Lost amidst the appropriately non-stop coverage of the failed car-bombing in Times Square, the predictably masturbatory coverage of the White House Correspondent’s Dinner (“Morning Joe” was particularly nauseating), and the other news of Obama’s first visit to the burgeoning enviro-cataclysm on the Gulf Coast, was Saturday afternoon’s commencement address by the President.

Obama, like others before him, chose to use the address not only to speak to a group of graduating college seniors, but to the rest of us as well. His topic was the media and his focus was one very close to this blog’s heart (can a blog have a heart? if it can have an oft-vented spleen, then why not…) — the vanishing importance of facts in journalism and in America.

Get Real has been, from the start, an attempt to separate the wheat (facts) from the chaff (opinion) when it comes to mainstream media reporting. We’ve taken on the NY Times and the NY Post — MSNBC and Fox News Channel. The point has not been to simply point fingers and move on but to get people to start thinking about the consequences of a media filled with people talking about the news instead of reporting the news. The distinction is important because without the reporting, the often expensive and painstaking work of gathering facts, highlighting mistruths, and giving the rest of us a baseline understanding of what’s actually going on, there will be no actual news left to talk about. The scary thing is how quickly we’ve moved in that direction.

And so on Saturday afternoon Obama chose to discuss this very topic.

Today’s 24/7 echo-chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before.  And it’s also, however, given us unprecedented choice.  Whereas most Americans used to get their news from the same three networks over dinner, or a few influential papers on Sunday morning, we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows.  And this can have both a good and bad development for democracy.  For if we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we become more polarized, more set in our ways.  That will only reinforce and even deepen the political divides in this country.

Of course Obama has a political motive to talk about this. He won as the “uniter” by appealing to independents who told pollsters they didn’t like the tone in Washington. A year later the tone is uglier than ever and Obama knows he will never succeed by jumping into the swamp. But it was interesting the see the reaction to his speech of those around me. I was with a die-hard conservative and seated near some people who’d loudly talked about how they’d wished the university had picked someone other than “that socialist” to give the commencement. What did they think of all this? Obama continued.

If we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from. Now, this requires us to agree on a certain set of facts to debate from.  That’s why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads. That’s why we need an educated citizenry that values hard evidence and not just assertion. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously once said, “Everybody is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

That last bit had everyone, including the conservatives around me, clapping their hands and shaking their heads in agreement. So Kumbaya, right? If only life were so easy. Without resorting to an instant polling session (made impractical by the fact that the ceremony continued on for another hour) I couldn’t find out if everyone really in agreement or just agreeing that the other side should stick to the “facts” more. It would be great if the former was true but I fear it’s more likely the latter.

Several polls (notably the Pew Poll) have shown a deepening of the partisan news divide and an increase in American’s dependence on cable news networks for information. Since two of the three major cable news networks have abandoned almost any sense of objectivity (that afternoon a Fox News anchor teased an upcoming segment, “A new move to ban toys in Happy Meals: Is this another example of the nanny state? A fair and balanced debate next!”) it’s fair to say that more and more of us are seeing less and less actual journalism. The result, like that following our move towards a fat and sugar-laden fast food diet, is obesity — in this case an intellectual obesity in which people have no hunger for, nor interest in, anything they aren’t already consuming.

Obama’s plea for a healthier news diet was truly non-partisan because many liberals seem just as righteous in their certitude as conservatives (compare the Daily Kos with Red State and you’ll see what I mean). But will anybody actually act on the good doctor’s advice? Will the media actually spend a second to reflect on its responsibility for any of this? And if this is really so serious, shouldn’t Obama have repeated this address (or at least the substance of it) later Saturday when he flew back to Washington to speak at the White House Correspondents Dinner instead of giving a predictable, mildly amusing, totally inside-the-beltway dinner speech? That certainly would have garnered some headlines.

Instead it’s Monday, and everyone’s returned to their roles. On the kooky Fox and Friends co-anchor Brian Kilmeade looked at the surveillance video released by the NYPD showing the suspect in the Times Square car bomb attempt and said, “What I was surprised at is that right away they say he’s a forty-ish white guy…. I don’t know if they’re just placating the public but that doesn’t look like a white guy necessarily.” Check out the travesty here.

