I'll be blogging about things I find interesting. If they offend you, please feel free to just pass on by. If they interest you too, then I hope you'll enjoy it here.
Confident in an Election Day win, the campaign looks to lower supporters' expectations on concerns their hopes of 'change' are unrealistic, a senior aide says
FOXNews.com
Friday, 2008-31-305
y Tim Reid, The Times of London
Barack Obama's senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week's election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harboring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.
The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of "hope" and "change" are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy.
One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, "so there's not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair."
The aide said that Obama himself was the first to realize that expectations risked being inflated.
In an interview with a Colorado radio station, Obama appeared to be engaged already in expectation lowering. Asked about his goals for the first hundred days, he said he would need more time to tackle such big and costly issues as health care reform, global warming and Iraq.
"The first hundred days is going to be important, but it's probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference," he said. He has also been reminding crowds in recent days how "hard" it will be to achieve his goals, and that it will take time.
"I won't stand here and pretend that any of this will be easy -- especially now," Obama told a rally in Sarasota, Florida, yesterday, citing "the cost of this economic crisis, and the cost of the war in Iraq." Obama's transition team is headed by John Podesta, a Washington veteran and a former chief-of-staff to Bill Clinton. He has spent months overseeing a virtual Democratic government-in-exile to plan a smooth transition should Obama emerge victorious next week.
The plans are so far advanced that an Obama Cabinet has been largely decided upon, with the expectation that most of his senior appointments could be announced shortly after election day.
Posted on Saturday, October 25, 2008 5:06:19 AM by tnye
Mr. Obama,
Given the uproar about the simple question asked you by Joe the plumber, and the persecution that has been heaped on him because he dared to question you, I find myself motivated to say a few things to you myself. While Joe aspires to start a business someday, I already have started not one, but 4 businesses. But first, let me introduce myself. You can call me "Cory the well driller". I am a 54 year old high school graduate. I didn't go to college like you, I was too ready to go "conquer the world" when I finished high school. 25 years ago at age 29, I started my own water well drilling business at a time when the economy here in East Texas was in a tailspin from the crash of the early 80's oil boom. I didn't get any help from the government, nor did I look for any. I borrowed what I could from my sister, my uncle, and even the pawn shop and managed to scrape together a homemade drill rig and a few tools to do my first job. My businesses did not start as a result of privilege. They are the result of my personal drive, personal ambition, self discipline, self reliance, and a determination to treat my customers fairly. From the very start my business provided one other (than myself) East Texan a full time job. I couldn't afford a backhoe the first few years (something every well drilling business had), so I and my helper had to dig the mud pits that are necessary for each and every job with hand shovels. I had to use my 10 year old, 1/2 ton pickup truck for my water tank truck (normally a job for at least a 2 ton truck).
A year and a half after I started the business, I scraped together a 20% down payment to get a modest bank loan and bought a (28 year) old, worn out, slightly bigger drilling rig to allow me to drill the deeper water wells in my area. I spent the next few years drilling wells with the rig while simultaneously rebuilding it between jobs. Through these years I never knew from one month to the next if I would have any work or be able to pay the bills. I got behind on my income taxes one year, and spent the next two years paying that back (with penalty and interest) while keeping up with ongoing taxes. I got behind on my water well supply bill 2 different years (way behind the second time... $80,000.00), and spent over a year paying it back (each time) while continuing to pay for ongoing supplies C.O.D.. Of course, the personal stress endured through these experiences and years is hard to measure. I do have a stent in my heart now to memorialize it all.
I spent the next 10 years developing the reputation for being the most competent and most honest water well driller in East Texas. 2 years along the way, I hired another full time employee for the drilling business so that we could provide full time water well pump service as well as the well drilling. Also, 3 years along the path, I bought a water well screen service machine from a friend, starting business # 2. 5 years later I made a business loan for $100,000.00 to build a new, higher production, computer controlled screen service machine. I had designed the machine myself, and it didn't work out for 3 years so I had to make the loan payments without the benefit of any added income from the new machine. No government program was there to help me with the payments, or to help me sleep at night as I lay awake wondering how I would solve my machine problems or pay my bills. Finally, after 3 years, I got the screen machine working properly, and that provided another full time job for an East Texan in the screen service business.
