What’s news today?
Let’s start with this, Boehner extends the olive branch, from CNBC
“House Speaker John Boehner offered Wednesday to pursue a deal with a victorious President Barack Obama that will include higher taxes “under the right conditions” to help reduce the nation’s staggering debt and put its finances in order.”
“His comments were generally along the lines of proposals by vanquished Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that also were vague on specifics. Still, the speaker’s comments signaled a willingness to enter into talks. He suggested Congress could use its upcoming lame-duck session to get the ball moving on such a compromise.”
Harry Reid has his own plans, from TheWashingtonTimes
“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that he will try to push through a change to Senate rules that would limit the GOP’s ability to filibuster bills.
Speaking in the wake of Tuesday’s election, which boosted Senate Democrats’ numbers slightly, Mr. Reid said he won’t end filibusters altogether but that the rules need to change so that the minority party cannot use the legislative blocking tool as often.
“I think that the rules have been abused and that we’re going to work to change them,” he told reporters. “Were not going to do away with the filibuster but we’re going to make the Senate a more meaningful place.””
Still no word on a budget Harry? Do your job!
Re-election or not, Hillary’s still gonna bail, via CNSNews
“State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said Wednesday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton still plans to step down after her successor is chosen despite President Barack Obama winning a second term.
“I don’t think the secretary’s plans have changed. You’ve heard her say many times that she intends to see through transition of a successor and then she will go back to private life and enjoy some rest and think and write and all those things,” Nuland said.”
And before the Benghazi investigation findings are revealed I’d bet.
Day 1 of the 2nd term agenda.
From Yahoo
“Hours after U.S. President Barack Obama was re-elected, the United States backed a U.N. committee’s call on Wednesday to renew debate over a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade.
U.N. delegates and gun control activists have complained that talks collapsed in July largely because Obama feared attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, a charge Washington denies.”
“But the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee moved quickly after Obama’s win to approve a resolution calling for a new round of talks March 18-28. It passed with 157 votes in favor, none against and 18 abstentions.”
I’m sure it’s completeley coincidental that this happened after the election.
And let’s not forget this looming over the country’s head.
From ZeroHedge
“Previewing Four More Years Of The Divided States Of America”
“Do not expect any changes to the trends of polarization and party non-conformists is the message from JPMorgan’s CIO Michael Cembalest. As he explains moderates like Blue Dog Democrats and Rockefeller Republicans are now artifacts in the Natural History Museum, having given way to their more ideological offspring (through retirement or after having been beaten in primaries).”
“However, defusing the cliff contributes to rising Federal debt unless the growth payoff is huge. In recognition of that reality, 80 US CEOs published a letter calling for Washington to strike a long-term fiscal “grand bargain” that includes higher tax revenues (but not in 2013). Here’s our latest Federal debt chart as a way to visualize the problem. The contours show the Congressional Budget Office Baseline Case and Alternative Case. As explained last week, while the Baseline Case represents “current law”, it has become increasingly preposterous, since it includes items that Congress passed but has been deferring for a decade (changes to the Alternative Minimum Tax and Medicare), and a wholesale resumption of 2001 tax rates that Congress has no intention of implementing. The CBO should put a unicorn next to it as an indication of how likely it is to happen.”
If yesterday was any indication, Wall St. doesn’t seem too excited about the prospects in an Obama 2nd term.
Also from ZeroHedge
“It seems like only last night everyone was celebrating more hope, if not much change. Now comes the hangover. The Dow Jones intraday drop is now 2.23% (and rising), greater than the biggest drop so far in 2012 record on June 1. The last time the market plunged as much: literally one year ago, or November 9, 2011.
Sadly, it appears that one can’t have their Dow Jones Industrial Average and redistribute it too.”
Wandering Views 
UN treaty – so predictable. Here’s where you all can find the draft text: http://www.un.org/disarmament/ATT/
See Snopes for a fact check.
And here’s the full text of what the State Department had to say back in July. As you can see, there was no secret about support for a second round of negotiation.
“The United States supports the outcome today at the Arms Trade Treaty Conference. While the Conference ran out of time to reach consensus on a text, it will report its results and the draft text considered back to the UN General Assembly (UNGA). The United States supports a second round of negotiations, conducted on the basis of consensus, on the Treaty next year; we do not support a vote in the UNGA on the current text. The illicit trafficking of conventional arms is an important national security concern for the United States. While we sought to conclude this month’s negotiations with a Treaty, more time is a reasonable request for such a complex and critical issue. The current text reflects considerable positive progress, but it needs further review and refinement.
