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Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Politico: "Obama Falls Flat"
Click Here To Read Article/Comments at CommentaramaPolitics
Monday, August 13, 2012
The Paul Ryan Pick
● Why This Pick Was Great: The Ryan pick was great on many levels. For one thing, Ryan is one of the few politicians people trust. He’s unassuming and he’s wonkish, so he doesn’t appear prone to exaggeration or lying. He’s also willing to tell people the truth rather than trying to give people a false sense of happiness, which allows him to get things done. And he’s not someone who scares people. That will make it difficult for Obama to use Ryan to agitate his own base or upset independents.
Ryan also excites the base of the party. He is seen as the “intellectual leader” of the party these days, especially by fiscal conservatives, because of his efforts at fixing the budget and entitlement reform. His ideas have become those of the party. He’s also very much liked by the Religious Right, who remain queasy about Romney because of his religion -- and this is despite Ryan’s support for extending employment protections to gays. Ryan also is very much liked by the establishment wing who see him as a steady hand.
In effect, Ryan unites the various wings of the party and brings tremendous energy to the base. He guarantees GOP and Tea Party turn out, without scaring the moderates and without increasing Democratic turn out. Moreover, he will prove invaluable in reforming and reshaping the government toward a more conservative, more sane and more sustainable structure once Romney/Ryan are elected. That makes him a great pick.
● The Democratic Response: Naturally, the Democratic response has been shameless. It has also been instructive for how disorganized and how ineffective it has been. Basically, they are attacking Ryan along all the standard hypocritical and propaganda grounds whether they fit or not:
● “Journalist” Andrea Mitchell said Ryan was “not a pick for suburban moms, not a pick for women.” This is the standard “war on women” meme which assumes that women only care about birth control and which ridiculously contends that Republicans want to drive women from the workforce. Only idiots believe this.Conclusion
● Some Democrats and The New Yorker said Ryan was a bad pick because he lacks private sector experience! Seriously! Think about that. Obama and Biden together spent 0.0 minutes of their lives in the private sector yet somehow this is only a problem for Ryan, who did work in the private sector. Not to mention that the left has been telling us that Romney’s private sector experience makes him unacceptable for the job.
● Many Democrats, and again The New Yorker, are calling him “risky” and “totally a Palin-redo” because he lacks experience. Yeah, right. Palin was a first time governor of a small state that is entirely dependent on federal money. She had about a year of political experience and none of it at the national level. Ryan has been in Congress since 1999, he’s risen to become budget committee chairman, and he’s gone toe-to-toe with Obama on ObamaCare and took him down handily. Ryan is media savvy, policy wise, and a seasoned and skilled political operator. Palin was none of those things. This is the standard Democratic “he’s stupid” attack they always use and it won’t work here because Ryan’s intelligence is obvious. And let’s not forget that these are the same people who thought Obama was qualified because he knew how to read from a teleprompter and cast a handful of votes in the Senate. The “lack of experience” charge is wishful thinking on the left.
The New Yorker also laughably thinks Biden will rip Ryan apart in their debate because of his votes for the Iraq War, TARP and Medicare Part D. Of course, they conveniently forget that Biden voted for all of those things too -- and more. Plus, Obama/Biden can add bailouts, stimulus packages, ObamaCare and financial regulation to that their list of failures, not to mention 9% unemployment and trillions in debt.
● They’re working hard to demonize Ryan on his Medicare reform proposal as well, which is rich coming from a party that plans to cut $500 billion from Medicare to fund ObamaCare. CNN’s Candy Crowley was the first to use the old tactic of pretending that anonymous Republicans are nervous about this, stating that she has spoken with “Republicans” who claim this pick “looks a little bit like some sort of ticket death wish.” Yeah, right, find me an actually Republican who said that you hack.
Running with this, the AP is turning out articles how this pick will likely cost Romney Florida. Once-relevant liberal Michael Kinsley refers to Ryan’s proposals as “Ryan’s slasher novels” and the blogosphere is full of leftists whining about Ryan trying to kill old people and poor people. Too bad for them, nobody will listen.
● Following Crowley’s lead, Politico tells us that unnamed Republican strategists have “misgivings” about the pick because Ryan is little more than a “random Heritage Foundation analyst,” and someone “close to the campaign” supposedly “grumbled” that Ryan would now be dictating policy for the campaign. This is standard leftist prattle as well. When they can’t find a reason to attack a conservative, they invent unnamed sources supposedly on the conservative side who are despondent or outraged or just generally upset by the candidate or policy. It’s bull.
● Dumbass Debbie Wasserman Schultz is trying to link Ryan to the “failed policies of the past” and for wanting “tax breaks for the rich.” Neither line will work with Ryan as he was never the face of the Bush years and because their class warfare attacks haven’t worked yet even against Romney. As an aside, Politico also points out that Ryan is rich. . . something they never seem to mention about all those rich Democrats.
● Politico also worried that the Ryan pick was a desperation pick for Romney, which will force him to change his entire campaign strategy in ways which Politico doesn’t actually explain. They also had a couple articles on how Romney “lost control” of the picking process and was thus forced to pick Ryan because the public forced Ryan on Romney -- which contradicts the polls which show Rubio was the more popular choice and which flies in the face of the argument that Ryan is unpopular.
All in all, Ryan is an excellent pick. He’s a solid fiscal conservative with solid social conservative credential, though he doesn’t display the hate of someone like Rick Santorum. He’s got the backing of every Republican who has spoken. His budgetary brilliance is unmatched. He’s not Tea Party, but his views align with them very closely and he should excite them. And as you can see from the above, the Democrats can’t find anything to attack him with except his entitlement reform proposals, and I don’t see those as a problem. For one thing, they make Ryan the one guy in Washington who isn’t afraid to try to save the current system. For another, the party which plans to rob Medicare of $500 billion is hardly in a position to criticize, and Ryan is smart enough to point that out.
Thoughts?
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Obama Was Sabotaged!!
Forget that Obama has saddled the economy with trillions in new taxes and regulations. Forget that he wants to shove Obamacare on the nation’s employers and terrorize the medical community. Forget that he’s adding more to the debt than all other presidents combined. Forget that he’s allowed too big to fail to get even bigger, that he’s done nothing to stabilize the housing market, and that inflation is out of control. Yeah, forget all that. The real reason the economy sucks is because. . .
(1) Corporate America is “sitting on vast piles of cash.” Yep. Although conditions are clearly right for Corporate America to be out there starting new businesses, launching new products, hiring like crazy, and making America the economic powerhouse it was meant to be, this cabal of Romney supporters simply refuse to do any of that.
Politico notes that according to the Fed, private companies are sitting on $2 trillion in cash. Reuters puts the number closer to $5 trillion. So why aren’t they spending that money on hiring people? Well, apparently, these evil business types site uncertainly, which Politico defines as there being “no guarantee there will be enough consumer demand to buy the product because not enough jobs are being created to put more money in people’s wallets.” Politico calls this a real “chicken and egg problem.”
Now think about this. What Politico is saying is that it is impossible to break out of a recession because business can’t hire people until they know the recession is over, but the recession can’t end until business starts hiring. If this is true, then how did we overcome the dozens of prior recessions the country faced? The fact of the matter is that the real uncertainty which bothers business is that Obama has imposed an incredible amount of new costs on businesses and consumers, and those costs aren’t known yet because of the way he did it, i.e. they are uncertain. No one in their right mind would commit to expanding their business if their costs could double any day or if consumers might find themselves socked with dramatically higher taxes and healthcare costs at any minute. That’s the real heart of the problem.
(2) Evil Congress wants to raise everyone’s taxes! They also want to slash spending, especially military spending. Yeah, right. Forget that Obama has been the one pushing for both things. Forget that the Democrats refused to negotiate the budget deal in good faith. Forget that Obama is the one who demanded the military cuts as part of the budget deal. Yeah, forget all of that and then you can blame the Congress because they have been unable to overcome the Democrats to stop these things.
It’s funny how Politico can miss the obvious. They actually worry that the nation is headed toward a “fiscal cliff” when these trillions in tax hikes and spending cuts will kick in on January 1, 2013 and they attack the Republicans for playing politics with this and for now leaving town on recess. They go back to the old MSM canard of calling the Congress “dysfunctional.” Yeah, ok, and who is to blame here? Nothing the House does gets passed in the Senate. Harry Reid won’t even bring Republican bills to a vote. Heck, he wouldn’t even allow Obama’s budget to be brought to a vote. And it was Reid and Obama who have been playing politics on the Bush tax cuts, first refusing to extend them long term and now using them for class warfare purposes. And it was Reid and Obama who pushed the idea of automatic spending cuts as part of the debt deal because they refused to agree to any responsible cuts. So if this is bad for Obama, it’s a problem of his own making.
