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Andrew Sullivan – Still Can’t Get Past His Nose…. UPDATE

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[Welcome Insta-P readers. It’s always nice to have company ’round here]

Up until today, he had featured this George Orwell Quote as the tagline of his blog: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” It seems to still be quite a struggle.

In light of the Scott Brown victory, here are a few snips of his latest posts:

Mort Zuckerman pronounces:

He didn’t address the main issue.

He means the economy. How anyone who has been sentient this past year can say such a thing merely reveals how effective the propaganda has been. Let’s review: a stimulus package that has clearly helped turn the economy around and was skilfully structured to ensure that it didn’t entirely fade away when the second year came around, a third of which was tax cuts; a bank bailout that is now being paid back; a lifeline to the car industry; major investment in infrastructure; extension of unemployment benefits; avoidance of a second great depression and a return to fragile but real growth after the financial and economic abyss of a year ago … I mean he didn’t address the main issue??

What the fuck is he talking about?

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Fisking Andrew Sullivan

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First, let me say that I have no problem with reasonable criticism and fact check when it comes to ANY political candidate celebrity type person, of the like of Barrack Obama or Sarah Palin. Sullivan has this THING about Palin that just grinds his gears. He can’t get her out of his system. Some of his criticism towards her has been spot on, but he goes way over the deep end, especially when it concerns baby Trig. Today he posted on the inconsistency of her reaction on the McCain campaign pulling out of Michigan. He writes:

Here we go again. Yesterday, Sarah Palin said the following to Oprah Winfrey on the air:

WINFREY: Didn’t several times they say to you when actually you mentioned, when you were talking about pulling out of Michigan and you said I wished we’d stayed in Michigan. Weren’t you told then, Sarah just stay on script?

PALIN: Right, told after wards and that, that was always puzzling to me because if I were to respond to a reporter’s questions very candidly, honestly, for instance, they say, “what do you think about the campaign pulling out of Michigan” and I think, “darn I wish we weren’t. Every vote matters, I can’t wait to get back to Michigan” and then told afterwards that, “oh, you screwed up. You went rogue on us Sarah, you’re not supposed to be.” And my reminder to the campaign was, I didn’t know we pulled out of Michigan. My entire VP team, we didn’t know that we had pulled out. I’m sorry, I apologize, but speaking candidly to a reporter.

Then he continues:

This was a lie. And we know it was a lie the way we know that 33 other statements by Palin are lies – because objective reality proves it so. On October 3, as Matt Corley explains, Palin told Carl Cameron that she disagreed with the decision to pull out of Michigan. How can she have disagreed with something that she now says she didn’t know at the time? Here’s the money section of the Cameron interview:

CAMERON: Thanks very much, Governor. I’m going get the hook. I have one quick political question for you that if I don’t ask you, I would be (INAUDIBLE).

Yesterday, just before the debate it was announced that the campaign was going to withdraw some of its exercises in Michigan, essentially leave Michigan for Obama to win. What’s going on there?

PALIN: Well, that’s not a surprise because the polls are showing we’re not doing as well there, evidently, as we would like to. But, I (INAUDIBLE) up this morning, also. I fired a quick e-mail and said, oh, come on. Do we have to call it there? Todd and I would happy to get to Michigan and walk through those plants where car manufacturers [sic].

We’d be so happy to get to speak with the people there in Michigan, who are hurting because the economy is hurting. Whatever we can do and whatever Todd and I can do in realizing what their challenges in that state are, as we can relate to them and connect with them and promise them that we won’t let them down in the administration. I want to get
back to Michigan and I want to try.

I have no idea how Andrew determines that these two statements contradict each other. The point she makes in both quotes is that she was not in the loop of the decision-making process that led to the campaign pulling out of Michigan, and that she didn’t get the message to “stay on point” until after they had left the area, and she was still harping on that decision…..

