An Afternoon with the Great Elderski (Part 3)

Intellectual Firepower: Who has it?

Larry Elder takes a break from the Treyvon Martin issue and starts talking about who the smart people are in politics and political commentary.  Larry argues that most of the intellect is on the Right with people like Paul Ryan, Charles Krauthammer, Dennis Prager, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Ann Coulter, and Laura Ingraham.  (Interesting to note that Larry unwittingly categorized this list into white males, black males, and white females)

Who's on the Left? (Crickets, then audience laughter)

Larry argues it wasn't always this way.  He points out Michael Kinsley who was once on Crossfire with Pat Buchanan.  He also mentions blogger Andrew Sullivan.

Then he brings up Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman and comments "That's the best you guys have?"

The case for a bigger government with a broad interpretation of the commerce clause in the Constitution is hard to make.  How do you intellectually argue that the commerce clause allows the government to mandate you to buy something?  The commerce clause is there to prevent one state from taxing another, "it wasn't designed to tell you what to pay somebody, what hours to pay, how far away from a computer screen your chair has to be.” 

Ron Suskind wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Price of Loyalty about the George W. Bush Administration.  It was unflattering and Suskind was treated well by the media and was invited on shows like The Today Show several times.  After he wrote Confidence Men, un unflattering book about the Obama Administration, he was ostracized.

Suskind wrote about two Obama economic advisors Christina Romer and Alan Krueger and how they tried to convince President Obama that it is not true that productivity causes unemployment.  This is about such claims Obama made about ATMs putting people out of work.  ATM machines don’t cause unemployment. They shift employment to those who have to manufacture, improve, distribute, maintain and repair the machines.  It is also a fact that there are now more tellers than before ATM machines.  Obama, upon hearing these arguments, wouldn't budge according to the economists.  “Obama was just wrong!”

Larry goes into how ABC News reporter Charles Gibson reminds then-candidate Obama that if you raise Capital gains tax, then revenue goes down.  Obama agrees but says “it’s a matter of fairness”.  Then, Obama goes on to say he needs the extra revenue to invest in infrastructure and our schools.  HELLO!, YOU’RE NOT GETTING EXTRA REVENUE BY INCREASING THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX!!!!!

In the same interview, Obama condemns spending without cutting and hiking up the deficit to 4 trillion dollars during the 8 year Bush Administration.  (It’s gone up 5 trillion in his 3+ years)

"History, shmistory"

Here's the audio: Larry Elder Show from the Reagan Library 3