Hey I'm taking off. I haven't had off (beyond a holiday) since January. I'm a little beat.

I will be around sporadically during the week, but mostly to put up open threads, if the cobs are busy. I may put up quickie links in a pinch but that will be the extent of my output.

Posted by: Ace at 05:13 PM | Comments (245)
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Well, we always knew they were ready to fold. They didn't want to do this in the first place.

Which is why I asked a couple of weeks ago, "Why bother doing this if they've already pre-announced their strong desire to fold at the first possible opportunity?"

You can't really bluff after you've tossed in your cards. You can't grab them back and start pretending you have pocket kings. (Well I guess you could do this if you really had pocket kings, but we know the GOP doesn't.)

So I guess the hope was "polling will show a less painful public response than feared" and that will give politicians some "backbone." * Which it really wouldn't be. Backbone, you know. Backbone is what you have when things look bad, not when they look okay.

But we didn't get that break. An NBC poll looks bad for Republicans, so that's all she wrote.

Republican demands that Barack Obama cut funding for or delay his healthcare law – a deal-breaker for Democrats – now appear to be off the table. The discussions include trimming health benefits for wealthier elderly Americans and easing the across-the-board cuts in spending forced on defence and other departments in a previous budget accord.

However, the shape of any agreement remains unclear...

As Drew noted in an email, the Republican plan is now to take ObamaCare off the table, and then trim Medicare benefits for older voters (majority Republican constituents) in order to ease the pain for government workers (huge majority Democratic constituents).

Well then! I guess I do now understand how things could be much worse after a Shutdown. Apparently we'll now be paying for the privilege of surrendering.

* I'd also hoped that the clear demonstrations of Obama's bad faith and malicious intent on the shutdown might galvanize the party, now that the real villains were revealed to not be Ted Cruz and Mike Lee after all.

But no such luck on that account.

Do these people read anything apart from NBCNews?

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:47 PM | Comments (439)
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He seems to emphasize the "fold" option a bit more.

The findings of the newly released NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll are simply brutal for congressional Republicans. Not only are they getting the lion's share of the blame for the government shutdown, but President Obama's numbers have actually improved. Worse, Obamacare's numbers are improving, as well.

That poll caused quite a sensation on Twitter last night, and while it is worse for Republicans than recent readings from the Associated Press's poll, NBC News/Wall Street Journal has a long track record of solid readings. This is not a result to be taken lightly.

...

It was supposed to be a shutdown about Obamacare, but Republican leaders were quickly sidetracked by low-hanging fruit like the closure of the National Mall, Harry Reid's gaffes, and Obama's refusal to negotiate. Tactically, this might have made sense, but strategically it was a terrible move. If the shutdown was supposed to be about Obamacare, then that should have been the only topic Republicans discussed.

I, obviously, don't agree with that at all. If the Shutdown is supposed to "hurt Republicans," then Republicans gain by making it not hurt as much.

But the below is true:

Moreover, insofar as Republican leaders have discussed Obamacare, they have done so ineptly, and have repeated Mitt Romney's grievous mistakes from 2012. Looking at the topline numbers on Obamacare, we can see it is very unpopular, but dig a little deeper and only about 30 to 40 percent of people believe that the law will make them worse off. This is a significant failure in political communication by the Republican party. Government agencies like the Congressional Budget Office and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have warned since 2010—in their dry, technocratic rhetoric—that Obamacare was going to harm middle class families. For weeks now stories have been trickling out about people receiving letters from their insurers notifying them that their rates are being doubled. For over a year we have similarly heard stories about hiring freezes or hours being cut because of Obamacare. And yet despite all this hard data, the public still has not connected the dots.

Yup. This I don't get.

Meanwhile, believe it or not, Peggy Noonan now thinks it's the time to strike.

The Obama administration has an implementation problem. More than any administration of the modern era they know how to talk but have trouble doing. They give speeches about ObamaCare but when it's unveiled what the public sees is a Potemkin village designed by the noted architect Rube Goldberg. They speak ringingly about the case for action in Syria but can't build support in the U.S. foreign-policy community, in Congress, among the public. Recovery summer is always next summer. They have trouble implementing. Which, of course, is the most boring but crucial part of governing. It's not enough to talk, you must perform.

