Big J: NY Times Offering Very Selective Coverage - Some stories more equal than others
Mediaite: MSNBC's Predictable Response to Beck's Rally - Larry O'Donnell suggests the crowd were passers-by who'd have been there anyway
Sun-Times: The O'Hare Terror Scare
Philly Post: Chris Christie for President in 2012? - Yes, please
Treacher: Anticipating Palin's Failure a FAIL
This must come as a surprise to…no one: So in the midst of rehearsing all the left’s darkest fears about the Bush’s motives, her mic cuts out and she comes back to admit she’s a conspiracy theorist. Cosmic justice strikes again!
I wasn’t all that impressed with some of the quotes that got passed around from Imam Rauf recently. The splashy one about the US having more innocent blood on its hands than Al Qaeda, while unpleasant, is also arguably true. I’m not talking about that Soros-funded Lancet study. That was bunk. But by any measure we have certainly been responsible for hundreds and probably thousands of “collateral damage” deaths in [...]
I said yesterday, before the speech, that Obama had a choice to make between the high road and the low road. He took the low road. No mention of the surge or the fact that without it we’d be in a very different place right now. But as Krauthammer said yesterday “imitation is the highest form of approbation.” Obama crusaded against the surge, but he now has the same team [...]
I see, thanks to Warner Todd Huston at Big Journalism, that Dana Milbank is moving from his usual space at the Post to the Op Ed page. It’s not a coincidence that he’s leaving his old spot, where he’s been for six years, just one month prior to the publication of his new Glenn Beck bashing book. Here’s what’s likely going on. The Post, having looked at the book, decided [...]
Things briefly seemed to be going well this morning, but that turned around in the late afternoon. Here is what the Anchorage Daily News had to say at 5PM: Today was the biggest chunk of votes. Murkowski has cut Miller’s lead from 1,668 votes to 1,469 today. That’s not nearly what the Murkowski campaign had hoped for. As a result, Murkowski conceded the primary just a couple hours ago: “We [...]
Tonight President Obama is formally announcing the end of combat operations in Iraq. The agreement to do this was actually signed by President Bush, but there’s nothing inappropriate in noting that Obama got the job done. That level of political grandstanding is expected of any politician. But Obama famously predicted that the surge would be a failure. This was during the darkest days of the war in early 2007. Casualty [...]
Politico reports on a new poll: The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll has support for the bill dropping 7 percentage points in August — down to 43 percent — while opposition rose 10 points to 45 percent. That’s the weakest showing since May — and a far cry from the bump proponents had hoped to see as some of the law’s more consumer-friendly provisions kick in. It’s going to get worse for Dems: The [...]
Over at The Corner, K-Lo notes that Huffington Post blogger Beau Friedlander made the following offer: It is time to pop the tea baggers’ favorite balloon (so what if it will be replaced by another?), and with that in mind I hereby offer to negotiate a $100,000 payday to the person who will come forward with a sex tape or phone records or anything else that succeeds in removing Glenn [...]
His latest column is another fact-free rant about Republican calumny (Rush Limbaugh called Obama an Imam), but the conclusion is interesting if only for its blue on blue content: If I were President Obama, I’d be doing all I could to head off this prospect, offering some major new initiatives on the economic front in particular, if only to shake up the political dynamic. But my guess is that the [...]
No teleprompter in sight and this guy lays out the case for dealing with our debt with passion, intelligence and conviction. This is the guy we need leading the party into 2012 and beyond: Am I on the Christie bandwagon? Damn right I am.
USA Today notes that welfare expenditures are rising steeply: More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That’s up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007… More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The [...]
On Saturday, Al Sharpton held a “Reclaiming the Dream” rally at Dunbar High School. His focus, aside from Glenn Beck, was education. In fact, the only high profile Obama administration figure in attendance was Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education. The SEIU was there too: Note the spelling on the SEIU sign. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. It reminds me of this old Far Side cartoon: [HT: College Politico [...]
