If all the liberal newspapers go bankrupt how can they cheerlead for Obama? Really, how can the Left show its support for Obama when so many of their institutions for supporting the Democratic Party's goals are getting undermined by Craig's List and web news site? Fortunately President Obama has the wisdom to support measures to prop up the liberal media.
The president said he is "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.
"I haven't seen detailed proposals yet, but I'll be happy to look at them," Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.
The internet has weakened the hold of the old gatekeepers. So has talk radio. The old gatekeepers are none too happy about this development. While the raw news gathering function of newspapers is still very important and reduction of reporter staffs reduces needed raw information collection the weakening of their ability to influence which issues and positions are legitimate is a beneficial development.
Newspaper revenue really is cratering.
Ordinarily, such numbers would be seen as catastrophic, but these times are not ordinary. The drop in combined print and digital ad revenue last year, 16.6 percent, according to the Newspaper Association of America, was the worst since the Depression. But it looks rosy next to 2009, when revenue fell 28.3 percent in the first quarter and 29 percent in the second.
I like the New York Times in spite of my disagreeing with their editorial position. I hope that newspaper survives. But the better parts of the blogosphere bring some needed balance and bring up stories and information the mainstream liberal media would just as soon ignore.
You might think our elites have discredited and weakened themselves as a result of the on-going financial debacle. Our biggest banks have either collapsed or have been bailed out with central bank and government money. We are descending into probably the biggest downturn since the 1930s Great Depression. Government-Sponsored Entities (GSEs) such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae played large roles in causing the disaster (egged on by Congressional critters who even now point the blame elsewhere with a total lack of shame). So time for a reduction in power in the hands of central governments and international institutions? Fat chance. Ross Douthat expects more centralization and more global regulation and control in the hands of our elites. Less democracy.
If the Western leadership class survives the current crisis, after all, the lesson they're going to draw from it is relatively simple: We must never let this happen again. And while that impulse could be a spur to greater decentralization and democratization, it's more likely to be produce greater supranational regulation, more expansive bureaucracy, and a more hand-in-glove relationship between big government and big business than existed before the crisis. In theory, one way to respond to a "populist whirlwind" would be to make governments more accountable to the voting public. But in practice, I suspect, the more likely response will be to build stronger dikes and firewalls against the dangerous and unpredictable masses, producing post-crisis institutions that are even more insulated from democratic accountability than they were before.
Of course we need to keep holding elections. Those elections bestow legitimacy on our rulers.
I think Holman W. Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal does a nice job of showing us what large segments of our elites think about our (us, the masses) role in this mess. If only the experts had not involved elected office holders in the development of solutions all would be well according to Jenkins.
Never was it a good idea to have a financial crisis in the middle of a presidential election. Involving Congress was a mistake. Letting the technical matter of keeping the banks afloat become a political football was a terrible idea. Letting our willingness to deploy giant sums of taxpayer money become the measure of credibility was a disaster. Letting all this be sold on Capitol Hill amid shrieks about the country collapsing into a Second Great Depression was a confidence killer across the economy, which until that point had held up well.
It's possible in hindsight to imagine a better course. Had matters simply been left in the hands of the Federal Reserve and fellow bank regulators, the "crisis" might have become fodder for little more than future late-night reminiscences by retired bureaucrats, pleasuring themselves with how closely the world came to burning down without the public ever knowing it.
Really, the Mandarins know best. I think we are going to become more like China. The upside: you won't need to feel responsible about larger events. You won't have any control over them.
Barack Obama opposes national borders and declares himself a citizen of the world. By contrast, I think I'm a lot better off by being a citizen of a Western industrialized democracy with strong rule of law and (if only) strongly defended borders.
In an echo of former President Ronald Reagan's speech when he demanded the Berlin Wall be pulled down, Obama said: "The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."
Obama introduced himself to the Berlin crowd as a proud U.S. citizen and a "fellow citizen of the world."
