Wanna be a professional blogger? Ed Morrissey made it.

There are some Mommybloggers out there who have hit the big time, but I only follow a couple of them with any regularity at all. A few Mommybloggers make quite a bit of money through endorsements and advertisements. (Caution to Mommybloggers: get permission before writing about family members, especially children, in any depth). A larger number make a little money by placing ads on their blogs.

There are Mommyblogs (and some Daddyblogs) out there which appeal to specialized audiences - special needs kids, empty nesters, etc. In fact, there are specialized blogs out there for just about any interest. Ace (mild language warning) recently compared blogs and discussion forums to the intellectual salons of old - a way for people to continue their education into adulthood. But the more specialized the interest, the less likely a blog is to have a following large enough to generate a respectable amount of money. And most bloggers don't go into blogging as a career. But some have found careers by blogging.  Two who have are The Anchoress (an assertively Catholic blogger who sometimes comments on politics) and Ed Morrissey, who writes mostly about politics.

I started following blogs becauseI was concerned about the way the media covered politics. So most of the blogs I follow include at least some political content. The Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia, writes about her "blogfather", Ed Morrissey on the occasion of an interview by Nick Gillespie of Reason TV.  Scalia got paying jobs writing (and later editing) due to her ability to gain a following as a blogger.

When he started blogging, Morrissey was running call centers for the alarm industry. He started blogging because he thought it was one thing he could do to help his country.  His first blog, Captain's Quarters (motto:  "Thus every blogger, in his kind, is bit by him who comes behind") got Scalia interested in blogging. It was one of my favorites as I started looking into the blogosphere, too. She writes:

. . . Ed managed to blog in a way that was smart, gentlemanly and fair and I thought I might be able to do that, too.


Heh. Clearly I have not managed to be as smart, gentlemanly or fair as he, but I am glad I took the plunge; blogging has changed my life, very much for the better — both personally and professionally — in that it has taught me how to slow down, take a breath and consider the Marquis of Queensbury Rules before jumping into a fray. I sometimes do revert to Bad Lizzie, but I am learning how to be more gentlemanly; it’s slow-going since, as long-time readers know, I was raised by blade-in-mouth barbarians.


Still I credit my blogfather for the lessons, and also for the encouragement. . .

Scalia now edits the columns of Ed's wife, Marcia, who lost her sight in her twenties due to diabetes, at the Patheos website.

Hard-core libertarian Nick Gillespie's interview with Morrissey is very interesting. It reveals that Morrissey started blogging when his wife was in the hospital. Similarly, Glenn Reynolds, an even bigger name in the blogosphere, started blogging when his wife was very ill. Most of the first crop of bloggers started out spending money on their blogs rather than making money. Blogging in its early days was full of interesting people who wrote just because they wanted to. The vast majority of bloggers still do.

If you're hoping to make money blogging (directly or indirectly) someday, you probably need to count on writing for the love of it for some time first. And keep your day job.

The Mainstream Media's Delusional Focus After the Arizona Shootings

I thought it would be a good idea to document some of what happened in our national media following the terrible Arizona shootings, for future reference.

Following the lead of CNN and the New York Times --- Paul Krugman in particular, the Mainstream Media and a few politicians on the Left started immediately to make the connection between the Arizona shootings, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. And they got details about the shooting wrong, too. Local media and alternative media did a better job.  And much commentary in the MSM was more responsible than news reporting. Don't miss Dr. Krauthammer's take.  He is a psychiatrist, after all.

The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?

Or should we call the Mainstream Media the "Make-Believe Media"? Compare the continuing references to "civility" in connection to the Arizona shootings (in order to connect the shooting in people's minds to the early false reports) with the incidents the MSM doesn't report nationally because the victim is conservative and/or there is no possibility to connect the perpetrator with conservative motives.

I think Krakatoa made an interesting point early on in the media frenzy:

Pretending that you can compartmentalize all the woes in the world into one neat box of causation called "Republican/Conservative/Colonialist White Male bigotry" gives you the illusion of the power to easily deal with those problems.

There's another reason that they lie: Misinformation gets results.

Glenn Reynolds wrote a piece in the WSJ about the Politics of Blood Libel on the Left. Sarah Palin later used the term "blood libel" in a statement, leading to a furious reaction from the Left and defenses of the use of the term from the Right - and even from Alan Derschowitz. (scroll through search results) Ann Althouse quickly compiled a little list of violent incidents which the Left tried to pin on conservatives. Jim Treacher on Twitter: "So what term would the left prefer for how they're using lies to try and connect their political opponents to murder?"

Ed Driscoll, February 1: "No Matter How Cynical You Get, it is Impossible to Keep Up"

New York magazine, November 16th, 1992:

I think the effect of Fox News on American public life has been to create a level of cynicism about the news in general. It has contributed to the sense that they are all just out there with a political agenda, but Fox is just more overt about it. And I think that’s unhealthy.

Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, yesterday.

Keller added: We have had a lot of talk since the Gabby Giffords attempted murder about civility in our national discourse, and I make no connection between the guy who shot those people in Tucson and the national discourse. But it is true that the national discourse is more polarized and strident than it has been in the past, and to some extent, I would lay that at the feet of Rupert Murdoch.

From the comments - Shannon Love: 

You’ve got admire the technique the same way you admire any good con.

By simply repeating they don’t believe there is a connection over and over again, they can plant the idea that there is a connection just by shear repetition. Eventually, when people hear about the shooting their minds will instantly associate that with Fox News, Palin and whomever else they wish.

It’s pysch 101, basic formative association.
They revealed their unprincipled and irrational biases in their rush to judgment about the shooting and now they are using their denouncement of their own mistake as a smear.

NoahP:

We live in an era almost without grace. The Missoula Community Theater stages the Mikado with lyrics calling for the beheading of Sarah Palin to applause and laughter. Following national exposure by the indispensable James Taranto in “The Best of the Web Today”, we get nonapology apologies but no apology to Sarah Palin and her family.

And if some deranged Leftist should harm her or her family would the NYT and their ilk take any responsibility? Not a chance.

James Taranto. . . this incident is shocking but not surprising. For all the bogus accusations being thrown at Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, genuinely hateful political rhetoric is commonplace in the art world, even in art that is not overtly political. . . .

Californio:
Wait – Didn’t the Times initially report that the Tucson incident should be blamed on Sarah Palin and the Duke Lacrosse team?

