Some serious fail on Mika Brzeninski's part when, after reviewing this clip on Morning Joe, quipping that her favorite founder was Lincoln.

Little Washington nit here, but Palin eventually settled on Washington as her favorite founder because of the notion that he "returned power to the people" because he didn't allow himself to be anointed King (a story which is at best apocryphal and at worst fictional). Beck agreed.

Apparently, Washington showed his populism by allowing two of his underlings (noted street folk plebeians Thomas Jefferson and John Adams) to have an election to replace him, not to mention the fact that he ordered the suppression of a populist rebellion* when Washington's Treasury Secretary and central banking advocate Alexander Hamilton convinced Congress to levy a vice tax on booze for the express purpose flexing the federal government's muscle and proving their ascendancy. Ignoring his presiding over a government that codified slavery, left women like Palin powerless, ignored the plight of Native Americans who the early American federal government didn't just outright slaughter, etc.

But if you focus on a probably made up story about him turning down the non-existent American Crown, he was a genuine Man of the People, returning the power pretty much right to them.

-----

Washington not only raised an army to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, he actually commanded the thing in the field personally. George Washington, returning power to the people and America's First IRS Agent. When Boro and the other ACists joke about Barack Obama and his IRS Agent minions showing up to your house with an army to collect the taxes you don't want imposed on you, THAT WAS ACTUALLY SOMETHING WASHINGTON DID. Man of the people imo

According to the Quinnipiac poll, more white people think that Obama is a worse president than Bush was than think he is a better one.

White people think Bush was a better president. How hard did Obama have to fail to make them come to that conclusion?

So, are white people out of touch, or are the non-white people out of touch?



12. Do you think Barack Obama has been a better President than George W. Bush, worse, or about the same as President Bush?


Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Wht Blk

Better 43% 11% 79% 40% 38% 47% 36% 71%
Worse 30% 63% 3% 26% 32% 29% 38% 2%
About the same 23% 23% 15% 29% 26% 20% 23% 22%
DK/NA 4% 3% 3% 5% 4% 4% 3% 5%



http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1411

To be fair, most white people are idiots.

racist ban imo

Well, that is almost true.

welllllll since he is continuing every terrible policy of Bush plus adding new ******ation of his own how is this wrong?

hehe n1 NeBlis

Tucker Carlson just started a website called The Daily Caller. Kind of like a Republican Huffington Post.

can't get much more low content than tucker carlson i guess

With the exception of "command of the english language" I am at a loss to find anything barry does better than gwb.

spends money?

Given that much of what the president actually does is give speeches to rally people behind certain plans and serve as the face of the US to the rest of the world, this is a far bigger deal than you are making it out to be.

Not to mention the fact that it's hard to find something he's done that's worse than GWB.

UE + even more deficit spending + the continuation of pretty much every bad policy of Bush = me questioning if you are even willing to look.

John Stossel on Crony Capitalism - youtube

Fox needs to move his show to Hannity's timeslot immediately. I hope he does a show on the Fed.

thanks! been looking forward to this one.

good series but Stossel tilts me the way he talks. he speaks like I talk to 4 year olds

you realize that many 4 years PWN joe 6 pack at logic right?

Just read through a bunch of this thread. Excellent posts by Dvaut, Not_In... ianlippert et al especially re;Chomsky. I was curious though... last time I logged in I got the impression that Not-in-my name was a libertarian, now I'm thinking more a moderate classical liberal type guy with left-wing sympathies, amirite?

I got feedback today for my economics module essay about neoliberalism and the financial crisis. The professor had some harsh words for me and gave me a god-awful mark. His main criticisms seemed pretty dumb, namely:

1) my argument that US healthcare is 'mainly socialized' is apparently 'preposterous' and he thinks I must live in a 'cocoon'.

2) my argument that Thatcher/Reagan were far from free marketers (Thatcher for example, increased welfare spending) made him say I've been brainwashed by free market catechism. I cited Noam Chomsky in support of my Reagan hypothesis.

3) My exploration of the CRA/Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac argument for the mortgage crisis makes me racist.

4) He described my arguments concerning Hayek's privatization of money theory as a 'rediscovery' of a bankrupt idea that has no intellectual traction.

5) I sounded like a 'right-wing paranoid conspiracy theorist' by suggesting that the
media and academics are anti-capitalist (I cited Schumpeter and Reismans explanations as to why this is the case).

