Surprise! Unexpected! Economy contracts in fourth quarter

The New Neo Posted on by

How long can the media continue to be surprised by negative reports on the economy? And why are the rest of us not surprised?

Or is the media only feigning its surprise?

Now, I understand that this is the first quarter since the 2008 crash that the economy hasn’t grown at least a little tiny bit. And I understand that most economists had predicted at least modest growth this quarter. Thus, the “surprise” of the experts.

But I still don’t see why they’ve been so surprised. How could the economic climate be good with the uncertainty of the fiscal cliff negotiations, the debt ceiling fight, the very real problems of unemployment and the deficit and looming Obamacare and payroll tax raises for all (even if they’re technically the result of the end of a temporary cut)?

The proximate cause of this particular downturn is thought to be defense cuts, and some other indicators seem okay. But nothing looks what one might call good. And why, pray tell, would it?

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m no whiz on economics and/or finance. But my gut and my brain tell me that the economy is one of those complex creatures, subject to the law of unintended consequences and a host of other things we understand only poorly, if at all, and that predictions are inherently shaky, whether by learned economists, politicians, or little old me. But that anyone is truly surprised by the economy doing poorly at the moment is—well, it’s surprising.

As I see it, the situation is that we must balance our need to cut government spending and shrink the deficit with our need to stimulate growth, and because it’s a fact in recent years that a lot of our economy is dependent on government spending, these become contradictory impulses. We must create a climate where people believe things are getting better, because people’s economic behavior is in part psychological (I think Romney’s mere election would have helped create at least a bit more of that climate, but we’ll never know if that was correct, because we never got a chance to find out). We have to balance the need to raise revenue through taxes with the need to not burden people unduly and decrease their spending.

And on and on and forth. I also suspect that our current economy still has some not insignificant bubble aspects, propped up in part by the government in a sort of endless loop, rather than reflecting true vibrancy.

[NOTE: IF you want to read a ton of articles on what this 4th quarter report means, just go to memeorandum and start clicking.]

The press: insight gained from going over to the dark side

The New Neo Posted on by

Earlier today I praised Fox’s Kirsten Powers for her hard-hitting comments about Kroft’s fawning Obama/Clinton interview on “60 Minutes.” But I want to point out something even more important that she’s said today.

Remember that Powers is a liberal, which makes her more difficult (although hardly impossible—where there’s a will there’s a way!) for liberals to marginalize. But after all, she’s gone over to the dark side and works for the enemy, Fox.

And that’s the subject of her piece: the administration’s attitude toward the network, and why this stance is so very dangerous. Powers gets it, probably because now that she’s on Fox, she’s lived it:

Alas, the president loves to whine about the media meanies at Fox News. To him, these are not people trying to do their jobs. No, they are out to get him. What other motive could a journalist have in holding a president accountable? Why oh why do Ed Henry and Chris Wallace insist on asking hard questions? Make them stop!…

Recently, the White House has kept Fox News off of conference calls dealing with the Benghazi attack, despite Fox News being the only outlet that was regularly reporting on it and despite Fox having top notch foreign policy reporters.

They have left Chris Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday” out of a round of interviews that included CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS for not being part of a “legitimate” news network…

Powers knows these people, and knows they are quite legitimate. She’s beginning to think it’s the other networks that are the illegitimate ones.

But that’s not all. Still a liberal, she’s beginning to be very, very puzzled by what liberalism has turned into. Well, I have news for her; that happened a long, long time ago (although I agree that there used to be more of those principled liberals like Powers around when I was a girl):

Whether you are liberal or conservative, libertarian, moderate or politically agnostic, everyone should be concerned when leaders of our government believe they can intentionally try to delegitimize a news organization they don’t like.

In fact, if you are a liberal ”“ as I am ”“ you should be the most offended, as liberalism is founded on the idea of cherishing dissent and an inviolable right to freedom of expression.

That more liberals aren’t calling out the White House for this outrageous behavior tells you something about the state of liberalism in America today.

This is the beginning of wisdom. Powers is looking around and noticing that, much to her surprise, she is pretty much alone.

