Stephanie Cutter & Alleged NYT anti-Obama bias!!!

James Taranto in the WSJ scorches Ms. Cutter's comely tush with a great column demonstrating that when it comes to Libtard chutzpah, there is nothing remotely like it elsewhere in the known universe:

It's not the first time the New York Times has been accused of bias, but it may be the funniest. Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner reports that the charge was leveled this morning by the Obama campaign. MSNBC host Chuck Todd asked deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter to comment on the latest Times/CBS News poll, and she said: "The methodology was significantly biased." She then "said that she didn't want to bore the viewers with talk of methodology, but repeated that she believed the poll was flawed." Pressed by Todd, she said: "It's a biased sample, so they re-biased the same sample." Glad she cleared that up. The Times's headline finding was that an overwhelming majority of respondents, 67%, think the president backed same-sex marriage last week "mostly for political reasons," while only 24% think he did it "mostly because he thinks it is right." This column agrees with the 24% more than the 67%, but in any case Obama has managed a neat trick: He has managed to look like a cynical opportunist while taking an unpopular position.

In any sane organization, Cutter would be out the door, being told not to let it hit her on her comely tush as she leaves. But this is politics down the rabbit hole, in Malice in Wonderland's Obamarama world.

One reason to think this Times poll may be more unbiased than usual is its findings on the substantive question of same-sex marriage:

About 4 in 10, or 38 percent, of Americans support same-sex marriage, while 24 percent favor civil unions short of formal marriage. Thirty-three percent oppose any form of legal recognition. When civil unions are eliminated as an option, opposition to same-sex marriage rises to 51 percent, compared with 42 percent support.

That makes the Times/CBS poll an outlier among polls, but puts it in line with the results of actual voting. Every state where same-sex marriage has been on the ballot, it has lost--usually by considerably larger margins, but mostly in socially conservative states. Forty percent support and majority opposition seems in the right ball park.

This doesn't sit with the POV of the hard-left Marxist pervs who are the useful idiots of the LGBT mafia, whose ability to raise money & donate same to Obungler derives from their lack of a wife & kids to support.

The Times/CBS poll of registered voters (not likely ones) found Mitt Romney leading Obama, 46% to 43%. A curious finding is that over the past month, the "gender" gap seems to have vanished. When the same respondents were interviewed in April, men favored Romney 49% to 43%, while women favored Obama 49% to 43%. In May both sexes favored Romney, the gents by 45% to 42% and the ladies by 46% to 44%. Independents favored Romney by one point in April and seven in May.

But wait, the one-man posse from the Times, a so-called "conservative" columnist named David Brooks, who is a walking talking writing oxymoron of a sport of nature, rides to the rescue of the crime syndicate the Obama administration is turning out to be.

If the Obama campaign is mad at the Times, maybe David Brooks can make it up to them. In a column today, Brooks marvels that Obama is "even close" in the polls: "If you look at the fundamentals, the president should be getting crushed right now." The economy stinks, the country is far more conservative than Obama, his major policies are unpopular, and he is losing ground among independents, Catholics, young voters and Hispanics. But this is an Obama-flattering column. Brooks rates the president as only "a slight underdog," and "most of the cause is personal. . . . Obama has displayed a kind of ESPN masculinity: postfeminist in his values, but also thoroughly traditional in style. . . . He has defined a version of manliness that is postboomer in policy but preboomer in manners and reticence." We're not exactly sure what a "version of manliness" that is "postfeminist" might mean, but we suspect it's similar to what the Washington Post's Dana Milbank has in mind when he calls Obama "the first female president."

Yes, and the geek from Kenya, Indonesia, Punahoe High, and Occidental U. is getting worse all the time.

When Stephanie Cutter accuses the Times of bias because its poll delivers some hard truths, one assumes it is because the campaign is accustomed to media flattery of the sort that Brooks and National Journal are dishing out. It seems to us that flattery is actually running counter to Obama's goal of being re-elected, because it masks his weaknesses. True, he had fawning media coverage in 2008 and won the election. But to think the former caused the latter is a classic example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Similarly, John Podhoretz of the New York Post is astonished that re-election effort has stumbled so badly, "given how astonishingly competent the Obama 2008 campaign was." But was the '08 campaign really all that competent? Or was it successful because he was lucky enough to have incompetent opponents?

McCain was a stone-cold dolt and Palin's know-how was buried by feminizes like perky Katie & other hellhound females, plus an ABC anchor long disappeared from public view. But Romney has know-how, and despite the slanders and lies of the WaPo re his high school pranks 47 years ago, Mitt will be POTUS 45 unless the mad men media & their Amazon reserves finally get their guttersnipe game into the happy horseshit they achieved in 2008.

Brit Hume Rips Silly WaPo article about Romney's High School Prank

Jeff Poor on the Daily Caller has this to say about Brit Hume's observations on the silly article on Romney:

What were the editors and reporters of The Washington Post thinking? That is the question Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume has for the national capital’s newspaper after it ran a story last week about former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s high school years. The story by Jason Horowitz has been roundly criticized for its timing and sourcing. But, according to Hume, that’s not where the problem lies. Hume explained that the story lacks relevance to Romney’s current role as a national figure. “My thought about that was, if this had been connected — I mean, look, this was not a prank,” he said. “This was hazing, and it was mean. There’s no doubt, and I don’t have real doubt about the basic truth of the story. The problem with the story, dating from high school, was … the utter failure of the Post to connect it to anything else in Romney’s life and career. … There was nothing. This thing, at almost book length, with an enormous splash on the front page, was all about one incident and [was] unconnected — indeed, I would say even disconnected — from anything else we know.” Hume explained how the Post can manipulate and play up a particular story, and he called into question the paper’s news judgment and handling of the piece. “So, the point is, I think it was much ado about not very much,” Hume said. “You have to wonder, what is an editor of a newspaper thinking? You know, editors who edit news pages do in a certain way express editorial opinion by the way they play the story, where they play it and at what length. This obviously struck the editors of The Washington Post and the reporters who work on this story as a big deal. And, you have to wonder what kind of news judgment these people have if they really think that. … The way it was handled [was] ridiculous.”

Ridiculous and a brutal smear job, and inaccurate to boot. Five anonymous sources and one Stu White who had forgotten the incident until the intrepid and dishonest WaPo reporter reminded him and neglected to mention this in the meretricious tripe the guttersnipe reporter finally spewed onto the tabloid Post's pages.

Will Germany Cave in to a Crumbling Europe?

Kanzler Merkel knows socialism and its nasty totalitarian tendencies from growing up in the oxymoronic German Democratic Republic, of unhappy memory. So now she's got to face a France which very narrowly tossed out President Sarkozy & installed M. Hollande in his place. Plus a refractory Greece totally out of control. Here's the FT take on the mess in the Eurozone:

