Oops, I've always wondered about all of this as well... how many times can that same phrase be used until everyone knows that something is not right with those who should know better and use it at every turn? BH

Unexpectedly!

Scott Johnson, Powerline 

Michael Barone elaborates on Glenn Reynolds' theme: why is it that after two years, bad economic news is still "unexpected?"

As megablogger Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, has noted with amusement, the word "unexpectedly" or variants thereon keep cropping up in mainstream media stories about the economy.

"New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed," reported CNBC.com May 25.

"Personal consumption fell," Business Insider reported the same day, "when it was expected to rise."

"Durable goods declined 3.6 percent last month," Reuters reported May 25, "worse than economists' expectations."

"Previously owned home sales unexpectedly fall," headlined Bloomberg News May 19.

"U.S. home construction fell unexpectedly in April," wrote the Wall Street Journal May 18.

Those examples are all from the last two weeks. Reynolds has been linking to similar items since October 2009.

Barone lays part of the blame, at least, on the fact that legacy media are cheerleading for the Obama administration:

It's obviously going to be hard to achieve the unacknowledged goal of many mainstream journalists -- the president's re-election -- if the economic slump continues. So they characterize economic setbacks as unexpected, with the implication that there's still every reason to believe that, in Herbert Hoover's phrase, prosperity is just around the corner.

I think that is correct. Nowadays, agenda-driven journalism is about the only kind we have.

Obama and his policymakers told the country that we would recover from the deep recession by vastly increasing government spending and borrowing. We did that with the stimulus package, with the budget passed in 2009 back when congressional Democrats actually voted on budgets, and with the vast increases scheduled to come (despite the administration's gaming of the Congressional Budget Office scoring process) from Obamacare.

All of this has inspired something like a hiring strike among entrepreneurs and small-business owners. Employers aren't creating any more jobs than they were during the darkest days of the recession; unemployment has dropped slowly because they just aren't laying off as many employees as they did then.

Do you remember when Democrats accused Presidential candidate George W. Bush of "talking down the economy?" It was a silly charge then, and journalists' efforts to "talk up the economy" today are likely to be equally ineffective. Irrational exuberance is not as easy to generate as some journalists may have believed.

Another must read contributed by Mike Walker, USMC Colonel (retired)

Comments on a dubious e-mail

All,

You are familiar with all manner of bunk communicated via e-mail.  Received the same probably spurious e-mail from two friends today but felt it was worth sending on a few words in reply.  It dealt with Israel, the New York Times, and Islam.  In a nutshell, it posited that the problem facing Israel is Islam. 

Is Islam the primary ‘problem’ facing Israel?  I argue no.  Anti-Semitism is more accurate but still wanting and neither term explains the essential support of the political left in the West.  We need to look carefully at some of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict to get a better understanding.

During the first decades following the birth of the State of Israel the bordering regimes and organizations fighting to destroy Israel were overwhelmingly both secular socialists and Arab nationalists.  This, over time, made them attractive to the western left especially after the Cold War put Israel squarely in the western camp. 

That is the critical fact in understanding why so many in the left in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere are so vehemently anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian today. 

Starting in the 1970’s, the violent radical left (Rote Armee Faktion (RAF) in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, Japanese Red Army, etc) were all brothers and sisters in arms against Israel.  The RAF trained in the Middle East (to include Saddam's Iraq) under the sponsorship of Palestinian terrorist groups and they coordinated their attacks (recall the hijackings carried out by the Abu Nidal Organization designed to free RAF prisoners in German jails).  The Japanese Red Army was actually formed in Lebanon not Japan and its leader was also a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Their shared opinion on religion was that it was an archaic opiate of the masses à la Marx.  Islam played no role for the radical left, Arab or otherwise, yet the goal, the destruction of the State of Israel, remained unchanged from that of the 1940’s and 1950’s.

These radicals have long been romanticized as heroes by too many on the left both here and abroad.  That means that a pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli policy is de rigueur in those circles today.  If you are an authentic leftist then you must oppose the State of Israel and you must take up the Palestinian cause. There are, however, contradictory forces working away at the ranks in the left that make this issue more controversial and offers a hint to a different outcome in the future.

The main contradictory force came to life with the rise of the Islamic theocracy movement that began in Iran in 1979 under the Shi'a ayatollahs that sent shock waves throughout the Islamic world.  This gave rise to bin Laden as a leader in a Sunni counterrevolutionary movement and re-legitimized the Sunni theocracy philosophy preached by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It created an endless friction point for the far left that abhors the concept of God, religion, and the male-dominated culture associated with radical Islam.  This works to weaken the decades-old and unquestioning support of the Palestinian cause and rejection of the State of Israel by the left.

