Chinese Imports as a Percentage of the Total

A very interesting analysis courtesy of Matthew Yglesias: for all the worry about Chinese imports, the fact is that combined imports from Canada and Mexico are nearly 1 1/2 times as large. Yglesias wonders why China gets so much media coverage.

...I’d say following the news probably leads to a mistake overestimation of how important China is to the US economy. I’d say China accounts for much more than 20 percent of total trade-related media coverage, even though the PRC is just 18.5 percent of our imports and less than 17 percent of our total trade.

This is true, but it seems to me that it's the imbalance going the other way that is most worrisome, and likely accounts for much of the media's focus. While we maintain slight trade imbalances with Mexico and Canda, we, in fact, import about 4x as much from China as we export to China.

Juan Williams

An e-mail I sent to Andrew Sullivan's blog that pretty much sums up my feeling on the Juan Williams affair:

In discussions of the Juan Williams/NPR dust-up I think one of the big issues is being missed here. Williams' omnipresence on Fox was a concern for his employer for reasons that go well beyond Williams' expressed opinions in one show. Fox News is a propaganda outlet moreso than a proper news organization and one of its primary missions is to discredit objective reporting in order to tilt the country's political discussion to the right. It does this by propagating the myth that mainstream media organizations like CNN and NPR tilt to the left, whereas Fox is neutral in its coverage of the news. And one of the many ways that Fox spreads this distortion is by holding roundtable discussions featuring right-wing partisan political hacks on one side of the table (Wm. Kristal, Charles Krauthammer) and mainstream media journalists on the other. Rarely will you find the editor of the Weekly Standard debating the editor of the Nation on Fox. You are much more likely to see Kristol facing off against Wiliams or Cookie Roberts of NPR. And this very format produces two fundamentally dishonest, desired results for Fox: (1) the disingenuous right-wing propaganda of Kristol et al. is countered by milquetoast commentary from mainstream journalists who don't want to come off as partisans defending left-wing positions (2) the mainstream journalists and their primary employers nonetheless do come off as "liberally biased" because the physical and ideological context demands it: they have been set up to counter the assertions of right-wing partisans.

Mainstream media organizations like NPR fiercely protect their reputation for balance and objectivity. A couple of weeks ago NPR sent out a missive to all of its employees warning them against attending John Stewart and Stephen Colbert's upcoing rally on the mall. This contrasts noticeably with Fox News reporters who can be seen egging on crowds at Tea party rallies (the videos are all over YouTube).

So it's hardly surprising to me that NPR would take this opportunity to divorce itself of Williams. His presence on Fox does not project the image that the news organization wants to present to the public.

Pride (The Bad Kind)

Quote:

Rick Hoskins told KFVS that he puts the decorations up every year as a sign of "white pride."
"There's been a bunch of people that's stopped by since I put them up," explained Hoskins. "Said they want to shake my hand. They said they're glad to see a little white pride is still left in this country."

The decorations in question? A Halloween display featuring figures depicting a KKK member lynching a black man.

(Wia: Wonkette)

Privatize Social Security?

Here's an eye opening statement that should trouble anyone who's contemplating a privatized Social Security System:

The decline has been painful for the Japanese, with companies and individuals like Masato having lost the equivalent of trillions of dollars in the stock market, which is now just a quarter of its value in 1989, and in real estate, where the average price of a home is the same as it was in 1983.

Imagine having to rely for your retirement on investment vehicles that are now only 25% as valuable as they were 11 years ago.

The Tennets of Marxism

Here is a video of Christine O'Donnell stating that "raising taxes" and not eliminating estate taxes are "tennets of Marxism."

This would be comical if O'Donnell didn't actually believe it.

Pure Genius

Add this one to the list of world's worst ideas. Apparently someone at a school district in Pennsyilvania thought it would be a fine and dandy idea to remotely monitor students who had been lent laptops by activating the integrated webcam and sending pictures back to the school servers. Students and their parents were understandably upset, and sued the district. Now the Lower Merion School District has been ordered to pay students $610,000.00 for invading their privacy. And quite honestly, that's a slap on the wrist compared to what they deserved. That no one ended up in jail, or at the very least on probation, for this is really quite amazing to me. This is the sort of thing sex offender registries were made for.

(Via: Engadget)

Blowing out the cobwebs

OK, it's been almost a year since I stopped blogging on Patriot's Quill. In that time I've contributed a few pieces to Stinque, but very little here. I think it's time to maybe blow out the cobwebs and ramp this blog up. Let's see how it goes over the next few days.