I’ve stayed away from the Al Gore sex story so far, and I hope to stay away again. But for now I will just say that, if one believes the facts described therein, it appears that when Al Gore is in crazed sex poodle mode, he considers anti-Bush music to be the equivalent of these aphrodisiac songs.
So here without further ado, is Gore’s putative choice for getting it on:
Tim Cavanaugh writes that Paul Krugman has become a laughingstock both here and abroad for his devotion to Keynesian spending in the face of overwhelming deficits and the burgeoning threat of bankruptcy in many countries of the western world. The reason, as Cavanaugh puts it, is that [emphasis mine], “As Margaret Thatcher predicted would happen, we have all run out of other people’s money.”
That’s what both the formerly ultra-liberal states of Massachusetts and New Jersey have recently learned, resulting in the elections of Scott Brown and Chris Christie. But Krugman’s having none of it, writing that we face a third depression if we don’t follow his advice:
…[G]overnments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.
But I don’t think Krugman should be called a laughingstock, exactly; he does have somewhat of a point, although he overstates it and understates the flip side of the issue. There’s no question that either deflation or inflation are possibilities, depending on how the current crisis is handled. There’s also no question that we (and economists such as Krugman, as well as his opponents) simply don’t know what will happen. But Krugman is ignoring the fact that this “depression” is different from others in the incredible size and scope of the government spending and deficits that have already piled up, and the crisis of confidence around the world that has resulted.
Confidence is a huge part of economic growth and prosperity, although it’s not everything. But people must feel that governments are not tottering on the brink of bankruptcy if they are going to get that old prosperity spark going again. Nearly everyone knows that this crisis was preceded, and in part caused, by too much and too easy credit, especially in the housing market, and then risky trading of that credit in order to make gobs more money. Many also know that banks were too highly leveraged. And nearly everyone knows that governments around the world are in debt up to their ears right now, with no end in sight. Throwing good money after bad (or more bad money after bad?), and increasing Europe’s and America’s debt, (or printing more money) is not going to reassure anyone—except, perhaps, Paul Krugman.
I’m with Robert Samuelson on this one:
We may be reaching the limits of economics. As Keynes noted, political leaders are hostage to the ideas of economists — living and dead — and economists increasingly disagree about what to do. Granted, the initial response to the crisis (sharp cuts in interest rates, bank bailouts, stimulus spending) probably averted a depression. But the crisis has also battered the logic of all major economic theories: Keynesianism, monetarism and “rational expectations.” The resulting intellectual chaos provides context for today’s policy disputes at home and abroad…
[T]he benefits of higher deficits can be lost in many ways: through higher interest rates if greater debt frightens investors; through declines in private spending if consumers and businesses lose confidence in governments’ ability to control budgets; and through a banking crisis if bank capital — which consists heavily of government bonds — declines in value. There’s a tug of war between the stimulus of bigger deficits and the fears inspired by bigger deficits.
If you’ve ever watched street magician David Blaine, you ought to enjoy this parody. I certainly did. But watch out; he may sneak into your pants, too (warning: language):
Senator Scott Brown is still a popular guy in Massachusetts, polling a favorability/unfavorability rating of 55/18, according to a Boston Globe poll.
Far more surprisingly, Barack Obama is behind Brown with ratings of 54/42. Note that high “unfavorable” number; this is Massachusetts, remember. Of course, quite a few of those 42% might be those who think Obama isn’t far enough to the left (unfortunately, the poll didn’t ask that question, which would have been a valuable one).
Brown has disappointed those who wanted him to be a strict conservative, but those who know him and listened to his campaign, and who understand the political realities of Massachusetts, think he’s done just about what could have been expected—which is to vote the Republican line 84% of the time.
I’ll take it over the alternatives.
[NOTE: When I first saw the article’s headline, “Brown outpolls Kerry, Obama,” I somehow thought it was Jerry Brown, and I was suitably shocked.]
Robert Byrd of West Virginia has died at the age of 92. Most of the articles about his death point out two of his most salient characteristics: he was the longest-serving senator in American history, and in his early days he was a member of the KKK.
Actually, those two things are not unrelated. Byrd was a Democrat elected to the Senate for the first time in 1958 who served continuously till now. Just contemplate that for a moment; Eisenhower was president back then. In those days, the South was still solidly Democratic, and nearly as solidly anti-civil rights for blacks (in fact, Byrd famously filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Byrd was not at all unusual for his times; his more distinguishing factor was that his career far outlived those times and he went along with the changes.
In later life Byrd repudiated his earlier views on race. On other topics, with a couple of exceptions, he pretty much voted the Democratic Party line during his career. He supported Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency, was an early opponent of the Iraq War, and was most notable as a rules and parliamentarian expert and a funneler of funds to his state, as well as for his personal and political longevity. Retirement was not in the cards for Byrd, no matter how old or infirm he became; he died, as it were, in the saddle. In a system in which seniority is very important, Byrd was king as the most senior senior of them all.
