The Spencerian

The Birth of a Region: Tampa Bay Times and the Tampa Tribune

by Benjamin J. Kirby

Is the Tampa Bay Times going to by the Tampa Tribune?

Here's why I ask: turns out Berkshire Hathaway -- that's Warren Buffett's vaunted company -- bought up 63 newspapers from Media General today.

One Media General paper they didn't buy up?  The Tampa Tribune.

Now, I figure most folks wouldn't normally think that much about it, except that it's been pretty obvious -- starting with the name change -- that the former St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) is eyeing a move across the Bay.

And it's not just the name change.  

This tweet from Times political chief Adam Smith caught my eye:

  Adam Smith ‏@adamsmithtimes

Qstn for TpaBay: what does Tpa Trib do bettr thn TpaBayTimes? Where cn we improve? Email (asmith@tampabay.com), call 727-893-8241, or twt me

Really?  Since when is Adam Smith doing quality survey work for the Times?  Don't he and Al Ruechel have a candidate to interview? 

Anyway, to be fair, you'll want to read the piece from Eric Deggans (Times media critic) here.  Interesting that Paul Tash, the Times Chairman and CEO declined to comment on the purchase.  

Don't Let the Door... The Corpse of the Failed Media Slowly Becomes Seen

A lot of people ask me what is wrong with politics in America today.

[Aside: How many people actually ask me that?  It comes up more often than you'd think, I guess because I worked in Washington, in politics, and write this sort of sub-par blog.  In my view, this is the rough equivalent of a fifteen year-old boy publishing a diary about his emotions and general feelings of confusion, and then having someone ask him to diagnose serious, complicated mental disorders in broad swatches of the population.  There's no doubt most every fifteen year-old boy experiences a complex roller-coaster of confusing emotions, but that doesn't make him a sociologist or a head shrinker.]

I usually give one of two answers, or both, depending on where I think the person is coming from.

One centers around money in politics and campaigns.  I have yet to meet a reasonable thinking person of any political persuasion who thinks the way we fund political campaigns in this country is just hunky-dory.  It is a profoundly broken system and at some point someone is going to have to get serious about fixing it.  It will be an ugly job, but nothing less than the future of our country is at stake.

The other answer centers around our flat-lining media apparatus.  In many ways, this is a worse -- and more complicated -- problem than the money in politics issue.  Most folks know what to do about money in politics: limit it or take it out altogether.  And by "most folks," I mean everyone but the United States Supreme Court.

The point is, the problem of money in campaigns can be addressed by talking about money.  The problem with the media collapse is that you have to talk about people.  Money is money wherever you go, but people are different.

The role of the media and journalism in American society is not insignificant -- in fact, it is a critical piece of our democracy.  Somewhere along the way, we corporatized media outlets.  I don't know when this happened, I'm not an expert -- remember, fifteen year-old pimply teenager with issues -- but it definitely happened.  And as it has happened, the institution of journalism has gotten weaker.

This means the chief role of journalism and journalists -- that of watchdog -- in America has weakened.  A great example, if you need the proof, is that of Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone.  Taibbi is the only actual journalist I know who has called for -- and continually calls for -- the heads of the Wall Street crooks who drove the global economy into a very deep ditch (remember, I'm talking journalists, not bloggers -- bloggers offer something different, are something different; more on that in a moment). 

Why?  Why is the voice of the American conscience on the financial meltdown a guy who writes for a maganize that more likely has Lady Ga Ga and scenes from Bonaroo on the cover than anyone else?

There should have been a cacophony of editorials and columns and in-depth, Pulitzer-level articles on who did what, exactly, and who engaged in what criminal behavior when.  There should be a hundred thousand Matt Taibbis.  There are not.  [Note: I do know that there has been other good journalistic work on the issue of the financial meltdown; there has been not nearly enough, which is my point.]

Not for nothing, but I assign blame to the media with respect to institutional failures and lies leading up to the War in Iraq.  Journalism should also feed our national conscience, which with respect to the Iraq War and the profound lies told at the highest levels of government, it is apparently bankrupt. 

So this critical piece of America is quite possibly DOA.  Yes, bloggers have provided an important voice, but I don't consider blogging journalism.  This isn't a knock on bloggers -- many of whom do practice real journalism.  It's just that blogging and journalism are two different things.  Journalism is based on research and facts and interviews and often a painstaking process of fact-gathering.  Bloggging is just different (see: fifteen year-old). 

All of that to say this: For all the writing and sharing with the public journalists and media organizations are supposed to do, they've been pretty good at hiding the ugly parts of their demise. 

Slate has a great piece today on journalists who were fired or quit and... well, what they had to say about it.  Click the link.  Read it.  Digest it.  See what you think.  Draw your own conclusions. 

Hey, just like in journalism.  Now, let me tell you about my emotions...

RIP: David Broder

Pulitzer-prize winning columnist David Broder of the Washington Post died today.  He was 81.

I think Broder got kind of a bum rap from my fellow progressive writers and bloggers.  It's true, he had a phrase named after him -- "high broderism" -- and in fact, he deserved it.  But the thing about phrases like that is that they have a large element of truth. 