2 years after that, I made another business loan, this time for $250,000.00, to buy another used drilling rig and all the support equipment needed to run another, larger, drill rig. This provided another 2 full time jobs for East Texans. Again, I spent a couple of years not knowing if I had made a smart move, or a move that would bankrupt me. For the third time in 13 years, I had placed everything I owned on the line, risking everything, in order to build a business.
A couple of years into this, I came up with a bright idea for a new kind of mud pump, a fundamentally necessary pump used on water well drill rigs. I spent my entire life savings to date (just $30,000.00), building a prototype of the pump and took it to the national water well convention to show it off. Customers immediately started coming out of the woodworks to buy the pumps, but there was a problem. I had depleted my assets making the prototype, and nobody would make me a business loan to start production of the new pumps. With several deposits for pump orders in hand, and nowhere to go, I finally started applying for as many credit card as I could find and took cash withdrawals on these cards to the tune of over $150,000.00 (including modest loans from my dear sister and brother), to get this 3rd business going.
Yes, once again, I had everything hanging over the line in an effort to start another business. I had never manufactured anything, and I had to design and bring into production a complex hydraulic machine from an untested prototype to a reliable production model (in six months). How many nights I lay awake wondering if I had just made the paramount mistake of my life I cannot tell you, but there were plenty. I managed to get the pumps into production, which immediately created another 2 full time jobs in East Texas. Some of the models in the first year suffered from quality issues due to the poor workmanship of one of my key suppliers, so I and an employee (another East Texan employed) had to drive across the country to repair customers' pumps, practically from coast to coast. I stood behind the product, and made payments to all the credit cards that had financed me (and my brother and sister). I spent the next 5 years improving and refining the product, building a reputation for the pump and the company, working to get the pump into drill rig manufacturers' product lines, and paying back credit cards. During all this time I continued to manage a growing water well business that was now operating 3 drill rig crews, and 2 well service crews. Also, the screen service business continued to grow. No government programs were there to help me, Mr. Obama, but that's ok, I didn't expect any, nor did I want any. I was too busy fighting to make success happen to sit around waiting for the government to help me.
Now, we have been manufacturing the mud pumps for 7 years, my combined businesses employ 32 full time employees, and distribute $5,000,000.00 annually through the local economy. Now, just 4 months ago I borrowed $1,254,000.00, purchasing computer controlled machining equipment to start my 4th business, a production machine shop. The machine shop will serve the mud pump company so that we can better manufacture our pumps that are being shipped worldwide. Of course, the machine shop will also do work for outside companies as well. This has already produced 2 more full time jobs, and 2 more should develop out of it in the next few months. This should work out, but if it doesn't it will be because you, and the other professional politicians like yourself, will have destroyed our countrys' (and the world) economy with your meddling with mortgage loan programs through your liberal manipulation and intimidation of loaning institutions to make sure that unqualified borrowers could get mortgages. You see, at the very time when I couldn't get a business loan to get my mud pumps into production, you were working with Acorn and the Community Reinvestment Act programs to make sure that unqualified borrowers could buy homes with no down payment, and even no credit or worse yet, bad credit. Even the infamous, liberal, Ninja loans (No Income, No Job or Assets). While these unqualified borrowers were enjoying unrealistically low interest rates, I was paying 22% to 24% interest on the credit cards that I had used to provide me the funds for the mud pump business that has created jobs for more East Texans. It's funny, because after 25 years of turning almost every dime of extra money back into my businesses to grow them, it has been only in the last two years that I have finally made enough money to be able to put a little away for retirement, and now the value of that has dropped 40% because of the policies you and your ilk have perpetrated on our country.
You see, Mr. Obama, I'm the guy you intend to raise taxes on. I'm the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead. I'm the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, and all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn't want to take a risk, and would not demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself. I'm the guy you characterize as "the Americans who can afford it the most" that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution "to spread the wealth" to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything. You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture. I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political career. What's worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of themselves. Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominant liberal media, and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land.
