printI’m talking about the media. The job of the press is to report events, not blanket the facts with conjecture and interpretations that end up becoming part of the narrative and serving to fuse fact with fancy. I refer to the way town hall attendees against Obama Care are being discounted as stooges for “corporate interests.”
It was wicked when the neocons presented antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan as something other than what she was. And it is execrable now that MSNBC is tarring impassioned Americans on the Right as something other than what they are. It doesn’t matter with which small or large groups these protesters, left and right, seek solidarity and solace. What matters is the case they present against socializing medicine. The rest is just ad hominem, which is where discourse in the US is at.
I don’t care if George Soros, as alleged by this neocon outfit , came to back Sheehan. Her cause was just. She spoke extremely well against the ongoing travesty in Iraq.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow intoned like a solemn commissar about corporate agents and their little foot soldiers conspiring against state health care. The forces of darkness against the forces of light. She arrived at her scoop by following a few links on the internet and ominously reading out some posts, which she framed as secret memos. Unlike comrade Keith, at least Maddow obeyed the journalistic imperative to interview one of those evil corporatists. And how delightful he turned out to be. “Do the oil companies fund us? No, but I’d love them to. I urge them to support us.” And so he went.
She looked confused. (Rachel’s inner voice: “When will all this free exchange of funds be outlawed? Oh pretty please, Obamby.”) But at least she was a good sport, which is more than one can say about Chris Trickle-Down-The-Leg-For-Obama Matthews and other Obamaheads.
I must say, Maddow is so smarmy and self-satisfied. I can’t bear to watch her coiling and uncoiling as she expounds ominously on conspiracies that are really unremarkable events and associations.
Update I (August 10): The woman of the frozen face and equally unsupple mind—Nancy Pelosi—has teamed up with the Ring Leader, Steny Hoyer (House majority leader), to label and libel 50 percent of Americans as “un-American.” As if the number of podiums the parasitical class monopolizes were not enough, the parrot press has given another sizable platform to this excuse of a team: “‘Un-American’ attacks can’t derail health care debate.”
Pay attention to how the dastardly duo:
• Conflates the political will with the will of the people. (“Health coverage for all was on the national agenda as early as 1912… Americans have been waiting for nearly a century for quality, affordable health care.”)
• Dishonestly fails to acknowledge that the protests mirror the polls:
The latest USA Today/Gallup poll finds that more Americans disapprove (50%) than approve (44%) of the way U.S. President Barack Obama is handling healthcare policy. There is a tremendous partisan gap in these views, with 74% of Democrats but only 11% of Republicans approving. Independents are more likely to disapprove than to approve of Obama’s work on healthcare.
• Contends that health care drives our economy. In truth, production should drive a healthy economy, not consumption of services. The former enables the latter.
• Sell yet another government program as salvation for the nation’s ills. If you believe them, you deserve what they dish. The problem is, you intend to force your choice on me and mine; sell me into serfdom, using the power of the state to get your way.
Update II (August 11): SVENGALI SHIFTS INTO CAMPAIGN MODE. Obama showed his hand by emphasizing during his Town Hall that it was not to the converted that he was preaching, but to a randomly selected group of people.
Naturally, MSNBC took him at his word, reporting enthusiastically on how little resistance BO met. Outside the Obama town hall the country was roiling—still is. Inside the Barack Bubble the debate was flatlining like Nancy Pelosi’s brain waves.
Tucker Carlson, who works for MSNBC and has certainly worked the political system, was unable to back-up the line the Obama organ—also his employers—was peddling. Most presidential town halls are screened and packed with supported, said Carlson. BO has just joined the rest in lying about the practice.
As BO’s charmed political life continues—suspended as he is in a third dimension—one of the few honest Republicans, Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter, confronted a more realistic setting. I say honest, because all Republicans bar a handful fit in the camp to which Specter defected.
In any event, Specter provided some much-needed comic relief. When asked by a patriot what he was going to do “to restore this country back to what our founders created, according to the Constitution,” Specter replied: “When you ask me to defend the Constitution, that’s what I’ve been doing.”
That’s rich.
Note how Specter, like a true pol, “vowed he would never support any bill that increased the federal deficit or took away a person’s right to choose their health care coverage.”
And indeed, once the lumbering juggernaut of government-run health care becomes a fait accompli, Specter and his ilk will be perfectly correct to say that when they signed off on this violation of rights and usurpation of authority, he was promised the “reform” would not become a public plan.
This is just how the Hildebeest and her Democratic warmongers excused their vote to give George authority to go to war in Iraq: “We were betrayed; we had been told the power would not be abused.”
These people are beyond contempt.
