Tag Archives: politics

The Bias of the Press

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It’s going to continue, as Howard Kurtz, writing for FoxNews has recognized.

Many in the media, mostly on the liberal side, have come up with a verb that captures their disgust at the man who will be America’s 45th president.

It’s a word that clearly signals that they will remain in opposition, in a state of perpetual outrage, that, in truth, they don’t fully accept the results of the election.

Donald Trump, they say, should not be normalized.

Especially that perpetual outrage part.  That’s not normal; that’s pathology.  Here’s Slate, as cited by Kurtz, describing the typical NLMSM and its refusal (not inability) to accept Donald Trump as the duly elected next President:

In an essay for the New York Times Magazine, Teju Cole wrote, of the days following Trump’s win, “All around were the unmistakable signs of normalization in progress. So many were falling into line without being pushed. It was happening at tremendous speed, like a contagion.” David Remnick told CNN, “We’ve normalized [the results] already. Less than a week after the election is over, suddenly Washington is going about its business talking about who’s going to get what jobs. You would think that Mitt Romney had won. It’s a hallucination.” …  “He is not normal,” insisted John Oliver over the weekend. “He is abnormal.”

The NLMSM as Fourth Estate?  Not anymore.

A Minimum Wage Mandate Demonstration

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McDonald’s, which already has ordering stations—kiosks at its restaurant tables from which diners can order their meals and have them delivered to them—at some 500 of its restaurants in Florida, New York, and California.  The Daily Caller, citing CNN Money, says more of these kiosks are scheduled to be added, next year, in McDonald’s restaurants in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, and DC.

Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) signed into law a new $15 minimum wage for New York State in 2016, and the University of California has proposed to pay its low-wage employees $15. Florida’s minimum wage will rise I January 2017. Seattle raised its minimum wage to $15 in 2014, followed by San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Notice that.  The additional kiosks are going into areas that have raised (Chicago and Boston in addition to San Fran and Seattle) or will raise soon their required minimum wage, instead of letting that be an item of negotiation between free workers and free employers.  It doesn’t cost $15 to operate one of these kiosks for an hour.  Even given the up-front costs of acquiring and installing the kiosks, their life cycle costs are much less than those of a $15/hr unskilled order-taking worker doing unskilled work, given the worker’s training (even if minimal) and high turnover rate costs.

Which is what the Left has known all along, because serious economists have been telling these Know Betters about these outcomes right along.  The Left’s policies are actively destructive of the prospects for those the Left claims it’s aiming to help, but those of the Left would rather virtue signal and feel good about themselves than do actual good for others.

Aparna Mathur, Resident Scholar for Economic Policy at the American Enterprise Institute [emphasis added]:

We know that we don’t really need someone to take an order…and we will eventually have machines do it. It is risky to fight for something that could put you out of work[.]

There’s an understatement.

 

H/t AEIdeas

Of Course

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Here‘s Senator Mark Warner (D, VA):

The coalition needs to be broader.  The Democratic Party has a history that it’s been about working Americans. We cannot be a party of the East Coast, West Coast and metropolitan areas.

And yet, that’s exactly what the Progressive-Democratic Party of Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) and Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and Barack Obama (D, President) has made itself into, with policies that actively suppress, with Know Better monumental regulation and governance by Executive Order, the middle and poorer classes of Americans.  Here’s that divide in geography, in two maps from The New York Times.  The first shows the vote for Donald Trump; the missing parts of the US are regions that voted for Hillary Clinton. trumpmap_1

This second map shows the vote for Clinton; it emphasizes the regions of Progressive-Democratic Party support, which are the two coasts and some urban enclaves.trumpmap_2

That’s the physical location of their bubble.  This, from the subhead of the WSJ piece under the first link above, illustrates their intellectual bubble.

There are big parts of the country that just aren’t hearing us.

Of course Progressive policies are panacea.  Us Americans are just too stupid, or to deaf, to hear and understand the Progressive message.  Or we’re just too irredeemably deplorable a collection of bitter, gun toting religion clingers.

Yeah.  That’s the ticket.  That’ll get the Progressive-Democratic Party back into power.

The Irony! The Irony!

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Outgoing President Barack Obama (D) was jointly interviewed by Germany’s public broadcasting network, ARD, and by Spiegel Online.  Obama had many things to say in this interview, but he had this in particular to say in response to ARD/Spiegel’s question about whether he would pardon Edward Snowden before he left office.  After declining to talk about the pardon itself on the grounds that Snowden hadn’t yet appeared in court, Obama said this:

I think that Mr Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.

Wow.  Just—wow.

Does It Matter?

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I don’t ordinarily go to People magazine for material, but I was sent here by Fox News Insider, and this tale is just too amusing to ignore.

[D]esigner Sophie Theallet has flipped the script on those ubiquitous calls to boycott, announcing that instead it is she and her brand who will be boycotting Trump and his wife, Melania, refusing to lend her any of her designs.

And

A source tells People, “This has already been going on for months. Designers wouldn’t lend to Melania, Ivanka, or Tiffany, so they either bought the items themselves or wore Ivanka’s brand.”

Wait—what?  Ivanka Trump is a competitor of these ladies and gentlemen?  That sheds some light on the matter….

Then there’s this:

Carolina Herrera told Business of Fashion, “I think that in two or three months [designers will] reach out, because it’s fashion. You’ll see everyone dressing Melania. She’s representing the United States.”

Because capitalism, and there’s money in being Dresser to the Stars.

I think a grown, adult woman is fully capable of dressing herself.  I think a woman as plainly intelligent, as obviously successful in the world of fashion (and modeling), as clearly successful in business as is soon-to-be First Lady Melania Trump is fully capable of making her own fashion decisions.  And if those fashion decisions come off the rack, well, that just demonstrates the superfluous superficiality of the precious ones of fashion…design.