What is so terribly sad about this is this. America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self reliance, self motivation, self determination, self discipline, personal betterment, hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach of every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states. If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self reliance. You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act on them. When people act on such ideals, they succeed. All of America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating. But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn't it, Mr. Obama? The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem solving was best left with individuals instead of the government. You and all your liberal comrades have got a vested interested in creating a dependent class in our country. It is the very business of liberals to create an ever expanding dependence on government. What's remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn't need my money if they would get off their entitlement mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life.
You see, I know because I've had them work for me before. Hundreds of them over these 25 years. People who simply will not show up to work on time. People who just will not work 5 days in a week, much less, 6 days. People always looking for a way to put less effort out. People who actually tell me that they would do more if I just would first pay them more. People who take off work to sit in government offices to apply to get free government handouts (gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?). You see, all of this comes from your entitlement mentality culture.
Oh, I know you will say I am uncompassionate. Sorry, Mr. Obama, wrong again. You see, I've seen what the average percentage of your income has been given to charities over the years of 2000 to 2004 (ignoring the years you started running for office - can you pronounce "politically motivated"), you averaged less than 1% annually. And your running mate, Joe Biden, averaged less than ¼% of his annual income in charitable contributions over the last 10 years. Like so many liberals, the two of you want to give to the needy, just as long as it is someone else's money you are giving to them. I won't say what I have given to charities over the last 25 years, but the percentage is several times more than you and Joe Biden. combined (don't you just hate google?). Tell me again how you feel my pain.
In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.
By Keith B. Richburg and Judy Rakowsky
NEW YORK -- A Kenyan aunt of Sen. Barack Obama has been living quietly for years in a South Boston public housing project, according to public housing officials. The Obama campaign later confirmed the woman, Zeituni Onyango, is the senator's paternal aunt.
In his memoir, Obama wrote affectionately about the woman, known as "Aunt Zeituni," who was the first Kenyan relative he met when he traveled there.
William McGonigle, deputy director of the Boston Public Housing Authority, said officials only became aware of Onyango's connection to the Democratic presidential nominee last week, after receiving inquiries from a reporter with the Times of London. Onyango then confirmed the relationship.
He said that Onyango worked as a residential health advocate for the housing agency in exchange for a stipend.
"She is a delightful lady and she did a wonderful job as a public health advocate and she's been a great resident," McGonigle said. "She's not looking for fame or notoriety, and we were as surprised as anyone to learn she was related to the Democratic nominee."
"She had not hinted at it at all," McGonigle added.
Since the Times of London published its story on Onyango, reporters began gathering outside the red-brick building, part of the West Broadway public housing development that had recently undergone a $60 million renovation. But Onyango was not there; she was seen leaving her apartment at mid-morning Thursday after she telephoned housing authority officials to request help in keeping reporters at bay.
"She is asking that everyone respect her right to privacy, and we will do our best to see that she can live in peace," McGonigle said.
In earlier, brief comments to two reporters from the Boston Globe, Onyango said she wanted to stay out of the way of her nephew's campaign so close to the election.
"We'll talk after the election," she was quoted saying. "Come talk to me after the fifth."
An Obama campaign spokesman later confirmed to the Globe that Onyango was the senator's aunt but gave no further details.
Campaign records show Onyango donated at least five times to Obama's campaign, in July and September, three times for $5 and twice for $25. She listed her occupation as "RHA Volunteer/Boston Housing Authority."
End of article
There is an audio clip of obama reading from his book where he talks about his aunt and says if she loses her job, there's no government safety net, only family to rely on. Apparently not him though.
Huffington reports this lady gave $260 to obamas campaign. I'm wondering how much he's given her. She believes in him, trusts him, and yet she lives in near poverty. But then, she's family. If he want to help the poor so much, why didn't he start at home?
And why is it that the Brits media is more on top of our candidates than we are?
It has been, these past eight years, a favorite trope of the Bush-bashers: The 43d president's power-lust is so insatiable, his disdain for constitutional checks and balances so complete, that he has fashioned himself into a dictator. Crackpots can always be counted on to say such things, of course, but even non-loonies have played fast and loose with the D-word.
