I try to be understanding. I do. As much as the media is faltering, the online media isn't exactly a cash-cow either. It's a highly competitive environment, and hit-whoring -- splashily overstated and linkable stories -- are a fact of life.

It's a bit like the comic book industry's attempt to Hype its way out of an industry-wide collapse in the late nineties. Everything is a stunt, everything is grabby. Spiderman dies! Alternate covers. Hologram covers! Gold leaf covers. In this issue, with six alternate covers including one gold-leaf hologram cover, Spiderman dies. Can't. Miss. Issue!

But there's a downside to that sort of Spike Sales thinking. When everything is calculated to Spike Hits, it begins to sound like carnival barking. And carnival barking tends to be -- get this -- dishonest. And people start noticing that.

Anyway, Buzzfeed published an article by the hackish McKay Coppins, which got linked around a lot -- including by people on the right, because it offered them a reassuring and surprising storyline: that hipsters and assorted liberal d-bags were the new "gun nuts."

Well, McKay's sources are saying the story is bullshit, and that the reporter failed to report their clear statements that contradicted the premise of the story. Quotes like...

The Atlantic Wire asked Carr what he felt like being a poster boy for a gun nut convert. The process does not sound like it's complete. At South by Southwest once, Carr said, he shot large-caliber handguns for a story. "I found them absolutely terrifying in all regards."

By "them" he meant "vaginas" but still it's the same thing. (No, just kidding, he meant guns, which are Icky like Veejers.)

Scott Beauchamp's wife Elspeth Reeve, who probably knows a thing about cooked-up, sensationalistic Too Good to Check pieces containing counterintuitive mindthoughts and unexpected soulpatterns, finds it to be shoddy.

Jim Shooter, a veteran of comic books, talked about the Great Big Comic Book Crash of 96/97 and noted:

The comic book industry today is rife with creators who don't know their craft -- creators who are in love with their ignorance and defiantly cling to their destructive self-indulgence. That's the greatest reason for the decline of the industry. It's not poor distribution, lack of promotion or anything else. If there was a comic book shop on every street corner with big neon signs, people still wouldn't buy un-entertaining, impenetrable, rehashed, derivative masturbatory crap.

Ill-conceived storylines, reliance upon "shocking" or sensational events, dependence on gimmicks and marketing ploys, oppressively derivative material and the dearth of new ideas are all evidence of visionless, clueless creative leadership at the top and untrained, clueless (though often very talented) creators on the firing line.

...

Whether Aunt May dies or not isn't the question. If she dies, does it mean anything beyond a brief sales spike[?]

I'm using the comic-book analogy because comic books are a fringy, niche sort of thing, and definitely considered a Lesser Cousin of the big players in the media, and so is online media. And because so much of comic books is plain ol' hucksterism and carnival barking. As is... online media.*

But ultimately the carnival barking is a very short-term strategy. Profiting in the long run is like grinding at professional gambling -- a hundred small, sound positive moves, few of which are spectacular in themselves, which accumulate to result in a net profit.

Shooter's advice for increasing sales is distressingly simple (distressing because "simple" isn't the same as easy): Be better. Write better stories.

Not really any way around that. Even if you have a Twitter account!

* There was never a Golden Age of the internet wherein Sensationalism and Hit-Whoring wasn't in vogue. Like the comic book industry, these things were present from the beginning.

It's not that these things are being abused now, or done more now. It's that... well, just like with comic books, everyone now understands these tricks and Eyes Glaze Over and then Roll.

It's just the tricks don't work anymore. A medium has to be sensitive to trends, including trends in audience sophistication.

I don't know about you, but I'm put-off by hit-whoring. Not saying I always was. Just saying that, to whatever extent I once thought it was funny or cute to hit-whore, it all now strikes me as... well, crude I guess. Callow.

