NICK GILLESPIE: Hey Chris Matthews: Can You Stop Talking About Nonexistent “Cronkite Moments” Already? “The Cronkite story plays into the romance of supposedly objective journalists having profound effects on the world. It’s a self-flattering myth that pumps up the ego of newshounds everywhere, which can only lead them into more and bigger mistakes. Filled with true tales of massive falsehoods, Campbell’s Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism is essential reading not just for journalists but all consumers of the news.”
Archive for 2012
July 9, 2012
AT AMAZON, 55% off Batman Beyond: The Complete Series.
Also, the Kindle Daily Deal is How To Slay A Dragon.
SO MUCH FOR THAT “NEW CIVILITY” BULLSHIT: Creepy Democrats Now Stalking Republicans At Home.
Related: Alternator Belt Cut On Romney Bus.
UPDATE: Speaking of double standards, reader John Casey writes: “There was a certain US Senate candidate who complained about video recordings made during his 2004 campaign, and I’ve suspected that the ‘invasion’ was blown out of proportion by the press, which was working for him even then.” Ya think?
They always go all have you no decency? when it’s done to them.
Plus, on the Romney-alternator story, from the comments: “Nobody knows whether Robert Gibbs cut the alternator belt on Mitt’s bus.”
And where’s the Secret Service? Romney’s the presumptive nominee, and anybody who could cut the alternator belt could have cut a brake line, or planted a bomb.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Obama vs. Romney: Bully vs. Nerd.
Romney’s big problem is that he grew up in another America. He was raised to believe there is a clear standard for adult conduct, that even politics has rules and that it is the duty of a president to unite and lead the nation through its economic crisis.
Timing could be his great misfortune. Fate has given him a demoralized electorate that is growing distant from that old America and an opponent who spouts its verities, but actually believes in none of them.
Barack Obama believes that politics is a knife fight, and the only rule is that he must win. His conduct reflects the unholy mix of a messiah complex with the muscle of The Chicago Way. His goal, he tells us, is to “transform” America, not fix it.
This culture clash explains a presidential campaign operating in parallel universes.
Old-fashioned America’s remedy for bullying: Punch the bully in the nose. Twice as hard. Think Romney knows that?
MORE: A Secret Service reader emails:
Regarding your “where’s the Secret Service?” response to the sabotaged Romney bus: frequently used motorcade vehicles are always under lock and key or attended by agents. If a vehicle is only occasionally used (like, say, a campaign bus), we don’t guard it, but the vehicle is carefully checked for bombs and sabotage prior to return to service.
And reader John Pennell writes:
I just finished the first two of Peter Godwin’s books about Zimbabwe, this smacks of the very early stages of Mugabe’s tactics which have kept him in power. One has to wonder if/when the “occupy” crowd becomes our own “war vets”.
By the way, the three books are available on Kindle and very much worth reading. 1) Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa, 2) When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, and 3) The Fear.
I think that may have been the intent with Occupy, but it’s hard to get good goons these days.
THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.
DIY CAR REPAIR VIDEO on The Saturday Mechanic.
A MACHINE TO PICK startup winners?
READER KINDLE BOOK PLUG: By three bigshot milbloggers: A Different View: Travels with Team Easy, Iraq 2007.
MATTHEW MITCHELL: Beyond Bailouts: What Is Cronyism?
Related: Timothy Carney: Building The Free-Market Case Against Big Business. “The research Mitchell brings together helps show why government-granted privilege is so important to big business and so costly to the rest of society. In one key finding, he highlights research indicating that free markets, with fewer barriers to entry and fewer bailouts to prop up failed giants, make it harder for dominant businesses to maintain dominance. . . . Big business wants safety, but big-business safety hurts the rest of the economy. Disdain for bailouts and corporate welfare has resided primarily in the populist corners of the Left and Right. But the scholarly case against systemic privilege is strong and growing, too. The subsidy sucklers, bailout barons and regulatory freeloaders may soon face a challenge on a broad political front.”
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Novel technique reveals unprecedented subatomic details of exotic ferroelectric nanomaterials. “As scientists learn to manipulate little-understood nanoscale materials, they are laying the foundation for a future of more compact, efficient, and innovative devices.”
THE LIBOR SCANDAL: History’s Biggest Market Fraud?
THE UNITED NATIONS WANTS TO TAX YOU, and Daniel Mitchell says “Ho, Hum.”
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Energy Revolution Part One: The Biggest Losers.
While the chattering classes yammered on about American decline and peak oil, a quite different future is taking shape. A world energy revolution is underway and it will be shaping the realities of the 21st century when the Crash of 2008 and the Great Stagnation that followed only interest historians. A new age of abundance for fossil fuels is upon us. And the center of gravity of the global energy picture is shifting from the Middle East to… North America.
The two biggest winners look to be Canada and the United States. Canada, with something like two trillion barrels worth of conventional oil in its tar sands, and the United States with about a trillion barrels of shale oil, are the planet’s new super giant energy powers. Throw in natural gas and coal, and the United States is better supplied with fossil fuels than any other country on earth. Canada and the United States are each richer in oil than Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia combined.
There’s still time to pay off some Greens to try to block development, though!
AT AMAZON, summer markdowns in Toys & Games.
Also, today only: Over 60% Off Select Kingston Solid-State Drives.
MICKEY KAUS: Good news for Obama: Government-subsidized batterymaker A123 may make it past election day before going bankrupt.
Plus: “Here’s a nagging question Obama chronicler Jonathan Alter may be able to answer: In his 2011 State of the Union address, Obama laid out a plan to have ‘a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,’ a goal that now looks increasingly unrealistic insane. Did Obama know the million-EV goal was BS when he announced it? Was he misled by advisers? If the latter, have any suffered adverse consequences ? Was he too inexperienced to know the extent to which bureaucracies tend to tell the boss what he wants to hear, even if it’s a fantasy? Or did he not care?”
SAUDIS SHOCK PAKISTAN WITH PRO-INDIA TURN. “In steps that point to Saudi Arabia’s concerns about Pakistan’s unsustainable national course, its fears of Iran and its renewed interest in its security relationship with the United States, the Washington Post reports that Saudi Arabia is stepping up its cooperation with Indian authorities on the sensitive question of Pakistani or Indian nationals suspected of terror activities and hiding in Saudi Arabia — in some cases people who are traveling on false documents apparently provided by people with access to the resources of the Pakistani state.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): The Hill Poll: Majority feel Obama has changed country for worse.
PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH doesn’t know if Robert Gibbs embezzles money from orphanages. Hey, neither do I.
NICOLE GELINAS: New York’s Risky, Hidden Debt Burden.
A JOE BIDEN INITIATIVE THAT DIDN’T GO ANYWHERE? WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN? Stuck in the middle: Biden-led task force dropping ball with just the voters Obama desperately needs.
THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK: Quotations from Chairman Lakoff.
So a language “expert” dog-whistles his title? Or maybe he’s just ripping off the Texas Hold’em community.
WAPO: Obama’s Two-Pronged Economic Problem.
Related: Greg Mankiw: What Recovery? With this stunning graphic:
MATTHEWS DEALS MOSTLY IN MYTHS AND TINGLES: Prof. Joseph Campbell: Chris Matthews Invokes Cronkite Myth In NYT Review.