What’s Your Political Philosophy?

By , November 15, 2010 4:22 pm

Apparently, I’m a Libertarian:

What about you?

So Is Google Sucking Up?

By , November 11, 2010 10:16 am

So, the Pjamasphere has been atwitter about Google’s apparent close ties to the Obama administration. And in the past, some have criticized the technology giant for what it has and hasn’t honored on its search page by tweaking the Google logo to fit the holiday. So, my interest was tweaked just a bit by Google’s logo today, Armistice Day:

Do These People Ever Stop?

By , November 5, 2010 7:29 pm

David Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, this evening on NPR’s All Things Considered:

If you had a group picture of the Republican members of the Congress, and if you wanted to use Photoshop to distill it into one face, it would probably look like former Sen. Trent Lott.

I’ll be back later to comment.

So That’s Where the Shovel-Ready Jobs Are!

By , November 4, 2010 5:06 pm

Mumbai Mirror columnist Cyrus Dastur reports that his city is putting on the shine for President Obama’s visit.

And now, as India gets ready for Obama’s visit, we’re once again scrambling around to make our cities look good even when they’re a far cry from being liveable. Certain roads will be hastily repaired, areas will be cleaned, and security will be completely in shape, et al. Basically, everything that makes us cast a good impression will be done. So what if all this crumbles down like a pack of cards the moment Obama’s flight leaves India.

Seems like wherever he goes, the President is a job-creating machine. Except here.

(Courtesy of Bureau of Labor Statistics)

And if that graph isn’t disappointing enough, try this one, which shows the median duration of unemployment year-by-year over the last 50 years:

How to Cut Spending? Get Specific!

By , November 3, 2010 12:01 pm

I agree with the Cato Institute:

We will not get federal spending under control unless we begin a national discussion about specific cuts. And we won’t get that discussion unless enough members of Congress start pushing for specific cuts.

I’ve created a page to keep track of that conversation online.

Let the conversation begin.

Keynes? Is that to the north or south of the Big Island?

By , November 2, 2010 10:11 am

Without comment:

Fast and Curious: Pjamasphere Reporting on the O’Donnell Documentary Story

By , November 1, 2010 3:20 pm

The Pjamasphere is a-Twitter with the news that the MSM failed to show Christine O’Donnell’s 30-minute ad–twice–something that would tick me off if it were true. But the claim doesn’t appear to be, at least based on the sources I’ve read.

I found the story on Instapundit, who linked to the Classical Values blog, which based its story on a short piece on The AtlanticWire, which ran with the reporting of one Philip Rucker of The Washington Post. Let’s start with Rucker. He writes, in the relevant part (all emphasis in this post is mine unless otherwise noted):

The source, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive campaign operations, said the station “forgot to air [O’Donnell’s documentary]” [on Sunday as planned].

So far, so good. But farther down in the piece, Rucker quotes Tim Qualls, executive producer at Delaware Channel 28, a public access station, hardly what you’d call the MSM (okay, that’s not counting MSMBC, whose viewership approximates the population of Delaware):

Tim Qualls, executive producer at Channel 28, said in an interview the ad did not air because O’Donnell’s campaign did not bring a tape to the production studio by the agreed upon deadline. She reserved the time on Thursday, for $2,500, and agreed to bring a tape by Friday at 5 p.m., Qualls said.

“I did not receive a tape until Sunday night at one of my employees’ houses,” Qualls said. “It has nothing to do with us refusing to air it. I just didn’t get the tape by my deadline.”

Qualls added: “It was all their people’s fault.”

He said he is a Republican and had planned to vote for O’Donnell, but the tape situation changed his mind. “She’s lost my vote,” Qualls said.

In short, there was apparently no forgetting involved–unless Qualls is lying, and we have no evidence for that. In fact, the only source in Rucker’s story for the proposition that the station forgot to run the story is an unnamed source who Rucker ties loosely to O’Donnell’s campaign:

The source, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive campaign operations, said the station “forgot to air it.”

The AtlanticWire basically ran with Rucker’s story, minus all of the messy details that contradict the premise captured in The AtlanticWire’s bolded headline for the story:

TV Station ‘Forgets’ to Air O’Donnell’s 30-Minute Ad

So what did Classical Values do with the story? It ran with the station did it meme. Under the bolded headline The Insanestream Media, it reported:

In today’s “the MSM is worse than you thought possible” news, one media outlet is caught on tape plotting to tie Joe Miller to child molesters, while another “forgets” to run Christine O’Donnell’s big 30-minute ad… twice. The day before the election.

In turn, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit linked to Classical Values and offered a typical brief comment:

Truth is stranger than fiction. And, where the nexus between “mainstream” media and political corruption is concerned, it’s worse than would be considered believable in fiction.

Now, I understand that there is some reason to be skeptical of the station’s side of the story, but from the facts/quotes at hand, the O’Donnell campaign’s side of the story doesn’t hold up. For that matter, neither does the reporting of the Pjamasphere–at least on this one.

Full disclosure: I don’t vote in Delaware, but if I could, I would vote O’Donnell simply because I’m in a throw-the-bums-out mood, even if that means a few bad bums take the their recently (tomorrow!) vacant seats. Oh, and I’m a big-C Conservative.

Panorama Theme by Themocracy