Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label press poodles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label press poodles. Show all posts

Saturday, March 16, 2024

They Get One Right

There is no warm place in my heart or in my mind for Meet The Press. Over the last 30 years, NBC in general, but MTP specifically, have turned their whole tele-journalism thing into a showcase for Press Poodles to pimp their Both Sides bullshit.

But like Grandma said, even a blind hog roots up an acorn once in a while.


Meet the Press Blog

‘MAGA movement’ widely unpopular, new poll finds

Just 24% of Americans surveyed have positive views of the Make America Great Again movement in a new national NBC News poll.

President Donald Trump is still unpopular and so is the political movement created in his image, according to a new national NBC News poll.

The Make America Great Again, or ‘MAGA,’ movement, which takes its name from Trump’s first campaign slogan, was the least popular individual or group tested in the new survey. Just 24% of Americans have positive views of the movement, while 45% voice negative views.

These numbers come as President Joe Biden made Trump — and his movement — the centerpiece of his re-election launch video on Tuesday.

Biden in his video that “MAGA extremists are lining up to take those bedrock freedoms away.” Biden and his fellow Democrats often use the term “MAGA” as a catch-all to describe pro-Trump Republicans who embrace the former president’s more extreme positions, including his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

A slight majority of Republicans — 52% — view the MAGA movement positively, as well as 53% of those who define themselves as conservative.

Independents also rated the movement negatively, with just 12% viewing it positively, while 45% say they have negative views of the movement.

The movement received net-positive ratings across only a few political and demographic groups, finding support among those who make up the Republican base, including Americans who are white, less educated and live in rural areas.

More than a third of rural Americans have positive views of the movement, the highest of any geographic subgroup. And the movement received its highest mark from white Americans, with a 29% positive rating, of any racial subgroup.

Men over the age of 50 were evenly split, with 36% voicing positive views and 37% voicing negative views. And a combined 58% of those with a high school degree or less and those who attended technical or vocational schools view the movement positively.

On the flip side, the movement received its highest negative ratings from groups that make up the Democratic base: the higher educated, younger people, people of color, particularly Black people, and those who define themselves as liberals.

Saturday, March 09, 2024

Today's Brando

"... they know what's gonna bring everybody to the wrestling matches ..." Brando has touched on that a few times before, and it's worth repeating:
  • Trump is a shiny veneer over nothing
  • He's all sizzle and no steak
  • Style over substance.
He established that on his first day in 2017 during a phone call with Mexico's president Nieto. Basically: "We don't really have to do anything - you talk shit about me and I talk shit about you, and the rubes will focus on that while we pick their pockets." He repeats that scam every chance he gets, and like Brando's said, he knows the Press Poodles will be happy to help him out by reporting on exactly the wrong thing.

There's a lot more than that in this excellent piece. Brando brings it.


Wednesday, February 07, 2024

Win Or Lose

It can't be much fun to lose the vote to "None Of The Above".

So why is Nikki Haley willing to subject herself to all this?

She might be the most interesting aspect of this election cycle. 
  • Why is she sticking with it?
  • What's her strategy here?
  • Is the point just to be a thorn in Trump's side?
  • Is she really running for 2028?
  • Are we seeing a kind of secret revolt of the GOP Normies?


Nikki Haley suffered an embarrassing defeat in Nevada’s Republican primary.

What happened?
She lost to an option to vote for “none” of the candidates listed. Trump skipped yesterday’s non-binding contest for tomorrow’s caucuses. (See full results here)

In the Democratic primary:
Biden won decisively. It was another step toward renomination, despite concerns about his age and how he’d fare against Trump in November.

Maybe we need to talk about that headline: "...Haley suffered an embarrassing defeat..."

Why can't the Press Poodles step outside their hidebound habit of reporting only on the ground-level obvious, and seem never to dig a little deeper - to ask a few of the questions that occur to some rank-amateur-random-nobody-blogger with no training or expertise?

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Bob Reich

Press Poodles have to fix their reporting.
  1. Stop reporting on Biden's age without mentioning Trump's (he's only about 3½% younger)
  2. Stop confusing "balance" with "honest" - no Both Sides bullshit
  3. Stop normalizing fascism

Saturday, December 23, 2023

Biden v Trump

More dishonest reporting at WaPo, merrily peddling the Both Sides bullshit.
  • "...political dysfunction in congress" is plainly the responsibility of MAGA Republicans who are trying to tear it all down. Inviting the inference that it's a Both-Sides problem is a lie.
  • "...deficit peaked under Trump, though both he and Biden have added trillions to the national debt." Are there any reasons you might wanna cite as to how those trillions got added to the debt? Say, for instance, Trump's TaxScam 2017®, vs Biden's application of Keynesian principles to keep us out of a full-blown  depression. Any of that sound familiar?
  • "...Americans appear downright despondent..." And of course, that can't possibly have anything to do with outright propaganda coming from wingnut media - plus the Press Poodles at WaPo failing us because their "journalism" is driven solely by profit instead of an honest pursuit of the facts, right?
You have to do better, WaPo. If you go on trying to placate authoritarians, and allow the forces of plutocracy to succeed, you will not be protected.

That said, they do come thru on the Student Loan point - but damn, it's like pullin' teeth to get these boneheads to brighten up a little. 

Fuckin' Press Poodles, man.



Biden’s economy vs. Trump’s in 12 charts

Both presidents tout their contributions on the U.S. economy ahead of the 2024 election. But how do they stack up?


The presidential election is less than a year away, and economic issues are once again top of mind for voters around the country.

Despite the economy’s rapid recovery from the pandemic, President Biden has struggled to convince Americans that his policies are improving their finances. In polls, the majority of Americans still say they trust former president Donald Trump’s handling of the economy over Biden’s.

Both presidents’ economic records have been defined by the pandemic and its aftershocks. The covid crisis upended the job market, stoked decades-high inflation and added trillions to the federal debt.

