Rearranged - Rush Limbaugh, CBS, and Cindy Sheehan
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
At one time he was the outlaw Rush "Jose Wales" Limbaugh! LOL
Bump.
Good but old
Did I miss the Sheehan linkage?
"... poor copy quality - and no original - is routine for forgeries."
These were not even FORGERIES - which are illegal copies of legal documents; this was a case of FRAUD, and government docs at that. This case should have been pursued as if an enemy power was involved in espionage.
Outstanding!
bump
Ping.
Up to a point. You're overlooking the most obvious reason for FCC licensing, which is that the airwaves would be unusable without somebody imposing order on who broadcasts on which frequency. Read up on the early days of radio, when it was completely unregulated. It was chaotic, with stations "stepping on" one another. FCC broadcast licensing prevents that chaos today. You don't have to agree with how the FCC awards licenses to see that such licensing is necessary.
Now I will again play devil's advocate, just for the hellovit.
"It isn't Cindy Sheehan - she's no more significant than I am. The problem is the broadcasters who get her to stand on her son's coffin and use it for a soapbox."
Shameless, yes; BUT, it sells soap to dopes.
Doesn't it.
The *new* depth of shamelessness the quisling mediots have sunk to I find consistent with the quality of people today in 2005 America.
Don't like it, never have & never will; nonetheless, that's the way it is.
Isn't it.
"And it isn't even the broadcasters, but the sheeple who would take offense at the idea that the broadcasters should lose their priveldge - not their right, but their privilege - to transmit at particular frequencies at particular places."
The *sheeple* take "offense" at anything?
Surely you jest.
The "sheeple" *are* "sheeple" because they follow don'tcha know, otherwise, they'd be *people*. {g}
To expect anything [more] than that which one witnesses coming from "sheeple" is to hold hope elephants will/can fly.
"And the reason they should lose their privileges is that those privileges - denied to you and me but given to the government's pets for free - is that the FCC license proclaim that the FCC licensee is "more equal" than you and me. An FCC license makes the licensee's voice in politics louder than yours and mine, and proclaims that what the licensee says and does not say, and what the licensee shows and does not show, is 'in the public interest.'"
*Excellent*
Real power, eh?
And the FCC, quisling mediots & their *corporate* bosses?
They got an *army*?
Our -- Republican controlled -- government has an army, y'know.
The puppet quislings dance at the pleasure *&* direction of their *corporate* bosses.
Y'know that too, right?
I've stopped thinking in terms of "Liberal", "Conservative" and/or "Socialist" when it comes to our nation's media of any kind.
Why?
Because the ideological component & capitalist concepts don't reconcile, period.
As such *that* fact provides a LOT (for me) of answer(s) when it comes to explaining the unexplainable I see.
That said...
"But isn't that true?"
No.
"Aren't the broadcast journalists objective?"
No.
Never in the history of the Republic have "journalists" been "objective".
Ever.
"Aren't they moderate?"
No.
Never in the history of the Republic have "journalists" been "moderate".
Ever.
"The burden of proof of that question properly lies with them."
For who, you?
Me?
Cut it out now, please.
"Journalists" report what they're told to report however outrageous.
That they just so happen to *believe* the swill penned -- however that was *arranged* -- is just sauce for the goose as far as their corporate handlers are concerned.
As for you, me and/or anyone else who disagrees with their message?
*Pound sand*.
"How can the licensees - how can the FCC - conceivably prove what is essentially an unprovable negative? It is impossible, and that is why the First Amendment ruled out governmental regulation of newspapers, books, or speakers. Because the objection is not to the fact that the broadcasters transmit radio signals, it is the fact that the government censors all but the few - and certifies the transmissions of the few as being 'in the public interest.'"
Say it again.
Who is "the government"?
Isn't it whoever's in power at any given time?
"Who's" the government *today*?
That we're seeing things in direct opposition to the "powers" that be today, therein lies the answer(s).
"But isn't it true?"
No.
In the world according to Conservatism_IS_compassion, Forgod'ssake, Landru it is.
But our influence is *it*, assuming those in our immediate circles *understand* and/or even care.
