The problem with a trip like this last one is that with “social” dinners thrown in-it leaves little time for booming or blogging. I opted for booming and let my blogging slide. I’m home for the weekend now and catching up.
A whole group of people are up in arms about the recent article by Mark Halperin about the Obama administration’s failure to communicate.
Barack Obama is being politically crushed in a vise. From above, by elite opinion about his competence. From below, by mass anger and anxiety over unemployment. And it is too late for him to do anything about this predicament until after November’s elections.
With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.
Now the douchebags writers of idiot conservative blogs are all agog saying “See? We told you so?”. I find that very laughable because they are conveniently forgetting that there was not a good alternative on the GOP side of the aisle in 2008. Sarah Palin? Please-she was a deal breaker from day one and still is. John McCain? Which John McCain-the guy we knew in 2000 or the useless asshole who has trashed everything he used to believe in to placate a noisy mob within his own party.
And it also ignores the fact that a lot has been accomplished-even though the President gets absolutely zero credit for it. If McCain had won we would still have over 100,000 troops in Iraq, for example.
Nonetheless-it would be well for key decision makers in Obama’s circle to pay heed to what Halperin is saying. Because Obama is losing the communications battle. If he has a message-no one is hearing it.
Part of that is the Teabag noise machine-aided and abetted by Fox News, but that is not all of it. Obama bears a lot of blame too-he has not been a good communicator, and he has picked his fights poorly.
As a result-Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the symbols of the Democratic party and that’s not good for anyone.
In 2009 Obama missed a huge opportunity to slap both of them in the face by not vetoing the Omnibus spending bill. It was a no brainer and he could have made the case that he was hear to save the Democratic leadership from its worst impulses. He would have gone a long way towards building a bridge towards moderate Republicans.
But he did not-and then he dawdled while Glenn Beck and Saint Sarah made millions feeding the Teabagger beast. As Dick Armey fiddled, Rome burned. As the summer of 2009-he never made a case that could have been easily made-that the nations health care system is broke and real Americans are getting screwed at the drive through by insurance companies. Oh they made some noises-but they never bundled it up into a coherent message that today’s attention deficit afflicted, factually impaired, average American could understand.
So if the supposed GOP wave happens-as it appears it will, you can trace the beginnings of that wave back to August 2009. Because that is when the Teabag noise jammer first kicked into high gear and the Obama administration did not field any effective countermeasures-like shooting the jammer down.
The question now however, is whether, Obama will actually take an objective look at his past two years and make the required adjustments to allow the truth to be heard.
And that is where Halperin’s thesis should probably be examined closely. Because they actually have done a lot more than they are getting credit for-but its not being heard or acknowledged by the 65% of us who don’t smoke on the teabag crack pipe. If you don’t do something to change the perception-the perception, however flawed, becomes reality.
Time will tell if they actually do it or not-and I hope they do. There is too much at stake to simply lie down and allow the country to be steamrolled into the Hobbesian hell that your friendly neighborhood douchebag tea partier wants to cast you into.
I enjoy that you live in Huntsville. It sounds so quaint and that you have found three Saurons that need deposing because they are so all powerful but I never think of Sarah as all that evil or FOX as all powerful or people who congregate with or without weapons as frightening. That you and your friends do is marvelous. Sarah doesn’t have a job like you or me. FOX is but one of many news channels but you barf in your mouth each time you think of it in words and people you don’t know at all at all invite your utter scorn and contempt.
Try pleasant in lieu of present.
News Corp-Fox’s parent is the third largest news consortium in the world. Which would be fine if Fox was actually dedicated to objectively reporting the news, but what they have done-sanctioned by the Sith Lord Rupert Murdoch is to move journalism away from the factually based reporting of the Murrow era and into the no factual world of pap for the masses. The Tea Party and its peculiar interpretation of history would be nothing without the financing of Dick Armey and Mr. Koch and the 24/7 cheerleading of Fox News. It’s frightening that the commercial propaganda entertainment media has this much influence on politics in America today. Even more frightening is the reemergence of the John Birch Society as a major influence within the GOP.
As for Palin-she is totally despicable. What price the courageous frontier huntress now—an empty-headed echo chamber for rumor-mongers and freaks who shoots from ambush and then runs away? Condescending right-wing intellectuals are calling her style “populist” and comparing it with Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan. What a laugh. The true name for it is demagogy, descending from Joseph McCarthy, Robert Welch, and the nastier elements of the old Nixon gang—people to whom slander and defamation was second nature.
You are right-Sarah Palin does not have a job like you and me. That she is paid so much for so little should be offensive to any decent American.
Of which Tea Partiers are not.
Skippy,
I suggest you read Micaheal Savage’s latest book “Trickle Up Poverty.” If you say you are truly “anti-Fox” and all of it’s types, you will probably enjoy reading about someone who is coservative, and yet doesn’t get the full support of Fox. So your arguments that Fox is just a shill for the GOP sort of fall by the wayside.
If you don’t like the Tea Party, well that is fine. to each his own. So will you be in D.C. on the 30th for the Stewart/Colbert rally that Oprah is paying for the busses for?