“We got the narrative right but the facts wrong…”

Remember how eager the MSM is to place blame on the Right as the 2012 elections approach.

Democratic Pollster Mark Penn: What Obama really needs is an Oklahoma City moment.

Earlier Related Posts:

The Establishment: Observations of Shannon Love on changes in the Left during the last 40 years.

CNN puts itself "in the crosshairs": Examples of irresponsible reporting and deceptive reporting - including sneakily deleting lines from the President's speech.

The Disturbing World of the Arizona Shooter: Legitimate issues which the mainstream media IGNORED while trying to blame Sarah Palin for the shooting.

Perry Mason could teach today's reporters a few things: How to restore some credibility to the media. How readers can spot deceptive news reports. Poll showing distrust of media.

The New Civility in Washington D.C.: Representative Cohen compares Republicans to Nazis. Not the person I would expect to do something like this.  Fascinating.

Libeling the Right: The only way the Left can win in America: Because Leftist policies are failing around the world in front of our eyes.

Newsweek finds a new way to keep the Big Lie alive: Including false suggestion through cover art.  Despicable.  Also, Daniel Henninger explains the origins of the Left's belief that the Right is violent.

Newsweek finds a new way to keep the Big Lie alive

NEWSWEEK,  the magazine that the Washington Post sold for one dollar, makes a new effort to remain relevant. They devise a way to further the big lie about a connection between the Arizona shootings and the Tea Party -- indirectly but very obviously, with cover art of an assassin wrapped in an American flag.

The cover story by Jonathan Alter is more than 2,000 words. And what one word does not appear in that article? Zeitgeist. 

Remember when Newsweek used to do reporting?

There is absolutely no excuse for Newsweek's false image of America-loving assassins now that so much is known about the Arizona shooter. Even if they believe The Narrative with all their hearts. The astute Andrew Klavan, way back on January 9:

. . . Indeed, the Left’s hysterical response to all who disagree with it — that they are racist or sexist or “phobic” or somehow reminiscent of Hitler — has become so predictable that satirists, from the libertarian Greg Gutfeld to the liberal Jon Stewart, have made fun of it in routines.

But never mind that, because the Left’s sudden talk about incendiary political rhetoric in the wake of the Arizona shooting isn’t really about political rhetoric at all. It’s about the real-world failure of leftist policies everywhere—the bankrupting of nations and states by greedy unions and unfundable social programs, the destruction of inner cities by identity politics, and the appeasement of Muslim extremists in the face of worldwide jihad, not to mention the frequently fatal effects of delirious environmentalism. Europe is in debt and on fire. American citizens are in political revolt. Even the most left-wing president ever is making desperate overtures to his right.

But all that might be tolerable to leftists if they weren’t starting to lose control of the one weapon in which they have the most faith:  the narrative. The narrative is what leftists believe in instead of the truth.

The Arizona shooter lived in his own dark little world. The Left's utopian dream world is a brighter place, but it isn't sustainable. It's falling apart before their eyes.  Their dark side is becoming more transparent as they become more desperate, and as alternative voices are more accessible.

Daniel Henninger explains one foundation of "The Narrative".

There has been a great effort this week to come to grips with the American left's reaction to the Tucson shooting. Paul Krugman of the New York Times and its editorial page, George Packer of the New Yorker, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and others, in varying degrees, have linked the murders to the intensity of opposition to the policies and presidency of Barack Obama. As Mr. Krugman asked in his Monday commentary: "Were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?"

The "you" would be his audience, and the answer is yes, they thought that in these times "something like this" could happen in the United States. Other media commentators, without a microbe of conservatism in their bloodstreams, have rejected this suggestion.

So what was the point? Why attempt the gymnastic logic of asserting that the act of a deranged personality was linked to the tea parties and the American right? Two reasons: Political calculation and personal belief. . .

The divide between this strain of the American left and its conservative opponents is about more than politics and policy. It goes back a long way, it is deep, and it will never be bridged. It is cultural, and it explains more than anything the "intensity" that exists now between these two competing camps. (The independent laments: "Can't we all just get along?" Answer: No.)

The Rosetta Stone that explains this tribal divide is Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter's classic 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Hofstadter's piece for Harper's may be unfamiliar to many now, but each writer at the opening of this column knows by rote what Hofstadter's essay taught generations of young, left-wing intellectuals about conservatism and the right. . . 

Read the whole thing.  They REALLY MUST believe that Repulicans are dangerous.  Noam Chomsky is quoted below.  His textbooks recently sold more than any other author at the UCLA bookstore (don't know if he's still the top seller).  He has said, among other things, that we have to be balanced in our thinking about Pol Pot's killing fields in Cambodia -  considering the benefits as well as the losses.  Pol Pot's goal was to totally obliterate the people's memory of their culture so he could build a new, pure one.   The only "benefit" I know of is that he killed off practically everyone who knew how to farm, so the "non-evil" people (those who weren't considered dangerous because the didn't wear eyeglasses or exhibit any significant sign of education) had nothing to eat.:

“The latest election....you could almost interpret it as a kind of death knell for the species," (said) Chomsky, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

Oh, boy.

And remember that libeling the Right is the only way the Left can win.

The New Civility in Washington D.C.

Well, that didn't last long.  Why is it that almost certain that when liberals (or Democrats) accuse conservatives (or Republicans) of some sin, it is a sin which they have just committed themselves or are planning to commit in the near future?

Relatively moderate Democrat Steve Cohen compared Republicans to Nazis with regard to the health care bill.  Even though Hitler promoted government-run health care.  He later said that he was really only comparing their lies to Nazi propaganda.  But they weren't lying.

Ironically, Cohen had at one time been attacked in an extremely uncivil manner by more liberal Democrats and was defended by conservatives and libertarians.  I heard as a guest on Dennis Prager's program -- TWICE (once when being smeared by his Democratic primary rival (with references both to the KKK and to his Jewish heritage - go figure) and again after his election when his request for membership in the Congressional Black Caucus was rejected even though he represents a majority-black district. I thought he sounded pretty reasonable and have read mostly good things about him.

He seems to have changed.  Note Cohen's ridiculous comparison of the Tea Party to the KKK (with a little reminder of the Nazis thrown in) on radio in the first video here. This vicious, bigoted characterization was accepted nonchalantly by the hosts of the program, probably because they are used to stereotyping Tea Partiers as the wrong kind of white people.  They've chosen their designated villain, and no evidence is necessary.  (Update:  one of these Young Turks is evidently ideological enough to be tapped to come on board at MSNBC after Olbermann's departure).

