By Jason Grill, on Thu Sep 8, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET  President Obama must step up to the plate and hit a home run next Thursday night. However, let’s be honest here, Congress has to be willing to put politics aside and do what is in the best interest of this country and our economy.
Our government came together to bail out Wall Street and the banking system, using taxpayer dollars, almost as fast as Usain Bolt runs a 100-meter dash. Why are they not doing this with jobs, the economy, and unemployment?
This is a serious crisis. President Obama needs to present a strong jobs plan on Thursday night and put some new ideas into the fast lane. Congress needs to think about the future of this country rather than the 2012 elections. Congress has to be willing to play ball on job creation and the economy at such an important time. So is it election politics as usual or is Washington D.C. really going to help find real solutions to the problems that face our economy? Is the 2012 presidential race really more important than a 9.1 percent unemployment rate? We shall see…
(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Thu Sep 8, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET Reporters in their young twenties are cheap labor, and they’re taking over presidential election coverage. [NY Times]
Here’s what reporters should be asking politicians about religion… and what’s just taking up space in the news cycle. [Time]
Sunday was the fourth anniversary of the death of Steve Irwin, also known as The Crocodile Hunter. [The Examiner]
The Church of Scientology fights back against the New Yorker for a supposedly damaging feature the magazine ran on the group… by handing out a fake New Yorker? [NY Magazine]
One organization that isn’t doubting the power of print media: The Onion. Keep on investing, folks! [The Onion]
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Sep 8, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET While Americans seem bitterly divided over political issues, there’s one that seems to unite most of us: We all hate negative political TV ads.
So for this week’s Huffington Post column, I try to defend the indefensible: I argue that truthful negative ads can be quite valuable to voters and can help strengthen our democracy.
Call me crazy, but read on:
Recently, a close friend and early political supporter of
mine confided that she would no longer contribute to political campaigns that engaged in negative advertising.
And really, who could blame her?
Every election season, the television airwaves are barraged by a seemingly endless succession of 30-second jeremiads that manipulate the facts and embitter the public. Worse yet, many of the most vicious advertisements are paid for by shady, vanilla-named cartels who’ve maneuvered through loopholes in the Swiss-cheese-like election finance law to poison our politics without ever revealing the sources of their funding.
But all negative ads aren’t equally offensive. Indeed, some are critical to preserving public confidence in our political system.
Sound counterintuitive? A political campaign featuring only positive advertisements that focus on “the issues” might seem to be ideal.
But sometimes, the gauziest, most emotion-laded, goose-bump-inspiring advertisements can be the most deceptive, and can do the greatest disservice to the public dialogue. As with marketing for any product, positive political ads tend to exaggerate a candidate’s merits while ignoring his flaws. And the worst of them can paint a thoroughly misleading — or sometimes even completely inaccurate — picture of an official’s character, virtues and record on issues of import.
While the press can serve a mitigating role — calling out false claims and exposing whitewashes — a large and continually growing proportion of voters no longer follows the mainstream media, and many that do no longer trust what they see. Further, on the local level, decimated budgets have crippled the ability of many daily newspapers to engage in the necessary level of scrutiny of candidates and campaigns.
Accordingly, it’s often up to truthful negative ads to expose corruption and hypocrisy and to properly educate the public on the worth and merits of particular candidates.
Click here to read the entire article which offers an example of a prototypical valuable negative ad.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Wed Sep 7, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
The poor-man’s smartphone. [picture]
Yeah, it happens. . . [picture]
Fantastic conversation between an AIM spambot and Cleverbot. [chat log]
Very likely. [picture]
Tech Support [comic]
Promotion Cap [OfficeRats]
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Wed Sep 7, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET Catch up on coverage of the Texas wildfires that are driving Austin residents out of their homes. [CNN]
How could punishing 19 men and boys for the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl be the subject of dispute? [GQ]
A sign that our political system needs a major overhaul: former mayor Rudy Giuliani will throw his hat into the presidential ring “if things get desperate.” [NY Magazine]
But there is some good news. The economic downturn isn’t as bad as we think it is, for once. [The Atlantic]
Check out this beautiful photo essay that documents the Twin Towers and their absence in the New York City skyline over more than 30 years. [Time]
By Robert Kahne, RP Staff, on Wed Sep 7, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET
George Lucas has touched the lives of millions with his Star Wars franchise, but he can’t seem to leave the iconic movies well enough alone. Rumor has it that Lucas is making some alterations to the Blu Ray versions of A New Hope, Return of the Jedi, and The Phantom Menace. [The Movie Blog]
As readers of this post surely know, I am really excited about the new marvel film The Avengers. Recently, Marvel talked at length about how the companion films The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 will fit together with their new project. [IFC]
I went to go see the film Attack The Block yesterday. It was a really fun film to watch. If its showing in your town, you would do well to see it. Young star of the film, John Boyega, has been attached to the HBO series Da Brick, which is to Mike Tyson what Entourage was to Mark Wahlberg. [Film Junk]
Netflix streaming really got booming several years ago when it partnered with Starz, allowing the service to show all of their on-demand films. Recently, however, Starz has decided to forgo the partnership, meaning hundreds of films will be lost to Netflix, including favorites such as The Social Network. [The Guardian]
Juno Temple (Atonement, Greenburg) has been attached to the Batman sequel The Dark Knight Rises for several months now. Now, we might know who she will be playing. [/Film]
By Artur Davis, on Wed Sep 7, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET  Countless events will obviously reshape the answer to this question. But this is what should hearten Obama supporters about 2012: presidents in the modern era (post 1932) tend to be reelected, regardless of their political position a year out. And the three who have lost – Ford, Carter, and the first Bush – all overcame huge polling deficits and weak economies to become competitive in the final weeks. In fact, if Reagan and Carter don’t debate in the final week in ’80, and if Perot does not collapse the GOP base in ’92, as weak as they were, even Carter and Bush might have won.