True, not all of the Tea Party solutions may work and a compromise may be in order for some, but then again, not all of the current plans are working, and yet I don’t see the present administration trying to compromise to make them work either.
Skippy-san,
I’ve probably written some mean stuff here but seriously, look at what I wrote and where you went with it.
Sauron
Sarah
FOX
people.
You jumped in an F22 and strafed some girl named Sarah and people, had a huge cow over one news service, arguably the most popular one and ignored totally the fact that it has countless peers ranging from a low of either CNN or MSNBC or ABC or CBS or NBC or HNN or……..Some reason you have to forbid me to watch, at least in the morning, a news service I like with pretty smart girls? Get up early and turn on Fox. It’s news dude. Don’t watch hannity or o’reilly. Try to pretend they don’t exist just as I do with whossnames who present your news.
Missed ole Sauron altogether. Genuine faux evil feeling a bit lost and forlorn. Lonely really.
I have to deal with Fox news everyday at work. As my cube is near a TV I will have to change the TV at least twice a day away from Fox to CNN or ESPN.
John Stewart summed it up well-Fox News’ daytime coverage does the prep work for the propagandists that begin at 3pm CST. They beat the drum and slant their coverage by their choice of stories they cover. MSNBC may be equally biased to the other side its true-but as long as Fox has a place in the news market-then so does MSNBC. They are probably both equally destructive to journalism in the long run.
The President summed it up well, “Fox News pushes “a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world,” Obama said.
“But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.”
What I have no patience any more is the same people who complain about media bias-praise the biggest practitioner of it. There is no “mainstream media” any more.
As for your reference to Tolkien-I ignored it. Its not germane to Sarah Palin. As for Michael Savage-that’s hardly what I would call an objective or informed source. I read conservative columnists that actually make sense-not ones like him who are certifiably nuts.
The best thing about being Romania for 10 1/2 weeks besides the women, was not having to watch Fox News.
Yeah, CNN..
‘Breaking News”!!!!!Three of the Chilean Miners have been released from the hospital!!!!”””””Really, breaking news?
MSNBC MAY BE biased eh?
I watch MSNBC all the time, except Keith and my new fav is Ed Schulz…sorta like Beck without the tears.
A real rabble rouser where the facts/truth mean nothing…
my kind of 60’s radical….Ahh, memories…
Why is the purveyor of any idea/service despicable?
No one(now I know this is a hard concept to understand)
is FORCED to buy her inane musings…
As O’Reilly says ‘YOU be the judge”
and you’d say well, Americans are STOOOPID…
and I ‘d say, well, yes STOOOPID and ignorant, but reading a LOT of foreign stories we AIN’T the only ones that put their thinking caps in storage.
That fact does not give me any solace at all..but thats the way it is.
As my Buddhist friend would say..we can only change ourselves..we have no control on how others think or act.
Its always a personal journey.
file under furriners are stoopid too…….http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-india-stampede-20101018,0,3019377.story
Richard-the point is that in today’s market, you pretty much know what you are getting when you turn on the channel. And it is a buyers market. However, as Sen Moniyhan used to say-every one is entitled to their own opinion, they are not entitled to their own facts. And that, I would submit, is the big difference between Fox and the rest.
In my dreams- I have this dream of being able to take over Fox news in a hostile takeover, solely for the ability to wreck the network. Problem is it would take a LOT of money, Murdoch’s capital reserves are huge. No one person ( and least of all me) will ever have that kind of money. So Fox will live on for a long time.
Taking it to its logical conclusion, why don’t you ever see anybody advocating the total elimination of your news service? Can you just see obama hating out CBS?
Are they there?
I don’t care about the crap you watch but why do you complain about what I want to watch?
She wears some very nice shoes, has a nice smile, shares my values. Never lived in Huntsville. Can’t imagine why you hate her to utter death. You would think she had at least one redeeming feature.
Curtis it doesn’t matter what you watch until it makes you stupid-and you vote stupidly because of it. Then it becomes my problem when whores and looneytoons ( Palin qualifies on both counts) get into positions of responsibility in the USA.
There are people advocating elimination of my news service-the writers at :Town Hall, Red State, and 30 other bastions of right wing stupidity.
You only think Palin shares your values-unless your real values are greed, hypocrisy, lies, warping your children, and misrepresenting Christianity. I doubt those are your values-but if they are, then enjoy Palin as long as she lasts.
Skippy,
Read Savage’s book. In the back of the book you will see when he makes accusations, he footnotes them in the back so that you can look up the article for yourself to read where the source documentation comes from, and decide for yourself if he is on the mark or off.
So just saying that you won’t read it, wouldn’t that put you in the “stoopid American” category too?
I gave it a very good scan at the exchange today. To say that he is taking some giant leaps in logic-based on the available data is a complete understatement. Several of the things that he cites as “Obama conspiracies” can also be attributed to perfectly reasonable explanations. In particular is his attack on the IRS hiring additional agents-something I have researched. It certainly is not the astronomical number he claimed. I think its 800 tops.
