Tag: Fox News
Quote du Jour
So, yes, people are “angry” at Wall Street. They are also “angry” at Octomom. I wonder if the depth and quality of those two rages differ–or is this all just a television show?…If you want to be angry about something, get pissed at a media culture that goes beserk about bonuses one week and forgets all about them the next. And be worried, quite worried, about a society for whom anger is a form of entertainment.
— Joe Klein (1946 -), columnist and author
Which Polls to Ignore From Now On
We all lived on polls before the presidential election, and some of us live on them the rest of the time too. But how accurate were the endless projections we hung on?
A Fordham University professor, Costas Panagopoulos, Ph.D., took a poll of the pollsters and ranked them by accuracy. Pew Research and Rasmussen, the right-leaning group, tied for number one, producing polls “perfectly in agreement with the actual election result.” Rasmussen uses a daily poll which it rolls into a three-day average. While more precise in the long run, this method also offered a partial time delay after pivotal events like the presidential and vice presidential debates.
George Washington University, Diageo/Hotline, and the American Research Group all overestimated McCain’s support, placing them in fourth place and tied for fifth, respectively.
The surprising last place finishers were such esteemed news organizations as Reuters/C-Span/Zogby, CBS/Time, and Newsweek. Incredibly, FOX was right in the middle. The full list:
- 1. Rasmussen (11/1-3)
- 1. Pew (10/29-11/1)
- 2. YouGov/Polimetrix (10/18-11/1)
- 3. Harris Interactive (10/20-27)
- 4. GWU (Lake/Tarrance) (11/2-3)
- 5. Diageo/Hotline (10/31-11/2)
- 5. ARG (10/25-27)
- 6. CNN (10/30-11/1)
- 6. Ipsos/McClatchy (10/30-11/1)
- 7. DailyKos.com (D)/Research 2000 (11/1-3)
- 8. AP/Yahoo/KN (10/17-27)
- 9. Democracy Corps (D) (10/30-11/2)
- 10. FOX (11/1-2)
- 11. Economist/YouGov (10/25-27)
- 12. IBD/TIPP (11/1-3)
- 13. NBC/WSJ (11/1-2)
- 14. ABC/Post (10/30-11/2)
- 15. Marist College (11/3)
- 16. CBS (10/31-11/2)
- 17. Gallup (10/31-11/2)
- 18. Reuters/ C-SPAN/ Zogby (10/31-11/3)
- 19. CBS/Times (10/25-29)
- 20. Newsweek (10/22-23)
Return of the Blame Game: GOP Decried It During Katrina, Now Fingerpointing Over Bonus Caps Is All They’ve Got
The Republicans’ campaign to gin up outrage over AIG bonuses has at least two purposes, neither of which has anything to do with bonus caps. Their over-arching motive is to damage the Democrats at any cost. In the short term, however, Republicans are agitating about the bonuses to shift public attention from the fact that it was their “trickle up,” anti-regulatory ideology that caused the U.S. economy to crash.
Republicans are masters at message discipline — a dark art liberals are too independent-minded (and disorganized) to master.
The GOP’s blame-shifting campaign now has striking similarities to the tactics they deployed — quite successfully — to silence calls for investigations and even impeachment of George Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
In September 2005, as the floodwaters in the streets of New Orleans receded and calls for investigations into the Bush administration’s failed response to the disaster rose, these same Republicans successfully staved off political retribution by trivializing Democrats’ calls for accountability as “playing the blame game.”
The tactic was hatched in the White House political office, then under the direction of Karl Rove. It was first floated by former Pres. George H. W. Bush on CNN’s Larry King on the first Monday night after the storm, on Sept. 5, 2005. “The media has a fascination with the blame game,” Poppy told King, “and instead of looking for what can we do to help now there’s a lot of why didn’t we do something different?”
The next day, it was power of repetition to flog the “blame game” theme:
McClellan told reporters six times that their questions about how the government failed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina amounted to a “blame game.” Twice he used the twisted neologism “blame gaming,” as in: “The time for bickering and blame-gaming is later.”
For the next three or four news cycles, Bush’s foot soldiers in Congress crowded the airways repeating the magic words “blame game” as often as possible. The messaging quickly found permeated the media. A New York Times headline read, “After Failures, Government Officials Play Blame Game.”
In a column on Sept. 9, the late great Molly Ivins connected the dots between the Republicans’ systematic destruction of FEMA, the federal response agency, and the cascading disaster after FEMA failed to respond in New Orleans after Katrina swept through:
The PSA That Wasn’t: Bill McCollum Runs for Something
A lot of questions are being raised about this “public service announcement” (PSA) from Florida’s Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum.
