By Warner Todd Huston

Just a Reiminder on how successful our economy is...

The Bush economy is a fantastic success. But here are some of the facts because the MSM won't spend much effort to let us know about it:

"According to the Office of Management and Budget's Mid-Session Review, which couldn't be worse news for New Direction Democrats. According to the report, President Bush's goal of halving the deficit by FY2009 is a year ahead of schedule, thanks to increased tax revenues produced by pro-growth policies. This year's deficit has fallen to $296 billion, or 2.3 percent of GDP---30 percent lower than February's forecast, and nearly 50 percent lower than 2004. FY2008's deficit is projected to fall to $188 billion, a more palatable 1.3 percent of GDP.

Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 5.6 percent in the first quarter, making this the 18th consecutive quarter of economic growth. Coupled with this growth, the American economy has produced more than 5.4 million new jobs since August, 2003. The U.S. unemployment rate, lower than the averages of the past four decades at 4.6 percent, has become the envy of the world.

Finally, spurred by the Bush tax cuts, tax revenues have increased by 11 percent, or $246 billion from 2005 to 2006. That's almost 19 times as much as Rep. Obey and House Democrats hoped to put toward deficit reduction by raising your taxes. Since the Bush tax cuts were fully implemented in 2003, tax receipts have grown no less than 34.6 percent. All of this has happened in spite of the devastating effects of September 11 and the economic burden of the War on Terrorism.

So why, you may ask, would we raise your taxes in order to balance the budget and reduce the deficit? That's a question Minority Leader Pelosi and the New Direction Party must answer for the American electorate."

(Thanks to the Federalist Patriot for the reminder!)

Yet the Democrats have issued their new agenda for America which calls for tax increases because of our econimc "failure"s? What country's economy are they measuring again???

-By Warner Todd Huston

There was an amusing story going around right after Nixon's re-election in 1972. As the story goes a New York columnist wondered how Nixon got re-elected as that Columnist had never met anyone that voted for him. This is the same sort of hermetically sealed bubble in which writer for Fortune Magazine, Marc Gunther, seems to live. A nether world where everyone he meets is homogeneous, all having the same opinions, influences, and pastimes.

In a recent article titled The extinction of mass culture, Gunther bemoans the loss of what he imagines is a common American culture because of the rise of the Internet, its diversity of sources of information ringing death knell for the MSM.

But here is the bubble in which he lives defined; Gunther imagines the loss of influence experienced by the MSM has made our country "poorer" for that diminished influence! Obviously he feels the time America was controlled by the same opinions from the self-appointed few in the MSM was a better day.

"I think the explosion of choice has left us poorer in at least two arenas. The first is journalism. ... The network evening newscasts, big-city newspapers and the national news magazines once had the money, access, skills, commitment and power to deliver lots of original reporting and put important issues on the national agenda. Today, they are all diminished.

Yes, there is more information available to us than ever, but I don't think we are better informed. Niche media will, inevitably, continue to weaken mass media."

Amazingly, choice is "bad" to Gunther! And, worse still, it is somehow destroying our "culture"... that is, if you define "culture" as that which is controlled by old media outlets like The New York Times, news magazines, and the big three TV networks!

Ridiculously, Gunther's idea of a loss of culture is the fact that one can no longer easily name the biggest TV star or the most recognizable Advertisement slogan.

"TV's biggest stars are Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric, but they don't appear in prime time and they've been around for years - before the 300-channel universe fragmented audiences and damaged broadcast TV's hit-making machinery.

As for advertising, there are no 21st century equivalents to 'We Try Harder' or 'Where's the Beef?' or 'Just Do It.'"

Somehow, I just can't warm to the idea that a passing of ubiquitous ad-lines like "Where's the Beef" equates to a culture of which we should bemoan the passing! Nor do I think we are somehow "poorer" because there isn't a particular TV star whose name is on the tips of everyone's tounge. But Gunther seems to feel that we are "poorer" for such losses none-the-less.

Sadly Gunther feels that all that America "is" is what happens on TV.

"Mass culture provides intangible benefits, too. Big stars, hit TV shows and even commercials help knit a society together. Think of the feeling that comes a few times a year - the morning after the Super Bowl or the Oscars - when tens of millions of Americans share a common experience."

This statement proves that Gunther is in a bubble of his own making, one of mere personal experience as well as one rooted in only a short amount of historical time. This "mass culture" Gunther seems to think America "is", has only existed for a small portion of our great country's history.

Without question, radio and Hollywood movies brought a sort of mass culture to America but only starting in the 1930s. And it wasn't really until TV became ever present that this commonality of experience that Gunther seems to feel defines America really took off.

