Fundamental misunderstandings

Something jumped out of this Washington Post story (Many Americans accumulating debt faster than they’re saving for retirement) at me.

Currently, workers with retirement savings accounts put aside more than 11 percent of their pay for retirement — 5 percent in their own accounts, and 6.2 percent in Social Security.

Note to Michael A. Fletcher, who wrote the story - that 6.2 percent for Social Security is a TAX, which goes into the treasury, and is then used for whatever the Federal Government is currently spending money on. It is NOT savings. There is no Social Security "trust fund," there is no account with your name on it, there is just a transfer from current workers to current retirees, in the hopes that currents workers, when retired, will be supported by future workers. But that 5% that workers with retirement savings accounts are saving doesn't magically become 11% just because the Federal Government is taking 6.2% of their money and giving it to others.

Reid: 'Why Would We Want To' Help One Kid With Cancer?

I understand that it's tiresome to listen to conservatives whine about the media. It is. Even for those of us doing it, it is. But that doesn't make out complaints invalid or unimportant.

Take a minute and try to imagine what the media response to Harry Reid's comment would be if uttered by a Republican.

It would be very different than it's going to be...

Some editor obviously screwed up...

It's trite and cliche to suggest that the press in this country favors the Democrats over the Republicans by a wide margin. Trite and cliche and true. And one of the ways in which that favoritism sometimes shows itself is through the art of juxtaposition - two superficially similar images side by side, with the Democrat beaming and the Republican scowling.

Years of that make this morning's edition of The Des Moines Register frankly shocking.

You can't buy that kind of publicity...

When did Obama label consulate attack "terror"?

It's sad to praise someone for just doing the bare minimum in their job requirements, but CBS news is so in the tank for the left in general, and the Obama campaign in particular, and has been for so long, that it's shocking to see a news story like this from them.



Obviously, Barack Obama lied repeatedly the other night, but it's still shocking to see CBS, of all people, actually report it...

"Mitt Humiliates The Mainstream Media..."

John Nolte

[T]his morning the American people trust the media even less than they did the night before -- and for one very simple reason: they were lied to … again. Where was the bumbling, elitist, out of touch, awkward, wife-killing, gay-hating, corporate vulture who tortures dogs and stumbles through Europe like Chevy Chase in a "Vacation" sequel?

Well, he didn’t show up last night because that's not who Mitt Romney is. That Mitt Romney is a media creation manufactured out of lies and desperation by those who spend 24 hours a day crafting trip wires, fabricating gaffes, and standing before the elephant of Barack Obama's failures and asking, "What elephant?"

Yup. As some of us have noted. Lord knows that I had problems with Mitt Romney as a Governor, I've got problems with Mitt Romney as a candidate, and I'll have problems with Mitt Romney as a President. But there's not a hint of any reason to have problems with Mitt Romney as a man, and that's where the Obama campaign, with its willing accomplices in the press, has been trying to win this election. They've created a caricature of Mitt Romney to attack, and attack it they have.

The real Mitt, as opposed to the straw Mitt, is tougher for them to deal with...

More evidence of Romney's domination...

... comes in this morning's NY Times. And you don't even need to read the editorial, as their position, and Romney's triumph, is made clear by the title - An Unhelpful Presidential Debate.

The first debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, so long anticipated, quickly sunk into an unenlightening recitation of tired talking points and mendacity. With few sparks and little clarity on the immense gulf that truly separates the two men and their policies, Wednesday’s encounter provided little guidance for voters still trying to understand the choice in next month’s election...Mr. Obama chose to be polite and professorial, as if hoping that strings of details could hold up against blatant nonsense. Viewers were not helped by a series of pedestrian questions from the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, who never jumped in to challenge either candidate on the facts.

If it were possible to spin last night as a good night for Barack Obama, the Times would not consider the debate to have been "unhelpful."

