Category Archives: Media

Updated: Why Support IlanaMercer.com Through This Winter Of Our Discontent

America, Barely A Blog, English, Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Israel, Justice, Media

On the front page of ilanamercer.com, under the heading “Contribute,” linked to the words, “here’s why,” is an essay detailing the reasons to support the site and its proprietor. The essay, “WHY SUPPORT ILANAMERCER.COM,” has been updated with the following compelling inducements:

THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT (January 31, 2009): The economy is not the only object of cooling; the weather appears to be freezing over too. This is why the gabbling, hot-and-bothered Al Gore has substituted “global warming” with the more versatile “climate change.”

Here at the Weather Underground (and @ilanamercer.com), I’ve encapsulated the Gorian illogic thus:

“Evidence that contradicts the global warming theory, climate Chicken Littles enlist as evidence for the correctness of their theory; every permutation in weather patterns—warm or cold—is said to be a consequence of that warming or proof of it.”

As Karl Popper reminded us, “A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is,” of course, “non-scientific.” What eco-idiots have done is to immunize the theory of global warming against the dangers of scientific refutation.

LET THE SUNSHINE IN. Readers of Barely A Blog were, moreover, introduced, before most in the mainstream, to the concept of “sunspot activity.” In March of 2007, I published an article written exclusively for BAB by N. Baldwin, Jr. It was based on our friend’s book, “Global Warming: CO2, SunSpots, or Politics?”

The decrease in sunspot activity—the sun having entered what appears to be a period of solar inactivity, resulting in all likelihood in global cooling—was reported a year and a half later by “Space Daily.” Fully two years after our report, sunspots, solar flares and solar eruptions have entered the overheated debate about the climate.

Having failed their readers time-and-again, the establishment media is struggling to survive. Good. Why support a source of propaganda that blows hot air about global warming and is cool to the market economy, the source of our splendid standard of living? Why contribute to the success of major media that have failed miserably and consistently to predict the outcomes of unjust wars, or warn ahead-of-time of the economic havoc wreaked by profligate administrations and their printing press?

The role of the contrarian who cleaves to the natural laws of economics and justice is even more crucial in times of crisis. To get by, such commentators rely on discerning patrons.

You, the reader, are my mainstay. I know you value the ability to come to a place in cyberspace where you’re heard, challenged, entertained—even regaled—and (gently) guided. But understand: This is hard work. It cannot be done without your assistance.

I appreciate your generosity.

ILANA

Update II: What Do You Know? We Are Not All Keynesians

Ann Coulter, Barack Obama, Economy, Inflation, Iraq, Israel, Media, Republicans, Socialism, Taxation, War

The Royal “We” is unwarranted; and it’s not only me. The following statement was signed by more than 200 academic economists, and posted by the Cato Institute. The Wall Street Journal buried the statement among a list of economists touting the stimulus package–and the “principle” of printing and borrowing the country out of a depression:

“Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s ‘lost decade’ in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.”

Update I (Jan 30): I always give credit where it’s due. Michelle Malkin is the only conservative writer that I know of who’s consistently protested the bailouts and assorted ‘stimuli’—not only the porky parts. And not because she is familiar with the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT), but because she is a true fiscal conservative. Good enough:

Stimulus Slush Fund for Housing Entitlement Thugs

The UAW’s Money-Squandering Corruptocracy

The Paulson Putsch: Time For A Fiscal-Conservative Counterinsurgency

Update II (Jan 31): Malkin’s moniker for her party: The Bend Over Republicans (BOR).

Malkin has incurred my libertarian wrath, expressed in “Internment Chic.” However, she deserves the credit Ann Coulter undeservedly gets.

The Canadian conservative writer Kevin Grace captured the core of Coulter’s “craft”:

“The secret to becoming a successful right-wing columnist is to echo the mob while complimenting yourself on your daring. That’s all there is to Ann Coulter’s craft, the rest is exploitation of the sexual masochism of the American male—he just can’t get enough of the kitten with claws.”

Or, as I’ve put it, “The secret to success is to keep the masses euphoric, moronic, and pheromonic.”

Coulter is an attractive GOP cheerleader, who has never opposed The Party in any meaningful way. When matters get heated, she further escapes into her formulaic, “Liberals This; Liberals That.” A recipe that works well for her.

American Newspapers Dying Of Self-Inflicted Wounds. Good.

