THIS IS SARAH HOYT: My blog attracts any number of regular readers/commenters who are also writers, and I give them at least a day a month to publicize their own works. This is that post. Some people have things for free or discounted and while I haven’t read these books, I know some of them are doing quite well. So if you feel like supporting indie publishing (another form of new media) give these books a look. Thank you to Glenn for allowing me to link these posts here.
CAPTAIN’S JOURNAL: The Wrong Way To Argue About Assault Weapons.
Personally, I hope the Dems push an assault-weapon ban hard. Last time they did it, it cost them the Congress.
JUST DON’T MAKE INCONVENIENT EXTRAPOLATIONS TO THE USA: Germany in the 1930s vs. Egypt in the 2010s. Egypt needs ruthless liberal democrats if it is to survive.
OVERLY-ATTACHED PARENTING? Mayim Bialik Announces Divorce, But Not Due To The Children In Her Bed. “The thirty-six-year old actor announced on her website that her marriage to Michael Stone was over. It’s very sad news for the couple, but I’m not sure why she feels the need to defend attachment parenting in her statement. Just because Mayim Bialik is divorcing, I don’t think most people would jump to the conclusion it’s because the couple co-sleeps with their children or that Mayim practiced prolonged nursing.”
THE AWFUL PROBLEM POSED BY THOSE alluring older men.
CYBER MONDAY IS TOMORROW, but the Cyber Monday Deals are up early tonight!
WHAT A DEMOGRAPHIC COLLAPSE LOOKS LIKE: “Last year, for the first time, sales of adult diapers in Japan exceeded those for babies.”
UPDATE: Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks: Reader Mike Henderson reminds me of this story linked on InstaPundit last month: Wearing Adult Diapers Is A Trend For Women In Japan. Well, maybe it’s just differently bad. . . .
AT AMAZON, Black Friday deals on Shoes, Boots & Slippers. For men, women & children.
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED (CONT’D): Super Gonorrhea Bugs Spur New Treatment Regimen in Europe. “Zithromax or a generic version of the antibiotic pill should be added to the standard treatment for gonorrhea to fight multidrug-resistant strains of the sexually transmitted bacterium, doctors in Europe said. New European guidelines for sexually transmitted infections recommend giving azithromycin as well as the injected medicine ceftriaxone, which is beginning to lose its potency against gonorrhea. The guidelines also recommend patients be tested after finishing a course of treatment to check they are cured.”
Plus this: “Gonorrhea now poses a potential public health disaster, with a very real threat that it may soon be untreatable in certain circumstances.”
THE TRANSITIVE LAW: Liberals hate Wal-Mart >> Wal-Mart helps the poor = Liberals hate the poor.
BLEG: Just a reminder: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your Christmas/Hanukkah shopping — or any other shopping — through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support the blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. It’s much appreciated!
GENETICS: Does being fat make you more jolly? “David Meyre of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and his colleagues found that a gene mutation associated with obesity is also associated with an 8 per cent decrease in the risk of depression.” On the other hand: “Obesity is a risk factor for depression, and vice versa.”
AT AMAZON, Black Friday deals in Watches.
Also, jewelry.
LAST MANGO IN PARIS: Goodbye, Petrodollar — Hello Agri-Dollar?
A PHYSICIAN’S NEW REALITY: Patients Ask Me To Break The Law. “Ironically, but expectedly, the ones who do this now are likely to have supported Obamacare.”
AMAZON KINDLES as cheap as $69.
ED DRISCOLL INTERVIEWS: Rob Long, James Lileks, and Roman Genn, from the 2012 National Review Cruise.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Yes, you can balance the budget without raising taxes. “Liberal columnists love to point out that the top marginal rate on personal income was 91 percent in the 1950s and in the early 1960s. But the tax code back then was also chock-full of loopholes and benefits that let top earners escape such stifling tax burdens. As high as top marginal rates were, taxes as a percentage of GDP never rose above 19 percent, and in fact fell as low as 14.5 percent.”
YA THINK? The Hill: Reid faces task of mending fences with GOP after campaign attacks. “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) infuriated Republicans during the campaign with his harsh partisan attacks and now faces the delicate task of mending his relationship with the GOP. Some Republicans say Reid poisoned his relationship with their party by waging controversial attacks against GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. They were most angered by Reid’s charge that Romney had not paid taxes in ten years, attributing the information to an anonymous source.”
