Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

Over the past several years, I’ve engaged in numerous debates with my liberal friends, and I think I’ve just about learned most of the tricks they pull at this late stage of the game. Here’s my short list of the “Favorite Nine”: 1) Attack The Messenger: Instead of addressing the argument that has been made, people using this method attack the person making it instead. This is particularly easy for many on the left who believe that almost everyone on the right is a racist, sexist, homophobic, Fascist, or some other horrible label.  2) The Bait & Switch: When a claim is made and your opponent refutes it, don’t try to respond, simply change the subject.  3) The Blitzkrieg: The goal here is blast your opponent with so many accusations that they can’t possibly respond.  4 ) Enter The Strawman: Tremendously exaggerating your opponent’s position and then claiming to fight against a position they don’t hold is always a great way to dodge the issues 5) History Will...

You’ll find plenty of blame to go around on this subject, but a little study shows that there were four or five major factors that caused the last big recession, and neither a single president or a single party can be blamed. First, the expanded mandate of Fannie and Freddie - The housing collapse can be traced back the Clinton administration’s pressuring of Fannie and Freddie to encourage more home buying. The Community Reinvestment Act — in which banks were encouraged to lend to people who normally would not be worthy of obtaining home loans — was especially pernicious. The Act had been around for a long time prior to Clinton, but the Clinton Administration turned a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities. This actually started way back in the Carter administration. Second, The FED kept interest rates too low for too long . Keeping interest rates artificially low led predictably to excessive credit a...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body, set up at the request of member governments. It was first established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and later endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 43/53. Its mission: "to provide comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity , its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, and possible options for adapting to these consequences or mitigating the effects." Note carefully that the mission of the IPCC clearly states "climate change caused by human activity" as a foregone conclusion - before it even begins to do any scientific research! The chief characteristic which distinguishes a scientific method of i...

A graph titled 'Private Sector Job Creation' on the Obama-Biden campaign website… announces proudly that 4.4 million private sector jobs have been created over the past 28 months. But at the same point during the Reagan recovery, the economy had created 9.5 million new jobs.     Contrary to the Obama campaign's misleading claim of 4.4 million new jobs created, total jobs today are still half a million less than in January 2009 when Obama entered office.    The unemployment rate, which we were told would not exceed 8% if we enacted Mr. Obama's stimulus package…has never fallen below 8% during his presidency. The rate has averaged 9.2% since February 2009. After Bush's tax rate cuts were all fully implemented in 2003, the economy created 7.8 million new jobs over the next 4 years and the unemployment rate fell from over 6% to 4.4%. President Obama and his chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Alan Krueger, brag that private sector ...