Good news gay people! Former Pres. Bill Clinton is finally feelin’ your pain. And while we love the former president, and totally respect the longevity of his marriage, and fully realize that the only ones who know what’s really going on in a relationship are the two people in it…Well, still, as far as him making any statements on marriage…Just saying.
Despite tea baggers’ misuse of the term, “socialism” applies to any system in which citizens pool resources to provide a service for the community — in other words, any service that is not private and provided on a fee basis. Public education, as well as public police, fire and emergency services, public hospitals and, of course, government-run pensions, like Social Security, and health-care, like Medicare, are all bona fide socialist services.
So it is a surprise — although, on second thought, it shouldn’t be — to learn that tea bagger queen Sharron Angle, who rails against the evils of socialism on the campaign trail, is actually a dyed-in-the-wool socialist herself:
Angle’s campaign acknowledged to Nevada journalist Jon Ralston Monday that both the candidate and her husband receive health care from the federal government. Spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said in a statement: “Mr. Ted Angle receives his pension through the (federal) Civil Service Retirement System. While it is not supplemented by the federal government, current civil servants pay into the program to pay the schedule of those already retired — much like how the Social Security Program works today. Mr. Angle does not qualify [for] — nor does he receive Social Security benefits. His health insurance plan (the Federal Employee Health Program), which also covers Sharron, is a continuation of what he was receiving while he worked for the federal government.”
If government-provided health care is so abhorrent to Sharron Angle, then she and her husband should reject it and buy insurance on the open market. I’m sure they could find a plan with similar coverage that would cost them less than $1,500 a month somewhere. Otherwise, she reveals herself to be just another rage-aholic tea bagger railing about socialism while apparently unaware that she is, in fact, soaking in it.
Like some TV Frankenstein, Ken Jautz gave us Nancy Grace, Glenn Beck and created the Joy Behar Show. Now he holds the reins of CNN, and it doesn’t look good for the beleaguered news network. Ken Stein was ousted after six years at CNN where he fought to maintain the network’s news integrity, according to The Wrap.
Jautz plucked Beck from obscurity on talk radio and plunked him down as the lead-in to Grace’s show. The rest is evil-creator history. Sounds a lot like CNN has in store what Joutz did for, er, to HLN:
According to a network insider, Jautz has repeatedly told people in the newsroom that he isn’t into long-form reporting or in-depth investigations. “I do not believe that ‘facts-only’ programming will work [in primetime],” Jautz told TheWrap in an interview on Friday. “Viewers, if they’re looking for just the news, they can get that anywhere now. The news that happened that day, they probably know already. They want context, perspective and opinion.”
Scott Safon, CNN’s chief marketing officer, who is taking over for Jautz at HLN, kind of let the cat out of the bag regarding plans for CNN:
According to one person at the meeting, Safon said Friday that CNN has a seven-month plan in place to explore what viewers want to see. He said he does not think their answer will be “more opinion,” he said. Instead, he thinks they’ll want “authenticity.” Safon and Robin Garfield, SVP of CNN research, have charted a course of “getting inside viewers heads.”
“They don’t want us to be Fox or MSNBC,” Safon said. The answer won’t be right or left, he told the staff. “It will be more authenticity, and more passion.”
I’m sorry, the only kind of passion I want mixed in with my news is when Walter Cronkite tears up when announcing the assassination of John F. Kennedy. While CNN is far from perfect, it is currently the closest thing we have to an all-news all-the-time network that can deal with breaking stories and wars, and still do some long-form journalism without a lot of opinion or “passion” mixed in. We need that.
In case you’re in a great mood — bluebirds chirping on your shoulder, etc. — and were looking for something to completely bum you out, this chart from Nate Silver’s
FiveThirtyEight.com showing the sheer volume of seats that the GOP appears set to pick up on Nov. 2 ought to do the trick.
All those blue squares represent vulnerable Dem House seats that will flip to red if the GOP wins in those districts. The GOP has about 179 seats now. They need at least 218 to take the House, which means they must take at least 39 of the 76 blue squares (or fewer if they retain a couple of the red squares) to get the majority.
Is a turnaround for the Democrats possible? Yes, and here’s why: As unpopular as the Democrats are right now, voters still revile their Republican counterparts in Congress.
For example the CBS poll last week is representative. It found that while approval/disapproval of the Dems was a weak 30 percent /50 percent, the approval/disapproval of Republicans was in the toilet — 20/68.
In the diplomatic ranks, trained professionals toil,
To keep the peace and tamp down foreign turmoil.
But for Greek ambassador,
Trump picked an artful dodger —
The grifting, drunken blackmailer Kimberly Guilfoyle.
