The New York Times refused to publish an editorial written by John McCain a week after publishing one written by Obama.   That's beyond absurd.   No wonder nobody reads the Times anymore.   The paper has become irrelevant!   No wonder the business is failing!

To read more and see McCain's editorial click the following link:

NYT REJECTS MCCAIN'S EDITORIAL; SHOULD 'MIRROR' OBAMA

Labels: 2008 presidential election, media bias

The AP writes about whether the media is playing fair in its campaign coverage in terms of the adoration heaped upon Obama measured in both quantity and quality.   They wonder if Obama "is simply a more interesting candidate at this point," Obama having "proven an attractive commodity."   Maybe John McCain is to blame for "criticizing Obama for a lack of foreign policy experience."   Of course, Obama has none and McCain was merely pointing out the obvious.   They ponder this reason and that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.   Maybe the media is more interested in Obama because he is their annointed one.   He is the man who has been chosen to defeat the evil Republicans.   Let's face it.   The time is long over gone to ask the question "is the media biased to the left."   Conservatives stopped asking that question quite some time ago.   Today it is a very rare person indeed who calls any sort of talk show to ask whether the media is biased.   Of course they are.   But that's not why Obama is getting more and more favorable coverage from them.   That would happen anyways though the lopsided nature would be better hidden.   The reason the media is fawning over the great annointed one is because he is black.   There's a term for that, isn't there?

Labels: media bias, racism

Reuters proudly informs you that Germans prefer Barrack Obama to John McCain by 49 percent.   No, not 49% to say 46%.   The margin of victory, if this thing were held today in Germany would be 49%.   That's not merely a landslide, that's an ObamaNation.

But these things aren't conducted internationally.   It's our country and actually we don't give a rat's ass what the German people think.   Same goes for the French, the Italians, the Libyans.   The oh-so-sophisticated press likes to pretend that these things play out on the world stage - that's in their pipe dream, not sure what's in the pipe.  

Interestingly, in their giddyness over the great man's international popularity, they sometimes let a thing or two slip.   Reuters says that while the German masses are swooning for Obama, those running the government are a bit more nervous.

The governments recognize the man has virtually no experience beyond voting "present" at the state/local level and a few years as a rock star during which he has accomplished nothing noteworthy in the Senate.   Heck, he can't even claim, as that jackass Kerry did, that he has held secret meetings with tons of world leaders who all prefer him to his opponent.

He can't claim it because basically this rockstar has been on the concert tour.   He has barely left the hotel except to hit the venues.   Obama has basically been a part of state government, proclaimed his own greatness to the world, won a pretty easy Senate position due to his connectedness to the Chicago Democrat machine, done nothing but give broad general speeches, not debate specific pieces of legislation, while barely showing up for the Senate job, and beat the former first lady for his party's nomination.

Apparently Barry's lack of experience is only one reason foreign governments are nervous.   Another such reason is their bad experience with Bill Clinton during his early years.   Funny but the press didn't report on that at the time.   They ignored it because the ineffectual President was a Democrat.   Assuming Barry wins this race, it'll be 2025 before the liberal media lets us know what a complete disaster the guy was.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, liberal spin, media bias

The AP reports: art "Exhibit aims to shatter US stereotypes of Islam".   That's nice.   An art exhibit shatters the mistaken images Americans possess with regards to Muslims and others who reside in Arab and Muslim countries.   Maybe this will help dispel some of the myths.   I've got nothing bad to say about it.   But how about an exhibit in Arab and Musl;im countries which dispels myths about Americans, Christians, etc.?   After all, we may have had many wrong beliefs about them but we let them live basically peacefully amongst us, while erectiung their mosques, poursuing the American dream, holding up the accomplishments of their culture in our schools, etc.   AND, THEY attacked us, not vice versa.   "They" is a specific reference to those fundamentalist extremists who allegedly hijacked Islam for their own purposes.   You can't impeach everyone who practices Islam because of the acts of a few maniacs.   But "they" also includes everyone who danced in the streets after the Sep 11 attacks, not to mention every other time Americans are killed by Islamic "extremists," those who routinely burn our flag or stomp on American symbols, and everyone in those misunderstood Arab and Muslim countries who blames any available American, or westerner for that matter, for everything that is wrong with their lives and culture.

Who is more misunderstood by whom?

