Pangloss

Are you suggesting I'm claiming Obama passed a tax cut when my claim is really that he hasn't raised taxes?

I could have been more clear. Your source doesn't say that Obama didn't or won't raise taxes. It says that he cut withholding.

Increasing tax revenue is essential to fighting the deficit.

It certainly is important -- IF we assume that all expenses in the budget are appropriate and necessary. This country is about to make a statement as to whether or not it thinks that $2.381 trillion is enough money to run a country.

Stimulating the economy increases tax revenue and in turn lowers the deficit despite increased spending, all without raising taxes! Amazing!

So amazing that most Americans think it's too good to be true.

Revenue in 2008 was $2.7 trillion. The projected 2.381 of 2010 is more than the 2.1 of 2009, but it's still less than 2.7. (source) That's not an increase, and when Obama says things like that people think he's a snake oil salesman trying to sell a new spending normal. They don't want a higher spending normal -- they want to "Restore Sanity".

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying it's a very convoluted solution to what's actually a very simple (just politically impossible) problem -- cutting, rather than increasing, spending. It doesn't matter that the people themselves are the main obstacle to cutting that spending. Republicans increased spending? They're gone. Democrats increased spending? They're gone. Next? Oh, you're going to increase spending too? Fine, you're gone. Next?

I really don't want to patronize conservatives here, but in general I think they have difficulty grasping that the economy is a nonlinear complex dynamical system. Stimulus doesn't translate directly to defecit.

So goes one of the two main theories.

I wasn't patronized (though I at least know how to spell "deficit"), but I don't think you're talking about liberals and conservatives. I think you're talking about two opposing groups of economic theory with equal academic bona fides. Liberals have just as hard a time accepting market economics as conservatives have accepting neo-Keynesian economics. Doesn't mean they're stupid.

So no, I have to strongly disagree with your assertion that "it's a good thing we didn't do another stimulus". It's a bad thing we didn't do another stimulus. According to many expert opinions had the stimulus gone further it would've further increased tax revenue and further decreased the debt.

Economically you may even be right, but it's a problem for your current position. If they had had another massive stimulus then you wouldn't have been able to make the point that the deficit was less than the previous year.

It's your point, not mine. Which is it? The deficit's getting better, or we should have made it much, much larger and (now) should not worry about it?

The President has focused on fixing the economy, and as a side effect, tax revenue increased and the deficit fell despite increased spending

It does need to be more clearly explained to the people that most of the deficit comes from budgetary spending and not the one-time stimulus and bailout deals that were directly tagged onto the deficit. There's a perception that those expenditures were added to the spending side of the budget and somehow continued in 2010 as a new spending norm. Given that expenditures went from $3.107 trillion to $3.552 trillion it's not hard to see why they are confused. And I'm sure Fox News commentators happily muddy those waters further.

But in the end the problem is the same. We're going to collect $2.381 trillion, and we're going to spend $3.552 trillion. THIS math is VERY simple. And Democrats are responsible for that math. And they defend it as if it makes sense. Main Street can't do math like that -- not because they're stupid, but because when they try they get their houses and cars taken away.

And you want them to understand that it's okay that the government is doing this because of some complex arithmetic that involves a deep and long-term trust of government. They're just not going to do that, bascule. They have a much simpler way to address the problem -- they're going to go to the poll on Tuesday and scream the word "NO!" at the top of their lungs, and they're going to KEEP screaming that word until Washington hears it.

Is that how things should be? Probably not, but lacking sane leadership that's how it is. It's not about Republicans or Fox News Channel. It's about leadership. We don't have it.

Seriously, what is Obama doing wrong by conservative standards.

I gave my opinion on that earlier but you didn't want to talk about it. He's failing to respond to the will of the people. He's staked out an ideologically progressive position, and when challenged on it he's thrown up a brick wall and lobbed grenades at the other extreme. And mainstream Americans (who don't generally even come close to that ideology) aren't buying it.

But that's just what I think is happening. That doesn't mean I think it's very fair, or that it's a good thing for the country. My opinion in general is that unguided (or poorly guided) mob mentality is generally a bad thing.

Taxes are down. The deficit is down. The economy is doing better. Sure, Obama is spending more, but that spending has directly translated into an improved economy and a lower deficit.

