Tag Archives: New York Times

THE NEW YORK TIMES, MSNBC, DAN RATHER, KEITH OLBERMANN AND THE LOT

Posted on May 30, 2012 | 2 Comments

It is easy for conservatives to fall into a gloom and doom trap.  Patriotism, Christianity and even capitalism are openly and widely ridiculed and rebuked.  We see nations in Europe falling into insolvency brought on by unsustainable spending rates with the United States following suit.  We are a democracy and have chosen a man to lead us who doesn’t believe in us.  Mom, apple pie and the flag are no longer sacrosanct.

Are we really doomed?  Is decline inevitable?  Is the light shining on a hill going out?  Sometimes the signs of hope lie in the signs of failure.

Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations argued that the collective wisdom of large masses of people over time far surpasses the intelligence of a few elites, no matter how astute the few may be.  In a free market society markets follow the collected wisdom of the people.  You buy the car you think is best.  You buy the clothes you like.  You shop at the stores that carry the goods you need at prices that represent fair value to you.  Those who offer real value succeed, those who don’t, fail.

It is no different with the media.  Whether it is time or money you are spending, you spend it where there is value.  The New York Times is failing fast.  The Times is selling assets left and right just to stay afloat.  The newspaper industry is a troubled one but given its history and prestige the Times should not be in the trouble it is.  But their content has become shoddy and biased beyond all reason.  John Hinderaker at the Power Line blog says “The Times is the newspaper equivalent of MSNBC.”  I have had the same thought myself.  MSNBC has but a fraction of the audience of FOX.  The people are free to choose.  As long as a majority see little value in the tripe put out by outlets selling the ideology of the uncompromising left, their failure is a sign of hope.

But I don’t wish them failure.  I wish them wisdom.

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Posted in Political philosophy

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SLIPPING THE MONEY IN

Posted on April 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

The New York Times published this headline on April 15th.

White House Opens Door to Big Donors, and Lobbyists Slip In

Lobbyists “Slip In”?  It takes a certain mindset to write a headline like that.  Is the New York Times saying the Obama administration is so incompetent they can’t stop people from giving them money?  Couldn’t be!  Perhaps then, the point is that the lobbyists are so slick they know how to get money into the President’s campaign coffers without the President knowing it; the money just slipped in.  How do you explain currying favor when the favorer does not know by whom he has been curried?

The best conclusion is that the authors at the Times actually believe the tripe they write – Democrats don’t accept money from lobbyists, at least not knowingly.  Democrats don’t cater to special interests either – nuts!  Is there nothing special about the interests of teachers, truck drivers and automotive workers who are represented by their unions?  Goldman Sachs contributed more to Democratic than to Republican campaigns in 2008.  Do the authors at New York Times not include Wall Street bankers in their list of special interests?  Of course they do.

It would be a good thing if some common sense slipped in at the New York Times.

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Posted in Opinion

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THE NEW YORK TIMES ON DAVOS

Posted on January 25, 2012 | 2 Comments

The World Economic Forum is once again in cession in the posh town of Davos, Switzerland.  Today’s New York Times covers the conference with a story under the headline At Davos, a Big Issue Is the Have-Lots vs. the Have-Not.  The headline is right out of Alinsky, including the hyphens.

Believe it or not, I did not come here today to find fault with the New York Times.  I came to talk about bias; it’s just that taking examples from the Times was the easy way out.  Bias is the most insidious bias when it is subtle.  It is also very effective because from any given source it is usually incessant. Let’s examine this sentence taken from the Davos article.

“[The income gap now is] debated openly in areas where the primacy of laissez-faire capitalism used to be taken for granted and where talk of inequality used to be derided as class warfare.”  (emphasis mine)

“Laissez-faire” is from the French where it means ‘let it happen’.  In economics it has come to mean that level of market freedom  which is free-wheeling, devoid of any meaningful regulation, a little bit reckless.  Later in the same sentence we read ‘used to be derided as class warfare’.  Removing the subtleties what we get are the notions that free-wheeling unregulated markets with minimal regulation are  the essence (primacy) of capitalism and that there is general agreement that pitting the poor against the rich is not an act of class warfare (used to deride).  Of course, there is no such agreement.

And what about that word ‘inequality’ in there.  In the context of the broad subject at hand it carries with it the connotation of unfairness.

The phrasing of a sentence in that manner comes easily to a liberally minded journalist and he would disclaim any bias in it.  But you saw it.  Or did you?  I told you it was subtle.