Same trajectory in the comic books. Dozens and dozens of Superman covers promised SUPERMAN WILL DIE!!! Number of Superman actual Superman deaths in his 80 year history: 0. (I know, people claim he died in 1996 or whatever. Well, he wasn't completely dead, it turns out. He got better. Is that really "dead" then?)

That trick works the first few times. Maybe the first dozen times if you're talking about six-year-olds. After that, people catch on pretty quickly that Superman isn't going to die and so this is all An Stunt.

Anyway, I guess I'm just tired of the Shouting. The Internet features a lot of Shouting in print form. I think I've just gotten a headache.

Speaking of Comic Books, Overhype, and Media Bias... Well we weren't actually talking about media bias in this post, for once. But let's say we were.

Anyway, Spider-Man comics featured a blatantly biased, egotistical newsman, of course, in J. Jonah Jameson.

I think J. Jonah's fair-and-balanced treatment of the city's pressing Spider-Man Issue is an unintentional parody of how the actual media frames issues for the public:

Pretty spot-on, eh? Assault Weapons: Threat or Menace? It just works.

Posted by: Ace at 01:36 PM | Comments (292)
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Investors have been willing to overpay for US treasuries and stocks on the theory that our economy, while not growing, was at least stable and predictable.

World investors may no longer be willing to pay a premium for a benefit that might no longer exist.

Note this article does not in fact address treasuries at all -- it's about stocks in US corporations. I would imagine that some of the same thinking applies to treasuries, but I don't know that, and the article doesn't say that.

It does suggest moving money out of US stocks and out of stocks dependent on US consumption for their growth.

The market had hoped for a “Grand Bargain”. Instead, it got a small, ultimately insufficient fiscal deal. The best to be said of the agreement hammered out on New Year’s eve is that it beat the alternative. While investors still cheered, nobody should mistake this for an economic, fiscal, or financial positive. Ideally Washington would have crafted a deal coupling long-term tax and entitlement reform with short-term stimulus. Instead, we got the opposite. The US now faces significant fiscal drag on an already sluggish recovery.

The drag might have been justified had the agreement actually addressed the long-term fiscal outlook. But it failed to tackle the US tax codeÂ’s dysfunction or the sustainability of major entitlement programmes. In abdicating any effort to stabilise the national debt, Washington now risks an eventual loss of international confidence in the US....

Rather than abandoning risky assets altogether, investors should tap market segments most geared to faster global growth and less exposed to US consumption....

To benefit from global growth even more directly, investors can reduce their overall US allocation....

Given the shift in relative fundamentals, investors should consider reallocating some portion of their holdings out of the US and into emerging markets, smaller developed markets and European exporters.

I had a half-baked idea. It's almost certainly been noted before. I don't know why I pretended ambiguity on that point-- it has been noted before, a bunch of times, including by commenters here. But I've been thinking about it, so I'm writing about it.

George W. Bush wasn't ever really as popular as he seemed post-9/11-- something that became apparent when his approval ratings cratered in 2007. His post-9/11 support was, as they say, a mile wide and an inch deep.

I believe that George W. Bush was the beneficiary of a rally-round-the-flag effect, as the liberal American media frequently speculated. In a time of trauma and crisis, he seemed to be, ahem, a safe haven for people's hopes.

But his actual support, being very fragile, cracked and then broke apart when he seemed to not be making any progress on the very issue due to which people had rallied to him, that is, the War on Terror (expanded into the War in Iraq, of course).

And then he became quite an unpopular politician.

The media almost never says that Obama is the beneficiary of a rally-round-the-flag sentiment, but that's only because their own support is so deep (and so deep, in fact, as to approach actual romantic love). They were Johnny On the Spot in pointing out the public might not like a President they themselves didn't like as much as it might seem; but when the sitting president is the apple of their eye, they're blind to the fact that maybe the public's support is a highly contingent and fickle thing. (Indeed, even when Obama's approval dropped to 45%, the press persisted for a year and a half calling him a "popular president.")