"Aren't the broadcast journalists objective and moderate? It's certain that CBS spent 5 years looking for an excuse for proclaiming that President George W. Bush's TANG service had been criticized by his superiors."
Yea, they did that alright.
Still aren't finished trying to torpedo the sucker, too.
Hardly.
Just because they *missed* that time doesn't mean they went away, ceased their objectives(s) insofar as this particular POTUS -- & his *party*, BTW -- goes.
In the words of one of the Liberal-Socialist's *darlings*, Henry "Nostrilitis" Waxman: So what?".
"Mary Mapes looked for such an excuse for 5 years - and when the Burkett "documents" came over the transom they were too good to be true:"
Uh-huh.
And?
You heard M.Mopes won some kind of an award, didn't you?
Uh-huh, a journalism award. ;^)
"First, since they weren't originals with original signatures, they would never have stood up in court."
What court?
The "court of public opinion"?
"Justice"?
What "justice" would you be speaking of expecting?
From the USSC?
HA!!
You're making me laugh out loud, c_I_c.
"On that basis alone, proclaiming that the "documents" proved anything was not in the public interest."
Everything you're saying the quislings should abide by is your definition of "public interest", can't you see that?
Your sense of fairness, justice?
That's not how the game's played, any "rules" you're thinking about enforcing are your rules, not their's.
The "truth" is whatever the quisling(s) *say* the "truth" is, be they of apparent "right" or "left" position.
Period.
And to that there's not a damned thing anyone can do to change it; UNLESS, there were a coup d'etat overthrowing the United States government & our Constitution as written.
"Second, the "documents" were not merely copies, but very poor quality copies - of the sort that are produced when the copy in hand is a copy of a copy of a copy, perhaps ten generations. That is suspicious because the "documents" turned up only in 2004, ten years at least after their publication would have been political dynamite. How strange that people obtained copies and made copies from them, over many generations - yet only in 2004 did they surface at CBS. Some of the "documents" purport to have been produced only for file and would have embarrassed their putative author "I'll backdate but I won't rate" if seen by other officers. the family of the deceased putative author, who would have had the decedent's effects, deny having had those "documents" - yet they did not turn up until ten years after they would have been highly valuable to Bush's opposition. But in 2004, the "documents" turn up at CBS - with no chain of custody. poor copy quality - and no original - is routine for forgeries."
Sweet Jesus!!
Your incredible, knowledgeable attention to event, detail(s), ability to *reason* is virtually light years beyond 99.9% of the nation's voting population.
Believe me when I say most people have no idea -- whatsoever -- what you're speaking about, none.
The detail(s) you, "Buckhead" et al spotted tipping y'all off to the scam which resulted in your questioning those documents STILL aren't understood by the average person in the streets.
I know, I speak with plenty of ordinary people every single day and have a sense of what they do & don't know, deem "important" in/to/for their lives and believe me SeeBS pulling some crap ain't one of 'em.
Those who are aware, incidentally, in all likelihood still believe the initial "report".
They believe what they want to believe.
The seriousness *is* the charge after all, not that there's a gram of truth to support it.
That was the [*only*] objective "reporting" the "news" based on phony docs so easily disproved by laypeople -- or anyone else -- with a discerning eye & minimal knowledge of trivia facts such as typewriters & word processors.
Hell's bell a typewriter repairman whose passion was politics could've outed the frauds just as well as a shyster.
We're just fortunate the people who did out the scam were of the right; because, in all likelihood there were probably a couple on the left who spotted the ruse, too.
They of course opted to keep their pieholes shut fore their partisan reasons.
"Minor anachronisms such as old address for GW Bush when the current address would have been known and its use de rigeur; nonstandard formatting of memos and nonstandard usage within them. And a memo complains of undue influence by an officer who was already retired at the time to which the "memo" was dated."
Totally missed by the *target* brains the "report" was aimed/intended.
As gambled.
The quisling's modus operandi, based on their 1st Amendment rights *and* thorough understanding of citizen apathy, ignorance & today's political polarization.
Who's fault is that?
The shameless quislings selling laundry soap?
