Earlier, valued commenter Germy Shoemangler alerted us to the location of a leaked PowerPoint deck from Jeb’s recent “Imma Tell My Mom, Dad and Big Brother You Were MEAN to Me” conference. There are 112 slides in the presentation. One hundred! And twelve!
Until I saw that, I didn’t think it would be possible for me to feel pity for the soulless fat-cats, sundry hucksters and hired political hatchet-men aboard the HMS Jebtanic. But damned if I didn’t experience a twinge of sympathy, imagining their despair as their beady little eyes adjusted to the dimmed lights and fixed on the slide counter at the bottom of the projection screen.
There’s a yawning chasm between my politics and values and theirs, but sweet merciful Christ, we’re all human beings! Anyhoo, here’s one of several slides that showcase Rubio’s deficits in a bid to stop donors fleeing toward the diminutive upstart (remember, this was before the debate):
Another slide calls Rubio the “GOP Obama,” which illustrates how perfectly insane these miserable fucksticks are. “GOP Obama”?!?!? As if, motherfuckers!
I take back what I said earlier about our common humanity. They deserved every moment of soul-crushing boredom they endured during that interminable slideshow. I hope the tuna salad sandwiches on the catered snack trays were both stale and soggy and that the cokes were flat, with nary a drop of bourbon in the room to ease their pain.
some guy
Republicans in disarray.
sweet
Roger Moore
I was thinking this was a scene from the PowerPoint presentation of the damned.
Chyron HR
I like page 9, which reads in its entirety:
THIS IS WHAT THEY LEAD WITH.
Betty Cracker
@Chyron HR: …along with a cheesy explosion overlay graphic that read something like “DISCIPLINE MUST BE MAINTAINED!”
Docg
Marco’s “I want everything right now” mentality almost guarantees sexual indiscretions. Of course Republicans can always publically “repent” and keep the support of the base.
MattF
@Roger Moore: Do you think Jeb! read every slide aloud? Auggh. I’m in pain.
piratedan
maybe there was a test or quiz afterwards…..
RSA
@MattF:
Well, sure. Facing the screen, away from the audience.
Germy Shoemangler
I imagine half way through the presentation, Jeb was forced to stand in awkward silence while the computer interrupted him to project “Windows 10 Updating” onto the screen.
gussie
“… have been concerned with what they have found?”
Nemo_N
Hillary and Bernie better be studying this.
Also, I wonder who leaked it. Maybe Jeb!, so tired of it all it, created a split personality, bent on sabotaging himself.
Or a disgruntled staffer and all that.
Germy Shoemangler
Jeb: “Hey, no shadow puppets! I mean it, guys…”
NonyNony
@Chyron HR: Judging from the slide, I’m betting that there was an animation there. The slide it’s on has a heading of “Discipline Matters … More of This” with examples of positive things that supporters are supposed to be saying. And then the smash-animation of the thing they don’t want people to be saying.
I think the real bit of stupid is on page 40. He’s going to keep pushing that stupid “W kept us safe” idea because it polls well with likely GOP primary voters. Good luck with that Jeb – you clearly don’t realize that they only agree with that sentiment because they know that every time you say it it pisses off a “liberal”. And at this point those likely GOP primary voters consider anyone to the left of Benito Mussolini to be a “liberal”.
Peale
@NonyNony: I like the slides that show Jeb’s favorables rising, but the polls seem to stop in May 2015 (before the rise of trump).
NonyNony
@Nemo_N:
Why? Oh – for the tips all of Marco Rubio’s weaknesses to use in the general against him. Good point.
My bet would be a former backer who decided to switch horses to Rubio and wants to send a message to Jeb? that it’s time for him to get out of the race “for the good of the party” the way Scott Walker did.
NonyNony
@Peale:
Those are good too. I assume that this slide deck was meant to be shown in a “blitz” fashion so that the viewers would be too overwhelmed to notice that the information is all way out of date.
azlib
Wow! Can you imagine sitting through all this. I can see donors eyes glazing over.
Chyron HR
This “Jeb!” character is entertaining, but not as funny as Brandt from The Big Lebowski.
Jeffro
How interesting that the Jeb? campaign has, in its presentation, slides that show Right to Rise Super PAC ads and other achievements as well. Why, it’s almost as if RtR is…is…just another arm of the campaign, albeit with no fundraising restrictions whatsoever.
How. Interesting.
Omnes Omnibus
Slide 40.
NotMax
Binders full of slides.
Thoughtful Today
LOL
Jeb?
Keith G
The New York Times is reporting.
My question is, what is our policy?
The president needs to let the American people to know what our goals are, how movement towards those goals is going to be measured, and how this fits into a greater regional policy that I hope we already have.
Cervantes
Too late, you pathetic little sell-out, you!
Cermet
Why is President Obama getting us more involved in Syria? Sending Op-Troops? Really? Strange – what is he trying to prove/do/achieve? This isn’t logical unless the Saudi’s are calling some chips in for driving energy prices so low to hurt Russia by our request (and for the Saudi’s, their own special extra, Amerikan Fracker’s get hurt, too.)
kc
Spring Valley High students stage walkout in support of Ben Fields.
dedc79
@gussie: It would be irresponsible not to speculate that this means that Rubio had an affair.
dmsilev
112 PowerPoint slides? I guess we now know Jeb’s stance on tortutre.
Hoodie
The Marco stuff is interesting, but the whole presentation is laughable and smells of desperation. Slide purporting to show Jeb is mas presidential than Hillary says “all voters” but there’s fine print on the bottom saying it’s from a Quinnipiac poll of republicans and leaning republicans and shows both candidates in the same ballpark. The media stuff basically says “we’re spending a shitload and still flatlining.” If I was a shareholder of this outfit, I’d fire the CEO and his staff. Curious who leaked this, it looks intended to raise questions about Rubio but also make Bush look pathetic. Maybe someone in Cruz’ camp?
Elie
Charles Pierce asks the question of whether the Romney campaign found something scary in Rubio’s background, but doesn’t speculate what.
I told you all yesterday that the Bush Crime Family was not going to let Rubio go without at least a knee job — maybe more.. We’ll see if Mr. Rubio has really sharp elbows after all and knows how to really play with the big boys. He had better, because it only gets rougher to be a “made man”…. so to speak
lol
Jeb!’s vaunted campaign organization has identified a mere 1200 supporters in Iowa. And that’s towards the laughably low goal of 24,000 they think they’ll need for a dominating victory at 18%.
They’ve also knocked on zero doors. That’s zero as in “they haven’t knocked on a single door”.
Golly, it’s so hard to imagine Trump’s campaign challenging such an in-depth ground game.
lol
@dedc79:
It’s also what the recent “Rubio is the Republican John Edwards” stuff is supposed to hint at without getting in trouble for saying.