Crap. I want to defend Palin. I really do. I though that I could decipher her pidgin-English-Palin speak to mean that she didn’t know she was going rogue, and it almost worked. But I just can’t twist it and turn it enough and make it work. In the Oprah interview she seems to be saying not only that she was not involved in the decision making process, but that she was not told even AFTER the decision had been made. She says clearly ” And my reminder to the campaign was, I didn’t know we pulled out of Michigan. My entire VP team, we didn’t know that we had pulled out. I’m sorry, I apologize, but speaking candidly to a reporter.“. As much as I try, I can’t get that line to jibe with the fact that she did know as evidenced by the e-mail. The campaign announced the retreat from Michigan on Oct 2nd, she sent the e-mail first thing in the morning on the 3rd. Which means she knew the day before. And in the Cameron interview she says: “Well, that’s not a surprise because the polls are showing we’re not doing as well there, evidently, as we would like to.” which echo’s the line said to the Washington Post by a senior McCain campaign advisor the day before – “The numbers have been bad in Michigan for some time,”.

Now, had Sarah Palin been more accessible to the media during the campaign, and she had commented to a reporter on October 2nd, then she would be in the clear. But we know how tightly controlled her media appearances were kept, and there doesn’t appear to be any record of her talking to anyone else but Cameron between the time she was informed of the decision to ditch Michigan and the interview.

Point – Sullivan.

Mega-Kudo's To Andrew Sullivan.

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For covering the Iranian Uprising 24 / 7. I’ve looked around, and haven’t seen anyone else doing it like that.

Happy Twelfth Year Blogiversary Sonicfrog.Net

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Twelve years ago, January 5th, 2005, I started this blog.

Yeah… Happy B-Day / Blogiversary To Us!!!!!

The main reason was to improve my writing skills while I was in the process of becoming a teacher. You see, I was never much of a reader when I was a kid, or even a young adult. Because of this, I didn’t absorb the fundamentals of the written English language that many of my peers did. I was not a complete English language washout though. As a kid, I had one ambition… To be an actor. Although I didn’t read or write much, I did pay attention to certain details because of that. I could write. And if the subject was something I cared about, like writing dialog or reports about tornadoes or earthquakes, or other sciencey stuff, I did pretty good. My grammar was high C to B average. My HUGE Achilles heel was spelling. In 1991, my junior year in college and long before this thing called “spellcheck” was a thing (you kids don’t know how well you have it), I had a professor write an assessment telling me I needed to make a dictionary my best friend. She was more than a little bit of a jerk about it. Of course she was not wrong. My spelling WAS horrible. But she handled it poorly. Some encouragement would have been more motivating. I graduated in 92 with decent grades, but never took any jobs where there was a lot of writing. But I felt the need to get better, and when I decided I was going to start a new career as a teacher, I knew I HAD to get better. The Sonicfrog blog turned out to be the perfect vehicle to improve my writing and spelling skills. I still make a mistake hear and their (just kidding), but I’m much much better at proverbially putting pen to paper, and with some confidence. It provided the practice I needed to become a better writer and become a good teacher.

There are a couple of other benefits to starting and maintaining a blog. Even though this was never an exercise in trying to get fame, some of my posts were featured on other more popular blogs, such as Instapundit, Ann Althouse, and even a couple of links on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. There was a time when I thought about writing more provocative content in order to attract more eyeballs, but I watched what happened with other blogs that went in that direction, and lets just say, blog management became a full-time unpaid job for many of my blog-pals. And that maybe would have caused me to lose sight of why I started doing this in the first place. Plus… MAN… When blogs really became popular, the comments section because freaking zoos.

Who needs that aggravation.

Not only did I decide not to try and become popular – I succeeded at that well enough – but also decided at some point to start challenging some of my own preconceived notions about the world. I came into blogging as a right-wing leaning fellow. I was more of a libertarianish type than anything. But I WAS a strong supporter of the Iraq war, and my early posts reflect that. 2005 was right when a lot of disturbing pieces of news had started to break. I would at first be the parrot, echoing what Conservative media said. But, because of my pledge to try and be accurate, I started getting into the habit of researching things on my own. Being someone who graduated with a degree in mass communications, I studied media / journalism quite a bit in college. One of the most important lessons I was taught is that there is no such thing as “unbiased” journalism. Every single human on this Earth is biased in some way, even me, and journalist, editors, photographers, news anchors, etc, ALL are biased in some way. The better thing to strive to find is the accuracy of information being reported, and look for things that may be omitted. The more I looked at all sides, not just the cherry-picked information each sides relies on to bolster their case, the more I grew to recognize that many of my long held beliefs simply didn’t hold up to scrutiny. So my blogging activities changed my perspective on the world. That was not expected.

