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Mighty Hiker

climber

Vancouver, B.C.

Jan 12, 2011 - 02:58pm PT

Any proposed solution to the budgetary difficulties of the national and state governments that doesn't involve some increased taxes (and reduced services) is by definition fantasy. Taxes in the US are still lower than in any other developed liberal democracy, apart from city-states. So if Illinois had the honesty and courage to raise taxes, good for them.

Ken M

Mountain climber

Los Angeles, Ca

Jan 12, 2011 - 03:00pm PT

Skip, simple question, since you chose to respond.

What does this mean:

PRAY FOR OBAMA: PSALM 109:8

What is it praying FOR?

the Fet

climber

Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La

Jan 12, 2011 - 03:10pm PT

I notice that as a good little Drone you left out the part about Obama.

He makes all those other guys look like paupers...

For, the record. I don't want any President spending like these guys do.

It is why "The only way to keep Government small ... is to keep Government
on a diet.

Like paupers? Look at Bush's increase. Then Obama added about 2% to Bush's last budget, and another 2% the following year. During the worse recession since the great depression he added a lot less than Bush did. But of course the reality of the situation isn't important when you have an ideolgical pre-conclusion.

I think government is getting too big, but it doesn't help when so many on the right of so full of crap you can't believe anything they say. We need a reasonable oppostion to democrats, but we end up with a bunch of lying fools.

the Fet

climber

Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La

Jan 12, 2011 - 03:15pm PT

skip did you just advocate lynching the president? Cause that is what it sounds like.

Nibs

Trad climber

Humboldt, CA

Jan 12, 2011 - 03:52pm PT

Jstan:
thoughtful and interesting posts; unfortunately the reasoning seems lost in the hysteria and need to be right no matter the facts. thanks for taking the time - most of the regular posters must not work for a living, or are financiers...I cannot keep up with the pace.

please continue with your thoughtful posts as:

We cannot give quarter to the outright fascists here on ST, they must be re-educated.

HighDesertDJ

Trad climber

Swimming in LEB tears.

Jan 12, 2011 - 04:19pm PT

Skipt said

When you look at his projections into the future, his numbers DWARF all other Presidents since Washington.

Guys if you:

1. Assume current stimulus spending levels continue indefinitely and
2. That we don't fix Social Security and
3. That we don't fix Medicare and
4. Pretend that the Preisdent spends the money and not Congress

Then holy crap it's just insane how much money hes's going to spend!!1!!!!11

JEleazarian

Trad climber

Fresno CA

Jan 12, 2011 - 04:25pm PT

Are you saying that we should be holding Congress responsible for spending and taxing HDDJ? Wouldn't that ruin everyone's colorful graphs?

John

bookworm

Social climber

Falls Church, VA

Jan 12, 2011 - 04:42pm PT

jhedge, what's your obsession with posters' names? if i say my name is john, what difference does that make? how would you know if i'm telling the truth? is there any more cowardly way to avoid addressing the evidence presented?

jhedge makes an assertion; somebody offers evidence that he's wrong; jhedge explains, "shut up"

"2 more election cycles and the repubs are irrelevant nationwide"

here are the facts:

1. gop won 23 governorships; 9 in states carried by barry in 2008

2. gop won 680 seats in state legislatures, gaining the majority in 14 new states (this does not include the 2 dozen or so dems who have since switched parties)

3. gop won control (both houses) in 26 states (including 15 governorships)

4. 2010 was a census year

5. 2011 is a redistricting year; state legislatures will decide new congressional district boundaries to be effective for the 2012 election

6. the 9 new gop governors in states carried by barry in 2008 also have implications for the electoral college

very few people actually realize what a devastating loss the dems suffered; winning the house is chump change compared to the avalanche in the state legislatures

bookworm

Social climber

Falls Church, VA

Jan 12, 2011 - 04:48pm PT

Big Lies and Little Ones
Paul Krugman's only example turns out to have been fraudulent.