Before mass entertainment, we had our history, our struggles, our educational system, our values, our politics and politicians comprising our culture and creating those shared experiences. But we also had our regional differences and local ideas that brought our communities together. Since the inception of mass entertainment venues like radio, movies and TV, our REAL culture has been watered down, even ridiculed and made "poorer" by the ever downwardly spiraling standards of that very entertainment. Recalling Newton Minnow's "vast wasteland" line here seems apropos.

Therefore, the death of the MSM and the rise of Gunther's lamented "choice" should be welcomed, not feared.

Speaking of politics, Gunther was also crying about how that has been affected by the MSM's loss of influence with his "second arena" of worry.

"The second arena where we are worse off is politics. This is related to journalism, as the moderate and responsible (okay, bland) voices of the MSM get drowned out by partisan, opinionated cableheads and bloggers."

Once again, Gunther is blinded by personal experience and a narrow knowledge of this country over too short a period of time. This "bland" world of mere facts and journalism that Gunther imagines existed to so better serve our common culture is a somewhat mythical creature that only existed between the decades nearing the end of WWII and the beginning of the Clinton years.

Gunther imagines that we had a steady, proud and unpartisan "journalism" that is now being drowned out by those evil bloggers. Yet, this is a canard. We have never had an unpartisan media. In those wonderful, halcyon days of perfect journalism that Gunther so warmly recalls, we had a decided lack of diversity of opinion as the main news sources all converged on a single ideology, one just as decidedly anti-government if not outright anti-American.

Gunther is also seemingly unaware of how bitter and partisan the press was during the entire of the 150 years before WWII, before FDR succeeded in co-opting the press to his narrow view, corralling them into lap-dog media status. Further, Gunther seems unaware that, since WWII, the media has viciously attacked anyone who did not toe the same socialist line that FDR set up in the 1940s. Truman, Reagan, Bush and W Bush have all been savaged because they stood for ideas that veered from the leftist line while their opponents rarely got but a cross word.

Gunther also claims that we are more "polarized" now than ever before. This similarly shows he doesn't know much about American history, but is basing all his opinions on his own narrow experience.

"Politics in America has become polarized for many reasons, but a big one is the fact that people can now filter the news and opinion they get to avoid exposure to ideas with which they disagree. Anderson suggests that this could well be a temporary problem, and that if the major parties continue to move to the extremes and the quality of debate continues to deteriorate, the Internet could well enable a new party or parties, to arise."

In this country's history, the press WAS the "filtering out" that the polarized political sides used to screen out unwanted ideas. From the very first days of our Republic newspapers chose a candidate or cause and promoted them. Each town had several newspapers, all of which supported their man or cause. If you supported a side, you read the paper that supported your side. And after WWII when the MSM all coincided on a single point of view, news outlets vehemently and overtly chose a side "filtering out" all opposing views. The only difference between the early days of American journalism and that after WWII is that diversity of opinion was quashed in the later.

Again, Gunther is dreaming of an American tradition of nonpartisan professional journalism, a trade that really has never existed. At least now we can get honest opinion from the new media on the Internet instead of the barely disguised homogenous leftism of the MSM.

Lastly, it is rather amusing to see him carp about the "extremism" of the Political Parties as if this is something new. America's political Parties have often gone "extreme" in the past, usually when they are out of power and trying to regain it or when their extremism is consequently causing them to lose the power they do have. They always figure it out eventually and distance themselves from the extreme and it is then they usually win. But, in many ways, politics is always about extremes, passions, loud talking and bellicose claims no matter who wins.

So, what Gunther laments as passing mostly never existed but in the minds of the snooty, Ivy League grads that run the MSM with their common opinions agreed upon and settled before they write their first "fact". The real world -- you know, the one Gunther has yet to visit? -- never ran that way but for that short, sleepy time of the Media's "Golden" age. This loss of culture that Gunther is so worried about is nothing to cry over, but something to celebrate. We are climbing out from under the oppressive opinions of the media elite and blinking in the sunlight of a world of free expression and forming our own opinions.

... But then, that threatens Gunther's elite position, I guess. So, maybe we can see why he wails so?

Of course, Gunther's "culture" dominated by I Love Lucy, Madison Avenue ad campaigns, ABC News, and The New York Times is a far different and "poorer" culture than that of the struggle for Religious Freedom, the Founding Fathers, the settling of the West, the great wars, and the quest for civil rights that forms our real culture. The culture that Gunther cries over at night is not the real culture of the country and its loss will not harm us a bit.