An even more unexpected side effect of starting this blog was the act of writing itself. When I started blogging, it was a chore to sit down and write. Twelve years later, not only can I sit down and write on a whim, but, this ability extends to my songwriting as well. I used to have to wait for some sort of inspiration to erupt in my skull to get something down on paper, now I can typically write something at a moments notice. I’m not saying those lyrics are on par with those that are backed by the mysterious creative urge, but I can do it if needed. I find it kind of cool actually.

Oh… And one last thing. I used to have a hard time writing in first person. Because of mm twelve years of experience writing my blog…

Well…

You know.

Why The Conservative Movement Is Becoming Irrelevant – Part 2

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Andrew Sullivan has a blog post titled “The GOP’s Talking Points On Poverty“. In it, he notes:

Philip Rucker and Robert Costa report that ”there is deep disagreement among Republican leaders and strategists over whether to embrace an economic-mobility agenda in the 2014 midterm campaigns.” But some prominent Republicans are beginning to address the issue:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will give a speech Wednesday that aides said will lay out changes to federal programs to help people climb out of poverty permanently. In the weeks to come, Rubio also plans to introduce ideas to make it easier for mid-career adults to go back to college or learn new job skills at vocational schools. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the 2012 vice-presidential nominee, has been traveling to impoverished areas and meeting with community organizers. He plans to address poverty in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams on Thursday.

A third potential GOP presidential candidate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), is also putting a renewed emphasis on the poor, traveling to Detroit to pitch a plan to revitalize urban centers through “economic freedom zones.” Paul has given his message on income inequality an ideological edge — mixing lofty, empathetic language with anti-government broadsides. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who has been visiting urban schools, will give a speech Wednesday promoting school choice as a way to address poverty. And Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has proposed increasing the child tax credit as a means of blending social conservatism with anti-poverty policies. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will give a speech Wednesday that aides said will lay out changes to federal programs to help people climb out of poverty permanently. In the weeks to come, Rubio also plans to introduce ideas to make it easier for mid-career adults to go back to college or learn new job skills at vocational schools. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the 2012 vice-presidential nominee, has been traveling to impoverished areas and meeting with community organizers. He plans to address poverty in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams on Thursday.

A third potential GOP presidential candidate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), is also putting a renewed emphasis on the poor, traveling to Detroit to pitch a plan to revitalize urban centers through “economic freedom zones.” Paul has given his message on income inequality an ideological edge — mixing lofty, empathetic language with anti-government broadsides. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who has been visiting urban schools, will give a speech Wednesday promoting school choice as a way to address poverty. And Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has proposed increasing the child tax credit as a means of blending social conservatism with anti-poverty policies.

I’m not as hopeful as Mr. Sullivan that things are starting to come around. As I noted in my blog post a couple of days ago, here is what the most powerful in the party are pushing. From TownHall.com:

“The truth is that income inequality is of minimal importance in a nation like America, where so many people already move between classes, where the poor are doing so much better than they used to, and where our poor already do so well compared to the rest of the world.”

As you know, TownHall is in lock-step with the talking-heads wing of the party. The article I quoted says this next:

“Among children from families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution, 84 percent of those who go on to get a college degree will escape the bottom fifth, and 19 percent will make it all the way to the top fifth.”

The problem is, that if you don’t dig into the numbers, this sounds pretty good. If you do dig into the numbers, and realize that being in the second fifth isn’t that great either, then you can’t really take this seriously. Further, if you do not endorse this point of view, you find yourself in really dangerous territory for Conservatives, admitting that Reaganomics and Trickle-Down Supply-side economics has failed over the 30 year period it’s been the economic backbone of the US economy.

