Free at last, free at last

Posting at ScribblingMonk has been light to non-existent for a long time due to concerns over running afoul of the ethics policy at my now former employer. Obviously that's not a problem now. 

Half of Her Heart Is In Iraq

A new song and video from the Right Brothers. Another song of theirs is featured here. Their site is here.

An Iraqi Speaks Out

More of this, PLEASE!

The Cost of Minimum Wage Increase

Arizona is experiencing the results of a mandated increase in the minimum wage. Democrats in the U.S. Congress should pay attention. According to azcentral.com some high school students are learning an important lesson in government and economics.

Mark Messner, owner of Pepi's Pizza in south Phoenix, estimates he has employed more than 2,000 high school students since 1990. But he plans to lay off three teenage workers and decrease hours worked by others. Of his 25-person workforce, roughly 75 percent are in high school.

At War With Islam?

Frank Pastore says Islam is not the enemy and offers six reasons why in his Townhall.com column.

It's a tough sell, as callers to Pastore's talk show insisted.

Callers insisted I was wrong, repeating over and over again things like, "there is no such thing as moderate Islam, there are only moderate Muslims who don’t really understand Islam," that "real Islam, and therefore real Muslims, seek world domination, a 7th century caliphate under universal sharia law," and finally, that "a true Muslim believes all non-Muslims must either convert or die."

Both modern headlines and an honest look at the history of the seventh to 14th centuries are loud refutations Pastore's optimism. The Crusades, which were a defensive effort by Europeans, stopped the spread of Islam by conquest. Since that time, at least until the last few decades, Islam lived mostly at peace. The Five Pillars of Islam are generally uplifting and not very different from practices of devout Christians and Jews. Unfortunately a considerable and influential number of Muslims have radicalized those practices.

There are also outspoken moderate Muslims who repudiate the radical agenda and their voices need to be heard and supported.

Lives Given, Not Taken

Michelle Malkin offers a perspective on the deaths of U.S. soldiers and Marines in Iraq not usually found in the media's tragic tolls. Here's what was said of Marine Cpl. Jennifer M. Parcell 20, of Bel Air, Md., who died Wednesday in Anbar province.

"We do not believe that Jenny's life was taken. We believe that her life was given," Fender said. "She was a good kid. Anyone would love to have her as their daughter."

Also read the stories of Marine Sgt. Joshua J. Frazier, 24, from Virginia's Spotsylvania County and Seaman Manuel Ruiz, 21, from Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Speaking Truth

Mudville Gazette features an exchange Newsbusters posted between Tim Russert interviewing New York Times foreign correspondent John Burns. Not only does Burns correct Russert by testifying that American troops were greeted as liberators by Iraqis, he also closes the clip with the assertion that there was nothing that could have been done to prevent the chaos that erupted after liberation from Saddam and the previous decades of tyranny.

Burns also supported America's instincts in Iraq to some measure when he said:

“I think that the instincts that led to much that went wrong were good American instincts: the desire not to have too heavy of a footprint, the desire to empower Iraqis.”

Kudos to Burns for speaking what he believes to be the truth in spite of the media culture's incessant carping. He appears to be the real deal, a journalist with an open mind. Maybe it's because he actually goes to the front lines to see for himself.

The Media's Job

Bash the President. Correction: Bash Bush.

Newsbusters has it from the horses mouth, or Newsweek's other orifice if you like.

Evan Thomas: "Well, our job is to bash the president, that's what we do almost --"

Why this important role? Since I went to J-school at Syracuse in 1980 it's been taught that a role of the media is to be an adversary to the government. That adversary role seems to only apply when there's an R in the White House.

Thomas has a "reason" for the current case of the media's Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Thomas: "Mmmm -- I think when he rebuffed, I think when he just kissed off the Iraq Study Group, the Baker-Hamilton Commission, there was a sense then that he was decoupling himself from public opinion and Congress and the mainstream media, going his own way. At that moment he lost whatever support he had."