With that in mind, we will continue to work towards an Arms Trade Treaty that will contribute to international security, protect the sovereign right of states to conduct legitimate arms trade, and meet the objectives and concerns that we have been articulating throughout the negotiation, including not infringing on the constitutional right of our citizens to bear arms. The United States took a principled stand throughout these negotiations that international trade in conventional arms is a legitimate enterprise that is and should remain regulated by the individual nations themselves, and we continue to believe that any Arms Trade Treaty should require states to develop their own national regulations and controls and strengthen the rule of law regarding arms sales.
We support an Arms Trade Treaty because we believe it will make a valuable contribution to global security by helping to stem illicit arms transfers, and we will continue to look for ways for the international community to work together to improve the international arms transfer regime so that weapons aren’t transferred to people who would abuse them.”
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A question for you guys:
I read Michael Walsh over at NRO this morning and he made a comment that the right needs its own “towers of truth” so as to prevail on information. To me the separate streams of data are part of the problem. Is there a way to get back to news that is news and to be clear about what opinion is?
The Yahoo article AJ posted goes on to say that the vote cited “hours after the election” was postponed as the UN had to shut down because of Sandy. The article also states the US position. I have already seen the right wing blogshpere going to to town on “second term agenda” as if this negotiation were some new thing … its frustrating to me. If they want to debate on the merits of international trade rules that may (or may not) help crack down on illicit arms trade, that would actually be a good thing. But that’s not what they are doing.
So, is there a way to back to actual news? Or am I kidding myself was there never actual news?
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It has to do with the discipline of the reporters and the media owners and in this day of financial upheaval and monetary restraints, coupled with “consumers” who don’t want to do the hard work of thinking for themselves ( and simply may not be able to del with so much information), I don’t think so.
Scandal, fighting, sex, sells.
Back in the dark ages when I learned about journalism at the UCLA Daily Bruin, we were told everyone has bias, but your job as a reporter was to mask your opinion and present facts. It was the readers responsibility to determine their own opinion. Our editors were watching for that and the good ones would call you on it.
The temptation, however, to be an authority and tell people what to think is huge–which is why it takes strength of character, professionalism and maturity to do the job well.
I stopped watching TV news some 20 years ago; I couldn’t handle the sloppy reporting any longer ( and my family got tired of me yelling at the TV, “where’s the other side?”)
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CB, thank you for being one of the few calm voices of reason on this blog!
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As long as consumers continue to treat opinion merchants as legitimate sources of news the “fake news” organizations will continue to churn out false information. If spinning propaganda disguised as news remains profitable those types of organizations and websites will continue. Look how huge Fox News has become.
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One of the problems I have is that I can’t tell spin from fact anymore. I was recently reading a couple of opposing view points in blog entries concerning the Lacey Act, and what I noticed was a supreme lack of depth in the “reporting”.
How in the world can you distinguish what is true and what is not when the level of reporting is so shallow?
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Having an opinion is well and good if you have a certain amount of content to base it on. The problem we have is that we have no dearth of vociferous opinionating, while the content is severely lacking
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Well, I’d say content is either lacking — or simply not trusted anymore (sometimes rightly so, but sometimes not).
The state of the media is in disarray (and yes, severe cutbacks have contributed to that everywhere). While I love the current diversity of news sources, we’ve become locked in our respective camps too often, suspecting bias from any source not “ours.”
The mainstream media, to use a tired phrase, has come under intense fire and mistrust. Some of that is the media’s own fault. But consumers also have become so suspect now that they see bias at every turn, even when there is none. It’s understandably hard to sort through it all amid the shouting all around us.
It’s easy to cry “bias” and people are now doing it ALL the time. We need to be more discerning as news consumers — but that also means not always assuming bias in every single instance.
Even the polls came under suspicion during this past election.
Pollsters’ reputations rise and fall on one thing — their ability to be accurate and to get it right; while there may be some outfits that tilt the results for favoritism toward one candidate or another, most are out to determine exactly how the vote is stacking up at any given moment, whatever the result. Turns out they called this election pretty accurately in the end (though Obama did better than most polls reported he would do in the final days).
The nation desperately needs unbiased (it’ll never be “perfect”) news sources that can be trusted. But maybe none exists (or none is perceived to exist) because the public’s trust has been sufficiently shattered that everything now is tainted, legitimately or not.
My fear is that all we’ll be left with is continuing polarization — and competing news sources, yours and mine.
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CB @ 7:59
“The United States took a principled stand throughout these negotiations that international trade in conventional arms is a legitimate enterprise that is and should remain regulated by the individual nations themselves, …”
Where does “Fast and Furious” fit into all this?
