This is gonna be a long one . . . stuff has been piling up . . .
‘JournoList’ E-mails Show Media Plotting to Kill Stories about Reverend Jeremiah Wright: Daily Caller [*1] -- Almost all national journalists for the "mainstream" media are lying to you. On purpose. With reasons they think are good and proper. But the fact remains that they daily--hourly lie to you, in order to advance what they think is the "correct agenda." After all, these people went into journalism to "make a difference in the world." If they have to lie and deceive in order to do it, well, the ends justify the means, don't they?
Refudiate [*4] -- What can you say? It's July. The Dog Days. The Silly Season.
Value Is Knowledge [*5] -- The worth of anything you happen to have is exactly, precisely what somebody else will freely pay you for it. Government only screws up the process:
The State is exceptionally poor at analyzing the true value of anything. The lens of ideology is filled with clouds of hatred, occasionally sundered by blinding flashes of righteousness. The actual value of health care and medical insurance was almost completely invisible to the architects of ObamaCare. The market is beginning to react as their legislation shudders and screeches to life… by canceling the health benefits[*6] of employees entirely, because it’s much cheaper to pay the ObamaCare fines. The Democrats will learn absolutely nothing from this. Their most likely response will be to slander these employers as heartless misers. The masterminds behind ObamaCare will quietly relish the collapse of the private health insurance industry, which was one of their primary objectives all along. No data will be transmitted into the government from this market disaster. Value will not become knowledge.
If you want to be a partisan, then be a partisan. Don't pretend to be objective or unbiased. Don't lie to us. That's really all we ask. Be as stupidly, myopically "progressive" as you want to be. Just don't lie to us about what you really are.
The Decline Of TV Network News Into Ignorance [*13] -- . . . and the body blows to the "profession" of journalism just keep coming. There's a reason why "journalist" rivals "politician" as one of the jobs held in deepest contempt by the American people . . .
Hoover's Dam Folly [*14] -- As a feat of engineering, the Hoover Dam is a marvel. As an economic and ecological force, it has been a near-complete disaster--and I think that most people who do not live in the American Southwest (and, perhaps, many who do) are maybe beginning to see this. This is one of the things that horrifies me when I visit Las Vegas. There really isn't supposed to be that much green in the middle of the desert. That water is supposed to be in the Colorado River, where it belongs. Harrumph.
Risky Business: Mothers Against the Madness: Women help restore the America we’ve known and loved. [*18] -- The "mama grizzly" meme has legs. A wise person does not get between a mama grizzly and the future of her cubs. Democrats should ponder this thought as they watch their Congressional majorities evaporate this November. (I'll add, a wise husband knows that there are certain things, at certain times, when you simply do not argue with your wife. Mostly, it's a sense of self-preservation. Guys--smart ones--will recognize "yes, dear" moments for what they are, and act accordingly.)
Does Government Spending Stimulate Economies? [*23] -- Did you know that academic studies show that tax cuts have a multiplier of 3--that is, a tax cut (TO THE RICH!!!!) of one dollar generates three dollars in economic activity. The best guess of economists for the multiplier due to stimulus spending is somewhere from 1 to 1.5. So, tell me again, my friends in the Democratic Party, how awfully terribly bad tax cuts are, when people are out there without jobs. Because if you really wanted to stimulate job growth, you'd be slashing taxes left and right, because that's where the "bang for the buck" is when you're talking about stimulating an economy.
So what should you do if you're taking photos and a security guard or police officer approaches you and tells you to stop? First, be polite. Security people have tough jobs and probably mean well. Ask them what legal authority they have to make you stop. (If you're in a public place, like a street, a park, etc., they have none; if you're in a private place, such as a shopping mall, they may have a basis for banning pictures.) Krages advises those hassled by security guards to threaten to call law enforcement. If it's an actual police officer who's telling you to stop shooting, ask to speak to a superior. And remember--you never have a legal duty to delete pictures you've taken.
One Of These Things Is Not Like the Other [*73] -- The "substitute just one word in the story with its opposite" strategy for detecting utter bullshit is always quite illuminating . . .
