IN HAITI, a milblogger rescue mission. I just donated a hundred bucks. (Bumped).
Archive for 2010
January 17, 2010
GOOD FOR REPUBLICANS? Bad weather forecast for Tuesday in Massachusetts.
GLENN GREENWALD: Krugman, Gruber, and non-disclosure issues. “The issue is the non-disclosure, and — most serious of all — the misleading attempts by the White House and others to depict him as being ‘objective’ and independent rather than disclosing that he was being paid a significant amount of money by the very party whose interests his advocacy was advancing (which happens to be one of the misleading schemes Sunstein explicitly advocated in his 2008 paper). . . . That’s the only issue here: for many people, there’s a big difference between hearing from a truly independent authority about Obama’s plan and hearing from someone being paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars by the administration.” Those “others” would include the media organizations whose high ethical standards and layers of editors and fact-checkers are supposed to protect readers . . . .
BOSTON GLOBE: Obama here for Coakley, trailing a diminished aura. “The feverish excitement that propelled Barack Obama and scores of other Democrats to victory in 2008 has all but evaporated, worrying party leaders who are struggling to invigorate the base before Tuesday’s Massachusetts Senate race and November’s critical midterm contests, pollsters and party activists said.”
Related: Patrick Kennedy a big fan of, um, “Marcia” Coakley. Marcia, Martha, what’s the difference? She’s the party pick. That’s what’s important.
UPDATE: Reader Morris Boggs writes: “At least he didn’t say ‘Marcia Moxley’.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: “The personal touch turns chillingly impersonal.”
MARKDOWNS ON TVs, Cellphones and Electronics.
NEW YORK TIMES airbrushes a Bob Kerrey quote on evolution?
FIREDOGLAKE: Progressives, please help defeat Coakley.
MORE PROBLEMS IN HAITI. “In search and rescue, as in the distribution of food and medicine, there is a tragic disconnect — between good intentions and resources piled high at the airport, and a city of three million, most of them aware of the global drive to help but still untouched by it.”
Meanwhile, Dr. George Milonas writes: “If Obama thinks Bush is such an incredible incompetent, why did he send Bush to help rescue the Haitians? Does he hate black people that much that he is willing to inflict Bush on them?” Heh.
Related: Survivors found in ruins condemned as tombs by Haiti rescuers.
FRED BARNES: KIRK CAN’T VOTE AFTER TUESDAY.
Massachusetts law says that an appointed senator remains in office “until election and qualification of the person duly elected to fill the vacancy.” The vacancy occurred when Senator Edward Kennedy died in August. Kirk was picked as interim senator by Governor Deval Patrick.
Democrats in Massachusetts have talked about delaying Brown’s “certification,” should he defeat Democrat Martha Coakley on Tuesday. Their aim would be to allow Kirk to remain in the Senate and vote the health care bill.
But based on Massachusetts law, Senate precedent, and the U.S. Constitution, Republican attorneys said Kirk will no longer be a senator after election day, period. Brown meets the age, citizenship, and residency requirements in the Constitution to qualify for the Senate. “Qualification” does not require state “certification,” the lawyers said.
Read the whole thing.
WANT AUDIENCE INTEREST? Danny Glover trumps Pat Robertson. Want Old Media interest? It’s pretty much the opposite. “Dear old Pat still thrills the oldies and the old-at-heart. But I wouldn’t be relying on controversial curse-calling Christians to fuel continued audience interest. Craptacular Copenhagenite claims, on the other hand, seem rather more topical. Fault lines run beneath both. Neither is as destructive as the quake, yet one refers to events of today instead of events centuries past. It’s called ‘news’ for a reason.”
A NEW PJM/CROSSTARGET POLL: Brown Up 9.6 Percent Among Likely Voters.
UPDATE: Hmm. That margin exactly agrees with this Merriman River Group poll, for whatever that’s worth.
HAITI’S EARTHQUAKE, through 16-year-old eyes.
ANN ALTHOUSE DISSECTS THE COAKLEY MESSAGE: Oh, no! It’s men in trucks! Plowing in from Texas! Running down all the women! Rape! “See how that article — by Jonathan Martin in Politico — tried to flip you? First, nonentities were presented as prejudiced against a woman, ready to vote against Coakley because she’s a woman, and then, suddenly, liberals are supposed pushed to feel that they ought to vote for her because she’s a woman.”
PRESIDENT OBAMA calls up reserves for Haiti relief.
UPDATE: JLOTS?
ALFONZO RACHEL: MASS HYSTERIA, Part Two: Brown’s Momentum Builds, Coakley’s Desperation Grows.
UPDATE: Reader Kelly Jefferson writes:
My mother was one of the teeming masses who attended the Scott Brown rally at Mechanics Hall (http://www.mechanicshall.org/) in Worcester, Massachusetts, this afternoon. Thought you might like the sign she brought (attached).
Not only did supporters fill the Great Hall (shown), but they also filled the overflow room downstairs and the overflow-overflow room at the Crowne Plaza hotel down the street.
Love the sign.
BILL QUICK: Some Things We Take For Granted.
ANN ALTHOUSE: We’re going to have to pay to read the NYT on line. “For me, reading on line is tied to blogging. I’m not going to spend my time reading sites that I can’t blog, and I’m not going to blog and link to sites that you can’t read without paying. Currently, I link to the NYT a lot, perhaps several times a day. I don’t know how much of their traffic is sent their way from blogs, but it’s one more factor that will limit their readership. You’d think what a newspaper would want most is readers, both to influence and to sell to advertisers. I know they need to make money, but I wish advertising was the way. Once they close themselves off — as they did once before with the failure known as TimesSelect — they sacrifice readers and lose appeal for advertisers.”
You have to make money somehow. Is this the way to do it? I’m skeptical, but in a way I’d like to be wrong, as there don’t appear to be any generally applicable schemes for making money from news on the Web.
UPDATE: More thoughts from Jeff Jarvis. “But note the verb that started off the paragraph above: should. Readers who read more should pay more. This is the product of journalism’s sense of entitlement. “
GREYHAWK DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THE COAKLEY STRATEGY:
I’m not in Massachusetts, so I’m really puzzled by some of the assumptions of the strategists in the Coakley campaign. Besides bringing this “Scott Brown defends young, unwed mothers” issue to the forefront, did they really think emphasizing Brown’s opposition to forcing Nuns to perform abortions was a vote-getter for their side? And what does that have to do with his Guard service?
They’re just flailing now, hoping that something will work.
DAN FROOMKIN: Voters Who Lost Faith In Dodd Wouldn’t Trust Obama’s Economics Team Either. “Voters get it: Certain actions are disqualifying from public life. So I can’t help but imagine what would happen if the public were allowed to directly weigh in on the cast of characters who make up President Obama’s economic team.”