The more-deft legislative leaders of eras past remembered that once the election was over you still have to work with people.
I TOLD YOU IT WAS DANGEROUS TO TRY TO “OUT-CRAZY” STACY MCCAIN: “Stacy McCain is not a Sicilian, but he has the memory of a Sicilian.”
ALONG WITH MY PROPOSAL TO REPEAL THE HOLLYWOOD TAX CUTS and various other ideas on how the GOP can push popular ideas that will hurt Democratic constituencies, several readers have suggested that the Republicans in Congress push cable-unbundling as a cause. It will, they suggest, make consumers happy, hurt the entertainment industries and probably put MSNBC out of business since, well, how many people would actually pay to get MSNBC? . . . .
AT AMAZON, Black Friday Deals in Men’s Clothing.
Also women’s clothing, and clothes for kids and babies.
And, today only: Garmin Forerunner 410 GPS Sport Watch with Heart Rate Monitor, $149.99 (50% off).
IF BRICK-AND-MORTAR RETAILERS HAVE THEIR WAY, the next Cyber Monday will be taxed.
Cyber Monday is the marketing term for the Monday after Thanksgiving, when many online retailers offer steep discounts and promotions. The day is a counterpart to Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
Under current law, states can only collect sales taxes from retailers that have a physical presence in their state. People who order items online from another state are supposed to declare the purchases on their tax forms, but few do.
This’ll happen sooner or later. If it has to happen, I favor a single uniform tax, to get rid of the complexities of trying to account for city and county taxes across the nation.
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: When it comes to economic policy, liberal pundits are failing their liberal base.
Liberal pundits have a real problem here. Now I’m not talking about old-fashioned, substance-lite stylists such as Maureen Dowd or Gail Collins. But Paul Krugman is a Nobel laureate. He’s supposed to know something. And Krugman surely does. But he’s just playing to his liberal fan base when he writes, as he did the other day, a paen to the high-tax, union-heavy 1950s economy as if it’s a relevant model for 2012 America. Many liberals would love to believe that if only we sharply raised taxes on wealthier Americans and corporations and slashed defense, we could not only leave Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as is. Unfortunately for them, the math doesn’t work.
But it’s not just Krugman. During the campaign, President Obama argued that the economic policies of George W. Bush caused the Great Recession and Financial Crisis. Indeed, this was a major theme of the Democratic National Convention. “We can’t go back!” Talk about a teachable moment that was wasted. Understanding what went wrong in the 2000s is critical to avoiding such economic catastrophes in the future. But where were the liberal econ pundits going on MSNBC and myth-busting the idea that Bush’s tax cuts and deficits were to blame?
Or pointing out the role of the Clinton administration in financial deregulation and housing policy?
Or explaining that the Great Recession might have been just a mini-version of the Great Depression, and thus it was overly tight Fed policy that really sunk the economy in 2007-2009, not Bush or the banks.
That last omission is particularly troubling. Many liberal econ writers now accept the theory, most famously advanced by economist bloggers Scott Sumner and David Beckworth, that the Fed should conduct monetary policy by targeting nominal GDP rather than inflation or interest rate levels. (I buy it, too.) But a major part of this theory argues that the Fed blew it in 2008.
Read the whole thing.
GETTING IT FAST AND HARD (CONT’D): Student Loan Interest Deduction Phasing Out: Another Screw For Obama Voters.
NEW YORK POST: Racial Smears Against Susan Rice’s Critics. Well, what else have her defenders got? “Fact is, the ambassador’s defense of the then-already discredited claim that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous mob protest against an anti-Muslim video is a legitimate target of criticism. That so many Democrats feel the need to resort to the racism-sexism shield in her defense more than makes us wonder just what they think she has to hide.”
The battle of the sexes is alive and well. According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.
Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don’t.
Over the last several decades, the rewards of marriage for men have declined, while the risks have climbed. Unsurprisingly, they find it less appealing.
UPDATE: Reader Chuck Allen notes an additional angle: “With regard to fewer young men looking to get married, who can blame them? Those 18-34 y.o. males mentioned in the survey have grown up watching media where husbands and fathers are demeaned as either incompetent or uncaring (or both) by the all-knowing and exalted wife/mother. So, if that is the impression of marriage given by television shows and ads, why would young men want to get married (at least so quickly)?”
Indeed.
