. In short I'm hoping people will change when we hit rock bottom and there isn't anything for John Stewart and Stephen Colbert to make fun of anymore without someone punching them in the face.

As a quick example, right or wrong about starting the war in Iraq, it has actually been a very EFFICIENT war in terms of deaths and dollars per capita. If we agree that all military action has a cost, this one has actually cost very little for the result it has achieved.

The very strange reasoning out there seems to be, that since Republicans didn't achieve utopia with very little, we have simultaneously achieve a "big lift" and fix the problem immediately with massive spending and energy and secondarily it probably still won't be utopia but it will be "better" than what Republicans did while the cost goes up 500%.

Quick sample:

D: During the Clinton years we had surpluses and Bush gave those up with tax cuts and a war based on lies.

ME: So what do you propose to do about it?

D: We aren't leaving, but will spend more to "win the peace" in Afghanistan and then we will run trillion dollar deficits for a few years at home to fix the economic damage.

ME: How does spending trillions and not ending the war fix overspending and bad wars?

D: Hope and change dude, hope and change, don't be a downer, jump on the bandwagon!

This is part of why I have looked into the generational angle. I'm not sure there is a Boomer Republican out there who can get us back to the mindset that we had of trying to balance budgets and stop being a cop to the world. The 1994 Republicans had those goals for a while. I'm not sure anyone Democratic or Republican has them now with regard to boomer and they have the power reigns for now. I see a boomer generation scared, printing and tossing money at problems right before their retirement years. They want the bright youngest brother(Obama) to fix what they never addressed their entire adult lives. It won't happen and it doesn't look good in my view.

I've heard that Obama signed an executive order that will throw Rahm under the bus eventually, but in the mean time they are studying the issue and eventually will get around to starting the bus in a year or so.

Or was that Guantanamo Bay......