Why the ‘Unexpected’ Keeps Happening
If an irresponsible teenager repeatedly crashed his car into a tree whenever he had a few beers, we would never say his accidents were “unexpected.” Rather, they would be foreseeable consequences of driving while drinking. Similarly, we shouldn’t let journalists get away with describing as “unexpected” the foreseeable negative consequences of bad government policies.
Blogger Glenn Reynolds recently highlighted numerous examples of the media’s increasingly frequent use of “unexpected” to describe bad economic news. Unemployment “unexpectedly” rose despite federal “stimulus.” Home sales “unexpectedly” fell despite taxpayer bailouts. ER visits unexpectedly rose in Massachusetts despite RomneyCare. Similarly, the Pundit Press blog has rounded-up dozens of examples of such “unexpected” developments since January 2011.
However, the fact that such government interventions necessarily stifle economic progress is not news. Volumes have been written on this topic. The “natural laboratories” of East Germany vs. West Germany, North Korea vs. South Korea, and communist China vs. Hong Kong amply illustrated the principle that whenever government forcibly thwarted people from furthering their happiness and their lives, the result was misery and death.
The same phenomenon can be observed in the natural laboratories within the United States. Economist Mark Perry has described how businesses are leaving California in “record numbers” for states like Texas that offer greater freedom from burdensome regulations. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that 37% of all net new American jobs since the recovery began were created in Texas.
Similarly, when the Mercatus Center released its 2011 Index of Economic and Personal Freedom ranking all 50 U.S. states, they noted two interesting facts. First, economic freedom correlated with income growth. Second, Americans “voted with their feet” and moved from states with less freedom to states with more freedom.
Ordinary Americans understand the link between freedom and prosperity. So why do so many well-educated journalists and pundits persist in describing the Obama administration’s foreseeable economic failures as “unexpected”?
Although some conspiracy theorists may believe this is a deliberate ploy by media and political elites to destroy America from within, the actual answer is worse. The problem is not a willful desire to destroy America but rather a willful blindness to the facts.
If a driver noticed that the real-world landmarks no longer matched his GPS map, he would take it as a wake-up call that his GPS unit was malfunctioning. (Tragically, every year a few motorists choose to ignore their eyes and instead continue blindly following their computer maps, resulting in what is now called ”death by GPS.”)
Similarly, the repeated occurrence of “unexpected” economic news should serve as a wake-up call to supporters of increased government control over the economy. In the words of Ayn Rand, they should “check their premises.” The “unexpected” is reality’s way of telling them they should stop relying on their faulty map of bad leftist economic theories. Otherwise, America may soon face the economic equivalent of “death by GPS,” as is already unfolding in countries like Greece.
Unfortunately, too many journalists and pundits prefer to dismiss inconvenient facts that don’t fit their preconceived theories, thus abdicating their professional responsibility to report and analyze the truth to their best ability. If a doctor treated his patients with the discredited medieval medical practices of leeches and bloodletting, we would not let him off the hook simply because he later claimed his patients’ deaths were “unexpected.” Neither should we let journalists and pundits off the hook who insist on characterizing each new failure of discredited economic theories as “unexpected” or an “anomaly” or “misfortune.”
As writer Robert Heinlein once wryly observed:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”
President Obama claimed that he wanted the country to hold an “adult conversation” about our economic future. If so, the first step will be to hold newsmen and pundits to responsible adult standards of reporting, rather than letting them get away with the journalistic equivalent of driving like drunken teenagers.
Old media journalists are, almost to a one, members of a cult-like secular religion named Progressivism. Like members of other cults, deprogramming would involve institutionalization, intense treatment, and an uncertain outcome. In most cases these ‘journalists’ will be permanent members of the Progressive cult. The best treatment for them involves the rest of us ignoring and marginalizing them as an incurably brainwashed people.
I was thinking electric shock “therapy” or high speed lead poisoning if the therapy does not take.
Journalists dont use the term unexoected. its the muckrakers who use the term unexpected. there are very few journalist “if any” left,
There is no difference between a “journalist” and a “muckraker”.
