Frank Luntz throws a pity party

I suppose this piece is supposed make us feel sorry for that evil pudgy putz, Frank Luntz who's having a crisis of faith because his slick sloganery isn't doing the job anymore. Damn the little people for failing to kowtow to his superior powers of persuasion. But in the end, the whole interview boils down to this:

Luntz's populism has turned on itself and become its opposite: fear and loathing of the masses. "I am grateful that Occupy Wall Street turned out to be a bunch of crazy, disgusting, rude, horrible people, because they were onto something," he says. "Limbaugh made fun of me when I said that Occupy Wall Street scares me. Because he didn't hear what I hear. He doesn't see what I see." The people are angry. They want more, not because we have not given them enough but because we have given them too much.

Damn the working poor for wanting to live decently. Don't they know adversity builds character? So says the guy with three obscenely opulent residences including his own private bowling alley, which according to him he's never home to use anyway.

Worse yet, he really wants to get out of politics and get into showbiz, but those damn libruls in Hollywood won't return his calls. To which I say, let the scheming miscreant burn in his own personal hell for the rest of his unnatural life. Don't generally wish misfortune even to the most evil among us, but admit I would take some satisfaction in seeing him living under a bridge in a cardboard box after having lost everything. Let him eat phony slogans.

What really happened when BoBo got high

Well, I suppose you could read David Brook's true confession about smoking pot. I wouldn't recommend it. I gave up his columns years without a moment's regret. I would however highly endorse spending a few minutes reading the hilarious response posted by the guy who got high with BoBo in high school. It seems our Mr. Brooks left out a few details, among them:

And here all along I thought he quit because of that time we got pulled over by the Radnor cops in senior year right after we’d clambaked his Mom’s Vista Cruiser, and first thing the cop does after the smoke clears is look him right in his red, red eyes, and said, “I don’t suppose it would go over so good if I went over to 632 Haverford Road and told Mr and Mrs Brooks their boy was out here with his clique smoking pot.” I was so impressed with the way Dave pulled himself together then. He didn’t beg for mercy or fight with the cop. Somehow he knew exactly how to go all bar mitzvah boy, how to talk to authority, how to flatter and impress and toady, even stoned to the gills, like his inner Eddie Haskell was deeper down than the pot could get. And it worked. The cop let us go, told us we were lucky he knew Dave and that we were white kids from Radnor...

Many more secrets disclosed at the link. It's unclear whether this is a true story, a satire or made up of the whole cloth, but whatever, it's a deliciously subtle "fuck You" to Bobo that shouldn't be missed.

Calling out the crackpots

Lazy posting today because, real life is exhausting. So, outsourcing to Charlie Pierce for the definitive take on Boehner's House of Dysfunction.

Earlier this week, Boehner pretended he was leading the House when Steve King and the flying-monkey caucus pretty much killed off the possibility of immigration reform for the balance of the president's second term. Republican senators wanted a bill. Republican power brokers wanted a bill. Hell, Boehner wanted a bill. But the House is not being led by John Boehner at the moment. He is no more the actual Speaker Of The House than Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is vice-president of the United States. The House Of Representatives is being led by the vicious and demented Id of one of the two major political parties that we have allowed ourselves to have in this country. The House Of Representatives speaks with the savage vocabulary of ancient and durable prejudice. The House Of Representatives speaks with the twisted syntax of frustrated white supremacy. The House Of Representatives speaks with the cruel and singular voice of unreasoning prejudice and inhumanity. There is no Speaker Of this House. The Id speaks, and it speaks for them all.

More at the link and always worth reading in full.

President Obama, cool, calm, collected

Some insights from former speechwriter Jon Favreau, on how President Obama deals with media driven scandals. Worth a read in full, but here's the standout grafs:

In the case of the AP phone records, Obama the former constitutional-law professor cares deeply about the balance between freedom and security. This is the president who began the foreign-policy section of his inaugural with the words “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” And he wants Congress to debate and finally pass a media-shield law. But can you imagine if the president of the United States had quashed a court-ordered subpoena in an independent investigation he wasn’t even supposed to know about? A subpoena aimed at finding the person in his own administration who leaked classified information that may have jeopardized American lives? Talk about a political scandal. [...]