The economy today is vastly different than it was in 2017, when Trump took office. But the data shows just how each administration has left its mark: Biden, by adding 14 million jobs in less than three years, bringing the Black unemployment rate to a record low and reducing student loan debt by billions. Trump, meanwhile, presided over a period of low inflation, low interest rates and low gas prices.

Here are 12 charts showing the state of the economy now vs. under Trump.

1. Job gains


The astoundingly strong labor market is arguably the White House’s biggest victory. In some ways, the bump was inevitable — Biden took office at a time when millions were still out of work because of the pandemic. Even so, the rapid job gains in recent years have blown past economists’ expectations and have fueled the economy’s blockbuster growth.

Even more remarkable is that the labor market has remained strong, despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive efforts to slow the economy. As long as Americans are employed, they’ve been able to withstand inflation and keep spending, allowing the economy to grow.

Employers have created 14 million jobs during the Biden administration, with a monthly average of more than 400,000 positions. Recently, though, the pace of job creation has slowed, with 199,000 new jobs in November.

By contrast, the economy added an average 176,000 jobs a month during Trump’s first three years, before coronavirus-related closures and layoffs resulted in the sudden loss of more than 20 million jobs.

2. Unemployment rate


Aside from a covid-fueled surge in much of 2020 and 2021, the national unemployment rate has remained low through both Trump’s and Biden’s presidencies.

Joblessness fell during the Trump years to a half-century low of 3.5 percent in early 2020, just before the pandemic. During Biden’s presidency, the unemployment rate has inched down even further, to 3.4 percent earlier this year. It now stands at 3.7 percent.

The years-long pickup in hiring has been particularly good for workers who are typically underrepresented in the labor force. Unemployment rates for Hispanic workers, Black women and people with disabilities have all hit record lows under Biden’s watch.

The Black unemployment rate, which Trump liked to take credit for improving during his presidency, fell during both administrations, but reached an all-time low during the Biden era earlier this year.


3. Economic growth


For the most part, the U.S. economy has expanded at a steady pace under both Trump and Biden. Gross domestic product, a measure of all of the goods and services produced in the country, has grown about 22 percent since Biden took office. That’s compared with a 14 percent uptick during Trump’s presidency, when the pandemic forced the economy into a steep and sudden recession. Even so, the economy rebounded quickly — thanks in part to trillions in stimulus money — and was growing again by the time Trump left office.

Now, under Biden, the economy has notched five straight quarters of growth following a six-month slump last year. The latest expansion has been powered by heavy consumer spending, which makes up about 70 percent of the economy, and new infrastructure and green-energy projects spearheaded by the Biden administration. But economists note that the current rate of economic growth — an annualized rate of 5.2 percent, as of September — is unsustainable, and many expect growth to cool next year.

4. Gas prices


Presidents have very little control over gas prices. But this is one area where the Trump era was better for Americans — and could help explain some of the gloom Americans are feeling now.

Pandemic-related hiccups, the war in Ukraine and spikes in demand have all sent gas prices on a dizzying roller-coaster ride since 2020. Gas prices more than doubled between April 2020 and April 2022, from $1.84 a gallon to $4.11. They peaked at an all-time high of nearly $5 a gallon in June 2022 but have come down since. Analysts say prices gas prices could fall below $3 per gallon by the end of the year, thanks to a combination of increased production and slowing demand.

Gas prices have a direct effect on how Americans view the economy, and higher prices at the pump have translated to lingering pessimism for much of Biden’s presidency.

Pump shock: Why are gas prices so high?

5. Home prices


Homeownership is one of the biggest ways Americans create wealth, and the recent run-up in prices has been a double-edged sword: Many first-time home buyers been shut out of the market, but people who already own homes have benefited from soaring property values.

On the whole, though, homeownership has become far less accessible during the Biden administration. Home prices have surged during the pandemic, rising an eye-popping 49 percent between spring 2020 and fall 2022. Those higher costs have driven housing affordability to all-time lows, according to Goldman Sachs. Homes are currently selling for a median price of $431,000 — less than the $480,000 they were commanding last year, but still well over pre-pandemic norms.

Mortgage rates have more than doubled in the past two years — from about 3.1 percent to about 7 percent — making it that much pricier to purchase a home and putting a chill on the market. Prices, though, remain high because demand for homes continues to outpace supply.

6. Inflation


Inflation has been a persistent challenge for the Biden administration. A rapid run-up in prices after the pandemic resulted in the highest inflation in more than 40 years. Americans have been pinched by higher costs for just about everything, including groceries, gas, cars and health care.

Although inflation has recently come down from last summer’s peaks, prices are still about 3 percent higher than they were a year ago. Many Americans say higher costs have tainted their views of the economy, with voters consistently citing inflation as their top economic concern.

7. Interest rates


The president has very little power over interest rates. While the Federal Reserve’s chair and governors are appointed by the president and confirmed by Congress, the central bank operates independently.

But the Fed’s actions have a far-reaching impact on the economy. During Biden’s presidency, the central bank has raised interest rates 11 times as part of its effort to rein in inflation. The bank controls the federal funds target range — the interest rate banks use to lend money to each other overnight — which, at 5.25 to 5.5 percent, is at its highest level in 22 years.

Each time the Fed raises that rate, or even hints that it might, there are ripple effects across the economy, resulting in higher borrowing costs for loans of all types, including mortgages (currently at about 7 percent), personal loans (12 percent, according to Bankrate) and credit cards (above 20 percent).

8. Disposable income


Americans have less spending power than they did at the beginning of Biden’s term. A drop-off in stimulus money, plus rising prices, have caused large swings in household income since 2020. Still, many Americans are ending 2023 better off than they were a year ago, as wage gains outpace inflation.

During the Trump years, by comparison, Americans saw a steady increase in spending power until the start of the pandemic. Overall, real disposable income, or what Americans are left with after taxes and inflation, rose about 10 percent between January 2017 and January 2020.