The second video includes an earlier news report about his Democratic Party primary rival connecting Cohen to the KKK.  This is way too ironic to make sense. Maybe he developed Stockholm Syndrome after he was elected due to pressure by the liberal Democratic juggernaut in the 111th Congress.

Congressman Cohen's speech on the house floor presented an opportunity for a civility test for liberals. Would they speak out against what Cohen said? Jon Stewart did.  (language alert)

Iowahawk is not what most people would call a liberal, but this is very funny. Note the recycle link at the bottom of the piece.

Are there any better ideas for increasing civility in Washington D.C.? How about a return to the principles of classical liberalism?   Some advice from George Washington would probably not hurt, either.

Perry Mason could teach today's reporters a few things

Too many reporters in the big national news organzations today take a very superficial, predictable approach to their stories. They shape their stories to fit a pre-determined template, usually based (wittingly or unwittingly) in their political ideology and consistent with stories by their colleagues.

Similarly, in the Perry Mason mysteries on TV, we usually first saw a "Designated Villain" story line, typically set up by the real villain or an accomplice.  This story line was usually reinforced by biased witnesses and  (unintentionally) accepted by unbiased witnesses and the prosecution.   If Perry Mason had not challenged the "Designated Villain" story line in the TV dramas, ALL of his clients would have lost in court.

In the fictional world of Perry Mason, the police and prosecution were usually honorable even if they didn't dig deep enough during their investigations.  Unfortunately, in the real world, not all police or prosecutors are this unbiased and honorable as the ones in these TV dramas. And Perry Mason (like professor K.C. Johnson) would have faced additional challenges in the real world.

We would hope that reporters would act fairly and honorably in gathering and reporting as much pertinent information on their stories as possible - just as we would hope that prosecutors would look into all the evidence fairly before charging a suspect.  Assuming honorable intentions and adherence to established ethical standards, if the prosecution had used some of the investigative techniques used by Perry Mason in the TV stories, there would be fewer people falsely accused of murder in these TV dramas.  Similarly, if reporters in the mainstream media (and their editorial support) did a little more investigation and/or reported fairly on what they found, there would more truth in their reporting and less drama when their reports are challenged by the NEW MEDIA, readers or viewers.

So, how do we spot bias or falsehoods in news stories?

Perry Mason is not conducting classes for incurious or biased reporters (or for their readers or viewers). And most reporters don't have a Della Street or Paul Drake to do research for them, even if they wanted to present a fair and accurate story. So I guess we'll have to turn to attorney Gabriel Malor for a detailed explanation of how bias and false conclusions are introduced into a story.

Malor demonstrates how a (probably idealistic) reporter for CNN reinforced his desired narrative to present a story which would "make a difference", by focusing on a designated villain and reinforcing his case that this villain was a genuine villain without presenting any facts whatsoever to support this designation.  Read the whole thing.  The CNN report came AFTER the initial flurry of national media reports blaming the Tea Party and Sarah Palin for the Arizona shootings had been shot down.  There was no excuse for this desperate  attempt to keep "The Narrative" alive: 

This type of slime job relies on several techniques common to bad fiction, but the central trope is the Designated Villain.

The Designated Villain, like its counterpart the Designated Hero -- about which I wrote here in relation to the President -- occurs when an author violates the "Show, Don't Tell" rule. A character is treated by the author and the other characters as the villain of the work even though the character hasn't actually done anything to justify this treatment. Quite simply since the protagonists oppose him, he must be the bad guy, even if all his evil occurs off screen and is barely mentioned. The villainy has to be assumed by the reader.

Like the Designated Hero, the Designated Villain is very much present in modern reporting. Fortunately, unlike fiction in which the reader has no choice but to accept the assumptions made by the author, we do not have to accept the assumptions of reporters. Here are just a few the CNN reporter uses to designate the Tea Party as the villain of both the Tucson shooting and, illogically, racist violence that occurred fifty years ago:

Malor demolishes the assumptions inherent in the CNN smear job, with the help of Google.  Remember as you read his piece that reporters can access Google, too.  Not to mention search engines designed  precisely to help the media present accurate stories.  And the layers of editors and fact-checkers which are supposed to increase our confidence in the Mainstream Media.  An example of information which could have easily been found by CNN if they were really interested in reporting the truth:

Please, please, please click the second link and watch the whole thing to see the Tea Partiers asking Giffords not to treat them like "a mob" and Giffords talking about the Tea Party and swastikas. That's how far from reality the CNN reporter wanders. Rather than shouting her down, the Tea Partiers tried to get her to state her positions and treat them with respect. In return, she slandered them with a Nazi comparison.

 We need to teach the kinds of analytical skills demonstrated in Gabriel Malor's piece to ALL STUDENTS. Particularly in journalism school, if reporters want to restore some trust in the mainstream media.

This is the problem with designating a villain outside of fiction. The assumptions necessary to make it work depend on the reader to be utterly ignorant of reality. In the real world, charged political rhetoric is common and rarely leads to violence. But to liberals, it is a feature of "right-wing" political speech and someone always ends up getting hurt. Evidence? No evidence required. . . 

Fortunately, the "working press" (particularly the local press) did a better job that the elite national press on this overall issue.  And the New Media helped get the truth out, too.

The Disturbing World of the Arizona Shooter

The initial campaign to connect in people's minds the Arizona shootings with "violent eliminationist rhetoric" from the Right continues in the modified form of a campaign to "tone down" violent rhetoric in politics and the media.  We are now witnessing a more subtle and devious way to connect idea of violent rhetoric from the Right with the Arizona shootings. And it deflects attention from the issues which should be under discussion as a result of this terrible tragedy.

This red herring is especially disingenuous after the shooter's friends have said that he was "on the left" politically in high school then apparently stopped watching the news, didn't listen to the radio and stopped taking sides in the normal political process.  But he was obsessed with the 2007 "new-age" anarchist internet movie "Zeitgeist".  Produced BEFORE Sarah Palin and the Tea Party were in the national news.  The shooter was also reported to have said in 2007 that Representative Giffords was a "phony" because she did not answer to his satisfaction his irrational question about government and grammar. He may have also developed a certain obsession with her.  None of his acquaintances seem to connect him IN ANY WAY with "right wing" politics. RS McCain links Dan Collins, a father whose child developed a rare form of childhood-onset schizophrenia, concerning the thought processes of schizophrenics.