"In terms of the power he now claims without significant challenge," Michael Kinsley asserted in 2003, "George W. Bush is now the closest thing in a long time to dictator of the world." When it emerged that the National Security Agency was sifting telephone records for possible counterterrorism leads, CNN's Jack Cafferty fumed that the administration intended to establish "a full-blown dictatorship in this country." A 2007 essay for CommonDreams declared: “Bush has granted himself an immense arsenal of powers for which the term ‘dictatorial’ is a modest understatement.” And in a recent piece for the Times of London, Andrew Sullivan informs us that "in war and economic crisis, Bush has insisted that there is no alternative to dictatorial rule."
Well, overwrought cries of "Dictator!" are an old story in American politics. Presidents great and not-so-great have been slammed as "tyrant" and "dictator," not to mention "autocrat," "Caesar," and "slavemaster." Somehow the Republic survived their administrations. Chances are, it will survive the Bush years too.
Bush as a ruthless autocrat? It would be easier to take the idea seriously if it weren't for the omnipresent clamor of voices denouncing the man. Tyrants have a way of squelching public dissent and intimidating their critics. Whatever else may be said about the Bush administration, it has never cowed its opponents into silence. If anything, the past eight years have set new records in vilifying a sitting president: "Bush = Hitler" signs at protest rallies. Crude "Buck Fush" bumper stickers. A 2006 movie depicting Bush's assassination. The New Republic's cover story on "The Case for Bush Hatred." The denunciation has been unending and often unhinged, yet Bush has never tried to censor it.
Will we be able to say the same of his successor?
If opinion polls are right, Barack Obama is cruising to victory. As president, would he show the same forbearance as Bush in allowing his opponents to have their say, unmolested? Or would he attempt to suppress the free speech of those whose views he detested? It is disturbing to contemplate some of the Obama campaign's recent efforts to stifle criticism.
When the National Rifle Association produced a radio ad last month about Obama's shifting position on gun control, the campaign's lawyers sent letters to radio stations in Ohio and Pennsylvania, urging them not to run it -- and warning of trouble with the Federal Communications Commission if they did. "This advertisement knowingly misleads your viewing audience about Senator Obama’s position on the Second Amendment," Obama's general counsel Bob Bauer wrote. "For the sake of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should refuse to continue to air this advertisement."
Similar lawyer letters went out in August when the American Issues Project produced a TV spot exploring Obama's strong ties to former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Station managers were warned that running the anti-Obama ad would be a violation of their legal obligation to serve the "public interest." And in case that wasn't menacing enough, the Obama campaign also urged the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation.
What should we make of these efforts to smother political speech? Perhaps they are simply the overly aggressive tactics of a campaign in an adrenaline-fueled sprint to the finish. Perhaps Obama’s staff is taking his admonition about confronting skeptics -- “I want you to argue with them and get in their face” -- a little too vehemently. But what if they’re more than that? What if these are the first warning signs of how an Obama administration would deal with its adversaries?
Michael Barone, the esteemed and judicious author of The Almanac of American Politics, fears the worst. "In this campaign," he writes, "we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy. . . . We may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead."
Pray that Barone is wrong. Our nation's political life is toxic enough when the president is falsely labeled a dictator. It would be infinitely more poisonous if the label were true.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
Ever hear of it? Neither had I until a couple of weeks ago. It seems it's a mix of martial arts and kick boxing with no face contacts. My granddaughters hubby is a black belt in Ju Jitsu and she's a purple belt. When this Pankration thing came up he decided to compete in it even though he had no experience.
Below is a link to a video my daughter made of the first match and hers is the voice sort of narrating it. If it seems a little shaky it's because she was almost as nervous as he was.
The young man's name is Mason Yohn and he won his first match. Sadly, he got trounced in his second but came away with a 2nd place medal. The competition was held in Goleta and that's where I spent he entire day last Sunday. A very interesting day it was too.
http://www.mint.com/blog/im... href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.mint.com/blog/im...>http://www.mint.com/blog/im... height="84" alt="http://images.google.com/im... src="http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:OV5bwkIL UzJypM:http://www.mint.com/blog/im... width="126" style="border-right: 1px solid; border-top: 1px solid; border-left: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid" /> "The choice you'll have," said Barack Obama during last week's final presidential debate, as he told voters what to expect if John McCain's health-insurance proposal becomes law, "is having your employer no longer provide you health care.
