Tag: MSM

The proposition that Barack Obama was actually saying — literally — that business owners don’t build their own businesses doesn’t make a lick of sense. Unless, that is, you’re already convinced that he believes this, and only now has he finally tripped up and admitted it. In that case, it makes all the sense in the world. And what does this contempt for business owners translate into, policy-wise? An increase in the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 39.6%. Apparently this is the rallying cry of today’s socialist revolutionaries.

Kevin Drum touching on just how hard it is to deal with what Paul Krugman calls “invincible ignorance.”
The ultimate wages of absolute epistemic closure on the modern GOP unfortunately extend far beyond simply causing them to nominate national embarrassments like Christine O’Donnell every now and again and into actual peril for the Republic.
The two political factions officially have their own “facts.” One of those factions has a 24/7 news organization, the most popular such outlet in the country, dedicated to using anything and everything as “indisputable evidence” of their set of facts; when usable material doesn’t show up on a given day, they resort to creative editing and outright fabrication. That’s what’s happening here. Obama made comments about infrastructure; creative editing makes it into a comment about business in America. Next thing you know, the Boston Globe runs a story on their front page implying there is no empirical evidence (e.g. the text of Obama’s speech as delivered); therefore “GOP says Obama hates business; Democrats say otherwise…” and no conclusion about the veracity of the claims is made or even implied. Unacceptable.
Research has repeatedly shown that once this inaccurate information such as this is “out there,” there’s just no stopping it. Primacy always wins. Even people who know the information in question is false in hindsight have difficulty accepting the “new” and correct information.
How then does Obama “prove” he isn’t a secret socialist? When did he stop beating his wife? These and other questions will plague us until the non-FOXnews contingent of the American media wakes up, realizes there’s no there there, drops this view from nowhere approach that gives us only unusable he-said-she-said nonsense, and starts thinking and acting critically (but without malice, obviously) in all dealings with figures public and semi-private. Short of somebody utterly and unexpectedly disrupting the media as it stands today, I see no other way out.

jasencomstock:

Supposedly this is a compelling cartoon that shows how ‘crazy’ those public sector unions are.

Indeed, but the failure here is in getting the message into the head of Joe Private Sector that he’s the one getting the raw deal and the answer to that is most definitely not making sure that everyone has all benefits stripped from their job too.
The GOP and their media enablers have spent over two decades convincing him that, in fact, he shouldn’t be getting any benefits and neither should anybody else, regardless of whatever contracts those parties have entered into. Unless and until Unions and The Democrat figure out that it will require a similarly sustained, unyielding, and focused message to undo any of that, nothing will change. And, assuming the staus quo prevails or worsens, sooner or later, everyone will end up losing pensions, health care, weekends, limited hours, paid vacations, and anything else they can pry from a working populace all too eager to hand over anything and everything for a simulacrum of a chance at actual advancement. You know, lotteries and such.

But, man, think of the efficiencies our Galtian overlords will have achieved. That will be something to see.

Happy Whacking Day!

Kent Brockman: But first, a look at the local holiday that was called distasteful and puerile by a panel of hillbillies, Whacking Day! In a tradition that dates back to founding father Jebediah Springfield, every May 10th local residents gathered to drive snakes into the center of town and whack them to snake heaven. [footage plays] After exposing Alger Hiss, Honorary Grand Marshal Richard Nixon goes after another deadly hiss.
[Nixon accidentally repeatedly strikes a person holding a snake down for him.]
Nixon: Is Whacking Day over? [everyone boos] Thank you. Thanks for coming out.

GSA “Scandal”

Worth noting that the “scandal” eating up several days worth of Congressional hearings cost American taxpayers $823,000. That’s Thousand, with a “t.” Particular interest seems to focus on a single party that cost $1960 dollars. Two thousand dollars.

Bonuses paid post-bailout in AIG’s godforsaken Financial Products Division? $168 million.
Total USG investment in AIG alone: $180 billion. With a B.

That’s just for AIG and really just for one division of AIG. The whole shooting match there on Wall Street was measured in trillions of dollars.

These and other gross mismatches in outrage brought to you by Feckless, the official messaging arm of The Democrat. Well played, boys. Should government money be wasted? Of course not. But let’s keep a sense of scale and focus the outrage on the truly outrageous.

in the 1960s, [there was certainty] that Americans would never consent to give up their big-government perks. And yet, somehow, alongside the ordinary tacking of American political preference between Democrats and Republicans, conservatism continues to thrive. That’s because power begets power: Democrats can be counted on to compromise with conservative nuttiness, and the media can be counted on to normalize it. And it’s because there will always be millions of Americans who are terrified of social progress and of dispossession from whatever slight purchase on psychological security they’ve been able to maintain in a frightening world. And because there will always be powerful economic actors for whom exploiting such fear, uncertainty and doubt pays (and pays, and pays).

Conservatism is not getting crazier, and it’s not going away, either. It’s just getting more powerful. That’s a fact that a reality-based liberal just has to accept – and, from it, draw strength for the fight.

Rick Perlstein, bringing the old optimism, and but also exactly right.

Get Thee Behind Me

What’s the superlative form of yep? Ed Kilgore earns it here:

By […] simply mocking Santorum as someone too unsophisticated to understand the supernatural as a fairy tale for rubes, his MSM tormenters are not only letting him off the hook for his sinister interpretation of politics as holy war, but are doing him the signal service of reinforcing his manichean vision of America torn between humble believers and derisive, self-satisfied elites.

