While he targets McCain I think what he says is applicable to many people that condemn greed.

I might as well chip in. I’m getting a bit tired of Senator McCain’s anti-business shtick. The line about serving “for patriotism, not for profit” is pathetic. America spends more on its military than the next 35-40 biggest military spenders on the planet combined: Where does he think the money for that comes from?

As for his line about “some greedy people on Wall Street who need to be punished”, aside from being almost entirely irrelevant to the subject under discussion (the subprime “crisis”), it reveals, I think, one of the most unpleasant aspects of McCain. For a so-called “maverick”, he’s very comfortable with the application of Big Government power, and the assumption of Big Government virtue. Undoubtedly there are “greedy people on Wall Street”. Why should he and his chums be the ones who decide whether they need to be “punished”? If greed is to be punishable, why doesn’t he start with a pilot program applied to, say, the United States Senate and report back to us in five years how that’s going?

The most important thing being said here is that even if greed is bad why should the state be in charge of regulating it. Those that want to control greed are no worse than those that want the state to control promiscuity.

Brace for the cold. Sorry it’s science.

This post is long but well worth it in explaining how the Sub Prime mortgage crisis came about. It remains in my opinion that no one involved should receive state assistance.

Over at Cato-at-Liberty they turn on the sarcasm juice regarding education budgets being reduced by the housing crisis.

The summary news lede simply doesn’t do justice to this looming educational catastrophe . . . we need to turn to the numbers.

At Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, parents fear cuts in Montgomery County’s proposed $2.1 billion budget will threaten the math-science magnet program.

The desperate schools of Montgomery County will need to find some way stretch the $15,246 they have to spend on each of the 137,745 students in their schools. The Post informs us that the $2.1 billion budget is “a year-to-year increase of $110 million. But it would be the smallest annual increase since 1997.” This 5 percent increase is the smallest in 10 years! Surely bake sales must be held.

Seriously we need to do what we did for microwaves for our children. We need to privatize education. That way even poor children will have a chance at an education that will lead to greater wealth. We shoudl care about our children as much as microwaves shouldn’t we?

Michael responds to a previous post which reflects his bias:

And of course the media was going to play up the negative aspects of the war, seeing as how the whole thing was unnecessary to begin with.

You were one of those people that didn’t believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction despite his intentional efforts to fool the Iranians into thinking he did. President Bush clearly did not see it that way. Given the intelligence at the time, he felt action was necessary. It easy to say Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction when its not your job to make sure none of those non extant weapons find there way into the country and kills thousands of people. When faced with the responsibility of protecting the citizenry there is a really good chance what you view as necessary and unnecessary will change.

You were not alone in thinking the war was unnecessary. Within journalism there is a large concentration of people that agree with you that the war was unnecessary. This belief clearly had an effect on coverage turning off large groups of people that didn’t believe the war was unnecessary.

The NYtimes serves as a fine example of showing how the staff’s bias led to coverage focused on the negative aspects of the war. This news organization put on the front page of its newspapers the Abu Ghraib story for forty four days in a row. Forty Four days it was on the front page. Recently the newspaper did a huge piece erroneously ‘reporting’ that vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan were more likely to kill. The people that made decision about this being ‘news’ agree with you that the war was unnecessary.

This fucking paper, to my knowledge, has never had a single fucking story about any, just any, of the heroics any of our soldiers have displayed while fighting brutal terrorist that enjoy sawing people’s head off. Even when the war was at it’s ugliest, none of the MSM took any time to show the valor or bravery of our soldiers. Astoundingly returning soldiers complained about the disconnect between the press’s war in Iraq and the war in Iraq they were fighting.

I have read about the selfless act of our soldiers in Iraq. Not from CNN, which published our enemies propaganda sniping OUR OWN FUCKING soldiers. Not from NYtimes, which ‘broke’ the story of the secret intelligence program which had extensive legislative and judicial oversight. No its not the MSM were I go to get actual information on the war in Iraq. If I wanted to hear the stories that come from people that see the war as necessary I read pro war bloggers that actually bothered, to you know, go to Iraq. It was here where I read about the heroics of our soldiers. It was here were I read about the sacrifice Iraq has made to transform a despot into a democracy.

By the way, these pro war bloggers were significantly more objective than any piece of shit report I ever read on CNN or NYtimes. It turns out when you see something as necessary you are more likely to give sobering accounts of it. The pro war bloggers were ahead of the MSM curve in reporting on how the aspects of the war were being mismanaged. I read first from them that country was heading into sectarian war months before the MSM go their slimy hands on that development. Those that believed the war was necessary reported both good and bad news and in the process gave a much more objective picture of the war.

I have know for years that the press leans left which leads to skewed reporting. For the most part I have accepted this problem. However, when it came to this war it’s biased coverage made me irate. This was because it was stated policy of our enemies to kill as many civilians as possible to get the top story coverage which, it was hoped, would then result in political pressure to pull out of the war.

