You Mean, Obama Didn't Mean It When He Said It?

I just want to quickly highlight Althouse's post showcasing what Obama has said in the past about reconciliation in the Senate, even regarding health care.

I know Rush and many others have also been bringing up these quotes.  I wish we could depend on the mainstream media to mention them.  Sigh.

Abortion and Media Malpractice

I just read an article at American Thinker on how the media totally distorts the annual March for Life in Washington D.C.

Last year, using 6 cameras, a group making a documentary were able to document that there were 350,000 participants at the March, with approximately 75% of the participants under age 25.  Of these, over half were women.  They were unable to find any pro-abortion activists, although USA Today found a few.  The author states that this year's demographics were the same as last year.  So, there were approximately 350,000 pro-life individuals vs. about 5 pro-abortion demonstrators.  Of those, about 100,000 were young women.

Still, writing for Newsweek, Krista Gesaman wrote, "Missing at the Roe v. Wade Anniversary Demonstrations? Young Women".  Rick Sanchez of CNN questioned, " "both sides being represented today, but it does appear to me, as I look at these signs that - which side is represented the most.  .. Do we know?"


While I'm hardly surprised any more by media bias, this blatant disregard for reporting the truth is pretty incredible.

Climategate - Bring On The Popcorn

I haven't read enough, yet, to fully understand Climategate. But, I know I'm going to enjoy watching as the scandal enfolds. This morning I've been shirking my household responsibilities to revel in it.

Here are a couple comments from an Althouse column this morning on how newpaper commenters are bringing the editorialists up to speed on the scandal:

From Traditionalguy:
The story of how easy it was to yell Warming in a crowded theater while dressed up as Scientists, and watch the lemmings self destruct, needs to be told over and over everywhere. The Authority that Science and especially medical science has accumulated is being rented out to the Gang in power at the UN and in the gang in power in DC. We want that authority back now, and we will not allow it to be rented out or stolen again. That is the news story that needs to be told.

The Commenter John posts a recurring theme:
Has anyone else noticed the palpable sadness among the more honest global warming advocates? You would think that the possibility of AGW not being true would make any reasonable person happy. Hurrah, it is wrong. We don't need to radically change our lifestyles and energy use. Not so with the advocates. They seem geniunly distrubed at the prospect of people being able to go on with life how it is currently lived.They really are just modern day killjoy puritans who have replaced God with the State and Gia.

Good point. Shouldn't everyone be happy that we aren't destroying the world?

But, of course, as commenter hawkeydjb states, the goal has always been control over human behavior:
There may or may not be solid scientific evidence for (or against) anthropogenic warming, but it's a meaningless debate. The fight against global warming is a means to an end: greater control over human behavior. It wouldn't matter a bit if the whole concept of global warming were discredited, the end will remain and another means will be sought

The guys at Hillbuzz are always looking at how every situation will impact the 2010 and 2012 elections. They feel this is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the not-politically-interested how the mainstream media manipulates the news for their own agendas. If that attitude can be enforced, the general public will be more likely to admit they made a mistake in voting for Obama, because they can blame the MSM.

Ahh, this is going to be fun. Bring on the popcorn, indeed.

Is That A Fact, Sarah?

I am now holding, in my formerly-fingerpaint-stained-hand, a copy of Going Rogue by Sarah Palin. After hearing that the AP hired 11 fact checkers to dig up dirt on this book (that would be 11 more than they hired for Obama's or Gore's books), Dave asked, "I wonder if the AP is going to send Palin the bill?"

It's hard typing while holding a book.

John Muir, Yosemite, Enacting Change

Last night, Dave and I caught most of the first episode of Ken Burns' new National Parks documentary.

I am going to digress already. First, the obligatory I know that PBS and Ken Burns have a liberal slant, but I still enjoy these documentaries. Second, the above linked article starts out with this statement (from a previous opinion piece, which I did not read) :

"[The documentary's] premise—that Big Government saved wilderness and national treasures that private enterprise would have destroyed—is a lot more politically pointed (in the year of the Tea Party) than you'd expect from a Burns documentary about trees. "

Please. There's a difference between big government taking over the free enterprise system while burdening future generations with phenomenal debt, and the government protecting natural resources. My time is too limited this morning to delve into this.

