Very good post by Ed Morrissey collecting up the Consensus of Experts, which must always be right, I'm told in another context.

In defending Romney against the completely made-up media fabrication that he'd "flip-flopped" on whether the economy was worse now than in January 2009, I expressed my opinion you could make that case, but it requires a bit of an argument.

The argument you'd made to demonstrate this goes something like this: While there has been some weak positive growth in GDP, we secured that by spending 2012-2015's revenues now. So yes, we got a meager (very meager) boost from spending tomorrow's revenues today.

But this has had the effect of depleting any further wiggle room we had regarding spending future receipts, and has left us with such an enormous overhang of debt that the fact of this debt outweighs any positive effect of spending future revenues today. This is why people aren't spending, aren't hiring, and aren't investing -- they know the actual economy is worse than the superficial glance at GDP growth rates would show.

They know that the minor goose of the GDP numbers will be erased by the steep drop in GDP to come -- and that it must come, as borrowing forever doesn't work, and if a government won't correct its unbalanced books, reality will balance those books one way or another for them.

The first expert quoted by Morrissey makes this case, more or less. Or at least I can see the outlines of it in what he's saying.

James Pethokoukis digests another report on the "stimulus'" non-stimulativeness:

Indeed, the results are horrifying. The two-year-old recoveryÂ’s terrible tale of the tape: A 9.1 percent unemployment rate thatÂ’s probably closer to 16 percent counting the discouraged and underemployed, the worst income growth and weakest GDP growth of any upturn since World War II, a still-weakening housing market. Oh, and a trillion bucks down the tube. Oh, and two-and-a-half years Â… and counting Â… wasted during which time the skills of unemployed workers continue to erode and the careers of younger Americans suffer long-term income damage. Losing the future.

Tom Blumer: Damnit, The Economy Is Worse Now: He disagrees with me.

Actually, he doesn't disagree with me because I don't really subscribe to the position he thinks I do. My position is more nuanced. I think you can make the case the economy is worse now than the day Obama took office, but it is tendentious argument that will get you ankle-bit to death by reporters determined to catch you in some gotcha about, say, the exact GDP growth in one quarter.

My take is more that it is far easier to make the case that Obama made the recession worse -- the difficulty here is all on the other side of it, on those attempting to claim the contrary -- and so, as a Choice of Messaging thing, I'd stick to that, and, pretty much as Romney did, demur on the other point but note (as he did) that anyone who wishes to argue that an economy with 16% real unemployment is a good economy, well, God Speed To You.

I don't mind at all if someone chooses to make the other case. But be aware, you are going to get ankle-bit to death on that, you are going to have reporters do nothing but quiz you on every single economic indicator in every quarter in the past two years searching for a gotcha, so you'd better do some serious flashcard memorization and conduct a lot of simulated hostile interviews.

And, even if you do do that, they're still going to call you a liar and ignore what you say.

Posted by: Ace at 06:58 AM | Comments (153)
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America is not a young, quickly-growing nation any more. We're a rapidly-greying, heavily-indebted, postindustrial society. This has implications for job-growth, and those implications are not good. Our GDP has recovered and even grown a bit from the recessionary trough, but employment is still in the doldrums. Why? Because businesses had to slim down and become more efficient during the downturn, and they found that they could make the same profit with fewer workers. In short, we are looking at the dreaded specter of structural unemployment of the kind that has haunted Europe for decades. The only way out is to dramatically grow the size of the economy, but that's not going to happen until we get a handle on our debt -- both as a nation, and in household terms.

China's inflation is probably even worse than they're letting on, given the secretive and opaque nature of Chinese finance.

I get the feeling that the DFL house organ known as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune really wanted to title this story "Republicans trash closed state parks". You know, since it's the GOP's fault for not giving Governor Dayton all the tax hikes he wants. The Star-Trib has always been a flagrantly-partisan Democrat paper, of course, but the Minnesota governmental shutdown is really driving them to the mattresses.

