Preconceptions

Good, if brief, editorial there at the New York Times today, on the continuing economic problems. Although some would like us to believe that the economy is in recovery, the truth is that the employment numbers don't lend themselves to that conclusion. The editorial runs throught this and talks about how each party's desire to mold the economic news into their narrative works.

"Because the White House's view of the economy is driven by a political narrative, little effort is made to grapple with some of the thorny questions posed by the slow job growth. Has technology-driven productivity growth and outsourcing placed a new speed limit on the rate of job creation? Can the government raise this speed limit?

The Democrats are enamored of their own narrative of corporate robber barons' conspiring with low-paid overseas workers to destroy the American middle class. So the Democratic candidates also fail to engage the complex reality and are too quick to resort to protectionist demagoguery."

Well, yes, but i do think the author of this one underestimates the corporate bias against the American Worker.

Rich Lowry - Not Entirely Trustworthy

He writes an article today that proports to be an interview the John Kerry. However, it is probably a satire on the fact that Kerry served in Vietnam. An honest satirist makes sure that his readers know that it is satire. But in this case Lowry doesn't bother to do that.

His point is, of course, that Kerry shouldn't bring up Vietnam. Stories about Kerry's Vietnam Experiences should remind us how vain and shallow he is (and not presumably how George W. Bush sat that one out).

David Limbaugh's Electoral Advice

In a nutshell, drop Kerry and run Edwards.

Limbaugh says that "all the polls" show that support for Kerry is solely based on our love for a winner, and definately not due to anything he's bringing to the table. So we will have buyer's remorse down the road. But of course, he's happy about that (in fact he names hs article "I'm Glad They're Nominating Kerry.")

He thinks we should run Edwards because although Edwards isn't that tall (nice of you to take the high road, mr. Limbaugh), he has the "appeal to the stupid masses" shtick down to a science. "Nevertheless, Edwards' smarmy pseudo-populism scares the heck out of me. Beginning in the courtroom, he has refined to an art the knack for victimizing and polarizing, pitting injured plaintiffs against evil defendants, and wage earners against entrepreneurs. Just like he convinces juries he cares more about the plaintiff's injury than his share of the verdict, exit polls reveal he has fooled primary voters into believing he cares more about "working folks" than his own lustful desire to be president.

If he truly cared, he wouldn't try to poison people's souls with envy and he wouldn't ignore the evidence so cogently presented by the brilliant Thomas Sowell that there are not nearly as many poor people in America as some would have us believe."

Yep times are great in America for everybody who matters. Following Limbaugh's style, this is a message President Bush and his legions push all year long. Everything is fine, and the only people suffering are lazy slobs who deserve it. Still, I suspect that Karl Rove has a bit better grip on reality than Limbaugh so my wishes may not be realized.

I also like the phrase "his own lustful desire to be President." Yep, that horny Edwards, always wanting to be President. Not like George W. Bush who had the Presidency forced upon him.

Your Weekly Rush

Well Rush was talking about the George Tenet Testimony yesterday, and he got one of his few liberal callers. Rush is careful to screen out any intelligent liberals with good arguments, so the liberals who do show up on his show are usually nitwits. This person made the point that George Tenet has had 5 years since being appointed by Clinton to rebuild the CIA. Rush explained Liberals' true feelings about the CIA.

"The correct answer is he shouldn't be rebuilding the CIA. We hate CIA. The CIA is the focus of evil and the CIA is why we're in trouble, we've got to get rid of the CIA and the reason we've got to get rid of the CIA is because of this Iraq debacle. This is what a true good liberal would really say if he were telling the truth. You don't call here and start defending the CIA. You don't call here and defend Clinton and the CIA. You don't do that. You're denying us who you really are. And I'm just not going to let it happen. You people got psychological problems, I'm going to try to help you."

Luckly for us all, Rush is an even bigger nitwit than his caller. Let's break this down.

1. Liberals hate the CIA and want it destroyed.

Truth: Many liberals do feel ambivelant towards the CIA, but few serious liberals want to see it destroyed.