Now, Bush's own contingent, fickle, best-port-in-a-menacing-storm was enough to allow him to squeak by in an reelection contest which pitted him against a personally cold, graspingly ambitious Northeastern Brahmin. But after the War in Iraq continued to go poorly (up until the moment it was won), support for Bush, and Republicans generally, fell dramatically, and Democrats swept into control of Congress in 2006.

I think Obama stands in a similar situation. His approval rating continues to fluctuate between 45 and 49 percent, as people continue giving him the benefit of the doubt on his own Main Challenge, the economy.

But as with Bush, this benefit-of-the-doubt is not perpetual.

As with Bush in the beginning of 2005, Obama has about eighteen months left to show some serious progress before people make a similar decision as they made with Bush -- we trusted this guy, we reelected him, and he's still not delivering on the central issue we elected him on five and a half years in.

Of course, Obama could actually get some good economic news.

But it doesn't seem like we'll have anything like a truly growing economy. It seems we will continue to merely grow-and-fall along a much-lowered baseline.

And of course his various expensive and controversial "surges" don't seem to be winning the day. In fact they seem to be hurting things, unlike Bush's.

There Is No "U" in Hubris

Wait a tic, checking again, there is.

Soothsayer Objects... He writes that the public doesn't care about such things.

we learned three things in 2012:

1. Obama does not need gas to be under $3.50/gal

2. Obama does not need unemployment rate to be lower 7.7%

3. Obama does not need a healthy housing sector, only one that perpetually shows "signs of recovery"

I don't think that's true. I think the public didn't demand these things occur by the end of his first term. That is different from them never demanding these things, ever.

Consider that the Iraq War was going poorly in 2004 -- and the public knew that -- but did not, at that point, give Bush his walking papers. By 2006, however, they kicked the Republicans out of Congressional power.

I think the dynamic worked like this:

Liberals overplayed their hands complaining that Everything Is Bush's Fault. The public realized that this was nonsense -- that terrorism had been a growing and unaddressed issue for a decade or three -- and that the liberal pretense that Everything Is Bush's Fault was unfair and just some political shuck-and-jive.

Liberals seemed to them overwrought, and primarily whining about their reduced political influence, rather than making accurate complaints and assessments of fault. And animated by ideological/political antipathy and outright hatred for Bush, which the public by and large did not share. (Nor did they love him -- I think the broad, less-political public views the passions of partisans as somewhat unhinghed and silly.)

I think the same sort of thing may have happened to conservatives in 2008-2012 -- that the public thought we were just whining about their decision (they voted for these imbeciles, after all) and were also offering up some shuck-and-jive political agitations for purposes of PR manipulation.

Nevertheless, the relentless drumbeat that Everything is Bush's Fault did in fact strike a chord with the public (how can drums strike chords?, you ask; Shut Up, I explain) by 2006 and continued through 2008... and to the present day.

At some point, the public was willing to believe Everything Is Bush's fault. That time just wasn't in 2004. It came later.

Will we see a similar dynamic? I believe that if things do not markedly improve we will in fact see that dynamic again.

I don't think the broad public is terribly political. I think they are practical, results-driven. It's hard to move them on policy because they just don't have much interest in policy, ideology, or theory.

But they will take note of results, and change their minds according to that metric.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (347)
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And thus Narcissus became enchanted by his own reflection.

President Barack Obama is featuring eight Americans as "citizen co-chairs" of his inauguration, a new role created to highlight his first-term accomplishments with examples of lives that have either been improved by his actions or inspired his presidency.

The honorees announced Thursday include a woman with a brain tumor who no longer is denied health care for a pre-existing condition; an autoworker who got her job back after the General Motors bailout; and a gay pilot-in-training kicked out of the Air Force before the president repealed the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Inauguration officials said the president has met most of the eight individuals during his first term and their inclusion in inaugural events is meant to showcase his administration's core values through real-life examples that people across the country can relate to.

One of the co-chairs is a bomb-disposal expert who had all four limbs taken from him by a bomb. Obama's great inspiration for him? Showing up at Walter Reed and giving him a Purple Heart.

