In practice it has turned out to be strongly redistributionist, but only because of its Ponzi game aspect, in which each generation takes more out than it put in. Well, the Ponzi game will soon be over, thanks to changing demographics, so that the typical recipient henceforth will get only about as much as he or she put in (and today’s young may well get less than they put in).

Of course we all recognize that bit of inflammatory scare-mongering from Gov. Rick Perry’s book “Fed Up!” in which he tells the inconvenient truth about Social Security that every American knows but no politician is forth-right enough to confront.  That in its current state, it is doomed to fail and leave generations that had paid into it stuck without the return they were promised. In short: A Ponzi Scheme.

Oh, wait… my mistake. Thanks to some excellent work by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.com I now see that the quote above is not from Gov. Perry but from a young, idealistic economist named Paul Krugman writing in the Boston Review in 1997.

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Tonight’s debate is being labeled as a CNN/Tea Party debate, but I’m expecting a whole lot of CNN and very little tea party — which means more questions about Creationism, race, abortion, gay marriage and why Rick Perry wants to replace Social Security checks with cans of Alpo. In other words, just about any question the CNN moderator can up with that stays as far away as possible from any of President Obama’s many, many, many, many, many failures.

Certainly, we should all be thrilled that a major news network is legitimizing the tea party with this kind of partnership, but we also have to be careful and remember who the MSM really is, and that’s our political adversary. The Leftist media isn’t teaming with the tea party or hosting debates at the Reagan Library out of respect for either institution. This is all about designing a Trojan Horse to get behind our defenses and attack from within. Politico? MSNBC? The network whose poster boy coined the term “tea bagger”?

Are you kidding me?

Who in the tea party thought it was a good idea to let CNN ask questions on their behalf? Because as you’ll see here, CNN is making no secret out of where thing are headed tonight.

All the liberal media has done thus far in this election is shamelessly palace guard for Obama and all we saw at last week’s debate was the laying of traps for our side in a way that creates left-wing talking points. Case in point, that lovely moment orchestrated by Politico and MSNBC that had Governor Romney beating up Governor Perry over Social Security — which means Barack Obama won that debate because he got the best swing-state ad out of it.

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The actual story? Members of both parties are conflicted about whether to let the payroll tax cut expire in order to pay for Social Security benefits.

The way AP reported it?

News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes.

Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right?

Apparently not.

Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different “temporary” tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.

The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama.

Many NPR affiliates repeated the same line in its news bulletins yesterday, telling listeners that many of the same Republicans who wouldn’t let the Bush tax cuts expire are now eager to start the payroll tax again. They’ll tax the poor, but not the rich.

The problem? Neither the AP nor NPR presented a single quote from a Republican who explicitly advocates the return of the payroll tax. All the quotes from Republicans in the original AP story discuss the policy implications of the payroll tax, but do not actually express a position on whether it should stay suspended.

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Anyone who’s been paying attention for the last ten years is aware that the level of public acrimony has been increasing steadily. This applies to acrimony in politics and journalism, as well as to surging xenophobia in many countries around the world, involving Jews, Catholics, Americans, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, French, Mexicans, and so forth.

I’ve written about continually increasing acrimony many times on my web site, over the last eight years. The one time that I got a big chuckle out of all the political bickering occurred in 2007, when I wrote, “Today’s Schadenfreude: The Congressional pay raise is blocked.” If bickering prevents a Congressional pay raise, then it can’t be all bad.

Journalistic acrimony was the subject of CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday. Moderator Howard Kurtz began the program this way:

We [journalists] have been called everything from patsies to pinheads, blamed for bias, skewered for sensationalism, ripped for recklessness. The atmosphere is just plain ugly.

What accounts for these mean-spirited attacks on the media, and in many cases perpetuated by the media? Why are journalists being called not just wrong, but dishonest, racist, corrupt? …

It’s not that the criticism is not legitimate. The media did perform badly, by and large, in the sacking of Shirley Sherrod. Liberal journalists did say some awful things about conservatives on that off-the-record discussion group [the Journolist]. Conservative commentators did accuse the mainstream media of shilling for Obama by not getting exercised about that New Black Panther Party controversy. There are serious questions about what Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings did with General McChrystal.

But never in my professional lifetime has the media bashing been so deafening, so personal, and so much of it carried out by some pundits against other pundits.”

Here are quotes from several of the clips that Kurtz showed to illustrate the point: (more…)

Number three on our list almost violates the criteria that I set up in the first piece I wrote for this series. I said then that denizens of the Old Media that are too much a “cartoon of journalism” would not be included on my list. Yet despite my dismissal of such Old Media clowns, in the number three slot on the list you’ll find Paul Krugman of The New York Times.

Given today’s revelations about the JournoList, we now know Krugman either participated in a media conspiracy to get Obama elected or at least witnessed it first hand and did nothing to stop it.  Consider this fact merely the latest insight into a man who’s done more consistently left-biased journalism than nearly anyone in America.

Krugman is indeed quite a cartoon of modern liberalism. He is hidebound and far from a new or even a very free thinker. But he makes the list simply because he is not only a Nobel Prize winner but is one of the leading media figures in America today. So, despite that he is not an original thinker and is steeped in liberal orthodoxy, his prominence argues for his inclusion here.

And besides that he is a true liberal loon.

Krugman’s January 17 piece is a perfect example of the nonsense that he tries to pass off as political analysis. In his piece headlined “What Didn’t Happen,” Krugman seriously tried to claim that one of Barack Obama’s biggest failings was that he doesn’t blame Bush enough for his own failings.

Mr. Obama didn’t… shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations.

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Gotta love this: “Will you listen to me instead of babbling?” It’s former senator Alan Simpson, now on the Debt Commission, hosing down a lefty with a bracing does of the truth. Can a liberal handle the truth?

See for yourself:

Good thing it all didn’t turn out like this: (more…)

The widespread feeling among the national media is that Sen. Harry Reid has the candidate he wants in Sharron Angle—to Harry, I would say be careful what you wish for.

Here in Nevada, we know Harry… and books have been written on the damage he has done to our state and the nation in his 24 years in the Senate. Few know Sharron yet, and Democrats will work hard to define her as horribly as they can.

Let me say this, what Angle did in Nevada is nothing short of remarkable. I watched this race closely (having worked with one of her opponents in the race) and saw Angle in action. I know the good and the bad. There is no perfect candidate. Races are relative. All that matters is that you are better than your opponent. (more…)

Greatest, Lost, Boomer, X, Next … names our society has conjured to describe particular generations.  But what of the unborn future generations already burdened with the crushing financial tab of reckless government spending and redistribution of wealth?

Indulge me for suggesting a moniker for these unborn:  the Ponzi Generation.

Right now we are witnessing America’s ongoing conversion into a socialist society.  Depending on the vote tomorrow in Congress, America risks modeling the disastrous behavior of EU nations currently wallowing in economic and social bankruptcy. (more…)