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Other than Frank-Ed-and-Zach, the news includes . . .
Boffo quick-poll numbers for Barack Obama, across-the-board jeers for Bobby Jindal (who apparently lied a good bit, as GOPers will, to boot). Last night CBS’s initial survey showed that 62% of speech-watchers approved of BHO’s plans for dealing with the economy before last night’s speech, and after it, 79% did. Pre-speech, 35% thought his economic plans would personally help them; post-speech, 52% think they will. Now for Fox News’s talking heads on Jindal:
BRIT HUME: It read better than it sounded… this was not Bobby Jindal’s greatest rhetorical moment.
NINA EASTON: The delivery was not terrific.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Jindal didn’t have a chance.
JUAN WILLIAMS: Childish.
Samples from 538.com’s liveblogging:
10:03 EST: (Sean) Trademark Obama cynicism-to-hope pivot begins. We’re near the close of the Obama part. Bobby Jindal really wanted to follow this?
10:10 EST (Nate). I thought that was done, very, very well. If the country/markets/etc. were looking for a symbolic pivot point, this might have been it.
10:29 EST (Nate): If it sounds like Jindal is targeting his speech to a room full of fourth graders, that’s because he is. They might be the next people to actually vote for Republicans again.
10:56 EST: (Sean) Josh Marshall has “Kenneth the Page” up; it’s everywhere… all anyone will remember about this night three months from now is Obama gave a great speech and Bobby Jindal = Kenneth the Page. Big Republican winner tonight: Mike Huckabee.
12:26 EST: (Sean) “Nihilism.” Per MyDD, David Brooks on Jindal: “In a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say ‘government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,’ it’s just a form of nihilism…. I think it’s insane, and I just think it’s a disaster for the party.”
As will be Huckabee, so they’re in a pickle.
NYT reports that Obama, having “split the difference” with his generals, is about to give the military three more months than the sixteen he originally targeted for the main US withdrawal from Iraq. This contemplated timetable sets August 2010 as combat-force withdrawal, leaving behind a “residual force of tens of thousands of troops to continue training Iraqi security forces, hunt down foreign terrorist cells and guard American institutions.”
Officials said he was prepared to make that shift because he agreed with the concerns of ground commanders who wanted more time to cement security gains, strengthen political institutions and make sure Iraq did not become more unstable again.
From Islamabad comes word that “American missile strikes have reduced Al Qaeda’s global reach but heightened the threat to Pakistan as the group disperses its cells here and fights to maintain its sanctuaries, Pakistani intelligence officials said.” This as Pakistani Supreme Court bars opposition leader Nawaz Sharif from holding national office — the court says because he’s a convicted felon, his supporters say because President Zardari ordered a “political” ruling. Look for more turmoil.
Amsterdam is celebrating (with less-complete happiness than New York’s) its own plane-in-the-Hudson moment today:
Times of London
This Turkish Airlines jet crashed into farmland just short of Schiphol airport this morning, reports ToL — early reports say six passengers and three cockpit crew died, and another 50 or so were injured (back trauma, mostly). The link has other pix.
Blighty is mourning the sudden death overnight of Ivan Cameron, the six-year-old, severely disabled son of the Conservative Party’s leader. Hug your kids, those who have ‘em.
Some fools in NOLA’s Garden District started shooting as the Mardi Gras parade was breaking up yesterday — five wounded, including an infant who was grazed; two arrests; three guns confiscated.
DougJ at BalloonJuice last night:
Okay, I had to see just how bad it was — but could only hack about 2 minutes of HufPo’s Jindal tape. Yeesh, creepy. Really meant to last to the Katrina part I’ve heard so much about, but life’s too short, y’know?
Lotus @ 2 – Jindal’s compared to Mr. Rogers, Kenneth @ 30 Rock, & Levar Burton from Reading Rainbow just to name a few of the comparisons I’ve read. By far and away, I think those comparisons were insulting to Fred Rogers, “Kenneth the NBC Page” and Mr. Burton. In no way should these fine persons, even if fictional, be put in the same sentence with Jindal.
