BadgerPundit

Sayonara Gunga Dan

"Courage." Did he really sign off his last broadcast with that notorious Ratherism..."Courage"? Well, we knew that the stubborn old coot would not go gently into that good night without reminding us of some of his greatest hits.

Now Dan Rather, the greatest train wreck of a television journalist ever, is gone.  After complaining for so many years, I like most conservatives will probably miss his comically biased reports and shameless spinning for Democrats.  How Dan Rather ever got such a prominent job is anyone's guess... it has long been obvious that he lacks the intellectual equipment to understand anything he's talking about, much less complicated historical, economic, or social questions.

The folks over at RatherBiased have a good retrospective of the lowlights of the Danimal's career.  Also, don't miss Saint Walter Cronkite's recent thoughts on why Rather should never have gotten Uncle Walter's old job.

So don't let the door hit you on the way out, Mr. Rather.  From one amigo to another, I've got just one word for you...Coraje, pal. Now you have all the time in the world to watch tennis tournaments on television.

Unions, Dinosaurs, and Walnut-Sized Brains

The Washington Post contributes an excellent chapter to the slow-motion obituary organized labor has been writing for itself in the United States over the past 50 years.  The article concerns an internal fight among the leadership of the AFL-CIO, with a faction led by John Sweeny insisting that Big Labor's problem is that it has not been sufficiently slavish in its commitment to the political interests of the Democratic party.  Unfortunately for those who are sympathetic to unionism (and BadgerPundit is assuredly not), it looks like the 70-year old Sweeny is going to win this fight.

The defection of the Reagan Democrats in 1980 should have proved to Big Labor that the political beliefs of its membership are far from monolithic.   Perhaps it has never occured to fossils like Sweeney that most Americans have an instinctive horror of organizations which require blind loyalty, ideological homogeneity, and unquestioning obedience to the party line.  Sweeney might want to consider that Labor's failure to spread an ideological "Big Tent" has been one of the many factors in the decline of unionism.

Further, Sweeney and his Big Labor pals ought to stop and ask themselves what they have gotten for themselves by doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on Democratic political power over the past several decades.  The answer, of course, is nothing.  As the most recent election indicated, and the makeup of Congress shows, the majority of Americans lean rightward in their politics.  There is certainly not a leftist consensus in American politics, and an obvious distrust of the Democratic party on central issues such as taxes and national security.  Given the conservative bent of the country as a whole, does it make any strategic sense at all for Labor to make an ostentatious and doctrinaire commitment to the minority party (the Democrats)?

Sweeney may hope to win back both houses of Congress and the White House for the Democrats.  But reason and experience suggest this is a fool's errand.  Sweeney's membership might well ask why the AFL-CIO does not rather conduct a highly advantageous auction for its political support.  By simply giving Labor support away to the Democrats, Sweeney gives Democrats a pass to renege on promises, while inviting the Republican majority to oppose Labor issues at ever turn.  Why should the Republicans ever listen to Labor, if a priori Labor has announced its intention to work reflexively for the defeat of Republicans?  Much like the African American voting block in the U.S., Big Labor has cooked up a recipe for its own political marginalization.

The irony is that Labor might find a receptive audience among Republicans for some (but certainly not all) of its agenda, particularly on issues such as China and illegal immigration.  The Republican Party is currently divided by an uneasy truce on free trade issues.  The Buchananite wing of the party (which BadgerPundit largely rejects) is highly sympathetic to protectionism and tighter immigration restrictions, and could easily make common cause with Labor on many economic issues.  Fortunately for believers in free markets, Big Labor's leadership is too blind and dogmatic to see the potent political alliances it might form beyond the Democratic Party.

So Sweeney & Co., keep demonizing Republicans to your hearts' content.  Your're simply  digging Organized Labor's grave with an astonishing productivity that would ordinarily be forbidden by Teamster work rules.

The Where's The Beef People

Winn-Dixie joins Bruno's, A&P, and host of other formerly great retailing names in Federal Bankruptcy court.  Sometimes progress looks ugly indeed.

Barney Frank, American Hero?