To the products from journalism schools, our TOTUS is “the chosen one”, “the messiah”, “spock-like” ad nausem. They are the proud parents of children sent to uber liberal private schools and there taught to sing fawning songs of praise for our own American version of the “Dear Leader”.
That he is a complete, unqualified, incompetent, feckless failure does not compute for them. Keynsian economics, political correctness and liberal social engineering are all noble things so it is not possible for them to fail.
“Kenyan” economics, more like. I agree with everything you said. However, the goal appears to be to drive a stake in the heart of the US economic system to bring about a command and control substitute, administered by the oh-so-intelligent ones in the government. Can anyone say “train wreck”?
See e.g., Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, which should be required reading in journalism class. Journalists, editors, foundation CEOs — they are all part of the American nomenklatura who prosper and exercise disproportionate influence in a high tax, heavy regulation state.
Why would you want them to read an instruction manual?
Or you can just save yourself some time and listen to “The Trees” from Rush.
Sorry, this whole thing is part of a plan hatched by Marx and Gramsci. Destroy the culture first, then you can start killing people (this is the ultimate goal of Leftism; check 20th Century history). Destroying the economy is an important part of destroying society. From 1930, there have been continuous studies and papers predicting exactly what was going to result from the New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society, etc. Read “Reckless Endangerment”. There were a number of people who described exactly what Fannie Mae’s programs were going to result in. Members of Congress (almost all Dems) squelched reports and buried whistle-blowers, but never seriously claimed that the predictions were incorrect. They wanted to give houses away and destroy the real estate market. That’s what they wanted, not what accidently happened. It seems Americans are doomed to be defeated by third-world invaders because they will not acknowledge that we are being invaded by aliens, who are not capable of assimilating, and don’t want to, anyhow. The same involves voting for Democrats, when they know or should know that Dem policies will always destroy private enterprise and gut the DoD, because that is the result the Dems seek.
Journalists – Fooey! Let’s have some good old fashioned REPORTERS asking the basic questions of “WHO”, “WHAT”, “WHEN”, “WHERE” and “WHY” and getting answers for answers, not Talking Points.
Dr. Shalit
Simple. The main stream media has so much invested in Obama that he simply CANNOT fail. If he does, it will make them all look like a bunch of liberal, biased, jerks (which they are, by the way). So they have to keep saying things like “unexpected” even though they know full well that Obama has failed and that there is nothing “unexpected” about the results of his actions. They keep playing the game, trying to keep making their guy look good, even though we all know he’s about as successful as Jimmy Carter. Well, let them drone on. We will have the last say on this matter in 2012. And, considering how angry the American public is right now with Obama and his horrific economic policies, there will be nothing “unexpected” about the 2012 elections. He will lose, big time.
They supported Obama as president based purely on racism. They were convinced that this black guy would bring about “change” that would have this nation zooming in both popularity and economic growth. That these suppositions were based on fantasy is immaterial, he was black and it was every self-loathing, guilt addled white journalist’s responsibility to take advantage of the opportunity that this president would “stick it to the (white) man”.
The fact that the exact opposite has occurred has also reinforced their self-hatred all the more and of course, their hatred of all things that “white people do”. In their mind, there is still a plantation somewhere, where non-white people are oppressed and made to work against their will. And they would be right. In about 70% of the world some form of slavery is ongoing. But you’ll never hear about that because the “journalists” are not only ignorant, they are only interested in the issue as it affects the US, or Western nations.
It took almost a century to arrive where we are with an entire industry self-guided to take down America. Their teachers were activists; Their goals quite clear.
Think 13 year old girls circa 1964 at a Beatles concert and you will grok how ‘journalists’ of the MSM feel about BHO. Put your nose to the wind and you will smell the moist panties from 1,000 miles away.
Easy answer:
1) 90% or more of them are marxist-flavored fascists, too
2) a similar percentage of the profession is stupid and/or intellectually lazy
LOTS of things besides Obama’s miserable results surprise these people.
The annual onset of Winter surprises these people.
Of course the onset of winter surprises them. They were expecting global warming.
“Drunken teenagers” is a less fitting comparison than Louis Renault, Prefect of Casablanca Police.