Luis de Guindos had one last clandestine mission before unveiling his plan to the public and jittery financial markets. The Spanish finance minister had just won a furious backroom battle to oust Rodrigo Rato, a favourite son of his ruling centre-right Popular party, from the helm of Bankia and nationalised the faltering year-old assemblage of savings banks that had collapsed after betting wrongly on the country’s housing bubble. But the most critical stage of his still-young tenure was facing him on Friday. He needed to convince the world that his government finally had a scheme to shore up its sinking banking sector, which bond traders were betting would force Madrid to seek EU aid, making it the fourth in a rogue’s gallery of eurozone governments to succumb to foreign management. Before he could convince the markets, however, he had to convince the people who ran Europe. First on his list was Olli Rehn, the ruddy-faced EU economic and monetary affairs commissioner. But the increasingly powerful Finn was not in Brussels, having flown off to meet Mario Monti, the Italian prime minister. A compromise was agreed: Mr De Guindos would fly under cover of night to Milan on Wednesday, away from the prying press corps in Madrid and Brussels. Over a late dinner in the Italian financial capital, Mr De Guindos laid out his plan: he would force Spanish banks to raise another €30bn in cash to offset expected losses on their property portfolio, taking total “provisions” to nearly €120bn. The next morning, he flew surreptitiously to Frankfurt, where he made the same presentation to Mario Draghi, the courtly Roman who heads the European Central Bank. The stage was set. Back in Madrid, Mr De Guindos announced his plan, and the financial markets sputtered. Borrowing costs on benchmark 10-year Spanish bonds edged back above 6 per cent, and Spanish stocks continued to fall; the Ibex 35 index is now at levels not seen since 2003. The covert transcontinental journey and Friday’s dramatic announcement capped a week that sent shockwaves through an already unstable eurozone, reviving fears that the crisis leaders believed had been tamed just two months ago was again threatening to rock the global economy. Nicolas Sarkozy, co-author of much of the single currency’s rescue plan, became only the second French president to be ousted after a single term. In Italy, populist comic Beppe Grillo stunned the political establishment by taking more than 10 per cent in some regional elections. The Bundesbank and political leaders in Berlin, amid mounting anti-German sentiment in the eurozone, conceded what was once unthinkable, allowing Europe’s biggest economy to risk inflation in order to pull the rest of the contracting continent back from the brink. Most consequentially, there was the election that could challenge the very existence of the 17-member single currency and the future of the European project: the collapse of Greece’s post-junta political order in Sunday’s national elections – and with it the elite consensus that the land that gave the world democracy would remain at the heart of Europe. France rumbles By law, the exit polls that inform the French public of their next president were not to be released until 8pm on Sunday night, but two hours earlier they began circulating in political and media circles. They showed that François Hollande, once likened to a soft pudding because of a perceived lack of convictions, had eked out a surprisingly slim victory over Mr Sarkozy. Those with Mr Hollande that night said he received word of his win at about 6.30pm. Rather than jubilation, he responded simply: “C’est bien.” Indeed, in contrast to the triumphant crowds in Paris, where revellers waved red roses as they hung from lampposts around the Bastille monument, symbol of the French Revolution, the mood in Mr Hollande’s rural political base of Tulle in central France, was subdued. When a giant screen in the town square finally flashed up the official result at 8pm, it promptly started to pour with rain. “That’s not a good sign,” said an older member of the crowd. The president-elect had reason to be reserved. Alongside intemperate weather and a narrower-than-expected victory, he had just been handed a country that had seen its credit rating downgraded, its standing next to its German partner in Europe questioned and its economy sputtering. Taking the stage in Tulle, he allowed himself the briefest of dances with his partner, Valérie Trierweiler, as an accordion played Edith Piaf’s “La Vie En Rose”. But his message, broadcast to audiences around the world, was stark: the challenges ahead would be “numerous and heavy”. Perhaps his earnestness was an attempt by a man who had never held government office to look presidential. Or perhaps it was because he was aware of the electoral earthquake taking place on the other side of the continent, presenting an immediate challenge to him and the German chancellor he had publicly antagonised during his campaign. Greece crumbles At the previous Greek general election, in 2009, the two parties that have dominated politics since the end of military dictatorship in 1974 – the centre-left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) and the centre-right New Democracy – received a combined 77 per cent of the vote. If leaders of Pasok, winner of the last election, had any doubt things would be different this time, they were banished on the Friday before election day at a closing campaign rally in Syntagma Square, central Athens. Three years ago, nearly 100,000 supporters packed the plaza nestling below the Acropolis; this time 3,000 at most turned up. “From that point on, we started bracing for a difficult outcome,” says one aide to Evangelos Venizelos, the burly Pasok leader. The party that would really have something to cheer about on Sunday was Syriza, a radical left grouping that vaulted ahead of Pasok to become the second biggest party in parliament. “They played hardball on the euro, we took a responsible line. They won,” says the aide. The seat of power had suddenly moved to an unlikely address: Koumoundouro Square in a rundown part of Athens where on Wednesday afternoon, vagrants were sheltering from the sun under bushes. Opposite was the headquarters of Synaspismos, the largest party in the Syriza coalition. Inside cramped, smoky offices, campaign officials were scrambling to stay atop the wave they had unleashed. Their boss, Alexis Tsipras, a 37-year-old career politician, was supposed to be negotiating with Pasok and New Democracy, but he had publicly spurned them. Instead he was courting a caretakers’ union, trying to transform his strong showing into a broad-based social movement. One gloating aide referred to “the two ex-big parties” Mr Tsipras had skipped out on. “They’re not big any more.” But not everyone was in celebratory mood. “The country is sinking,” Nikos Sofianos, secretary-general of the Athens chamber of commerce, said between persistent calls on his mobile phone. He said Syriza’s rise would eventually force Athens to quit the euro. Officials in Brussels and Berlin were preparing for a similar outcome, and began contemplating it openly. Contingency plans for a Greek exit that were made last year – when George Papandreou, then prime minister, threatened a referendum on euro membership – were being dusted off. “In a normal country, the political dynamic is those who are more responsible start getting to together and working things out,” said one senior EU official. “Whether that will work in Greece, I can’t tell.” The recriminations in Greece were almost immediate. After a token effort to form a government, Antonis Samaras, the New Democracy chief whose party came in first albeit with a stunningly low 18.9 per cent, returned his mandate to give Mr Tsipras a shot. The Syriza leader enjoyed two days in the spotlight before conceding his own failure to craft a governing majority. Then it was the turn of Mr Venizelos to attempt to form a new government. And there was a flickering hope: the small Democratic Left party, headed by a Pasok defector, signalled a willingness to join Mr Venizelos and New Democracy in a coalition, giving them an additional 19 sets, more than enough for a majority. The odds remained long, however, and new elections seemed likely for mid-June. Berlin scrambles... ©AFP On Monday, following regional elections, Berlin woke up to the traditional morning-after party press conferences. But the question at the top of everyone’s mind was not about Schleswig-Holstein. Overnight the ground had shifted – dramatically. Senior German officials had been prepared for the end of “Merkozy”, the awkward partnership between Chancellor Angela Merkel and the irascible Mr Sarkozy. They had already begun talking to Mr Hollande’s advisers, seeking out terms on which the new French president would accept Ms Merkel’s prized “fiscal compact” of eurozone budget strictures in return for some kind of annexe on growth. But the outcome in Greece caught them by surprise. Publicly, Berlin held the line. Ms Merkel struck her “Iron Chancellor” pose. Most telling to some EU leaders were remarks from Jörg Asmussen, the German member of the ECB board of governors and widely viewed as the most pragmatic and level-headed of the country’s occasionally doctrinaire economic class. “Greece must be clear that there is no alternative to the programme if it wants to remain a member of the eurozone,” he said in an interview with Handelsblatt, the German business newspaper. But behind the scenes, there was a scramble. Standing in the Bundestag, an agitated official from Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union pointed to the chancellery, a stone’s throw away. “They’re trying to do everything to make the Greeks see sense,” said the official. “Publicly, privately, they’re imploring the Greeks to recognise that giving up on the [bailout] programme now would be a sort of Hiroshima for Athens.” The fear was what it has always been: any whiff that Greece was serious about leaving the single currency would lead to a run on its banks, emigration and the risk that depositors in other peripheral countries would think twice about keeping their euros in Portuguese, Spanish and Italian banks. It was a point Berlin was trying to get across to Mr Hollande. “We’re hoping he’ll understand that a Greek exit from the eurozone will also hit France,” the official said. “I mean, it’ll be French banks that get hit, too ... We really hope that message is sinking in.” The concern had become so intense that some who talked to German officials said that, after a June election in Greece, Berlin might be willing to give a credible coalition wiggle room to keep the currency union together. “If you have a different approach, I’m sure ministers would be willing to listen, as well as the IMF,” said one senior official from one of Germany’s eurozone allies. “I wouldn’t say every comma is unchangeable ... but this could be on the outer margins.” ... and finally softens It was not only Ms Merkel’s Greek strategy under siege, however. Having been the champion of an austerity-led recovery plan for the single currency, the Chancellor was suddenly becoming isolated elsewhere. On Tuesday José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president who had long been bitter about being ignored by Berlin, touted Brussels’ growth agenda. His aides insisted they had been pushing for the measures being promoted by Mr Hollande long before he championed them. Similarly, at a Wednesday gathering of European grandees in Florence’s magnificent Palazzo Vecchio, Mr Monti – who entered office with subtle jabs at the Berlin austerity consensus – relished the chance to “gain German minds, and even more difficult German hearts, not to mention German pockets” for a more vigorous growth strategy in Europe. With three of the eurozone’s most important capitals – Rome, Brussels and Paris – in hostile hands, Berlin began to shift. When French polls closed, a hush came from the chancellor’s office. “No comment before tomorrow,” said Ms Merkel’s spokesman. He would not even confirm her calls to congratulate Mr Hollande and commiserate with Mr Sarkozy. But within days, even some in the mighty finance ministry, keeper of fiscal rectitude, began talking of jointly guaranteed “project bonds” and more use of the European Investment Bank to promote growth. Such things were anathema only six months ago. The most critical signal had come from Wolfgang Schäuble, finance minister and disciplinarian. Even before the ballots in France and Greece had been counted, he had dared to suggest Germany could increase wages faster than its eurozone partners. The signal was clear: it was time for Germany to do more for European growth.

Joe Bastardi Shows ACCURATE temp readings for last three years

REAL SCIENCE rebuts Bri-boy Williams and the IRCC in their sky-is-falling imitations of a climate Chicken Little. Use link to access the brilliant graphs, which I don't know how to access with the silly new blogger template.

Wooly Bully Helps Bam the Sham & the Pharaohs!

James Taranto is the Josh Hamilton of Op-Ed writers---the NYT stable of second-raters has no one near his caliber. See below how he eviscerates the Washington Post's vain attempt to smear Mitt Romney. Even the NYT's lubricious slander of McCain with a woman named Victoria Iseman wasn't as silly as this bucket of slime hurled from the WaPo garbage pit...!

If we had been more ambitious, we might have ended up at the Onion instead of at The Wall Street Journal, where our job is easy because we only have to write stuff that's true. (Incidentally, we can't remember if that quote about Quayle's grades was from an actual news story, though we did find similar ones, and he was described as a C student.) Journalism today looks increasingly like satire in 1988. Mitt Romney, another baby boomer, is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and the Washington Post has reached back to 1965, before Romney even graduated highs school, in search of scandal. Those of us who were born after 1965 have a hard time wrapping our minds around just how long ago that was. Here's some perspective: Lyndon B. Johnson was president, and Barack Obama was turning 4. Selma, Ala., was not a metaphor but the site of actual civil rights marches. Sam Sham and the Pharaohs recorded "Wooly Bully" while "Get Smart" and "I Dream of Jeannie" premiered. NASA was at work on a futuristic plan to land men on the moon. Mary Jo Kopechne was still alive. Romney was a senior at a prep school called Cranbrook, and according to the Post, he and some other boys played a cruel prank on a classmate named John Lauber, "a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, [who] was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality." Lauber, according to the Post's account, "was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye." Lauber died in 2004 and thus couldn't be reached for comment, but the Post interviewed no fewer than five other students, "who gave their accounts independently of one another" and remembered the incident "similarly." The five "mostly lean Democratic"; one was a volunteer for Obama's 2008 campaign. Lauber's life seems to have been an unhappy one. He was subsequently expelled from school for smoking a cigarette. He "came out as gay" and "led a vagabond life." He was committed to a psychiatric hospital "after an extreme fit of temper in front of his mother and sister." He worked as an embalmer and a chef. Perhaps most tragically of all, "his hair thinned as he aged"--unlike Romney's. In response to the report, Romney acknowledged: "Back in high school, I did some dumb things, and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that." He added that "I don't remember that incident." Should anyone care? Even the Post's own lefty blogger Greg Sargent is hard-pressed to answer in the affirmative. After going through a list of character flaws critics say this reveals about Romney--"a real mean streak, a disdain for the weak, and an ugly side to his sense of privilege . . . a homophobic streak"--Sargent throws up his hands:

But when it comes down to it, this all happened too long ago and too early in Romney's life to know with real certainty whether it's revealing of any of those things or not--particularly when it comes to who Romney is right now. I can't get around the simple fact that I wouldn't want to be judged today by some of the things I did in my teens, and I suspect many others feel the same way.

