Showing posts with label Analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Analysis. Show all posts

Thursday, March 14, 2013

@RuthMarcus, Villagers and the evolution of media bull@#$%...

My distaste for Ruth Marcus goes back a while. So I guess I shouldn't have been completely surprised when yet again decided to act as the Chief Villager for a Newspaper run by nothing but Villagers when she wrote her latest (cough-cough) column.

After listing through some of the nasty comments House GOPers were tweeting as the President was speaking to them about reaching a Budget Deal, she quoted the President calmly assessing the situation with George Stephanopoulos:

Obama: “You know — I think whatever I’m for, it’s very hard for a Republican to also be for. I think they always have to be a little bit — you know, maintain some distance.”

One would think after all the Filibustering and insults (some of them actually racist) that have been hurled at this President from the start of his administration, a columnist might react with shock and surprise that the sitting President managed to keep his cool.

Instead, Ruth Marcus offered this:

The president has made this point before, and maybe he’s right. Yet this analysis leaves him in a distinctly unpresidential posture — not leaning in, but holding back.

Excuse me, but...I did not think it was anatomically possible for one's head to get that far up one's...--never mind.

I don't know how to tell Journalists this, because...I really thought they would have covered it in Journalism school, but...it's not your job to balance the argument.

I know you think that's your job. But let's be clear about what your job really is.

Your job is to present both sides of a story...

Your job is not necessarily to lend them equal weight, particularly when they don't deserve it.

Again, you don't elevate both sides into equality.  We don't need you to do that.  In fact, it's a really bad idea if you do do that.

If you're a columnist, as Ruth Marcus is, this is even more tricky.  Why?  Because, a columnist offers nothing but opinion.  They don't do any actual reporting.  They don't go digging around for facts anymore...they've been excused from that particular activity.  In fact, they are paid a substantial salary to say only what they think.  Even if what they think has no basis in reality, as Ruth Marcus clearly demonstrated today.

One would think that some measure of journalistic integrity would matter in a circumstance like this, but again...you'd be wrong.  The Washington Post is more than capable of publishing utter complete bull@#$% so long as it fills column inches.  After all they employ Jennifer Rubin, Marc Thiessen, Robert Samuelson, Richard Cohen...and Ruth Marcus.

(Hey, at least Ezra Klein -- and I know me some Liberals who hate him for some reason -- no idea why -- does actual work to preparing his pieces.)

One would think it would matter to the folks at the Washington Post that their own readers can smell this line of crap a mile off, but we don't matter of the folks at the Washington Post.  Ruth Marcus has proved...once again...that the Villagers are talking only to other Villagers.

Which could explain why most newspapers are in trouble.

We need Newspapers and Magazines and Media in general, advocating for their audience, and not entertaining their damn selves.

For example...if someone...say like the President...presents something that is backed in fact, and his opposition presents something that is cloaked in bull@#$%...we kinda need Media to call out the bull@#$%.

But they're not.

They used to.  But they're not.

I mean it happens...sometimes, but it sure as hell didn't happen today with Ruth Marcus.

Let me quote something a columnist said not too long ago:

Excuse me, but can these people not count to 60? Have they somehow failed to notice that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have not exactly been playing nice? That while the left laments Obama's minor deviations from party orthodoxy, the right has been portraying him, with some success, as an out-of-control socialist?

That was from August 10, 2010. My goodness who wrote such a prescient piece?

C'mon, this is easy. This was Ruth Marcus...in a piece backing Robert Gibbs when he called out the Professional Left.

So what happened?

Apparently, Ruth Marcus...still employed by the Washington Post...has lost the ability...to count.

Ruth Marcus got lazy.  She and the paper needed column inches to fill, and bull@#$% magically transpired.

When you say the President isn't showing leadership after showing in just a few short paragraphs that there's no one who's willing to be lead, we do wonder why the President is to blame, and not the Congress.  And if you can't make that elementary of a call, it calls into question your ability to observe things...or any thing, for that matter.

I mean, I don't meant to tell Ruth Marcus in particular how to do her job, but I figured someone ought to.

Friday, March 1, 2013

"These aren't the cuts you're looking for..." (VIDEO)

Here is the President's brief Press Conference on the Sequester:



That's right. He went with Jedi Mind Mend.