2. If a Liberal defends the CIA he is denying who he is.

Truth: Only if you accept the first premise.

3. Liberals have psychological problems.

Truth: Huh? Don't I remember the old Soviet Union using supposed mental disorder as a means to get rid of people they didn't like? I would think Rush would not want to emulate the Soviet Union, but perhaps I've misjudged him.

Anyway I personally like the CIA although I do want to see it reformed in some areas.

Mr. Kerry

Although the Primary Season is far from over, currently Senator Kerry is out in front. So naturally he's drawing fire from Republicans (in much the same way that Former Governer Dean was drawing them three weeks ago).

Joe Conason examines Kerry and some of the charges against him in an article at Working for Change. He states, "If he wins the Democratic nomination, Mr. Kerry will pose certain challenges that aren’t so easily solved: He’s a decorated war veteran, a hunter and a politician who doesn’t hesitate to fight back when attacked. Those qualities distinguish him from the soft targets that Republicans enjoy hitting most."

I hope he's right. It would be nice to have a Democratic Candidate take the fight to the Republicans; but we'll have to see what happens down the road.

Great News for the Economy

Well, it looks like the Wall Street High Life is roaring back. I deduced that from the front page of yesterdays Wall Street Journal, where I spied (with my little eye) a headline saying "With the Market Up, Wll Street High Life Comes Roaring Back."

Apparently a year ago poor Bret Grebow, 28 Hedge Fund Manager, had to take cheap flights on JetBlue airlines. Luckily now that the markets back up he's able to charter flights to whereever he wants to go. Isn't that great?

Yep, we should all be happy that although the economy still sucks on the bottom, people on the top are doing wonderful.

Slow day today

But tomorrow we will be back to full speed, with increased full efficiency.

Let us all now Praise Linda Chavez

Chavez finally, once and for all, exposes Howard Dean for a hypocrite. All the other accusations I had blown off, but in today's article Ms. Chavez gives undeniable proof in her very first paragraph.

"Howard Dean stepped into the culture wars this week by proclaiming as "silly" a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigation of the on-air smut that passed for halftime entertainment at this year's Super Bowl. "There's a great many far worse things on television that you can inadvertently turn on when you happen to be cruising through cable at regular viewing hours," Dean said from the campaign trail. He didn't explain how he would know, however, since he and his wife have repeatedly told us that they don't subscribe to cable television.

Did you see that? He claims to know that there is a lot of smut on Cable television, and yet he also claims that he and his wife don't watch cable television. Obviously one of these is a lie.

One possibility is that his assertion that there is a lot of smut on cable television is dead wrong; there's no reason to worry about seeing sexually provactive stuff on televsion. Hmmmm. I'm not sure that hold water.

The other possibility is that Dr. Dean is lying and he and his wife suscribe to lots of cable television, but are just lying about it. What liars! They probably sit around all night watching cable tv and laughing at what dopes we are for thinking they don't.

Yep those are the only too possibilities. There's no way Dean could have gotten the idea that there was a lot of smut on cable tv unless he had cable tv. I mean it's not like he's been on the campaign trail for months and staying in a lot of hotels that provide cable to their customers. It's also not like this is an issue that might get discussed in the press quite regularly.

So there you have it Dean is definately a hypocrite. All praise to Ms. Chavez for bringing this to our attention.

Unusual Statement by Howard Dean

This is from an interview in Salon today.

"First of all, I say what I think and I stand up for what I believe in even when it's not popular. No Child Left Behind and the war are two examples of that. It's easy to stand up when the polls are in your favor. The president I admire most in the last 60 years is Harry Truman because he did exactly that and he's one of the great presidents of the last century."

So Harry Truman was a great president because he stood up when polls were in his favor? That's funny, I could have sworn it was the other way around.

More on the Intelligence Community

On the heels of Saffires article on the triumphs of the CIA comes an article by David Brooks suggesting that the CIA problem is in how they conduct their business. He calls it scientism.

