Andrew Sullivan reprints the following chart of polling data on the new Health Care Reform law from the Kaiser Family Foundation:

Following Ezra Klein, Sullivan feels that the chart illustrates the difficulty Republicans will have in pursuing a repeal of the new law: almost all elements of the law are very popular (with support in the 70% range).

But something else about the chart stood out for me. Its inherent contradictions, I believe, serve as a clear illustration of the mainstream media’s continuing failure to educate the American people on matters of public interest. Read more »

Let’s take a break from eating our own, for a moment, shall we? For now, my fellow Stinquers, is a good a time as any to remind ourselves that as unseemely as the situation at MSNBC might appear, it doesn’t even begin to approach the nakedly propagandistic dreck that emanates from Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes Fox News channel.

Exhibit A, today is a “draft letter” that Fox News “exclusively”  “obtained” from “defeated Democratic congressmen” imploring Nancy Pelosi to step aside for the good of the Democratic party. The letter, curiously enough, repeats tired right-wing propaganda about the Speaker’s supposedly polarizing persona: Read more »

ATTENTION: This is a LATE BREAKING STORY.  Late yesterday, MSNBC President Phil Griffin formally announced that he was permanently, officially and irrevocably canceling Keith Olbermann, a decision that has been proclaimed infallible by Papal bull and thus will stand forver until Olbermann is allowed to come back on Tuesday (as in: tomorrow). If you haven’t heard yet, Olbermann is the MSNBC host who jeopardized his network’s well deserved reputation for objectivity and fairness by singlehandedly orchestrating Harry Reid’s improbable re-election giving some money to a few guys running for something. This is like Pete Rose betting on Baseball, the Chicago White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series, or Ben Collins writing a book in which he reveals himself to be The Stig.

In a similar incident some years ago, MSNBC fired Imus in the Morning show host Don Imus for making racially charged remarks about a female college basketball team. At the time, Imus was about the only thing MSNBC had going for it. Not long after, the nascent Fox Business Channel (which, like MSNBC also had nothing going for it, except perhaps in an unintentional comedic sense) hired Imus to do his old show and so that Fox Business would at least have a couple of viewers for a few hours each day.

In announcing the permanent cancellation of Countdown with Keith Olbermann until this Tuesday, it is likely that MSNBC was hoping to prevent Fox News from hiring away Mr. Olbermann, and in an obvious and crass attempt to make liberals and liberal issues look bad, put him back on the air with no editorial oversight whatsoever.

That’s it for now.

Dear Deconfuser:

Sometimes you hear two completely opposite opinions about the same person. For example, just the other day Sarah Palin said this about Ronald Reagan:

“Wasn’t Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn’t he in ‘Bedtime for Bonzo,’ Bozo, something? Ronald Reagan was an actor.”

But then I read Peggy Noonan say the following:

Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin. Reagan people quietly flipped their lids, but I’ll voice their consternation to make a larger point. Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president.

I’d always heard that Reagan was an actor, but now I’m not sure sure. So who’s right?

-Confused in Topeka Read more »

Maybe I should have titled this post simply “The Big Loser.” Because, let’s face it: everyone expected the Democrats to get hammered. After all, the economy is still on the rocks, unemployment remains high, and Wall Street and Big Business, having gotten what they wanted out of the Obama adminsitration (a bailout and a stabilized economy) now want to get the party back in power that will allow them to go back to doing what they were doing before the economy collapsed, and thanks to the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision, they had carte blanch to throw money at the race. Seen in historical context, then, the Democratic losses are about what one would expect from the party in power during a mid-term election taking place before the backdrop of a very sour economy. This really is little different from what happened to Bill Clinton in 1994. So all in all, it’s not a terrible night for the Obama adminsitration. And it should not be forgotten that keeping the Senate in Democratic hands was a major plus for the Administration.

Read more »

For all the handwringing about Health Care Reform, it looks like the law is starting to have a positive effect on people’s lives. According to the Wall Street Journal:

The number of small businesses offering health insurance to workers is projected to increase sharply this year, recent data show, a shift that researchers attribute to a tax credit in the health law.

Many small businesses, however, remain opposed to the law. Some small businesses are benefiting from portions of the law, which includes a tax credit beginning this year that covers as much as 35% of a company’s insurance premiums.

According to a report by Bernstein Research in New York, the percentage of employers with between three and nine workers and which are offering insurance has increased to 59% this year, up from 46% last year. The report relies on data from a September survey by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.

This strikes me as especially significant in an economy characterized by high unemployment, a situation that naturally reduces the need for employers to provide new incentives to find good workers.

Apparently the country of New Zealand has amended its constitution to make Peter Jackson King of New Zealand and Labor Minister in perpetuity. This was done in a bid to ensure that the two new “Hobbit” movies are filmed there rather than on a soundstage in Hollywood (like the hugely successful “Plan 9 from Outer Space” was). Supposedly the films have a budget of about $500 million, which is something like 6 times the country’s GNP and enough to make about half the population millionaires, so everyone in New Zealand is cool with it (except the labor unions who are never happy about anything). Now Peter Jackson can pay the movie actors whetever he wants, and even have them do his laundry and mow his lawn (or till his outback, or whatever it is those guys have behind their houses in New Zealand). Everyone wins: Read more »