Category Archives: Elections 2008

Guess Who’s Pooh-Poohing Tea Parties & Touting The Political Process?

Elections 2008, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Politics, Taxation, The State

Mr. Neal Boortz is a big fan of the political process, which is why serious libertarians consider him a serious statist par excellence.

Boortz admonished irate Americans to:

“Use your tea bags to make tea and do something meaningful. Go around your workplace or neighborhood and register voters who actually produce and contribute to our society. Trust me, there are enough people out there registering the parasites, find the producers who don’t vote – convince them that their vote is needed and would count – and sign them up. Then take a copy of their voter registration, put it with the other copies you’ve already collected, and send them to your congressman.”

The palsied haters of the liberal press are not covering the Tea Party movement. When they do, it is with the toffee-nosed contempt they reserved for Sarah Palin, the Moose hunting mama.

Newsweek’s latest cover, “The Thinking Man’s Guide To Populist Outrage,” could just as well have read “Those hick rubes are at it again.”

I’ve protested the diffuse, directionless nature of the rage animating the masses. The eruption of civil society, however, is a good thing; far better than registering people to partake in a rigged charade. (Presumably, Boortz wants society’s producers to vote for a Republican.) But, right now, with the exception of a few pockets, the populist uprising is a bit of a headless chicken.

In any event, like the liberals, Boortz seems to need to show that he’s wiser than the yokels.

Guess Who’s Pooh-Poohing Tea Parties & Touting The Political Process?

Elections 2008, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Politics, Taxation, The State

Mr. Neal Boortz is a big fan of the political process, which is why serious libertarians consider him a serious statist par excellence.

Boortz admonished irate Americans to:

“Use your tea bags to make tea and do something meaningful. Go around your workplace or neighborhood and register voters who actually produce and contribute to our society. Trust me, there are enough people out there registering the parasites, find the producers who don’t vote – convince them that their vote is needed and would count – and sign them up. Then take a copy of their voter registration, put it with the other copies you’ve already collected, and send them to your congressman.”

The palsied haters of the liberal press are not covering the Tea Party movement. When they do, it is with the toffee-nosed contempt they reserved for Sarah Palin, the Moose hunting mama.

Newsweek’s latest cover, “The Thinking Man’s Guide To Populist Outrage,” could just as well have read “Those hick rubes are at it again.”

I’ve protested the diffuse, directionless nature of the rage animating the masses. The eruption of civil society, however, is a good thing; far better than registering people to partake in a rigged charade. (Presumably, Boortz wants society’s producers to vote for a Republican.) But, right now, with the exception of a few pockets, the populist uprising is a bit of a headless chicken.

In any event, like the liberals, Boortz seems to need to show that he’s wiser than the yokels.

Poisonous Pundits Never Go Away

America, Economy, Elections 2008, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Journalism, Media, Political Economy

Just a few months back, during the Bush era, high-ranking commentators like Larry Kudlow and proxies were touting the strength of the US stock market. Stocks were undervalued. The economy was “strongly reaccelerating.” “Goldilocks, Goldilocks,” Kudlow would crow from the CNBC rooftop. (What on earth does than mean?)

Kudlow and Company could not say enough about the economic benefits of a depreciating dollar. A weak dollar was an asymptomatic blessing, helping to make “US assets very cheap,” and thus ameliorating the trade imbalance. Never mind that it has made Americans poorer.

That was the man and his entourage’s cri de coeur.

“Today’s economic weakness is coming from the business side, not the sub-prime/housing/consumer side,” Kudlow wrote in January 2008.

Back then, Kudlow called for cheaper money and more credit: “the Fed needs to deliver a 50 basis point rate cut at its January 30 meeting. A big-bang rate cut would help businesses, consumers, and mortgage owners. It would make the cost of money cheaper and expand the overall liquidity base of the economy. … Inflation is the most overrated issue out there,” Kudlow asserted.

Kudlow failed to see that government had set the scene for the “minority Meltdown.”

Another snake-oil merchant is Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal. He wrote a book praising Bush’s quicksand society. It was titled “Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Is Making America Richer.” Fox New’s Greta Van Susteren has seen fit to make the man who praised the state’s house-for-every-Hispanic schemes an authority on our economic woes.

Like Kudlow, Moore’s congenital inability to call the situation has not dented his career.

Now Kudlow has switched, conveniently, cribbing Peter Schiff’s analysis and pretending he was capable of the same prophetic predictions.

Why does he retain his job?

If you don’t believe me, check out the manner in which Schiff was maligned in 2007 by Kudlow’s crowd as another “Michael Moore,” for forewarning about the consequences of the US’s consumption and credit-based economy.