I agree that the deficit thing is a valid point that hasn't been fully realized (or even noticed) by most conservatives. It's something to hang a sign on over the next two years, especially if you can keep the deficit on a decreasing footing and the health care bill doesn't blast everyone's wallets into submission like it shows every sign of doing at the moment (there's unbelievable outcry right over pending rate increases -- holy cow -- but that's another subject).

So throw it around -- that's the president's best line in the runup to 2012. If the economy and people's overall state improves by then, he has a chance. Otherwise I guess we'll have to move the West Wing REALLY far west. You know, so she can see Russia from her desk.

He's pretty much lost my vote at the moment, but he can earn it back again by returning to the center (or if Palin runs, that'd pretty much do the trick). If he does come back to the center and Republicans don't meet him halfway, I'll recognize that and advocate the return of Democrats to power in 2012. And I think the people will be right behind me.

Pangloss, I don't think you're paying enough attention, which is pretty sad for the moderator of the politics forum and perhaps a sign I'm wasting my time here and should stop posting permanently.

So I should stop posting my opinions because you might leave? Come now, don't pull a Whoopie on me, dude. ;-)

So the federal government would be funded like a corporation? And there would be no sales or income tax? (Just wondering if I'm understanding you correctly.)

One problem that leaps to mind is that it's pretty common for the government to pass laws and exempt itself from any applicability. Obviously it would not be able to do that without being accused of monopolistic practices. If they're going to compete with Wal-Mart, they have to follow the same regulations as Wal-Mart, or they won't be able to impose those regulations. That also puts a difficult burden on prosecutors and law enforcement to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

But assuming all of that is possible, I wonder if there might be conflicts over the nature of regulation. It may be that some regulation could not be logically applied to a "government store".

Also, what happens if Wal-Mart just plain *beats* the government store, and nobody wants to go there? Let's say revenue falls to the point where government actually goes out of business. You still have a border to defend, police to pay, contract laws to enforce (judges and clerks, buildings, etc), and of course an army has to defend the country.

I suppose you could stockpile a fund to pay for economic rough patches. Assuming you've met the test of regulation, you could resurrect Bill Clinton's most-idiotic-idea-in-the-history-of-the-state-of-the-union-address idea of investing in the stock market without the obvious pitfalls.

(That should get us started, anyway. I'll think about it some more.)

I can see little coverage of this in the media (as opposed to, say some random remarks of some guy on TV or radio about someone else). Why is that so? Is it because the complexity of the problem cannot be worded into nice sound bites which blame one party or another?

Well one thing is for sure -- we're not going to be able to rely on a collection of makeup-enhanced pinup dolls with online degrees in mass communications to show us the way to a better-educated future.

Interesting argument for defunding NPR in today's Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303738504575568222953428174.html

In a nutshell, what he's saying is that NPR's existence as a government-sponsored "highbrow" news organization inhibits the potential for competition from other ventures into "highbrow" journalism. In other words, if someone wants to start a news organization that leverages a very high standard for journalism, they would have a hard time doing that because of the perception that that role is already taken up by NPR.

My quarrel with government subsidies to NPR—via grants from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting—is that they cast a chill over the markets in which private entrepreneurs seek to raise capital for what might be called highbrow journalism. It is hard to quantify this. But it is a conclusion that I have reached after more than two decades spent seeking to raise capital for privately-owned publications competing in this arena.

 

More than once I have been interrupted, while singing the song of quality journalism to a potential investor, to be asked, "Isn't this already being done by public broadcasting?"

IMO there's a good argument to be made that it's the government's protection that allows NPR to be a "highbrow" news organization, but I think recent events challenge that perception. If NPR is not representing the full spectrum of American politics then there's nothing highbrow about it -- it's just propaganda. I know some on the left argue that it's not entirely progressive (doesn't attack corporations enough, doesn't promote socialism enough, etc), but that just shows those people to be so far to the left that moderate progressives look conservative to them. Left is still left, and they'd like it even less if it were right of center.

But the part of his argument that says that companies don't want to start up because of NPR -- I'm not convinced of that one. I think he has a valid point, but if an entrepreneur were serious about starting up such an outfit they could certainly compete with NPR, and if they're good at it they could beat them and take their listeners away. They might not even want to compete with them directly -- they could focus on video, for example, which has much more appeal with modern audiences. (The other day I was trying to explain the concept of The Tragedy of the Commons to my just-out-of-high-school game design students, and not one of them could name a single local radio station in the town they grew up in!)

