Why blogs have become indispensable

On full display in this post from Powerline are all the reasons individual blogs have become so very important in news reporting.  It was the Powerline blog that exposed Dan Rather, Mary Mapes and CBS for their fraudulent reporting on George Bush's Air Force Texas National Guard service in 2000, reporting designed to present him as a person of privilege who gamed the system in order to avoid combat duty during the Vietnam War period.  Eventually all the Rather/CBS reporting was exposed as outright fraud and cost Rather his job and position as anchor of that once prestigious news channel.  What that disgraceful episode demonstrated for many was how politicized the MSM had become over time and consequently how unreliable it had become as unbiased, fair presenters of the news.  Since that exposure in 2000, blogs have proliferated.  Many of them now have the resources and talent to fact check and at a minimum correct the record after the many biased and distorted stories generated by CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Wapo, NYTimes, LATimes and all the rest of what became over time to be known as the mainstream media (MSM).  Somewhere along the way some wag renamed the mainstream media the "lame stream media" (LSM) which seems much more the appropriate appellation.  We are well served by these blogs at least until the MSM begins to report news with less bias and more honesty.

ADDED:  And here is another contemporary story that speaks to the importance of blogs in getting at the truth that people in positions that can influence public opinion want to obscure and distort to satisfy their own agenda, usually a nefarious political one.  The lesson is that it is increasingly difficult for democrats to manufacture a false narrative given the reach of the internet and authentic truth seekers out there.Very good thing.

Statistics don't lie.

 SPENDING AS A PERCENT OF GDP.  These charts are interesting to the extent one understands that as long as interest rates are low all this debt is not a critical issue. Interest rates will rise if the markets fear inflation.  Inflation will occur if the government (Fed) prints money excessively.  Since the Fed is buying the government bonds being issued on an ongoing basis in order to fund the deficit between what the government takes in in taxes and what it spends on all the various programs (entitlement programs and all the rest), in essence it is simply creating excess dollars.  Excess dollars eventually translates into inflation.  Watch out below if we continue on the path we are on now.

Random posts 5/9/12

Before despair sets in it's probably a good idea to read the book "Culture Counts" mentioned in Steve Hayward's PL post.

What comes to mind while reading this outrage is the Duke lacrosse players' phony rape case a few years ago.  Racism is alive and well in academia and specifically the 'soft' social studies.  What a joke!

It almost goes without saying, Joe Biden is a cruel joke played on the American public..  As bad a President as Obama has been, and he's really been bad, Joe Biden makes him look reasonable and almost good by comparison.  Jonah Goldberg takes Biden apart in this well researched piece.  As pundits often say, you can't make this stuff up.

Another lesson from the Austrian school

More and more it becomes apparent that the Austrian economists (von Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, et al) had the real insights into how the economy works.  In this "lesson" we are taught about the role value plays in the economics of pricing and how this all results in the satisfaction of supply and demand .  This whole approach is the antithesis of Keynsian/Paul Krugman government created demand driven economics.  If all that Krugman gobbledegook economics worked, we would have had full employment shortly after the stimulus bill was passed in 2008.  Fact is that approach did not work in the '30's anymore than it works now.  And yet, largely through the ministrations of the Krugmans of the word, we keep trying to make it work.

Lizard brain and dopamine

This von Mises article explains why investing in the stock market is so difficult.

Random articles

The pathologies of failed and failing cities all over the land are on full display in this Russell Mead analysis.


Jack Cashill is the most informed reporter currently on the scene about the history and background of Barack Obama.  In this piece Cashill uses the recent brouhaha over the Julia ad to comment on Obama's story-telling about his girl friends from his college days.  There is very little about Obama's past that stands up under any kind of scrutiny.


When Obama was a student at the Harvard Law School he came came under the influence of Derrick Bell,  the only black professor on the faculty at that time. Bell's weird and dangerous theories are detailed here.


The current administration's war on then carbon industry (including natural  gas) is explained here by the CEO of Cheasapeak Energy.  It's clear there will be no return to cheap energy until the government's war on the carbon industry is over.  It's also clear that the war won't be over until we have a change of administrations. The current administration's war on the carbon industry is explained here by the CEO of Cheasapeake Energy.


For anyone who wants to remember what real leadership was like, here's an example.


Here's a reasonable explanation of nanotechnology.


MORE HOPENCHANGE: “The Coming Taxmageddon Will Crush Stocks by at Least 30%.”


LOOKING FOR REASONS OBAMA IS TOAST. Here's one man's 10 reasons Obama's in trouble.


This has always seemed like a good idea to me.


VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, worth reading on any subject.