America at 235

One of the most frustrating parts of the political process is dealing with uninformed people. This really isn’t a left/right issue. The list of things Americans are uninformed about is almost endless. Look at what people say about the Separation of Church and State, 9/11, the JFK assassination, or the issue that started the Civil War. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone say that “slavery didn’t start the American Civil War.” This is probably because I live in the South and that talking point has always existed, but it doesn’t change the fact that the argument is delusional. If the war wasn’t about slavery, what was it about?

The Information Age is great for those who are willing to use it, but it’s terrible for people who are lazy. The increasing trend in New Media is to tailor coverage towards the audience. FOX News has perfected it. FOX isn’t in the business of shaping the news. They’re in the business of covering the news that most Americans want to see. The FOX philosophy is simple: if people want to watch it they cover it. It’s all about increasing ratings and advertising dollars. MSNBC has become the liberal news network. While “leaning forward” the talking heads are actually cocooning themselves inside a tunnel of delusion.

What about newspapers? For a long while papers like the New York Times prided themselves for being “above the fray.” It was all nonsense, but the perception existed. It’s over now. The New York Times is just another source for the progressive cocoon. Krugman and Friedman write haughty, faux intelligent articles that aren’t exactly friendly with the facts. Just today William Buffett wrote an article about taxing the super rich. The world is aflutter! Who cares? Taxing the rich won’t put a dent in our debt problem. If people were better informed, they’d realize this and dismiss Buffett’s liberal talking points.

Mickey Kaus who considers himself a “neoliberal” wrote about the MSNBC effect on the New York Times today for the The Daily Caller.

In June the paper deployed its powerful “Draws Attention To” template, the formula for which is

X event in the news (go find one if necessary)

“draws attention to”

Y argument the Times wants to push

Example: SAGGING ECONOMY DRAWS ATTENTION TO WAR SPENDING

Rick Perry gets sued by athiests for his Prayer Day. 60% of R IA caucus-goers are evangelicals. How lucky can the guy get?

July 14, 2011 10:35 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@LarrySabato

Larry Sabato

There does seem to be something lucky about Rick Perry. There’s even a New York Times article today that focuses on Rick Perry’s days as a Democrat in Texas back in the 1980s. Perry’s defense for being a Democrat is that he came to his senses. No matter, the real meat of the story is this bit:

Mr. Perry’s timing, now legendary, could not have been better. He was one of only two Republicans elected to nonjudicial statewide office in 1990. Eight years later, Republicans swept every one of them.

“Perry has been a risk taker,” said Mr. Hance, the party switcher who became the chancellor of Texas Tech University. “And if you look at Perry’s timing in every race, he’s been the golden guy.”

It looks like lady luck is on his side yet again. The GOP field is in disarray. The frontrunner is Mitt Romney, a deeply flawed candidate that no one is enthusiastic about. Michele Bachmann is all the rage right now, but she’s no more qualified to be president than Obama (and look where that got us). Perceptually (that’s all that matters in politics), Perry is positioned as the Washington outsider from a big state who also has plenty of executive experience. Plus, Texas is one of the few states that’s creating jobs.

Yes, Perry’s record is far from perfect, but no candidate is perfect. There’s no other GOP candidate who can unite the GOP, Tea Party, and beat Obama. However, a lot can change before now and November 2012.

Let the Distancing Begin:

We Don’t Need No Stinking Empirical Facts: The brilliant Thomas Sowell has a great article up at Townhall entitled “Politics Versus Reality.” Sowell discusses the ever increasing problem or uninformed political discourse. How do you debate an opponent that wishes to remain willfully ignorant?

The same preference for talking points, and the same lack of interest in digging into the facts about realities, prevails today in discussions of whether to have a government-controlled medical system.

Since there are various countries, such as Canada and Britain, that have the kind of government-controlled medical systems that some Americans advocate, you might think that there would be great interest in the quality of medical care in these countries.

