The Road to Oblivion is Paved With Bad Intentions

I don't like to just cut and past whole articles and usually won't UNLESS they are so good that simply linking to them won't get them read. Gates of Vienna (the blog) is one of my "Favorites". Level headed, european in scope. You can read it in it's origional form with all the hyperlinks.

The Road to Oblivion is Paved With Bad Intentions
by Dymphna

Larry Kudlow warned the MSM about their hubris, using The Washington Post’s front page report from Tuesday on President Bush’s 9/11 anniversary speech:

Keep misunderestimating President George W. Bush as The Washington Post did this morning on its front page when it trashed Bush’s 9/11 speech to the nation.

Curious, I wandered over to Wapo’s front page "news" (subscription required) for 9/12 to see what they had to say. Kudlow was right: it was not a straightforward news report, it was analysis veneered with a thin layer of events, and larded with snarky asides. Here is one such passage:

The president’s painstakingly choreographed day was intended by the White House to recapture — at least for a moment — the sense of shared purpose that prevailed in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

But Bush faced a tall order. Although he urged Americans last night to “put aside our differences,” Democrats have been attacking the administration over Iraq and Bush’s national security record, hoping these issues will help them reclaim one or both chambers of Congress in November. Polls suggest the public does not accept Bush’s contention that the war in Iraq is a “central front” in the campaign against terrorists.

Last night, Democrats said Bush politicized the Sept. 11 anniversary. “The president should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning to commandeer the airwaves to give a speech that was designed not to unite the country and commemorate the fallen, but to seek support for a war in Iraq that he has admitted had ‘nothing’ to do with 9/11,” said Sen Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Bush has sought to shift public opinion in the past two weeks with speeches aimed at explaining the nature and goals of radical Islamists and putting the war in Iraq in a broader — and, he hopes, more popular — context.

And as Kudlow reports, while the MSM continues on this road (the one to oblivion, not the one paved with good intentions), in the real world — the one where people put their money where their mouth is — things are looking good for the Republicans. Tradesports.com is showing gains for the Republicans in the November elections:

The Senate GOP ‘06 contract is up to 84 from 78 just a few days ago. And most important, the House GOP contract is up to an unbelievable 46 today, compared to 38 just a few days ago. Especially for the House race, this is big news.

Kudlow also chortled over the strong gains in the stock market today, following the events of the 9/11 memorial and speech. Traders love tax cutters, despite the foils and curses of the economically illiterate MSM.

Dow 11,498.09 +101.25
Nasdaq 2,215.82 +42.57
S&P 500 1,313.11 +13.57
NYSE 8,348.32 +86.15

The learning curve for journalists seems to be infinite. Somehow I don’t think they’ll ever get over the fact that Woodward and Bernstein are your father's journalists, and Vietnam is so 20th century that as a meme it's road kill -- very flat, not much left of it. Certainly not enough to dine out on anymore.

Along with their Dem pals, the MSM continues to wander the halls, hoping that things will change. But "things" have changed; it's the Dems and the MSM who are stuck in a time warp where doom and gloom cloud the atmosphere with threats of scarcity and chaos.

Blinders and wishful thinking don’t make for a sane foreign policy or for prosperity at home, guys. Bad science, bad economic theory, and ignorance of history lead you to the dustbin. Oh, well -- you'll have lots of company as the unions jump in with you. Perhaps being wrong — dead wrong — is less painful when you have lots of company.


All I could say was AMEN, they said it so much better.