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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Friday, October 09, 2009 :::
Michael Moore has a new movie out:
Needless to say, because Moore is a Communist, the film is little more than crass, undisguised advocacy of Communism:...there are calls for armed revolution delivered in Moore's trademark singsong, Bolshie bedtime-story voice. The movie ends with Moore telling us, "Capitalism is evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it." Then he plays the bloodthirsty Soviet national anthem "The Internationale."
From the ads I've seen, though, it seems as though Moore has a different concept of "capitalism" than I do; I think of an economically libertarian or classically liberal system, but he seems to be referring to the government-industrial complex. Why he thinks the opposite of concentrating economic power in Washington is concentrating economic power in Washington is unclear, though, and I'm not going to spend $9 and two hours to find out.
Speaking of people with soapboxes and no ability to reason, anyone who hadn't already known that the Nobel Peace Prize committee has all the historical perspective and considered judgment of a typical adolescent should have learned something today. The Mankiw parody my brother linked to is appropriate in many years — scientists who did groundbreaking research decades ago and whose research has stood the test of time get awards in their fields, then the Peace committee announces an award to some trendy flash-in-the-pan who later turns out to be an embarrassment.
Speaking of Obama, last Saturday, Saturday Night Live finally poked fun at him, which has been widely noted as a milestone. What has been less commented on has been that the "attack" was from the left. The Obama impersonator spoke of having accomplished nothing, and even, in an aside, commented that he doesn't see why the conservatives are in such a fuss, as it ought to be the left upset with him for moving too slowly. Which they are, that doesn't mean inviting Congress to spend a trillion dollars on a porky "stimulus" bill; railroading bondholders and a bankruptcy court to put a car company in the hands of the government and an Obama-friendly union; encouraging the scapegoating of everyone in the financial industry for the housing/credit bubble without regard to actual responsibility while pushing the expansion of one of the laws that did cause the bubble; or pushing the federal micromanagement of the health care system (even if it hasn't yet been completed, or even resulted in an actual bill) constitutes not doing anything. Granted, I would prefer it if he'd make an actual decision with respect to Afghanistan, I think the economy ought to outweigh health care on his list of priorities, and I think the attempted stimulus bill would have been less bad if he had accepted the responsibility to write it in-house rather than let Congress write it. But, all things considered, I wish he had spent the last eight months doing nothing.
CNN, though, is still in the tank. Notwithstanding their admissions that they suppressed stories for Saddam Hussein, it wasn't that long ago that I considered CNN a respectable, if flawed, news organization. But their reaction to the Saturday Night Live sketch poking fun at Obama was to fact-check it. In case that wasn't sufficiently obsequious, they hosted schoolkids singing for Obamacare.Labels: Community Reinvestment Act, Health Care, Michael Moore, Obama
::: posted by Steven at 6:36 PM
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