I have come across some hints that maybe our Ambassador in Benghazi was negotiating arms deals for delivery through Turkey to rebels in Syria.
Pots and Kettles?
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CB,
I get what you’re saying about a return to “serious” news. The problem is we disagree on what is. You seem to point out the lack of it more in piece’s you disagree with, as do we all, yet ignore it at other times, as do we all. Much of what you consider good sources do the same thing, yet since you agree with them you don’t point it out. I guess we all do that.
The sad state of journalism didn’t happen because “right-wing” sources showed up. “Right-wing” showed up because an alternative to the left-leaning news of the MSM was necessary. They hadn’t been nuetral in years, and folks got tired of it. They wanted to hear both sides. If the so-called by you “actual news” had been available to begin with, this alternative wouldn’t be necessary. You can blame this on the MSM and legacy media, as well as the joke most journalism schools have become. No whining now, you missed the point when that might’ve helped years ago. Blame those responsible, not those who responded with an alternative.
And you can complain about Fox, but without them and foriegn sources, we’d know very little about Benghazi. That was, and is, an actual news story. Fox covered it from the start, your real news sources? Not so much. And you know why. The election. A nuetral press would be all over it, let the chips fall where they may. That didn’t happen. It calls into question their so-called nuetrality, as well as the idea that they are actually good sources for actual news.
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CB: So, is there a way to back to actual news? Or am I kidding myself was there never actual news?
You are kidding yourself in spades. Michael Walsh was exactly right in his article today, Nice Guys Finish Second.
Obama, working with his acolytes in the mainstream media and academia, ran a four-year campaign playing hardball politics, easily triumphing over Romney-Ryan. The conservatives need their own hard-hitting political think tanks that are skilled at being both the sword and the shield for their politics.
Obama’s coalition of blacks, Latinos, single women, libertine hedonists, and labor unions is rather formidable, especially given the ruthless tactics of the liberal media, arts, and academia. Anyone expecting dispassionate objectivity from this phalanx is delusive.
There is much to reflect on in the Walsh article. He is a delightfully hard-headed writer with long experience in the bowels of the mainstream media. Being a good Irishman, he is spoiling for a hard fight. He’s right that McCain and Romney foolishly played by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. Here is a taste:
Finally, as for Romney, whose political career is now over, I have mixed feelings. Like John McCain, he never really took the fight to Obama and, more important, Obamaism; he spectacularly refused to engage the Democrats on an ideological level, to explain why conservative principles are better than the chimera of “progressivism,” and to go straight at the machine tactics of the Chicago gang, the way the Republican reformers did during their battles with Tammany. And with the intelligence community leaking damaging details about Benghazi on a near-daily basis, he inexplicably took the entire issue off the table. He’s a good man, but a bad candidate, albeit the “most electable” of an unelectable lot.
It’s time for conservatives to take the gloves off. Nice guys finish second indeed. CB’s idealistic view plays right into the hands of the liberal establishment..
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I think we need a new news source that is modeled after our original governing documents – ie. checks and balances.
A team of journalists committed to the truth, committed to objective reporting. A team of journalists where a liberal and a conservative work side by side on the same story, and only report it when they agree on the facts.
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A facebook friend posted this link the other day with this quote.
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2012/11/obamas_win_is_an_indictment_of.html
“If you want to be a successful politician who opposes the many statist nostrums and cliches, you have to be very good at explaining to people why those ideas are harmful. During the late, dismal campaign, I saw over and over the inability of GOP candidates to offer cogent reasons for voters to prefer them over Democrats who promise the moon. Perhaps they would be able to offer such explanations if they had a grounding in classical liberalism and the fundamentals of economics.”
Santa Claus will always trump purveyers of fiscal responsibility. Just ask Barry Goldwater.
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Bob
Fast and furious stands as aa botched sting operation not as weapons sales from manufacturers to Mexico. But the irony is well taken. Sometimes the US insists on insists on international rules for others and balk when applying those rules to ourselves – see international election observation. I’ve heard some foreifn diplomats refer to this as the real American exceptionalism. I don’t know much about rumored arms deals to Turkey.
Sails
Been a while since I was called an idealist. Thank you.
Donna,
But the polls weren’t wrong if you took them as a whole. It turns out that unskewed polls was skewed. Rasmussen; btw was among the top three most inaccurate polls.
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From Drudge:
Rep. Ron Paul, whose maverick presidential bids shook the GOP, said in the wake of this week’s elections that the country has already veered over the fiscal cliff and he sees no chance of righting ship in a country where too many people are dependent on government.
