The Rumors of My Liberal Bias Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

I appreciate all comments, positive or negative, that we get on our articles at the Daily Iowan. Abundant comments show that our readership is engaged with our content and that's exactly what I want. For the most part I don't respond to comments because there is either no need or it simply isn't worth my time. However, sometimes a commenter gets so ridiculous that I feel I barely have any choice but to call him or her out on it.

Today, avid Daily Iowan reader/basher "taco" has earned himself such a response. Though I didn't write today's editorial calling out McCain for his shameful campaign-suspension stunt, I absolutely agree with it. That's quite clear from what I've been posting here on the opinions blog lately.

But taco clearly feels otherwise. This morning he posted a lengthy response in the comments section. Taco's tirade is so full of misinformation that I'm giving it a full-on Fisking. Taco's words are indented and my response is interspersed between them.

Taco begins:

Daily Iowa [sic], your blind partisanship and lack of pride in yourselves as journalists never ceased [sic] to amaze me. Christopher Patton, in particular: You are a real piece of work.

It's quite ironic that taco accuses me of blind partisanship. Even if I'm guilty of being overly partisan, which I don't believe I am, taco's accusation itself is evidence that my personal political allegiances are not in fact transparent to all of my readers. This is because I am not a Democrat, have never been a Democrat, and in fact have never even voted for a Democrat--not a single one. I was registered as an independent from the age of 18 until about two weeks ago. Now I'm officially listed as a Libertarian. If a race I'm voting in is close, I vote for the lesser of the two mainstream evils. However, in decidedly lopsided contests, I always support the Libertarian candidate if one is running.

Regarding my pride in myself as a journalist, it varies depending on how I feel about my articles a few days after they run. I have my ups and downs and probably engage in excessive self-criticism more often than not. But I have no problem being called a piece of work. Some of my best friends endearingly refer to me as such on a regular basis.

I'm glad for you if you feel uninvested and comfortable with what's going on in Washington right now that you'd rather McCain and Obama not be there. (In spite of Bush's televised request Wednesday night.) Personally, I want them to be in Washington right now. I'm very anxious about what's happening right now, and I wish I could be in Washington myself.

Actually, I feel very much invested and exceedingly uncomfortable about what's going on in Washington now. In fact, that's how I generally feel about events in our federal capitol. But this idea that McCain and Obama's physical presence there will somehow fix things is entirely baseless. Even assuming that Bush's proposed bailout bill, which is in reality a disgusting example of the worst kind of corporate welfare, actually needs to be passed ASAP, neither McCain nor Obama is likely to cast a deciding vote on the issue. Of course, as their parties' presidential nominees, their positions on the financial crisis have the potential to be extremely influential in determining how other members of their parties vote, but they can make their views known just as easily from the campaign trail as from the Senate floor. This is, after all, the information age.

Also, I have a hard time imagining a better use for McCain and Obama's time than debating these very issues tonight. One of them is going to be president in a few months. Americans need to know what their respective approaches to the ongoing financial crisis will be. Dueling press releases and ads aren't enough. We need to see them engage each other on this matter.

I don't know if you heard, since to tell from his Google Reader that Patton is more interested in gossip about McCain and Palin than hard news right now. (The fatal flaw of "Indy Media", as I posted yesterday.)

I'm flattered that taco takes an interest in my reading habits, which I proudly make entirely transparent on my shared items site. The extent to which I open my intellectual life to public scrutiny is, in my opinion, evidence of how seriously I take my journalistic integrity.

Certainly, taco is well within his rights to disagree with any or all of the articles I share, but he really ought to at least glance at the site before making assertions about what happens to be on it on any given day. The five items from other sites I had shared most recently before taco wrote his diatribe were the following: the Stranger's Dan Savage pointing out that Palin's assertion that she is not homophobic because she has gay friends has yet to be confirmed in any way, the Stranger's Erica C. Barnett noting that Palin's recent interview with Catie Couric provides further evidence that Palin has no idea what she's talking about most of the time, Reason's Tim Cavanaugh offering a lengthy, well-reasoned critique of Paulson's bailout plan as running entirely counter to the free market principles that have made America the prosperous nation it is today, Climate Progres' Joseph Romm reporting that worldwide carbon emissions increased an alarming 3 percent in 2007 alone, and Google's Vint Cerf explaining how his company believes the Internet will evolve in the future. Yes, two of those five items were about Palin, but one of those consists primarily of a transcription of an interview she did with the mainstream media. The Reason article focuses on the exact subject taco says I'm ignoring and the posts by Romm and Cerf deal with other issues of great importance to our planet's future. None of it is petty gossip of the kind that often dominates the mainstream media--the most recent exploits of Paris Hilton, Brittney Spears, etc. None of the outlets I read waste their time with such trash.

Washington Mutual failed last night, in the midst of all this. The first savings and loan to shut down amid all the mortgage banks, potentially taking with it hundreds of thousands of people's savings. The Federal Reserve Board, our foremost authority on the nation's economy, is telling us we have a problem, and events are bearing that out. Barack Obama spent the majority of the caucus season, as well as most of the last two weeks, touring the country talking to his constituents about the sad state of the economy and how he's going to fix it all if only we elect him! Was he just posturing too, the dozens or hundreds of times he has talked about the financial crisis and hard-working Americans losing their homes??

