Reality-Based Chat. Speak! Showing 651-700 of 1,199

[Mark]

Dan wrote: " If you are trying to argue, or debate, with gun nuts, forget it..."

Dan, I always try to abide by Schiller's exhortation: "Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain." Lacking delusions of divinity, I figure my odds would be even less good, so I generally decline to ply cretins with syllogistic demonstrations of my correctness... even when they're not packing nukes. This obsession with guns seems to be a peculiarly American sexual fetishization of instruments of death, but I really don't want to engage in a forensic contest with anyone thus afflicted.

I likewise try to avoid prodding deranged hyenas suffering from hydrophobia, but I think the odds of prevailing in that sort of contest might actually be slightly better (though it might require a series of injections in the aftermath). :)

I think that the existence of the automatically discrediting term, "paranoid," has been phenomenally convenient for the perpetrators of actual atrocities and conspiracies (and one would have actually to be severely delusional to believe that the government has never engaged in black ops or appallng behavior worthy of prosecution at The Hague)... but where "paranoid" gun nuts are concerned, I am inclined to believe that nearly all of them are precisely that: nuts. There do exist people in this world who have real and actual enemies and might want to protect themselves... and to that limited extent, I could understand someone's desire to own one gun. I personally never would, since I'm a very convicted pacifist and couldn't shoot anyone, even in self-defense, but I don't think it's necessarily irrational to own one weapon. To own a whole armamentarium, though, and live with the obsessive fear that the government is going to take away your mobile rocket launchers. and react to that prospective loss of manhoo... er, I mean weapons, by accumulating yet more of them, does seem to me insane. Do these gun nuts fail to realize that if the government actually did want to take them out, they'd be able to do it in five minutes flat, no matter how well-armed the target? In any case, as far as I can discern, politicians munificently rewarded by the NRA would have zero interest in discouraging the purchase of gun manufacturers' products by molesting obsessive gun buyers in any manner whatsoever. They really have nothing to worry about.

Ah, well, I won't try to argue with them, either. Segueing from Schiller to Mark Twain: "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time... and it annoys the pig." :)

[Wandaviolett]

To Mark Nr. 670 The Book of Stupid: Its funny!

[Wandaviolett]

"I do think it's interesting that Krishna is learning more about American history, especially America's relation to the world, than our students learn. And unless we are linguists like Mark or world travelers, we also know fewer languages than supposedly less well-educated people in other countries do. I guess that's because we are the superpower, so they have to learn about us and learn our language while we can be happily provincial".

Yes. These less well-educated people think so. ;-)

[Barbara]

Krishna, there is a History Lovers group on Goodreads that would be a more appropriate forum for your more history related questions. While history and politics are related, this group is focused on the questions of current liberal politics.

[Gail]

Barbara wrote: "Anyway. Kansas GOP Senator wants to criminalize "harmful" books."

Yes, there are some right-wing nut jobs who are going after teachers in all kinds of ways (legislators, who are also provoked by extremely conservative parents). Education here is under siege. Period. I know a fair number of retired teachers who are fighting like crazy and so far, losing.

The legislature has created deep fear among teachers here. I work with an environmental organization who has sued the state, is very active in lobbying, etc. and you cannot get into a school to discuss environmental issues because the teachers fear they will be fired. Remember, this is a state that made it illegal to discuss evolution some years ago. There are systems in place to monitor social media so that teachers/professors can be censored and all of that has created a milieu in which bullying teachers and making them deeply afraid of what they say, rules the day.

I don't know the specific details of this new assault. It just popped up in my FB feed the last couple of days. Honestly, I just can't face it all some days because there is so little hope of changing it. We thought that a desire to protect and improve education would help us elect a new Governor and Secretary or State. Didn't happen. The current crazy nutcase won handily. The state is going broke and rapidly defunding schools. It is a terrible situation here.

To top it off, my state representative is a devoted Tea Party member, home schools her kids, and pretty much opposes public education. When I write her, she won't even send a standard reply. She just ignores us completely.

And you think Texas is bad??

[Mark]

Wandaviolett wrote: "To Mark Nr. 670 The Book of Stupid: Its funny!"

Thanks, Wandaviolett! Welcome to LibPol! We're delighted to have your active participation in the chat thread! I see you're currently in Potsdam, so I'll add, "Wilkommen!" (Judging from your shelves, I'd have thought you probably just an American residing there, but judging from your hilariously -- and appropriately -- snarky comment about all us ostensibly "besser ausgebildet" Americans *snort*, I'm wondering... :))

[Mark]

Gail wrote: "Barbara wrote: "Anyway. Kansas GOP Senator wants to criminalize "harmful" books."

Yes, there are some right-wing nut jobs who are going after teachers in all kinds of ways (legislators, who are a..."

Thanks for your graphic, on-the-ground depiction of the dystopian landscape in your own neck of hell, Barbara. Texas is bad, but it seems to have been a "mad rush to the bottom" in all the "Gilead" states, and you may be right that Kansas has got there first.

Do you mean that it is actually illegal to discuss evolution in Kansas, such that if I went there and mentioned evolution to a hotel desk clerk, I could be arrested and criminally prosecuted? Or that it's illegal for anyone who is a teacher employed by the public school system to discuss it? And that teachers could be criminally prosecuted for using the word, "Darwin?" Or would they just be automatically fired? Any of these possibilities would seem to be so flagrantly and horrifically in violation of the First Amendment, that I'd think it would have gone to the Supreme Court by now. (Of course, it very well may have: the five Federalist Society sock puppets would have winked and smirked and bestowed a pontifical blessing on the State of Kansas, adjuring it to "go forth and suffer no teacher to live, unless it be an ignorant nutcase." I sustain no delusion whatever that the Constitution hasn't been entirely shredded and the tiny shreds ritually spat upon, but I'd think the ACLU would still have gone through the pointless motions, anyway.) I imagine the State could make the (deranged and evil) argument that they may "fire for cause" any teacher deemed "morally unfit" (and apply the requisite sick and evil criteria for establishing the latter), and I'd bet that any conservative court, including SCOTUS, would sustain that, but can teachers actually be jailed? Are they actually enforcing other insane, retrograde and evil, Levitican "moral" laws? "Sodomy" laws, for example? Or laws against adultery? (I'm 100% certain that Kansan legislators would never enforce the latter, but it seems as though the phrase, "we're not in Kansas, anymore," should now be viewed by any sane person as an expression of blessed relief.)

Honestly, I'm far past the ne plus ultra threshold on the dimension of depression, myself, but you have evoked horrors that even I was not imagining. Truthfully, I'm increasingly moved by Thompson's argument: all women, minorities and educated people ought to make a mass exodus from the Gilead states, and then let them form their own troglodyte republic and rot in it. (How they'll reproduce, absent women, is somewhat unclear. I rather hope they won't, but I suppose they could resort to cloning, if all the scientists capable of doing that hadn't already fled, and also if their demented beliefs wouldn't preclude the recognition that genes exist.)

