Chris Wallace's Pravda TV interview with Mr. Bush has so, so many interesting bits, but Mr. Bush's remarks about "taxing the rich," perhaps not surprisingly, didn't get a lot of coverage: "most people in America understand," Mr. Bush said, "that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes and the middle class gets stuck." Once again, that's the nominal leader of the Executive Branch of the federal government telling America that he can't enforce the law. He can't even suggest to Congress that they pass laws that would close tax loopholes. Perhaps not coincidentally, Democrats have actually prioritized closing tax loopholes and strengthening tax collection efforts in Congress this term, and what's happened? The Republicans in Congress have blocked their efforts. That's not very law-and-order of them, but then their chief isn't very much a law-and-order guy, unless black drug dealers are involved.
Yet another writer complains about "Liberal Intolerance"! I was going to say "I never, ever get tired of being charged with 'intolerance' on the basis of the first five anecdotes the writer can remember," but Maggie Gallagher's piece, thankfully, contains very little anecdotal evidence -- plus, not so thankfully, only one piece of questionable scientific evidence. She does fudge the argument's boundaries in a way that would make Jonah Goldberg proud: we move from are we repressed in paragraph one to we feel repressed in paragraph three, and she doesn't drop the word "liberal" in until the very last paragraph. In between she tries to build the case that "(t)he people who feel the most politically oppressed in the United States are exactly the people liberals most like to hate." See? It's automatically the liberals' fault! Except that, well, it might not be -- what if you feel repressed because you've damaged your ability to process the shame you deserve? What if you feel repressed because people disagree with you and won't back down when you continue to argue with them? What if you feel repressed because you don't have every single thing you think you should have in life? In short, what if you feel repressed because you're a whiner?
Today's News Dissector post is a must-read primer on Our Worsening Economy, which is now going so badly that even Pravda TV's Business Channel can't paint a smiley-face on it. And at the bottom of the post is this note: "READERS: PLEASE ENCOURAGE THE OTHER BLOGGERS YOU READ TO START WRITING ABOUT THE ECONOMIC CRISIS." I haven't made a point of writing about it every day like Danny Schechter has, because (I've reasoned) it's obvious the economy's going into the tank, as any economy that depends on shell-game financial maneuvering (instead of, you know, making stuff and selling stuff) must go into the tank. But, frankly, repeating the bad news, in all its ugly glory, has a profound utility that I haven't appreciated enough. So, starting today, I'll do better.
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