In Netflix's Lilyhammer, the joke is on liberalism

Lilyhammer is Netflix's first original scripted series and it comes with an interesting political twist. The series is a comedy starring Steve Van Zandt (of The Sopranos) as an ex-New York mobster, Frank Tagliano, who is in the witness protection program and hiding out in Lillehammer, Norway. Most of the humor comes at the expense of Norway's dysfunctionally liberal government. To find a job, Frank has to go to a government bureaucrat who cannot find him a job but does assign him to unhelpful training classes. He wants to open a nightclub but the same bureaucrat tells him that the paperwork makes it nearly impossible. When his new girlfriend injures herself skating, Frank finds that the hospital emergency room admitting staff gets itself lost in its forms. When he does find a doctor, the doctor refuses to treat the injured woman because he is "on lunch break." Frank meets a local farmer who is losing livestock to a wolf but, because of zealously enforced animal rights laws, cannot shoot it. Using his skills as wiseguy, Frank solves each problem in turn.

I have found the series funny. It would, however, be easier to laugh if its depiction of Norway's socialist bureaucracy did not so closely resemble Obama's vision for the future of America.

If you are an HBO subscriber and don't like your monthly fees supporting Bill Maher and other left-wing programming, Prof. Reynolds suggests switching to Amazon or Netflix. Lilyhammer is one more reason to make the switch.

This review is based on the first two episodes. In North America, Lilyhammer is available exclusively through Netflix. In Norway, it is broadcast on NRK. In Britain, it will be available on BBC4.

Don't understand what was said? Then it must be racist!

The online newsmagazine Gawker reports that conservatives are racists:

The reporter writes that he "can't understand the lyrics" but that doesn't stop him from hurling accusations of racism.

The video in questions was done by comedian Steven Crowder working with Chris Loesch. Steven Crowder, in revolutionary garb, points to his pants as he uses the word "knickers":

As the election approaches this fall, we can expect the MSM to produce an unending stream of such baseless accusations of racism.

Hat tip: Instapundit and BigJournalism.

Media hypocrite of the day: Brian Williams

Hat tip: Instapundit.

4.5 Billion to die this year, or maybe not

In 2007, The Canadian, which bills itself as a "socially progressive and cross-cultural national newspaper," warned of a possible global warming disaster to occur by 2012:Since the world population in 2007 was only 6.6 billion, the claim that 4.5 billion of us would die by 2012 is non-trivial.

In science, hypotheses ("theories") are tested against experiment. Hypotheses which fail to agree with experiment are to be discarded.

Newspaper reporters operate by a different standard: if something is scary and attention grabbing, then it should be printed before anyone has a chance to refute it. In John Stokes case, he has been promoted to National Co-Managing Editor at The Canadian.

Hat tip: WattsUpWithThat.

PREVIOUSLY on global warming:
•More ethics problems among Global Warming "scientists"
•Global warmists propose mass killing of animals
•Democrat: Global Warming will destroy Washington DC by the year 2000
•Earth Day: environmentalism and the test of science
•The collapse of the UN IPCC's credibility
•Yet another UN IPCC Glacier-gate scandal
•UN IPCC claims of melting Himalayan glaciers exposed as fraud
•Environmentalists at war with environmentalists over green energy
•EPA's new global warming rules, illustrated
•California global warming rules backfire
• France's carbon tax ruled unconstitutional
•UN IPCC responds to Climategate with wild accusations
•Surprise: EU's carbon trading riddled with fraud
•Global warming and the test of science, III
•Global warming and the test of science, II
•Global warming and the test of science, I
•141 scientists wrote letter to UN challenging global warming hysteria.
•Ma'am Sen. Boxer for and against climate whistleblowers.
•BBC propaganda on global warming
•Climate alarmist Phil Jones to step down pending review
•Why Penn State's investigation of its global warmist will go nowhere
•Former boss calls James Hansen call an embarrassment to NASA
•NASA's global warming scientists caught hyping false data
•The resemblance of global warming true-believers to Islamists
•James Hansen "muzzled" by Bush White House?