I was entertained no end. The rest of the Geek world was not, preferring instead to chastise my President for getting his franchises confused. (Yeah, like that's never happened to them.)

Leave it to the Geek Godather, Leonard freakin' Nimoy to put it all in perspective:



Yeah, baby, YEAH.

Also. It seems that the White House has chosen to OWN it (OWN IT, I say!!):

Thursday, February 21, 2013

GOP, consider this your final warning...

Coming off John McCain's rather rambunctious Town Hall, we now have this:

Immigration reform’s chances in the House are looking bleaker after one of the top Republicans tasked with shepherding a bill to passage ruled out a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), chair of the Judiciary Committee that will mark up any House legislation on the issue, told NPR this week that he will not support a bill that eventually grants citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in America.

“People have a pathway to citizenship right now: It’s to abide by the immigration laws, and if they have a family relationship, if they have a job skill that allows them to do that, they can obtain citizenship,” Goodlatte said. “But simply someone who broke the law, came here, [to] say, ‘I’ll give you citizenship now,’ that I don’t think is going to happen.”

Okay, for one thing...before you panic too much over this: don't. This doucebag Bob Goodlatte is not the only person in charge of Immigration reform. He's just in charge of it in the House. There is this thing called the Senate, which will have a pathway to Citizenship, and there will be a Conference Committee, so my guess is it gets stuck back in there somehow.

But in the end, it goes back to what I said before.

Republicans, this is your final warning.

This is your last chance...by which I mean, your last chance to survive as a party.

Believe it or not, as Democrats, the purely craven political calculation here (i.e., if we were thinking like you) is to have this bill fail, and have your fingerprints all over it.

That's the best case scenario for us. You kill Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and leave an entire emerging (and young) majority of Latinos in Democratic Hands for generations to come, and you Republicans become the 21 Century Version of the Whig Party.

And it's this close to happening.

Fortunately, we Democrats give a @#$% about Governing...so we might ultimately save you from yourselves.

But it's time for Latinos to flex their muscles yet again. It's time for you to participate in the other, less fun side of electoral politics...the flooding of phone calls to various Congressional Offices.

I've heard it from the President, I've heard it from Latino Groups: a pathway to Citizenship is a must.

Well, time to let 'em know it's a dealbreaker...LOUDLY.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Something to keep an eye on...



TPM has more on the story, but if you're a Republican, you are sweating bullets right now.

Think about it.  If you are a GOP Pol, you know your future, in fact the entire future of the party comes down to how well you behave on Immigration reform.  With more and more Latinos coming of age, and more and more of your own base dying off, the trend appears that starting with the 2016 Presidential Election, the old Republican Party will not see power for a generation.

Yeah, that bad.

The solution is simple, come up with a massive Immigration Reform plan.  Behave well.  Show the Latino/Hispanic population of this country that you don't hate them.  And for a majority of the GOP Caucus in the House and Senate, that's absolutely true.  They don't hate Latinos/Hispanics.

Problem is, the base of the Party does.  They genuinely hate Latinos and Hispanics, and want to see the lot of them,  legal or no, bounced from the country.  Heck, they probably want to see speaking Spanish turned into some kind of felony.

This Town Hall was on a border state, which has been reliably Republican.  It has a massively unpopular (and massively unconstitutional) Immigration Bill that's unpopular everywhere...except among the people of that Town Hall.

The people of Arizona, moreso the Republicans of Arizona know that they're staring into the eyes of death (of their party).  They know that young Latinos will not rest until the white, racist, anti-Immigrant GOP is burned to the ground, and yet this is how they react??

I want to see how McCain reacts when he gets back to town, but in my mind, knowing how ultimately spineless McCain is, the odds of us getting comprehensive Immigration reform this year or any time before 2014 just took a hit.

Bad news for our friends and neighbors, but very good news if you're a Democrat.  The Republicans are going to destroy themselves and hand you power as they do it.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Why are Gun Owners trying to do to me what they only THINK the Government is doing to them?