Labels: Islam, Islamic Facism, media bias

Nobody in the media bothers listening to serious criticism of CFL bulbs like this one: Representative Poe of Texas' speech regarding CFL lightbulbs.   Nobody aside from unscripted C-Span would ever give it air time, not to mention perhaps listing some of the facts enumerated therein including:

They contain mercury;

• They must be disposed of in federally mandated ways with which most users are not at all familiar;
  
• When they break, the first thing you are supposed to do is open windows and stop the air circulation system although many Americans who live or work in high rise buildings can accomplish neither;
  
• Rules for disposal of broken ones are extremely complicated (3 single spaced pages) and not known by the vast majority of Americans, not to mention they are easily followed by those who are aware of them;
  
• Use of CFLs fades photographs on the wall and interferes with the performance of most electronic devices commonly used by most human beings on the planet today; and
  
• All of these bulbs are made in China where quality control and environmental protections are nearly none existent.   None of these are made in the US.   They are all imported.

But this is boring, dry stuff which doesn't play well when you are trying to capture a younger audience so you can sell commercial time.   99% of Americans will never see this speech before Congress, allowing liberals to act as if it never happened and to proceed as if the facts listed are unimportant.   So let's take a slightly different, more entertaining look at the wonderful "modern" invention - the CFL:

The truth about CFLs

Labels: environmentalism, global warming, liberals, media bias

We're a little mixed up in this society.   It seems as if we have no idea what we're talking about with regards to almost everything.   We seem to have gotten hold of a large amount of bad information.   And the results of bad inputs are always bad outputs.

At a time when the world's Socialist and Communist powerhouses are getting stronger and stronger precisely because they have experimented with Capitalism, we are moving closer and closer to Socialism.   Our political leaders embrace one failed policy after another and espouse the very practices which hold back the Socialist world from overtaking us economically.   Some Congressmen have recently called for government controlled refining capacity as a way to meet demand for fuel when private interests are prohibited from building same by environmental activists.   Governments are as notoriously bad at protecting the environment as they are at running business enterprises efficiently.   Take China as an example.   It isn't the small, private entrepreneurs who are to blame for the pollution problems there.   It's the government-run industries.   Governments, of course, are pretty much immune from being sued for liability due to the damage caused by their pollution.   Indiviual entrepreneurs, of course, are not.

We worry about global warming caused by automobiles run on gasoline.   Yet, natural causes release more carbon dioxide and methane than all the world's cars combined.   We really don't know how much greenhouse gas is released by volcanic activity since we don't monitor even a high percentage of the world's volcanoes.   Heck, we haven't even identified many of the world's volcanoes, particularly those under the waves.   Naturally occurring, large-scale forest fires release more CO2 in many states than automobiles do.   We talk of protecting the natural carbon sinks called rain forests while these are also major sources of highly potent methane.   We strive to use "renewable fuels" grown on land made available via clear-cut rain forests.   We'd like to grow our "renewable fuel" via agricultural processes and avoid using "nonrenewable" oil which, by the way happens, to result from ancient organic matter.

We are concerned about the melting of the Arctic and what that might mean to the poor polar bears, which by the way managed to survive temperatures much higher than present day ones.   We measure the temperature of the water and find it sufficiently cold, perhaps colder than before "global warming" began.   Yet the water makes up most of the surface mass of the planet and should be the key element measured since it has a greater impact on the atmosphere than vice versa.   We measure the air and find it has risen insufficiently to melt the ice.   But the melting is occurring at least to some degree so we scratch our heads and blame it on automobiles.   Then scientists discover huge, active, CO2-spewing volcanoes beneath the Arctic ice which may be to blame and this barely makes any news headlines at all.

We protect species of fish which are of no apparent use to human beings, are not commercially harvested, but which prey on other species of protected fish, ones harvested by humans.   Each year we reduce the amount of certain species of fish which can be commercially harvested or caught by recreational fisherman because of still declining numbers of these species or because our arbitrarily determined targets (never before recorded levels) for them are not apparently achievable.   What are the main culprits in these species' failure to "recover," other species of protected fish which have virtually no natural predators including man.   The result are stable to dwindling numbers of human harvested fish and astronomical increases in non-human-harvested, predator species.

In the area of "performance enhancing drugs, we condemn Roger Clemens, based on comments made by one guy under legal duress, to the scrapheap because he probably used steroids during his baseball career, at a time during which they were not prohibited by the governing body of the sport he played.   At the same time we hold up Lance Armstrong as an American hero because he overcame a cancer which just happens to often be associated with steroid use.   Allegations have surfaced from many corners suggesting that Armstrong used performance enhancing drugs but these allegations have never been proven because legal settlements have quieted the accusers.   But we claim to "know" that Clemens has used performance enhancing substances because federal investigators claim he lied before Congress, a body arguably consisting of the biggest liars on the planet.   Clemens cannot quiet his accusers via legal means because they are government.   Armstrong's accusers are private individuals who can be "legally bribed."