RE: …for Bobby Jindal (who apparently lied a good bit, as GOPers will, to boot).
Lied? Not quite. Actually a case of “you say To-may-toe and I say To-mah-toe”(golf cart?/electric cart? oh the deception!)…bottom line: Jindals message that this stimulus package is nothing other than a mass squandering of taxpayer funds is spot on.
Living on the Coast, I see or hear Jindal probably about once a week. He is way more impressive–and comfortable in his own skin–than this. He was a Godsend after the disaster that was Kathleen Blanco. The national GOP machine has clearly taken hold of him, his mannerisms and his speechwriting. He is a genius, personable, quick on his feet, able to hold massive amounts of figures and facts in his head, much like Bill Clinton. The national GOP, which must think that dumbing things down is a winning strategy, has probably jettisoned this guy’s career in one fell swoop.
“62% of speech-watchers approved of BHO’s plans for dealing with the economy before last night’s speech, and after it, 79% did”
This doesn’t matter. Let’s look to what does: the markets.
as of 9:06 a.m. 2-25-09, markets down 159. The market is calling Obama’s BS.
Good. The public’s opinion doesn’t matter, only scared stocktraders’. For as long as your team thinks that way, 2Al, it remains The Loser. The rest of us will go on without it.
As Obama said once, about people with “skin in the game…” People that play the markets have their “skin in the game.”
My team? Ha. Every day, more and more people wake up to the fact that the R’s and the D’s are the same party, and that we are on our own. We “lost,” along with the rest of the USA, b/c the republicans had a democrat for a candidate.
Careful, lotus, I am one of those scared stocktraders who has seen half of their retirement vanish and I voted for Obama.
OWIL,
I would get out while you can. Make sure you have necessities for when the sh** hits the fan. Get a gun and learn how to use it too.
lies, lies and more lies:
The Associated Press has a feature called FactCheck that it runs occasionally when government officials throw out their own facts and figures. Here are some excerpts of the latest report, on President Obama’s speech last night:
http://tupelobizbuzz.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/check-the-facts-mr-president/
OWIL, me too. “Stocktraders” was a bit imprecise. I meant the BIG ones — “Wall Street,” the ones whose trades actually make the direction, the ones who see their cushy jig is up and are throwing a tantrum this morning.
Trouble brewin’ ….
Sez here … Tupelo paper … that the Mississippi parole authorities approved paroling convicted murderer Douglas Hodgkin. Hodgkin earned a “life” sentence in 1986 for the brutal murder of an Ole Miss coed. Sure convinced me, not that I needed more proof, that the parole board bears watchin’ and that parole should be abolished. But that’s just me. Glad it wasn’t my daughter.
A TPM reader pretty well sums up Jindal’s problem:
BenCole, I remember this when it happened, a very weird murder in that these two were dating and both were students at Ole Miss. Just went in and looked at picture of Hodgkin now to be around 43 years old and at the time of his conviction family was in banking in Kentucky.
Don’t have a clue as to what his defense was but it appears her family has not forgotten her and never will.
Magnolia: He didn’t really have a defense. He claimed to be sleeping on the bed in the small apartment when the murder happened. A pathologist from CT (famous guy) testified as a defense (!) witness reconstructing the crime, saying that the murderer bound and gagged and beat her close to death in a smallish living room, carried her down a short hall, walked around the bed on which he claimed to be asleep (bumping into things as he did so), then dropped her on the floor in the bathroom about 4ish feet from the foot of the bed, and continued torturing her. Blood everywhere. Part of my reaction on hearing this defense witness was that there was no way this guy was just asleep on the bed without being disturbed (or attacked by the murderer) operating within touching range of him. Oh, and the only entrance in and out of the apt was a door right beside that bed.
Somebody — GG? — was wondering about Gary Locke’s background the other day. Here’s a new NYT profile. Strong suit: China expertise.
China is definitely his strong suit, lotus, but what, I wonder, does “largely scandal-free resume” mean.