The amusing thing is that, despite the highlighted contention that the debate "provided little guidance," the contrast between the candidates is both clear and stark, and it showed last night.  One of the memes making the rounds on the left this morning is how ineffective Jim Lehrer was, and in a sense, that's true.  He did not control the debate.  But that actually left us with the two candidates sharing their positions, criticizing and explaining their positions, and enlightening viewers on policy positions, philosophy and communication and leadership style.

Of course the editors of the Times did not like what they saw last night - they are Obama partisans.

Of course they think the debate was "unhelpful" - they are Obama partisans.

Of course they think Romney's was speaking "blatant nonsense" - they are Obama partisans.

Of course they think viewers were not well served by Jim Lehrer - they are Obama partisans.

For those who are not Obama partisans, for those interested in the differences between the two men and their positions, for those seeking to determine which is the better choice to lead the country for the next year, this debate was indeed helpful.  And the Times' petulant reaction is just further confirmation of how helpful it was for the candidacy of Mitt Romney...

"A Campaign On The Edge (And it's not the one you think)..."

Rick Wilson

The delta between the world as Obama and his legion of fanboys describe it and the world as it is grows more spectacular and more impossible to sustain by the day.

Which is why stories about surreptitious videos and of Romney's campaign being on the precipice of destruction from internal tension and fights over strategic messaging are missing the most important point: there's only one campaign at real risk of destruction right now, and it belongs to Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney is running against Barack Obama.

But Barack Obama is running against Mitt Romney, and against a domestic economy in almost existential peril and from an Arab world sinking into chaos and darkness from Algiers to Aleppo, and from two of the world's economic superpowers about to start a hot war in the Pacific and from his “good war” in Afghanistan warming up to become a genocide at the hands of the Taliban as American troops inevitably withdraw, their decade of sacrifice and heroism squandered.

A good piece - read it all...

Media dictionary - 2012 edition

gaffe

Pronunciation: /ɡæf/
Forms: Also gaff.
Etymology: French (see gaff n.2).

Old usage:

A blunder, an instance of clumsy stupidity, a ‘faux pas’. [OED]

Current usage:

A statement by Mitt Romney, esp. one that would be damaging to the political prospects of Barack Obama if allowed to stand unchallenged.

New CNN poll - more manufactured Obama support

There was a new CNN/ORC poll released yesterday afternoon, and it has President Obama up by 6 points over Governor Romney, 52-46.  But there are some curious numbers in it.  Such as how it's possible that Governor Romney could be trailing by six points in a survey that finds him with a 14-point lead among independents.

Since they don't include most the raw numbers, and every respondent did not necessarily answer every question, there's some guesswork required, but there's a lot of information, and it doesn't all add up.

To start with, they give us the following information about their sample:

Sample information

1022	Adults
875	Registered voters
709	Likely voters

In 2008, according to the census bureau, about 64% percent of the voting-age population voted, as opposed to the 69% of this survey tabbed as "likely."  Other sources suggest that 61% is closer to correct.  Given that those who are not registered and not at all likely to vote are also less likely to take the time to respond to the survey, their likely voter screen, whatever it is, is producing a  number of "likelys" that might be a little high but isn't too unreasonable.

So they ask the question:  Obama or Romney?  And they tell us, in question 1, that the voters responses are:

Ballot test

	Likely	Registered
Obama/Biden	52	53
Romney/Ryan	41	45
Neither	2	2
Other	*	*
No opinion	1	1

So far, so good.  No, that doesn't add up to 100, but there are rounding errors, so, close enough. And, as one would expect, Obama's lead is bigger among registered voters than among likely voters (though not as much bigger as one might expect.)

Next, they ask Obama voters whether they are voting for Obama or against Romney, and then ask the converse of Romney voters.  Here's where it starts to get interesting. In the preface to the questions (pg 3), they reveal how many people chose each candidate in question 1.

Respondents

	Likely	Registered
Obama voters	351	441
Romney voters	340	409
Total	691	850

Here's the first problem.  A serious problem.  The 691 voters for Obama and Romney combined is about 97.5% of their advertised 709 likely voters, which is what we'd expect.  But they're touting a 6-point Obama lead; when they give the number of respondents who chose each of the candidates, what we see is an 11-voter lead for Obama, (351-340) out of 691.  11/691 = ~1.5%, not 6%. 

