Over at Kevin Drum's place, guest blogger Heather Digby Parton writes about the upcoming Wisconsin election: (emp add)
... in looking at the Marquette University poll just out yesterday, I couldn't help but be somewhat surprised by this:
Voters say they feel their current governor would be better at creating jobs than his recall challenger. Half say they think Walker would do a better job, while just 43 percent pick Barrett. And Walker holds a 51 percent favorable rating and 46 percent unfavorable, while his rival is at 41 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable.
It's almost unbelievable to me that voters would believe that when job creation has been the biggest issue of the campaign—and it hasn't been good for Walker ...
Even though Walker is being recalled mostly because of a fight with workers and the state is dead-last in job creation, 50% of the voters think he'll be better at job creation than the other guy? Nobody in the country has done worse!
This strikes me as yet another success of conservative talking points. I think many people have simply absorbed the oft-repeated notion that Republicans are the advocates for "job-creators" with their low taxes and deregulation and even in the face of clear evidence otherwise they can't really see how anything else would work.
Similarly, it appears that most people do not believe in Keynesian economics.
This is an era of simple-minded thinking. The overall economy is just like your household budget. Of all the components in the economy, only the much-heralded "job creators" matter. Regulations are bad. Facts and the historical record be damned.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared before the ongoing phone-hacking inquiry to respond to criticisms that he was too cozy with media barons such as Rupert Murdoch, whose newspapers have been accused of tapping phones and bribing police. According to Reuters, Blair said over and over again that the power of the British press "is indisputable," so he had no choice but to manage them as best he could.
With any of these big media groups, you fall out with them and you watch out, because it is literally relentless and unremitting once that happens... If [for instance] you fall out with the controlling element of the Daily Mail, you are then going to be subject to a huge and sustained attack.
... Blair is the godfather of Murdoch's daughter Grace, and acknowledged giving him back-door access to No. 10 Downing Street.
... In defending himself, Blair noted that Murdoch, more than any of his editors, runs the show, and that when "the country's most powerful newspaper proprietor, whose publications have hitherto been rancorous in their opposition to the Labour Party, invites us into the lion's den, you go, don't you?"
Nor is it true that private equity firms generally pile up companies with debt, loot them and then send them to the graveyard. This does happen occasionally, but banks would not be lending money to private equity-owned companies if those companies weren't generally credit worthy.
Cory Booker, up-and-coming Democratic mayor from New Jersey says on Meet the Press that the Obama campaign attacks on Romney's Bain Capital years was "nauseating". He later walks this back and is subsequently outraged that Republicans are using his words to help Romney's campaign.
There are many theories as to why he said what he did. Some point to the fact that making nice with the financial industry is good for a politician, and especially one from New Jersey (which shares some of Wall Street's commerce).
That may be the case, but there's another angle. Booker was on Meet the Press, and as anybody who watches the Sunday shows* can attest, those places are The Land of False Equivalences. A guest can be partisan, but will get much more approval by echoing the "both sides do it" narrative favored by the Beltway crowd (along with Americans Elect and Tom Friedman). So Booker, just like a party where the biases are clear, spoke to ingratiate himself with the gang.
* not counting Fox News Sunday which doesn't do equivalence
From Paul Johnson's "Modern Times", about the Japanese during periods of scarcity in World War II:
Tojo, in his frustration, took to riding around the Tokyo markets on horseback, and in reply to the complaints of the fishermen that they had no petrol for their boats would shout, "Work harder, work harder!"
David Cameron is meeting leading business figures today after ministers hit out at companies over their unwillingness to invest in the future.
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond accused company bosses over the weekend of “whingeing” while Foreign Secretary William Hague said they should stop complaining on get on with the business of wealth creation.
The angry spat erupted after business groups criticised the Government's failure to include any measures to stimulate the stagnant economy in last week's speech.
It sets the scene for a potentially tense meeting when the Prime Minister sees members of his business advisory group today - including some of the most senior business figures in the country.
Mr Hague opened the assault, dismissing the complaints about the lack of a growth strategy with a blunt message that the only answer to Britain's economic woes was to “work hard”.
noun loss of a large block of politically awkward memories; complete or partial loss of recall of policies enacted while governor, usually caused by brain injury, shock, or running for president.
EUCLID, Ohio (AP) — Campaigning in the backyard of America's auto industry, Mitt Romney re-ignited the bailout debate by suggesting he deserves "a lot of credit" for the recent successes of the nation's largest car companies.
That claims comes in spite of his stance that Detroit should have been allowed to go bankrupt.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee told a Cleveland television station on Monday that President Barack Obama followed his lead when he ushered auto companies through a managed bankruptcy soon after taking office.
"I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet," Romney said in an interview inside a Cleveland-area auto parts maker. "So, I'll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back."
Romney has repeatedly argued that Obama ultimately took his advice on the auto industry's woes of 2008 and 2009. But he went further on Monday by saying he deserves credit for its ultimate turnaround.
The course Romney advocated differed greatly from the one that was ultimately taken. GM and Chrysler went into bankruptcy on the strength of a massive bailout that Romney opposed. Neither Republican President George W. Bush nor Democratic President Barack Obama believed the automakers would have survived without that backup from taxpayers.
Romney opposed taxpayer help.
"If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye," Romney wrote in a November 2008 opinion article in the New York Times. "It won't go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed."
The key is Romney's use of the "help was given" element, which is where there was an enormous difference between what he advocated and what Obama (and Bush!) set out to do.
Interesting that Romney doesn't claim "some credit", but "a lot of credit". Why not, if you are living in a fantasy world?
NB: The thing to do is take Romney at his word, and not as a scheming pandering politician. Romney really thinks he deserves a lot of credit for the automobile industry recovery. What do you call such a man? Insane.
Rupert Murdoch 'not fit person' to lead News Corp, say MPs
The cross-party culture committee questioned journalists and bosses at the now closed paper, as well as police and lawyers for hacking victims.
Its report has concluded that Mr Murdoch exhibited "wilful blindness" to what was going on in his media empire.
And it said the News of the World and News International misled Parliament about the scale of phone hacking.
The committee of MPs began its inquiry in July 2011 in the wake of fresh newspaper revelations about the extent of hacking at the tabloid newspaper, with reported victims including the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the families of victims of the 7/7 London bombings.
It heard evidence from Mr Murdoch and his son James, and has now concluded that the notion that a hands-on proprietor like Rupert Murdoch had "no inkling" that wrongdoing was widespread at the News of the World was "simply not credible".
It noted that the newspaper mogul had "excellent powers of recall and grasp of detail when it suited him"
It was discouraging to watch John Burns of the New York Times indicate that he was buying the Murdoch bullshit. Last week Burns said on the Charlie Rose show that the most telling moment was when Rupert "admitted" that he panicked when he closed down the News of the World. It was not the panic of an old man. It was a cold, calculating move to destroy evidence. (Burns also sugar-coated Murdoch/NewsInternational by repeatedly saying that they were "very competitive", which is an oblique way of saying that they were ruthless and transgressing laws and norms.)