I have another piece to offer that complements the Powers article, although it was written fifteen years ago, and the events it deals with occurred almost forty years ago. I refer to this piece by Herbert Stein, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Nixon and Ford. It appeared in Slate in 1998. In it, Stein describes his experiences during Watergate, but in the following excerpt he is talking about press coverage of the Nixon Administration in general:

…I had my own experience with the extent of bias and animosity in the press against anything having to do with Nixon. During many years in Washington, before I entered the Nixon administration, I had had friendly relations with many reporters. I was then associated with the Committee for Economic Development, the least conservative of the business organizations, and we were the “good guys” to the liberal press. But these same reporters became my enemies and, I felt, misrepresented me as soon as it became apparent I was devoted to Nixon. As it happened, one of the president’s chief pursuers in the press, Carl Bernstein, of the Washington Post, had been my neighbor in Silver Spring, Md., and a friend of my children’s. He had been a likable boy, but I put no great stock in his professionalism or objectivity. So I did not believe the press was giving an accurate account of what had happened.

That same experience of instantly becoming persona non grata once a person goes over to the dark side (in this case, serving in the Nixon Administration, even before Watergate had become a scandal) was enough to completely change the attitude of the press from friendly to combative.

I believe it has only gotten worse with the Obama adminstration, much worse. But make no mistake about it: it was already quite bad.

I’ve been focusing a lot on the press lately because it is of the utmost, utmost importance. The present-day press gladly and dutifully serves Obama, yes. But in a very real sense he is also in good part their creation, the fruit of their long labors—and their mouthpiece, as they are his, in a pernicious and dangerous little dance of mutual reinforcement and self-congratulation.

“60 Minutes” voluntarily becomes Pravda, and The Atlantic actually notices

The New Neo Posted on by

Here it is again, the press’s big slobbering love affair with Obama.

The phenomenon has been discussed right into the ground, here and elsewhere, and analyzed almost to death (“Obama is not just the white liberals’ perfect dream of a black president, he’s the white liberals’ perfect dream of a black liberal president”). So I’ll skip further analysis here and just note the continuing dangerous phenomenon of the starry-eyed liberal MSM when faced with the glory of the man. And then I’ll point out a few things that seem a tiny bit new.

What’s new is not the fawning, sycophantic, soft-ball questions of supposedly tough “60 Minutes” reporter Steve Kroft when facing both Obama and heiress-apparent Hillary Clinton—who gets a pass on her mediocre-at-best record, and her alarming performance at the Benghazi hearings, because she’s another liberal darling, and a liberal woman to boot.

What may be new is that it seems to be too much even for a liberal outfit such as the Atlantic, which actually published a fairly scathing indictment of the interview, written by its somewhat conservative writer Conor Friedersdorf. Friedersdorf’s focus is on how the interview diminishes journalism, although it’s hard to see how it could be more diminished than it already has been in the last decade or so, and especially in the last five years.

Here’s Friedersdorf:

The 60 Minutes brand is associated with probing interviews, and Kroft is adept at using his tone and manner to create the impression of tough questions without actually asking any. For Sunday’s interview, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who sat beside him, benefited from 60 Minutes gravitas while answering questions better suited to Ellen. It hardly matters whether Kroft is deliberately pulling his punches to secure ongoing access or is simply disinclined to fulfill the core journalistic duty of holding powerful people accountable for their actions; his Obama interviews ought to diminish his standing and the reputation of his employer.

Friedersdorf goes on to analyze some of the questions Kroft asked (the entire piece is well worth reading), and to contrast them with questions from a previous “60 Minutes” interview (by another journalist on the show, because Kroft hadn’t done one) with George W. Bush. Pretty different, as you might imagine.

But Friedersdorf’s attack is almost completely focused on the consequences of this failure for journalism, rather than for America. And it’s the latter that matters; I couldn’t care less about the former except as it affects the latter. And when “60 Minutes” becomes Pravda, we’re in a heap of trouble.

But of course, you already knew that.

My guess is that the Atlantic allowed this to be published because it carefully skirts clear of the deepest issues involved, and focuses on the black eye this gives to journalism. In a way, if you think about it, it’s a method of telling journalists, “Don’t be so blatant about your biases that even ordinary people can see what you’re up to.” Not that this is what Friedersdoft is trying to get at; but still, he should have pushed the larger point and connected a few more dots.