Did their sample require that much manipulation?  On page 5, we see that they found 441 registered Democrats and 397 registered Republicans.  That breaks down to a 52.6-47.4 advantage for the Democrats in the two-party sample.  That's smaller than the 55-45 advantage in the two-party electorate that they had in 2008 (39-32), and maybe the pollsters are trying to match that.  On the other hand, that was a best-case result for Democrats (2004 was 50-50 [37-37]), and there's no reason to expect them to match it in 2012.  Obviously, there's a science, and an art, to coming up with the best analysis of the raw numbers, but this looks like a gratuitous thumb on the scale somewhere.



I mentioned the other anomaly at the top.  On page 21, they've broken the vote down by demographics.

By Party Affiliation

	Total	Democrat	Independent	Republican
Obama/Biden	52	97	40	2
Romney/Ryan	46	3	54	96
Other	*	*	*	*
Neither	2	*	4	2
No_opinion	1	*	2	*

Obama has a commanding lead among Democrats. To be expected. Romney has a commanding lead among Republicans. To be expected.

But what about those unaffiliated with either party? Where much of the Presidential contest is actually "fought"? Romney has a very large lead there, too, 14 points, 54-40. If that's the case, how can he be trailing by six?

Well, 441 registered Democrats plus 397 registered Republicans equals 838 register voters out of their  875 registered voter survey.  838/875 = 96%.  Given that Republicans and Democrats have made up 70-75% of the voting electorate in the past few Presidential elections, and that they make up 96% of the registered voters in this sample, it seems that they have undersampled independents.  There just are not a significant number of independents in this sample.

Which answers the question of how Romney could be trailing by 6 points in a poll that shows him leading independents by 14 points.


All in all, this looks like a poll result designed to be used to depress Republicans and promote the "inevitable reelection of the President" storyline.  This looks like news-making, rather than news-reporting. 

DNC pre-game report

As I’ve already noted, my exposure to the events in Charlotte this week will be, if for no other reason than to keep my blood pressure reasonable, limited.  But I’ve got a couple of thoughts on what’s going to happen as they get underway.

• In contradiction to Jonah Goldberg’s prediction, I think we do get the “four more years” chant, on more than one occasion.  The awkward questions that this ought to raise in response won’t be asked by the media.
• Any mention of the national debt will be made in the context of what a problem George W. Bush and the Republican Congress left.  No member of the mainstream press will opine, or ask  any question which implies, that this is not the correct framework for thinking about the debt.
• The Democrats will repeatedly, and loudly, proclaim a position on abortion which is far further from the consensus of American public opinion than that held by the Republicans.  They will do this while calling the Republicans’ position “radical.”  At no time will any member of the mainstream media reveal this, nor challenge them on it.
• The Democrats will convey the message, both implicitly and explicitly, that "real women" have to hold certain positions on certain issues.  The mainstream press will never think to call this position, that women are limited in their thought processes by biological determinism, "sexism."
• The Democrats will convey the message, both implicitly and explicitly, that African- Americans have to hold certain positions on certain issues.  The mainstream press will never think to call this position, that people with dark skin are limited in their thought processes by biological determinism, "racism."
• The Democrats will be addressed by a graduate student whose claim to fame is that she previously appeared before Congress to insist that the Federal Government mandate that all insurance policies cover birth control, and, in the process, provoked an intemperate remark from a radio host.  Their advocacy of this position is indicative of either a) their serious lack of understanding of the American body politic or b) mine.  
• Some people will defend Sandra Fluke, and the contraceptive mandate, as a shining example of "separation of church and state."  Those people have a radically different understanding of the Constitution and the first amendment than I do.
• The Democrats will claim, repeatedly, that the stimulus bill and other economic measures passed by the Democratic Congress in 2009 and 2010, and signed by President Obama, left the country better off than it would have otherwise been.  The impossibility of proving counterfactuals leaves this as a position that, though wildly improbable, is not necessarily false.  There might actually be some questioning from the media on this, but it will be largely in a helpful, share-with-our-viewers kind of way, with no significant challenges.
• Joe Biden's convention speech will be filled with the kind of blatant factual errors that the mainstream "fact checkers" tried - incorrectly - to portray Paul Ryan's speech as containing.  The "fact checkers" won't find anything worthy of comment.
• The storyline going in to the Convention is “Democrats dispirited, unenthusiastic.”  That sounds like the media actually sharing negativity about the Democrats, but that’s not the correct understanding.  (The Republicans are living up to the “stupid party” nickname by gathering and sharing these stories.)  The proper frame for understanding the “enthusiasm gap” stories appearing today is as background context for Friday’s “Democrats united and enthusiastic after great convention” stories. 