I think we're defining "success" way down low for Obama. Obama is now highlighting his unrivaled powers as a messenger.

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (423)
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Hm. Maybe time for a class-action lawsuit.

Two handguns and two pistol permits were stolen from the New City home of a man whose name and address are listed on the website of a local newspaper as possessing gun permits, police said.

The thieves ransacked the house Wednesday night, breaking into two safes on the home's third floor and stealing a third safe. The guns were in the stolen safe, police said.

Clarkstown police said they had no evidence the burglary was connected to the controversial map.

"The burglary is still under investigation and there are no facts to support this correlation at this time," Clarkstown Sgt. Joanne Fratianni said in a statement. "If the investigation develops further information, it will be released accordingly."

...

"At this early point in the investigation, we believe it is a random crime and the home was not targeted," Clarkstown Det. Lt. Charles Delo told News12.

Invoking Goldfinger's rule: The first time is happenstance, the second time is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.

We'll see about that third time.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (184)
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I don't understand how people can live such unexamined lives and never question their plainly-biased beliefs and statements.

Oh, by the way: Part of Quinn's criticism of Bush was that he had no parties and attended no parties previous to the inaugural, but now finds time for a gaudy inaugural ball:

In this administration, the idea of getting together socially with colleagues, political adversaries and even members of the president's own party seems to be regarded, as Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales has said of the Geneva Conventions, as "quaint" and "obsolete." Many in Washington's diplomatic and social circles have concluded that President Bush and those around him have no interest in meeting new people, exchanging ideas with those who differ with them, reaching out to the community in which they live, or, through the embassies, to the larger world.

The vapid aging socialite Sally Quinn has written on numerous occasions about her hurt feelings that no one's interested in coming to her stupid dinner parties any longer. She's even knocked Obama (and his people) for not caring about her stupid dinner parties. She resents her loss of social status and the unearned, unmerited social/political power her previous access to power-players of the 70s granted her. And she's so un-self-aware that she has no idea how much of her own petty egotism she's revealing every time she makes the same basic complaint that people ought to come to her dinner parties.

Posted by: Ace at 10:08 AM | Comments (153)
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I cited the 40% number too, in comments. I fell for it.

First of all, the figure comes from a Bloomberg study-- which is already a mark against its credibility.

Second of all, the 40% figure they cite doesn't even apply to all gun sales, but rather gun re-sales. Thus, 40% doesn't apply to all guns, new and old, but only to the old category.

Furthermore:

The dubious statistic of guns that avoided background checks — which is actually 36 percent — comes from a small 251-person survey on gun sales two decades ago, very early in the Clinton administration. Most of the survey covered sales before the Brady Act instituted mandatory federal background checks in early 1994.

If that alone didnÂ’t make the number invalid, the federal survey simply asked buyers if they thought they were buying from a licensed firearms dealer. While all Federal Firearm Licensees do background checks, only those perceived as being FFLs were counted....

If you look at guns that were bought, traded, borrowed, rented, issued as a requirement of the job, or won through raffles, 85 percent went through Federal Firearm Licensees and would have been subject to a background check. Only 15 percent would have been transferred without a background check.

Economist John Lott, the author of several landmark studies on the real-world impact of gun control, has concluded that if you take out transfers of guns either between FFLs or between family members, the remaining number of transfers falls to about 10 percent. Those were the numbers from two decades ago. “We don’t know the precise number today, but it is hard to believe that it is above single digits,” he told me.

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (251)
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That's what the left keeps telling us. Please allow me to retort:

I don’t “need” my AR any more than Rosa Parks “needed” to sit in the front of that bus. #NRA

— The H2 (@TheH2) January 17, 2013

My civil rights, like Parks', are non-negotiable. #NRA

— The H2 (@TheH2) January 17, 2013

Under segregation, blacks were "The Other". Every black man was a rapist, thief or murderer who just hadn't been caught yet.

