There was one other anniversary that I forgot to mention yesterday. Sixty-four years ago, Franklin Roosevelt breathed his last, and with his departure from this world, so ended his war on the free market, and the economic depression that he had so nurtured for a dozen long years. It was not mere coincidence that the post-war economic growth was so large — there was no FDR to continue to hinder it with his whimsical and arbitrary tinkering. RIP to both.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
What The Tea Parties Are About
This is both an interesting, and scary graph. The most important thing to me is not just the sheer magnitude of the Obama deficits, but the respective trends of both administrations.
Note that the Bush deficit was decreasing every year until 2008, when it got hammered by the TARP (at least I’m assuming that’s the cause, though it could also be a result of the slowing economy throughout the year, not to mention Congressional spending increases under the Democrats starting in late 2007). Note also that this was happening despite the evil Bush “tax cuts” (which obviously weren’t really tax cuts — they were just tax rate cuts that actually were reducing the deficit, despite the out-of-control spending by the Republican Congress).
In contrast note that the Obama plan is ever-increasing deficits after 2012, whether you believe administration or CBO projections. And though they decrease in the near term, they never get as low as the worst Bush deficit before they start to sky rocket in the teens. This, simply put, is fiscal insanity. And increasing taxes on “the rich” (as they’d surely love to do if they could get away with it) isn’t an option. There simply isn’t enough money there, and if there were, it would tank the economy even more, with even larger deficits from reduced tax receipts and automatic increases in non-discretionary wealth transfers. Also, estimate the integral under the curve. That’s an accumulating debt, with an ever-increasing proportion of the deficit going to interest, particularly when people become reluctant to loan money to a budding Weimar at low rates.
People who will be protesting on Wednesday won’t be protesting against a party. They’ll be protesting against a government completely out of control. But unfortunately for the Democrats and the left, they will be seen as the much larger part of the problem, because the Republicans are now at least giving lip service to reduced spending and reduced government. But they’re going to have to work very hard to live down their spending spree of the “compassionate conservative” (read, “progressive lite”) Bush years.
[Evening update]
“Liberal doughboys afraid of tea parties.”
Liberal bloggers and media groups can’t get the Tea Party phenomenon out of their heads. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, to them. Ordinary people getting together to protest against the liberal establishment. There is a cognitive disconnect. There must be a plot; the vast right-wing conspiracy at work.
So true to form, Media Matters sounded the horn that this was not a real protest, it’s a Fox News segment. Kind of a made for T.V. reality show, with a cast of tens of thousands. Think Progress joined in with “Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests.”
And the netroot blogosphere heard the call. FireDogLake proprietor Jane Hamsher posted “What Part of ‘FNC TAX DAY TEA PARTIES’ Don’t You Understand?” Hamsher also promoted “citizen-organized protests” which were unlike the “Fox-organized” Tea Parties; I guess she didn’t catch the irony of promoting counter-protests to protest other people promoting protests. Anyway, almost no one showed up for the counter-protests.
Gee, I think I have one of those in comments.
[Monday morning update]
More tea-party panic:
What’s the big deal? ACORN, MoveOn, and Soros get to pull puppet strings year after year, and that’s ok. But God forbid Fox News puts so much as its imprimatur on Tea Parties! No way! That’s too sinister, too insidious; and makes the whole movement illegitimate and inauthentic. Whatever…
Jane Hamsher and Oliver Willis are probably asking “Who the hell are this Tea Party bunch? Where did they come from?” I’ll tell you who they are, Jane and Oliver. They’re your worst nightmare: they’re small-governmenters first and party-loyalists second.
And we’re not laughing with you, Jane and Oliver. We’re laughing at you.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
More on Crazy Jane and the other panicked and paranoid leftists (like my commenter):
She’s implying because freedomworks listed the Texas Tea parties and Dick Armey is part of freedomworks that the Tea Parties, Houston in particular, are being organized by “Corporate lobbyists”. Houston Tea Party has never spoken with Freedomworks or Dick Armey, though we do know that Freedomworks has offered legal advice to different Tea parties, we’ve not sought it. None of that should imply they are running the show unless you go to the point of just making stuff up.
The “Corporate lobbyist” line is a laugh. Felicia is a local Mother of two who worked with some local grassroots groups like Raging Elephants. I was someone who was trying to be apolitical the past 4 years until I took a good look at was going on, and I was laid off last week and currently unemployed. There are other organizers and volunteers with us. None of them come close to the description “Corporate Lobbyist”.
And no, this woman is nuts, Fox News is not organizing the Tea Parties, they’re just jumping on board (like a lot of people are trying to). But she’s seeing Dick Armey and Fox News as the boogeymen in the closet…
So… I’ve had my LMAO moment for the day. How about you? 🙂
Edit: More on this silliness:
If we’re being organized by “corporate lobbyists” then where the heck is my check?
