Signs of the tea party times—and of the demise of the press
The weather at the tea party I went to yesterday was lovely, the sky blue and a little chill. The surprisingly large crowd was extremely varied, from young to old and everything in between, their mood buoyant and assertive.
I forgot my camera, but I took note of the fact that all the signs were homemade, and there was very little repetition of slogans.
Here are a few that caught my eye:
[held by a young adult male] I’ll still be paying on this bill when you’re all dead.
The power to tax is the power to destroy—John Marshall.
Debt—change you can believe in.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
King George read his tax bills.
We’ll keep our money and our guns, you keep the “change.”
I am a taxpayer and I’m mad as hell. I am not a right-wing extremist.
There was a great deal of energetic honking from passing cars. Only one driver yelled anything in opposition (“Obama! Obama!”) although many who passed by were silent.
What does it all mean? Not all that much, at this point. The tea parties represent an already-existing point of view and channel it. But they don’t create it; events create it. As time goes on, either more people will become dissatisfied with this President and this Congress and throw them out, or they will not.
But if the discontent does grow, it certainly won’t be because the press has done its job in spreading the news. A quick perusal of MSM coverage indicates that, on the contrary, the word is out (a) to minimize coverage of the demonstrations (do you think for one moment that if such numbers had gathered to promote a liberal cause, that fact wouldn’t rate top headlines and huge stories with photos?); and (b) to characterize the tea party participants—in any press mention that might happen to pass the filter—as right-wing extremists, as well as obedient minions whipped to a snarling froth by the few right-wing media outlets that still exist.
The Boston Globe‘s “coverage” seems typical. I choose the Globe because you would think that, with the local angle—Boston being the home of the original tea party and all—the hometown paper would see fit to give the movement, and the Boston demonstration itself, some special coverage. But the Globe, being a bluer-than-blue paper in a bluer-than-blue town, offered only this brief and very general AP article, with its telling lede [emphasis mine]:
Whipped up by conservative commentators and bloggers, tens of thousands of protesters staged “tea parties” around the country yesterday to tap into the collective angst stirred up by a bad economy, government spending, and bailouts.
The article only contains 245 words. But among them, the Globe managed to find room for these:
The tea parties were promoted by FreedomWorks, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington and led by Dick Armey of Texas, a former Republican House Majority Leader who is now a lobbyist.
While FreedomWorks insisted the rallies were nonpartisan, they have been seized on by many prominent Republicans who view them as a promising way for the party to reclaim its momentum.
Dick Armey. Republicans. Lobbyists. ‘Nuff said—that is, enough for most Globe readers to safely dismiss the story.
Note the comments after the Globe article. Quite a few of them mention the Globe’s well-deserved insolvency. The Globe (like so many papers these days) is in a heap of financial trouble, as this Christian Science Monitor article discusses. That article mentions “the deteroriating economy” as at least part of the reason, and no doubt it is. But is it possible, as so many of the comments to the Globe article indicate, that the paper’s exceedingly biased coverage could have anything to do with it?
No, not if you listen to a speech on the subject of “The Incredible Shrinking Newsroom” that Globe editor Marty Baron gave two weeks ago at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. In it, he describes the cutbacks that his paper and so many others have had to make as their fortunes decline.
Baron decided to close the Globe’s foreign bureaus, which were already much diminished. But he reiterates the paper’s firm commitment to local news:
We would not—I certainly was unwilling—to erode our local coverage to maintain foreign bureaus. Coverage of Greater Boston—everything about it, from the courts to the arts, schools to sports and business—was central to our mission. Above all else, it is our mission.
Well, Marty, “mission unaccomplished.”
He went on to say [emphasis miine]:
Local coverage is at the top of the reasons that people come to us. We do more of it, and are better at it in Boston, than anyone else…The people of Boston and Massachusetts see themselves in our pages. Our paper reflects the personality of the region. And it sets the news agenda.
Baron makes no mention of the fact that perceived bias on the part of his paper—the particular “news agenda” that it sets—might have anything to do with the paper’s declining revenues. And perhaps it doesn’t—after all, Boston is one of the most liberal cities in the country. But perhaps, just perhaps, it does—if many of the comments to the Boston tea party non-article are any indication.
