Media Archives

Friday Link Wrap-up

Let me get this straight: The government tells banks who they must lend to. Banks comply, and in doing so, very nearly go under. (Oversimplification, I know.) Obama propped up his friends in the banking industry by bailing them out. And the "Occupy Wall Street" folks are upset at the bankers? No, not just them; they’re upset at capitalism in general. Here’s a list of proposed demands that should make you squirm. Yes, it’s just a proposal from a forum post, but the promoted it to the front page of the site. And it gets general approval from the liberal commenters. "Universal single payer healthcare", "Guaranteed living wage regardless of employment" (emphasis mine), "Free college education", etc. The taxes required for all of this make the current unsustainable spending look like chump change. This certainly does not represent "the other 99%", as they claim.

Democrats insist that the Tea Party is run by the Koch brothers, on the idea that since the Kochs support it and give money to it, that they therefore control it. Wrong, but let’s go with that. How, then, to explain the big Soros, union, and other astroturfing money coming in to support OWS? (Additionally, if the Tea Party is racist for not having some requisite number of minorities among them, will those same people level that charge against OWS? Yeah, right. It’s not applied in the same way, depending on your political persuasion, so, in truth, it’s just a political bludgeon.)

And let me ask you this; if hundreds of Tea Partiers were being arrested around America, don’t you think the liberal pundits would be all over it? But when it happens at OWS, little if anything. In fact, the differences in how the media cover these two movements is and will be a very instructive lesson in media bias.

Getting away from OWS, when  you quote Ronald Reagan, you don’t think a little context might be in order?

Crony capitalism for Republicans? Bad. Crony capitalism for Democrats? Oh look, a squirrel!

And finally, if you’re going to protest, place the blame where it really belongs. (Click for a larger image.)

Friday Link Wrap-up

When the International Monetary Fund needs bailing out, from bailing out so many others, it’s time to seriously question the socialist policies of those it’s having to bail out.

The Pope reminds Europe that moral failure usually precludes many other kinds of failure, eve economic.

A page to bookmark when someone brings up the faulty idea that billionaires are running the Tea Party.

Congress will investigate Planned Parenthood. About time.

Meryl Yourish has a keen eye for news media bias against Israel and, coincidentally, a bias for Palestinians. The latest? A Palestinian man kills an American tourist (because he thought the American was Jewish, which he wasn’t). The AP headline only say the Palestinian man was convicted of "stabbing" the tourist. (Oh, and the tourist was a Christian who happened to be wearing a Star of David.)

"Despite increases in gun sales, gun crimes continued to decrease in the United States for the fourth straight year in 2010, according to the FBI." This goes completely against the liberal narrative. The reality is likely closer to crime is down because of the increase in gun sales.

"President Obama’s jobs bill is better than doing nothing in the face of a national crisis, but it won’t have much impact on unemployment." This incredibly foolish line begins a column trying to suggest Obama’s Stimulus Jr. should be bigger. First of all, how is wasting money on something that won’t do what it purports to do better than doing nothing? That’s how politicians have gotten us into this fiscal mess. Second, the answer is always more, more, more. And yet here we are anyway. How can more pounding our heads against the wall feel any better?

And finally, a political cartoon (of sorts) of my own. Someone took a picture of tax protesters, and attempted a little irony by pointing out things around them paid for by taxes. But they missed the point entirely. Then point is… (Click for a larger version).

Pushing the Narrative

We’ve all heard about the rich guys who asked for Obama to tax them more. But in that same townhall meeting, there was a small businessman who complained about the burdensome taxes and regulation. Did you hear about that?

Probably not. CNN seemed to have forgotten about it. That’s why we need the Media Research Center. Here’s the whole story.

Friday Link Wrap-up

Got to catch up on the wrap-up. The past two weeks have been dizzying.

Warren Buffet said he’d be more than happy to pay more taxes. First of all, if he’d be that happy about it, there is absolutely nothing stopping him from just writing a check to the US Treasury. Second of all, he wouldn’t be fighting the IRS over unpaid taxes. How happy, really, do we think he’d be?

Evan Sayet is getting confused trying to keep track of all the different kinds of beliefs that cause the Left to label you "racist". The list keeps growing. (Note, this is a link to a Facebook post. If you don’t have an account, I don’t know if you’ll be able to see it.)