At any rate, we have plenty of evidence that a private corporation could produce a "highbrow" news outfit. After all, that's what ALL of them were, back in the days of Cronkite and Murrow. So I think in some ways it's a pretty good argument. Also, it raises the question in my mind of whether such competition might actually happen. While I don't really have a problem with Fox News, I do think that aside from their Web reporting, the TV side is pretty much down in the dirt with the other pigs from CNN and MSNBC. And the networks aren't a whole lot better.

The idea of a "highbrow" news organization is pretty compelling. I wonder not only whether it's possible, but whether the majority of Americans are capable of recognizing it if it were to happen. Perhaps they could run a program on this "highbrow" network that would compare quotes from Rachel Maddow calling them conservative with quotes from Sean Hannity calling them liberal, and tally up some kind of running count.

What do you all think?

Even Karl Rove, responding to that very comment, thought it was bunk, and that he would caucus with Republicans for sure. And he is a MASSIVE Marco Rubio supporter.

"Lie" is such a strong word, isn't it?

Perhaps the larger issue here... does anyone care about the lies Fox is spreading? Things like Obama has raised/is going to raise taxes [not true],

A change in withholding is not a tax cut. Also, none of this speaks to the future ("is going").

Obama has increased the deficit [not true],

2009 budget (Bush's last, as you point out) had an estimated deficit of $407 billion. (source)

2010 budget (Obama's first) now has a deficit that has been reduced to $1.28 trillion (your source)

That having been said, further down the page it says that the 2009 deficit increased after full tax receipts were tallied, and that raised the estimated deficit to $1.4 trillion, which would be more than $1.28 trillion.

I guess it's a good thing we didn't do another stimulus like the President wanted, eh?

See that's the thing -- you focus on four or five things, but people are looking at a bigger picture. The president can't have it both ways -- either he wanted to absolutely blow the deficit out of the water in order to save the economy and deal with the deficit/debt later, or he was fighting to keep costs to a minimum. I don't think he's fooling anyone by bragging about some accounting error and AIG paybacks that brought the actual deficit in slightly under the projected one.

It's not about "lie". It's about trends, desires, and ideologies. It's about the direction that the public thinks the president wants to take this country. That's not the direction they want to go.

the stimulus didn't work [not true],

That's one interpretation of whether the stimulus "worked". But even if we accept that interpretation, it's not what the President promised that it would do. Whether it's right to hold a president to something as vague and difficult to define as the US economy is an interesting and certainly debatable question. Interestingly, the entire American public will actively participate in that one, and we'll know the result of that debate on Tuesday night.

healthcare reform increased the deficit [not true].

I stopped reading your link at the headline: "Healthcare bill to cut deficit: CBO". Your word "increased" is past tense. Does your article state that the budget has not been increased due to health care reform, past tense?

Regarding illegal foreigners

The main problem is that these people exist at all. Can someone explain me how these people have kids in a school, without being registered anywhere? Literally every step they take is tricky. They're officially now allowed to be where they are. But I understand from padren's post that the status of illegal immigrants is also quite different from country to country - and within the USA also perhaps from state to state.

As I understand it the determination was made to allow illegally resident children to attend public schools, and that this is common all over the country. The humanitarian side of the equation here is not hard to see, I'm sure, but I agree that it's just another step in a slippery slope. Their parents can't buy a house so they can't pay property taxes that contribute to school costs, but they pay other taxes (such as sales tax) and they rent housing in the local community (and that housing pays property tax), so it's a complex issue. (See padren's argument about the legitimization of illegal aliens.)

My personal feeling is to structure the economy in a manner that doesn't "invite" illegal immigration -- I'd be happy to pay more for local lawn care and hair styling. But that would also have an impact on legal immigration, which is in many ways the lifeblood of the country. Which (since we already admit more legal immigration than any other country in the world) brings us back to border enforcement.

Interesting story at Politico:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44216.html

According to the story, citing the Center for Responsive Politics, which runs OpenSecrets.org, apparently the Democrats are actually outspending Republicans this cycle by a long shot. This runs contrary to a story in last week's news cycle about spending by third parties on Republican candidates, which was running 2:1 over similar spending on Democratic candidates. The numbers cited (160mil versus 80) are a big drop in a very large bucket.