Elie
@Hoodie:
I would read between the lines (or slides) for real purpose and intent. The leak gives Rubio a heads up about what may be coming next. My suspicion is that if the Bushistas have the real goods on Rubio, they wouldn’t be talking about it on a deck — they would just quietly release the information through some source without their fingerprints on it.. Why give your target any forewarning? — I wouldn’t.
hitchhiker
You know . . . that sparky little Jeb! logo at the bottom of each slide is absolutely disturbing. If I were a fatcat being subjected to this 3rd grade level presentation, after about the 5th slide that logo would start to annoy me.
And after the 50th, I’d leave the room just to not ever have to see it again.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: I don’t understand it either.
Elie
@hitchhiker:
I think that logo was horrible from the get go. Like you say, its like the logo for a third grader.
Germy Shoemangler
I agree with something on Jeb’s powerpoint:
The press and their obsession with process.
Dupe1970
I’ve done better presentations in my sleep. What was this? Their first draft? Also i always assums 3 to 5 minutes per slide on average so their slide deck would take at a bare minimum 336 minutes to present or 5 and half hours. That’s longer than Ghandi!!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I’ve helped create long PowerPoint (Keynote, actually) presentations that were about that long, but they had pretty pictures of paintings on them, not “strategy.”
Cacti
RNC pulls out of NBC debate.
It’s scary outside of the Fox bubble.
Bobby Thomson
RtR did post that early last evening. It’s a window of suck.
Elie
Doesn’t look like Rubio is gonna get a big jump in polls anyway — at least not so far. Still in fourth place in early goin. Doesn’t surprise me at all — the dude is very light…
NonyNony
@Dupe1970:
That’s because you actually know how to use powerpoint as a supplement to a talk. And not as a mechanism to try to overwhelm the audience with a quantity of bullshit.
khead
I was cool with the soul crushing, but the bourbon thing falls under cruel and unusual.
Some guy
Breaking: Brinks Trucks Full of PowerPoints designed to destroy all unbelievers still stuck in traffic on Rt. 128.
Developing ….
piratedan
@Keith G: I wish I could say what our policy is/was because before it was apparently defined based on how much we could afford to piss off the Turks who had little interest in the establishment of a kurdish state. Whereas before the Bush Middle East Boondoggle commenced there was still the belief that Iraq would survive in some form resembling the nation state that had been crafted by the Brits a couple of world wars ago… Now I begin to wonder if Obama is quietly encouraging the creation of a de facto Kurdish national state as it has been shown that they are apparently the only ethnic group that is willing to fight Isis that has boots on the ground. The Iraqi’s haven’t distinguished themselves (at least based on the media reports) and the Turks are busy trying to handle the Syrian refugee issue. So this change may be a matter of dealing with the allies that actually exist versus the idea that there are still established nation states in the area that have their act together. It seems to follow on the heels of the prisoner camp rescue in setting a trend that we’re working with the Kurds and see what happens.
Hoodie
@NonyNony: The impression I get was they were trying to blow a bunch of stuff past some investors, I mean, donors, and wanted their eyes to glaze over while being impressed by Bush’s heavy duty operation that put together so many fancy slides. They must think their donors are as stupid as they think the voters are.
schrodinger's cat
@Dupe1970: My thoughts, exactly. That’s way too many slides.
BTW its Gandhi not Ghandi / pedant.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Keith G: Kerry had a good speech on all of those important things on Wednesday.
Video (48:18)
Transcript
There is a strategy. I don’t know if metrics can be applied to it, though…
Cheers,
Scott.
Peale
@Cacti: Would you quit asking us questions about what we did in the past and what we’ll do in the question and get down to the business of the real issue of Why Hillary would be the worst president since Pitt the Elder?
Another Holocene Human
@kc: spirit of george wallace lives on
waspuppet
First off, it’s appalling that Jeb! buys into the “Hillary has no accomplishments” BS.
Second, it’s cute that he thinks Marco Rubio’s lack of accomplishments “negates hit” against Hillary, or that Rubio’s scandals “take away line of attack.”
Does he know what party he’s in? They see nothing wrong with being the pot calling the sheet of paper black.
Hoodie
Love the new slogan “Jeb can fix it”? What did he ever fix beyond his brother’s election? What the hell is the “it” he’s fixing? His broken campaign? Jeb is approaching John Connolly levels of political incompetence.
Villago Delenda Est
Slide 40. The epitome of clueless fucking derp. Utterly blind to reality, doubling down on the stupid.
This is why ¡Heb! is doomed.
Josie
Betty, you are really on a roll lately. I wish your recent posts could get a wider circulation. They are classic.
boatboy_srq
[cough] Ms. Cracker, you’ve convused HMS (His/Her Majesty’s Ship, reserved for exclusively military units) and RMS (Royal Mail Ship, normally used for the bigger civilian passenger/cargo vessels (which are authorized to carry mail)). Something tells me the Jebtanic’s only guns would be on the passengers’ hips.
/pedant
These two lines from the slide:
… are priceless. Especially given the source.
daverave
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Republican National Committee on Friday said it was suspending its partnership with NBC News for the Republican debate scheduled for Feb. 26. “The CNBC network is one of your media properties, and its handling of the debate was conducted in bad faith,” the letter from RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack reads. “We understand that NBC does not exercise full editorial control over CNBC’s journalistic approach. However, the network is an arm of your organization, and we need to ensure there is not a repeat performance.” Priebus complained of “gotcha” questions and a “petty and mean-spirited” tone. Priebus says the Republicans are still planning to hold that debate and will still involve the National Review in it. NBC is a unit of Comcast CMCSA, +0.25%
JPL
From Tom’s post below, I found this proverb..
To be pissing against the moon — To waste one’s time on a futile endeavour.
boatboy_srq
@Hoodie: Two of them. Don’t forget all the interference Tallahassee ran in ’04 so that Shrub’s FEMA wouldn’t feel the pain of that hurricane season.
Villago Delenda Est
@lol: I think it’s an allusion to a second family Rubio is allegedly supporting through his bizarre financial dealings which seem to make him arithmetic challenged.
Villago Delenda Est
@daverave: Shorter Rinse: “WAAAH! WAAAH! WAAAH!”
boatboy_srq
@daverave: The epistemic closure shrinks a little further. Not that RNC PR BS is especially wrong here – just that the whiny babies taking their toys and going home (or off to play with somebody else) is typical of the GOTea.
Chyron HR
@daverave:
Well we don’t like your candidates, either, but I think you’re stuck with them until New Hampshire.
Peale
@daverave: yeah, I think this is all pre-staged so that there will be favorable debate questions next fall. I’m gonna go with questions like
“Candidate Clinton, you said that you have plans to create 3.0 million jobs, but I think the real number is 3.04 million. Could you explain how you arrived at your figures.”