The data are readily available as to how many weeks or months people have to wait to see a primary care physician in such countries, and how many additional weeks or months they have to wait after they are referred to a surgeon or other specialist. There are data on how often their governments allow patients to receive the latest pharmaceutical drugs, as compared to how often Americans use such advanced medications.

But supporters of government medical care show virtually no interest in such realities. Their big talking point is that the life expectancy in the United States is not as long as in those other countries. End of discussion, as far as they are concerned.

When it comes to health care liberals are brain-dead. Their arguments are tired cliches. It’s almost impossible to break through the misinformation. Heath care as an entitlement is a religion and the libertarian position is the infidel.

Casey Anthony: I haven’t kept up with this story and I can’t even muster up a reason why anyone should care. Apparently a jury of her peers acquitted her. That’s all I need to know. Now FOX News can get back to covering something that’s actually important.

Government Intervention: The shocking conclusion from CNN is that the housing market won’t recover until it hits bottom. Of course it won’t reach bottom as long as the Federal Government keeps intervening in the market.

Professional Apoligist

By now most of the nation has heard about NFL player Adrian Peterson’s comments about modern day slavery. Of course it’s ridiculous and I’m sure Peterson would take the comment back if he could. However, it’s amazing to hear people in the press try to defend the comment. This morning I caught two minutes of ESPN‘s Sports Reporters. It was just enough time to catch New York Times sports columnist William C. Rhoden defend Peterson.

Speaking of money, there’s a trainer back in the 1850′s named Charles Stewart who was a slave. This guy made so much money that he had to hire an agent to make some — he had to hire an agent to manage his money. He could negotiate who he got sold to. A lot of the unions across the country are getting hammered.

Owners are trying to take back medical benefits, they’re trying to make you work more for less. That’s what we’re talking about here. So rather than get distracted by oh this guy makes this, look at what is the underlying principle. That principle is affecting all of us who belong to unions.

Everybody’s trying to get more, reduce, make you work more, take less. So to increase profits. That’s a universal concept symbolized by the strike, by the lockout, I’m sorry.

Wait, are Peterson’s comments a distraction or are they justified? Why must reporters defend the indefensible? The story is that Peterson made a ridiculous comment that hurt the players union’s position. Instead, Rhoden came up with some talking points before the show to defend an idiotic comment. I can forgive Peterson for making a short sighted mistake in front of a camera. He’s a football player, not a pundit.

William C. Rhoden, on the other hand, went on TV and threw out some moronic example that in no way compares to the current situation. Rhoden is a pro-union liberal who is willing to defend any pro-union argument no matter how absurd he sounds. A lot of unions across the country are getting hammered? A lot of Americans across the country are getting hammered. Why are union members exempt?

Besides, it’s not private sector unions getting hammered; it’s public sector unions bleeding the tax payer dry whilst laundering money through the Democratic Party that are getting “hammered”. Once again, progressives brush with broad strokes to make it seem like responsible people are the second coming of the Nazi stormtroopers. As with the controversy over illegal immigration in which progressives called anyone opposed to amnesty for illegal aliens “anti-immigration,” so too anyone who shows support for making public sector employees carry more of the weight are “anti-union”.

Rhoden, you are sorry. You are a sorry excuse for a journalist. Your reasoning is a sorry excuse for an argument. I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised that the author of a book called Forty Million Dollar Slaves might be sympathetic to Peterson’s comments. Why should anyone in the press be surprised that the nation doesn’t take them seriously anymore? When William C. Rhoden makes idiotic comparisons to slavery and race he’s a respected, award winning New York Times columnist.  When you tolerate and praise lunacy, and then make illogical arguments to defend lunacy, people quit taking you seriously.