9. Stock market


The stock market rose rapidly during Trump’s presidency and has continued its ascent under Biden. After a period of slowing last year — in anticipation of higher borrowing costs and increased volatility — stock prices have picked back up on optimism that the Fed is done raising interest rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq hit all-time highs this month, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 is on track to follow suit.

Trump kept a close eye on the stock market’s path during his presidency, often taking to social media to flaunt his successes. He also warned Americans that a Biden presidency would result in a “stock market collapse the likes of which you’ve never had.”

That has not happened — which the president was quick to note. “Good one, Donald,” Biden recently fired back on X.

10. Student loan debt


Outstanding student loan balances have been climbing for nearly two decades — until now.

Biden took office vowing to whittle down the debt burden on student and graduates. And while his most ambitious plans, including a $400 billion forgiveness plan, have been blocked by Republican lawmakers and the Supreme Court, his administration has found ways to offer relief.

To date, the White House has canceled some $132 billion in student loan debt for more than 3.6 million Americans. It has also increased federal Pell Grants to low- and middle-income students, allowing them to take on less debt. As a result, outstanding student loan balances have been falling for six months. Americans owed $1.74 trillion in student loans in October, down from a record $1.77 trillion at the beginning of the year.

11. Consumer sentiment


Despite the economy’s strength, Americans appear downright despondent when it comes to their finances during Biden’s tenure. Consumer sentiment dropped to its lowest level, ever, in June 2022, when gas prices were at a record high. Since then, sentiment has rebounded somewhat but remains lower than it was when Trump was president.

But although they say they feel crummy about the economy, Americans are continuing to spend heavily. That spending — on a range of goods and services, including cars, travel and dining out, has helped power the economy and keep it growing.

12. Federal deficit


The federal deficit peaked under Trump, though both he and Biden have added trillions to the national debt. The national deficit — or the gap between what the government brings in and what it spends — grew every year of Trump’s presidency. Sweeping tax cuts, followed by the government response to the pandemic, added an unprecedented $7.8 trillion to the country’s debt.

Since then, the deficit narrowed in the first two years of Biden’s presidency. But this year it grew again, by 23 percent, leaving the country with a $1.7 trillion shortfall.

That growing deficit, combined with political dysfunction in Congress, is setting off alarm bells for ratings agencies that track the United States’ financial standing. Fitch Ratings stripped the United States of its top AAA score in August. In November, Moody’s downgraded its outlook on U.S. sovereign debt, warning that “continued political polarization” threatens the country’s fiscal strength.

Friday, December 22, 2023

These Fuckin' Guys

WaPo just can't figure it out. They have to spin everything into "...but it's bad news for Biden."

The Dirty Fuels Cartel has to be dismantled.

Its death grip on politics has to be broken.

HAS TO BE.

They know the reasons, and they know they're subject to the harsh realities of climate change, just like the rest of us. They don't get a pass - they're not exempt - they don't live off-planet somewhere - they're not passive observers whose only concern is to casually "report" on the violent destruction of their own home.

Lost in this muddied up slop they call "Analysis" is the very important fact that Biden and his merry band are working their asses off trying to do the things we have to get done if our kids and grandkids are going to have any kind of decent place to live. And they're having to do it while being countervailed at every turn by dog-ass Republicans - and against a freeloading press corps that won't even try to get it's head out of it ass.

Sick to fucking death of this Press Poodle behavior.



White House clean-energy spending boom puts Biden in the crosshairs

The rollout of a multibillion-dollar ‘green’ hydrogen plan may help the U.S. dominate the energy transition — and give critics another target


The Biden administration raised the stakes on its politically fraught bet on massive subsidies for nascent clean-energy technologies Friday, rolling out a plan for awarding billions of dollars in tax credits to the makers of ultrapowerful “green” hydrogen fuel.

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The fuel is made by splitting water molecules and may eventually power shipping vessels and factories. Under the proposal, which will be finalized next year, recipients of the subsidies would need to demonstrate that the huge amounts of energy needed to make their hydrogen are not coming from fossil fuels and that they have brought in enough new clean electricity to fully power their operations.

The lucrative government supports are the latest major climate incentive that the administration is putting into place through the Inflation Reduction Act, the historic spending package designed to give the United States a leg up in the energy transition and help the country dramatically curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The climate law was a major win for President Biden when it passed. But it leaves his administration navigating perilous terrain as it rushes to implement dozens of new government programs heading into an election year.

The incentives are funding projects that are risky by design, with the aim of rapidly scaling production of new innovations.

Some of the companies receiving funding are destined to fail. The program operates like an incubator for start-ups, funding a broad range of innovations in the hope that some will break through and disrupt entire industries.

Other innovations supported by the IRA include giant carbon vacuums meant to suck emissions from the sky, aviation fuels made out of cooking grease and corn ethanol, giant wind turbines, artificial-intelligence-driven power grid updates, and the massive scaling up of domestic production of battery-powered vehicles.

In the case of hydrogen, some of the world’s largest energy firms are angling for the subsidies, but whether the “electrolyzer” machinery used to make clean hydrogen can evolve quickly enough, and at a cost that makes the fuel competitive with other energy sources, is an open question.

“We’re focused on implementing the Inflation Reduction Act as quickly as possible and providing clear guidance to industry so that they can continue making historic investments and tackling the climate crisis using every tool in our tool belt,” said John Podesta, the president’s senior adviser for clean-energy innovation and implementation, on a call with reporters about green hydrogen Thursday.

Before the plan was even shared with the public, it was under attack. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) earlier in the week called the administration’s approach to green hydrogen “horrible” because too many projects would not qualify for subsidies. He warned that lawsuits are coming. Republicans have been holding hearings and launching investigations aimed at framing the entire climate package as a slush fund for donors and friends of the White House.

Energy firms and industry groups are deeply divided on the White House approach, which administration officials stressed is still a work in progress and could change before the rules are final. Praise from companies that stood to benefit from the strict rules the administration is proposing was offset by warnings from the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the guidelines would stifle growth and push companies abroad.

