…is an entitlement explosion. Complete with some scary graphs.
Also, more on why the Gang of Six is disastrous.
[Update a while later]
Category Archives: Media Criticism
When Ignorance Is The Best Excuse
I don’t actually believe that Eric Holder didn’t know about “Fast and Furious,” but if he didn’t, that’s just one more reason for him to step down. I think that if there wasn’t so much stonewalling going on, we’d know, one way or the other, and that’s yet another reason for him to step down. Or be impeached.
The Homers In The Media
…why is it a foregone conclusion that CCB can’t pass the Senate? By uncritically reporting that claim, journalists are in effect giving senators a pass on the balanced budget issue specifically and more generally of whether their previous declarations are worth anything at all.
And is it too much to ask our esteemed lions of the Fourth Estate toiling in the White House Press Corps to at least ask the president why he opposes a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and a supermajority in both chambers of Congress to raise taxes?
No doubt he has a logical case to support vetoing such a measure, but why not just ask him to state it for the record? Don’t our readers deserve to know at least that much?
This is an illustration of why so many journalists covering the White House, Congress and national politics so frequently end up functioning like “Homers.” No, I’m not referring to the ancient author, but rather the derisive term for sports reporters who never write anything critical of the home professional teams.
Whether they intend to or not, too many journalists are little more than Homers for the Big Government team. And then they wonder why their credibility is in tatters.
They may also be Homers as in “Simpson.” D’oh!
More Rubes Self Identifying
I think that these GOP donors are an excellent example of the old saying about the rapid separation of fools and their money:
Cry me a river. They looked at Obama’s Harvard law degree and that sharp pant crease and thought he was one of them, or at least more so than that uncredentialed piece of Wasilla trash, with all her vulgar “you betchas” and excessive children, including that embarrassing baby she doted on. And these snobs, instead of apologizing for contributing to the downfall of America, have the nerve to complain about “class warfare.”
It’s people like them that help make class warfare look attractive.
Hey, Contessa
You know who else (besides you) doesn’t have a degree in economics? Barack Obama.
What’s amazing is that these media ditzes (both male and female) are clueless about how stupid they make themselves look. Of course, there’s a reason that they both look that way, and are unable to recognize it. But just how stupid are the suits who hire them?
Space Thoughts At PJM
I have a piece up today on the end of the Shuttle (and big-government-space) era. Unfortunately, so does Christian Adams. Every paragraph of it seems to have been posted from an alternate reality. I may fisk it later, if no one else does.
[Mid-morning update]
Clark Lindsey has responded to Adams’ piece in comments over there.
The Core Belief Of Leftism
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.
Project Gunwalker
The families of those slain with weapons deliberately provided by our own government deserve answers, but if history is any judge, they’ll be hard to come by, and the media will continue to look the other way.
The Hate
…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.”
So Why Aren’t Businesses Hiring?
(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.