Right now, I want to discuss John Muir. First off, I need to say that I grew up with a totally trivial bias against him. I went to Horace Mann Middle School. John Muir Middle School was our cross-town rival, and therefore, evil. (Did you know there are only two John Muir Middle Schools in the country?)

Some things I learned about John Muir from the documentary last night:

- His father beat him and made him memorize the Bible. By the time he was 11, he had memorized 3/4 of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament.
- He attended the University of Wisconsin. He was able to use his knowledge to help businesses become more profitable.
(I may have missed this on the documentary, but something I read on Wikipedia is that he spent the years during the Civil War in Canada)
- He was temporarily blinded in a work accident. When he recovered, he walked to Florida. He planned to walk to South America and ride down the Amazon, but he was taken ill. He went to Yosemite instead.
- He turned his spiritual attention to nature. The documentary called it a Christianity with creation as its core. The wikipedia article states that he rejected the idea of a Creator. I think it would have been more apt to simply state he worshipped nature, instead of using the term 'Christianity' as a generic for spirituality.
- He married. His wife's family owned a vineyard and he helped to increase its productivity.
-He became ill. His wife realized he needed to get back in the natural environment, so she sent him to Mt. Ranier.
- He then went back to Yosemite, and was disgusted with how commercialized it had become.

Here's the part that stood out the most for me:

- He wanted Congress to protect the Yosemite region. The establishment wanted to discredit him, so he appealed directly to the people. He wrote articles in Century magazine glorifying the Yosemite region. This led people to petition their congressman to create a national park. Congress established it as a state-controlled park shortly thereafter.

So, one of our country's first conservationists, the founder of the Sierra Club, realized that the normal channels for enacting change weren't open to him. He used the means available to him to let the people hear him.

I wonder what he would have done if the internet had been available to him? Perhaps he would have bypassed even the magazine, and gone directly to blogging. I'm sure Tom Brokaw and Thomas Friedman would have been duly distressed.

Selective Journalism

I was planning on taking a break from discussing politics for awhile, but I came across this comment on the Althouse blog. I wanted to remember it, so I thought I'd post it here:

"A particularly apropos reminder when discussing the selective journalism of the NYT:

It is in the nature of [secular progressivism] for its adherents to make a certain kind of lying – and not only to others but first of all to themselves – a fundamental part of their lives.It is always a mistake to assume that [secular progressives] do not know the truth about the political reality they espouse. If they don’t know the truth (or all of it) one day, they know it the next, and it makes absolutely no difference to them politically. For their loyalty is to something other than the truth. And no historical enormity is so great, no personal humiliation or betrayal so extreme, no crime so heinous that it cannot be assimilated into the ‘ideals’ that govern the [secular progressive] mind, which is impervious alike to documentary evidence and moral discrimination.– Hilton Kramer

Kramer was writing about Stalinists. However, secular progressives in the US would be Stalinists but for constraints imposed on them by the traditional American institutions they work to dismantle: The Constitution, capitalism and Judeo-Christian values."

Reporting The News

Charlie Gibson, the anchor of the ABC Evening News, said yesterday morning that the reason he hasn't reported on the ACORN scandal is because he hadn't heard anything about it until the Senate voted to withhold funding the other day.

I believe that last night was the first time Katie Couric reported on it at CBS.

If you hold a position that's responsible for telling the American people the news, shouldn't you be aware of major developing stories?

Shouldn't we hold Gibson and Couric to the same standard they held Sarah Palin?

An Analogy

I thought of an analogy regarding the concept of The American People Are The New Fourth Estate. I'm not sure if it quite works, but it made me feel a little clever, so I decided to post it.

Suppose every time you go to the doctor, they seat some of the people on the left side of the waiting room, and some of the people on the right side. The people on the left side always received excellent care, but the people on the right side were generally neglected. Furthermore, if you ever complained, the lefties said you were overreacting. The doctors provided outstanding care. The doctors, too, called you a bunch of whiners and insisted their service was exceptional.

After awhile, some of the righties decided that they were going to take matters into their own hands. They figured out how to treat their own sicknesses, and started treating the other righties as well.

Of course, the doctors and the lefties trivialized the service these righties were performing, claiming it inferior.