The guys at Powerline snagged an interview with Minnesota State Senator Amy Koch, and Scott Johnson summarizes the conversation here. I know that this is inside-baseball stuff that's of interest mainly to Minnesotans, but I think our situation will closely model what's going to happen at the federal level regarding the budget negotiations.

Chris Christie is still making friends and influencing people in the senior LOTB member state of New Jersey. And as Insty might say: so much for the "new tone".

Oh, and LOTB founder California? Yeah, they're still boned. (And CalSTRS is getting a mite tetchy at people who are pointing out exactly how boned California is. Where's the love?)

See, kids, here is how a professional news organization spins horrible news into good news. Sky-high unemployment? People blaming your favorite God-King for the mess he made? No problem! Simply say that "the pace of layoffs is slowing" and you're golden! It sounds like good news, kind of, even if it means that unemployment is still increasing, and it helps your pal Barack in the court of public opinion.

The EC comes down on Moody's for telling nothing more than the plain truth about Portugal. Oh, no! A toothless, unelected, incompetent European bureaucracy is mad at us! Flee! Flee! Run for your lives! Mish Shedlock has something to say about this:

"There would never have been a sovereign default in history if "political will" was a guaranteed savior.

UPDATE: This is certainly DOOM-related news: A Culture of Fear, Intimidation and Retaliation. It's about the Atlanta, GA school district's pervasive cheating and undermining of educational standards. I wish I could say I was surprised, but this is probably more common than anyone realizes. And so the kids are once again shafted by adults who will be living in comfortable retirement when their children are trying to scrape a living out of a world they were never trained to function in. Those bastards ought to be charged with child abuse, because that's all it is. (I bears repeating: our public school system is a jobs program for adults, not an educational system for children.)

UPDATE 2: Question - How much good did that release of oil from the SPR do, President Obama? Answer - Not much. There's everyday incompetence, and then there's Obama, who raises incompetence to a level previously attained only by Shaolin masters who studied for many decades in a secluded dojo.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 05:00 AM | Comments (125)
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The things required for prosperous labor, prosperous manufactures, and prosperous commerce are three: first, liberty; secondly, liberty; thirdly, liberty -- but these are not merely the same liberty.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:57 AM | Comments (112)
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OMG: The US Army Spent $20 Billion Dollars on Air Conditioning in Afghanistan!?

Well that's what NPR is claiming in their report.

But of course when you dig into it it turns out that they're lumping in all kinds of things that aren't related to AC such as road building and fuel for aircraft. Oh and it's not even close to $20 billion.

Defense Department spokesman Dave Lapan says that in fiscal year 2010, the Pentagon spent approximately $15 billion on energy for all military operations around the world. The Pentagon says when it comes to Afghanistan, it spent $1.5 billion from October 2010 to May 2011 on fuel. That fuel was used for heating and air conditioning systems, but also for aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, combat vehicles, computers and electricity inside military structures.

But even if the US were spending a billion dollars just on air conditioning for the military it's still not necessarily a luxury item.

The US military after nearly a decade of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq is entering uncharted waters with respect to average time in combat for soldiers and marines. For many it's now higher than during WWII and puts experienced members at a much higher risk of combat fatigue and PTSD. And better living conditions including air conditioning are seen as a key part of preventing this.

During World War II, it was found that, on average, 200 days of combat would bring on a case of PTSD. After World War II, methods were found to delay the onset of PTSD (more breaks from combat, better living conditions in the combat zone, prompt treatment when PTSD was detected). Military historians note that successful, and often popular, commanders throughout history have paid attention to the physical well being of the troops, all in the name of "maintaining morale."