“I’m shocked, shocked! Your winnings, sir. Oh yes. Thank you.”
In on the game.
It’s the narrative and manipulation of words. ThusL
a. What economic disaster we created becomes “unexpected”
b. Marxist dictator becomes “progressive”
c. Killing human babies becomes “pro choice”
d. Living on welfare becomes “stimulating”
and the list goes on. The best, however, is freezing to death in the wintertime, starving, and using a toy to get to work becomes Green Jobs and Green Energy.
Don’t you mean,
Destroying the life of the only life that matters is “pro-life”?
Lefties and journos either know what they’re doing and lie about it, or they are too dumb to know better. The first bunch depends on a number of voters belonging to the second bunch.
The reason the lefties don’t have to correct their navigation is that the second bunch can always–always–be convinced that misfortune is the fault of some OTHER, mostly greedy bankers, wall street, profit-chasing businessmen. Not the fault of the actual strategy practiced by the lefties.
Denial, then, is the answer? Five years ago Dr Pat Santy, a psychiatrist blogging as ‘drsanity’ argued that the Left is trapped by DENIAL, projection (Palin, anybody?), and paranoia (examples are too numerous). In short, the Left manifests psychotic defenses in its discourse. (Not the the Right doesn’t suffer – only much much less from neurotic angst, eg, “conservatism is dead!”) The problem is that psychotics trouble us much much more than neurotics do!
In “Strategies for dealing with denial,” she writes: “At the center of all psychological denial is a hidden agenda.”
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/04/strategies-for-dealing-with-denial_17.html
There is much to chew on there for those who want to take the problem Paul Hsieh has crystalized further.
My favorite philosopher (Ayn Rand) stated: “When you pursue the irrational do not be surprised to wake up and find that the world doesn’t make any sense.” What collectivism and the creeds of self-sacrifice have accomplished is well illustrated in much (not all) of journalism and politics today. Neither work to serve one’s long run, individual, interests. Both are assumed, wrongly, to have not been pursued far enough (or led by the right group), thus the inward spiral of pursuing greater sacrifice, and more collectivism. Until and unless there is a profound awakening to a philosophy proper to the life of man, you can simply expect more of the same. And with results that will be worse than the myriad of issues we face today..
Let me add one other thing to this that has occurred to me of late: Journalists are uneducated. The reason I say that is, I have seen several times now when Palin and Bachmann have given answers that journalists thought were wrong and that the women were uninformed, when it was the journalists who were wrong and uninformed. (I also remember when Yasser Arafat told an NBC anchor that there was never a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount and the anchor sat there like the moron he was saying nothing.) In any event, the degree to which current journalists are uneducated, ill-informed, unable to think critically and tilted Left tells us something about the low state of America’ institutions of higher learning. So, I am unsurprised that journalists find unfavorable economic events to be unexpected; they don’t know any better.
Recently had a very unpleasant chat with my mother, to that effect. Although I consider her “conservative”, she faithfully watches the national TV news and gets her other news from the paper. She is now a fan of Mitt Romney and thinks Sarah Palin “is an idiot”. I asked why she thought that and she said, “She’s uneducated and that THING about Paul Revere, my gawd!”
When I corrected my mom, she said, “Tell ME about Paul Revere…I grew up in Massachusetts!.” As if that’s the be-all/end-all to knowing U.S. history. I tried to impress upon her that Sarah was correct, that Revere warned the British while in captivity and that as to being “uneducated” she attended college and has a bachelor’s degree in communications.
So I think my mom doesn’t like her simply because the TV told her so.
It’s good that Reynolds has pointed out the incessant use of “unexpected”; it does get the idea out there to all of his (and, I’d guess, your) very literate audience.
But how about a little credit where credit is due: Rush Limbaugh has been ridiculing its use for many, many moons before the Instapundit caught on.
Excellent essay, outstanding comments. Thank you, all. Too bad the people who really need to read them would never consider doing so.
More people read this than you know. Most folks do not have time to comment, though. This is one of the top 10 conservative sites. Things written here go far and wide. I have seen my own words, and words of others, get used in larger media, and even by politicians. This is important, because most politicians are simply inept at argumentation. (Republicans are starting to learn, finally, out of necessity.)
