« Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 196 -- Crime & Gun Crime. | WILLisms.com | VIDEOS: Utah State Fair Advertisements With Napoleon Dynamite. »

Some Call It A Bonfire (Or Carnival) Of Classiness...

We call it "Classiness, All Around Us."

Let's Get Quacking-

Social Security Choice blog notes that, as I have noted all along, reforming Social Security is going to take a longer haul debate. The good news is that people understand there is a problem:

Americans still want reform. Citizens just have to keep putting pressure on Congress to fix a broken system.

... Which is why the Reform Thursday series goes on, focusing on both problems and solutions. So stay tuned. You never know when the reform tide will turn.

We'll be ready.

2.

Media Bias Hurting Media's Bottom Line-

Random Numbers explains how left-wing media bias ultimately hurts the bottom line:

...if you can’t sell a liberal newspaper in either New York or D.C. where can you sell one?

I sure as heck wouldn't want to own any shares of the big left-of-center media stock, for the short-term, OR long-term. With no changes, it's a dying business.

3.

Howard Dean-

DANEgerus blog chronicles the ongoing absurdity of Howard Dean.

He's mad, in more ways than one.

Yeeeaaaargh.

4.

Good Guys & Bad-

The Anchoress notes that the collective establishment media has little interest in Chuck Schumer's scandalous dirty tricks:

There are lots of things about which the press is not interested. It is not interested in any connections which may be found between their beloved United Nations and Al Qaeda or Saddam. It is not interested in fund-raising violations unless the violations are made (or even if they’re not) by people with R’s after their names. They are not interested in setting straight exactly who it is that pays the bulk of taxes in America. They are not interested in protest babes in the Middle East. And considering how quick the press is to embrace the narrative that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” well…the press doesn’t seem interested in genocide in Zimbabwe, if the guy in charge is a communist.

A nice roundup of media bias via omission. And Chuck Schumer's snooping into private credit card files of an up-and-coming African-American Republican is a glaring and startling omission.

5.

Bernanke-

Marginal Revolution blog offers a nice bit of detail on Ben Bernanke, and specifically the global savings glut:

The bottom line is this: some Asian countries have high levels of savings, but poor financial institutions. They invest their savings in the United States, and often we invest in back in Asia. In essence they are "outsourcing" their savings to foreign financial institutions. This recycling of Asian savings may help explain what is going on in the global economy. It also suggests that the current U.S. position is at least temporarily sustainable.

Bernanke is a great choice. Although the Federal Reserve handles monetary policy, the Fed Chief is also increasingly influential on the direction of fiscal policy. And Bernanke gets "it."

6.

Katrina Coverage-

Captain's Quarters blog points out that bodies were recovered in poor neighborhoods and rich neighborhoods alike in New Orleans after Katrina:

I'd like to issue a challenge to the Exempt Media. Someone tell me, other than the position of Hurricane Katrina, what significant part of the story the media got right during the first two weeks of the coverage, especially regarding the effects on the city of New Orleans. I doubt we'll come up with a single point, despite their self-obsessed celebration of their reporting shortly after the catastrophe.

A great point. I have never seen such self-congratulatory nonsense than from them media in the immediate aftermath of Katrina.

7.

Noam Chomsky-

Right Wing News takes a closer look at the left's favorite intellectual:

Unfortunately, Chomsky is as influential as he is wrong and, therefore, it's not enough to simply write him off as a political quack.

Read the whole fisking.

8.

Perspective-

File It Under blog puts things in perspective:

Still for a moment, let's look at a few things while acknowledging that in a perfect world there wouldn't be any violence in the middle east.

First, in the US, the average number of deaths was about 5500 per day, or about 165,000 in a 30-day month. That's no small number. Now while that isn't all due to violence, it hardly makes the news either.

The body count game is so stupid, and as one who prefers to put things in proper context, I just can't stand the way the media focuses on some things to the exclusion of others. Liberals have been salivating at the thought of the ticker passing 2000 for quite some time. It's tellling.

9.

Saddam Hussein, Media Hero-

The neo-neocon blog is fed up with the nitpicking over Saddam Hussein's trial:

Can the Times spare a word in the editorial for any sort of satisfaction that the day of reckoning has come for one of the worst murderous tyrants of recent memory? No. On this momentous day of the trial's beginning, it seems our Blue-Gray Lady's editorial board can't manage to muster up even a smidgen of happiness, only a tongue-scolding for the all-too-imperfect prosecution.

The trial of Saddam Hussein is a truly momentous occasion, and something too long in coming. I don't think Iraq can fully overcome its terrorist/insurgent problem and transition to a healthy democracy as long as Saddam Hussein lives.

10.

European Anti-Americanism-

The Brussels Journal blog hopes that Condi Rice understands just how serious Western Europe's anti-Americanism has become:

And yet, there is also a foreign policy reason for why anti-Americanism has grown even deeper than it was twenty years ago at the height of the Transatlantic debate over the deployment of American cruise missiles in Western Europe. At that time the Left in Western Europe succeeded in convincing part of West European public opinion that the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were basically of the same, evil, nature. This was the theory of moral equivalence, where some regarded the US as an “occupying” force in Western Europe on a par with the Soviet Union’s occupation of Eastern Europe. While the East Europeans had to liberate themselves from the warmongering Soviets, the West Europeans were told that they had to “liberate” themselves from the warmongering Americans. This explains why in the early and mid 1980s hundreds of thousands took to the streets in anti-American “peace demonstrations” in various West European capitals. These were the largest mass demonstrations that Europe had ever seen.

Interestingly, the moral equivalence idea was shared by others. This is where the Muslim radicals and the West European Left meet.

A very worthwhile read.

I tend to believe that Rice and others in the elected portion of the U.S. government do understand just how damaging anti-Americanism truly is in Europe. But if you are Secretary of State, you have to temper your statements significantly. You have to be... diplomatic.

But it's a great read on the causes and consequences of anti-Americanism in Europe. Go read it.

Also, don't forget to check out all the old Trivia Tidbits Of the Day, the Reform Thursday series, the Quotational Therapy sessions, and the Wednesday Caption Contest (entries are due each Tuesday at 11:59 PM Central Standard Time).

Last Week's Classiness Certification from WILLisms.com:

*October 18, 2005.

WILLisms.com offers a weekly classiness roundup as a weekly feature, every Tuesday, with 10 blog posts deemed classy. The criteria for submissions: incisive original analysis, quirky topics nobody else is covering, fantastic graphics, or other posts that took a lot of work. We love to spread the word on upcoming blogs, being that WILLisms.com also fits that description. If you would like to nominate a post on your blog or another blog for inclusion, email us at WILLisms@gmail.com. Write "Classy Nomination" in the subject. You can also utilize this page to make your submissions. The deadline is each Monday at 11:59 PM Central Time.

Classy.

Posted by Will Franklin · 25 October 2005 03:49 PM

Comments

Posted by: DANEgerus at October 25, 2005 06:02 PM

Posted by: bullwinkle at October 25, 2005 09:10 PM

Posted by: Rob B. at October 26, 2005 09:45 AM

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at October 26, 2005 01:26 PM