13 hours and 5 minutes ago
The Obama White House’s inexplicable war on Fox News has magnified Fox’s stature among viewers. Far from marginalizing Fox and delegitimizing it as a news source, as intended, the feud has made more people than ever choose Fox News as their favored source of television infotainment. Fox’s ratings bumped up almost 10 percent in the two weeks after the White House decided to engage Fox News directly. And among advertisers’ favorite demographic — 25- to 54-year-olds — Fox’s ratings went up a whopping 14 percent. This is probably not the kind of change Obama voters thought they were voting for. Congratulations, Obama. You have transformed Fox into the most successful “news” channel ever. — D.K. Jamaal, Examiner.com
The breathless claim that Fox News’ ratings recently spiked thanks to the White House’s public critique is bogus hype. A detailed analysis of Nielsen ratings numbers clearly indicates that in the two weeks after the White House in mid-October sparked a media controversy by claiming Rupert Murdoch’s channel was not a legitimate news organization, Fox News’ ratings did not soar. They experienced no significant increase at all. Instead, in the two weeks after the initial verbal jousts with the White House, Fox News’ total day ratings virtually flatlined. Think about it. The unfolding controversy — which gobbled up untold hours and pages of news coverage as the Beltway press treated the dispute like a major news event — and the hubbub barely moved the ratings needle one inch in Fox News’ favor. — Eric Boehlert, Media Matters
The shooting at Fort Hood is so tragic and terrible. As President Obama stated, “these are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk and at times give their lives to the rest of us on a daily basis. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.” Suspect Maj. Nidal M. Hasan is in stable condition, and authorities are still trying to piece together what may have prompted the attack. In the meantime, our prayers should go out to the families of those killed and to the wounded, which includes a woman from Kansas.
The Congressional Budget Office concluded this week that the GOP health care reform proposal would end up adding about 6 million people to the ranks of the uninsured. By 2019, 52 million people would be uninsured (up from 46 million today). In comparison, the CBO determined that the Democrats’ bill would leave about 18 million uninsured. The Democrats’ bill also would reduce the deficit more than the Republican plan, the CBO calculated. “The only thing worse than having no health care reform plan is releasing a bad one, getting thrashed by CBO and making the House Democrats look good in comparison,” wrote Ezra Klein of the Washington Post.
Scott Paradise, campaign manager for 4th Congressional District candidate Wink Hartman, dismissed the endorsement of fellow GOP candidate Mike Pompeo by state Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, as one career politician endorsing another political insider. “If we want our government to change, then we have to stop sending those same career politicians to Washington,” Paradise said in a statement. Pompeo’s campaign manager, Aaron Jack, responded that Pompeo is a businessman and a first-time candidate for office, not a politician. “Here we are, 52 weeks to the day from the general election, and already Wink Hartman has decided to launch a negative campaign,” Jack said.
Setting aside Sedgwick County Commission Chairman Kelly Parks’ mysterious comment Tuesday about how he had “turned some stuff over to the FBI” — no one at the county seemed to know what he was talking about — Parks’ push for disclosing free meals and gifts received by commissioners has merit. Taxpayers deserve to know who is spending money hoping to influence policymakers. Commissioner Dave Unruh questioned the benefit of reporting every minor gift that commissioners receive, such as a coffee cup. But the commission could set a minimum dollar value of gifts and meals that should be disclosed.
GOP wins Tuesday in the governor races in New Jersey and Virginia boosted Republicans’ hopes for a 2010 comeback. But the win by Democrat Bill Owens (in photo) in a special New York congressional race — a seat that Republicans have held for more than a century — highlighted what can happen when conservatives try to purge moderates from the GOP. National conservative talk-show hosts blasted the GOP candidate as too liberal and not a true Republican. And politicians such as Sarah Palin and even Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, injected themselves into the race by endorsing the Conservative Party candidate. But Newt Gingrich warned that such national interference in local elections could make Nancy Pelosi the House “speaker for life” and guarantee President Obama’s re-election. “I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices,” Gingrich said.
Abortion remains a sticking point in health care reform legislation. The House version of the bill would allow people to use federal subsidies to buy private insurance that covers abortion, but only if the federal funds don’t go toward paying for an abortion. In other words, the insurance companies would have to use money from other sources, such as private employer insurance premiums, to pay for the coverage. But some House Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, want a complete ban, and may have enough votes to derail the bill.
Two more Sarah Palin books are coming out. “The Persecution of Sarah Palin” blames the media elite for Palin’s problems. “Sarah From Alaska” is sympathetic to the challenge Palin faced but argues that her lack of preparation contributed to her poor interview and debate performances. But neither book fully explains why Palin causes such derangement in many of her supporters and critics, a Washington Post book review argued.
