Celebrities And Politics

[Sonic Youth]

I agree that it's splitting hairs a bit. But both sides are playing that game with this GM plant. Paul Ryan was making a point, and a powerful one for many voters. It goes to the narrative of President Obama making promises or investments that look foolish later on. If it was once, maybe it could be overlooked, but several businesses were called good investments where millions of dollars were poured into. Many of them closed shop not long after. Solyndra is the most famous example of this, but there were others. Supporters of President Obama will say that this is no big deal. But it is. Why is the government getting so involved in these investments?

Don't ask us. G.W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law which allowed the government to give loan guarantees to energy companies. Why don't you ask the former Republican president why he felt the government should be involved in such investments?

This isn't about when the plant closed. It's about Obama's assertion that he could save it.

And how is Obama supposed to save a plant if it closes when someone else is president?

[criddic3]

I agree that it's splitting hairs a bit. But both sides are playing that game with this GM plant. Paul Ryan was making a point, and a powerful one for many voters. It goes to the narrative of President Obama making promises or investments that look foolish later on. If it was once, maybe it could be overlooked, but several businesses were called good investments where millions of dollars were poured into. Many of them closed shop not long after. Solyndra is the most famous example of this, but there were others. Supporters of President Obama will say that this is no big deal. But it is. Why is the government getting so involved in these investments? Better yet, why wasn't he listening to those who cautioned him on some of those investments? Suggesting that his policies would save a plant like the one in Janesville, during a speech delivered in front of the plant, only to see it officially closed the following spring? This isn't about when the plant closed. It's about Obama's assertion that he could save it. Just like his assertion that if he didn't turn things around in 3 years, he would be a one-term president. Now we're asked to believe that he should get four more years because he didn't have time to do it in the period he gave himself. Maybe setting an end-date really is a bad strategy, after all!

[Sonic Youth]

This is splitting hairs. The plant ceased produciton in December, 2008 when most of its employees were let go. A handful of workers were kept on thorugh April, 2009 to finish a truck order. This is standard practice for all kinds of businesses. If Ryan doesn't know this, Romney certainly does as he was the architect of many business closures at Bain Capital.

Yup. Even the factcheck sites acknowledge it. Politifact:

By December 2008, when President George W. Bush authorized nearly $14 billion in loans to General Motors and Chrysler, both of which were near financial collapse, GM had already warned it might close the Janesville plant because of sagging sport-utility vehicle sales. The plant was effectively shut down on Dec. 23, 2008, when GM ceased production of SUVs there and laid off 1,200 workers. (Several dozen workers stayed on another four months to finish an order of small- to medium-duty trucks for Isuzu Motors.)

Factcheck.org (my factcheck website of choice):

It’s true that the plant didn’t last another year, as Ryan said. In fact, the Business Journal in Milwaukee wrote that the assembly plant shut down on Dec. 23, 2008, at the tail end of the Bush administration, a victim of the financial crisis and dwindling demand for the SUVs produced at the plant. That’s nearly one month before Obama was sworn into office.

About 100 workers were kept on in 2009 to finish a truck order and help shut down the plant, according to the Associated Press.

These were from the links Oscar Guy provided, so no clarification was necessary. Neither factcheck website withheld the information that 100 workers were kept on to finish an order. But the issue, as Magilla said, is when it can be said that the plant officially shut its doors and I'm going to have to be fair and say that I understand why Ryan would say the plant closed in '09 rather than in 08. Then again, if a huge company announced today that they were laying off 5,000 workers, and the layoffs would be complete in six months, when Romney is president, you think the Repubs would say that the layoffs happened during Romney's administration? Don't make me laugh. The Jamestown plant began its irreversible plan for closure during the Bush administration and, despicably (even though most companies do this) let nearly everyone go just before Christmas. Therefore, the closure is a legacy of the Bush administration. That a few people were kept on to fulfill a contract is neither here nor there, although it does provide a nice, desperate "gotcha" that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

[Big Magilla]

This is splitting hairs. The plant ceased produciton in December, 2008 when most of its employees were let go. A handful of workers were kept on thorugh April, 2009 to finish a truck order. This is standard practice for all kinds of businesses. If Ryan doesn't know this, Romney certainly does as he was the architect of many business closures at Bain Capital.

The Medicare money being cut under the Affordable Health Care Act is administarative costs paid to insurance companies and hospitals, not cuts in service. Medicare only pays about 80% of mediical bills, which is why most peopele on Medicare have either a Medicare Advantage or Medicare Supplement plan. Medicare Advantage, run by insurance companies, is what most people prefer becuase for a small co-payment, typically $10, patients can see their doctor as often as they want. With a Medicare supplement, also run by insurance companies, there is no co-pay, Medicare is billed first and what it doesn't pay, the suppimental insurance does after an annual $500 deductable. Medicare Advantage has annual and lifetime caps. Medicare supplements have no caps. The Affordable Care Act will either kill Medicare Advantage or make them so cost prohibitive that people people won't support them. The simpler to administer Medicare Supplemental Insurance will likely survive, but insurance companies do not make as much from this plan. This is why the insurance companies and their Republican shills want to kill the Act. Ryan's voucher plan may sound on the surface that it is fairer to those 55 and older, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Ten years into the program when the new retirees find their vouchers don't give them what they need, there will be a big hue and cry for older seniors to share the burden and that's when it really get ugly with the younger seniors wanting to push the older ones off the cliff.