High broderism is more or less bipartisanship for the sake of bipartisanship.  Doesn't matter if one idea is actually better than the other -- all that matters is meeting halfway.  Compromise is king.  This thinking is the protective buffer around an insider-elite in Washington, D.C.  We D.C. beltway-types know better than you... if only you'd compromise...

It can drive you nuts, because it distracts from advocacy of really good ideas, no matter where they come from.

I spent a good deal of time in Washington, and I always had a pretty healthy mix of distaste for, and longing to be a part of the beltway elite.  You can't help it -- evil as they are, you want into that special club (and a guy like me was never, ever getting in -- at least not above board; maybe working the front desk taking tickets or checking coats or something...)

I kind of liked reading Broder.  I frequently disagreed with him, and when he was in "full broderism" mode, it drove me nuts.  But he was great, and there was rarely a time when I read something was wasn't left at least thinking.   

He and his family will be in our thoughts.

A New Resource in the Florida Redistricting Saga

If you're like me, you kind of fudged your way through Amendments 5 and 6 in the last election.  Oh, you knew they were important, and you checked out the very well done Fair Districts Florida website to learn all you could.  (Click here to read about Fair Districts Florida, why it's a good thing they were successful in having Amendments 5 and 6 pass, and find the link to the ballot language that passed).  For the record, here is the far less impressive Florida House Redistricting Committee website.  Sorry, guys.

I should have known a dude as ambitious as Peter Schorsch of Saint Petersblog would come up with a good website to track what's happening with redistricting here in Florida, and he has: Inside the Lines.

“Inside the Lines” offers the latest news, commentary and information on Florida’s reapportionment process, which is in the initial stage of a two-year process, culminating in the redrawing of the state’s Congressional and Legislative district boundaries.

Follow them on Twitter @insidethelines1.

Well, leave it to Peter to fill a vacuum.  I mean, come on: who else was doing this?  

The usual and increasingly less necessary Peter Schorsch caveats in a moment, but first let me say, I have no idea how the guy does it: he runs Saint Petersblog, of course, on which he's kindly and generously promoted this little blog a lot more than he's needed to; Battleground Tampa Bay, which I think sometimes focuses a bit much on the Tampa side of the bay, but that's me being picky -- it's really quite good; and now he's got this deal.  On top of all the other stuff I know he's got a lot going on with respect to politics and campaigns.  

You may have strong personal feelings about Peter -- everybody I've met that knows him sure does -- but you have to admit, the guy works pretty damn hard. 

I've said it before: Peter's got enemies.  In fact, his most recent back-and-forth with Irreverent View's Chris Ingram made the Michael Hussey/Kenneth Quinnell duel look like sunshine and lollipops at Disney.  

The apparent object of Mr. Ingram's ire is Michael Cifti, who is running for Tampa City Council.  Mr. Ingram has equated Mr. Cifti with, well, squirrel poop.  And I gather that Peter has Mr. Cifti as a client.  This has... displeased Mr. Ingram, per this post on Mr. Ingram's blog.  

This was a Twitter battle of epic proportions, with Mr. Ingram (@IrreverentView) doing some pretty heavy baiting of Peter (@SaintPetersblog) with respect to Peter's previous personal and legal issues.  I was disappointed that Peter resorted to violent language in the comments of Mr. Ingram's blog post ("Pray you don’t see me in an alley with no witnesses. Pray for that."  Poor form, Peter.)  But I was ultimately pleased that he "surrendered" (inasmuch as he was, well, too busy to keep going).  In fact, you have to give the decision to Peter on this one, if only because Mr. Ingram's dislike for Mr. Cifti makes him borderline irrational. 

What a distraction.  A delicious, hilarious, awesome distraction.  

Anyway, back on planet Earth, a lot of people will tell you that whatever it is the triumvirate of evil -- Haridoplos, Cannon, and Scott -- decided to merge, downsize, privatize, or cut will be the big news out of Tallahassee.  And it'll be big news, but it won't be the big news. 

The big news will be redistricting.  The budget cuts will hurt, and they'll get a lot of attention -- yes, including from me -- but this redistricting thing changes the face of Florida politics and government for a generation (and certainly has national ramifications as well).  Check out the new website, and we'll hopefully learn something together about this complex, but terribly important issue. 

Did the Debt Commission Have the Internet: Fun Graphics Sunday

You may or may not have noticed, but everybody's all riled up about the national debt.  The country currently owes -- in large part, China -- 10 trillion dollars. 

We liberals don't want to touch Social Security, the big national expenditure, and the conservatives don't want to raise taxes on wealthy fat cats or cut big spenders like the Defense Department, even though you've got to fill the hole with money from somewhere.  Once you get beyond this seeming impasse, it's tough to figure out what you might cut and where you might hold the line.

I'm going to give you all the fun links for today, but first let me just say that this is a weird debate to me, at least politically.  It should be a winner for Democrats, but once again we seem incompetent in the face of angry Republicans.  Why?  My liberal and progressive colleagues chalk it up to Obama trying to "compromise" from the center and only getting bullied by the GOP wingnuts eve worse.  I'm not so sure that's it. 

I think it's a fear of looking beyond Bush, which is to say, recognizing Clinton.