Sure, they will try and pin the blame on Obama. But then they will have to explain why that upward mobile trend doesn’t show itself under Presidents who were more favorable to Conservative economic ideals.

So, while there are a few in the GOP who are starting to talk about, say, finding ways to get more people to go to college or get vocational training, neither of those things actually creates jobs. Too often, the type of programs Rubio and others may talk about only create more people in debt. It ignores the bigger problem – the so-called “Jobs Creators”, despite the ever increasing wealth being generated in accord with sipply-side economic policies, simply are not creating jobs. To acknowledge that the “trickle-down” side of the equasion doesn’t work is simply too dangerous for any Republican to admit.

“American Betrayal”… Where Have I Seen This Before????

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Andrew Sullivan has been commenting on new book by Diana West that portrays FDR and his administration as basically a bunch of Commie Pinkos. Here’s the blurb for “American Betrayal”:

If the Soviet penetration of Washington, D.C., was so wide and so deep that it functioned like an occupation …

If, as a result of that occupation, American statecraft became an extension of Soviet strategy …

If the people who caught on – investigators, politicians, defectors – and tried to warn the American public were demonized, ridiculed and destroyed for the good of that occupation and to further that strategy …

And if the truth was suppressed by an increasingly complicit Uncle Sam …

Would you feel betrayed?

Yawn… It’s been done… The book I mean.

Years ago, while I was digging into the histories of recessions and depressions in the US and abroad, Conservative friends all were raving about a new book on the Great Depression they said I just had to read! It was called “The Forgotten Man“. Well, I had recently read “The Lords Of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke The World“, a fantastic book about the haphazard management of the European economies during the 1920, which ultimately helped set up some of the conditions that would trigger the Great Depression, so I figured…. Why not!

I bought it. Read it….

Man! Was I disappointed. Unlike the previous books I had read, which gave detailed analysis of economic policies, actions taken, and their seen and unforeseen consequences, Amity Schlaes book was nothing more than a McCarthyish exercise designed to pain the entire FDR administration as Communist sympathizers.

Here is what I wrote at the time:

I’m reading “The Forgotten Man”. I’m on page 139. I can’t say how much more I will read or if I will finish the book. To say that I’m underwhelmed would be an understatement. It’s dull. I expected some real economic information about the underpinnings and policy decisions made in the twenties that set the stage for the depression, and how FDR’s actions helped or hurt the possibility of economic recovery, you know, policy A leads to B which causes C, that sort of thing. Yet all I’m getting is a continuous rambling about this person and so-and-so who would end up working in the Roosevelt government who had some misplaced admiration of socialism and or Stalin. If Mrs Shlaes is to be believed, it’s a virtual commie love-fest. The was she writes about this period, it is the socialist intellectuals who caused and perpetuated the great depression. Yet so much of the info presented feels like gossip and innuendo (there are such things as footnotes you know – see Ron Chernow’s “Alexander Hamilton”). She’s almost McCarthyist in the zeal in which she names names. She has mentioned so many names that I can’t keep them all straight; they have become “Forgotten Men”. I will continue to read the book, but I can already say that you will get more useful information from the 40 or so pages devoted to this time period in the fun and concise “The Great Game” than from Mrs. Shlaes effort.

I did read the whole thing. It really wasn’t worth my time. I’m betting this new book isn’t either.

PS. A another good read on economic  / crash histories: The Panic Of 1907. I became interested in this subject when someone in a radio interview had said this near economic crash was triggered by the San Francisco Earthquake the year earlier. It’s a long explaination, but this book lays that out nicely. It also establishes exactly why the government created the Federal Reserve a few years later and why that was a neccessity.

Marriage Equality. A Step Forward.

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75 prominent (or somewhat prominent) Republicans today filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court rejecting Prop 8 and embracing the concept of gays being able to marry.

I sometimes have my differences with Andrew Sullivan, but today, his 24 plus years of same sex marriage advocacy makes him the go-to guy to comment on this stunning change of heart of some in the Conservative movement. Here is what he wrote on the news of the day.