Anyway, I'm sorry for all your political afflictions, but unless someone draws a line, I'm afraid that Kansas and Texas are going to become models for the nation after the 2016 election.

[Darlene]

Gail, I followed the Kansas governor's race with great interest. The polls that I saw leading right up to election day showed Brownback behind consistently. I have to say that I was quite surprised to see that he ended up winning after all. I'm not surprised about what he has done to education in your state and from what I've read, he has been a disaster for your state's economy. Was it a matter of low voter turnout which put him in office for another term? I feel for the citizens of your state!! In Pennsylvania, luckily we cut the albatross loose from around our necks… Tom Corbett!!!:)

[Mary]

Since I haven't taught literature in a few years, I forgot that the gun is a phallic symbol, probably the most potent phallic symbol. I should reread Wright's short story "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" before I debate more gun nuts. But I have an agenda when I engage in these seemingly useless debates. I always make the point that we should be more concerned about the wrong people having guns than about the wrong people voting. It's probably easier for a felon to get a gun than to vote in some states. I also point out that the gun lobby folks care more about making money than they do about saving lives.

Besides the various discriminatory -isms (racism, sexism, classism), the roots of all evil in America are anti-intellectualism, which leads to willful ignorance, and materialism. I love the argument that the way to prevent crime is to arm the "good guys." Hello, the cops are supposed to be the good guys, and how many unarmed folks have they killed lately? Do we really want elementary school teachers carrying guns?

My spirits lifted today, however, when I heard a materialistic top 1 percenter, the head of Goldman Sachs, sounding like a socialist on CNN. He said that economic inequality, the big income gap, could destabilize the economy. He was arguing for investing in education and housing; Bill Maher has made the point that the middle class was created by what conservatives call socialism. I know that my parents were able to buy a house in Kentucky because my father was a veteran. And when we were living in Evanston, my mother took high school classes at night to move from being a maid to office work. Let's hope these business types were spooked by what happened in 2008 and are going to try the Democratic way. Apparently, this guy has praised Hillary.

And that brings me back to reality and fear. Do we have a CPAC-like conference? I remember the candidates talking to the internet folks in 2008, and I know Tavis Smiley organized a debate as did the Latinos, but do we have a liberal version of what happened with the Republicans this week? I'm worried and disgusted by the media's determination to give the Democratic nomination to Hillary, who even my 87-year-old-but-looks-70 mother points out is looking old and tired. Why can't the M&M's, Mallory and O'Malley, get any attention? They can't be any less charismatic than Walker and Jeb Bush. Why aren't there stories about the dark horses? I'm sick of the media picking our leaders. They helped anoint Obama last time, and that worked out for me (although like Gail and others I was initially skeptical), but I want to have some say in who gets the nomination this time. I assume Bernie will run, but he's just going to help pull our candidate to the left. We need a viable, youthful alternative to Hillary, and the media seems determined to keep that from happening.

[Mark]

Krishna wrote: "Oh, OK I didn't know that this is only for current politics. Sorry."

Not a problem, Krishna. You are still extremely welcome here, and I hope you will continue to contribute posts on contemporary liberal politics. Your posts on educational practices in your country and the US stimulated considerable discussion, and were exceedingly helpful.

[Paul]

Mary said, "We need a viable, youthful alternative to Hillary."

I agree, but there's really not anyone who fits that bill in the Democratic Party right now. O'Malley couldn't even win reelection as governor of one of the most liberal states in the country. He's not the answer. Malloy can't seem to get more than 50.5 percent of the vote in another very liberal state.

I think Hillary is the best option the Democrats have, and that to the extent that figures like Sanders and Warren (and Obama, who has the power of his pulpit to bring certain agenda items to the fore) pull her to the left.

The way I look at it, it's not about how far to the left we can get a particular nominee; it's which nominee has a better chance at moving the center of the discussion to the left. A liberal firebrand who gets demolished in the general election does not move the national conversation to the left; he might even move it to the right by virtue of the perceived repudiation of liberalism he would represent.

The cards are stacked against Democrats retaining the White House for a third term in a row. Warren and Sanders and other liberal presidential hopefuls may perform their best service by helping Clinton see how best to include their concerns in a center-left package.

Not ideal, I know, but at some point we have to acknowledge the electoral realities, which are that the voters tend to support conservative politicians while desiring liberal policies, then get mad at the liberal politicians.

[Darlene]

Paul, I think you summed up perfectly what I have been struggling to find the words to say!! I believe I saw a poll recently in which a majority of people (or perhaps 'plurality' would be a better word) describe themselves as conservative. I think the country has been considered 'center right' for quite some time. But I also think that once again there seems to be a contradiction or disconnect as people DO like policies which are championed by liberals. As I believe I have mentioned before, people seem to equate liberalism with socialism and unfortunately socialism is a bad word in this country!!

I also agree that normally the cards would be stacked against the Democrats winning the White House but as I continue to see the three ring circus that is the Republican Party, I can't help but feel hopeful that perhaps it won't prove to be as difficult as it would normally be!! Of course, I am continually reminding myself not to celebrate too soon… anything could happen!! :)

[Paul]

Darlene, yes, I remain optimistic that Clinton will be elected in 2016, largely because the Republicans have a primary electorate that requires candidates to take unpopular positions that hurt them in the general election. On top of the recovering economy and Clinton's overall popularity and ease of nomination, the Democrats likely will have a better result than the underlying fundamentals say they should.

But that doesn't mean it will be easy. As you say, "liberalism" has a bad name that conservatism doesn't, even though liberal policies are incredibly popular and conservative governance has led policies and circumstances that are incredibly unpopular. It's really quite amazing.

One sign of optimism I take away from the early stages of the 2016 race is that the moderate GOP candidate gaining traction is Jeb Bush, who is much more pro-immigration than the rest and has started the race by talking about economic inequality (which Republicans have spent several years denying even exists). As I say, that's an example of the discussion shifting to the left – and it's a victory for liberals if it does so. I see even a Supreme Court decision striking down the Obamacare subsidies for federal-run exchanges the same way: Forcing Republicans to detail how they'll provide health insurance to the people who can no longer afford it brings them into the center of the discussion, rather than simply sitting it out – and as a result pushes the center to the left.

Of course, the risk remains that some yahoo like Ted Cruz or Scott Walker becomes president, but I think the result of their nomination would be something akin to Barry Goldwater's candidacy in 1964 – a disaster for the GOP generally, and conservatism in particular. Right now, I see the likelihood of a (weird!) Bush-Clinton race, which would not only be favorable to Clinton, but I think favorable to liberals because Bush would be the most moderate GOP nominee since Bob Dole and the center of the conversation would therefore be much further to the left than it was when Bush's brother or the "severely conservative" Mitt Romney were articulating their positions.