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Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy

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IF NEWT GETS THE NOD, THERE WILL BE WAR

Posted on January 20, 2012 | 2 Comments

From the New York Times

Gingrich Jousts With Rivals Ahead of Vote

By JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY

Newt Gingrich turned aside questions about his marital history at the final Republican debate before the South Carolina primary, and then took on Mitt Romney

Turned aside ??  Good heavens and mercy me, Gingrich did not turn it aside; he threw it back in their face!  “and then he took on Romney”? No, New York Times, not quite.  And then he took on the press.  

Gingrich’s remarks were a virtual declaration of war on the media. When Ronald Reagan knocked the press he was polite.  Mild mannered George W. Bush didn’t knock the press.  You might say their styles were appeasement.  Newt’s style is war.

It was not MSNBC that he was attacking.  That network came fully out of the closet some time ago.  It was ABC and all the other left “leaning” media that some people, believe it or not, still think report the news objectively.  Gingrich has given a lot of people reason to pause and think. And that’s a good thing.

Click for video.

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Posted in News, Opinion

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THEY STILL DON’T GET IT

Posted on January 13, 2012 | 1 Comment

David Brooks, writing for the New York Times laments, Where Are the Liberals?  “This should be the golden age of liberalism” he says.  And yet, declared conservatives outnumber declared liberals by a factor of two to one.  “How can that be?” he asks.

“The Republican Party is unpopular and sometimes embarrassing” says Brooks, inferring that conservatives and the Republican Party are one and the same.  The author is perplexed as to why the foibles of the Republican Party don’t lead more conservatives to join the liberal camp.  One has to wonder what he thinks the Tea Party is all about.

Brook’s reasoning is also myopic.  The relative popularity of the two philosophies was put to a test in the 2010 elections.  The rest of us know who won that popularity contest.  And embarrassment?  What could be more embarrassing than having to grant waivers to more than 1,200 companies and over 4 million employees to excuse them from compliance with a law that was so poorly constructed there was little other choice?  The answer is granting waivers to a law your own Party rammed through Congress against the will of the people; that’s what could be more embarrassing!

“Over the past 40 years, liberalism has been astonishingly incapable at expanding its market share.” 

Now I ask what is astonishing about the fact that something that doesn’t work, doesn’t sell very well?  Mr. Brooks thinks he has the answer.

The most important explanation is what you might call the Instrument Problem.  Americans may agree with liberal diagnoses, but they don’t trust the instrument the Democrats use to solve problems.  They don’t trust the federal government.

You can bet your belly button they don’t!  And it is not just the instrument they don’t trust; they don’t trust the players either.  Holders of the liberal point of view put their faith and trust in the wisdom, integrity and leadership of an elite few, oblivious of the fallibility of man.  When it fails they blame the few.  Even after it became obvious that the Soviet Union was failing the Russian people, the left didn’t find communism to be at fault.  The problem was simply that Stalin was the wrong man for the job.

Finding a better instrument to play the liberal theme isn’t the answer to the problem.  The liberal theme itself is the problem.

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Posted in Political philosophy, Political polemics

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PORTRAITS OF AMERICA

Posted on December 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

The New York Times featured a front page story in last Sunday’s edition entitled The American Archipelago, an obvious take-off on the Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  Solzhenitsyn’s book is the depressingly accurate first hand story of life and death in the vast system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union where millions died at the hands of Josef Stalin.  The Times author compares our current prison system and finds parallels with the atrocities of a heartless totalitarian dictator like Josef Stalin.

Please note this is a front page story in the leading newspaper in all of America and read around the world.  To a citizen in Europe for instance, the New York Times is the most knowledgeable and the most reliable authority on life as it really is in the United States.  They may not trust our government but they do trust the New York Times.

“Keep America American” may not be a very catchy slogan, but who can condemn the idea of seeking to preserve the great American culture?  Chris Matthews did by characterizing the Mitt Romney slogan as call for return to the days of the Ku Klux Klan.  Matthews’ vision of the country of his birth must be similar to that of a certain Reverend who preached at a certain church in Chicago.

The New York Times equates our imprisonment of a few terrorists who plotted to kill us with Stalin’s policy of committing large numbers of his own people to death solely for the purpose of solidifying his own power.  Matthews’ message on MSNBC is that Americanism is best exemplified by a hooded mob of racist lynchers.  With reporting like this, it is no wonder that Fox News has found such success.

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Posted in Opinion, Political polemics

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PAUL KRUGMAN GETS ONE RIGHT

Posted on December 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

Depression and Democracy is the title of Krugman’s column in the New York Times today.  I know little about the Hungarian political party known as Fidesz, but beyond that, what Krugman wrote was dead right as far as it went.  Democracy is under threat.