TBD is a blog site associated with ABC 7 in Washington DC. Yesterday, they promised readers a thorough fact-checking of Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally: Glenn Beck says his rally won’t be political. We somehow doubt that. So we’re going to be fact checking the statements of Beck, former Alaska Gov. and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and the other speakers at the “Restoring Honor” Rally today on the National Mall. [...]
Liberals have been having a laugh over the idea of a Ground Zero exclusion zone. Matt Yglesias even came up with a helpful map (I’d borrow it but I don’t think he likes me very much). The idea was echoed by Mayor Bloomberg, who said: The question will then become how big should the no-mosque zone around the World Trade Center be? On one level, you have to admit the [...]
John on September 2, 2010 at 11:11 am
It wasn’t that long ago that Joe Klein wrote a post titled Too Dumb to Thrive which concluded:
It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.
Today, Klein has reversed course. He is now recommending something called “deliberative democracy” in which ordinary citizens are selected at random to make tough policy decisions. His post today even includes this line:
“The public is very smart if you give it a chance,” says Fishkin…
So which is it, Joe? Are we a nation of morons or smart folks?
From what I can see, the chief appeal of “deliberative democracy” is that it allows experts to have a greater impact on results. It’s much easier to control the thinking of a small group of people than an entire populace. It’s not a coincidence that this idea has so far been most widely accepted on the far left, i.e. the Green Party.
Imagine a deliberative democracy approach to global warming. A room full of randomly chosen citizens being berated by environmentalists about why we’d all be better off if, say, the price of gas were to triple. No representative for common sense would be in the room. Indeed, Joe’s post mentions that one of the triumphs of this approach is that, in Texas, “the percentage of people — and these were stakeholders, utility customers — willing to pay more for wind went from 54% to 84%.” I’m sure after three days of hectoring by PhDs with Power Point slides, that seemed like a great idea. I’m not sure their neighbors who didn’t get the re-education effort would agree.
Category: MSM & Bias |
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Morgen on September 2, 2010 at 12:22 am
You are probably familiar by now with this infamous graph published by the White House in January 2009 highlighting their expectations for the impact of the Recovery Act on the rate of unemployment. Far from leveling off at 8% and then declining, the actual unemployment rate ran up to 10% by the end of 2009 and has declined only slightly since to 9.5%, largely due to a decline in labor force participation. This in spite of the rapid passage of the massive $787 billion stimulus bill in February 2009. (Geoff at the Innocent Bystanders blog deserves everlasting credit for being the first to point out this disconnect.)
With the White House and other Democrats resolutely sticking to their claim that the stimulus bill “saved or created” 3-4 million jobs, I thought it might be worthwhile to point out that the very same January 2009 White House report also included an industry by industry forecast of where these 3-4 million jobs would come from. Here it is:
Thanks to the inclination of economists to model verifiable data (even when they are pulling numbers out of the sky), these industry categories happen to align perfectly with employment data tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thus we can easily compare the actual changes in employment to the figures forecast by the White House. In the table below, I’ve calculated the net change in employment by industry from February 2009, when the stimulus bill was passed, to July 2010, using the latest data available from the BLS. (Click row headings for data source.)
| Jobs Created-Forecast (Q4-2010) | Jobs Created-Actual (Feb-09 to Jul-2010) |
|
|---|---|---|
| TOTAL | 3,675,000 | -2,629,700 |
| Mining | 26,000 | -14,000 |
| Construction | 678,000 | -862,000 |
| Manufacturing | 408,000 | -660,000 |
| Wholesale Trade | 158,000 | -173,900 |
| Retail Trade | 604,000 | -288,900 |
| Information | 50,000 | -161,000 |
| Financial Activities | 214,000 | -321,000 |
| Professional and Business Services | 345,000 | -246,000 |
| Education and Health Services | 240,000 | +473,000 |
| Leisure and Hospitality | 499,000 | -86,000 |
| Other Services | 99,000 | -71,000 |
| Utilities | 11,000 | -11,400 |
| Transportation and Warehousing | 98,000 | -143,500 |
| Government | 244,000 | -64,000 |
The figures speaks for themselves, but note that the difference between the total number of jobs the White House forecast would be “created” and the actual number of jobs lost represents an astounding delta of over 6 million jobs. Six million! Where are the jobs, indeed.
