Wal-Mart's lefty enemies trash the Constitution

Typical.

This ought to scare the hell out of every American who cares about his country.

Powerful special interests join with powerful media companies to trash a company with an enormous barrage of propaganda. The company seeks to defend itself by telling the truth. The special interests seek to force the government to silence the company from responding to the propaganda.

Which political party do you think more likely to knuckle under to powerful special interests? Which party is more likely to defend the constitution?

NY Times lies about wages

This economist takes the paper to task:

I suppose it's a dog bites man story—I shouldn't be upset when the New York Times news division writes a intellectually dishonest story that plays to the biases of its readership base. But today's front-page above the fold story on wages depresses and surprises me anyway.

Basically, the Times propaganda on wage decline is based entirely on a left-wing policy group's agenda and is at odds with all the facts available. Just really rotten journalism. The facts are wrong. There is no effort to get comment from economists who could point out the errors.

Inaccurate, unbalanced, agenda-driven drivel.

Put me down for a couple hundred, too

Megan explains why she would love to take up Kevin Drum on his bet. Bottom line -- Kevin is dreaming if thinks that the state of California will not suffer from forcing businesses to reduce their CO2 emissions by a draconian 25%. A nice of example of a liberal out of touch with economic realities.

Classy Bush vs. Arrogant Clinton

The Anchoress points out the difference between W, a serious believer, and Clinton, as unserious about his faith as anyone in public life, in the way they honor Catholic doctrine on taking communion at mass as a non-Catholic.

I really want to point out the little nugget near the end of her post. It seems that the Clintons wiretapped the phone of Cardinal O'Conner. The pre-text was to determine if he was part of a conspiracy to commit violent acts against abortion providers.

Q: Where are the NY Times and the ACLU when real civil liberties get trampled?

A: Cheering and celebrating.


(see e.g. Waco -- tank assault by military kills dozens of innocent children; Elian -- Clinton DoJ shreds civil liberties so egregiously that even left-wing law profs Tribe and Dershowitz are appalled.)

Check out this cartoon

Worth a thousand words.

Dems don't get it while pointing out that Dems don't get it

RCP had this piece from The Democratic Strategist which does a good job of pointing out all the ways that Democrats fail to understand middle class voters. They don't properly identify what income level is middle class. They don't understand how strong America is or how well the average American has done economically. They don't understand how optimistic we are and they don't have any ideas which appeal to middle class voters.

All good points. Of course, they wouldn't be Democrats unless they went seriously off the rails somewhere in their analysis:

It is true that our national prosperity is threatened by the Bush policies of high debt, tax giveaways to the most affluent, a theocratic faith that corporate America will solve our health care and energy crises, and the growing income inequality found in our country. Yet even with six years of wrong choices behind us, the bursting of the tech bubble, the attacks of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and sky-high oil prices - America's vital economic signs are fundamentally robust.

Uh huh. "Theocratic faith" sounds like solid economic analysis. Tax "giveaways"?!

I'm sure the middle class voter can't wait to jump on any Dem bandwagon promising to punish the "theocratic faithful".

Five minutes to midnight

The boys at Cox and Forkum point out an article which deals with the untidy facts that the liberal ostriches desperately try to ignore.

How many lives did Katrina save?

50,000? More? I saw this over at the Captain. It seems that the Army Corps of Engineers handling of the levee may have been just as incompetent as the MSM's coverage of the hurricane's aftermath.

Shudder.

I expect journalists to be dumb as a post and corrupt to the core. I have much higher expectations for the the Army and engineers in general. I can protect myself from the incompetence of journalists. Bridges, levees and dams are a totally different problem.

By any means necessary

Liberals will tell any lie, abuse any right, bastardize any legal procedure, engage in any manner of doublespeak, and trample any person who stands up for ethics or morality in their quest for political power. Opinion Journal has the latest example. I've read a lot of bad legal decisions over the years. I can't imagine anything this egregious, this blatantly political, being done 50 years ago.

Have they no decency left? No shame?

Dems seek to raise fed taxes by 58%

At Power Line, the talk with Senator Frist yielded this nugget:

The Majority Leader also made a point on taxes that surprised nearly all of his listeners. If you take a family of four, with an average American income of $64,000 per year, and assume that the Democrats regain control of either the House or the Senate and block the extension of the Bush tax cuts, as they are committed to doing, what would be the impact on that average family? A federal tax increase of 58%. That's what the Democratic Party stands for.

I guess the average American family of four is what the Dems think of as rich. Which makes one wonder what they think of the huge bundles of cash raked in by Bill and Hillary's brothers selling Bill's pardons.

