Category Archives: Media

Establishment Enraged At Its Candidate, Romney

Conservatism, Economy, Elections, Media, Republicans, Taxation

“…for the sake of not abandoning his faulty health-care legacy in Massachusetts, Mr. Romney is jeopardizing his chance at becoming President,” the WSJ editorializes.

The editors have objected to Mitt Romney’s lack of objection to Obama and the gang’s framing of The un-Afforable Care Act as a tax. Capiche?

Romney is not remotely as coherent as the WSJ thinks he is in his most confused moments.

Mr. Romney should use the Supreme Court opinion as an opening to say that now that the mandate is defined as a tax for the purposes of the law, he will work to repeal it. This would let Mr. Romney show voters that Mr. Obama’s spending ambitions are so vast that they can’t be financed solely by the wealthy but will inevitably hit the middle class.

On the other hand, it is just possible that the WSJ is upset with the Romeny campaign for failing to hire as campaign adviser the ubiquitous Stephen Moore, popular commentator on Fox New and beyond, and author of “Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Is Making America Richer.”

“We’re on its email list,” they whine, “and the main daily message from the campaign …[simply won’t cut it].”

Hint, hint.

CNN Moves Into Campaign Mode

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Military

Have you noticed how desperate the Obama heads on CNN are becoming, as the election approaches? Although not quite as blatant as MSNBC, CNN’s John King, Jessica Yellin, Dona Lemon, Anderson Cooper, Soledad O’Brien, Piers Morgan, are, nevertheless, sounding positively shrill.

Expect the BHO “bitch pitch,” coming from likes of CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux and her colleague Jessica Yellin, to crescendo in the coming weeks. The women folk are especially devoted to distribution and soft militarism (“nation building,” massacre mediation, etc).

I hear Big Daddy sexual overtones when these females talk about Their Man (perverts all).

Especially noticeable is the way CNN is attempting to shape the GOP message, for what that message is worth.

It does so by presenting to the public regular Republican commentators who’re left-liberals in all but name.

In addition to being a plain idiot, Ana Navarro, for example, is a Republican identity politics activist, who would have liked BHO to have delivered on his immigration promises. Known for siring —and surrounding himself with—stupid women, John McCain had once employed the gaseous Navaro as his consultant.

Another liberal Republican, who’s part of the CNN task force entrusted with moving the GOP “forward,” is John Avlon, “chief speechwriter for former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.”

A Rockefeller Republican though he may be, David Frum does not deserve to be lumped with these boorish bores. But if he fails to veer even more to the Left, especially on immigration, I expect him to go the way of Bay Buchanan (an establishment Republican, in my opinion) who no longer appears on CNN.

CNN is being extremely crafty about crafting the meta-message.

UPDATE II: On The Radio Show Of ‘Austrian’ Jay Taylor

Economy, Ilana On Radio & TV, libertarianism, Media, Natural Law, Political Economy, South-Africa

I will be a guest on The Jay Taylor Radio Show (“Turning Hard Times into Good Times”).

Date: Tuesday, June 26, at 3:30 EST.
Topic: Into the Cannibal’s Pot, as it applies to private property rights, gold in South Africa, and the backdrop to the establishment of Apartheid.

Jay Taylor is a New-York based investor and broadcaster, who invests and broadcasts in the intellectual tradition of Austrian economics. We met at the New York Junto gathering, where I was the month of May’s featured speaker.

I was delighted to hear that the topic of the talk—“Natural Rights in ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot’: Abstractions or Facts of Life?”—resonated with Jay.

Jay is a treasure. Tune in to support his work. (And, it goes without saying, go easy on me.)

UPDATE I (June 26): You can listen to the show here.

UPDATE II (June 27): An MP3 of my segment is here.

CNN Bimbo Holds Out Hope For Socialism

EU, Europe, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Socialism

This week, CNN’s ERIN BURNETT, HOST of OUTFRONT, and “a valued member of the OUTFRONT Strike Team,” whatever gimmick that stands for, entertained the possibility that President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party might just “save Europe’s economy and ours.”

Burnett’s babbling was boosted by “striker” Bill Gross, CO-CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER of PIMCO, who positively spun the political platform of Francois Hollande by describing France’s manifestly socialist agenda as “pro-growth,” and as “a different way forward.”

I listened to the Gross man live on TV. CNN’s transcriber failed to transcribe Gross’s salutary reference to France’s founding principles of “liberté, égalité, fraternité, writing in their place: “(INAUDIBLE)”

But here is Mr. Gross(out)’s verbatim nod to the blood-drenched, illiberal French Revolution and its legacy:

I think what [Hollande] is trying to do is favor labor as opposed to capital. Remember the (INAUDIBLE) [Gross actually said “liberté, égalité, fraternité”] and you know he’s moving in that direction. To the extent that he moves only gradually, I think that’s a positive. What France needs, what Euro land needs is growth. And to the extent that they can prevent a continuing recession, then the growth is going to be positive.

An “anti-austerity vote in France” Erin’s strike-man has conflated with a “pro-growth” agenda.

The Law is a pamphlet published in June, 1850, by Frédéric Bastiat, a great classical liberal “economist, statesman, and author.” Bastiat castigated his countrymen for becoming “the most governed, the most regulated, the most imposed upon, the most harnessed, and the most exploited people in Europe.”

In 1860, Bastiat saw France as a society that “receives its momentum from power”; a passive people who “consider themselves incapable of bettering their prosperity and happiness by their own intelligence and their own energy.”

“So long as they expect everything from the law,” he warned, “their relationship to the state [would be] the same as that of the sheep to the shepherd.”

Moreover, Bastiat, who had a mind like no other, did not share Mr. Gross’s fondness for French “fraternity.” “Enforced Fraternity Destroys Liberty,” he proclaimed.

“In fact, it is impossible for me,” wrote the great man, “to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary. I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed, and thus justice being legally trampled underfoot.”

******

As always, I appreciate your generous support during hard times. To keep such commentary coming, click to Donate.

ILANA