Originally, the ten-year cost of the legislation would have been either $7.4 billion (House-passed version) or $6.2 billion (amended Senate version). The ten-year cost of the compromise will be only $4.2 billion. Originally, the bill would have cost billions more beyond the ten-year window. Those added costs were jettisoned entirely from the compromise. Originally, the re-opened 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) — which closed in 2003 — would have stayed in operation through 2031. Now the VCF will be shuttered — permanently — in 2016. Originally, legislative loopholes would have permitted certain attorneys to gobble up a massive chunk of 9/11-related settlements. The compromise imposes a rigid ceiling on trial-lawyer fees, limiting them to 10 percent of the total amount awarded and giving the VCF “special master” authority to slash fees that he considers disproportionate. Originally, the bill suffered from a dearth of accountability controls. The compromise includes muscular safeguards against waste and abuse.

The nuts and bolts of the bill aren’t quite as sexy as “the evil GOP wants to screw the 9/11 workers!” Senator Coburn was raked over the coals for simply trying to make the bill better. The fact that he was able to make changes to the bill is a heroic achievement. To get an idea how brain dead the left’s echo chamber is becoming check out this New York Times article about Jon Stewart.

Did the bill pledging federal funds for the health care of 9/11 responders become law in the waning hours of the 111th Congress only because a comedian took it up as a personal cause?

And does that make that comedian, Jon Stewart — despite all his protestations that what he does has nothing to do with journalism — the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow?

Let the myth making begin! Jon Stewart is like Ed Murrow because he drummed up a bunch of hysteria about a bill he didn’t understand. If the left is looking to Jon Stewart for leadership and education about issues they may be gone forever. It’s funny that Stewart went to Washington just a few months ago to bitch and complain about the tone of the public debate and now he’s part of the problem. The 9/11 bill ultimately passed, but there was no reason it had to pass in the lame duck session. There will be laws made after the 111th Congress that will be just as bad despite what liberals believe.

It is not for the sake of acquiring political power that Tea Party activists demonstrate, rally and organize; rather, Lilla argues, the appeal is to “individual opinion, individual autonomy, and individual choice, all in the service of neutralizing, not using, political power.”  He calls Tea Party activists a “libertarian mob” since they proclaim the belief “that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone.”  Lilla cites as examples the growth in home schooling, and, amidst a mounting distrust in doctors and conventional medicine, growing numbers of parents refusing to have their children vaccinated, not to mention our resurgent passion for self-diagnosis, self-medication and home therapies.

It makes sense that among Bernstein’s irrational fears would be home schooling. His career is philosophy and education; a career that thrives on the indoctination of others into his belief system. Bernstein would likely die if he had to work hard for a week day. Not that there’s anything wrong with philosophy, but he has no clue about politics or the concerns of the average American.

People of the Bernstein political/ideological persuasion are incapable of recognizing what’s going on in American politics. The President can do no wrong and liberal policies are never to blame. Instead, the only time liberals get trounced at the polls it’s because of angry lynch mobs. Where were these angry mobs in 2008 and 2006? Or did racists simply quit going to the polls for two elections?

Obama needs more time to write a book about what to do next.

Where does J.M. Bernstein learn about the Tea Party? His op-ed quotes Mark Lilla frequently. Who is Mark Lilla? Lilla is an expert on the Tea Party because he’s a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, and the New York Times. Plus, he’s a professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. Oh, the humanity!

I won’t lose much sleep over the sophist chattering classes of “higher education.” This class of people has been out of touch for decades. The problem is these are the type of people Obama surrounded with himself for decades (a.k.a., an ongoing “college seminar”). If Obama was only writing books and hanging out with anarchists at the local vegan organic coffee shop commune that would be perfectly fine, but these people have no business running a grocery store lemonade stand, let alone a country.

Unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The careful scientific work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? The sheer fact that the IPCC exists is an example of “governmental bias.” Is it really shocking that an entire panel created to study climate change found climate change? When “big oil” funds a scientific study the results are ignored by the alarmists. Alarmists have kindly ignored the big bucks being made thanks to climate change. For the past decade the climage change business has been booming. Al Gore has a financial stake in climate change and the mastermind of the 2007 IPCC report Dr Rajendra Pachauri is making money as well.