Why is gay marriage so important to us? He gives but one example:

A friend recalled visiting a man dying of AIDS at the time. A former massive bodybuilder, he had shrunk to 90 pounds. ‘Do I look big?” he asked, with mordant humor. In the next bed, surrounded by curtains, my friend heard someone singing a pop song quietly to himself. My friend joked: “Well not everyone here is depressed!” Then this from his dying, now skeletal friend: “Oh, that’s not him. He died this morning. That’s his partner. That was their song, apparently. The family took the body away, threw that guy out of the apartment he shared with his partner, and barred him from the funeral. He’s stayed there all day, singing their song. I guess it’s the last place he’ll ever see where his partner actually was. His face is pressed against the pillow. The nurses don’t have the heart to tell him to leave.”

Major Kudos to those conservatives who have decided to stop basing their stance on fear, and instead support fairness.

On the quote above.

I didn’t have any experiences like that. In the 1980, when i was learning to accept the fact I am gay, I knew of people who were succumbing to the disease, but, seeing that I was still in the closet, I isolated myself from it by pretty much avoiding getting acquainted with anyone who was positive.

None-the-less, it still hit home. My ability to come to terms with the fact that I am gay was definitely delayed by the specter of AIDS, as I felt the shame that the world put onto gays – specifically, that being gay = having AIDS, something that just about made you a lepper in the eyes of the “normal” world. In the early 80’s I knew I was gay in high school, but never ever could have acted on it. Even in high school, there was talk of the “gay cancer” and there was no way I could have handled being associated with that. I was not very strong, and maybe would have offed myself if anyone found out I was a deviant. Even years later, I couldn’t even say the words “I am gay” until I was 27 or so. Even after that, on the few times I dated, if my date said they were positive, the date ended rather quickly.

In retrospect, I was kind of a dick. But it was a reaction of fear, and fear makes you do stupid things. I got better though. My Mate found out he was positive (thank you cheating ex) just when we started to get serious. Been together for 17 years. Best years of my life. And I owe that to him as much as anything else.

Unforced Errors

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Ann Althouse has posted a damning collection of information against the administration concerning the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi.  She features  some quotes from  Sen Graham from “Face The Nation”, laying out the case:

The intelligence community on the ground in Libya has told Senator Corker and myself that within twenty-four hours, they communicated up to Washington that this was a terrorist attack. The president of Libya on the same date said it was a terrorist attack. The video of the compound shows that there was nobody at the Benghazi consulate. There was never a group to riot. And the evidence is overwhelming, and the idea that it was spawned by a- a video and a riot would be– hold the administration blameless. They said it was a copycat of Cairo. It wasn’t a copycat. It was a sustained attack that lasted for six or eight hours, using heavy weapons which undercuts the idea that al– al Qaeda has been dismantled and on the run and it certainly undercuts the idea that our policy choices in Libya have not going after the militia, not helping the Libyans training the national army were good choices.”

It’s not just Susan Rice. The President of the United States said that it was the result of a video on David Letterman two days later. And the facts are very clear. There was never a riot. There was never a group of people around the embassy. It was a coordinated terrorist attack that took hours. Patrick Kennedy from the State Department briefed congressional staffers the day after the attack saying it was a terrorist attack. The next day after she was on your show, the– the counterterrorism deputy said it was a terrorist attack and the President after that went on national TV The View and David Letterman talking about we’re not sure if this was inspired by a video, a hateful video.

Some of you might dismiss this because Graham is a Republican. But Bob Woodward is also featured with quotes.

There are lots of unanswered questions. And I love documents, and they released some documents in this, and if you go and look at the original request for more security, they say our policy, our goal here is to shift from an emergency footing to normalize the security relationship.

Now, this is in March, six, seven months ago. Anyone looking at that what say, wait a minute, read the document in which they say, oh, the situation is incredibly unstable. Well, why are you trying to normalize your security in a situation that’s visibly unstable? You even acknowledge that.

