A lot of people have been excited/burned/outraged/delighted/disappointed/overly-reliant/overly-dismissive of Gallup over the last few years. They certainly deserved the burn over blowing the Presidential election. So can we get any useful information out of this year's State-of-the-States release? Yes- if you acknowledge their bias, and watch how each state has moved, you can see how certain Senators up for this cycle are barely treading water against a growing partisan current. Let me show you what I mean. more...

Posted by: CAC at 01:05 PM | Comments (181)
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CNN is faring badly.

umbers compiled by Nielsen Media Research show that Fox News is towering over the competition. Its total viewership surpassed CNN and MSNBC combined, with the gap increasing even further during prime time. Fox even surpassed its own record, coming up 6 percent in prime time viewers from this time last year. ItÂ’s great news for the cable network, which saw a slight decline in 2013 but now appears poised to regain that ground and more.

The big story, however, is CNNÂ’s precipitous drop in viewership. While MSNBC slowly bled viewers between last January and now, CNN hemorrhaged an astonishing 29 percent of its total viewers. And its prime time numbers are utterly abysmal, with 41 percent of its audience jumping ship in the space of just 12 months.

CNN will probably take from their precipitous decline that people are stupid, and that's why they watch Fox and not CNN. (And why they watch MSNBC and not CNN.)

That's the wrong take. People are in fact largely pretty stupid, but, as regards CNN's ratings health, they're not stupid enough.

It is true that Fox news has a partisan Republican and ideological conservative tilt. I think that's excusable because Fox's raison d'etre is to serve as a counterbalance to the relentless, ubiquitous partisan Democrat and ideological progressive tilt of all the other media (except for upstarts, like The Blaze).

And CNN would be right to think that MSNBC's viewers are stupid and crude, demanding constant partisan outrage fixes and ideological validation, like monkeys habituated to a cocaine drip.

But CNN is very nearly as biased to the left as MSNBC. CNN just uses the old model of media bias, one of implausible deniability. The denial of leftwing bias isn't plausible, but they're going to deny it nevertheless.

CNN would like to position itself as the smart, fact-based, probing news alternative to more demanding news consumers.

But they don't actually do the work necessary to be that. They pantomime their positioning. They offer less hot partisan hype than MSNBC. But scratch just a millimeter deep into Nonpartisan Real News paintjob and you find CNN loaded with all the same bias as MSNBC. They just convey it more subtly.

There probably is an audience for a straight-news, no bias news network. As the market fragments into smaller pieces, different approaches will attract different cohorts and wind up being profitable.

But CNN will never be able to attract such an audience when it continues to be "MSNBC with 50% less overt conservative-bashing and 90% less poop talk."

If CNN wishes to survive, it has to create a unique brand for itself and appeal strongly to an audience (even if that audience is fated to be smaller than MSNBC's and Fox's).

Simply being MSNBC's Somewhat-Better-Behaved-Big-Brother is not sufficiently unique.

On the other hand, if they confessed that Fox has a pretty good point as far as implicit and explicit bias, and sought to eliminate that without taking the next step of adding in Fox's own implicit and explicit bias, they might have a product that people would actually like.

But they won't. Their bias is too important to them. People don't go into the news business to make profits or report, neutrally, on the news. They go into the news business specifically to change minds, and specifically they want to change the minds of conservatives and independents towards the progressive viewpoint.

That's the fun part of the job, the satisfying part. The part that makes up for the fact that most people in the news media don't make a great deal of money, and also, by the way, don't hire many minorities.

I just thought I'd mention that.

Posted by: Ace at 10:22 AM | Comments (367)
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He actually says "Good Speech, Modest Agenda," then the rest of it.

He's a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who's been increasing disappointed by Obama the past couple of years. So his feeling may be taken at least as partially representative of the Disappointed Democrats bloc.

Is that all there is?

In what may be his last, best chance to revive a presidency that has fallen far short of its promise, Barack Obama unveiled his 2014 agenda Tuesday night: small-bore executive orders, studies, summits, and legislation, long-seasoned and stalled. "America does not stand still," he said, "and neither will I."

He focused on the era's seminal issue, loss of social mobility and income equality in a post-industrial, global economy. "The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by—let alone get ahead," Obama said to a joint session of Congress attending his annual State of the Union address.

Another cold, hard fact: Obama may not have the skill, the will, or the time to do much about it.

Another cold, hard fact Fournier omits: Income inequality has increased at a torrid pace under the Redistributor In Chief.

It was a good speech about a modest agenda delivered by a diminished leader, a man who famously promised to reject the politics of "small things" and aim big—to change the culture of Washington, to restore the public's faith in government, and to tackle enduring national problems with bold solutions. The night he sealed the Democratic nomination in 2008, candidate Obama looked forward to a day when future generations might say "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

Tuesday night was no such moment.

