Not One Debate Question Last Night Touched on the Deficit

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Wednesday October 17, 2012 11:34 am

The deficit was arguably the primary point of discussion in the Jim Lehrer debate, and Martha Raddatz featured it prominently as well. Voters don’t seem to care. They’re far more interested in things directly affecting their lives, like jobs, women’s rights, immigration, gun violence, gas prices, all topics that didn’t come up previously. Heck, even foreign policy, or at least the foreign policy situation of the moment in Libya, rated more pressing a concern than actuarial projections of the federal budget 20 or 30 years down the road.

I’m not always partial to the idea of the wisdom of crowds, but in this case, the political class would do well to follow the public. Polling consistently shows that voters don’t care about the deficit, and last night’s breadth of topics showed the same.

The group that consistently cares more about the deficit are, simply put, rich people. They don’t want their hard-earned massive tax cuts to get clawed back because the deficit gets so high that they can no longer use the “job creator” charade to shield themselves. So they obsess about the deficit, as a means to cut anything but their tax cuts. That’s the game. And the rich spend tens of millions to make that a reality, shaping opinions in Washington. The Democrats have sought to become the party of austerity in many ways to curry favor to a political class that demands so-called “fiscal responsibility.” But in reality, without our large deficit, we would not even have the recovery we have, a recovery that has outpaced the rest of the world, particularly in Europe, where they are mired in far more damaging austerity.

The more politicians realize that the public does not share the concern of the Beltway establishment on the deficit, the better off they – and the rest of us – will be.

Thank goodness I won’t have to retire the Rally Squirrel quite yet.  I’m not sure what I’ll do if the Giants get in and they haven’t made another video yet.

Maybe I’ll force you to suffer through Lumberjack Rabbit.

There are those who are already shoveling dirt on the Cardinals but they’re not dead yet.  They’re not even in a particularly bad position.  They split on the road which is what you expect.  Yes they took a 7 – 1 pasting and gave back 4 of a 6 run lead, but a W is a W and that’s all it is even if you lose (or win) by Lady Husky basketball digits.

What the Giants showed us is that they have some offense and really the Senior League sides haven’t lacked for it (Reds Game 2 (9 – 0), Giants Game 4 (8 – 3), Cardinals Games 2 (12 – 4), 3 (8 – 0), and 5 (9 – 7).  Those ‘Powerhouse’ Junior Leaguers… not so much.

So what can we expect at Busch Stadium this afternoon?

Well there is rain in the forecast so the game may be delayed or suspended at pretty much any point.  If the game is suspended after it starts it will resume at the point of interruption, even in the first inning.  It can cause problems with your pitching rotation as we saw last year because once your starter warms up you pretty much lose him for 4 days whether he pitches 1 inning or 9.

This is why it’s a big deal that the Giants didn’t pitch Lincecum Monday, now they have him available as a Zito replacement (and Barry was distinctly uninspiring) or in case a rain suspension spoils Cain’s (16 – 5, 2.79 ERA) outing.  Frankly if they’re pitching Cain I’d pray for rain because he didn’t look at all good in the opener against the Reds and barely better in Game 5 even though they won.

It would hurt the Cardinals if they were to lose a start by Lohse (16 – 3, 2.86 ERA) though.  It’s doubtful he could pitch again before Game 6 (if necessary) and he is an Ace, fully worthy of mentioning with Sabbathia and Verlander the unstoppable winning machine.

Dan: Eh, all right, I’ll buy that, but it still feels like it’s missing something.

(They think for a moment, then…)

Dan and Swampy: The song!

Dan: Okay, how about something like… ♪ Zubada, yia! Zubada, yia! ♪

Swampy: Do it again.

No, that wasn’t it.  Oh wait, Scutaro (2nd Base, hard slide) says he’s ok and will start today.

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Junior League Games will be carried on TBS, Senior on Faux.