These charts -- good ones -- from the St. Petersburg Times show that Clinton inherited a $5 trillion dollars in debt from George H. W. Bush, and that's true.  But in his second term, he managed to balance the federal budget.  What happens when you don't spend more than you have?  You can start to pay of the princple, that's what.  Eventually, you'll get your debt down to zero.  That's a balanced national budget for you, courtesy a Democrat.

I'm not going to spend time picking on George W. Bush (so tempting).  But look back at the chart.  The debt -- what the country owed -- went from six or seven trillion to about ten trillion when Obama took office in '08, nearly double.  That's what two wars and tax cuts for the wealthy will give you (look at the line for federal receipts -- that's taxes, and you'll see it goes down).

Not for nothing, but I don't recall hearing the volume about the national debt when Bush was in office quite as loudly (or at all) as I do now that a Democrat is in office.

But here we are.  So what to do? 

Hey, you tell me.  Or better yet, tell the New York Times: Budget Puzzle.  Thank you, New York Times!  This is too much fun.

Go ahead and give it a try.  How'd you do?  I ended up filling the gap 75% by raising taxes, and 25% with cuts, but I'm a pinko liberal freakshow.  (The truth is, I didn't even do a bank tax, so it could've been worse.) 

Give it a shot.  See if you can get the debt to zero.  It requires hard choices whether you're a liberal or conservative. 

Maybe Obama should try this with the deficit commission sitting around the computer.  And then maybe he should make a phone call to a guy who has some experience on this front.  I'm sure he's got the number.

You may also want to check out Howard Troxler's very "everyman" column on the issue here.

Here are what our Tampa Bay area friends and neighbors have to say about it.

Here's the PolitiFact review of the deficit commission's report (and by the way, I am aware that former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles was a co-chairman of the commissioner -- maybe he should have called his old boss, too).

Special Comment: A Quick Word on the Suspension of Keith Olbermann

Update:  This, which you darn well better watch:

# # # #

I first heard the story that Politico broke about the suspension of MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann kind of in passing (I did mention it in my earlier post).  I had heard that the cable network suspended him because he made political donations to candidates for office, and that employees of MSNBC weren't supposed to do that.  You see, there is a grave imperative in keeping separate our necessarily apolitical sources of critical news reporting and the political realm of campai...

Ha ha ha!  Whew!  Even I can't finish that one with a straight face.  For reasons I believe to be depressingly ovbious.

Anyway, I thought to myself, that can't possibly be the whole story, right? 

I mean, I figured there had to be much more to it, some huge piece I was missing.  Something critical that was so beyond the pale that the network executives simply had no choice but to suspend the host of their leading show indefinitely without pay.  Something so egregious that his immediate dismissal until further notice was warranted, post haste.

You know, something horrible, disturbing, and awful.  Like, say, I don't know...  how about fucking an employee, killing her in his office, and leaving her body there to rot.

I actually walked around with that in my head for a little bit today.  I thought that awful thing, and then I kind of realized it wasn't really fair.

I mean, here I was, judging what Keith Olbermann did -- which was break an agreement he had with the network -- and comparing it to something totally awful and unrelated that another MSNBC host was accused of, apparently without basis.  Comparing the Keith Olbermann suspension to the Joe Scarborough dead-employee-in-the-office thing was totally unfair to Joe Scarborough. 

I mean, it's not like Joe -- or even that idiot Pat Buchanan -- did the same thing as Keith and got away with it.

Oops.

Look, in seriousness, this one is going to hurt MSNBC.  I don't even have MSNBC anymore in my cable line-up, haven't watched "Countdown" (except for online clips) in a long while, now.  But I know Keith's still a liberal/progressive icon, and the management at MSNBC has really stepped in it.  It's not going to be tough from the perspective of "Keith is a friend to liberals" -- it's going to be tough because they allowed a double-standard.  Joe Scarborough is as conservative as the day is long, and the honcho at MSNBC who I guess thought he could get away with this, Phil Griffin, apparently is, too.  Now conservatives can donate to their candidates, but liberals can't?  That's not going to hold water.  At all. 

Anyway, if you dislike a double-standard as much as I do, here's your Friday night call to action: sign the petition and get Olbermann back on the air.  And then get a bunch of your friends to sign it. 

Our national media is undergoing profound change, and it's not all for the best, I'm sorry to say.  But if we all keep vigilant, we might be able to help steer it in at least a less bad direction.  For all our sake, for the sake of our precious republic, we have no choice but to try. 

And with that, I wish you good night... and good luck.

Policy Passes the Crossroads: The Divergence Between Liberals and Conservatives Growns

Two editorial pieces in yesterday's New York Times got me thinking about the state of the policy differences between liberals and conservatives, the impact those differences are having on America, and how it may play out in the election of 2012. 

That's right, I've pretty much written off 2010.  Talking about policy and strategy now is like going back to re-work the line-up or the roster at the bottom of the ninth.  It's going back to the chalk-board to design a whole new play with just seconds on the clock.  It's trying to come up with a lame sports analogy on a heavy blog entry when your daughter is about to wake up from a nap.

First, check out the piece from Bob Herbert: Policy at Its Worst.  He's lamenting the failure of leaders -- mostly the Governor Christie of New Jersey -- to build an underground tunnel connecting Jersey to New York. 