For one thing, why did he skirt Florida’s procurement laws to hire his own 2006 campaign media consultant to produce the PSA and buy the media? The tab, so far, is $1.4 million.
McCollum is the perpetual candidate, almost always out-gunned. He hitched his star to the Bill Clinton blow job scandal and expected to see it rise like…well, never mind
The other thing is, what’s the ad, er, PSA, really selling? According to McCollum’s office, the spot publicizes a web site where parents can get help with the questionably “rampant” problem of online sexual predators. McCollum’s name hangs on the screen in huge letters at the start of the piece while the web site URL is grayed out at the bottom of the screen and typed in fleetingly at the end.
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum appears in nearly every frame…
McCollum said he hired his former campaign consultant, Chris Mottola, because the state’s competitive bidding process was ”very slow, very complicated.” He cited an exemption in state law that allows him to use a no-bid contract for “artistic services.”
The ad shows McCollum speaking directly to the camera…
”The development of the ad is artistic. It’s how you present it,” McCollum said. “You got 30 seconds to be able to tell somebody something.”
But what’s he telling them?
States Rights: Feds Will No Longer Prosecute Legal Pot Shops
Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that federal legal and judicial resources will no longer be deployed against legal medicinal marijuana dispensaries in California and other states.
This is a 180-degree change from the right-wing policies of the Bush administration, which had a zero-tolerance policy against cannabis use by patients suffering from cancer, chronic pain and other ailments. During their eight years in office, Bush Justice Dept. officials spent millions of federal tax dollars to investigate and arrest operators of the dispensaries, even though the enterprises were sanctioned by state laws.
Despite the massive personnel and financial resources arrayed against hundreds of legal pot shops in California by the Bush Justice Department, only four operators have been charged with crimes over the past seven years.
Boss Limbaugh: ‘I Am All for the AIG Bonuses’ – Also Lies about Dems’ Efforts to Restrict AIG’s Corporate Pork
Just days after alleged death-squad leader Dick Cheney gave his hearty endorsement to Rush Limbaugh as the Republican Party’s new boss, Limbaugh weighed in on the controversy over $400 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses slated to be paid to derivatives traders at insurance giant AIG.
“Let me tell you something, folks. I am all for the AIG bailouts, and I am all for the AIG bonuses. Well, I’m not for the bailouts, well, in a way I’m for the bailout because I’m for the bonuses.â€
On his radio rantfest yesterday, Limbaugh came out in support of corporate pork and then — after quickly retracting his support of bailouts and then just as quickly retracting the retraction — came out full force in favor of the AIG bonuses, which would use taxpayer money to reward the traders whose risky schemes crashed the world economy:
Rush Limbaugh: “Let me tell you something, folks. I am all for the AIG bailouts, and I am all for the AIG bonuses. Well, I’m not for the bailouts, well, in a way I’m for the bailout because I’m for the bonuses.”
And Rush said: “We need some perspective here. Okay, so they’ve got $170 billion in bailouts, the bonuses are $165 million. The AIG bonuses are one-tenth of 1 percent of all the bailout money, not just for AIG, but for everybody else. It’s in their contracts. What is the number-one asset any company has? It’s people. It’s employees. This $165 million in bonuses is gonna help estimate the economy. It’s going to stimulate the New York City economy, $165 million, one-tenth of 1 percent of all bailout. The populist thing to do, the popular thing to come and do here today is bang my fist and be outraged over how in the world can they use my taxpayer money this way.”
Of course, many of the traders who have received the initial $165 million in bonuses were citizens of Great Britain who worked in AIG’s London office, and so won’t be stimulating the U.S. economy. It was also revealed yesterday that after receiving these “retention bonuses,” many of the traders left AIG for greener pastures.
In this snippet from yesterday, he criticizes a senator for suggesting that AIG bonus recipients should commit suicide — conveniently omitting the fact that the senator was a Republican — and then he deliberately misstates facts about Senate Banking Chair Chris Dodd’s efforts to restrict the bonuses from being paid out:
Palin Bellies Up to the Earmarks Buffet
Alaska’s earmarks include $1.2 million for an airport on Akutan Island, population: 800…but hey, you can almost see Russia from there!
Sarah Palin, who tried to deny soliciting pork barrel funds for Alaska during her ill-fated run for the vice presidency under John McCain, has taken a new crown: Earmark Queen. Mother Jones:
Alaska will receive more money, per capita, than any other state
…Alaska will receive more money, per capita, from the bill’s earmarks than any other state. (Alaska will pocket $209.71 for each state resident.) One hundred earmarks in the bill, worth a total of $143.9 million, are tagged for Palin’s state.