Update III (August 12): TAMRON TITS-HALL is an MSNBC host. Tits-Hall’s beauty is inversely related to her brain power. (The combination of beauty and brains is as rare as it is lethal, I paraphrase Peter Brimelow.) But in the Age of the Idiot she fits right in. (Whereas some MSNBC babes are lovely, Foxette News anchors, I would argue, sport the porn look. They are molded in the Hugh Hefner mold: vulgar but fit for You Know What. This Fox News aesthetic is one of the few issues of disagreement with my good friend, Prof. Paul Gottfried. I think the pea brain Kirsten Powers is a dreadfully plain girl. Alex Witt, on the other hand, has going for her that Lara loveliness from “Dr. Zhivago.”)
But I digress. Here is Tamron; a beauty. Here are her fans; brainless..
I arrive, after that bit of titillation, at Tamron’s portion of the week (that’s what we Jews call a weekly segment read from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue). First she and David Shyster peddled the propaganda that healthcare protesters had been bussed in by political operatives. Now they concede that these angry “un-American” Americans are simply stupid. Tits-Hall, who could never be called simple (read what her fans say about her clever cleavage), believes “these people,” clearly alien to a member of the “multicultural noise machine,” don’t know that Medicare and Medicaid are run by government; and they don’t get that INsurance (why do Americans place the emphasis incorrectly on the first syllable of this word?) is a third-party entity.
And this is reportage in the age of the idiot.
Your retort to Tits-Hall:
• From the fact that VA hospitals, Medicare and Medicaid are government-run, it doesn’t follow that incorporating more of the industry into the state gulag is insignificant, negligible, or that protest is rendered meaningless. Tits-Hall is one big non sequitur, which should be your most used word in the Age of the Idiot.
• The fact that there is already one mediating entity between doctor and patient does not mean that another, subject to all the wrong incentives, ought to be introduced.
Don’t count on Tits-Hall or Shyster to comprehend a reasoned argument.
Ilana writes:
“I must say, Maddow is so smarmy and self-satisfied. I can’t bear to watch her coiling and uncoiling as she expounds ominously on conspiracies that are really unremarkable events and associations.”
Yes, I was visiting my elderly parents this morning and happened to watch this particular act of Maddow’s. I remember thinking how ironic–one useful idiot, plant being surprised by another useful, idiot, plant. Isn’t it a sign of our cultural times and a real loss of freedom to be condemned and found guilty by association? So much so that a cantankerous old trad Catholic like myself must seek solace and the freedom to express honest thoughts on a blog called,”Barely” hosted by a thoughtful,paleolibertarian Jewess, while all rooms at the Media
Inn remain occupied by duopolists ratting each other out on national television and calling it news. Or as Ilana put it:”What matters is the case presented. The rest is just ad hominem, which is where discourse in the US is at.” Our Great Leader is following a mob, not leading a free people.
I cannot even stand to watch MSNBC anymore. The only time I’ll turn it on is to see if Pat Buchanan is on “Morning Joe”, but other then that it is impossible to watch. During the waning years of the Bush administration I was a fairly regular viewer of Keith Olbermann’s show, but that was before he revealed himself as a total shill for the Obama administration. Chris Matthews always struck me as a phony, who despite the claim to “hardball” interviews, seemed to have never saw a politician that he didn’t want to suck up to; though his persistent drooling over Obama takes this to an entirely new level. I never watched much of Rachael Maddow, but what little I did see didn’t impress me. The rest of the MSNBC liberal-left rat pack: David Shuster, Mike Barnacle, Ed Shultz, and Lawrence O’Donnell make Sean Hannity look half way intelligent. CNN isn’t any better, with the sole exception of the wonderful Lou Dobbs.
FOX is an interesting specie in these times. It still has all the mindless GOP hacks like Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, and Mike Huckabee, but also has Glenn Beck and Judge Andrew Napolitano, who are always a pleasure to watch. Though, when it comes to economics, I grow tired of all those supply-side economics knit-wits who keep repeating the mantra that good times are just around the corner. They have absolutely no credibility. The only economists that have any track record are guys like Peter Schiff, Tom Woods, and Gerald Celente.
Meanwhile, virtually every Democrat is a protester, activist, and agent of change.
So the leftists get the slightest taste of their own medicine and find it bitter. They have about as much claim on righteous indignation as Lucifer.
“Do you approve or disapprove of the way U.S. President Barack Obama is handling healthcare policy?”
It’s questions such as this one that always make me hang up on pollsters. None of the answers I might give fits on the form, for example:
a) Look, bozo! It’s not a personal thing between me and Obama.
b) It’s not how those idiots in Washington are handling health care. It’s that they are meddling with health care without any Constitutional authority.
c) You know that this foolishness will destroy what’s left of our economy, don’t you?
I often speculated as to whether the “real Jesus”, if he/He returned, would wind up being strung up by his most fervent so-called “followers”.
