Brilliant Writing, Solid Editing
Proving yet again the need for layers of editors, Maggie Carlson, formerly of Time Magazine, gives us an error-free account of Clintonomics and other assorted subjects in her latest Bloomberg article. Here’s a sample of Carlson’s writing excellence and Bloomberg’s editorial excellence:
When Bush got the job, the economy was humming, Saddam Hussein was boxed in, Iran was moderating, the stock market was at or near historic highs, and the ice cap wasn’t melting. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of billions of dollars had not been lost in a war against a country that did not attack us. The Constitution was still intact; 9/11 had not been invoked to justify torture, wiretapping and locking up whomever we pleased for however long it suited us.
And idiots like this look down their nose at bloggers? Let’s see if I can’t find an error or two…or three…or four.
When Bush got the job:
the economy was humming…
I hate telling Ms. Carlson this but the economy that hummed during most of the Clinton administration was contracting by March, 2000. That isn’t speculation. That’s fact. Here’s what Don Luskin wrote on the matter:
Here, however, are the facts:
- The unemployment rate bottomed at 3.8 percent in April 2000, and started deteriorating steadily from there (during the Clinton administration).
- The fed funds rate, the overnight interest rate administered by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, peaked at 6.5 percent in 2000, and had to be lowered in an emergency move on January 3, 2001, “in light of further weakening of sales and production” (during the Clinton administration).
Next up is this:
Saddam Hussein was boxed in…
Oh really? Then what’s the UN scandal all about? If Saddam was so boxed in, how could he grab a few BILLION DOLLARS for himself and buy off George Galloway, Kojo Annan, Benon Savon and literally thousands of others? If grabbing a few billion dollars while continuing to maintain the WMD programs is your idea of being boxed in, sign me up.
Iran was moderating…
Typical ostrich Democrat. Image was regarded as reality in the Clinton administration foreign policy.
The Constitution was still intact.
It still is, Ms. Carlson. In fact, with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito replacing Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor, a return to rulings actually based on the Constitution is actually more likely.
9/11 had not been invoked to justify torture, wiretapping and locking up whomever we pleased for however long it suited us.
Finally, Ms. Carlson gets something right; 9/11 hadn’t happened but AQ had been planning and training for it since 1993 without risk in Afghanistan.
As you’ll recall, the Taliban that ran Afghanistan weren’t much into human rights. Neither was Saddam, for that matter. I guess Ms. Carlson thinks that it’s better to have that type of ’stability’ than to have the ‘upheaval’ that we’re currently experiencing.
As for the ‘wiretapping’, I’m sure that Ms. Carlson is refering to the NSA’s intercepts, not wiretapping.
Other than those misprints (I’m sure they weren’t propaganda because we know that liberals are too into journalistic accuracy to lie.), the article is accurate.
Cross-post at LetFreedomRing
February 9th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
*Chuckles*
Was this an editorial? I love how the old media looks down on the little bloggers with such contempt and then write what they do. Keep up the good work!
February 9th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
“When Bush got the job [in 2000] . . . 9/11 had not been invoked to justify terror”
Is this lady dumb as a brick or what?
February 9th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Is this lady dumb as a brick or what?
I’d say yes but I don’t want to give bricks a bad reputation.
February 10th, 2006 at 8:46 am
Perhaps the article contained a sentence you missed “and then I woke up”.
February 10th, 2006 at 9:04 am
But unfortunately she didn’t and won’t. And we used to say a person like her is dumb as a box of rocks. In her case it’s disparaging to the box and the rocks, but so be it.
Fantasy obviously is alive and sick. Moonbats like her are the proof.
No wonder kids today, who have people like her to look up to, are in such sad shape in their social reality perceptions.
February 10th, 2006 at 10:45 am
Yet another vision of what the world was
Clinton world good
Bush world bad
She’s in desperate need of open eyes and Prozac
February 11th, 2006 at 6:39 am
Gary, this was a GREAT piece! I read it allowed to my husband and we both got a big kick out of it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
What hypocrisy! The “elite media” (elite in their own minds) are always downplaying the significance and competency of bloggers (only right wing bloggers… Daily Kos is the cat’s meow). They do this because we are changing the face of information distribution in America and they HATE it! It’s like Jesse Jackson saying last week at Coretta Scott’s funeral: “We can’t let them take her from us and reduce her to their trophy and not our freedom fighter.” This is what’s happening in the media. Conservatives are “taking it from them”, but because of their own disdain for true freedom of the press, they think we’re making a trophy of it. They want the monopoly. The fact is that we do it BETTER than them, grammar and all.
What a hilarious piece. I needed that. Thanks, Gary!