The "unbiased" news media, illustrated

Hat tip: LegalInsurrection, @MichelleMalkin, Jim Treacher

Related news, as summarized by GatewayPundit, on the Occupy movement:
Dead man in Salt Lake City…
Tuberculosis in Atlanta…
‘Zuccotti Lung’ on Wall Street…
Suicide in Vermont…
Murder in Oakland…
Occupy death toll mounts

It's a paradox, education edition

The Sacramento Bee reports on a "paradox": student test scores have increased after several years of public school budget cuts:

They write:

It's a trend that would seem to defy conventional wisdom: As public school spending has declined in California in recent years, student achievement test scores have gone up.

Statewide, school districts spent 6 percent less from 2008 to 2010, but the percentage of second- to seventh-grade students scoring proficient on the state's standardized English test rose from 48 percent to 55 percent.

In the Sacramento region, the same held true. School districts in the four-county region cut annual spending by about $120 million, or 4.4 percent, from 2008 to 2010, hampered by the lousy economy and state funding cuts. That translates to a 1 percent cut per student. But during that same period, their state achievement test scores improved – a lot.

It is a "paradox" only if you think that government schools spend their money wisely on things that actually affect student learning.

PREVIOUSLY on the paradoxes that vex liberal minds:
•It's a paradox: Congress unpopular "despite record"
•"Ironically," conservatives and their children are happier
•It's a paradox!: Crime down when criminals are in jail.
•Paradox: crime is down (again)
•Paradox: few fraudulent voters if voters are required to have IDs

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of education:
•Study: teacher's unions are bad for education
•Study: sexist women teachers stunt learning of girl students
•Black students, harassed for "acting white," get $150,000
•Teaching self-esteem backfires
•Education in Korea vs. the US: does "self-esteem" backfire?
•LA pays teachers not to teach
•What teachers learn in teacher's ed.
•Obama promises to throw money at schools
•How to get a job teaching in California even if you are illiterate

Liberals and their vivid imagination

Speaking on David Letterman, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow explains how Fox News is "fake" (interesting bit begins at 0:55 in the video):

Transcript:

Maddow: The problem is that is reasonable to assert about Fox is that they make up things out of whole cloth and then make a big deal out them. For example, they said the new black panther party decided the election for Barack Obama. They ran dozens and dozens and dozens of stories about how the New Black Panther Party, which is one guy who braided his beard in Philadelphia and who didn't have an organization yelling on a street corner, I mean, they said, they represented that story as if that is the guy who decided the election. That is fake.

If all of that sounds wrong-headed, it is because it is wrong-headed. Even the normally left-wing Politifact couldn't find a single case where Fox asserted that the New Black Panther Party decided the election, let alone "dozens and dozens and dozens" of such stories. Further, not how she also cannot summarize the story with even a shred of accuracy: no one cared about a "braided beard" and neither is the New Black Panther Party just "one guy."

Any channel that broadcasts news 24/7 is going to make some actual mistakes but Maddow cannot find one. Apparently, when hate-mongering on the enemy, facts are irrelevant.

Notice that, when Maddow claims "dozens and dozens and dozens" of such stories, she is making it up out of whole cloth. Her claim that Fox makes things up out of whole cloth is psychological projection.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of psychological projection:
•Homophobia and liberals
•More psychological projection: Democrats says those racists call them names
•The masters of astroturf claim that tea parties are astroturf
•Air America projects hate
•Air America fantasizes a right-wing hate machine
•Syria imagines that Israel does not want peace
•The New Republic says lying is 2nd nature to Republicans
•Rahm Emanuel caught projecting his strategy onto Republicans
•Alec Baldwin projects his hate onto Republicans
•Progessives and prejudice and hate
•HuffPost blogger projects enviro-hypocrisy
•Dems accuse other Dems of acting like Republicans

If only hate could change false to true

From news magazine salon.com's corrections page (via instapundit):

The Jan. 25 article "Is the President Panicking" originally stated that Fox News led the charge against Bill Clinton in the '94 midterm elections. Fox News did not come into being until 1996. The story has been corrected. [Correction made 1/27/10]

Facts, spin: when attacking an enemy, what's the difference?

On the other hand, it is to Salon's credit that they corrected this error within two days. Contrast that with the New York Times which waited 49 and half years to correct (PDF) an editorial claiming that space flight was impossible and ridiculing Robert H. Goddard for believing otherwise. Prof. Goddard (1882-1945) is regarded as the father of modern rocketry and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, was named after him.

The New York Times, of course, has learned its lesson. Instead of opining on the subtle and complex science of rocketry, they now write about global warming.