Honestly is the quisling mediots ever told me anything I found myself believing, in agreement with, I'd be checking & *rechecking* my facts over & over.
"The "documents" match perfectly the results of keying the same text into Microsoft Word operating at its default settings. This is amazing because: USAF stationary of that time was not 8.5 inches wide; a memo typed on narrower paper would naturally tend to be laid out differently than the same memo typed on 8.5 inch wide paper. Among all four memos there was not a single hyphenated word at the end of a line, as would be common with the use of a typewriter. the memos contain centered text - and Microsoft Word centers perfectly, down to the pixel level whereas typewriters center down to only the character level - an odd number of typed characters is not truly centered in the same way as an even number of typed characters because that would require adding a half of a space in the line. Microsoft Word not only assigns differing character space widths to various letters - "w" being given more space than than "i" - but actually nests adjoining characters together if (for example) the hook of a "j" can fit under the top of a preceding "T". This is impossible on a normal 1970's vintage typewriter."
:o)
Great scam!!
Almost worked, too.
But didn't.
And ISee SeeBS is still around, eh?
Amazing stuff, SOS.
America, ain't it great. ;^)
"Mr. Bush was running, not as a former Lieutenant but as a sitting commander-in-chief, so from the Republican perspective thirty-year-old TANG memos are merely quint. But Senator Kerry wanted scrutiny of that history because he was running as a former Navy Lieutenant."
Uh-huh.
"Power of the press"!! (print or air-wave, all the same handlers...)
Propaganda at its finest hour, I thought, shaming anything Joe Goebbels conjured, that's for damned sure.
"CBS gave Senator Kerry a pass on an amazingly thin record as a politician in the past thirty years..."
And don't forget totally ignoring the Swift Vets!!
*After* they completely discredited that which they never took a public moment to examine? :o)
As I said, great stuff.
...but pursued the merest possibility of evidence of mal/nonfeasance by Lt. Bush in the distant past in a way resembling nothing so much as Captain Ahab searching the Pacific for the great white whale."
Wellll in that the quisling mediots & their corporate handlers were *obsessed* preventing the Shrub's election & reelection goes, yes.
Can't argue the analogy, a'tall.
"The story of "Lieutenant Bush skipped Guard Duty" collapsed under the weight of the evidence of the fraudulence of the supporting 'documents.'"
SeeBS didn't *care* about the "validity" of the docs, for chrissakes.
If anyone thinks -- for one instant -- SeeBS didn't know wayyy ahead of time those docs were as phony as $3 bills they're delusional, should seek professional help asap.
"At that point CBS reverted to the "modified limited hangout." CBS created an "independent commission" to make a show of investigating the matter - and to conclude that it was not possible to conclude that those patent forgeries were forgeries and to conclude that CBS's fanatical pursuit of the flimsiest "evidence" for the Democrat and against the Republican was not politically motivated."
All preconceived, *everything*, in the advent they were caught.
No doubt in my military mind 'bout the fix.
They knew they would be caught, later hopefully than sooner.
It's the only way the whole sordid mess *fits*.
And even then SeeBS et al were *off* to (un)cover & *report* more "truths" in the "public interest".
They've never looked back are wellll beyond C.Sheehan as I write.
Planning the logistics of their next "assault", it's a *gimme*.
Get used to it because it ain't gonna stop until they get *their* guy(s) where ever they *want* 'em, politically.
That's not *me* just shooting off my big mouth, that's *history*.
And the best forecaster of events to come, is and always has been past history.
"So much for the good faith of CBS..."
What "good faith" are you speaking of?
If you've a "problem", it'd be you'r wayyy too honest.
Don't change, I like you as-is.
But don't think "they're} like you either, they're not.
They're exactly what you/we see, no more & no less.
"...with malice aforethought they aired a vicious, fraudulent hit piece in an attempt to manipulate the electorate and produce the election result they favored."
Yup sure did, and then they denied it.
Big surprise to me, lemme tell ya.
Were you surprised, too? :o)
"And when caught, they stonewalled shamelessly."
Yup.
They're good at that, shamelessness, that is.
"No objective journalist could fail to know that that is what happened."
There are NO "objective journalist(s)", anywhere.