The Child Is Back

Barack Obama, Elections 2008

The inspired Gerard Baker of the Times spoofs the Anointed One for the second time. Baker’s latest installment, sequel to “He ventured forth to bring light to the world,” commemorates the crowning of The Kid.

THE CHILD RETURNED FROM HIS TRAVELS – AND FINAL BATTLE WAS JOINED

An epic pilgrimage and miraculous signs were not enough to convince all doubters of the anointed one, who would soon be forced to face his demons

BY GERARD BAKER

He ventured forth’: read the first chapter

Despite the great wonders he had worked, the peace he had poured on the troubled waters, and the signs he had performed in Babylon and Jerusalem, there were some, yea even among his own countrymen, who refused to believe that he was the Anointed One.

Even when he joined hands with the Great Preacher Joseph of Biden, called the Blowhard, a wise man of many, many words, who had served in the Senate of the People for more than five generations, his enemies still strove to undo him.

In the summer, he travelled with his new friend Joseph to the Mile High City to speak to his followers. Four score thousand came to hear the word and their hearts were filled with joy and their spirits were lifted by his voice.

But despite the multitudes, there were still some among the Pharisees who secretly despised him. The followers of Queen Hillary muttered among themselves that he had defiled them with his disrespect. The people began to look for another leader.

And lo, in the west there appeared a rival, John, the Son of Cain. Now McCain was a great warrior. He was rich in wisdom and great of age, being, it was said, 936 years old. He had suffered sorely many years before in a war against the Asians. Eight years earlier he had bravely challenged the Evil Pharaoh Bush, but had been castrated by Bush’s feared henchman, Rove. He was straight of talk and, mounted on his trusty steed, a maverick, he began to find followers.

Being advanced in years, McCain needed a mate, a loyal follower who would succeed him when the time came for him to return to the Lord.

He had first considered Joe the Lieber-Man, but he was not of the same tribe as himself, but of the tribe of the Donkey. The tribesmen of the Elephant forbade him to make common cause with this renegade and so McCain sent his men far and wide to find another mate.

And they found him a woman, Sarah, from the North Country. She had dwelled long among the nomads of Wasilla and the North Slope. She was fair of face but unknown throughout the whole land, except among the Moose and the Caribou, who had grown to fear her. At first the scribes scoffed at Sarah. They mocked the way she spake and the vast family she had borne – her children were more numerous than the grains of sand in the desert or the stars in the sky.

But the people followed her and saw that she was good. Great crowds went out to meet her when she travelled with John. The word began to spread among the men of Gallup and Ipsos and Zog-Bee that they, and not the Child, might be the Chosen Ones.

And the Lord saw all this and fell into a righteous wrath at the people’s blasphemy. Did I not lead you out of slavery? he cried. Have I not shown you that it is the Child who is to save you from your exile in the House of Bush?

And he resolved to send down a great plague among the people of the Promised Land so they would understand their error.

The plague began in the valley of the subprime, smiting houses that had been purchased with money lent at unusually low interest rates, made possible by the foolish procurator Greenspan. The plague spread quickly across the land; and lenders and borrowers alike were laid low.

And it came to pass that a group of brothers, Lehman by name, an old and revered family, fell upon hard times because of the plague and they resolved to take themselves off to the Treasury. The Lehman brothers journeyed to the Treasury and fell on their knees and begged for help, even offering up in penance their asses. But the Treasury refused to heed their pleas, sent them away and told them to take their sorry asses with them. And with that, terrible signs appeared in the sky: Overnight Libor was elevated before the money changers’ eyes. Spreads on commercial paper widened as though in an earthquake, and all over the world the rivers of credit ran dry.

In great distress the people looked to McCain for help but he was confounded and had no answer to their pleas except for assurances that their fundamentals were sound, which the people did not want to hear.

All along, the Child smiled warmly and said little but promised salvation, and the people listened.
And it was about this time too that Sarah from the North Country was transformed. She began speaking in tongues. Sitting down with the Scribes of the media she was asked questions but replied in the language of Gobble-de-Gook and the people said among themselves: “What on earth is she talking about?” She no longer wore her simple sackcloth and parkas but appeared before the crowds in the finest robes from the stalls of Neiman-Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.

The plague quickly smote the enemies of the Child and sowed confusion among the people. The House of McCain began to spring leaks and not even the handiwork of the great Joe the Plumber could make it whole.

And so the final battle was joined and the Child prevailed easily, in fulfilment of the Scriptures. From the mountains of the west to the great plains, to the piedmont and to the orange groves of the Gulf, a great wave lifted him up and propelled him to the threshold of the Executive Mansion. Only the poor, bitter people of Appalachia, clinging to their guns and their faith, refused to listen to his word.
At last, when the scale of his great victory became clear, the rulers of all the world fell to their knees in unison and praised God, singing.

“Obama in The Highest”.