‘Tomorrow’s Headlines Today’

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Reason

It matter not how well or how poorly Mitt Romney performs in Wednesday night’s “first of three presidential debates.” On the morrow, the headlines the media scrum will run with will approximate these:

• “Romney tries to match BHO’s hipness, but sounds hollow.” (That is if Mitt dares to crack a joke. And Romney IS funny.)
• “Once again, Romney attempts to connect but falls flat.” (That is if if Mitt mentions any of life’s travails, or if he makes a logical argument, instead of sticking to emotions, as BHO does so well.

On and on. It’s tiresome.

Why don’t you have at it? Write “Tomorrow’s Headlines Today.” Pretend you too are a pre-programed journo pack animal.

Remember, it’s all for the love of Obama.

‘Juicing The Stock Market’ With A Confetti Of Funny-Money

Debt, Federal Reserve Bank

Democrats often counter the Republicans’ inchoate criticism of Obamanomics with the claim that Barack Obama has juiced the stock market like no other president.

Well of course he has. The consequence of Ben Bernanke’s non-stop monetary stimulus is a rise in prices, stocks included. Homes too.

But an increase in the price of an item is not the same as an appreciation in its value.

Promiscuous printing (inflation) decreases the purchasing power of each monetary unit (the dollar). As Peter Schiff pointed out, after the latest bout of quantitative easing—and before other foreign bankers were nudged to print in unison—“the Greenback was down 2.2% against the euro, 1.6% against the Australian Dollar, and 1.1% against the Canadian Dollar. A week after the Fed’s move, the Mexican Peso had appreciated 2.7% against the US dollar.”

If you don’t already know it, QE2 saw the Fed purchase Treasury securities, which “resulted in a cumulative threefold increase in the monetary base.” In “Operation Twist,” Bernanke, one twisted brother, exchanged short-term for long-term Treasuries.

That move, warned Schiff, “exposed US taxpayers and holders of dollar-based assets to the dangers of shortening the maturity on $16 trillion of outstanding government debt. Such a repositioning exposes the Treasury to much faster and more painful consequences if interest rates rise. Still, the set of policies announced yesterday will do so much more damage than ‘Operation Twist,’ they should be dubbed ‘Operation Screw.’ Because make no mistake, anyone holding US dollars, Treasury bonds, or living on a fixed income will have their purchasing power stolen by these actions.”

QE3, or “Operation Screw,” “focused directly at the housing market through purchases of mortgage backed securities.” Its outline: “buy hundreds of billions of home mortgages annually in order to push down mortgage rates and push up home prices.”

The upshot of the Fed’s confetti of funny-money?

…rather than building an economy on increased productivity, production, and wealth accumulation, he is trying to build one on confidence, increased leverage, and rising asset prices. In other words, the Fed prefers the illusion of growth to the restructuring needed to allow for real growth.

MORE.

UPDATED: Benghazigate And The True Tools of Deception

Barack Obama, Conspiracy, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Media, Middle East

Intimately familiar with the way information flows in and from the White House, Pat Buchanan relates that the day after the Benghazi attack, the intelligence community would have known this was terrorism. Yet 2 days after that, Jay Carney was talking a spontaneous attack. Who was it, asks Buchanan, who briefed Carney, and told him to go out and lie? In the White house Buchanan worked in it would have been the chief of staff and the NSC (National Security Council) adviser.

Next, 4 days on, out Susan Rice was trotted , she too a (willing) tool (in more than one ways) of deception. The FBI never went in to investigate the scene of the attack because Benghazi is an “utterly unsafe” city, although fifteen days following the attack, Rice promised the FBI was in there. That never happened, says Buchanan.

There is nothing new or particular galling, on the political scale of ethic, about what Buchanan has outlined.

The bigger scandal in all this is the “cover up of the cover up.” And the real tools (of deception) are the media Mafia, focusing as they are on poor Mitt Romney’s assorted hiccups, so as to cover for their Godfather Obama.

UPDATE (10/2): The consulate in Benghazi was, of course, a typical US government operation. There was full-on access to anyone who wanted it after the attack as before it. Arwa Damon of CNN tells of a scene unsecured after the attack, locals coming and going, rummaging through the compound and taking mementos (paid for by US taxpayers). Would that this manifest hostility to American presence in Libya deterred future diplomats from “duty,” but it won’t. What the fiasco in Benghazi means is not that America will divest from democratizing the word, but, rather, that the American taxpayer will fork out for fortresses, for Green Zones everywhere.

UPDATE II: The Paleo Problem: Intellectual Dishonesty Or Senility? (A Form Of Logical Fallacy)

Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Intellectualism, Paleoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Reason

Since 2001, I’ve penned a weekly, paleolibertarian column on WND.COM (ranked 1759th globally by Alexa, and 388th in the US).

Before that, the weekly column—expatiating on, as one wag put it, everything from “trade and terrorism to Microsoft [the SEC and antitrust law], Medicare, and Eminem“—was a fixture in Canadian newspapers, starting in 1998.