The Western developed nations need walls to keep out the exploding populations of the Third World. There are many times more of them than there are of us. If we let them all in our quality of life would plummet and we'd lose basic freedoms. Obama's flowery rhetoric amounts to pretty lies. His idealism appeals to people who want to dream impractical dreams. But if you want to hold on to what you've got then impracticality is your enemy.
I would like to see a reporter ask Obama he's saying that Israel's walls around the Gaza Strip and West Bank should be torn down and if Israel's wall on the border of Lebanon should be torn down. I would also ask him if he thinks that the South Korean government should tear down its DMZ barrier with North Korea. Or how about walls around prisons? Should they go too? We've got all manner of walls keeping various groups in and out. Tear them all down? They all start seeming analogous to the Berlin Wall if you just suppress your critical reasoning faculties.
In a post entitled "Obama Christ, Superstar" Rod Dreher argues Obama's liberal internationalism sounds a lot like Bush's.
As I've said elsewhere, I find Obama's stance to be a liberal internationalist version of the same crusading, feelgood, soaring, moralistic universalism that led us down the primrose path when it came out of the mouth of George W. Bush (compare Obama's speech to Bush's second inaugural address). It's perfectly understandable that people want a big change after eight years of Bush. I certainly do. But this Obama Messiah business is absurd. People think the guy is going to usher in a New Jerusalem; guess what, folks -- it's a Potemkin Village.
People like to think happy thoughts. Right now a lot of people are projecting their dreams onto Obama and he's using rhetoric that lets them interpret what he says in the most optimistic way possible. I'm reminded of vague popular song lyrics where different people imagine a song is about different topics.
JERUSALEM — An Israeli defense committee has approved the construction of 22 homes in a barely populated West Bank settlement, Defense Ministry officials said Thursday. The move appeared to catch some Israeli officials off guard, angered Palestinians and was likely to prompt criticism from the international community as it tried to push forward a long-faltering peace process.
Would the settlements be okay without barriers around them? That way the settlements would bring more Palestinians and Israeli Jews into contact with each other. Won't that produce mutual understanding and affection? Or might it produce mutual understanding and hatred?
Ronald Reagan never would have said this. Barack Obama sees small town America full of racist, bitter, gun-loving religious nuts. Yes, the paragraph below came out of Barack's mouth and you can expect the liberal media to defend him or ignore it.
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
So if you oppose large scale immigration from the Third World you are clinging as a way to explain your frustrations and you have a small town mentality. You have to stop clinging and let the world run you over - oh, and vote for Obama to show you aren't small town.
Obama can get away with saying this stuff because people people do not find Hillary Clinton as friendly and the media wants a liberal in the White House. Plus, lots of people want to prove they aren't racist by voting for a black guy.
With a choice between John "invade the world, invite the world" McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack (uncritically accepted phony) Obama I gotta say I feel like a spectator with no dog in this fight. But I'm disappointed by the lack of real critical analysis of what these candidates say.
A Pew poll says people like Obama because he makes them feel good about themselves.
While Obama's positive personal image plays an important role in his high favorable ratings, the polling found that his ratings are more influenced by how he makes voters feel than by specific characteristics they attributed to him. In particular, views that Obama inspires hope and pride are the strongest determinants of a person's opinion of him. In other words, he is a charismatic candidate who has made large numbers of Democratic voters feel good, and this is even more important to them than specific perceptions of him.
In contrast, Clinton's image is more driven by opinions about her own qualities, rather than the emotions she engenders in others. Although, making voters feel hopeful does register as a significant factor for her, especially among women, it is much less important than for Obama. Honesty is as much a factor for her as for him, though many fewer see her as honest compared to her opponent.
The press could decide to ignore Obama's comments about small town people so that those people can feel good about themselves due to other things he says.
Hillary says Pennsylvanians need a President that does not look down on them. Well, okay, but isn't it too late for someone else to join the US Presidential race?
“I saw in the media it’s being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that’s not my experience.
“As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They are working hard everyday for a better future, for themselves and their children.
“Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.”
I sure miss Ronald Reagan. And Ike too.