Best Hitter in Baseball

Travis Hafner of the Indians leads the majors in OPS (on base pct. plus slugging pct.). The best hitter in baseball and he wasn't even chosen to the all-star team. Anyone think this snub would have happened if he played in Boston or New York?

Brain dead MSM

Dafydd makes a simple point that has escaped our modern journalists -- casualty rates are not the way one evaluates military progress. Once upon a time, journalists with only a high school education knew this. Today, our MSM finest can't seem to wrap their little brains around the concept. As he points out, casualties were higher on D-Day. That doesn't mean we weren't making progress toward winning.

Tenn Democrat admits vote fraud

Bill Hobbs has the story:

Rep. JoAnne Favors stated that she had many people registered to vote at her home that did not live there in order for them to vote for her. As she was saying this from the microphone democrat leaders rushed up to her and pleaded with her to shut up. JoAnne Favors was concerned that Paul Stanley's bill might actually prohibit her from having so many people registered to vote at her home even though they didn't live there.

Illegal, unethical and stupid is one heckuva combination. Only a democrat could pull it off and stay in office.

Widespread Democratic Vote Fraud

Via Betsy, was this item by David Hogberg about the ridiculous study put out by the People of the American Way on "voter suppression". Hogberg notes:

And of course, PFAW has to whine about "Overly strict voter identification requirements that make it harder for the up to 10 percent of Americans who do not have government-issued photo IDs to cast a vote." Requiring a drivers license to vote is "overly strict"? Next time I try to cash a check at a bank, I'll try that "overly strict" complaint when they ask for ID, just to see how it goes over.

There is one reason and one reason only for not requiring ID to vote: making it easier to cheat.

Have you noticed that an incredibly diverse group of liberal partisans have gone the extra mile to try to kill any use of photo IDs to vote? From this left-wing outfit to the lawsuit brought by the former Democratic governor of Georgia, the entire Democratic Party appears to be mobilized for war on this. Why?

The argument that their use intimidates black voters is laughable. As is the argument that poor voters can't afford the free ID cards. Michael Barone has pointed out the Mexico got serious about vote fraud with a number of quality control measures, one of which is issuing an election ID with photo to every voter which includes features making it very hard to counterfeit. Anyone serious about stopping vote fraud knows you have to start with photo ID. Yet Democrats all over the country willingly make fools of themselves tossing out all kinds of silly claims in their desperate attempts to stop their use.

Obviously, they understand that the IDs will cut down on fraudulent votes by making it harder to cheat. A reasonable conclusion is that they know that Democrats benefit from vote fraud. Others have noted this, it is the numbers I find fascinating.

What I want to focus on is how widespread and diverse their efforts are. The opposition to photo ID seems to involve party supporters all over the country. They are united on this. And desperate enough to say anything, no matter how moronic. My point -- a person doesn't knowingly make a fool of himself for no reason. I don't think all these people would knowingly make stupid claims out of a sense of solidarity. I.e., "this photo ID thing seems really important for some reason I don't understand, but I'm a good Dem so I'll go along and make a fool of myself." No, I think you have to figure that the thought process goes something like this -- "Oh man, I've seen us busing people around to different precincts so folks could vote multiple times and I know about the absentee scams (or I know about it all from folks I trust), if photo IDs are required, we are totally screwed. We have to fight this at all costs, no matter how silly we look. If we lose on this, we are toast!"

Given the large number of Democrats fighting against photo IDs, I think it reasonable to conclude that there are a lot of folks in on the fraud. And the number of votes involved would probably stagger most of us.

Why worldwide terrorists are focused on Baghdad

The Ashbrook Update had this:

[Sen. Johnny] Isakson [R-GA], who had sat silent throughout the conversation with Frist, spoke up. "I’m sorry, I can't keep quiet on this," he said. "The terrorists and those that are trying their best to attack us—and a lot of that is coming out of Iran—are concentrated on Baghdad. It's a reflection of the success we've had in the majority of the country. If you confront that concentration now with the appropriate force and in conjunction with the Iraqi army and you can break its back, it has the chance to be a very optimistic result. If you turn the other way and say you're failing, then you've handed them a victory. You have to remember the terrorists don't have to beat us to win. All they have to have us do is quit and go home and they declare victory. You saw what Hezbollah did in South Lebanon."

Joseph Kippenberg wrote:

strategically it makes sense for all those who want the U.S. out and who want the Iraq experiment to fail to concentrate their efforts on Baghdad. That’s where the international press is. That’s the most target-rich environment. It can’t be isolated or circumvented that way other enclaves can be. And a Baghdadi "failure" can relatively easily be billed as a general (U.S. and Iraqi) governmental "failure."
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg

What the MSM won't tell you

Hugh had this yesterday. If you missed it, you need to read this letter from an Army commander in Afghanistan. You sure as hell will never get it from the MSM.