Baron does report that:
…confidence in the press is at a humiliating low…Sixty percent of Americans disagree with the statement that the press tries to report news without bias. More than half say we’re out of touch with mainstream Americans…
But then he fails to relate these facts to much of anything, and certainly not to his own newspaper; he just drops them.
Towards the end of his speech, Baron declares [emphasis mine]:
…There are risks that journalism will turn cynically to the quick, the easy, and the cheap—that a story’s greatest accomplishment will be to get a million page views, rather than to correct an injustice, or unearth wrongdoing, or give voice to people who would not otherwise be heard.
Perhaps Baron sees such social work, and “speaking truth to power,” as the highest mission of journalism. It certainly has a place there. But when journalists (they don’t call themselves “reporters” any more, do they?) go into the field because they have this agenda, they need to take special care that they don’t lose sight of another supposed central objective of theirs: offering the reader unbiased descriptions of what’s actually happening out there—otherwise known as “the news.”
Newspapers do get to pick and choose what to cover, and to set the “news agenda.” And so Baron does not include the tea party protesters in his list of “people who would not otherwise be heard,” whose voices he feels the paper has a duty to amplify. Those voices got mighty short shrift today in the biggest newspaper published in the town where it all began: Boston.
[NOTE: And isn’t it odd that the Boston Herald, the more conservative Boston rag, managed to get its own reporter out to cover the local tea party festivities? Although the Herald’s article is only marginally longer than the one in the Globe, it’s more neutral and focuses on the New England demonstrations, as well as giving an estimate of the afternoon Boston tea party crowd as “several thousand” instead of the Globe’s “a few hundred.” Here’s the Herald:
Libertarian leader Carla Howell told an early morning crowd of about 100 on the Common to engage in direct political action, voting for small government candidates. Several thousand people showed up for the noon rally on the Common and at Christopher Columbus Park at 4 p.m., where the crowd sang the national anthem, threw tea chests and chanted “you work for us,” a message aimed at pols.
And although you may have already seen CNN’s coverage in action, here’s that video of the CNN reporter hounding and interrupting a tea party demonstrator while purporting to interview him:
[ADDENDUM: And the link to this followup was posted in a comment:
Neo,
Wagging accusatory finger in face of supposed interviewee:
What does this [liberty] have to do with taxes??!!
Becoming still angrier, and continuing her lecture:
Did you know that the state of Lincoln gets 50 billion dollars…?
It is actually comical. This “journalist” is furious with the interviewee for not following and submitting to CNN official doctrine!
Jamie Irons
Journalism is soooo dead.
I’m almost tired of saying that…
Instead of reporting and figuring out what is going on. They choose to lecture us !
I have this fantasy that some old Pravda hack, long since retired, is sitting in his dacha watching this clip, and laughing to himself:
Never were we so clumsy as to actually try to instruct our readers in what they had to believe. Every Soviet citizen knew exactly what he was supposed to believe, and everyone would have laughed in our faces, or at least behind their sleeves, to listen to us trying to instruct them!…
No, it was far easier to sit in our offices and simply make the news up! Why bother with “interviews!”
Jamie Irons
Jamie: that’s the next step—making stuff up.
It would save expenses, too.
I just sent an email complaint to CNN about this disgraceful episode. I’m sure it will vanish without a trace – so I’ll share the gist with you all, for posterity’s sake:
“Your reporter Susan Rosen behaved disgracefully at yesterday’s Tea Party rally in Chicago. Her sarcastic comments to the man holding his young son were meant to wound and provoke. She acted like those paparazzi who harrass celebrities in order to catch them on film behaving badly. Her attempts to “school” and shout down that father instead of letting him air his views were outrageous, and give a prime illustration of why the public no longer trusts the media to report the news.
Reporters are meant to report, not editorialize. Journalists are supposed to cover the news, not create it. Shame on Susan Rosen, and shame on CNN.”
