CNBC is getting hammered because it’s not Fox News

[cigaretteman]

Darned debate moderators. All night long, they sought to needle the Republican candidates, in some cases even insulting them! Republican hopeful and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie nailed it when he said, “They want us to kill each other.”

Precisely. And there’s no better example of the moderators looking to pit one Republican against another Republican than this one: “Mr. Trump, it has not escaped anybody’s notice that you say that the Mexican government, the Mexican government is sending criminals — rapists, drug dealers, across the border. Gov. Bush has called those remarks, quote, ‘extraordinarily ugly,’ I’d like you — you’re right next to him — tell us — talk to him directly and say how you respond to that…Why not use this…debate to share your proof with the American people?”

That example of malicious, divisive debate moderation comes from the Aug. 6 clash at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, which was hosted by Fox News and was greeted as a universal success. It’s not from last night’s Republican debate in Boulder, Colo., which was hosted by CNBC to nearly unanimous negative reviews. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, called it an “encyclopedic example of liberal media bias” and ripped the CNBC moderators — John Harwood, Becky Quick and Carl Quintanilla — for allegedly believing that a “relentless series of personal attacks on the candidates would somehow drive their ratings and help Hillary Clinton.”

Consumers of democracy didn’t even need to wait until the debate concluded to get their fill of media criticism. The Republican candidates took care of that in real time. Sen. Ted Cruz will staked his claim to a spot in future debate highlight reels when he attacked CNBC moderators for their questions: “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” said the outspoken candidate. “This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions — ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?'” The Texas senator went on to plead for consideration of the “substantive issues the people care about.”

If memory serves, Cruz cited no similar concerns at the Fox News debate, even though he himself was asked, “How can you win in 2016 when you’re such a divisive figure?” And even though Fox News took a question from a Facebook user asking, “I want to know if any of them have received a word from God on what they should do and take care of first.” And even though Fox News, in its JV debate, asked an entire series of questions on “electability,” including one for Carly Fiorina if she was justified in comparing herself to Margaret Thatcher. So there’s some precedent — a bad one — for asking, “Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?”

As for Cruz’s complaint about Carson and “math,” have a look at the question posed by Quick:

You have a flat tax plan of 10 percent flat taxes, and — I’ve looked at it — and this is something that is very appealing to a lot of voters, but I’ve had a really tough time trying to make the math work on this. If you were to took a 10 percent tax, with the numbers right now in total personal income, you’re gonna come in with bring in $1.5 trillion. That is less than half of what we bring in right now. And by the way, it’s gonna leave us in a $2 trillion hole.
So what analysis got you to the point where you think this will work?

Nasty? Prejudicial? Shameful? Now compare it to a question posed by Fox News host Megyn Kelly to Ohio Gov. John Kasich in Cleveland:

Gov. Kasich, You chose to expand Medicaid in your state, unlike several other governors on this stage tonight, and it is already over budget by some estimates costing taxpayers an additional $1.4 billion in just the first 18 months. You defended your Medicaid expansion by invoking God, saying to skeptics that when they arrive in heaven, Saint Peter isn’t going to ask them how small they’ve kept government, but what they have done for the poor. Why should Republican voters, who generally want to shrink government, believe that you won’t use your Saint Peter rationale to expand every government program?

The point is they’re both good questions, though one gets attacked as a reflection of bias; the other doesn’t.

Cruz had another critique of the CNBC performance. “The questions that are being asked shouldn’t be trying to get people to tear into each other,” he said in finishing off his anti-media riff and presaging Christie’s complaint — quoted above — about the same thing. Turns out there’s some precedent for this effort to get people to tear into each other.

*”Sen. Rubio, when Jeb Bush announced his candidacy for presidency, he said this: ‘There’s no passing off responsibility when you’re a governor, no blending into the legislative crowd.’ Could you please address Governor Bush across the stage here, and explain to him why you, someone who has never held executive office, are better prepared to be president than he is, a man who you say did a great job running your state of Florida for eight years.” — Fox News’s Chris Wallace to Sen. Marco Rubio, Aug. 6.

