Tuning Into MSNBC Is At First Comical, Then Maddening.

Are you kidding me?  You MSNBC people really think that way?  When I initially tune in to hear what’s being said, it’s comical to me, then after about a 1/2 hour or so, it’s maddening and I can’t turn the channel fast enough.  Politics is Not a Sport will be expanding on this issue and many others in the weeks to come.  I’m not happy about what’s happening to our great country and much of the media is lost or just doesn’t care.

 

Don’t Let Oppression Take A Hold Of America.

It’s sad to think that some go through life being oppressed by another man, woman or nation, by way of intimidation, assault, control, or any means.  What gives someone the right to negatively affect another’s pursuit of a decent life?  It hurts to learn about the unacceptable atrocities going on around the world.  For those far away, I will always pray.  Growing up I thought the United States was a great, invincible nation.  And as an adult, I know the United States is great, but nothing is invincible.  While other nations try to liberate, oppression is creeping into America.  It’s in the form of financial burden, job loss, and so many other immeasurable troubles attributed to bad political decisions, self-serving fraud and deceit that doesn’t take into consideration what’s best for the American people and the country as a whole and an enabling, irresponsible media that no longer cares about the truth.  All need to be held accountable and these things mustn’t continue to be tolerated.

 

Media Perpetrations Against America And Americans — Where Did Truth Go?

When and why did the mainstream media, so-called journalists and news agencies stop caring about the truth?  When and why did most stop asking the hard questions?  It seems the majority now have an agenda and/or try to protect special interests, rather than report the real news.  Americans want the FACTS and America needs them in order to thrive. 

When did the tolerance of lies become acceptable?  It’s not — And it’s time we Americans start demanding unbiased news from those who act like they’re reporting it.  We mustn’t let the important, tough questions go unanswered.  America needs honest, fearless reporters (media outlets) who will consistently fight for what’s right — Otherwise what’s the point, it’s poor entertainment.  What’s happening now is a facade of journalism that’s bad for America.

“Accountability Experts” NEEDED = A New Media that asks ALL questions necessary to report important, straightforward news.  The first order of business will be an internal investigation to learn WHY our current media doesn’t care about the truth.  The second order of business will deal with uncovering political corruption.

Note:  There are more Americans than Politicians, which is hopeful, but the “media” has control over what’s assimilated through the airwaves, which is kinda sketchy.

 

The Race Card Can Kiss My…

If someone calls you a racist and you’re not, so what.  It’s their problem.  You need not go on the defensive to prove otherwise.  Let the truth you know set you free.  The race card is so played — It’s now time to stop the blame.  Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton (and alike) have negatively impacted interractial relations with their constant political positioning, misplaced emphasis and divisive rhetoric, if you can even follow what each is ever saying.

And to the actual racists in this world (black, brown, white, etc.), stop the ignorance, wisen up and be more productive.  What’s the point of being an idiot?  Likewise, one who wrongly plays the race card makes it harder to identify the real problems to be remedied — That’s not smart either.

 

This Article Says It All And We’re Sick Of It!

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

by Orson Scott Card
October 20, 2008

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism.  You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

 

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration. It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.  What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

 

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating. They end up worse off than before.

 

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

 

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

 

Isn’t there a story here? Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?  I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. “Housing-gate,” no doubt. Or “Fannie-gate.”

 

Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

 

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled “Do Facts Matter?”  (http://snipurl.com/457to): “Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.”  These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was … the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was … the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!  What? It’s not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?  Now let’s follow the money … right to the presidential candidate who is the number two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

 

And after Fred Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate’s campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

 

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.  But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an “adviser” to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama’s people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn’t listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

 

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.  If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.  If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

 

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

 

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.  Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

 

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.  If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate. Because that’s what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don’t like the probable consequences. That’s what honesty means. That’s how trust is earned.

 

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naiveté time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing. Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards’ own adultery for many months. So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means? Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

 

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women (NOW) threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles. That’s where you are right now.  It’s not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

 

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

 

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation’s prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama’s door.

