Archive

Archive for July, 2010

Death Highly Exaggerated

July 27th, 2010 No comments

link Europe’s prospects brighten as U.S. fades | Reuters.

I guess anything’s possible.  But these kinds of forecasts have been around for a while and somehow, never come to fruition.  It’s very fashionable these days to forecast the demise of America with the associated parallels to the Roman Empire, yada yada yada.  While this particular author may point to short term statistics that purport to show signs of growth in European economies, given the big picture political background, it’s unlikely to be more than a blip in the longer term declining picture.  In an article for The Wall Street Journal a few weeks back, Bret Stephens ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704057604575080602346820226.html )  articulated the fundamental structural flaw with the European way of doing things:

“…All European economic policies are the cultural derivatives of one dominant, nearly totalitarian statist ideology: the state is good, the market is bad,” says French economist Guy Sorman. The free market, he adds, is “perceived as fundamentally American, while statism is the ultimate form of patriotism…”

as well,

“…Then there is the media. Last week, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who leads the country’s market-friendly Free Democrats, took to the pages of Die Welt to lament that Germany’s working poor make less than welfare recipients. “For too long,” he wrote, “we have perfected in Germany the redistribution [of wealth], forgetting where prosperity comes from. For his banal observations, Mr. Westerwelle was roundly accused of “[defaming] millions of welfare recipients” and urged to apologize to them. It takes a remarkably stultified intellectual climate for an op-ed to spark this kind of brouhaha: It is the empire of the Emperor’s New Clothes, adapted to the 21st century welfare state…”

With this mindset entrenched in most European cultures and governments, it is only a matter of time before the events in Greece find their way to the northern neighbors.  Once you have granted a set of entitlements to people, it is very hard to take them back.  Socialist leaning parties will maintain their grip on government because the masses who think they will benefit from wealth spreading will keep them in power.  While it may sound civilized for Europeans to routinely take anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks holiday a year, the fact is, someone pays for this.  Mostly, this will be manifest by higher prices, higher taxes and decreased productivity.  Try to sell this notion to the Chinese or Indians.  Canada is well on it’s way to emulating the European model as most government jobs entitle workers 3 to 4 weeks paid holidays a year.  If you happen to belong to a union, even better. 

Americans have historically operated on a different mindset, that is, the notion of working hard to get ahead.  This fundamental notion is the pillar of what makes America, America and created the whole  image of American exceptionalism.   Of course, at this time, there is strong movement to change this mindset.  The entitlement clamor is loud and alarmingly influential.  The siren song of getting something for nothing is an irresistible lure.  Like a powerful engine with cylinder leaks, the American economy is hampered by drains on productivity rather than aided by contributions to it.  The success or failure of this movement may in fact determine whether the U.S. can continue to be the world’s economic engine. 

 It may be noted that historians have opined that Rome was destroyed by rot from within, not from external forces.  It’s hard to disagree with this premise as it applies to the U.S., given what’s happened over the past few years.  The most important thing Americans can do to reverse their demise is to excise  the rot.  As can be seen in Europe, once rot sets in, it’s pervasive.  As if Americans want to be cheese eating surrender monkeys who think soccer is interesting.

Maybe He Was Misquoted

July 22nd, 2010 No comments

link Proof of the Liberal Medias Double Standard – Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld – FOXNews.com.

Looking at the top headlines in Google News today, we see:

 
Some timely articles; some on going stories and of course the usual pop fluff.  What you don’t see is the story that should be at the top of every news list.  According to Tucker Carlson, there is smoking gun evidence that there  have been conspirational discussions among many in the left leaning media on how to silence Fox News.  Again, for those who have lives and don’t pay attention to these things, the viewership of the formerly dominant network news as well as readership of once venerable papers such as the NY Times has gone into freefall.  The Fox news organization on the other hand, has surged past all networks in their viewership and ratings.
 
If you were running a business and the competition was eating your lunch, wouldn’t you try to at least figure out what they were doing rather than digging deeper into your own failed business model?  In this case, the failed business model that the ‘mainstream’ media is pushing is bias and distortion.  It’s one thing to have foamy mouthed commentators like Oberman, Matthews and Maddow express ludicrous opinions because in fairness, you have equally passionate people on the right, though perhaps not so crazed in delivery.
 
It’s quite another to have ‘serious ‘ news people like Couric, Lauer, etc pretend to report news stories with the predictible and laughable spin in the guise of informing the American public.  Unless you happen to be a regular observer of the news, you would not realize that what is fed to you was not news, it was filtered opinion.  Now comes evidence from Carlson that in fact there was a complicit effort to stifle the reporting of Fox News because they did not conform to the progressive agenda that the rest of the media did.
 
I can’t speak for most people, but if I hear a news story about a child being struck by a car at an intersection, I don’t need to hear that the accident was really caused by George Bush cutting funding to the school lunch program, therefore causing the child to move slower than he normally would have if he had access to a hot lunch.  Do people really believe that George didn’t respond to Katrina’s wake quickly enough and therefore the city flooded?  Or that he was racist in doing so since the majority of residents are black? Maybe he’s not a fan of jazz.  If this same reporting mentality were applied to sports reporting, then the main story in golf over the past year would be that white golfers have been conspiring to keep Tiger Woods from winning any tournaments.  
 
As is now the case, people are finding that there’s no point reading or listening the mainstream media.  It’s ironic and comical that the once disparged National Enquirer has broken the most dramatic news stories over the past few years, including revelations on John Edwards and now Al, ‘the poodle’ Gore, stories that news media are supposed to break.  Let’s not forget Acorn.  That story was broken by a couple of kids. 
 
That’s not to say that ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS should stop what they’re doing.  They can do what they want as long as the public doesn’t have to pay for it.  Just don’t call it news.