In the Book of Jeremiah it is written: "Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not." (Jer 5:21). This line has been updated into modern English as the proverb, "There are none so blind as those who will not see."
I was reminded of these lines by a series of news stories over the last few days. Last night, I happened to flip by MSNBC a few times and each time they were coveraing a story about the Koch brothers. These are two billionaires who, according to MSNBC, are "funding" the tea parties. Aha! Nancy Pelosi was right when she called the Tea Parties "Astroturf". It was strange indeed to see the glee with which the stories were reported. It seemed as if those reporting the story actually believed that the tea parties were just a creation of the Koch brothers.
This morning, I turned on my computer to be greeted by an AP story "Primaries reveal Tea party Weaknesses". The story was how badly Joh McCain had damaged himself in easily winning the Arizona Republican primary. According to the story, because of tea party pressure, McCain had changed his views on immigration and was no longer a maverick who would buck his party's position. This had "cost him dearly" according to the article.
I also saw another article that screamed "US Stimulus boosted growth by up to 4.5%". Of course, in reading the article, I learned that the story refered to a study that said the stimulus boosted growth by somewhere between 1.7 and 4.5% on an annualized rate during the second quarter of this year when the stimulus impact was at its height. So it was actually a discussion of the stimulus causing additional growth in the economy of between 0.4% and 1.1% during the second quarter.
Each of these stories seem to be an example of the reporter denying reality. (I apologize for using the term reporter and MSNBC in the same thought, maybe they should be called "groupthink moderators.") It was wishful thinking by the left. The Koch brothers have donated funds to the Tea Parties. So? there is not one tea parties; there are a great many across the USA. Their strength lies in that fact. Would the groupthink moderators accept the idea that George Soros created the lefties as astroturf? I doubt it, but he gives more to the left than the Koch brothers gave to the tea parties. Indeed, this is not even a telling attack on the tea parties. Instead it seems to be a sigh of relief for the left that things really are not as bad for them as they seem. Blind by choice!
The story on McCain was the funniest of the lot. the contrast according to the reporter was between McCain's principled stand in 2006 and his current stand of "Build the danged fence". Obviously, the reporter must have missed the 2008 presidential election when McCain's line was "I heard you! We need to get control of the border first." That is the same position as today, but it predates the existence of the Tea Party. Why bother with the facts? Blind by choice!
The economic story is about the findings of the Congressional Budget Office. They used certain macroeconomic predictive models to ascertain the effect of the stimulus. For just under a trillion dollars in expenditures, we got growth during the best quarter of between 0.4% and 1.1%. The US GNP is 14.7 Trillion dollars currently. That means that we spent 5% of our GNP to create extra growth of between o.4% and 1.1%. Clearly, the effect was spread across other quarters as well, but this was the best one. Even if the total effect was three times as much as that during the quarter in question, we spent 5% to get between 1.2% and 3.3% increase. That is a losing proposition under any calculus. but the reporter chooses to ignore the bad news and proclaim it a success! Blind by choice!
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