 

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way. This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

 

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie. If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

 

You’re just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it’s time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

 

Source: 

http://www.linearpublishing.com/orsonscottcard.html

http://www.rtgreensboro.com/1homebody.lasso

 

I Need To Point Out Poor Political and Media Practices.

I want to update this blog much more than I’m able.  Since I don’t get paid to write here, I need to keep up with the writing that brings in income.  Any sponsors?  Regardless, I will continue to point out poor political and media practices and a lot more, but on available time.  Please keep checking back.  I currently have twelve drafts going.  My passion for these issues is strong, but it’s hard to keep up with the play by play.  And sometimes writing about all the BS brings me down.  I’ll be back, and back, and back.  Thanks for your interest. 

Writer’s Other Blog – http://www.ineedtext.com/FoodBlog/

 

I Don’t Get It, I’m Still Not in Love with Barack Obama.

After watching tonight’s Presidential Debate, it’s evident that I’ll be voting for John McCain — Not because I’m falsely persuaded, like much of the media is going to tell me, but because I’m an intelligent thinking adult.  Presidential Debates are important to hear more than sound bites and elite media interjections.  One can listen to an uninterrupted exchange and make his/her own decision. 

Senator Obama appears to do a lot of blaming without offering many solutions.  He simply repeats a list of debatable and non-debatable things that need to be done.  And on a few occasions he didn’t answer the specific question or address the disputed issue.  Why don’t people want to see it?  Many fell in love with Barack Obama so fast, but it’s time to break up now. 

Senator McCain asks you to look at his record, so PLEASE look at his record and let’s keep the debate pure – I’m an Independent.  Ignore ridiculous media bias and put aside party bias — Think for yourself.  Pick the best person for America today.

Related Link:  http://www.olemiss.edu/debate/

 

Charlie Gibson and the So-Called Bush Doctrine.

The so-called ‘Bush Doctrine’ NOT defined by Charlie Gibson in his interview of Governor Sarah Palin is a term coined by the media and used to describe a few different things in relation to President Bush.  It’s not one well known thing that everyone should know. 

How condecending Charlie Gibson was with his glasses to his nose asking Sarah Palin about the Bush Docrine, as if we all should know exactly what he means.  PLEASE.  Political reporters tend to act like they know it all.  I’ve lost respect for many of them.

Governor Palin did well.  I hope she continues to rise above it.  The country needs it.  Political reporters are not smarter than YOU — Don’t fall for it.  Make your own decisions and ignore the media commentary.  It’s usually self serving.

Related Links:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5795641&page=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNPGnZurs1k

http://whateversowhat.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/charlie-gibson-interveiw-with-governor-sarah-palin/

 

United We Stand — Stop The New Civil War.

United we stand, divided we fall — It’s true.  At today’s Democratic Convention, Hillary Clinton told me that the Democrats are America’s only hope for the future.  That seemed a bit pessimistic about the country, divisive, and over dramatic, but as expected everyone clapped on cue. 

But fingers will most likely be pointed in the opposite direction at the Republican Convention next week.  Why must we so harshly divide into separate groups?  The issues remain the same and shouldn’t be oversimplified.  Politics is not a sport, nor a tag line.  Real things need to get done fast — But all we usually see is a transfer of power and wealth, not enough being accomplished for Americans.

No matter who gets elected in November, we should stand behind him and work together.  Division isn’t good for the country.  We have the freedom to say what we think, but we should first ask ourselves — Does my expression benefit the United States, our soldiers, our children, society, or relations?  If not then ask yourself, what’s my point?  Some media responsibility is needed. 

Overall, unity makes for a better America.  Stop the new civil war, the Democrats versus Republicans, and the media’s play-by-play reporting of the same.  Many times there’s no good purpose for it.

Semi-related links for background and additional information:

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200808260005

http://clivecrook.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/hillarys_speech.php

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gP3PidrHLYWPVbvReNhnFAjicf2AD92QDS781