This, however, is what should keep Democratic strategists up at night: not counting blacks, Obama’s approval ratings have dipped dramatically with every sector of his 2008 majority, including Latinos, Jews, independents, white working class voters, and whites under 29. In other words, even if Obama achieves the 2008 turnout model, there is no guarantee that he will duplicate his ’08 demographic performance levels. And if he does not, he will have almost no margin for error.
(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Tue Sep 6, 2011 at 3:30 PM ET
Happy birthday to Google! [Mashable]
Amazon.com creates a tablet accessible version to prepare the way for an Amazon tablet [Gizmodo]
Google launches new Chrome browser that is open-source. [Washington Post]
The Postal Service struggles to remain solvent and relevant in an internet age. [New York Times]
By Sandra Moon, RP Staff, on Tue Sep 6, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
Public praise and adoption of Ayn Rand and her philosophical and political views is in fashion for conservative politicians, including those who identify themselves as Christians. Some challenge, however, that Rand’s values are antithetical to Christianity. [EvangelicalsForSocialAction.org]
9/11 inspired a new generation of Muslims that have worked diligently in the past decade to launch organizations that foster understanding and cooperation between Muslims and the rest of the America. [CNN]
Clergy not invited to 9/11 memorial ceremony. [Huffington Post]
A cross shaped bean on the site of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum sparks controversy. [NY Times]
By Robert Kahne, RP Staff, on Tue Sep 6, 2011 at 12:30 PM ET
I was never a kid to dream big. I never wanted to be an astronaut, or the President, or a rock star or anything. When I was young, I thought it would be nice to be an engineer like my grandfather, because he always had enough money to provide for his family and always seemed happy. When I got to high school, I realized that math was hard, and that I was really much more interested in social studies. I went to college and got a couple of degrees (BA, Economics; BA, Political Science), and then went straight to graduate school and got a Masters degree in Public Policy. I thought that if I followed my passions and worked hard in school, some firm out there would find my credentials appealing and hire me. Even when the economy went south in 2009, I thought that getting an advanced degree would help me out, and that I had worked hard enough and done enough of the right things to find a job somewhere. That hasn’t turned out so well for me.
There is this theme that runs through American mythology that goes something like this — “If you are willing to work, you will find a job in America.” There are several corollaries to this idea–sometimes “work” means “work yourself through college” or “get involved in extra curricular activities” or, in the most cynical iteration “Nothing is promised to you in this world, you have to go out and take it for yourself.” I am not so sure if any of that is true. It might have been at one time, but I cannot look out into the world in which I live and say that anyone can do that. I only have myself as an example, but I am utterly willing to work. Job I have done for money include: making pizza (4 years), hauling recyclable refuse (which was gross-2 years), waiting tables (1 year), and working in a pharmacy clinic (one summer). In addition to that, I stated in school in 1990, at Middletown Methodist Preschool.
 I did this 3 times. I’ve been in school for 20 years straight, and throughout that whole time I’ve worked hard and gotten the grades I needed to advance. I got good grades in elementary school to get into a good middle school, did well enough at that middle school to get into the best high school in my city, and then got into my state’s flagship public institution where I did well enough to get into a top-10 graduate school for my field. Furthermore, I have been active in good causes my whole life. I was the President of clubs in high school and undergraduate. I was selected to serve on a Presidential Advisory Committee in graduate school. I worked to get a student fee passed for sustainability throughout college, and served on the committee which spent that money while I was in school. I even teach Sunday School every other week. I did a lot of stuff–a lot of stuff which I thought would help me out when it came time to make my own living. I really believed in the idea that working hard would mean I could get a job. I even had some assurance that if need be, I had the skills to “take” my lot for myself. Nope.
Read the rest of…
Robert Kahne: The Politics of Unemployment
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The Recovering Politician Bookstore
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President Obama must step up to the plate and hit a home run next Thursday night. However, let’s be honest here, Congress has to be willing to put politics aside and do what is in the best interest of this country and our economy.
