Considerettes

Mr. Instapundit noted yesterday:

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: "Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

UPDATE: The Anchoress hears similar things.

Water must be warm in the tank.

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When sexual abuse in the Catholic church was uncovered, the national mainstream media was all over the story, as it should have been.  But when it’s a public school system that is involved in the same thing — including sending known offenders back in to work with kids, and trying to minimized the issue — their silence betrays their bias.  Then, there was outrage and daily reports on the evening news.  Now, local reporting but not much else.

Dave Pierre of NewsBusters chronicles the issue here (back in May) and here (last week).  The national media ignores a government program but wallops Christians over the same issue.  Yeah, no bias there, right?

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As my wife and I talked about the bailout failure, she wondered if there would be the catastrophe that pundits were predicting would come about.  I mean, some were giving the impression that the next day we’d be in The Great Depression 2.0.  The Dow Jones drop yesterday was a large absolute number, but it was just a little over 6%; less than a third of the percentage drop in ‘86.  And over the past week the market has taken wide swings as emotion rather than reason has put it on the roller coaster.

But as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reminds  us; don’t panic.

There are two reasons not to panic.  The first is that God is still in control, He knows what’s coming, and if we’re trusting in Him we don’t have to worry.  "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28)  Those "all things" may not all be pleasant and cheerful, but they’ll all work for good.  Likewise, this doesn’t mean we don’t have plans if disaster strikes — I have a savings account, a retirement account, and I backup my computer; this verse doesn’t tell us not to be careful — but whatever events come our way we need to trust Him to get us through it.  Panic, as human and as understandable as it may be, is a lack of trust.  A good article, "Fearing the Future", is here at Crown Financial Ministries’ web site.  Don’t panic.

The second is that panic makes us do foolish things that calm consideration may warn against.  We react instead of respond to the events of the day.  Take the fuel shortage hitting my neck of the woods.  If every car in metro Atlanta were to top off their tank on the same day, we’d have a fuel shortage even if all the stations had gas to begin with.  But, true to (human) form, when we heard that hurricane Ike slowed the flow of gas into the southeast, and the governor said not to panic, Atlanta did anyway.  Worried about gas lines and higher prices, Atlantans created and implemented a self-fulfilling prophesy.  If folks with 7/8th of a tank all hadn’t decided to top off during the same few days, we may have been able to ease through it.  There would have been some disruption, no doubt, but not to the point where some folks trail gas tankers to their delivery locations. 

The stock market lost 6% yesterday?  Then today’s the day to jump in.  Other people panicked and bailed out of the market, creating bargains.  Some folks have dumped stock of companies that aren’t going to be affected, or affected little, by this situation, so their stocks are now artificially low.  This podcast episode from Crown Financial Ministries deals with this specific issue.  (And I recommend picking up the feed in your podcatcher of choice.  Good advice all the time.)  Don’t panic.

But could we actually wind up in The Great Depression 2.0?  Only God knows, and that’s not a cliche.  Whether we experience some pain now or if we kick the can down the road, it’s still all known to God.  Trust Him, and don’t panic. 

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With a tip of the hat to Bruce McQuain at Q&O, the country of Ecuador is about to take a step into environmental extremism that is (so far) unparalleled.

The South American republic of Ecuador will next week consider what many countries in the world would say is unthinkable. People will be asked to vote on Sunday on a new constitution that would give Ecuador’s tropical forests, islands, rivers and air similar legal rights to those normally granted to humans. If they vote yes - and polls show that 56% are for and only 23% are against - then an already approved bill of rights for nature will be introduced, and new laws will change the legal status of nature from being simply property to being a right-bearing entity.

This is a complete rewrite of the definition of the concept of a "right". 

And where did they get this idea?  American leftists.

Thomas Linzey, a US lawyer who has helped to develop the new legal framework for nature, says: "The dominant form of environmental protection in industrialised countries is based on the regulatory system. Governments permit and legalise the discharge of certain amounts of toxics into the environment. As a form of environmental protection, it’s not working.

"In the same way, compensation is measured in terms of that injury to a person or people. Under the new system, it will be measured according to damage to the ecosystem. The new system is, in essence, an attempt to codify sustainable development. The new laws would grant people the right to sue on behalf of an ecosystem, even if not actually injured themselves."

