×
- Barack Obama is a gifted orator who has given many excellent speeches, but that doesn't change the fact that good speeches do little to affect presidential approval ratings. That being said, the advance word is that the speech will emphasize that efforts for a "bipartisan" reform bill have failed because only one side is negotiating in good faith. Contra, Republicans consider themselves the true vox populi and are underscoring that the president needs to be humble in light of all the real Americans protesting at town halls during August.
- Marc Ambinder has issued a challenge to media outlets who continue to give space to people irrelevant to the health-care reform debate, such as the former governor of Alaska, who for some bizarre reason, is still considered newsworthy 10 months after she lost her sole source of relevance: being the GOP's vice presidential candidate. The problem is that there are a number of explicitly ideologically conservative news sources invested in boosting the profile of also-rans, and even worse, ostensibly credible and mainstream news sources often have opinion and editorial space that repeatedly misinforms readers and spreads lies.
- One advantage of tapping relatively unknown politicians to give rebuttals to presidential speeches is that enterprising reporters tend to dig up all sorts of interesting information about them. Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), it turns out, once tried to purchase British nobility. He's also a birther. Now if Boustany can only throw a little faux populism into his classist and conspiratorial temperament, he ought to go far in GOP circles.
- I don't know whether Andrew Sullivan is just noticing this now for the first time, but he's correct to point out that so-called fiscal responsibility has been a trademark of Democratic, not Republican administrations. I'd add that it was the supply-siders who were chiefly responsible for encouraging Republican presidents to blow holes in the budget, and as Sullivan notes, the only recent Republican president who actually tried to rein in the deficit, George H.W. Bush, paid the price for his heresy.
- In the latest installment of conservatives and libertarians who deny right-wing extremism even exists, Reason's Matt Welch is absolutely appalled that newspapers have been referencing Richard "paranoid style" Hofstadter of late. I take it that Hofstadter's status as the ultimate charlatan is simply an assumption of the right-wing, because Welch never explains why he's quoting at length clips from newspapers, although he unhelpfully recommends some "counter-programming" as a remedy.
- Remainders: Max Baucus sets a deadline to mark up his health-care reform bill; Cass Sunstein is the latest Obamacon being targeted by wingers for his "radicalism"; Financial Times muses on the "link" between Barack Obama and the UN; the czar conspiracy theory has roots at Freeper HQ; and is Glenn Beck's advertising support imperiled?
--Mori Dinauer
