Trust No Media

Fox-o-Phobia - Bill O'Reilly - Townhall Conservative

Some nominal readers of my Blog or casual acquaintances assume that I must get all my information from Fox news. For your average liberal or left leaning moderate it is a pretty simple sort of equation; conservatism is ill-informed, people with conservative leaning views are being fed their shallow misconceptions by Fox News and talk radio, if they would expose themselves to REAL news and information, if the conservative's "problem" is simple misinformation ... assuming that their problem isn't the also prevalent liberally viewed conservative malady of low intellect.

Actually, my Fox News quota would rarely hit an hour a week, and my talk radio quota is zero unless I travel through AM radio country (areas with poor NPR or classic rock FM coverage!) on some rare occasions. Being busy, my standard media diet is short and simple:

1. A scan of the CNN page on the web to see what the top stories are and to make sure the other world isn't coming to an end today or something. Be a shame to do a bunch of wasted e-mail work if the end was that near.
2. NPR while driving around on my minimal short trips of the day -- to the office, to the health club, etc. Somewhat a "random sample", but again I tend to hear a top of the hour news show for some local MN flavor, plus the lefts view of reality.
3. Real Clear Politics. A sampling of the hot opinions of the day, left and right -- I do my best to read 50/50.
4. Powerline if I get a chance -- the Blog that blew the lid off from Rathergate, based out of the Twin Cities, just up the road. 
5. A scan of the local paper and Op Ed page for a local flavor
6. RARELY a little news channel surfing of Fox, CNN, MSNBC in the evening

Here is Bill's offending quote from Milbank;

"Immediately after the votes were counted, the incoming fire began. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote that Fox News held "a victory party" for Republicans on the air. Milbank then stated: "To be fair and balanced, Fox brought in a nominal Democrat, pollster Doug Schoen."

Not so bad -- completely untrue or course, how about Juan Williams? Geraldine Ferraro? Mara Liason? ...  What is deeper however is what I hear from a lot of youth and the left "Oh Faux News, they just ...". Normally they can't think of ANY specific examples of bias, they just KNOW that Fox is extreme. My take is that it IS "extreme", but only in the sense that it is an "outlier" from the  NYT, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC or NPR, it is just that of the widespread media, it is the ONLY media voice that considers conservative opinion to be anything more than some malady of low intellect or failed study. THAT is what makes it "extreme", certainly not the level of it's bias -- in fact, it always presents the liberal opinion as well, it just doesn't present it without exploring potential problems or arguments against that opinion.

 What is effective in shaping the opinion of the many is the drumbeat -- the steady onslaught of standard message, often very easily and very demonstrably false as it is in this case, but never ending -- fake proof after fake proof is mixed with the much rarer example of a real case of conservative bias on Fox ( I DO admit they have a bias ... as do I, and as does every other person and media outlet), and the eventual effect is the desired across a broad set of Americans. They are polarized against whatever news is reported by Fox -- for them, Fox has been successfully demonized, marginalized and trivialized so that even the mention of any person that would be willing to appear there is met with approbation Ultimately, that is true bias, and it's counterpart prejudice. Whatever the message, it is lost in the attack on the source.

The sad state of affairs is that the left in this country is afraid enough that they seek to remove thought alternatives and a freedom of speech beyond just the freedom to agree with their view.

ONLY Extend Bush Cuts for > $250K

RealClearPolitics - A Stunned and Dispirited Base

Remember when the Bush tax cuts were just purely bad and all the money went to the rich? Let's look at a little math.

In the linked and despondent article, far lefty Robinson says the following:

Let's examine this issue a little more closely. Making the tax cuts permanent for the wealthy would increase the deficit by $700 billion over the next decade. Which party claims to be urgently, desperately concerned about the deficit? The Republicans, of course. So which party is prepared to bust the budget, if that's what it takes, to serve the interests of the rich? The GOP. And which party, to get its way, refuses to approve desperately needed tax relief for the bruised and battered middle class? Once again, the Republicans.

Interesting, what he DOESN'T say is:

Liberal leaders contend their plan is fiscally more responsible. The Democratic proposal would add about $3 trillion to the deficit during the next decade, while the GOP plan would cost $3.7 trillion, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.

Hmm, how much have we heard the terrible Bush tax cuts lambasted as "all going to the rich"? Well, if one reads slightly between the lines of the liberal lies, they get backed into telling us the truth.

Cost for folks < $250K, $3 T
Cost for folks > $250K, $.7 T

Which seems larger to you? Apparently, if you are a liberal, the second number does.