E
You wrote:
Her sarcastic comments to the man holding his young son were meant to wound and provoke. She acted like those paparazzi who harrass celebrities in order to catch them on film behaving badly…
I appreciate your thinking on this, and your efforts, however hopeless and quixotic (as you obviously realize they are) to wake up CNN management, and you may well be right. But I read more a feeling of fear on this “journalist”‘s part, a sort of deer-in-the-headlights panic:
What is it with these citizens?! Haven’t they read the CNN User’s Guide to Political Truth?
Jamie Irons
When a “news” organization sees fit to declare that its product contains “all the news that’s fit to print,” it has already tipped its hand. ALL “news” is worthy; let the readers determine what’s “fit.”
THAT’s why mainstream media has declined; it’s forgotten what the product really is.
Not too many years ago I participated in a marketing survey conducted by the local dying newspaper, the Phila. Inquirer (or “Ink-wire,” as we say here). I was unable to articulate, even to myself, why I no longer felt a connection to the newspaper, and they came back with “Do you want more local news? High school sports, maybe?” No, now I can say that what I’d really like is reporters who report, and who have some understanding of common life, of common feelings and common struggles. I may just be getting older, but the outlook of most journalists these days is alienating, smug, and sophomoric.
I think protests will grow as the realization dawns on people that Obama’s line about just taxing the other guy, the “undeserving” “rich,” is a crock, and that even if he expropriated all of the wealth of the “rich,” he cannot come even remotely close to paying for the enormous “drunken sailor” spending binge Obama and Democrats are ramming through Congress, and that, eventually, everyone–except perhaps for all of those new welfare beneficiaries Obama wants to create–Obama supporters, you can be sure, one and all–that will pay no federal or state taxes–will be paying more and more taxes, direct and indirect, for generations to come, and still not be able to cover the gargantuan bill plus interest.
More countries have foundered because of bad monetary/fiscal/taxation policy than almost anything else, as we are about to personally experience.
Good for you, E!
I thought the journalist sounded like a community organizer trying to put an opponent down at a meeting.
No matter how one reads her, she was not a reporter doing her job.
As much as I think the Globe’s bias is deplorable, I think it plays a minor role, if any, in their financial problems, first of which is the undermining of their advertising model due to the Internet. The Globe has long displayed a strong liberal bias, with no sign of punishment in the marketplace. Note as well the more blue-collar-conservative Herald is also in trouble.
I attended mid-day Boston event for a couple of hours, and can say the Herald’s report is accurate. (My first protest in about 25 years, BTW, prior to which I was a leftist.) I estimated about 2,000 attendees at any one time, and one of the police officers estimated 3,000, according to one of Crittenden’s commenters. We had a somewhat heated altercation on this point with a CNN reporter, who was heard to say there were “about 200” demonstrators there. To be fair, I think she actually said “hundreds” of demonstrators, but that still leaves the wrong impression that there were fewer than 1,000 attendees.
Regardless, she also came out with a line I found very amusing, that the protest was taking place in “a park” next to the State House. She apparently had insufficient geographic or historic bearings to appreciate she was broadcasting from within the Boston Common. She also expressed a difficulty comprehending what the event was all about — “hard to tell,” she said more than once — despite the dozens of signs right around her focusing on the debt, spending, taxes, bailouts, and government’s role in the initial mortgage crisis. I was particularly amused that one actually said, “It’s the Debt, Stupid,” while another very wide banner tallied the current debt. I was holding a sign with this graph on it, along with the words “$10 Trillion More Debt!” But it’s too hard to tell what we’re saying, you know. It’s shrouded in mystery. It’s like Derrida or something.
Last night I happened to catch Jon Stewart, whose basic line was that the protests were being orchestrated by Fox News. I also caught the Globe’s (AP’s) insinuation that Dick Armey or other prominent Republicans were running it. I find these both laughable on the face of it, simply given how utterly amateurish the event was. Organizers apparently hadn’t put much thought into what kind of equipment you might need to be heard from more than a few yards away. Genuinely fake demonstrations tend to be run competently.
