Pelosi and co-conspirator Steny Hoyer held forth in a USA Today op-ed, telling us from the get go that those who want their concerns heard about health care are, "simply un-American." Hah! From the Heritage Foundation, "Pelosi and Hoyer claim that opponents of Obamacare are disrupting townhalls across the country by ‘drowning out the facts’ about health reform. However, it is not the townhall-attending Americans that don’t have their facts straight. It is Pelosi, Hoyer, and Obama’s allies that are doing violence to the truth."
Pelosi - "The first fact is that health insurance reform will mean more patient choice." That is false. According to the non-partisan Lewin Group, about 83.4 MM people would lose their current private insurance, or a 48% reduction in the number of people with private coverage.
Pelosi - "Reform will mean affordable coverage for all Americans." That is false. As we have already highlighted, yearly premiums for the typical American with private coverage could go up as much as $460.
Pelosi says her plan will "lower costs". That is false, and has been thoroughly refuted by the CBO.
We heard from Dr Robert Trout this pm, a close friend and keen observer who has taken it on his own (since Obama and co have yet to bother) to take HR3200 apart; below, what he found just at the beginning!
From Trout:
SEC 102 Protecting the Choice to"Keep" Current Coverage.(a) Grandfathered health insurance coverage defined. Subject to the succeeding provisions of this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable coverage under this division, the term "grandfathered health insurance coverage" means individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Year 1 (eg. Jan 1, 2010) if the following conditions are met: [SO FAR SO GOOD, THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS!!](1) Limitation of "NEW" Enrollment-(A) In General - Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Year 1 (eg., Jan 2, 2010).THIS MEANS YOUR INSURER CAN NO LONGER OFFER POLICIES TO NEW CUSTOMERS AFTER THIS DATE (EG JAN 2, 2010), WHICH MEANS THE INSURER WILL GRADUALLY LOSE INSUREDS UNTIL IT IS FORCED TO CLOSE BUSINESS!!!THUS, OBAMA'S CLAIM THAT "YOU CAN KEEP YOUR INSURANCE PROVIDER" IS TRUE, WITH THE CAVEAT THAT "UNTIL WE PUT THE COMPANY OUT OF BUSINESS IN A FEW YEARS"
Moving On:(2) Limitation on changes in terms or conditions--Subject to paragraph () and except as required by law, the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Year 1(eg Dec 31, 2009).THIS MEANS IF YOU OR THE CARRIER MAKE ANY CHANGES TO THE POLICY, YOU LOSE THE POLICY AND GO DIRECTLY TO GOVT COVERAGE. FOR EXAMPLE, SUPPOSE YOU WANT TO CHANGE FROM A HIGH DEDUCTIBLE PLAN TO A LOW DEDUCTIBLE PLAN, GO DIRECTLY TO GOVERNMENT INSURANCE!!
CALL/WRITE YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS. AXE THEM IF THEY HAVE READ EVEN THE FIRST PAGE OF HR3200, AND WHAT SEC 102 MEANS TO THEM, AND TELL THEM WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU!!!!
Dr. Robert Trout
Robert Craven
Monday, August 10, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Fascism in Washington? Already?
We’re told the word "fascist" has been tossed around a bit lately, particularly in reference to tactics from the Obama administration. Whoa now! We wouldn’t know as we don’t listen to talk radio, or any radio, don’t own a TV and don’t subscribe to any newspapers. We have a few books around, an old pc that rarely works, and that's about it. Fascism in the good ‘ol USA? Come on.
Let’s see. What does the word mean? We do own a dictionary; here is Webster’s definition: "Any program for setting up a centralized, autocratic, national regime with severely nationalistic policies exercising regimentation of industry, commerce and finance, rigid censorship and forcible suppression of opposition."
We looked up the Obama health care plan:http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-07140
Son of a gun. BO’s plan does seem to reek a tad (as does the White House email urging the masses to turn in their neighbor if that neighbor’s view on the plan seems "fishy").
