I’ll be generous, and assume that Jim Lehrer simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about, rather than deliberately lying to slander Republicans. But the media does this all the time. It’s all about the narrative, not the truth.
[Early afternoon update]
We report, you shut up.
Want to know why it will cost somewhere between ten and a hundred times more for NASA to develop a launch system/crew module than SpaceX? Things like this:
The NASA Inspector General said that during the three-day conference in Baltimore in 2008, the 317 attendees snacked on soda, coffee, fruit, bagels and cookies at a cost of more than $62,000.
As the article notes, that comes to over sixty bucks per day per person. And the ironic subject of the conference? Procurement.
…but now, more than ever. Repeal Davis-Bacon.
Like many “progressive” laws and impulses (such as gun control), its roots lie in racism.
The vote-a-rama provides several clues.
[Update a few minutes later]
You know what? When you’re getting praise for your public policy from Fidel Castro, maybe you ought to rethink it. But of course, people who like this bill probably don’t have a problem with Fidel.
But good news for the country, come November. As the president is about to embark on his “put lipstick on the pig” tour, 55% of likely voters want the monstrosity to be repealed. Good luck with that running-on-health-care thing this fall, Dems.
The media remain lap dogs of the left, and the Democrats (to the limited degree those things are different these days).
Plus, thoughts on Steny Hoyer’s (latest) sanctimonious hypocrisy.
And more thoughts from John Hindraker:
In large part, the current focus on threats of violence is aimed at the tea partiers, just as they were accused, apparently falsely, of racism. It is not hard to understand the Democrats’ motives; the tea parties are the most vital force, and likely the most popular force, in American politics, so smearing them is mandatory. But anyone who has attended a tea party rally will consider laughable the idea that the movement somehow tends toward violence. . . . The fact is that, unlike conservatives, modern liberals have had little quarrel with political violence. This is best demonstrated by their support for card check legislation, the entire point of which it to abolish the secret ballot so that union goons can use the threat of violence to extend union power and thereby enrich the Democratic Party. . . . The beating of Kenneth Gladrey by union goons–more specifically, the lack of any interest in it by anyone in the Democratic Party, the media, or on the Left generally–shows how hypocritical the Democrats’ current pacifism is. If the day ever comes when conservative groups start hiring goons, we can take the liberals’ purported fears of violence more seriously.
And speaking of death threats, Glenn Beck says that James Cameron should lay off them. Hey, it’s what thugs do.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Roger Simon to Steny Hoyer:
…in the grand tradition of totalitarian regimes everywhere, you employed “any means necessary” to make sure your ends were achieved, bribing and threatening your fellow Congressmen and women, etc. It is small wonder that our people are angry. It would be amazing if it were otherwise.
You have reaped a whirlwind by subverting a democracy. Now you must deal with it. The Democratic Party is no longer “progressive” or “liberal.” It is reactionary. And you and your cohorts have forever defined yourselves as reactionary politicians.
And this mob action in supposedly “tolerant” Canada seems to be part of the bigger picture as well. From Mark Steyn, who knows more than a little bit about Canadian soft fascism.
[Mid-morning update]
More thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson:
Socialism and totalitarianism are tough charges from the hard right, but they seem to me about as (or as not) over-the-top as Al Gore screaming “digital brown-shirts” or John Glenn comparing the opposition to Nazis. When 3,000 were murdered in Manhattan, and Michael Moore suggested Bin Laden had wrongly targeted a blue state, I don’t think that repulsive remark prevented liberal politicians from attending his anti-Bush film premiere. Yes, let us have a tough debate over the role of government and the individual, but spare us the melodrama, the bottled piety, and the wounded-fawn hurt.
Like it or not, between 2001 and 2008, the “progressive” community redefined what is acceptable and not acceptable in political and public discourse about their elected officials. Slurs like “Nazi” and “fascist” and “I hate” were no longer the old street-theater derangement of the 1960s, but were elevated to high-society novels, films, political journalism, and vein-bulging outbursts of our elites. If one were to take the word “Bush” and replace it with “Obama” in the work of a Nicholson Baker, or director Gabriel Range, or Garrison Keillor or Jonathan Chait, or in the rhetoric of a Gore or Moore, we would be presently in a national crisis, witnessing summits on the epidemic of “hate speech.”
It’s getting impossible to take these people seriously. As Glenn Reynolds notes in this interesting interview with Jonah Goldberg, they’re not elites. Elites have to be actually talented, and accomplished, at something other than pious hypocrisy and faux charm. They’re simply a parasitic ruling class. Fortunately, at least for the media “elites,” we’re on to them, and cutting off their food supply of the body politic.
The bloom is off the rose:
I have to say that I liked these, too.
An essay by Virginia Postrel. I’m pretty indifferent and immune to glamour and charisma, which is one of the reasons I saw through Obama right away, but many otherwise smart people obviously aren’t, so glamour is more important than many think.
The Treasury department sees slim demand for five-year debt.
The socialists may be about to run out of other peoples’ money. Or at least they (and sadly, we) will have to pay a lot more for it.
And as a Californian, this is cheery news:
“Compared to California, I’d rather bet on Iraq,’’ Daher said. “Iraq is a country where there are still bombs going off and people getting murdered, but they are less indebted than the United States. California is likely to have more demands on its resources, and there is no miracle where California is going to have more revenue coming out of the sky. Iraq has prospects for tremendously higher revenues, if they can manage to get their act halfway together, which they seem to be doing.’’
Of course, they don’t have a dysfunctional government.
…and California. There is only one solution: to cut spending:
That is why, together with Mike Pence and John Campbell, I have offered H.J. Res 79, a Spending Limit Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that would limit spending to one fifth of the economy — our historical spending average since World War II. The limit could only be waived by a declaration of war or by a two-thirds congressional vote.
I hate to put an arbitrary percentage like that in the Constitution, but we have to do something to do get this under control. But it would have to include entitlements, too. There can no longer be such a thing as “non-discretionary” spending.
[Update a few minutes later]
Bruce Bartlett thinks it’s an awful idea, for many reasons (including the one I mentioned). I think that Pence and Hensarling are going to have to go back to the drawing board.