It was in this newspaper that we first revealed how Pachauri has earned millions of pounds for his Delhi-based research institute Teri, and further details are still emerging of how he has parlayed his position into a worldwide business empire, including 17 lucrative contracts from the EU alone. But we should not expect the truth to break in too suddenly on this mass of vested interests. Too many people have too much at stake to allow the faith in man-made global warming, which has sustained them so long and which is today making so many of them rich, to be abandoned.

The truth is finally starting to come on this sad tale. Al Gore has always been a political opportunist. Gore’s name on the Nobel Peace Prize disgraced the award long before Obama made it official. Gore’s Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth may go down in history as one of Hollywood’s most ignorant moments of all time (that’s saying something). In a way this is the worst thing that ever could happen to Gore. Losing the election was painful, but Gore has always cared deeply about what others think of him. As the fraud and bad science add up on the theory of man-made global so does the ridicule for Al Gore.

Gore is now remembered for two things he invented. Everyone knows Al Gore didn’t event the internet, but for many Gore is the face of the Global Warming swindle. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong about Al Gore before, but something tells me the gig is up.

In Federalist 10, James Madison states that special interest groups will always exist and that we need to get use to them. He argues that “Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire. Human life is sustained by air. So is fire.” The elimination of air to eliminate the threat of fire would also mean the end of human life. Likewise, freedom is essential to both special interests and to vigorous political debate. Withdraw freedom from special interest and you destroy political life itself. This is exactly what campaign finance reform has done.

If tomorrow I decide to make a movie about a political candidate and it’s funded by a major film studio what business does the Federal Government have in telling me it’s not allowed? It may be unseemly to some that a corporation funds my movie but unseemly doesn’t rise to the point of restricting the First Amendment. The most frustrating part of this issue is there isn’t anyone adequately explaining why this decision was a victory for the First Amendment. It’s certainly not President Obama, who shamefully attacked the Supreme Court during the State of the Union. Obviously, the President either doesn’t understand or would rather score cheap populist points than tell the truth.

Why are corporations such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and FOX News exempt from campaign finance laws? The editorial content of these news outlets is very political and is absolutely not objective. The reason these corporations are exempt is the same reason why campaign finance reform is unconstitutional. That’s what is so shocking to me about this issue. The four liberal members of the Supreme Court are okay with some corporations and some citizens being denied the Bill of Rights.

Leaving aside complaints about “affirmative action for boys,” less attention has been focused on the social ramifications. Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.

I’m sorry if I’m completely unconcerned about the average college female’s prospects for landing a date on Valentine’s Day. In a world full of problems this isn’t one. It seems as if the average college male of the 1950s survived not having a lot of women around. I know this is a surprising observation but the goal of college is to secure an eduction.

Many economists take a much calmer view of budget deficits than anything you’ll see on TV. Nor do investors seem unduly concerned: U.S. government bonds continue to find ready buyers, even at historically low interest rates

That’s all well and good. Those crazy Republicans are just trying to scare the public like they did about Iraq. I wonder what Krugman thought about deficits during the Bush administration? Oh, I don’t have to wonder, Google enables me to search myself. Here’s Krugman’s take on deficits in 2003:

Still, do deficits matter? Some economists worry, with good reason, about their long-run effect on economic growth. But I worry most about America’s fiscal credibility.
You see, a government that has a reputation for sound finance and honest budgets can get away with running temporary deficits; if it lacks such a reputation, it can’t. Right now the U.S. government is running deficits bigger, as a share of GDP, than those that plunged Argentina into crisis. The reason we don’t face a comparable crisis is that markets, extrapolating from our responsible past, trust us to get our house in order.

Well Mr. Krugman, which one is it? American fiscal credibility is much worse in 2010 than it was in 2003, but now he’s completely changed his attitude. It seems Krugman is only concerned with deficits when a Republican is in charge. Krugman’s observations aren’t from an economics standpoint, but they represent the views of a bitter hypocritical liberal quite well.
Does Krugman even bother to read his own drivel?