Unlike in 1988, but like in 2004 when CBS News ran a fraudulent hit piece about George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, other news outlets, mainstream and conservative, are questioning the story. ABC News quotes one of John Lauber's sisters: "The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda." Another ABC report notes that the paper seems to have erred in describing the recollection of Romney classmate Stu White:

While the Post reports White as having "long been bothered" by the haircutting incident," he told ABC News he was not present for the prank . . . and was not aware of it until this year when he was contacted by the Washington Post. Breitbart.com reports that the Post changed the text to read that White "said he has been 'disturbed' by the Lauber incident since hearing about it several weeks ago, before being contacted by the Washington Post."

Conservatives also counter that young Barack Obama was a bully, too. A blog called The Talk of the Times unearths an Obama middle-school tale from "Dreams From My Father." Classmates were teasing Obama and a girl named Coretta, suggesting they were boyfriend and girlfriend:

"She's not my g-girlfriend," I stammered. I looked to Coretta for some assistance, but she just stood there looking down at the ground. "Coretta's got a boyfriend! Why don't you kiss her, mister boyfriend?" "I'm not her boyfriend!" I shouted. I ran up to Coretta and gave her a slight shove; she staggered back and looked up at me, but still said nothing. "Leave me alone!" I shouted again. And suddenly Coretta was running, faster and faster, until she disappeared from sight. Appreciative laughs rose around me. Then the bell rang, and the teachers appeared to round us back into class."

But both Romney and Obama have nothing on Vice President Biden. Commentary's Alana Goodman quotes from Richard Ben Cramer's "What It Takes: The Way to the White House," a book on the 1988 presidential campaign (in which Biden briefly competed):

Once Joey [Biden] set his mind, it was like he didn't think at all--he just did. That's why you didn't want to fight him. Most guys who got into a fight, they'd square off, there'd be a minute or so of circling around, while they jockeyed for position. Joey didn't do that. He decided to fight . . . BANGO—he'd punch the guy in the face. Joe was kind of skinny, and he stuttered, and the kids called him Bye-Bye, for the way he sounded when he tried to say his name. But Joey would never back down, and he knew how to box, when no one else did. . . . Even after he left, after Mr. Biden got the job selling cars in Wilmington and moved the family away, Charlie Roth would still (in moments of duress) tell guys that his friend Joey Biden would come back and beat them up, if they didn't watch out. (When Joe did come back, Charlie always had a list.)

We suppose a Biden partisan could take this as a positive--proof that he's someone who'll fight for you! Likewise, maybe some Republicans are relieved to hear that Romney has a nasty side. A lot of them do think John McCain was too much of a pushover in 2008. But it seems unlikely the election will be decided by this sort of thing. After all, no one much cared about Quayle's National Guard service, which at least occurred after he was an adult; and Bill Clinton, with no military service at all, managed to beat two World War II veterans. If journalists are going to dig up ancient history, we hope they at least find something more interesting than this, though "Bam Bites Dog" set a high bar.

Yeah, dog-eating Obama trumps Mitt's car-roof episode by a factor of parsecs.....! And WaPo has been outted as a total fraud in its journalistic-sleaze tactics, just in case anyone out there still thought that newspaper still contained news!

"Comical of Higher Education"

Naomi Schaefer Riley has written a short piece on the silliness of affirmative action and the explosive response shows just how silly giving stupid brutes a leg up on their betters has turned out to be:

The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations. April 30, 2012, 10:24 pm By Naomi Schaefer Riley You’ll have to forgive the lateness but I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent piece on the young guns of black studies. If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them. That’s what I would say about Ruth Hayes’ dissertation, “‘So I Could Be Easeful’: Black Women’s Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth.” It began because she “noticed that nonwhite women’s experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature, which led me to look into historical black midwifery.” How could we overlook the nonwhite experience in “natural birth literature,” whatever the heck that is? It’s scandalous and clearly a sign that racism is alive and well in America, not to mention academia. Then there is Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of “Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s.” Ms. Taylor believes there was apparently some kind of conspiracy in the federal government’s promotion of single family homes in black neighborhoods after the unrest of the 1960s. Single family homes! The audacity! But Ms. Taylor sees that her issue is still relevant today. (Not much of a surprise since the entirety of black studies today seems to rest on the premise that nothing much has changed in this country in the past half century when it comes to race. Shhhh. Don’t tell them about the black president!) She explains that “The subprime lending crisis, if it did nothing else, highlighted the profitability of racism in the housing market.” The subprime lending crisis was about the profitability of racism? Those millions of white people who went into foreclosure were just collateral damage, I guess. But topping the list in terms of sheer political partisanship and liberal hackery is La TaSha B. Levy. According to the Chronicle, “Ms. Levy is interested in examining the long tradition of black Republicanism, especially the rightward ideological shift it took in the 1980s after the election of Ronald Reagan. Ms. Levy’s dissertation argues that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, John McWhorter, and others have ‘played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.’” The assault on civil rights? Because they don’t favor affirmative action they are assaulting civil rights? Because they believe there are some fundamental problems in black culture that cannot be blamed on white people they are assaulting civil rights? Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments. If these young scholars are the future of the discipline, I think they can just as well leave their calendars at 1963 and let some legitimate scholars find solutions to the problems of blacks in America. Solutions that don’t begin and end with blame the white man.

Here's James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal's response to the silly brouhaha that resulted!

In the spring of 1987, your humble columnist, then an even humbler undergraduate, was the subject of an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. A young reporter named Michael Hirschorn phoned us to ask about our free-speech dispute with the journalism faculty at the third-tier Western university we were attending. We had been suspended from our college newspaper, ironically enough, for a defense of free speech: an opinion column about a cartoon poking fun at "affirmative action." The cartoon had appeared in the student paper at another university, where, as Hirschorn wrote, it "outraged members of campus minority groups," who successfully demanded the suspension of two editors. They were reinstated after threatening to sue. Although the facts of our case are a matter of public record, we're magnanimously leaving out the names of the people and institutions involved because this is a score we settled long ago. We bring it up in connection with recent events at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Until, oh, a few hours ago, the Chronicle employed Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of two books on higher education, as a contributor to Brainstorm, its blog about "ideas, culture, and the arts." (We should note that Riley is a former editor at The Wall Street Journal and that her husband, Jason, is a member of the Journal's editorial board, as is this columnist.) Riley became an ex-contributor to the Chronicle because some ideas turned out to be too weak to withstand a brainstorm. The brainstorm that set off a firestorm was Riley's April 30 blog post titled "The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations." The Chronicle had published an article on "the young guns of black studies," as Riley put it, with an accompanying sidebar listing "some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students." Riley mocked them as "left-wing victimization claptrap." Was she right? We report, you decide. One is titled " 'So I Could Be Easeful': Black Women's Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth." Another is a denunciation of blacks who deviate from the leftist party line: "conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, John McWhorter, and others," in the words of the Chronicle's report. (We know McWhorter and would describe him as a man of the center left.) A third argues that "the subprime lending crisis . . . highlighted the profitability of racism in the housing market." On May 3 the blog published a response from the authors of those three dissertations. They called Riley's post "a lazy and vitriolic hit piece . . . that summarily dismisses our academic work while debasing us," and went on to complain: "Riley displays breathtaking arrogance and gutless anti-intellectualism. . . . One can only assume that in a bid to not be 'out-niggered' by her right-wing cohort, Riley found some black women graduate students to beat up on. . . . Finally, shame on The Chronicle of Higher Education." The trio complained of Riley's "attempts to silence us personally," but in reality an attempt was under way to silence Riley. "Many of you have asked The Chronicle to take down Naomi Schaefer Riley's recent posting," wrote Liz McMillen, the Chronicle's editor, in a post published contemporaneously with the grad students' response. She answered in the negative:

I urge readers instead to view this posting as an opportunity--to debate Riley's views, challenge her, set things straight as you see fit. Take a moment to read The Chronicle's front-page story about the future of black studies, written by Chronicle reporter Stacey Patton and weigh in. Please join the debate.

McMillen's devotion to debate lasted all of four calendar days. Last night she was brought to heel by "several thousand" would-be censors who "spoke out in outrage and disappointment." The McMillen post announcing Riley's hypovehiculation is a classic of groveling and buck-passing:

We now agree that Ms. Riley's blog posting did not meet The Chronicle's basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles. . . . Brainstorm writers were able to post independently; Ms. Riley's post was not reviewed until after it was posted. . . . In addition, my Editor's Note last week inviting you to debate the posting also seemed to elevate it to the level of informed opinion, which it was not. . . . I sincerely apologize for the distress these incidents have caused our readers and appreciate that so many of you have made your sentiments known to us.

