Tag Archives: Peggy Noonan

May 18, 2013 · 2:49 PM

Nate Silver Debunks Peggy Noonan’s Claim IRS Also Went After Individuals Opposing Obama

Mediaite

2012 electoral polling star, the New York Times’s Nate Silver, who was lauded for being right on all things 2012 election, is back crunching the numbers, this time on the IRS political targeting scandal, specifically firing back at WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan’s claim that the Obama IRS went after wealthy Republican individuals in addition to Tea Party groups in his FiveThirtyEight blog Friday.

Noonan had wrote, “The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration,” espousing the IRS scandal as the “worst Washington scandal since Watergate.” She went on to point out specific wealthy individuals in Idaho and Georgia that had never been audited until going against President Obama.

After conceding that some conservative Romney supporters were targeted, Silver explains those high income earners supporting President Obama were also targeted based on simple math. Silver displays a chart that estimates the amount of high-income earners that were audited in 2012 by way of the IRS’s Data Book. He estimates the share of the vote that went to Romney versus Obama in each income bracket based on exit polling.

His results seem to debunk Ms. Noonan’s argument that only wealthy conservative individuals supporting Mitt Romney yielded an IRS audit, with an estimated 380,000 Romney voters being audited compared to 480,00 Obama voters.

Silver makes the larger point that even without intentional political targeting, hundreds of thousands of conservative voted would have beens selected for audits as part of their normal process. He goes on to suggest Noonan cherry picked few examples in a pool of thousands:

The fact that Ms. Noonan has identified four conservatives from that group of thousands provides no evidence at all toward her hypothesis. Nor would it tell us very much if dozens or even hundreds of conservative activists disclosed that they had been audited. This is exactly what you would expect in a country where there are 1.5 million audits every year.

He concludes that a handful of “anecdotal” data points aren’t worth much in a country of over 300 million people.

h/t FiveThirtyEight

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January 14, 2013 · 12:20 AM

Paul Krugman Tells It Like It Is, Calls Debt Ceiling Negotiations ‘Hostage Taking’

krugman

I had hoped that  President Obama would considered economist, Paul Krugman for Secretary of the Treasury.  I’m certain that  Krugman’s signature is more legible than Jack Lew‘s (the POTUS’ pick for that position.)

Having said that, I must say after watching Peggy Noonan the video below and regular Sunday appearances on most of the cable and network  news shows, I’ve come to the conlusion that Peggy Noon is a right-wing ideologue that believes everything Fox News puts out there.

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This morning on “This Week” Paul Krugman refused to bow to the usual pundit-talk, telling fellow round table members that the GOP’s tactic on the debt ceiling is “hostage taking” and should not be allowed. Krugman defended the President’s position on the battle against complaints by columnist Peggy Noonan, who said that she thought Obama should be “sitting down and talking” to Republican Congressional leaders.

Ignoring the obvious retort – he HAS sat down with them and they won’t cooperate – Krugman told Noonan:

“This is hostage taking, this is walking into a room and saying, ‘I’ve got a bomb, give me what I want or I’ll blow up this room.’ This has never happened before and should not be allowed to happen.”

He went on to say that this is a much scarier proposition because, unlike with the so-called fiscal cliff, sequester and other GOP slash-and-burn strategies, what is at stake here is the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. and if that is damaged, we just can’t know what the result will be. Fellow panelist Al Hunt agreed with Krugman’s stance, saying that the GOP’s brinksmanship is “…not on the level, a complete fraud.”

Noonan continued to whine about Obama, though, saying that it was “unusual” that he can “never make a deal with those folks.” What Ms. Noonan is neglecting to take into account is that it is thosefolks who refuse to deal in good faith with this president, as if he hasn’t bent over backwards to try to deal with the ridiculous and selfish actions of GOP leaders. Noonan opined about the “herky-jerky, crisis cliff” way that things are happening in governance but either can’t or won’t face the facts onwhy that is happening.

An obviously annoyed Krugman replied, “This is not something you negotiate over…” Another panelist, Judy Woodruff, pointed out that the White House position is that Congress was the one that appropriated these funds – meaning the spending which the debt ceiling covers – and they should be the ones to “bite the bullet” and pay for them.

Of course, Ms. Woodruff is correct – the debt ceiling is not some kind of credit limit, it’s the way we authorize payment for debts the country has already accrued. And it has nothing to do with the “spending crisis” that Peggy Noonan is wringing her hands over. Krugman’s stance is that the GOP’s gamesmanship is “… a doomsday, this is really saying, ‘I will blow up world unless you give me what I want.’ And you don’t negotiate on that.” And he is 100% right about that. I hope that the White House stands firm on this and refuses to deal with the Republicans who would take this country’s economy hostage with no thought for anything but their own designs. That, IMO, is perilously close to treason.