*”Gov. Kasich, I know you don’t like to talk about Donald Trump. But I do want to ask you about the merit of what he just said. When you say that the American government is stupid, that the Mexican government is sending criminals, that we’re being bamboozled, is that an adequate response to the question of illegal immigration?” — Fox News’s Chris Wallace to Gov. Kasich, Aug. 6.

*”Gov. Christie, you’ve said that Sen. [Rand] Paul’s opposition to the NSA’s collection of phone records has made the United States weaker and more vulnerable, even going so far as to say that he should be called before Congress to answer for it if we should be hit by another terrorist attack. Do you really believe you can assign blame to Sen. Paul just for opposing he bulk collection of people’s phone records in the event of a terrorist attack?” — Fox News’s Megyn Kelly to Gov. Christie, Aug. 6.

*”Sen. Cruz, your colleague, Sen. Paul, right there next to you, said a few months ago he agrees with you on a number of issues, but he says you do nothing to grow the party. He says you feed red meat to the base, but you don’t reach out to minorities. You have a toxic relationship with GOP leaders in Congress. You even called the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell a liar recently. How can you win in 2016 when you’re such a divisive figure?”–Fox News’s Chris Wallace to Sen. Cruz, Aug. 6.

Fox News should be applauded for igniting rhetorical scraps among the Republican hopefuls; that was among the elements that made its Cleveland tilt the highlight of the political season thus far. The argument between Christie and Paul over the NSA’s programs, for instance, eloquently captured two sides of a killer national issue — and it even impressed CNN’s Jake Tapper, who moderated the subsequent Republican debate. Consistent with Fox News values, the debate was also brilliantly produced and its moderators never lost command of the material or the candidates. On that front, CNBC did indeed fall short. It didn’t appear ready for the country.

Even so, the frothing and overreaching knocks against the business-news channel speak to a reality of cable-news programming, one that New York Times columnist Frank Bruni ably captured back in August: “On Thursday night in Cleveland, the Fox News moderators did what only Fox News moderators could have done, because the representatives of any other network would have been accused of pro-Democratic partisanship.” Which is precisely what CNBC is now being accused of.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...cause-its-not-fox-news/?tid=pm_opinions_pop_b

 

[cigaretteman]

Republicans are divided about many things, but one thing they all agree on is that the news media are out to get them, and when they fail, it isn’t their own fault, it’s because of the dastardly liberal media. So it was that the biggest applause in last night’s debate came when Ted Cruz unloaded all the righteous indignation he could muster on the moderators of the debate.

“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” he thundered. “How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?” He added that it was the result of liberal bias, noting: “The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every fawning question from the media was, ‘Which of you is more handsome and why?'”

He wasn’t alone. “I know the Democrats have the ultimate SuperPac. It’s called the mainstream media,” said Marco Rubio. Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie added their own media critiques.

And they’re half right. There were plenty of problems with many of the questions the candidates got asked. But it has nothing to do with liberal bias.

This is an old story. Republicans began complaining about media bias back in the 1970s, and you can count on every losing presidential candidate to begin whining about it within a couple of weeks of their defeat. The idea that the media are biased against Republicans has been woven deeply into conservative ideology, to the point where they’ll trot out the assertion on every issue, whether there’s any evidence to support it or not.

Let’s take, for example, Cruz’s assertion that the Democrats got softball questions in their first debate. That wasn’t how I remembered it, so I went back and read the transcript. Here are some of those softballs. To Hillary Clinton: “Plenty of politicians evolve on issues, but even some Democrats believe you change your positions based on political expediency…Will you say anything to get elected?” And the follow-up: “Do you change your political identity based on who you’re talking to?”

To Bernie Sanders: “You call yourself a democratic socialist. How can any kind of socialist win a general election in the United States?” To Martin O’Malley: “Why should Americans trust you with the country when they see what’s going on in the city that you ran for more than seven years?” To Jim Webb: “Senator Webb, in 2006, you called affirmative action ‘state-sponsored racism.’ In 2010, you wrote an op/ed saying it discriminates against whites. Given that nearly half the Democratic Party is non-white, aren’t you out of step with where the Democratic Party is now?”