"Don't take my word for it," he added. "The US Chamber of Commerce, which generally doesn't support a lot of Democrats, said that this plan could lead to the unraveling of the employer-based health care system."
If only.
An end to employer-based health insurance is exactly what the American health-care market needs. Far from being a calamity, it would represent a giant step toward ending the current system's worst distortions: skyrocketing premiums, lack of insurance portability, widespread ignorance of medical prices, and overconsumption of health services.
With more than 90 percent of private health care plans in the United States obtained through employers, it might seem unnatural to get health insurance any other way. But what's unnatural is the link between health care and employment. After all, we don't rely on employers for auto, homeowners, or life insurance. Those policies we buy in an open market, where (as a rule) numerous insurers and agents compete for our business. Health insurance is different only because of an idiosyncrasy in the tax code dating back 60 years -- a good example, to quote Milton Friedman, of how one bad government policy leads to another.
During World War II, federal wage controls barred employers from raising their workers' salaries, but said nothing about fringe benefits. So firms competing for employees at government-restricted wages began offering medical insurance to sweeten employment offers. Even sweeter was that employers could deduct those benefits as business expenses, yet employees didn't have to report them as taxable income. For a while the IRS resisted that interpretation, but Congress eventually enshrined the tax-exempt status of employer-based medical insurance in law.
Result: a radical shift in the way Americans paid for medical care. With health benefits tax-free if they were employer-supplied, tens of millions of Americans were soon signing up for medical insurance through work. As tax rates rose during the postwar decades, so did the incentive to keep expanding untaxed health benefits. No longer was medical insurance reserved for major expenditures like surgery or hospitalization. Americans who would never think of using auto insurance to cover tune-ups and oil changes grew accustomed to having their medical insurer pay for yearly physicals, prescriptions, and other routine expenses.
Source: Office of Management and Budget
We thus ended up with a health care system in which the vast majority of bills are covered by a third party. (For most workers, that third party is an insurance company paid by their employers; for the poor and elderly, who rely on Medicare and Medicaid, it’s the government.) With someone else picking up the tab, Americans got used to consuming medical care without regard to price or value. After all, if it was covered by insurance, why not go to the emergency room for a simple sore throat? Why not get the name-brand drug instead of a generic?
Unconstrained by consumer cost-consciousness, health care spending has soared, even as overall inflation has remained fairly low. Nevertheless, Americans know almost nothing about the costs of their medical care. (Quick quiz: What does your local hospital charge for an MRI scan? To deliver a baby? To set a broken arm?) When patients think someone else is paying most of their health care costs, they feel little pressure to learn what those costs actually are -- and providers feel little pressure to compete on price. So prices keep rising, which makes insurance more expensive, which makes Americans ever-more worried about losing their insurance - and ever-more dependent on the benefits provided by their employer.
De-linking medical insurance from employment is the key to reforming health care in the United States. McCain proposes to accomplish that by taking the tax deduction away from employers and giving it to employees. With a $5,000 refundable health care tax credit, Americans would have a strong inducement to buy their own, more affordable, insurance, rather than relying on their employer's plan. As millions of empowered consumers began focusing on price, price competition would flourish. And as employers' health care costs declined, most of the savings would return to employees as higher wages.
For 60-plus years, a misguided tax preference for employer-sponsored health insurance has distorted America's health care market. The price of that distortion has been paid in higher costs, fewer choices, and mounting anxiety. The solution is to restore market forces by fixing the tax code, and liberating Americans from an employer-based system that has made everything worse.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
Two different animals my friends. It seems that Husbandmaterial (or the powers that be) has taken to locking his threads after just a few comments thus turning them in to editorials. Is there a reason for that?
And you folks criticized Sam for deleting. Not a lot of difference in my mind.
Maybe TBC has a spot on the eiditorial staff. Check the classifieds.