So you’ve got a bad policy. And anyone looking at that would say, wait a minute; we are screwed up; we can’t normalize here.
So that’s the first problem. The second problem is, as soon as an ambassador is killed, the president should be more proactive and be out there. He can go, you know, five minutes in the White House briefing room and say this is really serious; we’re going to get to the bottom of it; we don’t have the answers. And all of this could have been nipped in the bud and it was not.

And when Chris Wallace asked about Susan Rice’s insistence that Benghazi was a video induced riot vs a terrorist attack, Woodward says this:

I don’t think we know exactly why she did that or what was going on. But the key… is, two weeks later, the president’s at the U.N. and citing this YouTube video, I guess half a dozen times. That, as we now know, had virtually nothing to do with what happened in Benghazi.

And as we now know, they knew this was not the case the day after the attacks happened.

So why on Earth would the President and his team continue following such a stunningly bad and damaging path on this, even after it became obvious that this was indeed a terrorist initiated attack?

It was indeed an error on Romney’s part to make the statement before the facts were known. By issuing his first statement, he looked very partisan. These are the people who are never shy about reminding us that politics is supposed to stop at the border. He didn’t get it right. But the Obama administration, in their zeal to try and make Romney look bad, ran with the anti-muslim video story and committed the worse error of responding to Romney instead of waiting to comment on the actual events and leaving politics out of the equation.

When it started to become clear that Benghazi was indeed a terrorist attack, the administration continued to run with the “video” story. Why? Because, in their isolated circle of advisers and in some of the media, it looked like that was working. Romeny seemed to be taking a hit from this.  But once the true nature of the attack permeated out into the regular media, they got caught in the trap they originally laid out for Romney. The administration became the Wiley Coyote of this story.

As Andrew Sullivan is so fond of saying….  Meep. Meep.

Media FAIL… The Daily Beast Going Bust?

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Looks like the Harmon family is divesting interest in NewsWeeks Daily Beast online blog.

Barry Diller launched The Daily Beast under the auspices of former New Yorker and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown in October 2008. The presence of Brown, coupled with an emphasis on political coverage that dovetailed with the election of U.S. President Barack Obama one month later, allowed The Daily Beast to immediately establish a brand and build an audience.

But advertising sales never caught up with the buzz, and media reports have estimated losses at The Daily Beast at around $10 million annually.

Diller and Harman decided to merge their titles in November 2010 — the rationale was to leverage the combined audiences to cross-sell advertising at both publications and subscriptions for Newsweek. The Daily Beast is a free, ad-supported site.

So far, however, the combined venture is still losing money, according to Diller, though he has said this year’s loss will be substantially less than last year’s. He did not give a figure and Brown has called reports of $30 million in losses last year “excessive.”

Here is the deal. The Daily Beast is predominately liberal. It was created with the expectations that the Obama friendly slant would guarantee a growth audience for years to come. It did have a great launch -“Sorry, Dad, I’m voting for Obama.” – And they lured into the fold the one blogger who has perhaps the biggest man-crush on Obama that could ever exist… Meep. Meep…. and more Meeps.

Ah… The folly of expectations! Just like The Nobel Peace Prize committee awarding President Obama that most honored prize even though he had only been in office for not even six months, because the President was surely going to do something to encourage World Peace and was certainly going to craft policy to make his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons“, a reality that has yet in any way to materialize (Bush’s fault I’m sure). And no, assassinating US citizens and killing people with drones and giving the OK to fly spy drones over your own citizens does not help the cause for peace….

Oops. I side-barred.

Anyway, the media strategy at the Daily Beast was destined to fail because left a huge chunk of the reading audience alienated from the get-go… Yes, that would be Conservatives. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for the placement of far right commentators by any means, but you don’t want to cater to the far left either. I mean, it’s not like Air America was also a success, and they were only a little more to the left than The Daily Beast has consistently been. You figure that lesson would have been learned.

I can hear someone saying now… “Well, what about FOX News or National Review Online? They cater to one side of the political fence and have been very successful!”.

