In at 2006 I discovered Frank Caliendo by watching YouTube videos about David Letterman. Frank is an amazing impersonator, and his specialty seems to be football personalities, as well as a few politicians and actors. Feel free to go look him up on YouTube, but I recommend watching his videos on Late Night with David Letterman. This video is about the now infamous shutdown corner Richard Sherman, for the Seattle Seahawks. I hope you enjoy it 🙂
I try not to swoon too much over any politicians or leaders in general, as they are simply people. However, I always enjoy watching worlds and leaders collide like this.
“That had a very profound impact on me,” Clinton told ABC News of his brief meeting with Kennedy. “It was something that I carried with me always.”
So lately I’ve decided to post a few Rachel Maddow segments, and I’m sure that has a lot of my loved ones in Oklahoma very worried about me. I would first like to clarify a couple of things. I don’t always agree with her, but when I do I find it worthwhile to share because I would imagine that many around me would otherwise never hear anything that she says, and I hear her often mischaracterized as just the opposite of the guys of Fox News (I don’t think that’s true, I appreciate that her shows are designed with enough information that you can refute what she says, and that doesn’t mean that I always think she’s right). Also, there are very few shows that are free on itunes as a podcast, but her show is, and while I didn’t have cable for 2 years I was very grateful for that.
Next I’d like to clarify my purpose of posting this video. I am not trying to pick a fight, or tease anyone. As a matter of policy and governance I simply disagree with the way that the Iraq War was instigated and executed. I say this with a limited knowledge of the military, so feel free to educate me if you know something that I don’t know. You are allowed to disagree and I can deal with that, although I might have questions for you. I try very hard to be reasonable, and part of that for me means that it’s important to reflect on our successes and failures. I don’t consider our troops to have failed, I am incredibly humbled that people risk their lives for me and live in the conditions in which our soldiers do, but I do consider our leadership in regards to this war to have been a failure on multiple levels.
If you find this video to be interesting, or even if you don’t, I recommend watching the documentary “No End In Sight” (which as of this post you can find on Netflix). If you are someone who has served in the United States Military I want to be clear that I am posting this with an honest concern for American lives, as well as for lives around the world, and I mean no disrespect.
I think that it’s a complete failure on part of our media that most people I’ve talked to about the War in Iraq have no clue as to the unbelievable devastation that Iraq has experienced… This short documentary is definitely being produced by people who are unapologetically liberal, and I wouldn’t dispute that. However, I think that being partisan doesn’t disqualify an argument, poor logic and a lack of information disqualifies arguments, but unsympathetic partisanship really can kill a great conversation. I supported the war as a 16 year old boy, but I no longer think it was wise. This video explains part of my change of heart/mind:
For anyone interested in watching “No End in Sight” I will post the trailer below. Again, I’m sorry if I’ve hurt anyone’s feelings, this is in no way meant to taunt anyone on my behalf. I know that this is challenging and per usual on challenging topics I expect a lot of views, but very little interaction, and that’s ok. However you feel about this post I hope that you can accept my sentiment when I say God Bless America, and God Bless all of our brothers and sisters of the world.
Did you hear about that navy seal from seal team 6Â who “went rogue” and wrote a book about what happened on the night that we killed Osama Bin Laden? Well, as it seems to me, he hardly went rogue, he just wanted to get the story straight, and in so doing he had support among the other seals. This was really a chilling interview… I recommend watching it, especially considering that the idea that it seems to have taken politics out of the equation (even though I am proud of President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for being the only one’s brave enough in the decision room to say that we should go own – but this video doesn’t talk about that).
I really admire this man (who used a false identity), and the rest of the seals who were a part of this operation. The last political thing that I will say about this whole story is that I’m completely ashamed of Fox News for deciding to release his real name, and place not only his life in jeopardy but also the lives of those close to him… Seriously, how could they justify compromising the life of a member of our military like that?… I won’t be putting his real name in this post. I’ll get off of my high horse, but I’m also going to include the 60 minutes interview with Leon Pannetta about his job, and the mission to get Bin Laden.
The Story of Seal Team 6’s Mission to get Bin Laden
Ok, so I’ve had time now to watch the first Presidential debate in Denver 3 times, and I have had a funny time with this one. I think that the picture above kind of sums up the emotional side of how I feel, but there is way more to the debate than just Romney seeming to change positions and be dishonest. One of the saddest things to me about politics is how the analysis is based simply on the success of the political strategy and execution, and how that affects the perception by the voters of the candidates. I know that it is apparently all about the performance anymore, but it seems to me that this is simply because the viewers/voters are suckers… I don’t mean to be condescending, there is way too much stuff to have to sift though, but I do get disappointed with how easily persuaded some folks seem to be. With that said, I think that plenty of people on both sides of the political aisle would agree about voters being suckers.