See the video here…

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December 1, 2012 · 11:24 AM

Peggy Noonan: Why Can’t Obama Just Give Us What We Want?

Peggy Noonan has gotten worse over the last four years.

What she seems to be saying is Obama needs to stop with the games and give the GOP what they want.  Uh, Ms. Noonan, you know very well that’s not how politics is played.

Had the GOP won this year they would have been full of demands like they were in 2010.

Addicting Info

Peggy Noonan is one of the wise elders of the right wing and she’s mad at President Obama. Why? He’s so stand-offish! Via DailyKos (emphasis mine):

You watch and wonder: Why does it always have to be cliffs with this president? Why is it always a high-stakes battle? Why doesn’t he shrewdly re-enact Ronald Reagan, meeting, arguing and negotiating in good faith with Speaker Tip O’Neill, who respected very little of what the president stood for and yet, at the end of the day and with the country in mind, could shake hands and get it done? Why is there never a sense with Mr. Obama that he understands the other guys’ real position?

It’s not as if Mr. Boehner and the Republicans wouldn’t deal. They’ve been weakened and they know it. A year ago they hoped winning the Senate and the presidency would break the stasis. They won neither. Mr. Obama not only was re-elected, it wasn’t that close, it was a clean win. If the president was clear about anything throughout the campaign, it was that he wanted to raise taxes on those he calls the rich. So you might say that a majority of the American people just endorsed that move.

No one would know this better than Mr. Boehner, who has risen to where he is in part because he’s good at seeing the lay of the land and admitting what’s there.

So it’s Obama’s fault for not just giving the GOP whatever it wants? How does that work? Oh yeah, I forgot! When Republicans win elections, they have unlimited political power and all must obey their dictates. When a Democrat wins, they really should just “compromise” with the losing minority. And by “compromise” they mean “do everything the way we want or we’ll bring the country to a screeching halt.”

Keep in mind, Peggy just said that Obama campaigned on raising taxes on the rich and the public said, “yes!” So what are the Republicans balking at? Raising taxes on the rich.

But, hey!, let’s blame Obama for the failure in negotiations. Under no circumstances can we blame the the party that has filibustered more bills than any Congress in history and has stated, out loud, that their number one priority was to make Obama a one term president. This makes perfect sense. On Fox News.

Listen Peggy, elections have consequences. One of those consequences is that the losing side does not get to make demands like they won. You lost, Peggy. Badly. And unlike Bush’s 2004 Social Security bait and switch (which failed miserably), Obama is doing exactly what he campaigned on. You’ll take whatever you’re damn well given and like it!

Just as an aside: Notice that Peggy says Obama “wanted to raise taxes on those he calls the rich”as if people making over $250,000 are not rich? And this is not a tax raise on that first $250k anyway, it’s everything AFTER $250k. The median household income for 2012 was $50,054. If you’re making FIVE TIMES as much and still complaining you’re not rich?

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November 7, 2010 · 5:20 AM

Peggy Noonan: Sarah Palin A ‘Nincompoop’ For Reagan Reduction

Peggy Noonan finally says something I agree with…

Huffington Post

Conservative columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan doesn’t like people demeaning the Gipper’s legacy, not even Sarah Palin, and not even if she’s only talking about the former president’s Hollywood career.

She writes in her latest column of a recent incident in which Sarah Palin attempted to explain away a Karl Rove criticism over her “reality show” by drawing parallels to former president Ronald Reagan’s silver screen career, including his roles in movies such as “Bedtimes for Bonzo, bozo or something”:

Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin. Reagan people quietly flipped their lids, but I’ll voice their consternation to make a larger point. Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president.

“The point is not ‘He was a great man and you are a nincompoop,’ though that is true,” Noonan continues. “The point is that Reagan’s career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him. He wasn’t in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn’t in search of fame; he’d already lived a life, he was already well known, he’d accomplished things in the world.”

Though Noonan’s piece is not simply a jab at Palin, but rather a larger message about the real political significance of one’s actions and accomplishments, as well as the necessity to “earn your way into politics,” it’s also worth noting that Noonan has never shied away from writing confrontational columns about the former Alaska Governor.

From Palin’s coming out party until her decision to step down as Governor of the Frontier State, Noonan has made it clear that she doesn’t jive with the “mama grizzly” brand of politics.

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