[Darlene]

You make some excellent points, Paul! But I was watching what was happening at CPAC and I have to say that Jeb Bush did not seem particularly popular! It seemed the crazies were all taking their shots at him!! It seems like we have seen this show before… with John McCain and of course, the 'severely conservative' Mitt Romney. The conservative base did not like either of those candidates but in the end, they supported them grudgingly. It seems that this trend MAY repeat with Jeb Bush. I really think though that the base of the Republicans believe that they lost the last two elections because their candidate was not a TRUE conservative. Perhaps they will not so easily capitulate this time and one of the other candidates… like a Scott Walker or Ted Cruz WILL be chosen! That scenario both comforts me and frightens me!! :)

[Dan]

Paul, O'Malley did not fail to win re-election. He was term-limited. His Lt Governor was the gubernatorial candidate and not a very good one. A very unpopular tax also had just been implemented. Maryland has a history of periodically electing Republican governors, particularly when the Democrats get lazy and run bad candidates, but not a Republican legislature. The governor cannot do much without legislative support.
The winning Republican candidate is a very sharp son of a very popular and well-known congressman by the same name. That didn't hurt him.

I don't for a minute think the odds are against the Democrats in the next Presidential election. I think it might be close, but the electoral vote works to the favor of the Democrats. All of the swing states, Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, voted for Obama twice, except he lost North Carolina narrowly the last time.

There is no doubt that the black vote helped Obama in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, but Hillary also has strong support in the black community, and she will boost the Democratic vote among women, which has been sliding down a bit. I think she also will generate a big turnout.

Right now I don't see a winning alternative to Hillary if Warren does not run - and I believe she is not running. Also, she doesn't have the organization and the experience to run an intense national campaign.

The only reason GWBush ever was President is because the Democrats ran bad candidates both times. While very smart, Al Gore had no charisma, and I am not convinced he would have been a very good President. John Kerry - as bright and as knowledgeable as he is - turns people off big time.

Hillary has high negatives, but also high positives, and she will have tremendous political and financial muscle behind her. I don't see any Republican on the horizon who can beat her.

[Dan]

Darlene, I saw a Gallup poll last month that showed more people identifying as liberal than in many years. It was the only category where there wan an increase. So it may all depend on which poll you see.

Some polls show fairly strong bias towards one party or the other. Rasmussen, for example, is strongly Republican. Nate Silver at www.fivethirtyeight.com has done extensive analysis of polling over the years and probably knows more about it than any other living human. He has ratings of every poll by their bias and by their historical accuracy.

[Darlene]

Dan, I have not seen a poll where more people are identifying as liberal but that's great news! Perhaps that has occurred because much of Democrats' focus has been on income inequality, minimum wage and of course issues such as gay marriage and immigration reform. I think a large portion of the population is hungry for those issues to all be addressed. I am familiar with Nate Silver. I followed him during the last 2 election cycles. He is impressive… although sometimes a bit over my head!!:)

As I mentioned before, I do think Hillary will be formidable. And I agree with you… she will affect turnout in a big way! When she ran against President Obama, she had huge support. I did some door-to-door work for Organizing for America and although President Obama was not and is not popular where I live in western PA, Hillary Clinton definitely was! In addition, I think she might even be able to pick up states like West Virginia and perhaps even Kentucky… just my opinion based on what I observed the last time she ran! I don't really see any Republicans that might be able to beat her but I still think that Republicans have to be feeling quite desperate to get the White House back. I just don't know of anyone that might fit the bill for them. Jeb Bush, who I thought would be a relatively strong candidate despite his last name, does not seem to be generating anything enthusiasm from the base. I really think they will be pushing for a very conservative (read far right) candidate. I'm not sure if the establishment will be able to stand up to them this time.

[Dan]

My late wife and I did some work for Organizing for America in Maryland, working phone banks, making calls to voters in Virginia. We didn't have to organize inside Maryland as there was no doubt about Obama winning the state.

We were Obama supporters from Iowa on, but I wrote a piece at the time in which I said I thought people were overestimating his liberalness, that I thought he was more a pragmatist. That's pretty much turned out to be the case. I remember seeing an interview of him by Rachel Maddow in which he said, "you liberals want me to do things I don't want to do," or something to that effect.

I am not yet convinced that the eventual Republican nominee is among those currently running.

[Darlene]

Dan, It's interesting that you mention that!! My oldest son and I had that same discussion many times during President Obama's first campaign!! I would be interested in reading that piece as I said the same thing many times. But honestly, I think his 'style' was exactly what people were looking for. We had been bogged down in wars, the financial system collapsed… he seemed the perfect person for the job. It's clear he is not a political animal (like Bill Clinton, for example). He approaches problems with logic and without a lot of emotion and looks for ways to solve those problems. That seemed very important at the time and actually still does. I never saw him as being all that liberal. I read both of his books and he struck me as methodical and reasonable… which is one of the reasons I am so baffled by the constant attacks about his supposed 'socialist leanings'. It's ludicrous! For me on a personal level, he had great appeal as we are from the same generation. I could relate to him and could easily imagine having a friend very much like him. He really hasn't disappointed me. I ma still a huge fan!

Are you saying that you believe there is a republican out there who hasn't declared his/her intention to run and that this person may end up being the eventual nominee? Someone like John Kasich perhaps? I live on the PA/Ohio border and follow Ohio politics as well as PA politics and I have to say that he seems to be pretty popular there… at least with HIS crowd! And you know, I was thinking about other possible Democratic candidates and the Kentucky governor came to mind! He has been a huge supporter of the ACA. I'm not sure how appealing he would be to the country as a whole but I like him!

[Mark]

Darlene and Paul and Dan,

You've all covered the topic as cogently as possible, so there's not much more to say, but ultimately, only one thing matters: We must not have a Republican elected to the White House in 2016. Our lives quite literally depend on this. Right now, largely through electoral nullification, the Republicans have stolen the House and Senate. The Supreme Court is controlled by five Federalist Society sock puppets, and there is no conservative trashing of the Constitution so egregious that they will not endorse it. (They will, moreover, intervene if necessary to effect the kind of coup d'état they did in the year 2000.) As things stand, Obama's veto pen is the only thing standing between us and Republican Armageddon, wherein Medicare and Social Security both go away, unions become illegal nationally, and we all live in the Republic of Gilead, wherein women have no reproductive rights whatever, and minorities and poor people have no rights at all. And the middle class continues to be utterly obliterated, the "concerned" proclamations of GS (who may finally have discerned that there will be no more host for the plutocratic parasites to feed on) all notwithstanding. Public education will, of course, effectively cease to exist. As it is now in Kansas, it will become illegal to discuss evolution, nationally. Global warming will continue unabated, and since, if no action is taken, we face the completion of the ongoing "holocene extinction event," that also spells the ultimate extinction of the human species... there has never been anything in the history of humanity so crucial as defeating the Republicans. Make no mistake: all of the above pernicious and Apocalyptic policies do represent their avowed agenda, and they have achieved much of that agenda already, even without the presidency.