………….
“People do not want anything cut,” he said. “They want all the bailouts to come. They want the Fed to keep printing the money. And they don’t believe that we’ve gone off the cliff or are close to going off the cliff. They think we can patch it over, that we can somehow come up with some magic solution. But you can’t have a budgetary solution if you don’t change what the role of government should be. As long as you think we have to police the world and run this welfare state, all we are going to argue about is who will get the loot.”
Read more: Ron Paul: Election shows U.S. ‘far gone’ – Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/nov/8/ron-paul-election-shows-us-far-gone/#ixzz2Bf9N2RnG
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
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And that’s exactly why Harry Reid should have gotten the boot long, long ago… I have nothing but contempt for a man who would sell his country down the river like that.
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MIM, what about Nancy Pelosi?
Something happens when they cross the Potomac. Heath Shuler was a decent guy, He really was. (Though a bad NFL quarterback.) He was going to take mountain values to Washington.
He got under Nancy’s thumb and voted the way she told him.
If you’re a Democrat, even a blue dog, you are going to support the Democrat agenda.
To the destruction of the country, if necessary.
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I have also been wondering about NJL. If anyone hears from her, please let us know.
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CB, I was making the point that the polls were largely accurate. Most showed both candidates within the margin of error, neck and neck, in the last week leading up to the election.
The numbers wound up breaking more for Obama in the end.
But that’s part of the point I was making, is that it’s led to consumers even questioning polls because of a supposed bias.
We basically have a situation now where everyone is questioning everything — which isn’t altogether bad. But most journalists, I think, are still striving to report stories objectively. Do they have a leftward or rightward slant that’s subconscious due to their own world view? Yeah, very possibly. And since most journalists lean liberal, that’s what you’re apt to see more often.
But I still hold out hope that the value of objective reporting is held in high esteem.
I do wonder if the rise of Fox news (which has done some very good work, BTW, including on Libya) has caused some journalists to feel somehow like they have to counter a “conservative” view of a story — and then go the other direction.
It’s not a science. Bias will seep in. But I was actually thinking along the lines of mim’s idea of a new site or publication, launched by journalists who represent a range of personal political ideas serving as checks and balances on each other, that is primarily devoted to producing the most objective reporting humanly possible.
Sort of reinventing the wheel, but we may have to do that at some point to gain back the trust of so many readers/viewers.
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Wait a minute. I thought my generation prized that bumper sticker: Question Authority.
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Did media bias swing this election?
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I think I will just buy another American made HiPoint Carbine.
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Who could say? 😦
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You want stupid, I got ya’ covered.
I just finished watching the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley. He finished with a touching piece on Hurricane Sandy survivors on Long Island digging thru the rubble of what’s left of their homes for personal mementos. It was very sad. I thought he did a good job with the piece.
And then came the stupid.
If this commercial went national, as opposed to local, shouldn’t somebody on the production team have seen this coming? Or was it some idiot at what I hope was the local affiliate qued up the first commercial? Either way, here’s the first commercial to follow the moving Hurricane Sandy story.
A new type of cane, ironically named, the HurryCane.
Are you kidding me? It was insulting, unfeeling, and just soooo wrong! Really? Bad timing is one thing, but really, shouldn’t somebody have caught this?
WOW, just WOW!
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Donna
On the polls the major argument unskewed and the like had was the higher number of dems which was labeled bias and ergo inaccurate. That criticism was factually wrong. Fox came up with similar numbers but on that the right wing newsites had little to say.
Solar,
No.
Aj,
The news show would not be responsilbe for ad placement.
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Joe B.,
That’s a pretty sweet piece of American made equipment.
🙂
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CB,
I’m figuring the local affiliate is responsible for the ads.
But wow, just bad.
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I see I’ve been reading and posting on yesterday’s thread. Did this one go up late or did I just wind up on the wrong thread? I went through this whole thread just now thinking, “I didn’t read that before . . . or that . . . or that” and thinking I somehow joined the thread late, and realized eventually I never joined it at all, though I did post today.
So anyway, if anyone saw my recommendation of Winkflash photo developing (very cheap–six or eight cent prints, good color, good paper–Fuji–and comparable in most ways to much more expensive prints), I mentioned that I thought they had one-price shipping. Apparently they used to; the first review of them I read said that they did. But they don’t anymore. (BTW, in comparing sets of prints, it seems they do well what apparently Fuji paper does really well–remarkably good greens. My photos were of the Smoky Mountains and streams full of mossy rocks, and the other company washed out the greens miserably and they got them sharp and vivid. But the sky and clouds don’t have as much detail. Reds seem to come out about the same, no less vivid and possibly more, though realistically I didn’t have much red in the prints I did. But for greens, apparently it is true that Fuji does them better than Kodak. (I remember reading that years ago and wondering if it was true.)