Harold Ford is a serial liar

No wonder Democrats see him as a rising star. There is nothing they love more than a prolific liar. Bill Hobbs has the details.

We play Charley Brown to Iran's Lucy

Every time she tells Charley she won't pull that football away and every time he falls for it. Dr. Sanity discusses the insanity of those who believe that the Iranians are sincere when they say they want to negotiate.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 592 times and counting, give me a job with the UN.

An insult to our intelligence

Jack Cashill on the CNN special about TWA 800 --

for anyone who cares about justice, if you could please call CNN or Newsweek and just ask them for an explanation that does not insult your intelligence, the nation will be most grateful.

Negotiating with Terrorists

Lucianne pointed out this great post on how to negotiate with terrorists. Read it. You will enjoy it.

Dafydd makes the case

Big Lizards' proprietor has much the better argument than John at Power Line on the question of whether a liberal Democrat winning in 2008 would make much difference. More later, but it is well worth the read.

The case for neglecting global warming

Donald J. Boudreaux, an economics prof at George Mason makes some good points. Did you know:

Over the past 100 years, says one researcher, Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago, humans in the industrialized world have undergone "a form of evolution that is unique not only to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of humans who have ever inhabited the earth.

The difference does not involve changes in genes, as far as is known, but changes in the human form. It shows up in several ways, from those that are well known and almost taken for granted, like greater heights and longer lives, to ones that are emerging only from comparisons of health records.

The biggest surprise emerging from the new studies is that many chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they used to. There is also less disability among older people today.

Why? Capitalism.

Capitalism produces so much food that we are never malnourished; it produces ample clothing and sturdy homes to protect us from the elements; it produces the soaps, shampoos, toothpastes and detergents that we use every day to cleanse our bodies and living spaces of bacteria and other dirt. And by continually substituting machines for human labor, capitalism progressively makes our work less backbreaking and less perilous.

These gains are significant and real. And they are continuing; no one knows where, or even if, they will stop.

Those of us who recognize these important benefits of capitalism -- those of us who understand that capitalism's true greatness lies not (as many critics insinuate) in producing oceans of pointless trinkets and baubles but in making the lives of ordinary people richer and fuller and longer -- are reluctant to yield power to governments to tackle global warming. We worry that this power will kill the goose that's laying this golden egg.

NY Times debates self; loses

James Taranto has these two NY Times lines in opposition to each other.

"The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates."--editorial, New York Times, Aug. 9


"Only a handful of those Lieberman supporters interviewed said they would switch to Mr. Lamont, signaling the difficulties he may have attracting Connecticut's moderate voters in a general election."--news story, New York Times, Aug. 12

Of course, the rule here is go with the news story over the editorial. While the news stories in the Times are often wrong, full of bias and outright opinion, and should always be read with a lump of salt, the contents of the op-ed page should almost always be ignored as the braying of insane donkeys.

Liberals register fake voters

At Bill Hobbs, they pointed out this story of liberals registering fake voters.

Elections workers verifying new-voter forms discovered signatures with the same handwriting, addresses that were for vacant lots and incorrect information for voters who already were registered, Damschroder said. One card had the name of an East Side man who’s dead.

All the questionable cards were turned in by workers for Ohio ACORN, a group that’s also paying people to gather signatures for a proposed November ballot initiative to raise the state’s minimum wage.

Must-Read on Bush and Israel ceasefire

I believe that Dafydd has nailed it. His explanation for the decision to hold off in Fallajuh is right on and the application to the present conflict makes tremendous sense.

An absolutely outstanding piece of analysis.

Another liberal "fact" trashed

Boys struggle in school compared to girls. Glenn noted this. I want to add context.

Remember when feminists were pushing the lie that teachers ignore girls and focus on teaching the boys? That girls were discriminated against in school? Anyone with half a brain knew it was garbage then and the stats keep getting worse for boys.

This is, of course, part of a larger patttern. The claim that there were millions of homeless was exposed as a deliberate lie. The standard mantra of environmentalists has been exposed as a lie. The claims of widespread wage discrimination against blacks and women have been exposed as lies.

Democrats scream about vote fraud, yet they fight vigorously against every effort to stop it. Why? Because they are lying. They know that they are the ones committing wholesale election fraud while they slander the GOP.

No wonder they loved the Clintons so much. They are people in love with the lie.

