Wall Street Village Rolling Stone

With the exception of the editorial pages, I am so fed up with the Wall Street Journal. I'm also starting to believe that it doesn't matter what the news is anymore. As long as we understand first principles, we don't need some leftist's interpretation of the news. Those freaks are simply incapable of reporting an event without propagandizing. We can get everything we need to know from Newsmax, or the Drudge Report, or the foreign press, all of which can be accessed online, or we can listen to talk radio.

On the front page of this morning's Journal, we are treated to this title: "Meet Ardi, Your Newest Oldest Relative." A hairy ape is pictured. The caption reads, "MOVE OVER LUCY: A trove of fossils, a million years older than the heralded hominid, sheds a sharper light on human lineage." (Did Rupert Murdoch write this himself?) When you turn to the article, you see the caption, "Down from the Trees." And best of all, who has authored this article? Why, that embracer of global warming theories and all-around iconoclast, Robert Lee Hotz, with whom I have communicated a number of times. The article is just a jumble of contradictions and inconsistencies that demonstrates to me that these scientists (to say nothing of Mr. Hotz) have no idea what they are talking about. "After 15 years of rumors, researchers made public fossils from a 4.4 million-year-old human forbear they say reveals that our ancestors were more modern than scholars had assumed, widening the evolutionary gulf separating humankind from apes and chimpanzees." Huh? "Although the differences between humans, apes and chimps today are legion, we all shared a common ancestor six million years or so ago. These fossils suggest that the ancestor--still undiscovered--resembled a chimp much less than researchers have always believed." So we shared this ancestor, but they haven't discovered it. Doesn't that mean that this is only an unproven theory? And these scientists learned something that is different from what "researchers" have "always" believed. Does that not suggest that what they have "always believed" has been wrong, and that there have been flaws in their assumptions? "In fact, so many traits in modern chimps and apes are missing from these early hominids that researchers now question the notion that chimps and apes are a repository of primitive traits once shared by our ancestors." What? And this: "[T]he human hand today actually may be the more primitive appendage, [the researchers] said." "'They are not what we would have predicted,' said anthropologist Bernard Wood at George Washington University. Already, the discoveries have experts reworking the human pedigree. They undoubtedly will shape debates about human origins for years to come, as scholars argue whether these creatures should be counted among our most ancient direct ancestors or cataloged as an intriguing dead-end." Well, at least there's a debate here. And if "scientists" are having a "debate," that means that there is no consensus among scientists about human origins. Is that a fair statement?

Elsewhere on the front page, we have the typical contradictions, assuredly without any type of analysis: "Stocks tumbled to start the fourth quarter, with concerns about employment and earnings driving investors to safer harbors." But I thought the recession was over. Right after this blurb, the following: "An expansion of manufacturing activity, growth in consumer spending and improved home sales indicated the U.S. economy is on the mend. [But here comes the usual caveat:] But it remained to be seen if a recovery will continue in the absence of federal help." What!? In the absence of federal help? What do they think TARP, the budget blowout and the "stimulus" bill have been? With any more federal "help," there won't be an economy. And what proof can these fools offer that all this spending has caused the economic activity to which they refer? Are they saying that our economy can now function only if it has federal "help"?

And last but not least, we have this blurb: "Senate Democrats fought off Republican charges that their health bill will raise taxes on average Americans." This suggests that these Democrats have proven that they are correct. Is the Journal acting as communications director of the Democratic National Committee? When you get to the headline of the article, you read, "Democrats Reject GOP Challenge to Health Bill." The essential fact is that by a margin of 12-11, the Senate Finance Committee defeated a Republican amendment "that would block any tax or fee from hitting individuals who earn less than $200,000 a year and families earning less than $250,000." Hmmm; didn't they simply reject the promise Obama has made to all of us over and over and over? Don't they have confidence in the Messiah, or in their own bill?