That last sentence encapsulates the intellectual corruption of academia, a profession that ought to encourage intellectual adventurousness, not pander to those who are unable to withstand the "distress" of having their ideas challenged. But we've been irremediably cynical about academia since our undergraduate days. In our own field of journalism, however, we still recoil at a display of perfidy. It is sometimes a useful exercise to take the things that people say at face value, especially when that is counter to their intended construction. Let's apply that technique to McMillen's post from last night. According to McMillen--whose bio informs us she has been with the Chronicle for over a decade and has been its top editor for nine months--she was ignorant of the publication's "basic editorial standards" until a thousands-strong mob set her straight in the course of seeking to silence one of her writers. Further, as of last Thursday, she was, by her own account, unable to discern what constitutes "informed opinion," or at least incapable of clearly conveying in writing her views on the question. If that is McMillen's honest evaluation of her own abilities as an editor, shouldn't the post have been a resignation announcement? Shouldn't she have left it to an abler successor to decide what to do about the Riley kerfuffle? In that 1987 Chronicle story, Hirschorn noted that "the newspaper's student editors"--present company excepted, we hasten to add--"quickly took the side of the faculty adviser, writing [in an unsigned editorial] that the [paper] had learned a 'valuable lesson in common sense,' and 'any suggestion of censorship . . . is as repugnant as it is untrue.' " With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, we sued and eventually won a favorable settlement. Hirschorn went on to a glamorous career as a magazine writer and TV producer. We long ago lost touch with our fellow student-editors, but as far as we know, all of them went on to work in fields other than journalism. May Liz McMillen prosper by doing the same.

Black victimhood is the latest scam for the brutal grifters pretending to be intellectuals. James Baldwin stayed in an apartment of a friend of mine and completely trashed the place. I rented my own digs to a black administrator at DC University----a joke of an institution anyway----and came back from overseas to find my apartment torn to pieces. I had to refurnish the place and replace rugs thick with filth and the detritus of jungle animals. A few black professionals who work hard and succeed invariably become Republicans. The vast majority of the American blacks have a loser mentality which makes the plantation of the Democratic Party a comfortable place for ne'er-do-wells and misfits like them.

Obama Is Ruining the American Economy

Unemployment is hitting the depths, with only 115,000 new hires, following 120,000 new hires last month. Yet the unemployment rate actually declined a tick to 8.1% The Wall Street Journal explains this insanity fashioned so that the Demonrats can still say the economy is "improving."

The economy turned in another lackluster month for job creation in April, with 115,000 net new jobs, 130,000 in private business (less 15,000 fewer in government). The unemployment rate fell a tick to 8.1%, albeit mainly because the labor force shrank by 342,000. This relates to what is arguably the most troubling trend in the April jobs report, which is the continuing decline in the share of working-age Americans who are in the labor force. The civilian labor participation rate, as it's known, fell again in April to 63.6%. That's the second decline in a row and the lowest rate since December 1981. That's right—more than 30 years ago, longer than Mark Zuckerberg has been alive. The nearby chart shows the disturbing round trip the workforce participation rate has taken since 1980 and the precipitous drop in the last three years This decline is highly unusual coming out of a recession. Normally as hiring picks up, more Americans see more job opportunities and jump back into the labor force. That's what happened after the sharp recession of 1981-82, when the participation rate last hit 63.6%. It rose smartly through the boom of the 1980s to a peak of 66.8% in January 1990. The rate dipped to 66% in the mild 1991 recession, but then rose again through the 1990s to a modern peak of 67.3% in January 2000 at the top of the dot-com bubble. The last decade has never reached the same heights, though the participation rate did rise back to 66.4% in late 2006 and early 2007. The rate fell to 65.7% in July 2009 when the last recession officially ended, yet the distressing fact is that it has kept falling over the course of the next 33 months of ostensible economic recovery. The trend deserves deeper economic study, though we can offer a few of the likelier explanations. One may be demographic as the baby boom generation gets closer to retirement age. Economist David Malpass notes that Americans age 55 and older are a rapidly rising share of the working-age population, a trend that has historically meant a lower overall labor participation rate. Still, the recent fall is so sharp and surprising that aging baby boomers can't be the entire reason. Another explanation is surely the slow pace of job growth, which means fewer opportunities to entice what economists call the "marginal" worker back into the labor force. Older workers who've lost a longtime job may find themselves unemployable in a rapidly changing economy. They may retire earlier than they might have preferred. Second earners in a household may also not find work at a high enough wage to justify the costs of commuting or child care. In a recovery that is really cooking, like the Reagan boom, these workers find that the opportunities reward more work. In today's mediocre expansion, not so much. That's especially true when stagnant wage growth means less reward for the effort. Over the past 12 months, average weekly earnings are up 2.1% but inflation has climbed by 3%. Real pay is rising far too slowly, which makes work less attractive. The Federal Reserve has maintained a super-easy monetary policy in the name of reducing the jobless rate and to reflate the housing market, but this has contributed to higher food and energy prices and thus reduced real income gains. This too is a disincentive to work and undermines one ostensible purpose of the Fed's easing. Another culprit may be the rapid expansion of government transfer payments during this recession. Medicaid, disability payments and food stamps have all risen sharply in recent years, starting under President Bush and accelerating under President Obama. This is a particular disincentive to low-skilled workers to enter the job market because in some high-benefit states they need to earn $30,000 or more to compensate for the benefits they lose. This is an insidious high marginal tax rate that deters many from ever acquiring the basic skills and experience they need to move up the income ladder. Reversing this falling labor force trend is a major policy challenge, especially as more of the baby boomers retire. The U.S. will need more workers to finance more retirees. This will require faster growth and more job creation than we've seen in this disappointing recovery. The tragedy of the Obama Administration is that it put the political pursuit of its social welfare agenda above policies to nurture a strong, durable economic expansion. Americans are paying for that mistake in less work and less reward for the work they get. The priority of the next Administration must be to reverse the decline.

Governor Walker's teachers' unions reforms has netted the state of Wisconsin more than $1 billion in savings and prevented teacher layoffs to a great degree. Funny thing, says the WSJ, that the Democrats running against Walker for Governor aren't bringing up the recall or the union reforms in their election campaigns. Only out-of-state union millions are keeping the recall campaign alive.

Lonely Julia is featured on Obama's election website. She is a successful businessperson, but decides to have a baby. Who's the BabyDaddy? The site doesn't say. In fact, the effeminate POTUS has no male in the site! Here's James Taranto in the link above marveling at the imbecility of the article on the site.

Taranto on Obama & Elizabeth Warren

Google has completely messed up my blog with its insanely aggressive bullying of its own customers. Imagine, I signed up for Google+ two months ago and still haven't got a single hit on this MySpace wannabe. Oh well, I'm gonna get around to some other bloodspot eventually, but before I ditch Google, here goes. JAMES TARANTO takes Obama and Elizabeth Warren to the woodshed. Can you imagine Obama if the mission had failed? He would have blamed GWB for sure...!

Imagine if President Nixon had decided to base his 1972 re-election campaign on the boast that he landed on the moon. His predecessors tried and failed for eight years. It wasn't an easy decision--what if something went wrong? But that's why you hire a president, to make those gutsy calls. Which path would George McGovern have taken? That's analogous to President Obama's effort to campaign on the killing of Osama bin Laden. His absurd braggadocio is turning one of the few successes to occur under his leadership into a political liability. Last week the Obama campaign released an advertisement featuring Bill Clinton (the president who actually did pass up opportunities to get bin Laden) praising Obama's leadership and suggesting that Mitt Romney would have let bin Laden go. Nonsense, Romney replied: "Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order," the New York Times quotes him as saying. (James Fallows, who worked in the Carter White House, grudgingly confirms Romney's surmise.) The Weekly Standard has video of Obama using the occasion of a joint press conference with Japan's prime minister to double down on this silly taunt: "

I'd just recommend that everybody take a look at people's previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and to take out bin Laden," Obama said, obviously taking a shot at Romney. "I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. And that's been at least my practice. I said that I would go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him--and I did. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they would do something else, then I'd go ahead and let them explain it."

In a Washington Post op-ed, Jose Rodriguez, a CIA veteran and author of the new book "Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives," concedes that Obama "deserves credit for making the right choice." Associated Press That's Buzz Aldrin, not Tricky Dick. But he notes that like the moon landing, the killing of bin Laden was merely the culmination of an effort that predated the incumbent's arrival in the White House by years: "[Obama's] administration never would have had the opportunity to do the right thing had it not been for some extraordinary work during the George W. Bush administration." Rodriguez notes further that "much of that work has been denigrated by Obama as unproductive and contrary to American principles." Toby Harnden of London's Daily Mail reports that some of the Navy SEALs who actually killed bin Laden are criticizing the president for politicizing the raid.

"The President and his administration are positioning him as a war president using the SEALs as ammunition," says Ryan Zinke, a retired Navy commander who formerly led the Team 6 unit and is now a Republican state senator in Montana. "It was predictable"

"The frustration--or, even anger--within the SEAL community is real, and has been brewing for months," reports BuzzFeed.com in a piece titled "Will the Navy SEALs Swift Boat Obama?" That's a reference to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that in 2004 deflated John Kerry's claims of Vietnam heroics. Unlike Kerry's boasts, though, Obama's are drawing derision even from fellow left-liberals.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank writes that Obama's "nonstop campaigning is looking, well, sleazy--and his ad suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn't have killed Osama bin Laden is just the beginning of it." Puffington Host hostess Arianna Huffington calls the Obama ad "one of the most despicable things you can do": Discussing the negative effects of such ads, Arianna said, "It's also what makes politicians and political leaders act irrationally when it comes to matter [sic] of war, because they're so afraid to be called wimps that they make decisions which are incredibly destructive to the country. . . ."