...

That gets us to the real story of last week, this week and the future, the one beyond the shutdown, the one that normal people are both fully aware of and fully understand, and that is the utter and catastrophic debut of ObamaCare. Even for those who expected problems, and that would be everyone who follows government, it has been a shock.

They had 3½ years to set it up! They knew exactly when it would be unveiled, on Oct. 1, 2013. On that date, they knew, millions could be expected to go online to see if they benefit.

...

Where does this leave us? Congressional Republicans and the White House may soon begin a series of conversations centering on the debt-ceiling fight. Good: May they turn into negotiations. Republicans are now talking about a grand bargain involving entitlement spending, perhaps tax issues. But they would make a mistake in dropping ObamaCare as an issue. A few weeks ago they mistakenly demanded defunding—a move to please their base. They will be tempted to abandon even the word ObamaCare now, but this is exactly when they should keep, as the center of their message and their intent, not defunding ObamaCare but delaying it. Do they really want to turn abrupt focus to elusive Medicare cuts just when it has become obvious to the American people that parts of ObamaCare (like the ability to enroll!) are unworkable?

The Republicans should press harder than ever to delay ObamaCare—to kick it back, allow the administration at least to create functioning websites, and improve what can be improved.

In the past the president has vowed he'd never delay. But that was before the system so famously flopped when people tried to enroll.

Eh.

See, here's one thing I definitely disagree with the Tactically Savvy (supposedly) folks on: They keep claiming-- agreeing with Obama and Jon Favreau -- that if only there was no shutdown, the media would be eager to discuss the colossal failure of ObamaCare, and the skyrocketing prices for health insurance.

Does anyone believe that? I can't imagine the people offering this dreck actually believe that. It sounds to me an awful lot like a Helpful Claim to Make, and not one that is actually believed.

Posted by: Ace at 02:13 PM | Comments (152)
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Stompenating: The Podcast is up!

Back to the post:

Megyn Kelly's show blew out Maddow's on "The Demo" -- the only demo advertisers really care about, adults 25-54.

But the night before, Maddow had edged Kelly on The Demo.

Phil Griffin, president or something of MSNBC, wants Fox's ratings investigated.

Well, by Nielsen, anyway.

Fun stuff from Twitchy.

"Tuesday -- you guys should be doing some investigations; I have never seen it in all my years of cable -- same overnight, same everything. And they doubled their ratings in a day? It is Unpossible." Griffin continued, "I have never seen it. They did election-night numbers in the demo Tuesday."

Griffin spoke a verbal typo, saying "impossible." I have changed it to what he clearly meant, "Unpossible."

...

At 9 p.m. on Monday, MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show beat Fox News' new The Kelly File, hosted by Megyn Kelly, by a slim 10,000 viewers in the key demo.

By Tuesday, though, Fox News was back to its dominant self, with 573,000 in the key demo compared with 261,000 for MSNBC between the hours of 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Perhaps most dramatically, Kelly's narrow loss to Rachel Maddow from a night earlier was significantly reversed, with Kelly drawing an audience of 623,000 in the key demo compared with Maddow's 291,000.

Nielsen has not yet responded to Griffin's remarks.

Oh, and here's something else: It appears that someone named Bill Weir, formerly a host on Nightline, has been promised a 9 PM show on CNN.

Wait a minute, that's Unpossible too. Doesn't CNN know that Piers Morgan already hosts a 9 PM show on CNN??!

We'll have to see what these mysterious signals mean.

Because right now I can't make any sense of it at all! You can't have two shows at the same time on the same channel!

That's just crazy!

Oh well, that's showbiz for ya!

...

Update: Earlier I asked "Why do they say adults 25-54? Why not just '25-54'?"

It's a pretty obvious answer I feel stupid for not knowing: Because they could also say "Men 25-54" or "Women 25-54." Adults means both.

Thanks to @drewmtips for making me feel dumb.

Posted by: Ace at 01:19 PM | Comments (219)
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Go away McCain. Retire or stop pretending to be a republican. This kind of behavior that McCain, Graham, King, etc. are doing reminds me of something Ellen Ripley said in Aliens.