I had a few main thoughts about this debate:
Even though it’s common knowledge that Governor Romney won it’s hard for me to see it that way when his approach was so full of political spin and dishonesty (and yes, there is a lot to say here). Governor Romney looked very sharp, but Vladimir Putin is sharp, and I would never vote for him. I have questions about his integrity due to his honesty.
I was happy to see Mitt become the moderate, in some ways, that he was for so many years (before this campaign for President began). I actually made a post a while back asking whether or not there would be virtue in being dishonest to accomplish political goals. The reason I asked was because Romney had obviously changed his mind at some point on a lot of political points, and he seemed likely to do it again. I wanted/want to know if for a right leaning moderate the only path to accomplish what they deem necessary, with the Republican party having moved so far to the right, was to lie…?………?
The President was not very aggressive on several things that he could’ve been aggressive on (ie: the 47 percent comments were never mentioned…). I think that the only topic in the debate that seemed to have a very clear distinction between the candidates was on Medicare, and I agreed with what President Obama relayed about the AARP saying that having a private option for Medicare, would essentially kill the program. I don’t think we can afford to risk Medicare after having seen so many elderly people in my life who have needed a guaranteed medical system.
Jim Lehrer is a sweet old man… I really wish that in that debate the moderator could’ve been a tough, hard nosed journalist, like David Gregory (Host of “Meet the Press”).
There is a lot more that I could say, but I figure I’ll let this video do the rest of the talking for me. I know that Rachel is very partisan, but she can do brilliant analysis, and I think that this is an example of that (not to say it’s the final word). I know that she can be seemingly condescending towards conservatives, and sometimes unfairly, but sometimes she puts on the best news show in the opinion news world. In this clip she explains that in every first debate minus one (Clinton vs. Dole 96) since televised debates came about the challenger has won. I don’t find that to be too surprising, but I was still surprised by Obama’s lack of energy on stage – but considering he’s also the President and quite busy I have some sympathy for him.
Ok, I’ll stop, but I am still just so baffled by that debate and the reaction to it. I can’t wait for there to be a tougher President Obama in the next debate, and I hope that we get to see a more moderate Romney show up again, but maybe this time with a little less B.S…
Rachel on first Debates
Please give me feedback if you feel like saying something.
I think that a lot of my conservative friends think that I’m completely in the tank for President Obama, and this is actually one of the areas where I’m most likely to get discouraged in talking politics and policy, because I’m actually not. I support the President as our commander and chief, but I do question his policies. I’m not 100% sure that they are working, but when I hear someone say that they aren’t, and I don’t know that to be true it makes me feel like by questioning them that I’m put in the category of “one who disagrees, and is there for with Obama”. I feel like they are forcing me to to be on a team that I’m still just thinking about being on… So, I feel that it’s time to inject some numbers, and therefore I think it’s time to look at a few charts – and whose charts would be better at a time like this than Steve Rattner’s Charts? Nobody that I can think of, so here we go.
Job Growth Under Obama: the argument that he has made the economy worse doesn’t seem true from all of the information that I gather. Unless if this is actually inaccurate I think it’s pretty obvious that the trend has gone towards higher employment. However, it is only fair to recognize the conservative rebuttal to this argument, which is that people have just stopped looking for jobs, which takes them out of the equation to measure Unemployment. But if we are to assume that this chart is relatively accurate then the argument against the President cannot be that he made things worse (as Mitt Romney has said so often), but just that he hasn’t made things as good as they should be by this point in time.
(To understand further how I feel about that last part feel free to click Here to see a comparison for the Reagan recovery versus the Obama recovery.)
Remember to look at where the X and Y axis to actually contextualize what this chart means
Private VS Public Job Growth: The debate between public vs. private jobs has really grown over the last couple of years, and not only have these numbers been up for debate, but for a lot of people there has arisen a war between the public and private sectors due to multiple factors (ie: pensions, and collective bargaining for unions public or private).
I have heard people debate over the job numbers a lot, but the most heated debates have seemed to come about the differential between private and public numbers.
Job Growth Under Different Presidents & Different Parties: In his address of the DNC last week President Clinton said several things that were pretty powerful politically. Maybe the biggest blow that he delivered to the Republican Party was his claim about job creation under Democratic Presidents vs. Republican Presidents. He said: “Since 1961 … our private economy produced 66 million private-sector jobs. So what’s the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million.” – Former President Bill Clinton Whether or not this is true will be debated and surely never agreed upon by everyone, but it was a new framing for the debate on jobs that will probably impact a lot of voters. I’m going to post his speech at the bottom of this post, because if you haven’t watched it you should, and then you should look into what people are saying about it.