 Pima college has release a disturbing video in which the shooter talks about what he is thinking as he walks around campus. It makes Collins' heartbreaking observations come to life. Drew M. says this  about the video:

This appeared last night and the reaction from folks on Twitter and email was that it's a tough watch.

The guy is genuinely disturbed. We knew that but to hear and see it so clearly is pretty shocking.

I would love to sit with Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman and the like to watch this. Then when it's over, I'd like them to explain to me how they think this broken and damaged man was in any way influenced by the 'tone' of our political discourse. . . .

Also read his quote from a commentator in the New York Times about the misuse of this tragedy to further a political agenda.  (The Times has backed off its original story line, probably due to the rapid response of competitive voices and real journalists).

Getting back to the Zeitgeist thing:  The Zeitgeist movie's producers, like many new-age types, paid attention to conspiracy ideas from across the political spectrum.  But the style of their movie was typical of activist art from the Left, and the movie won an award at a lefty film festival.  No wonder, since it attacked Christianity, suggested that the U.S. government was complicit in 9/11 and warned against "banking interests" and secret plots to start wars.

On the other hand, it also stated that the income tax is unconstitutional.  I haven't yet fully figured out why "truther" anarchist filmmakers who hate Fox News often get along very well with big-government leftists at rallies and activist film festivals. I would expect anarchists and big-government leftists to be ideologically incompatible. But then again, sometimes lefty anarchists espouse some big-government ideas -- which sort of makes them atypical anarchists.

Somehow, I am not confident that Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman and the like will now condemn violent rhetoric and images in left-wing activist "art"   like they condemned violent rhetoric and images from the Right. Art must reflect freedom of expression (unless it is critical of one of the Left's more fashionable "communities" of the moment).  These commentators cannot be consistent and retain their affinity with today's progressives. And they already have a designated villain.

CNN puts itself "in the crosshairs"

This coordinated attempt to shut down vivid speech by the Right is getting very, very silly. In a calculated sort of way. Don Surber makes some important points about surrendering the language* to the Left. From the comments:

I’ve told them what it takes, for us to stop that and return to civil discourse:

WE’LL STOP THE YELLIN’ … WHEN Y’ALL STOP THE LYIN’!

 Byron York documents that before banning 'crosshairs,' CNN used it to refer to Palin and Bachmann.

. . . Mark Preston, CNN's senior political editor, referred to another controversial politician, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, as being "in the crosshairs." "Michelle Bachmann is raising lots of money, raising her national profile," Preston said on September 14. "She is in the crosshairs of Democrats as well."

It turns out Preston was back on CNN's air on Tuesday, discussing Palin's recent interview on Fox News. "We saw her on Fox News last night where she is a paid contributor," Preston said. "A kind of a friendly setting, but she defended herself from all the criticism that's been directed at her regarding a Web site that she had put out where she had used crosshairs over 20 Democratic candidates.

NOT TRUE. The crosshairs were over congressional districts on A MAP. Not over candidates. Sort of like the Democratic Party maps with bullseyes over congressional districts.  Was Prestons mischaracterization sloppiness or a calculated effort to suggest more violent imagery, do you think? Either way, it's not acceptable for a senior political EDITOR. York comments:

"Crosshairs" again. Just for the record, CNN anchors, reporters and guests did absolutely nothing wrong with their use of the word in the last month and before. It would be impossible, at least for any reasonable person, to argue that the network's use of "crosshairs" in any of the various contexts it was used, was an incitement to violence by anyone, anywhere. But by announcing that "we're trying to get away" from "crosshairs" and other allegedly incendiary language, CNN is aligning itself with those who blame "rhetoric" for the killings. And by doing that -- plus inviting the public to "hold us accountable" -- CNN could open itself up to an examination of its own uses of the word and accusations that it helped create an environment that led to violence. Does that make any sense at all?

Read the whole thing.

* Richard Fernandez has similar thoughts:

CNN is now apologizing for the use of the word “crosshairs” in general political speech, as shown in the video after the “Read More” jump. The implication is that the word itself has been used to facilitate a hate crime. That is untrue, as former New York City Mayor Ed Koch observes. But maybe the belief is that if a lie is repeated for long enough then it eventually becomes true. Then power follows. “Real power is the ability to define what the fight is about.” The entire discussion moves into a rigged casino. Control words and you control truth. George Orwell understood this so well that he believed one of the first things every totalitarian ideology does is redefine the words in a language, purposefully, forcefully and relentlessly. In his novel 1984, he called this artificial language of totalitarianism Newspeak. . . 

From the comments:

Orwell, indeed, is required reading. “1984″ should be read at least every couple of years (like the Bible?), just to keep us Westerners on our toes. (Dispensations will be available for those who have had to actually live that nightmare.)

Though in this, Orwell merely echoes Humpty Dumpty—another one of my intellectual heroes. . . .

UPDATE: More deception from CNN.  And from the New York Times and Salon:

The New York Times did this earlier, deleting Obama's line about whether incivil debate caused the Tucson shooting -- "It did not," Obama said, fairly directly, contradicting the New York Times' Narrative.


. . . The Narrative is more important than a president's actual words, so the actual words had to be changed to reinforce The Narrative. . .

Can't. Stop. The Narrative.

Reality-based community or community-based reality?

They're like the dead in Sixth Sense -- they only see what they want to see. So they don't know that they're... ghosts of a fallen age.

Kind of seems like that sometimes.

The Tea Party is motivated by sex

New theory from the legendary leftist professor of sociology and political science Frances Fox Piven. The audio also reveals a number of additional dopey, bigoted stereotypes about the characteristics of people attracted to the Tea Party. The ONE thing she doesn't mention is the Tea Party's alarm at the aggressive efforts of the 111th Congress and the Obama Administration to take more control and power over large parts of the economy and larger parts of people's incomes, to spend money indiscriminately and to leave the bill for future generations:

That's why they say at their crazy rallies,  "I am angry"  - they have no follow-up line . . .

The disappointing move to the right in the last election was all because of a slight increase in all-white voters over 65 years of age. Meanwhile, in the real world, Shock CBS Poll: 77% of Americans are Extremist Teabaggers, Want to Cut Government Spending.