The Olympics approaches and performance enhancing drugs are again making big headlines, just not in the way you might expect.   One article today dicusses Chinese concerns over drug testing which might result in positives due to use of "traditional Chinese medicines."   Some of these "traditional medicines" include "Deer's penis," banned substances like ephedrine, and other "herbs."   The rub is the entire world of "banned performance enhancing drugs" evolved from "traditional medicines."   The full spectrum of steroids grew out of the study of "traditional" use of testicular extracts by, among others, Chinese practitioners of martial arts.   Somehow, we are supposed to give the Chinese athletes a pass should they be found to be doped, because they are mere victims of their traditional medicines "used for thousands of years."   At the same time, we impeach the entire US sports programs should some track star be found guilting of taking a modern medicine to treat his or her asthma.

Well, enough ranting for one day.   It is dumfounding to try to pick one's way through the misinformation and disinformation propagated by the American media.   Sometimes, you have to just release some pressure in the same manner volcanoes located under the Arctic do.   This can help prevent a complete meltdown of the planet and individual.

Labels: media bias

Let's say you travelled inside a world in which everyone was a card carrying liberal.   Let's call that world "the mainstream media."   Let's also say that during your career am,ongst these people, you have always been a representative from the dark side, the conservative side.   But going forward, the only way you are going to be able to earn a living is to throw off your conservative clothing and do something big which paints you as either totally objective or maybe even a bit of a lib.   That is what Scott McClellan has accomplished.   Congrats, Scott.   Now you'll be able to make a living.   But don't for a minute believe the liberal crowd does anything more than tolerate you.   They'll never like your kind.

Labels: media bias

I'll celebrate no man's death.   I wish no man to perish.   But of all the leaders of the leftist media, Tim Russert, dead today at 58 of a heart attack, was perhaps the single most influential soul.   His constant insistence that he was unbiased was belied by his work for the Democrat party in the campaigns of both Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and NY Governor Mario Cuomo.   Nobody in the media ever questioned Russert's lack of objectivity.   Nobody ever examined his obviously biased work product.   The Democrats and liberals have lost a very important voice.   I'll not mourn the man's passing.

Labels: media bias

Is it not common knowledge that one of the appeals of Disney is that it represents toned down experience, its "roller coasters" are of the lighter variety, its "haunted houses" are not particularly creepy, its TV shows are a bit heavy on the "family" viewing side, meaning suitable for young children while not very entertaining for teenagers and adults?   So why are they scaring the children now?

ABC News, part of the big happy ABC/Disney family, is running a broadcast which dares to ask the unthinkable, Earth 2100 - will we survive the next century?   These dopey dopes reason that "extreme changes in climate, combined with dwindling resources, famine, war and disease have the potential to create a post-apocalyptic world in less than a hundred years."   That's about the dumbest thing I've yet read by the modern version of the man on the corner carrying a "The End Is Near" sign.

There are a few salient facts which should be considered in this debate.   For one thing, biology tells us that species tend to flourish beyond what is sustainable by the environment.   That's completely natural.   Generally any successful species will outstrip resources and then get kicked in the face by nature until its numbers are less than the environment can sustain.   Its been happening since the dawn of time and will continue long after, ahem, we have left the planet.

Secondly, the nature of any beast indicates that at some point famine or disease will wipe out most but not all of a population.   Darwinists would call this natural selection.   Those few who are left continue on much stronger than they were previously.   Again, that's a completely natural occurrence.

Regarding climate change?   Come on folks, give me a break.   Put this fairy tale to bed for once and for good.   Chicken Little has had more than her 15 minutes of fame.   The Earthas climate has suffered far worse and dramatic climate shifts in the past and will most certainly do so in the future whether we are here or not.   We are guests in this place in the sense that over a relatively short time, the planet has been hospitable to our kind of life.   That may6 not last very long but our usage of fossil fuel has nothing to do with it.   The doomsayers have had their opportunity to get our attention.   They have no idea what they are talking about.   Right now, we sit at a serious risk of global cooling, at least as big a risk as warming.   And our little spec of a footprint has nothing to do with it.   We could no sooner avoid a dramatic cooling of the planet than we could mitigate a tsunami.   Please drop this.   All you are doing is scaring the children who don't know any better.

As far as "dwindling natural resources" are concerned, which ones are we referring to?   Surely the existence of our species does not depend upon oil, other stuff we pull from the ground, or any of the hard goods which may be experiencing a reduced availability.   The bottom line is whether there is enough clean water and produce, whether cultivated or not, determines whether our kind of life can continue.   Certainly nobody believes that if 90% of the population were to disappear, there would be any kind of pressure on the remaining resources.   Any species will, again, tend to outstrip the available resources, die back, and then perhaps thrive again.   It's all part of the Circle of Life.

Disney ought to stick with things it knows like "The Lion King."   And if they insist on scaring the children, we're not going to invite them into our houses any longer.   Is that a challenge?   Yes.

