• Pinboard Links,  The Afternoon Flap

    The Afternoon Flap: November 21, 2011

    These are my links for November 21st from 08:13 to 14:38:

    • Boehner blames Obama for failure of supercommittee to reach a deal – House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is blaming President Obama for the failure of the congressional supercommittee to reach a deal for cutting the federal deficit.The Speaker’s office sent out a memo Monday morning that says the supercommittee “was unable to reach agreement because President Obama and Washington Democrats insisted on dramatic tax hikes on American job creators, which would make our economy worse.”The memo from Boehner’s office says Obama set the deficit panel up for failure by demanding it become the vehicle for economic stimulus.

      “The President designed a political strategy that doomed the committee to failure first by insisting the committee include $450 billion of his failed stimulus policies in any agreement, making deficit reduction much harder and second by issuing a veto threat warning he would not accept an agreement that did not include a job-killing tax increase,” the memo obtained by The Hill states.

      The memo was not signed by the Speaker, as is customary for messages that come directly from him.

    • Super Committee Fails to Reach Deficit Agreement – The bipartisan congressional committee tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction announced on Monday it cannot reach agreement by the Wednesday deadline, a stark if not unexpected admission that its efforts have ended in failure.”After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline,” the co-chairs, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said.The declaration came late Monday afternoon in a written statement from the 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction despite last-second discussions in closed-door meetings.

      The committee, in the end, could not resolve that Republicans would not go as far as Democrats wanted on allowing more revenue raisers, and Democrats did not want to move on entitlement reforms. Intense messaging by both political parties on which was more to blame is surely to spill out for days, if not months.

      The super panel was created with extraordinary, fast-track powers this summer under the law agreed to by Republicans and Democrats during the debt ceiling crisis. That same law now says its failure will trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts over 10 years, starting in 2013. That so-called sequestration is to include cuts to Pentagon spending.

    • When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable? – If we trace liberal disappointment with President Obama to its origins, to try to pinpoint the moment when his crestfallen supporters realized that this was Not Change They Could Believe In, the souring probably began on December 17, 2008, when Obama announced that conservative Evangelical pastor Rick Warren would speak at his inauguration. “Abominable,” fumed John Aravosis on AmericaBlog. “Obama’s ‘inclusiveness’ mantra always seems to head only in one direction—an excuse to scorn progressives and embrace the Right,” seethed Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow rode the story almost nightly: “I think the problem is getting larger for Barack Obama.” Negative 34 days into the start of the Obama presidency, the honeymoon was over.Since then, the liberal gloom has only deepened, as Obama compromise alternated with Obama failure. Liberals speak of Obama in unceasingly despairing terms. “I’m exhausted [from] defending you,” one supporter confessed to Obama at a town-hall meeting last year.“We are all incredibly frustrated,” Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s executive director, told the Washington Post in September. “I’m disappointed in Obama,” complained Steve Jobs, according to Walter Isaacson’s new biography. The assessments appear equally morose among the most left-wing and the most moderate of Obama’s supporters, among opinion leaders and rank-and-file voters. In early 2004, Democrats, by a 25-point margin, described themselves as “more enthusiastic than usual about voting.” At the beginning of 2008, the margin had shot up to over 60 percentage points. Now as many Democrats say they’re less enthusiastic about voting as say they’re more enthusiastic.
    • We’ve All Gone Crazy – Unlike David Brooks — I walk out of room the minute he starts talking — David Frum is someone I consider a friend, which causes me to get a lot of heat from some of my conservative friends, including those friends whom Frum has attacked by name.Frum stubbornly believes he’s right (and also, Right), and any attempt to argue him out of his position is doomed to failure, simply because it’s his position and he feels honor-bound to defend it. Being rather mule-headed myself, I can relate to that, even when I know Frum is wrong, wrong, wrong (as is anyone who disagrees with me). However, I believe the point of arguments among conservatives is always to find the best way to stomp liberalism into smithereens. And I wish Frum would stop carping so much about conservatives, and start stomping some liberals.Read it all
    • David Frum on the GOP’s Lost Sense of Reality – It’s a very strange experience to have your friends think you’ve gone crazy. Some will tell you so. Others will indulgently humor you. Still others will avoid you. More than a few will demand that the authorities do something to get you off the streets. During one unpleasant moment after I was fired from the think tank where I’d worked for the previous seven years, I tried to reassure my wife with an old cliché: “The great thing about an experience like this is that you learn who your friends really are.” She answered, “I was happier when I didn’t know.”It’s possible that my friends are right. I don’t think so—but then, crazy people never do. So let me put the case to you.I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John ­McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration. But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.
    • Gallup poll: Is the Gingrich surge overrated? – In the latest Gallup GOP national poll, Mitt Romney (21 percent) and Newt Gingrich (22 percent) are in a statistical tie among registered Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Herman Cain has dropped to third (16 percent), with Texas Gov. Rick Perry (8 percent) now behind even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) (9 percent).What is interesting is the Gingrich surge at the onset of his first round of rigorous scrutiny has him much lower than the peak for Perry (29 percent). A GOP operative says he’s not surprised. “[Gingrich is] more of a known commodity, and not always in a good sense. Therefore he’s less likely to see a full-scale swoon.” Republican consultant Tony Fratto says the terrain is also different now than when Perry entered with a splash. He tells me, “Perry and Cain haven’t lost all of their elevated support, just part. So there’s less for Gingrich to capture. And Romney’s support stays fairly consistent.”Probably……
    • Will GOP NLRB Member Resign to Shut Down Labor Agency? – On November 30, the National Labor Relations Board is scheduled to vote on proposed rule changes that would speed up union elections by disallowing some appeals until after a workplace vote occurs. Employers typically aim to delay an election so that they can use the time to intimidate employees to voting against a union.But that vote may never take place, because some conservative members of Congress are pushing a plan that would force the NLRB, which is an independent federal agency tasked with enforcing labor law, to shut down. There are currently three people serving on the NLRB; if that is reduced by one, the body will be unable to issue valid rulings.In New Process Steel, L.P. vs National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that the NLRB cannot decide cases with only two members on the NLRB. For 27 months, during the last year of President Bush’s term and the first 14 months of the Obama administration, the NLRB only had two members (a Democrat and a Republican). The two members agreed to work together on common sense cases where they could easily agree on a ruling; they passed judgment in nearly 600 cases.