By JAMES TARANTO

Yesterday we noted that Paul Krugman, the New York Times's star columnist, had offered only one example to bolster his claim that "eliminationist rhetoric" is "coming, overwhelmingly, from the right." To quote Krugman's Monday column:

It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be "armed and dangerous" without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

As we noted in yesterday's column, in October then-Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, mused about assassinating a fellow politician. Not only was he not ostracized; he was rewarded with a spot yesterday on the op-ed page of Krugman's newspaper.
[botwt011311] Associated Press

Rep. Bachmann, fraud victim.

But what about the Bachmann quote? We doubted whether these three words, presented without context, constituted "eliminationist rhetoric" as Krugman claimed they did. Our skepticism turned out to have been well founded.

In March 2009, the left-wing site ThinkProgress attempted to present Bachmann in an unfavorable light by using a longer version of this comment. Blogger Dave Evers nonetheless found the site guilty of "selective quoting" and made his case by presenting the quote in its full context. It's not terribly interesting but is important to commit to the record. Here is what Bachmann said (Evers tells us that the ellipses reflect pauses, not omitted text):

But you can get all the latest information on this event, this . . . a must-go-to event with this Chris Horner. People will learn . . . it will be fascinating. We met with Chris Horner last week, 20 members of Congress. It takes a lot to wow members of Congress after a while. This wowed them. And I am going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people--we the people--are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States and that's why I want everyone to come out and hear. So go to bachmann.house.gov and you can get all the information.

Now, if Krugman had said the words "armed and dangerous" were ill-chosen, we would have agreed. If he had said they were irresponsible, that would be a legitimate opinion, albeit one we would be inclined to discount as partisan.

But that is not what he said. Krugman, who recreationally burns politicians in effigy, described Bachmann's comment as "eliminationist rhetoric." That is flatly fraudulent.

If the broader claim--that the "rhetoric" of Republican politicians and the nonliberal media was to blame for last Saturday's act of mass murder--is true, why can't it be presented without false factual assertions? Krugman's little lie undermines the big lie he and his newspaper are attempting to purvey.

Krugman and his colleagues on the Times editorial board are not skilled enough to be effective liars. That is far from the worst thing you can say about newspapermen. But when did the people who run the New York Times forget that their job--their duty--is to tell the truth?

Newsweek's Political Obscenity
In the wake of the Tucson massacre, the indecent behavior of the formerly mainstream media has not been limited to the New York Times-led witch hunt against Republicans, conservatives and independent media voices. Equally appalling in its own way has been the rush by pundits to advise President Obama on how to make political hay out of the atrocity.

The worst example is a Monday article by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter titled "Can Obama Turn Tragedy Into Triumph?" This passage will live in infamy:

Conservatives like to argue that these are isolated incidents carried out by lunatics and therefore carry no big lessons (unless the perpetrator is Muslim, in which case it's terrorism); liberals view them as opportunities to address various social ills. Obama is in the latter category and should act accordingly. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Rahm Emanuel famously said in 2008. The same goes for a shooting spree that gravely wounds a beloved congresswoman.

To say that this is deeply cynical falls short of capturing what makes it so shocking. Dick Morris published a column Monday titled "There Are No Politics in Murder." Morris is right, of course, but his sanctimony grates on anyone who remembers that he did not practice what he now preaches. As we noted Monday, Morris was the mastermind of Bill Clinton's effort to capitalize politically on the Oklahoma City bombing.

But Morris is savvy enough to have some sense of decorum. He is trying to look like a decent man. Alter seems to be lacking in any sense of decency. What's more, that isn't even the creepiest passage from the Alter piece. Here is his conclusion:

Sad to say, if Giffords had died, she would have been mourned and soon the conversation would have moved on. But Giffords lives, thank God, which offers other possibilities. We won't know for weeks or months whether she can function in public. If she can, she will prove a powerful referee of the boundaries of public discourse--more influential, perhaps, than the president himself.

A woman is in the hospital, gravely wounded in a brutal attack, and Alter is happy she is alive because he has an idea of how to put her to use furthering a political agenda. "Thank God" she lived, he says, because he has the rest of her life planned out for her. This is such an obscenity that Newsweek should be delivered in a plain brown wrapper.