“…There are risks that journalism will turn cynically to the quick, the easy, and the cheap–” The MSM made that turn, a left turn, a long time ago. And this fool responds to the fact that 60% of Americans disagree with the statement that the press tries to report the news without bias with “No comment,” which is, of course, the “quick, easy and cheap” way to deal with it. The Globe and its chorts can’t sink below the waves quickly enough.
neo-neocon: “Making stuff up” is the NEXT step? Hmmm….”John McCain had an affair, Obama did not bow, Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy to raise her daughter’s child, these documents are fake but accurate…etc.” It seems to me that the MSM took that step already. However, as these dinosaurs still live in the Age of Cronkite, they keep forgetting that with the Internet, the news doesn’t end, and is accepted, as it was when Uncle Walter said, “And that’s the way it is,” and they keep getting angry about the fact that the sheep no longer accept their every statement as the gospel truth, e.g. the CNN witch.
the next step is to manufacture news?
what do you think the lecture was? the same kind of spin where you tell people what they are seeing. the reporter gets confrontational, and then the other tells us what a hard time she is having there… as if the father of a young kid was going to attack her the way the yobs in the g20 where hitting the police with long sticks.
the US never had a king, there has never been a right left dichotomy till we picked up socialism… and pretended we lived in france and lived the french revolutoin not the american one.
they have been making stuff up for a long time…
you just didnt notice it unless it was more loudly overt. usually it was hiding in an alternative opinion with bad historical facts… some expert who will then tell us some other side, and gets it wrong. however since the experts who are have no values to compromise, they know that if they all parrot the same lies, copying each other, it will become the truth in the mind of the people who listen and here consistency and think that represents validity and reality.
it used to be that the discussion talk shows were not as popular as today… the reason was that the two speakers used to be limited to the facts on the issue. this made for dry discussion. now, facts like good or bad, dont exist. in fact they can be so loose that you can wrap a few different comedy formats around it…
i think the part that many here are missing is the paranoia. it comes from their sense that if they had power there would be zero oposition, so if there is any opposition, then they must not have all the power. this is a kernal of their thinking, and so unless there is zero opposition, then there must be huge opposition. if there is one person opposing them, then there must be secret cadres of others opposting them and hiding.
its once of the many modes in this new system that leads to death.
they actually dont get that they are the operative pawns in the game that make the moves and pay the prices while the players sit safely and manipulate the situation. Ayers and Dorhn seem to be heroes of a sort. a devils bargain. but the ones that blew themselves up by accident, paid the price for who? who from the other countries they had gave themselves to, advised them, gave them knowlege, and then let them pay the price and make the moves. cheaper than nuclear weapons. no?
step back from the incidents as discreet things happening and see them as if it was on a table. as i said before a table laid out with consequences for actions taken.
they are already turning police and homeland security inward to go after right wing radicals. linking timothy mcveigh, to that father holding his daughter in the video… politicians who think americanism is statism, think its “despicable”.
they tried to organize their own… they are trying to link it to things to turn off followers… they are literally playing games and we havent realize that they make stuff up? the whole opposition position to the tea parties was made up to oppose it when they saw that it had force.
this is the kind of thing that makes kings, feudal lords, tyrannical presidents and such really really get scared.
that the people will realize the REAL situation. that the kings are on the left, and if they keep saying let them eat cake, the right, which is the real left, is going to do the same thing that happened in france for pretty much the same reasons.
forget the labels… think of the positions and the roles they are playing and then use old terms.
feudal lords in state holding court are getting scared of the people. they have taxed them too much, hard times are upon them, and the lords are afraid that someone will say what wasnt said “let them eat cake”, and a tinderbox will happen and depose their kind for another 200 years.
who are the lords and ladies of the left acting like? lords and ladies of the court of france, all statists who are wiling to oppress the people to preserve their positions?
its inversions… so the more they act like what they pretend to oppose the less you see them.
they have thrown off their chains of public SERVICE and inverted it till they are the lords and ladies with power over those who would and did oppress them to clerks in the service of society.
ah well…
no pictures in daily news this morning… nothing in other things… and thats because what i said happwned. there was no requests and so few pro photographers went to any of them, even though there was a photo op with newt, and others depending on where.
