For NY Times, everything is evidence of the need for Big Government

October 30, 2012 by 1 Comment

A fake photo on Hurricane Sandy taking on Lady LibertThis morning, I read a very misinformed and misleading editorial from the New York Times titled ‘A Big Storm Requires Big Government,’ The column begins thus:

Most Americans have never heard of the National Response Coordination Center, but they’re lucky it exists on days of lethal winds and flood tides. The center is the war room of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where officials gather to decide where rescuers should go, where drinking water should be shipped, and how to assist hospitals that have to evacuate.

Before I read this column, I’m glad that I had spent hours watching coverage of Hurricane Sandy as it rushed ashore and shot straight over my home. I watched as the governors of NY, NJ, DE, and PA stood at podiums, as did many of their county and city officials, and presented an aura of command and leadership as they recited the logistical numbers regarding first responders, the locations of shelters (along with detailed contingency plans), and further warnings and advisories regarding anticipated weather conditions, road closures, and power disruptions. I saw these men on TV discussing mandatory evacuations and thought about all the hard lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina regarding the importance of readiness by local and state authorities. I saw each of these men do this without FEMA.

I also watched an interview with astronauts aboard the International Space Station (Commander Sunita Williams’ hair flailed around her like a peacock in all its gravity-free glory) and thought about the aging satellite fleet that will have gaps in its ability to monitor these storms starting in 2017 due to gross neglect.

Which leads to several themes:  Read more of this post

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The Media Cartel

September 13, 2012 by 3 Comments

Liberal media is a lapdog and not a watchdog of democracy.If a group of corporations got together to decide what to tell the public about  a product in order to engage in price fixing and create an economic monopoly through collusion, the liberal media would call for arrests and indictments. When the liberal media engages in the same behavior to decide how to frame a foreign policy story as a Romney failure in order to get Obama elected, it’s considered due diligence.

We call it ‘information fixing.’

On Tuesday night, Romney issued a strongly worded statement denouncing apologetic tweets to Muslim extremists from the American embassy in Egypt that correlated with the brutal attacks on American embassies in Eqypt and Libya. Rather than seeking further information on how a Romney administration would handle a similar crisis, thus providing some insight for voters still figuring out who to elect as their next president, the liberal media engaged in journalistic collusion against Romney and framed the issue as a question of Romney’s tone and sensitivity.

According to the blog Right Scoop:

Before Romney issued his statement today, an open mic captured the press coordinating questions to ask Romney, with one saying “no matter who he calls on we’re covered on the one question.”

The following is the overheard conversation:  Read more of this post

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Whose parents would be more disappointed, Romney’s or Obama’s?

May 31, 2012 by 1 Comment

I Accuse My ParentsRuth Marcus of the Washington Post has concluded that Mitt Romney has a major problem. His great success, which surpasses his parents’ success, would be a disappointment to his mom and dad:

The last week has brought two insightful profiles of Mitt Romney’s parents, offering an implicit, and disappointing, contrast with their more successful son.

As Ruth Marcus wouldn’t have voted for Mitt’s parents either, it’s hard to believe she’s really disappointed that Mitt’s become more right-wing in the context that he’s turning his back on his heritage. Beware liberals bearing concern for conservatives, as the only reason liberals wish for the lovable losers known as moderate Republicans is so they can more plausibly define the political center even further left. This context is the paradigm of every liberal version of history, whether the liberals making the complaint are doing so in 1962 or in 2012:

The tale of two generations of Romneys in politics is, of course, a parallel story of the changing ideology of the Republican Party and its relentless shift rightward.

The ‘of course’ clause is a nice touch. Republicans becoming more extreme and deranged is as tried and true a ‘scientific consensus’ as man-made global warming. What other lens is there through which to see every aspect of life than through the ever-expanding aggression of the right wing machine?

This next point in the sad tale of Mitt’s parental betrayal is tough to rope into any logical framework outside the liberal prism that gave it birth:

Here is the telling difference, and the sad, perhaps inevitable, trajectory of any political dynasty, from idealism to expediency. George Romney railed — indeed, he battled — against what he saw happening. Mitt Romney has adapted to it.

It’s modern day Hamlet, but instead of Romney falling on the right wing’s poisoned sword, he’s chosen to yuck it up with the royalty who destroyed his father to advance his own ends. Oh fiendish traitor!

Next, with allegorical flair, Marcus describes the Obama experience in the guise of the Romney family: Read more of this post

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President a little too cool

May 4, 2012 by Leave a comment

Français : Samuel L. Jackson au festival de Ca...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

April’s unemployment numbers came out today:
8.1% unemployment.
29.7 million are unemployed.
Labor force participation is at its lowest since 1981, which means the actual unemployment number is much higher than 8.1%.

From Politico:

As has been the case for the past two years, a surge in hiring at the start of the year has slowed to a trickle. The drop in unemployment from 8.2 percent is not much of a victory for President Barack Obama, even though it’s the best jobless rate since his inauguration at the start of 2009. That’s because the decline is largely explained by people giving up on their job hunts and the participation rate dipping to 63.6 percent last month — its lowest point since December 1981.

Yet through it all, Obama remains unruffled and keeps his cool.

Contrast the stark assessment above with Obama’s rosier depiction (followed by a non-sequitur):

Speaking at a high school in Arlington, Va., Obama called the report “good news,” yet stuck to his long-time argument that more federal help is needed to fully recover from the financial meltdown that happened almost four years ago. He criticized House Republicans for not reaching an agreement with Democrats on stopping interest rates on government subsidized student loans from doubling.

There came a point during the Iraq War where President Bush’s resoluteness and steadfast leadership began to be perceived as unrealistic hope and not aligned with the facts on the ground. Only so much bad news can come into the nation’s awareness before a president publicly touting the opposite makes him look disconnected from reality. For Bush, his upbeat optimism made him look oblivious.  Read more of this post

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