But actually when you think about it, Obama would look like anything but a wimp if he had the good sense to let the bin Laden raid speak for himself. By bragging about it incessantly, he comes across as insecure, and weak. Reader Rod Pennington remarks:

I don't mind the president taking a victory lap but this was, well, unpresidential. With the Dems' recent history of being defense pushovers, the folks in the White House are acting like a geek everyone thought would never lose his virginity but unexpectedly did. And, with the hottest chick in school. "That's right, I nailed Osama." "Here's the room where it happened." "That was the chair I was sitting in." Even John McCain is criticizing Obama, the Hill reports:

"I say any president, Jimmy Carter, anybody, any president would have, obviously, under those circumstances, done the same thing. And to now take credit for something that any president would do is indicative of [the kind of] campaign we're under--we're--we're seeing. . . . So all I can say is that this is going to be a very rough campaign," McCain told Fox News in an interview set to air Monday night. "And I've had the great honor of serving in the company of heroes. And, you know the thing about heroes, they don't brag." . . . Last week, McCain issues [sic] a statement denouncing an Obama campaign commercial heralding Bin Laden's death as "the height of hypocrisy" and accused the president of "a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get reelected." "Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad," McCain said. Which leads us to ponder an interesting counterfactual: What if McCain had campaigned against Obama in 2008? The Thirty-Second Indian Elizabeth Warren has supposedly located her elusive Indian ancestor, the Boston Herald reports: Amid questions about whether she used her minority status to further her career, the Harvard Law professor's campaign last night finally came up with what they claim is a Cherokee connection--her great-great-great-grandmother. "She would be 1⁄32nd of Elizabeth Warren's total ancestry," . . . genealogist Christopher Child said, referring to the candidate's great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, who is listed on an Oklahoma marriage certificate as Cherokee. Smith is an ancestor on Warren's mother's side, Child said. Actual Indians aren't buying it: Suzan Shown Harjo, a former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, expressed outrage yesterday after learning that Warren had identified herself as a Native American on law school records without documentation.

"If you believe you are these things then that's fine and dandy, but that doesn't give you the right to claim yourself as Native American," said Harjo, who said Warren might have taken a job another Native American could have received

. And as we noted yesterday, that's really the question: Did Warren game the "affirmative action" system? She apparently described herself as "Native American" early in her career but dropped the designation--and the stigma attendant to being a minority hire--once she was ensconced in the Ivy League. The Herald quotes Jay Westbrook, who hired Warren for an earlier job at the University of Texas:

"To suggest that she needed some special advantage to be hired here or anywhere is just silly. She was hired for her great abilities as a teacher and a scholar. Her family tree had nothing to do with it."

It seems to us that there is less to this denial than meets the eye. Isn't Westbrook's quote exactly what any university administrator or chairman would say about any affirmative-action hire? The simple truth is that both Obama and Warren are congenitally dishonest, c'est-a-dire, liberals.

Ultimate Laugher: NYT Pronounces Paper Unbiased Toward Liberalism

The NYT Ombudsman solemnly tries to refute centrist studies that paint the NYT as leaning so far left that their coverage is very biased. Here's the article:

FOUR weeks ago, I criticized The New York Times for overplaying an article on an investment made by Ann Romney’s blind trust. The article was but one installment of the intense campaign coverage scrutinizing Mitt Romney as he bids for the Republican presidential nomination. During this period, we haven’t heard as much from The Times about President Obama’s re-election effort. There is precedent for the disparity. The Republican primary fight is a prelude to the general election season. Eight years ago, The Times offered comparably scant campaign coverage of the incumbent, George W. Bush, even as it blanketed readers with articles about Senator John Kerry and others competing for the Democratic nomination. Now, though, the general election season is on, and The Times needs to offer an aggressive look at the president’s record, policy promises and campaign operation to answer the question: Who is the real Barack Obama?

There follows the punchlines or rather the lede, which for once is not buried when the Times' integrity is questioned. Although the ombudsman's contributions often end up at the bottom of page 18.

Many critics view The Times as constitutionally unable to address the election in an unbiased fashion. Like a lot of America, it basked a bit in the warm glow of Mr. Obama’s election in 2008. The company published a book about the country’s first African-American president, “Obama: The Historic Journey.” The Times also published a lengthy portrait of him in its Times Topics section on NYTimes.com, yet there’s nothing of the kind about George W. Bush or his father. According to a study by the media scholars Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter, The Times’s coverage of the president’s first year in office was significantly more favorable than its first-year coverage of three predecessors who also brought a new party to power in the White House: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. Writing for the periodical Politics & Policy, the authors were so struck by the findings that they wondered, “Did The Times, perhaps in response to the aggressive efforts by Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal to seize market share, decide to tilt more to the left than it had in the past?” I strongly doubt that. Based on conversations with Times reporters and editors who cover the campaign and Washington, I think they see themselves as aggressive journalists who don’t play favorites.[a total crock of BS] Still, a strong current of skepticism holds that the paper skews left. Unfortunately, this is exacerbated by collateral factors — for example, political views that creep into nonpolitical coverage. To illustrate, Faye Farrington, a reader from Hollis, N.H., wrote me earlier this year in exasperation over a Sunday magazine article about “Downton Abbey,” the public television series, in which the writer slipped in a veiled complaint about Mitt Romney’s exploitation of the American tax code. “The constant insertion of liberal politics into even the most politically irrelevant articles has already caused us to cancel our daily subscription,” Ms. Farrington wrote, “leaving only the Sunday delivery as I confess to an addiction to the Sunday crossword.” The warm afterglow of Mr. Obama’s election, the collateral effects of liberal-minded feature writers — these can be overcome by hard-nosed, unbiased political reporting now. Mr. Farnsworth, the media scholar, who is a professor at the University of Mary Washington, suggested to me that “more vigilance” is what The Times needed to keep out bias. He advocated a “wider range of sources and greater openness to perspectives that may not be the way the reporter thought of the story at the outset.” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, is a co-author of “The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election.” I asked her what she thought The Times should do to wring out bias in its 2012 coverage. Among other things, she said, “Don’t play a sex scandal out when you don’t have any evidence,” a reference to The Times’s controversial 2008 article on John McCain’s relationship with a lobbyist.

When the NYT put out a story on McCain on how he was wooing an innocent bimbo named Victoria Iseman, it was a sure indication to all the pilot fish presses and newsies who look to the Times like Stalinist newsies looked to Pravda back in the day that the book could be thrown at the hapless McCain with impunity. And the vilification of Sarah Palin was and remains an enduring stain on the hard left, which is guided by the Times. Sarah had more qualifications to be POTUS than the three senators who had never had a civilian job in their lives. Sarah had led the difficult negotiations with several big oil pipeline operators---more than SecState had ever successfully negotiated in her professional career.

Going forward, she said, The Times should examine Mr. Obama’s record and campaign promises; monitor campaign messaging for deception; emphasize substantive policy matters over petty rhetorical combat; scrutinize the newly powerful “super-PAC” groups, and take care not to let polls overdetermine the coverage. These are the right priorities. To date, The Times has delivered some clear-eyed coverage of the administration’s mixed record on the housing crisis, banks, the economy, Afghanistan and other issues. Now is the time to shift to a campaign coverage paradigm that compares promises with execution, sheds light on campaign operations and assesses the president’s promises for a second term. I asked Richard Stevenson, the political editor overseeing campaign coverage, about these matters, and he offered a detailed e-mail response, noting that “we take very seriously our responsibility to report without favoritism.” He added, “We remind ourselves every day of the need to provide readers — voters — with as much news, information and context as possible about the candidates, their records, their characters, their positions and the influences on them, including their campaign donors.” On covering Mr. Obama’s record, he cited as an example a Feb. 27 article about the president’s decision not to pursue recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles commission on debt reduction — a move the article said had contributed to undercutting “a central promise of his 2008 campaign, to rise above the rancor.” Mr. Stevenson promised that the Obama campaign’s use of his powers of incumbency, along with his “political style, character and learning curve,” will all be targets of Times coverage.

What a complete hoax! I haven't heard a bleat from the Times when Obama flies across the country on Air Force One claiming that he's attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies or church breakfasts for official reasons. James Taranto daily points out absurd pompous pronunciamentos about the NYT, including his always hilarious "Two newspapers in One!" reports. And this piety by Brisbane is followed by another howler:

On the question of campaign finance, Mr. Stevenson cited several articles that The Times has already done: one on the Obama campaign’s acceptance of money from a questionable source, another on the link between campaign contributions and White House access, and a third on Mr. Obama’s decision to use super-PACs to support his campaign, reversing an early policy. On the campaign operations side, he pointed to a March 8 article about the “largely secret” operation in Chicago where data specialists are cooking up ways to rebuild the vaunted support base of four years ago. I applaud The Times’s stated commitment to doing these kinds of stories. Readers deserve to know: Who is the real Barack Obama? And The Times needs to show that it can address the question in a hard-nosed, unbiased way.

The aggressive Murdoch has boosted the Wall Street Journal's paid circ to more than 2 million while the NYT continues to hemorrhage readers by the thousands. Now the real Times paid circ is around 800,000, although they claim the new revenue stream from readers paying to get beyond the new internet block has reached very high numbers. Given the Times' legendary dishonesty, I strongly doubt they will be around in 10-15 years given the way their paid circ has plunged in the last two decades.

The Government Is Biggest Drag on US Economy

Read this and weep. The "Bad Goldilocks" effect is busy wrecking the American Economy.

"Bad Goldilocks" means the recovery is neither hot enough to inspire confidence nor cold enough to drive Fed intervention. Fear of the policy quandary is keeping many investors on the sidelines.