The green hydrogen plans come after the inspector general at the Department of Energy, Teri Donaldson, warned Congress in October that the administration is ramping up energy subsidy programs at an unprecedented pace, making oversight a challenge.

“The current situation brings tremendous risk to the taxpayers,” Donaldson said. “There is no precedent in the department for this level and pace of financing. … Further, many of these programs are designed to promote innovation by financing projects not otherwise acceptable by private-equity investors — projects the markets do not view [as] acceptable.”

The deep disagreement in Washington over how the money should be deployed, together with a lack of public awareness of how these technologies work and why they are chosen, creates a familiar challenge for the White House. It is the same dynamic that turned massive clean-energy investment in the Obama administration into an albatross for Democrats, when a politically connected solar company called Solyndra went bankrupt after securing a $500 million loan guarantee from the administration.

“There were a lot of successes with that loan guarantee program, but when you have a failure like Solyndra out of the box, that is what people remember,” said David Hill, who was general counsel for the Department of Energy during the George W. Bush administration. “People still associate the program with that failed company.”

Republican lawmakers have been invoking the name Solyndra often lately, including as they launched an investigation into a loan guarantee of up to $3 billion to the solar firm Sunnova, which the lawmakers accuse of mistreating customers and exploiting its connection to a high-ranking Energy Department official.

“Solyndra is going to look like chump change compared to the amount of taxpayer money that will get wasted this time,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.), who is helping lead GOP oversight of the spending.

Administration officials say Republicans are misrepresenting the way the program works and the extent to which taxpayers are exposed to losses. They note that the same loan guarantee program that was attacked during the Obama administration as wasteful was actually a financial success, resulting in no losses for taxpayers while helping generate tens of thousands of new jobs. The Energy Department official accused of self-dealing sent a detailed letter to Barrasso explaining that he does not make the final decisions on which projects get funded.

Sunnova, which declined an interview request, said in a statement that while the government loan guarantee is aimed at reassuring investors that they will be made whole, the company would be responsible for absorbing any losses using its own funds before taxpayer money would be at risk. “Unfortunately, we have become a political football in an environment where the renewable energy industry is increasingly caught in the crosshairs,” Sunnova chief executive William J. Berger said in the statement.

On a call with reporters, senior White House advisers rattled off statistics that highlight the hundreds of thousands of jobs they say the climate package will create, the projects that have already been launched as a result of the subsidies and the impact the climate law is having on drawing clean-energy investment away from China.

Podesta said some of the same Republicans attacking the incentives are also showing up at project ribbon-cuttings to claim credit for the factories and infrastructure they are funding.

“Sometimes we have to remind my friends on the other side of the aisle that you can keep harping on Solyndra, but you also have the success of companies like Tesla that took advantage of that program,” he said. “One of the things we need to do is just get out there and tell the story about both the level of investment and the quality of investment.”

But even some allies of the White House are worried about the challenges of controlling the narrative on a program that is so costly, controversial and confusing to the average voter. Paul Bledsoe, who worked on climate issues in the Clinton White House, said he worries that even with existing technologies like electric vehicles, the administration’s plans may be out of touch with consumer concerns about lack of charging stations and high costs. He is urging the administration to be more supportive of transition technologies such as plug-in hybrids, even if that means overall car emissions aren’t cut as quickly.

“The conversation around the Inflation Reduction Act is often focused on technologies that are years away from commercialization,” Bledsoe said. “They are at risk of leaving the consumer behind.”

Friday, December 08, 2023

Today's Press Poodles


WaPo reports a pretty good jobs number for November with "labor market slowdown" (even though the number for Nov was higher than Oct), and that bit was in big bold headline type, but then - in tiny little sub-head font - it's "favorable to workers".

And they bury the rest of the good news in the last 2 paragraphs.
  • 4% Wage Growth
  • Unemployment down to 3.7%
  • Inflation is less than Wage Growth
  • Bankers feel encouraged
Fuckin' Press Poodles


U.S. adds 199,000 jobs in November as labor market slowdown continues

The unemployment rate dipped to 3.7 percent, reflecting a labor market that remains favorable to workers


The U.S. economy created 199,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate fell to 3.7 percent, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reflecting the continued slowdown in labor market.

The labor market has tightened through the end of the year with just a handful of industries, health care especially, fueling job growth, keeping the economy out of a recession that economists had widely feared just a year ago.

“The current state of the labor market is a good one,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director at the jobs site Indeed. “For the last year plus, we’ve been talking about a normalizing labor market. We’re at the spot where that process is complete. This is a normal labor market. Things have calmed down in a painless way.”

Health care and government created the most jobs, as consumers have continued to shift spending toward services and an aging population has intensified that demand. Health care added 77,000 jobs in November, mainly in ambulatory health-care services, hospitals and nursing-care facilities. The government sector added 49,000 jobs in November, finally catching its pre-pandemic employment levels, as wages in state and local government have caught up with the private sector.

Manufacturing also trended up by 28,000, reflecting the return of union auto-manufacturing workers from their strike. Leisure and hospitality added nearly 40,000 jobs, mostly at restaurants and bars, after months of choppy growth.

Other industries showed negative or sluggish growth. Retail lost 38,000 jobs, while transportation and warehousing, construction, financial services and the information sector, which includes tech, showed little change.

Some of the slowdown is a reaction to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes. The central bank, which has lifted interest rates to the highest level in 22 years to bring down inflation, so far has achieved its goal of easing demand in the labor market and wage growth enough to bring down inflation, to 3.2 percent over the year in October, without triggering catastrophic job losses so far. Economists caution that it remains too early to see the full impact of the rate hikes.

Investors are optimistic that the softening in the labor market will spur the Fed to cut rates early next year, which has spurred enthusiasm in the financial markets. Friday’s jobs report provides one of the last snapshots of the labor market before the Fed meets Tuesday and Wednesday to consider policy on interest rates, which are designed to curb inflation.

