WELL, THAT’S WHAT THEY GET PAID FOR: Saturday Night Live Continues The Narrative.
Archive for 2011
January 16, 2011
JESSE WALKER: The New Age Assassin.
UPDATE: The Crack Emcee is saying I Told You So. He’s been kinda hard on the whole New Age thing for a while, I think.
DODD HARRIS: How Not To Improve The Discourse.
MICHAEL WALSH: Those Calling For Stricter Gun Laws Should Look At Vermont. “Arizona’s gun laws may be among the most ‘lenient’ in America, but they’re not as ‘lax’ as Vermont’s — and nobody’s rushing to demonize Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders. Indeed, Arizona’s laws are far closer to the American mainstream than are the restrictive policies of New York, Massachusetts and California.’
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Unsealed Docs Show The Fed Was Fully Warned Of A Housing Crisis.
SO I WAS ON PETER “DATECHGUY” INGEMI’S TALK SHOW on WCRN radio in Massachusetts last night. It was a good show, and he seems to have plenty of advertisers, but they’re all local. Given that it’s a 50,000 watt station that blankets New England — including New Hampshire — I would have expected that a show reaching so many bloggers and Tea Party types would be running national political ads, but either (1) it’s too early for those yet, or (2) those advertisers just haven’t caught on yet. If not, they’re missing out, I think.
UPDATE: Here’s a post with his ad information.
JIM TREACHER: There’s more evidence that the liberal media influenced Eric Fuller than there is that Palin influenced Jared Loughner. I’m getting email from people who are unhappy that ABC didn’t show the tape of Fuller’s rant, too.
UPDATE: Apparently, ABC Did. LATER: Treacher emails: “Except Amanpour treated it as an afterthought and didn’t say who was being threatened . . . One of the people who’ve been falsely accused of making threats.”
IN THE MAIL: MYTH-Interpretations: The Worlds of Robert Asprin.
DAVID LAT ON AMY CHUA: “If you’re going to be a diva, then own it. . . . After her controversial essay about the superiority of Chinese mothers and hard-ass Asian parenting set the blogosphere on fire — and sent her book rocketing to #5 on the Amazon bestseller list — Chua backtracked a bit, instead of defiantly standing her ground. . . . Chua should send flowers and chocolate to whoever at the Wall Street Journal put that excerpt together. It’s a brilliant provocation, in the manner of early Ann Coulter. . . . Every book publicist in America should study the rollout of Tiger Mother as a lesson in how to market a book.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Chrysalis Opens.
The new Barack Obama has learned not to offer instantaneous editorial commentary in the fashion of his past editorializing on hearing of the Skip Gates affair, the Mutallab bombing attempt, the Ground Zero mosque controversy or the Maj. Hasan mass murdering.
Instead, the metamorphosizing president put his finger to the wind. He soon learned that his leftist base within 72 hours had turned off the public with its demagogic charges of conservative culpability for a deranged killer murdering the innocent. And so Obama summarily jettisoned his leftist scapegoating base. In dispassionate fashion, he figured that within hours the New York Times et al. would Trotskyize their earlier narratives, and most of the Left would cease the poll-killing (excuse the metaphor) “climate of hate” narrative.
He was right. The progressive community snapped back into line, reminding the country that the desire for power and status always trumps ideology. . . . Will Obama 2.0 work? Perhaps, especially if conservatives ornate the Clinton ’96 analogy with their own Bob Dole in 2012. But all that said, the wages of hubris—nemesis—are not so easily forgotten.
Read the whole thing. Related: The President Is Not Therapist-in-Chief.
A TUNISIAN Tea Party? Well, we’ll see. Does Tunisia have the requisite social capital to produce a Tea Party? But as the global political class becomes ever-more-obvious in its venality and ineptitude, I expect we’ll see the Tea Party spirit spread.
BYRON YORK: Rethinking Obama’s political performance in Tucson. “By the time he spoke in Tucson, Obama had let four days pass while some of the angriest voices in the media — his supporters — either blamed Republicans directly for the killings or blamed the GOP for creating the atmosphere in which the violence took place. During those four days, the president could have cooled the conversation by urging everyone to avoid jumping to conclusions, as he did the day after the November 2009 massacre at Ft. Hood, Texas. But he didn’t. Only after Loughner’s insanity had been indisputably established did Obama concede that politics was not to blame for the shooting. . . . Some Democratic strategists hope Obama can capitalize on Tucson the way Bill Clinton capitalized on Oklahoma City. Perhaps he’ll be able to, and perhaps he won’t. But he’s already trying.”
DONALD GRAHAM OF THE WASHINGTON POST argues on behalf of for-profit education.
WHY THE POWERS-THAT-BE want inflation.
ED DRISCOLL: ‘Politico.com in the Left Ditch, Wheels Spinning.’
ARGUMENT: COLLEGE IS STILL WORTH IT. Not if you take on lots of non-dischargeable debt. However, if the economics of college are overall good, colleges shouldn’t mind bearing a portion of the cost when students default on loans.
BLAST FROM THE PAST: Text-Based Adventure Games Now On The Kindle.
JACK DUNPHY: Sheriff Dupnik: An MSNBC Star Is Born.
CHANGE: Unilever chief warns over global crisis in food output. “The chief executive of one of the world’s largest food producers is to warn that the global crisis in food production is reaching ‘dangerous territory’ with prices soaring and demand outstripping supply.”
FIGHTING THE “Job-Destroying Spending Spree.”
UH OH: Swine Flu has British hospitals “gridlocked.” Plus this: “He expressed anger about the failure of Government and the NHS to develop sufficient contingency plans.” Yeah, it’s not like nobody worried about this previously. (Via Blue Collar Philosophy).
Related: Swine Flu in Wayne County, Illinois.
UPDATE: Oh, good grief: ‘Worried well’ should be banned from having flu jab says leading GP. They’ve gotten criticism for not ordering enough vaccine, so now they want to ban people from paying privately to get it, because that upsets the government rationing scheme. And the government rationing scheme, from what little I can tell from this story, doesn’t make much sense. The pharmacists seem to agree.
WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Holiday Spending Record Not As Good As It Looks.
This past season’s revenue marked a 5.7 percent increase over holiday 2009. That’s the strongest gain since 2004. While encouraging, that doesn’t mean shoppers have recovered from the loss of $11 trillion in household wealth. From consumers’ perspective, the economy hasn’t improved dramatically from last year, as credit remains tight, unemployment hasn’t budged below 9 percent, and home values are still depressed. Consumer confidence is hovering at the same level as a year ago and well below the point that signals a stable economy. . . .
In several categories, spending on gifts fell short of shoppers’ 2007 outlay. In 2010, consumers spent $50.7 billion on clothing and accessories like shoes and scarves; in 2007, that figure was $51.3 billion even before adjusting for inflation. Holiday revenue at department stores was $45.3 billion last year, much less than the $50.4 billion that traded hands in 2007.
Read the whole thing. It’s better than last year, but it’s not exactly “Happy days are here again.”
PATRICK RICHARDSON: “CNN is reporting there are ‘provocative photos of Jared Loughner in a g-string with a gun.’ Leaving aside the fact that makes me want to scream ‘MY EYES’ and run for the brain bleach, why is that important or worth a story on a major news network?”