(3) The evil central bankers around the world have refused to print more money! This gets rich. Politico notes that the Fed has a dual mandate to fight inflation and to “do whatever it can to boost employment” -- that’s actually not true, the dual mandate is to fight inflation and encourage growth, which is not the same thing as employment. Then they whine that all the Fed is doing is fighting inflation “despite no signs of any inflation.” Wow. First, inflation is soaring. Food and fuel inflation has run anywhere from 12% to 25% under Obama, not to mention that quality and quantity has been cut to try to mask price increases. It’s only if you look at official inflation, which excludes the things which inflate that you get to around 2%. Secondly, the Fed has done amazing amounts to promote growth. For one thing, it’s kept interest rates near historic lows since 2008. For another, it’s pumped vast amounts of new money into the economy through several rounds of quantitative easing. So what exactly hasn’t the Fed done?
Politico also blames Europe for being a drag on the world economy and the European Central bank for doing nothing to help. Total ignorance. They also specifically blame the Germans for not bailing out the other European countries, as if Germany was obligated to pay off the debts of Greece. Should we be paying Mexico’s debts?
ConclusionThis is low-grade economic idiocy and it’s premised on “facts” that are simply untrue. What interests me the most, however, is the attitude. The economy is bad because those evil capitalist who need to be put up against the wall have consciously tried to make us look bad and didn’t continue to do the things capitalists do when we started attacking them. The Fed owes us jobs and needs to keep spending to help Obama. Those lousy Europeans have sabotaged us by not fixing their damn problems and paying off debt that doesn’t belong to them. And that Congress. . . damn them, they didn’t overcome Obama’s policies enough to prevent Obama from being bitten in the ass by them.
Talk about whiny and talk about having NO grasp on reality. Do we really ever want to implement a policy put in place by people who think like this?
P.S. Don't forget, it is Star Trek Tuesday at the film site.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Crazy People
1. The Democratic Myths● Bane/Bain Capital. Team Obama believes the Bain Capital attacks will work. They think it worked for Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts and for Newt in South Carolina, so it will work for them. Politico, however, notes that the evidence is “not conclusive” and they site a recent poll which shows that, by a 34% margin, voters think Romney’s business background will make him a better decision-maker.
But frankly, there’s stronger evidence. After Obama spent a summer blasting away with millions in negative ads about Bain, Romney’s poll numbers have continued to rise while Obama’s have fallen. That’s pretty conclusive. And logic tells us these attacks won’t work in any event. For one thing, they are too esoteric for voters to understand. For another, Americans have grown accustomed to private equity financing and it doesn’t anger them. And for another, the longer Obama spends trying to attack Romney for being a businessman, the more he reminds people of his own lack of business acumen and the failure of his Keynesian economic policies.
As for this attack working before, Romney lost South Carolina because it’s an evangelical state. He lost to Ted Kennedy because no Kennedy will ever lose in Massachusetts. Bain had nothing to do with either.
● Party Like It’s 2008. Team Obama is clinging to the idea they can excite their base to get turnout similar to 2008. Politico refutes this with a recent Gallup poll showing that Democrats are 39% less likely to say they are “more enthusiastic about voting than usual.” That is solid evidence, but consider all the other evidence. Look how Obama’s fundraising is way down, how low Obama’s approval ratings have been for so long, and how few Democrats turned out in 2010. That’s the real evidence of a lack of enthusiasm. And then consider this: Obama’s 2008 victory required more than his base. He needed two-thirds of independents and even cross-over Republicans. All the evidence tells us that those people have abandoned him and aren’t going back. Nor is Obama doing anything to attract them, as he’s spending all his time working on his base. The idea that the electorate will mirror 2008 is a pipe dream.
● It’s Bush’s Fault. Team Obama thinks the voters will forgive his near total failure because they will remember how bad things where when he took office and will cut him some slack. But as Politico notes, there is no polling which reflects this. Moreover, Obama’s handling of the economy is routinely seen as a negative and Romney easily blows him away in poll after poll on economic issues.
But there’s an even simpler factor Politico has missed: the public may grade him on a curve because of the problems he was handed, BUT they will ultimately grade him on his performance since taking office in light of those problems. In other words, the bad start Bush gave him only means that people don’t expect him to reach the same heights he otherwise would have reached, it does not excuse his failure to progress. And on that point, Obama has progressed poorly: taking unemployment from a temporary 6% to a permanent 9%, taking a $450 billion deficit and turning it into five years of trillion dollar deficits, rampant inflation, etc.
2. The Republican Myths● It’s the Economy Stupid. Team Romney is entirely focused on the economy (except when they aren’t (LINK)). Politico thinks this is a mistake because “voters expect their presidents to be multidimensional.” But here’s the problem. First, Romney has proven to be very multidimensional all summer, as he went issue by issue through everything outside the economy. Secondly, what makes them think Obama is any more popular on any other issue? Obamacare, Fast and Furious, standing in the way of school vouchers, environmental failures, his pathetic foreign policy, inflaming racial tensions, failing to respond to disasters, a failed energy policy, a failed industrial policy, cronyism, confusion on social issues, attacks on religion, etc. Where exactly is it that voters will think Obama has an advantage?
● Can Buy Me Love. Romney believes that massive spending by outside groups like American Crossroads will crush Obama. But Politico warns that voters are starting to tune out ads because of their sheer volume. In other words, money doesn’t matter. . . so much for Democratic claims to the contrary. I can’t argue with this. By and large, money isn’t all that relevant, except to the extent it allows a ground game in key states. BUT this race isn’t about money in any event, it’s about Obama’s failures.
● You Don’t Have To Like Me. Romney continues to be not-liked. Romney thinks this doesn’t matter. Politico counters that this means that (1) Romney has no room for error, (2) Romney will have no defense when Obama starts attacking his character, and (3) his unpopularity will cause voters to interpret Romney’s missteps in a negative light. The problem with Politico’s analysis is that it’s not being borne out by the reality. Romney’s “gaffes” and Obama’s personal attacks have failed to influence anyone. And the reason is that voters aren’t weighing Romney v. Obama, they are deciding whether or not Obama deserves a second term. Romney only matters to the extent he’s either acceptable or unacceptable. In other words, they view Romney as simply YES/NO and then they spend their timing thinking about Obama. So all this talk of Romney’s likeability is misplaced. Not to mention, as I pointed out yesterday (LINK), there’s reason to think the disconnect between Obama’s personal popularity and his failure on every other point should be troubling.
● It’s Inevitable. Finally, Team Romney thinks that given the state of the economy, no president can be reelected. Politico agrees that the three presidents who went up for reelection during bad economic times (Ford, Carter, Bush I) all lost, but they also faced other problems -- Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis, and a third-party challenge from Ross Perot. So Politico concludes that while bad economic times probably do matter the most, elections are more complex than that.
I agree. BUT again, what exactly is Obama offering? Outside of the economy, his only two achievements are ObamaCare, which a clear majority of the public wants repealed, and financial regulation, which nobody cares about. And don’t forget, the public had a chance to render a verdict on all of his “achievements” in 2010 and they gave the Republicans an historic win in the House. The economy may not be the only issue, but Politico is kidding itself if it thinks that Obama fares better on any other issue.
ConclusionIt strikes me that Politico is nervous. Even before digging into these issues and seeing how limited their analysis was, it was already clear they think Team Obama is much more delusional than Team Romney. Indeed, the best they can do with Romney is argue that his reasons might not be correct, but with Obama, they’re pretty darn certain he’s wrong. What all of this tells me is that Romney is using an effective strategy with few holes, not to mention that he addresses the holes when they appear. But Obama is using a delusional strategy that just won’t work and relies on things happening which just won’t happen. Bad news for Obama.
Monday, June 18, 2012
It’s Because You’re Stupid
The MSM has finally found a narrative they can all get behind: criticism of Obama by conservatives is racist. Forget that they’ve leveled plenty of their own criticism, because hypocrisy doesn’t matter to them. Any conservative who criticizes Obama is a racist.The line that criticism of Obama is racist goes way back. Jimmy Carter whined in 2009 that the entire birther movement was racist. Then he claimed Republican Joe Wilson shouting “you lie!” during Obama’s campaign speech to Congress showed that there is “an inherent feeling in American that a black man should not be President.” In September 2011, MSNBC claimed that all criticism of Obama was because of “the color of his skin.”
Calling Obama “cool” was declared racist the other day. Before that the words “cocky”, “flippant” and “arrogant” were declared racist “code words.” Last month, Team Obama themselves said that trying to link Obama to Jeremiah Wright was racist and hate-filled.
Now we have Neil Munro, a reporter for the Daily Caller, interrupting Obama during his latest campaign speech from the White House where he tried to buy Hispanic votes by proposing amnesty for young illegal aliens. The MSM was immediately outraged, and quickly decided this was racist. Said MSNBC:
“I think it's a very important question because I think this is the first African-American president. We've never had a white president been told by the opposing party to shut up in the middle of a major address to the Congress. We've never had a president like this heckled so disrespectfully. We've never had this otherness afforded to any other president and I think the right wing has some explaining to do because to me it's patently obvious.”Well, actually, that’s not true. Indeed, as the Daily Caller immediately pointed out, Sam Donaldson used to do this to Ronald Reagan all the time, and yet the MSM never accused him of even bad manners.