“Candidate Trump, could you explains why you love the middle class so much?”
Goblue72
Synergy.
Peale
@daverave: yeah, I think this is all pre-staged so that there will be favorable debate questions next fall. I’m gonna go with questions like
“Candidate Clinton, you said that you have plans to create 3.0 million jobs, but I think the real number is 3.04 million. Could you explain how you arrived at your figures.”
“Candidate Trump, could you explain why you love the middle class so much?”
boatboy_srq
@waspuppet: I think ¡Heb! is campaigning to be candidate for Prescott Bush’s GOP. Not that he’d have had much more luck in that timeframe either…
NonyNony
@daverave:
Is it hilarious or scary that the Republicans think that CNBC – a financial network that is always 200% in the tank for rich investors trying to game the system – suffers from liberal bias?
Honestly their biggest problem is that they should have only had the top 5 polling candidates on that stage. All of the problems of the night stem from there being too damn many people on that stage at once. Of course that would be Trump, Carson, Rubio, Cruz and Bush, so that probably would have led to a whole bunch of other problems.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
Not that it matters but I disagree with your conclusion: “HMS” would seem to be the right (metaphorical) designation for a campaign.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@daverave: as several people have pointed out, they’re whinging about the network that gave us Teabagger godfather Rick Santellie as too liberal. And as I think Kevin Kruse said, Joe Kernan is pretty much a discount Steve Doocey, which is one of the meanest things I’ve read in a while
Betty Cracker
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: What did you find good about that speech?
I was struck by the praise of the monstrous Henry Kissinger followed by warmed-over neocon-lite blather. The only hopeful thing I took away from the activist tone was that maybe it’s all a smoke screen to quiet the saber-rattlers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like we’ll get anything better from HRC, though I hasten to add the obvious: the alternative is unthinkable.
Peale
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: When the protests started, US officials were warned that a violent overthrow of Assad would lead to a civil war that would take at least 10 years to resolve. Since we’re in year 3, the metric should be, will our policy shorten the civil war to less than seven more years.
Calouste
@Hoodie: Is Jeb? implying he aspires to be like the show Jim’ll Fix it, presented by a pedophile and rapist who made hundreds of victims?
catclub
@Peale:
We love our children – delicious!
boatboy_srq
@Cervantes: Given ¡Heb!’s close family ties with the [para]military, I’m willing to concede the point. In which case perhaps Spanish Galleon (Nuestra Señora de ¡Heb!mentum, perhaps) – that is, laden with unlimited corporate ca$h yet unable to weather the storm (and destined for a watery grave somewhere off Cuba) – may be more appropriate.
Brachiator
@Keith G: RE: President Obama will deploy a small number of American Special Operations forces to Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Syria, a United States official said.
I don’t think the administration knows what its policy is. The press has been circling around the possibility that Putin has made a major play to expand Russian influence in the area, and Russia’s military and diplomatic initiatives are pushing the US out, with respect to having any further influence in the region.
Interestingly enough, the GOP has not yet hammered the Obama administration on “losing the Middle East.”
And most immediately, this move appears to designed to help the strongest US supported group, the Kurds, against Turkey, ISIS and Russia (Russia might bomb the Kurds and claim that they were attacking “terrorists” in the area).
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
That alone should be enough to damn him forever.
On the other hand, he was speaking at a Carnegie event — so there’s that.
Some still hope otherwise — and good luck to them.
Mike J
I like the bit about how voters have ADD. Typical republican, has nothing but contempt for voters, and doesn’t have any sympathy for people with ADD either.
Booger
Edward Tufte would be spinning in his grave if he were dead.
Calouste
@boatboy_srq:
Rubio was Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives before becoming a Senator, so he was at least nominally in charge of 120 people. Granted, the Florida HoR only is in session for 60 days every year.
debbie
112 slides tells me Captain Queeg was in charge of the presentation.
gian
@Hoodie:
Jeb the builder yes we can
(Scoop muck and dizzy and rolly too)
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: Exactly. Inaccurate, irrelevant or [bonus points for] both.
Brachiator
@Hoodie:
Wow. This is unintentionally creepy on so many levels.
There used to be a British children’s tv show called “Jim’ll Fix It,” presented by British comedian Jimmy Saville. After Saville died, all kinds of claims surfaced that Saville had abused children throughout his career, including some who had been selected to participate in his tv show.
Jeb!? is getting some mighty bad advice here.
Another Holocene Human
@NonyNony: Unfair! They also exist to take suckers for all they’re worth. It’s long been rumored that Jim Cramer maintains ties with his hedge fund buddies and shills for suckers to take the wrong side of the hedgies’ bets.
Either that or he really IS that stupid and that’s why he’s on teevee and not investing OPM anymore.
Or a little of both. And yes, the above is a crime, but back when he was on my radar GWB’s SEC was letting the mice play.
Cacti
Gotta say, I also like the juxtaposition of Hillary sitting through 11-hours of hectoring from Trey Gowdy’s committee, vs. 10 Republican candidates running like hit dogs after a 2-hour debate on CNBC.
Way to burnish those tough guy credentials, fellas. lol
Belafon
@Cacti: Clinton should make that a commercial in the general.
tazj
@Brachiator: I’m really hoping that somehow this move will translate into something good coming out of the Vienna summit. Although, like you said, it’s probably just being done to support our most reliable ally in the region, the Kurds.
I watched PBS’s “Insides Assad’s Syria” the other day. You just desperately want the leaders of the world to finally get their crap together and end the terrible suffering and destruction there.
Roger Moore
@hitchhiker:
That kind of thing is one of the parts of PowerPoint I hate the most. I’m sure it’s part of Team ¿Jeb?’s standard template and spelled out in their branding rules; they have to make it clear that this is theirs on every slide. What those templates really do is occupy space that could be used for original content with meaningless, repeated nonsense. It’s very easy to wind up with more space taken up by template than by new information, and exacerbates one of PowerPoint’s great weaknesses, the difficulty in getting enough meaningful information onto each slide.
Another Holocene Human
@Calouste: The Speaker is powerful but distinct from majority and minority leaders (remember: two parties, even if GOP acts otherwise).
His replacement, Haridopoulos, was shady as fuck and up to something. He never gave off a vibe of workin’ too hard.
Like in many leges, the lower house proposes (nonsense) and the upper house disposes.
On their way to a PhD in Clownery, the House actually closed their session early last year causing a slew of bills to die and even legislation to expire, thankfully for Democrats a lot of the stuff that went bye-bye was shit.
gene108
Guess Rubio’s just written off Southeastern PA, with his ties to Norman Braman (the cheap-assed and much hated owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, until the mid-1990’s, who refused to keep Reggie White when free agency came to the NFL among other great players the Eagles had on their roster).
catclub
@tazj:
I would be pleased and amazed.
