I wonder how quickly the radical right will switch to demanding socialized news coverage once they realize that capitalism will spell it’s death.

(Daily Kos) CNN led during the President’s address with 3.1 million total viewers. MSNBC came in second with 2.3 million. Fox was dead last with 1.3 million. In the critical 25-54 year old demographic the numbers for Fox were even more dismal: CNN had 1.1 million in the demo. MSNBC had 706,000. Trailing significantly was Fox News with only 294,000, which was less than half of MSNBC and just over a quarter of CNN.

To some extent it is not surprising that the network that appeals most to Obama haters did not deliver their audience of whiny-ass sourpusses. It’s a constituency of sore losers who aren’t interested in staying informed and were probably busy cuddling their Bushmasters and forwarding chain emails about tyranny and the collapse of civilization.

What’s most startling in the ratings data is the relative disparities between the networks and their declines. Fox News was off a jaw-dropping 75% (82% demo) from 2009. CNN sunk a hefty 61% (67% demo). MSNBC, by comparison did fairly well with a mere 25% decline (37% demo). Digging deeper, these numbers tell us something that is even more foreboding for Fox. The percentage of their audience composed of the lucrative younger demos falls way below that of their competitors. CNN’s demo audience was 35% of their total viewers. MSNBC has 31% in the demo. But only 22% of Fox’s viewers are 25-54 years old.

That means that the next generation of news consumers is avoiding the severely conservative channel in droves. What’s more, MSNBC’s primetime anchors Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell were number one in their time slots for 2012 in the 18-34 demo. MSNBC has also led in African-American and Latino viewers. So by every measure MSNBC is positioned for future gains, while Fox is bracing for the bottom to fall out.

These numbers are not merely tabulated for bragging rights. They represent the potential for ad revenue. As the numbers fall, so do Fox’s profits. And with their dearth of the desirable youth demos, the advertising Fox maintains will command lower rates.

Lets get this straight: these ratings are not an indication of the decline of the radical right, it is the means of their decline. If it is not financially viable for Fox News to cater to them, then they will not. At least, you would think so, considering how loudly they have clamored for letting the free market do its thing.

From Bryan over at Why Now?

A veteran uniformed police officer stopped by his bank and walked in on an armed robbery in progress. Both the cop and the robber had six-shot revolvers. More than two dozen shots were fired at a distance of less than 20 feet and neither was hit. Fortunately no one else was injured but the bank’s lobby was a mess. The robber gave up after he ran out of ammo, while the office still had bullets. The robber reloaded once and the officer twice during the incident.

An off-duty officer stopped by his favorite bar on his way home after work. Just after he sat down, two men came out of the men’s room and one of them had what appeared to be revolver in his hand. The officer drew his auto-loader and fired 14 rounds at a distance of less than 15 feet. Neither of the men was hit, and they surrendered. The weapon turned out to be a pellet pistol designed to look like a Smith&Wesson large frame revolver. The officer was a member of his department’s pistol team and a range instructor.

These were trained police officers that I personally have seen group their shots on a timed course at 75 feet. When confronted with a shoot situation, their accuracy disappeared. You have to be a stone-cold killer not to experience an adrenalin surge and a blood pressure spike in a life or death situation. You experience hearing loss and tunnel vision as your brain stem prepares the body to fight or run by diverting blood from ‘unnecessary’ systems. Training reduces the problems, but they can’t be eliminated.

Given these realities, what are the realistic chances of someone with less training and seasoning than an NYPD SWAT officer being able to make the head shot required to take out a shooter wearing soft body armor and firing an AR-15 at you? An armed guard at that school would have been the first person to die, and wouldn’t have prevented anything. The shooter knew what was going to happen, and that is a huge advantage.

Not happening!

(guardian.co.uk) In the wake of President Barack Obama’s election win last month – which flew dramatically in the face of Rove and Morris’s confident on-air predictions – the News Corp-owned station is being forced to adjust to a new reality. (EM mine)

Its broadcasting landscape is now one in which four more years of Obama’s presidency stretch out in front of it. That second term was also won in an election many saw as a rejection of a Tea Party-infused Republicanism that saw extreme figures like pizza magnate Herman Cain, social conservatives Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann and even business mogul Donald Trump briefly leading the Republican field.

As a result, some experts see Fox News as having emerged from the defeat of eventual candidate Mitt Romney in the same shape as the Republican party itself – with a somewhat tarnished image. “It was a damaging election for Fox, not so much down to the result, but in the way that it was handled in the weeks leading up to it and in Rove’s famous on-air meltdown,” said professor Jack Lule, a media expert at Lehigh University.

The incident Lule is referring to happened on election night itself when Fox regular Rove questioned the channel’s own polling unit in deciding to call the crucial state of Ohio for Obama. In a remarkable piece of live television – ordered by Fox News’ co-founder Roger Ailes himself – anchor Megyn Kelly and a camera crew then took Rove’s opinion to the Fox decision desk who stood by their call and debunked Rove’s doubts.

Let me just state categorically: Fox News is not adjusting. It is chastising its pundits and news staff for getting things wrong. It is not any type of adjustment towards the center. After the inauguration they will return to attacking President Obama, Democrats, and liberals in the exact same manner they did during the past 4 years. Right now they are just acting subdued and waiting for this embarrassment to pass by.

Even if their ratings drop, they will not change their stance. In fact, the run up to the elections shows they will double down on their approach. Like Republican candidates that failed to win; they just were not conservative enough! Fox News will simple believe they were not supportive enough of the conservative cause. More of the same, only with more effort!

via Michael J.W. Stickings on a post over at The Reaction on a post by Mustang Bobby.