Naturally, the MSM went to Sam Donaldson and asked him if this was true. Guess what he said? He lied about doing this to Reagan. Indeed, he said, he “never once interrupt[ed] a president in any way while he was making a formal statement, a speech, honoring awardees or in any other way holding the floor.” Of course, that’s a lie, but no MSM reporter can be bothered to go find the dozens of example disproving this.
Then Donaldson said exactly what you would expect from a leftist hack. He charged racism:
“Let’s face it: Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there – they oppose him not for his polices and political view but for who he is, an African American!”This is pathetic. Do I think Munro should have interrupted Obama? No. It pissed me off when Donaldson and the rest did it to Reagan and I don’t think anyone should be doing it to Obama either. But it pisses me off even more that the MSM is pushing this crap about this being the result of racism.
People criticize President "Downgrade" Obama because he’s incompetent. They criticize him because he’s an arrogant ass. They criticize Obama because he’s ruining the country and trying to destroy large parts of our economy. It doesn’t matter what color he is, the man is a menace to our nation.
Moreover, the real racists are on the left and within the MSM. It’s the leftist media which sees the world through the prism of race, not the rest of us. The rest of us have moved beyond race. We now judge men and women by the content of their characters and the competence and quality of their actions, and in that test people like Obama fail miserably. Race doesn't factor into it for us, that only matters to the race-obsessed MSM.
So in the spirit of providing proof, give us your Top Three Biggest gripes with Obama without mentioning his race?
OT, For those who regularly visit Patti's site, she's talking about my book today and there's a Q&A! Check it out! LINK
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Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Martin Case? What Martin Case?
The Trayvon Martin case really exposed the liberal media as race-hate hustlers. Not to mention it showed their bias. But now that the facts of the case are going against their desires, they are all but ignoring it. Fortunately, it looks like the public has ignored the MSM all along.Right out of the gates, the media tried to turn this into a racial controversy. First, we had the NBC producer who maliciously edited the 911 call to make it sound like Zimmerman shot Martin because he was black, when the call actually proved that Zimmerman didn’t raise the issue of race and wasn’t even sure Martin was black. The MSM also tried to turn Zimmerman into a white guy so he would fit the racist narrative by calling him “white Hispanic” when his real ancestry apparently makes him “black Hispanic.” They also ignored all the charity work he did for a local black church. And to show that the only reason they covered this issue was race, consider what Alfonzo Rachel pointed out (about 1:05), that the media has ignored a succession of other Trayvons who were gunned down because they were all killed by blacks.
Once they had their narrative, the MSM set about trying to spin everything to fit that. For example, they ran with biased photos, using an old mugshot of Zimmerman to make him look like a thug while using a childhood photo of Martin to make him look like an innocent child. They kept using these photos even weeks after being criticized for the practice and long after more reputable places like conservative blogs were using better alternatives. They even shamelessly attacked the Daily Caller for “bias” for printing the nasty things Martin said on his Twitter account.
The reporting was skewed too. For example, they reported at face value that Martin had Skittles in one hand and a phone in the other, even though there is no witness who ever said that -- his girlfriend said that to the cops, but she wasn’t there to know.
After that, they kept trying to shoot down Zimmerman’s claims, like his claim that he had been attacked and injured. At first, the MSM just said they saw no evidence of injury. But how could they. . . they hadn’t looked? Then ABC released a grainy video and the media jumped on that as proof: “we don’t see any injuries!” Soon they were pronouncing him guilty because clearly he had lied about being attacked, right? Well, no. A week later, ABC enhanced the video. Now it showed significant injuries and the media actually attacked the practice of enhancing videos. Nobody bothered to read the witnesses statements or check Zimmerman’s medical records. Interestingly, Zimmerman’s lawyer has released his medical records, which show significant injuries, but the media didn’t repudiate their prior attacks. To the contrary, they all but ignored the records. An honest media wouldn’t have done any of this.
Now the blood tests have come back on Martin, and as expected, he had marijuana in his system. Yet, almost no one in the MSM reported this. Why? Because it doesn’t fit their narrative. Also, not one single reporter has pointed out that this fits with Zimmerman’s claim that Martin appeared stoned and was walking around aimlessly.
Now the case is pretty much being ignored since it hasn’t turned out like the MSM hoped. Although, some reporters are still trying. This weekend, for example, ABC attempted to deflect the public’s attention from the marijuana evidence. In this article, ABC ostensibly went through the witness statements. Only, they weren’t quite fair in how they did it. For example, the first couple pages of the article were “witnesses” saying things like “I do honestly feel that he intended for this kid to die,” and “I think the kid was running for help.” These would be damning statements if the person actually witnessed anything, but she hadn’t. These comments came from a woman who first saw Zimmerman after he had killed Martin and was standing over the body. So why repeat this speculation or describe her as a witness? This woman also said that Zimmerman told her to “call the police.” And to make sure the narrative continues, the reporter editorializes and describes this request as “curt,” as if that somehow proves something.
Another witness discussed in the article approached Zimmerman after the cops showed up and was asked by Zimmerman to call Zimmerman’s wife and let her know he was being taken into custody. According to the man, Zimmerman made this request “like it was nothing.” In other words, this “witness” was offended that Zimmerman didn’t act upset enough for his taste. In fact, he notes that Zimmerman didn’t act like: “I can’t believe I just shot someone.” So what? Again, this man witnessed nothing and his speculation that Zimmerman wasn’t shocked enough is utter horsesh*t and shouldn’t have been reported. Yet, the reporter leads off the article with this.
What this reporter has done is a despicable attempt to lynch Zimmerman by presenting as fact the speculation of people who saw nothing. This is deceitful advocacy. And so you know, none of the statements above will be admissible at court because witnesses can only speak to facts they witnessed, not opinions they formed.
So what really happened? Well, way near the bottom of the article, long after most people will have stopped reading, the reporter finally comes to the only person to actually witness something. This man said that he heard a commotion coming from the walk behind his residence. He looked out and witnessed a black male wearing a dark-colored hoodie on top of a white or Hispanic male who was yelling for help. He further stated that the black male was mounted on Zimmerman and “throwing punches MMA style” as the man on the ground yelled out for help.
Case closed. Self-defense.
On the positive side, the public seems to get it, even if the media doesn’t. Rasmussen asked people what they thought of the case. 40% thought Zimmerman acted in self-defense (up from 15%). 24% thought it was murder (down from 33%). These are good numbers. This means that only two in ten are going against the evidence of the case and buying into the media spin. Double that number have seen through the media spin. It also means that 34% of the public has kept enough of an open mind to change their opinions in light of new evidence and another four in ten have yet to form an opinion -- the way it should be.
So while the MSM is in the tank and is trying desperately to spin this case into a race war, the public clearly ain’t buying it.
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Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Political Philosophy
Let’s do a grab-bag of news issues and a philosophical question. . . oooohm. What is the sound of no hands clapping for Obama? Would it sound like panic? Are they really rights if nobody uses them? Can something that never died come back to life? What is gray? All this and not a word more. . .1. It’s (Still) Alive!!: Dick Lugar went down in flames last night in the Indiana Republican Primary. For 36 years, this moderate Republican has been a pillar of the Republican Party in Washington and in Indiana. Last night, Tea Party upstart Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock took him down. That has the MSM wondering if the Tea Party has come back to life, especially with Tea Party-backed Senate candidates Jeff Flake (AZ), Josh Mandel (Ohio), and Ted Cruz (TX) likely to join him. But how can something which never died come back to life?
2. Waive It Goodbye: Zimmerman waived his speedy trial rights yesterday in the Trayvon Martin shooting. Some have asked if this is normal. The answer is yes, almost everyone waives their speedy trial rights because nobody wants to rush into a trial because it’s too risky. So are they really rights if no one gets to use them?
3. The Sound of Panic: I mentioned the other day that Obama is having a hard time. Even the MSM is taking note. Jeff Greenfield just wrote an interesting column in which he laments “Obama’s bad week.” He notes, with a good deal of panic, that the empty stadium business has been a disaster for Obama because it has dominated the news. And that’s true. Even Politico just wrote an article whining about how unfair it was for everyone to keep harping on it. Greenfield also adds that the bigger worry should be that this is proof that college kids have abandoned Obama. He then pointed out that Saturday Night Live pulling a skit about Obama politicizing the bin Laden killing was proof that Obama did politicize the killing and that the left is really worried about it. He also mentioned that Obama’s political ads have been underwhelming.