Now that Bill Clinton has thrown down the gauntlet on Job Creation by party the debate over this chart is likely to become more and more pertinent over the coming years.
Job Growth Under the Last 4 Presidents: Again, these numbers will be debated, but this chart none the less should be in our discussion about where we go from here.
How much is enough to say that President Obama did a good enough job? That’s the big question, and it hinges on people’s understanding/beliefs of economic recovery, and how that relates to Keynsian Economics.
It might be unfair to always compare the simple numbers of job creation from President to President, but this is something that we should at least be somewhat aware of. I mean, it wouldn’t be fair to say that Clinton was just the best (he did strike gold in terms of being elected economic growth due to the internet boom), and that Bush II was just the worst (he was dealing with the bust of the internet phenomenon, and the aftermath of 9-11). In the same way we have Got to take into account what this President walked into, and it is not pandering to say so. Attempting to put any of our Presidents into a box as if they had the same experience as any previous President is not fair, and it’s distracting. As Bill Maher loves to say, there’s nuance in everything… The world is complicated. This is a semi-defense of both President Bush II & President Obama, to a degree, but there is still plenty of room to debate policies and their effects. I personally don’t understand why we’re having the debate about whether or not Obama has created jobs, as it seem apparent to me that the trends have been positive in his first term (as I don’t believe that the numbers are merely good because people’ve stopped looking for jobs). The question should be whether or not they were worth they debt that they cost us to bailout and stimulate the economy. I think that if conservatives would focus their attention on the question of cost-effectiveness they might actually gain some ground with moderates (assuming they can prove that the tax payers money would’ve been better used somewhere else).
In summation of the title of this post, we need to be looking at the economy as if we were all members of the board of our American Economy. If the money that we spent didn’t produce in the way that we think it should’ve then we might have to let Obama go, but let’s make sure that we have that conversation. I think that the job creation figure is important, but in terms of getting re-elected I think that, as Steve Rattner has pointed out before, Income Growth is more closely tied to re-electing a President, and in that case things are looking somewhat glum for President Obama…
This next chart explains the importance of income growth for a President’s re-election chances. If you’d like to see charts about Presidential re-election campaigns and how they have been related to economics Click Here.
This chart was very interesting as it says that historically the most telling economic indicator of a Presidential re-election is Income Growth. Steve stated that it seems to be the most telling of all of the economic indicators about elections, and it was actually looks glum for President Obama (he is where the Red and Green lines meet).
OK, with the charts out of the way I would say that it’s a good time to share the Bill Clinton speech from the DNC. Outside of the bounds of ideology, this speech was politically untouchable by anything I’ve heard recently… Feel free to let me know what you think about it, and if you’d like to see some of the greatest quotes compiled here (Polentical), which is a great post that was put together by probably my favorite small-time blogger that I follow regularly.
I really loved this segment with Steve Rattner on Morning Joe. People are constantly trying to breakdown the Presidential race, but I think that his analysis here is the best that I know of. He explains in this segment some of the different factors that have been compared to re-election campaigns for Presidents, and which ones seem to be more indicative of a re-election succeeding or failing. Here are the charts and why they are/aren’t significant according to Steve:
Job Growth & Election Outcome – positive for Obama, but only mildly a good predictor of a re-election.
Unemployment Rate & Election Outcome – The most overrated, and most common predictor discussed, but not very positive for Obama.
GDP Growth & Election Outcome – has been 1.5% for Obama in the second quarter. This is a rather accurate predictor (explains about 60% of the former re-election attempts) and it rather positive for the President.
Income Growth & Election Outcome – *Likely the most important chart, 80% accurate in past election (10 of last 13 winners), this is Obama’s weakest chart, and could be very telling if he is not to be re-elected.
While I recommend staring at these charts I first recommend clicking on the link above to watch the clip where he explains them. He also shoots down the exaggeration about the recent jobs report for July. Enjoy, and please, do watch the clip, if you clicked on this link you won’t regret clicking that one…
If you’d like to see his charts on his website just Click Here
I enjoy a good debate, and I really enjoy watching people take a stand.
Also, a side story about Chris Wallace: While I was in Washington D.C. this April I actually met a Fox News camera Man on the street next to the Capitol building and I told him that there were 3 Fox News reporters who I liked (Shepard Smith, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace) and he told me that I need to get over Chris Wallace because he was rude to all of the people on the set, constantly. I don’t know him, and I hope this isn’t true, but ever since he told me that I’ve had a harder time with liking him, but I’ll continue to like Bret and love Shepard (Shep Smith is the best…). Ok, enjoy this old interview.
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