Those were the first questions each candidate got. The question to Clinton presumed she’s a phony, the question to Sanders presumed he’s an unelectable extremist, the question to O’Malley presumed he left Baltimore in tatters, and the question to Webb presumed he doesn’t belong in his party.

Like the CNBC debate, the first Democratic one had some good questions and some silly ones. But the defining characteristic of almost every debate in recent years is that the journalists doing the questioning go out of their way to try to create drama.

Sometimes they do it by saying “Let’s you and him fight,” encouraging the candidates to criticize each other. Sometimes they do it with the old Tim Russert technique of accusing candidates of hypocrisy and seeing whether they can worm their way out of it (which is no more enlightening now than it was when Russert was employing it). Sometimes they do it by asking candidates who are behind or falling in the polls why things are going so badly, which never yields anything more interesting than the opportunity to watch the candidate squirm a little. Sometimes they do it by asking trap questions of the “Have you stopped beating your wife?” variety, which have no good answers. Sometimes they do it with inane personal queries (“What’s your favorite Bible verse?”) that test nothing more than the candidate’s ability to say something forgettably banal.

In every case, the question involves more of a pose of confrontation than actual journalistic toughness, which would involve taking the candidates’ ideas seriously, forcing them to be specific where they’d rather be vague, and holding them accountable for not just their gaffes but the consequences of what they propose to do.

So how did we get here? I put the blame for this problem on the late Bernard Shaw. Televised presidential debates started in 1960, and while there were a couple of dramatic moments in debates prior to 1988, they arose in organic and unpredictable ways. But Shaw taught his successors that the questioner could manufacture a dramatic moment with the right question. Be clever enough about it, and your incisive query would be repeated on every news show and in every newspaper for days.

In 1988, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis had been a lifelong opponent of the death penalty, a topic of substantial discussion on the campaign trail. As the moderator of the second debate between Dukakis and George H.W. Bush, Shaw could have explored this topic in any number of ways. With the debate’s first question, he said, “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”

When Dukakis answered by explaining for the umpteenth time why he opposed the death penalty, reporters declared it a huge “gaffe,” presumably on the rationale that in order to have answered the question properly, Dukakis should have said, “Well, if it was my wife, I’d completely change my position on the issue!”, or perhaps that he should have shouted, “I’d rip him limb from limb, I tell ya!” They never explained exactly what the proper answer should have been, but they declared Dukakis a heartless automaton for not showing enough emotion in answering Shaw’s idiotic question.

And Shaw himself was proud of his heroic effort. “I was just doing my job, asking that question,” he said years later. “I thought of Murrow taking on McCarthy. That was the essence of what I wanted to be: Fearless, not afraid of the scorching bite of public criticism.”

Ever since, the journalists who serve on these debate panels have tried to frame questions in ways they think will create those dramatic moments everyone will be talking about the next day. But it almost never works.

The CNBC debate featured some good questions, some terrible ones, and a bunch that were somewhere in between. The next debate will probably not be much different. One thing we know for sure is that no matter what, Republicans will complain that the media are biased against them, and their supporters will cheer.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...ith-liberal-media-bias/?tid=pm_opinions_pop_b

 

[moral_victory]

There should be no end of good or bad questions that candidates on either side should be asked. There is a fairly good chance that one of them will be our president. We might as well see how they handle questions when they are caught off guard.

 

[GarryO37]

There's a pretty big difference in the questions Fox asked as opposed CNBC. One asked the difficult questions in a professional manner. The other went the high school/teenage drama route.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

Sen. Ted Cruz will staked his claim to a spot in future debate highlight reels when he attacked CNBC moderators for their questions: “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” said the outspoken candidate. “This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions — ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?'”

I love how Cruz was able to repeat the criticisms of his opponents yet get credit for standing up the the MSM.

 

[ihhawk]

I look forward to the liberals reactions when the democratic debate is on Fox news and the Fox people ask them tough questions.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

I look forward to the liberals reactions when the democratic debate is on Fox news and the Fox people ask them tough questions.

I love tough questions. What I hate is how few questions there were on important issues.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

But you know what would be even better than tough questions? Good answers.

 

[Hawk in SEC Country]

I love tough questions. What I hate is how few questions there were on important issues.

CNBC was horrible...the questions were idiotic.