The Turks and Saudis generally get their way. And supporting the Kurds is not on their list.
Amir Khalid
@Cacti:
It’s worse than that. Hillary lasted eleven hours alone, and came out of it looking fresher than her team of questioners. Two hours divided by ten candidates yields a mean of just ten minutes — ten minutes! — facing the moderators.
feebog
Love slide 42, title Bush more Presidential. Damn if Jeb? isn’t beating Hillary in every category. It’s very impressive until you look at the source poll, which was of less than 800 REPUBLICANS!
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: PP is the epitome of the Microsoft Way and how they got so big and profitable. It’s an upper management mind meld. “Graphics … whiz bang animations … put corporate logo on there … presentations … professional … bullet points … buzz words … EZ to use.”
At some workplaces, workers are actually given a template that they must use for internal and external presentations. “Synergy”
The best feature (my personal pet peeve) is that you can print these PPs out (in more than one format) so trees can die and conference goers can immortalize the presenter’s talk notes (“remember to mention butt cancer”). There’s a format where you can write notes next to slides so you can ineffectively attempt to scribble down the only ACTUAL information presented. In my experience only one out of twenty slides might have some actual, decipherable info written down that you can use.
SiubhanDuinne
@hitchhiker:
The only thing that could make it worse is if it popped up randomly, like Clippy.
Just One More Canuck
112 power point slides? I’d be feeling either stabby or suicidal by about 60.
Another Holocene Human
ot
So this happened: http://thedailybanter.com/2015/10/trey-gowdys-son-posted-vine-video-of-him-singing-the-n-word/
Trey Gowdy’s son posted a vine of him singing the n word
Tazj
@catclub: You’re right.
SiubhanDuinne
@Hoodie:
And they explicitly think voters have A.D.D.
Bobby Thomson
@SiubhanDuinne: again, they’re not wrong.
Anoniminous
@daverave:
Good. Means the Democratic Party candidates will have all the air time.
Elizabelle
@Another Holocene Human:
Got to say, I’d cut the kid some slack. More young and stupidhood than racism there.
But dad as a “public servant?” Uh, no.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
Slide 4, “What They Are Saying,” is a little … selective.
Patricia Kayden
Hopefully, Secretary Clinton and the DNC are mulling over that Marco Rubio page. It’s priceless. And juicy! What the hell is in his background that is so concerning? TMZ needs to get on it.
shell
Oh Betty, just letting you know. I am STEALING that; the cartoon practically draws itself, complete with Jeb! rearranging the deck chairs.
Your talent for the mot juste, my dear, as impeccable as always.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Betty Cracker: I was flipping channels and heard from about the middle on (just after the Israel section).
Here’s what I liked:
1) There’s a decent background on what’s going on in the region and how it all ties together.
2) There isn’t bluster about “we will defeat them” all by ourselves through our mighty military, that it will be easy, that it’s a simple problem.
Lots of countries, with lots of different interests, are being affected by what’s going on in Syria, as are millions of suffering Syrians. Things are coming to a head so a negotiated settlement of some sort is in the cards.
I don’t see any indication from that speech that the US is going to bigfoot its way into the civil war there. We’ll try to help the parties end it sooner rather than later, and that will involve some military action (of course). But we’re not, by ourselves, trying to impose a solution.
Even the “Assad must go” language is being toned down:
The toning down of the language is a good thing, even if we still want him to go.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Patricia Kayden
@daverave: Perhaps NBC can placate Reince by promising to have Joe Scarborough and Shut Up Mika as panelists on their next Republican candidate debate.
It’s so strange that Republicans actually believe that their candidates deserve to be coddled during debates after what they put Secretary Clinton through for 11 hours last week. Pathetic.
Tom Levenson
@Just One More Canuck: You’ve more stamina than I. I start mentally sharpening my blades at about slide 12.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
My experience with PowerPoint is that it’s capable of making useful presentations if you know how to make useful presentations in the first place. The first step is to get rid of all the templates and go with straight empty slides, though I suppose a small logo in one corner wouldn’t do too much harm. Then try to get as much information onto the screen with as little wasted space as possible; make your figures as big as you can so that people can see what you’re trying to show.
What I was taught in my oral presentations class- back in the days before slideware like PowerPoint- is almost the opposite of what people are told today. We were told that the slides are supposed to contain the information that you can’t present verbally (e.g. photographs, diagrams, tables, etc.) and as few words as possible. That visual information is supposed to remind you what you’re going to talk about and serve as a visual aid. If you needed any more reminder of your speech than that, you were supposed to have it on notecards, not on the slides themselves.
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Yes.
Some would call this “Diplomacy 101.” I think it’s far more basic than that.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: The kid is a kid. It’s what it says about the adults in his life.
ksmiami
@gene108: Ok – not gonna divulge my source but the Braman family were victims of Madoff cuz they are greedy mofos. Maybe they are going the same way with Rubio. In any case, I’ll be rooting for serious injuries all the way around
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: This.
And print out of your charts (slide projectors!) would be full 8.5×11
Not so in PP.
debbie
@Roger Moore:
Unfortunately, most presentations I’ve witnessed consist of the presenter reading the slides to the audience and not much more.
? Martin
So, handily elected President twice? Isn’t that the very point of the exercise at hand?
Chyron HR
Hat tip to @SiubhanDuinne
It looks like you are a failed presidential candidate.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
You can print out PowerPoint slides with a full page per slide. Back in the days before we had access to a large format printer, we would do scientific posters as a series of letter-sized pages printed from PowerPoint (or other software when appropriate), often with a colored backing a bit bigger than the page, and then pin them up one at a time. It was nice in a way, because you could stack them and pack them in a manila envelope that would fit in your luggage rather than needing a mailing tube.
Rick Taylor
I’d guess most people here have seen the power point version of the Gettysburg address, by Peter Norvig, but just in case. . .
Another Holocene Human
@debbie: The one thing I give TED credit for is that their talks, in the whole, are what a presentation should be like:
engaging
present information you didn’t know
slides are used to provide something you can’t give verbally
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: Even if you print out full page per slide unless you did the trickery you talk about to make your image the full page, your image will not be 8.5×11 and if you do the very business standard gimmick of template + bullet points + graph, that graph is lucky to be 3×4
Another Holocene Human
@? Martin: Obama stole money from the Democratic Party??
//snark
Another Holocene Human
@Rick Taylor: I hadn’t, and that’s withering.
Love the colors in the template. Just right.
Gimlet
From the perspective of extreme right as centrist.