Linzey is a member of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.  This is their liberalism and environmental policies running out of control, and is a peek into what they really want in our country.

Linzey admits that Ecuador may be taking a step into the legal unknown. "No one knows what will happen [if the referendum goes in favour of new rights for nature] because there are no examples of how this works in the real world," he says. "A lot of people will be watching what happens."

Yeah, good luck with that guinea pig thing.  Just waiting for the Plant’s Suffrage movement.

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In the first Presidential debate, Barack Obama used the line more than once that this credit crisis we’re in stems from policies that "shredded" regulations, and that assumed that regulation is "always bad".  But that characterization is simply not true, and in the cases of Freddie and Fannie, which are government sponsored enterprises (GSE), government oversight is especially required.

First of all, GSEs are a non-free-market concept, contrary to Rep. Barney Frank’s assertion that this credit crunch is a failure of the free market.  It is a government program to target certain sectors with cheap loans.  Overall, it has been fairly successful, but it is not a free market issue.  This is government stepping in to deal with a situation it wants to see changed.

The second issue is that when Democrats pushed Freddie and Fannie to create what became known as the subprime mortgage market.  That was the subject of the previous video I posted on this subject.  It became the late-20th-century version of "a chicken in every pot" promise.  Everyone gets a home!  Well, not really.  Everyone gets a mortgage, including some who couldn’t afford it.  But Freddie and Fannie took this mandate and went wild.  It was essentially a big-government solution being administered by a big-government program; again, not a failure of the free market. 

During this time, Republicans realized that more regulation of these types of loans and the securities backed by them was required, but Democrats did not believe there was a problem.  Those were their words; not a problem.

Roll the tape, and listen to their words.

So Obama’s sweeping contention that Republican consider regulation "always bad" is demonstrably false.  Less regulation is a hallmark of conservatism, true, but where it’s required, especially in a government program, it should be done.  But Democrats, when faced with tightening the purse strings on a constituency that they claim for themselves, will see no evil.  Being for the little guy does not mean setting them up for failure.  It’s partisan politics, pure and simple.

And by the way, where’s the MSM on this?  Quiet as a mouse.  FactCheck.org’s checking of debate facts is silent on this issue.  The objectivity on this issue is pointing out some glaring blind spots.

Update: Roger Kimball gives the roots of this crisis a closer look, with suitable linkage.  Short and sweet, but informative.

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Shire Network News #147 has been released. The feature interview is with Dr. Rusty Shackleford, proprietor and founder of the My Pet Jawa Blog. Using just his computer and an Internet connection he stumbled on what looks like a possible campaign scandal. His first post on this broke the story to the world.

Rusty explains to us exactly what astroturfing and sockpuppetry are and the steps he and his team of web sleuths went through to do the job the Main Stream Media won’t do for you.

Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!"

Iranian President, Genocidal Maniac, and all-around fun guy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently said he was ready to debate the men running for US President.  Oh, now that’s something I think we’d all like to see, for the comedic value if nothing else.  It’s not that we could actually believe any answer Ahmadinejad gave, it’s just that it would be funny enough to watch him try to say things he thinks we would believe. 

So I’m going to take a peek into my crystal ball, and sift through what would be, from the home office in Camillus, NY, the Top 9 Answers Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Would Give During A Presidential Debate.

9 - No, Mr. Gibson, I don’t know what the Bush Doctrine is.  Is it a Baptist thing?

8 - When I talked about wiping Israel off the map, I was speaking metaphorically.  Somewhat like "killing all Jews in Europe" used to be.

7 - Actually, I just wanted to wipe Israel off my whiteboard.

6 - True, we do not have any homosexuals in Iran.  We also don’t have thieves, murderers, extortionists, or genocidal maniacs.

5 - No, I haven’t been ignoring the letters from the United Nations.  They’re in my "To Do Real Soon Now" pile on the kitchen table.

4 - I refuse to answer on the ground that it may make me sound like a raving lunatic.

3 - Did I say "Sharia Law".  I’m sorry, I meant Jude Law, the actor.  I loved him as Lemony Snicket.