Labels: media bias

Oprah is spending and spending big.   She chose to endorse Obama in very public ways and that apparently has hurt her TV audience.   Ratings info shows Oprah's afternoon show has lost 1.7 million viewers, including one quarter of the female audience between 25 and 54 years of age, and her magazine circ is down ten percent over the past 3 years.   Her Big Give Show flopped ... totally.   Oprah people have expressed no concern over the reduced numbers, choosing instead to claim everything is O K.   But let's get real here.   When a business drops big numbers from its top line while everything above the profit line remains the same, there's big trouble.   A 10% reduction in revenue does not yield a 10% drop in profits.   Profits always drop way more than revenue figures.   Oprah has taken a huge hit.   And in that business, once you drop in this manner, there's often no recovery.   That means over the net present value of what Oprah has spent to endorse Obama, the numbers are HUGE.   I sure hope it was worth it, O!

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, media bias

Sean Penn is busy talking at Cannes.   According to this genius, it is impossible to separate film from politics.   Somehow I don't have any trouble doing that.   Yes, somebody local named Schreck won a mayoral race but she is not an ogre and apparently doesn't get super-ugly after dark.   Yes, former politician Al Gore used a digitally created image of glaciers calving in his supposedly factual (not fact based) documentary.   Some people, especially actors have difficulty separating film from reality but us consumers out here usually don't have such difficulties ... unless the name of the film is something along the lines of "Jackass."

Labels: Al Gore, entertainers, glaciers, liberal spin, media bias

There is an e-mail making the rounds which claims military deaths during Bush's presidency are less than they were under Bill Clinton.   The irony of our military experiencing more deaths during a period with no open conflicts than it has during the evil Bush years (with two somewhat major conflicts going on) is obvious.   The e-mail cites a report on the web site of the Federation of American Scientists.   That supposed report has evaporated and the page now forwards interested visitors to a page on Army Times which in turn debunks the mythical "factual report."   I took a look at the Army Times "correction" and found what was there to be at least as interesting as the original e-mail.

The Army Times article says, "There's just one problem: The figures listed in the email are wrong.   They vary markedly from the figures published in the cited CRS source document."   It then goes on to analyze the actual figures saying:

In reality, according to the CRS report, 7,500 service members died on active duty in the eight years from 1993 through 2000, compared to 8,792 in the six years from 2001 through 2006.

The Pentagon has not yet released data on total active-duty deaths for 2007, but 1,014 service members died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that year, and more than 100 have died in the wars so far in 2008, pushing the known total under Bush to more than 9,900.

The report does not address the ratio of active-duty deaths to force size; the active-duty force shrank significantly during the drawdown of the 1990s, from more than 1.7 million in 1993 to about 1.3 million by the early years of this decade.

The first issue which strikes me from the foregoing is even with two conflicts ongoing and hundreds of thousands of fighting men and women in harms' way, the mortality ratio is very similar during the terms of the two presidents.   Yes, more were killed under Bush and each one is a tragedy.   But the difference during the "peace dividend" years and the period since we were attacked is not very large.

Any man's (or woman's) death diminishes me and you.   But let's be rational here.   The media, the peaceniks, and even the very liberals who voted to engage in the two actions in the Middle East have been screaming about how evil George Bush has been killing our sons and daughters en masse through his shameful invasion of a country run by a secularist dictator (not a religiously driven Islamic fundamentalist one).   Let's get a grip.   The mortality figures are not even close to any conflict this country has ever engaged in, let alone Vietnam or Korea.

These conflicts, together, are comparable only to ... The War of 1812!

The second observation is finally a recognition that our military was badly bruised under Clinton.   The "drawdown of the 1990s" occurred not after a major conflict but in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.   And it was a reduction of forces of almost 25% at a time during which we were in fact being attacked, such attacks becoming more and more frequent as the Clinton presidency wore on.

That was just the reduction in raw numbers of people.   It says nothing about the reduction in talent which was extremely significant.   Many career military people dropped out of the armed forces because they could see the writing on the wall.   We lost more than 25% of our braintrust during the Clinton years.

The reduction in raw numbers of people and talent isn't nearly comparable to the size of reduction in equipment, technology development, etc. we experienced under Clinton.   That was the bigger travesty.   The Clinton years left our military in shambles and totally reliant upon reserve forces, many of whom signed up just to get money for college since during those years college costs got really out of sight.

Do I need to remind anyone that the purpose of our military has never been to provide college scholarships for those whose parents are less wealthy and who otherwise do not qualify for aid given to underprivileged people?   The Clinton presidency gave us much, much more than don't ask, don't tell.   It gave us a smaller, largely demoralized, under-equipped military lacking in mid-level leadership.