The money race totals come to $856 million for the Democratic committees and their aligned outside groups, compared to $677 for their Republican adversaries, based on figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

But what's really interesting to me is that the article draws a comparison (on page 3) with the situation in 2006, when the ratio was similar but the shoe was on the other foot. Republicans outspent Democrats, but LOST. Now Democrats are outspending Republicans and appear to be poised for a massive defeat.

The elephant in the room here, in my view, is the frustration of the American voter. What do you think?

San Francisco is considering a proposition that will authorize legal and illegal residents (all non-citizens) who have children in a district public school to vote in district school board elections. The city voted down a similar measure in 2004.

"Pro" Argument

"Con" Argument

Interestingly, the "con" argument above comes from the San Francisco Chronicle, frequently cited by CTR/FNC as extremely liberal. Their argument is interesting:

... there is a big danger in trying to declare the worthiness of a certain group of residents to vote in certain elections. It's easy to see where this application of logic might lead. Advocates of voting rights for noncitizen parents might argue that they should also have a right to vote on bonds or parcel taxes to upgrade schools. Or, why wouldn't a contest for city supervisor, community college board, mayor or tax increases be just as important to a noncitizen parent with children in the city's public schools - or a noncitizen without children ... or a noncitizen with children attending private schools, for that matter?

Why not House member? Senator? President? The same logic applies -- the people elected to those offices have direct impact on the lives and futures of these residents, so shouldn't they have the right to vote? I agree, I think it's too dangerous a precedent, and should not be allowed.

But the issue faces an uphill legal battle even if authorized, because (according to the "con" argument cited above) the California Supreme Court has already decided that voters must be citizens. I don't know where the US Supreme Court stands, but I would be surprised if their position was not similar.

What do you think?

This disconnect between reality and image was architected by Republicans who are set to gain upwards of 50 seats in the House and thus control of it. This is madness. This isn't about Obama being too liberal. This is about a deliberate distortion of reality on the part of Republicans and Fox. They're spreading lies, and lies are getting people elected.

You're declaring catastrophe over a turnover of less than 12%. All I can say to that is that Democrats and Republicans alike may want to fasten their safety belts. I predict that to the American people in future elections, 11.5% is going to be little more than "a good start".

I don't believe that the people have turned against President Obama because they were frightened by Fox News, I think they've turned against him for the usual reason -- because he has taken or supported too many positions that were not shared by the majority. You can't do that and expect to maintain high poll numbers.

Just to expand on my last post a bit, I think it's also generally the case that when the president fails to reflect the will of the majority, he does that in a manner that seems to reveal an overall ideological bent that's also not reflective of the will of the American people.

Here's President Obama's chart at OnTheIssues.org, where they label him a "hard-core liberal", with tons of supporting evidence (they're just as direct about Republicans, too).

That's not representative of this country. How do I know this?

Here's a Gallup poll from 2009 saying that twice as many Americans identify as conservative versus liberal.

And that's not exactly a new trend, either:

The math here is pretty clear. It's a conservative country, and Obama is not fooling anyone (anymore) that he's moderate.

Those numbers correlate with MSNBC being liberal biased and Fox being an appendage of the Republican party

Well as we're so fond of saying around here, correlation does not prove causation. But fair enough, that's what the numbers suggest.

This is why I've said many times here that the danger of Fox News Channel is not their conservative bias, it's the fact that they're doing to media what partisan politicians have been doing to the political process for decades -- each subsequent participant raising the bar and one-upping each other. Rachel Maddow and Andersen Cooper wouldn't even be on the air if it wasn't for Fox News Channel. And Glenn Beck wouldn't be on the air if it wasn't for them.

I wonder how much money media mogul Oprah Winfrey and her companies gave to political parties and candidates last year, and I wonder if they were Democrats or Republicans. No, scratch that, I don't really wonder at all.

Ok, how about the Huffington Post, which just got a million-dollar donation to its investigative arm from George Soros?

 

How about National Public Radio, which just got a $1.8 million donation from George Soros (on the same day that it fired Juan Williams)?

 

Can we compare them with Fox News Channel?

No. I think the key difference you're missing here is that Fox/News Corp is the one doing the donating to the Republican party, not the other way around.