 

[mnole03]

There's a pretty big difference in the questions Fox asked as opposed CNBC. One asked the difficult questions in a professional manner. The other went the high school/teenage drama route.

There really wasn't much of a difference. The Candidates got away with attacking the MSM because most of the people watching have no idea how conservative CNBC is. The Tea Party movement started on CNBC.

 

[GarryO37]

There really wasn't much of a difference. The Candidates got away with attacking the MSM because most of the people watching have no idea how conservative CNBC is. The Tea Party movement started on CNBC.

There was a glaring difference in the questions asked. You honestly can't see the difference?

 

[JRHawk2003]

No one is really going to ask good, technical questions with context. If they did, the candidates would simply evade.

 

[naturalmwa]

There's a pretty big difference in the questions Fox asked as opposed CNBC. One asked the difficult questions in a professional manner. The other went the high school/teenage drama route.

I believe you must be thinking of CNN. That was the debate with the snarky questions.

 

[mnole03]

There was a glaring difference in the questions asked. You honestly can't see the difference?

The first four questions in the Fox debate were, Carson you don't know anything about foreign policy, with examples. Bush said something mean about you, Rubio. Jeb, how are you not your brother? Trump, here are mean things you said about women.

 

[naturalmwa]

I look forward to the liberals reactions when the democratic debate is on Fox news and the Fox people ask them tough questions.

Is this going to happen?

 

[moral_victory]

Is this going to happen?

I expect some religion, socialism, benghazi, email, abortion, and raising taxes questions.

But they will read like "senator sanders you plan on raising taxes on working and middle class families while blah blah economic blah."

 

[naturalmwa]

I expect some religion, socialism, benghazi, email, abortion, and raising taxes questions.

But they will read like "senator sanders you plan on raising taxes on working and middle class families while blah blah economic blah."

No I mean are the Ds going to appear on FOX? I don't think so. The schedule I see shows CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS and Univision. I don't think FOX will get a crack at Hillary and Sanders.
http://www.uspresidentialelectionne...dule/2016-democratic-primary-debate-schedule/

 

[iavagabond]

There really wasn't much of a difference. The Candidates got away with attacking the MSM because most of the people watching have no idea how conservative CNBC is. The Tea Party movement started on CNBC.

There was a huge difference. CNBC was irresponsible for wasting the opportunity to ask substantive questions. Their bias shown through.

 

[MitchL]

CNBC was horrible...the questions were idiotic.

While I somewhat agree, I also noticed that a good share of them would never answer the original question. Rather they would recite their memorized talking point until they timed out.
I was listening on my car radio on my way home from work and that is was stood out the most. As others have said... the field is simply too large and I think most were worried they might not get another chance so they started their rant when it had NOTHING to do with the asked question. I thought CF was the worst at this.
The size of the field has both advantages and disadvantages for both Parties.

 

[Pepperman]

Here's a question - long ago, like 100 years ago during WW1 or something. Did debates have a 60 second time limit for an answer? I realize we have way too many candidates in this GOP field still, but to me it seems like the format is impossible for a true "debate".

 

[naturalmwa]

Here's a question - long ago, like 100 years ago during WW1 or something. Did debates have a 60 second time limit for an answer? I realize we have way too many candidates in this GOP field still, but to me it seems like the format is impossible for a true "debate".

In the original Lincoln Douglas debates each speaker got 90 minutes. Hill and Bernie should adopt this format.

 

[LuckyNed]

CNBC was horrible...the questions were idiotic.

Those weren't questions they were statements or opinions.

 

[THE_DEVIL]

FOX trying to be like CNBC...

n an interview with Fox News’ Jenna Lee, struggling presidential candidate Jeb Bush doubled down on his attack on Sen. Marco Rubio (R)’s record of failing to show up for Senate votes.

“In your reflection, in the last several hours, what do you think of that exchange?” Lee asked the former Florida governor.

“Look, I was cut off to be able to complete the thought,” Bush replied. “I think I’m a do-er and I think we need a do-er as president of the United States, someone who has a proven record.”

“Marco’s my friend,” he said, “I admire him greatly and he is a gifted politician, for sure, but I think we need to focus on who can lead, who can forge consensus.”