We can go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and threaten to blow Iran off the face of the planet. We can conduct a nonstop campaign of drone and helicopter attacks in Pakistan and run a network of secret prisons around the world. We are the mightiest nation mankind has ever seen.

But we can’t seem to build a railroad tunnel to carry commuters between New Jersey and New York.

The United States is not just losing its capacity to do great things. It’s losing its soul. It’s speeding down an increasingly rubble-strewn path to a region where being second rate is good enough.  

He's right, of course. 

I have long lamented the opportunity lost in the oil spill, for example, small(ish) though it may be.  It was more than just a chance to hire cleanup crews, to engaged workers (though there are obviously some).  The same thing has held true for America's sorry, crumbling infrastructure.  This is all more than just a chance to hire people to go to work, as important, as desperately needed as that is.  It is, or it was, a chance to reinspire America. 

Mr. Herbert continues.  You can feel his frustration:

This is a railroad tunnel we’re talking about. We’re not trying to go to the Moon. This is not the Manhattan Project. It’s a railroad tunnel that’s needed to take people back and forth to work and to ease the pressure on the existing tunnel, a wilting two-track facility that’s about 100 years old. What is the matter with us?

The Chinese could build it. The Turks could build it. We can’t build it.

[snip]

We can’t put the population to work, or get the kids through college, or raise the living standards of the middle class and the poor. We can’t rebuild the infrastructure or curb our destructive overreliance on fossil fuels.

There have been many times when the U.S. has stunned the world with the breadth and greatness of its achievements — the Marshall Plan, the G.I. Bill, the world’s highest standard of living, the world’s finest higher education system, the space program, and on and on.

Somewhere, somehow, things went haywire. The nation that built the Erie Canal and Hoover Dam and the transcontinental railroad can’t even build a tunnel beneath the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York.

I guess infrastructure projects just aren't sexy.  

Anyway, this is all about whether or not Republicans (like Governor Christie) think building a tunnel which essentially makes almost everything better, literally, is a good idea or not.

Speaking of the other side, we have this from Jack Goldsmith, who worked in the Justice Department under George W. Bush.  His piece is about how we detain and ultimately what we do with terrorists we capture:

The Obama administration wants to show that federal courts can handle trials of Guantánamo Bay detainees, and had therefore placed high hopes in the prosecution of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, accused in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in East Africa. On Wednesday a federal judge, Lewis Kaplan of the United States District Court in Manhattan, made the government’s case much harder when he excluded the testimony of the government’s central witness because the government learned about the witness through interrogating Mr. Ghailani at a secret overseas prison run by the C.I.A.

Some, mostly liberals and civil libertarians, applauded the ruling, saying it showed that the rule of law is being restored. But many conservatives denounced it as proof that high-level terrorists cannot reliably be prosecuted in civilian courts and should instead be tried by military commissions.

The real lesson of the ruling, however, is that prosecution in either criminal court or a tribunal is the wrong approach. The administration should instead embrace what has been the main mechanism for terrorist incapacitation since 9/11: military detention without charge or trial.

I bolded that last bit.  Again -- this is in the New York Times, everybody, not the Onion.  This is one of the finest legal minds in the conservative spectrum, and kind of a big deal.  He teaches at Harvard Law.

And he is advocating simply capturing people and locking them up forever without a trial or even a charge.

You know, I hear a lot from a few friends and colleagues that, doggone it, they just can't tell the difference between those Democrats and the Republicans. 

Really?  Really?

Really?

Because whatever this Jack Goldsmith guy says, I'm against it.  Strongly.  And I hereby officially double-down on whatever Bob Herbert suggests.  This framework has been presented to us for the elections of 2010.  And people are going to kind of go the Jack Goldsmith route. 

The question of why is for after Election Day, for the post-mortems, for the Monday morning quarterbacking.

The question of how we make this picture even clearer, even more distinct, may answer itself before 2012. 

Despite what a lot of his progressive critics say, Obama has governed mostly from the "Bob Herbert" side.  With respect to how he's communicated with the base, it's mostly been, um, "Jack Goldsmith" (and some might argue a little more Jack Bauer).  I don't know what's on the agenda for the executive branch for the next two years.  There's certainly no guessing what the next tragic Deepwater Horizon scenario might be (ie, the unknown mess that will land on the president's desk). 

Whatever it is, if it is as divergent from the apparent Republican stance as you can imagine, 2012 may be a much better year than 2010.

They Go Hand in Hand: Books & Politics

I'm lucky enough to come from a family that really loves books.  I grew up reading all kinds of stuff -- Stephen King, Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, comic books, violent pulp novels, those crazy choose-your-own ending books.  And I loved -- and still love -- literature, too.  I have always liked Ernest Hemingway.  Remember reading Steinbeck in high school, and it stuck with me.  P.C. Wren wrote one of my all-time favorites, Beau Geste.  Ralph Ellison.  Conrad. 

I love reading Edgar Allan Poe around Halloween. 

Maya Angelou.  D.H. Lawrence.  Langston Hughes. 

Orwell. 

Melville.  Woolf.

Oh, yeah.  Shakespeare.

It wasn't really until I got to Washington, D.C. that I started reading a lot of non-fiction.  Still love it, though I mix it up pretty well with fiction.  For variety. 