Does a right-wing cabal play havoc with the media? Prominent liberals have been insisting for years that it does. In 1998, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton famously branded reports of her husband’s affair with a young White House intern the figment of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” The phrase did not occur to her in the heat of the moment. As early as 1995, White House officials had compiled “The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce,” a 331-page dossier purporting to chronicle the way “well-funded right-wing think tanks” and “British tabloids” were using the Internet as a means of getting “fringe stories” about President Clinton “bounced all over the world” and into conservative American venues like the Washington Times, the New York Post, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. This would in turn supposedly awaken Republican congressional interest, thereby generating “the legitimacy to be covered by the remainder of the American mainstream press as a ‘real’ story.”
A few years after Mrs. Clinton’s outburst, former Vice President Al Gore decried the “major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican party.” He named names: “Fox News Network [sic], the Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh—there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires. . . . Most of the media has been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks.” Gore’s “fifth-column” lament was quickly echoed by a number of leading figures in the media, including Paul Krugman of the New York Times (“so clearly true”) and the WashingtonPost’s E.J. Dionne (“It adds up to . . . a media heavily biased toward conservative politics and conservative politicians”).
In 2003, the leftist media critic Eric Alterman devoted an entire book to the theme of a Fourth Estate dominated by the Right. “Conservatives have spent billions . . . to pressure the mainstream media to move rightward and to create their own parallel media structure,” he wrote in What Liberal Media? “Unbeknownst to millions of Americans who continue to believe that the media are genuinely liberal—or that liberals and conservatives are engaged in a fair fight of relative equality—liberals are fighting a near-hopeless battle in which they are enormously outmatched in most measures.”
_____________
All of this fulmination notwithstanding, it is a plain fact that conservatives are overwhelmingly outnumbered in mainstream channels of the news business. Moreover, as study after study has documented, journalists are much more likely than the general public to identify themselves as liberals or Democrats and to vote accordingly. Not coincidentally, opinion surveys consistently find that Americans detect a pronounced liberal bias in the press.
A 2007 poll conducted by Zogby International, for example, showed that 83 percent of voters believe the media are biased, with nearly two-thirds saying the slant is to the Left. In July 2008, a Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 likely voters found that 49 percent believed most journalists would try to use their reporting to help Barack Obama, while only 14 percent expected journalists to try to help John McCain. An analysis of federal-election-contribution records by Investor’s Business Daily provided supporting evidence for this view: Twenty members of the working media donated money to Barack Obama for every one who gave to John McCain.
In bewailing the supposed triumph of conservatives over the liberal media, Clinton, Gore, and Alterman are thus sharply at odds with both the evidence and public opinion. Nevertheless, the belief has attained the status of “a new liberal group wisdom” (in the words of the late Michael Kelly, a former editor of the New Republic and the Atlantic). By 2007, it had become so entrenched that Democratic presidential candidates, under pressure from the party’s left-wing “netroots,” refused to take part in Fox-sponsored debates—or even, in some cases, to appear on Fox programs at all.
All of which might suggest that a book titled Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment would be another manifesto deploring what conservatism hath wrought. Happily, it isn’t.
_____________
“To the undoubted disappointment of those on the Left, we have not argued that the conservative media menace the country’s well-being,” write the book’s authors, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella. The two are professors of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where Jamieson also directs the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Their book is a scholarly analysis of the most influential conservative media outlets, focusing in particular on Limbaugh’s popular radio show, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and the Fox News Channel.
The mission of these outlets, the authors write, is to defend and uphold the values of Reagan conservatism that most of their audience already shares. In so doing, they create a “self-protective enclave” within which ideologically reassuring information is disseminated to the faithful, liberal arguments are rebutted, and ties to the Republican party are strengthened.
But Jamieson and Cappella do not argue that this process somehow subverts the public discourse, or that conservative voices have swamped the mainstream media. On the contrary: They believe that the conservative media form a parallel on the Right to what much of the establishment media have long done for the Left. “Just as influential representatives of the mainstream media have ties to Democratic politics,” they write,
the résumés of those at Fox and the Journal tend to carry Republican credentials. Whereas CNN, NBC/MSNBC, and ABC have drawn high-level talent from the Democrats, Fox has done the same from the GOP.
