Friday, October 10, 2003
IT WAS RACIST IS TAKEN FOR GRANTED
Here’s the Des Moines Register’s take on the Rush Limbaugh/ESPN flap:
Take Rush Limbaugh from his niche radio audience and see what happens: He gets in trouble for making racist remarks.
Sure, on his daily conservative talk show, listeners don't mind and are even amused by his antics.
There are so many smug and insulting innuendoes in that passage it is hard to know where to begin.
First, it assumes that Limbaugh and all his listeners—i.e. conservatives—are basically okay with racism. That the Register editorialists can believe that conservatives are racist these days only show what a hermetically sealed echo chamber they live in.
Second, what was so racist about his remarks?
He said Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because of social concern in the NFL" and media that have "been very desirous that a black quarterback do well."
It's like Limbaugh couldn't help himself. Couldn't help letting his prejudices seep their way into his analysis.
Isn’t racism judging people on the basis of their skin color? Isn’t saying something like “blacks aren’t smart enough to be quarterbacks” a racist remark? Yes, of course it is. But Rush didn’t say that. He didn’t judge McNabb on the basis of his race. He judged the sports media on their treatment of the race of NFL quarterbacks. If I were to say, “Blacks are more likely to get in to a top university than whites because of preferential admission policies,” does that make me racist? It is in no way a judgment on blacks’ academic abilities; rather, it is a criticism of screwed-up college admission practices. One can debate the merit of Limbaugh’s remarks, but they are not racist.
But, the Register editorialist would probably say that they are racist. Because in their minds, all dittoheads (of which I am one) are racist. Talk about prejudices.
Last comment: I really like the title “Few dittoheads in the NFL.” Here’s on thing for sure: there a lot more dittoheads in the NFL then there are subscribers to the political philosophy espoused by the Register editorial page.
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VOTERS ARE ANGRY—GUESS WHO NEEDS TO WATCH OUT?
Guess which spin on the recall the Des Moines Register editorial page followed? Here’s a clue:
the real threat to President Bush and all incumbents is a discontented people. Budget deficits, a poor job market and a weak economy are tiring to people for a while. Then they're irritating. Then voters get downright angry.
In a word, predictable.
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Thursday, October 09, 2003
TIGERS, GUNS, AND MONEY
But not all in the same post. Go visit Iowa Libertarian.
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GUESS WHO'S GONNA GET VICTIM STATUS NOW?
Go visit Tusk and Talon to find out.
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SPECIOUS ARGUMENTS AGAINST RECALL
Now that California has terminated Governor Gray “Coin-Op” Davis, it is worth looking at the Des Moines Register’s recent editorial against recalls:
California adopted them in 1911, but had never seen a recall campaign aimed at a state official. Now they've got one - and the state and the nation have become painfully aware that it could make a mockery of the very grass-roots democracy it was intended to serve.
If the “mockery” standard were seriously applied, we’d probably have to do away with most forms of elections, since most have at one point probably made a joke of what they were intended to serve. The election of, say, Evan Mecham or George Ryan would mean we’d have to get rid of gubernatorial elections. The election of Dennis Kucinich or Marion Barry might mean we should get rid of mayoral elections. And so on. By the time we’re finished, we might be living in a democracy with no elections—if that’s possible.
Petitioners forced a vote on the retention of Gov. Gray Davis, primarily due to the state's money problems, although Davis' responsibility for the mess is debatable. If a majority of Californians who go to the polls today are sufficiently ticked off at him, Davis is out. And while in the voting booth, Californians will pick from a list of 135 wannabe successors, the most popular of whom will become governor if Davis loses the recall. It means that a governor favored by as many as 49 percent of the electorate could be succeeded by a candidate favored by as little as 1 percent, if the votes were spread evenly enough among the 135.
That's democracy?