There really aren't words to describe how wrong this was, yet the left has no problem at all doing the same thing to legal gun owners. We are now "The Other" who are bent on killing your kids at school by our mere existence. We buy off congressmen to do our evil bidding. We're like the Nazis and the KKK all rolled into one.

Bullshit.

Our basic civil rights pre-date the constitution and are not dependent on what anyone, majority or vocal minority, deems a necessity.

By this standard, no one needs to be, say, a Wiccan when we have all these other religions to choose from, so the religion should be banned.

No one needs to burn a flag or display an image of crucifix in a jar of urine, so these should be banned.

You can still eat lunch at a segregated lunch counter. You can still drink water from a segregated water fountain. You can still learn at a segregated school. No problem with these - unban them.

And on, and on, and on.

So, no, I don't "need" my AR-15 or my 30-round mags. But that is irrelevant to whether the government can tell me I can't have them.

Related: A good read from Charles C. W. Cooke, who's fast becoming my favorite writer at NRO.

Posted by: andy at 07:47 AM | Comments (381)
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Illinois Public Act 91-0015 (SB-759)

Synopsis of Bill as introduced:

Amends the Juvenile Court Act of 1987. Provides for adult criminal prosecution of a minor at least 15 years of age who is charged with aggravated battery with a firearm committed in a school, on the real property comprising a school, within 1,000 feet of the real property comprising a school, at a school-related activity, or on or within 1,000 feet of a conveyance owned, leased, or contracted by a school or school district to transport students to or from school or a school-related activity. Provides that a juvenile judge designated to hear transfer motions must transfer for adult criminal prosecution the case of a minor at least 15 years of age charged with aggravated discharge of a firearm committed on various school properties or on a school conveyance or within 1,000 feet of these properties or the conveyance, or at a school-related activity, if the judge finds probable cause that the allegations are true.

Illinois Senate vote record for SB-0759

P.R.E.S.E.N.T.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:10 AM | Comments (374)
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• DC Mayor Open To Armed Guards In Schools
  
• Support For Gun Control Slips In CNN Poll
  
• Malicious Virus Shuts Down Power Plant In The US
  
• Bob Schieffer Likens Obama Taking On The Gun Lobby To Defeating The NAZIs
  
• Tom Brokaw Says Silence On Gun Violence Akin To Failing To Oppose Segregation In The 60s
  
• Militants Grab US Hostages
  
• Raid On Aforementioned Militants Results In 34 Dead Hostages
  
• Another Child's Life Not Saved By Obama
  
• When A Politician Talks About Our Rich Hunting Tradition, Reach For Your Gun
  
• SW Pennsylvania Hospital To Stop Delivering Babies Because Of Obamacare
  
• Even Al Franken Raises Doubts About Assault Weapons Ban
  
• Italian Prime Minister Doesn't Support Same Sex Marriages Or Adoptions
  
• What The Hell Is An Assault Weapon?
  
• Dog Runs Over Man With A Car
  
• Judge Napolitano On Guns And The Government
  
• Why Gun Hysteria Could Lead To Expansion Of Government(autoplay video)
  
• Is Rand Paul Getting An Early Start On The 2016 Race
  
• Obama's Executive Order Fails To Stop Shooting Outside Chicago HS Basketball Game
  
• Gun Rights Advocate Smacks Andrea Mitchell Around A Bit
  
• How To Crush Democrats Dumb Gun Control Argument
  
• US Announces New Trade Plans, BRICs Conspicuously Absent
  
• Harvard Flunks The Greens
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:12 AM | Comments (226)
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Happy Thursday.

Just one thing this morning because you're going to be hearing about it all day and it's long. Notre Dame's Manti Te'o, this season's football program super-star, apparently made up the existence of a girlfriend that he then claimed died tragically at the beginning of the season. The story hoodwinked journalists for about six months before coming apart yesterday.

It's kinduva crazy story.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (434)
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