Elites are not as much ignorant of the link between freedom and prosperity, they are very hostile to it, for it challenges their status as elites.
This touches on the “knowledge problem” that was developed by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. Elites insist that if only a committee of experts was smart enough and had enough information, they could successfully direct the rest of the economy. It is bad enough when they install themselves in a government bureaucracy and force us to buy only cars that are light enough to get what elites think is a high enough gas mileage. But government intrusion in the market always distorts the resulting consumer behavior and prices so that information becomes full of distortions and noise.
Worse, the bureaucracy down the street uses that noisy information in its deliberations and issues edicts to solve problems caused in part by previous bureaucratic intrusions. Mucking begets mucking. It is like trying to measure the depth of water in a lake from the back of a boat circling in its own wake.
This is why a socialist economy cannot function for long. Indeed, von Mises declared it is “impossible”!
Please allow me to add:
See
http://washingtonexaminer.com/node/102836
Op Eds
Glenn Harlan Reynolds: Progressives can’t get past the Knowledge Problem
“If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” — President Reagan, Jan. 20, 1981.
Economist Friedrich Hayek explained in 1945 why centrally controlled “command economies” were doomed to waste, inefficiency, and collapse: Insufficient knowledge. He won a Nobel Prize. But it turns out he was righter than he knew.
In his “The Use of Knowledge In Society,” Hayek explained that information about supply and demand, scarcity and abundance, wants and needs exists in no single place in any economy. The economy is simply too large and complicated for such information to be gathered together.
Any economic planner who attempts to do so will wind up hopelessly uninformed and behind the times, reacting to economic changes in a clumsy, too-late fashion and then being forced to react again to fix the problems that the previous mistakes created, leading to new problems, and so on.
Market mechanisms, like pricing, do a better job than planners because they incorporate what everyone knows indirectly through signals like price, without central planning.
Thus, no matter how deceptively simple and appealing command economy programs are, they are sure to trip up their operators, because the operators can’t possibly be smart enough to make them work.
Hayek’s insight into economics and regulation is often called “The Knowledge Problem,” and it is a very powerful notion. But recent events suggest that it’s not just the economy that regulators don’t understand well enough — it’s also their own regulations.
…
In a world run by children, many, many things are unexpected. Their world is filled with wonder and surprise as they’re unable to foresee the consequences of their actions. Children act only for their immediate gratification and become upset when things don’t go their way or they foul their diapers.
For some experience teaches however, and while they lose the child-like wonder, they gain the ability to predict expected outcomes of their actions, link disparate ones together and create this thing called ‘progress’ where amazing previously unimaginable things come to life, in fact become ordinary.
Having used GPS since is was just 4 satellites that gave a good position for a couple hours a day, I have always called it the “magic box.” Far to many trust the magic box over their own eyes and fail to ‘trust but verify’ as they should. Both traits that will help you avoid the unexpected.
Being in industry I have watched the private sector jobs disappear because frankly we as consumer buy the cheapest price we can find. Now that the playing field is being leveled by the Obama incredible shrinking dollar these same companies are reviewing the “put all your eggs in one basket” decisions. Some would move back to the USA in a heartbeat if the taxation and regulation trends were in a positive direction. Unfortunately the government has expanded and regulatory agencies are crawling all over the manufacturing we have left. Add on to that that Obama wants to increase taxes on the highest “wage” earners, not trust babies, and corporate tax and you have an absolute mess. The media’s response, Don’t Worry Be Happy.
The media’s “Don’t worry, be happy” chorus is due to the fact that they feel high corporate taxes punish the evil capitalists. They fail to negotiate the thread of logic that they, themselves, earn wages paid to them by their publishing entity, which, in turn is purchased by buyers interested in reading what they wrote. Capitalism. If they write crap, interest wanes and circulation diminishes. Thus, their own wages do likewise. Again, capitalism.
Perhaps in their minds, they will (someday) work for the publishing entity that is 100% government-owned and their checks will remain the same, whether they wrote anything that day/week or not. Yeah, it’s a nice dream, innit?