It was, instead, a moment in miniature: an executive order to raise the minimum wage for future federal contractors, and another to create "starter" retirement accounts; summits on long-term unemployment and working families; and scores of promises to "continue" existing administration programs.

"What I offer tonight," he said, "is a set of concrete, practical proposals." Oh, such a far cry from "an audacity to hope."

...

He turns to a recent gushing biographical piece cum interview that ran in the New Yorker.

He also told Remnick that people are looking for "other flavors ... somebody else out there who can give me that spark of inspiration or excitement." He's right, and you had to wonder during the State of the Union address whether Obama's time had passed ... whether even a great address could move the needle ... whether they've tuned him out.

That's an immature impulse, of course. People really ought to not seek too much meaning or "inspiration or excitement" in politicians, political parties, or political 5 point plans. That's kind of Dummy Stuff, isn't it?

But Obama, more than any President I can think of, is all about that and little else.

Fournier turns to various polls, including those that show that a majority of Americans now call Obama a weak leader.

...

Democratic operative Chris Lehane, another veteran of the Clinton White House, said, "It will require disciplined execution to succeed."

That's the problem: Obama has not executed; he has not found a way to overcome his era's obstacles and fulfill his potential for greatness. It may be too late to learn how.

I can't weigh in on whether it was a "good speech." I strongly doubt that. But I didn't watch. At 1:30 am or so I went to bed and turned on the TV and the speech was replaying on Fox. I heard Obama say something -- I forget what, but he used his Stage Whisper fake drama voice -- and I cursed "F*** you" at the TV.

I brushed my teeth and didn't hear much more than I had the first time. When I came back out, he said something else clingy, desperate, and false, and again I said "F*** you," then I turned him off my TV and watched something else for twenty minutes.

So that's what I got out of it.

On the other hand, alleged GOP strategist and CNN gadfly Alex Castellantos got a lot more out of it.

“I think I’ve said before that a speech by Barack Obama is a lot like sex,” Castellanos told a CNN panel after the State of the Union Tuesday night. “The worst there ever was is still excellent.”

Posted by: Ace at 09:34 AM | Comments (325)
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Instead of cutting 5% from the ever doubling "food stamp" program it "cuts" 1% but efforts to separate farm subsidies and "food stamp" spending failed when the GOP caved in conference with the Senate.

Members approved the House-Senate agreement on farm policy in a 251-166 vote. A majority of Republicans backed the bill, with 63 GOP "no" votes. But a majority of Democrats opposed it, with 103 voting against.

...

A majority of the spending in the bill is for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), informally called the food stamp program, and much of the Democratic opposition came from members who opposed the $8 billion cut to the program. The original House proposal would have cut $39 billion from food stamps, while the Senate-passed bill called for a $4 billion cut.

One of the reasons I put "cut" in quotes in the lead to the post is the mechanism that leads to the reductions might not actually happen.

The bill finds $8.6 billion in savings by requiring households to receive at least $20 per year in home heating assistance before they automatically qualify for food stamps, instead of the $1 threshold now in place in some states.

If that report is correct, just because someone isn't "automatically" qualified for food stamps doesn't mean there aren't other ways they qualify. Anyone want to bet these "cuts" never actually happen?

While the bill passed with a majority of the majority (most Republicans are always good with more spending), conservatives aren't happy.

Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., raised the concern Tuesday in a closed-door conference meeting of the conservative Republican Study Committee. The House passed agriculture legislation that split what he called the “unholy alliance” of agriculture and nutrition policy, namely the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps.

When the bill came back from conference with the Senate, however, the two sections were fused again. Rather than cutting $40 billion from SNAP, it slashes $8 billion, leading some House members to think something similar could happen with an immigration overhaul, even if they pass the piecemeal bills leadership is considering.

“It was something Republicans, not just conservatives, could have hung their hat on. We could have accepted a lot of crap if we preserved that separation,” Mulvaney said after the meeting. “If the new normal is going to be that we pass really good House bills but get killed in conference, I think it does raise legitimate questions about whether or not we should go to conference” on immigration.

The reason conservatives want to separate food stamps and farm subsidies is to make it easier to cut both. Bundling them together was a bi-paristan idea.

Some say if SNAP is separated from the farm bill, the House would still pass the remaining titles, albeit with amendments and spending sacrifices. But former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman disagrees. The coalitions between farm and food groups developed beginning with the late Sen. George McGovern and former Sen. Bob Dole in the 1970s "have been in large part responsible for the health of both farm and nutrition legislation," Glickman told Agri-Pulse.