By my count, most of the active participants in this group are retired. Loss of Medicare and SS is a life-or-death issue. Women may have to leave the States to get an abortion -- if they can afford to. Increasingly fewer will be able to afford that. And I wouldn't count on the absence of legislation imposing travel restrictions to prevent it. Contraception will become illegal and unavailable. We will live in a pig-ignorant theocracy, dotted with Creationist museums that celebrate the happy, frolicking cohabitation of the earth by our forefathers and groups of apatosaurs, shortly after it was created, 6,000 years ago (2,500 years after agricultural practices were in full bloom in Sumerian culture, 6,000 years after the onset of the Neolithic Period, and 4.5 billion years after the actual creation of the planet). Failure to act yesterday, per Naomi Klein and Elizabeth Kolbert, has already pushed us past the tipping point such that the best outcome we could hope for, if liberals were magically installed in power by a deus ex machina, is that human life on this planet woukd continue under nearly intolerable ecological and climatological conditions. But the much more likely (and almost inevitable) outcome, is that the Holocene extinction event will run its course, and that human life on this planet will be extinguished within 50 to 100 years.

The Republicans will do everything (inhumanly) possible to steal the forthcoming election (as they stole the ones in 2000 and 2004). But they have much more effective mechanisms in place now than they did as of when they perpetrated those coups d'etat.

Bottom line: again, only one thing matters. No matter what it takes, if it requires support of Hillary, if it requires support of an even more hawkish candidate, if it requires support of a benign extraterrestrial hippopotamus who is still a Democrat, we must do it to prevent our own extinction and that of the human race. There need to be phenomenally aggressive poll watchers in every precinct in the country. There need to be massive teams of Democratic lawyers incessantly challenging the systemic Republican rape of voting registry lists. There needs to be a take-no-prisoners, no-holds-barred fight to the death, because you can be certain that that is exactly what the Republicans, through ubiquitous egregious fraud and illimitable anonymous campaign contributions, will be doing: playing a death match in which we are the intended "slaughterees." And you're right, Paul: they hold nearly all the cards.

The prospective future "position of the discussion" is wholly irrelevant, because the "position of the discussion" in a plutocratic fascist dictatorship that is no longer a functioning democracy... is always irrelevant. We are, at very best, a democracy gasping its last breath, and soon, there will be nothing left to discuss. If we can't find a candidate more likely to prevail than Hillary (and I am still not convinced that Warren would not be more likely to prevail, because of the charisma factor), then we have to throw our full weight -- every grassroots activist; every clandestinely-recorded viral video of a Republican saying something unspeakably atrocious and offensive (even to the cretinous sheep), disseminated on youtube; every subliminally-loaded ad we can possibly run in the five critical states (because the Republicans use only mind control, and we have to counter it), funded by every dollar we can wring from the "saner" wing of the plutocracy; quite literally everything we have, no holds barred, -- behind Hillary (or Warren) and against these monsters. It's that or death. I wish I were exaggerating. I do not believe that I am.

[Mark]

Dan wrote: "Darlene, I saw a Gallup poll last month that showed more people identifying as liberal than in many years. It was the only category where there wan an increase. So it may all depend on which poll y..."

It was earlier remarked in relation to the unexpected Republican victory in Kansas, that it defied the polls. Of course, it did! The polls are accurate. It's the elections that are fraudulent. Focussing on polls that fail to take into account inevitable massive fraud perpetrated by Republicans is like paying scrupulous attention to the arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic, while ignoring the iceberg ahead. We have to do something about the fraud and electoral nullification. Otherwise, neither polls nor elections matter.

[Mark]

Darlene wrote: "You make some excellent points, Paul! But I was watching what was happening at CPAC and I have to say that Jeb Bush did not seem particularly popular! It seemed the crazies were all taking their sh..."

Darlene, you hit the nail on the proverbial. The Democrats' best hopes are Republican candidates so transparently and spectacularly odious that, if they did win (and I think the Republicans will likely manage to engineer a theft no matter who their candidate is), then we'll have Satan incarnate (and/or stupidity incarnate) in the White House. If there's a candidate they might tap who is currently "off the radar," I don't know who that might be, but I only hope it's the ghost of Hitler, because practically anyone less transparently unspeakably evil than Hitler (or less transparently stupid than Palin) would be someone they could still manage to convince the troglodyte morons to vote for. Actually, I think all members of the Tea Party would enthusiastically vote for the ghost of Hitler. (Of course, I think he's already in the race, on the existing roster.)

[Darlene]

Mark, I was the one who voiced my surprise over the outcome of the Kansas election!!:) But you know, your mentioning it brings up an important question… just WHO is being polled? As we have all talked about ad nauseam, a seemingly large portion of the electorate are informationally challenged. We (members of this group) seem to agree on what needs to be done but the problem still persists in just how we are going to manage to educate the above mentioned electorate and actually get people to vote FOR themselves rather against their own interests. That is a huge challenge and honestly, most days it feels insurmountable and really depresses me!! You're right…. we HAVE to keep the Republicans from getting the White House!! And I will vote for your Democratic hippopotamus if that's what it takes! I suppose I feel this need to talk about Republicans and the political 'process' (such that it is) and the possible candidates on their side because I have to admit that my greatest fear is that they will nominate one of these crazies and that person will actually win!!!

[Dan]

Pollsters employ different methodologies. The ones regarded the most highly have figured out how to get to cellphones. I got polled in this last election on my cellphone. I think it was a Republican pollster because there was a gasp when I said the Republican candidate for Senate was an "idiot," which she was. And she was trounced.
In any case, to judge the potential accuracy of a poll you have to look at the methodology. Those that do not reach cellphones under count younger voters and are more likely to show somewhat better numbers for more conservative positions.

[Dan]

Mark, I do not believe the Republicans really intend to do anything significant about SS or Medicare, but they nibble the edges, like the COLA. I think they want the Democrats to believe that SS and Medicare are in danger so that they will accept minor tweaks as "compromises." And some Democrats fall for that.

There is a viciousness in the Republican approach that is truly different from conservative strategies of the past. We are seeing the rise of a fascist political party in everything but name.

[Mary]

Dan made some of the points that I wanted to make, like that O'Malley didn't lose; his Lt. Governor lost. I don't know how good a candidate he was, but wasn't he black, Dan? We've had only two elected black governors (in Virginia and Massachusetts) since Reconstruction, folks, so we can't blame O'Malley for what happened there. I still talk about the Tom Bradley effect (that is why I wasn't initially for Obama even after Iowa, which is a caucus state, meaning people have to vote in person, and especially after what happened in New Hampshire), where people say they will vote for the black person in the polls but then secretly vote for the white candidate. The entire political career of our two-term Armenian governor, who is barely remembered by most people, was based on beating more well-known, supposedly more popular, and certainly more charismatic blacks. He beat Yvonne Braithwaite-Burke for Attorney General and Bradley, the very popular L.A. mayor for twenty years, for governor twice.