I continue to be mightily impressed by Kirsten Powers of Fox, however. I’ve written about her hard-hitting pieces before—and she has really come alive after the Benghazi incident, which seems to have outraged her regarding the performance of the administration and the news media’s collaboration. Watch her here; although she’s a liberal, she is much harder on “60 Minutes” than even Friedersdorf was, and that’s pretty hard indeed. He compared “60 Minutes” to “Ellen,” but she compares it to the “state-run media.” Bingo:

Of course, now that she’s on Fox, she can be safely ignored by liberals.

Obama is heavy bored…and this is heavy scary

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I thought this post, first published here in November of 2010, could bear repeating. I had forgotten the Jarrett quote with which it begins. But on looking at it again, it seems even more chilling than ever—and it was already quite chilling enough. So I present it to you once more, very lightly edited.]

Many of you may have already encountered this 2008 remark by Valerie Jarrett about Obama:

“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. ”¦ He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability ”” the extraordinary, uncanny ability ”” to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. ”¦ So, what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. ”¦ He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

We talk a lot about Obama’s ego, and rightly so. But if Jarrett’s perception is correct (and she’s the adviser closest to him, and has been at his side for more or less his entire political life), then the worst sentence in her chilling quote may just be this one: “He’s been bored to death his whole life.”

Think about it. Jarrett is saying that as a compliment, not an insult. Boredom, however, is not a sign of intelligence (unless one is sitting in a classroom learning something one already knows). Perhaps Obama thinks he already knows everything? Perhaps he is depressed? Perhaps everything that isn’t about him is boring? What else on earth could make a person bored his or her whole life, not to mention bored “to death”?

There’s the beautiful world of nature. There’s art and literature and love. There’s always-fascinating history. There’s friends and family. There’s the challenge of studying and observing people and their almost-endless foibles and crochets. There’s everything on earth and everything in the universe.

Of course, this is just Jarrett’s perception of Obama. But it’s hard to believe it doesn’t reflect a certain reality. What it really puts me in mind of, however (because I’ve got all those old poems floating around in my head), is poet John Berryman’s “Dream Song 14,” published in 1964.

Yep, that’s what I said. Take a look:

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) “Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.” I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me…

Emergency in Egypt

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember that one of the big objections to Mubarak’s rule was the fact that, during his entire time as president—which began right after the 1981 assassination of his predecessor Sadat and ended almost two years ago (almost exactly two years ago)—he never lifted the emergency rule that was imposed in the wake of that violence?

Well, no wonder this is causing a commotion.

It’s all sadly predictable.

The Republican Party and immigration reform

The New Neo Posted on by

Seems to me that, once again, the GOP is between a rock and a hard place.

Oppose this and they lose the Hispanic vote (which already was so instrumental in Obama’s victory). Support it and they probably certify a ton more Democratic voters and assure the GOP’s permanent minority status as a party.

I’m in a hurry today and don’t have time to find the links, but Hispanics not only went for Obama in huge numbers, but in 2012 even the Cuban-American population was less Republican than it used to be. There is no reason on earth to imagine the same wouldn’t be true for those who gain citizenship through this path:

The Senate proposal will probably include four main elements: border enforcement, employer enforcement, handling the future flow of legal immigration (including temporary agriculture workers and high-skilled engineers) and a pathway to citizenship for those who entered the nation illegally. Mr. Obama’s approach will largely echo his 2011 immigration “blueprint,” which he first outlined in a speech in El Paso, and calls for a pathway to citizenship for the more than 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country.

Though all members of the Senate group agree that some pathway to legal residency must be a part of the final proposal, they are still divided on what exactly that route should be. Republican lawmakers are urging that border security be tied to a pathway to citizenship and other requirements like having those who entered illegally go to the back of the line behind immigrants already waiting to enter the country legally, paying fines and back-taxes, and learning English.