Dole wrote in a Washington Post editorial on McGovern's passing that "we would both come to understand that our most important commonality the one that would unite us during and after our service on Capitol Hill was our shared desire to eliminate hunger in this country and around the world."

The best conservatives can hope for is there's some good (opposition to immigration reform efforts) to come out this business as usual mess the GOP has once again agreed to.

Anyone want to bet on that?

Posted by: DrewM at 08:33 AM | Comments (273)
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Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:19 AM | Comments (534)
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HUMP DAAAAAY, YEAAAH.

I didn't actually watch the State of the Union speech or the GOP responses last night. so I'll be spending a bit of today playing catch-up, I guess. Honestly, that guy has exhausted my interest. I have heard from a couple folks already that the GOP responses (all four!) did not satisfy.

The guy who tricked his 7-months pregnant girlfriend into taking an abortion pill was sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison.

Virgin Galactic has banned Chinese tourists from its space flights over espionage concerns.

Disney's decision to pull ABC's shows from Hulu and make them available only on Hulu Plus or for free on the website after a week appears to be backfiring. They're just training people to find and download their shows from copyright infringers.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:42 AM | Comments (271)
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Quote of the Day

"When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship."

-- Harry S. Truman

The American Dream is Dead in the South?

Well that's what a recent article by Matthew OÂ’Brien in Atlantic Monthly seems to claim.

Included in the article is a chart showing the percentage of people whose parents were the bottom 20% of income who made it into the upper 20%. When you look at the vast sea of red in the lower left it paints a pretty dismal picture of Dixie which appears to have about the same economic mobility as feudal Europe.

But this map doesn't correspond at all to the places that people are currently moving to to get a better life. And Stacy McCain calls bullshit on it. His primary rebuttal: West Virginia- the glory land of economic advancement?! No fucking way.

Why does rural Arkansas look like a beacon of upward mobility, while the bustling economies of Atlanta and Charlotte produce no such effect?

Most of all, why does the map referenced by O'Brien show that impoverished Appalachia offers more opportunity for advancement than any of the more prosperous surrounding flatlands?

To use a social science term: Your data is obviously fucked up.

And when people looked into the study they found it uses a strange way of determining economic advancement. Basically they looked at the mean family income levels of kids when they were in high school and then later the children's family income when they were 30 years old. Not too many people are in the top 20% of income levels at 30 even if they're doing very well. And I hope they adjusted the income levels for local costs of living but I wouldn't bet on it.

Short answer: Blue states by far.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:55 PM | Comments (571)
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Not really an open thread because the Star Wars thread, below, is really intended for that purpose.

If you care -- and I don't, that's why I just can't do this -- Allah wrote some crap about this abortion, and Jim Geraghty wrote about the SOTU as DC's F*** You to the rest of the country.

Posted by: Ace at 04:08 PM | Comments (1551)
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Sometimes a Sudden Betrayal has been telegraphed for so very long one begins to long for the Betrayal to finally just happen.

I guess the GOP is counting on that.

From the New York Times:

The principles say that Republicans do not support a “special path to citizenship,” but make an exception for the “Dreamers,” the immigrants brought into the country illegally as children, quoting a 2013 speech by Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader. “One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents,” Mr. Cantor said at the time. “It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home.”

Is there a great public demand for Immigration Reform Now? Allah, citing a new Pew poll, thinks not:

Immigration is now 16th on the list of Americans’ top 20 policy priorities. Just 41 percent said it’s a top priority this year — exactly the same percentage who said so five years ago. There’s a lot of interest in this topic among professional politicians because of the changing electorate, but among the public itself, there’s no movement.

Even one of the biggest RINO's on the planet -- MSNBC's pet RINO Joe Scarborough -- thinks this is all a bad political idea.

More than the substance of the Immigration matter itself is the anger over the underlying question: Who controls the GOP? The actual people who make it up and vote it into office, or the establishment figures being paid to staff it and their big-dollar donors, such as the corporate/business cartel?

It's pretty clear it's the latter.

And the GOP is fairly brazen about making this as clear as possible.

When it would really be in their best interests to hide it a little better.

Posted by: Ace at 02:29 PM | Comments (268)
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"When I heard those words, I called the control room and said this was a big deal."

I am tempted to make a gendered observation about how Andrea Mitchell manages to persist -- nay, flourish -- without a speck of aptitude for her job.

But that would be gendered of me. ()nly because I am not myself a progressive; progressives can make gendered attacks all day long without worry.)

Do not blame on gender what can be more easily explained by lead paint or repeated blows to the head by an ugly stick.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:14 PM | Comments (259)
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