Listening to Randi Rhodes tell the story of her former Father-in-Law having the temerity, the presumption to bring a loaded firearm into her home really really got me thinking. How much of this Gun Debate is really about people with Guns soooo used to getting their way in all things?

I mean, look at the NRA. Its whole history has been built on the premise that...well...you don’t mess with them...that and keeping guns out of the hands of certain people.

Yeah, a lot of this is tied into race. If young white people were dying at the same clip young black people were dying because of gun violence, the NRA would be the most toxic Lobby in America.

Well, unfortunately it happened to a bunch of young white children in Newton,and America finally had enough. Thing of it is, the African-American community has been facing their own Newtons every day for years now. It was just a nice reminder that Black Lives never count for as much as White ones.

Now that America has finally had enough, it looks like we’re going to get at least Universal Background checks, and maybe even a closing of the Gun Show Loophole. You do those two things, and all of the sudden an Assault Weapons Ban becomes a nice thing to have, but not necessary for the protection of the nation. (That being said, I’d still like to have see the Assault Weapons Ban passed).

What has the NRA’s reaction to this otherwise mild legislative rebuke? Well, they’re shaking their fist and trying to threaten and bully us. They’re saying an Assault Weapons Ban won’t pass. Conveniently leaving out the part where it may not be necessary. Then again, given their history of selectively quoting the Second Amendment, can we be surprised?



But there it is again. When in doubt, threaten. When in doubt, demand. No negotiation. No discussion, which is what you’d expect in a Democracy. For them, it’s always my way or the Highway.



I’m glad this two-bit Terrorist, James Yeager is so concerned about my rights that he’s willing to kill people for it.. If it were up to me, we would round up all the guns. But you know what? We can’t. Why? I’ve read the Constitution. Why hasn't James Yeager?  This supposedly a document he loves. This is supposedly the simplest of the amendments...he somehow keeps misquoting:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

By the way, the State of Tennessee, where he resides, has gone that inch further, and suspended his license to carry a firearm. Now what’s he going to do?

I shudder to ask, which brings me to the thing that has bothered me all this time.

What are my rights as a non-gun owner?

I feel that I have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...and to not have those things taken away from me by a nut with a gun.  And I have the right to these things with or without a gun.

Gun advocates, apparently disagree.

It’s a question that Randi has posed a number of times on her show, but listening to Yeager, and every other gun nut out there, you hear a couple of common refrains. They need their guns to fight off the Government, to "preserve Liberty" as they call it.

Hmmm.  Let's think about it.  Why would they feel the need to fight the Government? Well, probably to prevent them doing stuff they don’t much like.

Like say, being forced to do something, whether they wanted to or not?

Like say...buying a gun??

Why are the Gun Nuts of the world definitely trying to do to me what they only imagine the Government doing to them???

I don’t want a gun. I don’t want a gun anywhere near me. I don’t want Guns anywhere near where I live. That’s a free market choice I’ve made for myself.

But in Gun Nut land, that's the only choice I have.  It's the only choice people like Alex Jones and James Yeager want me to have.

That is the only solutions to any gun problems really being offered by the NRA and their affiliated Gun Nuts. Well, they have their guns. They need to keep their guns, and if you really want to feel safe like we do, you need to buy a gun like we did.

And there you have it.

My fellow citizens trying to dictate to me how I should live. There are my fellow citizens daring to impose their values on me whether I want them or not. This is the very thing that Gun Nuts say they’re afraid of the Government doing, yet here they are doing it to me instead.

Seriously, what’s the difference between the Gun Nuts and their Fascist state of their dreams (or is it nightmares, I get ‘em confused)??

Get it through your head, I DON’T WANT A GUN!!! And you have no right to demand that I buy one.

Yet here you are, demanding just that.

You’re willing to fight for (and apparently kill) to preserve your freedom. Mine you could give a @#$% about.

You don’t care about the Government. You don’t care about the Constitution. You sure as hell don’t care about your fellow citizens. All you do care about is holding on to the illusion of safety you get from having a gun, and damn everyone who gets in your way.

Only now you want me to get your Cancer. In fact, you insist on it. Your paranoia is more important than my safety, our liberty, or our collective sense of peace.

Well, guess what??  You’re going to lose this time, because you and your Lobby have finally gone too far.