where were the actors writers and stars? none of them are in opposition of higher taxes for the wealthy? why? think about what wasnt there…
what was there were the kulaks… the elite didnt show up, the media didnt really show up, the really wealthy didnt, the really poor didnt.
the ones that want to work hard to change their station/class in life rather than accept it, are the ones who showed up, and who were and are being turned into enemies of the state.
and if that isnt scary enough… i will let you realize something else.
this trains got no brake and no handle.
there is no way to stop them from the demonization of the radical right and such and doing more and more of it till it builds to a scary froth.
there is no voice of sanity here…
sanity has left the building in favor of a million false arguments polarizing people to fight each other…
and it gets scarier… china is using our dollars to stock up on huge quantities of raw materials… even though output is slowing. (and they reported that china has 38 million extra young men thanks to their birthing practices and their state child laws. prior to the laws in synergy with social practice, boys were favored, but every child was wanted).
the US won WWII because of its capacity to produce material. without that capacity, the war would have been lost. europe and england would have fallen, and russia would have lost as everything would have been turned towards her.
removing americans manufacturing ability was disarming her. removing her ability to get fuel, was removing flexibility in fuel in a crisis, since we are hand to mouth with oil. removing her peoples ability to actually debate real facts to leverage many people to get the best solution (they cant do this. and supression of the best answer through group think and a simple math truth is easy to see. the most talented and smartest will usually come up with better solutions, the rest wont have the capacity. so our new thinking system pits the majority of those who cant think as well, to throw out the solutions of those who can)
our population is helpless. they cant function without the artificial structure around them. especially the young who would be critical in opposing things.
and the list goes on..
that all leads up to a not to nice situation happening.
film of the crowd AFTER the CNN segment ended!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd2tg8gxCDU&feature=player_embedded
What does this [liberty] have to do with taxes??!! CNN reporter
“To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” Thomas Jefferson
The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” Thomas Jefferson
“The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.” Thomas Jefferson
“Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Thomas Jefferson
“The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.” James Madison
“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.” John Adams
“Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.” John Adams
“Now what liberty can there be where property is taken without consent?” Samuel Adams
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams
“In the general course of human nature, a power over man’s substance amounts to a power over his will.” Alexander Hamilton
“In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.” Chief Justice John Marshall
“Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” Abraham Lincoln
If the specific words of Jefferson, Madison, John and Sam Adams along with Hamilton, Marshall and Lincoln are not enough to both make the connection clear and to settle the matter, then liberals must face the fact that they are advocating for an America that the founding fathers would not recognize nor approve of.
Are they Americans in name only?
great quotes..
and to answer your question..
not even in name…
as to the protests being off the wall to the left, here is a interestng collection of left protest stuff. i have not seen it all yet, so i have no idea how bad it may or may not get, or how improper.
to quote:
This page is a compilation of the most shocking and sought-after photographs taken by zombie at rallies and other political events in Northern California.
http://www.zombietime.com/hall_of_shame/
Jamie: that’s the next step–making stuff up.
and a GREAT example of how media really lies
[when they decide to, though they dont always decide to, and sometimes its the author not the paper (by presenting a well put together piece for selection. how would they check?)]
http://www.zombietime.com/sf_rally_september_24_2005/anatomy_of_a_photograph/
Neo, you are forgetting Jason Blair, the New York Times reporter who was making ficticious news reports . It was not that long ago and the Times knew about it but waited until the situation became so untennable that Blair was eventually fired. Apparently, the Times believed its integrity and ethics were at stake. Imagine that.
No, Lucius, I haven’t forgotten Blair and others; I know “journalists” sometimes make stuff up. Let me clarify: what I meant was that the next step is to do away with actual reportage in general and just make stuff up instead.
The CNN reporter relegated to the McDonalds drive thru…
” Sir, why would you want the #2 combo instead of the #3 combo? Do you realise one is beef and one is the superior chicken? I don’t understand you ordering that!”
I don’t think its so much a problem in journalism school, as it is a problem that dates back to nursery school. They have zero empathy and concept of the other.