MORE RASPBERRIES FOR PAUL KRUGMAN, this time from Liz Peek. “Mr. Krugman should get out more. He would find that women no longer wear poodle skirts and the United States is no longer the globe’s free-range economic powerhouse that it was after World War II. In the 1950s, the U.S. was leagues ahead of its economic rivals, most of which had blown up their budgets, and their industries, during the long years of destruction.”
And if you missed it earlier, check out Mickey Kaus’s epic Krugman beatdown.
HOW IMPLEMENTING OBAMACARE will give the GOP a majority.
RESPONDING TO MARGINAL TAX RATES: Reader Alex Clay writes:
After the election, my wife and I are going partial Galt. We’re in California, so our state income tax went up in addition to what’s sure to come out of Washington.
My wife quit her job last week. I increased my participation in a tax deferment plan offered by my employer to bring my taxable income as close to $250K as possible. We’ll be cutting back a little, but the government is going to getting a whole lot less.
My wife’s entire salary barely covered our tax bill – she was 100% slave to the government, while I was a 10% slave. Now she is 100% free, and I’ll be a ~35% slave As a couple, 17.5% of our time is slaving on the government plantation from an astounding 55% previously.
My wife is deliriously happy, our children are delighted to have mom home, the dog gets more walks, and I find not spending money rapturously satisfying.
I think we’ll see a lot of this. Whether it will add up to “Irish Democracy” or not, well, we’ll see.
OUR LABORATORIES OF DEMOCRACY are moving toward one-party rule.
The federal government may be locked up in an extended state of bipartisan gridlock, but our fifty nifty United States have been moving towards clear-cut majorities not seen in these numbers in decades. . . .
This is going to be an interesting phenomenon to watch during the next four years of a continued Obama economy. As the choices made by individual states become more starkly partisan and the results start rolling in, we’re going to be able to compare apples to apples — and I’d bet good money that red states are going to start seeing significant gains in areas over which they have control.
Probably true, but if one-party rule persists over the long term it will be a bad thing, regardless of which party is involved.
MR. NAKOULA WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: Jailed Pussy Riot band member moved to ‘safe’ cell.
RED CROSS NOT LOOKING SO GOOD, POST-SANDY: In the hardest-hit areas, smaller and nimbler groups are playing key relief roles.
The American Red Cross “knows what it’s doing,” President Barack Obama said when he visited the agency the day after Hurricane Sandy devastated New Jersey and New York—and during the final week of the presidential campaign—as he called on Americans to donate to it. Two weeks after the storm, Gail McGovern, the group’s chief executive officer and president, deemed its response “near flawless.” . . .
But many residents and volunteers in the hardest-hit areas say they’ve been disappointed by its response, even as smaller and ad-hoc relief efforts have played a prominent frontline role in the relief and recovery effort.
It’s hardly the first time the Red Cross—which collected more than a billion dollars in contributions in its fiscal year ending last June—has come under fire. In recent years, the 131-year-old charity has been heavily criticized for its responses to 9/11, Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti, and the tsunami that hit Japan, with many of the complaints revolving around mismanaged funds and misleading fundraising, as well as the propriety of its blood-bank operations.
Yet the Red Cross continues to dominate fundraising in the aftermath of each new disaster, perpetuating its dominance over the emergency-response industry. Perhaps that’s because the Red Cross’s shortcomings often come to public light only in the wake of a disaster, and are forgotten before the next one hits. . . . In the days and weeks since Sandy ravaged parts of the New York and New Jersey coasts, however, residents in some of the hardest-hit areas say they still have seen no sign of the Red Cross.
Your money is better sent to smaller, less politicized and bureaucratic organizations.
UPDATE: Like who? Here’s a list.
JOHN HINDERAKER disagrees with my analysis. His take on why Dems do better nationally: “At the national level, we have seen an increasing disconnect between spending and payment. This is partly because most people pay either no, or very modest, federal income taxes, and partly because 40% of all federal spending is borrowed, so that our children will have to pay for it. To the average voter, federal money must seem to appear almost magically. There has been, in recent years, no connection at all between increased spending and any necessity to pay for it. So I think it is not surprising that the Democrats are currently doing better at the national level than the state and local levels.”
Good argument, and I certainly agree with this: “This strikes me as one data point among many that indicate it is time to revise our federal tax code so that more voters are also, to a meaningful degree, payers of federal taxes.”