I wish I could get paid whether I went to work or not myself. But as they say, “Wish in one hand, s**t in the other and see which one fills up first”.
No need to pick on journalists. They are a reflection of the culture within which they live.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
When things don’t make sense, it’s time to check one’s premises.
Conspiracy theorists, my ass.
Anyone who does NOT see the effects of leftism is an imbecile. Of course it is intentional. Of course they are engaged in “redistribution” and Keynesian/Marxist infusions into our information stream, DOJ, on our borders, at the NLRB.
Are you blind?
What kind of sugar-coated crap sandwich do we need to swallow to continually water down the intent and motivation here. By God, it is high time to stop this abject sniveling by those who tremble at the prospect of being called “fringe” for seeing what is there to be seen.
Instead of apologizing for seeing intent, why not read Radical-In-Chief by Stanley Kurtz or the Shadow Party by David Horowitz or Demonic by Ann Coulter..and then let’s discuss “intent and motive” when we are well read.
Instead, we denigrate the facts before our very eyes. This is the height of ignorance. Get up off your knees. I am a centrist and an independent and have been the whole of my life. But leftism has us by the throat. Wake up to the reality. This is intentional and THEY are playing for keeps.
It’s hard to influence people with knowledge and skill. You have to study and practice for years to do that. And even then, you might not succeed because…
It’s much easier to influence people with the appearance of knowledge and skill. Learn the power of makeup; get a good haircut; act confident: be condescending towards people who disagree; master the many easy-to-learn techiques of a successful liar. That way, you don’t have to quibble about facts or keep your stories straight or learn how to argue persuasively. After all, there are many ways to look at any situation.
Or just study any national politician. Better yet, take the advanced course and study Barack Obama.
There’s a reason we call anything on tv a “show”.
Thanks for saying it.
Leftists are the fantasy pushers.
This was meant for cfbleachers’ comment just above.
Good old cf, Center Field Bleachers. He has been posting here for years. He used to be such a Centrist. Now he has gone to the Right of ME! Love that guy! Needs to change his moniker to rfbleachers, though.
More likely he kept his seat while the field moved.
Most likely he kept his seat while the ILLUSION of the field moved.
Or in other words, just because the make believe media has uppped the wattage and become more extreme in THEIR liberalism doesn’t mean that centrists have become right wing extremists.
Marc, is it at all possible that it is you who has moved farther left?
Proreason, the notion of a radical right is a construct of the radical left. Politically the left is liberal and the right is conservative. By definition, a conservative is one who saves or desires little change, how radical can such a person be? Realizing that politics is a continuum from NO change Conservative to the Revolutionary change Liberal. Reactionaries want change back to an earlier state, which of course makes them liberals. Progressives are acting a lot like Reactionaries, desiring to return of rule by fiat or divine right of kings with them in the role of king!
Robert-
the “conservative”/”liberal” conundrum is yet another example of the left’s etymological hijacking
because of the corruption of the traditional meaning of “liberal” the principles once applied to it have now become “conservative”
but what are modern “conservatives” conserving? if anything, conservatism is a radical approach to deal with the stagnant status quo of our government that inhibits liberty and freedom– we definitely do not want to conserve this leviathan
The Left has actually been split on this:
The “moderate Democrat” economists, like Christina Romer and Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, were confident that Obama’s policies like the stimulus package would enable the economy to recover. And they were wrong.
It wasn’t just us conservatives who knew that Obama’s policies wouldn’t work.
The truly far-left economists, like Stiglitz and Krugman and Robert Reich, *also* predicted Obama’s policies wouldn’t work–and they were right. Robert Reich and Michele Bachmann totally disagree on what the best solution is–but they both recognized that the problem was much worse than what Obama’s Beltway advisers believed.
So why were the conservatives *and* the far-left correct about this, while the more mainstream Democrat economists were not?
I believe it’s because both conservatives and the far-left have a populist streak these days. Whereas the professional Democrat advisers in Washington who keep going around the “revolving door” between government and Wall Street and banks are insulated from the real America. Both a Michele Bachmann and a Robert Reich know what’s happening with working folks and poor folks out there in the real America, to a degree that those inbred Beltway advisers sitting in their plush offices in Washington D.C. do not.