By most measures, the labor market remains just as strong or stronger than the years leading up to the pandemic, a period marked by low unemployment and hardy job growth. The percentage of Americans who are unemployed has been below 4 percent for two years, a sign that the labor market remains unusually favorable for workers, giving them leverage to demand raises and switch into better jobs. Layoffs also remained low in October, according to the Labor Department’s job openings survey released Tuesday, despite some concentrated pockets of job losses in finance, tech and media.

Meanwhile, job openings have dropped substantially from their peak at 12 million in March 2022 down to 8.7 million jobs in October, according to the Tuesday report, in a sign that employers are no longer on a hiring frenzy. The low layoff rates and reduction in hours worked since earlier this year are signs that employers are acting cautiously, holding on to workers despite tempered demand, after years of competing for labor.

“Employers aren’t willing to close their eyes and pay for labor anymore,” said Drew Matus, chief market strategist at MetLife Investment Management. “But they’re paying attention to who and what they need. And they’re thinking, what if everything gets so much better and I’m understaffed? Some of that is a hangover from the covid experience.”

In welcome news for the Fed, wage growth moderated in November, rising by 4 percent over the previous 12 months in November, to $34.10 an hour. The good news for workers is that even as wage growth has moderated since earlier this year, inflation has slowed more, meaning average hourly earnings are beating price increases, boosting Americans’ spending power.

“This is encouraging for central bankers and the people getting real wage gains,” Bunker said. “It’s helping people spend more which is good for GDP growth and for everyone. It’s a win-win for a variety of audiences.”

Friday, December 01, 2023

Press Poodles

There's something wrong with the polling.

And there's something wrong with the Press Poodles who simply can't get it thru their vacuum-packed skulls that there's something wrong with the fuckin' polling.

I'm not saying Biden's great and everybody loves him. But I am saying that something is not as it seems.


6 days ago — Biden's poll numbers have gotten worse. President Joe Biden's polled vote share in head-to-head match-ups with former President Donald Trump, selected polls.

4 days ago — ... election years. Polls pitting Biden against Trump also look grim for the president right now. RealClearPolitics' polling averages currently show Biden ...

4 days ago — President Biden, at the White House, delivers remarks on the supply chain at 2:00 pm ET… Nikki Haley campaigns in South Carolina… And here's one way Donald ...

5 days ago — The question now facing Democrats regarding the 2024 election is whether, in the face of Joe Biden's unsightly polling, they're panicking too much or ...

18 hours ago — President Joe Biden is struggling in the polls one year before voters will decide whether to give him a second term in the Oval Office.
  • Maybe we could look at the constant propagandizing of the Wacky World of Wingnutopia
  • Maybe there's a shitload of disinformation from hostile foreign governments flooding social media
  • Maybe the Press poodles are too used to just "reporting" without digging into what might actually be going on


Let’s Stop Treating Polls as Actual News Events

The stakes of 2024 are too important for the media to obsess over every “snapshot” of the electorate.


Pick up a newspaper, turn on cable news, click on Drudge or listen to a podcast and you will encounter multiple stories on polls. Did you know that Joe Biden is polling poorly? Did you know Americans are deeply unhappy with the economy despite its metrics being very good? Did you know that Biden’s weakness among young voters should be taken seriously?

Everywhere you look there are polls, and these polls provide fodder for stories, which then fuel news cycles and shape narratives around the 2024 election, such as how Biden should drop out because of his age. “Voters think Biden’s too old,” says contrarian comedian Bill Maher, and indeed, there are polls, like one from The Wall Street Journal, in which voters are asked if Biden, 81—along with Donald Trump, 77—is “too old to run.” The poll, in which 73% of voters consider Biden too old, was cited in a separate Journal story asking, “Is Biden Too Old to Run Again?”

Of course, polls can be upended when voters actually go to the polls. Reuters gave Hillary Clinton about a 90% chance of winning on Election Day 2016, while the Huffington Post told us that Trump had “essentially no path to an Electoral College victory.” Everyone knows what happened next.

And yet recent 2024 polls, which serve, at best, as snapshots of the electorate a year out, become news events unto themselves, generating reams of coverage and endless commentary. They’re not actually breaking news events, like, say, a train derailment, even if treated as such. They’re more creations of a media industrial complex that longs for easy data points, for things that feel like facts but are actually imprecise measuring mechanisms.

For every piece that is directly about polling, like one from Politico proclaiming “the polls keep getting worse for Biden,” there are others based on the suppositions gleaned from poll results, such The Washington Post examining “Trump’s improved image.” Even pieces downplaying some headline-grabbing polls as the “wrong” ones, may seize on others to make a point.

“The odd thing about media polls is that they are reported as a newsworthy event, but this kind of event ‘happens’ only when a newsroom decides it’s time for one—and when it has the money,” NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen wrote in an email.

Polls may fall into the category of pseudo-events, a term coined in 1962 by Daniel J. Boorstin and defined as something that “planted primarily (not always exclusively) for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced.” Just like polls, a pseudo-event’s “relation to the underlying reality of the situation is ambiguous.” (This idea was recently discussed by on John Dickerson on Slate’s Political Gabfest episode on polling episode). In this way, a poll may be more like a press conference, something that is created to shape a narrative.

There are other problems with polls, according to Margaret Sullivan, the media critic and recently named executive director of Columbia University’s journalism ethics center. “Polls are, by definition, horse race coverage, which focused on who’s up or down, not substance, ignoring what Jay Rosen calls ‘the stakes,’” she told me. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say never write a poll story but, in general, journalists are bad at predictions and should do some more meaningful reporting instead.”

Rosen has been out front this presidential election cycle with an “organizing principle” for journalists: “Not the odds, but the stakes.” The focus, he argues, should be “not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for American democracy.” Placing too much emphasis on polls can shift the political conversation from critical reporting about what’s happening—such as the impact of Biden’s administration’s policies or Trump’s authoritarian plans for a second term—to predictions about what may happen a year later.