That is who he is. The handwringers and bed wetters in the D.C. punditocracy should know that Barack Obama will never be on their timeline. He does not value being first over being right. He will not spend his presidency chasing news cycles. He will not shake up his White House staff just because of some offhand advice offered to Politico by a longtime Washingtonian or a nameless Democrat who’s desperately trying to stay relevant. And if that means Dana Milbank thinks he’s too passive; if it means that Jim VandeHei will keep calling him arrogant and petulant; if it means that Chris Matthews will whine about him not enjoying the presidency, then so be it. He’ll live.

We could use some of that "not valuing being first over being right" ethic in our punditocracy right now. In fact we could use a metric ton of it. Not that we will get it as long as the big money is in chasing news cycles and creating outrage.

Hitting the Niall on the head

I don't often feel like visiting physical violence against someone, but Niall Ferguson deserves to be hit upside his head for his bizarre speech at some investment conference.

Keynes' economic philosophy, Ferguson reportedly suggested, was the result of Keynes not caring about future generations.

Keynes didn't care about future generations, Ferguson reportedly suggested, because Keynes was gay and did not have children.

Ferguson apparently issued a lame apology after the entire internet went into an uproar over his ridiculously offensive remarks. He claims he went off the written script and didn't realize how insensitive it would sound to normal people.

Plenty of articulate outrage at the last link, so all I'm going to say is this guy is a Harvard professor and a noted historian. If he's so stupid that he doesn't realize accusing gays and people who are unable to have children of virtually causing economic calamity because they're selfish and uncaring, then he has no business teaching at Harvard, much less collecting presuambly big figure speaking fees to spew his claptrap.

Oh why can't we have leaderly leadership

Jon Favreau is tired of hearing the whinging about why won't Obama lead the pack of GOP lunatics to sanity. Worth a read in full but here's the most important point that our insidery inside media doesn't seem to ever get to:

Today, a minority of senators can kill bipartisan legislation that is supported by a majority of their colleagues. And they frequently do. In the House, the speaker alone can kill bipartisan legislation that is supported by a majority of his colleagues. And he frequently does.

They do this not by changing minds with persuasion, but by blocking it with arcane procedural tricks that were meant to be used rarely, not as a standard method of governance. Both sides don't do this. I would say more but Booman already has it covered at length.

Busting up the false equivalency

A couple of days ago I tweeted how sad it makes me to see Ezra Klein apparently wanting to grow up to become the next David Broder. Deleted the tweet the next morning because it felt kind of mean, but I couldn't delete the thought out of my head. So it's especially heartening to see Ezra "Hulk Smash" the false equivalence crowd. He lays out the failings of the "if only Obama would move to the middle" idiocy, running down the various accommodations POTUS has made, and/or offered to make, in detail but this gets to the heart of the matter:

This had led to a lot of Republicans fanning out to explain what the president should be offering if he was serious about making a deal. Then, when it turns out that the president did offer those items, there’s more furious hand-waving about how no, actually, this is what the president needs to offer to make a deal. Then, when it turns out he’s offered most of that, too, the hand-waving stops and the truth comes out: Republicans won’t make a deal that includes further taxes, they just want to get the White House to implement their agenda in return for nothing. Luckily for them, most of the time, the conversation doesn’t get that far, and the initial comments that the president needs to “get serious” on entitlements is met with sage nods.

Stopped watching ages ago but I'm certain that's exactly what they're doing on the Sunday morning bobbleheads. Same as always. So, it's good to see Ezra speak up in such undiluted terms. It's helpful. He's the Village wunderkind. They listen to him. Hoping it's not a one-off just to shut up his leftwing critics.

False equivalence is killing us

Not sure what started this mass bashing of the courtier press this week, but there's been a heartening amount of calling out the perps. Today Brian Beutler takes on Obama Derangement Syndrone in the establishment media. Brian riffs off David Ignatius who published an inane op-ed that included this gem:

“Obama tries everything to gain control — except a clear, firm presidential statement that speaks to everyone onboard, those who voted for him and those who didn’t — that could get the country where it needs to go,” Ignatius sighs.

This of course ignores the last two years of pre-election campaigning, the SOTU and President Obama's numerous road trips in the last few weeks to make his case directly to the people. Road trips which Ignatius and his fellow insider Villagers sneeringly term "campaign-style" tactics. Which wouldn't be necessary if these parrots of the conservative party line did their job instead of obsessively repeating the tired "both sides do it" refrain.

Greg Sargent has been calling out the courtiers for longer than maybe anybody. Not the first time he's made this point the both-siders consistently fail to mention.