She is also disappointed in President Obama for not redistributing more wealth.  Wonder if President Obama's former press secretary Robert Gibbs would include her among those in the "professional left" whom he told off?   He thought they were being unrealistic about how far the President could go in imposing their preferred policies, given the makeup of the American electorate.

Don't you feel better knowing that our elite academics are this out of touch with what is really going on? 

 On the other hand, maybe she knows that what she is saying has no basis in fact, but is following the old precepts of "dialectical materialism": only statements which advance the cause of socialism are true.

Her musings on sex and the Tea Party seem to be consistent with the level of careful research which went into some of her  highly practical prescriptions for improving our society:

1. The way to get government to give everyone a guaranteed annual income is to bankrupt the government by intentionally overloading the welfare system. What could go wrong?

2. The unemployed should develop an  angry identity  in the U.S., sort of like the angry people protesting against the insolvency of the governments in Greece and elsewhere in Europe. What could go wrong?

Right now, I'm thinking that taking on tens of thousands of dollars of extra debt to study with the best-known professors in the "soft sciences" may not be such a good idea. Iowahawk had this figured out a long time ago. Classic.

Humility - Farewell to the 111th

John Boehner's speech impressed some people. Ace:

All the right notes, and I think he means them. What he's stressing is not the details of governance but the central assumption of it -- democracy, where the people rule.

Video at the link.

Roger L. Simon:

Like much of the world that doesn’t live Inside the Beltway, I was only marginally aware of John Boehner until some months ago when it was becoming clear he might be the next speaker. And even then I wasn’t impressed. The man-tan look made me assume he was just another shallow pol.


I was wrong. As of now, I have done a total about-face. In his speech today, John Boehner showed himself to be among the most impressive figures on our political landscape, and he did it by being that rarest of things in politics: a humble human being.

Compare and Contrast. Or, you might prefer to Compare and Contrast.

Boehner's big gavel kind of reminds me of Nancy's horrible "victory walk", (which she staged in order to accuse the Tea Party of being racist and/or violent) but I guess Boehner has a different meaning in mind.

Hope the new Congress can rein in some of the excesses of the 111th Congress. The great Thomas Sowell:

Runaway "stimulus" spending, high unemployment and ObamaCare are all legitimate and important issues. It is just that freedom and survival are more important.


For all its sweeping and scary provisions, ObamaCare is not nearly as important as the way it was passed. If legislation can become laws passed without either the public or the Congress knowing what is in those laws, then the fundamental principle of a free, self-governing people is completely undermined.

Bipartisanship, "No Labels"

Some interesting developments in the "tax deal between Obama and the GOP":

1. At the joint press conference between President Obama and former President Clinton, President Obama left to attend a Christmas party, leaving Clinton to defend his positions. Paul Gigott:

“I love the symbolism of two Democratic presidents — not one, but two — endorsing Bush tax cuts, saying, ‘We need them crucially to help the economy’.”

During the press conference, President Clinton called conservative Charles Krauthammer's piece (calling the tax deal "the swindle of the year")"brilliant". Krauthammer quipped:

The fact that he praised me means that my career is basically over, although perhaps — I think NPR has an opening, I think the Juan Williams spot. …

Or I could return to psychiatry. The House Democrats could really use someone right now. They’re very agitated. I would go into that caucus and just do a Valium spray and get all of ‘em at once.

2. Bernie Sanders, the declared socialist in Congress, decided to filibuster. Other progressives are also up in arms. But on the other hand, they have been pushing the "No Labels" meme. President Obama starts a "charm offensive" with new Republican leadership in private, while promising to fight them in public.

President Obama made one especially deceptive statement about the Republicans' position on tax cuts which totally destroys any possibility of bipartisan good will:

"When they expire in two years, I will fight to end them," Obama said. "Just as I suspect the Republican Party may fight to end the middle-class tax cuts that I've championed and that they've opposed."

He's apparently still a class warrior at heart. He has indicated several times that he considers his role that of a "community organizer" (although one who is a "strong leader" rather than one who stays in the background while pushing power down to the people according to Saul Alinsky's "rules for radicals".)

JournoList Race-Baiters Thread

When Breitbart warned the Media Matters folks on July 19 to get ready for July 20, I think he had been tipped off to the Daily Caller's story concerning JournoList and plans to squash news about Reverend Wright. Lots of scrambling for explanations is going on. I've started a thread to try to sort things out.

But to backtrack, revelations about the JournoList had already done some damage to the Left. June 25 - Dave Weigel: Someone on Journolist had apparently "outed" Dave Weigel, who had been hired by the Washington Post to cover the "conservative movement" as a hater of conservatives. He had once worked for the libertarian magazine, Reason, which the Post apparently thought would give him an "in" at conservative events. Editor of Daily Caller has questions for the Washington Post, others.

Weigel resigned from the Washington Post on July 24 and was hired by Slate, which is owned by the Washinton Post, on July 27. The next day he "confessed" in a guest-post on the conservative/libertarian Andrew Breitbart site, Big Government, concerning "the Washington Post, the D.C. Bubble and JournoList". Bonus Austin Powers "Dr. Evil" reference.   Question: Is "Snark" a specialty of "The Millenials"? "Starry-eyed they’re not."

JULY 22: An op-ed that appeared Wednesday at Investor’s Business Daily dubs the JournoList “The Smoking Gun For Media Bias:”

The point is, this is America’s “mainstream” media, supposedly. Except it’s not. It’s in fact a support wing for one party and one vision for America. And as with the rest of the progressive movement, it’s concerned not with the truth, but with power.

And that was written before this morning’s JournoList document drop du jour from Jonathan Strong of the Daily Caller, who writes, “When McCain picked Palin, liberal journalists coordinated the best line of attack:”

MORE: "Despite its name, membership in the liberal online community Journolist wasn’t limited to journalists. Present among the bloggers, reporters and editors were a number of professional political operatives, including top White House economic advisors, key Obama political appointees, and Democratic campaign veterans. Some left government to join Journolist. Others took the opposite route. A few contributed to Journolist from their perches in politics. At times, it became difficult to tell who was supposed to be covering policy and who was trying to make it."

. . . “Calling all Journos,” Bernstein wrote in a message relayed by Klein. “I thought we got too little love from progressive types re our tax changes targeted at businesses with overseas operations. We’re maybe going for another bite at the apple this Monday,” he wrote. Bernstein invited members of the list to join him on a conference call on the issue a few days later.