My initial sense is that Chief Justice Roberts (who, I think, thinks about his and his court’s place in history and how he and it will be perceived) will vote with the liberals and that marriage equality will win.

I have to admit, I agree with Michael on this point. When Roberts joined the liberals on ACE he signaled he was more interested in the long view than in maintaining an ideology.

It is important to note that he approached the ACA decision from two different choices, both apparently thought out.

(The Daily Beast) He certainly didn’t trust the dissenters, as he clearly instructed his law clerks to begin working on an alternative majority opinion (the final product was too polished and too long to have been written at the last minute). And he waited to see what was written.

(The Volokh Conspiracy) Notice also that his [Scalia’s] response to Roberts is tacked on at the end, rather than worked into the body of whatever he was writing (see page 64 of his dissent). For example, one would have expected Scalia to directly take on Roberts’ application of the Anti-Injunction Act, but his brief section on that act only mentions what “the Government” argues (see pages 26-28).

Do not for a minute think I believe Roberts is turning liberal. Instead, I believe he is going to make his best effort (we can argue over just how best his effort really is another day) at an unbiased approach towards interpreting the law. All law derives power from the people. At least as far as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is concerned. If Roberts wants to be seen as a defender of the Constitution, I believe he than needs to pay attention to the majority will of the people.

As an aside, has there ever been a United States Supreme Court Judge impeached and removed from the bench? And yes, I am going to do a Google search right after publishing this post.

Update: Well, I found my answer! Samuel Chase was impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted by the Senate. So he was not removed.

Number of wars to which William Kristol volunteered. 0

Number of wars to which John Kerry volunteered. 1

William Kristol needs to STFU.

(MinnPost) The Dayton administration on Friday sent an early signal to the federal government that Minnesota will pursue a state-run health insurance exchange and apply for an additional $39 million in grant funding to develop the tool, a crucial component of the federal health care reform law.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services postponed two key Friday deadlines till mid-December, but Minnesota pushed ahead anyway, emphasizing Gov. Mark Dayton’s commitment to implementing the exchange. Federal funding for the project will top $100 million if the grant is approved.

With DFL majorities in the Legislature, what once looked like a lonely project for the executive branch has become one of the most important issues for lawmakers this session.

One of the more obvious outcomes of the 2012 election will be the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in Minnesota. Specifically the health exchange portion of the act. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that Governor Dayton has a mandate, what with both the Minnesota House and Senate returned to Democratic control. The question now is whether the Democrats in control will be hesitant due to the nature of Minnesota Nice, or if they will go ahead and take this mandate out for a test ride.

On a personal note, I struggle with Minnesota Nice. I vacillate with its application. Some days I do not wish to make waves; other days I want to do nothing but push boundaries. It gets me in trouble at work. Oh, and with my relationships. But, what the hell. In the end I will end up dead. And I have come to the conclusion that getting someone’s heart rate running might actually improve their health.

Honest to God! What are they thinking? Any move to impeach President Obama on any of the points mentioned in the robocall that hit at least 4 states will only make the Republican brand that much more worthless.

People in four states — Colorado, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington — have reported strange political robocalls from a birther group called Conservative Majority Fund, saying that they “suspect” Obama may be “guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors,” adding “there may be grounds for impeachment as is laid out in the Constitution.

Continue reading →

I have a damn headache because the weather cannot make up its damn mind. It is warm; it is cold; it is warm; it is cold. It is getting old, is what it is doing.

Please; ignorant people supporting politicians who block any legislation on global warming, would you just do something stupid that gets you killed so we can elect people into congress that will do something to combat global warming.

Wow, that was mean.

Well, that is what happens when I get a headache. I get grumpy.

I had hoped to see more developments in the whole CIA/FBI/Generals investigation. But it is getting boring already. Turns out most of the players are actually really lame.

Still, something is not right about this whole situation. The sex is getting in the way of seeing clearly.

My problem is still the fact that the FBI continued digging into the emails after determining that no law was broken or national security compromised. Their relational just does not sound plausible.

The shocking revelation threatens to fell another of the U.S. military’s biggest names and suggests that the scandal involving Petraeus – a retired four-star general who had Allen’s job in Afghanistan before moving to the CIA last year – could expand much further than previously imagined.

via Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan investigated, Petraeus scandal widens | Reuters.

Seriously. This investigation seems to have uncovered a hornets nest. And my thoughts on Kelley being an innocent bystander are drawn into question.

The U.S. official said the FBI uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of communications – mostly emails and spanning from 2010 to 2012 – between Allen and Jill Kelley, who has been identified as a long-time friend of the Petraeus family and a Tampa, Florida, volunteer social liaison with military families at MacDill Air Force Base.

It was Kelley’s complaints about harassing emails from the woman with whom Petraeus had had an affair, Paula Broadwell, that prompted an FBI investigation, ultimately alerting authorities to Petraeus’ involvement with Broadwell. Petraeus resigned from his job on Friday.

And that is not the only thing that makes Kelley look less the innocent bystander.

U.S. officials had said in recent days that their investigation was largely complete and that prosecutors had determined it was unlikely they would bring charges in that case, which started when Kelley contacted an FBI agent in Tampa about harassing emails from an anonymous source.

That FBI agent, who has not been identified, has also come under scrutiny after it was discovered he had sent shirtless photographs of himself to Kelley, but “long before” this investigation, a law enforcement official told Reuters. The photographs were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The agent had never been on the Broadwell case, but had taken the information about the emails to the FBI cyber squad in Tampa, the law enforcement official said.

I do not know. This could all be way overblown. The raggedy edge of an old-fashioned culture exerting one last hurrah before finally being laid to rest like the rest of its old-fashioned values that never really existed.