[criddic3]

Here is an item from PolitiFact on this matter:

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/sta ... lant-open/

Not that you'll read the above, but you'll especially ignore the below from FactCheck:

http://factcheck.org/2012/08/ryans-vp-spin/

And even if you do read them, I guarantee the first words out of your mouth will be that they are partisan shills or liberal media or some derivation of the two. Yet, both sites have regularly poked holes in BOTH parties' positions, so, you can take your party line of partisanship and stick it.

Well, I will say that both of these links claim that the GM plant closed before Obama took office. Truth is, it didn't. It closed in April of 2009.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorial ... agenda.htm

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/the_ru ... t-checkers

[OscarGuy]

Here is an item from PolitiFact on this matter:

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/sta ... lant-open/

Not that you'll read the above, but you'll especially ignore the below from FactCheck:

http://factcheck.org/2012/08/ryans-vp-spin/

And even if you do read them, I guarantee the first words out of your mouth will be that they are partisan shills or liberal media or some derivation of the two. Yet, both sites have regularly poked holes in BOTH parties' positions, so, you can take your party line of partisanship and stick it.

[criddic3]

We expect partisans to slant things as positively as possible for their side, but occasionally there's an event so obvious in its implications that to attempt to deny it is to reveal oneself as a total hack. People who argued that Bush staying in the classroom with those kids on September 11th was THE APPROPRIATE THING TO DO revealed themselves that way; so does anyone who tries to argue that the Eastwood thing was anything but a train wreck. (Disclosure: I didn't watch it live. But within 15 minutes it was a legend online, and I watched as much as I could stomach of it there) It was so self-evidently a nightmare for the Romney folk -- not only for its rambling, old-man-lost-in-a-crowd style and content, but for how it pushed Romney out of prime time for half of his speech -- that not a few people have wondered if Chris Rock's tweet might have some validity (Rock tweeted: "Clint just called Barack and said, 'It went exactly as planned, sir'"). I thought, for a moment, of the way it only APPEARED Snape had betrayed the Order of the Phoenix; that he was actually on the good guys' side all along.

Contrarily, assuming it was genuine...who in the name of god thought it was a good idea to let Clint do 15 minutes of improv? He's, in O'Toole's phrase from My Favorite Year, "Not an actor -- a movie star"; he doesn't do live stuff. Magilla and Mike Kelly might remember way back to the 1972 Oscars: Charlton Heston, scheduled to open the show, was stuck in traffic, so Eastwoood was pushed into emergency duty. He fumbled miserably -- even commenting how dumb it was to have a guy who'd only spoken a dozen lines in his last three movies up there ad-libbing. It's just not his forte, and for the Romney people to give him carte blanche in such a key moment is a stunning lapse in judgment.

On the whole, it's hard to see this as a very successful week for the GOP. Ryan's speech on Wednesday was full of lies so blatant that even our normally supine "both sides do it" media was forced to highlight how mendacious it was. Now, on the big night, no one's talking about Romney's speech; it's Clint everywhere.

Which doesn't mean Romney won't move up in the polls. Conventions have a history of inflating candidates regardless of how poorly things have gone. The 1980 Democratic meeting was a disaster: Kennedy fought till the end, and wouldn't even shake Carter's hand on the podium at the close. But, a few days later, Carter had jumped to a high single-digit lead over Reagan. This tells you both how inevitable a convention bounce is, and how little it means to the actual outcome of the race.

It may be true that improvisation is not Eastwood's best mode, but that doesn't mean it was an embarrassment. Ben Affleck was among the few celebrities asked about the speech recently who said he didn't think it was really that bad. You might also be right that those in favor of Romney this election will zoom in on the parts they liked about the performance and ignore the long pauses and the awkwardness of the invisible Obama stuff. By the same token, partisans who lean the other way have been way harsher than they needed to be. Roger Ebert said Eastwood looked "foolish." And some left-leaning publications highlighted it as a moment that would hurt Romney. I am a Republican, but I took the middle view (as I often do, contrary to what some think). It was neither a triumphant speech nor a "train wreck." He had some great lines and pulled through with a message that resonated: "We own this country." That may seem obvious, but it drives home the point that you can like someone and still fire them when they don't deliver. "We got to let them go."

Paul Ryan's was not full of lies. Even CNN had to retract its story on the GM plant, saying Ryan had been truthful about it. The AP had a story on April 19, 2009 that that plant was officially ending production. Now some say, oh they were planning to close long beforehand. But Ryan's point stands, because by the time it did close, Obama was well positioned to help prevent that from happening. It also becomes part of a narrative about the kinds of pronouncements President Obama has made about several other businesses, most famously Solyndra.