I had an argument with a liberal from Minnesota a couple years back.   He was praising the brilliance of Clinton because he had "balanced the budget."   I said, "yes, he balanced the budget in terms of what gets reported out to the people but he very much did so ON THE BACKS OF THE MILITARY."   This guy disputed that.   He was wrong.   He used the old liberal standby debate winner by saying, "I've read a lot on the subject, have you."   I laughed in his face and said, "yes, you read a lot on the subject, a lot of BULLSHIT.   If you don't know or deny that Bill Clinton balanced the budget on the backs of our military, you REALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HE DID."

You can't win this debate by using the talking points issued in the liberakl code of conduct field manual.   The facts are Clinton decimated the military in order to present cleaner books to Congress and the public.   He even called it "The Peace Dividend" and the Clinton-adoring, leftist mainstream media published it as fact.   Then things got complicated.

Turns out this "drawdown" wasn't such a great idea after all since it we were certainly NOT at peace.   Oh, Clinton only had to fire a few million dollar missiles here and there to remain in office and keep his Democrat party doing OK.   But the enemy was shooting real bullets back at us and planting bombs of every type in our bases, in boats aimed at our ships, etc., etc., and so forth.   We were at war but we didn't know we were at war.   We let our soldiers go out on furlow and retired our officer corps while the enemy was putting our CIVILIANS in its sights.   Some freakin' peace dividend!

So, that's my take on the bogus spam e-mail making the rounds and the correction.   We hacve a serious disagreement in this country between those who do not see the invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent one of Iraq as the worst travesty foisted upon the American people and those who believe it is demonstrative of the "worst presidency in the history of the country."

I say history will be clear in its interpretations and judgments of the past and following 20 or 30 years.   Nobody alive today will view those interpretations and judgments.   They'll be published in the history books of students 100-150 years from now.   The whole period of 1960 - 2020 will be a relatively minor one in the history books of American school children, if there is still a United States of America in 2150.   They'll find this period somewhat boring.   They'll laugh at the primitive technology we lived with.   They'll study the slanted journalism of our times - no liberals not O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, but rather all the slanted media including 60 Minutes, NBC, CBS, New York Times, Washington Post, etc.

School kids in 2150 will have a sentence or two in their testbooks (something which will be on the test!) describing how the media openly attacked Bush and propped up Democrats by distorting the facts, to the detriment of the country.   They'll read how Clinton drew down the military while we were under attack.   They'll read that the Bush presidency was not nearly as bad as the media made it out to be.   They'll read how the Clinton presidency was not nearly as good as the media made it out to be.   They'll read how the candidacy iof inexperienced Obama was not nearly what the media made it out to be.   They'll be encouraged to critically question media reports about the current President, a Republican woman, part black, part white, part hispanic who was born into relative poverty and pulled herself up to prominence without any governmental assistance.

What the kids of 2150 won't learn about is how bad of an idea it was to invade Afghanistan or Iraq, or about how many people GW Bush killed, because 100-150 years from now, it won't look that way.

Labels: media bias

This really gets under my skin.   Whenever someone sticks (should I say clings) to his guns (and presumably religion), the media labels him or her a "polarizing figure."   When a liberal holds tight to his or her liberal political philosophy, they are called visionary, free thinkers, etc.   This phenomenon is very similar to the media's tendency to label conservatives as incapable of compromise while claiming that liberals are peacemakers, coalition builders, etc.   The truth is liberals invoke a strategy of constantly seeking give from conservatives while never actually engaging in the practice themselves.   The media paints almost every conservative as a "polarizing figure."   For example, 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl interviewed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and brought up the subject of Scalia's originalism.   CBS News describes the exchange and labels Scalia "a polarizing figure who invites protesters and picketers."   Stahl says, "I'm surprised at how many people really, really hate you.   These are some things we've been told: 'He's evil.'   'He's a Neanderthal.'   'He's going to drag us back to 1789.'   They're threatened by what you represent and what you believe in."

Liberals are fond of calling any strong conservative a whole host of silly names.   They think "polarizing figure" will make anyone who pretends to be intelligent dislike the guy right out of the box.   Conservatives are always accused of not being forward thinkers while liberals are embraced as dragging us reluctantly into the future.   When is this garbage going to stop?   When are they going to listen to the sound of us changing the channel?   When are we going to see some reasonable balance in the media?   We got rid of story fabricator, Dan Rather.   Now we need the rest of the liberals, like Stahl, to pass on into retirement.

