EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

it for sure is!

reihan salam left a good review, lol

Malcolm Harris ‏ @getsworse
For half the price of Matt Yglesias's ebook, get TNI's new issue "Youth" thenewinquiry.com/publications/m… Our is longer and contains no Matt Yglesias

those fucking TNI kids

they really want to be zingy and edgy and they are so bad at it

http://thenewinquiry.com/features/praise-for-tni-magazine-no-2-youth/10-praise-tni/

lol nerds, 'contains no matt yglesias' is quality tho

that guy mal harris is a tool

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/7/2012/02/1fa0f2d367bd695438b2da60efe49b17.jpg

http://gawker.com/5868073/im-the-jerk-who-pranked-occupy-wall-street

cool essay explaining your prank bro

he needs to get out of the way of that shot

I really want tni to be good but...

starting to think ezra isnt v good at understanding elections

he's also not very good on teevee

like he spends months telling us that romney is a more formidable candidate than he seems which is just ridiculous and writes dumb shit like this all the time http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/17/the-white-houses-huge-gamble-on-paul-ryan

the democrats literally maneuvered exactly the guy they wanted into the spotlight but watch out it might back fire!

oh no!

The Obama team never could have predicted that its efforts would help vault Ryan into the nomination for vice president. The difference between what they reasonably hoped a strategy like this could achieve and what it actually achieved is attributable to Ryan, who has proven a tremendously skilled politician — so skilled, in fact, that he’s convinced many Republicans that the fight Obama wants is the fight they should want, too. Many of them share House Whip Kevin McCarthy’s view. “It’s not so smart to raise [Ryan] up by picking him as an enemy,” he told Draper. “If he picks a budget fight with Paul, Paul will beat him.”

not understanding the difference between politician and political operative, get back to me when he convinces voters of something

how has Ryan proved himself a tremendously skilled politician

yes ezra you just mightve been wrong http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/13/why-is-obama-ahead

stick to explaining explaining legislation bro

xp- seems to have convinced almost everyone in the world he has written a budget that will reduce the deficit?

how has Ryan proved himself a tremendously skilled politician

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, August 17, 2012 4:34 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

via rising in the house ranks, getting the gop caucus to go along w/his budget/vision - which is where i was making the distinction between politician and political operative - ryans job right now is to get votes from people who are not in the house of representatives, something i suspect he is not particularly special at - also just to state the obvious who cares abt the vp pick

xp- seems to have convinced almost everyone in the world he has written a budget that will reduce the deficit?

― reductio ad burzum (flopson), Friday, August 17, 2012 4:37 PM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would like to see some polling on this

to his credit he has worked the media p well but imho thats more due to the fact that they needed someone anyone to fill their wonky young smart republican w/srs ideas slot than his own strategic acumen

i suspect he is going to be fired from that job v shortly

think this is pretty skilled politics:

For a virtuoso display of this principle in action, return to another vintage Ryan moment: his Dave profile from last year, where he awed a swooning reporter by opening up the budget to a random page and fingered a boondoggle. The item Ryan pointed to was the Obama administration’s reform of the student-loan industry. “Direct loans—this is perfect,” Ryan said. “So direct loans, that’s new spending on autopilot, that had no congressional oversight, and it gave the illusion that they were cutting spending.”

The exchange is so perversely revealing that it rewards explanation. For decades, the government helped make college more affordable through “guaranteed loans”—it encouraged banks to lend money to students by promising to repay the banks if the students defaulted. Banks were making billions of dollars in profits at virtually no risk. The General Accounting Office, a kind of in-house fiscal watchdog for the federal government, issued sixteen reports over the years noting how the government could save money simply by issuing the loans itself and cutting out the middleman.

It was the simplest, no-brainer pot of savings you could find—ending pure corporate welfare, just like in the movie Dave. The cause attracted support from think tanks, as well as the moderate Wisconsin Republican Tom Petri, an eclectic reformer who is sort of the real-life version of the Paul Ryan character who appears on television. Two National Review editors endorsed eliminating guaranteed loans in an article advocating a new reform conservatism.

The banks lobbied fiercely to protect their gravy train. Among the staunchest advocates of those government-subsidized banks was … Paul Ryan, who fought to protect bank subsidies that many of his fellow Republicans deemed too outrageous to defend. In 2009, Obama finally eliminated the guaranteed-lending racket. It could save the government an estimated $62 billion, according to the CBO.