I have nothing more to add, except RIP and condolences to the family. Byrd’s death will not change the composition of the Senate politically, since the Democrat Governor of West Virginia will appoint his successor until the next election in 2012 (see this for some of the finer points of that process).
Here’s Mark Steyn’s succinct take on McChrystal’s plight:
Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They’ll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades.
The rest of Steyn’s column tries to answer that age-old question about Obama, “Who is this guy? ” On this forum we’ve pretty much resolved that, for now, as “at least knave, and perhaps both knave and fool.” But others are still attempting to puzzle it out.
For example, re the unused skimmers in the Gulf oil spill:
Sen. Lemieux found the president unengaged, and uninformed. “He doesn’t seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers,” reported the senator.
He doesn’t seem to know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t care. “It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all,” wrote Richard Cohen in The Washington Post last week. “For instance, it’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human-rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia.”
I dunno, but it seems to me that all of these otherwise-inexplicable stances can be explained quite simply by positing an over-arching philosophy on Obama’s part that is hostile to liberty, capitalism, and the US, and friendly to socialism around the world. What’s so complicated and mysterious about that?
Nothing, except that the mind finds it difficult to wrap itself around the idea that this would be true of the president of the United States. And then, to voice that idea is to ally oneself with fringe elements such as Glenn Beck, and other assorted and sundry supposed-wackos.
Even Steyn stops short of such a conclusion in his piece, expressing merely the idea that Obama is an opportunistic narcissist. And while that certainly appears true, it is not inconsistent with a commitment to Marxist ideology.
In other news, we have Mike Huckabee saying that he’s the best challenger for Obama in 2012. If that is so, then heaven help the Republican Party, and the US.
And then there’s Joe Biden. There’s always Joe Biden:
The following, however, can’t really be blamed on Obama. So we’ll just have to blame Bush, I guess. Or perhaps Beyonce herself, for whose fashion choice here I have no ready explanation:
It hardly seems possible that a year has passed since the tragic and untimely death of FredHJr, one of the most memorable and prolific commenters here. His loss to this community is a great one, and I miss him still. We could sorely use a large dose of his wit and wisdom.
The loss his family feels is far greater, and I am thinking of them today and hoping they have found comfort in the memory of his love and faith.
And now I will reprise some words I wrote last year when I first heard of Fred’s death:
Even though none of us actually met Fred in the real world, most of the regulars here knew FredHjr as I knew him””a brilliant mind containing knowledge of unusual depth and breadth, and demonstrating a rare ability to articulate his thoughts with precision, grace, and logic; a staunch patriot and passionate defender of liberty who never pulled his punches; a “changer” who had been a Marxist in his youth and held a vast storehouse of expertise on how the Left thinks and operates; a seeker of truth with an almost inexhaustible interest in the world around him; and a man of strong religious faith and great and abiding love for his family.
The news of his extremely untimely and tragic death comes as a great shock. It’s also a reminder that people here can become an important part of our lives; we feel as though we know them, even though our knowledge of them is only of the virtual sort. But minds meeting minds is a very powerful thing nonetheless.
[NOTE: Here is Fred’s obituary.]
If you take a look at the last paragraph of the piece in which WaPo ombudsman Andy Alexander tackles the Weigel imbroglio, it’s hard to escape the notion seems that he places most of the blame for the entire episode on the person or persons from Journolist who ratted Weigel out.
After quoting the lament of Ezra Klein—creator of the listserv, who has closed it down in response to what happened to Weigel—that such discussions can be “dangerous” because they lull members into thinking that they are private when they are not, Alexander adds:
Alas, it took only one listserv participant to bundle up Weigel’s archived comments and start leaking them outside the group. The result is that Weigel lost his job. But the bigger loss is The Post’s standing among conservatives.
Alas, indeed. Clearly, Alexander would have preferred that Weigel and the WaPo have been allowed to go on pretending that Weigel was able to give conservatives a fair and objective shake, while remaining a man filled with hatred for them who saw fit to freely spew his bile only in the comfort of a (supposedly) private club of like-minded folks.
Alexander defends the WaPo by saying that it vetted Weigel as it does any of its writers, by looking at his published work and checking his references. Alexander quotes WaPo managing editor Raju Narisetti, who oversees the paper’s website, as saying:
But we’re living in an era when maybe we need to add a level…It may be in our interests to ask potential reporters: ”˜In private… have you expressed any opinions that would make it difficult for you to do your job.’
Again, it appears that the emphasis is on avoiding detection and not leaving a paper or cyber trail, not on insuring an actual objectivity of thought. And perhaps that makes sense, because true objectivity in politically interested people is most often a polite (or impolite) fiction, very difficult and rare—although newspapers and their reporters would like to pretend differently, at least to a gullible public. Far better, however, (as Alexander ponders at another point in his column, in response to a suggestion by Dan Gainor, a VP at the conservative Media Research Center) to acknowledge bias if it cannot be avoided.