2 - I want to thank Mr. Anderson Cooper for the interview he had with me, and would love to evade, shift blame, and give further "no comments" anytime he wants.

And the #1 Answer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Would Give During A Presidential Debate:

I agree with everything Mr. Obama has just said.

Consider that.

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This is a 10-minute video that sets the Way-Back Machine to 1995 and documents, with quotes, news articles, charts & graphs, how we really got into this mess.  It also notes who contributed to it and who tried to stop it before it happened. 

Keep your mouse on the Pause button.  It packs a lot of information into those 10 minutes.

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The latest advancement in stem cells is that it’s getting safer to convert adult stem cells to "induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells" (basically what embryonic stems cells are).  Adult stem cells are already curing loads of diseases, without the need for destroying embryos.  This is just one less reason to want to rely on the ethically murky embryonic ones.

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Yes, there could be profits made with the taxpayer-backed bailout funds for the mortgage-backed securities.  The government would be buying them at a discount, likely, and most folks don’t default on their mortgages. 

So who should get the profits?  How about, oh, the taxpayers?  It’s only fair; they (we) took the risk, they (we) should get the benefits.  But Washington Democrats, true to their view that any money in their vicinity is theirs (not the taxpayers), are already trying to lay dibs on it to fund other government programs.  They can’t even try to help the economy without sneaking in what amounts to a 20% tax.

Thanks, guys.

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…or "on empty", depending on how you look at it.  Last Tuesday this came out about Obama’s latest ad.

Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign hit Republican John McCain today over his family’s ownership of foreign cars, saying it would air a TV ad in Michigan highlighting McCain’s statements on buying American.

But the ad, which accuses McCain of misleading Michigan voters by saying he’s bought American vehicles “literally all my life,” doesn’t say that of the 13 vehicles owned by the McCain family, only one is registered to McCain himself – a 2004 Cadillac CTS built in Lansing.

The 12 other vehicles include a 2005 Volkswagen convertible, a 2001 Honda sedan, a 2007 Ford half-ton pickup and three Gem neighborhood electric vehicles – essentially road-worthy golf carts built by a Chrysler subsidiary.

Cindy McCain is the legal owner of 11 vehicles. The Lexus she drives is registered to Hensley & Co., the Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship she inherited from her late father.

He’s unfit for office because … he owns cars, of all things!  And he married into 11 of them!  Oh, the humanity.

If the Obama campaign is trying to say that being rich means you’re elitist, then it’s just the same old class warfare that Democrats have used for decades.  So much for "change".  "Elitism" is an attitude, not the result of a balance sheet.  I would say that racism is elitist, thinking your race is better than others, but anyone from Joe Sixpack to Donald Trump could have that attitude.  You can be in an elite group of people, such as the super-rich, but not necessarily have an elitist attitude.

I would say that suggesting that Pennsylvanians cling to guns and religion during bad times (like that’s a bad thing) is elitist.  And especially after you’d just returned from Pennsylvania praising those same people. 

But my main point is that this sort of ad — calling attention to what he owns instead of what he thinks — smacks of desperation.

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I’ve wondered about this before, but couldn’t figure out how.  It could remove some of the thrust of the wind and have … some sort of effect.  Perhaps seeds don’t get blown as far or something like that.

Well, this Q&A column from the NY Times notes that one study suggests that the turbines / windmills could force the agitation of moister ground air with drier air higher up to produce a drying effect at ground level.  That’s probably not a big deal if your windfarm is in the desert southwest, and maybe not even if it’s out at sea.  But it makes it less likely you’ll want to toss up windmills in the middle of fields in the country’s breadbasket.

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Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-Oz), speaking to the National Jewish Democratic Council, used this fine bit of prose to attack Sarah Palin.

Florida Democratic Congressman Alcee Hastings pointed to Sarah Palin on Wednesday to rally Jews to Obama.

"If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention," said Hastings. "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through."

Hastings, who is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, made his comments in Washington, D.C., while participating in a panel discussion sponsored by the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Well, there’s a leap I don’t think I’ve ever heard made.  "Don’t vote for Palin; she clings to her guns and mooses."  And the connection to caring about Jews and blacks is obvious, right?  Right?