      But the Supreme Court invalidated all those rulings because they were made with only two members. Therefore, some conservative politicians such as South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and prominent right-wing blogs such as RedState.com are pushing for Republican NLRB Board Member Brian Hayes to resign before the vote for the rules is issued on November 30, which would effectively shut down the agency.

    • Spirit Airlines’ deceptive Tweets land a U.S. fine – MarketWatch – Oh MY! | RT @WSJ:Spirit Airlines has been fined $50,000 for tweets advertising $9 fares that didn’t disclose add’l fees
    • Federal lawmakers restore $12.5 million to program for methamphetamine lab cleanup – The war on methamphetamine has gotten some support from Congress — millions of dollars to clean up the toxic waste generated by clandestine meth labs.President Barack Obama signed a wide-ranging appropriations bill Friday that included the restoration of $12.5 million for meth lab cleanup.0

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      “It’s an awesome thing,” said Tommy Farmer, state meth task force coordinator for Tennessee, the state that led the nation in the number of meth labs in 2010. “It keeps us in the fight so we can combat these things.”

      The measure restores funding lost in February, when federal meth lab cleanup money through the Community Oriented Policing Services program ran out, and was not renewed. The program provided $19.2 million for meth lab cleanup in 2010.

    • Why Can’t Newspapers Make Money Online? – The bottom line is this: the reason that newspapers can’t make money is because they’re pricing themselves out of the market. It’s true that newspaper circulation has declined due to competition of various new media (check out Newspaper Death Watch if you really want to get depressed), and newspaper ad expenditures have declined along with them since 2001. But the real problem seems to be that newspapers have been way too slow in responding to competitive pressures by lowering their ad rates to a competitive level. Lulled into complacency by decades (if not centuries) of dominating the advertising industry, they’ve failed to recognize that when it comes to advertiser value, they’ve long since fallen from the top spot. The advantages they once had based on geographic exclusivity, readership, and exclusive content have been eliminated by the rise of the web. Today you can get your news from a huge number of sources other than the local bundle of papers tossed on your doorstep; and you (as a consumer) can get it for free. Craigslist and Facebook and Yelp and blogs and job listing sites and myriad other sources of local content have drained away readership and, more importantly, have all but negated the exclusive lock that newspapers used to have on local content. Advertisers who want to reach local audiences now have a huge amount of options and don’t have to be held hostage to the rates newspapers got used to charging.“News” has now become a commodity, yet the papers continue to charge premium prices. Unless they can figure out how to pare down costs, price themselves competitively, and, more importantly, offer content that’s worth paying for (see The Wall Street Journal), desperation tactics such as paywalls are only going to hasten the inevitable decline.
    • Dilbert November 20, 2011 – To Catch a Thief » Flap’s California Blog – Dilbert November 20, 2011 – To Catch a Thief
    • President 2012: Newt Gingrich – Really? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012: Newt Gingrich – Really? #tcot #catcot
    • George Will | Newt Gingrich | Ron Paul | Mediaite – George Will Dismisses Newt Gingrich, Scoffs At Idea That He Is A ‘Historian’ #tcot
    • Democrats Pray for Newt – Democrats Pray for Newt #tcot
    • (500) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/conservatives-shouldnt-kid-themselves-about-newt/2011/11/20/gIQA9RhhhN_blog.html – Conservatives shouldn’t kid themselves about Newt #tcot #teaparty
    • Only 12% Expect Value of Their Home To Increase In Next Year – Rasmussen Reports™ – Poll Watch: Only 12% Expect Value of Their Home To Increase In Next Year #tcot
    • Untitled (http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/us/politics/deficit-deal-fell-apart-after-seeming-agreement.html&OQ=_rQ3D4Q26adxnnlQ3D1Q26pagewantedQ3DallQ26adxnnlxQ3D1321891541-qqfPM1wiKQ51yi2VQ2BBJWqRqAQ26utm_sourceQ3Dtwitt – Deficit Deal Fell Apart After Seeming Agreement
    • Do Overweight People Eat LESS Often? | Smiles For A Lifetime – Temporary (Locum Tenens) Dentistry – Do Overweight People Eat LESS Often?
    • Where Michigan stands on 2012 race for president | Detroit Free Press | freep.com – President 2012 Michigan Poll Watch: Romney 46% Vs. Obama 41%
    • The Morning Flap: November 21, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Morning Flap: November 21, 2011 #tcot #catcot

  • Conservatives,  Liberals,  Polling

    Poll Watch: Conservatives Are Largest Ideological Group, Liberals Smallest

    Conservatives Gallup Poll

    So Says the latest Gallup Poll.

    Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.

    No surprise here.

    Is there any wonder why Left-Wing activists view the “Liberal” label as an anathema and prefer to use the word progressive?

    All spin.

    But do note:

    • Conservatives – 40%
    • Moderates – 35%
    • Liberals – 21%

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