G. Elliott Morris, editorial director of data analytics for ABC News’ FiveThirtyEight, noted in an email how “pollsters like to market their work as ‘snapshots in time’—quick, one-off readings of the public’s attitudes that get less accurate the further you get from that moment in time. That means that polls of the 2024 election are of very little utility this far ahead—roughly of zero predictive value, historically speaking, though there’s reasons to believe they’re more predictive now with higher levels of polarization.”

“But they’re also subject to a lot of measurement error,” Morris continued. “Only about one out of every 100 people a pollster calls picks up the phone. Those respondents can be really weird, politically speaking, and are also prone to overreacting to the news cycle. This means we need to be even more careful when reading into a single poll’s results.”

Even if the intention of conducting a poll is to capture the views and sentiments of voters, the outsized coverage of it may distort the picture of what’s going on. As Boorstin wrote, “The shadow has become the substance…. By a diabolical irony the very facsimiles of the world which we make on purpose to bring it within our grasp, to make it less elusive, have transported us into a new world of blurs.”

PS) Biden's ahead by 2 points nationally, and he's up by healthy margins in some very important cross tabs.
  • 52% to 25% with voters aged 18 to 29
  • 50% to 39% with voters aged 30 to 44
Time to start relentlessly slamming the Press Poodles at every opportunity on this shit.

Thursday, November 16, 2023

George

George Santos announces he won't run for re-election in '24, following a unanimous vote of the House Ethics Committee, slamming him for conduct unbecoming.


Considering some of the weird shit we've seen coming from the GOP side in the House, Santos must be just short of Beelzebub his own bad self.

What chaps my ass is that the Press Poodles seem to be giving the political considerations top billing, while putting the ethical &/or legal aspects in the second chorus.


Sunday, November 05, 2023

Today's Award


Stephanopoulos is a Press Poodle extraordinaire. He pretends to ask the tough question, but then he sits back and lets a smarmy prick like Steve Scalise filibuster with endless and empty GOP talking points.

Get your shit together, George.


Friday, October 13, 2023

Missing The Point


There may in fact be some Republicans who still want to govern - who want to make the thing work. And there's more than a fair probability that some of these clowns are indeed just interested in the clicks and the fund-raising opportunities, and the chance to keep a very lucrative gig.

But there are plenty - the MAGA gang, and the "quietly complicit moderate institutionalists" - who want dysfunction as a means to an end.

They've been telling us for 50 years:
  • "to err is human, but if you really wanna screw things up, call the government"
  • "government is the problem"
  • "less government is better government and the best government is no government"
They're telling us they want to shit-can our little experiment in democratic self-government and start over with a shiny new coin-operated corporate-style plutocracy.

More dysfunction = more cynicism and dissatisfaction = higher likelihood that people will support a major shift to authoritarian rule.

I could be wrong, but could we at least acknowledge the possibility, and then have the balls to ask a few fucking questions about it?


Friday, September 15, 2023

Press Poodles


Hunter Biden was indicted on a gun charge that practically no one is ever indicted on, and of course we're all patiently waiting for the NRA to come out forcefully in defense of his 2nd amendment rights.

The MAGApublicans in the House have forced Speaker McCarthy to declare (kinda) that he's opening an impeachment inquiry (of sorts), and WaPo puts up a headline like the whole thing is perfectly legit and by golly, "America has to get to the bottom of this. Harrumph."

The piece does mention that the Republicans haven't come up with anything of substance linking Joe Biden to any of the assumed shady dealings of his son, but it's not until the end of the 2nd paragraph, and it's pretty wimpy, inviting the inference that it's legit instead of being the usual dishonorable smear tactics bullshit that Republicans have been practicing for decades.

There's likely something that Hunter did that looks bad - and it's likely that some of his dealings have been less than full-on ethical, but IMHO, this is all spin - nothing more than the Benghazi crapola, where Republicans spent years slamming Hillary for the express purpose of damaging her politically.

And WaPo is delighted to report it out as if it's a real thing - which of course helps Republicans make it seem real enough to have a negative impact on the only candidate of the only party that's trying to make sure The Washington Fucking Post isn't subjected to the kind of mob violence Republicans have already engaged in.

ie: Jan6 of course, and that raid on The Marion County Record

It's like the Press Poodles desperately need to shoehorn everything into a framework of normality because that's how they learned it in school - and by Jove, that's how it has to be, cuz that's what's supposed to ensure my rightful place in the pantheon of great American journalists - as they purposefully ignore the fact that the rise of fascism depends heavily on people believing "it's not real - not really", or that someone else will ride to the rescue, or "the American people are fine and decent folk, and they won't allow this bad thing to happen."

The good Germans.


Double blows of inquiry and son’s indictment create tough stretch for Biden

Hunter Biden was charged two days after launch of impeachment process, creating political and personal challenges for the president


In just over 48 hours this week, President Biden faced a double-barreled onslaught of political and personal setbacks, as his son’s business dealings and personal struggles created new turbulence at a time when his advisers wanted to focus attention on the problems of former president Donald Trump and House Republicans.

Keeping up with politics is easy with The 5-Minute Fix Newsletter, in your inbox weekdays.
On Thursday, Biden’s son Hunter was indicted on charges of making false statements and illegally possessing a handgun, paving the way for a criminal trial that could unfold as Biden pursues reelection. That came two days after House Republicans opened a formal impeachment inquiry centered on whether the president benefited from his son’s business dealings,
although they have produced little, if any, evidence to that effect.

Neither the inquiry nor the indictment was unexpected, but the back-to-back developments underscored the challenges Biden faces as he runs for a second term. He faces no serious competition for the Democratic nomination, but some Democrats are growing increasingly concerned about his vulnerabilities, including his age, as polls show a tight race between him and Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

The legal and political clouds hanging over Hunter Biden now add to those troubles. “It’s always a concern,” former senator Doug Jones (D-Ala.), a Biden ally, said of Hunter Biden’s indictment. “It’s weighing on him and the entire family. The fact of the matter is, this president has made a point of letting the Justice Department do its work and not interfere. The chips will fall where they are going to fall.”