And quantitative easing is about to embark on a third round:

Let's say the United States economy is going into a recession or maybe even worse than a recession and you are the chairman of the federal reserve and you have to do something about it. well, the first thing that you would do is that you would lower the federal fund's rate, and that's the rate that banks lend to each other overnight and they way that you lowered if the banks don't do it on their own after you say you wanna lower it is that you print money as the federal reserve, you use it to buy usually short term treasury securities and that money gets deposited in banks. so, the demand for reserves because that what these things are, the demand for reserve goes down, the supply goes up, and the federal funds rate should go down, but what happened if you keep doing this and you keep lowering the federal funds rate all they way down so that the overnight borrowing rate is approximately 0%, what do you do then if the economy still looks like it's a bit of tailspin. well, you could still print money. you can still print money, but using that money to buy short term debt won't help any because they are not gonna lower the short term overnight interbank interest rate anymore. so, you can go out and buy other things. you could buy other things, and those other things can be longer term treasuries, or it could be other types of securities. it could be-- you could buy mortgage box securities. you could buy commercial debt and this idea of printing money not just for target interest rate, but essentially to get that money into circulation and maybe to affect other parts of the market. this is called quantitative easing and in bernanke's, although that's exactly what he's doing, he's printing money to buy other things and what the fed traditionally does when it carries about the overnight borrowing rate, he calls it not necessarily quantitative easing, but credit easing and in his mind, even though mechanically, they are the same thing. in his mind, he's saying look, i'm printing this money not just for the sake of printing the money and putting it into circulation. i'm printing money so that i can buy particular assets where it seems like there might be a log jam in the credit market because with just printing money and buying government securities, maybe the interest rates on government debt goes down, but maybe because of panic or crises interest or the prices on these things don't behave properly. so, in order to fix that credit easing in the bernanke sense would be to go out and buy this type of asset.

Got it? Looks like a scam and knowing the Obama Administration, it probably is. Looks like the recession, like a Bactrian Camel, will have two humps! Government has become its own worst enemy when it comes to the economy, with public spending putting a damper on growth that otherwise continues at a steady if unspectacular pace.

Friday's gross domestic product report confirmed what a drag government can be: While consumer spending grew at a 2.9 percent clip, state and local governments cut back spending by 1.2 percent on an annualized basis and the federal government pulled back by 5.6 percent. As a result, the GDP number showed just a 2.2 percent improvement. The report disappointed economists, some of whom had the number as high as 3 percent and beyond, and cast an uncertain future on a stock market dependent on Federal Reserve stimulus for growth. "None of this is all that surprising, so where is the miss?" wondered Brown Brothers Harriman global currency strategist Marc Chandler, after noting some fairly pedestrian and in-line quarterly growth results. "Contrary to what passes as conventional wisdom, the main drag is coming from the government itself." Before anyone starts thinking that Washington suddenly has gotten religion on spending, the bulk of the federal government cuts came from defense spending, which plunged 8.1 percent. State and local governments, facing the necessity to balance their budgets against declining revenue (not to mention the specter of Meredith Whitney's muni bond default forecast) likely will continue to cut, though that's not as certain with their federal counterpart. Washington's drop in spending came after a 19.1 percent decrease in the fourth quarter of 2011. "The government spending plunge is unlikely to repeat for a third quarter (in 2012 at least) and an inventory drag in 2Q only masks moderate demand gains," Citigroup economist Steven C. Wieting said. "But the 1Q GDP data should limit remaining optimism that U.S. economic growth will accelerate significantly this year." So what does this all mean? Investors are watching the Federal Reserve closely for signs that the U.S. central bank might step in and provide more stimulus once Operation Twist ends in June. The Fed currently is buying long-dated bonds and selling shorter-dated notes in an effort to stimulate risk and drive down lending costs. At the same time, it is rolling over the $2.8 trillion already on its balance sheet in the form of Treasurys as well as mortgage and other debt. Some are hoping that Chairman Ben Bernanke and Co. will be willing to step in with a third round of balance sheet expansion — quantitative easing — to keep goosing the market through the economic trudge. But the GDP progress, halting as it is, likely will forestall if not completely derail QE3 prospects. It's all part of "Bad Goldilocks" phenomenon, in which the economy doesn't grow quickly enough to inspire confidence but moves just enough to keep the Fed at bay. Central bank critics worry that all the liquidity efforts will spur inflation, not to mention uncertainty over what happens once the Fed has to start unwinding all that debt it is holding. Also remember: Out there not so far in the future is the "fiscal cliff" of which Bernanke has warned will appear if Congress cannot agree on deficit reduction and thus face an automatic round of steep spending cuts and tax increases at the end of 2012. "Enthusiasm for equities is likely to be curbed by a turn in the US profit cycle, an absence of additional unconventional monetary stimulus from the Fed and a renewed flare-up of the crisis in the euro-zone," John Higgins, senior market economist at Capital Economics, said in a note. "The latter should weigh particularly heavily on stock markets in the region, even though valuations are now low from a historical perspective and relative to the US," he added. Indeed, there's a lot not to like about an economy that relies on government spending as its primary growth engine. Just ask anyone in Europe. Ostensibly, the U.S. economy is consumer-driven, with private spending amounting to 70 percent of GDP. But several economists doubted that the robust 2.9 percent spending increase in the first quarter could last, raising further questions about where we go from here. "We assumed that growth would be driven primarily by final demand, but, inventories contributed 0.6 (percentage points) to GDP, putting real final sales at a weak 1.6 percent annualized growth rate," said Neil Dutta, U.S. economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "Moreover, the strength in consumer spending and contribution from motor vehicle output look unlikely to repeat in future quarters." Government policymakers, then, face a dicey dilemma: Continue spending and risk falling further into the fiscal abyss, or cut back and deal with a prolonged future of uninspiring GDP numbers. "The dagger (from the GDP letdown) came from a second straight steep drop in federal government spending due to plunging defense outlays," observed Pierpont economist Stephen Stanley. "Boy, wait until these budget cuts start to kick in."

As Bette Davis said in that film in the '30s about an airplane & a difficult situation: "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride."

How McCain Occasionally Gets it Right!!!

John McCain may have messed up his own campaign in 2008, but the grizzled old warhorse still has some piss & vinegar in him. Behold his proclamation of something the bashful Mitt would demurely avoid saying:

"Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad. This is the same President who once criticized Hillary Clinton for invoking bin Laden 'to score political points.' "This is the same President who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn't 'spike the ball' after the touchdown. And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get reelected. "No one disputes that the President deserves credit for ordering the raid, but to politicize it in this way is the height of hypocrisy. "The Obama campaign asks whether Mitt Romney would have made that decision. Of course they want to focus on this one tactical decision because the other decisions this President has made have harmed our national security. "He turned his back on the people of Iran when they rose up to end their tyrannical, terrorist-supporting, Holocaust-denying government, giving them no assistance as they were crushed in the streets. "He has repeatedly thrown our ally Israel under the bus and jeopardized our shared security interests. "He tried to bring Khaled Sheikh Muhammed, the mastermind of 9/11, and other Al-Qaeda terrorists into the middle of New York City to stand trial in a civilian court. "He disregarded the advice of his military commanders and pulled all of our troops out of Iraq, and Al-Qaeda is making a comeback there as a result. "He disregarded the advice of his military commanders again by telling our enemies that we are leaving Afghanistan and then putting our mission and our troops at risk by short-changing our commanders on the ground. "He watches passively while the Assad regime in Syria, Iran's closest ally, kills thousands of its own people in an unfair fight, and his response to this mass atrocity is to create an 'Atrocities Prevention Board.' "With a record like that on national security, it is no wonder why President Obama is shamelessly turning the one decision he got right into a pathetic political act of self-congratulation."

Sadly, the wooden stick figure of Mitt Romney hasn't got the campaign equipment to deliver a direct attack on the feckless moron in the White House. Perhaps for all, it's best to retain his dignity and let feisty John-boy do his heavy lifting. Perhaps Mitt will hit stride later. If he doesn't, the First Clown will win again.

John King Interviews Ajami on Middle East

Fuad Ajami rented my apartment for a year after I was married around 30 years ago and before that lived as my houseguest a year earlier when he first arrived at SAIS from Princeton. He is the most cogent man I've met on the Middle East. Here's what he says about US policy towards Syria in a CNN piece:

Fresh reports of violence follow news that more U.N. observers are arriving in Syria. The U.N. Security Council recently authorized sending up to 300 monitors to Syria for 90 days. They are tasked with observing a cease-fire that was supposed to have begun April 12. They're also charged with monitoring the implementation of U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan, which calls for the government and the opposition to end the bloodshed, provide access to the population for humanitarian groups, release detainees, and start a political dialogue. But why is the violence continuing, and what chance does a peace plan have in Syria? CNN's John King spoke with Fouad Ajami, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and author of the soon-to-be released book "The Syrian Rebellion." Here's an edited version of their conversation: Emergency meeting in Cairo over Syria Snipers continue fierce assault in Syria Report: Syrian killings after U.N. visit Syria's deadly lies to U.N. monitors JOHN KING: Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary-general, filed a report essentially with the U.N. Security Council Monday that says, guess what, Syria is still violating the cease-fire, still breaking its rules. As soon as the monitors leave town, (security forces are) going in and killing people. And Annan says he's "going to lodge his objections," meet with the Syrian people "at an appropriate time." Do you see any urgency, or is it -- as you wrote in the "Wall Street Journal" -- you view this Annan mission as essentially cover for al-Assad? FOUAD AJAMI: Well over 1,000 people have been killed since the beginning of the Kofi Annan mission. The Kofi Annan mission -- to be blunt about it -- is really a lifeline to the Bashar regime. And you know, people in (there), people in distress, they know things very clearly and state it very clearly. One city stuck a note on one of the land cruisers of the observers and said the following: "The butcher kills, the observers observe, and the people go on with the revolution." There is nothing new in that Syrian nightmare. KING: I know the U.S. ambassador to United Nations, Susan Rice, is quite frustrated. She had said that Russia and China have blood on the hands because they won't accept a tougher proposal. But the United States is among those who have backed this Kofi Annan mission. When you hear the reports of further crimes against the (protesters) and then you say, we'll be touch with them at the appropriate time; at what point does the United States for its own credibility need to walk away from that process? AJAMI: We bear our own moral responsibility. And we know, for example, that we can say unequivocally that Russia and China are responsible. We can say that they aid and abet the Bashar al-Assad regime. But what about American culpability? We went to the United Nations when anyone would have told you that the Russians and Chinese were going to veto any resolution that would aid the Syrian people. So at some point in time ... we have to accept our own responsibility. We can't say such terms as "the violence in Syria is unacceptable." We are accepting it. It goes on day after day. And the United States itself is doing nothing about it. KING: Do you see any evidence that there's a change of heart, or is this going to go on and is the killing going to continue while the world talks, but does nothing? AJAMI: Well, I think there's one beat that you know very well, more than the rest of us, I believe. You observe and understand the game in Washington very, very well.Nothing will happen: That's my own prediction, my own fear, my own sense. Nothing is going to happen before the November election in 2012, before the bid of President Obama for a second term. I spent some time in Turkey. I spent some time in the refugee camps in Turkey, and even just simple people, simple people, unschooled, unlettered, they will tell you, no cavalry is coming to the rescue, and that Washington has pretty much looked away and averted its gaze from this terrible slaughter. And everyone, the Arabs, the Turks, are waiting on the Obama administration, and the rain of mercy has not come.