John Kerry, without the major lies that buttress his resume, would be an even emptier suit. [Although that raises the question of whether anything can be emptier than empty.] It is precisely for their lies that the left loves Michael Moore, Richard Clarke, the Plames, and Cindy Sheehan.

Without the lie, the left would have nothing.

Liberals are so nice

And classy too! Although the source is the AP,

Democrat Ned Lamont's campaign manager said he will send an apology to the mayor of Waterbury for describing the city that backed his opponent, Sen. Joe Lieberman, as a place "where the forces of slime meet the forces of evil."

Ed Koch praises Bush

At RCP, Ed Koch writes:

In my judgment, when history evaluates George W. Bush's position in the pantheon of presidents, he will be compared with Harry S. Truman. Bush's fortitude in recognizing the danger of Islamic fundamentalism to the U.S. and, indeed, the Western world, and his awareness of the need to win this war of civilizations is remarkable. He deserves the applause of all Americans and in time he will receive it.

Extreme reactions

The Anchoress takes extreme bloggers and commenters to task on both sides of the political spectrum. I agree, but want to note two things. First, there is a difference between advocating an unhinged policy based on an accurate understanding of the facts (nuke 'em all) and spouting lies and nonsense while advocating an unhinged policy (Bush caused all these terrorists, it would all stop if we just left Iraq).

Second, no political leader is advocating the "nuke 'em all" policy, none are going to, and I would bet that the poster who wrote it knows it and likely doesn't really want anyone to. On the left side of the extreme, however, the insanity is very real and having a measurable impact on the politicians. There is an enormous difference in the way that the insanity of the extremists is having a serious impact on reality.

Hillary has a plan for you

Will Collier points out a mind-blowing mess which has enveloped British hospitals. Un-freaking-believable. And all directly caused by Hillary's favorite idea.

Fighting back in their own small way

AJ talks about his flight experience as his fellow Americans demonstrate that they won't be intimidated.

Economic reality doesn't apply to Chicago

Don't you just love liberal Democrats? So stupid, yet so earnest. RCP's blog pointed to this editorial about the City Council's law to force big stores to pay government mandated wages.

Add Lowe's Home Improvement Center to the growing list of retailers that are putting their Chicago development plans on ice.

Lowe's joins Wal-Mart and Target in a limbo of the City Council's making. The council last month ordered "big-box" retailers to pay their workers $10 in wages and $3 in benefits by 2010. Mayor Richard Daley could veto the ordinance. Until that is settled, new stores on the drawing boards for depressed Chicago neighborhoods, offering hundreds of new jobs and millions in tax revenues, are on hold.

Not to worry, assures Chicago's self-appointed retail consultant, Ald. Joe Moore (49th), who sponsored the ordinance. Those big-box retailers have no choice but to come to Chicago because "we have huge density," said Moore.

Once this little flap about government-ordered wage levels blows over, Moore believes, the Wal-Marts and Targets and Lowe's of the retailing universe will flock to Chicago even if they have to pay higher wages than they do in the suburbs.

This appears to be a new Chicago School of Economics. It's a school that says Chicago can ignore the rules of markets and competition because, well, because the City Council has decreed they just don't apply here.

"We have people who want to spend money," said Moore. "We have a large city, so people in the center core are not going to drive miles to save 10 cents on toilet paper."

He's right on the first point, dead wrong on the second. Chicagoans will drive miles to save money and to seek jobs if that's what they have to do. Last year, Chicagoans spent more than $530 million at Wal-Mart stores outside the city. By various estimates, Chicagoans generated $5 billion to $6 billion in sales in the suburbs in 2004.

Suburbanites shop in Chicago too. But they can't shop where there isn't a store.

This is also true: A job that doesn't get created in the city doesn't pay a "living wage"--or any wage.

McCain vs. Guiliani

I responded to RCP's Tom Bevan when he requested e-mails on Rudy vs. John. Here is what I wrote:

The biggest difference I see between the two is integrity. McCain has shown a tendency throughout his career to sell out his party and its leadership whenever the MSM will praise him for it. You are right that both of these guys have a lot of issues where they are on the "wrong side". Where they seem to differ is that Rudy has shown that he has the spine to tell the MSM to go to hell and do what he thinks is right. McCain, the politician, seems likely to "grow" in office under the intense glare of the MSM.

Dafydd sees it the same way in his post.

my objection to McCain is not this or that policy difference; it's his overall character.

The man is untrustworthy;

He stabs friends in the back;


He has a volatile, at times uncontrollable temper;


He holds a grudge longer than Richard Nixon did;


And he believes the absolute, bloody worst about anyone who disagrees with him.