Two points here. The Daily Beast seems to have been built on the assumption that Obama would be a hugely successful President. At this point, that certainly looks like a silly assumption. Live by the Obama sword, die by the Obama sword (sorry again Nobel Committee, probably a bad idiom to use for this President). More important in this case IS the examination of FOX News and National Review Online. Why FOX has worked so well, that many liberal detractors seem to ignore, is that before FOX, there was almost nothing out there in the cable news industry that catered to the right wing audience. Murdoch and friends had a completely untapped audience waiting for someone to come along and snatch up that demographic segment.

National Review Online?

They had a very successful branding, and they started small. This is often the most important aspect of starting a business that both Air America and apparently The Daily Beast completely ignored. They both started big, huge in AA’s case, which didn’t leave them any room for segment growth. Both FOX and NRO were able to grow to fit their audience, not the other way around. I also suspect that a great many in the business / advertising world have over-estimated the effectiveness of online advertising (yes facebook, I’m looking your way) and have set themselves up for a rude awakening when that bubble bursts. But them, I’ve always thought the price for advertising was always overvalued in many aspects of media, so this may be a bias on my part clouding my judgement.

Is this a sign that daily Beast is going under? I can’t say. There is still time to save the product. But they have to get much smarter and much more accommodating to other political point of views if they are going to survive. Oh, and get rid of Tina Brown. She doesn’t exactly have a great track record for the last several years.

PS. To Yahoo writer Peter Lauria – Thank you and Yahoo for including the fact that you used to work for the Daily Beast so that we can know there might be some bias in this report (why did you leave I wonder). But… BUT… Andrew Sullivan did not exactly scoop the story about Anderson Cooper being gay. You can’t scoop something when the whole world pretty much knows it anyway.

Wow! I’m being awfully snarky tonight.

Political Fun…. Is Romney Being Bainboated?

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Though I’m on vacation and have had little time to Digg into the news (the topic of the death of Digg.com will be a subject of my next post), I have noticed the hub-bub concerning Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital from 1999 – 2002, during the period where he spent most of his time successfully fixing the broken Salt Lake Ciry Olympics.

SEC / business law “experts” such as Andrew Sullivan are calling for the SEC to launch an investigation into this period because Romney says, though he was still payed as and listed as Bain CEO, he was not involved in day to day activities. Sullivan and others are twisting themselves in knots trying to make this a crime, with the stated logic being ” you’re either CEO, or you’re not”….

Really? You really think business rules and laws are that simple? Romney’s arrangements with the board of Bain were declared in the SEC filings at the time. And it’s not as if it was some secret where Romney was or what he was doing. Plus, let’s put this in context. This all went down during the turn of the century, when the SEC was already pretty uptight due to corporate shenanigans that occurred during the Dot-Com boom and bust of the late 1990’s.

But I know, I  know, it’s politics, and there is little room for logic and common sense during the silly season. The Romney / Bain arrangement seems to have been unusual, but, seeing that Romney’s activities were about as transparent as you can get in the business world, this line of attack certainly seems odd, and maybe a bit desperate.  It is like the fringe Kerry-haters from the 2004 campaign. There was not much in the way of positives to parade in support of Bush, so they took the one thing that could have been a positive for Kerry, and turned it into a negative. And a few of the things that were thrown at Kerry did turn out to have some validity, but much of it was just throwing stuff on the wall and see what sticks.

Now, with the bad economy, the Obama administration doesn’t have a heck of a lot of positives to campaign on. He has made moves to separate himself from his opponent on some social issues, for which I am grateful, because this election was looking to be the blandest in my memory. At least now there is some specific, tangible differences between the two. These new lines of attacks are probably the only weapon the Obamaites have left in their arsenal. With Romneys weakness as an attractive option to the current President, this “Bainboating ” approach will probably succeed.

PS. I’m writing this on the go from my phone, so there are no links I can feature at the moment. Also, if there is any sloppiness…. Sorry bout that.

PPS.  I’m not a Romney supporter; I just find this fun. They should change the name of  the political cycle to the “political recycle”!