Beats me, GG. His Wikipedia entry mentions no scandal at all, and I sure don’t recall any around him (in the little I do recall).
“Mari” comments at WaMo:
Yes’m!
Gosh durn that “librul media”.
Lotus @12
RE: “I meant the BIG ones — “Wall Street,” the ones whose trades actually make the direction, the ones who see their cushy jig is up and are throwing a tantrum this morning”
Oh, you mean the traders that make the trades for all those pension funds and mutual funds that millions of working and retired Americans have their savings in, right? And I guess that all their clients (mom and pop) are eager to “buy” in and raise the prices back up –because they see so much certainty in the future — but instead the traders are selling off. Yes, a tantrum indeed.
Up 236 yesterday, down (at the moment) 148 today, BCHAN. Meaningless froth.
It’s foolish to look at the day-to-day (and minute-to-minute) gyrations of the stock market and attribute it to a single cause. Drudge has a clever headline right now saying “Was it something he said?” with a link to the NYSE. If the market rebounds today and finishes in the black, I doubt Drudge will still have that headline up. I carpool with a conservative that does the same thing…..when the market tanks for the day, he blames something Obama did. When it doesn’t tank, he says nothing. It’s a handy device for assigning blame, but it’s not realistic.
So are those traders tantruming or frothing today? Does it mean that working/retired Americans are so “hope” filled today that they are now investing more money in corporate stocks(of, for example,the companies that employee Americans)? ‘fraid not.
Dana Milbank:
One of the most pathetic was Rep. John Culberson of Texas, who represents the richy-rich areas of Houston (he had 8,216 “followers”) and decided to video-stream his walk to the capitol for the speech and then to live-Twitter his experience.
Yeeouch. Nailed.
Just like you, BCHAN, they’re having a frothy, meaningless tantrum.
Newt was tweeting as well.That is until Jindal came on with his rebuttal and then, it seems, Newt’s tweets were no more.
According to the Great Wiki:
“The social and economic system which characterized most European societies in the Middle Ages goes by the name of feudalism. The system, in its most basic essence, is the granting of land in return for military service.”
I’m not sure that fits Mississippi or not. Nobody has ever offered me land in return for my military service.
As a life-long (and 7th generation) Mississippian, here is (in part) what I think my state is:
Clannish – we stick to our own, which usually includes kin and folks with the same skin color as ourselves, and we don’t like folks that aren’t like us. We are suspicious of outsiders, and if the New York Times suggests that we do something (like change our flag), that’s good enough for most people here to not do it.
Anti-Intellectual – while there are pockets of bright folks all over the state, and true intellectual hubs like Oxford, a higher education in Mississippi isn’t something that’s highly regarded by most folks, and is a sign of suspicion to many. I have been called “college boy” several times, and it was never a compliment.
Racist – related to Clannish above, race is an overconsuming factor in our day-to-day life. I would submit that race is the most common organizing element of our daily life, including our political parties. While all races favor their own, in Mississippi most white folks don’t want to send their children to school with blacks, and they don’t want to live in neighborhoods with blacks. Thus, we have huge segments of our white population moving to the suburbs and attending private academies, which results in our inner cities and public schools being starved of funds. The “white flight” crowd offers many reasons for doing what they do, but it really boils down to race. There are a lot of black racists, too….but they at least have a more compelling reason for their behavior.
A Great Place to Live – in spite of our many flaws (many of which result from our devastation and resulting poverty after the Civil War), Mississippi remains a great place to live, with a high-quality of life, great food, and really wonderful and kind people (especially if they are in your clan). Oh, and we invented popular American music, too.
While I have my misgivings about this state, I would live nowhere else. I have seen great, great improvements in my life with regard to racial equality (I doubt any other state has come as far and as fast in this regard), acceptance and tolerance for “otherness,” etc.
We still have a long, long way to go, but we’re getting there.
Plexix, I can’t find anything there with which to disagree (except the part about wanting to live nowhere else).
