Programming Note: Everybody Needs A Vacation

Folks, apologies for my absence. As some of you know, I've recently returned to American and have been busy celebrating national holidays, waterskiing, watching M's games, entertaining guests, etc. Forgive my writing absence. I'll bet back to it in the next day or so.

In the meantime, here's a couple of good reads to tide you over.

• At Rasmussen, Michael Barone holds forth on the "accomplishments" of the Obama administration thus far.

• Matt Welch & Nick Gillespie do something similar in the Washington Post. Taken together, these two columns are a devastating critique of President Obama.

• Finally, in the City Journal, Ed Glaeser, an economist at Harvard, writes about human capital in New York City. Get a rope. (h/t Matt L.)

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Quote Of The Week I - The Age Of Reagan (UPDATED)

One of my weekly must-read columnists, Daniel Henninger, writing in today's Journal:

Today Mr. Obama releases the details of his $3.5 trillion budget, his path to the same goal. Rather than drown as usual in this accounting morass, Republicans should contrast the Obama-Pelosi budget with the Reagan-Kemp philosophy of how a striving nation works, saves and invests.

Republicans can start by taking the time to read the first Obama budget document, "A New Era of Responsibility." The word "investment" occurs over 140 times in its 142 pages. But this "investment" isn't private capital invested in private start-ups, what Mr. Kemp constantly called "entrepreneurial capitalism" and what most parents hope their children will join. Mr. Obama's document genuflects to "the market economy," then argues that it won't endure unless we "sacrifice" (through tax increases) to make "overdue investments" (which literally only means public spending) on four explicit goals: green energy, infrastructure, public health care, and education.

[...]

It is not conceivable that a Reagan or Kemp would have directed the U.S. economy's legendary energies into building hybrid cars, windmills and bullet trains. It would not have occurred to them that America's next Silicon Valley -- Apple, Intel and Oracle -- could grow out of "investments" listed in the federal budget. This would not have occurred to either man because their politics were rooted in the 300-year-old, singularly American tradition of individuals freely deciding how to spend their productive hours and money inside a public system that mainly provides security and safety.

Don't make too much of the fact that only 31% of poll respondents said they were Republicans. It has always been the case that Republicans were more apt to answer that they were "conservatives" when asked about their political philosophy.

Last election's exit polling confirmed that this is still a conservative nation--a national full of conservatives who will usually vote for Republicans, when, of course, those Republicans espouse a conservative world view. Such has not always--especially recently--been the case.

This party identification thing is just a passing popularity poll. Haters' contention that losing Specter etc., is a sign of a Republican party in decline is also a whole lot of nothing. This is a conservative nation that prefers Republicans--even if they don't want to identify themselves as such. Tuesday's generic Congressional ballot poll conducted by Rasmussen confirms that. The GOP leads the Democrat Party, 40-39.

The Age of Reagan is far from over.

UPDATE 5:01pm BST: Steve Hayward @ The Corner is on the same page as Daniel Henninger & me:

More to the point — we've been here before, and Reagan showed the way out. After the post-Watergate 1974 election disaster, some polls showed the number of voters who identified as Republicans below 20 percent (compared to 31 percent today), and there were calls to abandon the Republican Party and found a new Conservative Party. Bill Buckley wrote at the time that the Republican Party had become “an administrative convenience for a few politicians,” and speculated that “If Reagan ran for President on an independent ticket, he would get a higher percentage of the vote than the Republican Party would get if it were led by any other American.” Reagan rejected this advice (which came also even more strongly from Bill Rusher), and it prompted one of his most famous speeches, before CPAC in 1975: “Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which makes it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people? Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.”

But there is another rant that needs registering, namely, that all those folks who claim to be Reaganites would take the time to sit down a study the man's methods — not his ideology — more seriously. As we now know, he worked extremely hard, studying the issues in depth and preparing and practicing his speeches at great length. I'm frankly appalled at the low level of rhetorical skill displayed by most GOP politicians today. It is not just a matter of talent; talent helps, but Reagan showed that hard work is the key ingredient. Too many of our would-be party leaders today are simply lazy, and think they can coast through speeches and media appearances with little forethought. Finally, Reagan lived by an old show-business adage — always leave your audience wanting more. His speeches were often memorable because they were relatively short. You could fit five of Reagan's state of the union speeches inside one of Bill Clinton's or George W. Bush's. (This means you, Governor Palin, whom I heard in Anchorage in March making a rambling hour-long speech that someone at my table rightly described as "Castroesque.") So try this out, GOP leaders: Shorter speeches. People will remember more of what you say, and want to hear you say more later. This really isn't rocket science. Heck, it isn't even political science.

Good things.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

NB #3: Seattle Times, MSM, & Fairness Doctrine

Post #3 is up over at Newsbusters:

Seattle Times Feels Threatened, Calls for 'Net Neutrality'

This isn't the first time we've addressed this topic (see here & here). The long and the short is that conservative talk radio (the only place conservatives used to be able to find a home) and the internet have wrested control of the "marketplace of ideas" from the liberal, old-guard media.

This is a good thing.

The smart public recognizes what the MSM has done to news reporting with their consistently liberal-biased reportage and coverage. Now, with the democratization of news and opinion writing brought on by the internet, they are losing readers and ad revenue.

MSM, RIP.

*UPDATE 14 August 10:42am PST: It seems my post was a timely one. Today Rasmussen released polls showing that the 47% of those polled want some sort of "fairness doctrine" for radio and tv and 31% want to see one for the internet.

While I now make a living "exposing and combating" liberal bias in the media, the last thing I want is the government to impose some sort of rules to govern the balance. This is not China (or Russia, for that matter), after all.

Recent polls have shown that a significant majority of Americans see a liberal bias in the media, one that favors Barack Obama, and increasingly, one they do not trust. The results of this poll are probably a response to something that has been building for years--especially coming, as it does, in the aftermath of the media cover-up of the Edwards scandal.

There are disturbingly large numbers of conservatives in favor of some sort of government imposed "Fairness Doctrine." My suspicion is that once they realized exactly what the implications of this would be (government regulation of speech), the would back off their poll responses.


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Don't Just Take Our Word For It

Thanks to John Fund and the folks at Political Diary (h/t: S. Lybbert) for bringing this fantastic quote to our attention--further illustrating the degree to which the MSM has become a shill for Pope Barack Obama I:

I think that the coverage [Barack Obama] is getting is beyond presidential. It's papal. I mean, a president never has all three anchors on the way with him. . . . If you needed any evidence of how much in the tank the mainstream media are, this is it.

This, in addition to the NYT's refusal to print Senator McCain's op-ed unless he conform to their preferred policy, well, can we make it any clearer than that? The one redeeming glimmer of a silver lining is the fact that John Q. Public seems to be wise to the machinations of the Democrat Party's media-arm. Per Rasmussen by way of Politico:

In an automated survey of 1000 likely voters, Rasmussen found that 49 percent of respondents believed reporters would favor Obama in their coverage this fall, compared with just 14 percent who expected them to boost Sen. John McCain. The number of Americans who see pro-Obama bias in the press has increased by five percent in the last month.

According to Rasmussen’s numbers, less than a quarter of voters – 24 percent – now trust the press to report on the election without bias

Click this link to get the full Rasmussen report.

So much for objective journalism. Of course, we kind of expected this from the NYT. After all, this is the same New York Times that gave a price break to the Moveon.org slander of General Petraeus last September.

We take some comfort in knowing that the NYT's stock price is at a 20 year low.


If you have tips, questions, comments, suggestions, or requests for subscription only articles, email us at lybberty@gmail.com.