Are Americans too uninformed to be part of the process? OK that’s a little over the top but after the last year it’s really difficult for someone who’s spent a career trying to find the facts and then report them to watch the media, the pollsters, and the people follow each other down the rabbit hole into a world where every opinion is valid while every fact is either suspect or not worth our time.

Let’s ponder the polls on health care reform from just the last three frenzied weeks. It says a lot about what we’ve become.

Fox News’s last poll had some interesting wording:

Some Americans choose not to buy health insurance even though they can afford it. The president’s plan requires all Americans who can afford it to have some form of health insurance or else pay a penalty. Failure to pay the penalty would result in an even larger fine, a jail sentence of up to one year, or both. Do you think the government should be able to require all Americans who can afford it to have health insurance or pay a penalty, or not?

Yes                     29%

No                      68%

That was the sixth question Fox asked after the generic approve/disapprove and better/worse queries. I would have liked to see them follow with the same question but substituting “auto insurance” for “health insurance”. Alas that kind of thing was not on Fox’s agenda. For instance check out this one:

Some people think President Obama is showing strong leadership in his efforts to pass health care legislation by staying the course even in the face of opposition, while other people think he is showing stubbornness by ignoring opposition to the health care proposals and moving ahead anyway. Which is closer to your view?

Stubborn? Love that. Nowhere did Fox ask if people knew any facts about the bill. Not on the agenda.

I like this from CBS:

Do you feel you have a good understanding of how the current health care reform bill would affect you and your family, or is it confusing to you?

Good Understanding                       42%

Confusing                                        54%

So where’s the follow-up? Something like, “Why are you confused?” or “Who do you think made you confused?” or “Have you read anything other than headlines about the bill?” I guess it would have been too easy to ask if people thought the news media had done a good job of making the bill clear.

On the other hand CBS got an odd answer to this question:

Do you think Democrats who have been trying to pass the current health care bill have done so mainly because they believe it is good policy for the country, or mainly for political reasons?

Good Policy                                   35%

Political Reasons                           57%

Really? I guess the news that this is “political suicide” for Democrats hasn’t penetrated despite it becoming almost overnight conventional wisdom from the New York Times to Fox News.

The best poll by far was the one done by a health policy organization. The Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll not only asked probing questions about what Americans think about the health care bill but also importantly what they know about it. Here are two:

As far as you know, has the independent Congressional Budget Office which analyzes the cost of legislation said the health reform legislation currently being discussed in Congress will increase the federal budget deficit over the next ten years, decrease the deficit over the next ten years, or is it not expected to have much impact on the deficit?

As far as you know, if Congress and the president did pass a health care reform bill, would most people who currently get health insurance coverage through their employers keep their existing health insurance arrangements or would most people have to change their existing health insurance arrangements?

On the first one 55% got it wrong and 15% got it right. (The CBO said it would decrease the deficit) while 48% got the second one right and 41% got it wrong (the bill would be unlikely to have much impact on people with company plans). Neither result is particularly reassuring that Americans know very much about what they are being asked to opine on.

Another interesting question came from the AP-GFK poll early in March. This one pointed up the childlike unfocused unhappiness of many Americans when it comes to health care (and I would argue a lot of other things but we’ll save that for another day):

How much, if at all, should the health care system in the United States be CHANGED? Would you say it should be changed a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, or not at all?

Great Deal                                  31%

A Lot                                           19%

Moderate Amount                       32%

A Little                                         13%

Not at All                                       4%

So 50% think the system needs significant change and 82% think it needs to change at least some. But how? AP didn’t ask. Probably because the leading answer would have been, “I don’t know but in some way that makes everyone happy.”

Instead we got some real gems like this one from CNN/Opinion Research Corp asked of those who said they oppose the final bill:

Do you oppose that legislation because you think its approach toward health care is too liberal, or because you think it is not liberal enough?

Liberal? The bill is a lot of things but “conservative” or “liberal” it is not. Those political terms are almost meaningless when you’re talking about politicians let alone a huge and complex reworking of one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy. If you disagree then answer this: Is Medicare a “liberal” or “conservative” program? I’m gonna bet you wouldn’t get many of those aging Tea Party folks to say it’s “liberal” since most of them seem to be old enough to be getting their health care through Medicare.

Of course the pollsters don’t really deserve as much blame as their clients since that’s who pays the bills and signs off on how many questions will be asked. The fact that none of these news organizations was interested in finding out what, if anything, Americans knew about the health care reforms that will change a huge part of our economy and social system is a damning indictment on their failure to report both about the bill and the public’s failure to be responsible citizens.