“Did you know that the state of Lincoln gets 50 billion dollars…?”
In other words, “The reporter replies “You should be happy that the government steals from everybody and gives some to you”.
I’m struck by the CNN “reporter’s” argument that Illinois would be getting $50 billion, the implication being that the protester should be pleased.
This is typical liberal economics. Woohoo! Free money! Did she ever think where that $50 billion was coming from? Was it dropping from the sky? Was it going to be found under a cabbage leaf? No – it was part of a sum extracted from other people, part of it pissed away in administrative costs/corruption, and another part sent to Illinois. Apparently the reporter wasn’t intelligent enough to figure that out.
They don’t want checks in the mail – especially not from them addressed to the government. They don’t want their money being taken and spent by people who they don’t know. They don’t want to be labeled as loonies and ignored by the mainstream media because of their political beliefs. That sounds reasonable enough to me.
But inevitably, CNN is going to focus on the “God Hates Obama” posters and the “Obama is the Antichrist” banners, and not the “Republicans Suck Too: Disband the Fed” signs, or the good men and women who attempt to use reason and historical precedent in their arguments. It’s the reverse of what happened with the rallies against Bush. We saw a lot more “Doves of Peace” than the “Bush=Hitler” and “Destroy Law & Order” on the news. I was able to witness firsthand some of the destruction that these “peaceful protesters” left in the city where I was living at the time. Statues were defaced, anarchist signs were everywhere; even a local toy store had been vandalized and destroyed. And yet, when I turned on the news, the CNN reporters were quick to assign the blame to a radical minority.
Disgusting, really.
– G
More Humpty-Dumptyism.
Destroy Humpty-Dumpty and the Left will wither away.
You can believe for awhile that perceptions are reality, especially if you control the portrayal of reality.
But reality always wins in the end, in the form of pirates, Nork missiles, Iranian bombs, and in this case, an appetite for spending than can never be supported by an actual willingness to pay taxes, while re-regulating the economy (and taxing carbon-consuming activities) will reduce the aggregate ability to pay taxes.
What a bender. The hangover will be equally epic.
That was badly said.
I was trying to say that reality will continue to be there, no matter what you want to believe. And you have to deal with that reality, no matter how much you want to believe in rainbows, unicorns, and hopey-change.
pst314, you posted while I was typing. Great minds and all that.
I’m in a bad mood because I just received the voter’s guide to California’s special election. It describes propositions to
1) establish a “rainy day” fund to “reform our broken budget system” that “we’re all frustrated by;”
2) “modernize” the lottery, and oh, incidentally, “borrow” $5 billion from the future lottery profits to balance the budget (“without raising taxes!” Only those with three digit IQs realize that borrowing in and of itself incurs costs that will be met by…raising taxes);
3) “protect children’s services funding” by “temporarily redirecting funds from the Children and Families Program” to achieve “state General Fund budgetary savings;”
[Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: anyone who talks about “the children” is full of shit.]
4) “redirect” Mental Health Services Act funds this one time to achieve General Fund savings.
And where did all these propositions come from, you ask? Why, from our liberal-infested state legislature, of course.
They’re frustrated by our budget process, and propose to “fix” it by establishing a “rainy day” fund on the same ballot in which they’re proposing raiding a bunch of other funds to make up the shortfall induced by their profligate spending. They’re the authors of the budgetary crisis. Bankrupting California is no mean feat, but the liberals have managed to do it. Giving them a free hand to “fix” the budgetary crisis is like giving an alcoholic a drink to “steady his nerves.”
Even liberals should have enough brainpower to see this for what it is. But they probably won’t.
“Fourth Law of Thermodynamics”
Would this be the Heat Death of the Progressive Universe? 😀
The Communist News Network journalist went to the demonstration looking for a fight. She was rude, she would interrupt people, she editorialized, and she was lying about where the inspiration for the Tea Parties was coming from.
The mainstream media is putting together in its smorgasbord line a shit sandwich of its own making that will be its own undoing.
One of the more significant aspects of the tea party rallies is that a lot of people are finding out that they are not alone in their anger, most especially that they are not alone within their own comunities. This in spite of the best efforts of the ‘news’ media.