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In what can only be viewed as an abandonment of fact for the purpose of Obama advocacy, the New York Times is reporting falsehoods about McCain campaign manager Rick Davis.  The denial from the McCain campaign is pretty categorical.

Today the New York Times launched its latest attack on this campaign in its capacity as an Obama advocacy organization. Let us be clear about what this story alleges: The New York Times charges that McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager Rick Davis was paid by Freddie Mac until last month, contrary to previous reporting, as well as statements by this campaign and by Mr. Davis himself.

In fact, the allegation is demonstrably false. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006. Zero. Mr. Davis has received no salary or compensation since 2006. Mr. Davis has received no profit or partner distributions from that firm on any basis — weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual — since 2006. Again, zero. Neither has Mr. Davis received any equity in the firm based on profits derived since his financial separation from Davis Manafort in 2006.

Further, and missing from the Times‘ reporting, Mr. Davis has never — never — been a lobbyist for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Mr. Davis has not served as a registered lobbyist since 2005.

Though these facts are a matter of public record, the New York Times, in what can only be explained as a willful disregard of the truth, failed to research this story or present any semblance of a fairminded treatment of the facts closely at hand. The paper did manage to report one interesting but irrelevant fact: Mr. Davis did participate in a roundtable discussion on the political scene with…Paul Begala.

Again, let us be clear: The New York Times — in the absence of any supporting evidence — has insinuated some kind of impropriety on the part of Senator McCain and Rick Davis. But entirely missing from the story is any significant mention of Senator McCain’s long advocacy for, and co-sponsorship of legislation to enact, stricter oversight and regulation of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — dating back to 2006. Please see the attached floor statement on this issue by Senator McCain from 2006.

It’s not just misreporting but non-reporting that the Times is guilty of; both of the positive things that McCain has done, and of the negative connections to Obama.  Michael Goldfarb, in this statement, lists a few, but also the full Ayers connection that Mark linked to earlier.  If this tenuous connection to Fannie and Freddie is worth reporting on, certainly that should as well. 

The advocacy journalism of the Times is their right.  Pretending to be nonpartisan is not.

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Charlie Martin has gone as far as getting the URL http://www.palinrumors.com/ to point to his ever-updated list of rumors about Sarah Palin.  Since last I visited there, there have been new ones added.  Here are a few (and details are on the site):

#72: No, she didn’t try to charge rape victims personally for rape kits.

#76: No she didn’t institute a "windfall profits" tax on oil companies.

#79: No, Palin didn’t eliminate or “void” the Alaskan WIC program as Newsweek claimed.

#83: No, she did not cut the Special Olympics funding in a recent budget, except in the Washington sense of “didn’t increase it as much as someone wanted.”

#84 Yes, she did bill the Alaska State Government for per diem on days when she was “home.”  But that’s the way the law is written, and even doing what other governors did, she still had expenses one-third to one-fifth of the previous governor’s.

Bookmark that page.

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From the Patriot Post, a compendium of quotes regarding the current credit & mortgage crisis, and the bailout being debated.  Quite a number of different takes on it, looking at it from different aspects. 

(By the way, the Patriot Post can come to your inbox 3 times a week.  It’s a good read.)

“Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts. The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.” —Thomas Sowell

“The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy. In fact, what we see now is a market correction to foolhardy government policy. Congress’ move to bail out lenders and borrowers who made poor decisions will simply create incentives for people to make unwise decisions in the future.” —Walter Williams

“[A]s lawmakers debate buying up hundreds of billions in assets, they should realize that the government’s aggressive meddling in financial decision-making is what got our economy into this mess in the first place. The long-term answer isn’t more federal control, it’s a return to free-market principles.” —Ed Feulner

“Crisis is the friend of the State. The politicians are desperate to be seen as ‘showing leadership,’ so we’re surely in for a new round of government interventions.” —John Stossel

“When the Forbidden Fruit was handed to Adam and Eve, they were allowed the moral choice to accept or decline. I know people who have refused to feast on the money tree. They live simply, within their means, and seem far more content than those who are trying to horde their wealth while clinging to the ladder of ‘success,’ terrified to let go. That isn’t real living. The Puritans rightly saw that as covetousness.” —Cal Thomas

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