Evening Open Thread with Stuff to Read and Stuff

Early night (podcast night) round-up: Comparing Bridge-gate and Cuomo's Moreland Commission scandals, Bridge-gate is almost literally 1000x as important as Cuomo's scandal, in the eyes of the media.

Noah Rothman writes more on this point.

Who exactly are these 23% of Americans who tell pollsters that the nation is on the right track?

Obama's polls don't bode well for his party's fortunes in November.

As uncomfortable as it will make Democrats, Obama heads into the final three months of the campaign not looking all that different from his predecessor, President Bush.

In a July 21-24, 2006, survey conducted by Peter Hart and Bill McInturff for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, Bush’s job ratings stood at 39 percent approve/56 percent disapprove. Gallup had very similar numbers in its July 28-30, 2006, survey: 40 percent approve/56 percent disapprove.

President Obama’s job performance numbers in the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted June 11-15 are only slightly better at 41 percent approve/53 percent disapprove. And that survey found only 37 percent of respondents saying they approved of the job the president was doing handling foreign policy, while 57 percent disapproved.

Incidentally, Obama's personal favorability is now down to 40%, too.

Another projection (this one in the WaPo) predicts the GOP will take the Senate.

Ron Fournier says that Obama's planned Executive Whim Amnesty would be a nuclear bomb for the country, dividing it as never before.

Even Politico concedes that Megyn Kelly is a smash success.

The headline is "The Secret of Megyn Kelly's Success."

What secret? Isn't it obvious? She's a great questioner, obviously extremely intelligent, knows her stuff, plays it down the line (well... close enough), and has movie-star looks.

I can't believe I even doubted, for one second, that bumping the night lineup for her wasn't 100% the best, most obvious, easiest decision in the world.

Some dumb poll says that US citizens favor handling Israel and Hamas "even handedly," and don't support "favoring one group over the other."

This is the stupidest question I've ever seen.

75% of very fervent backers of Israel would say: "I agree, we should treat both sides even handedly. This means we should condemn Hamas, even-handedly, for terrorist attacks on civilian populations."

The conceit that we are all "even-handed" and "perfectly fair" and without any pre-existing allegedly irrational bias is so cherished by people: what did they expect most people to say?

This is an especially grim delusion among the LIV/"independent" voter set. More ideological people, on either side of the line, tend to have made firm decisions which they admit to themselves, and so tend to know they're no longer quite "even handed" (meaning, in practical effect, without any pre-existing base of knowledge whatsoever).

Anyway, I don't even see the point of asking this question. It's like asking people, "Do you consider yourself open-minded and fair-minded?"

What do you think people are going to say? Good Lord.

So you probably know Obama's proposing a new burst of "Economic Patriotism," this one involving keeping American corporations under American tax authority.

It's such an obviously great thing, he'll tell you, that no thinking person could ever propose the contrary.

So you can probably guess what this next link will say.

Maybe I'll write a free-standing post on this, but I'm pretty disappointed by this news: The most compellingly original writing on a TV show this past winter turns out to be not so original at all.

I read the book that Pizzalatto "borrowed" from for the weird, PITCHblack aggressively-depressive worldview of his show's hero, Rust Cohle. It was such a clear ripoff, I assumed, incorrectly it seems, that they'd paid the writer Thomas Ligotti some money for using his ideas, themes, and even words (in the lightest sort of paraphrase).

This post lays out the case for plagiarism, which is pretty easily made.

Again, I just assumed it was bought and paid for. And maybe they paid extra to not give him a credit, like "Inspired by the writings of Thomas Ligotti."

Like a vanity move -- we don't want to give you a credit on the show, so we'll pay you double what we talked about.

Without some agreement like that, this is pretty obviously an infraction.

Meanwhile, True Detective 2 is getting close to shooting. I read that Vince Vaughn might star.

I guess if they get Vince Vaughn I'll just put this nasty plagiarism out of my head and watch it.

posted by Ace at 07:11 PM

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