He continually puts John McCain ahead of everything else, including the United States itself. And if elected president, he would likely become our very own version of Bill Clinton.

McCain didn't push McCain-Feingold (the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, BCRA) because he cared anything about "reform," nor did he push it because he hates freedom of speech (he doesn't; he just doesn't care). He pushed it because it aggrandized a fellow named John McCain.

Similarly, he didn't create the "Gang of 14" in order to expedite the judges nominated by President Bush, nor even to throw them under the bus: he did it, without regard to consequences, so that John McCain would again be the first name on the lips of America.

And, he notes, Rudy did a remarkable job as chief executive of a city of over 8 million (a population larger than 40 states) and handled himself extremely well in the crisis following 9/11. In contrast:

John McCain has never run anything but his mouth... and he can't even control that very well, can he?

I wholeheartedly endorse his conclusion:

The primary "values and philosophies" demanded are not found in either man's position on the issues Bevan examines, but rather in both men's characters in a time so fraught with peril. Everything I know, I learned from Zorro, including this: "No man can govern others until he has first learned to govern himself." John McCain cannot even govern himself; I will not trust him with my country.

Predicting 4 of the last Zero rescessions

Paul Krugman, Princeton economics prof and NY Times columnist noted for having his brain reside in an alternative universe, is at it again. Via Don Luskin, this quote from one of his readers:

So Paul Klugman, Economist to the Nomenclatura, will have predicted four of the last zero recessions?

Note -- this is considered quality work by the NY Times. Given the abysmal performance of its reporters, editors and other columnists, it really is. In fact, Krugman's insane rants (which would degrade a junior high school paper), may be the highest quality work in the organization.

Interesting looking book

Don Luskin pointed out this book. Looks interesting. "Econospinning : How to Read Between the Lines When the Media Manipulate the Numbers," by Gene Epstein. Here's the description:

Epstein exposes bad reporting by the elite media, including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Economist—and especially by The New York Times and its economics columnist Paul Krugman,

Epstein also deconstructs CNN newscaster Lou Dobbs’ coverage of outsourcing and globalization; the illusory connection between abortion and lower crime rates, and bad theories about the role of real estate brokers, featured in the bestseller Freakonomics; the treatment of the working class portrayed in Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed; and the sensationalized coverage of the employment report by CNBC’s "Squawk Box."

From the disputes over Social Security to misinterpretations of the unemployment rate, Econospinning points out the unfortunate lack of integrity that pervades mainstream economic reporting.
Epstein exposes bad reporting by the elite media, including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Economist—and especially by The New York Times and its economics columnist Paul Krugman,

Epstein also deconstructs CNN newscaster Lou Dobbs’ coverage of outsourcing and globalization; the illusory connection between abortion and lower crime rates, and bad theories about the role of real estate brokers, featured in the bestseller Freakonomics; the treatment of the working class portrayed in Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed; and the sensationalized coverage of the employment report by CNBC’s "Squawk Box."

From the disputes over Social Security to misinterpretations of the unemployment rate, Econospinning points out the unfortunate lack of integrity that pervades mainstream economic reporting.

Amazing that an editor of Barron's would speak such truth -- "the unfortunate lack of integrity that pervades mainstream economic reporting." That about covers it.

Time mag: GOP "ferocious"

Time is so lame:

From Washington State to Missouri to Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates found themselves on the defensive Wednesday as the Republican Party worked ferociously at every level to try to use the primary defeat of Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut to portray the opposition as the party of weakness and isolation on national security and liberal leanings on domestic policy.

In Time's world, I'm sure Democrats work passionately, devotedly, diligently. Republicans, however, work "ferociously". Can't you just get that mental image of Karl Rove's minions working away with their fangs bared and a menacing growl emerging from deep in their throats.

What a tool.

How the MSM does propaganda

Dafydd does a really nice job of taking apart one example of news media propaganda. It is well worth the read. I wholeheartedly agree with his conclusion, too:

Never attribute to stupidity what can adequately be explained by malice; or in this case, what can only be explained by malice. Make no mistake. Know thine enemy as thou knowest thyself.

MORE-- RCP has Jed Babbin's take on the contrived news story. Also well worth reading.

NY Times-- Lamont voters moderate

No, really. They really wrote that. Read what Ace thinks of the latest insanity from the toilet paper of record.

Why the Left dominates universities

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

At Jane Galt, one of Megan's commenters had this priceless comment in response to this: "The facts raise an interesting question, however, and one that should trouble right-wing critics of the current situation: why is liberal dominance of academia a problem given that it represents a market outcome? That is, if liberal academics are so bad, why does the market support so many of them?"