Its concievable that there could be marches so big in a year that some tv studios will have to put curtains up to keep their viewers from seeing the marchers go by out their windows.
Nope, that’s the Fifth Law.
Excerpt from a private conversation of a while ago:
My brief career in the news business consisted of a paper route when I was 12. I delivered The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald Traveler. The Globe supported the Democrats and the Traveler supported the now extinct Republicans. The Traveler customers tipped much better than the the Globe folks. I was a fair to middling Little League pitcher so porch or bushes was more attitude than competence.
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The last time I watched CNN was to catch snippets of the marathon coverage of the coronation–I mean inauguration–when the panel of CNN sock puppets took turns being amazed at everything happening. Interspersed with their rapture were interviews with participants who had walked away from schools, jobs, etc to be a part of “history.” No THAT was the face of CNN and things have devolved further since then.
McCarthy was right.
br549, the Venona transcripts show that there were communists in the government. Lots of ’em, apparently.
Re CNN, I programmed that poxy “news” show out of our remotes two years ago. (Did wonders for my tranquility.) But today is special, because today I’m going to cancel our cable subscription outright. We’ve not even turned on the TV in the last month, and we have young kids. We’re just not interested.
Nixon was right too. The press was out to get him.
Hmm… you know, I’ve wondered if Nixon is the one who actually coined the phrase “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean there’s no one out to get me.”
Occam, I’m considering removing the Drudge Report as my home page. When my browser fires off, the head lines and bylines just make me shake my head in disbelief. Who was it…. Rove, I think, stated he believes about 30% of our population is truly socialist.
But I think it is more than that. Something rather new. There are a large number of people in this nation who simply want others to work their butts off and be forced to give their money away to others who are doing very little for it. If anything. I have no idea what that is, politically. Retribution? Payback? Self loathing on steroids?
I have tried to imagine how I would view the present, had I been in a coma for ten years and just woke up. I can’t. I’ve been awake all this time and still can’t get my head around this. It does not make a particle of sense.
I turned my TV off on Election Night and didn’t turn it on once in the next 2-3 weeks. I hardly watch it at all anymore. I haven’t cancelled my cable subscription yet, although the thought has crossed my mind. I do like to watch the occasional baseball game.
br549, I doubt that most people are actually socialist, just profoundly stupid. They think that free stuff will fall from the skies, and, like the CNN reporter braying about $50 billion payouts, haven’t stopped to think where the “free stuff” is coming from.
The amazing thing to me is that I thought socialist was dead, dead as dog food. The Berlin Wall fell, Moscow got a stock exchange, the true horrors of socialism became known, and even countries famous for it – e.g., Sweden – backed off, implicitly and lamely saying, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
But here we are, and socialism isn’t the punch line of a joke, as it should be. It’s risen phoenix-like from the ashes. Amazing.
rickl, my man!
I like baseball too, and in fact still play (I played in high school, college, and semi-pro in my long-gone youth).
So here’s the solution for ya: MLB.TV. $110 for the season, and you get high-def versions of 2400 (!) games on your computer, with a TiVo like capability, so you can watch ’em whenever you want. You can even watch four games at a time on split screen! (I find this too distracting, but some might like it.) The only downside is that you don’t get home market games, but with an antenna you can get those – again in high-def – over the airwaves, for free.
Adios, cable!
“br549, I doubt that most people are actually socialist, just profoundly stupid.”
You forget the other parts – greedy and lazy. What we are seeing isn’t socialism. Socialism assumes people actually work and if you do not, well, you do not get anything. You also get according to your means/needs which means not everyone is “equal”. The closest we saw to real socialism was Sweden and, as you say, it didn’t even really work there either.
What we see is generally called “theft” except that this time it is government enforced. Were I just being forced to purchase some good (say a military, a school, a fire department) I can see it, that is what taxes are *supposed* to be for. However I’m simply having my money removed from my paycheck and given to someone else that the government decided ought to have it more than they think I do.