(h/t dday)

Citigroup’s Chief Resigns in Surprise Step

By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and SUSANNE CRAIG, The New York Times

October 16, 2012

In an interview, Mr. Pandit said that the decision to resign was entirely his own, adding that it was “something that I had been thinking about for a while” and that Monday “it occurred to me to go see Mike.”

For weeks, though, Mr. O’Neill and other board members had been mapping out the transfer of power during meetings that occurred, in part, while Mr. Pandit was in Japan last week attending a gathering of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, said the people briefed on the matter, who declined to be named because the meetings were private.

…

“This is a ludicrous management transition, the worst I’ve seen in my 25-year career,” said Michael Mayo, an analyst at Credit Agricole Securities.

…

Mr. Pandit presided over a turbulent chapter in Citi’s history, steering the bank back from the brink of collapse during the financial crisis when Citi received a $45 billion lifeline from the federal government, along with other federal support.

…

Mr. Pandit’s total direct compensation, which includes salary, bonus payouts and some stock awards, totals $56.4 million in his years as chief, according to the research firm Equilar. But his biggest payout from Citi was the $165 million that he received when the bank bought Old Lane Partners, the hedge fund he co-founded after leaving Morgan Stanley.

With Mr. Pandit’s exit, just two men who ran Wall Street banks during the financial crisis remain in their posts: Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs.

…

Some board members saw the Federal Reserve’s rejection in March of Citi’s proposal to buy back shares and increase its dividend payments as a reflection, in part, of Mr. Pandit’s poor relationship with the bank’s regulators, according to several people close to the bank.

Then some board members were angered when the final valuation of the wealth management unit, which is jointly owned with Morgan Stanley, was considered a coup for Morgan. The banks agreed to value the brokerage operation at $13.5 billion, and as a result, Citi took a $2.9 billion write-down during the third quarter.

Mr. Pandit’s resignation was a surprise on Tuesday because its third-quarter earnings, released the day before, were seen as relatively strong, excluding the write-down and one-time items.

…

Still, shareholders were apprehensive. Despite recent gains in the stock, the shares had fallen 89 percent since he took over. In April, they rejected a board-approved pay package that increased Mr. Pandit’s pay to $14.9 million in 2011, up from $1 a year in 2010. That rebuke surprised some board members, adding fodder for those who wanted to replace Mr. Pandit.

Citigroup’s $900 Million Man Departs Abruptly

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The media seems to have accepted the board’s effort to save face, which is that they were in the process of pushing Pandit out. But “in the process” is not the same as pulling the trigger. This was, in the words of analyst Mike Mayo, the worst transition he’s seen in 25 years. While Pandit presumably got some personal satisfaction by (probably barely) beating the board to the punch, it was a self-indulgent, immature move.

…

Pandit’s much bigger win is that he is laughing all the way to the countinghouse. The behemoth bank paid $800 million to secure the services of Pandit, who had been a promising executive at Morgan Stanley before forming the hedge fund, Old Lane Partners, that Citi acquired. That price produced at least a $165 million payday for Pandit personally. The effective price of getting him on board may have been even higher, since the bank shuttered the fund a mere 11 months later, and may have taken losses on credit extended to it. Even though he took only $1 in 2010, he still wound up with $56.5 million over his tenure at Citigroup (Felix Salmon claims it was $96 million).

Pandit managed the impressive task of underperforming his closest cousin in the garbage barge category, Bank of America. Citi’s stock price fell 89% over Pandit’s tenure, while the Charlotte bank’s declined a mere 79%. Sheila Bair wanted his scalp, both out of the belief that managers of bailout-out banks, even relatively new ones, needed to suffer consequences, as well as her assessment that Pandit was not up to his job, in particular, that he was not on top of operational workings. But Pandit, a pick of Robert Rubin, got to keep his job thanks to the support of fellow Rubin protege Timothy Geithner. And the “strategy” he appears to have been given credit for, that of shrinking and focusing the bank, was demanded of him by regulators. Similarly, the offensive “the government made money on its investment in Citi” is patently false. It not only had to restructure the deal (a second bailout after the initial TARP infusion) but the Treasury provided a second huge gimmie, that of allowing Citi to preserve the value of $50 billion in deferred tax assets, which in 2010 counted for a full third of the bank’s tangible common equity.