Another instance of where private, protected, Christian speech will get you suspended. (Note, this is too much even for the ACLU.)

You need an ID to get a job, fly on a plane, or buy liquor. But showing an ID to vote? Why, that’s a poll tax, says Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).

Planned Parenthood styles itself as a "family planning" service (at least, it does that when it’s trying to protect its government funding). But by their own numbers, 97.6% of pregnant women who went to PP in 2009 were sold an abortion. And that’s up from the year before. It’s an abortion mill, plain and simple. Follow the money. On top of that, would you consider "safe" a procedure that caused 28% of its patients to attempt suicide afterwards? Or one where patients had an 81% increase in mental health issues?

When the NY Times calls you liberally biased, you really need some self-examination. And yet this same "news" organization was chosen to moderate the recent Republican debate.

The government gives breaks from taxes and some laws based on religious affiliation. However, that determination seems to be getting rather politicized under Obama. When the National Labor Relations Board can decide if you’re "religious enough" (and claiming it based on specious authority), it’s chipping away at religious liberty.

The Washington Post’s "On Faith" section recently asked its contributors, "After millennia of religious studies, is it time for universities also embrace secular studies?" Richard Land, President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission answers with the obvious, "They already are."

A recent WikiLeaks document dump did not redact the names of informants to the US State Department. Now these people must fear for their lives. Is this what Assange supporters really want from their idol; pronouncing death sentences?

Civility Watch: New web-based video game lets you kill well-known Republicans. If a Republican is shot anytime soon, will the Left allow anyone to blame liberal incivility? (Hint: No.)

James Pethokoukis makes a strong case for the idea that what Obama did made the economy worse, not better.

In Obama’s jobs speech the other night, he claimed that all his spending would be paid for. No, sir, not based on your speech it won’t.

And finally, a thought on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. (Click for a larger picture.)

Well, this was just a matter of time. "New congressional estimates say the trust fund that supports Social Security disability will run out of money by 2017, leaving the program unable to pay full benefits, unless Congress acts. About two decades later, Social Security’s much larger retirement fund is projected to run dry, too, leaving it unable to pay full benefits as well."

A Jewish friend of mine give a report on Glenn Beck’s "Restoring Courage" rally in Caesarea, Israel.

"A pregnant woman, her husband and their three-year-old son were killed in a house fire early yesterday as police who arrived before the fire brigade prevented neighbours from trying to save them." Yes, you read that right. Read the rest of it.

Good news on the abortion front. Defenders of human life are advancing in the war of ideas.

If unions can get their gravy train, they’ll just take their ball and go home.

The long obsolete Fairness Doctrine finally, officially, dies.

When Bush’s approval ratings were low, hardly a day went by when the media made note of it. Now that Obama is in the same territory, all of a sudden approval ratings don’t seem to be news. (Just like involvement in foreign wars and casualties from the same.)

The media will ask conservatives "Yes or no, do you believe in evolution?", but they’ll never ask a liberal "Yes or no, do you believe in the Bible?"

Could you escape a terrorist attack in 15 seconds? In southern Israel, where rockets from Gaza are a nearly-daily occurrence, they have to.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) (no, really, "CERN") published a report in the magazine "Nature" that shows the Sun really does have more influence over our weather, clouds specifically, and thus current climate models will need to be (and I quote) "substantially revised".

Sorry, no cartoon this week. Nothing really stuck out.

Friday Link Wrap-up

Guns: A year after a law was passed in Virginia allowing those with permits to carry concealed weapons into bars (i.e. "alcohol-serving businesses"), gun-related crime in bars actually declined slightly. They did not turn into the shooting galleries that were predicted. This didn’t make national news, of course, because it doesn’t fit the narrative. If it had gone up, I’m quite sure we’d have heard about it for days on the evening newscasts.

Politics: First Ed Schultz and MSNBC selectively quote Gov. Rick Perry to make it sound like he’s being racist against the President. Seems you can’t say the word "black" in any context without it being called "racist". Then, MSNBC’s newest talker, Al Sharpton, takes the smear and, ironically, calls Gov. Perry divisive and ugly for saying something he didn’t ever say! Say what you want about Fox News, but if you don’t see far, far worse bias on the part of MSNBC, you’re just not paying as close attention as you think you are.