Scalia said..the court has long had a majority of justices who disregard the Constitution’s text and original meaning if it conflicts with their views.
“The whole time I have been on my court, it has been a liberal court,” said the 79-year-old justice, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 and part of a majority of Republican appointees throughout his tenure.
Scalia said the court’s promotion of what he derisively called the “living Constitution” began in the 1920s, when justices interpreted the guarantee of due process of law to protect fundamental rights not mentioned in the constitutional text.
srv
@Keith G: Start another quagmire for his successor?
Question is, who will kill one of our not-boots first?
1) ISIS
2) al-Nusra
3) Turks bombing Kurds from Incirlik
4) Russia bombing al-Nusra
5) SAA
Am sure I’m missing a few others.
Danack
Page 61 – Jeb has 10 paid staffers in Iowa
Clinton had 47 back in July http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/07/07/clinton-adds-paid-iowa-staffers/29814329/
Whoever is the eventual GOP nominee is going to have an incredibly weak ground game in all states.
And depending on how much recrimination there is during the choosing of the final nominee, it could massively affect downvote races as well.
Keith G
I see that ESPN has killed off Grantland. That is really too bad. There were some really good writing about culture by folks working there.
Edited .. Thanks voice recognition
? Martin
@Keith G:
The challenge with foreign policy is that there is at least one other party that has a greater say in the policy than you have. Worse, the most important foreign policy scenarios have no good outcomes – your goal is to pick the least bad outcome and find a way to ask for money or lives to pay for an admitted bad result.
Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea all have no good outcome scenarios. You’re choosing between an unacceptable amount of death and misery now or later, between death and misery for this group or that group. And any time you have other parties involved with a greater tolerance for death and misery (ISIS, Al Bashar, Putin, Iran all as examples) then your ability to set an active policy is virtually nonexistant because these other parties know where you are sensitive and will drive straight to that point which will force you off of your policy.
There’s a reason why the GOP sees foreign policy as a much more straightforward endeavor – they have a much higher tolerance for delivering death and misery.
Doug R
@Cermet: Don’t forget it driving dirty tar sands oil out of business too.
Keith G
@? Martin: We are putting a fighting force on to the soil of a sovereign state that, to my knowledge, has not given permission for that force to be there.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to have some notion made available to the American people about what it is we’re trying to do and how we are intending to go about doing it.
Anoniminous
@Danack:
Last I looked JEB! was relying on the GOP party leaders in the county organizations to lead his GOTV, focusing on the I-80 corridor. Given the recent history of Iowa Republicans outside the corridor to vote for the most Evangelical-Fundie ignorant bigot in the running – Huckabee, Santorum – it may be his best play.
Doug R
@daverave: I love how Comcast/nbc shares go up at the announcement.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human: I’ve read that the proliferation of Power Point in the military has ruined staff presentations, stripping them of their stated goal of providing the commander being briefed with information he can use to come to a decision. I recall using a precursor to PP in staff briefings in the 9th ID when it was still around, and the “high-tech test bed” of the Army, and we were required to use that precursor, but not at the expense of providing standard staff information as outlined in field manuals on staff work.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: Graphical information, like charts to get across trends and such, at least in my military experience, and post military experience.
? Martin
@Keith G: I don’t disagree. But if the dynamics in that region weren’t bad enough, you have a Congress that steadfastly refuses to do its job. Does that mean that the Executive branch simply shuts down? Does Congress get to veto Executive authority simply by refusing to do anything, or is their refusal to do anything a message that Obama is free to do what he wants?
My objection to the complaints against Obama is that they refuse to recognize that he’s trying to do this with only half of a government. The public would be better served by *any* message out of Congress.
And as to the larger plan, I don’t think you can broadcast that plan in the current political climate. I’m pretty sure the plan has been to undermine Saudi Arabia as the power broker in the region and replace them with Iran who is actually willing to work against ISIS/Taliban/Al Qaeda. That leaves us in a very awkward position in Syria and with Israel, and it also opens up Obama and Democrats to very effective attacks by Republicans. Remember, any long-term strategy in the middle east needs to consider who is running the show in the US – that’s inevitably part of the policy. Partnering with Iran against ISIS won’t work if President Cruz is out there bombing Iran.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
It’s worth reading his “making of” discussion. He said that he didn’t have to do anything within PowerPoint to make the presentation worse; he just used the Auto Content Wizard and it messed everything up at least as badly as he would have if he tried. That’s the really damning thing about it. He didn’t go out of his way to make it awful; he just used the tool as provided.
? Martin
@Villago Delenda Est: Provided the data visualization itself is useful and not misleading. Problem is that few people are actually trained in how to present information – regardless of medium. Even presentations that I’ve seen that are very data-rich tend to be completely useless because of how bad the charts are or the data relationships being presented.
Keith G
@? Martin: Maybe I’m just unique among taxpayers, and maybe a little bit of it has to do with the fact that I was very much alive and cognizant during the Gulf of Tonkin episode, but I want clear and precise direction and accountability on the use of our armed forces when they are being applied to an active war zone.
Yes Congress is shit, but that doesn’t change the fact that we depend on the President of the United States and his administration to create a strategic view of how we’re going to operate in the world. That is something that can be done with or without the cooperation of Congress as it is not about spending money , it is about the plan and systems of evaluation under which we will work to achieve our strategic needs.
As an example, Containment was the policy developed by George Kennan and bought into by Harry S Truman. The policy was the blueprint then Congress had to be involved in the exact legislation that would fund the actions to fulfill the blueprint.
This president is not facing the toughest of all times and I expect him to do this difficult task to his full capability.
Amir Khalid
Somewhat off-topic:
The Jeb campaign has laid off chief operating officer Christine Ciccone. Ciccone was on a monthly salary of US$12k. (Via TPM.)
gogol's wife
@debbie:
The mess boys ate the strawberries!
NonyNony
@Amir Khalid:
The story says that she was responsible for logistics.
Hm – from the lack of ground game that the PowerPoint here exposed, I suspect that this probably won’t hurt his campaign much.
Elie
@? Martin:
Well said —
Situation is horrible and cannot be solved — only managed and very imperfectly at best.
Not sure what we could tell the American people of a policy that is explicitly doing two opposite things at once –= setting up a new way to play Iranian, Saudi and Israel’s interests off of each other while also keeping an eye on Russia — all to defeat ISIS and come up with some sort of solution for Syria — though we have several other hollowed out states in the region. What could be said?
Cervantes
@? Martin:
True enough, but he’s the Commander-in-Chief. The buck stops where he is. If he chooses to put (more) people in harm’s way, can he justify that by saying that Congress did nothing to stop him?
Think of the letters Tom Cotton alone could write.
Brachiator
@Keith G:
This has been slowly happening for a while, I guess this is the final nail. I used to listen to a number of Grantland podcasts.
