Pat Robertson, January 2008:

“he said oil would reach $150 a barrel - the price hit $100 on Wednesday - with the dollar continuing to lose value in 2008.”

Reality, October 2008:

“Crude has now fallen about 40% since surging to an all-time record $147.27 a barrel on July 11.”

So close, Pat! Despite the fact that your “prophecies” are for the most part relatively safe bets that any pundit/meteorologist could predict, they have once again failed to materialize. And that was back in October: Oil prices per barrel are less than a third of their high now, not to mention the dollar is doing great compared to both the battered Euro and the beleaguered Yen now.

Even more ironic is that it was his correct (if fairly safe; you could smell the bad economic news from a mile away) prophecy of a stock market crash that caused his oil prophecy to fail to materialize. Maybe he never got around to taking Economics at Washington and Lee. Either that or we were supposed to be in for Stagflation II: The Revenge of the Oil Shocks.

Of course Pat’s prophetic track record isn’t exactly the most illustrious, even putting this aside: no nuclear attack in 2007 (one of the more frighteningly specific ones), no hurricaines ravishing the coast in 2006 (on the opposite end of the safe spectrum, but nevertheless still wrong). But when the Lord takes to mocking your predictions like this, it’s probably a good sign that God is not telling you this stuff, Pat.

Surely by now every American is aware of the collapsed credit market and the imploding American auto industry. So what are the automakers telling us to quell our fears?
(WARNING: The sample of commercials is non-representative and based on two nights of watching an hour of TV.)

Honda was subtly and soothingly reassuring, with a hypnotically calm voice:
“Rest assured that now, as always, you can still get low APR financing.*”
*for well qualified buyers

One desperate-sounding Ford dealer accosts viewers with the fact that it has learned nothing from the credit crisis:
“Helloo-oo! Looking for a lease? Finance with Ford and everyone’s approved!“

One Mitsubishi dealer set in with an entire economic treatise:
“Think you can’t get credit? Well I want you to know that’s just not true! Yes our sales are down but that’s due to low consumer confidence and not lack of credit! With demand low and supply high now is the time to buy your new Mitsubishi! We have good relations with over 50 lending institutions who are ready and willing to extend you credit!”
Translation: He does not forgive [lack of credit for you], he does not forget [his econ 101 class]. His group has over 9000 lending institutions… AND THEY’RE ALL RAPING CONSUMERS

That annoying Suzuki dealer is still putting out commercials. My gosh I hope he goes bankrupt. Really, who buys Suzukis anyway?

One Nissan dealer rehashed Honda’s message in peppier form:
“Think you can’t get approved? Think again! Come on down to…”

Toyota’s annual Toyotathon commercials seem to exude an air of “Crisis? What crisis? Oh really? I hadn’t noticed”. They’re probably going to be first in line for the dance on the laurels of the Big 3 anyway.

And finally, I have yet to see any commercials from GM or Chrysler, or any of their affiliated brands. Probably because they have no advertising budgets anymore.

Lest you think I’m going to be giving the Democratic base a break while I bite the Republicans, this bit of fun has been going around various left-wing blogs. Liberal bloggers have collectively lambasted Obama for appearing on Fox News without a confrontation and undoing all their work to “delegitimize the network”.

Delegitimize the network. YA RLY.

Let’s look at this lofty goal. Why try to delegitimize a major news outlet? They cite a constant conservative bias in reporting and “repeatedly broadcasting some of the most specious of rumors about Obama”. According to the article, one DailyKos blogger even said “By going on Fox News, Obama made the right-wing press legitimate. Simply put, I cannot vote or support anyone who participates in this medium.”

So the issue is a partisan bias. Shall we look at the left-wing press then? As I recall, McCain’s most successful fundraising day to that point came the day after the New York Times broadcasted its own pretty specious rumor about him. The New York Times has not endorsed a Republican candidate since Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s - a pretty solid pattern. In fact, with the exception of radio, the Left has a far more pervasive grip on all sorts of media than does the Right. But when was the last time you heard of a group of conservatives conspiring together to delegitimize the New York Times?

Or is it the case that the Left has a right to media and the Right doesn’t? For all the bemoaning of the left about civil liberties lost under the Bush administration, this amounts to nothing less than grassroots speech control. Whether it comes from above or below, the effect is the same, and just as wrong. This stunt is patently ridiculous, blatantly hypocritical, and thankfully completely infeasible.

So to these bloggers: News is politics. The media is just as private as you and me and thus has just as much right to be partisan as you and me. Bias and partisanship are thus inevitable until the demand for unbiased news exceeds apathy or blindness to bias. But if you’re going to be part of that demand, if you’re going to criticize media bias, be fair and balanced yourself: take the plank first out of your own eyes.

More than logic, more than emotional appeal and more than fear of punishment, there’s nothing like ridicule to kill an idea. People fear looking stupid in many cases more than they fear consequences - after all, you could go down as a martyr. And where’s the fun in that for the status quo power? It looks like the RIAA has picked up on this concept with a new set of posters being put up in campus dorms claiming that copyright violations will make you look stupid (click on images for larger version).

And of course, if that doesn’t work, there’s always good old-fashioned scare tactics. Apparently the gallows await foolhardy filesharers.

Regarding the controversy over Don Imus’s recent comments about the Rutgers Womens basketball team being “nappy-headed hos”, I’d personally be much more offended at the fact that he called them hos than the fact that he called them nappy-headed. They are nappy headed after all; his comment wasn’t so much racist as just plain rude.

But, I guess it’s harder to stick someone with being rude than being racist.