That's why combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan often sleep in air conditioned quarters, have Internet access, lots of amenities, and a two week vacation (anywhere) in the middle of their combat tour. This has extended their useful time in combat, before PTSD (or "bad morale") sets in. No one is yet sure what the new combat days average is, and the new screening methods are an attempt to find out. The army and marines are now confronting the fact that, for a large number of their combat NCOs, the limits are being reached. It's a lot more than 200 days in combat, but the army and marines have the majority of their most able and experienced NCOs approaching that limit.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:10 PM | Comments (783)
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This video contains sound taken from the Smallville Finale: Emotions video that Ace posted about a month ago. There were real problems with that sound with background noise, TV noise, and constantly fluctuating signal levels. I tried to clean it up, but I had trouble running the audio workstation program.

Three audio magicians were kind enough to volunteer, "Chris R" at ideacatcvhers.com, Carlton Cobb of carltoncobb.net, and commenter "Walter Sobchak." While they were all great Walter's cut stood out for some reason. Walter also took a shot at mixing the video and audio.

More help came from "sTevo" at exactaudiocopy.de; "blueguitarbob"; "Flounder"; "jeffeneff" at @jeffeneff on Twitter, and a couple of nice people who simply want to be known as "the others" since they're lurkers and they don't have nicks they're happy with yet anyway. If there is anybody I missed, let me know, so I can add your name.

Thanks to all of you. Video below the fold. I know it's a month too late to really be topical, but, hey, when we resolve to stay the course around here, the course gets stayed. Hopefully, I can move faster the next time Ace comes up with a hot idea. When that happens, I'll give the AoSHQ Soundboyz a shout. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 05:46 PM | Comments (36)
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One thing I've noticed about the left and the chattering class (but I repeat myself) is a childish elevation of the power of words.

Words are powerful. What is more powerful is facts. A poet can paint a picture of a stone in flight with words but you know it is cold and hard if it strikes you in the head.

Obama's searching for a way to win 2012. They tend to look to prior successful campaigns for themes that seemed to work. They're looking at Reagan 1984 as their model. But they're probably going to be facing Reagan 1980 as their opponent's model, and their opponent will have the much better case to make.

5.1, 9.3, 8.1, 8.5, 8, 7.1 and 3.9....

They are the quarterly percentage gains in gross domestic product starting in 1983 through to Election Day 1984. And they aren't the only significant numbers. In 1984, real income for individuals grew by more than 6% and inflation plummeted. The unemployment rate in November 1984 was still 7.2% — relatively high — but it had dropped from 10.8% in December 1982, and it was clear the momentum was for even lower unemployment. "Staying the course" with Ronald Reagan made sense to most people, which is why he won re-election in a 49-state landslide.

Sadly for Obama — but far worse for the country — that kind of growth seems like a pipe dream. Last month, the Federal Reserve lowered its forecast for 2011 GDP growth from a range of 3.1% to 3.3%, made just two months earlier, to a much slower 2.7% to 2.9%. And it revised downward its projections for 2012 and 2013 as well.

They tried to use Reagan 1984 as a model of avoiding the Big Red Wave in the 2010 elections:

Reportedly, Obama's speechwriters even studied Reagan's speeches for tips on how to frame the choice. They concluded, since Reagan blamed Jimmy Carter for the country's problems, Obama should do likewise with Bush. Reagan said Americans faced a choice between "going back" to the old policies and pressing ahead with new ones. Obama parroted the same line: "This is a choice between the policies that led us into the mess, or the policies that are leading out of the mess," Obama said in a campaign appearance for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "America doesn't go backwards, we go forwards."

You can't use the slogan "It's morning in America" when it's actually a quarter past midnight.

Posted by: Ace at 03:37 PM | Comments (276)
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Say it's not so. He almost admits to ideological bias in the press before Dennis Miller, pursuing his own thought, cuts him off.

What's interesting here is that Jake Tapper of course at first insists that it's not ideological bias at play here, but anti-woman bias. That's why, you see, Palin's Paul Revere quote and Bachman's Founding Fathers one get endlessly chattered about, while there is a coordinated media blackout on Obama's Medal of Honor gaffe.

Similarly, Jon Stewart claimed the press was merely biased in favor of "laziness, conflict, and sensationalism" in poo-pooing Chris Wallace's assertion that is it liberally biased.