ROBERT PARK: Genocide And Crimes Against Humanity Ongoing In North Korea. World doesn’t care. Too busy attacking Israel.
NEWS FROM THE NEW ARMY: “I had no idea that a combat zone would be such a sexually charged environment. . . . There’s nothing that compares to making love at war.”
UPDATE: A reader emails:
While I understand the premise, did you notice the “Jesus obsession” bit?
I’m guessing a similar letter referring to a “Mohammed obsession” would not have seen print…or be written in the first place.
Another example of oikophobia?
Yeah, probably.
THE NEW YORK TIMES takes secession seriously. Well, I think it’s a dumb idea, and suggest instead that taking federalism seriously would be a better idea. That said, this is a dumb argument against secession:
Few of the public calls for secession have addressed the messy details, like what would happen to the state’s many federal courthouses, prisons, military bases and parklands. No one has said what would become of Kevin Patteson, the director of the state’s Office of State-Federal Relations, and no one has asked the Texas residents who received tens of millions of dollars in federal aid after destructive wildfires last year for their thoughts on the subject.
These are details — really, we can’t secede because Kevin Patteson would be out of a job! isn’t very persuasive — and one might as well say “No one has asked Texas residents how they’ll spend the federal income taxes and gas taxes they’ll no longer be paying.” If those are the best arguments against secession, I might change my mind. But they’re not.
WAYS TO CULTIVATE GRATITUDE IN KIDS.
HOW DO PORCUPINES MATE? Very carefully. “Their stark, night-piercing shrieks aren’t just about the quills.”
THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE: Gesture Control. And future means “sometime next year.”
CHANGE: “The truth is, fat is in and thin is, well, mostly fantasy.” Walking around campus, I’d say that the center of the weight distribution has shifted upward by about 15 pounds among undergraduates over the 20 years or so I’ve been teaching. The change is more notable among the women than the men — not surprising at that age — but you see it in everyone.
IN CANADA, HOW COURTING THE IMMIGRANT VOTE PAID OFF FOR THE TORIES:
Fifteen cups of tea. That’s how the election was won.
In one day during the 2011 election campaign, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney attended 15 different chai parties hosted by Indo-Canadian voters in Brampton West, Ont. That’s just a snapshot of his epic cross-Canada campaigning, but it’s indicative of the stamina and persistence of the Conservative point man for ethnic communities.
He and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have transformed their party from one that was perceived as hostile to new Canadians to one that is now home to a great many immigrant voters and Members of Parliament.
It helps. When Phil Bredesen ran for governor in Tennessee the first time, he was thought of as an out-of-touch northeasterner. He then spent a lot of time going to chili suppers and VFW affairs all over the state, and by the next time people thought he was okay. Of course the Democrats and media run a double-bind operation here: They attack the GOP for being racist and insular, but then also attack it if it reaches out to new groups. That’s a calculated strategy to keep the GOP isolated, but you just have to overcome it.
This kind of outreach, done right, would do more good than amnesty bills. Harder to do at the national-campaign level, though.
JOHN HINDERAKER: It’s a Good Thing We’ve Got “Smart Diplomacy!”
I am so confused! When anti-Mubarak demonstrators gathered in Tahrir Square and were met with tear gas, they represented the Arab Spring. So what do these anti-Morsi demonstrators represent? Are they Arab Spring too? Or Arab Autumn? Or maybe the seasonal analogies are no longer operative. . . .
But never mind that–I am still really, really confused! Mubarak was our friend, but a bad guy. So he had to go, and Obama denounced him and helped force him out. Morsi is our enemy, and also is a bad guy. So Obama thinks he’s A-OK, and helped Morsi take power. That’s called “smart diplomacy.” You probably wouldn’t understand.
Other things are confusing, too. Did Obama know that Morsi was about to claim dictatorial powers when he made Morsi the “hero” of the Israel-Gaza cease fire? If so, did he mind? If Obama didn’t know–which seems more likely–does he now think that Morsi double-crossed him by capitalizing on his faux diplomatic mission to proclaim himself a dictator? Or is that one more thing that is A-OK with Obama? If Obama doesn’t like the fact that Morsi has cut “Arab Spring” democracy off at the knees, does he intend to do anything about it? Or, when bad things happen, is it “smart diplomacy” to do nothing and pretend you don’t mind?
Pretend you don’t mind — and lead from behind!