Trump’s criminal trials stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his alleged mishandling of classified documents have largely overshadowed Biden’s challenges to this point. But an impeachment inquiry and the indictment of an immediate family member, especially in such rapid succession, represent a striking pair of setbacks for a president, a reality that may become more evident with the formal launch of proceedings in the courtroom and the Capitol.

Jones said he thinks the court case will end up with a favorable resolution for Hunter Biden. In the meantime, he predicted, the president will stay focused on selling his record to voters.

“It’s significant and it’s historic,” the former senator said of Biden’s accomplishments. “That’s what he’s going to be running on. I don’t think the American people are going to give a damn if a son has been charged with a gun offense.”

Some Republicans see more of a problem for the president.

“Biden has had a very difficult time gaining any sort of momentum as he heads into his re-election bid,” said Jesse Hunt, a Republican strategist and the former communications director at the Republican Governors Association. “This is another troubling development for him when voters already questioned his competence. It gives them yet another reason to look at him in a negative light.”

Hunter Biden’s indictment follows the collapse of a deal in which he would have pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax violations while admitting to illegal possession of the gun but not pleading guilty to that felony offense.

The deal probably would have allowed him to avoid jail time. Instead, Hunter Biden could now stand trial in the middle of his father’s reelection campaign, and it remains possible he will face additional indictments on tax charges.

Hunter Biden’s legal team argues that the plea deal collapsed because of pressure from right-wing Republicans who complained that the president’s son was getting off easy.

“As expected, prosecutors filed charges today that they deemed were not warranted just six weeks ago following a five-year investigation into this case,” Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, said in a statement. “The evidence in this matter has not changed in the last six weeks, but the law has and so has MAGA Republicans’ improper and partisan interference in this process.”

In the House, it is not clear whether the inquiry will lead to an actual impeachment of Biden. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) ordered the inquiry on his own authority when Republicans appeared to lack the votes in the full House to initiate the move.

Even so, such an inquiry is a rarity in American history. Three presidents have been impeached — Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Trump, who suffered the indignity twice. None of them was convicted by the Senate, which acts as the jury in such cases.

Similarly, presidential relatives have caused problems before, but rarely in this way. “Having a son or daughter who gets into trouble is nothing new,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “Billy Carter and Roger Clinton never really loomed large in the White House, whereas the Hunter Biden story is about trying to connect the link to dad.”

Billy Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s brother, faced a Senate investigation into alleged influence-peddling. Roger Clinton,Bill Clinton’s half brother, had drug problems and received a controversial pardon from his brother for a drug-related conviction.

Biden is known to worry deeply about his surviving son, who a few years ago was in the throes of a major drug addiction. Hunter Biden stayed at the White House for two weeks this summer, and most of the president’s aides avoid discussing his son’s troubles with the president, believing their contributions and ideas would not be welcome, even as they worry about the personal toll it is taking on him.

Hunter Biden stays close to his father amid probe

Senior aides to the president informed him of his son’s indictment shortly after it became public and less than an hour before he departed the White House on Thursday for an economics speech in Maryland, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Biden did not address the indictment on Thursday, and officials said there are no plans for the White House to do so, as they want to emphasize that the Justice Department’s case against Hunter Biden is independent.

But as a father, the president — whose other son, Beau, died of cancer in 2015 — is particularly sensitive to Hunter’s legal troubles. When Hunter Biden’s plea deal collapsed in July, the president was blindsided and frustrated, since he had believed his son’s legal troubles were largely behind him, according to people familiar with his reaction.

“The legal status of his son has got to be extremely painful for him, but he’s going to have to endure,” said former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), who served with Biden in the Senate.

Both father and son have spoken about Hunter’s struggles with addiction, and the president has often related how proud he is of his son’s recovery.

Republicans have not presented any direct evidence indicating the president benefited from his son’s foreign business dealings, but many of the most conservative House Republicans had been pressuring McCarthy to formally open an impeachment inquiry. Some even said they would not support funding the government unless McCarthy acquiesced.

“They have no evidence, so they’re launching the next phase of their evidence-free goose chase simply to throw red meat to the right wing so they can continue baselessly attacking the president to play extreme politics,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.

But as in any inquiry, there are risks for the president. Congress is likely to have expanded authority to dig into Biden’s finances and could spend more resources investigating the president and his family.

“Going through an impeachment hearing is never a badge of honor,” Brinkley said. “It’s not something the president coveted or wants to happen, but it’s part and parcel of our new civil war going on between Democrats and Republicans.”

He added: “The weaponization of impeachment has now come to full blossom. It was always the fear of double impeachment of Trump that this day would happened. You don’t really need evidence to get an impeachment inquiry going — you just need the political will to do it. It’s just another manifestation of toxicity in our politics.”

Friday, August 18, 2023

Today's Press Poodles

The Associated Press put up a poll in which they asked about Trump, and electability, and support for prosecuting him.

Here's how they (and others) headlined it:


And here's how it actually plays out:


Fuckin' Press Poodles

Friday, August 04, 2023

A Score Card


With Mike Pence finally coming out and showing us a bit of actual courage - joining Chris Christie as pretty much the only well know Republicans to go openly against Trump, we start to think maybe there's hope for the GOP to reclaim its honor.

Yeah no - prob'ly not. But a guy can dream, can't he? I mean it is a sign of hope, right?

WaPo has kind of a breakdown on the State Of The Indictment



5 things Trump’s Jan. 6 indictment week tells us about the 2024 election

The first former president of the United States to be indicted has now been charged a third time. This historic event capped a week that tells us a few things about the 2024 presidential race, in which the former president remains the overwhelming GOP favorite.

Here’s what we’ve learned from the past five days.

1. No candidate can escape the specter of Jan. 6

Republican Party leaders have spent much of the past two years hoping to just move on from Jan. 6 — and urging Trump (in vain) to stop talking about the 2020 election.

This week made clear that nobody can escape it.