Actually, Governor Coin-Op received 47% of the vote. You can look it up in the Almanac of American Politics. His vote total was 3,533,490. Arnold’s totals? 3,624,154, or 48% of the vote. So much for the Des Moines Register’s 1% theory. It was based, of course, on the idea that voters are extraordinarily stupid. A liberal editorial page wouldn’t think that, would it?
Nah, of course not.
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MORE OF YOU-KNOW-WHO
Yes, I’m trying to not take Rekha Basu, a.k.a. author of the DMRWCE, seriously anymore. But once in a while a real “gem” shows up in her column. Regarding the Wilson-Plame scandale, she wrote:
"Just because you're paranoid," goes the joke, "it doesn't mean they're not after you."
By the middle of last week, I was feeling pretty paranoid.
More so than usual, Rekha?
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Wednesday, October 08, 2003
A QUESTIONING OF PATRIOTISM
My new column at the American Prowler.
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Tuesday, October 07, 2003
AGREEING WITH KRUGMAN—TO A POINT
I actually find myself agreeing with the first paragraph of Paul Krugman’s column today:
Economists call it the "lump of labor fallacy." It's the idea that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in the world, so any increase in the amount each worker can produce reduces the number of available jobs. (A famous example: those dire warnings in the 1950's that automation would lead to mass unemployment.) As the derisive name suggests, it's an idea economists view with contempt, yet the fallacy makes a comeback whenever the economy is sluggish.
But, of course, Krugman can’t resist a shot at President Bush:
the Bush administration has resolutely refused to try the policies most likely to improve the employment picture.
You’re shocked, I know.
Then there is this wing-dinger:
Since 2001, sensible economists have been pleading for federal aid to state and local governments so schoolteachers and police officers needn't be laid off because of a temporary fall in revenues. They've also urged the administration to stop dragging its heels on much-needed homeland security spending, not just because such spending is needed to make the country safer, but also because it would create jobs and put more income into the hands of Americans likely to spend it. (And if you're worried about spending's [sic] leading to increased deficits, why not cancel some of those long-run tax breaks for upper brackets?) Until we've done the obvious things, there's no reason to despair about job creation.
“Sensible economists”—i.e. Paul Krugman and all those who agree with him.
On a more serious note, would Krugman’s proposal of spending more money on government really pull the economy out of its funk? There are many examples that suggest it wouldn’t. First off, consider Japan, which has been in an economic funk since the early 1990s. The Japanese have poured tons of money into their public sector, with little economic growth to show for it. Or take the 1990s, which Krugman considers, in his new book, to be a marvelous decade economically. If you look at government expenditures as a percentage of GDP, government accounted for about 19.6% in the first quarter of 1990. By the end of 2000, it had shrunk to 17.5%. If government growth is so good for the economy, why does government shrink, at least as a percentage of GDP, when the economy does so well?
Now, some may say that Krugman only wants short-term government spending, that it’s just a quick shot in the arm, and what I’m looking at in the previous paragraph is the long-term. Okay, let’s compare the last two recessions in the U.S. From the time the recession began in the first quarter of 2001 until the second quarter of 2003, government spending has grown 9.7%. Now if we compare a comparable period in the last recession—from when it began in the third quarter of 1990 until the second quarter of 1992—government spending only grew 1.5%. Now, if government spending during this recession/recovery is up more than 6 fold over the last recession/recovery, then why is it that the last recession, in Krugman’s words, “looked like a hiring boom compared with recent experience”?
Here’s a more plausible explanation: increased government spending has slowed the economic recovery this time around, and the tax cuts are the only thing keeping the economy from sinking into a recession.
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PAUL KRUGMAN CONCEDES IRAQ - AL QAEDA CONNECTION!
Yes, it’s true sports fans. The Bush-obsessed New York Times columnist has admitted that there is a link to al Qaeda. The nation’s most dangerous pundit had previously claimed no such link existed, as in this May column: “The war was justified to the public by links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. No evidence of the Qaeda link has ever surfaced.”
