OK, lets.

Measure inflation the same way that Carter did, and it’s about the same.

Measure unemployment the same way Carter did, and it’s about the same.

Don’t go on about how bad it was under Carter, you aren’t measuring it right.

Oh, and we didn’t have gas because of an attempt to Congress to “fix” gas prices. Here’s hoping they don’t “fix” it like that again.

Why does CNBC give us hours of pollyanish commentary Dennis Kneale and his new clone in drag, Michelle Caruso Cabrera, a full hour of Larry Kudlow and his cronies and only maybe 5 minutes a day of Ron Insana???? Yes, I know Ron Insana is now just a CNBC contributor and not an on-air reporter but this speaks volumes about the quality of CNBC these days.

I personally believe the country desperately needs a centrist guy like Ron Insana as Secretary of Treasury. What a brilliant mind, combined with completely honest, bias-free commentary on the “message of the markets. Another good option, CNBC can fire Larry Kudlow and apologize for his complete lack of objectivity and replace him with a show hosted by Ron Insana that would actually feature intelligent discussion for a change with guests who don’t have a political axe to grind acting as shills for the GOP.

It’s critically important for major media to give us honest reporting and not bogus pollyanish crap that has virtually no value to anybody who doesn’t subscribe to supplysidegroupthink. Economics is not a Disney movie, there is no guaranteed happy ending here. BR, I hope you become rabid about taking these people down. The country needs people to step up at times like these.

DL mentioned earlier that Larry Kudlow sees virtue in optimism. He’s just worshipping ad nauseum at the Church of Reagan, the eternal optimist. Well, here’s a legacy of Ronald Reagan: the country got numbed by the idea that we could prosper forever with huge budget deficits and that it would never matter. Dick Cheney said Reagan proved that. The ginormous deficits of today are a major legacy of Reaganomics and Reagan himself. That doesn’t deserve any halo in my opinon.

Finally, BlueStateDon wrote:

“All of this is why lonely individuals decades ago warned against consolidation of the media. Eventually their warnings were disregarded as a quaint remnant of an earlier age, and things came to pass exactly in the manner that the warnings foretold. Fox News is the archetype of the new media class, and as such is functionally indistinguishable from Izvestia, Tass, and Pravda, the old propaganda organs of the Soviet Union, whose Russian versions of Brit Hume and Larry Kudlow relentlessly pushed the notion that communism was always and everywhere ascendant, the shelves at the GUM department store were always full, and that millions of impoverished westerners were yearning to join socialism’s gleaming promise.”

This is quite a brilliant and accurate description. Bravo.

I’m no psychoanalyst, but I suspect they lean left because they believe they are “enlightening the masses.” Like teachers, this lends itself to the mistaken belief that a command economy, like the classroom, or their one-way dispersal of information, is the best way.

You want a BAD economy? I mean REALLY bad? That was it. Back then you couldn’t BUY gas.

Look, things are hardly rosy right now, but guess what? It isn’t the apocalypse today, by any means. Companies fail and retrench. Even General Motors. People trump Starbucks! STARBUCKS!! Please, they had too many stores and their prices are too high.

Meanwhile. Banks. Anybody a sentient adult in 1984? You know what happened to banks in 1984. They gave up ALL…repeat ALL… of their profits they had ever made UP TILL THAT POINT! This subprime mess is a blip compared to that.

The rampant pessimism on this board is highly amusing. (Note: that’s different than saying we are in a bear market, which we clearly are in.

Highly amusing.

http://www.journalism.org/node/2304

A survey of 1149 journalists indicate they are much more likely to describe themselves as “leaning leftward.”

Of course…those “moderate” journalists’ definitions of “moderate” were really to the left of the general public’s, i.e. more than twice as likely to support gun control and abortion. Therefore, it wouldn’t be surprising that a much larger proportion of them would vote Democrat, in keeping in line with their actual political beliefs, despite their self-identification as “moderate.”

It wasn’t 12, btw, a MSNBC survey of ACTUAL donations reported to the FEC, revealed that of 143 reporters identified, 125 donated to Democrats.

As for turning it into a political discussion, Barry did that himself by positing that “corporate interests” had reversed whatever liberal media bias might have existed in the ’70′s, and now the media was all in the tank for the “right,” corporate interests, and all that.

My response is:
1) the media in general tilt to the left as evidenced by their self-identification, issue support AND political contributions.

2) The media might just be wrong on their optimism, rather than deliberately trying to purvey misinformation. Never ascribe to a conspiracy what can be ascribed to incompetence. It’s almost always proved to be the latter.

Detroit. This country is at a crossroads. We are now faced with a burgeoning national crisis that is challenging virtually every aspect of the American way of life as we know it, including the ability to own a home, the opportunity to have a job and even one of the fundamental freedoms that we have longed enjoyed in this vast nation – the freedom of mobility.

That the domestic automobile industry has been a bellwether of this country’s looming national crisis is no secret, at least not to the learned people who understand the key role that our auto industry plays for this nation’s economic health as a whole. Detroit first faced the reality of the global economy and what it really means long before the rest of the country had to give it even a second thought.

As the economies of China, India and Russia have emerged, the demand for the world’s resources has pushed prices through the stratosphere. Everything that goes into the manufacturing of an automobile – steel, aluminum, rubber, glass, plastic, oil, etc. – has gone up dramatically in the last several years, putting tremendous pressure on the auto companies and their suppliers.

SNIP

cont here: http://www.autoextremist.com/

Someone mentioned earlier that Kneale is like a 16 year old kid, I think that’s being generous, he’s more like a 4 year-old and no doubt tonight he’ll be throwing a tantrum.