Happy Birthday to Bruce Thomas, 65.
Good stuff:
1. Good summary by Ramesh Ponnuro of the case against Newt's revisionism about the 1995-1996 shutdown.
2. An argument for the fact-checkers from Lucas Graves.
3. Byron York on the rodeo clown that's been in the news.
4. Seth Masket on Colorado recalls. One question for him: if successful recalls have an additional benefit of intimidating everyone else, what about unsuccessful recalls? Do they intimidate because it's a pain to go through even an unsuccessful recall -- or do they backfire because they reveal the weakness of the recallers?
5. And the New York Times covers one of the great ones: Russell Baze.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
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I would imagine that the deterrent effect of unsuccessful recalls would depend, at least in part, on how close they came to succeeding.
ReplyDeleteRead the Byron York article. Interesting was the total disregard for the sanctity of private enterprise... That is, the right of a money making venture to employ who they want and dictate their conduct so as to promote their brand. The clown angered many of their customers and totally unnecessarily created a huge media firestorm and a giant headache for the Missouri State Fair. So they fired him. Why wouldn't they. But to counter this, Byron York points out that Bill Maher once said mean things about George Bush and still has a job at HBO. Bill Maher, well known liberal provocateur who once had a show called "Politically Incorrect". And then, truly bizarrely, that somebody once wrote a novel in which a couple of low life's contemplated an assassination of George Bush.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe how much space York spent on that "Death of a President" movie, which was so forgettable I forgot I'd streamed it on Netflix on a sick day four or five years ago, and would have been utterly forgotten if not for the firestorm over the dubious taste of a faux-documentary about a sitting president's assassination.
DeleteThe whole article, in fact, was a strange exercise in willful ignorance. To hear York tell it, this was an isolated instance of racially-charged, anti-Obama insanity, and it should be forgiven because mean liberals said mean things about George W. Bush.
He must not read his own comment threads! I don't recommend it... An incredible display of vile racial epithets. But what I was really struck by was the large number of commenters who were convinced that the clown had his first amendments rights violated because... They didn't like his act and will no longer pay him to do it again. In their minds, apparently, freedom of speech means that once you are hired for a gig, once, you can do or say anything you want in your performance and be guaranteed to be rehired forever, no matter how much your employers hate your act. He should file a lawsuit, it's just like the Soviet Union, etc. and so on.
DeleteWhat's really lost on York is that the Missouri State Fair is an instrumentality of the State of Missouri.
ReplyDeleteYork also pretends to be confused that elected officials were not "banned from office" for calling Bush a clown or using a terrible analogy invoking gun violence. Politicians get into office by winning elections. In some cases people might be disqualified because they are convicted felons or born in Austria, but otherwise... It's democracy. He also implies that the rodeo clown has lost his livelihood. He's lost one gig. A couple days of work per year. The clown will probably end up doing fine. There are likely people who actually want to pay him to do his Obama chased by a bull routine.
ReplyDelete