PREVIOUSLY on the Democrat/Media war on Fox News:
•White House war on Fox News continues
•Obama vs. Fox; Also MediaMatters caught again
•Obama's war on Fox, updated
•Obama's war on Fox
•Fox News and Obama's Nixonesque enemies list
•Obama White House has time to demonize Fox but not to work on Afghanistan
•Rep. Sanchez (D-CA) proposes making dissent illegal

PREVIOUSLY on news bias:
•MRC's Best Notable Quotables of 2009
•Unbiased news report of the day
•University study finds Fox more fair and balanced than ABC/CBS/NBC
•News media credibility at lowest level since polling began
•The MSM admits that it is a joke
•Faking the news
•The unbiased left
•CNN criticizes Obama not
•Common sense vs the MSM
•MSM Obama worship: "it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric..."
•MSM glorify Stalin as "calm" "steady" "buddha"
•What hang-up causes news media to imagine a female political figure as a dominatrix in some sexual fantasy?
•Media's bizarre hero worship
•AP's hero worship of Hillary
•Media misses the story
•All the bias that fits
•Name that party
•17% of US voters claim newsmedia unbiased
•If a story makes a Dem look bad, MSM find an excuse not to cover it
•Hillary surprised when MSM changes sides on her
•"White anger fueling health care debate"
•MediaMatters caught dishonestly editing Glenn Beck
•Unbiased MSM gets its "truth" from Media Matters for America

Where has the laughter gone?

Democrats claim to have a sense of humor and don't all those Dan Quayle jokes prove it? Mona Charen asks: why aren't they laughing at MA Senate candidate Martha (AKA Marsha) Coakley?:

Oh, how different the world would look if Martha Coakley were a Republican! As it is, she gets the sort of gentle rebukes the press reserves for Democrats. Her campaign was too "lackadaisical," we are told. She was "overconfident" and too "buttoned down." Reading and watching the MSM, you wouldn't know that Coakley is a walking minefield. There is now -- and there always has been -- a completely different set of rules for Republicans.

If a Republican candidate in such a high-profile contest put out campaign literature that misspelled the name of her state, it would be worth, let's see, mentions on every Sunday gabfest and two, maybe three, jokes on the late-night shows. Dan Quayle's misspelling is the stuff of legend. Coakley's? Not so much.

When Coakley was challenged in an October debate about her lack of foreign policy credentials, she parried: "I have a sister who lives overseas, and she's been in England and now lives in the Middle East." Hmm. Just a few months ago, Sarah Palin said something similar, and the smart set has not finished laughing yet. Palin didn't say "I can see Russia from my house!" But the Tina Fey parody has replaced the less amusing truth. "Saturday Night Live" can be brilliant. But if Palin's comment was worthy of such mockery, wasn't Coakley's equally so? Just asking.

The woman who would like to sit in the U.S. Senate announced last week that there are no longer any terrorists in Afghanistan. Not since Joe Biden boasted (during the 2008 vice presidential debate) that he had chased Hezbollah from Lebanon have we heard such a loony claim. Where are the titters?

This kind of media hypocrisy is so common that it is easy to forget that we should still be outraged at it.

For more on the MA Senate race, see Michelle Malkin here and here. For the latest polls, see here and here.

PREVIOUSLY, on liberal hypocrisy:
•The UN's global warming advocates vs. their own carbon footprint
•Eco-hypocrite of the day: supermodel Giselle
•The hypocrisy of ACORN and others on minimum wage
•It is outrageous to make Hitler analogies, or not
•Broadcast networks discover a new responsibility to air presidential speeches.
•Saddam's connections to terror change depending on who is president.
•Dems advocate 10-year effort in Iraq until they don't
•The ever-increasing energy use of Al Gore's mansion
•With five private jets, Travolta still lectures on global warming.
•Dems supported enhanced interrogation.
•UN humanitarian hypocrisy
•Poster child hypocrisy
•Edwards' hypocrisy toward the poor
•Liberals bash gays

MSNBC host advocates vote fraud

MSNBC host and radio talker Ed Schultz explains why he supports vote fraud in the upcoming Senate race in Massachusetts:

The transcript:

SCHULTZ: I tell you what, if I lived in Massachusetts I'd try to vote 10 times. I don't know if they'd let me or not, but I'd try to. Yeah, that's right. I'd cheat to keep these bastards out. I would. 'Cause that's exactly what they are. [Emph. added]

(hat tip: NewsBusters.) If one believes Wikipedia, Ed Schultz has the largest audience ("highest ranking") of any liberal talk show.