The GOP’s explicit position is that no compromise solution of any kind is acceptable — this must be resolved only with 100% of the concessions being made by Democrats — which means any compromise Dems put forth is by definition a nonstarter at the outset.

And James Fallows schools the dunderheaded punditry on recent history they choose to forget:

... a hidden-from-no-one opposition strategy that embraces crises, shutdowns, and sequesters rather than wanting to avert them. Look again at the Lizza/Cantor quote: Obama and the Republicans could have had a "Grand Compromise" deal, but Republican hotheads wanted a fight for the sake of fighting.

On the off chance you've forgotten, this refers to when the scary sequester monster was spawned:

During the insane-at-the-time-and-worse-in-retrospect debt ceiling crisis nearly two years ago, Cantor intentionally talked Speaker John Boehner out of accepting a compromise with the Obama Administration, because Cantor wanted to preserve this as a campaign issue.

As always, Steve Benen politely sums it up

Pundits obsessed with pushing false equivalencies and needlessly blaming "both sides" are convinced they're part of the solution. They're actually part of the problem.

Me, I'm tired of being polite about it. The big platform, prima donna punditry is willfully engaging in a failure to inform solely to keep phony controversies alive. These people are not stupid. They have to know they're promoting false narratives. It's lazy and destructive. Hard to call it any else but journalistic malpractice commited solely for personal gain.

Round and round and round in the circle game

Probably going to rot in hell for taking entirely too much pleasure in watching Fox News flail:

January marked Fox News Channel’s lowest 25-54 demo delivery for Monday-Sunday Primetime and Sales Prime (M-Su 7p-2a) since August 2001.

January was also the worst month ever for FNC’s On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren in the 25-54 demo. It was also Fox's lowest total at 10 pm since July '08.

Photos and more at the link.

That's not the only untoward delight I'm enjoying on this day of great changes. The long past their sell-by date, dueling husband and wife pundits, Carville and Matalin no longer work at CNN and Erick, son of Erick sadly bid adieu as well, as he headed to his new home at Fox News.

The only thing that would have made this day better would have been if George Will suddenly decided to retire to spend more time contemplating the deeper meaning of blue jeans.

Holiday reading

Wet, gray Christmas here in my little city. Perfect day to catch up on some lighter reading.

Every year some undercover (or not quite undercover) journalist goes on the National Review's annual Carribean cruise where well-heeled cons take to the sea with the stars of the NRO. I never get tired of these stories. The mood on this year's cruise was bleak and angry. Worth a read in full, but this one graf summed up the crowd's mindset perfectly:

“Their conception of what the country is about, they really were sure the country would reject Barack Obama,” he continued. “I do think it hits them hard. The fear I have, why this election stung, I think, Obama has successfully ­de-ratified some of the Reagan revolution in a way that Clinton never could and didn’t even try to. That’s what freaks people out, that feeling in their gut, either Obama has changed the country, or the country has sufficiently changed that they don’t have a problem with Obama. That’s what eats at people.”

Because this is their country dammit and everyone else who isn't them is ruining their sense of superiority and entitlement.

Then there's this related but not quite the same subset of conservatives. Meet the doomsday preppers whose gurus are not only the slickest of grifters but also serve as the saviours of the true believers.

Though doomsday evangelists fantasize about reaching mainstream consumers, hardcore prepping attracts a fairly limited demographic. Stevens pegs the market at about 4 million people, and he has his theories on why it's not for everyone. "It's the upper-middle white class that shows up here," he says. "I've seen two or three black people and that's about it. They never show up to these places. They don't get it. Culturally. It's not brainpower, it's not color, it's cultural. They've never lived this lifestyle. More important is the car with thin tires and the beautiful finish and nice clothes and rings. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is!"

Translation: those shiftless negroes only care about the bling and free stuff from the gummit. Can't get any money out of them. Fascinating read.

And another long read that's more entertaining is Alex Pareene's annual media hack list. Hours of snarky fun here.

A happy Christmas Eve to all. Whether you celebrate this holiday or not, may your days be filled with joy and peace. [photo via]

Pundits do the CYA dance

This is hilarious. He is always wrong, about everything. So much so, his predictions are considered the proverbial kiss of death. Still it's significant that Dick Morris is willing to tell us he lied in order to keep the Rmoney campaign alive.