On average, which group do you think is likely to make the most productive use of extra money to advance the economy? C'mon, be honest -- who is most likely to blow it on a flat screen, and who is most likely to invest it in "The next Google??".

Do most liberals even KNOW how to be honest? After 10 bleeping years of hearing how "unfair" these Bush tax cuts are (I know, this is a projection ... but I saw the old numbers, the ratios were the same), they can't even utter the truth when it is staring them in the face.

For the good of the country, for the good of the deficit, for more jobs, we would be FAR better giving the tax cut to ONLY the people that make OVER $250K!!!! That is if we cared about results, having a productive growing nation and leaving our kids better off than we are. But at least Democrats STILL don't care about any of that. They only want class warfare.

But, STILL, after the last election, the even the vast majority of the people DON'T GET IT, because the MSM is too darned biased to admit the truth directly. It has to be weaseled out from around the edges!!

A large part of our problem is simply that Americans are being sold the bill of goods that 99% of them can get more out of the government piggy bank than they put in and the top 1% are so stupid that they will pay for it.

It is the top 5% are the people that are overtaxed!!!!

The following from http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $159,619), however, still paid far more than the bottom 95 percent. The top 5 percent earned 34.7 percent of the nation's adjusted gross income, but paid approximately 58.7 percent of federal individual income taxes.

We are penalizing our MOST PRODUCTIVE ... this is like forcing the top sports stars to play with weights on their wrists and annles. The net effect is a giant drag on our economy that prevents us from being nearly as competitive as we could be in the world -- maybe moving our "bottom" up from just having cell phones, flat screen TVs, high speed internet and weight problems, to maybe having trips to Disney and Cruises while still being poor. Were we to continue to allow the American economy to be unleashed as it was in the '80s, we may be close to the point where our "poor" would need better advice on the proper wine to go with camembert. Remember, SOMEONE will ALWAYS be in the bottom 20% of that income bracket!!!

Ok, Greed is bad, but SO IS ENVY -- especially when it allows us to make stupid decisions with the most powerful economy on the planet. BO is an anti-colonialist that wants to see America "cut down to size"!!! Get it, deal with it, and let's ignore him as much as we can and get this nation moving again!

Even a Democrat Can See

Requiem for the Pelosi Democrats - WSJ.com:

Good little column of a fairly unbiased inside view of the Democrat Congress meltdown. Baird saw it coming and decided to go ahead and leave on his own. I found the following to be pretty clear on what everyone really ought to know. This financial meltdown was PRIMARILY caused by the unholy public private confusion with Fannie and Freddie. The Bush administration tried to reign them in as early as 2002 but there were was just TOO MUCH MONEY -- when you combine the assets of the Federal Government, race pimps like Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangle IN the government and groups like ACORN on the street with the chance for everyone from Wall Street to low income home owners the chance to cash in at the casino, is it any surprise it comes to a bad end?

It ought not to be -- and guess what, blaming Bush doesn't help one bit when even a DEMOCRAT notices that the vaunted BO / Democrat financial reform fails to address Fannie and Freddie, which EVEN A DEMOCRAT realizes were the core of the problem.

Please, please, please forget about government "helping the little guy" -- ONLY as an accident of buying votes that typically cost FAR more in lost jobs, lost GDP, increased business uncertainty and the general corruption of our political, financial and legal system than ANY amount of money would be worth!!!

"Although he voted for it, he says he was troubled that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the entities at the heart of the housing meltdown, weren't addressed. They have clearly exercised undue influence on Capitol Hill, he notes. 'When I was first elected I was puzzled why they were holding events in my honor as a mere freshman. I asked myself, why is a federal entity so involved in political activity?'"

Daniels '12 (not Jack)

The American Spectator : Mitch the Knife:

While I think the Republican mission needs to be Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, we are in definite need of a solid anti-BO. Mitch is my pick at this point -- the whole article is good, the excerpt is a key. We MUST bust the government employee union - Democrat corruption nexus or it will strangle us as it has strangled Europe!

"Once elected, Governor Daniels started cutting right away. On his first day in office, he rescinded his Democratic predecessor's executive order allowing collective bargaining by government unions. As conservative journalist Conn Carroll later wrote, 'The decision has not only cost the left's perpetual dependence machine millions in taxpayer-funded union dues, but also enabled the state to cut costs by instituting a ‘pay-for-performance' personnel system.' Daniels trimmed the state payrolls by 14 percent and Indiana now has fewer state employees than it did in 1982."

EJ Perspective

RealClearPolitics - After Setback, Dems Must Not Retreat

First, here is something that EJ and I mostly agree on:

The most politically potent attack on the health care effort was not on the plan itself. It was the argument that Democrats should have spent less time on this bill and more on job creation. Every moment the Republicans devote to destroying this year's reform opens them up to exactly the same criticism.