Lest you think this is all much ado about nothing watch this video from an anti-health reform rally in Washington last week:

I’ve asked literally tens of thousands of questions to people over the years about what they think of political and policy decisions and this is not rare. This isn’t a conservative, liberal, rural, urban, racial, or anything else problem. This is an American problem. Everyone’s got an opinion but almost no one has an intelligent opinion yet all are treated equally. Everyone deserves to be heard. Right? Well, no.

What does it say about us as a country that both the pollsters and the polled appear appear to be completely and totally divorced from the “reality-based” world, and doesn’t care?

Tuesday’s review of Diane Sawyer’s debut in Tuesday’s NY Post is a case in point. Kyle Smith goes on a spleen dump and gets almost everything comically wrong. He’s one the the paper’s TV writers but you wouldn’t know it from his lack of knowledge, writing ability, or research acumen.

First let me say for the record that I don’t have strong feelings about Diane Sawyer one way or another. It’s good that two of the three big seats of TV journalism are filled with women (finally) but I kinda prefer Katie. Nonetheless I don’t watch any of the nightly newscasts regularly (I’m decidedly under the age of 63) so I don’t particularly care.

Second, it pays to remember here that the Post and Fox News are Rupert Murdoch’s one-two partisan political punchers — media outlets that feed off of one another to help create news-like events that do the boss’s bidding (see: Tea Partys). Once you get that it makes all the sense in the world why Mr. Smith would go to Cuckooland in talking about FNC competitor ABC News.

Smith takes Sawyer to task for interviewing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week, holding the “get” until this week, and then not really grilling him. That’s all fair. TV news has always been about the “show” as much as the journalism and lining up big interviews so that the promotions department can tease the crap out of it is SOP on all the networks including Kyle’s beloved FNC. Remember Fox’s Sarah Palin week? A sharper bulb might have used ABC’s reliance on this old skool technique to point out how all the network news divisions have turned their nightly 22 minutes into shows about their anchors rather than about the news.

Instead Smith goes on to note that ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl did a piece on health care that was, according to Kyle, insufficiently like one Glenn Beck would do. He notes with derision that the story was filled with “last week’s” news about the deals made to get various Senators to back the bill. The same reports that fill his own paper’s coverage today. I’m pretty sure the intrepid Mr. Smith has not taken his complaints about the Post’s coverage to his boss Col Allen. Probably because the story is still developing….

Then there’s this:

A story on the dropping crime rate cited FBI statistics that showed, for instance, murder down 10 percent from January to June. Wait: you’re giving us news that became available July 1? Is this ABC or The History Channel?

Hahahaha. Oh that Kyle. So clever! But wait: it take the FBI six months to collect crime stats from the hundreds of cities and towns and law enforcement agencies across the country. So the FBI report was released…wait for it…yesterday. The day ABC (and everyone else including the NY Times, Bloomberg, the Washington Post, and 686 other news sites according to Google) reported on it. Apparently fact-checking is not a strong suit of either Mr. Smith or his paper. Maybe I can help. Here’s the press release from the FBI.

Smith digs Sawyer and her show as a “stale plate of info-leftovers for shut-ins, news for people who aren’t all that interested in news” without noting that the three network newscasts still get at least four times as many viewers as all of the prime-time cable clowns combined. I admit I’m not one of either group but if Smith’s colorful description of Sawyer’s show is accurate I can’t wait for him to let his quick wit loose on the shows of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity or Keith Olbermann all of which traffic in talking about days-old stories (forget about reporting anything) to audiences that are even older (and presumably more shut in) than the network newscasts.

Finally Smith shows his true colors when he derisively points out that the Sawyer broadcast spent 27 seconds on the death of actress Brittany Murphy as compared with 42 seconds on Obama delivering cookies to kids. I’m not sure either deserved that much time but what do I know? Unlike Kyle Smith I don’t work for a “news”  organization that devoted more back-to-back covers to Tiger Woods sex life than it did to the September 11th attacks in which almost 3000 Americans died.