6) I apparently ignored the role of financial institutions. This is odd as my main argument for the crisis was the Federal Reserves monopoly over the money supply and controlling of interest rates. But as the Federal Reserve is effectively private, it must be a free market institution and not an abrogation thereof, according to him.

7) He said that my assertion that neoliberalism is contested from some right-wing circles is nonsense.

8) He crossed out my claim that neoliberals are in favour of civil liberties. I doubt he's even read Capitalism and Freedom by Friedman.

FWIW it was considerably better than another module essay I did which got a top grade.

I emailed him, will post his response here if I get it. What really cheesed me off was that all his criticisms were completely ideological.

I've only been to one of his lectures where he basically accepted every Marxist position on capitalism and the only mention of free markets was about how evil George Bush was and the IMF etc. He gave the examples of Amazon and Microsoft as supporting Marx's monopoly predictions.

your prof is a ****ing imbecile and a partisan hack IMO


edit: plz post the paper if you can as well as his LOLtastic criticisms.

I guess start a competing university?

Your ability to judge the quality of your own work may be biased by your emotional investment in the topic, i.e., in comparing this essay to your previous one. Depending on what you wrote, 1,2,4,5 may all be reasonable responses...I know that you're here mainly just to have people tell you what an idiot and ideologue your professor is, but that needn't be the case.

I loled

I agree with you up to a point. It could be that I presented my arguments badly hence the bad mark. However, as I noted his criticisms did not address this. Rather he made ideological rebuttals to my arguments as opposed to constructive criticism about the presentation/language/structure etc.

I don't understand why his views on health care, Thatcher, Hayek etc are relevant in regards to the quality of my essay. Also that a professor would retort to ad hominem is pretty lol. He is just completely unfamiliar of even the most basic of mainstream conservative- nevermind- libertarian viewpoints about the economy and I would guess his knowledge of free market economics is limited to a very superficial Naomi Klein type scope.

I used to be a right-libertarian yea. I wouldn't say I've moved to the left so much, just moved away from the hard right Rothbardism/Miseans. I'd still loosely call myself a libertarian in that I think value freedom extremely highly, I'm just not sure if absolute private property rights are compatible with that.

He's right. Government intervention and protections etc /= socialized. Especially when socialized to the majority of people clearly means UHC. Unless you do a damn good job of explaining yourself, writing stuff like that is just asking for them to mark you down.

Yeah, this is definitely dumb on his part. Christ, even Naomi Klein makes sure to put "free marketeers" in quotation marks whenever she describes the neo-liberal ideology and says that the "free market" reforms are anything but free. Your professor it seems can't spot the difference between rhetoric and actions.

lol. I'd actually talk to a department head or somebody about that. That's ******ed. Though in general, writing Mises type stuff in essays is a sure-fire way to fail. Just stick to orthodoxy. Are you there to write think-pieces for mises.org or to get a degree?

Seems he shouldn't be bringing he personal convictions into his marking if your arguments are well reasoned. That's a pretty big if though. Bringing in huge, controversial ideas into a short essay is asking for trouble. Him not agreeing with you is a ****ty way to mark essays though.

Many academics certainly are, I don't know how he can dispute the large anti-capitalist feelings in faculties. I'd definitely make sure to emphasize "some" though. Plenty of academics support capitalism, they just aren't as vocal as the left. Saying the media is anti-capitalist is pretty lol though. Try to take into consideration what "capitalism" means to the majority of the population. To them, it does not mean completely free markets. It means, basically, what we have now. When you redefine words, or use them completely counter to the rest of society, don't be surprised when people make comments like this.

I think he's right here. Ignoring the role of Wall Street banks etc. is pretty poor. You should have at least mentioned that is the prevailing view that big, greedy banks caused the crash, and THEN refuted it. Ignoring it entirely is bad scholarship no matter what you are arguing.

This is pretty odd considering Cameron's move away from Thatcherism recently

In theory they have. In practise there has been a massive attack on civil liberties by neoliberals.

Yeah, it does sound that way, though it sounds as if your essay was kinda dogmatic as well. I just really don't think it is worth all the hassle of writing your essays as if they are for submission to mises.org. You need to consider your audience, his intellectual background etc etc. It's not great, and you might not like what you are writing, but it's what is going to get you a good grade.