The media is now dutifully recounting Pandit’s sins: Citi’s failure to get permission from the Fed to pay dividends this year; an exit from its JV of Smith Barney on terms that were way too favorable to its partner, Morgan Stanley (ahem, but where was the board on that one?); asking for $15 million in pay for 2011, a level that investors rejected. And I’m a bit of a loss at the idea that quitting after the third quarter earnings announcement allowed Pandit to exit with his head high. Nearly half of the quarter’s $3.3 billion in earnings (before the $2.9 billion after tax loss on the Smith Barney sale) came from the reversal of loss reserves.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Today is the Colbert Report’s seventh anniversary.

This appears to be the full interview from which Stephen Colbert’s appearance on Meet the Press was drawn.  It still has waaay too much Dancing Dave for my taste.

Roundtable Responds to Colbert Exclusive

Moderator Role Under Scrutiny – Before the Debate

By Mark Halperin, Time

October 14, 2012

In a rare example of political unity, both the Romney and Obama campaigns have expressed concern to the Commission on Presidential Debates about how the moderator of this Tuesday’s town hall has publicly described her role, TIME has learned.

…

In the view of the two campaigns and the commission, those and other recent comments by Crowley conflict with the language the campaigns agreed to, which delineates a more limited role for the debate moderator.

…

According to the debate-format language in the agreement, after each audience question and two-minute responses from the candidates, Obama and Romney are expected to have an additional discussion facilitated by Crowley. Yet her participation is meant to be limited. As stated in the document, “In managing the two-minute comment periods, the moderator will not rephrase the question or open a new topic … The moderator will not ask follow-up questions or comment on either the questions asked by the audience or the answers of the candidates during the debate or otherwise intervene in the debate except to acknowledge the questioners from the audience or enforce the time limits, and invite candidate comments during the two-minute response period.” The memo, which has been obtained by TIME, was signed by lawyers for the two campaigns on Oct. 3, the day of the first presidential debate in Denver.

…

Crowley seems unfazed by the behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Even after concerns were raised in the wake of the Malveaux interview, Crowley made additional comments that make clear she does not feel bound by any agreement between the commission and the Obama and Romney camps. On Oct. 11, the day of the vice-presidential debate, she told Wolf Blitzer, “I’m always interested in the questions because you don’t want to – in a debate, you don’t want to go over plowed ground. Now, this is the vice-presidential candidates as opposed to the presidential candidates. So is there room there to come back to a presidential candidate and say, Well, your vice-presidential candidate said this? I’m always kind of looking for the next question … So there’s opportunity for follow-up to kind of get them to drill down on the subjects that these folks want to learn about in the town hall.”

Sources say both campaigns are preparing their candidates for the debate under the assumption that Crowley might play a bigger role than either they or the commission want. At the same time, some officials familiar with the deliberations of the campaigns say they hope that by publicizing the expectations for the moderator’s role in the town hall and making public the language in the memo, Crowley will be less likely to overstep their interpretation of her role. One key source expressed confidence on Sunday afternoon that, despite Crowley’s remarks on CNN, the moderator would perform on Tuesday night according to the rules agreed to by the two campaigns.

The lame rules for presidential debates: a perfect microcosm of US democracy

Glenn Greenwald

Tuesday 16 October 2012 16.03 EDT

The way the two major parties control the presidential debates is a perfect microcosm of how political debates are restricted in general. Though typically shrouded in secrecy, several facts about this process have recently come to light and they are quite instructive.

…

Under this elaborate regime, the candidates “aren’t permitted to ask each other questions, propose pledges to each other, or walk outside a ‘predesignated area.'” Worse, “the audience members posing questions aren’t allowed to ask follow-ups (their mics will be cut off as soon as they get their questions out). Nor will moderator Candy Crowley.” The rules even “forbid television coverage from showing reaction shots of the candidates”.