Walter Cronkite

OK so if the pundits left, right, and center are to be believed Barack Obama’s 7-month-old Presidency is in trouble and his speech to Congress on health care was his last best chance to keep the ship afloat. We’ll let you decide if that’s a bit hyperbolic (see: Bill Clinton health care failure 1994, reelection 1996 or George W. Bush “Education President” 2001, Iraq War legacy-killer 2008).

The big speech on the hill is getting plenty of (digital) ink but it was not Obama’s most important speech on Wednesday. That came hours earlier in New York when he spoke at Walter Cronkite’s funeral. And what he said has everything to do with his, and America’s problems, real and imagined.

Standing before the assembled masses of media and journalism executives and stars Obama spoke truth to power:

It may have seemed inevitable that he was named the most trusted man in America. But here’s the thing: That title wasn’t bestowed on him by a network. We weren’t told to believe it by some advertising campaign. It was earned. It was earned by year after year and decade after decade of painstaking effort; a commitment to fundamental values; his belief that the American people were hungry for the truth, unvarnished and unaccompanied by theatre or spectacle. He didn’t believe in dumbing down. He trusted us.

What a novel thought. Earned trust built over time. Not trust claimed in splashy promos so silly they look like Daily Show parodies. But there was more.

We also remember and celebrate the journalism that Walter practiced — a standard of honesty and integrity and responsibility to which so many of you have committed your careers. It’s a standard that’s a little bit harder to find today. We know that this is a difficult time for journalism. Even as appetites for news and information grow, newsrooms are closing. Despite the big stories of our era, serious journalists find themselves all too often without a beat. Just as the news cycle has shrunk, so has the bottom line.

Ah yes, money. As Obama notes journalism is in perilous times. The giant corporate owners of newspapers are staring into the abyss of free online content and vanishing paid paper circulation. Advertising has disappeared. They are responsible to their shareholders first. Readers and citizens second (maybe).

And television? Despite the predictable lionizing of Mr. Cronkite, network television was always the place of news stars who commanded large salaries to recreate the morning headlines from the New York Times and Washington Post in moving pictures. Before GE figured out it could force NBC to make a profit in news the networks at least did a public service in exchange for the use of the publicly-owned airwaves. Remember those hour-long documentaries in prime time? Those days are long gone as the President noted.

And too often, we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed. “What happened today?” is replaced with “Who won today?” The public debate cheapens. The public trust falters. We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should — and that has real consequences in our own lives and in the life of our nation. We seem stuck with a choice between what cuts to our bottom line and what harms us as a society. Which price is higher to pay? Which cost is harder to bear?

It is not a lofty philosophical question. The destruction of journalism as a place where citizens could reliably get (mainly) facts and reason is a cancer that will destroy this 233-year-old democracy. It’s easy to blame the big bad companies that control the mainstream media (by which I mean giant corporate media like Fox, NBC, USA Today — not the silly meaning ascribed the phrase by bed-wetting whiny conservatives) but the old answer — the audience chooses what to watch/read/listen — is partly true.

There are choices galore. We have become the Wal-Mart of information: Cheap, available, and disposable. We consume the information we desire. We depend on our Facebook friends to tell us what’s going on. We only watch what we already believe. We believe we know the truth while the other side is brainwashed. Nuance? Shades of gray? The possibility that perhaps we are wrong and the other side is right? Even occasionally? [Insert shouts of righteous indignation here.]

We are children. And we have very bad parents.

The crowd at Cronkite’s funeral dutifully nodded at Obama’s points and then got into their awaiting black cars and returned to their plush offices to prepare the next posting/article/op-ed/newscast/chatterfest. They all might individually agree with what the President said but likely feel powerless to do anything about it. And be honest about it: Is Keith Olbermann suddenly going to grow up and use his keen wit and insight to examine all sides of an issue? Is Diane Sawyer going to grab the reins of World News and use it to give her viewers more than fast-paced gloss-over 2-minute reports on the biggest stories of the day? Is Rupert Murdoch going to direct his minions at Fox News to at least be responsible enough to stick to the facts instead of making things up? Is Jon Klein going to use CNN’s substantial resources to replace his network’s prime-time chatter with actual reporting?

And from their perspective why should they? The audience would rather watch train-wreck TV. And they have all those choices!

If you expect the media to fix itself you are delusional. Along with his honest diagnosis Obama gave the modern-day “giants” of journalism a little pat on the back but it was hard to take seriously. Cronkite was no god. Murrow did more to save America from itself. Adolph Ochs essentially founded objective American journalism. But Cronkite at least believed that he had a responsibility to his country. The Sean Hannity’s of this world believe only in what supports the largest paycheck.

