…from Oliver Stone. I wish I were surprised.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Simon Jester
…is back. And just in time.
The Makers And The Takers
…and the forgotten men and women:
Now, before you say something in your comments you’ll regret — or should regret — this is not to endorse the freedom-killing and economy-destroying solutions of the left, which only create a nation of rulers and dependents. Barack Obama has been a disaster for the poor and the working class and, I believe, will continue to be so. But to pat a worker on the head with your cigar hand and say, basically, “Don’t worry, little man, an unfettered market lifts everyone,” is not going to win you his confidence or his vote. Reagan never did that. (Read the excellent WaPo piece by AEI’s Henry Olsen at the link.) Reagan always stood up and spoke up for the little guy. He identified with him and explained why his policies would help him. Many of today’s Republicans have lost that knack and given the game away in the process. That’s why the polls showed people shared Romney’s values but thought Obama cared about “people like me.”
It’s largely conservative policies that help the working guy and girl, but you have to let them know that and make sure they understand that government cares about them and will not abandon them if they fall off the bottom rung of the ladder. When one candidate is saying, “Tax the rich,” and the other is calling half the people moochers, both are wrong… but only one will win an election.
Yes, the September/October surprise worked. And Romney was no Reagan. But the good news is that a more ept candidate can make the case to the working class for free markets. But the Republicans have to start caring more about it themselves, and stop coddling big business.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Related thoughts from Paul Hsieh:
…in retrospect, the vote totals showed that Romney’s support may have been deeper than McCain’s in 2008, but not significantly broader.
So in that respect, those GOP rallies indicated something akin to the small-but-intense fan base for Apple computers in the mid-1990s. Of course, one of Steve Jobs’ key accomplishments in the 2000s was to turn that into an LARGE-and-intense fan base for Apple products.
I won’t rehash the “bigthink” arguments about the best next direction for the GOP. I just want to propose that *if* they can improve their message and inspire genuine enthusiasm for a positive pro-freedom agenda, then rallying (and growing) the base won’t be a problem. Although I have a mixed opinion of Ronald Reagan policies, he was an acknowledged master at communicating an inspiring, upbeat message to the voters. If the GOP finds a good message and a good messenger, then the turnout problem will take care of itself.
Yup.
Who Knew What When?
Eric Holder knew about Petraeus months ago?
By late summer, after the monitoring of Ms. Broadwell’s emails uncovered the link to Mr. Petraeus, prosecutors and agents alerted senior officials at FBI and the Justice Department, including Mr. Holder, U.S. officials say. The investigators never monitored Mr. Petraeus’s email accounts, the officials say.
So let’s get this straight. The Attorney General knew months ago that the head of the CIA was embroiled in an affair with national security implications, and he didn’t tell the president? Because that’s the official story from the administration — that the president (and Clapper) only found out last week. I dunno, I think if I had an AG who kept me in the dark for months on something like that, I’d ask for his resignation, along with Petraeus’s, last week. But that’s just me. And of course, were I president, he’d have already given me ample reasons to show him the door. On the other hand, if I’d been president, I’d have never appointed the corrupt racist hack in the first place.
Buzzfeed
…and their historically illiterate insinuation.
Demographics might well cost the Republican party the future, and conservatives must address this if we wish to stay relevant. But we should also ensure that the historically illiterate don’t cost us our past as well. In the comments section on BuzzFeed, one woman rants about the “Republicans” being responsible for “Jim Crow,” and a man says that the GOP should be banned because it’s always on the wrong side of history. The temptation is to look at this and ignore it as meaningless pop-culture silliness. This would be a mistake. Conservatives and Republicans have for too long ceded pop culture’s influence to the Left. If we continue to allow progressives to construct a linear historical narrative that casts conservatives and the Republican party as the villains in every piece, we can kiss goodbye to ever winning a national election again.
This is why the country is on the verge of ruin — the takeover of the educational system at all levels by the Left for the past forty years. While the coming collapse of the academic bubble (and the unsustainable pension of the teachers’ unions) may help purge the system of a lot of these liars, as Jedediah Bila notes, we have to take back the popular culture as well.
Elizabeth Warren
The country’s in the very best of hands.
I wish I could write that non-ironically, but it seems pretty hopeless, for at least four years.
Obama’s Worst Day
Was it November 7th?
And there’s this:
…then there’s Michael DiPietro, 25, of Brooklyn, who accumulated about $100,000 in debt while getting a bachelor’s degree in fashion, sculpture, and performance, and spent the next two years waiting tables. He has since landed a fundraising job in the arts but still has no idea how he will pay back all that money. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s an obsolete idea that a college education is like your golden ticket,” DiPietro says. “It’s an idea that an older generation holds on to.”
Yes, because the older generation remembers a day when college degrees actually had value, and people weren’t spending a hundred grand to get a B.SA. degree in “fashion, sculpture and performance.”
Katrina On The Hudson
“We are living like animals.”
They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney that we’d have a president completely indifferent to the suffering of the middle class. They were right.
And at least with Katrina, people didn’t have to worry about freezing to death.
[Update a few minutes later]
Comment of the day:
FEMA, while it is a clusterfrig of titanic proportions, could not cause this much misery on its own. Although they FAILED to have emergency generators at key fuel distribution points (read gas stations) and although they FAILED to have any kind of plan to move food and fuel to the affected areas, and although they FAILED to even have a forward based supply of bottled water and ran out last Friday, even these gold plated MORONS couldn’t have frigged things up this badly alone.
No, there’s plenty of blame to go around, but primarily, the failure is a one more sign of breakdown of the blue-state model.
And FEMA shouldn’t actually be expected to take care of things like this (and after these continued failures, I hope that people start to realize this). It is not a federal responsibility. The blame lies with Bloomberg and New York and New Jersey politicians who go along with corruption and the unions, in addition to instilling a dependency on the state that can’t help, instead of self reliance.
So Much For The Landslide
Romney was less than half a million votes from winning the electoral college. In the end, he was a flawed candidate who just ran a lousy campaign. And the country’s going to suffer for it for the next four years.
Was Petraeus Blackmailed By The White House?
It’s a legitimate question. What’s keeping him from talking now?
Oh, and by the way, Ricochet? If there’s no second page, please don’t waste peoples’ time and bandwidth putting a link in pointing to it.