"Wafa Wows the West" (But not Muslims and Media)

Islam, Media, Middle East

It’s … of special significance that members of the American news media—not Al-Jazeera—have distorted what [Wafa] Sultan has said, introducing their bias into her unambiguous words. Equally intriguing is the fact that Al-Jazeera—not the American Fourth Estate—introduced Sultan to the world…
For my money, if Al-Jazeera continues to provoke viewers with the likes of Sultan, I’ll be signing on when they start to transmit here. It’s a whole lot better than enduring Chris Matthews’ incestuous love-ins with “The ‘Hardball’ hotshots.” That’s when MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough, and Rita Cosby aka “Throaty McHuskington,” who each torture us independently during their respective programs, combine to amplify the unedifying effects.
As for the girls at CNN—Paula Zahn, Kyra Phillips and Anderson Cooper appear indifferent to professional competition. Edgy reporting elsewhere never rubs off on this crew. They prefer to kvetch interminably about colorectal, breast and lung cancer; anorexia nervosa, and Katrina. In this stream of soporific, soft-news stories, Wafa Sultan is indeed a rarity.

Wafa Sultan is the reason I praise Al-Jazeera in my new column, “Wafa Wows the West (But not Muslims and Media).”

“Wafa Wows the West” (But not Muslims and Media)

Islam, Media, Middle East

It’s … of special significance that members of the American news media—not Al-Jazeera—have distorted what [Wafa] Sultan has said, introducing their bias into her unambiguous words. Equally intriguing is the fact that Al-Jazeera—not the American Fourth Estate—introduced Sultan to the world…
For my money, if Al-Jazeera continues to provoke viewers with the likes of Sultan, I’ll be signing on when they start to transmit here. It’s a whole lot better than enduring Chris Matthews’ incestuous love-ins with “The ‘Hardball’ hotshots.” That’s when MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough, and Rita Cosby aka “Throaty McHuskington,” who each torture us independently during their respective programs, combine to amplify the unedifying effects.
As for the girls at CNN—Paula Zahn, Kyra Phillips and Anderson Cooper appear indifferent to professional competition. Edgy reporting elsewhere never rubs off on this crew. They prefer to kvetch interminably about colorectal, breast and lung cancer; anorexia nervosa, and Katrina. In this stream of soporific, soft-news stories, Wafa Sultan is indeed a rarity.

Wafa Sultan is the reason I praise Al-Jazeera in my new column, “Wafa Wows the West (But not Muslims and Media).”

Henry Hazlitt and the Government-Spending Hazard

America, Bush

The national debt is reason enough for the impeachment of W. Today, as The Christian Science Monitor reports, it totals $8.3 trillion. Democrats are quite right to tar “Bush as the president who squandered the Clinton-era track record of fiscal responsibility.” As our national debt stands, we would not be admitted into the company of socialists: The European Union. The EU “expects member nations to hold deficits below 60 percent of GDP.”

The US doesn’t qualify.

The evidence goes to show that government growth as a share of GDP coincides with a decline in GDP growth. Governments in high-income developed economies have now been steadily accreting for decades. The decline in prosperity or in real growth rates in these nations has been concomitant: As government share of the GDP rises, so has GDP in the OECD nations been declining. ‘A 10 percent increase in government expenditure as a share of GDP results in a 1 percent point reduction in GDP growth.’

If they do nothing else, Americans should switch off Fox News and open Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson (the first makes you too dumb to comprehend the last). There they will learn that there is no free lunch. To finance his Welfare and Warfare wantonness, Bush calls on the Federal Reserve and the printing press to print money. Inflation is an increase in the money supply. This practice—inflation—raises prices and depreciates the value of the currency. The new money will generate price hikes throughout the economy. The endemic price hikes and economic distortions that follow are a byproduct of this legalized counterfeiting.

And that invariably means poorer people, not politicians—Americans should also know that the parasites in charge, the ones they give their unremitting support to, will always get richer; you and I poorer.

Why? The new money reaches the politically connected first. They get fat checks well before the general price increases caused by all the new money affect their purchasing power. Corporate cronies like Kellogg Brown & Root, the construction arm of Cheney’s Halliburton, and the Bechtel Corporation are good examples of war profiteers who’ll benefit first from counterfeit coinage.

By the time you and I, politically unconnected suckers that we are, experience a meager rise in money income, rising prices will have obliterated the tiny gain.

Further reading: Government Growth Impoverishes, Blame Government for the Economic Bust, Wartime Socialism, and Deficit Disorders.

Bush Cries Croc Over Dubai

Bush, Government, Islam

As you know, those who furiously plugged the Dubai Ports deal were equally energetic about cussing Americans for their alleged racism. These Kudlow-and-company types must also think Americans are all liars. When polled people claimed to be concerned with national security. Their detractors, however, assert they were concealing rank racism and Islamophobia.

Indeed, the Dubai debacle has served as the all-time low-life litmus test—in their self-righteous haste to substitute ad hominem arguments for substantive debate, neoconservatives and their left-libertarian allies in this affair truly showed their skunk appeal.

Needless to say, Americans are not a bigoted lot. To them the deal was so obviously dicey—most of the Bush administration’s schemes are. Even if DP World were the most apolitical, service and safety-oriented franchise in the world, unheard of in a government-owned entity, the deal would still raise serious security reservations.

Rather than lose face, President Bush, a scheming and antagonistic character, has shifted from the eff-off position to the I’m-right-so-eff-you posture. He said “the collapse of the Dubai ports deal sends the wrong message to American allies in the Middle East.”

That’s vintage Bush logic for you. It’s a lot like his, “We are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” asininity. As though the mess in Mesopotamia and terrorism in the US were mutually exclusive occurrences.

By logical extension, close relationships with our Arab allies do not necessarily require extreme displays of faith and confidence. Building trust can be a gradual and slow process. The fact that we have not let DP World have the run of the ports is not a rejection of friendship; it’s merely an exercise of choice. The one doesn’t preclude the other. Only in Bush’s simplistic and manipulative mind could the people’s will (anathema to him) be framed in this way.

Besides, if Bush is so concerned about how the Arab world views us, he should not have invaded a sovereign Arab country, killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and propelled the place into a bloody civil war.