"I think that there was a period of time when the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic, nobody thought there was a chance of victory and I felt that it was my duty at that point to go out and say what I said."

-- Dick Morris, in an interview on Fox News, explaining why he predicted a landslide for Mitt Romney in the presidential election.

On a related note, I'm not much for public shaming, but this tumblr, Pundit Shaming is on its way to becoming a valuable archive of just how wrong all the pundits were. Not that they'll ever suffer for it, or feel ashamed, as long as they keep collecting the big paychecks.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Very serious news analysts

No idea why Vanity Fair dragged out this 2 year old interview other than they wanted to use the photo they had hanging around. Actually, the bizarre photo is only reason I'm posting this.

I don't doubt that JoeScar has been entertaining the idea of possibly running for president someday, but I suspect he's making too much money pretending to be a pundit to give it up for the horror show that is our electoral process today.

The post is clearly an excuse to publish a little Mika cheesecake. Gotta admit it's pretty decent hit bait but how bloody embarrassing. If you didn't know it was for their show, you would think it was either a poster for some lounge act at the local Holiday Inn or maybe even an ad for some cheezy soft porn film. Which pretty much describes out teevee punditry these days, come to think of it.

r [More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Wherein I (shockingly) link to David Brooks

Hell, I haven't read a full David Brooks column in (literally) years. I rarely even read posts about his columns, except for Charlie Pierce's reliably amusing posts channeling the long suffering pup Moral Hazard. Yet, I not only read this one, I'm passing it on. Not often you see BoBo try to taunt Romney with satire. A few excerpts:

... Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947, in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Virginia and several other swing states. He emerged, hair first, believing in America, and especially its national parks. He was given the name Mitt, after the Roman god of mutual funds, and launched into the world with the lofty expectation that he would someday become the Arrow shirt man.

Mitt grew up in a modest family. His father had an auto body shop called the American Motors Corporation, and his mother owned a small piece of land, Brazil. He had several boyhood friends, many of whom owned Nascar franchises, and excelled at school, where his fourth-grade project, “Inspiring Actuaries I Have Known,” was widely admired….

...He spent two years knocking on doors, failing to win a single convert. This was a feat he would replicate during his 2008 presidential bid.

After his mission, he attended Harvard, studying business, law, classics and philosophy, though intellectually his first love was always tax avoidance. After Harvard, he took his jawline to Bain Consulting, a firm with very smart people with excessive personal hygiene. While at Bain, he helped rescue many outstanding companies, like Pan Am, Eastern Airlines, Atari and DeLorean.

After his governorship, Romney suffered through a midlife crisis, during which he became a social conservative. This prepared the way for his presidential run. He barely won the 2012 Republican primaries after a grueling nine-month campaign, running unopposed. At the convention, where his Secret Service nickname is Mannequin, Romney will talk about his real-life record: successful business leader, superb family man, effective governor, devoted community leader and prudent decision-maker. If elected, he promises to bring all Americans together and make them feel inferior.

Steve M. thinks BoBo was going for a sort of tough love, but I'm with the Balloon Juice theory, where Anne Laurie tempted me to read BoBo's piece in the first place. I think it likely somebody hacked BoBo's column.

Can't wait to hear what Moral Hazard has to say about it.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Drowning in stupid

Seriously. There's a legion of cons and GOPers out there today trying to drown out the calls for Rmoney's tax returns with a veritable tsunami of stupid. Not worth archiving it all, but Grumpy Grandpa McCain might be the funniest one. Earlier today he told the media he picked Palin over Rmoney for VP because she was "the better candidate." The walkback is the funny part:

Some in the media have chosen to take my answer today, in response to the question of why I did not select Governor Romney as my vice presidential nominee, out of context. I selected Sarah Palin because she was the best fit for my campaign, and my decision had nothing to do with the bogus tax return attacks currently being waged by the Obama campaign. I have the highest respect for Governor Romney and his record of public service, and he will make an outstanding president.”

Sorry Gramps, but quoting your full remarks is not "out of context." You just suck at messaging. Which is why you're not president now.

Meanwhile, MSNBC's newest resident token idiot wingnut, S.E. Cupp, took the stupid to toxic levels. For real. After I watched the clip I felt a little dizzy and sick to my stomach. But I'll let Charlie explain that one. I'm still recovering.

I will add though, someone should tell her that wearing the same eyeglasses as Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow does not make her as smart as them. It just magnifies the empty place behind her eyes.