The Economy: The US may have lost it’s AAA rating from Standard and Poor’s, but on that same day, Ohio’s rating went up. Republican Governor John Kasich has presided over newly-balanced budgets, an 8.6% unemployment rate, and a steadily improving economy, coming back from the recession quicker than the Feds. This was done with reducing the size of government and rewarding job-creators.

And speaking of the economy (click for a larger version):

Independently Confirmed: Media Leans Left

Tim Groseclose is a distinguished professor of political science. He is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA. He holds joint appointments in the political science and economics departments. He has held previous faculty appointments at universities including Stanford and Harvard. In short, he is certainly not  a member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

And yet he is coming out with a book,"Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind", that has been researched over eight years, using "state-of-the-art statistical and social-scientific methods", and which comes to the conclusion that, indeed, the media is so biased to the left that Fox News doesn’t get credit for it’s centrist stance. The PowerLine blog reprinted the preface on Sunday, will reprint the introduction today, and chapter 8 Tuesday through Friday.

This purports to prove scientifically that there is liberal bias in journalism, and that it works; it shifts the general public to the left which, in turn, remakes the "center" in this country more liberal. Which then feeds on itself.

This could be a very important  book in the coming years. Worth keeping an eye on.

Friday Link Wrap-up

Post-war (i.e. WWII) marginal tax rates (the top individual tax bracket) have fluctuated from above 90% to below 30%, but W. Kurt Hauser noted that, in 1993, the total tax revenue, as a percentage of GDP, stayed virtually constant. Really. The data has been updated to 2007 and the observation holds. You can’t soak the rich. Raise their rates, and GDP goes down to match, in addition to the tax shelters that suddenly become very popular. Social engineers who want to use the tax code to implement what they want ought to be very disturbed, if they even know about this.

In terms of absolute dollars, federal revenues have tripled in the last 50 years (quadrupled if you consider the amount just before the recession). The problem is, federal spending has outpaced even that. Ed Morrissey has the charts to show that we don’t have a revenue problem.

Homeschooling is such a success that liberals at the NEA, in the Dept. of Education and in Congress are "troubled" and "concerned" by it, and of course consider it racist. Yes, really.

The pro-life cause continues to advance, recently in Ohio. And Americans United for Life has put out a scathing 181-page report on abuses and law-breaking at Planned Parenthood, and is taking it to Congress.

Global warming seems to have stopped. Well, Scientific American says, "Blame Asia!"

Obama, in prosecuting war, embraces his inner Dubya.

Just like the press (and the anti-war movement) has gone very quiet about wars, old and new, being prosecuted by this President, the NY Time even notices that the press has been ignoring the poor during this recession. And they’re part of the press to blame for it! What a difference a Democratic President makes!

Andres Oppenheimer says it best. "What Chavez has done in Venezuela over the last 12 years is nothing short of an economic miracle: Despite benefiting from the biggest oil boom in Venezuela’s history, he has somehow managed to turn the country into a shambles." Read the whole thing. It’s amazing to see truly how much money socialism can spend on people, only to make their lives worse.

Comparing and contrasting the economic stimulus under Clinton (that got rejected) to the economic stimulus under Obama (which passed) and which was actually better for unemployment.

If the debt ceiling is not raised by August, we would still have enough money coming in to not default on interest payments on the debt, and cover Social Security, Medicare, and "essential" defense. Don’t let Obama’s threat about withholding Grandma’s check scare you.

The ban on circumcision that will be on the San Francisco ballot in November is rife with anti-Semitism. That’s just about all you need to know about it, but here’s more.

And some more slipper slope for you. (Click for a larger image.)

Friday Link Wrap-up

Relative bias in the media vs actual bias. A new book from a UCLA political science professor demonstrate how, because the media is so generally slanted to the left, outlets like Fox appear more right-slanted, when in reality they’re far more centrist.

Rosalina Gonzales had pleaded guilty to a felony charge of injury to a child for what prosecutors had described as a "pretty simple, straightforward spanking case."

Trevor Phillips, chairman of Obama’s Equality and Human Rights Commission accused Christians, particularly evangelicals, of being more militant than Muslims in complaining about discrimination, arguing that many of the claims are motivated by a desire for greater political influence. Hmm, define "militant".