Right now I'm in the middle of The Omnivore's Delimma, by Michael Pollan.  At this point in the book, I am fairly confident I am never buying food again.  If I thought I had the room or the talent, I'd grow everything from now on.  Seriously, read the book -- it's quite something.

But back to the political stuff: I came across this great set of book club recommendations.  Actually, Flashlight Worthy Books is a great site generally (and you can follow them on Twitter @flwbooks). 

Take some time and check out the Politics & Current Affairs section.  I was depressed at how many of the books I hadn't read... and then I remembered: I love books.  My Christmas wish list is already set! 

Look, any list (Must-Reads From the Panelists of Flaming Politics) that includes Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World A.) knows a lot about politics, and B.) is my kind of book list.

But FLW Books is not relegated to the political, of course.  There is a book list for Biography & Memoir, one category of which is Memoirs of Our Presidential Candidates.

It's a long story and you don't care, but I've pretty much had to give up drinking.  But for my friends who like to hit the sauce, there's Nine Booze-Soaked Books (of which I have read a dismal four: Big Sur; Tortilla Flat; Tender is the Night; John Barleycorn).  Anyone who has spent five seconds in politics knows that drinking and politicking go together like reading and... well... writing, I guess.  Something like that, anyway.    

I spend a lot of time on this blog smarmily congratulating myself on my time in the Clinton Administration and other political adventures.  But one thing I don't talk about -- ever -- is my writing life, such as it is.  Or such as I want it to be. 

I have finished a novel-length work (even I don't have the chutzpah to call it a "book") of fiction that is essentially a love story set against the backdrop of a war in the violent criminal underworld.  I'm looking for an agent.  I have begun re-writing a second work of similar length.  I've had small pieces of fiction and non-fiction published in some relatively small journals. 

I enjoy writing.  I enjoy the process, and I am enjoying learning about how the agenting and publishing world works (there is a lot to learn). 

Anyway, I found the Writing list to be a treasure trove.  It's the other half of my Christmas list.

So if you belong to a book club -- whether or not it's political -- please check out these book club recommendations.  Thanks to Flashlight Worthy Books, I bet you'll find something you like.

Veepstakes and the Lowest Drawer

I read Jack Germond's "Fat Man in a Middle Seat" when it came out in, I think, 1999 or so.  I still consider it a must-read, and recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in politics and news. 

One of the things about it is, it makes you want to reach for your best scotch glass and a bottle of the good stuff.  I don't really drink much scotch anymore (or really anything for that matter) so when I think about that book now I just salivate a lot and ask people if they smell peat. 

The reason for the Pavlovian response is because it's kind of a old-school tale of reporters who covered politics.  This was back when everyone in the news business drank.  A lot.  And they drank even more on the campaign trail.  It kind of romanticizes the whole business of covering politics and campaigns, all through the liquid-brownish hue of a scotch glass with a double pour.  It's funny: can you imagine sitting across from Obama, Rahm, and Gibbs on the campaign plane and pulling out a bottle of Black & White today?

Anyway, I just finished the case by Tunku Varadarajan of why Obama should shuffle of Joe Biden and make Secretary of State Hillary Clinton his running mate in 2012 over at the Daily Beast.  All I can reasonably conclude is that the tradition of drinking heavily in the newsroom is alive and well.

2012 is still two years away—a veritable lifetime in American, or any other, politics. But that shouldn’t stop us from talking, or even fantasizing, about the next presidential election. After all, what else is there to lick our lips over these days—Linda McMahon? Michaele Salahi? Mad Men?

Maybe a that fifth of gin you got stored in the lower desk drawer? 

It goes downhill from there.  In fact, Tunku is barely coherent, sloshing around from barely discernible point to head-scratching point. 

Obama first. Whatever his failings as a reformer and a president, and however much of a beating he takes in the midterms later this year, there is absolutely no way that this racially peerless president will not offer himself to the nation for a second term. And why should he not? Carter did. And Carter was but the first peanut farmer to be president.

So, the guy who reformed health care and gave us the most comprehensive Wall Street reforms since the 30s is a reform failure already, and will be seen as such in 2012. 

Well.  Maybe we can agree that's just a touch of a leap.  And to boldly predict that he will run again in 2010!  Way to risk it all, Tunku. 

And he should run again... because... wait for it... Jimmy Carter did.  I will bet anyone a bottle of Grey Goose vodka that he felt good about this sentence: "And Carter was but the first peanut farmer to be president."  Don't hold your breath for the Pulitzer folks, Tunku.

It gets better.  He decides to pick on Joe Biden, the Vice President, as though he were some feeble old man.

Biden: Dear old Biden. Let us not be naïve. Obama needed him. Obama, the first serious black candidate for the White House, needed someone reassuringly all-American to run with him. It was a question of political aesthetics. Biden, with his hard-Scranton childhood, was the perfect foil to Obama’s unprecedented blackness-on-the-brink-of-power. He continues to be so in ways big and small:

The editors at the Daily Beast must not be drinking, lest they'd have called it "Where the white women at!"

For the record, I do agree with him that Secretary Clinton has done a great job as Secretary of State.  I don't understand this recent fascination with the idea that because she's doing such a great job, she should get Biden's job.  It just doesn't work that way.