"This was at a time, just after the war, when economists, urban planners and social engineers believed that human affairs could be understood scientifically, and that the social sciences could come to resemble hard sciences like physics.

If you read C.I.A. literature today, you can still see scientism in full bloom. The tone is cold, formal, depersonalized and laden with jargon. You can sense how the technocratic process has factored out all those insights that may be the product of an individual's intuition and imagination, and emphasized instead the sort of data that can be processed by an organization.

This false scientism was bad enough during the cold war, when the intelligence community failed to anticipate seemingly nonrational events like the Iran-Iraq war or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But it is terrible now in the age of terror, because terror is largely nonrational."

All well and good, and there is a grain of truth to Brooks words. But the accusation is contextless. The reason that the CIA is in trouble is that the Bush Administration would like to blame them for the failure of intelligence that led us into Iraq. Brooks, presumably, believes that even though we haven't found any Weapons of Mass Destruction, nor have we proven any connection between Iraq and Al-Queada, President Bush still made the right call in invading. That this decision, which came from President Bush's "heart," should trump all the "scientism" of the CIA.

"Individuals can use intuition, experience and a feel for the landscape of reality. When you read an individual's essay, you know you're reading one person's best guess, not a falsely authoritative scientific finding."

Yeah but which individual should we trust, Mr. Brooks? Many people's intuition before the war suggested that we had successfully contained Saddam. Should those people have been trusted? Or is it strictly President Bush's intuition we should trust?

Interesting article

This isn't the deepest of posts. Just read an article by William Saffire I thought was interesting, on espionage in the cold war.

The ending though has to be ominous for the CIA. "Now is a time to remember that sometimes our spooks get it right in a big way."

Not sure whether Saffire is being ironic and suggesting they get it right most of the time, or if he is referencing the fact that the White House would prefer that the blame for the decision to prematurely invade Iraq go to the CIA.

Joseph Wilson Speaks

For those of you who don't remember Joseph Williams, he's the poor shmuck who disputed President Bush's Nigerian Yellow-cake Story and who's wife was subsequently outed by the Bush administration and Robert Novak. Geov Parrish caught up with him and got a very interesting interview on where the War on Terror should go from here and on the odds of Democracy in the Middle East.

He concludes his essay with this bit. "GP: Last question. With all of these grim issues, what gives you hope within all this?

JW: One of the things that has given me hope is having had the opportunity to go around my own country. I've been to Iowa several times, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, Massachusetts, California several times, I was supposed to be in Arizona today. ... I find that there is still no finer people than the American people, and there is no better system than the one that we have. And it is well worth fighting for and it is a democracy that's well worth taking back from those who have usurped it and taken it into their own hands.

You know it just sounds like supporting President Bush isn't a prerequisite to loving your country.

A Clarification

I was listening to Sean Hannity on Friday for a bit and he took a caller who was getting on with Hannity for the first part, until he suggested that some of our foreign policy might have been better handled and that might have prevented September 11th. Sean Hannity immedietly put him in the "Blame America" crowd, which as we all know is part of the larger "Hate America" crowd.

So for those of you who might be calling into the Sean Hannity show or talking to a conservative of his stripe her's how it works.

If you claim that September 11th happened because of President Clinton, is that "Blaming America First?" Nope. Clinton was the President of the United States, but his failures are his alone and can't be pinned to the rest of America.

If you claim that September 11th happened, in part, because we failed to "Get Tough" with the Middle East, is that "Blaming America First?" Nope. That would be correct, because the only reason we didn't "Get Tough" with the Middle East was that creepy evil liberals prevented it.

If you claim that September 11th happened, in part (no matter how small a part), because of American actions in, say propping up Saddam Hussein way back when, or in training terrorists against Russia that then turned against us? Yep, that is definately anti American, and you should just accept that you are a scummy liberal.

I hope this reference guid is of some use.

New Quotes

Well this weekend was busy and now I'm sick, so not much. But more this week hopefully. Still I did a new quote and new Quotes Page.