I wouldn't be so sure Clint wasn't working from a prepared script, criddic.

I'm sure he loosely prepared an act, but there's no indication that much of what we saw was fully prepared in advance. Just an outline probably.

[kaytodd]

This is the third RNC that has been preempted or contravened by a hurricane. It's partly their fault for convening in hurricane-prone areas.

The primaries last until June. Thanks to current election finance laws, it is advantageous to have the conventions as late as possible which means late summer and peak hurricane season. Staying away from hurricane prone areas rules out the entire Gulf Coast and eastern seaboard, including the greatest place in the world to live and visit, NOLA

[Sonic Youth]

An interesting observation. This is the third RNC that has been preempted or contravened by a hurricane. It's partly their fault for convening in hurricane-prone areas, but it has to be some kind of message. If there is a God, maybe he isn't too pleased with the Republican Party.

How Michelle Bachmann-esque, not to mention Falwell-esque.

Anyway, my sister-in-law is in Baton Rouge and was in the hurricane's path. Fortunately she's okay.

[OscarGuy]

An interesting observation. This is the third RNC that has been preempted or contravened by a hurricane. It's partly their fault for convening in hurricane-prone areas, but it has to be some kind of message. If there is a God, maybe he isn't too pleased with the Republican Party.

And really, how does it look to people when you have a natural disaster occurring three states away. Thousands are forced to leave their homes and a long-standing dam takes enough damage that they give those in its flood path a mere 90 minutes to gather their belongings and get out. And here, the out-of-touch political elite are cozy and safe in Tampa (a city with a Democrat Mayor and a unanimous Democrat bloc on the city council) patting themselves on the back. I'd love to put together various images of suffering alongside images of speakers at the RNC. They could have called the RNC short and made it look like they actually cared about something other than politics, but they didn't. Guess we know where their priorities are.

[Mister Tee]

We expect partisans to slant things as positively as possible for their side, but occasionally there's an event so obvious in its implications that to attempt to deny it is to reveal oneself as a total hack. People who argued that Bush staying in the classroom with those kids on September 11th was THE APPROPRIATE THING TO DO revealed themselves that way; so does anyone who tries to argue that the Eastwood thing was anything but a train wreck. (Disclosure: I didn't watch it live. But within 15 minutes it was a legend online, and I watched as much as I could stomach of it there) It was so self-evidently a nightmare for the Romney folk -- not only for its rambling, old-man-lost-in-a-crowd style and content, but for how it pushed Romney out of prime time for half of his speech -- that not a few people have wondered if Chris Rock's tweet might have some validity (Rock tweeted: "Clint just called Barack and said, 'It went exactly as planned, sir'"). I thought, for a moment, of the way it only APPEARED Snape had betrayed the Order of the Phoenix; that he was actually on the good guys' side all along.

Contrarily, assuming it was genuine...who in the name of god thought it was a good idea to let Clint do 15 minutes of improv? He's, in O'Toole's phrase from My Favorite Year, "Not an actor -- a movie star"; he doesn't do live stuff. Magilla and Mike Kelly might remember way back to the 1972 Oscars: Charlton Heston, scheduled to open the show, was stuck in traffic, so Eastwoood was pushed into emergency duty. He fumbled miserably -- even commenting how dumb it was to have a guy who'd only spoken a dozen lines in his last three movies up there ad-libbing. It's just not his forte, and for the Romney people to give him carte blanche in such a key moment is a stunning lapse in judgment.

On the whole, it's hard to see this as a very successful week for the GOP. Ryan's speech on Wednesday was full of lies so blatant that even our normally supine "both sides do it" media was forced to highlight how mendacious it was. Now, on the big night, no one's talking about Romney's speech; it's Clint everywhere.

Which doesn't mean Romney won't move up in the polls. Conventions have a history of inflating candidates regardless of how poorly things have gone. The 1980 Democratic meeting was a disaster: Kennedy fought till the end, and wouldn't even shake Carter's hand on the podium at the close. But, a few days later, Carter had jumped to a high single-digit lead over Reagan. This tells you both how inevitable a convention bounce is, and how little it means to the actual outcome of the race.

[Sonic Youth]

I wouldn't be so sure Clint wasn't working from a prepared script, criddic.

[OscarGuy]

Well, considering the voting bloc they have to turn out is straight white men, a porn star would be a great choice.

[Greg]

I wonder if anyone in the Romney campaign is thinking, if they had it to do all over again, that they should have replaced Clint Eastwood with Jenna Jameson.

[criddic3]

It was an unusual delivery, but he had some great things to say, had some nice one-liners and got his point across. "We own this country" "When somebody does not do the job, we have to let them go." The crowd in the convention loved it. The Stockdale comparison doesn't really work, because unlike the Admiral, Eastwood made lucid points. It was his style of delivery, choosing to act out with an empty chair, that caught people off guard. It might have helped to have a script, but speaking seemingly off-the-cuff made the speech more authentic in some ways.