They always do this. They will eat razors before they admit to any liberal bias. They will confess to a hundred biases, even some they do not actually have, before they will admit to a liberal bias.

Let me give you an example I always give. If the Black Correspondent's Association (or whatever) claims the press has a subtle anti-black bias, the media will consider this and meet with that association and consider implementing reforms/safeguards to ensure against such bias continuing. They'll have a panel discussion on Nightline or Meet the Press to seriously consider this bias.

Same thing with anti-woman bias. Or anti-Muslim bias.

The press is perfectly willing to consider the possibilities it is biased in many ways, and take seriously such complaints.

Except for one, of course. The one bias they will not admit to having, ever, is a liberal ideological bias. (And note-- the biases they're willing to cop to tend to require them, to cure those biases, to adopt even more anti-conservative positions. Biased against women? Include more feminist voices. Biased against Muslims? Make sure the country knows about anti-Muslim "hate" in the form of racial profiling. Biased against blacks? Agitate for preferences, quotas and so on.)

Why? For two reasons:

1. That is the bias they are most flagrantly, obviously guilty of, and no one likes confessing to their real flaws. People will cop to lesser flaws and non-flaws all the time. But not their deep dark dirty laundry.

2. Because they absolutely despise conservatives. Because they hate conservatives so much that they view this entirely as political actors, and if conservatives "win" a little on this point (as a serious discussion about it would represent), then they lose.

The very fact that this is the One Sin They Will Not Confess proves the existence of the sin.

Tapper and Stewart will trot out a series of crimes to excuse media misconduct -- some crimes, in fact, the media isn't even very guilty of -- to avoid any sort of reckoning on the real crime they're guilty of.

Posted by: Ace at 03:08 PM | Comments (51)
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Attempting to explain why global warming is in fact failing to warm despite increasing CO2 levels, the cultists have a new idea: Maybe all that sulfur pumped into the atmosphere by Chinese coal-burning power-plants is actually deflecting sunlight away and thereby cooling the earth.

Like alcohol, then, fossil fuels are the the cause of, as well as the solution to, all of life's problems.

Posted by: Ace at 02:29 PM | Comments (107)
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All that Obama's obnoxious press conference last week accomplished was shaming Harry Reid into bringing the Senate into session this week. You see, they had to be here to work on the debt Libya, though now that's not going to happen either. The reason the Senate can't work on the debt deal is there's no public proposal in the form of a budget from either Obama or Senate Democrats. But appearances must be maintained and all.

So today Obama called the press in for a political commercial statement to announce he's invited the bi-partisan group of congressional leaders from both houses to meet on Thursday. This is of course an exciting change from last week when his spokesman said meeting with Republicans wasn't worth it.

Today's performance was shorter than last week's but just as annoying. For Obama, who has no public plan and voted against raising the debt ceiling as a Senator, to lecture anyone about "kicking the can down the road" and the need to solve the problem sooner than later is beyond hypocrisy.

All last week and today's appearances were about is politics. Obama wants to be seen as the adult in the room a lot more than he wants to actually be the adult in the room.

One thing to keep in mind though...Obama's statement today was a political commercial plain and simple. He got it covered as big news simply because he's the President and that ability to drive events and get you spin out goes with the job. Just something to keep in mind when it comes time to dish out credit or blame.

Related enough...David Brooks kindly provided Democrats with their talking point of the day by saying the Republicans are being irresponsible for not taking Obama and the Democrats deal saying it, "is the mother of all no-brainers".

Paul Ryan begs to differ.

"If you take a deal like that, you're necessarily requiring tax rates to be higher for everybody. You need to lower tax rates by going after tax loopholes. If you take away the tax loopholes, without lowering tax rates, then you deny Congress the ability to lower everybody's tax rates and you keep people's tax rates high. And you take the pressure off Congress to cut spending."

Ryan said he hoped that no debt increase without spending cuts remained the Republican position going into another work week.