But even then, Alexander doesn’t get it (or pretends not to). He writes [emphasis mine]:
The Post might consider two: one conservative with a[n] ideological bent, and another who can cover the conservative movement in the role of a truly neutral reporter.
And who, pray tell, might that latter person be? Practically no one, and it does no good to pretend otherwise. Far better to either drop all pretense of objectivity and identify the paper as liberal or conservative, and write accordingly. Or, if the best approximation of objectivity is desired, then attempt to hire a roughly equal number of equivalently excellent conservative and liberal journalists. Fat chance, right?
But either solution would blow the cover of the MSM itself, which for the most part continues to attempt to maintain its increasingly threadbare facade of objectivity.
[NOTE: Neil Patel of The Daily Caller asks a pertinent question:
Why did Klein and other JournoList contributors who work for the Washington Post stand by and allow their newspaper’s readers to be conned into thinking that Weigel was an objective reporter with no axe to grind when they knew for a fact that wasn’t true?
Perhaps Patel’s question was rhetorical, and he knows the answer already. But if not, I can offer one up right now: it is standard operating procedure. Yes, there are opinion journalists on the left, such as Klein himself, who are upfront about writing from the liberal point of view. But the entire MSM in its present form rests on feigning (wink, wink) an objectivity that does not exist in its reportage.
And one other thing—how could Weigel have thought his emails were inviolate, even on a liberal listserv? It’s another example of a bizarre amount of naivete.]
If this is true, then McChrystal should have lost his job for an excess of misplaced and shockingly naive trust, if nothing else:
A U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, Air Force Lt. Col. Edward T. Sholtis, acknowledged that Hastings, like other reporters who have interviewed McChrystal over the past year, was not required to sign written ground rules. “We typically manage ground rules on a verbal basis,” Sholtis said. “We trust in the professionalism of the people we’re working with.”
That was mistake number 2. Mistake number 1 was the entire idea of giving a reporter from Rolling Stone that sort of off-the-record access in the first place. Or perhaps that should read “any reporter.”
It reminds me of the story of…oh, let’s just listen to the song:
Verbose, reflective spambot poised on the brink of change:
“It seems as though you’ve captured the right nitty-gritty of the state of affairs at hand. While many another look to have missed the crucial detail of it, when it was expressed before is plain and consice. Clearly I don”t sounding out that I harmonise along all points; yet, you did afforded me cause to ponder many of the charges that I believed that I carried as steadfast beliefs in that attentivenesses. Well stated, and it is now time for someone like myself to ponder a bit more along a couple of the outstanding concepts. All At Once I have to think you have did a job well done..”
I haven’t covered this story so far, but for those who have been following it, the news is that Weigel has resigned from his WaPo post. Ace offers a great deal of background. Here’s more.
There’s an awful lot of this resignation stuff going around lately, isn’t there?
[ADDENDUM: On further reflection, I’d say that Weigel makes someone like Keith Olbermann look good. At least the latter is up-front about his viciousness and his biases. Weigel was pretending to be something he was not, and then he had the stupidity to trust that the emails relating his real feelings would never leave the confines of the liberal clique in which they were originally circulated.]
Another must-read column by Victor Davis Hanson.
And, on a slightly different (although related) topic, here’s an interesting comment to the Hanson piece, from Jason S. on June 24 at 11: 32 AM. Its subject is political change, and it gives me hope:
I wonder how someone with such thin skin would react when seeing the faded Obama bumper stickers, with slogans that seem so silly in retrospect, being removed from the vehicles of embarrassed saps who fell for this empty suit. My liberal parents, who were so eager to talk about Obama until recently, even going so far as to hang a picture of him in the office, now appear a little sheepish when the topic arises. Katrina is no longer remembered as a natural disaster exacerbated by Bush but is instead used as a gauge for the “unconscionable ineptitude” of the great experiment known as Obama. Americans were arrogant to think we could elect “anyone but Bush”, without regard for qualifications, and maintain our status in the world (not perceived status by pining, disgruntled Europeans but real status, measured by influence and effectiveness). My parents are hopelessly liberal but they love their country, and I don’t think they were quite ready for the postAmerican world Obama has tried to foist upon us. The logic that comes with being liberal politically but stuck in the real world without an ivy league degree or political connections, is beginning to open their eyes. They cannot seem to reconcile between the pretty words that sound so lovely being relayed from the teleprompter and the events happening in the real world. Buyer’s remorse? No, it’s much stronger than that. My folks, God love ’em, are actually beginning to look deep inside themselves and question their long-held beliefs. Knowing them as well as I do and how closely they have held these beliefs for so long, I sense that there are many more like them who are beginning to acknowledge, if only on a subconscious level, the disconnect between the promises of those pretty words and the dimal, real-world effects of the political philosophy behind them.