My Blog

Category: Society

  • 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.

  • Drivers Get Creative to Avoid High Toll Fees

    Drivers fed up with New York City’s expensive toll roads are carpooling to save a few dollars on the George Washington Bridge, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    Bridge commuters can save $6 a vehicle by using the “carpooling” lane. Because of this, some rogue drivers have started picking up hitchhikers determined to save money (and help others save money, too).

    According to the WSJ, the George Washington Bridge’s toll booths bring in $625 million for the city. Toll cheats like this cost the city $7 million.

    Port Authority police have caught on to the carpooling scheme. Officers patrolling the bridge have started issuing citations to drivers who pick up passengers near the toll booths. Picking up a hitchhiker isn’t illegal, so the police nab these drivers through tickets for an illegal lane change or stopping at a bus stop (a bus stop near the bridge is popular place for these drivers to pick up passengers).

    via Business Insider.

    Before I took a little break, I wrote about Cook County raising cigarette taxes and have revenue plummet.  This is just another fine example of people changing their behavior in order to avoid taxes.

    The more you tax something the less you get of it.

  • Protests

    Story:

    Protesters throw fence on police 5:43 p.m.

    Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, dressed in his white uniform and wearing sunglasses, has appeared behind the thick line of police in riot gear.

    The police are facing off with protesters at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Cermak. A large crowd of protesters is gathered in the street on Cermak.

    Police and protesters are nose to nose, pushing at each other. Some protesters fall when police shove them with batons held horizontally in both hands. Periodically, police pull a protester out and take them away.

    At one point, protesters facing the police threw a section of metal street barricade on top of the line of police, who caught it with their hands and passed it back through the line of cops.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    And either a differing account or a wholly new event:

    Pizza proprietors fail to ride NATO summit wave 7:21 p.m.

    The four operators of Papa John’s Pizza, 80 E. Cermak Road, watched from their closed storefront window as the bloody skirmishes took place outside.

    “I had as good a front row view as anybody,” said Steve Feldberg, one of the operating partners.

    The pizza proprietors originally decided to stay open during the NATO summit weekend in hopes of picking up extra delivery business from customers who didn’t want to leave their homes.

    That turned out not to be the case, and sales lagged below expectations, he said. Just before noon Sunday morning, they made the decision to send staff home and close for the rest of the day, citing safety concerns.

    “We could just tell what was coming,” Feldberg said.

    He and his colleagues decided to stick around out of curiosity. At one point, the group watched as protestors wielded a barrier fence above their heads and started trying to throw it toward his store.

    “We were all watching it as it happened,” Feldberg said. “There was nothing we could do.”

    Police were able to take control of the fence and pass it safely to the rear of their flank.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Whether this is one incident or two there can be no doubt as to a few facts:  The protesters tried to hurl a section of a metal fence at someone, & this is not the kind of non-violent action the protesters claim to be all about.

  • 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.

  • 21 Unanswered Questions

    #3 Why does the Department of Homeland Security need Predator-B drones to patrol the border between the United States and Canada?

    #4 Why is a militarized “Red Zone” being set up in Chicago three weeks prior to the upcoming NATO summit on May 20th and 21st?

    #5 Why is the Milwaukee Red Cross being told to prepare for an evacuation of Chicago?

    via YOLO (you only live once).

    Some of these are quite serious (#’s 7, 12, 19.)  Some are easily explained.  Visit the link and decide for yourself.

    Keep in mind as you as you review this list that:

    They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety,
    deserve neither liberty nor safety.
    — Benjamin Franklin

    and

    A government big enough to give you everything you want
    is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
    – Gerald Ford, Joint Statement to Congress, August 12, 1974.

  • Frederick Douglass: Do Nothing With Us!

    In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us.  What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.  The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us…. I have had but one answer from the beginning.  Do nothing with us!  Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.  Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! … And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also.  All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! …  Your interference is doing him positive injury.

    via Frederick Douglass – African American Quotes.

    Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.

    Simply amazing.  When will the modern left learn their lesson?

  • Trayvon Martin Case Causing More Beatings?

    Mobile police need your help to catch a mob that beat Matthew Owens so badly that he’s in critical condition.

    According to police, Owens fussed at some kids playing basketball in the middle of Delmar Drive about 8:30 Saturday night. They say the kids left and a group of adults returned, armed with everything but the kitchen sink.

    Police tell News 5 the suspects used chairs, pipes and paint cans to beat Owens.

    Owens’ sister, Ashley Parker, saw the attack. “It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed.” Parker says 20 people, all African American, attacked her brother on the front porch of his home, using “brass buckles, paint cans and anything they could get their hands on.”

    Police will only say “multiple people” are involved.

    What Parker says happened next could make the fallout from the brutal beating even worse. As the attackers walked away, leaving Owen bleeding on the ground, Parker says one of them said “Now that’s justice for Trayvon.”

    via The Daily Caller.

    NOTE:  Photo of Mr. Owens in the hospital at link.

    Violence begets violence until someone stands up and shouts STOP!!

    But that hasn’t happened.

    What has happened is the MSM, black “leaders”, the new black panthers, and Left leaning talking heads of all sorts have been yelling form the mountaintops “No Justice No Peace.”  Matthew Owens is the result.

    Our society is so screwed.

  • Tale of Two Missions

    Absolutely amazing piece of work about Chicago’s failing schools.

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmnFQkD0Eg0]

    I have considerable new found respect for Mr. Williams after seeing this.  I always thought we was railroaded out of NPR unfairly.  But I also thought he was a little light intellectually.  Whatever his faults (and we all have faults) it’s clear he cares about the children and wants to make things better.  Kudos.

  • 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.

  • Climate Alarmist Says Burn Down Skeptics’ Homes

    Climate Alarmist Calls For Burning Down Skeptics’ Homes

    “Let’s start keeping track of them…let’s make them pay”

    via  Infowars.

    Really?!

    Ya, really!

    “We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices,” writes Zwick, adding, “They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?”

    What a dingle-berry.

    How about this:  how about we make a list of all the people who got the global warming thing wrong and then charge them for all of our energy bills (gasoline, coal, electricity, natural gas, etc.) going higher because of their stupid regulations?

    Let’s start with Al Gore who lives in a huge mo fo house using 10 times the energy of the average person and wants to drive up the energy costs of poor people living in everything from cheap apartments to public housing.

    From there we’d move on to all the folks who don’t want to drive for oil in the Gulf of Mexico and ANWAR.  There should be two prices for gas in this country:  $2.65 for all the folks who support drilling and $6.75 for all the folks who don’t.

    Morons.