Republicans have to focus on JOBS FIRST and only repeal the most onerous aspects of the health bill -- fines to people not buying health insurance, reporting of every transaction over $600. Meet with chamber of commerce and business leaders and try to remove the most job killing aspects of the bill. Don't give in to just "kill it all" without having specific reasons for the parts killed and solutions that are better than the parts that are potentially salvaged.

Execute on a reasonable plan, be prepared to deal with even unfair charges of "ideology over people". Some will be unavoidable -- there really isn't any free lunch, and we can't have all that we might like. But be VERY clear -- on some of the aspects, "Would you rather have unemployment under 6% or would you rather have a lot of health care goodies"? Your job or provisions x, y and z? The persistence of high unemployment should be enough to clue in all but the true left ideologues on what the real trade-off is.

In 2008, the largest number of voters in American history gave the Democrats their largest share of the presidential vote in 44 years and big majorities in the House and Senate. 

How did Republicans react? They held their ideological ground, refused to give an inch to the new president, and insisted that persistent opposition would eventually yield them victory. And on Nov. 2, it did.

"Yes BUT" ... Democrats NEVER said what they were going to do. People voted for "Hope, Change, Yes we Can" and if you REALLY believe in fairy tales, "the end of Business As Usual politics". In some ways, the last was more true than many realized -- BO governed as "compromise is you doing it my way, otherwise, you are obstructionist". So the electorate was handed the hardest left turn since Johnson and told it was moderate. The electorates view and answer to guys like EJ was fortunately "Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining".
Now on to EJ's summary:

Give Republicans credit for this: They don't chase the center, they try to move it. Democrats can play a loser's game of scrambling after a center being pushed ever rightward. Or they can stand their ground and show how far their opponents are from moderate, problem-solving governance. Why should Democrats take Republican advice that Republicans themselves would never be foolish enough to follow?

Egads. Bush was completely progressive rather than conservative. Remember prescription drug? remember the deficit spending? remember "uniter not divider"? The stupid thing is that he actually tried, where BO gave some options for some RINOS to sign on to exactly what he wanted and when none were available, he went to stiff arming the few remaining near-left vs far left Democrats to fall on their swords and go his way. Bush lost control of the Senate in his first term and barely eeked out a majority in '02 that held until '06. His administration was an orgy of compromise -- with his own party and recalcitrant Republicans, where BO's to date was an absolute fascist "my way or the highway" (although cleverly disguised with Nancy and Harry being the "bad cops" to BO's good act).
The "middle"? Where would that be? Germany? I think EJ sees the options as left of Sweden being desirable -- if not Cuba, Germany being "middle" and maybe Ireland  being "far right". What a difference perspective makes.

Judicial Independence

Political Judges - Thomas Sowell - Townhall Conservative


Solid column by Thomas -- worthy of full read, but this is the core.

As for judicial "independence," that does not mean being independent of the laws. Being a judge does not mean being given arbitrary powers to enact the liberal agenda from the bench, which means depriving the citizens of their most basic rights that define a free and self-governing peop

I'll Take Kevin

Kevin Rubs It In - NYTimes.com

I regularly (painfully) read Mareen. She often laments of the HORROR of having come from an unwashed conservative family that remains unenlightened. I chuckle as largely I remain the reverse black sheep of my unrepentant lefty clan (with slight apology to my brother ... who maybe sensibly seems to kind of go with the current general tide).

While Mareen nearly never has anything that I much agree with to say, I gotta admit that she has great taste in brothers. I do strongly compliment her for never rising to levels of snobbery where her poor family had to be "Un-familied.

The whole thing is good, but "France without the food" is an excellent description of what the liberal target America is:

The voters left no doubt about their feeling for his super-nanny state where the government controls all aspects of their lives and freedoms. Warning signs were up in the three elections held in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey and with the noisy birth of the Tea Party. But the president, swathed in the protective cocoon of adulation and affirmation from the media and his own sycophants, soldiered on in his determination to turn our country into just another member of the failed European union — France without the food.

Poor Mareen ... a bad election loss for her makes T-day a real test. I'm pretty sure that 2004 was one of her saddest laments. Perhaps there is more news from what I'm sure I would find to be her wonderful family to share with us!

If only the NYT would pick up Kevin and fire her! I think she could produce a column almost as good as Kevin once or twice a year.