I see it as two sides of the same coin. I think you would have a big problem with Rupert Murdoch giving $1.8 million to NPR on the condition that they fire Nina Totenburg and hire 50 reporters in each media area of the country.

And I don't recall you complaining about GE/NBC's $3.3 million in donations to national Democrats. I only see you complaining about $1 million News Corp/Fox gave to Republicans. Why is that?

(Edit: Obviously we cross-posted.)

How is the general public supposed to know what a person stands for if they change party halfway through a campaign?

How about exactly the same things they said they stood for before they changed parties? It's not a law of physics that you have to match the party platform, you know.

And at risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I wonder if people who are informed about what a candidate stands for by what political party they are in should even be voting. But the old axiom (no idea if true) is that ~80% of the country votes that way, so what do I know.

France lies in ruins. Public life comes to a grinding halt. It's a small miracle that the Eiffel Tower still stands. They are left wing surrender monkeys.

Not from what I've seen. The news approach is to ask the question, suggesting an answer, not actually giving you one. Fox had a very good education on this from the older news organizations.

Conservatives may not like those surrender monkeys - I personally draw my own conclusions. I like that country.

You forgot "cheese-eating"! (Thank you Homer Simpson!)

But seriously, it's not about like or dislike. I enjoyed my time in that country very much. I remember some people seeming intolerant of people like me doing a hatchet-job of their beautiful language, but I also remember the tiny corner cafe owner who ran two blocks down a busy evening street to return my forgotten (and very expensive) camera to me. They definitely have a unique character all their own (which from what I've read in this thread may play a role here), but I'm sure they've all got their up and down days just like anybody else.

None of which really answers my question, I suppose, but I'm not sure it's one we can completely answer anyway.

That sounds more like a subject change than a refutation of my point, or maybe I just don't understand it. Can you drag it around to the subject of banning party-changers after primaries?

Aside from the fact that it's not (it's actually a selection of one candidate over the others), I would also point out that we allow "rejected" candidates to return again in future elections and even run for the same office. By your logic, they should be barred from doing that because they've been "rejected".

Then why bother with a the primary/caucus system to begin with?

Why indeed. I don't think that system serves ANY useful purpose to the American public, and there are some very good arguments that it actually harms us quite a bit. I don't know that I espouse that view, really. I think when the party system works well it does a valuable service. When everyone is behaving honorably and professionally it helps us filter candidates and lets us chose between the best ones, which in a country this size is pretty important.

But I think it's good to keep that system on its heels much/most of the time, and not comfortable and in control like it wants to be. Especially right now when inappropriate and detrimental influences (both left and right) have grown to be so strong. Affording them this additional privilege (legally denying the losing primary candidate the right to run as an independent) seems like a bad idea to me. It fails to pass the test of "does it hurt the people, or just the parties".

Just my two bits, of course.

In the Florida case, as stated, Crist is pulling support from Meek, who would have had a much better chance to win if Crist had not run.

The whole "independents pull support from legitimate candidates" argument has a major flaw. People get all upset because some "spoiler" candidate pulled support away from their darling, but they're ignoring the fact that their candidate has failed to appeal to the people who are supporting the "spoiler".

You talk about corruption, people could/would simply run for office to change the outcome, which may be the case in Alaska....Lisa Murkowski could only run as a write in Candidate, only one such winner in our history has this been done, yet can ONLY draw votes from the person who beat her in the primary, Joe Miller and their nearly tied.

I will admit that it's unfortunate for Joe Miller, and you might have a point about Alaska's voting mechanics being flawed. But if he's the candidate who has the broadest appeal then it won't make any difference -- he cannot fail to be elected, no matter how many spoilers there are.

That's the great thing about democracy -- if you leave it alone people tend to elect the represetatives they want. Which is pretty much the point.

Crist is a good person for Florida and may not be delectable in the future.

Actually I know some women here in Florida who still think he's pretty delectable. ;-)

Yeah I don't disagree with you about Crist's decisions over the last year or two. He has only himself to blame for his situation.

