It’s been eleven days now since Jimmy Hoffa dropped his infamous “take these son of bitches out” comment at an Obama Labor Day rally. Why hasn’t the press been hounding the White House for an apology or at least a comment about Hoffa’s remarks? When Rep. Joe Wilson yelled, “You lie!” during President Obama’s health care pep rally, which was true by the way, it was all we heard about for days on end. The press has basically ignored this event.
Does anyone think the President Bush could have gotten away without having to comment about something like Hoffa’s slur? Faith in President Obama’s leadership is unraveling, but one has to wonder how much worse it would be if the press wasn’t in love with him.
President Bush received a never ending stream of negative press. What was going “wrong” in Afghanistan and Iraq was always headline news. It’s as if the wars ended the day Obama was sworn in. This has been the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since the war began, yet it’s not even news. The economy is in tatters and the President still blames Bush after spending over a trillion dollars. After receiving non-stop adulation from the mainstream media for four years how does Obama spin his way out of this? The American people have tuned it out. These are very strange days.
The biggest casualty during the Obama administration has been the anti-war left. Most of the anti-war left was a fog. It’s like people who play Dungeons and Dragons. They dress up on the weekends, have a good time, and go back to their normal lives. Most of the anti-war left was made up of partisan Democrats who weren’t really upset with war, but angry that there was a Republican in the White House. The wars have continued under new ownership and the hypocrites have gone back to their lives. Yes, they’re still “angry” about Iraq, but their arguments are easy to dismiss.
Noam Chomsky is a true believer in the anti-war dogma. He doesn’t greet the death of Osama Bin Laden as a significant accomplishment. Chomsky just uses it as another excuse to bash President Bush.
We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.
Noam Chomsky is a Institute Professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. I guess that means he is the ultimate “decider” of what is considered “uncontroversial.” Meanwhile our current President continues to authorize drone attacks in Pakistan and the policy of holding prisoners indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay. Chomsky cannot be bothered by the present when he’s so obsessed with the past.
President Obama will spend the next few weeks (or months) basking in the glow of his accomplishment. Who can blame him? Who can be surprised? This is the President who couldn’t give a normal convention speech and took his campaign to Germany (that sure didn’t work out). Our President is someone who has no trouble talking about himself.
In the grand scheme of things history will look back at President Obama and judge him based on what he did or didn’t do about the nation’s fiscal problems. Obama’s biggest concern isn’t fixing our financial problems. The sole focus of the the Obama administration is getting elected. The power of the incumbency has never been stronger. At what cost? Obama wanted to be Lincoln. Sadly, he’s more like Pierce, Filmore, and Buchanan.
Thinking about the budget makes Moby's head hurt. Listening to Moby sing makes my head hurt.
It’s becoming more and more difficult to take anyone on the left seriously. During the build up to the war in Iraq the left’s position against the conflict could be justified. It was a somewhat perfectly logical argument. What is the left’s logical argument about reducing the national debt? They don’t have one and they look like idiots.
The new rallying cry on the left is to oppose the Republican budget. I should say the “idea of a Republican budget” since no one on the left seems to know the details. Speaking of the uninformed, Moby has a new album coming out. What better way to promote it than to hold a hunger strike to protest the Republican budget. Here’s a video that features Moby’s new song and a slide show of people who never took economics classes. By the way, comments are disabled. No need for a free exchange of ideas during a hunger strike.
MoveOn.org helped create this idiotic masterpiece. Moby is outraged because the budget gives tax breaks to corporations and millionaires, and it hurts people. Is anything better than a shallow, illogical talking point cited by a barely famous musician? Yes, when a shallow, illogical talking point is promoted by an idiotic marketing stunt that’s backed by an organization funded by a European born billionaire. Hooray for the little guy! What is it that these bleeding hearts really want?
I’m starting to believe the left wants universal poverty. That’s where we’re headed. If the country goes bankrupt and our economy collapses we will all struggle to make ends meet. That’s the reality. Raising taxes isn’t going to solve the problem. Cutting defense isn’t going to solve the problem. It’s puzzling to me that the left is so willing to believe the world is in peril due to Global Warming, but a real man-made budget crisis could leave us all poor and destitute.