IMMIGRATION, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Multiculturalism, Outsourcing, Propaganda

I join Peter Gadiel in celebrating some creative destruction–the demise of the newspaper industry.

Writes Gadiel on VDARE.Com:

“American newspapers are dying. Let us celebrate, since in their extinction lies the only hope for journalism.” …

“Newspapers were largely owned, edited and to a considerable degree staffed by people who actually were from the town about which they wrote. Thus, when you got the Sheboygan (Wis.) Press, The Indianapolis Star or the Florence (Ala.) Times-Daily it was a pretty sure thing that when you read an editorial, the news pages, the women’s page—whatever—you were reading something written or at least edited by someone who had roots in that city.”

“Not so today. The people writing the editorial in the Hendersonville (N.C.) Times News or “reporting” about events in the Asbury Park Press are corporate gypsies who come from someplace else via some school of journalism located somewhere else. They are all waiting to move to a bigger paper in a bigger city on the way up to starting the trip all over again back down in the small towns as assistant editor.”

“What’s worse, the gypsies who staff those papers are hired by people who are answerable to the likes of ‘Pinch’ Sulzberger of the NY Times…”

More.

Does Obama Want To Lynch Rush Limbaugh?

BAB's A List, Barack Obama, Conservatism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Socialism

Our friend, economist George Reisman, is on a roll. Read about George in the previous post, “The Myth That Laissez Faire Is Responsible For Our Financial Crisis.”

Does Obama Want to Lynch Rush Limbaugh?
By George Reisman*

My answer to the question “Does Obama Want to Lynch Rush Limbaugh?” is, no. He and the rest of the Left just want to drive Rush Limbaugh off the air.

Obama has already used the prestige of his office to attack Limbaugh by name. According to The New York Post and Fox News of January 23:

WASHINGTON–President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.

To get the silence-Limbaugh campaign going, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee yesterday (January 27) launched a petition drive urging people to “EXPRESS [THEIR] OUTRAGE ABOUT RUSH’S COMMENTS” that stated his hope that Obama’s socialistic plans will fail. This followed a warm-up led by assorted news anchors, pundits, and celebrities denouncing Limbaugh in the media.

Here’s is what Limbaugh actually said, back on January 16, and which led to the orchestrated campaign now being waged against him:

“I’ve been listening to Barack Obama for a year-and-a-half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don’t want them to succeed.

If I wanted Obama to succeed, I’d be happy the Republicans have laid [sic] down. And I would be encouraging Republicans to lay [sic] down and support him. Look, what he’s talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work..… Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: ‘Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.’ Somebody’s gotta say it.”

Actually, as Limbaugh well knows, it’s really not necessary to hope for the failure of Obama’s socialistic policies themselves. If they are adopted, they will fail by virtue of their own nature. But it is perfectly reasonable to hope for the failure of Obama’s efforts to get his policies enacted and to hope that to the extent they are enacted their failure is recognized. This is what Limbaugh clearly meant.

The Left cannot tolerate criticism or dissent. A large proportion of its members are actually Stalinist in their mentality. (This is a far larger proportion than the members of the right who are in favor of the diametric opposite of Stalinism, namely, laissez-faire capitalism, which the Left attacks more and more stridently.)

Serious Leftists, i.e., those who want to establish and maintain actual government ownership or control over the economic system, are all implicitly totalitarians. On the one hand, they want to take total control over people’s lives under the pretext of improving and enriching their lives. But their policies are so bad, cause so much destruction and human suffering, that the potential is created for an explosive outburst of hatred and vengeance against them once the public draws the logically inescapable conclusion that it is they and their policies who are responsible. To stay in power and keep socialism in existence, they have to prevent this from happening by crushing all possibility of dissent.

Limbaugh is a major thorn in the side of the Left. They need to remove him, because his criticism serves to slow their advance and might even help to stop them in their tracks.

That’s why I’m for Limbaugh and I too hope Obama fails at every turn in his efforts to expand the powers of government.

*Copyright © 2009, by George Reisman. George Reisman, Ph.D. is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute. His web site is www.capitalism.net. A pdf replica of his book can be downloaded to the reader’s hard drive simply by clicking on the book’s title Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics and then saving the file when it appears on the screen.

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Posted at George Reisman’s Blog on Economics, Politics, Society, and Culture at 1/28/2009 02:11:00 PM