It's just ironic, imo, that wikipedia was designed to be open-edit so that people could directly modify it if they had criticism of the content yet people still criticize it for being potentially unreliable. What do they want to make it more reliable? All you can do is improve the content or take it as it is. People think there is some magical formula for assuring the reliability of information/knowledge. Unless someone has sufficient wisdom to be able to assess the validity of information for themselves, they have no choice but to rely on blind trust. It is somewhat annoying, imo, when people call for greater reliability so that they can avoid opening their eyes and actively critically assessing validity for themselves. You just have to start doing research and comparing sources and critically thinking about whether information makes sense and if not, why not. Critical questioning should act as a crucible for discarding blatantly false information and thinking in more depth about how to assess information that is not blatantly false. Reliable authority isn't a product of the legitimacy of the source but the reasonability of the claims. If claims can be reasoned to be weak, no amount of source-legitimacy can make them strong. So users have to apply reason instead of expecting reliable authorities to do it for them and serve them truth on a platter. Yes, of course everyone expects not to be led on a wild-goose-chase of intentional deceit but no one should take a destructive attitude toward any source that isn't absolutely bullet-proof. If your authority isn't reliable enough to assess the validity of a wikipedia article, what gives you the right/ability to demonize the source?

There IS a magical formula for assuring the reliability of information/knowledge. It's called a paragraph. ;-)

Why would people start acting rationally, all of the sudden? Al Gore invented the internet and Obama's a Muslim. But in this one instance, everyone is going to get it right?

Well I guess that's true enough.

"When people say, `I'm never going to watch you again,' that's an indicator," she said, because NPR isn't on TV.

ROFL!

Okay, so you retract your statement that party affiliations by independents are "binding". That's fine, I'm glad we agree.

Pangloss, under the primary or caucus system the members of a party pick their candidate to then run against the others. ... It was a rejection of one person over the others.

Aside from the fact that it's not (it's actually a selection of one candidate over the others), I would also point out that we allow "rejected" candidates to return again in future elections and even run for the same office. By your logic, they should be barred from doing that because they've been "rejected".

At any rate, you haven't explained why it's a bad idea to allow an individual to run for public office as an independent and then caucus with whomever they want. For that matter, I don't see the harm in allowing them to run in one party's primary, and, if they fail in that one, to run in the other party's primary in the same year. Why not? I think that would hurt them more than anything else. I can see how it might hurt one or both parties, maybe, but that's irrelevant -- the ONLY thing that matters is whether they're hurting the voters.

Just look at the Alvin Greene thing in South Carolina. Is the South Carolina Democratic Committee (or whatever it's called) hurt by this? Undoubtedly. But the people of South Carolina elected the man, fair and square. Sure he kinda makes them look a little rough around the edges, but it could just as easily have gone the other way, if he'd stood up and changed public perception. But either way he's their man -- they elected him, that's the end of it. Democrats in South Carolina have no right to say otherwise. They made their bed. They get to sleep in it. If they have a problem with that, then they can put up a better candidate next time!

All I see here are excuses and the corruption of power.

How is it hypocritical to not want to be perceived as a bunch of bigots?

I didn't say that it was.

We've had a number of threads in politics where we discussed what someone said, and how it played out in the press. What they said, and what the context was, rarely mattered.

And that's wrong.

Why is this different?

It isn't.

Several times I've seen someone say "what he clearly meant was …" in some of those threads, even though there was dissent over the interpretation — so it's not so clear for everybody.

The explanation of "what he really said" isn't a matter of interpretation, it's a matter of what he actually said.

Too many listeners (or viewers, in other cases) don't have the patience for context, and then there's source amnesia — all they'll remember is that he's a bigot because they remember the controversy rather than the facts. Perception is reality.

And look at the result when they reacted to perception rather than sound policy -- a massive controversy. According to that ombudsman article I linked earlier, she said they got "hundreds" of requests to fire Williams, but "thousands" of complaints after they fired him.

I get what you're saying -- they're stuck between a rock and a hard place, and to some extent paying a price for society's presently divided political environment. Sure. But if they had done the right thing, taking the time to view the man's statement in context, and having the courtesy to talk to him in person, they might have found the sanity to make the right call and avoided a much larger controversy than a few hundred people who were really just complaining about Fox News.

How is it hypocritical to not want to be perceived as a bunch of bigots?

It's hypocritical to allow him to provide commentary for ten years, and then fire him for providing commentary. Quoting his boss, "News analysts may not take personal public positions on controversial issues; doing so undermines their credibility as analysts". This is ridiculous -- what does she think Juan Williams was doing for ten years on the air at NPR? IMO that's a statement about their bias, but regardless of whether you agree, that's clearly inconsistent. And they did it remotely, without even so much as a face to face meeting after ten years of service.