Matt writes in the comments:

Assuming it as given that a certain percentage of the general population is going to be leftist cretins no matter what (it's not provable at this point in history, but the evidence certainly seems to lean that way), an economically efficient system will tend to channel them to the occupations in which they can do the least damage, even if simply because all the competent people are (and indeed should be) out in the real world doing the work.

If you're a better businessman or engineer or whatever than you are a teacher, then it doesn't matter a whit how much better a teacher you would be than the folks who are actually doing the teaching...you and society are still economically better off if you farm out the job of teaching and focus your efforts on the work you're best at. The folks who are left to utterly nonproductive work (such as is represented by professorships in most academic disciplines) will be the dregs of the competency barrel, simply by process of elimination.

All things considered, universities are not a bad place for such people...at least, putting them there is more just than locking them in prisons, and more humane than committing them to asylums for the incurably insane. Occasionally pretending that we think their opinions matter even keeps most of them from getting angry enough to take up politics (as distinct from ideology), and the fewer lunatics we have trying to take over the country, the better off we all are.

It is worth noting that, in academic departments which are _not_ well described as "utterly nonproductive work", the leftist bias is far, far less powerful.

The useful question is not "why are universities dominated by leftists", but rather "why is the known-to-be-dominated-by-leftists university system still trusted with _monopoly_ power to grant credentials for entry into fields of productive endeavour?". This is the only respect in which these folks have any actual power, and I think it's high time we took it away from them.

Even if one assumes the questionable proposition that universities operate as a true market, this is a delightful response.

How stupid is Tim Russert?

Did he really say this?

"You have free elections in Iraq, and the head of the parliament calls us butchers. You have free elections in Palestine, and Hamas wins. You have elections in Lebanon, and Hezbollah wins 10, 12 seats in the parliament and two cabinet seats. Free elections are no guarantee of democracy."

"Free elections are no guarantee of democracy." Say what?!

First, free elections ARE democracy. They are no guarantee that our friends will be elected, but genuinely free elections are democracy.

Second, what the hell is his point supposed to be? That some of the nasty people in the mideast are nasty people? Damn, who knew?!

In a land of blind people, the one-eyed man is king. In an MSM filled with biased incompetents, Tim Russert is fortunate to have nothing worthy to be compared to.

MSM vs. Truth -- which to believe?

A general sets the record straight.

And the MSM wonders why fewer and fewer believe them every day.

Congratulations Roger Goodell

Tim Goodell, Davidson '79, was an SAE with me and a teammate on the Wildcat baseball team. His brother has just been announced as the new commissioner of the NFL. If he is anything like Tim when it comes to being smart, personable, friendly, loyal and an all-round good guy, he will be a huge success in his new job.

Update -- if this article is accurate, he certainly is.

[Oops, correction -- in this post I previously wrote his name as Charles, but that was Tim and Roger's dad, the former senator from NY.]

Blue state racists?

From Dean Barnett, a note about a blogger who provided info on this post on race-based hate crimes. The worst offenders are in blue states and the fewest such crimes are in deep south red ones:

For some time now the FBI has been tracking hate crimes. These are broken down by state and type of offense. If we look at racially-motivated hate crimes, we see something, well, that goes against the conventional wisdom. According to the 2004 statistics, the top four states for race-based hate crimes are:

New Jersey
Michigan
Montana
Minnesota

That is a bit of a surprise, isn’t it? Let’s look at the bottom four states for race-based hate crimes. They are:

Louisiana
Georgia
Mississippi
Alabama

Dems have unprecedented hatred for Hillary

Kaus had this nugget from the Boston Herald:

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Dick Bennett has been polling New Hampshire voters for 30 years. And he’s never seen anything like it.

“Lying b**** . . . shrew . . . Machiavellian . . . evil, power-mad witch . . . the ultimate self-serving politician.”

No prizes for guessing which presidential front-runner drew these remarks in focus groups.

But these weren’t Republicans talking about Hillary Clinton. They weren’t even independents.

These were ordinary, grass-roots Democrats. People who identified themselves as “likely” voters in the pivotal state’s Democratic primary. And, behind closed doors, this is what nearly half of them are saying.



“I was amazed,” says Bennett. “I thought there might be some negatives, but I didn’t know it would be as strong as this. It’s stunning, the similarities between the Republicans and the Democrats, the comments they have about her.”