Readers of this blog recall that about a week or so ago I predicted the failure of the Annan truce. My many visits to Syria when I was an American diplomat convince me that the Alawite sect that Bashar Al-Assad belongs to will never relinquish power voluntarily. Neophytes like Annan might have known that had they a feel for the Levant and the many warring sects, including Druze & Christian, who live in Syria. Also, the Alawite sect is closest to Shi'ite doctrine and belief, so Iran will always be there giving Al-Assad & his sect money and equipment. Oh, well.... Anyway, I'm looking forward to buying Fuad's book.

Krauthammer on Why Biden is Greatest Foreign Policy Imbecile Ever

RealClearPolitics has a short article outlining some of the Vice POTUS's most egregious examples of stupidity on broad & important issues of American Foreign Policy. I'm not talking about run-of-the-mill silly factual errors as when he averred that the US had "kicked Syria out of Lebanon" at a time when Syria & its cat's paw Hezbollah had just taken over complete power in Lebanon. Aside from his silly gaffes supporting Obungler, e.g. "the President has a big stick," here are what Krauthammer thinks are his greatest unforced errors over the decades that this moron has infected the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

The Vice President has been over the last 30 years holds the American record for wrong on the most issues in foreign affairs ever. And the list starts with the nuclear freeze in the early ’80s against Thatcher and Reagan and Cole which is one of the follies of the era. He supported it. He was against aid to the Nicaraguan Contras which in the end brought democracy and ended the Sandinista rule at the time. He was against Reagan’s expansion of the defense budget, which bankrupted the Soviet Union and led to the end of the Soviet Empire. He was against Reagan on Strategic Defenses, which is the big advantage that we have now in the missile age. And look at where he was on Iraq. He opposed the first Iraq War, the Gulf War that liberated Kuwait that everybody agrees was a good thing. He supported the Iraq War which he, not I, he says was a terrible mistake. And then when the surge happened, he opposed the surge in Iraq which rescued a losing war and ended with our leaving with our heads held high and some promise in the future.

To think that this blockhead is still one heartbeat away from being POTUS. No wonder Osama bin Ladin thought that assassinating Obama & having the egregious cretin Biden as President was the best way to grease the skids to America's downfall!!! UPDATE Reading the above after I'd published it on my blog, I noticed that the transcript of Krauthammer's verbal sallies on FoxNEWS were spelling German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's name as "Cole," a mistake that the RCL transcribers made, but that the erudite Charles would never commit.

John Dean shows How Not to Write

CounterPunch.org has a total fruitcake leftoid mutant named Alexander Cockburn infecting its masthead. Here's the latest abomination from the forgotten, but not gone turncoat John Dean's keyboard, about the guv of my native state, Scott Walker, who should stay guv of Wisconsin:

In my prior column, drawing on the work of Bob Altemeyer and others, I listed traits that are consistently revealed by social dominators, or authoritarian leaders. To earn this label, a person must show four key traits: (1) they seek to dominate others, (2) they oppose equality, (3) they are desirous of personal power, and (4) they are amoral. News accounts of Scott Walker reveal that he possesses all four of these defining traits, not to mention others in the longer list I set forth in my prior column. Here, however, I will merely note the evidence for Walker’s having a defining social-dominating disposition. (1) Domination. Authoritarian leaders seek to control others; in short, they are social dominators. This is the story of Scott Walker’s life. By age 7, Walker had formed a “Jesus USA” club, which was a mix of his father’s Baptist ministry and his attraction to patriotism. By age 8, he had undertaken a door-to-door fundraising campaign to take charge of purchasing a flag for the village hall of his small Iowa town. As a teen, Walker sought leadership posts, which provide some control, in Boys State and Boys Nation, and became an Eagle Scout. He attended Marquette University (but has no college degree from there or any other school). At Marquette, he was elected to the student senate, and twice sought but failed to get elected president of the student body. He ran for the Wisconsin State Assembly the same year that he lost his bid to be student president at Marquette, losing the Assembly race as well. Since then, Walker has never stopped running. In 1993, he was elected to the State Assembly, where he remained until 2002. In 2002, he sought the post of Milwaukee County Executive, and he held that post until he was elected Governor in 2010. This is the behavior, writ large, of a dominator. {Huh?] (2) Opposition To Equality. The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology(which is searchable) further defines social dominators as “hard, tough, ruthless, and unfeeling toward others, as opposed to compassionate, generous, caring, and altruistic.” There are many examples of Walker’s harsh and uncaring treatment of those whom he does not believe to be entitled to equality. None is more glaring than his intolerance of gays and lesbians. For example, as Governor, he has worked to end Wisconsin’s recognition of the rights of same-sex couples. He fired the law firm defending the state’s domestic-partnership law. And he appointed a woman to the state’s Labor and Industry Review Commission who believes that gays can be harassed in the workplace. One attorney familiar with Walker’s thinking states, “Governor Walker is ideologically opposed to equal rights for gay and lesbian and transgendered people as is everyone in his administration as far as I can tell and they will probably want to take steps to ensure that gay and lesbian and transgendered people do not have equal rights. Everything that Governor Walker is doing is ideological; I don’t see that his administration has any particular respect for the law per se.” [And this attorney's name is?] (3) Desirous Of Personal Power. Scott Walker has been seeking personal power his entire life, and has never stopped reaching for it. Note how Walker has worked not merely to reach higher offices, but also to enhance his power in these offices when he occupied them. For example, as governor, Walker sought to remove civil service jobs, in order to make them political appointments, and thus subject to his control. Most strikingly, he has sought to undercut the public-employee unions so that he would not have to deal with them, thus increasing his power. Often overlooked in Walker’s infamous union-busting “budget-repair bill“ is the power grab to fill three dozen civil-service jobs with political appointees. For instance, the bill politicized and placed under Walker’s control functions like open-records requests, the selection of general counsels for key agencies, and the selection of communications spokespeople in key departments. He has increased his personal power over some fifteen state agencies, and I suspect that he is (or was, depending on the recall vote) just getting started. Walker’s move to break public employee unions is his most notorious personal power play. To try to prevent the union-busting law’s passage, Democratic state senators left Wisconsin, so that the GOP-controlled legislature could not do Walker’s bidding and ram it through. But nevertheless, using dubious parliamentary ploys, the bill was passed by the Senate, making it a done deal. Walker’s push to get this legislation, known as Act 10, passed into law was done in about as authoritarian a fashion as you will ever see, outside of a dictatorship. Part of Act 10 has already been struck down by a federal judge, and, as I noted earlier, the wisdom of Walker’s power play will be tested in the June 5th recall election. (4) Amorality. To be amoral, of course, is to be insensitive to moral matters. A politician like Scott Walker will wrap himself in a cloak of morality, while, in fact, acting anything but morally. Needless to say, Walker’s policies that attack poor women by cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood; his slashing of education budgets while giving tax breaks to wealthy corporations; and his pursuit of similar radical Republican actions all raise serious moral issues. But different people have different moral standards and views of such activity, so I have excluded these matters from this discussion. Similarly, I have set aside the fact that a growing number of Walker’s closest aides are being criminally investigated and several have been charged with, or pled guilty to, crimes stemming from actions that occurred during Walker’s tenure as Milwaukee County Executive. Walker has hired several high-powered criminal defense lawyers and is building a legal defense fund, but this, too, is not relevant at this time, for little is known of this secret “John Doe” grand jury proceeding. Walker has not been charged. The grand jury proceeding simply remains a dark cloud following him, and no conclusions can or should be drawn from it. Nonetheless, Walker’s amorality is conspicuous. It is found in his history of ethics violations and the record of his lying. A lengthy article could (and should) be written about both, but suffice it here to note that his ethics problems go back to his Marquette University days, when the college newspaper called him “unfit” for student office. Later, in the Assembly (in 2005), Walker would earn the distinction of receiving the second-highest fine for an ethics violation in Wisconsin history. His lying is notorious. Politifacts Wisconsin (which I am told is more reliable than most of these sites) finds Walker to be an accomplished falsifier. With respect to 44 statements that Politifacts examined, Walker was found to have been truthful only on six occasions. The fact that 38 statements were pants-on-fire false, false, mostly false, or half-truths is stark evidence of amorality. I watched a video of a Walker speech at the Goldwater Institute. He’s slick: Fast-talking, confident, and dishonest—I watched him distort facts with which I was familiar. He spoke in mostly half-truths, and certainly not with the kind of candor that the late Senator Goldwater expected from political figures. Clearly, Walker has all the traits of a social dominator and authoritarian leader. More strikingly, it is also clear that he is, in fact, what social scientists term a “double high authoritarian.”