In his Oct. 28 column, Cal Thomas compared the Obama administration’s complaints about Fox News to “dictators who desire control over the flow of information in order to enhance their power.” So, asked Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show,” does that mean Thomas also objected when the Bush administration leveled similar complaints last year about MSNBC? No. Thomas groused in May 2008 that the Bush administration waited until its last year in office to criticize media coverage. “They should have taken on the media a lot sooner,” Thomas said.
An article in the Sunday Eagle about the strong competitive challenge that Brazil’s Embraer poses to Wichita’s planemakers brought to mind one frustration of flying certain routes in and out of Wichita Mid-Continent Airport: The American Airlines flights operated by American Eagle (to Chicago) and Chautauqua & Trans States (to St. Louis) and the Continental Express flights operated by ExpressJet Airlines (to Houston) all use Embraer regional jets. The flights and equipment help support Mid-Continent service, but it always feels wrong to be leaving or returning to the Air Capital of the World on a plane with no local ties. At least, as the article noted, Wichita planemakers also sell planes to buyers in Brazil.
Some parents understandably aren’t comforted or satisfied by the efforts of day care employees to keep Margaret E. Walker (in photo) from driving, because their children still ended up riding in a van driven by someone who was legally drunk, according to a police report. But the employees of Creative Connections Learning Center deserve credit for calling 911, particularly when they knew that doing so meant they would lose their jobs. “I knew once I call, we’re done,” teacher Lindsey White told The Eagle. The employees also called police and confronted their boss before she left, told her not to drive and attempted to take away the van keys, according to White.
There wasn’t much point to holding a runoff election in Afghanistan after one of the two candidates, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew. Still, the decision doesn’t add any legitimacy to President Hamid Karzai’s government, which is widely seen as corrupt and ineffective and was accused of rigging the last election.
Good for Congress for deciding to buy out residents of Treece. Lead, zinc and other chemical contamination from past mining operations made the southeast Kansas town unsafe and isolated. Kudos to the Kansas delegation, particularly Sen. Pat Roberts and Rep. Lynn Jenkins, for pushing for the buyout and for standing up for residents who needed help.
The Web site Edmunds.com contends that the Cash for Clunkers program was a costly incentive because many people would have bought cars anyway. It claims that only 18 percent of car sales wouldn’t have happened without the program — so the per-car incentive cost of those 125,000 cars was $24,000. But the White House countered that Edmunds’ claims are at odds with a number of other reviews of the program, including by Moody’s, and by third-quarter economic growth.
Congratulations to Intrust Bank Arena for being selected to host the first and second rounds of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament in 2011. The tournament will be a nice economic boost for the city and will help promote women’s basketball in this area — particularly if Wichita State University or another Kansas team makes the tournament and is assigned to play here. Successfully hosting the tournament also could boost Wichita’s efforts to land the men’s tournament in the future.
The country is facing a 2009 federal deficit of $1.42 trillion, more than three times larger than any annual deficit in history. To get the country in the black for the year, every man, woman and child would each have to write out a check for $4,700. That’s a lot of money. According to the Government Accountability Office, 20 years from now, about 92 percent of every federal dollar will be spent on entitlement programs and interest payments on the federal debt. The federal government has only a few choices: increase revenue (raise taxes), reduce expenses (cut services) or a combination. And Congress is elected by a nation of voters who want to have it both ways: low taxes coupled with generous, federally funded programs. Yet we wonder why the national debt grows. So while the 2009 deficit is a stunning $1.42 trillion, the real question is whether it’s stunning enough to finally prompt Congress to make changes when the economy recovers. — Des Moines Register editorial
Remember Ross Perot? In 1992, he predicted that the federal budget deficit was on track to end the world as we knew it. In fact, the rapid growth of the economy during the following years reduced the deficit to zero. Deficits and debts mean just about nothing anyway — at least out of context. In 1945, the federal debt was 120 percent of the entire U.S. economy. A few years later, the debt as a proportion of GDP had been tamed — and not primarily because of cuts in government spending. Yes, of course — wartime spending ended. But the big change was in the denominator of the equation. Economic growth kicked in big time, and reduced the debt as a proportion of the economy to manageable levels. I’d prefer the government run a larger deficit. With unemployment and underemployment rising, the federal government has to spend more — and the deficit has to be larger — in order to get people back to work. — Robert Reich, RobertReich.blogspot.com
It’s troubling that Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, reportedly is under investigation by two ethics panels for steering federal funds to clients of a lobbying firm that made donations to his campaign. Tiahrt secured $5 million and helped steer another $2 million in earmarks to clients of the PMA Group between 2001 and 2008, while receiving $21,250 in campaign donations from PMA Group during that period. The Center for Public Integrity also complained this year that Tiahrt directed earmarks to a company represented by a former Tiahrt aide. It included Tiahrt among other House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee members “in circles of relationships fraught with potential conflicts of interest, involving former congressional staffers-turned lobbyists, earmarks and campaign cash.”