Remarkably, even the total number of government jobs dropped, I imagine due to job losses at the state and local levels. And how can the Recovery Act be considered anything other than a complete and utter failure with over 1.5 million fewer construction jobs than forecasted? In spite of endless propaganda over shovel-ready projects, and the nation littered with roadside signs touting Recovery Act projects.
Most damning of all I think is that the job losses I’ve highlighted occurred after President Obama assumed office, and by and large after the stimulus bill was passed and the money began to flow. These are not “inherited” job losses by any stretch.
Defenders of the White House argue that the economy was in more dire shape than they realized at the time, and that the employment situation would be worse without the stimulus bill. This may be the case, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Administration and their allies in Congress rammed through an unprecedented $787 billion in spending – much of it having little to do with economic stimulus – based on flawed assumptions and overly optimistic forecasts.
It’s simply irrefutable that the Recovery Act has not had the beneficial impact projected by the White House. In fact, based on the data alone it’s arguable that the net impact has been detrimental to the economy, especially in combination with other legislation and policy changes enacted by the Administration and the Democrat-led Congress.
While Democrats would like to blame their declining political fortunes on a climate of fear stirred up by the GOP and conservative media, mainstream America recognizes incompetence and mismanagement when they see it. Saddling our children and grandchildren with $787 billion of debt (plus interest), while presiding over the loss of millions of more jobs – and yet brazenly claiming that they somehow “saved or created” 3-4 million jobs – is a disgraceful legacy of failure and deceit from which there is no escape. November is coming.
Category: Politics |
Comments (5)
John on September 1, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Here is Max Fisher deploring the politicization of the hostage taking:
Lee, who police say may have explosives, has long protested the Discovery Channel building and has posted a crazed, rambling Internet “manifesto“, calling the human species the “most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around” and insisting that the Discovery Channel air his views. Though Lee is clearly sick, and though the hostage crisis is still ongoing as of this writing, bloggers and partisan commentators have not hesitated in using this incident to score political points.
Yes, Lee is obviously unhinged. You don’t threaten to kill people unless you have problems generally. But apart from his actions, there is little in his “crazed” manifesto that represents his own original thought. Most of these ideas have a long, respectable history on the left going back at least as far as Paul Ehlich’s The Population Bomb. Neo-Malthusian ideas have been repeated many times since then by tenured professors around the globe. I’ve written about some of them here on the site more than once. In fact, here’s a description of one lecture by highly respected University of Texas Professor Eric Pianka:
“He recommended airborne Ebola as an ideal killing virus,” Mims said. “He showed slides of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse and human skulls. He joked about requiring universal sterilization. It reminded me of a futuristic science fiction movie with a crazed scientist planning the death of humanity.”
It’s not all that different than Lee’s “crazed” manifesto, is it?
As for Lee himself, he was a devotee of Richard Dawkins and joined the following meetup groups: The Maryland Science and Skepticism Meetup Group, Washington Area Secular Humanist Meetup Group, CFI-DC Drinking Skeptically. In short, he considered himself a rationalist.
Does Max Fisher think someone who holds Lee’s views is necessarily crazed? Or is he referring to the style and not the content?
Addendum: For the record, here are my thoughts on when it is fair to look at someone’s beliefs in connection to their use of violence.