John Dean was Legal Counselor in the Nixon White House. Since then, he has held no position other than inconsequential gadfly who occasionally popped up on left-wing TV such as PMSNBC. Methinks the has-been doth protest too much! P.S. I thought they taught law students how to write in law school!

Obama Donors' Spirits Start to Flag....

Don Surber notes that although the AP loyally spews the DNC party line about Obama's bundlers assembling giant amounts of campaign cash, the NYT begs to differ slightly, noting that said bundlers and donors are less enthusiastic for the First Clown's second rodeo. Perhaps that's why the First Swindler and Kickbacker accepts Maher's money without a qualm and still has swindler Corzine bundling for him even in March. Given the First Imbecile's track record... Figures!!!

Two Poems: Apples into Roses

The apple & the rose are two members of the same family of Rosacea. The rose is the final version of the apple and the end of Citizen Kane with its enigmatic sign on the sled thrown into the fire, "rosebud," could mean the failure of a gifted man to develop his gifts into full fruition. As a postscript, T.S. Eliot had an image of a rose enveloped in flames on his tombstone.

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS [W B Yeats]

I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lads and hilly lands.
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

TO THE ROSE UPON THE ROOD OF TIME

i{Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!}
i{Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:}
i{Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;}
i{The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,}
i{Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;}
i{And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old}
i{In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea,}
i{Sing in their high and lonely melody.}
i{Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate,}
i{I find under the boughs of love and hate,}
i{In all poor foolish things that live a day,}
i{Eternal beauty wandering on her way.}

i{Come near, come near, come near -- Ah, leave me still}
i{A little space for the rose-breath to fill!}
i{Lest I no more bear common things that crave;}
i{The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,}
i{The field-mouse running by me in the grass,}
i{And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass;}
i{But seek alone to hear the strange things said}
i{By God to the bright hearts of those long dead,}
i{And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know.}
i{Come near; I would, before my time to go,}
i{Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:}
i{Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.}

To Yeats as to James Clarence Mangan, author of the poem Dark Rosaleen, the rose stood for Ireland.

[Ending of] Little Gidding [T S Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

"the fire and the rose": The rose is a traditional symbol of English royalty, and therefore represents England, and Western civilization beyond it— and it also stands in mediaeval literature for divine love and mercy, and in this poem for the garden (sc. Eden) where the children (Adam and Eve) hide (and they reappear here). Fire is the flame both of God's judgment and wrath, and of the Spirit who purifies, warms, and enlightens.

Why institutions favor liberals

h/t to Dennis Mangan & "Daybreaker"

"Liberals dominate institutions because liberals want to dominate institutions. Conservatives want a school to be a place for learning or a garden club to be a place for gardening."

Some Points About Liberals & "Intelligence"

One, liberalism is a collective strategy (sometimes with a collectivist ethnic thread in it), and modern "conservatism" is individualist. In social conflicts of all kinds, collective strategies are exceedingly powerful in competition with individualist strategies. Elaborate theories of how everyone is supposed to thrive through individual competition fail instantly as individuals confront teams and duly lose. "Every man for himself" rapidly becomes "let save (himself) who can".

On the simplest level, liberals can advance through the institutions by favoring each other. Feminist networking rationalizes self-interested mutual back-scratching as "empowering women" and this produces career spoils that both advance lefties in bureaucracies and cements loyalty through patronage. What is the "conservative" equivalent? It doesn't exist.

Two, if you're smart (and not barred from promotion by ethnic nepotism or quota issues) you may get to a "managerial" position where you get to make decisions. The first time you make a decision and you are asked to rationalize it, you will basically have these options:
* Argue a non-liberal rationale for your decision. Congratulations moron, you have just killed your career. And you are likely to suffer social ostracism too.
* Argue a liberal rationale for a liberal outcome. Good! Even if the policy does not work, you are unlikely to be blamed, as nobody can admit what's wrong. (And of course you are a liberal, and to live with yourself you need to make yourself believe liberal dogma, if you can, or if you can't you at least need to make yourself forget how wrong you know you are.)
* Argue a liberal rationale for a conservative outcome. This is risky. There's more chance that the policy will be beneficial, but there's no special payoff for you for that. And there's more effort in contriving your paradoxical rationale, and more chance that you will be found not to have acted in the right spirit if things go wrong. (And of course you are a "conservative," and you need to get your thoughts firmly grooved within the bounds of liberal rationalizations to stay safe. Which will in the long run limit how "conservative" your results will be.)

People who reach managerial positions and like intellectual elegance are likely to be liberal."

I for one worked in TV at NBC, ABC & CBS as well as PBS. I worked as an FSO for more than a decade at the least incompetent [with the possible exception of the CIA] agency in the US government, the Dept of State. Job security in large institutions is rather stable, but in TV news & the entertainment world [the two are now not far apart!], there is little job security. State is full of petty functionaries with a lifer mentality while Hollyweird has insecure people looking to stay in the loop by aping the Penns & Clooneys in their political outlook. Academia blocks alternative POVs in an autonomic fashion---the key meme is "No fault on the Left" unless one is talking about a Stalin or a Saddam Hussein [the Baath Party in Iraq & Syria are both socialist in their ideology]. Bashir Assad may be the next "leftist" to join the club of libtard reprobates.

However, in my five years in a Jesuit seminary, I met some of the most intelligent people in my life---so no standard deviation is without its exceptions!

Annan Plan Collapses---Predictably---in Syria

Kofi Annan holds the record as the single most incompetent UN SecGen in the tormented history of that cave of winds. His ham-handed handling of the Rwanda catastrophe, including his failure to head off the massacres, denotes a singular incapacity to lead or even negotiate in any complex situation.

Syria is another area where Annan has dropped the ball. Sadly, this arrogant oaf doesn't learn by experience.
UPDATE
QED: Annan fucks up, just as I predicted months ago!

How Marxism is Obama's Key Ideology

Barry Rubin is a longtime friend who now lives in Israel. Read his erudite analysis to understand how Obama and his cohorts are corrupting America with their dishonest policies and fraudulent promises.

DC's Marion Barry Another Argument Against Statehood

Marion Barry is a confirmed crackhead whose love of crime & criminals makes him the worst mayor in DC history, and that's saying something!

Read the attached if you can stand a black racist POS ranting about Asians who are hard-working, tax-paying entrepreneurs...!

"Clever Sillies" and the Problem of High IQ Absent-Mindedness

Bruce Charlton has an interesting explanation of "nerdiness" which I submit to you with a hat tip to Dennis Mangan's blog:
Summary

In previous editorials I have written about the absent-minded and socially-inept ‘nutty professor’ stereotype in science, and the phenomenon of ‘psychological neoteny’ whereby intelligent modern people (including scientists) decline to grow-up and instead remain in a state of perpetual novelty-seeking adolescence. These can be seen as specific examples of the general phenomenon of ‘clever sillies’ whereby intelligent people with high levels of technical ability are seen (by the majority of the rest of the population) as having foolish ideas and behaviours outside the realm of their professional expertise. In short, it has often been observed that high IQ types are lacking in ‘common sense’ – and especially when it comes to dealing with other human beings. General intelligence is not just a cognitive ability; it is also a cognitive disposition. So, the greater cognitive abilities of higher IQ tend also to be accompanied by a distinctive high IQ personality type including the trait of ‘Openness to experience’, ‘enlightened’ or progressive left-wing political values, and atheism. Drawing on the ideas of Kanazawa, my suggested explanation for this association between intelligence and personality is that an increasing relative level of IQ brings with it a tendency differentially to over-use general intelligence in problem-solving, and to over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which could be termed common sense. Preferential use of abstract analysis is often useful when dealing with the many evolutionary novelties to be found in modernizing societies; but is not usually useful for dealing with social and psychological problems for which humans have evolved ‘domain-specific’ adaptive behaviours. And since evolved common sense usually produces the right answers in the social domain; this implies that, when it comes to solving social problems, the most intelligent people are more likely than those of average intelligence to have novel but silly ideas, and therefore to believe and behave maladaptively. I further suggest that this random silliness of the most intelligent people may be amplified to generate systematic wrongness when intellectuals are in addition ‘advertising’ their own high intelligence in the evolutionarily novel context of a modern IQ meritocracy. The cognitively-stratified context of communicating almost-exclusively with others of similar intelligence, generates opinions and behaviours among the highest IQ people which are not just lacking in common sense but perversely wrong. Hence the phenomenon of ‘political correctness’ (PC); whereby false and foolish ideas have come to dominate, and moralistically be enforced upon, the ruling elites of whole nations.

And as everyone knows, the moderately intelligent always want to ape their more intelligent "betters" in the IQ department, so that PC among the dominant elites is quickly assimilated among the less-mentally cogent. The rub is that the traditional "common sense" of those instinctive and spontaneous forms of behavior are often the butt of jibes by those slightly smarter, but socially more inept, eventual losers themporarily higher up the so-called social ladder, often a step-pyramid resulting in human sacrifice such as Stalin's vicious purges of the so-called "elites" are a prime example!

Arthur Koestler's depiction in Darkness at Noon of the Communism of the thirties which in the USA often used the highest ideals of human progress to mask the duplicities of a Hiss or the barbarism of Stalin's NKVD is a salutary lesson of the "clever sillies" that ruling elites in Europe & the USA are now giggling about.

May political correctness, born of Lenin's NEP in the early 1920s, die an ignoble death before its centenary.