Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The Core Belief Of Leftism

44 Comments

Robin Hanson:

The far future seems to have put Frase in full flaming far mode, declaring his undying allegience to a core ideal: he prefers the inequality that comes from a government hierarchy, over inequality that comes from voluntary trade.

Yes, he prefers a world in which everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. And as Glenn notes:

I always figure that people who feel this way do so because they think they’re better at sucking up to authority figures than at creating value on their own. And my guess is, they’re right about that.

And the president is a canonical example.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Hate

14 Comments

…that dare not speak its name:

Since Hitler’s death, the world has defined anti-Semitism down. Nurturing ancient fantasies of secret Jewish cabals that control the media and play politicians like puppets on a string, and making political judgments based on these fantasies isn’t sort of or almost anti-Semitic. To believe that Jews control public discourse and the media and bend the gentile masses to their sinister agenda is the essence of old fashioned anti-Semite. In some countries these beliefs are so common that they are no longer recognized as an aggressive and communicable mental disease. These ideas have become so widely accepted that they are seldom questioned or examined; when that happens, a whole society is poisoned and distorted.

The irony, of course, is not that it has become so prevalent on the left, but that those same leftists continue to attempt to rewrite history and claim that Hitler was of the “right.”

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

So Why Aren’t Businesses Hiring?

10 Comments

(Democrat) Steve Wynn explains:

…this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next three hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems, that keeps using that word redistribution. Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration. And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America.

You bet and until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it’s not going to change. And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, God, don’t be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama’s deal and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America.

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, they’re holding too much money. We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody’s afraid of the government and there’s no need soft peddling it, it’s the truth. It is the truth. And that’s true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I’m telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he’s gone, everybody’s going to be sitting on their thumbs.

Anyone who ever imagined that Barack Obama was a “centrist” was using some pretty exotic drugs.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Why the Democrat Party is doomed:

Like it or not, Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev: a man forced to preside over the demise of a political system he desperately wants to save.

Democrat champions in the punditocracy confidently predict that the future of the world’s oldest political party is bright. But in fact, the coalition that is the modern Democratic Party is doomed. Every pillar upholding its heavy roof is crumbling.

If so, it’s not a decade too soon. I hope he’s right.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“A Chilling Interview”

37 Comments

With tax cheat Tim Geithner.

If you are for individual liberty, and the American Dream it should be chilling. Shivers went up my spine. Geithner is a character straight out of central casting.

With regard to the debt ceiling, Geithner doesn’t offer up a compromise at all. It’s the administration’s way, or the highway. This means that there is only one way — vote out the Democrats by a significant margin in the House, Senate and get rid of Obama and his very left wing administration in 2012.

He also outright lies about what will get paid and what won’t.

Listen to his words on Dodd-Frank: “Don’t listen to the bankers because their interests aren’t aligned with the American people.” It could be a phrase right out of Atlas Shrugged.

Bankers need a healthy economy to make money. Geithner and Obama want a government directed economy where government de facto owns the banks.

Listen to him talk about the new activist “Consumer Financial Protection Agency” and avowed big government/public sector ownership advocate Elizabeth Warren. Geithner has no faith in the private sector, or the individual. He wants to trample individual rights.

Also, a bonus reference to advocates of limited government and liberty as “anarchists.”

[Update a few minutes later]

Federal expansion — the real issue in the debt-limit debate.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Mainstream Media Can’t Stop Lying

17 Comments

…about Project Gunwalker:

Automatic weapons were not among those being trafficked from American gun shops to Mexican cartels.

Not a single one.

They have been heavily regulated since the National Firearms Act of 1934, and in the 77 years since that became the law of the land, machine guns like those you would find in a a few specialized gun shops have been used in just two illegal homicides.

In yet another unsigned editorial, the New York Times leads with the blatant fabrication that 70 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States. This is the most recent talking point created by Democrats, released just before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform heard testimony from ATF whistleblowers about Operation Fast and Furious in June.

The statistical misrepresentation is a variation of the 90 percent lie that the Obama administration has been using since the president was inaugurated. In actuality, 83 percent of guns used by the cartels come from somewhere other than the United States, and of the 17 percent traced to U.S. origins, roughly 8 percent were traced to U.S. gun shops.

Plus, we now know that a substantial portion of the weapons that transited gun shops did so as a direct result of federal law enforcement agencies telling dealers to make questionable sales to suspected cartel gun runners.

A fact the Times conveniently and purposefully ignores.

It’s hard for them to not lie, or be mistaken about guns in general, given how ideologically driven and ignorant they are on the subject.