Tunku's thesis, as you'll see, is simple.  Apparently Obama needs to exile Joe Biden, who is obviously some sort of child molesting war criminal who long ago served some vague purpose we no longer care about, to that revolting hell-hole, Scranton, where he will spend his days guest-starring on the Steve Carrell-less The Office.  ("It's a big fucking deal!" could be his tag-line.)

This is a depressing piece.  He can't even get his arms around what he's trying to say in the closing.

In sum, 2012 is going to be a bruising, battling presidential election: Barack Obama is going to need Hillary more than he needs Biden. He’s going to need Hillary, also, because he needs Bill. The vice president’s job is Hillary’s for the asking—and, if the Republicans aren’t careful, the taking.

Wait, you just throw that in the second-to-last sentence.  He needs Hillary (and by the way, it's Secretary of State Clinton, you jackass), because he needs "Bill" (President Clinton; getting hammered really does knock down boundaries...).  Why wouldn't he have "Bill", anyway, Tunku?  Didn't even broach that thought, did you? 

If the Republican's aren't careful, Hillary will take the VP job?  Wait.  Is this drunk logic, or just poor writing?  Is he saying that Obama/Clinton is such a winning ticket, the GOP can't win?  Or...

Hell, I don't know.  I don't make just a ton of predictions here, and especially not about 2012.  I'm not even ready to make any solid predictions about 2010 yet.  I will say this: the 2012 ticket for Democrats will be Barack Obama and Joe Biden.  Such a bold gamble!  And would you believe I'm stone sober?

The Rich Stay Healthy, The Sick Stay Poor

I'm not an economist, but this bit from former Treasury Secretaries Paul O'Neill (of the W. Administration) and Robert Rubin (of the Clinton Administration) seems to be pretty awful: more stimulus isn't the answer, they say.

Rubin, who served under Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the U.S. is “going to have slow and bumpy growth,” during a taped interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” aired today. A “major second stimulus” might create more uncertainty and undermine confidence, he said.

Wait, how might that "create more uncertainty"?  How might it "undermine confidence"?  Who would be uncertain?  Whose confidence undermined? 

You know the answer, right?  The answer is: rich people like him.  Both Rubin and O'Neill tip their hand in the next paragraph: 

Companies concerned about demand won’t expand facilities or hire new employees until sales have improved, said O’Neill, who was Treasury secretary under Republican President George W. Bush. “We are moving forward at a pretty gradual pace,” he said. “But I don’t think things are terrible.”

Well, Paul.  First of all, like I said before, I ain't no economist, but don't you think folks ought to have a little money before they can friggin' spend it?  Hey, you're the economic genius, the guy at the top of his game, the former Treasury Secretary, former CEO.  You show me how that works: a guy who is unemployed, who is not getting a paycheck, who has no money in his bank account, you show me how that guy "improves sales" by spending money he does not have.

"But I don’t think things are terrible."  Robert Rubin, you are a terrible person.  No, I don't guess for a guy that's worth many, many tens of millions of dollars "things are terrible."

No, instead of offering a construct for a practical solution which would, you know, help people, O'Neill and Rubin offer a construct for a practical solution to help, you know, themselves.  Tax reform.  Which is a sort of code for "I pay the lowest percentage tax rate in the history of this country, so don't let my tax cuts expire."

The recovery is working, but it is slow.  On that much I can agree with the former Secretaries.  According to Recovery.gov, Florida, for example, has added around 40,000 jobs.  It's good, but it's not enough.

At the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute, they are advocating for income and job boosters.  You know, to give people money O'Neill so desperately wants them to spend.  And we need to do it now:

By the last quarter of 2010, the Recovery Act will no longer provide a boost to growth. What will emerge to take up the slack of fading Recovery Act spending is a troubling open question about the economy going forward. It would be wise for policymakers to provide more fiscal support to the economy, and soon.

What's that?  Sixteen states have double-digit unemployment? 

Well, can't you see?  That's it!  All those unemployed people now have more time to go shopping!  The economy should be rumbling along any time now!

Look, I realize that O'Neill and Rubin and really big-time, super-important people, and they're on big talk shows like GPS and Bloomberg is writing about what they say.  But I must point out that they're not making a lick of sense.  I'm not so sure the emperors have any clothes.  And it's kind of hard to watch.

Instead, while the economic indexes stay essentially flat-lined (which go hand-in-hand with the economic confidence numbers), Bob Rubin and Paul O'Neill will continue their public plea to save their own portfolios. 

RIP: Daniel Schorr

Daniel Schorr, the long serving news analyst for NPR, died today.  He was 93.

Schorr, who once described himself as a "living history book," passed away Friday morning at a Washington hospital. He was able to bring to contemporary news commentary a deep sense of how governmental institutions and players operate, as well as the perspective gained from decades of watching history upfront.

I am sorry to his family -- and to his extended family at National Public Radio -- for their loss.  I hope they can all take some comfort in the fact that he spent a long, good life doing what he loved to do right up until the very last -- I believe I heard him on the radio just a few days ago.  May we all do what we love until we're in our 90s. 

He and his family are in our thoughts.