Blood for oil is apparently a justifiable excuse for bombing Libya. Hail to the chief, baby!
Also, why aren’t these same people who protested the Iraqi conflict up in arms about what we’re doing in Libya? Shouldn’t these pacifists be in the streets protesting because we’re bombing Libya for apparently no reason, with no UN authorization, for the behest of European oil interests? They’re hypocrites. Here’s a journal entry on Moby’s website from 2003.
ok, let’s talk about the war in iraq, and one of the more salient issues. the issue that i’d like to talk about is not whether saddam hussein was a bad man (he was/is). the issue is not whether iraq was a dictatorship (it was/is). the issue is why we went to war. we went to war because the bush administration said that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction and because the bush administration said that iraq was supporting al qaeda and because the bush administration said that iraq was developing nuclear weapons. and, just to be clear, we now know that iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, was not supporting al qaeda, and was not developing nuclear weapons. and, just to be clear, we now know that the bush administration knew these things all along and lied to the american people and to congress about the reasons for waging war against iraq. i know i sound redundant, but i’m trying to make a point… [emphasis added]
Moby is still trying to make a point. His borderline incomprehensible journal quote is a textbook example of tribal knowledge, a.k.a., the phenomenon of the Rationale of the Irrational Rationalist. These emo lefties don’t really believe in anything except to oppose those Christ loving evil Republicans. Moby’s journal has 340 entries that mention Iraq and zero mentioning Libya. There are plenty of entries on Christians. Here’s a great quote:
i’m going out on a theological limb here, but i do think that christ would be 1-anti war 2-anti death penalty 3-anti capitalist 4-pro environmentalism 5-pro programs that help the poor so, not to make a pun, but what the hell? how is it that millions of americans call themselves christians but don’t seem to incorporate any of christ’s teachings into their lives? what do they teach in their churches?
See? It’s not war that is the problem, it’s those hypocritical Christians. Don’t they know that Jesus Christ was a disciple of Karl Marx? Most people don’t know, but right before Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness he posted a YouTube video promoting his wilderness tour. Jesus was concerned that a right-wing Jewish uprising would affect many great Roman funded social programs, like bath houses and vomitoriums. Plus, Jesus had a huge book coming out that he had to promote. Jesus knows a thing or two about publicity.
Seriously though, hating on Christians isn’t anything new. However, we should always remember who the most charitable members of our society are and they’re not on the left. Conservatives donate more time and money to charity than liberals. Conservative families also make less money on average than liberals; however, liberals will continue to “feel more” and “think less” about their arguments. Moby, Christians aren’t the hypocrites you should be worried about. “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
The video below is a nice satire of the Anti-war Left who apparently are on vacation. There are plenty of people on the Right who disagree with our foreign policy in Libya, but nothing rises to the level of derangement that came from the Left during Iraq.
Where is Joe Biden? Oh, there he is… on Larry King Live. I would assume that would be a safe venue for Biden; however, I’ve learned that there are no safe venues for Biden.
I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.
Iraq could be one of the great achievements by “this administration?” All this time I thought Iraq was Bush’s war. I guess when news is bad you have to grab on to something. So now the Obama administration blaming Bush for everything except Iraq. Now that is some serious change.
There have been a few pundits and politicians blaming the current economic problems on Iraq. I expect more and more people to make that claim as the year progresses, especially since around 67% of Americans believe that the war in Iraq has contributed a lot to the U.S. economic problems.
It’s not news that Americans are woefully ignorant on economic issues like immigration, free trade, etc. This ignorance is why so many bad policies are created and rewarded. Many of these problems are documented in Bryan Caplan’s book the Myth of the Rational Voter which I read last year.
The press has helped this Iraq myth along by not reporting specifics. The real answer is that Iraq really hasn’t effected our economy at all. Energy prices have been going up since 2000 and the housing bubble has nothing to do with Iraq. Greg Mankiw shares my sentiment on the New Your Times poll on Iraq and the economy.
I have never taken a public position on the Iraq war: The issue is a hard one, and foreign policy and military matters are well beyond my area of expertise. But I am confident that it would be a mistake to view the war primarily through the lens of economics. My guess is that if this poll question were asked of professional economists, most would answer “Not Much.”
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