Obama's ability to outperform the polls is one of the most astonishing, almost miraculous, things about him. I think it's because he's the candidate of people who don't take polls, not just because they have cellphones but also because they don't want to be bothered. They are also the people who won't bother to vote if they are not inspired. And that's my problem with Hillary. She and Bill were not able to inspire the Obama voters to come out and vote in 2014. They were the ones campaigning. Her book tour was also a bust. As soon as she stopped working for a man and started promoting herself, her negatives went up and her positives went down because she is not her husband when it comes to campaigning and promoting herself. In fact, she's not even as good as Obama, and some of her problems are because she's a woman.

I also fear what happened with my last original candidate, with Romney the second time, with Fred Thompson, with Rick Perry, and I believe with Hillary the first time. If the candidates don't really want the job or don't want it as badly as their spouses or devoted supporters want them to have it, they will find a way to lose. I initially didn't believe Romney when he claimed his wife had encouraged him to run in 2012. I thought he really wanted to run but was just blaming his wife so that he wouldn't look so desperate to get in the White House, but then I watched them and realized Ann Romney, who was born in 1949 (like me and Elizabeth Edwards), fought breast cancer between the first and second campaigns (like Elizabeth), and didn't have it all (as we female forty-niners were supposed to) because she stayed at home with the children (as Elizabeth claimed she did with her first children) was the second coming of Elizabeth Edwards, and I knew he was going to lose. He didn't have an affair with and impregnate an indiscreet party girl the way the clearly more desperate Edwards did, but Romney made some pretty stupid mistakes. Hillary's first campaign was also handled badly because she didn't want to win as much as her husband wanted her to win. One point that wasn't made in GAME CHANGE was that on the Democratic side, the two people who were most eager to get in the White House were Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Edwards.

I'm not stuck on O'Malley; I don't know as much about him as Dan does or as I did (or thought I did) about Edwards (whom, by the way, I like now more than I did when he was my candidate; I think he was a nice guy, much nicer than the former governor of Virginia, who had no problem throwing his wife under the bus to save himself; I think Edwards was like Jay Gatsby, done in by the foul dust that preyed upon him) because I haven't read any books by him or his wife. But I just have a bad feeling about Hillary. I agree, however, that if she's our candidate, we should hope that Bush or someone really loopy like Cruz or Paul is the Republican candidate. Bush takes away the fatigue factor (since there has been only one Clinton versus two Bushes), and the other two will be Goldwaters.

[Dan]

I'm not convinced that the thing between the governor and his wife in Virginia is legitimate. I have suspected that those two are like the couple in House of Cards, and this falling out was done to protect both of them. It worked for her, and he got off a lot easier than expected.

[Dan]

After nearly a week of struggling, my new website seems to be functioning properly. Any thoughts will be appreciated: http://www,danriker.com

[Dan]

Anthony Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor of Maryland, had a distinguished career in the Army, including serving in Iraq. He is a graduate of Harvard and the Harvard law school. He served in the state legislature before being elected Lt. Governor. He is considered black, but actually is of Cuban descent and is very light-skinned. The last three lieutenant governors of Maryland, two of them Republicans, have been black.
Maryland has only had the lieutenant governor's position since 1970 and with the exception of the first one, Blair Lee III who became acting governor for two years while the incumbent was prosecuted for bribery, all of the others who have run for governor or senator have been defeated.
Brown's problems began with his oversight of the Md entry into the Obamacare program that failed almost as spectacularly as did the one here in Oregon. Both had to be shut down and completely new systems brought in.
Then there was the very unpopular "rain" tax that charged fees based on square footage of concrete, etc. (I am not sure of all the details). Apparently, with O'Malley having succeeded in raising a number of other taxes, this was the proverbial straw.

And, as I mentioned in another post, the Republican, Hogan, was a strong campaigner.

Now the big deal is going to be who will succeed Barbara Mikulski. Here is a piece that discusses possible successors: http://atr.rollcall.com/long-list-bar...

I also read that the mayor of Baltimore says she is thinking of running.

I would love to see my former congressman, Elijah Cummings, become the senator. I think he would be great. He is a terrific congressman.

[Paul]

Thanks for the correction on the Maryland governor's race. I actually came here to post it myself after reading a mention of it in an article this evening. The point still stands, though, that O'Malley is not viewed as a serious presidential candidate.

I do agree with Mark that even if having a moderate Republican like Bush as president would be better than someone like Walker or Cruz, I'm pretty much on the page that the Supreme Court is looming ever larger as a de facto legislative body. As such, no matter how strongly you agree or disagree on specific topics here and there with a candidate, it is absolutely essential that a Democrat be elected until there's no smaller than a 6-3 liberal majority on the court. And who knows, by that point the GOP might have divided itself into oblivion, and the two-party system will feature moderate Democrats vs. liberal Democrats. ;-)

The big problem for Democrats is that their coalition simply does not turn out for off-year elections, which makes the polling difficult. Lots of people who support the liberal candidate decide not to show up unless it's a presidential election year. Until Democrats can figure out how to get those voters fired up — preferably on policy grounds, rather than the fear-based ones that have worked so well for the GOP's coalition of wealthy white men and pro-life women — they are going to experience the ongoing frustration of having presidents in the White House who can't get anything done because they keep losing Congress in the off-year elections. The last good off-year election Democrats had was in 2006, nine years ago now, and the time before that was 1998. If the only way Democrats can win in non-presidential years is to have the president be as catastrophic a failure as George W. Bush or have the Republican Congress impeach the Democratic president, that's not a good thing for anyone.

[Darlene]

Hey everyone… what do you think of this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/...

[Dan]

It was about half of Lawrence O'Donnell's show tonight. He thinks it is a big deal and potentially a big problem for Hillary. However, there is much not yet known.

[Mark]

Dan wrote: "It was about half of Lawrence O'Donnell's show tonight. He thinks it is a big deal and potentially a big problem for Hillary. However, there is much not yet known."

Two issues loom large, here:

First, the Times notes off-handedly that "Jeb Bush, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, [made a production of releasing] a trove of emails in December from his eight years as governor of Florida." Does anyone want to compute the Bayesian probability that the two events are wholly unrelated? It is impossible for me not to suspect that Bush's action was taken preemptively to "clean his own house" in anticipation of the execution of precisely this stratagem by the Republicans. And that makes me think that the Republican powers-that-be have already determined who their candidate is going to be, to which inference the flow of money to Bush frequently adduced by Dan lends further credence. Now, as Mary has convincingly observed, there might otherwise have accrued some beneficial "balance of fatigue" factor from a Bush-Clinton face-off, but if the powers (all of them) are determined still to keep this a Bush-Clinton contest, then the release of this "holecard" information will wholly nullify that effect by crippling the predetermined Democratic candidate from the outset.

