Saturday, September 17, 2011
The US media: "cupbearer to a styrofoam demigod"
The MSM was in trouble as a result of the Internet revolution in communication. Like the US Post Office, much of its function has become irrelevant. The difference is that the Post Office still has a shred of reputation despite its service issues (ever go to a post office in the last few years to stand in line while employees ask customers about archaic options?) while the MSM is viewed as a hostile occupying army much like the Germans in Paris in 1942.
Much of the Obama coverage was orchestrated sychophancy. They glided past his pretensions — when did a presidential candidate before “address the world” from the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin? They ignored his arrogance — “You’re likeable enough, Hillary.” And they averted their eyes from his every gaffe — such as the admission that he didn’t speak “Austrian.”Let's not kid anyone, the MSM managed to commit intellectual suicide. Like a rock star on drugs and booze the trip felt good and the groupies were there to make them feel alive but reality is creeping in and nobody has any use for their talent. Anyone can make noise, and the acoustics are even better when it’s all amateur hour.
The media walked right past the decades-long association of Obama with the weird and racist pastor Jermiah Wright. In the midst of the brief stormlet over the issue, one CNN host — inexplicably — decided that CNN was going to be a “Wright-free zone.” He could have hung out a sign: “No bad news about Obama here.”
The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama — he strolled to the presidency.
Palin, in particular, stands out as Obama’s opposite in the media’s eyes. As much as they genuflected to the one, they felt the need to turn rotweiler toward the other. If Obama was sacred , classy, intellectual and cosmopolitan, why then Palin must be malevolent, trashy, dumb and pure backwoods-ignorant.
Every doubt they hid from themselves about Obama, every potential embarrassment they tucked under the blanket of their superior sensibilities, they furiously over-compensated for by their remorseless hounding of Palin — from utterly trivial e-mails, to blogger Andrew Sullivan’s weird speculations about Palin’s womb, musings that put the Obama “Birther” fantasies into a realm near sanity. (We are now seeing an echo of that — with a new book promoting all sorts of unconfirmed gossip about Palin, including her alleged sexual dalliance with a basketball star.)
Rogue UBS Trader Loses $2 Billion.
It's one of the reasons I left UBS and set up my own firm. Proprietary trading is a ticking time bomb.
Barack doesn't beat Michelle.
Peggy Noonan in the WSJ pens her analysis of Obama’s mistakes that contribute to his sliding polls and the loss the Democrats suffered in NY-9. She ends her essay by trying to say something nice about Barack, mentioning that he isn’t mean, there have been no scandals and that he, Michelle and his grandmother are living in the White House.
Apparently branding your opponents racist may be despicable but in Peggy’s world it isn’t mean. Neither is trying to destroy your opponents as the White House went after Rush Limbaugh and FOX News … among others.
There has been no scandal if you don’t count the gunrunning in “Fast & Furious” or the crony capitalism that funneled over half a billion dollars to Solyndra, and then restructured the loan to give first claim in bankruptcy court to Barack’s contributors. And lest we forget, Obama’s fundraising via unchecked credit card donations in 2008; the one where Good Will and Doodad Pro along with thousands of other improbables contributed to the Obama campaign.
If people like Noonan, Obama suckers all, are reduced to praising Barack Obama for staying with Michelle and not abandoning his children, it tells you something about the people who supported him in 2008 and are about to do so again.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Oil, Gas, Jobs and the Election
Glenn Reynolds notes that the Alberta oil sands are a jobs and economic bonanza. Let it also be noted that Texas has produced most of the jobs in the US the last year. Critics of Texas Governor Rick Perry say it's just luck; that that Texas has an economy bouyed by oil. I fail to understand why Perry, as he seeks the Republican nomination for President doesn’t respond by announcing that if he is elected, he will do for the US what he - and oil - did for Texas and what the Alberta oil sands did for Canada: unleash the exploration and production of oil and gas that have recently been discovered in our own country.
Where oil and gas production is allowed by the government in the US, the economy is booming. The problem is that Obama has suppressed the development of our own energy deposits. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal, yet the Obama administration is threatening to bankrupt the users of coal. We have discovered centuries of natural gas in our own country, yet the Obama administration, in concert with radical environmentalists, prevents its development. Drilling permits are still being held up in the Gulf of Mexico and exploration off the East Coast has been halted despite indications of substantial reserves. Further exploration and production in the Arctic has run into a brick wall even as production from the North Slope declines.
Imagine the jobs that could come from large scale development of our own newly discovered energy resources. Then imagine the reduced prices for gasoline and the impact it would have on costs throughout the economy in lower food prices … in fact in lower prices for everything where transportation is a cost.
To get back to Perry, he is given a golden opportunity to appeal to everyone except the radical Greens by explain in a few simple sentences, in a brief sound bite, that oil, gas and coal is not limited to Texas, it is found in New York, Pennsylvania, the Dakotas, off the coast of Virginia and the Carolinas, in the Arctic ocean and in the Gulf or Mexico. And his first action as President is to encourage the development of all of our resources; proven energy for an energy and jobs hungry nation.