What I do find interesting is his long history of getting fired from just about every job he has ever held. That’s probably a more telling representation of his supposed brilliance than anything else. Plus how can you really believe someone who says autism is “just a racket”?
There are plenty of books that critical of Obama that don’t go over the line advocating violent things-in a reckless manner, the way Savage does.
Bernie Goldberg, no friend of Obama, listed him as one of the 100 most dangerous people in America. That alone should be reason to look elsewhere on the book aisle.
Wow,
I don’t read townhall and let me tell you that that sadly the last 50 books I bought were written by my little sister ( I recommend them), Terry Pratchett, David Weber, Jim Butcher. (recommended by my cousin) or W.E.B.Griffin. I totally refuse to buy the serf serving spew of the entitled class.
skippy’s, I am really not someone who trolls around, falls to the knees in profound worship of the elitist argument stuff. Hung around with them for a time.
Turn off the TV or at least set it to SCIFI. If you read the Huntsville Times try to include the Wall Street Journal or Scouting Times.
Skippy,
If Savage advocated violence, he wouldn’t be on the radio. As far as getting fired from various jobs, I remember the MSNBC show but you have to admit, if he is a loon then why is it that he has the #3 radio show in America? Is it because at least 10-15 million people are just plain stupid as you say?
Yes, I read the book by Bernie Goldberg, and it was probably written by the way Savage labeled him in his book “The Political Zoo” (which cuts across both parties).
Bernie also listed quite a few Dems in his book, but you seem to think that they are fine people and have no problems with the.
Maurice,
I think it is important to look at exactly what I said-I don’t endorse all Democrats nor do I think all Republicans are bad-but I think that the Tea Party effort to demonize people who take a moderate path is plain wrong and not in the best interests of the country as a whole. I do believe a lot of the problems the Democrats have are self inflicted-but the “supposed” cure to that is far worse than the disease. And finally I remain deeply suspicious of the way these idiots only discovered outrage after January 20th 2009.
But lets look at Savage a little deeper shall we? He was fired from two stations in San Francisco that I found, as well as MSNBC. He was banned from the UK-for what I consider to be valid reasons. He could not even get admission as an academic. And he has sued ( and lost) anyone who criticizes him. There have been 19 incidents of domestic terrorism in the last two years alone-many of the perpetrators have been influenced by him, or Beck or any of the others who are out there in la-la land. Savage may not have pulled the trigger-but its pretty clear that he planted the seed.
So yes, 10-15 million people are pretty damn stupid. When people like him, Beck and the rest are considered intellectuals, the country has a pretty high stupidity quotient. I’m not backing down on that.
Skippy,
Look at the stations that let Savage go in the Bay area, and look how their ratings fell when he left.
As far as being banned in Britian, look at who is also on the list. He may say things that people don’t agree with, and I don’t agree with all he says, but to put him on a list with convicted skinheads and other murderers just because he speaks is wrong. Also, his show is not carried in Britian so how do they know of him?
Skippy you need a program to ween you back into reality because you’ve suffered a radical departure.
So what I watch according to you makes me stupid?
You’re a fucking Communist! When are you going come and kill me for exercising my rights?
Free speech dude! You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. My kind tend to follow the rule.
Right to assemble dude! We got that down in spades. WHO THE FUCK EXACTLY IS THAT ALWAYS TAKES THAT RIGHT TO MEAN RIOT AND BURN DOWN BUSINESSES? It isn’t the conservatives. Nope, it’s fascists and other left wing and communists and earth lib front and sierra wing and just what political orthodoxy are they in? A lot of fascists and communists tend to believe that there is some sort of corporate dealism between the two but to the masses they are indistinguishable…..the fucking government stole my last marshmallow, raped my dog and took my daughter as a sex slave. FYI, conservatives over here believe in the US CONSTITUTION and none of that is allowed by their creed but it’s okay for communist and socialist shitbags.
free press just so long as never ever ever applies to News Corp, Rupert Murdoch or Fox News.
What did I miss….oh yeah there is zero tolerance for guns or religion at public schools.
Why don’t you just adjust my attitude with regard to where you think we stand with regard to our constitution first amendment rights under this socialist/fascist regime?
Tea Baggers are always rioting just like their peers at all those International summits and leaving a wasteland behind them.
Seriously, take a day off next time in Japan and hit a temple and sit down and reflect.
I never heard of a single non Jewish temple outside of Islam getting stormed, besieged and looted by the mobs that show up at the G8 or G20 or IMF etc. You co-creedists are some of the most despicable people on earth.
Curtis,
I would submit it you that needs the contemplation-not I. I’ve never stood up in favor of the kind of demonstrations that happen at G20 meetings. Just like I don’t stand up in favor of teabagger demonstrations. They are both equally futile.
But while the G-20 folks are singularly ineffectve-the teabaggers are leading a wave that will screw themselves and ordinary Americans like me who are not as stupid as they are. Furthermore-they don’t believe in the Constitution, only the parts they like. The world has changed, you stupid fucks, and it is time you woke up and accepted that fact. All you guys are doing is accelerating the irrelevancy of the USA. You do that by nominating and electing worthless whores.