I don't know which species is worse, Burke. You don't see them effing each other over a god damn percentage.

I'm pretty tired of republicans spending more time attacking republicans than democrats. Hell, democrats could barely bring themselves up to attack filthy Filner. That's how disciplined they are. McCain republican types? They can't wait to attack non-establishment members. And they do this for what? A higher position in what is now becoming a permanent minority party? Whatever. It's a dying party. Especially if this is what Boner's plan for the shutdown was.

1. Start a fight
2. Give up just before you win
3. Get nothing out of it
4. Look like a total fool
5. Let down your constituents
6. Reinforce the dictatorship

Posted by: CDR M at 06:00 PM | Comments (626)
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Hey, I was just saying all this in the comments.

[T]he more common tendency instead is that people (and especially the "experts" who write about the issues for a living) overestimate the degree of predictability in complex systems. There are some other exceptions besides presidential elections — sports, in many respects; and weather prediction, which has become much better in recent years. But for the most part, the experts you see on television are much too sure of themselves.

That's been my impression of the coverage of the shutdown: The folks you see on TV are much too sure of themselves. They've been making too much of thin slices of polling and thinner historical precedents that might not apply this time around.

There's been plenty of bullshit, in other words. We really don't know all that much about how the shutdown is going to be resolved, or how the long-term political consequences are going to play out.

And:

1. The media is probably overstating the magnitude of the shutdown's political impact.

Remember Syria? The fiscal cliff? Benghazi? The IRS scandal? The collapse of immigration reform? All of these were hyped as game-changing political moments by the news media, just as so many stories were during the election last year. In each case, the public's interest quickly waned once the news cycle turned over to another story. Most political stories have a fairly short half-life and won't turn out to be as consequential as they seem at the time.

Or consider the other story from President Obama's tenure in office that has the most parallels to the shutdown: the tense negotiations, in 2011, over the federal debt ceiling. The resolution to that crisis, which left voters across the political spectrum dissatisfied, did have some medium-term political impact: Obama's approval ratings declined to the low 40s from the high 40s, crossing a threshold that historically marks the difference between a reelected president and a one-termer, and congressional approval ratings plunged to record lows.

But Obama's approval ratings reverted to the high 40s by early 2012, enough to facilitate his reelection. Meanwhile, reelection rates for congressional incumbents were close to their long-term averages.

Now all bets are off, he says, if the government actually does default; but I don't think that's very likely at all. The Establishment is dead-set against that. Indeed, 94% of anti-Establishment radicals are against that too. Oh, we want to use that as a threat, but honestly: No. We're not going to let that happen.

It would take quite an extraordinary series of unexpected events for that to happen. Could happen, but everyone will try to avoid it.

In fact, I suspect that's the Establishment's out, here: they can ultimately collapse and then just say "We fought as hard as we could, but you couldn't possibly want us to default and tank the global economy, could you?" And for 93% of radicals, we'd say "No, I guess not. Oh well. You tried."

There are six conclusions, chiefly about doubt, regarding the shutdown; I've just given you one specific one.

Thanks to @rdbrewer4.

* Corrected My Correction: Silver incorrectly swapped "low" and "high," in an obvious typo. I've corrected his typo. Update: I think he actually fixed that from between my first read to my posting of this, and then I wrongly unfixed it.

Or maybe I just flat-out misread it from the start. That seems increasingly likely.

Anyway. Another banner day for me.

Context and Interceding Events: Dr. Brown cautions me that Nate Silver's analysis was written before the release of an NBC poll that caused a lot of agita for the GOP. A poll that suggests the shutdown made ObamaCare less unpopular than it had been.

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (230)
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These poll results are full of sedition goodness

...The number of Americans who say they want to fire everyone is fairly consistent among most groups – at around 60 percent – but it spikes among rural voters (70 percent), white independents (70 percent) and those in Republican-held congressional districts (67 percent). Just^(*) 52 percent of respondents in Democratic-held districts would vote to fire every lawmaker on Capitol Hill...

A record-low 14 percent think the country is headed in the right direction, down from 30 percent last month

Just 17 percent think the economy will improve in the next year, while 42 percent think it will worsen.

