Most Corrupt MSM?

North Dakota tops analysis of corruption - USATODAY.com

I don't think we need to think very long to realize that when there is a problem in the Republican ranks, the topic of the day for the MSM is "how deep and wide does the corruption in the REPUBLICAN Party go?". Tom Delay, Mark Foley, Ted Stevens--the message is always clear "Republicans are corrupt, here are some specific examples". Notice any slight difference in how they deal with rampant corruption in the Democrat party?

I'd argue that the REAL message is that POLITICS is a corrupt business, BOTH Democrats and Republicans are often corrupt, but some states and areas are more corrupt than others. In this article USA Today says something really stupid in the headline, but the unintended message is what I just stated, politics are corrupt and these stats prove it. BUT, the idea that North Dakota is even in the same universe of corruption as Chicago and Illinios is so ludicrous that what the USA today claim really shows is just how wildly biased the MSM really is.

First, the "easy one", just reduce the problem to see how accurate the algorithm is. Let's just take "governors per population" ... ND has 1, IL has 1, ND has 600K people, IL has 12 Million, or roughly 18x as many. Therefore, if ND has one corrupt governor any more often than 18 years, that means they are more corrupt than IL. Make sense to you? If it does, you too could be a reporter for the USA today!

Where do you think a black person stands out more? Helsinki, or Kenya? If you guessed Kenya, than you could work for the USA Today. Second test in this vein. If you were forced to be dropped in the "worst neighborhood" in Fargo, Bismark, or Chicago with a funny hat and a big sign that said "will pay for directions", which city would you pick? "Corruption" is something that is VERY relative -- "corrupt" in ND really stands out, in Chicago, what would get you arrested in Bismark could get you awarded "Mr Clean" on the South side of Chi-town.

Why would one pick CONVICTIONs as a test of corruption? Is that the usual USA Today standard? Let's see, Slick Willie had a whole bunch of folks convicted of this and that in his administration, but USA Today didn't have any trouble with him. Bush has had ONE ... poor Scooter, who didn't know what day he was the last to find out the Valerie "I drive into the CIA every day from my home" Plame actually "worked at the CIA". Golly, who would have thunk it!

Isn't the whole deal on "corruption" is that there gets to be a "culture of corruption" and there are a bunch of kingmakers, croneys, corrupt officials, etc and it "keeps going on"? Like say "in Chicago". Doesn't more convictions mean that you are getting rid of more corruption?

How about "level of corruption" as a measure? Let see, IL has had 3 Governors end up eating off tin trays since '70 -- so far, looks like they have another in the running. ND? None ... and of course that is the way it is in most states. USA Today is trying to do nothing put provide misdirection to the sheep in a desperate attempt to direct their attention away from the cesspool from which their beloved BO was spawned.

It is lovely to see some folks ALREADY whining about how "Republicans ought to give BO a chance". Oh yes, you mean like Democrats did with Bush in 2K? How about while we were fighting two wars? Were they big on "giving him a chance" then? Do we live in a country where the President and his party are supposed to be unopposed? Isn't it enough to have the entire MSM braying every day about "historical" and spending all their time trying to defend the emporer on every subject? Must we ALL just bow and scrape to his royal BO about whom there can't even be a joke uttered?

The Republicans I know would VERY MUCH like to see things go better, but the Democrats took over Congress two full years ago, and the "change" is well under way. Worse, the "change" is being sold as "free markets don't work" rather than "if you tell banks to give free loans to people that can't affort them and refuse to regulate THAT, you are creating the seeds of DISASTER". Right now we are so far gone that people aren't even looking at what has already happened and what is in the process of happening as being "wrong direction". The country got so lost on what was good times, bad times, recession, depression, whatever, that I'm convinced that 90%+ of the sheep have no idea what direction they are even going.

Senate Seat on E-Bay

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iowahawk_blog/3097265339/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Swimming In The Cesspool

Obama Worked to Distance Self From Blagojevich Early On - washingtonpost.com

The MSM is working very hard to help BO distance himself from the IL Governor. My analogy is that if you went into one of those restaurants where you get to pick the fish you are going to eat from a tank, and the tank was an open cesspool from which you held your nose and picked a fish saying "gee, I don't think this one got any on him!" you would be as optimistic as it seems that most of the country is about BO and the IL political cesspool.