The Looney Tiger Runs Free: Despite the Significant Accomplishments of this Post, it is Clearly a Big Disappointment

Thank you to Roger Simon at Politico for highlighting what is now one of my new all-time favorite lines ever written in a political analysis piece, and hell, maybe ever:

The Nation, wrote recently: “Few progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment.”

I admit, I did not read the remaining 17,000 words of the article — I am saving it for my next coma — and that is because I had trouble grappling with the phrase “significant accomplishments notwithstanding.” If you toss significant accomplishments out the window, how would Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln or George Washington do by that standard?

Aren’t significant accomplishments what presidents are supposed to accomplish? And isn’t it more than a little unfair to toss those accomplishments aside and then judge those presidents?

Bold is mine.

Oh, man.  I literally cannot wait for Katrina Vanden Heuvel to send me an email asking me to financially support the Nation (which I actually like pretty well, but woah, hey).

It gets better. 

The Republicans are riding the tiger. It is the tea party tiger, and to a large extent, it is a tiger of anger, intolerance and a fair amount of looniness. (Just 41 percent of tea partiers believe President Barack Obama was born in the United States.)

If you are not 100% enraptured by the very concept of Riding the Looney Tiger, then you my not have a soul.  It is my new phrase -- and not just for tea baggers.  I'm going to apply it to anyone I think is actually disconnected from reality enough to write phrases like "significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment." 

Run, tiger, run!

(via John @ Balloon-Juice)

The Setup for a Pollster Cage Match?

I was going to do a quick post on the number of kooky ads this time around (have you seen the machine gun lady?  At this pace, I'm predicting a candidate for office will actually shoot another person in one of their ads), but this is too good.

John Zogby, the head honcho of Zogby International Polling, has an open letter to Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight on the Huffingtonpost.  I'm not so sure Mr. Zogby knows who in the hell he's talking to:

You are hot right now - using an aggregate of other people's work, you got 49 of 50 states right in 2008. I know how it is to feel exhilarated. I get the states right a lot too.

If I were Nate, I'd take pretty much take a gigantic grain of salt along with any advice from a guy who starts his bio with this quote: "All hail Zogby, the maverick predictor who beat us all."  Jesus. 

Nate actually has what I find to be a very polite response over at Five Thirty Eight.

One of the things I really like about Five Thirty Eight is they don't spend a lot of time analyzing what they got wrong and what they got right.  It's just about aggregation and analysis. 

Boy, you have to wonder what prompted Zogby to write that.

Sellout John Feehery's Florida Connection

File this one under "stuff I did not know."  I just didn't do my homework -- and I'm a guy who usually does his homework.  At least on stuff like this.

Well, as you know if you read this blog, I've had a few posts on a GOP truth-twister and commenter-on-random-(mine)-blogs, Mr. John Feehery! (In chronological order: here, here, and here; see my comment on his post basically begging for a job at his GOP think tank, and his response here). 

There's some news -- and a fascinating Florida connection  I didn't know about -- regarding Mr. Feehery.  First, it looks like he's going to be one of the PR flaks for BP. 

Congratulations on the new gig, John!  Of course, having worked for the criminal Tom Delay as well as illegal bill passer Denny Hastert, you know what it's like to work for morally bankrupt, soulless pricks.  You'll fit right in with the yacht-racing douches at BP.

So here's one piece of advice from a media/PR guy to another: tell the BP brass to start hitting the beaches themselves.  They -- including that insufferable ass Tony Hayward -- ought to go on a walking tour from the keys all the way to Plaquemines Parish.  Walk the entire goddam thing.  Apologize to every business -- every restaurant, every kayak rental shop, every t-shirt vendor, every soda stand, every crab shack -- and hand out checks along the way.  Walk it, don't drive it.  Do it all day, five days a week.  Let the media come if they want. 

Just an idea.
 
Okay, now for that Florida connection I mentioned: turns out Mrs. John Feehery -- that's Kerry Feehery -- is the chief of staff to seat-warmer Senator George LeMieux of Florida.  Who knew!  Well, not me, I'm embarrassed to say. 

Politico did one of their "Off the Clock" pieces with Kerry.  Can't find the video on the Politico site, but John has it on his, here. 

Let me say, John and Kerry, my harsh words for your politics aside: you have a lovely home, and seeing the piece on Kerry made me miss D.C. -- and most especially Eastern Market -- a great deal.

If you're ever traveling to D.C., loyal reader, let me encourage you to take a trip to Eastern Market.  You won't regret it.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to seeing you and the BP boys walk up through St. Pete Beach.  Now that I know you have a Florida connection, I'm sure I can count on seeing you!  My offer of a beer at Peg's still stands.

Opposites Attract: Stanley's Woodshed Moment & Mike Sells the Just Folks B.S. Once More

Couple of big profiles out there you want to check out, for sure.  Both of them are well worth your time.

First, let's click over to Rolling Stone and read Michael Hasting's piece on Afghanistan War head honcho General Stanley McChrystal. 

I've got to tell you -- McChrystal sounds like he's had one hell of a career.  Just amazing, really.  Even more impressive are the public relations fiascoes from which he has managed to extricate himself, including the horrifying Pat Tillman friendly-fire disaster.  He was also the guy who managed to put President Obama in a box when they were working on Afghanistan strategy by leaking his preferred method of moving forward before the president was ready to sign off on something.  Anyone else preempts the boss, and they're fired.  Not this guy.  Interestingly, the article almost goes out of its way to say how media unsavvy McChrystal is given his experience in Special Operations and some of the more secretive stuff in the military.  I don't know -- I'd say if the guy doesn't know how to manage his image very well, then he damn sure knows how to survive (and that being said, the first casualty of this piece was one of his civilian PR flaks).

