My Blog

Category: Media

  • The ‘Wild, Wild Midwest’

    The city’s murder rate is quadruple New York City’s. Homicides since 2001 total twice the number of U.S. military personnel killed in Afghanistan in the same period. Police have moved to reduce the carnage, but activists say gun use must be reined in—and they will stage a peacemakers’ rally on Friday.

    via The Daily Beast.

    We’re making national headlines on a regular basis now.  In the meantime Rahm and The Machine that run this town are still telling everyone that crime is down.  The local news media is fully complicit with the ongoing lie.

    It’s like they’re all Frank Drebin:

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NNOrp_83RU?rel=0]

  • The Media’s Unholy Relationship with Obama

    On the evening of Tuesday, June 30, 2009—just five months into his administration—Barack Obama invited a small group of presidential historians to dine with him in the Family Quarters of the White House. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, personally delivered the invitations with a word of caution: the meeting was to remain private and off the record. As a result, the media missed the chance to report on an important event, for the evening with the historians provided a remarkable sneak preview of why the Obama presidency would shortly go off the rails.  …

    Over the two-hour dinner, Mr. Obama and the historians discussed several past presidents. It wasn’t clear from Mr. Obama’s responses which of those presidents he identified with. At one point, he seemed to channel the charismatic John F. Kennedy. At another moment, he extolled the virtues of the “transformative” Ronald Reagan. Then again, it was the saintly Lincoln…or the New Deal’s “Happy Warrior,” Franklin Roosevelt….

    Mr. Obama told the historians that he had come up with a slogan for his administration. “I’m thinking of calling it ‘A New Foundation,’ ” he said.

    Doris Kearns Goodwin suggested that “A New Foundation” might not be the wisest choice for a motto.

    “Why not?” the president asked.

    “It sounds,” said Goodwin, “like a woman’s girdle.”

    via Fox News.

    Absolutely amazing the collusion between  these “historians” and a sitting President.  How can they claim to be objective when they participate in such pandering?  Why doesn’t the media point out the obvious problem with these sorts of meetings?  …

    That last one I can answer.

    Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed:
    everything else is public relations.
    ― George Orwell

    There continues to this unholy relationship between the media and Obama specifically and politicians generally.  The media wants, no needs, access to the pols and the pols need access to the media.  It’s a symbiotic relationship where each benefits the other.

    The New York Times was just last week busted printing stories whereby national secrets where “leaked” from the White House.  What we have is a major news organization dishing out exactly that the White House wanted printed.  That’s not journalism; that’s public relations.

    Thankfully the internet is killing the mainstream media faster than the plague raced across Europe.  At least with citizen journalists the bias is out in the open.  People can make up their own minds considering the source.

  • Half of Florida H.S. Students Fail Reading Test

    Nearly half of Florida high school students failed the reading portion of the state’s new toughened standardized test, education officials said on Friday.

    Results this year from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test showed 52 percent of freshman students and 50 percent of sophomores scored at their grade levels.

    Students in the 10th grade must pass the exam in order to eventually graduate but can retake it if they fail.

    The results came days after the Florida State Board of Education voted to lower the standards needed to pass the writing part of the test, known as FCAT. The test is administered in public elementary, middle and high schools.

    via Yahoo! News Canada.

    #1.  This is just plan embarassing.

    #2.  Why is this being reported by Yahoo! News Canada and not here in the U.S.A.?

    #3.  When are we going to have a national discussion about how our educations system is fundamentally, philosophically, and systematically broken?

    #4.  Note the “proposed solution” is NOT to actually teach the students how to read.  The solution is to reduce the testing standards so that more dummies can pass.

    We are failing as a society.

  • Stripping Chicago Spending, Bare Down

    “What do a Chicago strip club
    and the President’s campaign fund have in common?    ”

    ANSWER:  BOTH were paid- with public funds- as “VENDORS” to the City of Chicago.
    _______________________________________

    Yesterday, OpenTheBooks.com upgraded it’s transparency portal to include the City of Chicago checkbook from 2002-2011.

    It contains $74 billion in vendor payments. Last year 69,800 entities received checks.

    Here’s what I found while scanning the data…

    The City of Chicago approved checks to both The Admiral Theatre Inc, a Chicago strip club, and Obama For America, the president’s campaign organization. According to data received, both share the same “vendor code.”  Yet, neither organization exists in Chicago’s current transparency portal: click here and here.

     

    The Admiral Theatre strip club received $5,197.78 in City of Chicago checks. Sixteen checks range from $1.20 to $1,900. A buck twenty?