But don’t take it from us. What follows are excerpts from a presentation by David Janda, an MD and recognized expert on preventative health care, as keynote speaker at a Congressional Dinner in Washington, July/17.
About BO’s plan, Janda summarizes, "...it should be clear that the same warning notice must be placed on the Obama care plan as on a pack of cigarettes. Consuming this product will be hazardous to your health. The underlying method of cutting costs throughout the plan is based on rationing and denying care. There is no focus on preventing health care need...."
Janda continues, "The rationing of care is implemented through The National Health Care Board. This illustrious Board ‘will approve or reject treatment for patients based on the cost per treatment divided by the number of years the patient will benefit from the treatment.’ Translation.....if you are over 65 or have been recently diagnosed as having an advanced form of cardiac disease or aggressive cancer.....dream on if you think you will get treated.....pick out your coffin."
Next, "The plan also outlines that doctors and hospitals will be overseen and reviewed by The National Coordinator For Health Information and Technology. This ‘coordinator’ will "monitor treatments being delivered to make sure doctors and hospitals are strictly following government guidelines that are deemed appropriate." It goes on to say.....’Doctors and hospitals not adhering to guidelines will face penalties.’ According to those in Congress, penalties could include large six figure financial fines and possible imprisonment. So according to The ObamaCare Plan....if your doctor saves your life you might have to go to the prison to see your doctor for follow-up appointments. I believe this is the same model Stalin used in the former Soviet Union.
Then there is Section 1233 of The ObamaCare Plan, devoted to ‘Advanced Care Planning.’ After each American turns 65 years of age they have to go to a mandated counseling program that is designed to end life sooner. This session is to occur every 5 years unless the person has developed a chronic illness then it must be done every year. The topics in this session will include, ‘how to decline hydration, nutrition and how to initiate hospice care.’ It is no wonder The Obama Administration does not like my emphasis on Prevention. For Mr. Obama, prevention is the‘enemy’ as people would live longer."
Finally, Janda noted that, "Section 102 has the Orwellian title, ‘Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Coverage.’ What this section really mandates is that it is illegal to keep your private insurance if your status changes - e .g., if you lose or change your job, retire from your job and become a senior, graduate from college and get your first job. Yes, illegal."
After Janda finished the presentation, a Congressman asked him how to respond in an interview if asked for the best single word to describe the plan. Janda responded - "Fascist".
Seems a fit but not a surprise. White guilt and a sour economy got us a community organizer for president whose administration’s strong-arm tactics would make ACORN proud.
Robert Craven
Let’s see. What does the word mean? We do own a dictionary; here is Webster’s definition: "Any program for setting up a centralized, autocratic, national regime with severely nationalistic policies exercising regimentation of industry, commerce and finance, rigid censorship and forcible suppression of opposition."
We looked up the Obama health care plan:http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-07140
Son of a gun. BO’s plan does seem to reek a tad (as does the White House email urging the masses to turn in their neighbor if that neighbor’s view on the plan seems "fishy").
But don’t take it from us. What follows are excerpts from a presentation by David Janda, an MD and recognized expert on preventative health care, as keynote speaker at a Congressional Dinner in Washington, July/17.
About BO’s plan, Janda summarizes, "...it should be clear that the same warning notice must be placed on the Obama care plan as on a pack of cigarettes. Consuming this product will be hazardous to your health. The underlying method of cutting costs throughout the plan is based on rationing and denying care. There is no focus on preventing health care need...."
Janda continues, "The rationing of care is implemented through The National Health Care Board. This illustrious Board ‘will approve or reject treatment for patients based on the cost per treatment divided by the number of years the patient will benefit from the treatment.’ Translation.....if you are over 65 or have been recently diagnosed as having an advanced form of cardiac disease or aggressive cancer.....dream on if you think you will get treated.....pick out your coffin."