Second, there must be a phenomenally compelling reason for Clinton to have done this, given what she must have known to be more of a horrendous certainty than a horrendous risk -- that it would be revealed before the election. The most cynical inference would be that she was operating under Bilderberger orders to provide the instrument for the destruction of her own prospects, since they had already determined, in conjunction with the other powers, that all the next presidency "are belong to Bush." This is a stretch, but really not wholly inconceivable. Kerry was, after all, clearly instructed to stay flat on the mat by Skull & Bones (and complied immediately, despite overwhelming legal basis for challenging the outcome of that stolen election, and whole legions of lawyers ready and available to undertake the challenge). A less cynical interpretation would be that there was a great deal she needed to protect from transmission through the NSA, or other "archival monitors," to Republican operatives seeking to undermine all of Obama's diplomatic activity, and then she'd certainly have been better off to use the services of private Democratic encryption specialists and "non-official" email accounts (this, even knowing the potential risks, because she considered the immediate diplomatic exigencies to be of greater primacy). It ultimately depends on the publicly unknown answer to whether average-case NP-hard approaches to encryption are nevetheless still amenable to cracking by quantum computing (or whether the NP-completeness problem has actually been solved, unbeknownst to practically everyone), and whether the NSA or others have (in the likely event that it hasn't been solved) sufficiently advanced quantum computing resources to circumvent virtually any form of encryption, even ones based on the "shortest vector problem," as opposed to RSA prime factorization. Edward Snowden probably knows the answer to this question, but would Hillary's technical operatives? Or did she want deliberately to disseminate disinformation, creating the plausible appearance of a really determined effort, but knowing her encrypted, "private service" emails would ultimately be cracked? Truthfully, I think this latter interpretation is possible, but it gives her too much credit for savvy in this realm. Nevertheless, Hillary is far too preternaturally intelligent, far too strategically-farseeing, and far too devoid of innocence -- in my view -- to have done anything unknowing of the potential consequences. I always reason backwards by "abduction," on the assumption that sophisticated parties want (or are prepared to accept) foreseeable consequences. So I have to assume that Hillary knew this might be coming, and found it either necessary, desirable or "unavoidable under the circumstances."

[Barbara]

Mark wrote: "Dan wrote: "It was about half of Lawrence O'Donnell's show tonight. He thinks it is a big deal and potentially a big problem for Hillary. However, there is much not yet known."

Two issues loom lar..."

What a relief. I was afraid there would be no controversy this election cycle.

[Mary]

Barbara, I assume you're being sarcastic. When Rachel started talking about this "big deal" news dump, and I realized it was about Hillary, my response was: "And so it begins." They didn't even wait for her to declare her candidacy. Today they were talking on my local news about some portrait painter who included a shadow in his portrait of Clinton to represent Monica's stained blue dress. And this time Monica will not be hiding in England. She's out and about, showing up at the Vanity Fair Oscar party, for instance, and she's trying to portray herself as a victim of the press who blamed and shamed her. My idea of having Hillary fake run to draw all of the fire while a stealth candidate quietly waits in the wings seems even more enticing today.

But, Dan and Paul, it looks like O'Malley might be going after Mikulski's job. Rachel reported that his mother has worked as Mikulski's receptionist for 28 years. If I were as paranoid as some people I could name, I would assume that the two women (Hillary is a former Senator, so she certainly knows Barbara) conspired to get O'Malley out of the way. But clearly Barbara is old enough to retire, and he doesn't seem to be threatening Hillary so far.

Anyway, I'm already moving on, still searching for the alternative to Hillary. Sherrod Brown has declared on Rachel's show (with a second from his wife) that he's out. But where's that former Democratic governor of Ohio? I'm even thinking about the governor of Kentucky who did such a good job with the ACA. As I said, I have a bad feeling about Hillary and not just because she takes away my favorite message, that we are not only right while they are wrong, but we also represent our beautiful future while they represent the ugly past.

Paul, I agree that the Supreme Court justices are much more partisan and therefore more important now. I think the change came in 2000 when they gave the election to Bush. O'Connor stuck around until after he was reelected (or not as Mark is suggesting) in 2004 so that she wouldn't be seen as selecting the President who would replace her, but I like the point made by one commentator who pointed out that Bush would not have been the incumbent in 2004 if he hadn't stolen the first election, so 2004 was a continuation of that crime, even if he did win in Ohio.

Dan, I agree that the Virginia governor and his wife are probably still together, but I think she's a great political wife because she was willing to let her husband place all of the blame on her, hoping that they would both be saved. The strategy may have backfired, however. Women can play the victim and blame men, but when men do it, they look like jerks. A man with a horrible wife is doomed. If he lets her mistreat him, he's a punk; if he defends himself, he's a jerk.

[Dan]

I didn't know about O'Malley's mother, either. I am not sure O'Malley could win a primary against either Van Hollen or Cummings, but since those two are high in the House Democratic hierarchy they may decide not to give up their seats to run for the Senate.

Throughout its history the Supreme Court has been political. What we have today is not any different from what existed in the late 1800s when they narrowed the meaning of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, etc. That Court held separate but equal to be constitutional. They threw out a law in New York that protected bakers from being forced to work more than 60 hours a week because it interfered with their right of contract. The WWI Court twice threw out federal regulation of working hours for children.

The Court has a very checkered history. If a Democrat keeps control of the White House for another term after Obama, there is a good chance that the Court will change dramatically. There are a lot of very old justices. That job seems to agree with people and they live a long time, but some of these justices will not be around in six years or less. Getting Scalia off the Court would be a huge step because he has enormous influence. The guy is very smart even though he is wrong a lot of time. It is amazing how extremely smart people can come up with the most imaginative ways of being wrong.

[Paul]

Agreed, Dan. A Democratic win in 2016 could very well flip control of the Court.

This Hillary stuff is weak sauce. If someone were really trying to upend her candidacy, they'd sit on this until much closer to the election. If anything, this benefits her. The more bad press she gets now, the less there will be to bring up when people are actually paying attention. How does Jeb Bush get a single reporter to cover Hillary's personal email address at State in September 2016 when they've covered it ad nauseum in March 2015? If I were conspiratorial, and I'm not, I'd suspect someone on Hillary's side of leaking this so as to rob it of its potency before it could actually do any damage.

[Dan]

Hillary's email won't change a vote.

[Mark]

Dan wrote: "Hillary's email won't change a vote."