BadgerPundit never expected to call Massachusetts representative Barney Frank an American hero, but in the case of l'affaire Eason Jordan, there is no other way to put it.  Like most Americans, I have long since stopped watching CNN due to the network's leftward tilting coverage, preachy liberalism, and dishonest attacks on the Bush administration.  So Eason Jordan's paranoid beliefs are news to me...they are also properly news to all Americans who continue to believe that CNN (under Jordan at least) is both an honest and trustworthy source for television news.

For those who have been living under a rock, Eason Jordan was until last week the editorial head of CNN's news division.  Appearing about two weeks ago on a panel in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Jordan accused American soldiers in Iraq of deliberately targeting and killing journalists in Iraq.  Of course, Jordan had absolutely no evidence, other than the conspiratorial rantings of unidentified acquaintances on the radical left, to substantiate this outrageous slander against the honor of American soldiers.  Jordan would never have had the guts to level these inflammatory and unsubstantiated charges overtly on CNN; the heat from the viewer revolt would have been far too intense.

So instead, Eason Jordan thought he would take his paranoid distrust of the American military, and his obvious opposition to both the Iraq war and the Bush Administration, before a friendly crowd of anti-American opinion leaders in Europe.  Far off the camera, Mr. Jordan was free to undermine American political objectives by catering to European prejudices and tossing off casual damaging slanders without any pretext of proof.

Fortunately for America, and the honor of our fighting forces, Eason Jordan sat on the same panel with Rep. Barney Frank.  Jordan might have expected a friendly audience for his lies from Frank, since Frank is one of the most reliably liberal members of the U.S. Congress.  To his everlasting credit, however, Frank sprang immediately at Eason's comments, challenging their implications and demanding that Jordan document specific incidents to back up his claims.  Since Jordan had not one scintilla of actual evidence, Frank's challenge forced him to back off his comments almost immediately.

Frank's evident outrage at Jordan's calumny of U.S. troops played a major role in generating the subsequent interest in the controversy, first in the blogsphere, and then in the conventional press.  And now, Frank's timely challenge has forced CNN to fire Eason.  Barney Frank's demand for proof limited the damage from Jordan's initial remarks, and led to Jordan's final comeuppance. 

Frank's example shows that genuine patriotism belongs to neither left nor right;  although Frank himself opposed the Iraq war, he refused to countenance unsupported attacks on the honor of American soldiers, who serve in Iraq because of duty, not their individual political beliefs.  In America, vigorous opposition to political leaders is a precious, vital, and time-honored right; scurrilous attacks on brave men and and women doing their duty are not.  Frank, unlike Eason Jordan, clearly understands the difference, and deserves the thanks of all Americans.

So now, Eason Jordan is gone at CNN.  But remember, all of Eason Jordan's friends and political allies still work there.  Therefore, watch CNN at your own risk.  As a whole, the network continues to be dominated at the top by 1960s retreads haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam, who see My Lai in every military action and reflexively regard all American soldiers as baby killers, war criminals, psychopaths, and barbarians.  No wonder this group of Mao-worshiping journalists and SDS washouts found John Kerry as their natural champion in the last election.  And no wonder they are beneath our contempt.  Send a message in the most effective manner you can, by never tuning your TV to CNN.

A Conservative Being Born

On rare occasions, it is possible to witness exact moment of a political epiphany- a shining instant when the scales drop from the eyes of the formerly bamboozled, and a man begins to see the world for the first time as it is.  We are indebted to "Professor" Ward Churchill, American Indian activist of highly dubious provenance and veracity, for inducing such a moment of political chrysalis in his University of Colorado colleague Paul Campos.  Writes Campos:

Academics claim to despise censorship, but the truth is we do a remarkably good job of censoring ourselves. This is especially true in regard to affirmative action. Who among us can claim to have spoken up every time a job candidate almost as preposterous as [Ward] Churchill was submitted for our consideration? Things like the Churchill fiasco are made possible by a web of lies kept intact by a conspiracy of silence.

Churchill thus represents the reductio ad absurdum of the contemporary university's willingness to subordinate all other values to affirmative action. When such a grotesque fraud - a white man pretending to be an Indian, an intellectual charlatan spewing polemical garbage festooned with phony footnotes, a shameless demagogue fabricating imaginary historical incidents to justify his pathological hatreds, an apparent plagiarist who steals and distorts the work of real scholars - manages to scam his way into a full professorship at what is still a serious research university, we know the practice of affirmative action has hit rock bottom. Or at least we can hope so.