Next, "The plan also outlines that doctors and hospitals will be overseen and reviewed by The National Coordinator For Health Information and Technology. This ‘coordinator’ will "monitor treatments being delivered to make sure doctors and hospitals are strictly following government guidelines that are deemed appropriate." It goes on to say.....’Doctors and hospitals not adhering to guidelines will face penalties.’ According to those in Congress, penalties could include large six figure financial fines and possible imprisonment. So according to The ObamaCare Plan....if your doctor saves your life you might have to go to the prison to see your doctor for follow-up appointments. I believe this is the same model Stalin used in the former Soviet Union.
Then there is Section 1233 of The ObamaCare Plan, devoted to ‘Advanced Care Planning.’ After each American turns 65 years of age they have to go to a mandated counseling program that is designed to end life sooner. This session is to occur every 5 years unless the person has developed a chronic illness then it must be done every year. The topics in this session will include, ‘how to decline hydration, nutrition and how to initiate hospice care.’ It is no wonder The Obama Administration does not like my emphasis on Prevention. For Mr. Obama, prevention is the‘enemy’ as people would live longer."
Finally, Janda noted that, "Section 102 has the Orwellian title, ‘Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Coverage.’ What this section really mandates is that it is illegal to keep your private insurance if your status changes - e .g., if you lose or change your job, retire from your job and become a senior, graduate from college and get your first job. Yes, illegal."
After Janda finished the presentation, a Congressman asked him how to respond in an interview if asked for the best single word to describe the plan. Janda responded - "Fascist".
Seems a fit but not a surprise. White guilt and a sour economy got us a community organizer for president whose administration’s strong-arm tactics would make ACORN proud.
Robert Craven
Saturday, August 8, 2009
How To Offend A Founder
Those familiar with economic history find it difficult to swallow Obama’s agenda. They understand the implications. So would the Founders. So does Obama; he simply hopes the public are slow to catch on.
Background: Obama may appear to the casual observer to be historically challenged, proclaiming for example that during WWII his great-uncle helped liberate Auschwitz, and his grandfather knew troops that liberated Auschwitz and Treblinka. (This is nonsense. The Americans did not free either camp.) Or, in Berlin, stating when referring to his preferred half color that, "I don’t look like...Americans who’ve previously spoken in this.. city," forgetting apparently that both Powell and Rice had preceded him. Fortunately the fate of our country does not hang on these amusing constructions; it does hang on the success or failure of Obama’s assault on the private sector. That’s a tad more serious and that is where most of the left simply follow, lemming like, as Obama and his co-conspirators conveniently ignore economic history in their pretended role as society’s saviors.
Obama hijacked the economic crisis through the so-called stimulus bill. Now he has manufactured a crisis for the purpose of another government grab; this heist will be permanent, a ready-made legacy. What for example if our friends from the left sat down with James Madison in an attempt to justify their president’s health or economic agenda. Judging from everything Madison has ever written, he would no doubt lose his lunch. Madison warned in 1794 against, "the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in government." Yet Obama’s crew didn’t even bother to disguise that motivation - "never waste a crisis."
Sure enough, left-leaning administrations here and abroad have over the years levered all kinds of crises. The US Depression is one of the latest such opportunities, the left taking advantage of economic trouble to amass power. And we all understand the "ratchet effect." As problems subside, the enlarged government presence remains.
For those in the "feel good" camp who have never seen an easy way out they didn’t take, perhaps a read of F.A. Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom (Is Paved With Good Intentions) is in order, a book Milton Friedman endorsed as, "..for anyone interested in politics in the broadest and least partisan sense, a book whose central message is timeless." Hayek demonstrates that the left’s trademark of empowering government with increasing economic control will inevitably lead not to a utopia at all but to fascism.
Finally, another Founder reminds us that, "Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants." Alexander Hamilton would find Obama a threat to the Republic to which he and others gave birth.
PS Recall that on Monday, 8/3, the White House website asked citizens to send any "fishy" information regarding the health care plan to flag@whitehouse.gov. "Fishy" as in dissenting. That is, turn in your neighbor. Step one. Hamilton was right.