Let's assume that he DID swim with the turds for 15 years and "didn't get any on him". How then do we account for the fact that he ALSO did absolutely nothing clean up the tank? This guy claims to be a "reformer"? So did he not see corruption in Illinois even though the guy that helped him get his $1.6 million home (Tony Rezko) is now a convicted felon and also part of the Blagojevich investigation? If that is true, he would seem to be naive beyond imagine, but if it ISN'T true, then he knew about it and just "let it go"? But what would that say about this guys character?

"Obama saw this coming, and he was very cautious about not having dealings with the governor for quite some time," said Abner Mikva, a former congressman and appeals court judge who was Obama's political mentor in Chicago. "The governor was perhaps the only American public
officeholder who didn't speak at the convention, and that wasn't by accident. He's politically poisonous. You don't get through Chicago like Barack Obama did unless you know how to avoid people like that."

Gee, he "saw it coming", and the only action he took was to not let the guy speak at the convention? But, then in the NEXT PARAGRAPH we find:

But Obama and Blagojevich shared pieces of the Chicago political network, which is why this has been an uncomfortable week for Obama's presidential transition team. Senior adviser David Axelrod once advised Blagojevich. Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a developer who was convicted in June of fraud and money laundering, raised money for both men. Robert Blackwell Jr., a longtime Obama friend, served on Blagojevich's gubernatorial transition team. Blagojevich appointed one
of Obama's closest confidants, Eric Whitaker, as director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Uh, so BO's campain manager and now sr advisor -- the exact equivalent for BO of Karl Rove for Bush, once advised Blagojevich? So that is "avoiding"? I wonder if Rove had advised a governor that was trying to sell a Senate seat if the media would title the article "Bush worked to distance himself..."??

Meanwhile, we see that Rahm Emanuel is suddenly missing from BOs side at a couple press events and was ducking questions on HIS relationship to Blagojevich. Let's see, he was the congressman from the 5th district in IL, is he yet another case of the "unblemished trout in the cesspool tank"? Must be I guess, because we can see from the MSM that the story is NOT about the "connections to crooked Chicago politics", but rather about "how hard he worked to distance himself".

The Age of Turbulence

I enjoyed the walk through the latter 2/3 of the 20th century with a guy that is clearly of genius level and very engaged in the real world. I think this book gives a feel for the global economy in a way that few others can. My major sense (although he never completely directly puts it this way) is that "global free markets and rule of law" are a bit like a giant and powerful genie that is released from the bottle by freedom and the sense that individuals can create value and improve their lives by keeping a significant percentage of that created value to make their own lives, and the lives of their children better (that is a restatement of "rule of law").

The "genie" ONLY produces wealth when it is "uncorked". Attempt to control it via too much in the way of regulation and taxation, and the genie is gone like it never existed. More than anything else, the "genie" arrives ONLY when the vast majority of people see market freedom and rule of law as a reality and believe that they can invest their money, time, energy in "risky" ventures and have a reasonable chance to better their lives. If that "belief and confidence" is removed, you see what has happened in the last quarter of '08 come to pass.

The other sense that I got from the book was that Alan understood that the actions taken after the '87 crash, bailing out Chrysler, bailing out the S&Ls, bailing out the hedge funds, fixing the "Asian Contagion", the Russian meltdown, the crash of 2000, 9-11, Enron, etc were a "danger to the moral hazard", but he didn't want it all to end on "his watch", so he rationalized each risky action. The "moral hazard" is the idea that if folks feel that they are "insured", they will go do stupid things (like sub-prime lending).

My sense is that each action taken to stave off or reduce the impact of the "crisis / recession of the day" during the Greenspan years increased the risk for the future -- and that the future happens to be now. The "moral hazard" was worn down enough, so that coupled with the Democrats taking over in '06 and Bush being left in the weakest state of any US president in memory, the sub-prime crisis collided with what was fanned into a "leadership crisis" and confidence evaporated world wide.

Confidence is WAY harder to create than it is to lose, and somehow I suspect that BO in action is going to be way less impressive than BO giving a speech. Boy, do I hope I'm wrong, because if I'm right, we are likely due for a finger pointing descent into a very long financial abyss.

The book is a very worthy read, I highly recommend it.