None.
Nada.
Nyet.
Nietz.
Can't say when they "died", perhaps when our "choice" was eliminated, back when the print media was threatened most. 1993? Clintigula's reign?
"And no journalist who wishes to be considered "objective" by establishment journalism..."
Would be *employable* by "establishment journalism", or otherwise.
If they could they would, but they aren't so there aren't.
...- including but not limited to CBS - dares to state the obvious truth."
Why should they?
They don't need to speak anything except that which we hear and that's *what* we hear.
"Only a journalist like Rush Limbaugh - a journalist who is dedicated to the truth rather than to a staying in the good graces of go-along-and-get-along Establishment journalism - would tell the obvious truth of the matter."
I'm sorry but Rush himself says he's an "entertainer" & Rush is selling soap (or wood flooring, as it were).
That those who hunger to hear the truth of what's happening today in our society must turn to a self proclaimed entertainer sort of says it all about where we as a nation stand, today.
But Rush et al *did* turn the dieing media band AM into a real *profit center*, eh?
"And the "conservative talk show host" journalists like Rush learned the obvious truth from the Internet. Ultimately, from Free Republic."
Yea, and?
Sold soap with [it].
Although in all fairness without the Internet & mainly this place & its cyber-citizens.
Because I'll tell you something, the other places are monstrously polluted shit-holes infested by quacks, misfits, rejects and freaks of every stripe.
But even so we have all seen the result of the effort exposing SeeBS' scheme.
Danny boy's gone & a new puppet has assumed the seat as Master Mouthpiece.
Message hasn't changed, no?
"The conclusion is that the government was arrogant to create the broadcast bands by means of censorship, in direct contravention of the First Amendment."
Yes!!
As did CFR, 2nd Amendment restriction(s) and long list of other blatant violations of our beloved constitutional protections.
All gone.
So what.
They got the *army*, eh? :o)
"FCC licenses are actually illegitimate titles of nobility which the Constitution explicitly forbids."
Yup.
No doubt, no truer words have been spoken.
"And the result of that creation of a commanding political height has been the promotion of socialism - of the importance of government."
Of which both parties hands are dirty filthy.
Don't forget that, either.
"The Internet produces no such commanding height..."
So far.
Just wait.
"...it is the realization of a "poor man's soap box" with a nationwide reach."
Uh-huh and they'll make their move to *gag* the Internet -- as we know it -- the *moment* they're power's really being threatened.
That hasn't happened quite yet, not even close.
"Print journalism and personal speech and assembly are constitutionally protected, and if anyone uses the Internet then everyone who wants to is entitled to. But broadcast journalism - arrogant, partisan "objective" broadcast journalism - is fundamentally illegitimate and should be banished from the airwaves."
Back to revolution, huh.
For better or worse?
There aren't many Americans left anymore with the kind of fight in their belly for that kind of talk, never-mind real action.
The ones who are left out there would quickly deliver to us a governmental hell of their choosing, too.
"Ironically, Air America is more legitimate than CBS News - at least Air America is openly liberal."
Yea, maybe they are; BUT, they're broadcasting on airspace licensed by the FCC, too.
Great essay, full of common sense.
...as usual ;^)
That says it all. The woman used her son's coffin as her soapbox. I hope she is freaking happy.
....But isn't that true? Aren't the broadcast journalists objective? Aren't they moderate? The burden of proof of that question properly lies with them.
They tell us they aren't biased but it's such bs.
***..........................If others could understand your truth, you would not think of yourself as a "vanguard." You would no longer inhabit the morally charmed world of an elite, whose members alone can see the light and whose mission is to lead the unenlightened towards it. If everybody could see the promised horizon and knew the path to reach it, the future would already have happened and there would be no need for the vanguard of the saints.
That is both the ethical core and psychological heart of what it means to be a part of the left. That is where the gratification comes from. To see yourself as a social redeemer. To feel anointed. In other words: To be progressive is itself the most satisfying narcissism.
That is why it is of little concern to them that their socialist schemes have run aground, burying millions of human beings in their wake. That is why they don't care that their panaceas have caused more human suffering than all the injustices they have ever challenged. That is why they never learn from their "mistakes." That is why the continuance of Them is more important than any truth.