UPDATE: Tiahrt issued a statement this afternoon saying that the Office of Congressional Ethics asked about the process his office followed for submitting defense-related project requests to the House Appropriations Committee, and that he had fully complied with the request. But he had “no reason whatsoever to believe that we are subject to a House Ethics Committee investigation.” Tiahrt said he takes “pride in our professional and ethical process for reviewing requests made to my office — a process that we undertake to ensure the highest level of integrity is part of all our conduct.”
A public health insurance plan appeared dead two weeks ago, but both House and Senate Democratic leaders announced this week that their reform bills would include the option. The comeback may be fueled by opinion polls showing that a majority of the public wants a public option. Fifty-seven percent of Americans favor a public insurance option, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Support among doctors is even higher — 63 percent favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance, according to a survey released last month. Overall, however, the public is still divided on the health care reform bills in Congress, with 45 percent favoring the broad outlines of the proposals and 48 percent opposed.
Two New York Times columnists have offered thoughtful cases against giving Gen. Stanley McChrystal the extra troops he wants in Afghanistan.
Arguing that digging deeper in Afghanistan will weaken the United States, Thomas Friedman wrote: “We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan.”
Suggesting there are better uses for U.S. dollars right now than “inflaming Pashtun nationalism,” Nicholas Kristof doubts more troops will do the trick. He wrote: “We have been fighting in Afghanistan for twice as long as we fought in World War II, with a current price tag estimated to be more than $60 billion a year. Standard counterinsurgency ratios of troops to civilians suggest we would need 650,000 troops (including Afghans) to pacify the country. So will adding 40,000 more to the 68,000 already there make a difference to justify the additional annual cost of $10 billion to $40 billion, especially since they may aggravate the perception of Americans as occupiers?”
Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post ranked Sarah Palin as the most influential Republican, noting the upcoming release of her memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” and her ability to draw big and energetic crowds. Meanwhile, the editors of the Nation are publishing “Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare” on the same day that Palin’s book comes out.
President Obama should set a timetable to get our troops out of Afghanistan as soon as is practically possible. Their presence cannot contribute to bringing peace and security to that country, nor does it contribute to the security of the United States. In fact, the occupation of Afghanistan is making things worse. The United States has helped put together a government dominated in key positions — especially military, police and intelligence — by Tajiks, the ethnic group whose paramilitary leaders were the first to strike a deal with the invading forces. Not surprisingly, this contributed to the nationalist fuel for the insurgency among the Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group. This contribution to ethnic conflict is a common mistake, or sometimes a tactic, of occupying powers that helps drive lasting and violent civil wars. — Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research
There are many reasons for hunkering down in Afghanistan and adopting a tougher military strategy so Americans and their NATO allies can finally leave behind a more stable — though barely democratic — Middle East. New York City, Philadelphia, Denver, Springfield, Ill., and the U.S. Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va., are high among those reasons. All five places were prime targets of suspected radical Islamic jihadists, as emerged from plots the FBI and local police nixed in September. Most of the would-be terrorists the FBI has identified and arrested had trained at various al-Qaida camps in or near Afghanistan. And all of them had gained cover in the United States by posing as normal members of moderate Muslim communities. — Bogdan Kipling, for McClatchy-Tribune News Service
“While the wheeler-dealer side of the financial industry, aka trading operations, is highly profitable again, the part of banking that really matters — lending, which fuels investment and job creation — is not. Key banks remain financially weak, and their weakness is hurting the economy as a whole,” columnist Paul Krugman wrote. He noted that many banks “remain reluctant to lend, and tight credit, especially for small businesses, stands in the way of the strong recovery we need.”
“Slashing executive salaries, bonuses and perks at the seven bailed-out companies that gorged most gluttonously at the public trough is emotionally satisfying, but it shouldn’t be,” wrote columnist Eugene Robinson. “It’s like arresting jaywalkers while ignoring the bank robbery that’s happening in broad daylight down the block.” Though he supports the pay caps, Robinson argued that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to “curb the irresponsible Wall Street practices that led to the financial meltdown — and, if unaddressed, will lead inexorably to the next crisis.”
Moderate Democratic lawmakers are pushing to tie a vote on raising the government’s debt-ceiling to the creation of deficit-reduction commission. The commission, which would be similar to military base-closing commissions, would make proposals that Congress would have to accept or reject as a package with no amendments. Columnist David Broder supports the commission, though he thinks the odds are against its creation. “Because such a commission is likely to propose both cuts in popular entitlement programs and tax increases whenever the country comes out of the current recession,” he wrote, “those members on the ballot next November, including Reid and Pelosi, would much rather avoid any discussion of such steps.”