Why We Do Recounts

Ann Coulter : Minnesota Ballots: Land of 10,000 Fakes - Townhall.com

Hard to get much information on the MN recount locally. I've heard quite a lot about the horror of the 133 missing votes, and the obvious answer to why they are "missing" being that election workers ran a stack of ballots through twice. Ann raises the obvious question is "Why have recounts if one isn't going to believe the results"? To which of course the answer that a rational and fair minded person would draw is there are two choices:

1). We either decide to abide by the results as of election night
2). We decide to do a recount and abide by those results

Liberals, not being fair minded and rational have option 3:

3). You selectively use the results from either count that best support your candidate

So, in MN, we are going to "leave it up to the canvassing board" of which the chair (Mark Ritchie) is a hand-picked Democrat put in place specifically "remedy" the problem that Florida had a Republican in that post (Katherine Harris) in 2000. Naturally, since Ritchie is a Democrat, the MSM finds him to be completely unbiased and not the subject of any slurs on his impartiality as Harris had to suffer.

So what will they decide? Nobody knows, but I guess one thing that is "nice" is that their decision and the parameters going into it will at least not be done in the midst of a media firestorm. If Franken "wins", even if it is in the Sentate with Harry Reid deciding, it will be "the will of the people". If Coleman wins, it may be 2010 or later before it is reported -- and then it will be a "dissappointment in which folks were disenfranchised again".

BTW, nice AP picture of Al ... sort of portrays him like they usually portray Republicans.

I Love PJ

Print paupers could use bailout | The Australian

PJ O'Rourke for president. I just like his outlook on the world. A sample:

The Government is bailing out Wall Street for being evil and the car companies for being stupid. But print journalism brings you Paul Krugman and Anna Quindlen. Also, in 1898 Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal started the Spanish-American War. All of the Lehman Brothers put together couldn't cause as much evil stupidity as that.

The MSM Is Shocked !

Obama Was Mute on Illinois Corruption - WSJ.com

Wow, corruption in Illinois and Chicago politics. What a surprise!! The MSM did a very thorough investigation on AK politics and even managed to get an investigation going in Sarah Palin was all found to be unfounded the night before the election! Imagine that, they didn't find anything, but it wasn't because they didn't go through Wasilla and Juneau politics with a fine tooth comb looking for ANYTHING! Nice it all worked out the day before the election, I'm sure the media feels HORRIBLE for having raised such a big stink and found NOTHING!

Now we turn to Illinios. Wow, there is corruption in Illinious, who would have thought THAT??!!! Any connections between Blago and BO?? Well, interestingly, the home that BO currently lives in was found by a guy  named Rezko who also came up with some very special finance tricks to allow BO to get into it. Rezko happens to be a convicted felon sitting in jail right now, and his name is all through the Blago charges --- but of course, there is "no connection" between the corruption of IL politics and BO! He simply swam and was successful in that cesspool for 10+ years and didn't even pick up a bad smell! In the MSM / Democrat world, you could go to a restaurant where you pick your fish out of a tank and have no trouble picking yours out of a putrid paste of raw sewage and say "I'll take that one, I don't think he got anything on him!".

Naturally, as per usual, the bleating public sheep are "innocent". They took their information feed from the national media and in the national media Rezko and IL politics in general have been the kind of state secret that the MSM is VERY good at keeping -- now, OTOH, if for example they had actual top secret information that could damage a Republican, but has a good chance of making the whole nation less secure -- say "secret" installations in countries favorable to us for interrogations, THAT would need bold headlines in every paper and on every news show!!

Zero and Oh Look Alike

Investors buy U.S. debt at zero yield - International Herald Tribune

BO doesn't like his middle initial (H for Hussein), and apparently he doesn't like the "B" much either, so he tends to put up the big "O", usually with some rainbows, red-white and blue, or other coloration.

Anybody notice how much 0 and O look alike?

Apparently world investors do and their vote on BO is ZERO!!! As in ZERO % interest on short term T-Bills. The last time we got to that level it had taken FDR a full two terms of screw-up government to get to 38-40 when T-Bills drew NOTHING!!!

In Tuesdays Fed Auction, 4 times as many folks wanted the $30Billion at auction, so the yield fell to zero. This is "government as a mattress". It says that going forward from here the assumption is that EVERYTHING is going to LOSE MONEY, so I may as well bury my money in a coffee can in the back yard--or just have Uncle watch it for me and get NOTHING in return.

If one was inclined to panic, it appears that now would be an excellent time.