Not all violence is the result of insanity. Some is calculated for effect in a rational way, i.e. suicide bombings. In those cases, some goal is given a higher value than life. This is certainly not normal, but it’s also not necessarily insane. In cases where the killer’s (or would be killer’s) actions flow rationally from their beliefs, it should be fair to point out that ideas do have consequences.
This post is timely once again: In defense of the blame game
Category: Blogs & New Media, Climate Change & Environment |
Comments (2)
John on September 1, 2010 at 11:55 am
Update 2PM PST: It’s over. Police report that James Lee has been shot and his 3 hostages are free. They believe his explosive device may have gone off when he was shot.
Update 2:55PM PST (Morgen): Lee’s Meetup page confirms he was an atheist:
Hello. I’ve been in DC-MD for a few years now looking for some of that ‘change.’ I’m an Atheist and am extremely proud and open about that fact. My favorite authors are Daniel Quinn, Richard Dawkins, and Jared Diamond.
Guess he never found the “change” he was looking for.
[Original story]
This story hit close to home:
A gunman, possibly carrying explosives, has entered the headquarters of the Discovery Channel and fired shots, according to police in Silver Spring, Md…”There’s a guy with a gun in the lobby. Police are swarming in — assault rifles and all,” producer Talal Al-khatib told ABCNews.com via instant message.
One of my best friends in the world (best man at my wedding) works for Discovery as an editor. When this broke, I got worried because, if you knew my friend Henry, you’d know that he would be the guy volunteering to be a hostage so everyone else could leave the building.
I just got off the phone with him. He was home and had just learned what happened from a neighbor who also came to check on him. He checked his company e-mail from home and found this:
We have reason to believe there is an armed gunman at One Discovery Place. All employees should seek protection in a locked office on their respective floors immediately.
According to this site (HT: Chris Moody on Twitter), the guy with the gun is “a disgruntled, aspiring TV producer who has apparently gone off the deep end after having his pitches rejected by Discovery on several occasions.” His website now contains a list of demands. Here’s a sample:
The general aura is one of eco-lunacy. The idea that humanity is a plague upon the planet is reminiscent of Paul Ehrlich. The manifesto also echos a lot of the talk coming more recently from John Reid and others on the left.
Of course every time something like this happens, the left assures us that they don’t play the “blame game.” But these same sites weren’t so reticent in drawing conclusions when a Muslim cab driver was stabbed in Manhattan recently. Only violence plausibly emanating from the right is symbolic of larger problems and a “climate of hate.” Violence from the left, well, in that case it’s just another lone gunman.
Update: According to his website, this is video of James Jay Lee throwing money in the air in Silver Spring:
I’m not sure what the point of this was, but there it is. Here’s a screen grab of him in action. You can see the money in the air:
And here’s a title sequence he created for his proposed Discovery Channel show:
He used “Eve of Destruction” as his theme music. Also note this photo from his MySpace page. The caption is his addition:
It almost goes without saying that he’s an atheist, but I’m saying it because, if he were a Christian, it would be fodder.
Update 2: James Lee reviews Al Gore:
I finished reading Al Gore’s book, and inconvenient truth a few days ago. It was very enlightening. However, at the end he didn’t offer any real solutions, as if changing a lightbulb would even put a scratch in the global warming epidemic. The book was half good, which means the part about science was good. The rest seemed like a commercial for sainthood.
I re-read Genesis the first chapter. It was obviously written by a totalitarian farmer.
Here’s another bit of foreshadowing on his MySpace page. Note this is from 2006:
Been having strange dreams.
I can’t seem to stop myself from this venture. I can’t think about anything else except this and this alone. Thanks for ruining my life Shannon.
I am ready to go all the way with this one. All the way guys!
I hope no one is hurt by this lunatic.
Update 3: Think Progress attempts a gainer with a half twist by trying to claim Lee’s manifesto has a lot in common with right-wing anti-immigration groups. Pity the poor junior staffer who was assigned this line of garbage.
Category: Climate Change & Environment, Crime & the Law |
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