James Carville likewise is panicking. He yelled at his stupid Democratic-voter friends to “wake the f**k up!” Heck, we’ve been telling them that for years, but for a different reason. His reason is that Obama is in danger of losing and yet the Democrats are showing no signs of enthusiasm or urgency. That’ll happen when your administration is a walking advertisement for “FAIL by Obama.”
Obama also is imploding all over the place on the gay marriage thing. Not only did North Carolina toss a lot of cold water on the dream that gay marriage would spread beyond the liberal enclaves (they banned gay marriage AND civil unions 69% to 31% last night), but Obama is being called a hypocrite on the issue by the left. Indeed, after Biden said this weekend that he’s totally thrilled with gay marriage and would have one himself if he could find the right woman, Obama continued to try to be for it and against it at the same time. This has the MSM fuming:
● CNN’s Jessica Yellin asked if Obama was trying to “have it both ways before an election” and whether he should “stop dancing around the issue.”Sounds like they want to out Mr. Obama, doesn’t it? So what is the sound of sycophancy fading?
● ABC’s Jake Tapper: “It seems cynical to hide this prior to the election” and then attack Obama’s people for hiding behind talking points.
● NBC’s Chuck Todd: “So help me out here. He opposes bans on gay marriage, but he doesn’t yet support gay marriage?”
4. Let’s Get Philosophical: Finally, I want to bring up something we discussed yesterday in the Politics of Trek comments. For as far back as I can remember, conservatives have been accused by liberals of “seeing everything in black and white” and being unable to see shades of gray. But in my experience, the opposite is actually true. Conservatives tend to be very good at grasping how much gray there is in the world and accepting it as gray. It’s liberals who are incapable of accepting gray. Indeed, they seem to have a nearly obsessive need to define everything as black or white and to demand that all the blacks be banned or prohibited while everyone be forced to partake in all the whites, i.e. no grays will be tolerated.
The reason liberals attack conservatives as being incapable of seeing “shades of gray” is because liberals lack consistency and conservatives don’t. In other words, liberals define everything as black or white, but these extreme positions can change at a moment’s notice. Thus, liberals are simultaneously extremists, because everything must be a black or white, and unprincipled, because black and white can change at any time. However, they wrongly see their ability to flop around as a positive, which they define as being able to see shades of gray, i.e. having nuanced minds, even though they really aren’t seeing any gray at all -- just lots of blacks and whites flopping around. It would be like loving or hating everyone on the planet but then claiming you are actually indifferent about people because you can move people from the love to the hate column and vice versa.
And since conservatives rarely tend to change their minds about what they consider black and white, liberals wrongly accuse conservatives of not being able to see gray even though it isn’t really gray the liberals are talking about. . . it’s really “lack” of inconsistency which liberals are calling “incapable of seeing gray.”
Thoughts?
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Monday, April 30, 2012
White House Press Dinner Portends Doom
The end of the Obama Reign of Error is nigh. Yep. The signs are everywhere. And the latest evidence comes from the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday. Oh yeah. Observe these mighty omens:Omen One: I’ve pointed out several times now that Obama has no idea how to win back the public. Saturday proved that more than ever because Obama demonstrated that he and his staff have a tin ear for the things the public is upset about:
● Obama made jokes about the Secret Service scandal, as did Biden. Stupid. When a scandal is fresh, people want to know it’s being taken seriously. Making jokes about the scandal only shows that Obama is not taking it seriously. This also serve to highlight the question of whether or not Obama’s faked-outrage at the scandal was genuine or just for show. . . reinforcing the idea he doesn’t really care about anything.All of this tells us that Obama does not understand what has upset the public or how to win them back. He thinks the criticisms of him and the blowback he’s received are a joke. And one thing the public will not stand is its concerns being treated as a joke. His campaign is doomed.
Moreover, his joke on this topic rather nastily pulled in Hillary Clinton: “Four years ago, I was locked in a brutal primary battle with Hillary Clinton. Four years later, she won’t stop drunk-texting me from Cartagena.” Calling your Secretary of State a drunk, making her sound desperate and lonely, and suggesting she was connected to a hooker scandal is not a way to demonstrate class. To the contrary, it comes across as petty and vindictive, especially when this particular Secretary of State has already announced she won’t be attending the Democratic Convention. Start the “bad blood” talk again.
● For a President who spends his time on golf courses and lets his wife vacation at five star resorts with her entourage on our tax dollars while unemployment sits at 8-9% and real income is falling, the last thing said President should be doing is being seen hobnobbing with spoiled Hollywood celebrities. And then inviting Lindsay Lohan just made everything even worse. Talk about a poster child for spoiled, rich, undeserving, played-out, drug addicted tramps! Lohan has ruined every chance the public has given her and she is now a cultural icon for pathetic failure. . . not the kind of person a sitting President should associate with.
● Obama made a joke about eating a dog and combined it with a poke at moms: “what’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? A pit bull is delicious.” Whoops. Having launched a slimy attack against Romney on the dog front, and having been called on it by Romney, who point out Obama ate dog growing up, the last thing Obama should be doing is joking about eating dogs. That’s like an accused child molester making a joke about under-aged sex.
Further, this joke smells of yet another attack on moms. With Hilary Rosen making a broadside against stay-at-home mothers, the timing couldn’t have been worse for suggesting that mothers are vicious. And by the way, this was meant as a Sarah Palin joke, telling us that Obama is stuck in the past and that he still hasn’t found a way to excite his base about attacking Romney.
Omen Two: More telling, perhaps, was the fact that Jimmy Kimmel attacked Obama in ways you never see liberals attack Democratic politicians. . . unless they think the Democrat is finished. Check out these jokes from Kimmel (none of which were denounced by the MSM):
● "Remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow? That was hilarious."The fact Kimmel is so open about these issues is stunning. I simply cannot see this as anything other than a declaration that Obama is finished. I also expect this may open the late-night floodgates. And when those “opinion-makers” start mocking him, the center-left sheepulation will give up on him.
Translation: The public’s hope in Obama was a sick joke, you have failed Mr. Obama. This is truly vicious and I can only see this as evidence that even the left sees Obama as no longer worthy of propping up. This is a demoralizing joke for Obama supporters.
● “You know, there’s a term for guys like President Obama. Probably not two terms.”
Translation: This is Kimmel saying point blank that it’s so hopeless for Obama that they should laugh about it. This joke will soften the support of all the frontrunners and bandwagoners, who only stick with winners.
● "Democrats would like you to stick to your guns. And if you don't have any guns, you can ask Eric Holder to get some for you."
Translation: Kimmel is striking directly at an Obama scandal. This is like a joke about Nixon breaking into the Watergate, it’s just not done to sitting Democratic Presidents. This is the kind of thing which will get millions of little liberals and moderates accepting the fact Obama is corrupt and tainted.
Omen Three: Finally, there have been an incredible number of articles written and tweets sent out about the propriety of this entire WHCA dinner. Journalists from all over the spectrum are attacking the WHCA dinner and the ethics of the journalists who attended:
● Gawker's Hamilton Nolan: "It is the single most revolting annual gathering of pseudojournalistic ****suckery in all the land. The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner is a shameful display of whoredom that makes the 'average American' vomit in disgust."Personally, I think these critics are right. This dinner shows that our modern press corps has no ethics whatsoever. They happily respond like Pavlov’s dogs to the opportunity to rub elbows with the people they are supposed to be viewing impartially and investigating. It makes the MSM appear incestuous. But that’s not the point.
● Politico’s Ben Smith: "Is the fawning, sycophantic worship service to wealth, power and celebrity over? Or is there more crap today?"
The point here is that leftist journalists are openly attacking this shindig with a Democratic President sitting in the White House. Usually these kinds of diatribes are saved for the few celebrities and journalists who cozy up to Republicans. The fact that so many are making broadside attacks against journalists who cozy up to Obama (and in an election year) tells me that they think Obama is finished and they are determined to score points with their readers for purity. In other words, they see no reason to be team players anymore because the team has lost.
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Monday, February 27, 2012
I'm Calling Out Rush
After last Wednesday’s debate, Team Santorum immediately suggested that Romney and Paul had cut a dirty deal to work together in the debates. Hence, we should ignore Santorum’s belly flop because the others cheated. Of course, Santorum has ZERO proof of this.
The following morning, Rush, who feigns neutrality in this race, ran with Santorum’s talking point. Only, Rush didn’t present it as a Santorum talking point, he claimed it as his own “epiphany.” Here’s what he said:
What I had detected, like an epiphany, all these debates I had never seen Ron Paul attack Romney, nor had I seen Romney attack Ron Paul. I saw Ron Paul attacking everybody else. . . .Let’s break this down.
The point is that there is an alliance between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. This is what I have been remiss in not mentioning. So last night after the debate, I start doing show prep and I see all this stuff in the British press about Romney may be offering Rand Paul the vice presidency and I'm saying to myself, "I know I mentioned this in an e-mail to some of my friends.". . .