…the gravity of European political developments isn’t widely understood.

First of all, the crisis of the euro is killing the European dream. The shared currency, which was supposed to bind nations together, has instead created an atmosphere of bitter acrimony.

…a Europe-wide recession now looks likely

Europeans [are] furious at what is perceived, fairly or unfairly (or actually a bit of both), as a heavy-handed exercise of German power.

Nobody familiar with Europe’s history can look at this resurgence of hostility without feeling a shiver.

The ecojournalist doesn’t hesitate to use the H word either.  Krugman never was known for his political correctness, if you will pardon the pun.

…ominous political trends shouldn’t be dismissed just because there’s no Hitler in sight.

Now we must delve into uncertain territory, what the author thinks but doesn’t say.  Just which movement on the current scene does he think a figure like H best represents?  Krugman limits his remarks in the article to political parties in Europe.  Speaking domestically, would it be the Occupy movement or the Tea Party?

Spokesfolks from the left see the problems; they just don’t see the causes so they come to the wrong conclusions about the solutions.  They are looking at the malaise through a window when they should be using a mirror.

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Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy

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SHAME ON THOSE GUYS!

Posted on September 30, 2011 | Leave a comment

A headline in yesterday’s New York Times reads:

“Companies Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a Profit”

It seems a company that is providing security services in Australia for detention camps housing illegal aliens there, is charging for their services.  Shame on those guys!

If those guys want to get to heaven they should follow the example of the New York Times.  The paper has generated an operating loss of $114,000,000 thus far for the current year.  Analysts predict this morality measure will continue to improve as the losses keep mounting through the end of the year.

(psst! step a little closer.  We don’t want to start a rumor but there is story going around that Sulzi the publisher and Janet his CEO are charging for their services too.  Their salaries are more than 3 million dollars apiece.  I don’t think it costs them that much to go to work.  Shame!  Don’t tell anybody I told you.)

Ahem!  The story goes on to say the services stink.  Could be.  I know I smell something.

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Posted in Satire

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DAVID BROOKS and THE LOST DECADE

Posted on September 27, 2011 | Leave a comment
David Brooks

Image via Wikipedia

Give the devil his due and the devil’s domain too.  When they’re right, they’re right.  David Brooks has an excellent Op Ed piece in today’s New York Times.  The title belies the content.  The article is better than its label.

Brooks points out that “Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary, is arguing that America and Europe are on the verge of a disastrous double-dip recession”.  Republicans and Democrats are stuck in their own one cure solutions.  Democrats say government needs to spend more to jump start the economy. They always say that.  Republicans say the government needs to tax less and get out of the way, and then the recovery will begin.  They always say that.

Brooks is more disposed to the idea of throwing out the bath water, throwing out the baby, throwing out the tub, throwing out the towels, the soap, the powder, the whole ball of wax.  Then he would start anew with a flat tax.  He doesn’t say it but he describes it.  Brooks would give the whole international banking and monetary system the Ron Paul treatment and start from scratch.  But he calls it the holistic approach.  Read it if you want to see David’s solutions.

[David, did I read you right?]

Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary, is arguing that America and Europe are on the verge of a disastrous double-dip recession

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Posted in Economy, Opinion, Political philosophy

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DAILY NEWS ENDORSES TURNER VS. WEPRIN

Posted on September 5, 2011 | 1 Comment
Official Portrait of President Ronald Reagan

Image via Wikipedia

The Daily News’ endorsement of Turner vs. Weprin is the equivalent of the New York Times endorsing Palin vs. Obama.  Bob Turner is the Republican running for the seat vacated by disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner.  David Weprin is the Democratic contender for that seat and should be a shoe-in in the solidly Democratic district.  Normally, a Republican would be doing well to get 25% of the vote.  Polls show Turner at 40%.

The point is not who will win this race; that will probably be Weprin.  The point is, it is indicative of the level of discontent felt by hard-core Democrats about the political leaders of their party.  The national implications are very significant.  Ronald Reagan was once a Democrat and later said “I didn’t leave the Party.  The Party left me.”  As the Democratic Party accelerates it’s leftward turn it is leaving more and more of its people behind and some of them are beginning to realize it.

Today is Labor Day.  May God bless the working man and woman.  They are the apple pie, motherhood and are the foundation of all that is good in America.  Whether they pound a hammer, push a pen, birth a baby or cart away the trash they are the heart and soul of this great nation.  They are exceptional; and yet the current Democratic Party leader is telling them there is no such thing.

Who said the Democratic Party is the working man’s party?  The Democrats did, that’s who.  Wrong again!

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Posted in Opinion

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