HOW MUCH IS AN HOUR OF SUNSHINE WORTH?
To find out where homeowners get the most solar bang for their buck, real-estate consulting firm Knight Frank looked at 14 warm-weather vacation spots around the world. Using the average hours of sunlight per day and the average house price for a four-bedroom property in a prime real-estate location, Knight Frank arrived at the price for an hour of sunshine, averaged over a year. . . . Caribbean islands ranked high on the list, in part because there’s less land to develop, which drives property prices higher, says Paddy Dring, head of the international residential department for Knight Frank.
Well, few people vacation for gloom.
HOW DO YOU TAKE OVER A WAL-MART? “An assembly line is a delicate process that can be stopped by holding one of dozens of chokepoints hostage. A store can pretty much only be stopped by holding the whole store.”
And you don’t want to get in the way of Wal-Mart customers on Black Friday. If I were management, I’d just announce that all flat-screen TVs were $20 each for the first hour. Strike broken, “occupiers” trampled, end of story.
HOW THE WORLD ALMOST ENDED: An Asteroid Near-Miss in 1883. “So if they had collided with Earth we would have had 3275 Tunguska events in two days, probably an extinction event.”
Kind of like the backstory to S.M. Stirling’s The Peshawar Lancers.
“UNREST” IS THE PROPER RESPONSE: Egypt unrest flares over Morsi’s move to broaden his power. “The state is crumbling. The law is being completely sidestepped. We are now a lawless country.” If it ends with him being deposed it’ll be better.
AT AMAZON, Black Friday deals in Camera, Photo & Video.
NICK KRISTOF WRITES A LOT ABOUT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. But given this dogs-breakfast of a column about America, I’m beginning to doubt the reliability of his observations from anywhere.
People want generators because the power goes out in storms. The reason power goes out in storms isn’t because marginal income tax rates aren’t high enough. The reason power goes out in storms in general is that ratepayers — who, not taxpayers, are the ones who pay for electrical-utility infrastructure — balk at paying the higher rates it would take to harden up the infrastructure, and the political bodies that oversee utility rates tend to agree.
The reason that power went out on Long Island is that Andrew Cuomo did a lousy job of overseeing the incompetent Long Island Power Authority. And the reason why people buy generators is because they’ve gotten better and cheaper thanks to technology, while we’ve gotten less willing to live without electricity for an extended period.
The larger phenomenon that Kristof identifies — people buying their way out of “public” (that is, government-supplied) services — is real, but the chief reason is that government has become more concerned with redistribution and cronyism, so that the quality of services has generally fallen. Increasing the amount of money available for redistribution and cronyism won’t fix that.
Also: Dear generator-owning homeowners, do not invite Nick Kristof over next time there is a hurricane. “Completely ignored is that government spending is going through the roof, including on police and schools, yet we have little to show for it. The answer for Kristof, more of the same.”
Plus, from the comments: “Kristof is losing his touch! I fully expected him to suggest that we have a progressive electric rating scheme in this country like we do our taxes. The couple with the $50k shack get their electric for free, while those with the Manhattan condos and $5m Hamptons mansions pay the highest electric rates in the nation. Slipping I tell you!”
UPDATE: Speaking of government and money: Exclusive: New Jersey railway put trains in Sandy flood zone despite warnings. “The Garden State’s commuter railway parked critical equipment – including much of its newest and most expensive stock – at its low-lying main rail yard in Kearny just before the hurricane. It did so even though forecasters had released maps showing the wetland-surrounded area likely would be under water when Sandy’s expected record storm surge hit. Other equipment was parked at its Hoboken terminal and rail yard, where flooding also was predicted and which has flooded before.”
Oh, and by the way, if you’re looking for a generator. . . .
UPDATE: A couple of more gems from Prof. Jacobson’s comments:
Didn’t Kristof (twice) favor the candidate who proposed an energy plan in which “electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket” and who thinks that’s a good thing? Therefore, Kristof believes that only the wealthy should have an adequate power supply. Q.E.D.
And:
The way things are progressing, in 20 years “only the rich can afford electricity” will be a common utterance, and an established fact.
Indeed.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: At Elite Colleges, The Rich Stay Rich.
BRITAIN: “A couple had their three foster children taken away by a council on the grounds that their membership of the UK Independence Party meant that they supported ‘racist’ policies.” Tar and feathers are the appropriate response to such outrages.