You know what’s the worse part of this? Everything you’ve suggested, everything you say you want is the perfect solution for the true constituency of the NRA, the gun manufacturers.

No matter what the problem, what the cause, the solution for the NRA is always the production, distribution and sale of more guns. How else do we view their “idea” about Armed Guards in public schools? Never mind that an armed guard didn’t stop shootings in Colorado.

This is a cheap con, perpetrated by people who stand to make a lot of money off the sale of a lot of guns, and their willing sheep willing to be bought and sold by their fear, and willing to push us around in the process.

I’m glad America has finally decided to take on the NRA. It’s overdue.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

If the Romney camp's so secure in their "victory", why go to the race card? (VIDEO)



Pretty much every Black person in America, upon hearing this, will draw the same conclusion I just did. (Also, every white racist is going to hear the same dog whistle as well...only they'll applaud with approval.)

We know the code, guys.

We've been listening to you for 300 years. Our very survival has depended on it.

TPM: "Thank Goodness Somebody Is Finally Getting Tough On Big Bird" (VIDEO)

The first Obama Ad after the debate... (VIDEO)



Not the greatest, not the worst...but here's your problem if you're Mitt Romney: you lied so much last night, there's a lot more to come.

Mitt Romney lied to America's face last night. Liberals fail to notice.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand about being a Liberal myself, is that it puts me in the company of other Liberals.

Mainly, it puts me in the company of the kind of chicken@#$% Liberals, who think they know it all...yet somehow magically manage to keep losing us elections.

Yet somehow, those seem to be the only kind of Liberals that are allowed to speak on matters, or allowed to be pundits on Television.

Basically, the headline I've gotten from Liberals and Obama Supporters is "Yeah, Romney lied to our collective faces, but he did it so well.  Therefore, I gotta give him debate."

Seriously?

I may be the only Liberal in America who thinks Barack Obama won last night (okay, that's not fair...one of the few).

Why?

Well, first off I didn’t watch the Debate on CNN, or MSNBC...and Lord knows I didn’t watch it on Fox. I watched it on C-SPAN, a technique I picked up from beloved radio goddess, Randi Rhodes.

You watch C-SPAN only one thing happens, you see the event.  You don't get spin, telling you what to think about what you just saw.  You don't get pre-spin, telling you what to think about what haven't seen yet.  You just get the event.

To me Debate Strategy is all about missions. The Candidates come in with a mission, something they want the tape to show the next day. Here's what the Press won't tell you, because they want you watching the debates.  Candidates always succeed at accomplishing their mission.  Almost always.  Very rarely do they fail.

The only question is whose mission is the better campaign strategy over the long haul.

Romney’s mission was to go on the attack, be more aggressive and get in the face of the President. Well, mission accomplished. Then again, he had to do that.  Everyone knew he was going to do that.

The President’s mission was to look...well...Presidential. Mission accomplished as well.

But the President had a second mission as well. He wanted to get Mitt Romney on tape shape-shifting. He wanted him flip-flopping one of his “severely conservative” positions. I think the President thought it was going to take all night to get him to do that.

Instead it happened in the first answer of the night, when Mitt Romney ditched his Tax Plan, right there on Live Television.

The Pundits saw a President who “didn’t want to be there” last night. I saw a President, with his jaw-dropping after Mitt gave his first answer, and all but looking at the camera and saying: “Uhhh, did you get that? Is that on tape? Are we good?”

Josh Marshall over at TPM put it another way:

Romney’s focus though came at the cost of a few key things. 
He basically tossed aside his own tax plan or said he would if his numbers didn’t add up. But then he insisted that he could find enough loopholes to close to afford a $5 trillion tax cut for upper income earners. These are more numbers on the table. That’s really what most of the debate was about — budget numbers. Romney insisted with a straight face that up was down.

The Obama team isn’t going to try to get into a fight about whether their guy was on his game. There’s no point. (This is what I meant a couple days ago when I said Obama is not a great debater. Not a great night. But I’ve never seen him great at debating.) What I fully expect, what they’ll do if they’re smart is go full court press on Romney’s numbers and press for details about his budget plan.