By the same token, “conservative assumptions are more likely to go unchallenged on Fox’s talk shows than on CNN’s, and liberals are more likely to be required to defend their premises. The opposite is true on CNN.” And if Republican candidates benefit from more frequent appearances on Fox, “there is evidence that MSNBC and CNN provided more interview time to Democrats.”
Much of Echo Chamber is devoted to inferring the actual impact of the conservative media, especially Limbaugh, on their self-selected audience. Not surprisingly, the authors conclude that Limbaugh’s broadcasts may indeed affect the intensity of his listeners’ views, but whether this translates into more votes for Republicans in general elections is, they write, a question “often asked and difficult to answer.” Perhaps more surprising is the vigor with which Jamieson and Cappella defend Fox News and especially Limbaugh (whose highly partisan rhetoric and use of hyperbole and ridicule they describe in detail) from charges that they dumb down their audiences or seal them off from reality, thereby accelerating a decline in political participation.
Limbaugh’s fans may enjoy his “bluster and bombast,” according to the authors, but behind it “there is a substantive defense of a coherent political philosophy.” He makes politics “engaging and entertaining,” and one result is an audience more rather than less likely to seek out other sources of information. Contrary to stereotype, Limbaugh “dittoheads” consume more print news than do non-listeners. Fox viewers and Limbaugh fans, Jamieson and Cappella note, are also likelier than comparable groups of voters to tune in to presidential debates. Nor does gravitating to conservative media generate civic torpor. Far from making people cynical or indifferent toward public affairs, “Limbaugh reinforces his audience’s disposition to participate in the political process.”
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Early in Echo Chamber, Jamieson and Cappella announce that it is not their “purpose to determine whether what is generally known as the ‘mainstream’ media . . . are indeed ‘liberal,’ as the conservative media suggest.” Perhaps to signal their agnosticism on the question, they repeatedly put the world “liberal” between quotation marks—as if serious investigation were required before the New York Times, National Public Radio, or MSNBC could safely be labeled left-of-center.
At other times, however, the authors are not quite so tentative. In the book’s closing pages, they concede that the framing of mainstream news coverage “is different from that of Fox and, in sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious ways, more hospitable to Democratic than Republican points of view.” And they remind “those who wring their hands over the rise of the conservative media” that while the right-of-center outlets are noteworthy voices in the marketplace of ideas, they are hardly the only ones and by no means the loudest.
Fox News, for example, may be the most popular cable network, but the nightly newscasts on any of the legacy networks attracts a larger audience. Limbaugh may be the top talker in radio, but his listenership is dwarfed by that of NPR. Impressive as the Wall Street Journal’s circulation figures are, USA Today has 200,000 more readers—and in any case, the Journal’s editorial page is read by a minority of those who take the paper.
For Gore and other liberals of a certain age, one suspects, the real problem is not that there are only strong conservative media voices to be heard these days, but that there are any. They grew up in the age before the cable revolution, before the rise of talk radio, before the Internet—the era when liberal media dominance was a fact of life, and conservatives were rarely seen or heard from. Now the Left has to compete for attention.
Thanks to the conservative media challenge, we have a livelier public dialogue, a more engaged and invigorated electorate, and an array of new sources for news and comment. Do the conservative outlets sound at times like a right-wing echo chamber? No doubt—but hardly on the scale of the left-wing echo chamber in which so much of the establishment media have long been entrenched. Jamieson and Cappella rightly observe that as liberals and conservatives compete in the new media environment, “monitoring each other for bias, [they] add an element of accountability to the system that was missing in the days when the three major network evening shows took their cues from the New York Times.”
That system will probably never be, to coin a phrase, fair and balanced. But it is far closer than it once was.
(Jeff Jacoby is an op-ed columnist for the Boston Globe.)
What does “Election Day” mean? Once, the answer was obvious: It signified the date -- the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November -- when Americans came together in public to choose their political leaders and reaffirm their common stake in democratic self-government.