I can't believe how much racism I'm seeing...

...during the GOP convention. I'm seeing people on Facebook planning to leave the country rather than live under a government headed by "white people," and a cable news network that won't show speeches given by minorities...

MSNBC abandons GOP convention during every minority speech

In lieu of airing speeches from former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, a black American; Mia Love, a black candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah; and Texas senatorial hopeful Ted Cruz, a Latino American, MSNBC opted to show commentary anchored by Rachel Maddow from Rev. Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes and Steve Schmidt.

Throughout this convention, Matthews has accused the Republicans of playing dog-whistle racist politics while on scene in Tampa. It isn’t clear, however, if Matthews will hurl accusations of racism at Davis, Love or Cruz for speeches his network failed to broadcast.

Mia Love is a darling of the right-side of the blogosphere right now, and it's easy to see why.



Artur Davis' testimony was powerful.



One understands, of course, why MSNBC would censor the minorities out of their presentation. Showing them would confuse their viewers, who are repeatedly told how much the evil Republicans hate black people and hispanics...

Times Ombusdman: "Yeah, we're pretty much shills for the left..."

Like we didn't already know it.

Arthur Brisbane, in his last column as "public editor" (ombudsman) of the New York Times:

I also noted two years ago that I had taken up the public editor duties believing “there is no conspiracy” and that The Times’s output was too vast and complex to be dictated by any Wizard of Oz-like individual or cabal. I still believe that, but also see that the hive on Eighth Avenue is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds — a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within.

When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.

As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.

No conspiracy, though. Whew, that's a relief!


OK, this is not a revelation. I've said it before.

But there's another way that bias manifests itself, and we don't always notice it as clearly. That is selection bias, covering as news issues or events that really aren't, just because it can make one party (say, the Democrats) look good or one party (for example, the Republicans) look bad.

That's just the way it is. But it's nice of Mr. Brisbane to acknowledge it...

This is just a little thing...

... but it's so typical of the prevailing bias in the press. This example is from the Hill, a purportedly non-partisan site that covers Washington Politics.

Obama does not appear open to meeting with Cantor, Boehner before speech

The president's speech to Congress — originally planned for Wednesday night, before Boehner rebuffed Obama for trying to upstage a scheduled GOP primary debate — will be aggressive in trying to pressure Republicans to sign on to Obama's jobs plan, Carney said.

If it was "originally planned" for Wednesday, that plan was only on the part of the White House. They never asked for, nor received, permission from the House, half of one of the three co-equal branches of the government, for their plan. They solicited an invitation, and pouted and whined when it wasn't at exactly the time that they wanted it.

"the Left is having trouble enacting its agenda..."

George Will:

With metronomic regularity, we go through these moments in Washington where we complain about the government being broken. These moments have one thing in common: The Left is having trouble enacting its agenda. No one when George W. Bush had trouble reforming Social Security said, "Oh, that's terrible - the government's broken."

100% dead-on accurate.

Some thoughts on disaster relief logistics

The Associated Press addresses an important issue in the continuing response to the earthquake in Haiti.

More than a week after an earthquake leveled swaths of the Haitian capital, the recriminations are circulating faster than clean water. From CNN's Anderson Cooper to blogs and social networks, questions echo: Why is help taking so long? Why can't the relief process be streamlined? Can't this thing go any faster?