Michelle Malkin has much more on the Massachusetts Senate race: see, for example, here, here, here, or here. Also Brian Maloney is following it closely.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of Democrats and vote fraud:
•Dems and vote fraud in New York State.
•How to buy a vote
•NJ Dems demand equal rights for fraudulent voters
•Nevada accuses ACORN of 39 felonies
•Three Obama supporters plead guilty
•Another ex-ACORN worker pleads guilty
•An insider's guide to vote fraud
•Vote fraud update
•Absentee ballot and dishonest elections
•Fraud and Deceit in 2004

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of Democrats being uncomfortable with democracy:
•Democrats want to stripe union workers of right to secret ballots
•Libs distrust voters; want smoke-filled rooms or monarchs
•Dems oppose democratic allies
Dartmouth eliminates alumni trustee elections

MRC's Best Notable Quotables of 2009

The "unbiased" news media is always good for a laugh and Fox's morning show reviews some of the highlights from the Media Research Center's 2009 awards:

Hat tip: GatewayPundit

PBS says its attack on Fox News was wrong

PBS used its Government-subsidized Sesame Street children's show to attack Fox News as "trashy."  PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler says:

Broadcasters can tell parents whatever they think of Fox or any other network, but you shouldn’t do it through the kids.

The fringe media have no fact checkers

Reuters, CNBC, the NY Times, and Washington Post all fell for a left-wing hoax: the left-wing group, the Yes Men, issued a fake press release that pretended to be from the US Chamber of Commerce announcing an unlikely reversal of the Chamber's policy on cap and tax. No one at any of those "prestigious" news organizations thought to check the facts before running the story. The hoax was exposed when a real Chamber of Commerce official disrupted the fakers at a pretend "press conference."

In related news, drops in circulation are forcing the New York Times to lay off 8% of its newsroom staff. (The Wall Street Journal is now the largest newspaper by circulation, indicating that there are some benefits to being a paper with some measure of editorial balance.)

Where bin Laden gets his anti-Western views:

The BBC is Osama bin Laden's "favorite station."

Hat tip: Ghost of a Flea

How the media learn their trade

Jim Lavery explains the media's relationship with Pres. Obama:

NPR's Frank James says minorities support child prostitution?

From NPR.org:

It's also important to keep in mind that ACORN's workers are coming from the same low-income neighborhoods the organization serves, with all that entails -- poor schools, high crime and the sorts of social problems that have been documented for decades.

So the flaws conservatives are pointing out about ACORN are not so much problems associated with that organization per se but more about the problems of being poor and minority in urban America.

The "poor," if desperate enough, might support extreme methods for earning money. But, what does child prostitution and international sex slavery have to do with "being ... minority in urban America"?

Hat tip: BotW

PREVIOUSLY on Democrats and racism:
Overt Racism in Tennessee
San Franciscans discriminate against blacks
"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line"
"NAACP defends racism."
Stanford finds Democrats are racist
Obama nominates a racist
Leaders acknowledge Democrat base is racist
"That's just how white folks will do you." ---Barack Obama
Dem says Dem primary voters are racist
Dems accuse Bill and Hillary of racism

Michelle Malkin has more on ACORN corruption.

The MSM admits that it is a joke

The New York Observer reports that, with Newsweek's June 8 issue, "Comedy Central funnyman Stephen Colbert will be Newsweek’s guest editor." Peter Wehner suggests a new slogan: "Newsweek: Now With More Truthiness."

PREVIOUSLY, on the merging of the MSM with left-wing commentators,
Maureen Dowd was caught plagiarizing Josh Marshall
Unbiased MSM gets its "truth" from Media Matters for America

CNN criticizes Obama not

With Pres. Obama in office and not facing an election for years, the "unbiased" media feels the situation is safe enough to criticize him. Their criticisms, however, remain ever so tame. In CNN's "top ten faux pas" list (they cannot bring themselves to call a gaffe list), there are such insignificant, irrelevant, and forgettable actions as Obama's hitting his head entering a helicopter mixed in with lots of rhetoric about Republicans being worse. Omri Ceren compares what CNN omits with what it includes:

Nothing about the tragicomic Gordon Brown DVD fiasco or on getting the Queen an iPod, both of which kept getting better and better as the DVDs turned out to be the wrong format and the iPod gift was megalomanical even by this President's standards.