It really shouldn't, but then Benghazi should never have been an issue, either. I don't think it's ever the substance of the chimerical affront over which disingenous, feigned horror is incessantly voiced by the Republican media, affording all the psychos at Fox News the opportunity to swoon at the opportune moment: I think it's just that they like to keep an inventory of past "affronts" to resurrect for that purpose. I think they'll still use it as part of the background thematic in their overall relentless, mindless drumbeat of Hillary-anathematization as the election approaches (if she gets the nomination, though I'm very much with Mary in still wishing earnestly for some viable alternative), but Paul is also right that, strategically, it would have made more sense for the Republicans to divulge this (for improved feigned shock value) closer to the election. Honestly, I may have been overthinking it, but since her seeming indifference to exploitable ginned-up future mischaracterizations of her motives made so little sense, on the face of it, I had to wonder: why would she make herself vulnerable?

[Mark]

NYT: Solicitor General Will Try, Again, to Keep Health Care Law Alive

Note the Times' use of the word, "try." This is code. The Times either doesn't expect Verrilli to prevail against the opposition by bringing mere rationality to a Carvin-knife fight, or wishes to create the expectation that he won't.

Howsoever, direct to you from the NYT [with bracketed insertions provided by your moderator for the sake of clarification]:

"Mr. Verrilli will again face Michael A. Carvin [indefatigable advocate for The Legions of Hell Avid to Let People Die (TLHALPD)] who represented [TLHALPD] last time. Mr. Carvin will argue [on the basis of a ludicrous and insane, tortured, wildly diseased and incredibly flagrant misrepresentation of the intent of language he managed to find buried in the bill] that the law forbids the federal government from providing tax subsidies to help people buy insurance in the three dozen states that have refused to establish their own insurance marketplaces, known as exchanges." [In a coda to his argument, Mr Carvin noted further that the intent of the First Amendment was to require that mouths be sewn shut surgically, and that the intent of the law of gravity was to cause people and houses to fly off into space.]

"In 2012, four members of the court — Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. – were ready to strike down the entire law, as they made clear in a bitter joint dissent." [in which they further expressed their deep melancholy in contemplation of the continued existence of poor people, and their hope that Scrooge would repent of his conversion and that Tiny Tim would die -- hideously, if possible.]

"It is certainly possible that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will again desert his usual allies to vote to save the law. But that is hardly a certainty." [It is wholly unclear why Roberts failed to join in the usual Alliance of Gleeful Evil last time, but how many times can miracles really be expected to happen?]

[Mary]

It turns out Rachel's prediction that O'Malley might join the Senate race was wrong (he announced that he will not be running for the Senate), and now I'm wondering about her agenda. Her show last night was a textbook example of how media spin works. She kept using the word "primary" as if this was 2016, and the poll numbers that had O'Malley at 1% were actual votes. I might post on her blog, asking her if she knows what Bill Clinton's poll numbers were in March, 1991, or Carter's in March, 1975. It's ridiculous to act as if the Democratic primary race is over when no candidates on either side have even officially declared their candidacies. Around this time or maybe even later in 2007, everyone thought McCain was toast; his frontrunner campaign had imploded. Late in 2003, everyone thought the 2004 Democratic nominee was going to be Howard Dean, and of course, Hillary looked like the overwhelming favorite, with Obama a distant second and Edwards a distant third, at this point in 2007. I would assume that Rachel was secretly working for Hillary except that she has promoted some other Hillary alternatives--Warren, McCaskill, and when he was on her show, Sherrod Brown. She clearly doesn't like Jim Webb; neither do I. But could she have something against O'Malley? Is he pro-life or anti-gay marriage, Dan? Or is it possible that she doesn't like him because he hasn't been on her show? I smell a rat, and the smell is really potent on MSNBC at 6 p.m. Pacific time.

[Mark]

Mary, O'Malley, though Catholic, is unambiguously pro-choice (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKmTXw...) and both sponsored (here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-...) and signed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland (in 2012). There is no reason for Rachel to dislike him on either basis. It would seem very uncharacteristic of her -- and I'd find it hard to imagine -- that she'd be so petty as to want to dismiss O'Malley on the basis of his failure to appear on her show, even if that had ever been an issue (and I can't find any public evidence that it has). I don't think it's Rachel, specifically, and I don't think it reflects her political inclinations, but there certainly has been a redolence of spin on MSNBC, of late. I think MSNBC is, per Chomsky*, allowed to "define the [leftmost] boundary" of public discussion, but we all know by whom MSNBC is ultimately owned, and it may be that the higher-ups want to move that boundary to the right, or that a ukase has come down on this particular issue. I would expect Maddow to have fought it internally, but I think the people who've waged (intransigent) internal fights have tended to disappear from the airwaves, and she might reasonably perceive that as unpragmatic for the cause, because she's coming to be the last legitimate liberal standing. (I think it was you who pointed out what had happened to Ed Schultz.) Honestly, I really don't know. It seems clear to me also that something is going on behind the scenes.

* Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

[Mark]

Dan wrote: " Throughout its history the Supreme Court has been political. What we have today is not any different from what existed in the late 1800s when they narrowed the meaning of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, etc. That Court held separate but equal to be constitutional. They threw out a law in New York that protected bakers from being forced to work more than 60 hours a week because it interfered with their right of contract. The WWI Court twice threw out federal regulation of working hours for children."

SCOTUS did make all of these appalling decisions, Dan -- even as they held in 1857 that Dred Scott was effectively not human -- but how the current situation differs is that the evils perpetrated by those past courts reflected pervasively evil societal attitudes: they were not acting in every single case wholly at variance with the will of most people (however deranged and toxic that will may have been). But much more important, they were not (to my knowledge) acting almost consistently in lockstep under direct marching orders from the contemporaneous equivalent of the Federalist Society. In past, the appearance is that Supreme Court judges made their own (albeit frequently abhorrent) decisions. A block of five of them were not acting as marionettes under the direction of a unified fascistic ultraconservative power to whom their blood fealty was pledged and whose orders they were compelled to take. I would maintain, as I have consistently, that this is the (unprecedented) situation that prevails currently (and you, yourself, have -- I think, correctly -- observed that "there is a viciousness in the Republican approach that is truly different from conservative strategies of the past" and that "we are seeing the rise of a fascist political party in everything but name")... so that an effort to put recent decisions within a horror-mitigating historical perspective seems to me to omit this factor. And even if it had (as I do not believe is true or sustainable) always been the case that Court justices were taking marching orders, that would really not lessen either the revulsiveness or the prodigiously toxic effect of the prevailing state of affairs. So I agree with you quite unreservedly on all the historical facts, but would still maintain that this is not a case of "nothing new under the sun." To the degree that it may diminish our alarm in contemplation of contemporary atrocities, in any case, I think it's always a bad idea to "put matters in a historical perspective" that has that effect.

