Less political rebellion, more mollycoddled mob - Brendan O'Neill, The Australian

An interesting perspective about the riots in England from someone on the Left.

Less political rebellion, more mollycoddled mob | The Australian

If we are to survive the looming catastrophe, we need to face the truth - Janet Daley

It's refreshing to see someone finally talk about the cause of the financial crisis in Europe and the U.S. I've been saying something very similar: that the decades of welfare statism followed by Keynesian attempts to stimulate our way out of this mess have failed. As Daley says:

We have arrived at the endgame of what was an untenable doctrine: to pay for the kind of entitlements that populations have been led to expect by their politicians, the wealth-creating sector has to be taxed to a degree that makes it almost impossible for it to create the wealth that is needed to pay for the entitlements that populations have been led to expect, etc, etc.

The Coming Intra-Party Wars - The Atlantic

Megan McArdle's The Coming Intra-Party Wars - The Atlantic posting on the debt limit battle contains two comments that caught my eye. The first one talks about the choices the Republican and Democrats will have to take.

The Democrats ... are going to face unprecedented conflicts between their constituencies in the decades to come. Fundamentally, we're bumping up against the willingness of the American public to pay more taxes, or accept spending cuts. Some constituencies are going to lose. Republicans are going to have to decide whether they'd rather have lower taxes, or a stronger military. And Democrats are going to have to decide who they care about more: old people, or poor people.

The other comment brilliantly captures the shell game we're playing on ourselves.

Me, I'd like a single entitlement system that takes care of people who are actually destitute and unable to work, not this mad scheme whereby America's middle class is supposed to get rich by picking its own pockets.

Tax The Rich? Good Luck With That - Investors.com

When we hear certain politicians, like Obama, constantly demonizing the wealthy for their transgressions and proposing higher tax rates for this group to close the budget gap, consider what Walter Williams says in his Tax The Rich? Good Luck With That - Investors.com. The bottom line: this avenue leads to a dead end that falls woefully short of the declared goal of having enough funds to pay for all of the expenses in our national budget. 


This isn't top secret, impossible to find information so I can only conclude that the motive behind the incessant demonizing of the rich has other motivations than balancing the budget.

Deaths per TWH by energy source

Related to the post below about different radiation sources this link compares the rates of death of different methods of generating electricity. Deaths per TWH by energy source

Radiation Comparisons

Found this link when the Japan nuclear reactor first started to fail after the earthquake. While this is old news I like how this chart shows the relative exposures from different sources of radiation. Better late than never, right?


http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Jon Stewart versus Chris Wallace

I happened to find the link to Jon Stewart’s appearance on Fox’s Chris Wallace show and watched the entire interview. Before I start let me say that I’ve watched Stewart occasionally and enjoy his show. I even went to watch him when he performed at UConn several years ago and laughed at most of his material.



Overall I though Wallace did a fair job challenging Stewart’s claims about how biased Fox News is. When challenged Stewart hid behind the “I’m a comedian” shield. Although to be fair (and balanced) Stewart admitted “the bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict and laziness.” While I partly agree with his assessment I don’t agree with his denial that the mainstream news outlets don’t have their own political agenda. (See more below.)

NewsBusters’ analysis covers most of the points I would have made so instead of repeating them here I’ve provided the link.


http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/06/19/jon-stewart-tells-chris-wallace-fox-news-biased-rest-media-arent


And in the interest of being objective here is the link to PolitiFact, “a project of the St. Petersburg Times to help you find the truth in politics.” When you look closely they have their own bias but I’ve found some useful analyses. http://politifact.com/. They take Stewart to task over his claims about Fox.


I find it interesting how much ire Fox stirs among the left. It’s almost as if they’re saying, “How dare you call yourselves fair and balanced? You’re biased!” By implication they’re saying that the mainstream news media outlets are paragons of objectivity. Stewart provides a prime example when Wallace presses him whether The New York Times is “pushing a liberal agenda.” His answer: “Do I think they're relentlessly activist? No. In a purely liberal partisan way? No, I don't.” For an analysis check out http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/20/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-says-those-who-watch-fox-news-are-most/. Their conclusion: “The way Stewart phrased the comment, it’s not enough to show a sliver of evidence that Fox News’ audience is ill-informed. The evidence needs to support the view that the data shows they are ‘consistently’ misinformed -- a term he used not once but three times. It’s simply not true that ‘every poll’ shows that result. So we rate his claim False.”


I’d say Stewart is too intelligent and informed to make a “mistake” like this. I think he threw this claim out to see if Wallace would challenge him on it. Unfortunately Wallace let this claim slide. I gather he was more interested in drawing Stewart out regarding the bias of other news media rather than getting bogged down in refuting Stewart’s claims about Fox.