The fundamental weakness with President Obama’s theory of racial healing and social progress is that has assumed that America would always have the means to pay for its grand ambitions. With the arrow of redistribution flowing along racial lines from the relatively well-off whites to the latinos and blacks, ‘progressive politics’ in a depression may just be another word for “division and tension between black and white Americans”.
You have to wonder why Obama and the Democrats want to play with this particular fire.
The shafting of Shirley Sherrod [*78] -- Self-inflicted wound, if wound it be . . . don't discriminate on the basis of race in the first place, and this never becomes an issue. Easy.
Congress Ranks Last in Confidence in Institutions [*80] -- Our government is failing. Actually no, that's not correct. Our politicians are failing to properly run our government. Maybe they should start with actually reading and understanding that document that they swear that they will preserve, protect, and defend . . .
Suppose There Were Food Insurance [*83] -- Now, shouldn't this be "Suppose there WAS food insurance?" Was? Were? What? (OK, the article makes a pretty good health care insurance point, if you can get past the whole was/were issue . . .)
Democrats Dissent on Bush Cuts [*85] -- Weird WSJ headline . . . thrust of the story is that two Dems have come out in favor of extending the tax cuts . . .
The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy [*90] -- The left always--ALWAYS accuses the right of what they themselves, the left, are doing--or want to do: Being racist; creating vast conspiracies (*cough* JournoList *cough* the Soros-funded echo-machine of think tanks and media screechers *cough*); fomenting violence at Tea Party rallies; politicizing the Department of Justice; etc., etc., etc. . . the list just goes on and on and on.
Sherrod Wants BigGovernment Shut Down, Thinks She Should Sue Breitbart [*103] -- I direct Ms. Sherrod's attention to: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." If you don't want to be called a racist, don't sound like a racist. It's not nearly so much fun when you're the one on the receiving end, is it, Ms. Sherrod?
Black racism: a real problem, or pure politics? [*104] -- If you accept (which I vehemently do not) that racism is only possible when one group has power over another . . . what is the race of the sitting President of the United States? The current Attorney General? If you want to go down that nonsensical road where personal prejudices against other races are only a problem when one group has power over another, then it makes no difference. In fact, as long as Obama is President, then blacks by the racism-power definition can indeed be racist.
It is time for the black community to face their own demons, the way that whites have for the past forty or fifty years, if not more.
A good start would be suspending the use of race as an excuse for every single little god-damned thing that's wrong in your lives.
First came Climategate, now it’s JournoList; Who’s next for an email scandal? [*106] -- I've been telling people this for well over twenty years now: Don't send anything via e-mail that you don't want to see on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow. You would think that journalists--or in this case "journalists," of all people would know this. You would, apparently, be wrong.
“First They Call You A Whore…” [*122] -- The ongoing character assassination of South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley . . . just like the left tries to assassinate the character of all who stand against them.
Obamanomics 101: Failure Explained [*123] -- The stimulus failed to stimulate precisely because, at a fundamental level, Democrats do not understand economics . . .
Amazom.com Switches Sides on Net Neutrality [*125] -- Government control (i.e. regulation) of the Internet's content--"Net Neutrality" is an epically bad idea . . . as Amazon has come to realize . . .
Why Are We Discussing Racism? [*126] -- Two reasons: 1: To distract people from the continuing economic problems that the Democrats have actively worked to prolong--whether or not that is their goal, that's the effect--and 2: To try to activate their lethargic, dispirited base for the 2010 elections. In other words, there's nothing noble about it--this is pure, cynical politics.
Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege [*134] -- A sighting of the rare, almost extinct Moderate Democrat. Somebody invoke the Endangered Species Act . . . perhaps we should start some sort of captive breeding program, lest this relic of a bygone age vanish forever in the mists of extinction . . .
Time to be bored with race [*140] -- Actually, time to point and laugh heartily at people who start throwing around the "racist" word for cynical political gain--which actually is just about everybody nowadays . .