What if Charles Schultz had done cartoons of Doctor Who characters? The result would probably have looked like this.

"Smart" diplomacy; cozy up to dictators, snub our friends.

Democrats pilloried George W. Bush for "not listening to his generals" when he made decisions counter to the Pentagon. When Obama does it, not so much.

Would ID requirements for voting amount to a Jim-Crow-style poll tax on blacks? E. J. Dionne thinks so. James Taranto wonders if ID requirements for Amtrak, hotels, air travel and employment are equally as "racist"?

Nancy Pelosi said that they had to pass the bill before we could find out what’s in it. Apparently, some surprises are buried in there.

President Barack Obama’s health care law would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed.

The change would affect early retirees: A married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said officials who make long-range cost estimates for the Health and Human Services department.

Whenever there is a budget shortfall, taxes are always on the table. How about we take them off just this once?

Medicare spending is unsustainable, and the CBO itself admits that its tools for determine any consequences from Obamacare are flawed. Yeah, that should "fix" health care.

And finally, define "emergency" (click for a larger version):

The Palin E-mails

With fervor and scrutiny they’ve not shown for anything related to Obama (his personal communications, the health care bill, budget spending, etc.), the media has pounced on the e-mails of a vice presidential candidate from 3 years ago who is, so far, not running for any political office. Yeah, and it’s a Republican they’ve saved their diligence for. Surprised? Yeah, me neither.

James Taranto, who’s column should be required reading, had a great take on the whole thing. It’s a non-issue, and the media just hates that.

The Left’s ‘Birth Certificate’
Lots of journalists spent lots of hours poring over Sarah Palin’s gubernatorial emails. What did they find? The best part of the Los Angeles Times’s ,1,300-word story is the list of contributors at the bottom:

[Matea] Gold reported from Washington and [Robin] Abcarian from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Maloy Moore and Ken Schwencke in Juneau, Ben Welsh in Los Angeles, Kim Murphy in Seattle and Tom Hamburger, Kathleen Hennessey, Kim Geiger, Christine Mai-Duc and Melanie Mason in the Washington bureau also contributed to this report.

What shocking revelation did these 11 reporters find? "Palin Closely Guarded Her Public Image, Emails Show."

Other headlines:

  • "Sarah Palin Emails Provide No Big Bombshells"–Politico
  • "Palin’s E-Mails Undercut Simplistic Views of Her, Both Positive and Negative"–New York Times
  • "Palin Emails Don’t Contain Any Bombshell, ‘Gotcha’ Moments"–Anchorage Daily News
  • "Search Shows Few Michigan References in Palin Emails"–Detroit News

London’s Daily Telegraph reports that Palin "received a barrage of abusive emails including death threats in the run up to the 2008 presidential race." Don’t expect to read that in the New York Times, which is heavily invested in the lie that political "incivility" is the exclusive province of the right.

The Times did, however, publish this hilariously oblivious observation:

Another near certainty whenever Ms. Palin is involved: a media spectacle.

In terms of the zeal with which they were demanded and the anticlimax of their release, the Palin emails are the left’s equivalent of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate. Except, of course, that sensible conservatives never took birtherism seriously. What we’ve learned here is that major news organizations are populated with the left-wing equivalent of Donald Trump and Jerome Corsi.

Our favorite Palin email bit is a hysterical–and hysterically funny–screed by Patricia Williams, a Columbia professor, in London’s Guardian, titled "Sarah Palin Emails: Banal, Hypocritical and Smug . . . We Already Knew That." Among other things, Williams is outraged to learn that Gov. Palin employed speechwriters and prayed for guidance:

One wonders if she isn’t going to come out ahead at the end because her correspondence is boring. This is playing against the backdrop of revelations that New York Congressman Andrew [sic] Weiner sent hundreds of salacious texts and photos to women who were not his wife. By contrast, Palin’s correspondence seems a paragon of virtue, as she is revealed fussing about her hair, wondering about dinner, and hiding the hootch from the kids. You could almost forget she’s an idiot.

Williams writes that she spent at least two hours "trolling" the Palin emails. There is no reason to think Palin would spend two minutes reading any of Williams’s writing. Who’s the idiot?

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