Lee then went on to ask Bush about his apparent ambivalence toward campaigning, when he said, “I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around being miserable listening to people demonize me and feeling compelled to demonize them.”

So why, she asked, did Bush feel to the need to “demonize” Rubio?

“I’m not demonizing anybody,” he protested. Rubio, he said, “has the worst attendance record in the Senate.”

Lee persisted, reading negative reviews of Bush’s remarks from Politico and pressing him once again to admit that it was a “mistake” to attack Rubio’s attendance record.

“It’s a mistake to run for office and not serve,” he said before launching into a recitation of his campaign talking points about how Americans are struggling to get by.

“Why are you pointing out Rubio and not some of the other candidates?” asked Lee. “What is it about Rubio that you feel particularly passionate about?”

Bush said that Rubio has the worst attendance record in the Senate and that he’s a constituent before pivoting to attack President Barack Obama.

Lee went on to quote one commentator who said that Bush’s decision to go negative on Rubio is a sign that his campaign’s condition is terminal, which Bush greeted with a strained chuckle and an incredulous shake of his head.

Bush has struggled for a toe-hold as his campaign has floundered in a campaign season that has fixated on blowhard Reality TV star Donald Trump and soft-spoken pediatric neurosurgeon and dietary supplement salesman Dr. Ben Carson. As of Oct. 27, Public Policy Polling showed Bush tied for fourth place in the race with Carly Fiorina and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Last week, the campaign laid off several salaried workers and began what Politico deemed to be the opening notes of its “death knell.”

 

[IMCC965]

No I mean are the Ds going to appear on FOX? I don't think so. The schedule I see shows CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS and Univision. I don't think FOX will get a crack at Hillary and Sanders.
http://www.uspresidentialelectionne...dule/2016-democratic-primary-debate-schedule/

Because they're chicken shits. Republicans will show up on a liberal channel with liberal moderators. Why can't the Dem candidates do the same?

Because they're chicken shits, that's why.

 

[naturalmwa]

Because they're chicken shits. Republicans will show up on a liberal channel with liberal moderators. Why can't the Dem candidates do the same?

Because they're chicken shits, that's why.

Not really. Rs aren't facing MSNBC, Univision or PBS. Rs aren't going on any liberal channels either. They are just as chicken or strategic if you will.

http://www.uspresidentialelectionne...dule/2016-republican-primary-debate-schedule/

 

[HawkeyeHitman]

Becky Quick made me hard last night.

 

[THE_DEVIL]

If anyone thinks CNBC is part of the vast left wing media they are clueless.

 

[HallofFame]

When Henry Hook was fourteen years old, living in East Rutherford, New Jersey, his grandmother gave him a crossword jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. Designed by Eugene T. Maleska, who became a legendary editor of the Times crossword, the puzzle had three parts. First, you had to solve the crossword puzzle on paper; then you had to fit the jigsaw pieces together in order to verify your answers. When you were done, if you looked carefully you could find a secret message zigzagging through the answers: “
YOU HAVE JUST FINISHED THE WORLD’S MOST REMARKABLE CROSSWORD.” Hook was less than impressed. Within a matter of days, he sent a rebuttal puzzle to Maleska. It contained a hidden message of its own: “
WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOUR PUZZLE IS MORE REMARKABLE THAN MINE?”

In the thirty-two years since then, Hook has come to be known as the Marquis de Sade of the puzzle world: a brilliant and oddly beloved misanthrope, administering exquisite torture through dozens of puzzle books and syndicated crosswords. But he’s not used to being clueless himself. Standing at the corner of Forty-third Street and Ninth Avenue one Saturday night, glaring out from beneath a Brooklyn baseball cap, he looks both fearsomely focussed and a little disoriented. He’s been brought here, along with a team of other puzzle experts, by a blank scroll of paper—the first clue in an elaborate treasure hunt known as Midnight Madness. From Fortieth Street to Sixtieth Street and from the East River to the Hudson, fifteen teams are scrambling across Manhattan in search of clues, each of which points to another location. Every fifteen minutes, teams can call in to headquarters and ask for a hint; the first team to reach the last location wins.