I'm not being critical here. I'm just pointing out something that is obvious. Romney is never criticized by Paul but Paul has criticized everybody else that has become the most popular not-Mitt of the moment. . . And, by the way, if you are a Romney guy and a supporter, you're thinking, "This is brilliant, a brilliant campaign tactic."
Whether it's true or not that there has been an actual meeting of the minds in conversations and strategy developed between the two guys, it is clear that there's a hands-off policy between Paul to Romney and vice-versa. Paul does not attack Romney. Ron Paul attacks every one of Romney's opponents; Romney doesn't attack Paul.
And so last night, we start seeing these stories in the British press. One of them, Toby Harnden, was that Ron Paul would be offered the veep slot. Then another one followed that and said maybe Rand Paul, and then Rand Paul put out a statement saying he would be honored to be Romney's VP. And that's when I said, "Damn it! Damn it, I wrote that e-mail on the 13th of January. I saw this, I knew what was happening, and I didn't say anything about it."
First, it’s not true. Ron Paul has attacked all the other candidates when he has attacked. By and large, however, he has not attacked anyone. Paul is an issues candidate who is there to talk about his issues. He mostly ignores the others. And when he has attacked, he has attacked each of the others as having a fundamentally flawed view of government. He has not omitted Romney from that. And his attacks on Santorum have been in response to Santorum attacking him as not a conservative.
Secondly, what Rush is doing is a standard smear tactic:
1. He argues in the conspiratorial. Indeed, the crux of his argument is this statement: “Whether it's true or not that there has been an actual meeting of the minds. . . it is clear that there's a hands-off policy between Paul to Romney.” Translate this logically: “whether it is true or not that there is a deal, there is a deal.” This is meant to mislead you by making it sound like Rush is only floating the possibility of a deal, when he is actually telling you the deal is a fact.
2. Then he suggests that this is more than mere speculation by telling you how it is being reported by others (i.e. the British Press). Except, the British Press were repeating what Santorum’s strategist said right after the debate. Basically, just like the MSM did with the Herman Cain smear, Rush is using the fact that an allegation has been reported as evidence of its being true. Then he doubles down by saying Rand Paul hasn’t rejected a VP slot, thereby implying Paul has affirmatively confirmed the deal.
Then he tries to confirm it himself by claiming that he told his brother about this back on January 13. This is the Herman Cain smear to the letter: (1) multiple people are repeating the same allegation so it must be true, and (2) I told my family before it hit the press, so it must be true. This is shameful reasoning.
3. Rush then misleads you further by suggesting that he’s not actually criticizing Paul or Romney for this deal, even though that’s exactly what he’s doing. Again this is meant to make Rush sound disinterested. But Rush isn’t disinterested. He supports Santorum, which is why he said this (which is now being used in Santorum mailers before a key primary): “Rick Santorum is ‘the last conservative standing’.”
And why he would say this about Romney:
“Something else I’m confident about saying: As hard-hitting and go-for-the-throat and take-no-prisoners as Romney’s going after Newt, he will not do this going after Obama. If you like Romney’s toughness in the way he’s taken out Newt, I’ve got a thing for you: He isn’t going to do that against Obama.”Even though Romney is the only candidate primarily targeting Obama, and even though Rush said this in 2008 about the man he now treats as a RINO:
“There probably is a candidate on our side who does embody all three legs of the conservative stool, and that’s Romney. The three legs of the stool are national security/foreign policy, the social conservatives and the fiscal conservatives.”What changed?
4. Third, note that nowhere does Rush mention that this is the same talking point Santorum’s people are spreading that very morning. Yet, this is the same man who often attacks the MSM for repeating Democratic talking points without pointing that out.
5. Nor does he mention that Romney and Paul both denied this. Nor does he give the more likely reasons for his (wrong) observations. Ganging up on the frontrunner has been the pattern throughout. Moreover, Paul strongly opposes Santorum’s brand of “conservatism,” (i.e. big government economic liberalism + neocon foreign adventuring + federal government intrusion in the bedroom). Also, it has been widely reported that Santorum has been entirely disrespectful of Paul. Those are all the likely reasons he attacked Santorum, not some dirty deal. But those don’t let Santorum claim he’s a victim of cheating.
But this issue goes beyond Romney/Santorum for me. For years, Rush excelled at rising above the smoke and mirrors and explaining genuine conservatism in a way that won people over. He did it with good will and good faith. But all that changed during the Bush administration when Rush began vehemently knee-jerk attacking anyone who dared to point out that Bush was not a conservative.
Since that time he’s been nothing but knee-jerk. He, like most of talk radio, jumped on every bandwagon he could find. He refused to vet people like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, whose loss may be THE loss that keeps us from getting a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. He’s attacked everything the Republicans have tried to do, squandering every single long term opportunity just so he could scream loudest that he’s more conservative than those RINOs in Washington. Now he’s about to repeat the same mistake with the candidates because he won’t examine them with his mind rather than his ratings detector.
Conservatism needs better.
We are in the current problem precisely because people like Rush failed to vet candidates before the primary began. They went into this thing blind and without a plan, and have gone wherever the soundbites have taken them. They are stirring up the mob for no reason except ratings and he's no longer willing to take correct but unpopular stands. And that has brought us to this point, which should be the crowning moment of a new conservative age and instead has turned into a cluster-fudge of epic proportions.
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Tuesday, February 21, 2012
The Economist Believes In Magic
The Economist starts by trying to overwhelm your logic with emotion by talking about victims, butchery, dead being buried under cover of darkness, mourners, makeshift clinics, and floors slick with blood. They are trying to paint a picture so emotionally horrible that you put aside your reasoning and just accept that something must be done. Then they say the Syrian people have the “fire of conviction” that they will win, but “the outside world, to its shame, has shown no such resolve.” In other words, victory is inevitable and you are shameful to oppose intervention. These are peer pressure arguments.
Having set you up emotionally, they now give the “logical” case for intervening:
Argument No. 1: Almost 7,000 people have died and “the people of Syria deserve better. . . the world has a responsibility to act.” Uh. For starters, the number is actually half that. And if world-intervention is justified just because people are being killed, then why not invade Brazil? Don’t the 55,000 people killed there each year “deserve better” too? Why isn’t The Economist demanding the world invade Mexico where 30,000 people have been killed in the past few years in a drug war?That’s it for the justification, by the way. Clearly, the case for intervention is unassailable, so let’s talk about what the world should do.
Argument No. 2: “[The world] also has an interest. Syria occupies a vital position in the Middle East, jammed between Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Israel and Lebanon.” Holy cow! That’s the argument? The mere fact that Syria has neighbors is now considered an interest which justifies an attack? What country doesn’t have neighbors? Using this logic, there is literally nowhere on Earth that doesn’t have some vital world interest. And yet these people said we had no interest in Iraq and have no interest in Iran?
Right out of the gates, The Economist shows that it has no stomach to do anything real: “shifting Mr. Assad from power as fast as possible is essential.” Talk about a mealy euphemism. We’ve gone from defeating and killing to eliminating to regime change to shifting from power. That sounds like retirement. And it’s ominously passive, like they want Assad to agree to quit. In fact, they do. Observe.
First, they claim that it’s too late for Assad to “negotiate an accommodation” to oversee “an increase in democracy.” In other words, they’re sick of talking and he needs to be taken out -- notice how this flies in the face of their positions on Iraq and Iran where they demand never-ending talk. And why must he go? Because he’s lost the will of the people and if he gave them democracy, they would only use it against him violently. Translation: we can’t not-kill him because if we don’t kill him, the people would kill him, and we can’t have them killing him, so we are forced to kill him. Try figuring that one out.
But don’t worry about an actual attempt to kill or dethrone him, because The Economist doesn’t have the cojones for that. Indeed, watch them crumble.
See, Assad’s military is loyal and is willing to kill civilians. That’s a big advantage which we must overcome. So how do we stop them? “The most direct answer is. . . bombing Mr. Assad’s troops.” This would satisfy “outsiders’ urge to do something to show their outrage.” BUT, The Economist notes, Russia and China will stop the UN from doing that. Also, Syria’s terrain isn’t like Libya and there are no front lines, so The Economist says bombing won’t work. Ergo, take bombing off the list.
What about arming the rebels? That might work, EXCEPT the rebels are disorganized and lack unity and “such a policy would not suddenly turn the opposition into a fighting force.” Also, The Economist warns us that “a country awash with weapons would be plagued by the very violence the world was seeking to avoid.” It then argues that giving the rebels guns would create another situation like Afghanistan, where the flood of guns “helped create the chaos that spawned the Taliban.” This is, of course, ludicrous. First, it was a civil war which spawned the Taliban, not the presence of guns. Secondly, the Syrian regime has more than enough guns to cause this to happen if they fall.