This is another worrying sign of trouble that new media has establishing itself. People complain about the “mainstream media,” but old media is dying, but nothing has yet taken its place. I was surprised to find that one of the Grantland contributors I listened to had won a Pulitzer when he worked at the Boston Globe. I think he has found a job at a traditional newspaper again, but how long will that last?
Amir Khalid
@NonyNony:
It’s been speculated, in these very threads as I recall, that the Jeb campaign should try laying off Jeb. It’s a risky move; but if they can pull it off, it just might work.
Elie
@Keith G:
But what would he say, Keith? There is no way to line up all the angles to demonstrate a nice clean policy with no contradictions. We are explicitly doing opposite things — sometimes with the same players! We are both opposing Saudi Arabia’s work in countering Isis even as we give them planes to bomb rebels in Yemen. We can’t for example, just oppose the Saudis or completely cave to their priorities as we have done in the past. How do you explain that to the American people? If you don’t want to do both at the same time, which do you choose and why. Yes — its a total mess, but once we had shia and sunni interests and “allies” on both sides, it was going to be what it is… We can’t really default on either but neither can we trust either — much less Putin.
catclub
@Brachiator: I think it is certainly a recognition that firing/ letting Bill Simmons quit/
was pretty stupid. They had no plan for after he left. I have enjoyed a lot of their long NBA articles. Usually not Simmons.
But he clearly had an eye for good writers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: if he were to do that, he would not justify it by saying Congress did nothing to stop him. He would justify it by saying that he thought it was the best of the available options in the current situation.
goblue72
@Amir Khalid: I am the last person to defend ?Jeb! but that article you linked to in the WSJ smells like a complete hit job (and a sexist one at that). The lede goes out of its way to describe her as “effectively an office administrator responsible for logistics”, which makes it sound like she was a glorified office manager. And then it later goes out of its way to quote that she made $12k per month, as if to shock readers at how “overpaid” Ms. Office Manager was.
When reality is that $144k per year salary is probably on the lower end for a COO. Even a modest sized nonprofit is probably paying in that ballpark (or more) for a COO.
Its not until the last graf you see that she worked in the White House and was previously a lobbyist. Quick google check shows she’s a lawyer and also has a graduate degree from the Naval War College. She’s former Asst Staff Director & General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, Special Assistant to the President, and then spent 10 years as a lobbyist with Honeywell, with a nuclear fuel company, and then with a private consultancy.
She effectively got thrown under the bus, because as well know, the COO of a political campaign whose candidate if flailing is the primary one responsible – as opposed to, I don’t know – the campaign’s political director.
Also too – dollars to donuts, if she wasn’t a woman, this article would be reading differently – or possibly she wouldn’t even have been fired.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
Of course, those two statements are not mutually contradictory!
Anyhow, referring to this current adventure in Syria, do you feel the President should (a) obtain Congressional approval of his action, and/or (2) explain his action to the American people?
PS: And should his acting in this instance be contingent on (1) and (2)?
Cervantes
@Elie:
If true, is that a warning sign? In general? In this instance?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: As a general rule, the answer to questions like that is yes. Given this Congress and its abandonment of any serious role on foreign policy, I do not blame the president for acting. If Congress wants to step back into the ring it can do so at any time. As far as informing the public as to what the US is trying to do, I think that it is a good idea.
Ruckus
@Keith G:
As several others have said there is only so much of the game one can give away before the game falls apart. It is easy to give broad terms to a world political problem when the problem is very one dimensional. Take WWII. How hard was it to say, “We want to defeat the Axis powers”? That pretty much sums up the whole ballgame, even without specifics or tactics. Now try to make a simple statement about the middle east. It can not be done with any level of realism. Conservatives just say bomb them into oblivion. It’s simple, as in a 4 yr old simple. But it’s wrong, it alienates all the participants, some of whom are sort of on our side. It’s not in our best interests at all to alienate all sides, and we do have to at least try to keep as much peace as possible so that we and most other countries can stay out of war. If you are in doubt, look what happened 12-14 yrs ago when as a country we decided to have a tantrum and attempt to obliterate another nation with an idiotic rational.
Adults are playing a very serious game. They may not get it right, probably won’t in fact for there is no real “right” here. What is disheartening is that there is a whole lot of wrong and little that can be done about it in any meaningful, positive way. But that’s how the world and humans work.
CaptMontoya
I think everyone is missing a few trees for the forest. Yup, huge PP deck. Fine. But look at some of the meta —
– Jeb has a huge org that is looking at data and how to get Republicans to win
– Not sure if I buy the 260 million person database, but that covers nearly everyone in the US who can vote.
– Couple slides showed that they’re actively looking at $/vote… e.g. how much and where they have to spend to get people to go w/ Bush.
– They are clearly going for the long haul and not THAT concerned with the early noise. This makes sense… last cycle it was “Everybody but Romney” where the last man standing was, of all people, Santorum. As long as Trump or Carson don’t legitimately break away, and nobody thinks they will, then the 2nd tier of Bush / Marco / Cruz will come up.
– Rubio is the guy to beat. What I really took away from the deck is that Bush is not thinking about anyone else in the field except Rubio, and then Clinton. Trump is a blowhard. No Carson, no Cruz (surprising), no Fiorina or Christie (a bit surprising).
If I’m on Team Rubio right now, I’m using this deck to my guys as Bush is running scared and clearly knows Rubio is in the pole position for the nomination. GOP Obama is actually potentially accurate — and Obama did win.
Amir Khalid
@goblue72:
Describing Jeb’s campaign COO as responsible merely for logistics did strike me as odd. A COO usually reports direct to the CEO. If you’re laying off your COO, it normally means your org is already dead.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: This.
Keith G
@Elie: I am not suggesting that he put down in writing specific activities to be used in regards to specific countries in the area. A strategic blueprint is a generalized set of principles that allow all participants to understand what is happening what will be happening and why these things are being fought for (if necessary) and achieved (hopefully).
Such a plan gives allies the information they need to affirm their cooperation. It gives enemies and potential enemies guidance on what is and is not acceptable behavior.
Perhaps most importantly it gives the bureaucracy at home their marching orders and gives the voters at home a method by which to evaluate the current office holders and future candidates.
I understand President Obama’s reluctant to create and give voice to a set of principles and proposed actions by which he will eventually be evaluated, but he owes it to the nation for the reasons I listed above to develope and enunciate strategic ideas for our actions in the Middle East and/or the Arab world.
The last thing that we need is to have this (and more importantly) future administrations approaching problems in this part of the world in a purely ad hoc basis. Thereby lays a path to certain hell.