........For these self-appointed social redeemers, the goal-"social justice"-is not about rectifying particular injustices, which would be practical and modest, and therefore conservative. Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things. "Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires. It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself.
Even though they are too prudent and self-protective to name this future anymore, the post-Communist left still passionately believes it possible. But it is a world that has never existed and never will. Moreover, as the gulags and graveyards of the last century attest, to attempt the impossible is to invite the catastrophic in the world we know.
But the fall of Communism taught the progressives who were its supporters very little. Above all, it failed to teach them the connection between their utopian ideals and the destructive consequences that flowed from them. The fall of Communism has had a cautionary impact only on the overt agendas of the political left. The arrogance that drives them has hardly diminished. The left is like a millenarian sect that erroneously predicted the end of the world, and now must regroup to revitalize its faith.
No matter how opportunistically the left's agendas have been modified, however, no matter how circumspectly its goals have been set, no matter how generous its concessions to political reality, the faithful have not given up their self-justifying belief that they can bring about a social redemption. In other words, a world in which human consciousness is changed, human relations refashioned, social institutions transformed, and in which "social justice" prevails.
Because the transformation progressives seek is ultimately total, the power they seek must be total as well. In the end, the redemption they envision cannot be achieved as a political compromise, even though compromises may be struck along the way. Their brave new world can ultimately be secured only by the complete surrender of the resisting force. In short, the transformation of the world requires the permanent entrenchment of the saints in power. Therefore, everything is justified that serves to achieve the continuance of Them. ...........................*** Source
And the reason they should lose their privileges is that those privileges - denied to you and me but given to the government's pets for free - is that the FCC license proclaim that the FCC licensee is "more equal" than you and me. An FCC license makes the licensee's voice in politics louder than yours and mine, and proclaims that what the licensee says and does not say, and what the licensee shows and does not show, is "in the public interest."I just have to point out, that, since the *"Fairness Doctrine" was done away with the conservative prescence has only grown, while strictly-branded liberal talk continues to wane.
Wile Limbaugh and Beck and Hannity and host of others occupy about 20-23 minutes per half hour the MSM mediots only blather on at the top of the hour for 3 mins or so (and sometimes for a couple of mins at the bottom).
I call that progress; we are winning, winning on the war of ideas and the total numbers of minutes of airtime a day ...
* Fairness Doctrine:The policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission that became known as the "Fairness Doctrine" is an attempt to ensure that all coverage of controversial issues by a broadcast station be balanced and fair. The FCC took the view, in 1949, that station licensees were "public trustees," and as such had an obligation to afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of contrasting points of view on controversial issues of public importance. The Commission later held that stations were also obligated to actively seek out issues of importance to their community and air programming that addressed those issues. With the deregulation sweep of the Reagan Administration during the 1980s, the Commission dissolved the fairness doctrine.
The problem is that the antiwar Left has conflated these issues . . .
. . . with the exception of a few of their extremists, they (including all of their legitimate presidential hopefuls) know we can't legitimately talk about withdrawing, which is why they are not offering — not even pretending to offer — any alternative plans.
In a level playing field debate, the left has not the slightest possibility of defeating a conservative; the left has to hide its agenda - and always has. The left uses euphemisms for things it cannot say out loud - essentially it uses the words "public" or "social" when it actually means nothing else but "government." Thus "socialism" is really just a euphemism for "governmentism" - which, all too clearly, is a synonym for tyranny.But a conventional TV "debate" is not a level playing field at all. They are really competitive joint news conferences. And although both maintain the fiction that the distinction is meaningful, there has really been no political difference between a Democratic politican and a journalist for the past three decades. In the 1968 transformation of the Democratic Party into its present cheap talk, antivalor configuration, Democratic poiticians divested themselves of any principle other than the idea that nothing matters except PR.
So the moderated TV "debate" is not the solution to the problem of enabling the public to select good presidents. There is no reason at all that the candidates could not debate equally publicly but on a far more level playing field. If all you cared about was enabling the public to understand what the issues are, you would give the candidates 3-hour blocks of radio time, and a chess timer to control whose microphone was live. The two candidates would not be required to be in a common location, so that there would be minimum impact on their schedules - and there would be five such debates.