Among other things, my guess is that this would be a slippery slope, and that some of these restrictions would end up going by the wayside in due time (and probably not all that much time, either). More:

“You’ve got border security, you’ve got employer verification and you’ve got a temporary worker program that addresses the magnet, so those three things have to go together to address operational control over your border,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, one of the senators mapping out the legislation. “Then you go to the next big thing ”” the 12 million. How do you deal with the 12 million in a firm, fair way, realizing you can’t put them all in jail and they’re not all going to self-deport?”

Let’s see—one way to deal with them would be to not grant them citizenship—but hey, I’m not a US Senator like Lindsay Graham.

There’s a principle here, among other things, which is that coming here illegally should not be further rewarded. I write “further” because it already is rewarded.

Is anyone else being driven somewhat nuts by this…

The New Neo Posted on by

…or is it just me?

You go to a public place that has a wide-screen TV. A restaurant or bar, or sports bar, for example. You’re having your hamburger and fries, or maybe a Cobb salad (that would be me). Every now and then you glance up at the TV to see what’s going on.

And what you see is distortion. Usually, bodies much wider than they really are. All out of proportion, looking very strange and also strangely heavy. I suppose for football games, that’s considered a good thing. But for anything else, I find it very disconcerting.

It can happen in motels, too, which is even worse. Settle down to watch some mindless show, and the actors and actresses all look about a third wider than they should, and it’s impossible to fix because the remotes in motels won’t let you do it.

It seems a rather simple thing to get the settings right. I did it on my own TV at home, which isn’t the widest of screens but is fairly large. It took some doing, but once it’s set, it’s done. I would think that in a public place it would be even more important to get the picture correct. But the problem is so ubiquitous that I begin to wonder whether anyone notices or cares.

Your take?

[ADDENDUM: Aha, aha! Found a kindred spirit, and one who actually (unlike me) knows something about the technical aspects. I’m not alone after all!!]

Ruling on Obama’s recess appointments

The New Neo Posted on by

This is about as complicated and legalistic as it gets. But it’s a rather startling decision.

The Senate has increased its use of the filibuster (which ordinarily is not technically a filibuster any more; see this) in order to block appointments. And so presidents have increasingly made recess appointments in order to work around that, and it’s reached even greater proportions with Obama. This ruling would make it harder to do so.

But whether it will ultimately be upheld is anybody’s guess. For an interesting back-and-forth discussion, please read the comments at the linked post, too.

Helping Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

This recent comment by “Snackeater” (fine moniker, by the way) brought up an interesting angle on Obama and his supporters:

I’ve always thought that subconsciously, Liberals are racists. Not that they hate people of other races ”“ quite the contrary ”“ they truly love them. But they do think that people of other races are inferior and therefore unable to make it on their own. So they do whatever they can to help them (with other people’s money, of course). The War on Poverty is a perfect example. So is affirmative action. And 0bama is another.

So the T-P media falls all over themselves trying to help him. They cover for him, attack his enemies, whatever it takes. They project their racism onto their opponents. And the more inferior they think the person is, the more they try to compensate. Hence the completely in-the-tank attitude over 0bama.

Whether condescension and paternalism towards people of other races is “love,” exactly, I’ll leave for you to decide. And of course we already know that this “love” is limited to those minority members on the liberal or left side of the fence. Fortunately for liberals, that would include the vast, vast majority of minorities such as blacks.

Ever since Obama’s candidacy was first declared during the 2008 campaign, I’ve noticed that one of the most common types of article about him is what I’d call the advice column. There is no dearth of liberal and/or leftist pundits, or even ones who call themselves neutral as well as certain softies on the supposed right (David Brooks, Peggy Noonan), trying to tell Obama what he should do to be even more successful.

Maybe now that he’s triumphed by being elected to a second term they’ll stop and figure out what they should have figured out long ago, which is that, in the sense of political strategy, this man (or his advisers) knows exactly what he’s doing. And in the policy sense, Obama’s agenda is probably not quite what they think it is, unless they’re already in with the in-crowd.

Plus, Obama isn’t going to take their advice. He’s not scouring the papers for helpful hints on how to govern. If he wants any help on that score, he’s got Valerie Jarrett.