Half an hour ago, one of Hook’s seven teammates pulled out a tape measure and found that the blank scroll was exactly forty-three by nine inches. That brought them to this intersection, where they’ve been searching ever since. Across the street, a writer for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and a crossword virtuoso named Ellen Ripstein are scrutinizing graffiti in a phone booth. Catercornered to them, the editor of the
Wall Street Journalcrossword is standing beside a professional palindromist who is riffling through a bin of adult-education pamphlets. But by now they’re not alone. All around them, spindly cryptologists from fourteen other teams are scanning signs and peering sharply at Chinese menus. Hook’s teammates already look winded—they’re accustomed to more sedentary puzzle-solving—but their opponents are dismayingly sprightly. They are also better prepared: one team has come with nearly twenty members, many of them dressed in black, who are being deployed like ninjas around the intersection.

Hunts like this are the X-Games of cryptology: half wordplay and half extreme sport. The clues are as much as a mile apart, and the organizers—three shadowy figures known to us only by their first names—seem more interested in absurdist humor and elaborate effects than in pure deductive logic. “I hope you know I’m missing my karaoke night for this,” Hook mutters, lumbering past. Given his reclusive ways, it’s a wonder he agreed to join at all, and it’s clear that he expects to regret it. The T-shirt he’s wearing shows a man with thick spectacles irately crumpling an I.Q. test. “Why am I doing this?” the man is saying. “Why am I allowing myself to be humiliated by these moronic puzzles?!”

Before long, Hook’s team is so desperate for a clue that the writer for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” begins quizzing a local panhandler and calling in random guesses to headquarters. Finally, during one call, someone tosses him a lifeline: “Fearless, brave, bold, courageous, valiant, heroic, daring, resolute, audacious, plucky.” The puzzlers glance up at one another with twisted grins: at long last, some words. Then they charge off, as one, for the Hudson.

 

[HallofFame]

It is while watching Portland’s annual Vagina Beauty Pageant, a very explicit talent contest, that Oregon’s commitment to protecting free speech really shines. The pageant is the product of Portland’s surplus of strip clubs and the lack of restrictions on the performances in them: it’s completely legal for a performer to do a magic trick in a liquor-serving bar that would either earn them a ticket or an arrest in any other state.

That Oregon has a lot of strip clubs is well known to any resident. Why here? Locals understand it’s partly because Oregon loves free speech. It’s the only state to have no crime of obscenity, which remains a federal offense. Oregon’s free speech protections are far more expansive than those of the federal government. The all-nude, liquor-serving strip clubs are just the most visible manifestation of a legal framework that protects everything from naked bike rides to verbal harassment to unlimited campaign spending.

In this state’s truly weird fashion, University of Oregon football deserves credit. In 1980, during a historically awful scandal-ridden era of the program, four Ducks players were charged under a coercion statute that made it a crime to use a threat to publicly expose “a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject some person to hatred, contempt or ridicule.” The subsequent case, State v. Robertson, resulted in a unanimous Oregon Supreme Court decision that has been the single most important free speech decision in the state’s history.

The original charges in Robertson have largely been forgotten, but they are stunning. Few people in Oregon or anywhere else know of the case, much less that it emerged from the worst time in Ducks football history from an incident that is a case study in the sordid intersection of collegiate athletics, entitlement and the legal system. It is also so similar to current events that it appear to be just another instance of a story that repeats over and over again; the only things that ever seem to change are the details.

Every college football program has its fallow times, but Oregon’s futility was impressively consistent until the current century, when a healthy infusion of Phil Knight’s money helped the Ducks become one of the most potent programs in the NCAA. Before that, there were decades of nothing but pure struggle in Eugene before the Ducks started notching post-season appearances and single-digit national rankings. They did not appear in a single postseason game between the 1963 Sun Bowl and the 1989 Independence Bowl; and after the formation of the Pac-8 in 1968, did not go to a single Rose Bowl until the ‘90s. They played in one of the worst college football games in history, turning the 1983 Civil War with bitter in-state rivals the Oregon State Beavers into the infamous Toilet Bowl, a game that ended in a scoreless tie with a total of 11 turnovers and four missed field goals.