…

Here then, within this one process of structuring the presidential debates, we have every active ingredient that typically defines, and degrades, US democracy. The two parties collude in secret. The have the same interests and goals. Everything is done to ensure that the political process is completely scripted and devoid of any spontaneity or reality.

All views that reside outside the narrow confines of the two parties are rigidly excluded. Anyone who might challenge or subvert the two-party duopoly is rendered invisible.

Lobbyists who enrich themselves by peddling their influence run everything behind the scenes. Corporations pay for the process, which they exploit and is then run to bolster rather than threaten their interests. The media’s role is to keep the discourse as restrictive and unthreatening as possible while peddling the delusion that it’s all vibrant and free and independent and unrestrained. And it all ends up distorting political realities far more than illuminating them while wildly exaggerating the choices available to citizens and concealing the similarities between the two parties.

To understand the US political process, one can just look to how these sham debates are organized and how they function. This is the same process that repeats itself endlessly in virtually every other political realm.

The 2012 Debates – Memorandum of Understanding Between the Obama and Romney Campaigns

Leaked 2012 Presidential Debates Contract: Few Critical Points Worth Raising

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Monday October 15, 2012 8:25 pm

It is what should be expected from candidates from the two most prominent political parties in America, which wrested control of the debates from the League of Women Voters back in the 1980s. The two parties launched the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which has conducted itself like the corrupt organization it was destined to become by working to exclude third party candidates, debate moderators and key issues/topics for decades now.

The contract shows no one is to “issue any challenges for additional debates” or “appear at any other debate or adversarial forums except as agreed to by the parties.” They are also not to “accept any television or radio air time offers that involve a debate format or otherwise involve the simultaneous appearance of more than one candidate.” What this means is that when news programs like “Democracy Now!” or HuffPost Live hold debates or CNN host Don Lemon hosts does a segment where third party candidates are invited, neither Obama nor Romney can participate because of this agreement. They also cannot accept invitations from the NAACP to participate in forums or groups like Free and Equal, which is committed to openness and fairness in elections. The two campaigns agree to close off debate and limit democracy in the election.

If candidates outside of Obama or Romney are “invited to participate,” they must sign the secret contract and agree to these terms. Should they refuse, they cannot be part of the debate. Someone like Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson or Green Party candidate Jill Stein might get a bump and have enough support in a poll to be in a debate but, if they refuse to cooperate with a organization with such a shady history, they will not get to go before an audience and share their platform.

…

For the town hall debate, the contract instructs the moderator to go through a cumbersome process of approving audience questions prior to the debate for the benefit of the candidates, who would not want to be caught off guard by a question the carefully selected media personality had not finessed and sanitized for public consumption.

…

There are also to be no cut-aways to candidates not answering a question or not giving a closing statement. This is why candidates are shown in a split-screen on television. That is not prohibited in the agreement and is also not a cut-away. In any case, the campaigns mean to limit viewers’ ability to react to body language.

There is nothing in the “leaked” secret contract on third party candidates, beyond the note that additional qualified candidates must sign the CPD agreement. The selection criteria, however, is posted on the CPD website. It makes clear a candidate must be “constitutionally eligible, “appear on enough state ballots to have at least a mathematical chance of securing an Electoral College majority in the 2012 general election” and  have a level of support of at least 15% “of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations’ most recent publicly-reported results at the time of the determination.”

…

The selection criteria is why Johnson took the step of filing an antitrust lawsuit against the CPD. According to the Los Angeles Times, the suit argues the Republican and Democratic national committees engaged in a conspiracy by meeting and creating rules for the debates in secret, which exclude third-party candidates. It also alleges they participated in a “restraint of trade” that violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. (The challenge is different from a challenge brought by Ralph Nader that argued the CPD was violating the Federal Election Campaign Act by endorsing, supporting or opposing political candidates or political parties.)