They didn't understand that the righties would have much preferred to let the doctors do the job. Someone had to do the job the doctors refused to do.

American People Are The Fourth Estate

I wanted to post this video. It ties in nicely with my recent posts on the media and also on ACORN.

Incidentally, Breitbart's Big Government blog has the latest scoops on the ACORN debacle.

At Least He Isn't Biased

We don't usually watch the evening news, but tonight Dave had the beginning of it on just before supper. Brian Williams, the anchor of NBC News, led off with a statement along the lines of "President Obama's health care agenda has been sabotaged by town hall meetings spreading false rumors of 'death panels'. "

Grrrrrr

The Media And The Administration

If you spend much time on the internet, you probably already know that Obama's Green Czar, Van Jones, resigned over the weekend. Van Jones made derogatory statements and lived a radical lifestyle, and he should not have been appointed to a non-accountable position overseeing a $30,000,000,000 budget.

These are the accusations against him that I am aware of:

1) Earlier this year, he called Republicans a**holes.

2) He actively supported a cop killer, Mumia, convicted of the 1981 slaying of a Philadelphia police officer.

3) Jones is a self-described communist. Specifically, "by August [after the Rodney King verdict] I was a communist." He assumed a leadership role in the group STORM, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, a Marxist organization in the San Francisco area.

4) Most disturbingly, he's a 'Truther'. This is a term for people who believe that the Bush Administration was behind the 9/11 attacks on our country. Jones now claims that he didn't understand the 2004 petition he signed. It's implausible that a community activist wouldn't understand the words on a petition. More importantly, as early as 2002, he organized a Truther March in San Francisco.

Items #1 and #2 above should not, of themselves, disqualify him from service. (Although, if a Bush appointee had called Democrats a**holes, the mainstream media would have been all over it.)

However, isn't it a very genuine and reasonable concern to question whether a man who has core beliefs that undermine our system of government should be responsible for overseeing a $30,000,000,000 budget within that same government?

Obama named Jones a czar, bypassing the part where the Senate has to confirm his appointment. Jones could have spent the money in any way he chose, with no accountability to the American people. Fortunately, we have a diligent media intent on pursuing truth and making sure that there is no corruption in the Obama Administration, right? Ha Ha.

It's been documented that all last week, as the controversy surrounding Jones' past was brewing, CBS, NBC & ABC, as well as other mainstream news outlets, had zero stories on him. As this article states:

"When the vast majority of the traditional news outlets in the nation fail to report major news regarding the country and its government, citizens are kept precariously in the dark concerning vital news that they need to know in order to make informed choices. CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, the Washington Post, etc. are all so heavily invested in the success of the Obama administration, due to their obvious cheerleading role during the campaign and after the election, that they are loathe to report any information that may place Obama, the Administration, or the Democratic Congress is a negative light."

When the press finally reported about the controversy, after Jones' resignation, they focused on Item #1 above as the main reason for his downfall, not his extremist views.

On Sunday's Meet the Press, Tom Brokaw and Tom Friedman claim that the main lesson from the Jones debacle is that the internet is a dangerous place, and now people will be afraid to say anything controversial over fear that it will be posted on the internet. You can check out the video here .

That's the main message? Not that the mainstream media was bending over backwards to protect an Obama appointee from public scrutiny? Don't American citizens have a right to know if someone in a highly responsible government position has extremist beliefs that, are, in fact, subversive to the government?

Of course, I've been aware of a liberal bias in the media ever since I switched over to conservatism. Lately, it's become more than annoying. It's chilling. Those who are supposed to be the watch dogs for all of us, have instead become the lap dogs for the other side.

By the terms they use, by the inflections in their voices, by the questions they ask and don't ask, even by what they edit out and what they leave in an interview, they've been able to decide how the debate will be presented. Who's going to appear to be reasonable, and who's going to appear to be wacko? Who's going to come across as a nice guy, and who's a jerk? Who gives thoughtful responses to a question, and who's answers are mindless?

Is that the way it's going to remain? In years to come, will the few still dominate the dissemination of information? Or, will internet based media gain more and more prominence? In the future, who will be the main framers of the debate?

I don't know. But it definitely reinforces my conviction that I need to hone my own, and my children's, thinking and writing skills so that we'll be prepared to participate.