For us conservatives, it is NOT being against the free market for us to oppose this “revolving door” between serving in government, then working for a bank or Wall Street firm getting bailouts from one’s old friends in Washington. That’s corporatism, not capitalism.
Good insight.
the “right” believed obamanomics is wrong because a centrally planned economy by a few technocrats has never worked in the course of human history
the “far left” believed obamanomics is flawed because there was not enough spending
I don’t think the idiot Harvard economists based the stimulus on a belief in Keynes.
They simply looked at the recovery charts of the prior nine or ten recessions and concluded that as of Jan 2009, the economy was bound to begin improving dramatically.
And since that data seemed conclusive, they were more than willing to agree to a 900 billion dollar political payoff package. They were probably chuckling amongst themselves for being so cautious. Little Paulie wanted at least twice as much payola and firmly believed in an even faster recovery. The White House idiots overruled him and were going for “promise low and deliver high”.
If it was based on deeper thinking than that, the fools would not have published the simplistic graph about employment recovery that they are now being strangled with. And they wouldn’t have all fled back to academia, where they can play with their computer models that always conform to their liberal fantasies.
To admit that bad results are the predictable consequences of Progressive policies is to commit apostasy. They would be expelled from the Cult, no longer to be admitted into the presence of the cool kids.
Psychological denial is their only option.
My college economics and personal finance professor warned this was coming. He warned the students that the government was spending recklessly and would soon reach the point where its debt and obligations would be unsustainable and it would all come falling down. The goverment would simply run out of other people’s money and so it would inflate the currency and then it would fall apart.
Not many people listened and in fact that was the last semester personal finance was taught. Econimics only remained because it was required for accreditation by the state.
As for the newsies: they are mostly hired for their looks. An empty head helps too so they don’t feel silly for all the babbling they do and so they’ll just regurgitate the words being fed into their ears without hesitation, thought or editing.
The media lives in a child-like world of only “intended consequences.” Look at their discussion of every law; they describe it by its intent, whether it’s a food safety bill sponsored by Monsanto to burden small farmers, gun control bills that burden ordinary citizens without restricting criminals’ access to guns or the economic stimulus, there is no rigor applied in criticising or evaluating legislation beyond snappy titles and accepting a law’s purpose as a description of its future impact.
When you don’t consider unintended consequences, the unintended consequences will always surprise you.
Second, Americans “voted with their feet” and moved from states with less freedom to states with more freedom.
Unfortunately, a fair amount of these same people are too stupid to put the pieces together, and once established in their new homes with more freedom, promptly vote for the same stupidity that eventually results in the problems they left behind.
Ah, yes, those “conspiracy theorists” again.
Would that be those of us who have read Karl Marx, the Humanist Manifestos, John Dewey, their proteges like Alinksy, et al, and who therefore have a clear understanding of what is going on?
Those of you who think the near-perfect congruence between the methods and goals espoused by the writers mentioned above, and the history of the U.S. for the last hundred years is merely all coincidence, are the ones Lenin referred to as “useful idiots”.
“Would that be those of us who have read Karl Marx, the Humanist Manifestos, John Dewey, their proteges like Alinksy, et al, and who therefore have a clear understanding of what is going on?”
Sorry to pick on you Mark, but honestly every time I read things like this I roll my eyes – I would bet any amount that you have not read all these books. If you have in-fact read them and have a subsequent clear understanding of what is going on I would like to hear it. Especially regarding the role humanists have to play.
Democrats have been pushing programs that are predicted to destroy the economy and degrade America’s defenses since 1933. No breaks; no let-ups. And their policies do, every time, harm the private sector and cut defenses. How many times can we watch this and still claim that it’s all some big mistake? Everything O’bwana is doing is a continuation of the New Deal. And don’t foreget that ‘we’ fought WW II in the first place to save the USSR. There will be no World War this time. If you need some history, recall that the GOP slogan in Nov 1946 was “Where’s the Meat?” Why was meat scarce over a year after WW II ended? Because the govt was still rationing food and controlling prices. The GOP ended all the Depression-era price-controls, although it cost them the ’48 elections. But make no mistake, if they hadn’t cut off the controls, the Depression would’ve just continued. Because Dems like Depressions — they hurt private businesses and make people dependent on ever more-powerful govt. In simple terms, Democrats are the enemies of America, and they want to destroy our society.