But tens of millions of Americans no longer wait until November to vote. In much of the country, voters are permitted to cast their ballots a month or more in advance, either in person at designated early-voting polling places or by mail as “absentees.” Over the course of just a few election cycles, one of our oldest political institutions has been all but overturned. In 1980, notes political scientist John Fortier of the American Enterprise Institute, some 4 million ballots were cast before Election Day. In 2004, there were 27 million. That number will go even higher this year; there are estimates that as many as one-third of all votes will be “banked” before November.
Not every state has abandoned the communal tradition of Election Day. Massachusetts does not open polling stations early, and voters requesting an absentee ballot must have an excuse for not going to the polls in person. But the momentum, regrettably, is in the other direction. Oregon has done away with polling places entirely; 100 percent of its elections are conducted by mail. Close behind is Washington state, at more than 70 percent. Ohio jumped on the bandwagon for the first time this year, inviting residents to vote as early as Sept. 30 -- even letting individuals register to vote and cast a ballot in the same visit if they showed up by Oct. 6.
The trend away from a unitary Election Day has long been cheered by those who want voting made more “convenient.” Bill Clinton endorsed early voting during his reelection campaign in 1996. “A lot of people are busy,” he said, “and it's hard for them to just get there and vote.” BeAbsentee.org, a website created this year to encourage voting by mail, offers 10 reasons to embrace absentee ballots. Among them: “You have better things to do on Election Day,” “You do not have to stand in line,” and “It might rain on Election Day.”
For voters truly unable to make it to the polls on Election Day, due to illness or travel, absentee ballots are a reasonable accommodation. But for most of us, getting to a local polling place once a year is far less onerous than getting to work or to school every day, or to the supermarket once a week. Anyone who can manage to take in an occasional ball game, or go to the movies now and then, or periodically go out to dinner can manage to vote in person on Election Day.
Are some citizens so uninterested in political affairs that they won't bother to cast a ballot unless they can do it from their living room couch, or are given a month-and-a-half to get around to it? Yes. But what is gained from encouraging such lazy or apathetic people to vote?
Especially pernicious is another of BeAbsentee.org's reasons to vote early: “You can make your decision and move on. Enough with this election already!”
In an age of instant gratification and “have-it-your-way” convenience, it may seem unreasonable to expect voters to wait until November to help choose a president, senator, or city councilor. Why not encourage them to vote in October or September -- or even in August, for that matter -- if they've made up their minds?
Here's why: Because voters who cast early ballots do so without benefit of all the information, analysis, and discussion that bloom in such profusion during the last weeks of an election campaign -- the debates, the endorsements, the voter guides, the candidates' speeches, the heightened media attention.
What is significant about Election Day isn't so much the date itself; it's the focus that date provides for the process of democratic decision-making. No one thinks jurors should be allowed to render a verdict before seeing the final witnesses and hearing the closing arguments on each side. Theater critics don't skip the play's final act in order to write their review. For the same reason, Americans should vote on the first Tuesday in November, not whenever they're ready to “move on.”
What does “Election Day” mean? It used to refer to the pinnacle of our civic religion, the gravely eloquent day when voting in America took place. Now it's just the day when voting comes to an end. Many changes are for the better, but this isn't one of them.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
This sort of thing is obscene and shows that he isn't all that confident that he has the election in the bag. Why would he spend this kind of money if he's so sure?
If so, any ideas on how to house break a house broken almost 5 year old Westie cross dog who has started going in the house because of a baby?
When I got him the shelter said he was turned in because the people had a new baby. He loves kids so I thought they were bs'n me. Now that I've been keeping the baby a couple of times a week he's taken to peeing on his play yard leg and today on his saucer (bouncer.) He's pooped in the bedroom where I keep the baby stuff and peed to the point that I put puppy pads under all the legs and anything he can hike on. He also peed on a paper bag of jackets I had to put in storage. In that same bedroom.
I finally put a gate across the door to keep him out and thought I'd solved the problem until he got the saucer in the living room today.
Now I understand why the previous owners got rid of him.
Background. When I worked full time he stayed in the house all day and never had accidents. He sleeps from about 11 pm to 7 am without needing to go out. I know this behavior is jealousy but how do I stop it short of putting a rubber band on his dingwilly?