...

Ryan probably knew, even in that split second, that he stood little chance of exposure. (The overlap between television news reporters and people with a detailed understanding of the federal budget is quite small.) Yet a lesser politician might have panicked, or hesitated, or possibly tried to flip to a different page. In that moment, Ryan revealed the qualities that have propelled him to his current position. As cool as can be, and as winsome as ever, he said, “This is perfect.”

(http://nymag.com/news/features/paul-ryan-2012-5/index5.html)

guy just has convinced ppl by sheer force of nerdy swagger & a good rapport with media that he is a moderate think thank policy wonk making hard choices when his thinking is as shallow & ideological as like everybody else

i would like to see some polling on this

― lag∞n, Friday, August 17, 2012 4:38 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me too actually i am concerned

guy just has convinced ppl by sheer force of nerdy swagger & a good rapport with media that he is a moderate think thank policy wonk making hard choices when his thinking is as shallow & ideological as like everybody else

― reductio ad burzum (flopson), Friday, August 17, 2012 4:42 PM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people =/ reporters - covered that upthread btw

Don't know anything about Ryan's district, but he might just mean getting elected in a state that's voted Democrat (sometimes just barely) in every presidential election from '88 forward. If Ryan's in a notably conservative district, no big deal.

its a lean republican district

and it doesn't matter how well or quickly Ryan has ascended GOP ranks. The guy sits in a safe district. He has never been tested except in front of Cokie Roberts types who want to be his Ayn Rand.

1. ryan doesnt really matter because hes just the vp candidate
2, the democrats made him famous ON PURPOSE
3. just take a look at this dude he is so clearly not the political genius being sold by the credulous ezra klien et al

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PXCxBDTMqQ

check out the charisma dripping off this guy, a v cool character

I looked at his district:

--he's won lopsided elections every year since '98: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ryan
--the district was Republican but pretty much dead even in the two elections before he arrived: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Neumann
--a Democrat held office from 1971-95 (mostly Les Aspin, who I vaguely remember as being conservative?): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin%27s_1st_congressional_district

So: I think you've got to credit him for winning the district convincingly every time out--it's only been solidly Republican since he started running. I realize there are undoubtedly many other factors at play.

Les Aspin was Clinton's doomed first defense secretary and a classic but extinct subspecies called the Dem hawk.

under no circumstances should anyone be given any credit as a bigtime politician for winning house races

it is also generally rated as a lean repubican district

Didn't Aspin have a heart attack while in Clinton's administration?

It's been leaning heavily Republican...exactly from the moment he started running.

u realize there are people who do things like rate congressional districts professionally right, apologies to your 30 seconds of googling

And you carry this information around in your pocket? Anyway, I know you're pretty obstinate when you fixate on something, so this one's all yours--Paul Ryan is clearly a disaster for the first district of Wisconsin.

u can find the infos using yr google, so obstinate

Paul Ryan is clearly a disaster for the first district of Wisconsin.

― clemenza, Friday, August 17, 2012 5:09 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol v poor paraphrasing of my argument

guys

guys yrself

clearly a disaster for the only Klein-Iglesias thread

So I looked at--I googled--Charlie Cook's ratings for various districts, and sure enough, he has Wisconsin's 1st at +2 Republican. The rating--I googled--is based on "averaging its results from the prior two presidential elections and comparing them to national results."

Simple question: if the district runs about +2 in favor of Republicans, and Ryan's winning each election by an average of +30 (I googled), and it was held by Democrats from 1971 until four years before he started running, might it not be reasonable to conclude that he's a pretty good politician at the district level?

a. who cares
b. no

You see, that's what you did when we argued about the Sarah Palin film--you reverted to your schtick. Which I continue to find pretty funny in most contexts. It's just a little deficient in actually supporting your argument. And very difficult to counter.

sry thinking success in a house race translates over to a presidential race is a non starter for me

as far as my 'shtick' this might shed some light for you on our interactions

I think that's perfectly valid, and probably right--we'll find out over the next couple of months. But if Klein says that Ryan is a skilled politician, he can only base that on what's already happened, not on what might happen. And based on Ryan's performance in seven elections, and the fact that he's now one-half of the Republican ticket, I don't think it's that strange a conclusion to reach.