2006 election -- impeachment referendum

Read Byron York. Democrats cheered wildly when Bill Clinton used Army tanks to kill children, shredded the Constitution to seize an innocent child, used the FBI and IRS to harass and intimidate opponents, committed multiple perjuries, sold pardons for cash, obstructed justice repeatedly, suborned perjury, and engaged in the wholesale violation of civil liberties.

So they want to impeach W.

Lying is not enough

Big Lizards fisks the AP lies on WMDs. What makes the AP report interesting is not the lies, but the incredible extent to which the AP labels anyone who doesn't believe their lies as ignorant, stupid or psychotic.

Arguing with stupid people

Powerline demonstrates that there is not much point trying to have an intelligent discussion with a journalist who writes for the MSM. Stupid people do not get the point.

Bill Keller was unable to articulate a coherent reason for publishing national security secrets and does not appear to have even given the matter much thought.

We tend to get angry at the mindless liberal bias of the MSM. Perhaps we should focus a bit more on the mindless part.

MSM-- lying their asses off

RCP hadthis story about Reuters using a doctored photo.

Update -- just saw this at Power line. I hadn't checked the web over the weekend. Looks like this is a pretty good scandal.

Sanctions haven't harmed Cuba's economy

This column in Slate does a decent job of explaining how Fidel has kept his grip on his dicatatorial power. I have a real disagreement with the silly conventional wisdom:

Sanctions have accomplished three things since they were first imposed in 1960: They have inflicted hardships on the Cuban people, they have strengthened Castro's ability to block citizens' access to the resources they need to win some independence from their government, and they have alienated U.S. allies whose companies are penalized for doing business in Cuba.

Total BS.

Cuba's economy did not go in the toilet because of economic sanctions by the US. It went into the toilet because the communist command economy was not able to produce anything worthwhile for people to trade. Other nations around the world engaged in trade with Cuba. Nothing stopped the Cubans from trading with Canada or Europe for anything they didn't get from the US. The reason very little trade took place was due to the failure of the Cuban economy to produce much of anythng that Europeans or Canadians want.

This is just too simple to understand for so many people to screw it up. If Kroger should refuse to sell me groceries, I would still eat just fine as long as other grocers will sell to me. Kroger, by itself, cannot cut me off from trading my dollars for food. And the US didn't cut Cuba off from trade with other countries. The US sanctions, as a matter of simple logic, can not have caused the horrible economy that Castro's rule imposed on the Cuban people.

Barone has strong praise for W

Michael Barone compares W to William Pitt the Younger. High praise indeed as Barone regards Pitt as "was one of Britain's most important leaders and quite possibly the most brilliant."

Pitt's farsightedness reminds me of George W. Bush's attempts, even in adversity, to forge long-term solutions rather than short-term patchwork. It has been on display in the past three weeks as Israel has responded to attacks by Hezbollah. There are many points of similarity between Pitt and Bush. Both had fathers who held their executive positions before them, and both faced circumstances different from those their fathers had faced and responded with different policies, designed to provide long-term solutions. Both were bitterly and vituperatively opposed by the political opposition and much of the chattering class of the day.

...

But I come back to what I think they had and have in common: a steely character and an ability to persevere on a long-term course despite harrowing setbacks. Both came to power in part because of their fathers and because their lineage gave people--GeorgeIII and members of Parliament in Pitt's case, American voters in Bush's--confidence in their character. And, in my view, that confidence has proved to be deserved in both cases.

Read it all.

MSM boycotts Juan Williams

Betsy writes about the way Juan Williams, a died-in-the-wool liberal, has gotten completely shut out by the MSM for writing a book which includes some criticism for race pimps like Jesse Jackson.

Just one more example of the fact that the journalists of the MSM are nothing more than a bunch of liars, frauds and propagandists.

Value Pros are buying

WSJ has an article in the Money and Investing section of this morning's paper on how many of the old pro managers of value mutual funds are seeing bargains in the market and buying. Cash levels have been brought down.

As I have written before, the P/Es of the major indexes keep coming down, the estimated P/Es are extraordinarily low and the analysts' estimated earnings keep proving to be too pessimistic each earnings season. Good time to invest (especially for long term investors).

Are liberals more empirical?

Stuart Buck demolishes the silliness of Jonathon Chait with a nice rundown of examples where liberal "academics" ostracized those researchers whose work disagreed with their beliefs.

Reality -- Ann Coulter is absolutely right when she labels the "liberalism" practiced today as a religion.

Warren Buffett -- "rip-off artist"?

CNBC just did a short interview with an author named Timothy P. Carney who has written a book titled, "The Big Ripoff". Apparently, the book discusses how some business people use campaign donations to insure huge profits for their businesses. He talked about the kind of cash and benefits the federal government funnels to Archer Daniel Midlands (25% of all the ethanol grants) and the sugar growing family in Florida which uses the feds to keep sugar prices about 3 to 4 times higher than they would be in a free market.