Robert Craven
Background: Obama may appear to the casual observer to be historically challenged, proclaiming for example that during WWII his great-uncle helped liberate Auschwitz, and his grandfather knew troops that liberated Auschwitz and Treblinka. (This is nonsense. The Americans did not free either camp.) Or, in Berlin, stating when referring to his preferred half color that, "I don’t look like...Americans who’ve previously spoken in this.. city," forgetting apparently that both Powell and Rice had preceded him. Fortunately the fate of our country does not hang on these amusing constructions; it does hang on the success or failure of Obama’s assault on the private sector. That’s a tad more serious and that is where most of the left simply follow, lemming like, as Obama and his co-conspirators conveniently ignore economic history in their pretended role as society’s saviors.
Obama hijacked the economic crisis through the so-called stimulus bill. Now he has manufactured a crisis for the purpose of another government grab; this heist will be permanent, a ready-made legacy. What for example if our friends from the left sat down with James Madison in an attempt to justify their president’s health or economic agenda. Judging from everything Madison has ever written, he would no doubt lose his lunch. Madison warned in 1794 against, "the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in government." Yet Obama’s crew didn’t even bother to disguise that motivation - "never waste a crisis."
Sure enough, left-leaning administrations here and abroad have over the years levered all kinds of crises. The US Depression is one of the latest such opportunities, the left taking advantage of economic trouble to amass power. And we all understand the "ratchet effect." As problems subside, the enlarged government presence remains.
For those in the "feel good" camp who have never seen an easy way out they didn’t take, perhaps a read of F.A. Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom (Is Paved With Good Intentions) is in order, a book Milton Friedman endorsed as, "..for anyone interested in politics in the broadest and least partisan sense, a book whose central message is timeless." Hayek demonstrates that the left’s trademark of empowering government with increasing economic control will inevitably lead not to a utopia at all but to fascism.
Finally, another Founder reminds us that, "Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants." Alexander Hamilton would find Obama a threat to the Republic to which he and others gave birth.
PS Recall that on Monday, 8/3, the White House website asked citizens to send any "fishy" information regarding the health care plan to flag@whitehouse.gov. "Fishy" as in dissenting. That is, turn in your neighbor. Step one. Hamilton was right.
Robert Craven
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The Palin Phenomenon
Our friends from the left are driven perfectly mad by the presence of an accomplished and attractive female - Sarah Palin. One, to use his words, "lost it" this week in a discussion with a Palin supporter.
We have already highlighted how Palin has exposed the media - see our sketch of July/13, a must read. Now she has just as unintentionally set a trap for our fruitcake friends. Her looks, voice and jargon trigger a visceral reaction in these types that is so laced with a sense of moral superiority that reality will never cooperate. They are doomed through their excess. To insist as they do that Palin is a blithering idiot is only to seal their coffin.
Our lefty friends forget that it requires brains to manage a family with five kids, live on a limited budget, get elected to local office, fish, hunt, go to sea, cook your own food, navigate in politics with no money, without an influential dad and power-broker husband. And how about the female critics? (Lefties gleefully tell us how their wives "just hate Sarah".) If one were to draw up a list of these types and trace their own lineages, one would discover that they either are married to powerful insiders, dated powerful insiders, or are the daughters of powerful insiders. Whoa ladies, very impressive, very self made.
Robert Craven
We have already highlighted how Palin has exposed the media - see our sketch of July/13, a must read. Now she has just as unintentionally set a trap for our fruitcake friends. Her looks, voice and jargon trigger a visceral reaction in these types that is so laced with a sense of moral superiority that reality will never cooperate. They are doomed through their excess. To insist as they do that Palin is a blithering idiot is only to seal their coffin.
Our lefty friends forget that it requires brains to manage a family with five kids, live on a limited budget, get elected to local office, fish, hunt, go to sea, cook your own food, navigate in politics with no money, without an influential dad and power-broker husband. And how about the female critics? (Lefties gleefully tell us how their wives "just hate Sarah".) If one were to draw up a list of these types and trace their own lineages, one would discover that they either are married to powerful insiders, dated powerful insiders, or are the daughters of powerful insiders. Whoa ladies, very impressive, very self made.
