Meme Busting, Bill Whittle Style

I've been busy the last couple of weeks so I missed this earlier. Bill Whittle takes on and takes apart numerous media perpetuated memes in this Firewall  video.

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The Betrayal of Sarah Palin

John Hawkins has an excellent piece up at Pajamas Media about why Sarah Palin fans feel betrayed. The only word I can take exception to in the whole article is "slyly".

To be conservative is to be betrayed on a regular basis. You send your kids to a school that tries to slyly indoctrinate them into liberalism, you come home to watch an “unbiased” news show that covers almost every story differently based on whether a Republican or Democrat is involved, and then you try to unwind by watching TV shows that take guarded shots at the values you cherish.

Eventually, election time rolls around and you get two candidates, a Republican and a Democrat, both of whom claim that they want to slash the deficit, oppose gay marriage, and are dead serious about securing the border. Then, when they start governing, you find that the liberals are always lying — but even the Republicans turn out to be fudging on what they believe as often as not. Sun Tzu once said that “all war is deception,” but as far as conservatives are concerned, the same could be said of politics and the media.

This becomes especially frustrating because of the double standard that’s present in politics today. On any given day, a decent conservative can make a single gaffe that ruins his career, while liberals like Ted Kennedy can overcome despicable incidents like Chappaquiddick and emerge unscathed.

Then along came Sarah Palin, whom most conservatives viewed as the lone bright spot of the 2008 campaign. Here’s a woman that many conservatives identify with not only because they believe she really shares their values, but because she is genuinely what so many other politicians pretend to be. She’s a person who got where she is based on merit and she found success without the advantage of being born in the right family, being wealthy, or being given a break because she went to an Ivy League school.

Read it all.

Money, Money, Money. - Stephen Green Explains Speculaton and Investing

The inimitable Vodkapundit, Stephen Green, put up a post on investment and speculation yesterday. He makes two very important points:

1. All investment is speculation.
2. The secondary market makes the primary market possible.

The first point is easy. You invest, but there’s risk. The higher the risk, the higher the reward sought. Everybody knows that one. You also should bear in mind that no matter how risky (or safe) an investment might be, you always always always seek to minimize that risk. That’s not just the invisible hand or whatever, that’s human nature. And it’s a good thing.

The second point is a little more subtle, but nothing difficult to understand. And it applies to both stocks and bonds. When you buy a newly-issued bond from GM, you’re the primary market. If I buy that bond from you, I’m the secondary market. And if I didn’t exist, you would never buy bonds from anyone.

He goes on to explain why the markets work the way they do, and why investors expect greater returns for greater risk.

If you have any money in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pension funds, REITS or any other investment vehicle at all you are a speculator. If you ever buy a lottery ticket, you're a speculator (and not a very smart one).

Our president has taken to demonizing "speculators" and has justified turning established law on its head by depriving investors of their lawful rights to essentially confiscate their lawfully obtained property and redistribute it to his favored political constituencies, namely the United Auto Workers Union. This is a very slippery slope he has started us down and the people you would think would start taking him to task on this our esteemed fifth column fourth estate, the mainstream media are either silent or actively cheerleading for him. Until they decide to do their jobs, he's going to keep getting away with this and soon, we will have no property rights left. And property rights are the foundation of all our other rights.

Go read all of Steve's post.

Bill Whittle on the Cost of Media Bias

I haven't figured out how ot embed video from PJTV, so just go and watch this Bill Whittle piece. Make sure you hang in there for the ending.