"What on Earth has gone wrong?" the Arab News, an English-language newspaper in the Middle East, wondered in a sharp editorial this week.

But take a step back. While the difficulties of negotiating the decimated Haitian infrastructure are clear and the logistical and administrative problems formidable, could a perception gap be at play, too? Are the expectations of the virtual world colliding with the realities of the physical one?

In the space of a single generation, ours has become a world of live video chats, one-click online ordering, overnight delivery, on-demand movies and instantaneous electronic fund transfers — including sending aid to Haiti via your cell phone. It becomes only natural, in such a society, to bristle at any delays.

Trouble is, the physical world can't move as fast as the virtual one and, barring the invention of a "Star Trek"-style transporter, probably never will. Unlike medicine and food and water, information no longer has to travel via plane and boat and road and foot. News can arrive immediately. But doing something about it? That's another thing entirely.

I don't disagree with any of that. I think it is correct and perceptive.

I thought so in September of 2005, too, though I seemed to be pretty much the only one:

. But there is a huge amount of bad faith mixed in with legitimate questions about FEMA's performance. People are assuming that things are possible without taking into account what has happened, the full scale and scope of the efforts that a) are needed and b) are underway. The logistics involved with the number of people, the amount of water, the size of the area, are all staggering. There are huge areas, hundreds of square miles, that cannot be reached by car, truck or boat. How long and how many helicopters would it take to evacuate 100,000 people from a 300 square mile area, people that are bunched in 10s and 20s? As I write this, it has been approximately 96 hours since Katrina hit the Gulf coast. What, realistically has not been done which should have been done?

And contrary to the "Bush doesn't care" nonsense, he actually declared disaster areas before the storm even arrived to expedite the federal response. FEMA's been there since before the storm arrived. The Navy is moving the hospital ship USNS Comfort to New Orleans. But it takes time to travel from Baltimore to New Orleans by sea. Likewise with all of the different units that the President outlined on Wednesday, 48 hours after the catastrophe. I know that the New York Times wants him to bite his lip and "feel your pain" but what he was doing instead was making sure that actual rescue efforts were taking place.

I understand that this is an instant gratification nation. We want what we want, and we want it now. But sometimes the real world gets in the way. The laws of physics prevent everything from happening at the same time, and prevent multiple vehicles from operating in the same space simultaneously. Everyone stranded in the middle of the flood knows that a helicopter could rescue them in the next hour, but again, how many helicopters are there? Pilots? How much area is there to search? It takes time. Time while crews open roads, while work crews remove downed power lines and trees, while flood waters recede. Has FEMA reacted appropriately and fast enough? Are there enough National Guard troops to do what needs to be done?

I have no idea. Neither do the people criticizing the relief efforts.

Among that group criticizing the relief efforts in the aftermath of Katrina was...the Associated Press.

One would love to think that a media organization made up of fine impartial journalists wouldn't cover similar stories differently just because of the party identification of the President of the United States at the time the story was taking place. But, of course, there's no reason whatsoever to think that the Associated Press actually is made up of fine impartial journalists...

(H/T: Mark D. Roberts)

Explaining away Republican victories...

Charles Krauthammer hits one of my pet peeves:

Every time the Republicans succeed, it's all about anger and irrationality. When you had the Gingrich revolution 16 years ago, it was called "the year of the angry white male" and Peter Jennings declared on the evening news that the country had thrown a tantrum — as if when conservatives win it can only be an expression of irrationality and emotionalism.

Of course, when Obama wins in '08, it's hope and change and peace and light and all the goodness in the American soul.

This is so true. And it's indicative of, and the result of, a pervasive media bias against Republicans. Media personalities consider Democratic victories as the way things ought to be, and Republican victories as aberrant results that need to be explained away.

Campaign Obama vs. President Obama

David Corn is the latest liberal to suggest that there's no problem with the Obama administration that "message discipline" can't fix. Jim Geraghty correctly identifies that as nonsense.