POINTS AND FIGURES: Eventually, Math Wins.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: More on the $10,000 bachelor’s degree.
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Jurors Agree: University of Iowa Law School Discriminated Against Faculty Applicant Due to Her Conservative Views.
From the comments: “I hope people will start to take this issue seriously now. Everyone knows this happens; the issue has always been proving it. Now someone has.”
IN THE MAIL: From Eric Flint and Charles E. Gannon, 1635: Papal Stakes.
JONAH GOLDBERG ON THE DEMOCRATS’ BOGUS CRIES OF RACISM:
One of the points of racial slander is to signal that only liberal policies are guaranteed to be non-racist (even when such policies were forged with racist intent, like the Davis-Bacon Act). This is why the Congressional Black Caucus insists on calling itself the “conscience of the Congress.”
That’s why policies like school choice are routinely denounced as racist, even though they’re largely aimed at improving the lives of inner-city blacks trapped in bad schools. Teachers unions don’t like school choice, ergo, it’s racist.
Any serious attempt by the GOP to win black votes won’t involve Republicans copycatting liberal policies. It will require going over the heads of black and white liberal slanderers to offer a sincere alternative to failed liberal policies on schools, poverty, crime, etc. The more effective that effort, the more the GOP will be called racist.
When Romney, whose father marched with Martin Luther King Jr., spoke to the NAACP, Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast dubbed him a “race-mongering pyromaniac,” primarily for using the term “ObamaCare” — a term Barack Obama used himself.
Just imagine the attacks in store for a more effective Republican.
Indeed.
EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN: The CIA’s Great Gatsby. Does this history shed any light on today’s events?
GETTING IT FAST AND HARD (CONT’D): How ObamaCare will keep unemployment high — by forcing small companies to cut their workforce to fewer than 50 people.
SCIENCE: Pornography Actresses: An Assessment of the Damaged Goods Hypothesis. Apparently, they’re not any more likely to be crazy, or to have been abused as children. They do, however, enjoy sex more than average.
R.I.P. Larry Hagman.
NEWS FROM BLOOMBERGISTAN: Queens storm victims armed and angry after thieves strike on Thanksgiving.
BENGHAZI: “After more than two months, Libya’s investigation into the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi appears in limbo. Key security commanders and witnesses say they were never questioned. No suspects have been named, and gunmen seen participating in the assault walk freely in the eastern Libyan city.”
Related: Benghazi-Gate Enters New Phase: The Cover-Up of the Cover-Up. “It now looks as though the White House’s excuse for the pre-election Libya cover-up is itself a cover up. Last week we were told by the Administration (and the compliant media) that during her now-infamous round robin of five Sunday news shows, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was only telling us what she was told by the intelligence community. We were also told that references to al-Qaeda were edited out of the talking points in order to avoid tipping off the attackers that we were on to them. According to a number of CBS News’ sources, this simply isn’t true.”
IF REPUBLICANS ARE DROWNING IN A DEMOGRAPHIC TIDAL WAVE, WHAT EXPLAINS THIS CHART? State Government Control Since 1938.
Let me offer an alternative theory: The bigger role the national media play in a race, the worst Republicans do. So the GOP does well in state legislative races and governorships, and U.S. House races, because national media basically ignore those. Does worse in Senate races, where national media will sometimes take notice, worse still for Prez, where the national media pretty much control the game.
UPDATE: Reader Rick Licari writes:
Wasn’t there a study that showed Media bias causes the population to move significantly leftward from its natural leanings? I can’t remember the name of it nor who was involved, but it was a highly respected non-partisan professor and there was a mass of outrage after the study was published. This just goes as anecdotal evidence to that point: when people are focused on who will govern in their interests better (do things like not run deficits, provide the basics a government should provide, work for ALL their people, not just politically important groups, etc. and social issues (which are important, but not as important as, I don’t know, the well being of the country as a whole), massive distortions about the impact reducing spending will have on an average person’s life, and where both candidates will appear on a basically even plane for exposure to their own faults whatever they may be (outside of big cities, of course) those people will chose the serious candidate with a plan. At this point in time the ones with a plan are Republicans. Hell, the president himself couldn’t offer up anything except trying what’s already failed on a greater scale…and was allowed to get away with it, but when people looked at local races without hearing about binders full of women, perhaps they realized that those policies were failures (without recognizing they stemmed from the president himself).