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Whoops, it looks like I was on today’s thread earlier after all, and on the wrong one now. I’m a little spacy today (background headache), so don’t mind me.
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This from Mark Levin that exactly expresses my view:
MARK LEVIN: We conservatives, we do not accept bipartisanship in the pursuit of tyranny. Period. We will not negotiate the terms of our economic and political servitude. Period. We will not abandon our child to a dark and bleak future. We will not accept a fate that is alien to the legacy we inherited from every single future generation in this country. We will not accept social engineering by politicians and bureaucrats who treat us like lab rats, rather than self-sufficient human beings. There are those in this country who choose tyranny over liberty. They do not speak for us, 57 million of us who voted against this yesterday, and they do not get to dictate to us under our Constitution.
We are the alternative. We will resist. We’re not going to surrender to this. We will not be passive, we will not be compliant in our demise. We’re not good losers, you better believe we’re sore losers! A good loser is a loser forever. Now I hear we’re called ‘purists.’ Conservatives are called purists. The very people who keep nominating moderates, now call us purists the way the left calls us purists. Yeah, things like liberty, and property rights, individual sovereignty, and the Constitution, and capitalism. We’re purists now. And we have to hear this crap from conservatives, or pseudo-conservatives, Republicans.
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On second thought, this isn’t the whirled thread. Carry on. I’m a bit spacey today (dealing with a background headache). I’ll repost the above on the whirled thread.
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Sails,
By all means, next time nominate Rubio or Ryan. Go as far to the right as you can. Then at last you will know.
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Um CB, nominating those two wouldn’t be going as far right as possible. They are mainstream Republican conservatives, and darn good, too, as far as their intelligence, ability to speak on the issues (Ryan especially), and appeal to voters (Rubio especially). Rubio is an incredible speaker, and have you looked at his impressive victory in Florida two years ago? This relative unknown trounced a popular former Republican moderate governor AND a liberal Democrat. Ryan routinely wins reelection easily in a swing district, because he can communicate his ideas to voters and they know he’s trying to make a difference.
Going as far right as possible, socially, would be to nominate Santorum. Fiscally, to nominate Rand Paul. As far right as possible overall probably would mean nominating Bachmann, Palin, or Jim Demint.
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“Sadly, it appears that one can’t have their Dow Jones Industrial Average and redistribute it too.”
DIJA at Obama’s inauguration: 7949
DIJA today: 12811
That’s a 61% increase over 2.85 years.
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Guess who’s going to Iowa? Rubio, to attend a fundraiser for the governor there.
Let 2016 begin. 😉 CB, how are Rubio & Ryan substantially different (on the political scale) than Reagan, whom you voted for twice? Don’t you think maybe it’s your views that have shifted, changing your perspective a bit over the years?
Sounds like Tuesday was a very hard night for Romney & company:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/
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Buddy Glass, correlation hardly equals causation. The truth is that the financial markets tanked to very low levels by late 2008. The higher levels now had little to do with Obama’s policies.
Obama’s serial $trillion deficits have actually placed the economy in a dangerous condition. A failed Treasury auction is likely on the present course; this would make the last recession look like a picnic.
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Donna
We can start with Ronald Reagan raised taxes 6 times after his tax cut because his Administration understood it had gone a bit too far on tax cuts.
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“correlation hardly equals causation”
Exactly. Which is why blaming Obama’s election for the dip on the following day is silly.
“A failed Treasury auction is likely on the present course”
How likely, would you say? Care to make a wager?
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“We are the alternative. We will resist. We’re not going to surrender to this. We will not be passive, we will not be compliant in our demise. We’re not good losers, you better believe we’re sore losers! A good loser is a loser forever. Now I hear we’re called ‘purists.’ Conservatives are called purists. The very people who keep nominating moderates, now call us purists the way the left calls us purists. Yeah, things like liberty, and property rights, individual sovereignty, and the Constitution, and capitalism. We’re purists now. And we have to hear this crap from conservatives, or pseudo-conservatives, Republicans
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BG, Very likely. Paul Ryan regards a devastating debt crisis as one of the more predictable events in American history.
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Let’s call it then. I’ll bet you $100 it doesn’t happen during Obama’s 2nd term.
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