Good article! Let’s trace “unexpected.”
1)Congress/Senate
-Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid
2) Administration
-Geithner
-Bernake (Fed Chairman)
-Rohm Emanuel (former)
-Eric Holder (current)
3) Cabinet
- Cass Sustein
- Clinton
- Van Jones (extra government)
- George Soros (financier)
How is this “unexpected?” These are dyed in the wool: subversive Fabian Socialists, leninists, marxists, and communists.
If a thorough “vetting” process had been performed of candidate Obama, this “unexpected” expected could’ve been avoided. Merely, “circling the wagons” syndrome by “We the Elite People” (Re: RNC, DNC, MSM) at this point is fruitless. Why?, one asks! Well, because WE THE PEOPLE know full well what’s at stake and we’re going to take back our USofA! PERIOD! We’re not changing our US Constitution (Time magazine), we’re not touching the Declaration of Independence, and certainly not even going near our Bill of Rights. What we’re going to do is change “We the Elite People” culture in Washington DC. So, get over it! Vote this coming 2012 election because there is massive voter fraud on its way. Enact, in each State’s legislature, a Voter ID law. God Bless America!
Another insightful piece by Paul Hsieh. “Unexpected” is just the new “perfect storm.”
What makes a person with a journalism degree more qualified than the folks who are out there busting their rump everyday more qualified to comment on any contemporary subject? I say nothing. We common folk are as capable and observant as they who beleive they can guide us to the truth. Unlike them, we know BS when we see it.
I have been managing money for 25+ years. For several years, I kept track of the supreme economic misdirection provided the cadre of so called journalists and the actual results of their prognostications. For example, the Los Angeles Times’ business page printed a traumatic market “expectation” back in early 1991. As you may recall, we were involved in the First Gulf War, and to most knee jerk journalists, (even business writers), it was the beginning of the end. I was giving a speech in Los Angeles the day before the U.S.launched its troops. We did not KNOW that the troops were going to be sent in the next day, but I was indicating a positive outlook for the market, while the LA Times was doom and gloom. The market spiked up and reacted “unexpectedly”. The only people who work for most old media business sections are dried up brokers who couldn’t make any money “reading” the market. And papers only print doom and gloom, if the president is a Republican. If he is Democrat, then the negative news is always “unexpected”.
My point is that papers rarely connect the dots correctly. They have an agenda, and it rarely is dynamic. So journalists figure if THEY missed it, no one ELSE could be smart enough to get it. Of course they are wrong…the people who ARE smart enough ….don’t work for newspapers….UNEXPECTEDLY!!
I can understand when Obama or his lackeys say “unexpected”, because they are entertained by just getting their underwear on the right way.
But, when the chairman of the Federal Reserve starts using this term, and can’t pose any explanation, it’s evident we have a complete group of juveniles trying to act as authorities.
Paul, willful blindness is worse than a destructive urge?? Sober up! They, or most of them, know exactly what they are doing and why, and it is destruction. OK, severe and long lasting pain and hardship, Misery. And please, most certainly Obama and the crowd around him know it.
Paul it’s going on close to three years now, it’s not an accident & it’s not a mistake. Aggression coupled with force are salient factors in history, it took a long time but the Left has finally come out of it’s closet & The O is their man.
To explain the policies of Progressives, it is not necessary to assume their ignorance of economics. It is only necessary to note that they do not care about the average level of prosperity in the country. What they care about is the average level of prosperity among Progressives. It is perfectly possible for the average level of American prosperity to plummet, but for the average level of Progressive prosperity to soar. To a Progressive, the problem with Capitalism isn’t that some people get rich; the problem is that the wrong people get rich.
When I hear the media and/or politicians use the word “unexpected” I will be viewing it in a whole different light. Thank you for bringing our awareness to the misuse of this word in the political arena.