So what do we do? Well, The Economist has the answer. It would be “far better to attack Mr. Assad’s regime where it is vulnerable – by peeling away his support.” Specifically, we need to SOMEHOW convince Russia to stop defending Assad in the UN because that would let us do a bombing campaign (which The Economist already said won’t work). We also need to convince all of the minorities in Syria to rise up as one. Yep. There it is: the Kumbaya Plan.
How stupid can you get?! When faced with a dictator killing his own people, the liberal response is to wish that people would stand up to them. Doesn’t The Economist realize that’s what’s happening in Syria right now and it’s not working? And how in the world can they think this will work when they just said the following a couple paragraphs before about Assad’s advantages:
“One is his willingness to do whatever it takes to put down the rebellion. . . Syrian soldiers are steeped in blood [and] Assad commands crack units and a relatively loyal officer corps.”In other words, Assad doesn’t care how many people stand up to him, he’ll kill them all. Yet, The Economist’s plan is to hope enough people stand up that Assad gives up? Insane.
And The Economist isn’t done yet. See, to make this happen, “Syria’s fractious opposition must unite. . . with a single voice and credible leader.” In other words, they need a Magic Syrian they can all trust. Then this leader can talk to “the Kurds and Christians who back Mr. Assad.” Oh oh. Wait. The Kumbaya Plan relies on everyone rising up and “isolating” Assad, but now we’re hearing that chunks of the population support Assad? Doesn’t that doom the Kumbaya Plan? Oh, that’s right, the Magic Syrian can heal the sick and bring everyone together.
Then The Economist goes into all-out fantasy mode. Once this Magic Syrian appears, “the Russians would also begin to shift ground.” Why? Because Russia would then know that defeat for Assad would be inevitable, and unless Russia wants to lose a naval base it has in Syria and its arms export business to the country, then it would clearly shift sides. As this happened, naturally, the Syrian military will change sides too because the Magic Syrian is just unstoppable. . . somehow.
So let’s put this together. We need to enter a civil war without provocation because people are dying. And to defeat a military that is willing to kill as many of its own people as needed, we need only hope that a Magic Syrian arises who can unite all the people, including those who have a vested economic and social interest in backing Assad, and can convince the Syrian military and Russians to abandon Assad. And like that, the world will have solved the Syria problem.
Nice work Economist, you’ve solved everything.
Finally, for good measure, while we wait for the Magic Syrian, The Economist suggests that we kind of, sort of ask someone to create a safe haven somewhere near Turkey where Syrians can flee. Why? Because “a free patch of Syria would be powerful evidence that Mr. Assad’s brutal days are numbered.” Yes, refuge camps always defeat dictators.
Idiots.
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Monday, February 6, 2012
Iran: Sanctioning Stupity
The Economist’s argument runs like this. First, they claim that Obama is on the verge of solving the Iranian problem because he just signed a measure into law which imposes “sanctions of unprecedented severity.” Yep. Specifically, these sanction will “ban” sales of Iranian oil to Europe, Japan and South Korea, who currently account for 40% of Iran’s sales. It will also “punish any foreign financial institution transacting business with Iran’s central bank.” This is meant to pressure Iran into stopping its development of nuclear weapons and “to show a jumpy Israel that there is an alternative to a military attack.” This is important because a military attack would raise tensions and might not actually work.
Makes sense, right?
Well, that depends on whether or not you keep reading the article. For in the very next breath, The Economist admits that skeptics “are entitled to ask” if sanctions will really work, “given that a variety of sanctions over the past 30 years has failed to change Iran’s behavior.”
Ok, let’s stop right there. This 30-years-of-failure fact tells us that the skeptics have been 100% right for 30 years now and what The Economist proposes has a miserable track record of absolute failure. Hence, the skeptics are more than just “are entitled to ask.” To the contrary, they are entitled to laugh uproariously at this idiotic suggestion. Indeed, what The Economist is doing fits Einstein’s definition of insanity -- doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Also, let’s be clear, this is the same Economist which claims that sanctions against Cuba can’t work but which now says they will work in Iran.
So why does The Economist think these will work? Because these sanctions are different. These are “sanctions of unprecedented severity” (sounds like “rodents of unusual size”). Indeed, according to The Economist, these sanctions will finally hurt the regime because they will stop Iran from selling its oil! Ah ha! Take that you Iranians! And take that too you dirty “Republican candidates” who are cynically trying to “depict Mr. Obama as weak.”
Yep, Obama is great. The end.
Oh wait, there are more words in this article. Words like this: “China, which is Iran’s biggest trading partner and has little truck with sanctions, will probably take up much of the slack created by Europe and America’s Asian allies.” Hmm. So Iran will shift its sales from Europe to China and Iranian sales will decrease by exactly 0%. Interesting. And no one at The Economist thought this might make their description of these as “sanctions of unprecedented severity” suddenly seem rather ridiculous? No one thought that Iran suffering NO economic consequences at all from these sanctions meant their estimate that “the latest sanctions will cause [Iran] more pain,” could perhaps be completely and utterly wrong?
It gets worse.
See, it turns out that this could be bad for Europe and the US: “the fragile economies of Europe and America would suffer if Iran’s oil exports disappeared from the world market.” Now think about this. This means these powerful sanctions will result in ZERO harm to Iran, but could tip the West into recession, thereby weakening Iran’s enemies. Yet The Economist, with a straight face, says this is “nevertheless worthwhile.”
Soooooo, let me see how this logic works. Doing something that hurts you but not the person you want to hurt is worthwhile because it will somehow force them to change their behavior. Hmm. Well, in that light, I think we should shoot pineapples up the rear ends of everyone who works for The Economist. That might just be what’s needed to stop Iran. Sure, I can guarantee you that it won’t actually do anything to Iran and it will certainly hurt the staff at The Economist, but it’s “nevertheless worthwhile” because. . . well, because it is. Problem solved, crack the bubbly!
Idiots.
Anyways, the pineapple sitters at The Economist aren’t done supporting their argument. They say, it’s clear that Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz is proof that the mere threat of these sanctions has put the regime under strain.
Of course, it’s more likely the Hormuz threat is a direct response to Israel fueling up its jets. But let’s not confuse The Economist with facts or logics as they clearly are not equipped the handle either. Also, for the record, this is the same threat Iran makes whenever something displeases it. They made it during the Iran-Iraq war, in response to the 30-years of ineffective sanctions, in response to UN reports, in response to Gulf Wars I & II, Saudi saber rattling, movies they didn’t liked, etc. In other words, thinking this threat shows a regime under pressure is purely wishful thinking.
The Economist also thinks Iran is worried about the Arab Spring. Of course, it conveniently ignores the fact that Iran already had its spring and the springers lost.
Finally, it suggests offering Iran “a carrot” by telling it everything it stands to gain if it just starts playing nice. This is idiocy. Can they really believe that Iran doesn’t know what it could gain or lose either way and hasn’t made a rational decision that it has more to gain going this route? “Wait Ahmed, you mean the Americans will open a McDonalds in Tehran if we stop trying to kill them? Why has no one told me this before?!”
The Economist also suggests we could promise to enrich their uranium for them. Yay! Never mind that this was only ever a temporary suggestion to slow Iran’s own enrichment and it’s been offered twice, by France the first time and then Brazil and South Africa the second, and Iran laughed it off because they want to build a bomb.
Liberalism is a mental condition and articles like this prove it. No human being with even a hint of intelligence could think that a plan which would do no harm except to the person proposing the plan will cause a bad guy to become a good guy. Yet here it is. I am honestly at a loss for words to describe how stupid this is.
I swear I’ve been punked.
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Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Anybody But These Guys: Our Broken System
Two weeks ago, Newt Gingrich was cruising toward the nomination. His poll numbers were soaring and his advantage over Romney was growing. He became the inevitable candidate, and that was depressing. But then people actually started listening to him. Now Newt’s lead has collapsed and he’s headed in the other direction. Of course, that doesn’t help with the depression because none of the others are any better. Something is wrong with our system and I blame the media.First, let us dispatch Newt.
There have been lots of signs Newt was in trouble. For one thing, there was the baggage he never managed to unload. It followed him everywhere. Then, when he started making his positions known -- things like amnesty for illegals and regulating global warming -- his upward moment stopped dead. Soon the nastiness reappeared and the crazy talk, and people were wondering if the old Gingrich was back. In truth he never left.
And that’s been the problem with Newt. The more you know, the more you fear the guy. Newt as nominee shoots from the hip and says stupid, offensive things. He comes across as nasty and is unpalatable to the independents we will need to win the election -- not because he’s a conservative, but because he’s nasty. Newt as President is even scarier. Newt thinks government can be used to remake society so long as the right people are doing the remaking. This is wrong. And with Newt’s ego over principle approach, it’s too dangerous to let him anywhere near the presidency.