Addendum: John Sununu was a contender for dumbest con of the day too, but Steve M. has that one covered. I'll just add it's hilarious that a guy who was born in Havana to a foreign born mother, whose father was raised outside of the United States is saying President Obama doesn't understand how to be an American. [More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

The suffering of socialism

David Cay Johnston goes looking for the suffering sad residents of a socialist country. Unsurprisingly, he can't find any. In fact he finds regular working class people doing much better than our own. Funny how that works.



Video clip from Jay Ackroyd at Virtually Speaking. You should be listening to that show all the time if you're into talk radio. They do it the best over there.

Not The Onion - Updated

Apparently the actual cover of the next issue of Newsweek.

Update: It's the real cover for sure. Here's the article, Obama's long game. Getting good reviews in some quarters. In others, not so much. Andrew answers his critics here.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Bye Bye Buchanan

Heard the news last night and still smiling about it this morning. Don't think anything made me this happy since the moment I watched George W. Bush board that helicopter and leave the White House for the last time. Just hope this isn't some kind of cruel fakeout and MSNBC is really firing Pat Buchanan as a political bloviator. This quote does give me some hope:

"When Pat was on his book tour, because of the content of the book, I didn't think it should be part of the national dialogue much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC," said MSNBC President Phil Griffin.

Of course, Unka Pat says nothing new in his new book, "Suicide of a Superpower." It's the same racist, anti-Semitic crap he's been spewing on the air for years. So I guess that's probably not the real reason MSNBC is cutting him loose. Certainly it's not really to please liberals and progressives who have been howling Pat should be fired for just about forever. And they're still giving Morning Joke his three hours every day, though intriguingly it appears Joe Scar was investigating jumping ship on his own.

Meanwhile, "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski acknowledged at a news conference Saturday that they considered offers from other networks in recent months, including CBS, which is launching a new morning show on Monday. Former "Morning Joe" producer Chris Licht is producing the new CBS show.

Sadly, that is not to be:

Scarborough said they concluded that they couldn't duplicate their show on broadcast television, specifically the lengthy interviews.

I suspect the real reason is they gave him and Mika a big pot of money to stay on. While the morning jokester is as bad as Buchanan in many ways, liberals still love to hate him and keep masochistically watching his show. Never going to get rid of him unless and until his ratings go down.

But hey, I'm not greedy. Willing to settle for seeing Unka Pat sent into exile at last. Even this slight dredging of the celebrity media cesspool is a reason to celebrate. [graphic: Crooks & Liars]


[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Rove predicts through rose colored glasses

People often tell me that Rove is over-rated as a political operative but my philosophy is don't ever take you eyes off a snake, even if it looks like it's sleeping. Granted, Karl's recent tweeting blitz of failed talking points smells of fear and desperation, as do his predictions in this op-ed in WSJ. He does make one valid and honest point though:

Groups like American Crossroads (which I helped found) will narrow the Democratic money advantage.

Otherwise, shorter op-ed: This is my wish list and I'm counting on my high priced, stealth smear ad campaign to make it come true.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

They're all BoBos on this bus

It's Charles P. Pierce's birthday today, which I discovered by chance in a rare perusal of the comments. But that's not why I'm giving him quote of the day. It's because he summed up in one sentence why I stopped reading David Brooks so many years ago:

I think David Brooks belongs in a cage.

I have nothing to add to that, however, our estimable blogging hero has much more to say on the subject of Mr. Brooks "to-the-manor-born sociopathy" along with his usual delicious roasting of Brooks' fellow sociopaths. So, you know what to do

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

American Lyin' - Updated

I'm pretty sure Random House won't be publishing Mr. Pierce's books any time too soon. Not after my guy Charles incinerated Jon Meacham with a scorching critique of the perennial pundit's Gingrich fluffery. My favorite line of this magnificent rant:

Meacham's work here is what Walter Lippmann would've produced if he'd worked for Tiger Beat.

This in reference to Meacham's piece lovingly entitled, "The Myth of the Stature Gap: Could Newt Be the Next FDR?"

Atrios has the ultimate shorter commentary already. So, if you like this insider stuff, just read the links. I have nothing to add.

Update: This is still getting traction today. John Cole has a great tribute to its brilliance. I would have written something like that but I was afraid Charles would think I'd turned into a deranged stalker.