Trump faces a criminal trial over his role in efforts to overturn the election that culminated in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And former vice president Mike Pence, who was invoked more than 100 times in the indictment, has been forced to lean into making the Jan. 6-centric case he had long declined to emphasize.

(Imagine you were told a month ago that Pence would be selling merchandise based on Trump’s indictment — new gear features the slogan “too honest,” which is what Trump allegedly called Pence as Pence declined his entreaties to help overturn the election.)


The party as a whole and all its 2024 contenders will feel a newfound onus to weigh in, too.

The GOP has done its best to avoid a detailed accounting of Trump’s actions and his false claims of mass voter fraud. It acquitted him at his post-Jan. 6 impeachment trial based on a technicality. (Key senators said you can’t impeach someone who has left office.) Then it pulled out of a deal for a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission.

But this indictment has landed when Trump is again the focal point of American politics. There is no waving it off because he’s out of office. And 2024 opponents who have carefully massaged and triangulated their messages about Trump’s legal peril will risk being left out of the major topic of conversation if they don’t engage.

Oh, and Trump has signaled he is going to make all of this very uncomfortable for the GOP by using it to re-litigate the 2020 election and his false claims that it was “stolen” from him.

2. Trump may be losing control of the clock

Trump’s legal team has made clear it would prefer his federal criminal cases don’t go to trial before the 2024 election. While that remains possible with the classified-documents case in Florida — set for trial in May but subject to delay, in part thanks to the new superseding indictment and the care required in handling sensitive material — the Jan. 6 case in Washington, D.C., may be a speedier affair.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment appears built for speed. For a start, he charged Trump solo. If he charges Trump’s alleged co-conspirators, it will apparently be separately. And he kept the indictment narrowly focused on four charges, one count each. Then Smith announced at a news conference that “my office will seek a speedy trial.”

He might get his wish. A magistrate judge said Thursday that a trial date will be set at the first hearing, on Aug. 28, which isn’t always how it’s done. Trump lawyer John Lauro has said it’s “absurd” to try to conduct the trial in accordance with the Speedy Trial Act, which would mean starting the trial within 100 days.

Also remember that, unlike the classified-documents case, this one doesn’t feature a Trump-appointed judge who has in the past ruled in his favor in controversial ways. And it does feature a fact pattern that has been chewed over extensively for more than two years.

3. Ron DeSantis is running out of ideas

July was not a good month for the Florida governor. The presidential race was actually mostly static for his first month as a candidate, but since then he has gone from trailing Trump by nearly 30 points in the Republican primary to trailing by nearly 40 points. He’s now competing just to be in second place in states like Iowa and South Carolina, after polling close to Trump as recently as February, before he was officially running.

Hence the campaign shake-up.

What’s got to be particularly frustrating for DeSantis is that he’s even losing badly to Trump among voters who might logically be in his corner, like those who emphasize fighting “woke” corporations, a DeSantis signature issue. And his supposed retooling of his message hasn’t exactly borne fruit.

So what’s left for him to do to arrest the backsliding? Well, this week DeSantis sent Vice President Harris a letter seeking a meeting to discuss his state’s controversial slavery curriculum (she declined). And he just agreed to a one-on-one debate with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), which Newsom proposed nearly a year ago.

The combined picture is a campaign more focused on stunts than anything else, because the “anything else” has roundly failed.

4. Trump’s woes have not helped Biden

Despite all the legal drama surrounding Trump, polls this week suggested that the GOP might be as competitive as ever in the 2024 general election.

A New York Times/Siena College poll showed Trump and Biden tied at 43 percent in a prospective matchup, despite most recent quality polls giving Biden a small edge.

A CNN poll, meanwhile, showed that encouraging signs about the economy and inflation really have yet to give President Biden much of a boost.

Finally, the CNN poll included a somewhat remarkable finding. It asked whether people had more confidence in Biden or congressional Republicans to deal with major issues. While Americans in December picked the GOP by two points, they picked it by nine points in this poll.

All of which might help explain why Barack Obama felt the need to give Biden a reality check about Trump’s potential to defeat him in 2024.
  • About the only thing the polling data shows is how ubiquitous and dangerous wingnut propaganda is. Press Poodles always miss the point on this one, and that blind spot always shows them to be unaware of (or deliberately ignoring) the single most important angle they should be reporting on.
  • As the village is being wiped out by an avalanche, WaPo tells us all about property damage and the human toll, while carefully omitting any reference to one party's denial of gravity, friction, and slope failure - making it impossible for normal people to prevent the catastrophe.
5. Republicans won’t desert (or vouch for) Trump

There has been little in the way of a merit-based defense of Trump after this latest indictment, as was the case after the previous two. And relatively few Republicans have actually gone to bat for him in any significant way — at least compared with the way they did when the federal government searched Mar-a-Lago a year ago.

But in this case, the tepid pushback is arguably more pronounced.

The idea is that Trump is being politically targeted.
The idea is that there is a two-tiered system of justice.
The idea is that Trump was entitled to free speech and may even have believed his falsehoods.

Virtually none of the Republican defense argues that Trump was actually right and that his actions were warranted. This lack might be considered rather patronizing, because it implies that he wasn’t, and they weren’t. Why not just argue that what he said and did was substantiated?

Because they can’t. It’s in some ways an extension of what happened after the 2020 election. Republicans by and large didn’t echo Trump’s obviously false claims of mass voter fraud, because they seemingly knew they were ridiculous. They instead made process arguments about voting rules that changed during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, supplementing Trump’s objections with these to at least seem like they were on the same page.

Some seemed to think that was the smart play and it would all just blow over. Then Jan. 6 happened.

Nearly three years later, Republicans get to keep dealing with it, right into the middle of the 2024 election.

BTW - Pence (and a shit load of notable others) ignored congressional subpoenas. But they've all complied with the subpoenas from Jack Smith's office. Maybe we should be doing something about the little problem of people cherry picking which laws they will and won't obey. Seems like we need just a bit of a change.