This past year has also seen a lot of controversial and unpopular policies and ideas that this president didn’t campaign on, because campaigning on them would have meant he would have gotten shellacked.

Ideas like giving Khalid Sheik Mohammad a civilian trial in New York City. Ideas like lowering the tax deduction for charitable contributions. Ensuring that bonuses for AIG employees are federally protected. An unlimited bailout for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Having the federal government take over GM. Bowing to foreign monarchs. Unannounced low-altitude flybys of lower Manhattan for a photo op. Ideas like loudly announcing that you’ll close Guantanamo Bay within one year, and then later announcing that you won’t make the deadline because it turns out there aren’t good alternatives.

Obama didn’t campaign on any of this, and if he had, he probably would have lost by a landslide.

Message? Message? The problem is not the message. The problem is the decisions of the messenger.

Exactly right. Obama's a radical leftist who ran as a moderate in an essentially conservative country. There's no amount of "message discipline" that can reconcile the reality of Obama with the illusion projected (and enhanced by the media) during the campaign.

If it doesn't make the NYT, is it news?

Nine stories that the mainstream press suppressed found non-newsworthy refused to didn't cover.

Prior to the internet, these stories would have been completely uncovered. Al Gore may yet have reason to regret that he "took the initiative in creating" the 'net...

Chairman Mao has a fan in the White House

White House communications director Anita Dunn, whose job seems to consist of attacking Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, back in June of this year reveals the people that she takes lessons from:



"...two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse Tung¹ and Mother Teresa"

If we had an unbiased, objective mainstream press in this country, if the New York Times and Washington Post and CBS News and CNN were what they purport to be, there are a thousand people in the Obama White House who wouldn't have a prayer of working in the White House. But no, they have to spend their time using bogus quotes to prevent Rush Limbaugh from buying into an NFL team instead of vetting White House employees. And even when this stuff does make it into the blogosphere and then onto Fox News, there still won't be anything, except maybe, like in the Van Jones case, a note about a resignation that none of their readers/viewers will have any context for understanding.

This administration is full of, if not anti-Americans, anti-capitalists who are against many of the things that have made America great. Starting with the guy at the top. Many are now realizing it, of course, and if there were to be another election this November, I don't believe he'd win. And I don't believe that Nancy Pelosi would be the house speaker again. But the amount of damage they've done thus far and the amount that could be done in the next year are sobering to contemplate.





¹ - You could never get away with saying "Adolph Hitler" in this context - even a liberal couldn't get away with it - but is there really a significant difference between the two?

Humorous "grade" for the President

Time Magazine with a LOL parody grade for the first 9 months of the Obama administration:

Barack Obama, PresidentGrade: A- [ha ha ha ha ha]
Instantly comfortable and highly skilled [ha ha ha] at the hardest job in the world — proving his supporters' contention that all the traits that made him a great candidate would serve him well in the White House [ha ha ha]: even temper, cool demeanor, boldness under pressure [ha ha ha], shrewd facility for managing personnel [ha ha ha ha ha], unfailing instincts about when to delegate and when to engage [ha ha ha ha ha ha ha]. A handful of public missteps (particularly on his international trips and on torture issues) and a failure to ameliorate the partisan divide are the only true blemishes so far [ha ha ha ha ha]. Has ably balanced the spectacle and the grindstone [ha ha ha ha ha] — allowing the public to feel an intimacy with his life and family, while retaining a formal distance as he handles business.

Excellent stuff here, as Mark Halperin demonstrates a deft comedy touch...

("What's that? What did you say? They're serious???? Are you sure?")

Uh, never mind.



This is the kind of thing that members of the mainstream press, no matter how much they love Obama, should avoid. There is no rational person who could objectively look at the first nine months of this administration and grade the President an A-. He's accomplished nothing except the explosion of the deficit, exacerbation of racial tensions, and partisan rhetoric, and the alienation of our international allies. He's been a disaster, and when they give a grade that's so obviously inflated, it's laughable, and just another blow to their credibility (not that there's much of that left)...