Tag Archives: Talking Points Memo

“Odds of This Happening to a White Kid Are Just Very Slim”

I haven’t followed the Zimmerman trial closely, but I’m a big fan of Josh Marshall, and I wanted to share this.

From “Trayvon’s Dead Body,” Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo:

“I didn’t know this until just now. But yesterday MSNBC momentarily aired a courtroom image of Trayvon Martin’s dead body at the crime scene. It was seemingly accidental and they quickly panned away. Our video team saw it but didn’t run it, which was totally the right decision by every standard we’ve always followed. I didn’t see it myself or even know about it until a few moments ago when Gawker ran the image.

“I’m sure it makes me sound a bit naive saying this but I was shocked when I saw it. Of course, I’ve seen dead bodies before. And I’ve seen countless crime scene photos of dead bodies. In terms of who’s guilty and who’s innocent, it is well worth noting just for the record that seeing a dead body is inherently inflammatory and disquieting. It’s not probative at all in terms of determining guilt, which is why there’s usually a lot of jousting in a courtroom about what jurors get exposed to.

“But I wanted to share a personal reaction when I saw it. I felt guilty journalistically that it hasn’t been seen. Not guilty as us, TPM, but guilty in terms of journalism in general. We’re not going to run it because we’ve always had a pretty conservative editorial standard about running images that show gratuitous violence or death, dead bodies, etc. Whatever the merits of that standard, it’s probably not the right decision to depart from it now in this one case at the end of a trial we have not covered closely. And in any case, it’s already published if you want to see it. Before I link to it, seriously, think it over before you click. It’s upsetting. Here it is.

“But back to the image itself. Seeing it, for all the tabloid coverage and endless CNN cable news coverage of the case, a big part of me feels like the real story here has been glossed over. Whatever the ins and outs of the legalities here, the odds of this happening to a white kid are just very slim. I knew that an hour ago. But I’m confronting it in a different way now.”

They’re Not Getting Warrants!

It seems Edward Snowden wasn’t exaggerating when he said he could access the contents of anybody’s communications.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) says he learned during a classified briefing that the NSA isn’t getting warrants to listen to our phone calls, and by extension to reading our emails and texts.  He was told that low-level analysts can make that decision.

For more, see “NSA admits listening to U. S. phone calls without warrants,” Declan McCullagh, CNET News.

Note that Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo is questioning the accuracy of this story.  But Marshall seems to be relying on an unclassified briefing (he uses video from C-Span), whereas Nadler is referring to a classified briefing.

With Friends Like These…

In trying to show the absurdity of claiming that White House economic adviser Gene Sperling threatened Bob Woodward, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes that Sperling is “as diminutive as he is nerdy.”

And Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine calls Sperling “a diminutive but feisty policy wonk.”

Ouch!

How short is this poor guy exactly?  Are we talking Robert Reich, are we talking “follow the yellow brick road”?

GOP Looks to Win Ugly

The GOP plan to win presidential elections by allocating electoral college votes based on congressional districts rather than winner-take-all in states Obama won twice is finally getting attention.  Rachel Maddow has been raising the alarm, and here’s Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

“Rather than going by the overall vote in a state, they’d allocate by congressional district. And this is where it gets real good, or bad, depending on your point of view. Democrats are now increasingly concentrated in urban areas and Republicans did an extremely successful round of gerrymandering in 2010, enough to enable them to hold on to a substantial House majority even though they got fewer votes in House races than Democrats.

“In other words, the new plan is to make the electoral college as wired for Republicans as the House currently is. But only in Dem leaning states. In Republican states just keep it winner take all. So Dems get no electoral votes at all.

“Another way of looking at this is that the new system makes the votes of whites count for much more than non-whites — which is a helpful thing if you’re overwhelmingly dependent on white votes in a country that is increasingly non-white.

“This all sounds pretty crazy. But it gets even crazier when you see the actual numbers. Here’s a very illustrative example. They’re already pushing a bill to do this in the Virginia legislature. Remember, Barack Obama won Virginia and got 13 electoral votes. But… if the plan now being worked on would have been in place last November, Mitt Romney would have lost the state but still got 9 electoral votes to Obama’s 4. Think of that, two-thirds of the electoral votes for losing the state. If the Virginia plan had been in place across the country, as Republicans are now planning to do, Mitt Romney would have been elected president even though he lost by more than 5 million votes.

“Remember, plans to do this are already underway in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states in the Midwest.

“This is happening.”

Got that?  Mittens would be president today with five million fewer votes than Obama.  If the GOP can’t win with women and minorities, they’ll just win with gerrymandering.  Be afraid, be very afraid.  They know demographics are against them, but if they soften their crazier stands, they will lose their base.  So desperate times call for desperate measures, and this is pretty damn desperate.

How Tight Is This Race?

Josh Marshall writes at his liberal site Talking Points Memo this morning that by their calculations, Obama has 259 electoral votes and Mitt has 210.

He believes that the only real toss-ups left are Ohio, Colorado, Florida, and Virginia, for a total of 69 remaining electoral votes.  He also says that Mitt could well take all four of them.

TPM Gives Florida to Mitt

Liberal web site Talking Points Memo now gives Obama only 256 electoral votes (down from 270 on October 9) and Mitt 235 (up from 206 on October 9).

They’ve moved Florida to “Lean Romney.”

Sarah Silverman, you need to schlep harder.

But mostly the Prez needs to “try better,” as Alex the Parrot used to say, in the final two debates.

“Devastating”

From “Devastating,” Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo:

“It’s rare when the impact of some gaffe or embarrassment or revelation isn’t overstated on first blush.  But this may just be that rare exception.  This tape strikes me as absolutely devastating.

“As for the tape itself, this is a fine distillation of the most rancid version of the libertarian conservative worldview.

“This is the caricature of Mitt Romney, who was born on 3rd base (in Ann Richards’ memorable phrase), thinks he hit a triple and thinks the broad middle class who’ve relied on government for student loans or social security or anything else are losers who can’t get their act together and take responsibility for themselves.  Only this tape says that caricature Mitt Romney is the real Mitt Romney.

“Big problem.”  Emphasis added.

Mitt’s Doing It on Purpose

I love Josh Marshall and his site Talking Points Memo.  But I think he’s wrong about this one.

Yesterday on Meet the Press, Mitt said he’d keep the popular stuff in Obamacare, like making sure people with preexisting conditions can get insurance.  Not long after, his campaign walked that back, saying that it wasn’t a policy change, and that it was only for those with continuous coverage, not those buying insurance for the first time or coming back into the market.

Josh Marshall says that shows either a “disorganized campaign” or Mitt’s “ingrained flipfloppery.”

I think both the comment yesterday and the walkback today were planned and on purpose.

Meet the Press attracts moderate and independent voters, many of whom are undecided.  Mitt was trying to appeal to them, to make them think he’s a reasonable guy.

By contrast, many of those viewers will never find out about the campaign’s walkback.  So Mitt gets credit with them, while calming down his base, which does pay more attention.

The campaign is fully aware of this, that you reach out to moderates in a high-profile way, and then pull back in a quieter way, knowing a chunk of them won’t notice.

If you want more evidence, Mitt did exactly the same thing quite recently on abortion.  All of a sudden, he said that he supported the right to an abortion in the case of rape, incest, health and life of the mother.  He had been saying rape, incest, and life, but not health.  So the reference to health of the mother was a change, one intended to make him seem more reasonable.  It was taken back by the campaign right after.  But many more people heard Mitt and read the reports of his softer position than heard his campaign spokesperson disavow it.

Disorganized, my tush.  They know exactly what they’re doing.