    See a database of City payments to The Admiral here.

     

    The check to Obama for America raises more questions. The campaign received a $1,000 check on August 28th, 2007. For some reason, theydidn’t disclose this to the Federal Election Commission: click here, and Open Secrets- here.

    Click here for my Freedom of Information Act Request seeking more information. See the detailed accounting data surrounding the check: vendor code, transaction id, PO#, fund, department, amount, check number, and date.

     

    Surely, the City will have some sort of explanation. Because, public funds used for campaign purposes violates federal and state law. And, we know that no Illinois or city worker would ever violate those laws, right?

     

    The City has five days to respond to our request for additional information. I can barely wait for the naked truth.

    You can search for yourself at www.openthebooks.com

    Sincerely,

    ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI
    Chairman | For The Good of Illinois PAC

     

  • Wealthy Flee France (Shhh, don’t tell the U.S. Media)

    For those that don’t know, France recently had an election and voted for the most socialist guy on the ballot.  The guy who’s promising to raise taxes on the rich and increase the transfer payments to the poor.  The result?  The rich are leaving…  in droves.

    France’s high earners feel increasingly unwelcome in a country now led by a man who has admitted: “I don’t like the rich.” So where are they looking? London. It comes as no surprise – while Hollande prepares to raise taxes, over here David Cameron is cutting the 50pc tax rate for income above £150,000 to 45pc. “I have already worked in London and lived in South Kensington,” said one French banker who expects to return to the UK over the next three months. “The question is how much of Hollande’s rhetoric will materialise into policy.”

    Few are keen to find out. Private equity firms and American banks in Paris have already begun making arrangements for their top executives to set up office in London, amid widespread concern about changes to the French income tax regime.

    via Telegraph.

    This story is told over and over again in the European press, particularly earlier this week (I realize I’m late to the story.)  But the U.S. press is just getting to the story; mostly in the business press.  Neither the Chicago Tribune nor the sun-Times has not written a single word about it.

    While it can be shown that the rich are generally willing to pay their fair share, i.e. remain in places with high taxes, it is only when they feel that the quality of life issues make paying the high taxes worthwhile.  There can be no doubt that ever higher and higher taxes will drive the wealthy away; the Laffer Curve is real.

    The net result of this is that higher taxes impose a disproportionate burden on the middle class and the poor.  States like Illinois need to move to a more progressive tax structure; however they must do so very carefully in order to assure that the rich are not incentivized to relocate to Indiana.

  • Ron Paul vs. the #HonestMistake

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hONl8bAhRGI?rel=0]

  • Afghanistan – The Forgotten War

    Consider:

    Since Apr. 24, the following American service members have died as a result of continuing operations in Afghanistan.

    Spc. Manuel Vasquez, 22, West Sacramento, California
    Spc. Benjamin Neal, 21, Orfordville, Wisconsin
    Spc. Jason Edens, 22, Franklin, Tennessee
    Lt. Christopher Mosko, 28, Pittsford, New York
    Spc. Moises Gonzalez, 29, Huntington, California
    Staff Sgt. Brandon Eggleston, 29, Candler, North Carolina
    Sgt. Dick Lee Jr., 31, Orange Park, Florida
    Staff Sgt. Andrew Brittonmihalo, 25, Simi Valley, California
    Master Sgt. Scott Pruitt, 38, Gautier, Mississippi
    Pfc. Christian Sannicolas, 20, Anaheim, California

    via The Unknown Soldiers.

    Why is the media simply not covering these losses?

  • Pentagon Smears Critics

    The first casualty when war comes is the truth.
    — Hiram Johnson

    No one knows this better than the folks at the pentagon.

    The newspaper USA Today said Friday an editor and reporter probing Pentagon propaganda efforts have been targeted by an online “misinformation campaign.”

    Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created under the names of the reporter and editor with postings denigrating their professional reputations, according to the daily.

    The timing of the online harassment coincided with stories by Pentagon correspondent Tom Vanden Brook, who has written about the military’s “information operations” program that spent large sums on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    The program has faced criticism in and outside the Defense Department as “ineffective and poorly monitored,” the paper said.

    The false online accounts, including a fake Wikipedia entry, started appearing only days after the reporter first contacted Pentagon contractors for the story, the newspaper wrote.

    Two weeks after enterprise editor Ray Locker’s byline appeared on a story on the same subject, a fake website under his name — RayLocker.com — popped up, the paper said.