My use of “feudalism” refers not to the rewarding of land for military service (though militarism is, by national standards, unusually revered in Mississippi) but to the socio-political organization that mag was suggesting: the “great” (i.e., wealthy) families long existing — as if some kind of nobility — in a stratum above the rules that apply to the everyone-elses whose peonage actually keeps them afloat. But you’re right, as I’ve witnessed on brief visits these last 10-15 years, that Mississippi’s progress out of anachronism really is noticeable. Here’s to more and better!
Ah. Today’s daffy GOPer idea: a spending freeze!
(Psst to BCHAN: Dow down 47, d’oh.)
Michelle Obama says Malia and Sasha get their dog in April, and they’re looking to rescue one of these (Ponto, there in the middle of the second row, looks very Sasha-ready, don’t you agree?).
Juanita Jean seconds Dana Milbank: “I had a first lunch date with a new friend a couple of weeks ago. She sent four twitters during what will be our last lunch. She’s a grown-up. Cripes! Twitter is for kids, you know humans at an age where running in packs is necessary to development. If you’re a grown up and doing twitter, quit it. You look silly and your pants droop.”
Some guy from Kentucky just pled guilty to bribing Dollar Bill Jefferson (who hasn’t been charged and claims he’s cooperating) to the tune of $400K.
Is this the beginning of a draft?
http://www.infowars.com/democrats-introduce-public-national-service-bills/
At Benen’s you can find these links live, so I won’t enliven them here, but:
A-yup.
I had a dear friend who had two Portuguese Water Dogs and they are earily human-like. So smart, so easily trained. Empathetic, if you can imagine a dog being so sensitive to its owner during a serious illness. The First Family is bound to pick a winner with this breed.
Neato, OWIL. Sounds like a great match with the Obamas.
TPM has an excerpt from Dusty Foggo’s sentencing memo that’s such classic BushCo it’s hard to beat. Got everything: corruption, incompetence, arrogance, damage to national security, even sex. Most of all, of course: gonzo stupidity.
‘Nother goody from ducky — Stephanopoulos blogged, “We learned at the White House lunch today that the Obama’s [sic] have a family tradition that I want to adopt at our house. At dinner, they play a game called ‘Roses and Thorns.’ Everyone takes a turn describing a good thing that happened that day (rose) and a low moment or tough problem they had to deal with (thorn). When the President finished his turn after a particularly challenging day at the White House (we didn’t learn which one), Malia told her Dad: ‘You have a really thorny job.’ Smart girl!”
I’m thinking that if everybody had parents like Malia and Sasha’s, psychiatrists would be hard-put to find work.
Lotus, speaking of Malia and Sasha, have they named the dog yet?
Not as far as Michelle’s concerned, 3dS! (There was some talk of “Frank” or “Moose,” I understand.)
Here we go, from the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, a rev-up of the ol’ My State’s Wusser’n Yours Rodeo:
LiveScience.com clues Jindal in on volcano-monitoring.
Was he trying to sneak in a secret (not-very-good) dig at Palin somehow? Naaah, just doofus speechwriting, prolly.
Norm Coleman’s liggle iggles seem to be going the way of Ted Stevens’ prosecutors.
And NY’s poor messed-up Gov. Paterson just fired a whole buncha staffers that he’s replacing with Clintonistas.
Reckon that’ll be an improvement? (Funny comments so far, unless you’re a Paterson fan.)
Hold tight Oxford, you have another high profile trial coming your way.
Remember that automobile accident Morgan Freeman was involved in? Well his passenger has hired Gloria Allred to represent her in a lawsuit against Freeman and it has been filed on Oxford.
GG @ 46 Makes you wonder whom will be the local talent.
Well, DLM, there’s always Folo’s own NMC.
GG – We’ll have to ask NMC if he’s into car wrecks and the like.
Car wrecks, prolly not so much, DLM, but defending Morgan Freeman’s honor would be something else. And then there would be the matter of standing up against Ms. Gloria, her ownself.
Digby closely echoes my comments above (#24) about Drudge and the stock market:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/and-yet-still-rules-their-world-by-dday.html
water@35: Thad Cochran is a principal co-sponsor.