Not everyone was sold. A couple of members on the list, including Greg Anrig of the Century Foundation and Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer, panned the administration’s plan to crack down on offshore tax havens as a misleading political stunt.

Dean Baker, at the time a blogger at the American Prospect, agreed the policy was dishonest, but defended it anyway. “Sure, some of the things they are saying are not true (the jobs story first and foremost),” he wrote, “but the industry groups have this town blanketed with lobbyists and own a large portion of Congress outright. … There has to be some counterforce to the industry groups and that is the populist rabble. It might not be pretty, but that’s Washington.” . . Yglesias took some pains to couch his advocacy in the language of journalism. Jeff Hauser, a professional political operative, didn’t bother. During key moments in the presidential campaign, Hauser dropped the pretense entirely, becoming nakedly political. . .

. . . Journolist’s greatest challenge is to make sure an actual win by Obama translates into winning the battle for political impact.

In the conversation that followed Hauser’s post, not one Journolister expressed surprise or disapproval. No one rebuked Hauser for telling journalists how to carry water for a politician. Despite the group’s supposedly “very strict” ban on political operatives and explicit partisan coordination, Hauser remained a member of Journolist for almost two more years.

Breitbart vs. NAACP thread

The NAACP got Andrew Breitbart's dander up with the way they smeared the Tea Party organization as racist. I have never seen as much misinformation over a short-term issue as I've seen on this one.  I've decided to start a thread so I can add information as the dust clears.

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS

July 22: Soros-funded Media Matters publishes a timeline which is picked up by Huffington Post, with the ridiculous claim that the timeline shows collusion between "right wing" bloggers and Fox News, rather than bloggers reading each other's posts. They accuse The Anchoress of participating in the "disturbing coordination" WHEN SHE EXPRESSES DISSATISFACTION WITH THE PLACE THE BREITBART VIDEO CLIP ENDED.  Maybe they were upset that she was the only popular blogger or media person to point this out before Sherrod was forced to resign. That's where I first saw the story mentioned, so maybe I'm part of the "disturbing coordination" too.  The "disturbing coordination" amounted to FOUR BLOGGERS picking up the story before CBS News, and FIVE BLOGGERS before Drudge. And this was after Breitbart had threatened to release evidence of racism at an NAACP event, which would be expected to clue bloggers and others in the media to be watching his site.  Pretty lame "coordination", if you ask me.   Especially compared to the irresponsible spread of the lies about Tea Party racisms  by the mainstream media back in March.    Read about the McClatchy timeline, immediately "amplified" by the New York Times and many others in the mainstream media, and watch the video.   Breitbart has since released additional videos countering the reports by the CBC members. He increased his reward for proof of racial epithets to $100,000 but has had no takers, despite all the recording devices at the scene.

 Note that the fake hate crimes were repeatedly reported as if they were true in the New York Times as late as FOUR MONTHS after initial reports had been contested with a reward for evidence supporting the story. And it was AUGUST before the Paper of Record published a lame, face-saving "correction" indicating that there was no evidence that epithets reported by members of the CBC came from members of the Tea Party.  In contrast, every "conspirator" named in the Media Matters timeline above, including Breitbart,  IMMEDIATELY issued corrections once the full Sherrod video was released, and several apologized to Ms. Sherrod.

Media Matters must really be feeling sensitive about the Journolist scandal, in which liberal journalists and "opinion leaders" were shown to have shared ideas about how to shape the news. For example, one journalists suggested that they could kill coverage of the Reverend Wright issue by picking a conservative - any conservative - and calling him a racist.

I think Media Matters also misrepresented the 1:40 notation concerning Fox Nation on their timeline, as later reports indicated that Sherrod's name had never been mentioned on air before she resigned. Additionally, early reports by Fox (including an internet post) stated that Fox was "seeking comment".  Which is more than the USDA and the White House did.

Interesting that the Breitbart report didn't hit the big-time breaker-of-news, Drudge, for FIVE FULL  HOURS. Breitbart used to work for Drudge. That story really spread "like wildfire", alright. The tape first aired on Fox News AFTER Sherrod resigned.  Seems to me that the USDA and White House were the ones who acted like Sherrod was "on fire".  I don't think they expected "push-back" from her.

BREITBART VS. NAACP ON TV

Chris Matthews defends Breitbart - then sends program down the memory hole. Fascinating. Chris Matthews Vs. Howard Dean.

Well, there you go. [Quoting Ms. Sherrod] “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.” So, Joan, that part, that part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape.

You can judge for yourself if Joan Walsh is misrepresenting the "scare tactics" she says the right are using. Breitbart's original post, before the full tape was located and released:

In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

August 3:  Breitbart decides to sue MSNBC.  Heh.

Speaking of Howard Dean, the liberal attack machine which pushed the story that Sherrod was fired because of Fox News coverage seems to have lead Dean into heaping false charges upon Fox News, and getting caught with his facts down.   So embarrassing.  Scroll down to watch the whole clip, in which he also jokingly compares Glenn Beck to the murderous regime in Iran.   (This is typical of HATERS on the Left. Have you ever heard a Republican official say anything this divisive about, say, Keith Olberman?)

But then again, maybe Dean wasn't misled in his comments about Fox. I say this because he repeated his mischaracterizations  after being corrected. He seems to be good at making charges of racism against people and organizations "out of context". Doesn't he have the responsibility to check his facts before making malicious claims like this?

Oveer at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, who bears false witness on national TV against more people  than any woman I can think of, made news in Australia on July 22 for her paranoid belief that Fox News got Shirley Sherrod fired before mentioning her on air. Maddow used three clips of Fox News reports which aired AFTER SHERROD HAD BEEN FIRED to prove that Fox News was to blame for her firing. Because no such pieces had aired before she was fired.

By the way, Maddow also falsely suggests that there was nothing to the ACORN tapes shown on one of Breitbart's sites because James O'Keefe did not wear his grandmother's fur "pimp coat" into the ACORN offices (only in the introductory bits on his videos), and because the tapes were edited.  But there is no way he could have faked the efforts of the ACORN volunteers to help them set up a brothel, give advice on managing underage prostitutes from El Salvador, and evade taxes. Prosecutors couldn't find a cause for legal action against some of the workers, I guess.  But ACORN had been getting away with illegal activities FOR YEARS at taxpayer expense, because of their friends in government.  Embezzlement, voter fraud, etc.  And there was a black whistleblower within the organization, too.  ACORN lost much of its government funding as people started to look into its other activities as a result of the tapes.