With that much exposure I would expect that the voters would know who was on offer, and would make a more prudent choice than is currently to be counted on.
Iraq: let's quit confusing
Jewish World Review ^ | August 30, 2005 | David Limbaugh
I don't think you understand the situation. The fundamental problem is story selection - what is the lead, what makes the cut, and what isn't reported at all. Consideringwould the "memos" have logically been important even if they were absolutely genuine? Would it have been "objective" to call them a smoking gun, when all they putatively "prove" is that Bush wasn't the second coming of Audie Murphy - something which Bush himself never claimed?
- Kerry's book, Winter Soldier, and the rest of his quisling act back in the Vietnam era,
- Kerry's negative military expenditure votes in the Senate, and
- Kerry's dismissal of the "what did you do in the war?" issue when the Democrats were electing a draft dodger in 1992,
I'm not arguing that they wouldn't have likely suppressed the Bush vote enough to turn the election if the blogosphere and talk radio hadn't put the kibosh on them - I think they probably would. But that begs the question - why would an objective person think it was their job to promote the Kerry political line?
Just turn it around. Suppose that there was information about Kerry that was exactly as derrogatory as those "memos," but it was about John Kerry. Would CBS have aired it, and would it have affected the election? That's not a hypothetical question, of course - the answer is the book Unfit for Command by O'Neil and the other members of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." If 60 Minutes had breathlessly touted it they way they did the "memos," there would have been no doubt at all as to the outcome of the election. Instead CBS and the rest of the "objective" journalists pretended to give SBVT a hearing, then announced that they had been "discredited." And even so, SBVT is credited with the defeat of Kerry in Ohio.
The idea of "objectivity" is absurd when story selection determines the political slant of your reporting. Which is why the First Amendment is so elegant - and why the government was wrong to create the "titles of nobility" known as broadcast licenses.
CBS News counters bloggers with 'Nonbudsman'
Reuters via Yahoo ^ | 08/30/05
The tragedy is that "the media" can so blythely and so truthfully be spoken of as a single entity. Of course the relatively novel format known as "talk radio" cannot be lumped in with "the media" even though it obviously is a part of the generic term. The true distinction is not between "talk radio" and "the media" but between philosophical communication and sophistic propaganda.It has been known since Socrates that claiming virtue is arrogant. Claiming the particular virtue of wisdom is called "sophistry." It is impossible to have a rational debate with a sophist. The sophist will always demean anyone who disagrees with him/her in lieu of debating the merits of the issue at hand. Thus the littany which Rush so often recites - "racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe" - is so excrutiatingly familiar whenever a "debate" occurs between a liberal and a conservative.
And it is always the "liberal" who applies those labels. It is always the liberal who does so, because the liberal can rely on the support of the sophistic propaganda power of "the media." The conservative does not attempt to resort to that technique, not only because of the lack of propaganda power, but because the conservative is always defending the philosophical high ground.
Philosophy - "the love of wisdom" - claims only to be willing to listen to reason. Philosophy rejects ad hominum and other misleading argumentation. But in the present circumstances in the United States, there is an establishment (usually referred to as "the media") which claims the virtue of wisdom (tho they call it "objectivity"). That cabal is able to launch a tremendous propaganda campaign against anyone who dares to reject its claim of superior virtue. Consequently our political discourse is heavily biased toward emotion and against logic and factual data.
Historically it was sometimes claimed that the Democratic and Republican Parties were "Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee" - or alternatively, "Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber." And since the Republican and especially the Democratic parties had "broad tents," there was at least a colorable argument for that perspective. The Democratic Party had such a broad tent because it included not only the liberals but also the conservative post-Reconstruction southerners who would "vote for a yellow dog before they'd vote for a Republican."
Then came the Johnson Administration out of the southern state of Texas. The Vietnam involvement that Johnson inherited was a mess, in the sense that the legitimate government of South Vietnam had been overthrown. Madam Nhu, the widow of the deposed President Diem, blamed the Kennedy Administration for his murder. It was infuriating to have our government slandered in that way. But it turns out not to have been slander at all; the CIA did indeed have its fingerprints on it.