Yeah, me too. How do I get in on this hot “corporate lobbyist” action?
Government-Run Health Care
Someone please explain to me why it will get better when it applies to all of us?
Whenever I think of government health care, I can’t help but think about the DMV.
Prosecutorial Misconduct
Not just for Ted Stevens, but was it also related to Scooter Libby?
[Update a few minutes later]
This just points out that while elections matter, they don’t necessarily matter as much as they should, due to entrenched civil servants below appointment level, which is why the CIA seemed to be at war with the Bush administration for much of the past eight years (not to mention the State Department). And the administration never seemed willing to even try to do anything about it (for instance, no one was ever fired for all of the leaks to the New York Times). I’d be curious to know if Ms. Morris ever prosecuted a Democrat.
The Beginning Of The Myth
I missed noting it yesterday, but it was the fiftieth anniversary of the announcement of the Mercury 7. It set the pattern for the mythology of the NASA astronaut (with two minor variations — the first in the sixties when it was no longer necessary to be a test pilot, and in the late seventies, when women were allowed into the club). I may have more thoughts later, but to me, it was one of the key events that led us off on a very wrong path that has resulted in the space quagmire we’re in to this day.
Bringing The World Together
This is what we have come to. Unilateral action, even if it is as clear cut as defending US interests against pirates, must be avoided. Murderous Jihadist terrorists get civil rights and government lawyers while US taxpayers pick up the bill. Pirates, who board US shipping and threaten American seamen, get treated like simple criminals that do not warrant so much as a mention by the President. One would have thought it was a no-brainer for the Manchurian President, a populist win-win to paint Obama as a decisive leader, a chance to inspire confidence that he was up to the challenge. It was a chance to warn aggressors, pirates or otherwise, away from international shipping. It was also a chance, now squandered, to reassure friend and foe alike that America had not lost her nerve or reneged on her exceptional role as a world leader.
But no, it’s all just a distraction from the greater work of wealth redistribution, “social justice,” and remaking America into the utopian vision of a narcissistic socialist academic with a nice speaking voice. No pompous speeches and meandering lectures this time, the implications of piracy on trade and sovereignty are beyond Obama.
Treacher has similar thoughts:
1) Presidents of the United States don’t tend to go around apologizing for their own country on foreign soil.
2) Pirates don’t tend to attack American ships.
3) When both happen within a week of each other, each one for the first time anybody can remember, there might be loose talk.
Shootings happen more often than we’d like, but people like Oliver Willis and Markos Moulitsas have no problem pinning one on Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or whoever else they want to malign. Whereas pirates kidnapping Americans at sea happens once every 200 years. But I’m not supposed to wonder if President Obama running around the world with a “Kick Me” sign on his back — which almost flew off during his spine-bending bow to a king — has anything to do with America getting, um, kicked.
And President Obama makes a heart-warming outreach to the moderate pirate community:
For too long, America has been too dismissive of the proud culture and invaluable contributions of the Pirate Community. Whether it is their pioneering work with prosthetics, husbandry of tropical birds or fanciful fashion sense, America owes a deep debt to Pirates.
The past eight years have shown a failure to appreciate the historic role of these noble seafarers. Instead of celebrating their entreprenuerial spirit and seeking to partner with them to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.
Some of us wonder if our current Overseas Contingency Operation would even be needed had the last administration not been so quick to label Pirates as “thieves,” “terrorists” and worse. Such swashbucklaphobia can lead to tragic results, as we have seen this week.
And I’ll have a scoop this weekend on the new administration’s long-overdue moves to heal the breach with the solar system.
That’s Awunna Expensiva Pizza
When you’re the president of the United States, only the best pizza will do – even if that means flying a chef 860 miles.
Chris Sommers, 33, jetted into Washington from St Louis, Missouri, on Thursday with a suitcase of dough, cheese and pans to to prepare food for the Obamas and their staff.
Short of out of the president’s own pocket, is there any good answer for that question? If it came out of the White House catering budget, how is that justified to the taxpayers? If someone donated the money, who was it, and what did they get for it?
And why doesn’t the The Daily Mail think that’s an interesting question? Would the New York Times? Or is it just news that’s not fit to print?
And, of course, knowing this, what are we supposed to think when the president excoriates the greedy and rich?
A Dose Of Reality
Something all too rare. I’m sure that they’ll be attacked for blasphemy, but Arizona State doesn’t think that the president has enough experience to entitle him to an honorary degree.
Gee, it’s nice to see someone pointing out the Emperor’s sartorial problems.
The Universal Mistake
The case against universal health coverage.
Some Thoughts On Charity
From a libertarian perspective, your generosity is reflected in what you do with your own money, not in what you do with other people’s money. If I give a lot of money to charity, then I am generous. If you give a smaller fraction of your money to charity, then you are less generous. But if you want to tax me in order to give my money to charity, that does not make you generous.
But it does seem to make you self righteous.