“The Paleolibertarian Column,” so titled, now features on RT too, the large website of the Russia Today TV network (ranked 947th globally).

The exposure is limited, for sure, but it’s not quite a small “pond life.”

Yet John Derbyshire writes the following in “Hans-Herman [sic] Hoppe–The Last Paleolibertarian” (on VDARE, ranked 128,883th globally, 44,603th locally):

“We haven’t heard much of the paloelibertarians since Lew Rockwell joined La Raza, and even persons knowledgeable about the pond life of dissident conservatism might pause when asked to name a current paleolib.”

Really? Given that there are so few paleolibertarians, I would think that a writer on mathematics and his “knowledgeable” sources ought to be able to count us.

As mentioned, I’ve written hundreds of weekly, paleolibertarian columns since 1998, covering almost every topic under the sun (cataloged here.)

To these hundreds of weekly columns add two books. Hardcore paleolibertarian both. First came “Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With a Corrupt Culture” (2004). Next was “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South” (2011).

Derbyshire’s editor, Peter Brimelow, ameliorates his “omission” somewhat with a hyperlink to a 2008 paragraph giving imprimatur to one of my columns. He writes: “Illana [sic] Mercer … combines libertarianism with an appreciation of the nation and the dangers of immigration in a recent WorldNetDaily column …”

However, Brimelow’s partial qualification fails to mention that all said columns—and not just the one referenced—are the work of a writer, in the words of Prof. Clyde Wilson, “who knows that the market is wonderful, but it is not everything.” (In addition, while some libertarians tend to cover their ears and hum loudly, refusing to address real-life issues or matters of politics and policy, all to preserve their libertarian virginity (or out of a lazy habit of mind), this column applies paleolibertarianism to almost every issue conceivable.)

The omissions aforementioned: Do they amount to a momentary lapse of reason or a pattern of intellectual dishonesty? Who knows? Suffice it to say that VDARE’s title amounts to an assertion that there is but one remaining paleolibertarian, and Derbyshire’s subsumed statements in support of this assertion are as declarative and conclusive.

In any event, VDARE’s practice in this case of ignoring reality does nothing for its credibility (always a touchy subject).

You lose credibility when, in contravention of reality, and from small, atrophying intellectual enclaves—you proclaim on who counts to the paleolibertarian tradition, and by default who doesn’t. As a paleolibertarian who shall not be named once wrote, “Reality is the rational man’s anchor.”

I treasure fond memories from the early 2000s of sitting (and, yes, imbibing) at an Auburn tavern with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the sui generis paleolibertarian discussed by Derbyshire, and with other Mises-Institute paleolibertarian pals. (And I have just received Dr. Hoppe’s latest book from assistant publisher at LFB, Jeff Tucker.)

In the interest of intellectual honesty and full disclosure; and lest I too adopt the habit I am here criticizing—and thus fall into what Hans Hoppe would call a performative contradiction—here is the quorum of paleolibertarians that right away comes to mind, other than this writer:

• WND colleague Vox Day (he is, however, skeptical of free trade per se)
• Facebook Friend Prof. John Hospers (Read his “LIBERTARIAN ARGUMENT AGAINST OPEN BORDERS.”)
• Jack Kerwick, a young, new, much-needed arrival—a philosopher, who, I believe, tends more to paleolibertarianism than paleoconservatism in his antipathy for statism.

UPDATE I (9/30):

Other notable paleolibertarians:

• Thomas DiLorenzo. When the left and the “right” dismiss you as a neo-Confederate, and Sons of the South consider you a son of theirs—I’d say you are a thoroughbred palelibertarian. Tom DiLorenzo’s name is synonymous with secession.
• Thomas E. Woods Jr.: Tom is an intellectual machine gun when it comes to States’ Rights, for example. Can there be a more central issue to paleolibertarian sensibilities than the devolution and decentralization of power? The passion for “the Old Republic of property rights, freedom of association, and radical political decentralization,” as Lew Rockwell once wrote, is the soul of the subject; the very thing that animates paleolibertarianism.
• Nebojsa Malic, columnist for Antiwar.com since 2000. Having lost his homeland of Serbia in the Bosnian War, Nebojsa understands liberty’s indispensable framework (to borrow Murray Rothbard’s expression).

UPDATE II (10/3): A FORM OF LOGICAL FALLACY. Does the paleo practice of ignoring reality, highlighted in the current post (“The Paleo Problem: Intellectual Dishonesty Or Senility?”), amount merely to a child covering his ears and humming loudly, in the hope that reality will magically change?

Yes, and worse.

In his Foreword to Nonsense, Robert J. Gula’s handbook of logical fallacies, Hunter Lewis cautions that it is, in “a broader sense” (“broad” being Gula’s genius and sensibility), a logical fallacy to inject information or arguments that are … incomplete, or to omit some important fact, point, or perceptive, … whether intentionally or unintentionally.