I’ve long wondered why all the helpful columns. Yes, I know the media is liberal and/or leftist, and they’re on his side. But still, I just don’t remember all this help offered another president on left or right (and of course the “help” offered those on the right is always of the “he should give in more to the other side” variety, which is nothing remotely like what’s suggested to Obama).

So why more than any other president does Obama draw out this advice mode in the blogosphere and MSM? Did he seem needier in some way? I assumed it was because he was young and inexperienced, but maybe “Snackeater” is onto something (besides Fritos). Is all that helpfulness due to an assumption that he’s racially challenged?

Well, probably some portion of it. When I really think about it, I believe that the impulse that motivates them was/is actually racial anxiety (can he play in the big leagues?) combined with an intense, a truly extreme, desire for him to do well because of his race and his status as the first black president. In a sense, he’s Too Big (and Too important) To Fail.

Their wish for him to succeed is multiply-determined. It’s not just his race; his liberalism or leftism (take your pick; I’ll take the leftism) taps into theirs, except for Noonan and (arguably) Brooks, who may not be conservatives but who could not be described as liberals or leftists. These latter two might be the purest example, therefore, of the need to have Obama do well because of his race.

It would have been fascinating, wouldn’t it, to have seen what pundits on the left would have said if the first black president had been a conservative or even just a garden-variety Republican. Would the left have been just as helpful with their hints with a President Condoleezza Rice, for example (who, after all, is not just black, but a black woman)? It takes no time at all to realize the answer is “no, no, a thousand times no.” Rice (like other black conservatives or Republicans) became an Honorary Old White Guy long long ago—or worse, a Traitor to Her Race, good only for ridicule of the vilest (and most racist) sort.

So, as with many things, it’s complicated. Obama is not just the white liberals’ perfect dream of a black president, he’s the white liberals’ perfect dream of a black liberal president. And as such, he must be defended no matter what he does.

And you can bet your life that Obama knows that, and acts accordingly.

[NOTE: The only time Obama ever ran up against a situation in a national election where he couldn’t take advantage of this was during his run for Congress against Bobby Rush in 2000, when he made the egregious error of running against another black liberal, a popular guy with far more impressive street creds, including a history in the civil rights movement, in a district made up mostly of working class blacks. Rush made the most of the contrast, saying about Obama:

He went to Harvard and became an educated fool…Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it.

Ouch! But could anyone else have said something similar about Obama and gotten away with it? Only people with the same profile as Rush—and Obama never ran into one again. As Rush later said about that 2000 race:

He [Obama] was blinded by his ambition. Obama has never suffered from a lack of believing that he can accomplish whatever it is he decides to try. Obama believes in Obama. And, frankly, that has its good side but it also has its negative side.

Rush didn’t have the handicap of idealizing Obama because of Obama’s race, nor did his voters. But although the next opponent Obama faced in a national election was also black, it was a very different proposition. Not only was this a statewide Illinois election for national office, and therefore had a much higher percentage of white voters than his 2000 campaign against Rush had featured, but his opponent in the 2004 Senate race—after Republican nominee Jack Ryan was suspiciously sidelined by a scandal late in the campaign—was the hastily-appointed Alan Keyes, who could be said to be at least as educated and intellectual as Obama, and a black conservative to boot (making him eligible for Honorary Old White Man status and worse), as well as an unpopular newcomer to Illinois. It was no contest; Obama won by tsunami margins.]

Lip reader finally solves the Michelle-eye-roll mystery…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that’s been burning up the blogosphere ever since the inauguration (even though I’ve somehow, with almost superhuman strength, managed to avoid writing about it till now).

The answer? A smoking joke, combined with a hen-pecked husband joke (hmmm; “hen-pecked” can’t possibly be politically correct, can it?), by Speaker John Boehner (“speaker” in two senses of the word):

Lip reader Larry Wenig tells “Inside Edition” that Boehner asked President Obama ”” a longtime smoker who claims to have kicked the habit ”” if he’d had a chance to have a cigarette before the luncheon. The speaker, a chain smoker, then quipped, “Somebody [Michelle] won’t let you do it.”

Are you not glad we’ve cleared that up?

[Hat tip: Althouse.]