Robert Craven
Monday, July 27, 2009
Good For Business
Business has not been especially peppy in the grievance industry past few months. We have a half black president; a majority of Americans see race as incidental; a majority of blacks no doubt care for their family and community just as much as the next guy, sick of the constant reminders of a racism that they themselves rarely encounter. These conditions are not good for business for Jackson, Sharpton, H.L. "Skip" Gates and the rest who depend on racial conflict for a living. So, if it no longer comes naturally, they will manufacture it. This explains the recent accusation of racial profiling in Cambridge.
Most of us endeavor to stay alive. Post 9/11 the left flew into a tantrum when Muslims were questioned before boarding an airplane. But passengers and crew knew that although all Muslims were not terrorists, all terrorists were indeed Muslims. Naturally the precaution. The chatterers would see the wisdom of this if they were on the wrong plane.
Similarly, it is well known that blacks commit violent crimes in numbers far in excess of their presence in the population. Because of that, and human nature, law enforcement may sometimes error to the side of caution. After all, even Jesse Jackson said that if a black man’s behind him on a dark street, he’s nervous. Yet in the Cambridge situation, the arresting officer (as we all know now) had an exemplary reputation of dealing with the black community. All evidence indicates he acted property. Still, he was accused of profiling by the professor.
Instead, as most Americans realize, the only party guilty of racial profiling was Gates. And the situation was custom made for his industry. Without conflict he would have to transfer; maybe the literature department would fit. But then Gates once compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to the playwright Shakespear. "It’s like Shakespear’s ‘My love is like a red, red rose,’" he noted. Oops. That line was written by the Scottish poet Robbie Burns, about 200 years after Shakespear. Oh well. That won’t work. But then, with Obama's help, he won't need a transfer.
Robert Craven
Most of us endeavor to stay alive. Post 9/11 the left flew into a tantrum when Muslims were questioned before boarding an airplane. But passengers and crew knew that although all Muslims were not terrorists, all terrorists were indeed Muslims. Naturally the precaution. The chatterers would see the wisdom of this if they were on the wrong plane.
Similarly, it is well known that blacks commit violent crimes in numbers far in excess of their presence in the population. Because of that, and human nature, law enforcement may sometimes error to the side of caution. After all, even Jesse Jackson said that if a black man’s behind him on a dark street, he’s nervous. Yet in the Cambridge situation, the arresting officer (as we all know now) had an exemplary reputation of dealing with the black community. All evidence indicates he acted property. Still, he was accused of profiling by the professor.
Instead, as most Americans realize, the only party guilty of racial profiling was Gates. And the situation was custom made for his industry. Without conflict he would have to transfer; maybe the literature department would fit. But then Gates once compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to the playwright Shakespear. "It’s like Shakespear’s ‘My love is like a red, red rose,’" he noted. Oops. That line was written by the Scottish poet Robbie Burns, about 200 years after Shakespear. Oh well. That won’t work. But then, with Obama's help, he won't need a transfer.
Robert Craven
Monday, July 13, 2009
Palin's Gift
Certainly the intellectually honest must now acknowledge the in-bred, pre-programmed liberal bias of the mainstream media. The left can no longer deny the suddenly obvious, and thanks to Sarah Palin. She, without intending to do so, exposed the whole shebang.
Palin as an individual tripped something in the liberal media that spotlighted the rotten core - CNN, NYT’s, AP, ABC, Newsweek, Time. Newsroom reaction to Palin’s candidacy reflected to the average American just why these folk are rapidly going broke.
Media vulnerabilities were especially accentuated in the coverage of Palin. What these "journalists" exhibited in 2008 was epitomized by an eradication of the lines between fact and opinion – and, even more troubling, between reporting and propaganda. Some journalists were content to repeat Democratic party talking points or bloggers' rumors as though they were established fact, interspersing them with ideological commentary. For example, remember Palin’s decision as governor to cut Alaska's special education budget by 62 percent? After receiving emails to that effect, CNN's Soledad O'Brien cited the figure on-air. Oops. Palin actually tripled the state's spending on special needs kids. Recall the one about her membership in the Alaska Independence Party, which favors secession from the union? That made The New York Times, and again, wrong.
