Category Archives: Government

UPDATE II: Media’s Sickening Sentimentality On Egypt

Conspiracy, Government, Iraq, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East, Reason

The following is an excerpt from my new WND.COM column, “Media’s Sickening Sentimentality On Egypt”:

“… I’ve finally figured out what it was that repulsed me so about American opinion-makers’ slobbering response to [the revolt that began in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and swept the Egyptian president, Mohammed Hosni Mubarak, from office.]

It was not so much that the media ignored the likely possibility that democracy in a country that has become progressively more Islamic since the 1950s might not have a happy ending.

It was not that the media pretended that the Muslim Brotherhood, also the “best organized opposition force in the country,” would not field a viable presidential candidate.

It was not that, in their jubilation, Anderson Cooper (CNN), Neil Cavuto (Fox News) and Christiane Amanpour (ABC) failed to mention the precedent set in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has deployed the democratic process to get the better of the country’s Maronite Christians.

It was not even the fact that the journalistic imperative to provide nuance, detail, and an economic and historic backdrop to the unfolding events was replaced, by the journalistic jet-set, with the telegenic drama of the man on the street.

None of this bothered me as much as the patronizing position these American reporters adopted; the neat bifurcation they managed to maintain between “Us” (the “free” men and women of America) and “Them” (those pathetic, shackled Egyptians).

The fact is that the heroic movement for democracy in Egypt dovetails with an ongoing flirtation with fascism in the U.S.; the twilight of individual sovereignty in the U.S. contrasts with its rise in Egypt. …

Read the complete column, “Media’s Sickening Sentimentality On Egypt,” now on WND.COM.

UPDATE I (Feb. 18): To the letter writer below: I am not a conspiracy theorist. Here is a post that explains why conspiracy is usually irrational.

“The premise for imputing conspiracies to garden variety government evils is this: government generally does what is good for us (NOT), so when it strays, we must look beyond the facts—for something far more sinister, as if government’s natural venality and quest for power were not enough to explain events. For example, why would one need to search for the “real reason” for an unjust, unscrupulous war, unless one believed government would never prosecute an unjust war. History belies that delusion.” …

UPDATE II (Feb 19): Daine: No; there are no conspiratorial. What we have are The Takers-–tax consumers—who want the Makers—the so-called rich—to support their parasitical life style. And the Über-parasites, the politicians, who make the most of this human nature.

The Liars At Labor

Business, Debt, Economy, Government, Labor

The economic “experts” have a lot riding on the recovery ass. Hence the notion of a jobless recovery, which is a lot like a housewarming for the homeless.

“The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 9.0 percent in January,” reports the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, at 64.2%, the labor force participation rate … is now at a 26-year low, the lowest since March of 1984. The “labor force as a percentage of total population” has plummeted.

The reason for the “drop” in the unemployment rate, as the labor force shrinks from 86.2 million to 83.9 million—or 2.2 million in one year!—is the rise in the number of discouraged individuals who’ve left the labor force.

The more accurate, less finessed, number from the Liars at Labor is the U-6, which includes the unemployed and people who would like to work, but who have not looked for a job recently, as well as those involuntarily working part-time. “Not-seasonally adjusted U-6 surged from 16.6% to 17.3%” in February.

Politicians Pair Off For Their Big Night (Not Ours)

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Democrats, Ethics, Government, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul, The State

Care about principles? Then the only time you want your representative to reach across the aisle is to grab a Democrat or an errant Republican by the throat. What about sitting together at the biggest “Stalinist extravaganza” (http://barelyablog.com/?p=33815) of the season, the State of the Union Address? “More than 60 members have signed up to sit next to one of their colleagues from a different party,” reports CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/25/brazile.congress.sit.together/index.html?hpt=T2). Reporters are giggling and cooing over who’s dating whom. I could not care less about the seating silliness. Let the statists play at symbolism. It’s a matter of time before tea partiers, bar the Pauls, slip between the sheets with their big-spending profligate pals.

Watch the formations—the twosomes and the threesomes into which the pols pair. That ought to tell you something about future alliances.

Loughner, Language, and The Big Lie

Education, English, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Government, Political Correctness, Politics, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry

The following is from my new WND.COM column, “Loughner, Language, and The Big Lie”:

“… Jared Lee Loughner was both fixated on his representative’s imagined failings, and preoccupied with language and its misuse. These elements combined and then combusted in his head.

As a writer who really loves the English language, I am intrigued by the intrusive, persistent thoughts about grammar and illiteracy to have plagued Loughner.

You see, as I mourn the senseless slaughter of my countrymen, I also grieve – with almost every book I pick up or Internet tract I read – the bastardization of the language.

Given time, the nation’s mental-health mavens will confuse matters. They will likely assert, without any science, that misfiring neurotransmitters in the man’s brain brought us to this point. It would appear, however, that what pushed Loughner into an abyss was the inability to “read” the world around him.

Words are symbols. They are used as agreed-upon conventions to make sense of the world. For Loughner, these constructs no longer corresponded to the things they are supposed to describe.

The magazine Mother Jones interviewed Bryce Tierney, a close friend of Loughner. Tierney confirmed “the fascination Loughner had with semantics and how the world is really nothing – [an] illusion.” In addition, Loughner, said his pal, liked to insist (credibly) that government was “f—ing us over.”

Perhaps, then, it was not speech per se that inflamed Loughner’s febrile passions, but, rather, Orwellian speech; lies that belie reality.

The Big Lies. …”

Read the complete column, “Loughner, Language, and The Big Lie.”