Similarly, I imagine that Tom Jefferson, Paine, Henry, and other founders would be among the first to be shipped to Gitmo or some other re-education camp by either the Hannity Fascists or the Olbermann Socialists for being “anti-American”. Between the “my way or the highway” rightists and leftists, the only people left in the country will be brainless TSA goons and illegal aliens.
Might I suggest taking some of these just to be safe?:
http://twitpic.com/daatx
Myron,
As is often the case, you are sport on when you observe “Between the “my way or the highway” rightists and leftists, the only people left in the country will be brainless TSA goons and illegal aliens.” Buchanan has a story this morning about this very fact.
Many Americans have nonexistent or insufficient health-care coverage. Unfortunately, at this juncture the US can barely afford to keep on spending the amount it already does on those who DO have adequate coverage. If fundamental changes are not effected in the way health-care dollars are spent, not only is universal coverage a pipe dream, but so is the viability of the present system. Much of the discussion I see on mainstream media is of the ‘angels on a pinhead’ category.
Not to be a overly negative again, but it’s time to give up on this country guys. I decided that America was not a place that supported liberty years ago.
We are, unfortunately, merely documenting the decline of a once great culture and civilization with our complaints and posts.
It’s time to find the New America, and leave this rotten husk to the fools, idiots, and evil people to rot in.
I hear that there are interesting things going on in Europe…
~Alex
I’ve been corresponding with my sister-in-law over the TEA party and Health Care. I send her history of the first revolution, facts and numbers about the deficit and the need for countering Congress’s lies with facts and figures contrary to theirs. Receive ditzy reply. Send her e-mails with more facts about the deficit and explaining that this can only become a revolution if cool heads educate the public to why the TEA party exists and how we need to win the support of the people. I never receive any confirmation that any of my information has registered in a positive manner.
I agree with Alex that the fight is lost. I liked Georgia until the US used it to tick off the Russians. I still think Mexico is worth checking out and customs is a breeze. Now if I can just get my wife to brush up on her Spanish.
[Bless you for trying, but, as I once said, I would gladly give up my vote if all women were denied the vote.]
I agree that America is lost. I’ve believe this for some time. But there is nowhere to run. Europe is an unarmed population faced with an encroaching caliphate. And Mexico is, well, Mexico.
The new republic will be born right here, in the ashes of the old.
Meltdown in 2012…and Revolution follows with it.
http://tinyurl.com/nhna7d
(link leads to page 2 of 2)
For Ilana,
I’ll try to choose my words more carefully in the future.
[It sure makes it easier for the moderator. Otherwise you’ll be giving ammo to those who’d love to discredit your solid thinking.]
WOW, Mr. Glisson – you actually tried arguing with a *woman*? Holy cow. No offense, but that is one of the dumbest things anyone of any gender can do.
I remember arguing with a girl over Obama. She said he was ‘amazing’. I started laughing. After she asked why, I said something to the effect that, despite my age, I knew more about how the world worked than he did. She scoffed; there was no way! I explained calmly that he did not know nearly anything about economic theory.
Know what she said (after throwing her arms up in the air)? ‘Haven’t you seen his speeches?!’
I stared at her and then called her an idiot.
~Alex
[Our Alex…]
Alex – well yes, “interesting things” are happening in Europe. A detailed analysis of this can be found in Christopher Caldwell’s book, “Reflections on the Revolution In Europe”, which I would highly reccomend.
Although anyone can argue, “my way or the highway,” a sovereign is needed to make that prescription a reality. Who’s to say that Obama won’t, ultimately, do that with his health care “reforms?” His predecessor did so with his unconstitutional, immoral invasion of a sovereign country, helped along by his phrase, “You’re either with us, or with the terrorists.” Few Americans want to be “with” the enemy; Obama just needs to find the “correct” phraseology. Kind of like Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany (who really did have autocratic rule) when he averred, “Whoever in the case of a European war was not with me was against me,” (Barbara Tuchman, “The Guns of August,” p. 24). And look at how well that effort turned out.
I can only admit to sheepishness, forty years this October, and I’ve never won one with my wife yet. BUT- I’m an optimist. Like oft quoted cuz. Jack Gleeson was noted for. “One of these day’s Alice!” I can’t quit trying. European travel sounds good, a good local rebirth of Liberty, Truth and Justice for all, though will have to simmer in the ooze of bureaucracy long past 2012 before it experiences a rebirth. But, I grew up in New Mexico and found that living in a Hispanic culture is not that difficult. Get away from the border towns, drug routes and you find decent modest citizens to live with on either side of the border. Not only that, but if the break toward Liberty does come quickly, the person in Mexico, will have the opportunity to rejoin much faster than if they were in Siberia. I know, doomed to argue, Don Quixote.
[Fred Reed says as much. I just can’t tolerate the heat. 65F degrees is my limit; actually the brain functions best at that temperature. I love cool climates.]
Alex,
A bit more trying was arguing with a man about Obama. Even otherwise masculine men were hot for Obama.