The coverage of Palin’s family life took media behavior from reckless to indecent. "A day of stunning Palin disclosures," was how the Associated Press greeted the news that Bristol Palin was pregnant. "A political stunner!" echoed CNN's Campbell Brown. In one 30-minute stretch, CNN reporters and anchors referred to the teen's pregnancy as "a bombshell" four separate times. And of course the Palin pregnancy hoax by Bill Mayer and Vanity Fair. From our favorite liberal, Camille Paglia , "The vicious double standard is pretty obvious. Only the tabloids, for example, ran the photos of a piss-drunk Chelsea Clinton, panties exposed, falling into her car outside London clubs a few years ago. If Chelsea had been the scion of Republican bigwigs, those tacky scenes would have been trumpeted from pillar to post in the U.S. as signals of parental failures or turmoil in clan Clinton."
Perhaps it was the 10/02/08 debate which was most revealing, the night Biden exposed his total lack of a grounding in government and constitutional affairs, the night incidentally that Palin cleaned his clock. No one in the media even saw it, or, chose to report it. Leading up to the debate, such luminaries as John Alter of Newsweek wrote that, "She is a far-right conservative who supported Pat Buchanan over Bush in 2000. She thinks global warming is a hoax and backs the teaching of creationism in public schools." She did not support Buchanan, she questioned whether climate change is man-made (not whether it's occurring) and gave creationists the most minor of rhetorical nods – and never questioned the teaching of evolution in schools. Hah! Too much.
And then the debate. Biden erroneously claimed that McCain voted with Obama on a budget resolution and asserted wrongly that Obama wanted to return to the Reagan-era marginal income tax rates. When the talk turned to national security, presumably Biden's purported area of expertise, he went completely off the grid. For example, he said Pakistan’s nuclear weapons can hit Israel. That is false. Pakistan has no intercontinental missiles. He said we "kicked" Hezbollah out of Lebanon. That is false. The US never "kicked" Hezbollah out of anywhere. Biden criticized Bush for supporting elections of the West Bank and said BO did too because it would legitimize Hamas. He was confused. Fatah controls the West Bank. Biden was thinking of Gaza. With Afghanistan, facts matter he said..."we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spend on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan." "Let me say that again," he said. He did and he was wrong both times. The facts here were that at the time Biden was speaking, the U.S. had spent $172 billion in Afghanistan over the 7 years. The Iraq War consumes between $7 billion and $8 billion every three weeks. What a clown. What a buffoon. Or when dressing down Dick Cheney, who was not present, for supposedly being unfamiliar with the Constitution. "The idea that he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States – that's the executive branch – he works in the executive branch," Biden said. Unfortunately, Article I defines the legislative, not executive, branch.
All of us know that if Palin had said any of this, she would have been laughed out of town. Biden got a pass. How come? As SJ Valley neighbor Vic Hansen role plays the journalists view, "Can’t smart people see that Palin’s naugahyde family is a reification of all this middle-class, mindless consumerism, without style, erudition, nuance and skepticism? How infuriating to sit here in New York and think that a winking tart could ever be elected, when seasoned sophisticates like Joe Biden and cosmopolitan metrosexuals like Barack Obama, who see it all, might not have been."
One intellectually honest, liberal journalist, a chief Washington correspondent for a news service, put it this way, "In the 2008 election, we took sides, straight and simple, particularly with regard to the vice presidential race. I don't know that we played a decisive role in that campaign. What I am saying is that we simply didn't hold Joe Biden to the same standard as Sarah Palin, and for me, the real loser in this sordid tale is my chosen profession." Facts matter.. "But they didn't in 2008, not when it came to Joe Biden (our guy) against Sarah Palin (odd outsider). The ladies and gentlemen of the press were more interested in her hair, her glasses, her wardrobe, her accent, her sex life, her kids' sex lives, and her hunting habits than in whether her opponent knew anything about foreign policy, the Constitution of the United States, or the job he was running for."