The numbers simply don’t add up. Over a few news cycles that can build up really fast. He says he’ll push massive upper income tax cuts and those have to come at the cost of much higher deficits or big tax hikes for middle income people. His campaign agenda is based on a massive deception.

That’s the vulnerability Romney brings out of this debate. And it may be bigger than people realize.

My fellow Liberals can twist themselves into all the knots they want. Romney @#$%ed up tonight, severely.

He has promised across the board Tax Cuts of 20%. These will cost us $5 Trillion dollars. He can deny it all he wants, but those are just facts.

He’s promised to reduce the deficit with spending cuts, spending cuts he won’t specify.

And he went back on ALL of that last night, onstage. He said his tax cuts won’t hurt the deficit, and later promised he won’t enact them if they do. He said he won’t touch Defense Spending, as well as calling any notion of a $2 Trillion defense spending hike a lie. He also said he won’t touch Education spending, saying that the states should do more...and promising that the Federal Government will help if needed.

He was saying these things sometimes within the same answer.

Oh, and he out and out lied about his Health Care Plan covering pre-exisiting conditions.  His own surrogate, the legendary Eric Fehrnstrom said Governor Romney's plan wouldn't do that.

As my Father, who was watching the same C-SPAN feed I was, texted me: if we keep having debates, Romney won’t be left with anything to cut.

The President did not lose last night. It’s hard to lose a debate when the other guy is lying to America’s face, and doing so...so blatantly that its hard to believe.

The only way the President loses this debate is if we don’t see ads in the next 48 hours showing Mitt Romney from the debate contradicting the Mitt Romney from the campaign trail. The only way the President loses this debate is if he doesn’t remind America, with both Ads and on the stump just how badly Mitt Romney lied to their face.

Just watch, because it's coming.

The only way the President loses this election is if Liberals keep whining, and talk themselves out of a victory.  Unfortunately, that can still happen.

UPDATE: 10:29am Pacific Time: Guess what? Obama has his first ad out.  That only took what? Twelve hours?

Friday, September 14, 2012

What the Federal Reserve did yesterday, in plain english...and why it's good news.

This is Ezra Klein's complete article: Here’s why everyone is so excited about what the Fed did yesterday.

I was going to use a snippet, but when Ezra's on his game, he's on his game, and there's nowhere good to cut, so to explain it all...you've got to read it all:

I want to explain why everyone is so excited about what the Federal Reserve did yesterday. But I want to do it without using the words “quantitative easing,” because those words are almost designed to get you to give up and stop paying attention.

Imagine you got a choice of superpowers. You could be invisible, you could fly, you could be really strong, or you could create unlimited amounts of money. You might well choose the money one. The other ones are cool for a bit, but they’re not all that versatile, and they may well get you into trouble.

The best way to think about the Federal Reserve is that it basically has a superpower. It can create as much money as it wants. Real, American money.

And the Fed doesn’t need anybody’s permission. It’s not like when the president says he wants to do something, like the American Jobs Act, and you have to ask, “What does Congress think?” Or when John Boehner wants to pass something, and you have to ask, “Well, what does Harry Reid think?” Once the Board of Governors decides to move forward, they don’t need 60 votes in the Senate — they just do it. And that makes them incredibly powerful.

But, as Spider Man would say, with great power comes great responsibility. And so the Fed is very cautious in using its powers.

By law, it needs to try to keep unemployment and inflation low. Over the past two years or so, inflation has stayed low, and unemployment has been very, very high. But the Fed has not been doing all that much about it. It’s been hoping the situation would turn around of its own accord, or that Congress and the president would stop bickering and unleash more stimulus — anything so that the Fed didn’t have to further unleash its powers.

But it didn’t happen. And so, on Thursday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed had finally decided to do something about unemployment. Something big. Something that might actually work.

He said it was going to buy hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of government and housing bonds for as long as it takes to get the recovery back on a solid footing, and then keep buying them for as long as it takes to be absolutely certain the recovery will stay on a solid footing.

The way the Fed’s plan works — if it works — is that buying all these bonds will drive down long-term interest rates, which will give businesses and investors more incentive to spend now as opposed to sitting on their money waiting for later. It will make mortgages even cheaper, which should accelerate the housing market’s recovery.

