Tag: Wall Street Journal

Brian Clegg has posted a review of Martin Bojowald’s new book about loop quantum gravity at the Wall Street Journal, but Mr. Clegg might have just as well spared himself the trouble of writing an intelligent summary of a very difficult book for Rupert Murdoch’s ultra-right-wing rag, because almost all the readers’ comments came from dim-witted creationists whose only interest in anything about science is denouncing Charles Darwin.

You cannot prove by any means that the central concept of one living God is untrue. Stop trying.

But why did reader Charles Sullins post this touching declaration on a thread about loop quantum gravity? God only knows, and it quickly got worse, as the pseudo-Christian spokesperson Keith Beveridge initiated a general attack on “secular Darwinism.”

By definition a world view should be balanced, practical, not too simple, not too complex, and match up fairly well with the world at large. Secular Darwinism fails on many of these accounts, most notably in my opinion in its self referential claim to truth in the face of its fundamental claim that there really is no truth, just molecules in motion.

And then it was God this and God that, for more than 100 comments on an article about loop quantum gravity!

But since you can read any number of articles and comments on those articles about almost any other subject except science in the WSJ without ever encountering the word “God” in any of them, I decided to ask Rupert Murdoch’s pseudo-Christian readership a couple of salient questions.

Sarah Palin has been bashing QE2, Ben Bernanke’s latest adventure in quantitative easing, and when the Wall Street Journal covered Sarah’s economic pronouncements like straight news, an angry mob of their relatively well-educated readers objected.

But most of their objections were personal, rather than substantial, and Andrew Polacek’s comment was typical.

Palin should stay out of things she doesn’t understand. Regardless, she is right that the Fed’s QE2 along with all the money printing in the world is not going to help us one bit.

Those Ivy-League bankers don’t want no moose-huntin’ hockey-mom to speak for them!

But most of the Journal’s readership hates Bernanke’s team at the Fed just as much as Sarah hates them, and some of their criticism of Bernanke is well-informed. For example, Thomas Dowling wrote that Bernanke’s main intention is “covering up the fact that he knew in 2006 and 2007 that banks like Citibank – and not just Citibank – were making intentionally bad loans.”

Reader Dowling isn’t really smart enough to figure that out for himself, and his comment is actually an unattributed quote from John Hussman, who has some claim to foresight about the collapsing credit bubble which continues to collapse. In 2003 he wrote…

“So the real question is this: why is anybody willing to hold this low interest rate paper if the borrowers issuing it are so vulnerable to default risk? That’s the secret. The borrowers don’t actually issue it directly. Instead, much of the worst credit risk in the U.S. financial system is actually swapped into instruments that end up being partially backed by the U.S. government.”

Now Bernanke is papering over cracks in the foundations of fundamentally unsound banks, and anybody (including Sarah Palin) who objects that QE2 won’t do much good for the rest of us is probably right, but what’s the Republican alternative, except…

More tax-cuts and deregulation!

For tea-baggers and most of the rest of the Republican Party, tax-cuts and deregulation are the magical twins which guarantee freedom and prosperity always and forever, and the only real problem with Sarah Palin as a spokes-person for Magical Republicanism is…

She’s stupid enough to believe their catechism, and usually recites it unadorned with the usual Republican pseudo-economics.

Karl Rove keeps whining about Palin’s lack of “gravitas,” but now that she’s learning some graver lingo, and chattering brightly about the Fed…

Poor old “Turd-Blossom” feels himself sliding into total irrelevance, along with so many other Bush-era confabulators, and good riddance!

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck won the last election, and it’s time for the rest of the GOP to sing their tune.

The Wall Street Journal is currently displaying “A Tea Party Manifesto” at the top of its website, and this thing includes a declaration of war on the Republican Party.

The tea party movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party, but a hostile takeover of it.  

After that relatively bold war-whoop, most of the rest of it is just about the sort of anti-government hate-speak that you might expect.

By definition, government is the means by which citizens are forced to do that which they would not do voluntarily. Like pay high taxes. Or redistribute tax dollars to bail out the broken, bloated pension systems of state government employees. Or purchase, by federal mandate, a government-defined health-insurance plan that is unaffordable, unnecessary or unwanted.

By definition! It couldn’t be more obvious! Only a fool would dispute these self-evident truths!