Thank you Sarah, for the gift of illumination.
Robert Craven
Palin as an individual tripped something in the liberal media that spotlighted the rotten core - CNN, NYT’s, AP, ABC, Newsweek, Time. Newsroom reaction to Palin’s candidacy reflected to the average American just why these folk are rapidly going broke.
Media vulnerabilities were especially accentuated in the coverage of Palin. What these "journalists" exhibited in 2008 was epitomized by an eradication of the lines between fact and opinion – and, even more troubling, between reporting and propaganda. Some journalists were content to repeat Democratic party talking points or bloggers' rumors as though they were established fact, interspersing them with ideological commentary. For example, remember Palin’s decision as governor to cut Alaska's special education budget by 62 percent? After receiving emails to that effect, CNN's Soledad O'Brien cited the figure on-air. Oops. Palin actually tripled the state's spending on special needs kids. Recall the one about her membership in the Alaska Independence Party, which favors secession from the union? That made The New York Times, and again, wrong.
The coverage of Palin’s family life took media behavior from reckless to indecent. "A day of stunning Palin disclosures," was how the Associated Press greeted the news that Bristol Palin was pregnant. "A political stunner!" echoed CNN's Campbell Brown. In one 30-minute stretch, CNN reporters and anchors referred to the teen's pregnancy as "a bombshell" four separate times. And of course the Palin pregnancy hoax by Bill Mayer and Vanity Fair. From our favorite liberal, Camille Paglia , "The vicious double standard is pretty obvious. Only the tabloids, for example, ran the photos of a piss-drunk Chelsea Clinton, panties exposed, falling into her car outside London clubs a few years ago. If Chelsea had been the scion of Republican bigwigs, those tacky scenes would have been trumpeted from pillar to post in the U.S. as signals of parental failures or turmoil in clan Clinton."
Perhaps it was the 10/02/08 debate which was most revealing, the night Biden exposed his total lack of a grounding in government and constitutional affairs, the night incidentally that Palin cleaned his clock. No one in the media even saw it, or, chose to report it. Leading up to the debate, such luminaries as John Alter of Newsweek wrote that, "She is a far-right conservative who supported Pat Buchanan over Bush in 2000. She thinks global warming is a hoax and backs the teaching of creationism in public schools." She did not support Buchanan, she questioned whether climate change is man-made (not whether it's occurring) and gave creationists the most minor of rhetorical nods – and never questioned the teaching of evolution in schools. Hah! Too much.
And then the debate. Biden erroneously claimed that McCain voted with Obama on a budget resolution and asserted wrongly that Obama wanted to return to the Reagan-era marginal income tax rates. When the talk turned to national security, presumably Biden's purported area of expertise, he went completely off the grid. For example, he said Pakistan’s nuclear weapons can hit Israel. That is false. Pakistan has no intercontinental missiles. He said we "kicked" Hezbollah out of Lebanon. That is false. The US never "kicked" Hezbollah out of anywhere. Biden criticized Bush for supporting elections of the West Bank and said BO did too because it would legitimize Hamas. He was confused. Fatah controls the West Bank. Biden was thinking of Gaza. With Afghanistan, facts matter he said..."we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spend on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan." "Let me say that again," he said. He did and he was wrong both times. The facts here were that at the time Biden was speaking, the U.S. had spent $172 billion in Afghanistan over the 7 years. The Iraq War consumes between $7 billion and $8 billion every three weeks. What a clown. What a buffoon. Or when dressing down Dick Cheney, who was not present, for supposedly being unfamiliar with the Constitution. "The idea that he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States – that's the executive branch – he works in the executive branch," Biden said. Unfortunately, Article I defines the legislative, not executive, branch.
All of us know that if Palin had said any of this, she would have been laughed out of town. Biden got a pass. How come? As SJ Valley neighbor Vic Hansen role plays the journalists view, "Can’t smart people see that Palin’s naugahyde family is a reification of all this middle-class, mindless consumerism, without style, erudition, nuance and skepticism? How infuriating to sit here in New York and think that a winking tart could ever be elected, when seasoned sophisticates like Joe Biden and cosmopolitan metrosexuals like Barack Obama, who see it all, might not have been."
