Francis Wilkinson (Me Neither) Is "Loopy"

Ugh.  More gibberish from the loons that Al Hunt has cobbled together into an editorial team over at Bloomberg News.  This time from a Francis Wilkinson (?) saying that we're going over the fiscal cliff, essentially because Michelle Bachmann is still in Congress.  Furthermore, he mocks economic growth as "magic" (in the bad sense, as in hocus-pocus).  Does this guy not realize that it is near universally accepted in the field of economics that growth, and usually growth alone, solves fiscal imbalances?  Doofus.  No more need be said.

Except this.  This is how this story's headline would appear on your Bloomberg terminal for those privileged enough to pay $2000 a month for one, "Loopy Republicans Will Send Us Over the Fiscal Cliff."  How's that for incisiveness?  Anyway, since we're operating on that plane, here's my retort:

"Loopy Democrats Will Bankrupt the Nation, Turn Us Into Greece."

UPDATE:  Last I checked Turbo Tax Timmy was a Democrat and courtesy of Wilkinson's boss, Al Hunt, we get word that Triple T advocates absolutely zero strictures, no limits whatsoever, on the amount of indebtedness that our government can rack up on our behalf.  If I didn't know any better, I'd think these characters have no intention to pay the debt back or are unaware that debts do indeed have to be paid back.  Both notions are downright "loopy".

Never a Crackpot With a D Next to Their Name...

Conservatives Open Their Hearts to Crackpots

Apr 24, 2014 2:43 PM EDT

By Francis Wilkinson         

Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher. Sarah Palin. George Zimmerman. "Bette in Spokane." Cliven Bundy. Every few months or so, conservatives elevate a new Everyman or Everywoman to embody their crusade.

I have a simple question for the likes of Francis Wilkinson. 

Are any of the following people what you would consider a crackpot? 

1) Alan Grayson, 2) Wendy Davis 3) Bradley Manning 4) Sandra Fluke 5) Howard Dean 6) Leland Yee 7) Marion Barry (whoops sorry, he's a crackhead) Al Franken 8) Rod Blagojevich

I'll stop there in the interests of time.  Any of them? 

Again, Lefties Mis-Diagnose Gun Ownership Roots

Our old pal Francis Wilkinson shows up again to spout his ragingly biased nonsense somewhere other than Bloomberg News.  And this time he's talking guns.  I only highlight him (he's not worth engaging really) to play up a point that I made somewhat recently.

 Byron York attributes Kentucky and West Virginia GOP wins to guns, coal and freedom.  Fine, I happen to like all of those things.  I think each GOP win had something to do with at least one of those...most likely freedom  (n.b. what liberals don't understand is that guns are a subset of freedom).

Wilkinson's is a classic of the genre, he gets wherefore we are tending but fails to examine why.

“Despite a long-standing decline in violent crime and recent political victories for gun regulation in Washington State and elsewhere, gun culture in the U.S. continues to grow more aggressive. If the recent Pew survey is correct, it may also be growing more popular.

(Note: FW might be up for a Fox Butterfield Award here, but that is someone else's bailiwick...and not to pass up a trademark of another marquis blogger...wait, more guns, less crime?  someone should write a book about that perhaps...)

Anyhow, my point is that liberals continue to fail to see guns as a subset of freedom.  It isn't actually "gun culture," sinisterly jammed upon us by the NRA, that is the root of Wilkinson's dread; it is "freedom culture" that has been on the rise recently - the tens of millions of founding era books that have been sold these last many years, to the political rise of the Tea Party, to the plunging credibility of Congress and loss of faith in government at all levels.  You see the manifestations of increasing fear and distrust of government and a reawakening of concerns over our level of freedom nearly everywhere you turn (the political careers of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are entirely owing to this phenomenon).  Gun ownership is just part and parcel of the overall trend, a more pronounced statement than, say, Lemonade Freedom Day, but emanating from the same concerns.  But liberals need the Big Lie and the Big Evil White-Guy Organization (so they can say "shut up"), thus they continue to misunderstand what is happening in the country.

Welcome to the Party, Powerline!

Some of the bigger and more prominent conservative blogs are noticing something that we've been noting and chronicling for some here at NBfPB - that Bloomberg News, under the auspices of Al Hunt, is a carnival of leftist hackery. Just search on "Hunt" or "Bloomberg News" (or even "unexpectedly") on this blog and you will get copious examples of the "journolist"-style tripe that emanates from that putative "news" source.

Here are the guys at Powerline expressing amazement at a typical instance:

I know Michael Bloomberg is a clown and an aspiring tyrant. I didn’t realize his news service had decided to compete with MSNBC for the title as the most ludicrous news organization on the planet (after Al Jazeera, of course). Check out this headline from yesterday:

House Republicans Set to Defy Obama Are Mostly White Men The core group of Republicans who are pushing the House toward a showdown with the White House over the debt ceiling and government spending is made up of 41 members — all white men except for two.

Except for two? I’m sure if Bloomberg tries hard enough, they’ll find those two are white African-Americans, just as George Zimmerman was a heretofore unknown category of “white Hispanic.” And then there’s this graph:

And about half of them, 19 of 41, have already received campaign donations this year from the political action committee of Wichita-based Koch Industries Inc., controlled by billionaire energy executives Charles Koch and David Koch, who spent millions trying to defeat Obama in 2012.

Seriously? Did a Bloomberg editor really sign off on this?

Welcome to the party Powerline!

BTW, this wasn't the only ridiculous "white people doing it = rank illegitimacy and loathesomeness" theme that Bloomberg News has foisted on us this week. Minor Bloomberg hack Francis Wilkinson picked up a few gun magazines (magazines as in printed publications), saw mostly white people, and declared guns that much more frightening.

Everybody's white. That's the conclusion from a survey of gun magazines I bought the other day. The survey, I admit, was not conducted in accord with the best research practices: I asked the guy at the subway kiosk for as many gun magazines as he could give me before the #4 train pulled in. He handed me three for $17.

All the magazines have ads for, well, guns, and loads of accessories (love the "Sneaky Pete" concealment holster). Naturally, they have stories on guns -- whether "intimidating, big-muzzle looks" or a "Tank-tough Recon Tactical with added strength and reliability for patrol." In addition, there are features on gun life, such as columns in Guns Magazine called "Campfire Tales" and "Odd Angry Shot."

There are pictures of guys with guns, gals with guns, animals with guns, ammo with guns and guns with guns. Curiously absent are pictures of black people with guns, brown people with guns or Asian people with guns. The good guys are white. The bad guys are white. In the Gunworld depicted in these pages, pretty much everyone is white.

 Um, OK.  I guess I could say the same thing about magazines on log cabin homes, woodworking, Irish poetry, quilting, or the wines of France.  So what?  And that about sums up the only logical response to much of the drivel that Al Hunt's minions spew at Bloomberg News's relatively new social commentary apparatus...so what.

Al Hunt's "Journo-list" Minions Soldier On

James Taranto deconstructs obscure Bloomberg columnist Francis Wilkinson's hatred.  Welcome to the party, James.