But in last Friday’s column Krugman wrote “Mr. Wilson never opposed the 'war on terror' — he opposed the war in Iraq precisely because it had no obvious relevance to the campaign against terror. He feared that invading a country with no role in 9/11, and no meaningful Al Qaeda links, would divert resources from the pursuit of those who actually attacked America” (Italics mine.) In his slippery and underhanded way, Krugman admits that there is a connection.
Of course, he has to try to save his skin by modifying the word “links” with the phrase “no meaningful”. I guess it’s not meaningful:
-That Osama bin Laden met at least eight times with Iraq’s secret police agency, the Special Security Organization, and with the mukhabarat, Iraq’s external intelligence agency.
-That al Qaeda’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri met with Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad in 1992 and 1998, and in 1998 the Iraqi regime paid him $300,000.
-That Hussein gave financial assistance to al Qaeda through a complex tangle of financial institutions in Europe.
Not meaningful? Perhaps it depends on what Krugman’s definition of “meaningful” is.
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BOB HERBERT IN WONDERLAND
Yep, for Bob Herbert, it’s all coming true. President Bush is in heapum big trouble: Iraq is a quagmire, the economy is crap, Bush’s approval numbers are down—it will culminate in a crushing election defeat in November 2004. Oh happy times for the New York Times op-ed page!
Herbert complains:
Despite the administration's relentlessly optimistic chatter about the economy, the Census Bureau reported that the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.7 million last year, the second straight annual increase. During those two years, the number of poor Americans has grown by 3 million.
Belt-tightening is also in order for the middle class. The median household income declined by 1.1 percent, a drop of about $500, to $42,400. It was the second straight year for a decline in that category as well.
Per capita income decreased, too. It dropped by 1.8 percent, to $22,794 in 2002, the first decline in more than a decade.
Yes, Bob, that’s what happens when a terrorist attack occurs on the heels of a recession—a recession that got going before Bush had enacted any economic policy.
And even diehard Republicans have been forced to acknowledge that the president was surely wrong when he insisted that his mammoth tax cuts would be the engine of job creation.
I don’t know which Republicans those are. Could you please give an example? Or are you coming down with I’ll-make-a-charge-with-nothing-to-back-it-up-itis? Perhaps you caught it from your colleague Paul Krugman? And, guess you were the victim of bad timing Bob—kind of like that New York Time-Billy Ayers-9/11 thing. On the Friday your column came out, the unemployment numbers show that the economy created over 50,000 new jobs in September. This is not surprising, since productivity is way up this year, and increased productivity is the precursor to job creation. Oh and more bad news, Bob: this coincides with the full phase-in of the Bush tax cut.
Next,
The vicious release to news organizations of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer could serve as a case study of the character of this administration. The Bush II crowd is arrogant, venal, mean-spirited and contemptuous of law and custom.
Kind of pales in comparison to the Clinton Administration, huh Bob? See, that’s what happens when those in the media like you let a president like Bill Clinton get away with all manner of sordid stuff. When a new Administration takes over and engages in potential wrong-doing, the American public responds with a big fat yawn. Reap what ye sow.
Oh, and one last thing: That title “Shaking the House of Cards” is in very poor taste. After the Jayson Blair Fiasco, you should ask your editors to be more careful when choosing the paper’s headlines.
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WHILE I’M BASHING THE NEW YORK TIMES…
Take a look at this article about President Bush’s decision to reorganize the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan under a new “Iraq Stabilization Group.” After dispensing with the initial description in the first two paragraph, reporter David E. Sanger comes up with this little gem:
It comes at a time when surveys show Americans are less confident of Mr. Bush's foreign policy skills than at any time since the terrorist attacks two years ago. At the same time, Congress is using President Bush's request for $87 billion to question the administration's failure to anticipate the violence in Iraq and the obstacles to reconstruction.
It’s not that the President wants to improve the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. No, it’s a policy that is poll driven.
Guess the age of Clinton is still with us.
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Monday, October 06, 2003
BACK ON TUESDAY
Will start up tomorrow. Till then...
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