Defending BO

How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost the Midterms - NYTimes.com

I think this guy has done a fairly reasonable left view of the "unfairness of BO treatment". Let me cover where I disagree with him:

1. Saving capitalism is like saving gravity -- it just shows you don't understand how the universe works. Even in the old USSR and China, the market continued to function. It was often "black", but it can't be removed. To think that someone "saved capitalism" shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the way things work.
   
2. POTENTIALLY, the TARP (which would have been W and Democrat congress fault), and/or the Stmulus MAY have HURT the economy. Note, I did not say that "I know", because I don't believe that anyone really does.  In my model, tax cuts are a better stimulus because they allow millions of people to decide where the "right place to spend money is". The BO stimulus assumes that some folks in Washington make better decisions on where to spend the money to get the best job growth. My view is that  it is impossible in anything like an economy for centralized intelligence to be as smart as distributed intelligence, and huge amounts of money put into the wrong things may well crowd out the right things for growth being done, and actually HARM the economy. To not at least believe that is POSSIBLE is again to not understand that in the human universe, there is no such thing as "unalloyed good".
   
3. The idea that "health care is a positive" is a similar world view issue. Whatever one thinks of the system we had, it was a system that American business understood and knew how to work with. We now have 3k pages of "the unknown", and for people that have to invest their own money, "unknown" is a gigantic disincentive. Again, there is NOTHING that man can do (other than seek redemption from Christ) that is an "unalloyed good" -- but take heart, we are very capable of doing pure evil!
4. The idea of voting by your stock market is quite odd for a liberal and disingenuous -- Reagan would have been a GREAT president by that metric, but I'm pretty sure that this guy isn't going for that. Markets are about "sentiment of future earnings" and "alternative returns". The markets really tanked AFTER BO was elected, so much of the "worst President" relative to markets is based on how bad the markets felt about the NEXT president, the glorious BO!!! When McCain picked Palin and Republicans had some false hope in Sept '08, the markets went up to 11,300 ... they were at 11,500 when W took office -- WAY different from "worst president ever" -- assuming that one wanted to use such a measure for anything.

Is it POSSIBLE that BO has done great and Americans have treated him unfairly? Sure, I think W was treated EXTREMELY unfairly after say "Katrina". My view of the major BO failings are 1). He doesn't realize he was elected president of an EXCEPTIONAL nation 2). Much of what he has done has INCREASED  business uncertainly 3). He appears to have no understanding that economic growth comes exclusively from THE PRIVATE SECTOR -- he keeps maligning the very people he needs to get the economy moving. I guess I'll stop there ... the list is long.

Liberals and American Exceptionalism

What’s So Great About America | The Weekly Standard

One of the areas that conservatives have a hard time communicating with liberals on is American exceptionalism.  My view on "why" is that the conservative vision is pretty much "One nation, under GOD, bequeathed by our founders and creator with a unique and superior position (broad fertile landmass between two oceans), superior people (self selected to be risk takers, willing to put independence and opportunity beyond safety and relative comfort), and superior government (designed to be LIMITED, not able to infringe on the people -- including allow them to bear arms as a final check against such infringement).

My view is that as we have moved away from the pioneer / emigrant ethos and into the misconception that "progress" (largely technical) somehow equates to "wisdom", we have lost our way, with BO being proof -- a PRESIDENT that no longer believes that America is any more exceptional than say "England or Greece".

Good column, read it all, I found this to be the core.

First, the idea of American exceptionalism has the benefit of being true. The United States is fundamentally and demonstrably different from other countries. It is bound together by a founding proposition, and properly applied the proposition has brought freedom and prosperity to more people, and more kinds of people, than any other. Second, a large majority of Americans believe American exceptionalism to be true. And third, it drives Democrats right around the bend.

It’s not clear why. Maybe liberal polemicists don’t quite understand what the phrase means, and so they pummel it into a caricature. In Politico last week, under the oddly truncated headline “U.S. Is Not Greatest Country Ever,” the columnist Michael Kinsley wrote that exceptionalism is “the theory that Americans are better than everybody else.” The next day, on a well-trafficked liberal website, another columnist said much the same thing—they tend to run in packs, these guys. Other countries, this columnist wrote, are “investing in infrastructure,” unlike the United States, which apparently just spent $780 billion in stimulus on chopped liver. At the same time, he went on, “the Republicans have taken refuge in an antigovernment ideology premised on the lunatic notion that America is the only truly free and successful country in the world.”

A Will Must Read

George F. Will - A recoil against liberalism

Odd syntax is sometimes correct. Just go read it all ... cogent, correct, well crafted. Being a reader of "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", I can tell you that liberals can change those as well as a leopard can change his spots, or Randy Moss can become a docile, always hustling wide receiver.