Keith G
@Ruckus: regarding your World War II analogy, we were a nation fighting an existential war with the president operating under a declaration of war. That provided the strategic blueprint for what our actions were about. It’s ridiculous to assume I would advocate the debate of specific alliances and actions that were a part of the actual fighting of the war that had been declared.
Calouste
@goblue72: The journalist of the WSJ who wrote that article probably makes somewhere close to what Bush’s campaign COO is making, if not more. Sounds like she took a pay cut to work for the Bush campaign, although no doubt expecting a nice job somewhere in D.C. as a stepping stone to an even nicer lobbying gig if Bush won.
Seanly
@RSA:
And just reading the slides verbatim, not using them as a prompt.
Ugh, I hate 90% of the presentations I see. People put up unreadable small text, or do full & long sentences with each bullet (and have too many bullets). I was taught to use large font and no more than 5 bullets with no more than 6 words each. A lot of the ones I see also include equations which can be an issue all their own.
Also, that’s a dense slide to be one of 112. Was this an 8 hour meeting? Even at just a minute a slide, that’s 2 hours! Shoot me now.
Elie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Si — I also agree
J R in WV
In my career as a software developer, we used PPT presentation a lot. But we never looked at one of the slides we were talking about, and didn’t parrot the sentences or bullet points on a slide. Instead we talked about the point of any given slide – why it was being presented.
We also had a medium hard limit of 20 or so slides, which was flexible according to the audience and/or topic.
This is terrible, just an awful misuse of the tool, PowerPoint.
Peale
@Amir Khalid: Or you’re not planning on having a very organized organization!
piratedan
@Ruckus: especially so with some of the players involved… our economic ally in Saudi Arabia but who is our undeclared cultural enemy (at least in their funding of folks who appear to oppose any foreign interest in the region). We have a Theocratic state in Iran offering to go toe to toe with Muslim extremists, we have the Turks, who don’t want to support the Kurds, have their own extremists to deal with plus the Syrian immigrant problem which is causing them to have their own internal fighting over what to do about a whole gamut of issues plus the Russians playing footsy with not only Assad, but being bad faith actors trying to redefine themselves as a worldwide superpower again. Plus the lack of assistance from the other Arab nations taking in refuges and the whole undercurrent of Arab nationalism which is still in its infancy. Considering our media still hasn’t driven a stake thru the heart off the GOP Benghazi committee hearings and our GOP are flat out working to scuttle the existing Iran nuclear arms deal and have said that they would dismantle it and start up the bombers if they had their way, I can kind of understand why he hasn’t approached the media or congress about this? Because none of this meets the horse race narrative of the elections nor can you depend on the current Congress to meet this with any kind of rationality. If that wasn’t the case, why isn’t the media reporting about it? Those fuckers can’t even be bothered to tell Carson he’s clueless about the Debt ceiling and iCarly that she’s wrong about damn near everything,
Elie
@Keith G:
Oh I definitely agree about the risk — certainly with a future Republican administration.
I am not sure what he or the US people gain from hearing the confusing mess of conflicting alliances other than to blame his administration and give the Republicans the opportunity to smear Hillary (particularly) with the accusation that our foreign policy is a mess and they would make it simple. It certainly would not make us appear in a good position vis a vis our positioning with Putin who would continue to laugh. Most of all, totally outing our confused policy does not allow us to make it less confused — only further undermines any sense of trying to accomplish anything. Again, how would Obama describe what is happening and why?
I surely do wish this weren’t the situation, but informing the American people without being able to offer a fix is a recipe for political disaster without any real purpose. Obviously, the next President (hopefully a Democrat) will be inheriting a shit sandwich ..
Fair Economist
@Gimlet:
I guess Scalia never read the Ninth Amendment:
Can’t say I’m surprised.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chyron HR:
I bow deeply to you. That is just too perfect.
? Martin
@Cervantes:
For a while he can. One problem with our checks and balances system is that the Constitution doesn’t give the Executive a way to respond to inaction by the Legislature. He can respond to action by veto, but for things which Congress need to authorize, he can’t compel them to take a position on the issue.
If it’s a short term situation, he can just roll on it. But if it’s a long term foreign policy situation that will require the next President to support, then the politics of who the next President will be comes into play. You can only have a coherent policy if you have continuity in implementation. If that implementation is uncertain, then the policy is uncertain. So Obama needs to be careful about how to present this policy because just the presentation of the policy can affect its implementation by providing the opposing party a line of attack and the ability to sway the election. Had Congress weighed in (either way, mind you) then that complication is largely eliminated – either the policy will be blocked and nearly impossible to implement even with a new President, or the policy will be upheld and can be assumed to carry over to the next President regardless of who is elected by authority of Congress. But if the President stands alone (just as when USSC stands alone) then the topic is unavoidably political. Had Congress codified RvW, it would be less politically fraught. ACA became less political once USSC cleared it. Having two branches on the same page matters a lot.
That Obama’s policy increasingly relies on Iran as a key regional ally makes it basically impossible to go solo on because the US public has not shifted to a more neutral position on Iran mainly due to the GOPs constant warmongering. So not only is Obama dealing with a noncommittal Congress, he’s dealing with an opposing party that is writing their own foreign policy with the explicit intention of undermining Obama. It doesn’t matter what Obama says, it will be destroyed from within. His only option is to say as little as possible, to be sufficiently vague that the GOP needs to show their hand first to which he can respond.
I agree with Keith G – Gulf of Tonkin is a very important lesson and the public should be informed, but the reason for that lack of disclosure lies not with Obama but with a semi-treasonist GOP and an utterly incompetent Congress. Obama is threading an impossible needle, and one which he has almost no precedent to learn from. If the public demands information, that’s why we have a House of Representatives. Thats their job. They can put a resolution forward and demand the President respond to it, and if he defies them, they have the power to impeach or censure. That’s how this is supposed to work.
Ruckus
@Keith G:
What makes this any different?
I used the WWII reference because it was a relatively simple, single dimensional issue, not because it was a declared war. The current situation in the middle east is very multi dimensional. In many ways our friends are also our enemies and our enemies are also our friends. This is about states and groups that may have some loyalty to a state but are not speaking nor fighting for that state. It is about poverty and wealth, power and powerlessness. Except that many groups that would have been powerless in decades past no longer are. And ways that powerful countries controlled less powerful ones no longer work. We are no longer the sole powerful country. In modern terms, the political world is going global. We are powerful enough to have large influence but we are not as powerful as we were 70 yrs ago. We have to understand that we get to work as a powerful nation, not as the powerful nation.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
JEB? has 110 slides on what’s wrong with Marco Rubio but can’t get off one solid quip about him during the debate? Sounds about right.
SiubhanDuinne
@Keith G:
That’s too bad. I’m not much of a sports fan, but I would check in occasionally for a Charlie fix when the Esquire site wasn’t quite enough.