Ward Churchill's career provides a lurid illustration of what can happen - indeed, of what we know will happen - when academic standards are prostituted in the name of increasing diversity. Tenure and academic freedom are hard to defend if they don't provide us who benefit from them with the minimal degree of courage necessary to say, when confronted by someone like Churchill, enough is enough.

Hallelujah! He once was lost, but now he sees.

Right Wing in the East Side

Speaking of real estate, BadgerPundit is pleased to report success in our recent house hunting mission in Milwaukee.  My wife and I have agreed to purchase a lovely old home in the heart of Milwaukee's East Side.  My future neighbors (many of whom have apparently forgotten to discard their now ridiculous looking Kerry Edwards signs) don't know what they're in for.  The East Side is clearly Blue State territory, with presidential election contributions running in favor of John Kerry by $89,000 to $56,000.  I'm sure the vote share in zip code 53211 ran even more heavily in favor of the wind-surfing, globe-trotting, fortune-hunting, heiress marrying, multi-millionaire art collector from Massachussetts.  Needless to say, BadgerPundit plans to work tirelessly to help correct this imbalance.

Wanted: Investment Advice for Sy Hersh

In an excellent article in the Boston Globe (of all places), Ross Terrell takes the lunatic left to task for giving up on democracy, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Iran, in Venezuela, and everywhere else in the world where men and women yearn to breathe free.  He also notes the contempt of the left towards attitudes of the common man, as well as the inability of radical leftists to accept the contrary verdicts of democratic elections.  Witness the unintentional self-parody in Senator Edward Kennedy's (D- Rehab) remarks about the recent U.S. election.  Notes Terrell:

"The Democrats are the minority party in Congress, " said Senator Edward Kennedy, "but we speak for a majority of the American people." Don't the winners of an election have a better -- if imperfect -- right to speak for a majority of the American people than the losers? Not so to a left whose eyes bulge with self-entitlement and whose pale hand is estranged from physical labor.

Self-righteousness and an irrational antipathy towards George W. Bush have reduced Democrats and many leftist fellow travellers to overt enemies of freedom, who secretly hope for economic catastrophe at home, and the death of brave American service personnel abroad.  They hate America, plain and simple.  If they can't win, they'd like the rest of us to simply go to hell.  X-Files viewer, comedian, and "journalist" Seymour Hersh gives the game away in a recent radio interview, where he positively salivates at the prospect of American decline:

Seymour Hersh recently told "Democracy Now!" radio that America was in a bad way because "eight or nine neoconservatives" have "grabbed the government." Not mentioning that Bush was elected by 51 percent of the voters, Hersh did detect a ray of hope. One "salvation may be the economy," Hersh said regrettably, "It's going to go very bad, folks. You know, if you have not sold your stocks and bought property in Italy, you better do it quick."

Fortunately, the punchline to this bad joke is on Hersh himself.  One can only hope Sy will surrender to his delusions and transfer his savings to Italy.  Consulting my latest issue of The Economist magazine, I observe that unemployment in Italy stands at 8%, remarkably high given the low labor force participation rate of 49%.  In the U.S., by contrast, unemployment is 5% on a 65% labor force participation rate.  If as many people in Italy wanted to work as do in the United States, the Italian unemployment rate would be nearly 31%, or approximately 6 times the U.S. level.  In 2004 and 2005, GDP growth in the U.S. is expected to be 4.3% and 3.5% respectively, versus only 1.3% and 1.4% for Italy.  As it has for most of the past decade, the U.S. economy is growing 2 to 3 times faster than than the Italian economy.  Italy's national debt is over 100% of GDP, versus only around 45% for the United States.  Italy's population is aging rapidly, with birth rates well below replacement level.  Given Italy's far more extravagant welfare state, this demographic time bomb will cause Italy's continuing budget deficit (currently 3% of GDP) to blow up much faster than in the U.S.

Sunning themselves in a pleasant Tuscan villa, Sy Hersh and his America-hating friends may believe Italy (or anywhere else in the Eurozone) is the future.  Economic facts, however, suggest his long term bet on Italian real-estate will prove to be a sucker's bet.  So sell your stocks, Sy, and hop on that boat.  When the Italian crash comes, it couldn't happen to a nicer person.