“This democracy,” Walter said, “cannot function without a reasonably well-informed electorate.” That’s why the honest, objective, meticulous reporting that so many of you pursue with the same zeal that Walter did is so vital to our democracy and our society: Our future depends on it.

So look in the mirror. When the American people stop caring about what’s true and factual instead buy into whatever superstition or fantasy suits them at the moment, our democracy is lost.

Our American story continues. It needs to be told. And if we choose to live up to Walter’s example, if we realize that the kind of journalism he embodied will not simply rekindle itself as part of a natural cycle, but will come alive only if we stand up and demand it and resolve to value it once again, then I’m convinced that the choice between profit and progress is a false one — and that the golden days of journalism still lie ahead.

Will Republicans Take the Bait?

Barack Obama may be, above all else, a savvier politician than even Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton. Why? With his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court Obama has set a defining trap for Republicans: If they take the bait they will dig themselves deeper into the pit of electoral despair that will take a generation to climb out of.

There are two fundamental things to remember about America and voting: Women vote in bigger percentages than men (plus there are more of them to begin with) and Hispanics are well on their way to becoming the dominant “minority” in the U.S.

In last year’s Presidential election women made up 53% of the vote although they represent just shy of 51% of the population (and 51.6% of the voting age population). Women have traditionally voted more Democratic than men and have favored the Dem Presidential candidate in every election since 1988. That’s twenty years and the trend is not good for the GOP. Obama won the biggest share of women since Reagan crushed Walter Mondale in 1984.

In choosing Sotomayor, Obama is acknowledging both the historic gender imbalance on the Supreme Court (110 members, 108 men) and the smart political play of appointing a woman. Remember who appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court — Reagan, who as we just noted, was the last Republican Presidential candidate to get a huge share of the women’s vote.

If Republicans attack Sotomayor for being “intellectually shallow” or a “bully” they will likely trigger the kind of reaction among women that will hardly help their cause. How often do women hear they aren’t as smart as the guys? How often to we hear about the shrill woman who has to get her way? These are dangerous waters for a party that is already decidedly male in the ranks of both its electeds and voters. Even if these arguments don’t get a full workout, count of the Democratic political team to make sure the media believes Republicans are making these kinds of challenges the center of their opposition to Sotomayor.

The other bait in the trap is even more alluring and dangerous for the GOP. In 1988 Hispanics made up just 3% of those voting for President. By 2000 the number had jumped to 7%. Last year it was 9%. Still not a huge number and not yet the second-largest racial voting group after whites (blacks were 13% in 2008) but growing fast. What’s much more critical about the Hispanic vote is where it is growing. In states like California, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and Texas the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly that it is impossible not to count those states trending Democratic over the next decades if the GOP doesn’t figure out how to win over more Hispanics.

This is not a new issue for Republicans. When then-California Governor Pete Wilson blamed the state’s problems on immigrants (later clarifying he meant illegal immigrants but the damage was done) the party was banished to a generational oblivion in the Golden State. Republicans managed to win the Governor’s office back in this decade but only with a “Bloomberg Republican” named Arnold Schwarzenegger. The rest of the state’s party has been pretty moribund since the Wilson fiasco.

George W. Bush recognized this and campaigned hard in 2000 for the Hispanic vote, pushing his party to see the demographic reality. Bush then stuck his neck out on immigration reform in his second term and got it promptly chopped off by his own party.

Of course that hasn’t stopped some conservatives from denying the obvious but the specter of Republicans hammering Sotomayor on immigration or racial decisions must bring big smiles to the Obama White House. Fox News was off to a fast start highlighting a Sotomayor ruling in the case of white firefighters in New Haven suing for reverse-discrimination just minutes after the President’s Sotomayor news conference ended.

Perhaps the biggest problem for Republicans is that they have so few (any?) credible, prominent women or Latinas to make their case against Sotomayor no matter what ammo they decide to use on her. There are only three female Republican Senators and two voted for Sotomayor when she was elevated to the Appellate Court by Bill Clinton in 1998. Both are also among the last remaining moderates in the shrinking GOP caucus. Don’t expect (Ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee) Jeff Sessions to convince Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins to be the spokeswoman for the “Republicans Against Sotomayor” campaign. As for big-name Republican Latinas, forget it.