RandomMonster
See, now they’re wishing they had invited Boehner to the meeting.
jl
What I am thinking is that if Rubio gained a lot of cred points in being a Formidable Opponent at the last debate for destroying Jeb?, that is a pretty low bar. I think most of the GOP political game show contestants there could, and have in deed in the past, done as well or better.
HRC or Sanders would destroy the little schnook in debate.
Elie
Well this is gonna help the Republicans fix their disarray…
(sorry for the link to Politico)
Bobby Thomson
Slide 67. Check out Region 6.
Mike G
@Germy Shoemangler:
Windows 10 would be a suitable punishment for an asshole of Jeb’s magnitude.
Bobby Thomson
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: no, only 3 slides are about Rubio, and they’re pretty thin.
Hoodie
@Bobby Thomson: Looks like Mason drew the short straw, hope he likes to drive. The thing that gets me is how any young person could be excited enough about an entitled asshole like Jeb to live on shitty fast food for months schlepping across a territory like that.
jl
@Elie: One source of hope for Dems is that the GOP will not be able to limit the effects of the display of insanity necessary to impress their primary base to the campaigns and debates, but rather, it will spread and swallow more and more of the the whole political organization.
TPM blog gives two recent examples of RNC issuing threats to pressure NBC, so that part isn’t new, and I imagine that NBC will fold, or at least go through the motions of folding in order to go ahead with their debate.
But the GOP candidates, an assortment of goons grifers, nuts. and mediocre hacks, trying to stage some sort or revolt and taking things into their won hands is a hopeful prospect, and I wish them great success.
This Ain’t Their First Rodeo: The Two Other Times The RNC Threatened NBC
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/rnc-boycotting-nbc-history
And I see a proposal on TPM front page to use CNN’s state-of-the-art futuristic technology of CNN’s cheapjack low resolution crappy distorted hologram stunt to have Zombie Ronald hologram Reagan to moderate all future GOP primary debates. I think that is a great idea.
SRW1
Ok, so now we know that Rising Above is a Clinton mole!
He had a link to that PP yesterday and was desperately trying to direct attention to it.
I didn’t manage more than the first ten slides, at which point I decided to spare myself further tedium.
jl
And forgot where I read it, but looks like Rubio is following the Romney road for GOTV in going light on ground organization and infrastructure and relying on recruited volunteers to get out and ‘do something’ effective when time comes to get out the vote. Rubio is focusing more on ads and marketing and PR.
Now, you can say Sanders is doing the same thing with his grassroots political organization, but if you check the number of local campaign offices and paid staff in charge of organization, he is building that as fast as he can and getting close to HRC. No other GOPers are close, except Jeb? I think.
That is huge weakness in Rubio as a candidate, and one that neither HRC nor Sanders has, and one that might be overooked in favor of splashier campaign PR and theatrics.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ruckus:
I have been following this argument, but I would counter that in this case the overall goal is simple, obvious, and wise: Ensure the continued success of the only consistent ally we’ve had since Bush blew Iraq into flinders (the Kurds) against the most dangerous threat to our interests and civilians in the area (ISIS). Do so with minimal investment of American lives, among other things because ‘America’ = ‘Those guys who blew up Iraq’ to way too many people involved. Why does sending a small commando force now support that strategy? I don’t know, but I don’t think I would expect to. That is the kind of information the military would prefer to keep close to its chest because of tactical advantages.
Keith G
@? Martin:
That is not an argument that I heard here when Obama deservedly stepped around Congressional inaction by issuing executive orders.
There are certain things that need to be done for the good of our future and if Congress is AWOL, this and past presidents have found way to get some of it started on their own.
The GOP will impeach a president for getting a blow job, but never for being war-like without notice.
Keith G
Anyway as a coda, we will see.
It seems to me that the best way to handle the extremism and state instability that we are now witnessing is through multilateral cooperation and action. I think that we (the modern world) are going to need a grand thinker who can envision something as complex as a combination of the Marshall Plan and Containment Doctrine combined (but I hope a lot less war-like).
Several parts of the globe are going to shit. A decade or so ago I hoped that it would burn itself out on its own and “right thinkers” in each of the troubled areas would step to the fore and help establish order . Now it seems that inaction on our part (or worse yet, ill planned half measures) are not going to serve us well. As Europe is finding out, unaddressed or wrongly addressed , far off trouble can walk itself right to one’s door.
If Obama is working the behind-closed-doors secret sauce, and doing it well, we will find out soon enough.
It Obama is putting out brush fires and enveloped in ad hoc decision making, we will find that out too.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
To me what you’ve outlined is pretty normal, respect and support friends of our country, without giving out too many details that will most likely cause failure.
However the middle east is not a normal situation, even in world politics. It has many moving pieces and to my thinking, no easy answers, possibly no answers at all. As a country’s leader, how do you talk about it in any meaningful way without offending/pissing off a sizable contingent? I don’t think you do, especially with such a mess in your own country’s politics. Iraq and GWB is a case in point. He was pretty clear on what he was about and that worked out well, didn’t it? Didn’t cause any turmoil in the middle east did it? Now this isn’t the same as the current situation, at least from what viewpoint we have available, but I hear questions and have them myself, that is this the start of something far bigger and worse? I think that is what Keith G is referring to, how and who does this help and what are the limitations. But given the middle east in it’s entirety I’m thinking that any even rational public discussion of policy, is going to work out badly.
NotMax
@Frankensteinbeck
Don’t discount its utility as a deterrent to keep Turkey from bombing Kurds inside Syria.
(BTW, Special Ops forces have been deployed to 147 countries in 2015 so far. Now make that 148.)
Cervantes
@Ruckus:
You’re not suggesting that Bush was honest about his intentions in Iraq, are you?
Jinchi
To summarize the first 40 slides:
Discipline Matters: “It feels very much like a death spiral” (Jeb! 2016)
Sure Bush is running a distant 3rd in New Hampshire. (Jeb! 2016)
But he’s also running a distant 5th in Iowa. (Jeb! 2016)
Don’t believe the polls that show Trump crushing Bush by 20 points. Polls taken 4 months before an election are very volatile. (Jeb! 2016)
Instead, believe a poll that shows Bush defeating Clinton by 4 points in a hypothetical matchup 13 months from now. (Jeb! 2016)
I can’t imagine any Bush backer leaving this presentation pumped up and ready to go. Who picked his campaign staff?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You know reading this, it sounds like Jeb was the one who anointed Rubio as the Next Serious Candidate(tm). It’s not like anyone was taking Rubio seriously before the the last debate when Bush tried to attack Rubio. And calling someone “The GOPs Obama” is hardly a take down when one is talking about who can get elected president.