The polls are reflecting this. Indeed, the last Gallop poll shows this:
In twelve days, Newt has gone from a 15% lead over Romney to a statistical tie and falling. Some Newt people claim this is only the result of negative ads being run by Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, but those ads are only being shown in Iowa. The truth is, Newt is poison and conservatives know it.But if Newt is poison, then Romney is white bread -- substance free and bland. He’s no conservative and even if he was, he wouldn’t have the fiber to act on those principles. The rest are even worse. . . idiots and clowns with no understanding of conservatism, no grasp of what America means, and no ability to lead.
How did we get to this point? There has never been a better moment in time to get a genuine conservative elected, and yet there isn’t one in the race. Instead, we have fools and weirdoes. . . conservative pretenders. Why?
I blame the MSM first and foremost. They have turned the election process into a game show designed to find the very people who should never be trusted with power. They seek to destroy, not reveal. They see the candidates as targets to be attacked with phony narratives and dirt dug up from lying sources and then critique their responses. They attack the candidates’ families and harass their friends and business partners. They have turned the primary system into a non-lethal version of The Running Man and no one but megalomaniac scum would subject themselves to that process.
And as if that weren’t enough, the MSM ensure that only those without integrity can win. Indeed, to prevail in this contest, you must be prepared to slander and liable all around you and absolutely must be willing to promise the unpromisable and declare soundbite solutions to the questions that have plagued mankind for millennia. In other words, only the liars and the fools can thrive in this environment.
What’s worse, conservatives are to blame for falling for this. They should know better, yet they go along with it. They lap up all the crap the MSM produces and some even gleefully join this witch-hunt process in the hopes of destroying the competition to help their preferred candidates. It’s like sports fan praying for penalties on the other team rather than excellence from their own.
Candidates should win this process, not be the last man standing!!!It is despicable that burger companies wage their wars for customers with infinitely more integrity than our politicians handle the electoral process.
Ug.
Sadly, I have no answer on how to fix this except to keep making the point and to hope that people listen. And maybe it’s time to consider serious electoral reform? Maybe it’s time to have all the primaries on one day to stop the endless horse race and pandering? Maybe it’s also time to let politicians sue the media for their tactics. . . no more reporting unsubstantiated rumors, no more stalking politicians’ kids? Maybe it’s also time to end the debates and replace them with interviews? Heck, even infomercials might be better.
What do you think?
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Monday, December 19, 2011
AP Top 10: Politicized News
The AP has put out their Top 10 news stories of 2011. As usual, they’ve politicized the list and they aren’t good at separating the pointless from the significant. Here’s their list followed by a sneak peek at the top stories of 2012.No. 1. The killing of Osama Bin Laden. Yawn. Let’s be honest. Osama meant nothing by this point. He wasn’t giving orders and he inspired no one. Subsequent events have shown his death changed nothing in the war on terror. I’m glad he’s dead, but he doesn’t belong atop this list.
No. 2. Japanese Disaster. Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown, 20,000 people dead, $218 billion in damage, 100,000 homeless. This one deserves to be on the list. It’s too bad so many Hollywood types thought this was a good time to crack racist anti-Japanese jokes.
No. 3. The Arab Spring. This one probably deserves to be the top story. Even The Economist is now worried that the thing “no one could have possibly foreseen” is happening, i.e. radical Islam taking power. Expect this one to cause a lot of carnage in the coming years.
No. 4. EU Crisis. Eh. Reality doesn’t quit. When you create a currency that anyone can print and you have no way to keep people from running up the bills, it’s only a matter of time before it all blows up. The real story would be if the Europeans learn anything from this.
No. 5. US Economy. Huh? They actually identify this as our economy growing and “unemployment rate finally dipping below 9 percent.” Don’t make me laugh. This recession will get worse before it gets better. Seasonal Christmas hiring won’t change that.
No. 6. Penn State Sex Abuse Scandal. If you care about Penn State, sure. But shouldn’t the bigger story be the recent arrests of Hollywood pedophiles? Oh that’s right, only some pedophiles are bad.
No. 7. Gadhafi Toppled. Wasn’t this part of the Arab Spring? Also, riddle me this: so what? Seriously, how does this change the world?
No. 8. Fiscal Showdowns In Congress. Kabuki theater at best.
No. 9. OWS. Morons crapping in the streets. More theater.
No. 10. Gabrielle Giffords Shot. Yeah, because this changed everything. Some crazed leftist shoots Giffords and the left blames Sarah Palin. The left calls for a “change in tone” while famous leftists joke about killing Palin and her family. Been there, done that.
Notice how they put this list together. First, they went liberal. Most of these are meant to aggrandize Lord Obama’s policies: Obama’s triumph over villains bin Laden and Gadhafi, Obama finally taming the economy, and the masses showing support for Obama through OWS. Several of the rest are meant to explain away Obama’s failures: the evil Congress that can’t fix the budget, the Japanese disaster that blasted our economy, and the murderous right-wing opposition that tried to kill Giffords and is determined to stop Obama. Of course, NONE of that is true, but truth doesn’t matter to leftist. They only care that it can be spun to make Obama look good or explain his failures. This is Obama’s campaign resume brought to you by the AP.
But even beyond helping Obama, look at the ludicrousness of this list. This entire list is aspirational, not based in reality. They hoped killing bin Laden would change the world. They hoped the Arab Spring and killing Gadhafi would bring peace to the Middle East. They hoped the Giffords shooting would end America’s love of guns. They hope the economy has turned around. They hope OWS finally means something.
And isn’t it interesting they ignored the elimination of “don’t ask, don’t tell”? I guess that didn’t turn out to be so popular with the public. They ignored the tornadoes across the Midwest and Southeast. Why? Because Obama never bothered to help those people because they don’t vote for him. They ignored Solyndra and MF Global and Fast and Furious. They ignored the Pelosi financial scandals and the retirements of dozens of Democrats. They ignored the attempt to force a union on Boeing. They ignored the left’s failure to recall Wisconsin Republicans. They ignored Climategate 2 and a bevy of global warming scandals. They ignored the courts striking down ObamaCare. . . something we were assured only lunatics could think would happen.
Gee, I wonder why?
Anyway, here’s a sneak peek at the top stories of 2012:
[+] Read More...1. Tebow wins Super Bowl
2. Obama loses in landslide
3. Republicans capture 58 seats in the Senate
4. First case of cannibalism at OWS occurs in NYC
5. Egypt invades Libya
6. Mysterious explosion at Iranian nuclear plant
7. Germany quits the Euro
8. ????
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Time’s Person of the Year: The Idiot!
When I first heard Time had chosen “The Idiot” as its person of the year, I couldn’t help but scratch my head! Actually, I’m joking, but only a little. Time has chosen “the protester” as the person of the year. Which protester? The OWS protester, the whiny Greek protester, and the Arab Spring protester. Laughable.The Person of the Year Award is supposed to be about people who actually influence the world. I can see picking the Arab Spring protesters because they really have changed the world. They’ve brought down corrupt repressive regimes and could, I suppose, usher the Middle East along toward becoming a responsible part of the world where you don’t have to worry about being executed for sorcery or store clerks molesting your vegetables. COULD is of course the operative word as they could just as well end up ushering in a new set of repressive veggie loving regimes. It will probably be the latter, but who really cares?
But the Greeks? The only reason they’re protesting is because they ran up their credit cards and now the bill’s showed up in the mail and they don’t want to bear the consequences of their own actions. They’re just whiny, overextended debtors. Why in the world would anyone honor them?
And choosing the OWS protesters is ridiculous. What have these dipships achieved? All they’ve done so far is rape each other, murder each other, sell each other drugs, endanger their own children and act out Animal Farm without any costumes. They have brought about 0.0% change in the universe. Not only have their demands not been met, they haven’t even been considered. Nor have they inspired sympathy in the general public. To the contrary, their single achievement has been to provide amusement to conservative bloggers and to annoy the liberal citizens of liberal towns who wasted tax money making sure these idiots didn’t rape anyone beyond their imaginary borders. These turds were so ineffective, even the Democrats won’t go near them anymore.
What would Time Man of the Year alums Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939, 1942) and the Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) say about these fools joining their elite club?
Even more ironically, there WAS a protest movement that actually did change the world a couple years ago. It was called the Tea Party. But Time didn’t honor them. Apparently Time didn’t think that millions of Americans rising up against a corrupt American government was all that interesting. Instead it honored Ben Bernanke who gave us the Great Recession.
You know, I’m starting to see a pattern here. Clearly, you have to be an idiot to win this award. Apparently, I was right the first time. So in that vein, let’s nominate some people who deserve it:
I nominate Obama for trying to let the morning after abortion pill be sold over the counter to teenage pranksters and creepy boyfriends everywhere. Here honey, drink this.
Alternatively, I nominate Fosdick Corporation, the inventor of the Snuggie.