One intellectually honest, liberal journalist, a chief Washington correspondent for a news service, put it this way, "In the 2008 election, we took sides, straight and simple, particularly with regard to the vice presidential race. I don't know that we played a decisive role in that campaign. What I am saying is that we simply didn't hold Joe Biden to the same standard as Sarah Palin, and for me, the real loser in this sordid tale is my chosen profession." Facts matter.. "But they didn't in 2008, not when it came to Joe Biden (our guy) against Sarah Palin (odd outsider). The ladies and gentlemen of the press were more interested in her hair, her glasses, her wardrobe, her accent, her sex life, her kids' sex lives, and her hunting habits than in whether her opponent knew anything about foreign policy, the Constitution of the United States, or the job he was running for."
Thank you Sarah, for the gift of illumination.
Robert Craven
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Palin - a little fun this Thur am
My, my, my, my, my but our friends from the left are hysterical about all this Palin stuff. They can’t contain themselves, poor things. I tried to talk to my pal at the nursery about plant material, but mid sentence - "I’m sick of that Palin! Did you here her rambling quitting speech? Typical." Ok pal, how about selling me some plants? "No. How could a quitter run for president. I’ll never vote for her!" Ok. Maybe she is just sick of having her kids brutalized by your kind, maybe just a TV show? "I’ll never watch that. Never!. I mean it." OK ok. We know, we know. The Palins are just like those trashy folk who pile out of their Tahoe, in the way at the Safeway just as our pal is parking his Volvo. Sure that’s infuriating. Sure it is.
But really now, shame on Palin for resigning. Of course, just like Dole, and Bill Weld, Fred Thompson and Bill Bradley. And of course - no other than Obama. Shame on BO. The notion of leaving an elected office after only two years. (Of course, BO did it on the public’s dime, ever resourceful.) And then there’s Col. George Washington. He quit the Virginia militia. The IBD editorial board, the best in the business, takes us back: Ed Rollins: "Everyone is shocked by this and everyone assumes there's another story. You just don't quit the Virginia militia," notes Ed. "You certainly don't do this as a steppingstone to anything else. This makes George look terribly inept. I think that's one of the questions that people have about him. Is Washington substantive enough to be a serious candidate for anything else? This just doesn't make sense." Or pundit Maureen Dowd, " Georgy Porgy is one nutty puppy," pundit Maureen Dowd wrote on hearing the news. "George wanted everyone to know that he's not having fun in the Virginia militia and people are being mean to him and he doesn't feel like serving anymore." Other journalists in the 13 Colonies agreed that George Washington was finished as a military leader. It was decided beyond a reasonable doubt that Washington by dropping out of the militia had ended what might have been a promising career.
But really now, shame on Palin for resigning. Of course, just like Dole, and Bill Weld, Fred Thompson and Bill Bradley. And of course - no other than Obama. Shame on BO. The notion of leaving an elected office after only two years. (Of course, BO did it on the public’s dime, ever resourceful.) And then there’s Col. George Washington. He quit the Virginia militia. The IBD editorial board, the best in the business, takes us back: Ed Rollins: "Everyone is shocked by this and everyone assumes there's another story. You just don't quit the Virginia militia," notes Ed. "You certainly don't do this as a steppingstone to anything else. This makes George look terribly inept. I think that's one of the questions that people have about him. Is Washington substantive enough to be a serious candidate for anything else? This just doesn't make sense." Or pundit Maureen Dowd, " Georgy Porgy is one nutty puppy," pundit Maureen Dowd wrote on hearing the news. "George wanted everyone to know that he's not having fun in the Virginia militia and people are being mean to him and he doesn't feel like serving anymore." Other journalists in the 13 Colonies agreed that George Washington was finished as a military leader. It was decided beyond a reasonable doubt that Washington by dropping out of the militia had ended what might have been a promising career.
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