Rahm Emanuel, a man known for petty indecencies, was asked yesterday about Alter's gross one. FoxNews.com has the video of a stricken-looking Emanuel, now running for mayor of Chicago, delivering a well-earned refudiation of Alter: "First of all, what I said was: Never allow a good crisis to go to waste when it's an opportunity to do things that you had never considered or that you didn't think were possible. That's not intended for this moment, or [sic] does it apply to this moment."

For Rahm Emanuel, there are limits. Not so for Jonathan Alter--or, for that matter, for the editors at Newsweek who allowed these ghoulish sentiments to be published. This follows a pattern. Politicians of both parties and all ideological stripes have behaved far better than the liberal media in the aftermath of Saturday's horror. (There are a few exceptions, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik being the most glaring.) Liberal journalism is being consumed by a moral rot. We cannot say the same about liberalism itself.

President Obama is expected to make his first extended remarks on the subject as part of a memorial service tonight at the University of Arizona. This will probably be the most carefully scrutinized speech he has ever delivered. If he is seen to be trying to use this atrocity for political purposes, it will damage the country and his presidency.

It may be that the monstrous behavior of Obama's supposed supporters in the media has put him in a position where he has no choice but to behave decently, scrupulously avoiding the merest hint of political opportunism. Here's hoping.

bookworm

Social climber

Falls Church, VA

Jan 12, 2011 - 04:59pm PT

hey al, if i claim in writing that you are responsible for murder, that's blood libel; blood = murder; libel = accusation/defamation

Douglas Rhiner

Mountain climber

Truckee , CA

Jan 12, 2011 - 05:06pm PT

bookworm probably yells "FIRE!" in crowded theaters to get himself off.

HighDesertDJ

Trad climber

Swimming in LEB tears.

Jan 12, 2011 - 05:07pm PT

John said

Are you saying that we should be holding Congress responsible for spending and taxing HDDJ? Wouldn't that ruin everyone's colorful graphs?

No, I'm saying that Skipt doesn't understand the budget or our government in general. Presidents propose budgets like a kid going to mom to see if he can get an ice cream. Congress passes and appropriates them. If he's insisting that Obama will be the worst deficit spender in THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD then he's also insisting that his Dear Republican Majority (the one that was supposed to save us) will be the worst deficit spenders in the history of the world.

Mighty Hiker

climber

Vancouver, B.C.

Jan 12, 2011 - 05:08pm PT

Blood libel (also blood accusation) refers to a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, in European contexts almost always Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays. Historically, these claims have - alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration - been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel

As for the Palin claiming to have been blood-libelled, methinks she protesteth too much. And reveals her ignorance of history. Only she could self-righteously claim to be a victim of what happened in Tucson, instead of taking some responsibility for her lurid rhetoric.

HighDesertDJ

Trad climber

Swimming in LEB tears.

Jan 12, 2011 - 05:12pm PT

Palin is Jewish and Obama is literally Hitler.

Douglas Rhiner

Mountain climber

Truckee , CA

Jan 12, 2011 - 05:28pm PT

And you will never hold office, Jeff.

the Fet

climber

Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La

Jan 12, 2011 - 05:32pm PT

skippy wrote:

Skip, simple question, since you chose to respond.

What does this mean:

PRAY FOR OBAMA: PSALM 109:8

What is it praying FOR?

As I said in my response, your saying this was popular amongst people is way overblown.

But since you seem to be so worried about these matters maybe you can decipher the code going on with this statement:

Hog tie that f*#ker.

Hang him up from a tree.

Let children throw rocks small enough to leave a mark, but not big enough to kill, at him for a month.

Then dip him in hydrogen peroxide to avoid infection.

Then waterboard the son of a bitch.

I see why so many people on this site are disgusted by you.

Douglas Rhiner

Mountain climber

Truckee , CA

Jan 12, 2011 - 05:33pm PT

Skipt,

And you speak of AC threatening you?

WTF???!!!???

shut up and pull

climber

Jan 12, 2011 - 05:36pm PT

The left just does not get it. Screaming "youre a hater!!" or "youre a racist!", instead of responding with cogent argument, just doesnt work anymore. It is a tired boy-who-cried-wolf sort of thing. And the left reeeeeeally doesnt like the fact that people just don't care what they say anymore.