And you're forgetting something: He ISN'T a bigot. Once his comments are seen in the actual context of his statement, it's clear that he was NOT promoting racism. So he CAN'T make them look like "a bunch of bigots".

Here's the irony: They fired the one and only black man they employ on the air over a perception that isn't accurate. But are Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson storming the bastions of NPR with crowds of angry protestors? Nope. Gee, I wonder why. (foxnewsfoxnewsfoxnewsboogaboogaboogaaieeeee!)

Whatever happend to our right to be paid by NPR to say whatever we want to?

What I said is that NPR had the right to fire him, but that in my opinion it was hypocritical and shows their bias.

Regardless of whether NPR had the right to fire him, the reasons he was fired and the manner in which he was fired cannot be a healthy contribution to the national dialogue.

Well said.

If NPR wants to be considered a source for reasonable analysis and discourse on political topics, this firing (in both cause and execution) hurts that goal. It is not consistent with "walking the walk" and can only push their staff to second guess themselves and choose "safer assessments" in what they report - not for accuracy, but for the perspectives they try to relate. That just hurts everyone.

Exactly.

----------

NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard is criticizing NPR's hasty and long-distance decision to fire Williams, but supporting their implementation of the ethics code.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2010/10/21/130713285/npr-terminates-contract-with-juan-williams

She doesn't look at the consistency/hypocrisy issue, but that's not the job of an ombudsman -- they're supposed to weigh the merits of individual decisions -- so I guess that makes sense.

The ones I use the most are probably Wikipanion, Kindle, and (recently) Tower Madness.

Pangloss, according to the voters in Florida they nominated a Republican (bound to caucus with republicans) Rubio, REJECTING Mr. Crist.

This is pretty wild extrapolation of what a vote means. In TWO ways.

First, people vote for a candidate. That's the mechanism they have available. Saying that a vote for Person A is a "rejection" of Person B is an interpretation.

Second, people vote for a candidate. That's the mechanism they have available. Saying that a vote for a candidate constitutes a "binding" obligation to join some nebulously-defined "caucus" that they had no say in the construction of is another interpretation.

It's dangerous to interpret the will of the American people. And you need to review the Constitution, which contains NEITHER of the above interpretations.

It sounds like the people in charge are doing a lot of interpreting. And I don't like what I'm hearing here at all. You're doing a great job of convincing me that what they're doing is even worse than I thought.

Since Mr. Crist could caucus with either party and especially this election it could mean the balance of power.

I think you're wrong about this whole "binding" thing anyway. I think Joe Lieberman, for example, could "caucus" with the Republicans if he so chose. I don't think anything "binds" him to caucus with the Democrats at all. I think he made that call himself, and he could reverse it tomorrow if he wanted to.

It's called being "independent". As in NOT a member of either political party.

the general consensus to my knowledge is Crist will caucus with the Democrats

Pure speculation, and also, I believe, incorrect. I've followed Crist for years, and remember all the times he was the hand-picked darling of Jeb Bush and being regularly smacked around by the left. He's fought against gay marriage, lead an effort to put mandatory PRAYER back in Florida public schools (!), favors broadening the range of crimes that carry the death penalty, considers the 2nd Amendment an absolute, favors distribution of federal welfare dollars through religious institutions, opposes NAFTA, opposes amnesty for illegal aliens, and opposes progressive taxes.

Here is where OnTheIssues.org has him placed:

Wow. And you think he'd caucus with Democrats. Really.

Again, if somehow Crist were to win and the count w/o him were 50 Dem/49Rep (VP breaks any tie), he would hold the total power of all Chairmanships, heads of all committees and total control of the Senate.

More speculation, and I have no idea why any of the above would be a bad thing, not just for Florida but for anyone.

By the way, here's Marco Rubio (the Republican candidate for Senate):

And here's Kendrick Meek (the Democratic candidate for Senate):

Just in case anybody's wondering why I'm wringing my hands so much about this election. And these charts really say a lot, don't they? I think it's *fantastic* that Charlie Crist is giving Floridians a third option. I just wish more of them were planning to take it. (Crist is running 14 points behind Rubio.)