First, I'd like to point out that I shared a blog post about Washington Mutual's failure within a few hours of the story breaking.

Second, the FDIC guarantees all bank accounts up to $100,000, so hundreds of thousands of people will not lose their savings.

Third, as someone who actually supports market economics, I don't agree that the Federal Reserve Board is the foremost authority on our nation's economy. If their central planners were really as wise as taco thinks they are, why didn't they take action to stop the housing bubble that is the root of all the problems we're having now from getting so overly inflated? The answer is simple: they didn't realize that there was a dangerous housing bubble. A bunch of people made really bad decisions and now they're paying the price. Yes, the Federal Reserve should act to prevent a full-scale run on all of America's banks because that could lead to a depression. But, no, they should not be allowed to step in and save institutions that made poor investment choices just for the sake of preventing those institutions and the people who invested in them from losing their shirts. Paulson's bailout plan amounts to leaving capitalists' gains private while socializing their losses. It's a textbook case of crony corporatism, the very worst form of socialism. The fact that so many Republicans support it is further evidence of their party's abandonment of the free market principles it used to trumpet. I have yet to hear a convincing argument that we're on the verge of the sort of mass financial panic that would actually lead to a depression. Paulson and Bernacke certainly haven't been offering one. But don't take my word for it--over 200 reputable economists have signed a letter opposing the Bush administration's current proposal. (Via Reason, one of those supposedly liberal and gossipy indy rags I read.)

Fourth, of course much of Obama's talk about economics is mere posturing. That's what politicians do. I seriously doubt I'll be particularly pleased with whatever harebrained scheme Obama and the rest of the Democrats end up supporting in place of Bush's proposal. But at least he's not doing his best to make predictions of a complete collapse of our financial system into self-fulling prophecies by running around screaming that the sky is falling. Instead, he's sitting back and calmly arguing that matters as important as this one be discussed and debated at length before any major decisions are made.

This is what I hate most about this country. You complain about the candidates not focusing on the issues as much as anyone, and when push comes to shove you forget the issues and fall in-line behind your candidate!!

If I were taco, I'd be more cautious about saying he hates anything about America. If his right-wing friends hear that kind of talk they might go a far as to dis-invite him from the College Republicans bar crawl. And what would Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter think? They might ban him from their fan clubs. The horror!

In any case, I'd rather our politicians weren't as eager as they are to muck around in matters they clearly don't understand. But if I have to choose between a guy who rambles nervously about how we have to do something, anything NOW NOW NOW or we might all wind up broke and homeless in a matter of days only a week after asserting that the fundamentals of the economy were strong and a guy who has been arguing cogently for months that there were serious imbalances in the economy but still stresses that we need to proceed cautiously with any attempt to correct those imbalances, I don't consider it to be a difficult decision. If I were hyper-partisan I'd vote for Bob Barr no matter what, but I recognize that he's not going to win. So I have to choose the lesser of the evils. And Obama's a lesser evil than McCain by an order of magnitude, not just regarding his stance on the bailout but also because his greater respect for multilateralism abroad and civil liberties at home.

So does all of this make Obama my candidate? I guess so. But I'm no kool-aid drinker. Accusing me of being one without any evidence only serves to suggest that it's taco, not me, who is the knee-jerk partisan hack.

Our economy is in history-making economic trouble. McCain and Obama have both been summoned to Washington by Bush do something before things get worse. Get over your stupid blind obsession with McCain and Palin, at least until congress [sic] has a chance to stabilize our country's economy, for crissakes!

Again, I'm not denying that the current financial crisis is serious, but that doesn't mean that just doing something, anything is going to help. Frankly, at this point, anyone who's not highly skeptical of the Bush administration's ability to effectively manage anything after the debacles in Iraq and New Orleans is sadly naive and credulous. This notion that we have no choice but to fork over $700 billion dollars of tax-payer money to Paulson, who worked at Goldman Sachs when it was making many of the bad investments that are now bringing down so many investment banks, so he can hand it over in shady, backroom, no-strings-attached deals to his buddies on Wall Street is nothing short of ludicrous.

Seriously, people, whatever happened to fiscal conservatism? The Republicans have become the big-spending, big-government boogeymen they've always accused the Democrats of being. No self-respecting free-market conservative could possibly support this insane proposal to socialize the costs in financial markets while leaving the benefits private. It's embracing the most egregious aspect of socialism without even getting the alleged benefits of a more robust welfare state in return. Again, don't take my word for it. Read Reason magazine's article "Hank Paulson's Countdown to Armageddon".

The brouhaha surrounding the financial crisis and the various government plans to fix it really has my head spinning. Up has become down and down has become up. People who call themselves conservatives are accusing me of being liberal because I'm skeptical of a government proposal to spend $700 billion in a reckless fashion. Vertigo is setting in. Someone, anyone, please wake me from this twisted fever dream.

Oh, the hell with it. It's Friday. Time to go drink. Maybe beer can wash away my frustration--or at least dilute it for a little while, allowing my distressed mind a few precious hours of peace.