Ken Nelson

When asked about Boehner playing golf with Obama,  Hank Williams Junior said this:

“That’d be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu.”

I didn’t take the remark as Obama being Hitler. I took it as a round of golf won’t help bring  irreconcilable opponents together. 

I stopped watching Fox long ago. They are better than CNN, but that is like cold dog turds versus the fresh kind.  Oh… I’m sorry, am I calling Roger Ailes dog shit?  Nope you analogy fiends!

Hank Williams, who I consider the honey badger of country music, tried to explain what he meant, but eventually gave up because they don’t care.  

So he did what he does… he pulled his song from ESPN, and he wrote a new song:

Now all would be well served if people dumped Hitler analogies, except in the case of actual genocide.  So Williams was dumb in that way, but he wasn’t calling Obama Hitler, and if you think he was then we… your intellect is like Hitler to…. Oh never mind.

The Tribune isn’t hiring Dutton Peabody types any longer are they?

In a few short years my son will be at college. Probably at a Utah school.

This piece in the Salt Lake Tribune makes me wonder if it will be worth attending by the time he is old enough.

The University regents raised tuition 7% to 9% (what was inflation this year?).  Utah tuitions have doubled in the last decade (what was inflation in the last decade?).

Now I know how education bureaucrats work – they always want to raise spending and tuition.  They aren’t surprising. They are disturbingly predictable.

What irks me most about the piece is the compliant nature of the journalist. And his use of a news article to state his own opinion.

The obvious questions were not asked. “Why didn’t you cut spending?”  Or “Would it save money to hold your meetings in cold Salt Lake, instead of expensive travel to sunny St. George? 

I don’t understand becoming a journalist to just repeat back what bureaucrats yap at you. Why wake up in the morning and rush off to do that?

On the “coarsening” political discourse in this country…

• Those making the accusation are invariably on the losing side of the political trends.
• Given how screwed up things are, we have a right to be angry. And there is nothing wrong with letting others know.
• If our political class would stop being so damned stupid, greedy and corrupt, we wouldn’t think so little of them.
• There is nothing the matter with calling somebody socialist, progressive, libertarian, conservative… if that is what they are. I’m a libertarian. Proud of it. If you are a Progressive and prefer to hide that, well… you might want to reconsider your beliefs.
• Calling somebody a Nazi is stupid. Nobody has been a “Nazi” since the fall of the 3rd Reich.
• There is anger, and there is insanity. What we saw in Arizona was the latter.

I’m irked I even feel the need to write this. But many on the left see everything in terms of political opportunity. Even tragedy is included in their calculus.  Well… to hell with them. How’s that for “coarse discourse”?

I’ve got valid reasons to be mad, and their tragedy opportunism isn’t going to stop me from expressing it… at appropriate times and in peaceful ways.

Underwater… the view for many Americans.

Many “middle class” live well but all that separates them from poverty is a thin thin line called “a job”.  Although older, they haven’t saved.  And their assets, mainly house and car, have lost value.  Many owe more in debt than assets and cash.

The Washington Post has a story about Chrissanda Walker of Fort Meyers, FL,  a nursing home executive that lost her job one and half years ago.

Walker used to make $100,000 a year as a nursing home executive until she lost her job a year and a half ago. Unable to find a new one, she shed her business suits and high heels and put on an apron and soft-soled shoes. This year, she and her daughter are living on $11,000: her unemployment benefits plus whatever she can earn selling home-cooked dinners for $10 apiece.

I was impressed with Ms. Walker and those helping her.  I like her faith. I like her work ethic.  Wil Haygood, the author of the piece, goes into interesting detail but as happens with so many “journalists” they don’t ask the tough questions.

Like… where is your husband Ms. Walker?  Or where is the father of your daughter?  Why isn’t he helping?   And why didn’t you save?  What did you buy before, instead of saving, that you regret now?  Are you only looking for nursing home executive jobs?  Will your job hunt standards change once the unemployment benefits run out?   How long, btw, is “fair” for those?

I’d like to see journalists asking tough questions like this to somebody other than Sarah Palin. Wouldn’t you?

I’m pretty well off.   I probably save more than many earn each year, but I could save more.   And I invest. And I own a business. But I know that it all come crashing down, and quickly. Especially with government assistance (Mr. Obama, Mr. Bernake).  So I’m not speaking from the “glass house”. I’m far more irked with Mr. Haygood, than Ms. Walker.

But both represent fundamental problems in America… not planning for the future, and a compliant, complacent, biased media.

Via Failblog.com

NPR fired Juan Williams, who often represents liberal views on Fox News, because he is a black man.