..... We interrupt this broadcast to suggest mass panic. Everyone should immediately jump up, run screaming or take another ridiculous action as quickly as possible. Potentially we could try to impeach BO and vote in an even less experienced and unknown empty suit from an even more corrupt state than Illinios ....hmm, on second thought, I'm not sure we could find that, so maybe we really do have the man for the times.

The age of "B Zero"???

Looking At the Change

8 really, really scary predictions - Nouriel Roubini (1) - FORTUNE

Worth reading. In summary, nobody thinks the economy will turn around in '09 and many figure it will be a lot longer than that. Some of them suspect that the stock market is going to drop by another 50% to the neighborhood of $4K before it turns around. Most figure that we will see very significant inflation, if not hyperinflation. Unemployment pushing 10%, 12 million people losing their homes, cheery things like that.

One of the key points made is "confidence has been lost". Really? Who would have thunk it? Back when Slick Willie was wagging his finger at us, the MSM was all over the "confidence thing". Those nasty Republicans were "risking the great economy" by going after poor old Slick, didn't they realize that saying bad things about old Wandering Willie could cause a lost of CONFIDENCE!!!

How awful--of course once Bush got in, there just didn't seem to be much concern about confidence, and while we were at it, why not pile on corporate leadership, banking, wall-street, and globalization!! What we need is CHANGE!!!! ... without any real indications of what that might mean.

Is anybody starting to see the meaning yet, or is it going to take a little more "reality therapy"???

Change In Illinois

Blagojevich free on $4,500 bail after arrest - CNN.com


Who says Democrats are against free markets! Clearly, Blagojevich believed in the power of getting value out of the assets that he had available for sale. One of the reasons that the Republicans were turned out in '06 was "corruption", we know that is a problem that primarily plagues Republicans!!

So I wonder if we had a Republican President-elect and the Governor of the State where he is vacating a Senate seat was arrested for trying to sell that Senate seat on the open market would the MSM be getting into any innuendo about a "sleaze factor"? Howq about trying to find any shoestring connection they might be able to find between the same-party Governor and President Elect? I can't imagine a press that would attempt any "guilt by association" if we had Republicans involved here, can you?

No, I'm sure they wouldn't. Look how strongly they looked into the past of Barry Sottero (currently known as Barack Obama) vs Sarah Palin -- gee, I wonder if Barry was in any beauty contests 20 years ago? That would CERTAINLY be an important issue to be dug out, wouldn't it?

The Dems pulled into Washington control in '06, and the change just keeps on coming. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank doing a bang up job of oversight on sub-prime loans and Freddie and Fannie, Nancy Pelosi being a great little "tuna helper" for Starkist, Charle Rangle misdirecting his rent controlled appartments and grafting hither and yon, and good old Willam Jefferson with his $90K in cold cash in the freezer -- although the voters in LA FINALLY decided to turn him out -- no thanks to the Democrat party for policiing their own membership!

The change is here! I can't see how we are going to wait two more years for even a ray of HOPE!

None of these hardly get any coverage in the MSM though, so for most of the sheep we are still looking at "Bad Bush".

Coleman Wins! ... Again

Power Line - The Recount Is Over

I remain amazed at how little reporting is being done on the MN Senate race. One would think that just because of the "horse race" nature it would be a hot topic, especially locally, but it is as if nobody cares. Yes, of course the GA victory for Chamblis meant that the Dems didn't hit 60, but I think everyone pretty well knows that with Olympia Snow and Susan Collins plus no doubt a few others, the Democrats have their effectively filibuster proof Senate. I'm quite certain they could confirm someone to the left of Karl Marx to any position they desired and the MSM would applaud it.

The "smart money" would assume that Al would have to concede at some point here, but one needs to realize that there isn't a lot of "smart money" in the Democrat world. Hardball partisan politcs is pretty much their order of the day and always has been, so while one might assume there would be "blowback" from overturuning a state election, one might be wrong. The lack of media coverage makes me wonder if they aren't just keeping it low key to help keep Al's options open so if there is a Senate overturn, it "seems like the right thing".

BO's Saintly Speechwriter

Washington Times - BREITBART: I believe Hillary's cardboard cutout

The Saint is the guy doing the groping -- he is a major contributor to the "smoothness of BO".

Hey, these guys are Democrats, so all in good fun! How would one compare this iconic treatment of a current US Senator and incoming SoS by a Presidential speech writer to an alleged mention of a pubic hair on a can of coke and uttering the name of an X-Rated movie 10 years previously? Would there be any sort of a double standard if one tried to deny a black man a Supreme Court seat on the basis of a couple of decade old innocuous comments, yet finds no reason at all to even break this out into the general public as a story?

