Category Archives: Media

Where’s The Equal Division Of Labor Between Liars?

Democrats, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Republicans

Am I correct to suspect, from perusing its “truth-o-meter statements,” that PolitiFact.com has a preference for certain “truths” over others?

The site is the winner of the prize establishment bores and boors give themselves: The Pulitzer Prize for journalism.

Just look at the Pulitzer winners over the years in the Commentary category. To borrow from a Camile-Paglia description: “catty, third-rate, wannabe sorority queens; empty vessels,” all. One pleasure of reading online is that one never has to see anything written by people like Maureen Dowd, Kathleen Parker, Eugene Robinson, Thomas Friedman and Cynthia Tucker! “I ignore their hypertext like spam for penis extenders.”

Back to PolitFact. I would think that in the Demopublican confederacy of knaves, members of both parties would feature equally as liars, but are lie detectors biased too?

It doesn’t look like it from the latest statements PolitiFact.com has reviewed. I could be wrong, but practically everything bad said about Obamacare is marked as a false statement.

A Professor Who Doesn’t Pander

Economy, Education, English, Internet, Journalism, Media, Pseudoscience

Still a tad mild for my liking, but far better than any “critique” provided in mainstream media is Tyler Cowen’s assessment of Nate Silver’s “data-driven journalism.” In “Nate Silver’s 538 is up and running,” Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, writes wryly:

… to me these are “tweener” pieces, too superficial for smart and informed readers, yet on topics which are too abstruse for the more casual readers. … Here is Silver’s introductory essay as to what they are about. It is too sprawling and evinces a greater affiliation to rigor with data analysis than to rigor with philosophy of science or for that matter rigor with rhetoric.

In Cowen we may have a rare professor who doesn’t pander to annoying Millennials.

American Patriot Explains A Russian Patriot

Media, Neoconservatism, Paleoconservatism, Politics, Russia

No wonder the brilliant Pat Buchanan is nowhere to be seen on cable news channels imparting his considerable knowledge of history and geopolitics to American media ignoramuses. Much like Henry Kissinger’s well-informed, balanced analysis on Ukraine and Russia, smuggled into the Washington Post over the ignorant din made by the likes of Chucky Krauthammer—Buchanan understands and knows stuff. That makes those egos in the anchor’s chair look even more idiotic.

Writes Buchanan in “Is Putin the irrational one?”:

… if Putin is not a Russian imperialist out to re-establish Russian rule over non-Russian peoples, who and what is he?

In the estimation of this writer, Vladimir Putin is a blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethnonationalist who sees himself as Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate concern.

Consider the world Putin saw, from his vantage point, when he took power after the Boris Yeltsin decade.

He saw a Mother Russia that had been looted by oligarchs abetted by Western crony capitalists, including Americans. He saw millions of ethnic Russians left behind, stranded, from the Baltic states to Kazakhstan.

He saw a United States that had deceived Russia with its pledge not to move NATO into Eastern Europe if the Red Army would move out, and then exploited Russia’s withdrawal to bring NATO onto her front porch.

Had the neocons gotten their way, not only the Warsaw Pact nations of Central and Eastern Europe, but five of 15 republics of the USSR, including Ukraine and Georgia, would have been brought into a NATO alliance created to contain and, if need be, fight Russia.

What benefits have we derived from having Estonia and Latvia as NATO allies that justify losing Russia as the friend and partner Ronald Reagan had made by the end of the Cold War?

We lost Russia, but got Romania as an ally? Who is irrational here? …

… If the people of Eastern Ukraine wish to formalize their historic, cultural and ethnic ties to Russia, and the people of Western Ukraine wish to sever all ties to Moscow and join the European Union, why not settle this politically, diplomatically and democratically, at a ballot box? …

MORE.

Which Is The Worst Mouthpiece Of Propaganda?

Free Speech, Individual Rights, Media, Russia, The State

It’s not RT TV. Russia Today reports openly and extensively on assorted proposals to restrict freedoms throughout Russia as well as on existing restrictions in that country:

“Moscow magistrate convict Russian nationalist of extremism” tells of restrictions and bans imposed by the Moscow City Court on an individual whose activities are viewed as “extreme.”

More headlines exposing illiberal restrictions: “Russia may criminalize multi-ethnic fights between individuals,” which is also silly. It is already naturally unlawful in almost all criminal codes to attack another individual unprovoked. This latest Russian proposal is just a species of the hate-crime legislation endured in Europe and throughout the Anglo-sphere.

Another of today’s RT headlines: “Opposition party proposes 5 year jail term for insulting patriotism.”

Social engineering is par for the course in the US, except that American leaders incentivize values in opposition to the traditional values Putin seems after:

“New Family Code to protect traditional family, religious values – key lawmaker.” The Russian “head of the lower house committee for family issues has described a new set of legislative amendments protecting the values shared by basic religions, and inspiring young people to choose marriage over cohabitation”:

Other possible changes could include outlining priorities in favor of traditional families and traditional family values. These include the concepts that have been supporting the Russian nation for over a thousand years – the union between a man and a woman, several children in a family, families uniting several generations and the deep connection between these generations.

Either way, shaping society in politically pleasing ways is not the role of the state.

Back to the point of the post: RT covers quite well what we in the US would and should consider the state’s encroachment on liberty.

Can you say the same about mainstream media stateside?

MORE.