"These ideas," Boudreaux says, "are almost exclusively about how other people should live their lives. These are ideas about how one group of people (the politically successful) should engineer everyone else's contracts, social relations, diets, habits, and even moral sentiments." Liberalism's ideas are "about replacing an unimaginably large multitude of diverse and competing ideas . . . with a relatively paltry set of 'Big Ideas' that are politically selected, centrally imposed, and enforced by government, not by the natural give, take and compromise of the everyday interactions of millions of people."

Welcome Tea Party Conservatives

Jim DeMint: Welcome, Senate Conservatives - WSJ.com

Good honest appraisal of the temptations of Washington. The Republicans gave in to temptation sometime after 2K, their majority will be as short lived as the Democrats if they give in again!

"When you are in Washington, remember what the voters back home want—less government and more freedom. Millions of people are out of work, the government is going bankrupt and the country is trillions in debt. Americans have watched in disgust as billions of their tax dollars have been wasted on failed jobs plans, bailouts and takeovers. It's up to us to stop the spending spree and make sure we have a government that benefits America instead of being a burden to it."

A New Republican Face

Colonel and Candidate by Jay Nordlinger - National Review Online:

Read the whole thing, well worth it. I only quoted one great paragraph, but there were a bunch. I think West is a great example of the right kind or Republican. The left is determined to demonize him because he is a free thinking Black that has left the "Thought Plantation". As we see with Sarah Palin, in the left world view, everyone has their assigned role, and they ARE NOT allowed to leave it. Women need to be "pro-choice, anti-war and pro-government support of anything to take the kids off mom's hands" -- or they can stay home, back cookies and shut up. Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin? THEATS! Big time threats -- diversity of thought in the groups bought and paid for by Democrat policy is DANGEROUS.

Likewise Allen West. Were he a Democrat and had committed any sort of crime and got off, he would have "an appealing life story". Being a Col in the military and firing a gun in the vicinity of a hostage to find out critical information that saved lives? HORRIBLE!!! Pretty much anything that a Black Democrat does is completely fine ... he was just re-elected again in the face of ethics violations of which the MSM has no concern about.

I expect to see a lot of good stuff out of Allen West!

"There are two things that could lose us our country if we’re not careful,” says West. One is the relinquishment of individual responsibility; the other is political correctness. He points to the case of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood, and who was not sidelined before that, despite his obvious Islamist predilections. “What can we say when political correctness has so seeped into our military that people are afraid to identify a problem situation because they don’t want to experience repercussions?” After Hasan’s massacre at Fort Hood, Army chief of staff George Casey said, “As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” West finds this repulsive."

Guess Who?

RealClearPolitics - Guess Who?

Cute little column by Sowell ... ground that has been covered in my blog before, but considering how many times many have heard the MISinformation about FDR "getting us out of the depression", it is likely impossible to repeat the facts too often!

MSM Setup in AK on Miller

Power Line - Plot still thickening in Alaska, cont'd

We've had "Jurnolist", we've had Rathergate, we've had a bunch more of them, but how long does it take for folks to figure out that the MSM is ACTIVELY seeking ways to get Tea Party and or conservative Republican people?

Do we really need to look any farther than the difference in the MSM coverage of BO vs Palin? Now we have this!

The CBS affiliate calls the candidate, gets the answering machine, fails to hang up, and we get treated to a scheme to "identify a child molester" at a Miller rally -- no doubt in some sort of a smear.

MSM coverage? Zilch, nada. Imagine if Fox or Limbaugh could be caught in something similar? Oh wait, we don't have to wonder! Limbaugh as "caught" with Viagra in an airport screen and even that was worth days of national news. When you are a conservative, NOTHING is off limits, but of course BJs at work if you are a Democrat ala Slick Willie are "private".

Strange Man In the WH

A Crossroads Election - Thomas Sowell - Townhall Conservative

Great article! I love the Democrat and MSM flip flop on "full disclosure" of bills going through congress and funding for ads. When BO ran, even when Democrats had controlled congress for 2 years already, braying about "putting bills on the internet so EVERYONE could comment and discuss them before they were signed" was somehow worthy of repeating over and over without the MSM laughing. The Democrats ALREADY controlled congress! Now? Disclosure? Not so much ... need to "pass it to find out what is in it"!

Blanketing the air waves with MoveOn.org ads funded by George Soros and other shadowy folks? No problem, and no need to "name names" in '06 and '08. When the Democrats were rolling in the dough, A-OK!

Read it all ... but here is the punch line:

We have a strange man in the White House. This election is a crossroads, because either his power will be curbed by depriving him of his huge Congressional majorities or he will continue on a road that jeopardizes both our freedom and our survival.