A large enough group of people realized that they can legally steal my wealth if they get laws passed to do so. Socialism or communism is leaps and bounds above that. At least in those systems you both have to work and you get *something* back (even if it is worth less than what you put in). We are loosing the battle partially because we have allowed theft to be equated with socialism ans social equality/justice. It *should* shame people to propose it, instead the language is such that many feel pride in it.
Although I can’t understand for the life of me what has happened to Peggy Noonan over the past couple years, she did say something in her latest column I can identify with about boomers. “The first in the office in the morning, the last to leave at night.”
Where I am now, there are only a couple of us who still work like that. We are of boomer age. Those younger than us, even bright ones, don’t seem to care. They come right on time or a couple minutes late, do the minimum and are gone a minute or two before quitting time. They leave a little early for lunch, and come back a little bit late. I can only imagine what a neighborhood would look like were its individual homes maintained at such a level.
Engineering, sales, production – the quality of all three is on the wane. The proof is beginning to show up in the product. I can say this, our customer base is beginning to suffer for it. Our sales will follow suit. Our cutting edge is becoming a butter knife.
It’s not just taxes. It’s work load. Let the next guy carry the load. What I mean by that is people are not willing to give what it takes to be better than the competition. To make the best product line possible at the level we have previously reached and maintained. People insist on being “paid what they’re worth” without having to be worth what they’re paid.
Hell, they’d rather not work at all, and still get paid for it. That’s obvious – and that is what is beginning to happen. Even socialism can’t survive that.
Richard Epstein, a law professor who knew Obama at Univ. of Chicago, nails the problem with Obama’s approach to the economy:
Obama worked as a community organizer and was in many cases very constructive… But, the difficulty you get, for someone who has only worked in that situation, is that he believes the creation of private wealth is something the government cannot influence or destroy. He has many fancy redistribution schemes, in addition to his health plan and new labor laws, which are all wealth killers.
He is about to engage in a series of proposals to redistribute wealth that we do not have….
The fundamental mistake of his entire world view is that he treats contracts as devices for exploitation and not as devices for mutual gain, and he assumes that redistribution can take place without any negative impact upon production.
If you live in that kind of a fairy land, which I think he does, every one of his major social and economic initiatives are going to misfire.
Richard Epstein Discusses Barack Obama
We need to steal a page from Alinsky’s playbook and be prepared to use it on people like Susan Roesgen. The poor harassed interviewee should not have requested leave to finish his statement; he should have called out her arrogance in interrupting him and hectoring him. CNN (and people who think like the people at CNN) believe that the right to label someone as “arrogant” is their right. Take back that right and watch them squirm.
Same with Barney Frank, who is even now working floating ideas that could lead to more federalization of state and local debt (which is already represented in the $50 billion “stimulus” to Illinois by funding to allow local governments to avoid or reduce local spending cuts). Anyone who appears on TV with Barbey Frank should make his outrageous, bullying public style the issue, and mock the impotence of the TV talking heads who can’t keep order.
“Barbey” s/b “Barney” above
As strcpy touched on: greed, laziness. I’d like to add jealousy and some weird need to bring others down (to their level – in my opinion), to “equalize”, even if it means being counter productive in order to accomplish that end.
I know people in the very office (company) I work in that if they put as much effort into producing something of benefit as they do in getting out of work, it would definitely change things for the better. What the hell, they have to be here anyway.
We need Ari Fleischer. He demonstrated a great example of what Oblio was talking about when during his interview with Chris Matthews, he called the host out on his rude manners and abrasive style of discourse. These people are intellectually dishonest, and they will do anything to cut us down.
Get ready for the cheap shots and call them out on it. It’s a major advantage for us as we know how they think and what they want. They on the other hand do not understand us at all, which is why they have to label us false terms like “reactionary” and “racist”. It’s a failure of the liberal imagination.
I have attended 5 tea parties and will go to a 6th on 4/25. Since I am a multiple right wing extremist based on DHS criteria, what would one expect.
If the tea parties fail, and so far it appears they have not influenced congress, then following MLK’s lead, we should start picketing those politicians who have voted to spend us into ruination. If that doesn’t work, sit-ins at their local offices will be required.
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