A month later JFK was dead and Johnson was POTUS. Johnson responded to the moral obligation implied in US overthrow of a friendly government, and assayed to produce a better and stronger South Vietnam - in no small part by military defense thereof. Before you knew it the US had 500,000 troops in South Vietnam.
And then came the Tet offensive - a treacherous attack during a holiday for which the Americans had been pressured into declaring a temporary truce. It was a bloody battle which pushed US troops temporarily out of some critical positions. But ultimately it was a go-for-broke effort by the Viet Cong (the terroristic South Vietnamese Communists) which went broke. It went broke in Vietnam, but it hit paydirt in the form of the demoralization of American journalism.
Journalism had been in love with the Kennedy Administration, which was in a very real sense a precursor to the Clinton PR machine. Kennedy suffered the humiliation of the construction of the Berlin Wall by the Soviet Union, the failure of the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, and the insertion of Soviet missiles into Castro's Cuba. But JFK changed the subject of the Bay of Pigs disaster by launching the crusade to beat the Soviets to a manned landing on the moon. Throughout the Kennedy Administration - and indeed long long afterward - the Kennedy family was a virtual cult of personality. During the Kennedy Administration you could never walk past a newsstand without seeing at least one magazine with a flattering cover photo of Jack and/or Jackie Kennedy. The assassination of John Kennedy was a bitter blow to the nation, but most especially to liberals.
Journalism was in love with the Kennedys, and suddenly JFK was dead and Johnson was president. Johnson had seen the adulation accorded the Kennedys, and assumed that by he would have similar acceptance as he pursued the goals with which Kennedy had associated himself. In that he was grieviously mistaken. Johnson attacked the agenda with vigor. Did Kennedy talk a good game about opposing Communist expansion? Johnson would send half a million troops to Vietnam. Did Kennedy talk about civil rights? Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (supported by greater majorities of Republican than Democratic Congressmen and Senators). Did Kennedy talk about helping the poor? Johnson would propose the Great Society programs of Head Start, welfare entitlements, medicare and medicaid, and so on. What Kennedy had only spoken of, Johnson did - big time.
But although JFK could easily be labeled a hawk by later standards, liberalism had never been enthusiastic about anticommunism. Support for that was concentrated in the embarassing southern conservative wing of the Democratic Party; the liberals unreservedly backed Alger Hiss. Who, as the secret Venona files now make crystal clear, was as charged a Communist mole as a senior aide to FDR - and as our representative at the founding of the United Nations.
Suddenly a southern Democrat was in the White House, paying suit to bereaved liberalism but putting his weight behind an anticommunist crusade. The effect was as if journalism and liberalism had been JFK's bereaved widow, and LBJ was a boor proposing to Kennedy's widow at Kennedy's funeral.
The demoralizing impact of the temporary Communist victories of Tet proved to be a sharp blow to that fault line in the Democratic Party. The fracture followed: suddenly anyone who supported the effort to redeem the Kennedy moral commitment to a free South Vietnam was a vicious "hawk," and those who wanted no part of the continuing sacrifice which that implied were virtuous "doves" (and so it remained, until the Berlin Wall fell and it became clear that Reagan had won the Cold War. Then the entire concept of vicious "Right Wing Cold Warriors" and virtuous "doves" was stuffed down the memory hole).
The Democratic Party went to the 1968 Chicago convention with this scism torn raw. It is interesting to speculate on alternative scenarios for that nomination and that election. But what is clear is that no subsequent Democratic candidate for POTUS has won unless headed by a southern governor. And indeed the last Democratic ticket to win election (by a plurality of the popular vote in a three-way race) was of two southerners. The Congress stayed in Democratic control until 1994, but the power of incumbency finally was broken by the House Bank scandal and dissatisfaction in the South with the actual liberalism of the pseudomoderate "New Democrat" Clinton Administration.