…Palin introduced herself to America by declaring she was a foe of wasteful spending who had “championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress.” She claimed that she had said “thanks, but no thanks” to America’s most infamous earmark, the Bridge to Nowhere. During the presidential campaign, McCain railed incessantly against earmarks, at one point thundering that if he made it to White House, “I will take an ink pen and I will veto every pork barrel earmark spending bill that comes across my desk.”
In trying to beat back the omnibus spending bill, McCain denounced earmarking as a “corrupt practice.” And he employed the timeworn tactic of publicly mocking silly sounding appropriations…
The earmarks that Palin apparently will accept could also be ridiculed in a McCain-ish fashion. They include $475,000 to construct a “heritage center” in the Chilkat Indian Village…$200,000 for investigating and prosecuting bootlegging; $200,000 for researching the king crab; and $855,000 for building fairgrounds. The Alaska earmarks also include $1.2 million for construction work on an airport on Akutan, a tiny island that relies on seaplane for contact with the Alaskan mainland. (The Coast Guard handles medical emergencies.) The island has roughly 800 residents. Could this be dubbed the Airport to Nowhere?
Deputy Whip’s Gaffe Confirms That GOP’s ‘No’ Campaign on Economy Is Political Hackery in a Time of Crisis
A gaffe in Washington, as they say, is when a pol accidentally tells the truth. In an article in the National Journal (subscription-only), House GOP Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry (N.C.), admitted that House Republicans’ campaign of opposition to Democrats’ anti-recession policies is motivated purely by politics:
As we learned irrefutably from George Bush, when the president fails, the country fails with him.
“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said [McHenry], who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”
In the vote on the stimulus bill in the House, Rep. McHenry and the GOP leadership marshaled their troops to produce a unanimous vote against the bill. Their message was loud and clear: Like Boss Limbaugh, they wanted the president to fail. As trite as it sounds, there is no difference in wanting the president to fail and wanting the country to fail. We learned this irrefutably from the presidency of George W. Bush, whose manifold failures contributed to the current crisis.
Leaving aside the stink of treachery, wishing failure on the president is a political loser — a sound bite that will likely be repeated in a marathon of Democratic campaign ads in the congressional elections next year.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who’s said he might run for president in 2012, backed away from the failure meme on Meet the Press on Sunday:
You’re irrational if you don’t want the president to succeed because if he doesn’t succeed, the country doesn’t succeed. I don’t think anyone should want the president of the United States to fail. I want some of his policies to be stopped, but I don’t want the president of the United States to fail. I want him to learn new policies.
(Of course, it was Speaker Gingrich who shut down the federal government in 1995 in a fit of pique after the Clinton White House made him sit in the back of Air Force One on an overseas trip.)
Rep. McHenry’s gaffe confirms that his party’s opposition to the stimulus and other proposed economic remedies is just what it appears to be: unprincipled political hackery. To engage in this sort of tomfoolery in the current environment means House Republicans either don’t take the economic crisis seriously — or that they are willing to pour gasoline on the bonfire of the U.S. economy on the hope they can take control of the smoking ruins after the collapse.
Greg Sargent at The Plum Line calledMcHenry’s office for confirmation. McHenry staffer Brock McCleary told Sargent that the congressman was standing by the quote.
Poll: 85% of Republicans Can’t Name GOP Leader
According to a new poll from Rasmussen Reports, Republicans who were asked to name the leader of their party cited Sen. John McCain and RNC Chairman Michael Steele equally — both had 5 percent.
Roughly 85 percent of conservatives believe they are leaderless — just six weeks after their party lost control of the Executive Branch and two years since it had control of all three branches.
Conversely, a whopping 68 percent of GOPers said their party had no leader. Another 17 percent were undecided.
That means that roughly 85 percent of conservatives believe they are leaderless — just six weeks after their party lost control of the Executive Branch after eight years and two years after it controlled the Legislative Branch for most of the previous 12 years.
The party’s de facto leader, “Boss” Rush Limbaugh, was named as the actual party boss by just 2 percent in the poll, while Gov. Sarah Palin received 1 percent.
At the bottom of the list, congressional bigwigs Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, and Rep. John Boehner, Minority Leader in the House both received less than one-half of 1 percent.
Glaringly absent from the list was George Bush, the party’s leader until January.
Among Democrats, Pres. Obama was seen as the party’s leader by 66 percent, while 4 percent named Speaker Nancy Pelosi and 2 percent said Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Interestingly, comedian Jon Stewart was named leader of the Democratic Party by 1 percent of Democrats — which means Stewart is tied on the left with Gov. Palin on the right.
The poll also offered proof that Democrats understand Republicans better than Republicans know themselves. Seven percent of Democrats named Boss Limbaugh as the Republican Party’s leader.