Nothing about insisting to Austrians that they speak a language that exists only in Obama's mind. Nothing about visibly demonstrating to Iraqi troops that he has no idea what the different units in Iraq are. They might even have included the Freeman nomination and the Durban II trainwreck, though I can see how those were less "amateur hour gaffes" and more "shots across the neoconservative bow."

Oh - and then there was that $328,000 Manhattan photo op that the White House signed off on after being told it "might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay?" It happened a day before this list came out yet somehow never came up.

But tender clips of the First Daughters? Check. A montage of the the White House puppy? Check. 10 seconds of shamelessly goofing on Bush before delivering the list in a skeptical "these are what count as gaffes now" tone? Checkity ... check. Because even when The One deigns to mingle among mere mortals, his human bumbling merely makes his divinity more pronounced. More like an allegorical Bacchus than a Christ figure, but still thoroughly worthy of worship.

Obama: too "low key" for satire?

Dan Schnur at the San Francisco Chronicle wonders why Hollywood is not making fun of Pres. Obama:

Republicans argue that this is just another example of a liberal entertainment industry unwilling to make fun of one their own. Democrats counter by citing the scope of the challenges the real president faces and suggesting that it would be inappropriate to lampoon him during such difficult times. But the real answer might have less to do with ideology than personality. For better or worse, Barack Obama is a fairly low-key individual, without the over-the-top behavioral characteristics that lend themselves to satire.

Really? What about Obama's claim that the US invented the automobile? What about his inability to find nominees who are not tax cheats? What about burning 9,000 gallons of gas to demonstrate his concern for the environment? What about his vaunted "$100 million" budget "cuts." What about his reliance on teleprompters? At the Chronicle, they don't find any of that suitable for satire?

Left-wing movies: another one bites the dust

The hagiographic movie about left-wing thug Che has bombed at the box office:

The two part movie "Che" has turned out to be one of the worst box office bombs in film history. How bad was it? Well, since opening last December, this movie has earned a grand total of just $1,432,057 as of the weekend of April 10-12.

Since the budget for this film was $40 million and at least half of those revenues went to the theaters screening this bomb, that means the total loss for 'Che' was approximately the entire budget cost.

This continues a pattern:

Remember Oliver Stone's "W?" If you have forgotten it even existed, that is because it died a quick death at the box office immediately upon release last October. [It] suffered exactly the same fate as all the other leftwing movies produced in the past few years by Hollywood. Redacted?" DEAD! "Rendition?" DEAD! "Syriana?" DEAD! "Stop Loss?" DEAD!

The lousy box office happens despite glowing reviews. A Star Tribune movie review, for example, was headlined "'Che' as complex and compelling as the man" and concludes with "the most engaging film experiences you are likely to have this year." Audiences had to discover otherwise on their own.

At the New York Times, Frank Rich tries his hand at explaining the problem (hat tip: Chris Jones) :

It would take another column to list all the movies and TV shows about Iraq that have gone belly up at the box office or in Nielsen ratings in the nearly four years since the war’s only breakout commercial success, “Fahrenheit 9/11.” They die regardless of their quality or stand on the war, whether they star Tommy Lee Jones (“In the Valley of Elah”) or Meryl Streep (“Lions for Lambs”) or are produced by Steven Bochco (the FX series “Over There”) or are marketed like Abercrombie & Fitch apparel to the MTV young (“Stop-Loss”). ....

Most Americans don’t want to hear, see or feel anything about Iraq, whether they support the war or oppose it. [emph. added]

Notice how Mr. Rich avoids the obvious conclusion by pretending that the movies were diverse in their "stand on the war." They weren't: they were all anti-US.

Economists have found that not all businesses have the same risk-adjusted expected returns. In some businesses, like "socially-concious" mutual funds, the investors accept typically lower returns to gain psychic benefits. Those who invest in left-wings movies obviously are not doing it for the money: they are also looking for psychic benefits, maybe in the form of prestige at Hollywood dinner parties.

In any event, selecting a movie is more difficult: when a movie gets top reviews, that generally means the movie is either good or left-wing. The reader is left to guess which.

UPDATE Oct. 2009: Michael Moore's latest, Capitalism, tanks at the box office.