Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The Real Cultural War

38 Comments

It’s about free markets versus fascist corporatism.

[Update early afternoon]

Sorry, but yes, it is fascism. Which is not identically equal to Nazism.

[Update a few minutes later]

So much for the rule of law:

As much as anyone, we want to see Chrysler emerge from its current situation as a viable American company, and we are committed to doing what we can to help. Indeed, we have made significant concessions toward this end – although we have been systematically precluded from engaging in direct discussions or negotiations with the government; instead, we have been forced to communicate through an obviously conflicted intermediary: a group of banks that have received billions of TARP funds.

What created this much-publicized impasse? Under long recognized legal and business principles, junior creditors are ordinarily not entitled to anything until senior secured creditors like our investors are repaid in full. Nevertheless, to facilitate Chrysler’s rehabilitation, we offered to take a 40% haircut even though some groups lower down in the legal priority chain in Chrysler debt were being given recoveries of up to 50% or more and being allowed to take out billions of dollars. In contrast, over at General Motors, senior secured lenders are being left unimpaired with 100% recoveries, while even GM’s unsecured bondholders are receiving a far better recovery than we are as Chrysler’s first lien secured lenders.

Our offer has been flatly rejected or ignored. The fact is, in this process and in its earnest effort to ensure the survival of Chrysler and the well being of the company’s employees, the government has risked overturning the rule of law and practices that have governed our world-leading bankruptcy code for decades.

Hey, there are omelettes to make.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What He Says

7 Comments

…and what he does:

1. “As President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.”

2. “I will make sure that we renegotiate [NAFTA].”

3. Opposed a Colombian Free Trade Agreement because advocates ignore that “labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis.”

4. “Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.”

There are a lot more broken campaign promises (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, and not call them lies) where those came from, and probably a lot more to come.

I just don’t understand why anyone believes anything he says. Must be something in the water.

[Update early evening]

Note, unlike many of His flock, I’m not complaining about him breaking campaign promises per se — many of them were awful, and I’m glad he didn’t follow through. I’m just sayin.’

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Under My Bus

10 Comments

Celebrating the first hundred days. I think that most of us will be under that bus before this is over.

[Update a few minutes later]

The audacity of audacity:

“Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I’m not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, Obama said, “let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security.”

“But,” Obama continued, “let’s not play games and pretend that the reason [for the deficit] is because of the Recovery Act.”

Talk about “playing games.” Yes, how could 800 billion dollars of unnecessary spending possibly have anything to do with the deficit? Why, that’s just crazy talk.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

An Amazing Admission

5 Comments

From Tom Friedman:

So to recap: the Bush team kept us safe from an implacable foe by using interrogation methods which the American public approved of and by fighting (often against the admonitions of Friedman and his colleagues) and largely prevailing in Iraq. The latter effort may deal a death blow to Al Qaeda which one supposes made it a very worthwhile endeavor. Well, yes, Friedman awards Obama the prize for “doing [his] best” in a war largely waged by his reviled predecessor – who is rarely praised for doing his best, but we get the point.

It must be some other George W. Bush who was the worst foreign policy president in history – because the 43rd president, by Friedman’s accounting, got some very big things right, despite ferocious odds. (One of President Bush’s librarians might want to clip this one out for the “Bush Legacy Inadvertently Revived By Obama” file.)

As time goes on, and particularly now that the Dems own the Senate, it’s going to get harder and harder for them to continue to blame everything on Bush.