But the other part of the plan, and this part is really important, is that Bernanke just sent a signal to businesses and investors and the market and everyone else that the Fed is going to use its powers in a big, unusual way to get the economy moving. That’s a hugely important statement to make.

Imagine a business trying to decide whether it should hire more workers. The basic question it needs to answer is whether people will be buying a lot more stuff next year than they’re buying this year. If business owners don’t see any good reason to think the economy will improve, then the answer is probably, “No, people aren’t going to be buying more stuff next year,” so there’s no need to hire more workers.

But if they think the recovery is going to come, if they think people will be buying more stuff, then they need the workers. They don’t want to be caught without enough product — then their competitors would get those sales.

The Fed is trying to influence that decision. Fed officials are saying: “We’re going to use all our power to make sure there are people out there buying your stuff. So go hire. Do it now. We’re behind you.”

Or you can think of it this way. The Federal Reserve is kind of like the economy’s tough, older brother. If the economy is having problems with some kids at school, and the tough, older brother seems distant, or uninterested, then the economy’s in trouble.

But if the tough, older brother makes it clear that he’ll be there to back up the economy, come what may, and even says that he’s going to go have a talk with some of these kids tomorrow, then the economy is going to be a lot more confident walking to school from now on. And right now, what the economy needs, more than anything, is confidence.

Now, as some of us learned when we were young, tough, older brothers aren’t invincible. And few economists believe that the Fed can solve our ongoing economic problems on its own. But it can do more to help then it’s doing now, and with the housing market beginning to come back and Europe appearing to stabilize, there’s a mounting argument that the conditions for a recovery are beginning to look pretty good. If there’s a policy dark spot here, it’s that Congress is still a mess, and there’s no clarity as to how they’ll bridge the fiscal cliff, or even if they’ll bridge the fiscal cliff. And then, of course, there’s the fundamental fact of the economy right now, which is that consumers are still digging out of debt and businesses remain skittish. Sometimes, even a big older brother isn’t enough to make you feel better.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Can someone explain Haqqani network logic to me?

Some stuff in this world just blows my mind.

Okay, so let me get this straight:

"Hey, we're holding one of your Soldiers hostage, but if you designate us as Terrorists, then we'll kill him"??

And that's supposed to make you somehow...what?  Less Terroristy?

Seriously??

Senior members of the Haqqani network said that the United States' designation of the militant group as terrorists could endanger the life of an American soldier thought to be in their custody and jeopardize peace talks.

"The Obama administration and U.S. military commanders know that their soldier Bowe Bergdahl is in our possession," a Haqqani commander told NBC News in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location on Friday. "He is in our custody, but his government failed to make any sincere effort for his release, and now this new development could add to his woes."

The Haqqanis, a Pashtun tribe with strongholds in southeastern Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan, have been blamed for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and other high-profile assaults in Afghanistan. The group is also believed to be holding U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured in 2009 in Afghanistan’s Paktika province, bordering Pakistan’s South Waziristan.

Stronger Together: Gay Marriage - 2012 Democratic National Convention Video

American Heroes: Auto Workers - 2012 Democratic National Convention Video

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Watch in amazement as @ABC News commits Journalistic malpractice right before your very eyes (VIDEO)



This is one of those stories that seems designed and destined to produce mixed feelings in me.  In the end, though, you'll see my feelings are not that mixed.

On the one hand, it's freakin' Ashley Judd.  Big time, actual Movie Star, talking about how she schleps it, like the rest of us Volunteers, hoofing it from door to door on behalf the President in freaking Tennessee!  For that alone, she deserves major, big-time kudos.

But she's the only one who deserves kudos.  ABC News, on the other hand...

Honest to God, WTF??  There is a speech is being made by Former Governor Ted Strickland, and he's absolutely KILLING IT.  This is what would be called, you know...actual news...something usually covered by something called a News Organization, or in the case of ABC News, an Organization with "News" in its name.  But no, ABC News elects to skip actual news, and talk to the Movie Star.

Epic...freakin'...fail.

What amuses me so much, is that Journalists seem to get really, really peeved when they see how much (at times) the public truly hates them.  What they never seem to understand is that this is the stuff that makes us hate them.