There are some very frank -- and very offensive -- quotes in the piece which would seem to support that notion of media naivete on the part of McChrystal and his team.  Take this pretty offensive exchange, at the start, in which McChrystal is preparing to leave his aides in his hotel room and go to a high-level dinner in Paris to shore up support for the war effort:

"I'd rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner," McChrystal says.

He pauses a beat.

"Unfortunately," he adds, "no one in this room could do it."

With that, he's out the door.

"Who's he going to dinner with?" I ask one of his aides.

"Some French minister," the aide tells me. "It's fucking gay."

Just a short paragraph or so later, the aides are preparing the general for a press conference.  They proceed to denigrate Vice President Joe Biden:

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. "I never know what's going to pop out until I'm up there, that's the problem," he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.

"Are you asking about Vice President Biden?" McChrystal says with a laugh. "Who's that?"

"Biden?" suggests a top adviser. "Did you say: Bite Me?"

The drumbeats for McChrystal's resignation are loud and getting louder: DailyKos diarists here and here with a link to the Uniform Code of Military Justice; Politico reports on big Democrats here; The Atlantic's James Fallows here; Democracy Arsenal here; memeorandum here; James Hoge at the Daily Beast here; Vote Vets Jon Soltz here, and Robert Greenwald here, both at Huffingtonpost; John Cole here, in his own way.)  

I echo some of John's frustration, by the way.  It stinks that everyone says the president "has" to fire McChrystal.  Yes, it's in military law: you can be insubordinate.  But it's up to the president to interpret that law.  He is the Commander in Chief, after all. 

Here's one idea for McChrystal instead of just firing the guy.  How about a demotion and an assignment in some shitty part of the world?  Seriously.  Think about it.  What's he got, four stars?  Take away two or three and send him to oversee some airport hangar or training facility in Alaska or on some sunburned patch of sand in the Pacific. 

In fact, I have a hard time thinking of anything that would teach the general about public affairs better than that.  The president can say he's keeping a guy on board -- he's not firing him -- who is tough and who the conservatives love, apparently.  But he's getting a clear problem out of the way.  Oh, and he's sticking it to a real jackass.  

Another profile you're going to want to read is Ariel Levy's New Yorker piece on Mike Huckabee.

I'll admit to being a little disappointed in this piece.  I think it's pretty clear Levy bought in to the entire "Huckabee" persona he has built for himself.  He's an outsider!  He's religious, but not doctrinaire!  He's just folks!  

Bullcrap.  He's a brutal archconservative who is one of the nastiest campaigners I've ever seen.  He has no sympathy for gay people -- I wrote yesterday about his callous, horrible, nasty remarks regarding gay marriage.  He claims to have a love of the poor, but with the exception of saying he prays for poor people, I've yet to see any evidence of it.  Instead, he employs a trick with reporters by putting on his "everyman" persona.  He plays bass in a corny band.  His wife eats jalapeno poppers.  He employs corny but catchy phrases ("It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!").  Never mind how hurtful, how awful.  

Of course, if you're a convict (and future cop killer), a rapist, a murderer, he has no problem springing you from prison -- just so long as you've declared your love for Jesus.  I was shocked that Levy let the Wayne Dumond thing go.  She gave barely more than a passing mention to cop killer Maurice Clemmons, whom Huckabee freed when he was Arkansas Governor.  

It's more than just personality flaws with Huckabee, too.  The guy wants to do away with the IRS and institute a flat tax.  This is totally insane.  

Levy does catch him in a couple of different paradoxes.

When Wolf Blitzer pushed Huckabee to say whether he believed in evolution, at a debate in New Hampshire in June of 2007, Huckabee expressed exasperation that the question “would even be asked of somebody running for President—I’m not planning on writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book.” He said that the question was unfair, because it “asked us in a simplistic manner whether or not we believed, in my view, whether there’s a God or not.”

As President, though, he would appoint the Secretary of Education. And it is difficult to comprehend what is unfair about the question when he has written, “Everything you do and believe in is directed by your answer to the ultimate question: Is there a God? It all comes down to that single issue.” According to Huckabee, a person who believes God created man has a world view that is “absolutely irreconcilable” with that of someone who believes man created God. And “either by numbers or persuasion, one side of this polarized culture will defeat the other in setting public policy.” This is the defining paradox of Huckabee: his adamant resistance to being branded a zealot paired with his insistence that faith defines character and, consequently, has an essential place in government.

I will say once again what I have been saying almost since I started this blog: Mike Huckabee is unfit to be president.  Where General McChrystal may (or may not?) have fallen down with respect to being media savvy, Mike Huckabee has that skill in spades.  It's how he's managed to get as far as he has for as long as he has.  It's no mistake he has a show on FOX.  

I'm not sure he'll run in 2012.  I think he's still sizing up the opposition.  Either way, I'll plead once again, America: don't let this man become president.