Some mood music below the fold.

more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 11:23 AM | Comments (138)
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NRO's Planet Gore blogger Greg Pollowitz joins Gabe, Drew, John E., Rick Tempest and me to discuss the government shutdown, the CR/debt ceiling fight and the disastrous Obamcare exchange rollout.

From there we moved on to lighter topics like Womyn's Empowerment! through t-shirts, the Washington Redskins team name and the ridiculous overreaction to the "Let's Move" stamps showing kids engaged in dangerous activities like the cannonball dive. The US Postal Service gets a lot of love at the end.

[MP3 Download] | Subscribe: [RSS] | [iTunes]

Follow on Twitter:
AoSHQ Podcast (@AoSHQPodcast)
Rick Tempest (@RickTempest)
Drew M. (@DrewMTips)
Gabriel Malor (@GabrielMalor)
John E. (@JohnEkdahl)
Andy (@TheH2 and @AndyM1911)

Posted by: andy at 12:47 PM | Comments (125)
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Interesting story.

I find the attacks on the "Old Guard" crude and reductivist. It seems a little too easy just to spout off angrily at the Old Guard. And my default belief is that if something is a little too easy, it's probably a little too wrong.

But I gotta tell you, crude and reductivist though it may be, I'm starting to think that in this case The Easy Thing to Say might in fact also be, like a broken clock, The Right Thing to Say.

Conservatives are not just conservative politically, but conservative by temperament, and it does seem that the Old Guard is very temperamentally conservative indeed as regards clinging to their old ways of doing business, their old priorities, and, most importantly of all, the old order in which they are always firmly positioned at the top.

I understand why they want to remain at the top. I understand how the ego has deceived them into thinking it's critical to the Good of the World that they remain at the top -- every human being has within him a massively powerful self-justification apparatus that will always tell him that What's Good For Me Personally Is Good For Everybody.

But what is their record? Many will cite the Reagan Years as a time when they were On Top. But the Reagan Years were a very, very long time ago at this point (almost before Meghan McCain was even born!!!), and the Reagan Years were a lot less perfect than nostalgia would have it (we didn't quite roll back the government; we instead managed a containment line and a temporary truce), and, in any event, a guy who once vaguely worked "for Reagan" (in as much as he drew a government check during the Reagan Years, or drew a think tank check in the Reagan Years) is not in fact Reagan.

Reagan's Magic is not viral, and it is not spread by contact.

So I am wondering why it is exactly we should continue the important extra-political apparatus of Conservatism, Inc. dominated by and run by people who really have not won much of anything at all since 1986.

Ted Danson was quite a big star in 1986. He's not such a star now. He gets work -- he's on CSI now -- but no one thinks of him as a big star, except possibly himself.

Bush barely won the election of 2000, and he was only very popular for three years based not upon the work of the permanent conservative political class but due to a terrible mass-slaughter by Al Qaeda. As the rally-round-the-President effect faded, so did Bush's popularity, and the permanent conservative political class was unable to, by its own efforts, inject any sort of major conservative initiative into the public debate.

We got a tax cut, yes (and was it wise to make so many people immune to the federal tax code?). But we also got Medicaid Part D and quite a bit of new spending.

So I guess I have to join my more radical/Tea Partyish commenters in asking the Old Guard, "If you're so vital to the movement, and your thinking is so clear and smart, how come you've pretty much gotten your asses kicked up and down the block since Iran-Contra?"

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (496)
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Good news? Yeah, I lied. I guess that qualifies me to be a GOP officeholder.

Governor John KasichÂ’s administration today requested the Ohio Controlling Board appropriate Obamacare funds for Medicaid expansion, an attempt to circumvent the General Assembly for billions in new entitlement funding from DC.

...

His attempted end run around the legislature is the starkest evidence to date that John Kasich, who was elected in 2010 as a limited government conservative, is less interested in freedom than in “free” money. By 2020, the Obamacare expansion is expected to increase Ohio’s annual Medicaid spending by nearly half a billion dollars.

But at least ObamaCare will be good for Ohioans. Health insurance rates for individuals will be sky rocketing there.

Yeah, see I lied again there. DrewM in 2016!

Just kidding, the GOP ticket is going to be Christie/Kasich.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:07 PM | Comments (189)
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