Indeed the biggest voice against Sotomayor so far is (surprise surprise!) Rush Limbaugh who said on the radio after the announcement that he hoped she “fails.” That sounds familiar doesn’t it? If Rush is the Republican spokesman on this those White House smiles will get even bigger.

So the trap is baited and set. Will Republicans bite? Obama certainly hopes so.

Who Me?

It’s a recurring theme of Get Real but only because Republicans keep doing things that prove the point. The Pity Party seems absolutely bent on self-destruction by following all the old rules for the old game that they can’t stop playing.

Take John Boehner, leader of the House Republican minority. Sunday George Stephanopoulos had him on to talk about the Republican alternatives to Barack Obama’s proposals including on global warming:

…the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.

There he goes again. Boehner, like so many other Republicans wishing Ronald Reagan could be brought back to life (and the White House), still thinks like this is an era when politicians can get away with saying trees cause air pollution. And ketchup is a vegetable.

Actually Boehner’s scientific analysis of cow farts wasn’t the funniest part of his interview. After trying, to no avail, to get Boehner to say anything about a Republican energy plan, Stephanopoulos threw out one last question to wrap up the segment:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you are committed to coming up with a plan?

BOEHNER: I think you’ll see a plan from us. Just like you’ve seen a plan from us on the stimulus bill and a better plan on the budget.

And we know how much voters liked those plans.

The GOP is living in some kind of wonderland where conservatives believe the same ideas that lost them the last two elections will somehow work now. They voted unanimously against Obama’s budget and stimulus bills (actually 3 GOP Senators voted for the stimulus but have been vilified by their rank-and-file for doing so). They lined up behind Rush Limbaugh’s old-timey ranting like soldiers on review. And those tea parties.

Fox News showed it’s true colors with it’s slavish coverage of the tea parties it helped sponsor last week. But almost everyone else treated it like a joke. Or worse — like a big gathering of your crazy uncle and his friends. These coast-to-coast gatherings were in many cases the wing-nut conservatives’ version of a wing-nut liberal conference on impeaching then-President Bush. Wackos to the left of me, wackos to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle…. 

The problem for Republicans is many of the people who showed don’t represent a majority and seem far more likely to vote for Ron Paul than a mainstream GOP candidate.  Tying the Republican brand to a fringe anti-tax message is probably not the way Madison Avenue would have gone about it but what the heck? Nothing else it working.

Actually that message seems to finally be seeping through the cracks in the Republicans coalition. As Get Real has repeatedly pointed out, Republicans are losing everyone but their aging, male, white, Southern base and hence, any chance at winning elections. The majority of voters now do not remember socialism. Do not have the visceral reaction to the term ‘facism’ (which has been stripped of all meaning lately). Do not buy into the tax-cuts-at-all-costs ideal. Are not impressed with the tried-and-true Republican talking points they have heard their entire lives.

Meagan McCain, John’s daughter, is getting the most play in this, mainly from liberal bloggers who love her in the same way conservatives loved Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman — as apparent apostates. Saturday she spoke at the Log Cabin Republican National Convention (insert joke here about oxymorons) and laid it on pretty thick after mentioning that she had gone after Ann Coulter in column and paid the price:

People in our country have much more important issues to deal with on a daily basis. But the experience did reinforce what I learned on the campaign trail in some major ways.

I’ll summarize them in three points:

1. Most of our nation wants our nation to succeed.
2. Most people are ready to move on to the future, not live in the past.
3. Most of the old school Republicans are scared shitless of that future.

McCain went on:

I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes. There are those who think we can win the White House and Congress back by being “more” conservative. Worse, there are those who think we can win by changing nothing at all about what our party has become. They just want to wait for the other side to be perceived as worse than us. I think we’re seeing a war brewing in the Republican party, but it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past. I believe most people are ready to move on to that future.

Her most damning line followed shortly thereafter:

Simply embracing technology isn’t going to fix our problem either. Republicans using Twitter and Facebook isn’t going to miraculously make people think we’re cool again. Breaking free from obsolete positions and providing real solutions that don’t divide our nation further will. That’s why some in our party are scared. They sense the world around them is changing and they are unable to take the risk to jump free of what’s keeping our party down.