Here, she helps David Letterman get even more facts wrong.  The typical arrogant bigotry of today's American Left is demonstrated by their belief that they know the motives of the people they are discussing.  And her agreement with Letterman's exaggerated, false summary is completely irresponsible for someone in her position, who reports the "news" during her program.

Watch him go on about getting the facts right, while getting them completely wrong. It isn't about facts at all with these people, it's about the narrative.

More on the decline of David Letterman:

Whatever was left of Dave’s edgy sense of irony died while engaging in a serious discussion about the ethics of journalism with… Rachel Maddow… of…. MSNBC…

Signs of change: Anderson Cooper Says He Was Wrong to Let Shirley Sherrod Smear of Andrew Breitbart Go Unchallenged.  "Well, at least his learned his lesson, as have many. It was a teachable moment on race, I guess, just like the President wanted. . . ." Follow the link from Instapundit above to learn more about Shirley Sherrod's appearances on CNN.

Now we go back to Fox and the sometimes-dramatic  and sometimes odd Glenn Beck, who stated that Sherrod had been treated unfairly after she was fired.  After Sherrod was offered her job back, Beck did a Howard Stern-type bit (minus the obscene language) on Keith Olberman's imcomparable dramatic comparison of Sherrod's ordeal to being imprisoned on Devil's Island. Olbermann:

”Shirley Sherrod has been to her own Devil’s Island thanks to the perpetual fraud machine that is FOX News and the scum that is the assassin Breitbart.”

As one commenter to another piece noted, Breitbart didn't get Shirley Sherrod fired. The hyper-vigilant atmosphere produced by unsupported charges of racism from the Left got Sherley Sherrod fired. Along with the actions of her employers, who, if they were in the private sector, would be facing a big lawsuit for the way they handled this.

July 31: Andrew Breitbart at Uni-Tea - speech presenting his story. Whole speech, PJTV. Part 1 - Need for unity vs. design to divide - "tainting the Tea Party as racist" as a political strategy. Part 2 - How watching the Clarence Thomas hearings changed his political views. Part 3 - Congressional Black Caucus makes false charges of racism. Part 4: Rebellion against the stifling of dissent and continued collusion of mainstream liberal media with politicians.

BLACK FARM WORKERS VS. CHARLES AND SHIRLEY SHERROD

Unexpected Black vs. Black fallout - Monday, Aug 2: Ron Wilkins, a former organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1974, under an assumed name, hired-on at New Communities Inc. The Emergency Land Fund, an Atlanta-based black land retention organization, which shared oversight responsibility for NCI’s progress, wanted to know the basis for NCI’s continued poor performance. He reports that the Sherrods exploited and mistreated black workers, including children, at New Communities, Inc. He was fired after organizing a union action.

This would be an explosive accusation to make if it weren't true, especially since Shirley Sherrod has already promised to sue Breitbart for defamation. But there also seems to have been a lot of in-fighting in the leadership of these various black activist groups, so it's prudent to take that into consideration in weighing the veracity of this story.  August 3:  Glenn Reynolds notes that the quality of information in CounterPunch is "not especially reliable". Wretchard, July 21:

The public policy arena can be compared to a grand opera house, whose foundations were laid in turmoil, and which despite the magnificence of the Grand Staircase and Grand Foyer is reputed to contain numerous secret passages and dank cellars. Two of the chambers marked “do not enter” are the Hall of Race and the Chamber of Journalistic Collusion respectively. This week the patrons of the opera, unsettled by the changing times, have taken a turning into these dark chambers. Now they’re there, what is going to happen next?

August 5: Zombie finds an old union publication which confirms the story that the Sherrods exploited and mistreated blacks on the neo-Marxist commune they ran - land held in their names. So, why were the Sherrods the big winners in their Pigford lawsuit, instead of the people who made 67 cents an hour working for them?  Her participation in exploiting black people under slave-like conditions puts her charges that Andrew Breitbart wants to see blacks back in slavery and that those who protested the takeover of health care by the federal government are racists in a different light.

From the comments: 

As the well-known legal scholar, Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

"All Racism, Only Racism, 24 Hours a Day"

The reason for those bogus charges of Tea Party Racism?  Insufficient empathy and diversity among liberals!

Timothy Dalrymple:

It is essentially a failure of imagination. Liberals cannot imagine themselves into a way of thinking in which conservatives do what they do and believe what they believe for good reasons. And since they cannot believe that conservatives are motivated by rational beliefs and admirable motives, they must appeal to darker, more primitive impulses to explain their behavior. The racist motive presents itself as a natural and convenient explanation.

Case In Point

Chris Matthews focuses on race as the obvious explanation for the nomination of an Indian-American by the Republican Party in South Carolina. Sounds shockingly malicious, but then maybe it's just the "liberal failure of imagination" concerning the motives of conservatives.

In Hollywood, racism is all about politics. In Illinois, too.

"Think Progress" is so heavily invested in portraying the Tea Party as racist that they use liberal-produced "Crash the Tea Party" signs as evidence of Tea Party racism.

Now Al Queda is racist, too. There are lots of possible explanations for the President's new "racist AQ" theme. But perhaps partly because multi-culturalism dictates that all religions are morally equivalent, it is forbidden to mention Islamic extremism as a motive for terror in the Obama administration.   Racism falls under a different category in the liberal mind.

I Write Like . . .

Margaret Atwood?  Heh.    I used three paragraphs from my 2 posts on Confucius.  No quotes.

Try it yourself.  Just for fun.  Via Crooked Timber, a rather philosophical progressive site.

What happened to Awe?

We lose something when people misuse words. The example under consideration here is the transformation of the formerly meaningful word "Awesome" into a throw-away interjection or adjective.

Moments of real awe that overwhelm the soul are rare, but if you look closely at the miracle of creation in the macro or micro cosmos you can create such a moment almost at will. Real awe is front-loaded into the universe.

At the same time, those things of man that inspire awe diminish moment by moment under the unstoppable onslaught of the word "awesome" . . . .