The Backlash
Peter Wehner - 01.12.2011 - 11:17 AM

Mark Halperin, co-author of a very good campaign book, Game Change, is usually a reasonable political reporter. But yesterday he made comments on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that were irresponsible and deeply (and unintentionally) revealing.

In discussing the political reaction to the Tucson massacre, Halperin said: “I just want to single out one thing. I don’t want to over-generalize. But I think the media and the politicians have behaved pretty well so far. The thing I’m most concerned about now is the anger on the right-wing commentariat. On Fox and George Will and other conservatives are in some cases justifiably upset at liberals. But they’re turning this right now, in the last 24 hours, back into the standard operating procedure of ‘all this is war and fodder for content’ rather than trying to bring the country together.”

“Wait a second, Mark,” Joe Scarborough responded. “I think they would say that you have that backwards, that a shooting was turned into fodder to attack conservatives.”

“And I’ve already made that criticism as well,” Halperin said. “They’re right. But rather than seizing on it and turning the other cheek, they’re back at their war stations. And that’s not going to help us.”

Let’s examine Halperin’s arguments in turn.

What’s not going to “bring the country together” is a grotesque effort by some liberals to implicate conservatives in the shooting death of six innocent people. And perhaps if the network Mr. Halperin appears on (MSNBC) and the magazine he writes for (Time) had not allowed, and in some cases advanced, that narrative, conservatives would not have to go “back to their war stations.” (For more, see this.)

Mr. Halperin concedes that conservatives are right in believing that the Tucson shooting was turned into fodder against conservatives. Yet he seems quite untroubled by it all. In fact, he counsels conservatives to “turn the other cheek.” Now isn’t that touching? Conservatives have been on the receiving end of a remarkable slander campaign — and Halperin is most upset that they are responding to it. It’s not advancing the civilized public discourse conversation that Halperin says he wants to have. What he doesn’t seem to grasp — and it really isn’t all that hard to grasp — is that when the left attempts to make conservatives moral accessories to a massacre, it isn’t likely to drain our political dialogue of anger. And the blame for this doesn’t rest with those who are on the receiving end of the slander.

What I think we’re seeing in Halperin’s reaction is upset that the rules that once applied in journalism no longer do.

Once upon a time, a libel by liberals, amplified by the press, would have worked. The narrative would have been locked into place. Conservatives could complain about it here and there, but it wouldn’t really matter much (think Reed Irvine). The rise of the “new media,” which is not really so new anymore, has changed all that.

Today there are a variety of outlets — tweets, blogs, websites, conservative talk radio, and cable news, as well as columnists and even a few editorial pages — that are quite able and willing to push back, to deconstruct bad arguments, to point out factual errors, and to change the trajectory of a story.

We’ve seen that with the Tucson massacre. During the first 24 hours, the left, aided by many in the “mainstream media,” argued that the killings were fostered by a political (read: conservative) climate of hate. That was a completely unjustified and bigoted assumption; and in every hour since then, it has been exposed as such. We are now seeing a public backlash against that calumny. It will grow with time.

The quasi-media monopoly was broken some time ago. A relatively few journalists with a strikingly similar ideological disposition are no longer able to dictate the story lines they want. In this case, they desperately wanted to use the Tucson massacre as a way to indict conservatives for their supposed part in creating a “climate of hate.” But this effort is backfiring. The response from conservatives (along with a few reporters and left-leaning commentators) has been swift, comprehensive, sustained, and effective. Liberal-minded journalists see that and are rattled by it. In response, they are making silly arguments that, on reflection, they probably wish they hadn’t made. But those arguments are themselves instructive. Many journalists are lamenting the loss of a world that no longer exists.

Liberals wanted to use the Tucson massacre to smear conservatives. In the end, it will further discredit them and journalism itself. We are seeing, in a somewhat different form, the Dan Rather/National Guard story all over again. And we know how that turned out.

HighDesertDJ

Trad climber

Swimming in LEB tears.

Jan 12, 2011 - 05:38pm PT

Fatty said

the more we hear, it's seems that Palin is a victim.

Yes, it's a role that she's desperately been trying to play ever since she came out swinging at the '08 convention. I don't think you'll stop hearing about Palin being the victim for the rest of the time that people speak of Palin.