Republicans ought to be listening to people like Megan McCain. Sure she’s not as popular as Rush or Sean or the certifiable Glenn Beck but that begs the question: Are the people those blowhards are popular with the solution to what ills Republicans or are they the disease?

Youth isn’t the answer to everything and experience counts for a lot. But we’re not talking about kids when we say thata good size majority of American voters don’t much like Republican positions on so many issues. McCain and other (older) Republicans recognize the problem but the party’s Stalinist-style loyalty demands will keep them marginalized until someone new and fresh can begin to draw moderates, suburbanites, and immigrants back into the GOP.

It will happen. But in whose generation?

Bring on Some Geeks!

I know you’re all waking up this morning talking about the stimulus football but I can’t let pass what happened earlier on Sunday without notice.

The US government is about to spend 800 billion or 900 billion or a trillion dollars on a stimulus “program” and that was, rightly, the topic of every one of the major Sunday political television talk shows. Shows that are the closest thing America still has to relatively thorough discussions of critically important issues. Ha!

This week ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC showed just what they think of any serious discussion about the largest single spending bill in the history of this country — a bill that could stave off another Great Depression or sink us deep into one. There were plenty of politicians and analysts to trade talking points and, as usual, virtually no intervention from any of the hosts to insert some reality into the mix. Incredible assertions passed by with nary a peep. And worst of all, amidst all the various guests on all the various shows there was but one, count ‘em, one economist.

Now I know economists aren’t the first people who come to mind when you are programming television but we’re talking about a trillion bucks folks! Bring on some geeks!

NBC’s Meet the Press was the lone show that bothered to have an economist on to ask him about the stimulus program and what he thought about it. Unfortunately David Gregory invited an economist who was also an advisor to John McCain’s Presidential campaign! Mark Zandi is the chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com and actually supports the stimulus plan as it is unfolding. But really, couldn’t NBC find an economist who wasn’t on the payroll of a recent political candidate?

I guess beggars can’t be choosers. Especially when you have to undergo head-snapping drivel from elected officials who can’t even be bothered to read the stimulus bill. Check out Arizona’s other Republican Senator Jon Kyl (on Fox News Sunday): “The centerpiece of this is a $500 rebate to folks, about 27 percent of whom don’t even pay federal income tax. That didn’t work last year. It’s not going to work this year. And so that’s not a good place to start.”

Where to begin? First it is NOT a “$500 rebate to folks” it is instead roughly $10 a week less taken out of workers’ checks for taxes. Second the rebate checks Kyl says didn’t work (and he’s right) were the work of the President he supported (Bush) and were mailed out as a single check. People did exactly what most economists said they would do with it — pay off debts and put it in the bank. They did not spend it. So third, Kyl’s contention that this stimulus program’s tax rebate won’t work is absurd on it’s face and he knows it. Too bad Chris Wallace didn’t bother reminding the fine Senator of that.

And then there’s David Gregory questioning John Kerry:

MR. GREGORY: “Martin Feldstein, conservative economist at Harvard but a proponent of the stimulus plan, offered criticism this week about that.  This is what he said: ‘The plan is to give a tax cut of $500 a year for two years to each unemployed person. That’s not a good way to increase consumer spending. Experience shows that the money from such temporary, lump-sum tax cuts is largely saved or used to pay down debt. Only about 15 percent of last year’s tax rebates led to additional spending.’ Senator Kerry, will people go out and spend this money?

SEN. KERRY: “Probably not. Some of them will, obviously, pay down debts; some of them will pay their rent, stay in their–hopefully stay in their rental home at this point.”

Whoa! These guys are unbe-fricken-lievable. Gregory quotes from an economist who simply gets what’s in the plan wrong and then Kerry doesn’t bother to correct him. Senator Kerry, in the form known as “Sunday Morning Political Show” you are the designated Democrat. The least you can do is understand a central element of your party’s stimulus bill — an element that the GOP has been using against you by lying about it — and correct the record.

Of course what would really have been nice is to discuss any of this with an honest-to-God independent economist. But I ask too much. Gaahhhd! (Thanks Napole0n)

Obama and Roberts do it again.

So usually we bestow a Mea Culpa on someone who admits he or she screwed up. U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts definitely screwed up in his first Presidential swearing-in reading the words of the oath wrong and making Barack Obama look screwy as well. Roberts didn’t exactly hold a press conference to talk about it — and frankly it was no big deal.