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Tuesday, November 15, 2011
60 Minutes Outs Pelosi
The Democrats are masters of corruption. They talk about hating evil corporations and helping the poor, but it’s all for show: the Democrats use government to enrich themselves. The reason they’ve gotten away with this for so long is the media covers up for them. So why did 60 Minutes just “out” Pelosi?Here’s the story. In 2008, Nancy Pelosi “somehow” got the chance to buy into (subscribe to) the Visa initial public offering (IPO). For those who don’t know, this is something only insiders get to do. IPOs are almost always limited to company employees, their families, and large companies connected to making the public offering happen, i.e. the investment bank, a few institutional clients, company creditors and lawyers. Pelosi was none of these, yet she got in.
Indeed, Pelosi bought between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock. She paid $44 per share to buy in. Two days later, the IPO was issued to the public and the stock price soared to $65 per share. Two month later, it was $85 per share. She had almost doubled her money in two months.
So how did Pelosi get into this IPO? Well, it turns out that companies looking to build good will in Congress will sometimes let selected members of Congress in on their IPOs. And why would Visa care about Nancy Pelosi? Because two weeks after Pelosi bought into this IPO, the Credit Card Fair Fee Act was introduced in the House. This bill would have prevented credit card companies like Visa from charging certain fees. How much in fees? The credit card companies took in $48 billion in these fees in 2008 alone.
This bill passed the Judiciary Committee and apparently had broad public support as high as 77% in one poll. Yet, for some strange reason, Pelosi never let this bill get to the House floor for a vote. Imagine that.
And Pelosi wasn’t done there. Another bill, called the Credit Card Interchange Fee Act of 2008, which would have required credit card companies to disclose rates, met the same fate: Pelosi killed it. Instead, she brought to the floor a vote on a similarly named bill which only provided for further study. That's not a bad return on investment for Visa since it cost Visa nothing to let Pelosi ride along on their IPO.
Other IPOs in which Pelosi made money include Gupta (88% profit in two days), Netscape and UUNet (100% profit in one day), Remedy Corp., Opal, Legato Systems, Act Networks, etc. In 2007, Pelosi put $100,000 in an IPO with natural gas company Clean Energy Fuels and $500,000 in an IPO for natural gas company Quest Energy Partners. Then she started pushing natural gas bills in Congress. Tom Brokaw actually asked her if she had made significant personal investments in natural gas companies and if this represented a conflict of interest and she dodged the question.
But this is nothing new for Democrats. In just the last couple years:
● Pelosi got special treatment for donor Kaiser Permanente under ObamaCare.Of course, the MSM has long ignored all of this. So why report the Pelosi story now? Could the MSM be about to become honest about exposing Democratic corruption? Or did Pelosi just cross some secret line?
● Democrat Max Baucus, who made his girlfriend the US Attorney for Montana, apparently made the same kinds of insider trades Pelosi did.
● Democrats Jim Moran, Peter Visclosky, and John Murtha directed $137 million in defense contracts to clients of a lobbyist who funneled more than $380,000 in illegal campaign contributions to them.
● Democrat Chris Dodd, who wrote banking regulation legislation, got sweetheart loans from the banks that would have been effected.
● Pelosi budget supercommittee appointee Xavier Becerra, sent out a fundraising letter to the companies whose programs he could now cut.
● The Congress Black Caucus has been particular good at illegally giving federal money to their friends and family, see e.g. Democrats Sanford Bishop and Eddie Bernice Johnson (scholarships to relatives), Charlie Rangel (tax breaks to donors) and Maxine Waters (money to relatives’ banks).
● As a Senator, Democrat Joe Biden, who was basically owned by MBNA worked to make credit card debt harder to discharge in bankruptcy.
● Democrat Obama gave the Treasury to Goldman Sachs and GM to his union friends. His donors at GE had record profits yet paid no taxes. GE also gets waivers from Obama for laws they’ve lobbied for. Of course, Obama also gave thousands of Obamacare waivers to donors.
● It’s getting increasingly obvious Obama steered $535 million in taxpayer dollars to big-time Obama donor ($100k) and “green-jobs” showpiece Solyndra as it was failing.
● Democrat Jon Corzine managed to “lose” $700 million in client money when his new company, MF Global went belly up. . . after donating $500,000 to Obama’s reelection.
How about this: this information was first uncovered by the Heritage Foundation. They were, in fact, writing a book about it. I suspect 60 Minutes realized this information would reach the public, no matter how hard the MSM tried to ignore it because Pelosi has such a high profile. Rather than let this blow up during the election and hurt all Democrats, 60 Minutes chose to cover this now, during the silly season where little is happening in Washington and the public is preparing for the coming holidays, i.e. 60 Minutes wants to defuse this now.
If I’m wrong, then 60 Minutes will follow up on this and attempt to get Pelosi to disgorge the profits and/or resign from Congress. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
What do you think is going on?
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Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Fox News: Left Turn For Circus Maximus
There was an interesting article yesterday by Howard Kurtz about an interview given by Roger Ailes, the Grand Pooh-Bah of Fox News. It’s interesting on several levels. First, Fox is apparently moving left in its coverage. Secondly, it really highlights why conservatives should not trust Fox.One of the most striking things Ailes said was that Fox is undergoing a “course correction” toward the left. Apparently, Fox executives think the entire network took a hard right turn after Obama’s election and “as the Tea Party’s popularity fades” they are shifting back to the center. Oh, where to begin.
First, there was no hard right turn. The types of stories Fox covers and the slant they put on them was no different in 2009 than it was in 2006 or 2002. Sure, they hired Glenn Beck, but he didn't dictate what the network would cover. He simply provided one opinion show. By that token, MSNBC is right wing because they hired Joe Scarborough.
Secondly, the presumption that the Tea Party is fading sits exactly at the core of why conservatives should be leery of Fox. Fox only cares about drama. . . not truth, not politics. To achieve that, it tries to shoehorn every issue into an easy storyline with clear winners and losers, so it can hire attractive women to represent each side and slap it out on television. The only thing missing is the Jello.
The Tea Party is an idea, not an organization. It is twenty million Americans all doing their own thing with the same goal in mind: change our government. It has no leaders, it does not engage in political theater. In many ways, it is akin to communist cells. And that cannot be squeezed into Fox’s format. But Fox tried. Rather than reporting what was really going on and helping people understand the Tea Party, it instead appointed fake leaders, like Michelle Bachmann, Dick Armey, and Glenn Beck to make its storylines work. Not surprisingly, those people failed to catch on. So now Fox is declaring the Tea Party finished because Fox's storylines didn't work and are played out. . . without ever considering that it has completely misrepresented what the Tea Party is.
This is why you should not trust Fox, because it does not care about presenting conservatives fairly, it cares about using conservatives to sell its drama, and it will twist conservatives to fit its needs.
Third, if Fox is to be a legitimate news source (as it pretends) then it should not be setting any sort of course. It should take the news as it comes without comment and bias. Indeed, Ailes himself complains about the bias of the other networks and the AP: “the AP is so far over the hill, they’ve become left wing, antiwar. Gotta watch their copy.” That’s certainly true. But let me ask, why then does FOX do nothing more than repeat AP stories? Why doesn't it gather its own news? And if bias is bad, why does Ailes admit in the article that he's advised so many of these candidates, including Romney, Perry and others?
Moreover, listen to what happened prior to the debate. Hours before the last debate, Ailes’s team sat in the auditorium plotting how to trap the candidates. And yes, “trap” is the right word. Listen to what Chris Wallace planned to do to trap Perry to generate “fireworks”:
“[I'll ask] 'How do you feel about being criticized by some of your rivals as being too soft on illegal immigration?' Then I go to Rick Santorum: 'is Perry too soft?'”This is inappropriate. There is nothing wrong with planning an interview question. In fact, a well-prepared journalist needs to think of things they will ask in advance. BUT, this goes beyond preparing a question. This adds the element of using Rick Santorum to sneak attack Perry. This is akin Jerry Springer bringing out a surprise guest. This is trying to make the news, not report it.
Rush rightly criticized this: “Fox wants these people to tear each other up.” And what did Ailes say in response? “Because [people] see conservative thinking on our channel and don’t see it on any other channel, they think we’re in someone’s pocket.” Well, no. Because you call yourself “news,” we figure you would act like journalists, not game show hosts. Apparently, we were mistaken.
Frankly, none of this is new.
Fox has been a fraud since its inception. The way Fox works is simple. They buy stories off the wire from the Associated Press and ask their anchors to spin those stories to the right. That's all they do. To add excitement, they hire telegenic guests to slug it out. That’s not journalism. . . it’s a game show.
And it's not conservative either. Fox's conservatism is the conservatism of big, crony corporate socialists. It is the voice of K Street. And now it wants to turn our primary into reality television. Enough!
**************
As an aside, according to a Zogby poll, Herman Cain is now the leader at 28% with Republican voters.
Cain: 28%
Perry: 18%
Romney: 17%
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