Labels: media bias

The tall tales are not limited to fables about global warming this election season.   There are many other lies being spread.   Some of them are bigger than others.   The specifics of the lies aren't nearly as important as the facts that the powerful groups spreading those lies are doing it for political advantage and the media absolutely refuses to correct the falsehoods in order to inform the public.   After the election, there will be many stories claiming there is or is not a left lean to the field of journalism based on the number of news stories praising Barack or attempting to destroy McCain.   Yet there is no denying that the newsies fail to straighten out one of the bigger lies being spread quietly among Democrats.   Tha lie pertains to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Yesterday a teacher and member of the extremely powerful teachers union made a comment in passing which is basically indicative of what many other teachers are talking about at their union meetings.   The teacher was complaining about NCLB.   Then she paused and said with some satisfaction that it'll "be gone by January."   The notion is that evil George Bush is entirely to blame for it.   And either Obama or Clinton will wipe it from the face of the Earth.   Then we can get busy really fixing our schools.   That's a bigger lie than global warming.

First of all, it remains clear that the act was written by Democrat Senator Kennedy.   Secondly, let the record show that although they currently criticize the legislation, both the Junior Senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the Junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama, VOTED FOR IT!   Third, the concept behind this act is here to stay whether liberals, candidates, or teachers like it or not.

Our nation's schools have been in rough shape and getting worse for decades.   They don't match up well with those of the rest of the developed world.   When inner city schools graduated kids at a higher rate, they had a tendency to graduate kids who could neither read nor write.   Further, there was a dramatic difference between the quality of education received among the highest performing minority students and the average white one.   Forget about the lowest performing minorities.   They received virtually no education whatsoever, though at great cost.   As a result, home schooling soared, states instituted NCLB-like programs in order to improve their schools relative to the rest of the country, and anyone who cared to examine the situation immediately saw the need for teacher accountability.   Need was the mother of NCLB, not the Republican party, not George Bush.   Something had to be done and that something had to involve measurement and accountability.

Most in government saw what needed to be done.   It had to be a bi-partisan solution because solving the problem was too important for the country's future.   NCLB was a first effort and, though flawed, its central premise remains the only known cure.   The Democrats, despite their rhetoric, know this as well as the Republicans do.   The media, however, does not want us to realize that NCLB was bi-partisan, none of the candidates is likely to wipe it from the face of the Earth, and it is necessary.

Obama talks about spending a lot of money to improve our schools.   There is no money in the till.   That has nothing to do with Bush's spending.   That money cannot be raised by taxing capital gains, bringing the troops home from Iraq, or any other method proposed by Obama or the Democrats.   All the rhetoric regarding new educational spending is just that, rhetoric, or, if you prefer, propaganda.

Obama has no plan to get rid of measurement and accountability while also improving the educational system.   Why?   It can't be done.   He may actually rid us of NCLB but he'll have to replace it with NCLB2.   Teachers who think all their problems will go away "as soon as we get a Democrat into the presidency" are sadly mistaken and will be very disappointed.   But for now, the media is happy to pretend this is just another of Bush's bad policies.   They'll do anything, tell any lie to win the office for their Democrat party.   But it'll sure be fun to watch the teachers squirm as the campaign promises fall to the wayside, one by one.   The repeal of NCLB should be the first one to fall.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, Barack Hussein Obama, Bush Bashing, Democrat party, education, Hillary, media bias

An expert ... Whoa ... an expert ... testified that the entire belief system of the polygamous sect in Texas is abusive.   Children are trained to be "obedient and compliant" there.   "Obedience is a very important element of their belief system," said the expert witness.   He also said, "The culture is very authoritarian."

Oh my gosh!   I'm going to have to reverse my previous opinions.   We've just got to get those children out of there before they get punished for misbehaving.   We can't allow anyone to live in an authoritarian environment, except an entire country where punishment means caning, having one's hands chopped off, or being put to death.

It's ... it's ... it's just not right!

Get those children away from their dictatorial fathers!

Abuse!   Abuse!   Abuse!

Labels: media bias

The media gleefully announced that Obama's condescending Ivy-League-Asshole comment about people (us here underedjacated people) clinging to guns and religion "may not dramatically change the head-to-head match-up in Pennsylvania."   Sure, sure, sure.   OK.   But I guarantee you that a bunch of us stupid folks ain't gonna vote for him in the real election because he's an elitist asshole.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, Barack Hussein Obama, media bias

I'm all for upholding the law of the land.   I despise pedophilia, as I understand that term.   I'm philosophically against polygamy.   I believe we should expend at least as much energy helping the victims of crime as we do seeking and prosecuting perpetrators.   But I cannot get a clear understanding of what is going on with respect to the storming of the "polygamist retreat" in Eldorado, Texas, and this vexes me.

I understand that supposedly a bunch of polygamists run this "retreat" and there was supposed to be a phone call for help from some underage wife of one of the polygamists who I guess was being held against her will(?) but I do not understand why police would feel it necessary or, more importantly, justified to take everyone out of there, separate mothers and children, etc.

It is my understanding of our constitution and laws that a person can be held against their will by police for a period of time when they are believed to have committed a criminal act or when they are a minor wuithout custodial parents around and or/believed to be the victim of a crime.   But there are many adults in this situation who are not believed to be either victims or perpetrators of any criminal act.