I couldn’t put it any more clearly than that. So I excerpted it; you really should read the whole thing.
Anywho: the issue here is not that Santorum believes in Satan or the Tooth Fairy, it’s that the broader outcome of those views is such that he declares all of Protestantism as a “phony theology.” That’s where and what to attack and attack legitimately, MSM, not his belief in all or part of the Roman Catholic catechism.

Get Thee Behind Me

Selective Stenography

Glenn Greenwald, writing a sort of response to yesterday’s NYT Ombudsman piece (in which he wondered whether NYT journalists should challenge the “facts” they are presented when working stories), really nails the MSM’s ongoing stenography problem. It’s not so much that MSM journalists dutifully and uncritically write down (and then print) what they’ve been told, but that they only do so on behalf of those already in a position of power (be it economic or political):

…there is one important caveat that needs to be added here. This stenographic treatment by journalists — of simply amplifying what someone claims without any skepticism or examination — is not available to everyone. Only those who wield power within America’s political and financial systems are entitled to receive this treatment. For everyone else — those who are viewed as ordinary, marginalized, or scorned by America’s political establishment — the exact opposite rules apply: their statements are subjected to extreme levels of skepticism in those rare instances when they’re heard at all.

[…]

The most damaging sin of this stenographic model isn’t laziness — the failure to subject false statements to critical, investigative scrutiny — although that is part of it. The most damaging sin is that it’s propagandistic: it converts official assertions and claims from the most powerful into Truth, even when those assertions and claims are baseless or false. This stenographic model is the primary means by which media outlets turn themselves into eager spokespeople and servants for the most powerful factions: the very opposite of the function they claim, with increasing absurdity, to perform.

Yep. Read the whole thing.

Selective Stenography

Half Measures

ilyagerner:

“So I think this is going to a very, very difficult year and I think, honestly, that HALF-MEASURES LIKE ASSASSINATIONS or sanctions are only going to produce the crisis more quickly. The better way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons is to attack its nuclear weapons program directly, break their control over the nuclear fuel cycle.”

— John Bolton, who has endorsed Mitt Romney.

Half-measures like assassinations!

And but also, I’d like to know exactly how an attack is anything less than a half-measure? Even if said attack works perfectly, and utterly eliminates all nuclear facilities “known” and “unknown,” precisely how does this “break their control” over the nuclear cycle? Within six or nine months they are presumably already right back at it, with a deeper, or more secretive laboratory. Or they never stop because, you know, they already had a deeper or more secretive laboratory. And now you’ve done nothing more than provide indisputable proof that they need nuclear weapons. Only way to fend off these Americans and their constant nosing into our bidness.

Bolton’s “plan” only works, in fact, if you a) go nuclear and functionally exterminate all living matter in Iran, –or– b) conventionally or otherwise invade and govern Iran. There is no other way that has any reasonable chance of success. Period.

I suspect the American people would poll dramatically against either of those “kill ‘em all” style outcomes. Therefore it might behoove reporters to ask about them directly such that we are all clear exactly what this lunatic and lunatics like him are talking about. But they never do. Shrill. We have learned nothing from the W. Bush administration and, apparently, never will. So the Republic crumbles.

I Think He’s Got It!

Dave Weigel points out the lesson from Iowa and, as I read it, the broader outlines of the GOP primary thus far:

Four years ago, a depressed GOP went to the precinct caucuses, very well aware that Democrats had all the energy. The total GOP vote: 119,188. This year, Republicans should be psyched about the chance to uproot Barack Obama. There will be something above 122,000 total votes. An improvement, right? Well… in 2008, 86 percent of the people who chose the GOP caucuses were Republicans. This year, 75 percent of the electorate was Republican, with the rest of the vote coming from independents and Democrats. What the hell happened?

What happened is those independent and non-GOP folks are Ron Paul voters; also, pretty much anybody under 65 in the room. So, in what should be a high voter interest year, in the “early” state with the most potential to generate that largely white, evangelical, “Obama is ruining the country” style fervor that the GOP counts on to win its national elections you get…depressed turnout, most of which has no interest in the frontrunner and a large chunk of which isn’t really even interested in your party, much less your presumptive candidate.

So far, Mitt is right where he was in 2008. That’s your story. If there was a true frontrunner here he would have, again, finished well back and would (again) be poised to under-perform in his “firewall” of New Hampshire. Instead, he’ll under-perform and but also win there. That will soften the inevitable South Carolina blow, keep things just interesting enough for the media circus to stay engaged, and only serve to delay the inevitable “well, I guess we have to nominate him now” triumphant GOP convention moment down the road in Tampa. Mitt Romney, reporting for duty! I can already smell the rising tide of national excitement.

I Think He’s Got It!

Both Sides Not Equally at Fault

TNR’s Timothy Noah has a nice piece up detailing polls that show the general public largely gets that it’s the GOP being more obstructive, more extreme, and (even among Republicans) ultimately less popular and more deserving of being shown the door. But then Noah writes the funniest thing I’ve read in a while:

I hope the “objective” press reports these findings accurately, and doesn’t bend itself into a pretzel trying to portray this poll as mere generalized disgust with partisan bickering in Washington.

What color is the sky in your world, Tim?

Both Sides Not Equally at Fault