Tomorrow, during the second presidential debate, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson will not be on stage. A functioning democratic society would not tolerate a political process where these individuals were not treated fairly. At minimum, each general election cycle would begin with a debate with all candidates that were on enough state ballots to assume the presidency and were registering a percentage of support in national polls. That would typically be four to six people and not unreasonable.

Regardless of whether the rigged system makes it possible for them to win or not, they should not be excluded. Secret contracts have no place in any society claiming to have fair elections. And, the CPD-which is a symptom of the bipartisan racket that is US elections-should be dissolved. It does not encourage open, free and fair politics but rather exists to protect the status quo or current order that benefits the richest one percent and the guardians of the national security state.

*Tune into “Democracy Now!” as they expand the debate Wednesday morning after the second presidential debate with Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson and Virgil Goode, who will answer questions they should have been asked personally the previous night.

Me?  I’m going to be watching Professional Wrestling because I know that’s not fixed.

This is an Open Thread.

As all my readers know I’m just a warm fuzzy teddy bear of nurturant positivity, so as I promised last night I’m going to attempt to alleviate the anxieties of the Yankee fans in my audience.

First of all I can’t help but feel that Derek Jeter’s unexpected injury has opened Yankee management’s eyes to the vulnerability of their current line up.  Win or lose the team of destiny has all the resources they need to make dramatic changes (I understand the Cardinals are lousy with minor league pitching prospects) and as I think I’ve made clear I have no quarrel at all with their goals (173 victories) or strategy (whatever it costs), but merely with some tactical decisions ($27.5 Million a year until 2017?!  What were you thinking?).

Other positive signs include the fact that the Tigers are terrible at Comerica.  Didn’t they just lose 2 straight to the As there?  Also in playoff games without Alex Rodriguez the Yankees are an undefeated 1 – 0, you can’t beat that.

Tonight we’ll have Phil Hughes (16 – 13, 4.23 ERA) on the mound who is their 3rd best pitcher after Sabbathia and Kuroda.  Girardi has changed his mind and will pitch Sabbathia on full rest in Game 4 tomorrow.

On the other hand the Tigers will be starting Verlander (17 – 8, 2.64 ERA) and he’s an unstoppable winning machine.  Leyland probably won’t even have to call on the questionable Valverde though he says he’s willing to if necessary.

Still it’s not hyperbole to call this a ‘must win’ game.  In a playoff you have to do everything you can to avoid being placed in a elimination situation.  If the Yankees lose tonight they’ll have to win every single one of the remaining 4 games to advance or it will be a whole 3 years since their last World Championship in 2009 (their average is 4).

Unacceptable!

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Junior League Games will be carried on TBS.

Crossposted from DocuDharma

The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent

By CHRYSTIA FREELAND, The New York Times

Published: October 13, 2012

Even as the winner-take-all economy has enriched those at the very top, their tax burden has lightened. Tolerance for high executive compensation has increased, even as the legal powers of unions have been weakened and an intellectual case against them has been relentlessly advanced by plutocrat-financed think tanks. In the 1950s, the marginal income tax rate for those at the top of the distribution soared above 90 percent, a figure that today makes even Democrats flinch. Meanwhile, of the 400 richest taxpayers in 2009, 6 paid no federal income tax at all, and 27 paid 10 percent or less. None paid more than 35 percent.

…

Educational attainment, which created the American middle class, is no longer rising. The super-elite lavishes unlimited resources on its children, while public schools are starved of funding. This is the new Serrata. An elite education is increasingly available only to those already at the top. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama enrolled their daughters in an exclusive private school; I’ve done the same with mine.

…

America’s Serrata also takes a more explicit form: the tilting of the economic rules in favor of those at the top. The crony capitalism of today’s oligarchs is far subtler than Venice’s. It works in two main ways.