According to the Associated Press, the Texas State Department of Family and Protective Services is running the show there.   A spokesperson of the agency said, "It is not the normal practice to allow parents to accompany the child when an abuse allegation is made."   But what are we talking about here?   If you were staying at a religious retreat or, say, a hotel, and somebody complained about some sort of abuse taking place there, would the police round up all patrons of the place and put them in some public building while taking children away from parents, etc. until they could sort out the whole mess?   At what point must they make charges or let everyone go?   What would you do?

Supposedly there is some sort of court order involved in the detention of all these people.   Under what right did the court issue the order?   Did the order name the particulars?   Against whom may charges be pending?   Who are authorities allowed to detain and under what right?

The press seems to be more concerned with covering the condition of the people than they are with the process of law in this case.   Statements in the coverage discuss the original phone call but nobody seems to know who made it.   The focus is on the fact that this involves some evil polygamist sect within (or outside) the Mormon church.   Side information concerns such matters as "living conditions were cramped" or "about 20 children were recovering from a mild case of chickenpox."   That's the state's living conditions that were cramped, not the retreat's!   I'm almost surprised that the media hasn't spun the incidence of chicken pox as an example of abuse since apparently, these kids haven't been innoculated!

But what of the particular charges being levied against ... the sect?   AP says, "The state is accusing the sect of physically and sexually abusing the youngsters and wants to strip their parents of custody and place the children in foster care or put them up for adoption."   The sect is accused of systematically abusing the children?   I thought the accusations involved adult men marrying underage minor girls though this is in conformity with the sect's legitimate(?) religious beliefs.   I say "legitimate(?) religious beliefs" because they didn't form some sort of new religion for the purpose of abusing young women.   Their non-mainstream (and as it happens, illegal) beliefs are pretty old, dare one say established, and not a matter of some sort of diabolical scheme.

And we're not talking about pedophilia as I understand it.   There are probably cases of statutory rape but the issue isn't sexual assault against pre-pubescent minors as it is when we talk about NAMBLA - one of the ACLU's favorite groups to protect.   We are talking about polygamy which is clearly against the law regardless of the consent of the married women (adult or underaged).   But the commission of a crime offending laws prohibiting polygamy can't be spun automatically to imply abuse of the offspring of such illegal marriages.   Nor can statutory rape of an underage mother be used to remove her children and put them up for adoption.   Are the mothers incapable of taking care of the children?   What about the mothers' legal relatives, the children's grandparents, aunts and uncles ?

So what is it all of these people are being charged with?   Are all the children considered victims of abuse?   Who perpetrated the crimes?   Have they been charged?   Arraigned?

What right does the state have to "place the children in foster care or put them up for adoption?"   Are all the children going to be possibly put up for adoption?   Or is it only those who have been abused?   What about their mothers?   Are children whose mothers are not charged as perpetrators, who may be victims, going to have children taken away and put up for adoption?   Are children who might not have been abused going to be taken from their legal parents?   Under what theory of law?

Why is the media not covering this story?   Why do they seem devoid of any concern regarding the operation of law here?   Where the hell is the ACLU?   Why isn't somebody saying "wait a minute!   We are not going to take one more step until this whole goddamn mess is straightened out, until we compile a list of names of all parties being detained, another for a list of perpetrators and alleged crimes, another for supposed victims.   What we need here is a clear delineation of charges, perps, victims, and innocent, unharmed bystanders.   Then the bystanders could go on their way with rights intact.   True victims could be helped to the extent they need help.   And alleged criminals could have the charges levied and proven or disproven.

Aside from such a rational development, what we have are the acts of an apparently out of control police state raiding and dismantling a community based on alleged acts performed by a few members of that community, as alleged by an unnamed, unidentifiable person.   This is NOT the way this country is supposed to operate.   This is not the rule of law!

Labels: media bias, Police State

...at least that's what the Associated Press is now trying to tell us.

In their lastest article, "McCain: More conservative than his image" written by Libby Quaid, is published as a news piece, but reeks of commentary. It basically says that John McCain is much more conservative than Republicans have made him out to be...

The likely Republican presidential nominee is much more conservative than voters appear to realize. McCain leans to the right on issue after issue, not just on the Iraq war but also on abortion, gay rights, gun control and other issues that matter to his party's social conservatives.

It's clear what the AP is doing.

They feel certain in their mind that Obama will become the Democratic nominee, and they know as I do that Obama's hardline liberalism will lose in a landslide to McCain's moderatism.

So they're simply painting McCain as being further over to the conservative side, and will then rebrand Obama as being a moderate. They're going to publish articles that justify Obama as a moderate by searching for conservative voters throwing their support to him.