At the end of the piece, he noted that Warren Buffett is a huge supporter for high estate tax rates for good reason. It turns out that Warren's company, Berkshire Hathaway, has purchased some of its profitable acquisitions because estate tax bills forced the heirs to sell the family-owned businesses at a huge discount.

Of course, Warren may just love the estate tax because he is a big liberal. After all, he is a huge fan of the Clintons.

[Note, however, that his love for the Clintons may be due to his admiration for their open marriage. When Wall Street had a scandal recently because a partner in a big firm turned out to be a big financial supporter of a prostitution madam, one person interviewed on TV (didn't catch his name) said it was unlikely to make any difference to the firm. After all, he said, Warren Buffett is known to have kept a mistress rather openly for a long time without scandal affecting his business. Hmmm. Didn't know that. No wonder he's tight with Bill and Hillary.]

Good advice

Forbes editor, Rich Karlgaard offers good advice about the criticism directed at W from conservative economist Bruce Bartlett. First, Bartlett's financial interests are directly aligned with bashing Bush. Second, his criticism fails to acknowledge any of the enormous good which has resulted from the Bush tax cuts.

Bottom line -- when the criticism is clearly unbalanced and the critic has a strong financial interest in selling the criticism, take what the critic says with a very large grain of salt -- say a lump.

Court stops Times' effort to cover up crime

A federal appeals court ruled that the NY Times could not hide behind the First Amendment in its efforts to cover up who tipped off Islamic terrorist funding sources that the feds were about to conduct a raid. Story here.

MSM lies for the enemy

Communications professor, Cori Dauber, posted about these pictures smuggled out of Lebanon and published by an Australian newspaper. They show conclusively that the terrorists are dressed as civilians and operate anti-aircraft guns from residential areas.

Cori notes that the MSM doesn't seem interested in running the pictures.

No matter how many times we say it, there is value in repeating this simple truth -- the news outlets of the MSM are knowingly engaged in lies and propaganda when they refuse to publish information which does not support their favored side. For journalists, this is as corrupt as it gets. Even if a news organization published information that it knew was false in exchange for cash payments, it would be no more corrupt than this.

If an organization professes to engage in fair and balanced journalism, it matters not one bit why it knowingly publishes lies (or knowingly refuses to publish the truth). Whatever the reason is, whether for cash or ideology, knowingly engaging in publishing false depictions or propaganda is corrupt -- absolutely and thoroughly corrupt.

Does that make most everyone in the MSM corrupt? Yes.

They lie for a living. Why anyone would treat any of these people with respect or dignity is beyond me. People who belonged to polite society once refused to socialize with those who lacked integrity. We would be a better society today, if we made a lack of integrity a scarlet letter once again.

Cover-up?

Jack Cashill has another article on the bizarre FBI behavior in sabotoging the investigation into the cause of the downing of TWA flight 800. The named source was the investigator for the union which was involved in the investigation. Their report, attached per law to the NTSB report, says that the FBI removed key evidence and fabricated findings.

CNBC -- lying again

Anchor just said that FEMA's performance after Katrina was " acknowledged by all accounts" to be a complete disaster. Wrong.

Popular Mechanics, in the most comprehensive reporting on the aftermath of Katrina, wrote:

In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall.

Now everyone with half a brain knows that this reporting would have been trumpeted on CNBC and every other MSM outlet if the report made a Democratic administration look better. After all, the MSM cheered for Clinton and Janet Reno when they used tanks in a military assault on the home of several dozen children leading to their deaths. See a pattern here? Dems get praise and cheers when they completely screw up, violate rights and get innocents killed. GOP gets slammed no matter what they do right.

Ann Coulter Interview

The Baltimore Sun interviews her.

Worthlessness of World Opinion

Dennis Prager has a good column on the immorality of "world opinion".

If you are ever morally confused about a major world issue, here is a rule that is almost never violated: Whenever you hear that "world opinion" holds a view, assume it is morally wrong.

And here is a related rule if your religious or national or ethnic group ever suffers horrific persecution: "World opinion" will never do a thing for you. Never.

"World opinion" has little or nothing to say about the world's greatest evils and regularly condemns those who fight evil.

The whole thing is well worth the read. He lists all the great horrors about which the world was apathetic as a nice contrast to the insignificance of the incidents "world opinion" gets panties wadded over.

And he sets forth four reasons for all this. TV News and journalistic cowardice are the biggest factors.