I've had a few moments in my life where genuine awe shook me to the roots of my soul. Holding my daughter in my arms a moment after she was born comes to mind as does a time when I was very young, lying a field and looking up at the sky and the high cirrus glowing burnt orange in the fading rays of day. There were others as well, gifts given and grace notes. Common to all were an intake of breath and a feeling as if your heart had been grazed by a thought of God and forgot,  for that moment,  to beat. Matched up against all the torrent and cascade of moments though, this genuine awe was rare; it was one of the pearls beyond price, the shining instant of "Ah ha, so that's what it's all about."

Not so today. Today awe is as common as clay. Today all things of man possess the awe of someness.

Some of the language in the rest of the piece is quite strong. If you follow the first link, keep in mind that the author is an immigrant from the Netherlands who was once an executive in the "men's magazine" business, if I recall correctly. He doesn't mince words. And he's sort of hard on Aerosmith. But actually, he has a pretty good point. Famous for scarves hanging from the microphone stand? Seriously? Though I think it might take a  phrase or line from the ninth symphony rather than "one note" to crush their entire oeuvre.

Interesting that more people are starting to pay attention to this issue now.

Confucius: "morals and art will deteriorate"

Brought forward from an old post elsewhere.  Note that hyperbole concerning global warming has had even more negative consequences for proponents of these views than when the post was written in December of 2008.

“If language is not correct . . . . . . morals and art will deteriorate":

Many years ago I went through an art exhibition at a glitzy mall in Newport Beach. I remember two of the art exhibits. One was a model wearing one of those iconic French Maid outfits - the short black, form-fitting dress with the little white apron and cap. But the model (perhaps the artist) was a rather tall man who also wore black tights, some really ugly black and white gym shoes and a gas mask. The other memorable exhibit featured wall hangings which exploited the various textures and colors of lint removed from clothes dryers.

I think there was some sort of environmental message intended by both of these art pieces, but I'm not sure what it was.

There are at this moment in history a lot of "artists" on the Left delivering political messages through "art". Relatively few on the Right, most of them satirists pointing out rhetorical or other excesses on the Left. Moe Lane compares Australian Green protesters (dignified by American standards) to performance art. I can imagine myself in the audience. He says about the second photo in this post:

". . . it looks for all the world like a snapshot of a particularly boring and pretentious piece of performance art. You know the kind that I’m talking about; one featuring three or four people moving about and talking aimlessly while atonal, yet annoying, stringed instruments play in the background. You’re there because your S.O.’s friend is involved with the production, and you have been promised that the party afterward will not be dull - so you spend the time trying to decipher the program, which reads like it was translated from German to English via Academic Marxist, with a quick stopover at Martian. You suspect that it has gained in the translation; meanwhile, up on the stage someone has just waved a broomstick at a man wearing a cow suit, which apparently has something to do with the Falkland Islands War.

It is about that time that you grimly conclude that the party afterward will be dull."

Hyperbole on the part of Australian Greens has reduced the tendency of the general population to pay attention to the Global Warming Issue. Particularly since the Australian contribution to greenhouse gasses is so tiny compared to, say, China's growing emissions. But the Greens still have the attention of the news media - just like in America. This may be one reason why political "performance art" gets more and more extreme while serious, fact-based discussions of issues go unnoticed.

Confucius and Clarity of Language

Brought forward from an old post:

Confucius said:

“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. 


Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”

The translation above makes me wonder how the end of a sentence is indicated in Chinese.  That's some first sentence.  We're really not used to long sentences these days.  I put in a paragraph separation just to make the quote easier to get through.

The piece from which this quote was taken makes some over-broad statements about government spending.   But it includes some really good points about how people have been misled about government money.  Click on the link at the bottom of the page for comments from readers which reveal some of the ways government involvement tends to make everything more expensive while sometimes making stuff seem "free".   David could tell many similar stories.  Money from government allows corrupt or astonishingly inefficient systems - public or private -  to survive much longer than they would if they had to earn their own money.

Dr. Helen has some interesting advice concerning how teachers can help their students think critically and clearly understand some of the ways propaganda works:

"  . . . in my opinion, it is not your job to decide the politics of the students in your class, it is your job to expose them to the critical thinking skills that will help them make informed decisions and back them up in a reasoned way. This is what is sorely lacking in our present educational system."

Did you know that there was a Propaganda Game ?  Some non-PC books for kids would also help provide some balance to the liberal mindset which filters down from our higher education system.

European Social Democrats could not change human nature

Victor Davis Hanson, currently touring beautiful Europe, pinpoints one area where the benevolent European wise men who thought they had engineered the "end of history" went wrong:

Vienna — Walk the beautiful streets in Munich, Strasbourg, and Vienna, and you can see why Europeans thought in the last decades that they had reached the end of history. There is not a soldier to be seen. Sidewalk cafes are jammed midweek with two-hour lunch-goers. Fashion, vacations, and sex dominate the ads and billboards.

Bikers, electric commuter trains, and tiny fuel-efficient cars zoom by in a green contrast to our gas-guzzling Tahoes and Yukons.

Naturally, there is a general sense of satisfied accomplishment among European social democrats. They believe that finally a quiet sameness across their continent has replaced two millennia of constant European warring and revolution. Now, everybody seems to get an apartment, a small car, a state job, a good pension and peace — and in exchange, all voice comfortable, center-left consensus politics.

But beneath the genteel European Union veneer, few remember that human nature remains constant and does not give even nice Europeans a pass from its harsh laws. . .

. . .  human-driven history is now roaring back with a fury in Europe. . .

. . . Only one question remains: At a time when Europe is discovering that its democratic socialism does not work, why in the world is the United States doing its best to copy it?

Read the whole thing. It's short. VDH has written recent books on the close similarities between current events and events which happened in ancient history.  Plus a novel.  It will be published by a big-time publisher.

A podcast or computer broadcast of the excellent interview with VDH which I recommended here can be found here (second item - choose to listen or podcast). He's our own local (well, regional) celebrity - recently Grand Marshall of a celebration in Kingsburg.

Take some time to listen. You can keep the broadcast on in the background while you work on your computer.  He speaks in an exceptionally clear and straightforward manner.  You will probably understand the world better as a result of the time you invest.  Particularly if you live in California.  Whether or not you agree with what he says.

Example:  Has it occurred to you that the United States (due to its huge, fast-growing debt to China) is now placing itself in the position of begging an emerging, totalitarian third-world nation for healthcare funding?