I believe the study Rick’s referring to is the one in Tim Groseclose’s Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. “Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points, on a scale of 100, the difference between the current political views of the average American, and the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California or Salt Lake County, Utah.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Gordon writes:
In connection with your commentary on the influence of the national media on the outcome of elections, I would like to say that Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow directly supports your thesis. In fact, as I have been reading it in the days after the election, I am stunned by the number of relevant human thought biases that Kahneman discusses that were clearly exploited by the Democrats. It’s as though they used Kahneman’s points as a playbook, while the Republicans played the naive, straight man.
Your website has been an intellectual oasis, which our thirsty country desperately needs. I could not live without it. Thank you!
Only because of readers’ contributions like these.
MORE: Reader Juliana Vandermeer writes:
I happened to turn the tv and flip through the AM shows on Thanksgiving. It landed on the CBS morning show. Not that I need convincing, but it is clear how bias is woven into every aspect of even the most non-newsy type shows, including an AM show’s entry.
The opening of the show began with a replay of a joke on the Jimmy Fallon show. It was a joke that mocked Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich. I don’t remember the joke – something about fat turkeys – but two republicans were the punch line. This opened the show. Millions of people watch. Drip drip. Seep seep.
Yes, see my earlier suggestion that rich Republican donors would be better off targeting the lifestyle/women’s press than buying a bunch of overpriced TV ads. And note that Cathy Seipp was ahead of the curve on this. “Yes, Ann Coulter is extreme. But Eve Ensler is also extreme, and she’s in women’s magazines all the time.”
MORE STILL: A suggestion from reader Kevin Murphy: “The LA Times, the only newspaper in Los Angeles County, is for sale in bankruptcy. Considering the utter failure of Dems in California, it would be handy if there was a major newspaper willing to point that out.”
STILL MORE: John Hinderaker says I’m wrong.
GETTING IT FAST AND HARD: “The United States will now undergo a four-year stress test of American liberalism, as Obama will get his tax hike and ObamaCare will be implemented. Those who think Obama cared about people like them will now experience the full extent of his caring.”
BLEG: Just a reminder: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your Christmas/Hanukkah shopping — or any other shopping — through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support the blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual It’s much appreciated!
ILLEGAL MAYORS AGAINST GUNS: Crimes of gun-grabbing mayors: Second Amendment group exposes Bloomberg’s hypocrisy. An awful lot of these mayors do turn out to be crooks, don’t they?
AT AMAZON, Black Friday Deals in Home, Kitchen & Garden.
Also, today only: Canon PowerShot S100 12.1 MP Digital Camera, $229.99.
And why not just do all your Black Friday shopping right here? No lines, no fistfights, no stampedes, no traffic! (Bumped).
UNEXPECTEDLY! Obama hits the links for post-Thanksgiving golf.
SOCIAL MEDIA AT REUTERS and Anthony De Rosa’s Balls. “At the beginning of the day, I noted an ugly tweet by Reuters’ Anthony De Rosa. One response to De Rosa was sufficiently embarrassing and, uh, viral enough to make the wire service’s social media editor remove his tweet.”
THIS COULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED AT AN ONLINE SCHOOL! Newlywed teacher, 28, charged with raping two underage students – ‘while having an affair with another teacher.’ She was teaching biology, which sort of makes sense, I guess.
UPDATE: Robert Ferrigno writes:
‘She was telling me that every question I got right we could do something,’ one victim told police.
Glenn, If I had this teacher in high school I would have worked myself blind to get an A.
She was just trying to motivate the students. . . .
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Milestone: A General Method For Designing Stable Proteins. “What you have now is a flexible set of building blocks for nanoscale assembly.”
MICHELE CATALANO HAS a new music blog at Forbes.
COMING: The Firefox Operating System.
BILL WHITTLE CHANNELS KIPLING: “Can the natural rhythm of excellent poetry overcome the lack of a rap beat?”
I THINK IT’S GOOD WHEN PEOPLE RESPOND VIOLENTLY TO POWER-GRABS: Violence in Wake of Egyptian President’s Power-Grab.
DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE: “Now that so many young men have grown up in homes where their mother left their father, or they’ve never even had a father, it is arguably going to become harder and harder to sell the idea of women being intrinsically pedestal-worthy by virtue of their sex.”
NOT SO LULZ: Stratfor Hacker Could Be Sentenced To Life.
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