The first is to channel the state’s scarce resources in their own direction. This is the absurdity of Mitt Romney’s comment about the “47 percent” who are “dependent upon government.” The reality is that it is those at the top, particularly the tippy-top, of the economic pyramid who have been most effective at capturing government support – and at getting others to pay for it.

Exhibit A is the bipartisan, $700 billion rescue of Wall Street in 2008. Exhibit B is the crony recovery. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that 93 percent of the income gains from the 2009-10 recovery went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The top 0.01 percent captured 37 percent of these additional earnings, gaining an average of $4.2 million per household.

The second manifestation of crony capitalism is more direct: the tax perks, trade protections and government subsidies that companies and sectors secure for themselves. Corporate pork is a truly bipartisan dish: green energy companies and the health insurers have been winners in this administration, as oil and steel companies were under George W. Bush’s.

…

Businessmen like to style themselves as the defenders of the free market economy, but as Luigi Zingales, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, argued, “Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition.”

…

That all changed with industrialization. As Franklin D. Roosevelt argued in a 1932 address to the Commonwealth Club, the industrial revolution was accomplished thanks to “a group of financial titans, whose methods were not scrutinized with too much care, and who were honored in proportion as they produced the results, irrespective of the means they used.” America may have needed its robber barons; Roosevelt said the United States was right to accept “the bitter with the sweet.”

But as these titans amassed wealth and power, and as America ran out of free land on its frontier, the country faced the threat of a Serrata. As Roosevelt put it, “equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists.” Instead, “we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already.”

It is no accident that in America today the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider than at any time since the Gilded Age. Now, as then, the titans are seeking an even greater political voice to match their economic power. Now, as then, the inevitable danger is that they will confuse their own self-interest with the common good. The irony of the political rise of the plutocrats is that, like Venice’s oligarchs, they threaten the system that created them.

The Giants are wisely going with one of their 3 playoff winners tonight and not a moment too soon.  It is certainly possible (as I will be telling Yankee fans tomorrow) to overcome a 2 game home losing streak, especially in a longer series where you don’t immediately face road elimination, but it’s not a desirable position to be in if you can avoid it.

The Cardinals can’t afford to be complacent.  A split away is what you expect, however their Bullpen didn’t look overpowering by any means and they can’t expect a 6 run cushion every game.

Tonight the Left Coasters will start Vogelsong (14 – 9, 3.37 ERA) who is as good as anyone in their rotation post season.  They’ll face Carpenter (0 – 2, 3.71 ERA) who allowed the Nats 7 hits in their Game 3 8 – 0 defeat.

Carpenter is much nastier than those figures suggest because he can hit too and has a great record in the playoffs.  Then there is the fact that basically no team has demonstrated much Home Field advantage, even in the Regular Season.

On the positive side Tim Lincecum is set to start Game 4 even after last night’s relief appearance unless he gets called for relief tonight or in Busch Stadium Wednesday.

Since I have a feeling we’ll be seeing lots more of the Rally Squirrel here’s the 2010 official hype video again.

No, they don’t have a new one as far as I can tell, but my searches are all messed up by Sunday’s ‘9ers/Giants game.

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Senior League Games will be carried on Faux.

Crossposted from DocuDharma

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can’t be objective about Nixon.- Stockton

Martha Raddatz and the faux objectivity of journalists

Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian

Friday 12 October 2012 09.01 EDT

At best, “objectivity” in this world of journalists usually means nothing more than: the absence of obvious and intended favoritism toward either of the two major political parties. As long as a journalist treats Democrats and Republicans more or less equally, they will be hailed – and will hail themselves – as “objective journalists”.

But that is a conception of objectivity so shallow as to be virtually meaningless, in large part because the two parties so often share highly questionable assumptions and orthodoxies on the most critical issues. One can adhere to steadfast neutrality in the endless bickering between Democrats and Republicans while still having hardcore ideology shape one’s journalism.

The highly questionable assumptions tacitly embedded in the questions Raddatz asked illustrate how this works, as does the questions she pointedly and predictably did not ask.