The second is the inescapable fact that there are millions of Israelis and millions of Palestinians at the same place.  Neither is going to go away and somehow both need a state.  That is the legitimate argument that strengthens the left in its anti-Israeli crusade yet causes a dilemma regarding the fate of the citizens of Israel except for the most extreme and genocidal of their brethren.

The final force at work is the old adage 'My enemy's enemy is my friend.'  Both the hard left in the West and the Islamist radicals hate the capitalist democratic system.  As it stands today, both are more than ready to hold their respective noses and grasp the hand of the other in common cause against the free-market West.  But that begs the question, what will happen if the common enemy is removed?  As Hobbes put it, life during that ensuing civil war will be nasty, brutish, and short.

It is true that Islam plays a greater role today than at any other time in the ranks of those bent on destroying Israel but as the historical record shows it has never been a necessary and sufficient condition to seek that destruction.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Mike Walker, Colonel USMC (retired) 

The death of UBL has led to a spate of misinformation regarding the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda.  Basing decisions on misinformation at this point would be a tragic and far-reaching mistake.

First, let us go over the history between these two organizations.  Al Qaeda was led, until this week, by UBL.  The Taliban is led by Mullah Omar.  The current alliance between the two began in earnest when Mullah Omar invited UBL and al Qaeda into Afghanistan from the Sudan within months of the Taliban taking control of Kabul in 1996. 

The leaders of the two movements were indivisibly joined in the tradition of that region, i.e. the feudal intermarriage between the two families to cement the alliance.  Most reliable open source reports cite the fact that a daughter from each family married into the other’s family.  They are joined together in blood on many levels.

In May 1998 al Qaeda declared war on the United States during a conference hosted by the Taliban in Afghanistan.  In 1999 al Qaeda began detailed planning and training for the 9/11 attacks from camps provided to them by the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

By 9/11 2001 al Qaeda was an official unit in the Taliban Army in Afghanistan and was designated as 055 Brigade.  In other words, the fighters in al Qaeda and the fighters in the Taliban were seamlessly integrated in common cause against us on the battlefield from day one. 

The Taliban alliance with al Qaeda is a strong today as it was on 9/11.

Second, we need to understand how important personal leadership is to movements like this.  When Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), was killed in 2006 the organization carried on normally for a few months.  But after the previously planned operations were completed AQI began to falter.  New and well-coordinated operations did not easily follow and the organization soon faded as a viable threat to Iraqi sovereignty.  

A fair portion of this collapse was due directly to the loss of the ‘great leader.’  It was not simply a case of a key billet that urgently needed to be filled as is the experience in the Western or Eastern military tradition where the army is bigger than any one person.  It was a hole that could never be filled.  In organizations like al Qaeda the leader often is the organization.  This is especially true when the heart and soul of the organization is so deeply based on faith in God as are the al Qaeda and Taliban movements. 

The inescapable question now facing every true believer in al Qaeda is why did God kill UBL?  That leads almost immediately to asking why has God forsaken us, why are we being punished, what did we do that was so wrong?   The death of UBL is not simply the loss of a key or even the key leader; it represents a shattering of the previously unchallenged belief that UBL was the righteous arm of God.  Clearly he was not. Great personal piety is no excuse for merciless and compassionless murder of innocents.

The death of UBL has caused a crisis of faith in the ranks that al Qaeda will probably never recover from.  A similar fate probably awaits the Taliban should Mullah Omar meet his just deserts.

Finally, let us go over what we do not know.  We do not know that UBL was only a figurehead or symbolic leader.  We do not know that he was an active leader running operations directly from his compound in Pakistan.  We will, however, know which assumption is true shortly. 

Open source reports claim that significant amounts information in the form of documents and electronic storage media were captured.  Reportedly, he had several "thumb drives" whose information was so sensitive that he carried them on his body at all times. 

If that reporting is largely true then that information will be exploited by the intelligence community and we be able to assess just how involved UBL was in al Qaeda operations.  Perhaps more importantly, we will find out how deeply UBL was or was not involved in operations conducted by the Taliban, Haqqani Network, and Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami Faction in Afghanistan. 

If he was an active member of the enemy’s Afghan operational leadership then that could have a profound effect on both the Taliban and Haqqani Network (or less likely, on Hekmatyar's) spring offensives now underway in Afghanistan as those plans may now be compromised.

My bet is that UBL was actively involved.  Too many intelligence and operational leaders underestimated UBL too many times in the past.  The assumption that he was a mere figurehead may become one more miscalculation on our part in understanding the threat we face on the battlefield.

Semper Fi,

Mike