It was the explicit strategy of Al Qaeda to use our news organization against us to generate the pressure needed to get us to retreat from Iraq.

Knowing this how did CNN, NYtimes and the rest of the MSM respond? By only covering and giving top headlines to the death and destruction Al Qaeda was creating in the country. Indirectly the MSM was complicit in assisting our enemies in succeeding in Iraq. And you know what, it almost worked. The MSM and Al Qaeda almost beat the US Military in Iraq. Fortunately we had a leader wise enough to see what was going on between the press coverage and our enemies and he stood steadfast against the intense political demands for retreat. Since he saw the war as necessary he was willing to make changes when he saw that was needed irrespective of Al Qaeda and the MSM attempts to force his hand.

Many citizen became wise to MSM complicity with our enemies. As a consequence we see many people indicating there unhappiness with the way the press covered the war. This seems obvious, when your coverage harms your own military and helps your enemies then readers are going to turn away from you as a credible new source.

Like you Michael, the MSM saw the war as unnecessary, and this lead to an alliance between Al Qaeda and our press. Ironically, Al Qaeda most certainly saw the war as necessary and fortunately, for the sake of our country, so did George Bush and the countless citizens who saw the war as necessary.

Chrenkoff notes the problem with bias coverage:

The future of Iraq is still uncertain, and one has to resist the temptation to claim victory, in contrast to so many others who have been declaring defeat virtually from the start. One thing is almost certain though: however Iraq will turn up, the mainstream media has become one of the casualties of that war. As the recent study by the Sacred Heart University has shown, less than 20% of Americans believe the media all or most of the time. Specifically, the study found that

Nearly three-quarters of all Americans surveyed, 70.7%, indicated they strongly or somewhat agreed that negative media reporting damages troop morale. Over half of all survey respondents, 59.8%, agreed (strongly or somewhat) that negative media coverage damages prospects for success in Iraq because it encourages terrorists, and about half, 49.1%, agreed (strongly or somewhat) that things are likely going better for the U.S. than the U.S. media portrays.

The more reflective among the media professionals might ponder on why they have become as trusted as a profession as used car salesmen, and then they might briefly remember the “one to 27 ratio.”

The “surge” in negative reporting from Iraq might have failed, but we are all poorer for it.

To be honest I don’t think this is a big deal. MSM traded their supposed reputation of objectivity to push its political agenda. Didn’t work and now many people have found other sources to get the news they desire. If anything it just helped facilitate the downfall of the old way news is disbursed.

Here is a story that perfectly captures liberal theme. The piece is about a suburb in Cleveland that has turned in to a ghost town as home owner are evicted when they can’t make their payments. Towards the liberal reporter quotes locals.

Laura Johnston, 50, says that her street — about 10 minutes away by car — was alive two years ago. Today, half the houses are abandoned.

More quoting here.

“Folks could not afford their payments. They were asked to pay loans which doubled. They could not afford it, some lost their job. Lenders were greedy. They threw them out of their homes,” she told AFP.

For county treasurer Jim Rokakis, the greed of the banks is to blame for this man-made disaster.

“All you needed was a pulse to buy a house. Some loans were written with no money down, no proof of buyer’s incomes. They did not even check what people were saying. Most of those folks were jobless,” he said in an interview.

The theme being that the greedy bankers take advantage of poor unemployed people. This truly is a liberal theme. Capitalism’s greed drives bankers to trick poor people into borrowing money they have no hope of paying back. Effectively we have greed abusing the poor. It does not get more liberal than that.

But what about the conservative theme. By the story’s own admission many of these people were unemployed. What were they doing signing off on loans they knew they could not possibly pay. Where is the personal responsibility in that? Why didn’t this reporter get a local saying well these people knew they couldn’t afford the loans but decide to get them anyway. I’m sure there are plenty of people willing to aim contempt at those foolish enough to take subprime loans. Why is that not a theme of this story.

By they way, framing on this story is important because its will help dictate what kind of policy will come out of it. Personally, I would like to see the state take a hand off approach to this problem. Those foolish enough to sign off on loans they could not afford should recieve no help. Companies that go out of business because of the fools that default on their loans should also receive no assistance. Seems to me everyone is guilty and therefore everyone can deal with the consequence of their decisions.

This site lists movies that are in part about kind of philosophical topics. I might have to check some of them out.

Perfect captured by this story about Sesame Street.

There’s something wrong with a picture from the original Sesame Street - little children riding bicycles without helmets.

Other scenes, too, from the original Sesame Street could be too seedy for today’s kids, CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports.

The first few seasons have just been released and come with, of all things, a warning.

“These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grownups and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child,” the warning reads.

Free of charge, the MSM attempting to moralize the kid. How annoying.

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