Moves were made to run them out of the Pac-8 in the 1970s, when other conference schools suggested that they and Oregon State might be more comfortable in a league better suited to their achievements, like the Big Sky. They averaged only four and a half wins per season, few in league play, as league titles and bowl berths usually went to USC, UCLA and Washington. Oregon had last won a conference title in 1957. Loving Ducks football meant intimacy with failure.

Joe Robbins/Getty Images
After the school briefly flirted with Bill Walsh, Rich Brooks took his first head coaching job in this desperate situation in 1977. Despite their recent history, the team mattered in Eugene and in Oregon; the only major league team in the state was the Portland Trail Blazers. Oregon and Oregon State football were the state’s biggest draw in sports.

Still, Ducks football struggled for relevance in a newly expanded Pac-10. Now they had to compete with two more teams, Arizona State and Arizona, for the recruits not taken by other league powerhouses . Although the school initially paid Brooks less than $35,000, they backed it up with a $100,000 recruiting budget, second highest in the Pac-10.

It was starting to pay off in 1979, when Brooks was named Pac-10 Coach of the Year after the Ducks finished 6-5, their first winning season in nine years. His leading scorer, tailback Dwight Robertson, and leading receiver, Ricky Ward, were both returning. Brooks had depth at QB, cause for optimism for 1980.

Oregon enjoyed its turnaround season for about a month before a series of scandals rocked the program. After an extensive cash-for-credits scam was uncovered in Arizona State football, evidence of fraudulent transcripts and phony class credits for dozens of college athletes around the country were discovered by law enforcement, the NCAA, and the universities themselves. For Oregon, the trouble began when it was revealed that three players had received credits for an extension course they never took called “Current Problems and Principles of Coaching Athletics” at Los Angeles Valley Community College. That Oregon assistant coach John Becker had been the head football coach at LAVCC just prior to coming to Oregon didn’t look good. University President William Boyd asked Becker for an explanation. Instead, Becker tendered an unsigned letter of resignation.

“His failure to give me such a letter is liable to be taken as a confession of guilt,” Boyd told the Portland Oregonian. “Rather, I think he is living by a code, a different code than I live by. His is a macho code where you don’t finger those involved at the other end.”

Sporting News via Getty Images
ABOVE: FORMER UNIVERSITY OF OREGON FOOTBALL COACH RICH BROOKS.
Brooks turned in his own resignation, saying at the time, “My action solely reflects my support of John and my feelings for him plus my overall responsibility for the football program.” Boyd rejected the letter, absolving Brooks of any real responsibility although he was later fined, and Brooks stayed on through 1994 before moving on to coach in the NFL and at Kentucky before retiring after the 2009 season.

 

[SCHawkFan]

I look forward to the liberals reactions when the democratic debate is on Fox news and the Fox people ask them tough questions.

A little levity in the thread. Thank you.

 

[Jan Itor]

I look forward to the liberals reactions when the democratic debate is on Fox news and the Fox people ask them tough questions.

You'll be looking for a long time. Debbie Speech Impediment Schultz is coddling the Democrats (well, Hillary) and one, keeping the number of debates lows, and two, not allowing networks like Fox News to moderate. I wouldn't doubt it if someone said the Debster is handing each network the questions they can ask. What a fuking farce.

 

[Jan Itor]

If anyone thinks CNBC is part of the vast left wing media they are clueless.

How do you account for the types of questions that were asked? Try being honest for a change. Oh I forgot, you're Satan.

"Mr. Trump, you've done very well in this campaign so far by promising to build a wall and make another country pay for it, send 11 million people out of the country, cut taxes $10 trillion without increasing the deficit, and make Americans better off because your greatness would replace the stupidity and incompetence of others," Harwood said.

"Let's be honest," he added. "Is this a comic-book version of a presidential campaign?"

http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-confronted-by-john-harwood-2015-10

Just ridiculous.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

While I somewhat agree, I also noticed that a good share of them would never answer the original question. Rather they would recite their memorized talking point until they timed out.
I was listening on my car radio on my way home from work and that is was stood out the most. As others have said... the field is simply too large and I think most were worried they might not get another chance so they started their rant when it had NOTHING to do with the asked question. I thought CF was the worst at this.