…

That Iran is some major national security issue for the US is a concoction of the bipartisan DC class that always needs a scary foreign enemy. The claim is frequently debunked in multiple venues. But because both political parties embrace this highly ideological claim, Raddatz does, too. Indeed, one of the most strictly enforced taboos in establishment journalism is the prohibition on aggressively challenging those views that are shared by the two parties. Doing that makes one fringe, unserious and radical: the opposite of solemn objectivity.

Most of Raddatz’s Iran questions were thus snugly within this bipartisan framework. At one point, she even chided Biden for appearing to suggest that Iran may not be actively pursuing a nuclear weapon: “You are acting a little bit like they don’t want one”.

…

In sum, all of Raddatz’s questions were squarely within the extremely narrow – and highly ideological – DC consensus about US foreign policy generally and Iran specifically: namely, Iran is a national security threat to the US; it is trying to obtain nuclear weapons; the US must stop them; the US has the unchallenged right to suffocate Iranian civilians and attack militarily. As usual, the only question worth debating is whether a military attack on Iran now would be strategically wise, whether it would advance US interests.

One can say many things about the worldview promoted by her questions. That it is “objective” or free of ideology is most certainly not one of them.

Exactly the same is true of Raddatz’s statements and questions about America’s entitlement programs.

…

That social security is “going broke” – a core premise of her question – is, to put it as generously as possible, a claim that is dubious in the extreme. “Factually false” is more apt. This claim lies at the heart of the right-wing and neo-liberal quest to slash entitlement benefits for ordinary Americans – Ryan predictably responded by saying: “Absolutely. Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts.” – but the claim is baseless.

…

That Medicare is “going broke” is as dubious and controversial a claim as the one about social security. Numerous economists and fact-checking journalists have documented quite clearly why this claim is misleading in the extreme.

Yet this claim has also become DC orthodoxy. That is because, as the economist Dean Baker has explained, “Social security and Medicare are hugely important for the security of the non-rich population of the United States,” and “for this reason” many Washington media outlets and think tanks “hate them”.

Nonetheless, Raddatz announced this assertion as fact. That’s because she’s long embedded in the DC culture that equates its own ideological desires with neutral facts.

…

That is what this faux journalistic neutrality, whether by design or otherwise, always achieves. It glorifies highly ideological claims that benefit a narrow elite class (the one that happens to own the largest media outlets which employ these journalists) by allowing that ideology to masquerade as journalistic fact.

These establishment journalists are creatures of the DC and corporate culture in which they spend their careers, and thus absorb and then regurgitate all of the assumptions of that culture. That may be inevitable, but having everyone indulge the ludicrous fantasy that they are “objective” and “neutral” most certainly is not.

Braiiiins!

Over on the Seniors’ side they can’t stop talking about the Zombie team comebacks of the Giants and Cards.  They should give out promotional pacemakers instead of bats.

These are both really good teams, the 2 consecutive previous World Champions, and this is the first matchup between teams with these credentials in a League Championship (Braves/Yankees ’58 in the Series).

Most observers rate the Cardinals as favorites despite their inferior record.  I find myself in rare agreement.  They’re a team without many weaknesses.

The Giants, on the other hand, have a problem with pitching and it starts with Bumgarner (16 – 11, 3.37 ERA).  If he’s as ineffective as he was against the Reds it could be a very short series since he’s scheduled to pitch twice including tonight.  They’ve also returned Lincecum to the rotation from Bullpen exile on the basis of his strong performance in long relief and Zito’s unconvincing effort.

The Cardinals start Lynn (18 – 7, 3.78 ERA) and follow with Lohse, Carpenter, and Wainwright.  Lohse in particular is very dangerous, better than anyone left except Sabbathia and Verlander.

We’ll start tonight with the Rally Squirrel since I haven’t had time to check YouTube recently.

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Junior League Games will be carried on TBS, Senior on Faux.