President Perry will not bow to Middle East kings and sheiks. Instead, he will see a renaissance of American energy production and we will produce so much of our own energy that they will go back to herding camels.
UPDATE:
Anon makes an interesting point which is also being made by other Obama supporters. So I did some research on the web. It turns out that the rise in oil production is really Bush’s fault. National Journal makes the point that it takes one to three years for the government’s policy to have any effect on production. At this point, the major Obama initiatives have been to stop, cancel or reduce the permits required to explore or drill for oil on public lands on and offshore. Obama’s own energy information administration numbers show a decline in production in future years. UPDATE:
It’s typical of the Obama administration to take credit for Bush’s successes, claiming it as their own and blaming their failures on Bush or anyone but themselves.
Monday, September 12, 2011
The US Needs a Control Group
Frank J. Fleming points out that the Liberal government is anti-science.
To be serious for a moment, have you noticed that Liberals are hot to trot for the precautionary principle when it comes to things that affect the physical environment, but are perfectly willing to try out just about any nutty idea when it comes to the economic or social environment? Threaten to dig a hole without an environmental impact statement and you get the Left screaming bloody murder. Experiment with the human race and you have their wholehearted support.
Science is extremely important. It’s given us microwaves, dinosaurs and the “Mr. Wizard Show.” And medicines. Except for the homeopathic ones.
It’s critical that we all accept science’s conclusions. For instance, if we don’t agree on the age of the Earth, how will we know what to do when the Earth tries to buy liquor? And without knowledge of evolution, when a species goes extinct, how do we know who to notify as its next of kin?
But despite the obvious importance of science, one group of people does everything in pure defiance of scientific methods: politicians.
What do politicians do when they think they have a great idea? They just go and implement it. It’s like someone thinking he’s got a cure for cancer and immediately injecting it into everyone he can. That’s a madman, not a scientist. You always have to at least try out your idea on monkeys to make sure it doesn’t kill them.
Were farm subsidies first tried on monkeys? Social Security? Bank bailouts? No, the unscientific politicians went straight to trying all their ideas on humans, and now we have a bunch of bankrupt people instead of harmless bankrupt monkeys.
But the problem with testing political ideas on monkeys is that forcing them to go billions into debt would violate animal-cruelty laws. The only ones we’re allowed to do that to are people.
So we have to just observe the effects of the politicians’ policies -- but that’s not so simple. Many say the Obama stimulus was a failure; others say we’d be even worse off without it. With the data we have, we can’t prove who’s right.
In science, when testing things on people, you always use a control group. If you have a drug you think will cut cholesterol, you give it to one set of test subjects. If everyone in the group that took the drug turns purple and starts choking but the control group is fine, we scientifically conclude there’s a problem with the drug.
We have an economy that’s turning purple and choking. Did the stimulus cause that? If we had a control group that looked fine, we’d know.
To be serious for a moment, have you noticed that Liberals are hot to trot for the precautionary principle when it comes to things that affect the physical environment, but are perfectly willing to try out just about any nutty idea when it comes to the economic or social environment? Threaten to dig a hole without an environmental impact statement and you get the Left screaming bloody murder. Experiment with the human race and you have their wholehearted support.
Read the whole thing.
On Vacation
In the middle of a vacation, and checking the internet there are a few sites that are always able to give us a quick but thorough overview of what’s happening in the world away from sun, water and cool breezes. And no, I’m not talking of islands but of beautiful Michigan and its Lake Superior and Lake Michigan shores.
Pictures when I return.
For a rapid overview there’s DRUDGE who gives us pictures and headlines and is now more influential than the NY Times. A paper in its dotage has become a caricature - and a punching bag - that even Liberals won’t bother to defend any longer. The Times and the US Post Office are both sliding into irrelevance.
For pithy comments as well as a universal overview of the important events and thoughts of the day, there’s Glenn Reynolds, Professor Instapundit.
More later.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Senate Democrats won't approve new funding for disasters unless they get the funding they want for corporations that make electric cars.
This week the left-wing press has been attacking House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for holding disaster relief funding "hostage." A more accurate way to put this is that Senate Democrats won't approve new funding for disasters unless they get the funding they want for corporations that make electric cars.
Remember when the Supreme Court allowed homes to be destroyed to benefit a developer? The case was Kelo vs. New London.
The property has been turned into a dump.
. . . the city’s project has been a failure, with 91 acres of waterfront property sitting there empty and overgrown by weeds.The development never happened, the site sits abandoned, the homes are gone and Justice Clarence Thomas is vindicated.
Now, we learn from the local newspaper, The Day, that following the hurricane Irene, the city has designated the Fort Trumbull redevelopment site as a place to dump vegetation debris. For a video of locals dumping that stuff on the site, click here.
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