They say it was because he said that folks getting on the same plane as him in full Muslim garb “concerns him”, but that isn’t the real reason.

The real reason is that they hired him to be their black dude and if he was going to agree with a big white Irish guy named O’Reilly then they wanted no part of him.  They fired him because they are part of the liberal effort to ostracize socially and economically anybody affiliated with Fox News, and thus with the truth.

Remind me… why do we fund NPR with TAXPAYER money?  Stop that!  It pains me that this long after Reagan our stupid Republicans haven’t cut their funding entirely. To me it is symbolic of the FAILURE of the Republican party after Reagan.

BTW: See the bottom of the link for examples of outrageous things NPR folks say and do about white folks that causes their management no grief.

What does the press do to threats to Obama? They work hard against them.

Hillary is a big threat. Bigger than Sarah Palin or any Republican.  So they make her look like a drooling demon by showing a photograph of what she looks like threw a video camera viewfinder:

I actually wouldn’t mind this, if they treated all politicians this way.  But the treatment does seem to go one way only…

If you can’t burn it, what CAN you use it for?

Foxes are bold and cunning. Gerbils are scared and tentative.

So which critter is Fox News now that it is scared to show a few burning Korans?

New Slogan: We decide. We report.

Matt Drudge must never sleep!  Anyway, I was going to make this visual comparison today as well, but Drudge beat me to it as I snored away this morning:

 
Both Presidents are dangerous narcissists. And their staged photo ops are staged to appeal to their respective populations. So the photos say MORE about US than the subjects.  And I’m embarrassed by what ours implies.

Our local silly newspaper, The Spectrum, has decided to charge for online access:

A 5 minute read of articles by uninspired un-inquisitive reporters isn’t worth $120 bucks a year. Sorry, Spectrum, no sale.

I have the print edition free at the hotel I’m staying out while our house is rebuilt from being flooded. But… I don’t read it. It just isn’t a very good newspaper.  Their reporters are profoundly uncurious.

If an officer cannot figure out Rolling Stone, how can he understand the Taliban?

Victor Davis Hanson
in this post at the Corner

I’d add that if a President is not competent enough to appoint competent officers to execute our wars, how can we win them?

McChrystal screwed up, but I’m sure having to deal with ninnies like Obama and his crew would drive any patriot insane. Why he had to blow hard to the Rolling Stone is what mystifies me.

Update: Don’t blame the general…

The Altantic, in my view, has seen better days. This year’s “big idea” issue typifies the slide.  Go ahead, read them, it won’t take long. See if you think anything is “big” in what they write.

Or anything that might be an “idea”.

I went there expecting to find ideas, instead it was just liberal pseudo-intellectuals with good grammar recounting trends that aren’t new and aren’t “ideas”.

I used to enjoy the Atlantic, back in the 80’s, but like most other things with any hint of liberalism in them, they have rotted.

Oh well. I have the Internet and can read lots of other stuff now.

Hmmm…  a banker is okay to get a big bonus if he is “savvy”.  What does “savvy” mean?

Two definitions:

To understand; shrewd, well-informed and perceptive; A phrase to determine if something is understood
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/savvy

and

     To donate large sums to the Democratic party.
     

Wouldn’t an aggressive Washington Post have jumped on this comment and the money connection if it were Bush? Or any Republican?

Just think of all the problems we could have avoided if the press had done their jobs.

 
Not trusted and not that pretty. What’s with $14 mil a year?

Is Katie Couric worth $300K a week (or $14 million a year)?

No clue. But I’m pretty sure CBS knows if she is worth it. They have polls, q-ratings, viewer focus groups – they know what she is worth.

So I’m not going to bitch about what she makes. But I’d certainly ask her to recuse from reporting on other “over paid” executives. Or to note, during a report, that they could only dream of making what she makes.

Not that I’d ever see it. I don’t watch CBS news, or any other broadcast news.  Ever.

My own, admittedly uninformed view, is that while anchors used to be “trusted”, now they aren’t. So any pretty blonde will do.  Fox News has a bevy of them,make a $500K offer and I’m sure one of them would happily jump ship to read a teleprompter a few blocks over.

Using elementary statistics, Randall Hoven has found that voting Democratic and dying from cancer correlate very highly:

Harry Reid said, "On average, an American dies from lack of health insurance every ten minutes." If he can say that, then I can say, "On average, an American dies from voting Democrat every 3.5 minutes." Both statements are equally valid.

Hoven also limited his data to just Americans, when we all know that voting Democratic kills people in other countries too.

What he is really writing about is that causation and correlation do not go together.

Journalist students should be required to study relatively advanced statistics so they will know when Harry Reid lies to them. Or they could just assume he is.