Gunther may be the king of media, he may know every prosaic entertainment trivia question under the sun, but he don't know jack about history nor what "culture" truly is.

-By Warner Todd Huston

Why anyone ever bothers using an AP/Ipsos poll result to "prove" anything is beyond me. It has been well documented by multiple sources that this France based polling company habitually over samples Democrats in their polls and this particular poll is no different.

But, here is the AP wire headline screaming that "Americans want Democrats in Power" in their latest poll.

WASHINGTON - Republicans are in jeopardy of losing their grip on Congress in November. With less than four months to the midterm elections, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule.

So, what was the sampling numbers for THIS one?

According to the AP/Ipsos site they over sampled Democrats...again.

Registered Voters polled:
Strongly Republican - 17
Moderately Republican - 25
Definitely independent or neither - 5
Moderately Democrat - 32
Strongly Democrat - 21
_____________
Total Republican - 41
Total Democrat - 53

Looks to me like they gave the Democrats a 12% advantage in the sampling. Yet the actual results resulted in only an 11% higher Democrat reading!

Wouldn't that be a 1% Republican gain? (hat tip sweetness and light)

Jut another ho-hum day in the MSM!

-By Warner Todd Huston

Gorbie is wagging his finger at that big, bad U.S.A. and ABC News is helping him do it.

In a piece by Claire Shipman, Mikhail Gorbachev is claiming that we ”Americans Have a Severe Disease” because we see ourselves as “winners”, but that Russia’s attacks on democracy are just “some mistakes” made.

And once again, Ronald Reagan -- the man who REALLY ended the Cold War -- is ignored by a fawning media falling all over itself to genuflect at the feet of failed leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

The pieces starts with this idiotic paragraph:

“Mikhail Gorbachev is generally regarded as the man who broke down the ‘iron curtain’ that separated the communist world from the West and thawed the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.”

No, Mz. Shipman, only the MSM imagines that Gorbie broke down the Iron Curtin. Anyone with any knowledge of the era knows it was the strength and good sense of Ronald Reagan that ended the Cold War and set the Soviets on the path of their last steps to dissolution.

To be fair, Gorbie did lightly scold Russian president Vladimir Putin … but only lightly.
 
Gorbachev said of Putin,  "Putin has used and he will continue to use authoritarian measures…” But Gorbachev is sure that everything is going fine, just the same. “… but Russia will form a democracy. I know Vladimir Putin. He is a moral person”, Gorbachev concluded.

Yet, this “moral man” has cancelled elections, used his government to forcibly take over private businesses, jailed competitors and shored up a neighboring authoritarian, anti-democratic regime.

And of these many mistakes Gorbachev says “so what?”

"We have made some mistakes," he said, referring to recent attacks on Russia's democracy. "So what? Please don't put even more obstacles in our way. Do you really think you are smarter than we are?"

But for the leaders of the country that has freed a people, helped set up and foster elections, and fought terror all across the world, Gorbachev has nothing but harsh words.

According to Gorbie…

Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney are, "… are just hawks protecting the interests of the military -- shallow people,"

And he “wryly” said of Bush, "He's very determined. You can't say he does not have character."

But he reserves his worst criticism for the entire American people. "Americans have a severe disease -- worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex," Gorbie opined.

The Gorbie love ends with his last statement, "I want my grandchildren to live in a democratic country -- in a peaceful world. But it's hard to imagine because there are so many answers we still need to find."

I don’t doubt that it is “hard” for him “to imagine” since he excuses the anti-democratic actions of Putin but thinks the pro-democratic actions of the U.S.A. is a bad thing!

And leave it to the MSM to slavishly listen to this old crank’s nonsense.
 

My son went away to Iraq with the Illinois National Guard, last week. I, the proud papa of one of our brave men in uniform, stood in the bleachers at the General Richard L. Jones Armory in downtown Chicago on the morning of July 3rd watching as the boys of the 178th Infantry battalion (MPs) presented themselves to their relatives and Chicago's media for the last time before they leave for duty in Iraq.

Republican candidate for governor, Judy Barr Topinka, was present and stayed for a while shaking hands and wishing the soldiers well. Every single TV news outlet attended to interview the boys for a segment on their nightly newscasts.

And where was Dick "Turban" Durbin when the boys from Chicago were preparing to leave for Iraq?

Talking about bugs.

No, not the NSA, CIA, surveillance kind, I mean real bugs. Dick was touring nearby Kane county, Illinois looking for the emerald ash borer beetle that he is trying to get Federal funds to combat.

