Flying Pig Moment...

Is the New York Times finally getting it?

Flying Pig Moment...

...wherein I agree with Barney Frank.

I never thought I'd write that sentence!

The subject is drug legalization.  He and I are on the same page. 

Scary, isn't it?

Flying Pig Moment...

Generally speaking, you can count on pablum from the “tame conservative” David Brooks in his commentary published by the progressive podium afforded by the New York Times.  But check out this lead:

There is a statue outside the Federal Trade Commission of a powerful, rambunctious horse being reined in by an extremely muscular man. This used to be a metaphor for liberalism. The horse was capitalism. The man was government, which was needed sometimes to restrain capitalism’s excesses.

Today, liberalism seems to have changed. Today, many progressives seem to believe that government is the horse, the source of growth, job creation and prosperity. Capitalism is just a feeding trough that government can use to fuel its expansion.

...and then go read the whole thing.  Definitely a flying pig moment!  I expect poor Mr. Brooks may be fired at any moment...

Changing Tunes...

The London Daily Mail has been a reliable podium for “warmists” (proponents of anthropogenic global warming) to shout their message to the unwashed masses.  Over the past ten years, it has published thousands of articles sounding the alarm over AGW.

Now it is changing its tune, and rather abruptly.

Probably the publication's managers have just realized that the more sensational story is now the failure of the AGW proponent's models, and the belated justification of of the skeptics.  In other words, stories about the failure of climate science will sell more newspapers than the AGW warnings. 

Still, it's nice to see the lamestream media coming around...

Flying Pig Moment, Legal Department...

The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, justifiably notorious for its progressive-leaning rulings, must have missed its meds: they've just ruled that agents at border crossings cannot search digital devices (such as phones, laptops, etc.) for no reason at all.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been asserting its right to do just that, leading many organizations to counsel that travelers not carry these devices with them.  DHS has also cited, numerous times, that the mere existence of an encrypted file is suspicious – a plainly absurd assertion in this day and age.

Someone please hide those meds!  This kind of Ninth Circuit I could learn to admire!

Flying Pigs Moment...

A famous report, the darling of the progressive obliviots, employee of a famously left-wing newspaper, writes an article declaring straight up that Obama is lying about the origins of sequestration.

Bob Woodward in the Washington Post.

What the hell is going on?

Flying Pig Moment: AGW Skeptics Might Be Right?

I was simply gobsmacked by this story out today about a new report from the National Research Council. The lead:

In the galactic scheme of things, the Sun is a remarkably constant star. While some stars exhibit dramatic pulsations, wildly yo-yoing in size and brightness, and sometimes even exploding, the luminosity of our own sun varies a measly 0.1% over the course of the 11-year solar cycle.

There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate. A new report issued by the National Research Council (NRC), "The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth's Climate," lays out some of the surprisingly complex ways that solar activity can make itself felt on our planet.

Well I'll be dipped in peanut butter! This is exactly what for years now many AGW skeptics have been urging climate scientists to examine – the causes for the clear correlation between solar irradiance and climate.  The scientists are presenting this as a new revelation (the better to get research dollars approved, I'm sure), but who cares?  Understanding the actual physics underlying climate is so much better than diddling models!

Flying Pig Moment...

Who'd a thunk it?  Playing on CBS (that well-known right-wing network), a segment about Mitt Romney that was completely positive.  Was this just an error (for which some poor CBS slob has been fired), or is the lamestream media starting to recognize that the non-Obama candidates might not actually be the devil incarnate?

The Day the Progressive Narrative Died?

It's too soon to declare that happy day, but here's a development that is at least quite interesting, and possibly an indicator of a sea change.  Lara Logan is a reporter for CBS News (a conventionally biased charter member of the lamestream media), and has evinced a decidedly Progressive viewpoint in the past.  Here, Logan is being reported on by Laura Washington of the Chicago Sun-Times – itself a cherished member of the lamestream media:

Logan stepped way out of the “objective,” journalistic role. The audience was riveted as she told of plowing through reams of documents, and interviewing John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a Taliban commander trained by al-Qaida. The Taliban and al-Qaida are teaming up and recruiting new terrorists to do us deadly harm, she reports.

She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”

Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.

As a journalist, I was queasy. Reporters should tell the story, not be the story. As an American, I was frightened.

Logan even called for retribution for the recent terrorist killings of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other officials. The event is a harbinger of our vulnerability, she said. Logan hopes that America will “exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil. That its ambassadors will not be murdered, and that the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.”

In the “good old days,” reporters did not advocate, crusade or call for revenge.

In these “new” days in a post-9/11 world, perhaps we need more reporters who are willing to break the rules.

What fascinates me the most about this story is that in two major media outlets, two reporters are drifting way off the Progressive narrative.  This is something not often seen.  Let's hope it's just the beginning...

The Pigs Are Flying!

Wolf Blitzer is the flying pig in this story.  Wolf's efforts at political reporting are noteworthy in the main only for their rigorous hewing to the progressive political narrative.  He must have skipped a day on his meds for this one, as he executes a very nice takedown of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic Party's National Chairman and acolyte of Nancy Pelosi.  In this segment, she wriggles very hard, trying to misportray Paul Ryan's proposed Medicare reform – and she appears to be very surprised that Wolf is not being the lapdog he usually is:


Wolf, you should try this more often.  After a few dozen such efforts, you might just be able to regain a little respect from your fellow citizens...

By the way, the comments on the YouTube site are quite funny.  The first one:

About effin' time a journalist kept the light on the cockroach.

A Politician Talking Sense?

Sounds like a flying pig moment, doesn't it?  But here's the transcript of a speech by a governor, sounding more like a level-headed businessman than a pandering, poll-driven politician.  As if that wasn't remarkable enough, this governor is from New Jersey!

Flying Pig Moment...

Steve Clemons, writing at the (notoriously, fatuously liberal) Puffington Host, said this:

If current trends continue, this once mesmerizing Camelot-ish operation will be be seen in the history books as the presidential administration that -- to distort slightly and inversely paraphrase Churchill -- never have so many talented people managed to achieve so little with so much.

And he's talking about the Obama administration!

Flying Pig Moment...

In the New York Times, aka “Obama Lickspittle Times”:

But the limits of rhetoric were on display last week when the president could not rescue two foundering candidates in governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia. Has Mr. Obama lost his oratorical touch? Is the magic finally beginning to fade? Does the White House rely too heavily on his skills on the stump to advance his priorities?

The editor who let that through probably ought to be thinking about an alternative career.  Or could it be that even the New York Times is waking up?

Nah...

Flying Pig Moment...

When Helen Thomas bludgeons Obama's press representative over the White House's tightly controlled “town hall” meeting, you know that somewhere pigs are flying...


What this all means, I don't know. All I know is that I certainly never expected, a mere six months into the Obama administration, to see the press doing anything other than kiss Obama's butt – especially Helen Thomas...