So, when the President does his job and ignores bad advice he put himself at odds with the mainstream media.

Oldest Newspaper Goes Digital Only

of Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper has stopped its print edition started in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina and exists in a digital edition only. The Guardian has the details.

I and many other newspaper employees watch this trend with great concern. I'm a very big fan of online news but also know the revenue from online newspapers is fer lower than the print editions and can't support the number of employees of a print edition.

Economic Sour Grapes

Any data analysis is useless unless it follows the old axiom requiring the need to compare "apples to apples." Citing raw dollars in the U.S. budget over the span of decades borders on useless. As the size of the U.S. and global economy grows a more valid comparison would be percent of GDP. It seems in coverage of the economy most mainstream media folks just wants to stick with sour grapes.

It was that way in 2004 when the press chose to castigate President Bush for a better econoly than it praised Bill Clinton for. Here's a bit of retrospection from David Frum at the American Enterprise Institute via Austin Bay.

In 1996, Bill Clinton ran for reelection as president. The U.S. economy was doing well at the time: unemployment down to 5.2%, inflation under control at 3%, and overall growth at 2.2%. And the press reported all this good news: According to the 2004 MRC study, 85% of all major economic stories on the economy in the summer of 1996 were positive.

Eight years later, George W. Bush was running for re-election as president. The U.S. economy in 2004 did much better than in 1996: The economy grew at a 3.9% pace, while unemployment and inflation roughly matched their 1996 levels (5.4% and 2.7% respectively). Yet this time, 77% of all major media economic coverage was negative. (For the full report, see www.mediaresearch.org/realitycheck/2004/fax2004
1020.asp.) And since the 2004 election, the barrage of bad news has continued: reports of housing bubbles, warnings of an imminent collapse in the U.S. dollar, and so on.

And fresh from today's Opinion Journal:

Our favorite agonist is Kent Conrad, the Senate Budget Committee Chairman, and he didn't disappoint. "The President's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality, and continues to move America in the wrong direction," said the Senator who was himself blocked from sneaking nearly $5 billion in "emergency" farm spending into a military construction bill in the final days of the last Congress. The North Dakotan needs to keep shouting disaster in a crowded political theater so he can justify his desire for a big tax increase.

The news Mr. Conrad won't broadcast is that over the past three years the federal deficit has shrunk by 58%. The Congressional Budget Office--not the White House--is estimating that the current year's deficit (for fiscal 2007) will fall to $172 billion. That's not bad given continuing Katrina relief spending, $30 billion for homeland security, and a couple hundred billion or so to fight the war on terror.

The White House is projecting that its new budget will eliminate the deficit by 2012 assuming Mr. Bush's tax cuts are extended after 2010. We don't put much stock in future budget forecasts because they depend on so many variables. But even CBO predicts the deficit should remain near or below 1% of GDP for the rest of the Bush Presidency. That's well below the 40-year average of 2.4% of GDP.

This also means that the federal debt burden will continue to fall. Alarmists point to the $1.4 trillion rise in total federal debt from 2003-2006, but that amount is dwarfed by the $14 trillion in new household wealth created over the same period. And for all the international scolding of an allegedly profligate America, U.S. federal debt as a share of GDP is falling again (see the top chart nearby). At 37% in 2006 and heading south, the U.S. figure compares to 52% in Germany, 43% in France, and 79% in Japan. Once again rising total "debt" is a scare word used to justify higher taxes.

But how does the media report our recent economy? Before last November's election it was all housing bubble, wage gap, etc., etc. Now that it's a Democrat congress the wind is changing again.

And yet, bizarrely, at this very moment of maximum worry, the press reports--so negative, for so long--are suddenly turning positive again. On Jan. 31, Associated Press reporter Andrew Taylor filed a story from Washington that opened cheerily: "The House passed a [US] $463.5-billion spending bill Wednesday that covers about one-sixth of the federal budget as Democrats cleared away the financial mess they inherited from Republicans."

No bias here. Move along. Move along.