Naturally, we all know that this is the kind of story that WOULD NOT SELL, so the unbiased press is simply not pushing it because they are only interested in making money and nobody would even look at this!

Now, we all know that if this was a Bush speechwriter it would be treated EXACTLY the same way, right?

Will on Fairness Doctrine

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Fairness Doctrine Fouls Out

Will does a good job of covering the history of the fairness doctrine. A quick review of this sordid chapter in US history and the fact that many Democrats would like to bring it back today gives some instruction on just how hard it is to have freedom of speech!

Because liberals have been even less successful in competing with conservatives on talk radio than Detroit has been in competing with its rivals, liberals are seeking intellectual protectionism in the form of regulations that suppress ideological rivals. If liberals advertise their illiberalism by reimposing the fairness doctrine, the Supreme Court might revisit its 1969 ruling that the fairness doctrine is constitutional. The court probably would dismay reactionary liberals by reversing that decision on the ground that the world has changed vastly, pertinently and for the better.

Until the Reagan administration extinguished it, the doctrine required broadcasters to devote reasonable time to fairly presenting all sides of any controversial issue discussed on the air. The government decided the meaning of the italicized words.

Plutarch and Modern Morality

Parallel Lives by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online

This blog has covered this topic many times, but Hanson does a great job with a few current examples; Fuld/Rubin, Rangle / Stevens, Gonzales/Holder, Dodd/Lott.

The punchline of the comparisons is this:

I could go on and on with these Plutarachean examples of Parallel Lives but you get the picture. Here, the contrast is not the respective virtues of Greece and Rome. Nor is there any regret whatsoever that liberals of good faith thankfully scrutinize the bad judgment and even criminal activity of wayward conservatives. The problem instead is why we continuously consider liberal transgressions as misdemeanors and their conservative counterparts as felonies.

If Plutarch once believed that action, not intention matters (otherwise, as Aristotle noted, we could all be moral in our sleep), we moderns believe the reverse — that proper thinking can often excuse improper acts.

Why so? Perhaps we suspect that a Rubin or Dodd want to do more good things for the poor than do a Fuld or Lott, and so we should interpret their transgressions as atypical lapses rather than characteristic behavior.

I suspect that Anderson is being a bit tounge in cheek here, basically the real answer is that we as a culture have largely stopped thinking with any rigor at all, and the whole idea of "comparative lives" is well beyond our current culture. We as a society have decided it is OK to give a pass to those that we agree with and to treat those that we don't agree with as pariahs no matter what they do.

The left does the most of it for two reasons; first, because they can. They are the dominant culture, so the media will break their way, secondly, anything they have approaching a moral is only relative anyway. Having a consistent outlook would cause way too much soul searching for them, so they simply apply the thought they like when they like it and forgo it the rest of the time.

The Burden of Brilliant Economists

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Markets, Not Economists, Will Help the Economy

George has a good one here, worth the read. I do love the context of BOs claim for "helping to save or create 2.5 million jobs". A classic meaningless statement. Here is some context -- I love the "Before Reagan / After Reagan" part, the change to an economy that averaged a million more jobs a year after Reagan's first term is the kind of results that the MSM isn't that interested in providing for context:

"Since Eisenhower's first term, the economy has created an average of 1.5 million new jobs each year. Since Reagan's first term, the average has been about 2.5 million a year. And Reagan, who inherited an economy as bad if not worse than the current one, saw 6.3 million new jobs created four years after he entered the White House."

What will the benchmark be after BO? How many jobs the economy LOST in a 4 year term? Here is the punchline of the piece--George has a wit that is very urbane and subtle, but it certainly gets the point across.

In his wise book "Capitalism, Democracy & Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery," John Mueller, an Ohio State political scientist, notes that John Maynard Keynes' central theme, according to his biographer Robert Skidelsky, was that "the state is wise and the market is stupid." Mueller continues: "Working from that sort of perspective, India's top economists for a generation supported policies of regulation and central control that failed abysmally -- leading one of them to lament recently, 'India's misfortune was to have brilliant economists.'"

Many of them were educated in Britain, by Keynes' followers. In America today, everyone agrees that the president-elect's economic team is composed of brilliant economists.