    You see?  you go writing things about the pentagon that they don’t like and misinformation about you will magically appear out of this air.  But worry not…

    A US official confirmed to AFP that the Defense Department had made inquiries to contractors doing public relations work to ask them about the false online accounts.

    The contractors denied any such activity, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

    But the websites were taken down following the Pentagon’s inquiry. Some other accounts were removed for violating Internet providers’ terms of service, USA Today said.

    The Pentagon said Friday it had not launched a formal investigation of the case.

    No no… why would a formal investigation be necessary?

    “We’re aware of the allegations and are not dismissing them outright to be sure,” press secretary George Little told reporters.

    via Yahoo! News Canada.

    Uh huh, right.

    Know this:  If the misinformation department at the pentagon is willing to take on a reporter and an editor from the USA Today — the nation’s largest paper — who have research staff and other resources at their disposal to fight back, then it would have no problem whatsoever totally destroying an ordinary citizen who exposes the truth.

  • Keith Olbermann Wanders Aimlessly in NY

    Unemployed, perennially confrontational talking head Keith Olbermann aimlessly wandered around Central Park South earlier this week, seemingly looking for a friend or a purpose.

    Our spies snapped unflattering pictures of Olbermann decked out in a giant red pullover and clownishly baggy jeans as he strolled 59th Street near Seventh Avenue, smelling the roses — or, in this case, the horse manure, allergens and aromas from a nearby food cart.

    via NYPOST.com.

    Ha ha ha.

    I never cared for Olbermann.  He, much like Bill Maher, engage in gutter dialog; although Olbermann uses fancier language.  It’s one ad hominem attack after another with this guy.  He has no unique ideas or thoughts of his own; he only tears down, divides.

    I’d like to think that karma is serving Keith the dish he richly deserves however the Left always need a useful idiot like Olbermann around to throw bombs.  He’ll be back.

     

  • Prescient or Racism?

    Again, a UK paper carries a story no U.S. media outlet would touch.

    In his three years as U.S. president, Barack Obama has been dogged by claims he is not patriotic enough.  …

    Now it emerges that similar fears were expressed about his father, who was categorised with others as ‘anti-American and anti-white’ when he moved to the United States in 1959.

    A memo … released today by the National Archives in West London …  sets out their concerns about the young Kenyans.

    Dated September 1, 1959, it says: ‘I have discussed with the State Department.  They are as disturbed about these developments as we are.  They point out that Kenya students have a bad reputation over here for falling into the wrong hands and for becoming both anti-American and anti-white.’  …

    Mr Obama Snr was among 100 or so Kenyan students brought to America by the African American Students Foundation.U.S. and British officials were deeply suspicious of this outfit, observing that the AASF – though backed by singer Harry Belafonte and actor Sidney Poitier – had links to a Kenyan nationalist leader.

    ‘The motives behind this enterprise, therefore, seem more political than educational,’ warned a letter from the British Embassy in Washington.

    It added: ‘The arrival here of these students, many of them of indifferent academic calibre and ill-prepared for the venture, is likely to give rise to difficult problems.’

    Mr Obama Snr, who died in 1982, is not singled out for concern in any of the documents.

    via Mail Online.

    My first blush at this is that it’s nothing more than racism.  A bunch of upper-crust government types don’t are much for a bunch of African kids polluting their fine universities.

    Further though makes me wonder though, we know what kind of life Barack Sr. (and Barack Jr.) made for himself.  But we don’t know how any of the other students did.

    The comparison I’m thinking of is where a law school (or other academic institution) will let in a student based on race who’s not performed well in the past  (i.e. affirmative action.)  It is sad but true that some (not all but some) of these students simply cannot handle the rigors of law school and end up dropping out.  Sometimes affirmative action is education is just setting someone up to fail.  That’s not helpful to anyone.

    So maybe it’s not racism, it’s a sense that having these African kids is not helpful to anyone.  It’s not helping them do anything in Kenya.  It’s not helping us with any issues we’re having.  And further it denies the spot to someone who could really use it to make the world a better place.  i.e.  It’s not serving the greater good.

    But then maybe… just maybe…  these government types back in the 50’s weren’t like the fools we have today.  Maybe the government knew that these kids were really up to no good.  That they were just biding their time, working the system, until the moment was just right when they could make their play.

    Maybe it would have been better to not allow students selected by a national socialist political leader into our system if for no other reason than to separate politics from higher education.  We know locally that when politics and higher education mix it’s with bad consequences.

    We may never know what motivated the memo back in ’59.  But it is odd that not one U.S. media outlet covered this story.