"I do believe that we will reinforce that position in the House — I can't speak for the Senate, but in the House. We're not going to go down this path of taxing people," he said.

This probably deserves more attention but I'll put it here for now: Obama's "recovery" sucks compared to other post-recession recoveries. It's like his policies failed and he's doing damage to the country.

Posted by: DrewM at 01:39 PM | Comments (91)
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And I'm avoiding the "r" word because it looks pretty forbidding in a headline. But that's the service she requested.

Now, this is absurd, of course. There is no "post traumatic stress disorder by proxy," that is, PTSD not from your own trauma but simply from hearing of another's. The first time I ever heard of this odd clinical diagnosis was from Doctor Chris Matthews of the Hardball Institute for Made-Up Psychoses, who postulated that the Fort Hood Murderer killed people because he, as a psychiatrist, had by traumatized by listening to veterans tell of their own traumas.

Or, maybe, because he was a jihadi. Either/or.

Now, this woman is claiming a similar PTSD by proxy syndrome. But I have an alternate diagnosis: She was already long a sexual neurotic and probably suffered from eight different dementias long before she reported on a Haiti rape victim; this was merely the trigger for doing something nutty to scratch this itch.

Mac McClelland, a civil rights reporter who has seen the impact of sexual violence around the globe, couldn't shake the image of Sybille, a woman who said she had been raped at gunpoint and mutilated in the aftermath of Haiti's catastrophic 2010 earthquake.

While on assignment for Mother Jones last September, McClelland said she accompanied Sybille to the hospital when the woman saw her attackers and went into "a full paroxysm -- wailing, flailing" in terror.

Something snapped in McClelland, too. She became progressively enveloped in the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress -- avoidance of feelings, flashbacks and recurrent thoughts that triggered crying spells. There were smells that made her gag.

McClelland, 31, sought professional help but said she ultimately cured herself by staging her own rape, which she writes about in a haunting piece for the online magazine Good. The title: "How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD."

Her sexual partner mercilessly pinned her, beat her about the head and brutally violated McClelland -- at her request.

"I was not crazy," she told ABCNews.com. "It was a way for me to deal in sort of a simulated, but controlled situation. I could say 'stop' at any time...."

Which really means it's not a rape at all; it's merely sexual role-play, which tens of thousands of people do. And by speaking of it as "rape" she demeans rape, but I'm sure she'll get a lot of you-go-girls from the feminists because, well, you go girl.

Women are to be praised for everything.

By the way, some readers of Mother Jones called this headcase a "racist" which means of course she must have asked a black guy to do this (and identified him as such in the article.)

So, either a racist or you go girl.

What does this mean, politically? Not a lot, but the left has always been sanctum for people with a particular set of pathologies. People who are, in purely clinical terms, Totally Head-Fucked and who Suck At Life.

Of course, yonder on the far/wingnut right are some people with a different set of pathologies, but we hardly need to speak of them, as the MSM talks about them all day long and speaks as if we're all nuts.

But, anyway, there are a lot of identity/gender confused individuals and people who have some kind of longstanding, incurable childhood trauma to work out, some sort of dysfunction in social settings and general alienation from the mass of humanity.

Or some parental sexual issue. That's always a popular one.

Or of course: Attention Whore Complex With Advanced Drama Queen Aspect. That might be the diagnosis that best fits the available evidence.

Psychiatrists give such people psychotropic medications; leftists give them book deals.

BTW: When I say there's no such thing as second-hand PTSD (when you traumatize someone, you also traumatize everyone they'll tell about it; kind of like the videotape in The Ring), I'm not being factual, but opinionated.

I am 99.9% sure that psychiatrists have actually created a dumb Second-Hand PTSD diagnosis.

I'm sayin' it's bullshit.

Isn't This Pretty Exhibitionist? Does she really need to make her "therapy" such a public spectacle?

Or is that rather the point? more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:54 AM | Comments (404)
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