Obviously it was more important to be merely one county away looking for insects instead of making an appearance at the ceremony wishing bon voyage to the soldiers of the biggest city in his state.

Yes, apparently the ash borer beetle is more dangerous to America than are terrorists as far as Senator Dick is concerned.

In researching this beetle problem, I can agree that we Illinoisans need to try and stop their advance across the state. But, was it right to be only a few dozen miles from the soldier's farewell ceremony yet to eschew attendance to talk about bugs? No, they aren’t that important.

Worse, the matter isn't even very pressing as to the funding issue, anyway. Durbin has said that the matter of Federal funding won't be settled until the coming September! He certainly had the time to make a token visit to the soldier's ceremony, I'd say.

So, once again, we see that Dick "Turban" Durbin has his priorities clearly on display. The soldiers that he thinks are as bad as the enemy -- OUR soldiers -- are to be ignored as a bug takes first palce in Durbin’s list of priorities.

Spending Federal funds on bugs or supporting our soldiers? The choice is clear for Durbin.

Senator Durbin, meet the beetles … but to heck with Beetle Bailey.

-By Warner Todd Huston

Bet this won't get any press...

Blogger Hao Wu freed after being held for five months

"Reporters Without Borders voiced “immense relief” at the news of the release today of blogger and documentary filmmaker Hao Wu after nearly five months in detention. His release was announced on her blog by his sister, Na Wu."

The oppressions of the Commie Chinese is something that the MSM really doesn't like to talk much about. The MSM seems to want to paper over any oppression the Chinese do to their own people as a private or internal issue, or some such thing.

“At the same time, 50 other people are currently in prison in China for writing about ‘subversive’ subjects online,” Reporters Without Borders continued. “China is by far the world’s biggest prison for bloggers and cyber-dissidents. We would also like to pay tribute to the courage of this blogger’s sister, who battled relentlessly for his release.”

The Chinese are more oppressive of the press than any other nation but Cuba. They have jailed, tortured and murdered more people of conscience, religious conviction, and views of democracy than any nation since Stalin's U.S.S.R. passed from the scene. And the Commie Chinese have long ago far outpaced the evils perpetrated by Russia.

China has killed more people than any other nation in history.

So, where is the MSM on this?

Focusing more on the story that the GOP "stole" the 2004 election in Ohio, THAT'S where they are!

-By Warner Todd Huston

-By Warner Todd Huston

Well, the Japanese are finally starting to return to adulthood. Since the end of WWII and their subsequent loss of the war to the US, Japan has been slowly evolving from the dependent child to the loud but unsure teen. Now they are about to become adults, once again, ready to step out fully on their own.

And we have the psychotic, idiot that China allows to oppress the North Koreans, Kim Jong-il, to thank for this transformation.

Japan has announced that it is considering the prudent step of preemptive strikes against North Korean missile launches.

“Japan has warned it would launch a pre-emptive military action against North Korea if it had firm evidence Pyongyang was planning a missile attack.”
(Source BBC)


When Japan reformed its civil government after WWII, it placed a measure in its Constitution that prevented it from forming an army that might be used for aggressive purposes. That was a necessary measure to take at the time as the Japanese had been among the most vicious and violent cultures of the world previous to that time. The Pacific Rim as well as the rest of the world needed reassurance that a militant Japan would never again threaten the world.

But, that day is long passed. Japan, in many substantive ways is a different nation, a different, more civilized people.

So, it is sensible and right that they begin to look to their own defense with a stronger and more vital military force. And it is right that they take on the preemptive strike ideas of the Bush Doctrine. North Korea is NOT a sane, civilized nation and it will NOT observe up to diplomacy and discussion.

It will only know overwhelming power lined up against it.

“Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba said it would be "a self-defence measure" if North Korea was going to "resort to arms against Japan".

"Mr Ishiba said it would be too late if a North Korean missile was already on its way.”

Exactly the sane logic that Bush has used to reverse decades of Democratic Party weakness and Vietnam Syndrome fear to tell the world that a threat will be dealt with before it harms the US.

Japan is coming into its own Bush Doctrine with the realization that the world isn’t a nice place where love and flowers greet you at all turns. North Korea is a threat to the world, but even more dangerous to Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the region. It is even a threat to China and only Chinese hardheadedness keeps them from admitting it.

So, good for Japan. Welcome to adulthood again. It’s been a long time.

Until this is up and running, please check us out at our old address...

PUBLIUS' FORUM
http://www.publiusforum.blogspot.com

As soon as Town Hall gets their bugs worked out we will be developing this site.

...thanks and good blogging!