Conservative bloggers and commentators need up step up their assertions that McCain is a moderate, who appeals to both Democrats and Republicans, and that Obama is a hardline liberal.

Labels: John McCain, liberal spin, media bias

It finally occurred to me who the biggest losers are going to be as a result of this sub-prime mortgage thing.   We have been told that Bush is responsible for this "crisis" because he allowed the investment community to securitize all those shaky loans.   The financial institutions won't be losers if big government has its way - they'll be baled out.   The government won't be the big loser because it will recoup everything it pays out in the form of taxes.   We will be losers as we pay those taxes but the vast majority of us won't be the real losers.   The biggest losers will be the folks who would not have been able to get mortgages (buy homes) because they fall into the group which can only qualify for loans they can't afford.   The so-called under-qualified borrowers who will no longer be able to procure loans will be the biggest losers of all.   And, it is very important to note that the overwhelming majority of these people have NOT defaulted on their loans.   But don't expect the media to point out this blatantly obvious fact.   It tends to prop up those Republicans.

Labels: media bias

US News has an interesting "statistical analysis" of the 2007 "housing bust" online here.   As I say, it is an interesting article and it does tell some accurate tales.   But there's enough in there that is inaccurate or skewed to a particular direction to question the overall conclusion it is intended to lead you to.

For one thing, the piece lists statistics regarding housing price and says, "Average annual rise in home-price value, 1990-1999: 3 percent; 2000-2006: 8.6 percent."   I don't know if that's precisely true or not but there's one thing any idiot knows which is the 1990s were one of the worst housing markets in history.   They followed the first widesporead decline in home prices ever.   That was caused by the passive activity loss limitations enacted in 1986 to tone down the high degree of speculation which was taking place.   The 90s were a very weak market which was unprecedented.   On average, US home prices inflate at a rate of about 10% a year which makes the 2000-2006 "price spike" (if USN's figures are accurate - something I doubt since I believe the increases were much higher) unremarkable to say the least.

For another, USN fails to take a look at the housing price bubble which occurred outside the United States.   And there is no recognition of how much foreign money was spent on home price speculation which further fueled the bubble.   This is jusr anecdotal but I recall visiting California on holiday around 2002.   My brother likes to spend his spare time running inside new construction homes, particularly expensive ones in southern California.   He proposed an experiment for us while we were visiting a very large development of multi-million dollar homes.   He suggested we speak perfect English while acting like American WASPS (which we are) and see if we could get any salesperson to help us.   We couldn't.   Then we tried to emulate the speach of foreigners here only to purchase a home (presumably for speculation purposes).   We put on thick accents and had no trouble getting the attention of a saleswoman.   The place was teeming with prospective buyers but very few of these people spoke any English.   The sales crew had several folks who were multi-lingual!

Another factoid of the USN piece read, "Ratio of the median home price to median household income, 1985: 3.2; 2006: 4.6."   That would be a staggering increase but for the fact that medians are irrelevant.   That's because not everyone owns a home.   The percentage of Americans who do own homes has gone up significantly as USN notes: "U.S. homeownership rate, 1985: 63.5 percent; 2007: 68.2 percent."   And that should presumably be seen as a positive thing, shouldn't it?   But at about a two thirds home ownership, that excludes more than half of all people below the median from home ownership!   There's no value in looking at medians when they are entirely irrelevant.

USN states, "Percentage of mortgage holders unable to tell if their loan includes a prepayment penalty for refinancing within two years, 2007: 44 percent."   Nobody asked me this question!   This is basically the result of a poll.   They didn't cite the poll so there's no way to gauge its accuracy or authenticity.   This is a garbage factoid.

USN closes by juxtaposing two "facts" as follows:

"Total cost of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, in 2007 dollars: $408 billion"

"Total estimated cost of the subprime crisis so far: $150 billion to $500 billion."

There is nothing which tells how the 1980s numbers have been adjusted for inflation.   The S&L crisis of the 80s occurred, obviously, quite some time ago, particular in real estate price terms.   I recall a house sold for $200K around the time of the S&L crisis.   That house now goes for around a million - after the most recent correction.   While the overall rate of inflation isn't anywhere near that anecdotal 500%, home prices have gone up more than the overall rate of inflation, quite a bit more.   Since mortgages are a factor of home prices, it stands to reason that if we compare the S&L crisis to today's bursting bubble, today is smaller, at least as of right now.

I do think there is reason to examine the housing bubble burst of today.   And some of what USN published is telling.   We need to get our arms around what happened.   It's useful to avoid the same mistakes in the future.   But the convenient choice of comparison dates, the use of invisible polling data, and some of the assumptions are rather disingenuous.   It makes the work as a whole basically a piece of trash.

Labels: media bias