Firoina was awful. Here's her standard response:

1. Here's a problem (sometimes false, often with an attack thrown in)
3. We need leadership.

Nothing wrong with that format if you also include

2. Here's what I plan to do about it.

But she rarely had a #2.

Here's an example where she jumps in on someone else's question:

FIORINA: Let me just say on taxes, how long have we been talking about tax reform in Washington, D.C.? We have been talking about it for decades. We now have a 73,000-page tax code.

There have been more than 4,000 changes to the tax plan since 2001 alone. There are loads of great ideas, great conservative ideas from wonderful think tanks about how to reform the tax code.

The problem is we never get it done. We have talked about tax reform in every single election for decades. It never happens. And the politicians always say it is so complicated, nobody but a politician can figure it out.

The truth is this, the big problem, we need a leader in Washington who understands how to get something done, not to talk about it, not to propose it, to get it done.

QUINTANILLA: You want to bring 70,000 pages to three?

FIORINA: That’s right, three pages.

QUINTANILLA: Is that using really small type?

FIORINA: You know why three?

QUINTANILLA: Is that using really small type?

FIORINA: No. You know why three? Because only if it’s about three pages are you leveling the playing field between the big, the powerful, the wealthy and the well-connected who can hire the armies of lawyers and accountants and, yes, lobbyists to help them navigate their way through 73,000 pages.

Three pages is about the maximum that a single business owner or a farmer or just a couple can understand without hiring somebody. Almost 60 percent of American people now need to hire an expert to understand their taxes.

So yes, you’re going to hear a lot of talk about tax reform —

QUINTANILLA: Mrs. Fiorina —

FIORINA: — the issue is who is going to get it done.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

There really wasn't much of a difference. The Candidates got away with attacking the MSM because most of the people watching have no idea how conservative CNBC is. The Tea Party movement started on CNBC.

Was Cruz a birther? I can't remember. I assume not because of his own status.

Interesting that we've had 3 debates and neither his nor Rubio's eligibility has come up (that I recall). Since the questioners seem to like gotcha questions that seems an obvious one to ask. Not merely a question on their eligibility but where they stand on the issue of ending anchor babies and similar questions.

 

[Vroom_C14]

There should be no end of good or bad questions that candidates on either side should be asked. There is a fairly good chance that one of them will be our president. We might as well see how they handle questions when they are caught off guard.

Important questions like 'fantasy football' really show us how the POTUS will handle the position.

 

[Vroom_C14]

Was Cruz a birther? I can't remember. I assume not because of his own status.

Interesting that we've had 3 debates and neither his nor Rubio's eligibility has come up (that I recall). Since the questioners seem to like gotcha questions that seems an obvious one to ask. Not merely a question on their eligibility but where they stand on the issue of ending anchor babies and similar questions.

So you all want a "Benghazi" like panel. Understood.

 

[moral_victory]

Important questions like 'fantasy football' really show us how the POTUS will handle the position.

And Jeb is undefeated. We don't want a loser.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

You'll be looking for a long time. Debbie Speech Impediment Schultz is coddling the Democrats (well, Hillary) and one, keeping the number of debates lows, and two, not allowing networks like Fox News to moderate. I wouldn't doubt it if someone said the Debster is handing each network the questions they can ask. What a fuking farce.

Is the RNC allowing any so-called liberal news media to run any of the GOP debates? MSNBC? PBS? RT? Democracy Now?

Where's the debate (for either party) with Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Naomi Klein, and Amy Goodman as questioners?

 

[Vroom_C14]

And Jeb is undefeated. We don't want a loser.

Then why is Obama in office?

 

[THE_DEVIL]

How do you account for the types of questions that were asked? Try being honest for a change. Oh I forgot, you're Satan.

"Mr. Trump, you've done very well in this campaign so far by promising to build a wall and make another country pay for it, send 11 million people out of the country, cut taxes $10 trillion without increasing the deficit, and make Americans better off because your greatness would replace the stupidity and incompetence of others," Harwood said.

"Let's be honest," he added. "Is this a comic-book version of a presidential campaign?"

http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-confronted-by-john-harwood-2015-10

Just ridiculous.

I stand by statement as does anyone who has ever watched cnbc