[Mary]

Mark, I decided to investigate O'Malley myself before I started my O'MALLEY FOR 2016 push. I discovered what you did, that he's very liberal on social issues and even passed a gay marriage bill. In fact, he debated the Virginia governor, whom Rachel can't stand, on his ultrasound-before-abortion policy, and I now remember seeing her comment on that debate, praising O'Malley. But during my research, I discovered a "scandal" that amazed and amused me so much that I couldn't wait until tomorrow to post my findings here. "Rumor" claims that O'Malley has an illegitimate black child. (I knew there was something about him I liked.) Rumor claims the child was the product of an affair with a Baltimore newswoman, but O'Malley refuses to admit the affair, etc. Give me credit, everybody, my candidates (first, Edwards, now O'Malley) are not sterile, impotent, or lifeless. They definitely represent the future.

Maybe that rumor is why Rachel is trying to ice him, but, Mark, trust me, I generally like Rachel, but she can be as petty and mean-spirited as anybody on television. She was real snarky about the former Virginia governor, whom she called "Governor Ultra Sound," and she took delight in going after Christie because of his stand on gay marriage. She milked that bridge scandal for weeks, partly because it spiked her ratings, but initially because she wanted to nail Christie.

But what really got my attention (because she usually just attacks conservatives and people who are active in the news) was a totally bizarre dig at Edwards when he was in North Carolina minding his business. She was going after the Virginia governor for his corruption charges and started talking about Edwards. I thought she was going to compare and contrast the two, but instead she was mentioning some obscure Virginia politician who happened to have the same name as John Edwards, but before she explained who this guy was, she went on and on about what a bad choice Edwards was for Vice President in 2004, and she mentioned his six indictments as if being indicted meant he was guilty. Oddly, right after his trial ended in 2012, she had passionately defended him. The only explanation I saw for this mean-spirited attack on a man who was no longer in politics was that she had tried to get him on her show because she was discussing voting issues in North Carolina, and her ratings were lower (this was before the Christie mess) than that blonde (Meaghan?) on Fox. Interestingly, a week or so later, she mentioned Edwards in a positive way, possibly because he had threatened to sue her.

These media people all have agendas; sometimes they are personal (O'Malley's alleged mistress wouldn't be the first newsperson to have an affair with a politician. Barbara Walters not only cheated with Brooke, but she dated Elizabeth Taylor's former husband Warner, and the previous L.A. mayor had an affair with a newswoman recently), sometimes political, and sometimes it's just business.

[Dan]

I've been a fairly regular watcher of Rachel's show since she first came on, and I don't see a particular agenda, other than promoting gay rights, probably in part because she is gay. She also promotes help for veterans and made a big deal about the problems in the Veterans medical system. Her father was military and she wrote that book about the military, which is quite good, by the way. I never have detected any bias towards O'Malley. I think she just may not take him very seriously. I know I don't. He is responsible in large part for a Republican being elected as his successor.
What I fear is that Rachel may wind up being the token liberal on MSNBC. I have read that Chris Hayes, Ed, and Lawrence O'Donnell may all be slated for the chopping block, along with Reverend Al, who I think is great. I like them all, but none of them has very good ratings.
The strategy that MSNBC developed a few years ago of being the liberal foil to Fox has apparently lost its luster since Comcast, which is very conservative company, bought NBC - something I think the government never should have allowed.
Their ratings have slipped, and no one comes close to matching the numbers Keith Olbermann used to get. I don't think they have been the same since he left.
Of course, ratings of politcally-oriented programs are likely to drop during periods like this.
If I were running MSNBC I would put a hard-hitting news show on at about 9 PM somewhat like the show that they did in the Newsroom television series. Not a fluffy news show like the network newscasts, and not a 60-minutes, but a tough, no prisoners-taken, show covering the major stories and issues of the day. With the right kind of host and some vivid video, I think it could be a winner.

[Mark]

When Merely Being Noted for Outrageous Socially Retrograde Tendencies is Not Enough...

You get your Supreme Court to do this:

WP: In defiant ruling, Alabama Supreme Court stops same-sex marriage in state

[Mark]

Dan wrote: "I've been a fairly regular watcher of Rachel's show since she first came on, and I don't see a particular agenda, other than promoting gay rights, probably in part because she is gay. She also prom..."

Dan and Mary,

I think Rachel is sincere in her political convictions, about gay rights and everything else I can think of that's of concern to liberals, so I tend to believe that she's primarily motivated by pragmatism, and I've never had a problem with her aggressively vituperating socially destructive conservatives, because I do it myself: I don't think it's "mean" for the prey verbally to attack the monstrous predators. But I'd really not heard of her directing personal attacks against other liberals until you mentioned it, Mary, so I don't know how to explain that.

I'd find it hard to understand why Rachel would be concerned about Megyn Kelly, who apparently has about half her IQ and caters to the wingnut crowd incapable of parsing Maddow's simplest sentences -- but it certainly seems possible that higher-ups might have badgered her with ratings statistics. Probably, no one in the media manages to stay there without a personal survival agenda as well, though, so it's really hard to factor it out.

I do share your concern, though, Dan, about the prospect of Maddow's becoming the last liberal (present as a token) on MSNBC. You're right that Comcast should never have been allowed to make the buy, but that's a fait accompli. In terms of a successful business model, you might be right that Comcast would do well with a "tough, no prisoners-taken, show covering the major stories and issues of the day..." but since literally the last thing in the world they want is for Americans' ignorance of right-wing atrocities to be redressed by aggressive reporting (when they can't even tolerate O'Donnell's or Sharpton's commentary), why on earth would they do that? I'd think they'd want to make MSNBC into a clone of Fox with perhaps a pseudo-liberal veneer, to retain some of the non-zombie audience. Personally, I'd like to see the FCC award whole and total ownership of Comcast to Keith Olbermann. (If I'm going to have insane quixotic fantasies, I suppose they might as well be pleasing ones.) :)

[Dan]

I love your last sentence. I am a big fan of Olbermann (he also worked for UPI - he did the UPI Audio report of the American Hockey team beating the Russians in the Olympics so many years ago).

[Mark]

Dan wrote: "I love your last sentence. I am a big fan of Olbermann (he also worked for UPI - he did the UPI Audio report of the American Hockey team beating the Russians in the Olympics so many years ago)."

What I admired about Olbermann, apart from his intellect and his eloquence, was his obvious passion, which I think none of the surviving liberal talking heads can duplicate. Maddow has tremendous intellect and Schultz has very great populist charisma, but for sheer passionate intensity (of the sort Yeats ascribed to the other side) Olbermann was really inimitable... which was, of course, why they found it so urgent to expel him and terminate Countdown.*

Anyway, yes, huge fan here, too.

* Had any Fox news commentator given ten million dollars to a political candidate, I honestly believe nothing would have happened. Olbermann's minuscule token contributions were, I believe, strictly a pretext.

[Dan]

My article on trickle-down economics is featured on the front page of www.truth-out.org today:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29...