Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Stephen was the perfect person to do this, he's a genius of extemporaneous speech. I was waiting for him.

@messenger said: "The crap the two Fox guys are coming up with though is just silly, and the same old false tropes, like the protesters are against capitalism, their message is incoherent, and so on."

Yeah, I agreed above that the two Fox people said some dumb things, but there are countless similar things in Cenk's discussion, and his supporters always conveniently ignore them all. If Clinton had left office 6 months later, the dot-com bubble would have been burst, and we'd today be talking about how bad his performance was. That's been known for a decade, so when can we expect ideologues to understand it? Probably never.

Also, since Cenk is a college graduate (I checked; he went to some of the best schools possible), surely he knows to base his case on a variety of metrics, which would help him avoid errors like the one discussed above. For example, since Cenk is more interested in increasing his intelligence than in scoring statistical-artifact cheap shots, he'd surely be interested to add the comparative performance of red and blue states to his analysis.

I'll help:

The study looks at factors that affect state prosperity and economic outlook, such as tax burdens and population change. What’s clear is that red or red-leaning states dominate the top positions while blue states have the dubious distinction of dragging in last. In the economic outlook section, for example, the top 20 states are bright red or lean red, while eight out of the bottom 10 are very blue: New York, Vermont, California, Hawaii, New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon and Rhode Island.

Most of the “poor states” states, as ALEC calls them, have the highest personal income tax rates and the largest unfunded state pension liabilities. Source

That's something I have a personal interest in because my home state, California, went from being one of the best places in the world to one of the worst states in the country on some measures. This happened despite (or because of) having some of the most liberal policies and the highest taxes in the country, so that path doesn't seem very reliable.


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@messenger said: "It's not professional, but speaking extemporaneously, I get it."

Yeah, Cenk is a nice guy, but it doesn't seem proportionate to give him a free pass because (1) in the same breath he's giving his opponents zero leeway for making the same kind of mistakes, and (2) even when he has endless prep time, he still seems to make the same 'ideologue type' mistakes. I don't expect Cenk's performance to ever improve, but it seems pro-social to at least talk about it.


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Do you think it's warranted to change the title of this video, since it doesn't appear to be true?

You're right. Cenk did at least once conflate the actual 99% and the protesters, and another time, he put the word 99% into the mouths of the two Fox people in that same sense. When a movement takes its name from something it's easy to make mistakes like that. It's not professional, but speaking extemporaneously, I get it.

The crap the two Fox guys are coming up with though is just silly, and the same old false tropes, like the protesters are against capitalism, their message is incoherent, and so on.>> ^chilaxe:

@messenger
Look at how the "99%" term is actually being used, though. Cenk's discussion in this video and the title of this video claim that Sowell said 99% of the population are parasites. Are there any interpretations in which that's not a lie?
It's expected that ideologues confuse their own thinking, but it's taking things a step further to actually criticize the intellectual status of his opponents at the same time that he's perpetuating these things.

>> ^dgandhi:
This and QI have got to be the cheapest TV productions this side of Faux News, and yet we in the US can't manage to cobble together half a dozen celebs who can manage to be more extemporaneously interesting than hollywood squares. It makes me laugh, but the quality gap saddens me.


There's plenty of others, of varying quality (Have I Got News For You, Mock the Week and at times Never Mind the Buzzcocks are good). I was wondering the other day why all the quiz-coms (that's what our schedulers seem to want us to call them) are British. It's a simple format, get a topic (current affairs, public opinion, music, whatever), a host who's good at improvised comedy and several similarly minded guests and make sure all of them have an IQ of above 50. 8 out of 10 cats fails occasionally on the last requirement (Kelly Osbourne, for example). I don't know if it's been tried in the US or elsewhere. I can imagine American producers getting Kevin Federline and Paris Hilton as guests and then wondering why it bombs.

You have got The Big Bang Theory, which makes up for a lot.

This and QI have got to be the cheapest TV productions this side of Faux News, and yet we in the US can't manage to cobble together half a dozen celebs who can manage to be more extemporaneously interesting than hollywood squares. It makes me laugh, but the quality gap saddens me.

" She should have said she misspoke the second time she was asked, but give me a break, somebody get her on something substantive."

If the premise of your campaign is that your duties as first lady helped to make you the candidate of experience, then this kind of resume padding is important. Keep in mind that this is part of a pattern. She also exaggerated her role in Northern Ireland.

It's also important to remember that the bigger part of this screw up came in prepared remarks. So, this wasn't just said off the cuff (although she repeated her lies later while speaking extemporaneously).

I guess my take is that just because these criticisms aren't about any esoteric and wonkish details of her policies doesn't mean they aren't substantive. Rather, they go right to the center of what she's made the foundation of her campaign.

Oh dag, you crack me up! GWB speaking extemporaneously about history!! LOL.

He knows what to do because he feels it in his gut! History schmistory!