Liberalism has always pitted the rich and the poor against the middle class. Liberalism always chides Republicans as favoring "the rich," but a comparison of the distributions of donations in the Republican Partiy with that of the Democratic Party belies the application of the "party of the rich" label to the Republicans. It turns out that although it gets its votes from the poor, the Democratic Party gets its money - not to mention a disproportionate fraction of its Senate candidates - from the rich. And, it must be added, liberalism gets unstinting support from "the media" - and there isn't a major outlet of "the media" in the country which is owned by a pauper.
The stagflationary debacle of the Nixon-Ford-Carter era produced another signal change in American politics: the Reagan-Kemp-Roth revolution. Up until the Ford Administration, Republican fiscal policy was to oppose wasteful spending and to insist on balancing the budget. And as fine as that was in civics textbook theory, it was a political and ultimately an economic disaster. It was a scheme which gave the liberal Democrats a political free lunch. Democrats bought votes like drunken sailors, and Republicans paid the bill by voting for high taxes to pay the tab. Finally in the middle of the 1970s Jack Kemp called for a transformation of Republican fiscal policy. That change - to an outright low tax rate policy, deficits or no - was adopted by Reagan and was a smashing success.
From valley to peak, federal revenue doubled during the Reagan Administration. And although the Savings and Loan crisis caused a recession which doomed GHW Bush's reelection bid, Reagan-Kemp-Roth triggered a secular expansion which lasted through the Clinton Administration. Voters below the age of thirty have little concept of how desperate the economic condition of the country seemed by the end of the Carter Administration. And Mario Cuomo made his reputation with a single speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention, at which he viewed Reaganomics with alarm and ridiculed as "rosy" Republican predictions which in the actual event proved conservative.
The effect of the Reagan-Kemp-Roth transformation of Republican fiscal policy was to transform Democratic fiscal policy. No longer able to count on Republican cooperation in a tax-and-spend vote-buying spree, Democrats have beem cornered into adopting a pure big-government - high spending, high taxing - position. At the top where it counts (not at the bottom where the votes are), the Democratic Party is the party of the big guy - big spending, big taxation, big media, and the big contribution and the rich senator.
If you look at the red-county/blue-county map, you find the Democrats carrying the inner city and the toney suburb - and the Republicans carrying the middle class suburbs and rural areas. It is a map of the areas where people are willing to condescend to others - or be condescended to - on the one hand, and of areas where the majority are neither desirous of patronizing others nor willing to be condescended to, on the other.
A Gathering Storm for the Media
Carolina Journal ^
. . . The hour-long debate did not allow for lengthy answers. The candidates were asked about education, affordable housing, terrorism, crime, race relations, gay marriage, unemployment and disaster preparedness and in most cases had just 30 seconds to respond . . .
You see, that is just the trouble. They have, understandably enough, four candidates to winnow down to one nominee - and they have no principled way to choose among them, since the one who polls the worst could in principle be the one who is the second choice of the all the voters in the primary. So what do they do? They run a "first past the pole" race with a runoff against "second past the pole" if the winner doesn't get 40% of the vote.Let's just suppose that what they actually wanted to do was inform the public enough to get a good candidate for mayor. What would they do? IMHO they should:And how do they inform the public on the candidates and the issues? They broadcast a brief live, competitive joint TV
debatepress conference among the whole lot of them.
IMHO that process would seperate the wheat from the chaff - candidates who aren't ready for prime time would probably realize it by the time they got their clock cleaned by three different people in three seperate three-hour radio debates.I thintk that method of debating in the general election would enable Republicans to blow Democrats away - Democrats depend so heavily on being protected by journalists (see Hillary Clinton, poster child).
Democrats Debate, Asked 'Why Is Bloomberg Popular?' (NY) WNBC Television ^ | 9/8/2005 | Puppage
This is a federal system. There are vestiges of State's rights left in the country - at least when there aren't Clintons in the White House.The scandal is not that the governor was able to block the movement of people in an emergency situation, the scandal is that Governor Blanco in fact did block the Red Cross from supplying people with food and water. And blankets.
And the really big scandal is that establishment journalism did not then, nor even now does not, ask the Red Cross where the relief supplies were.
The real scandal is that, with the connivance of the FCC, big journalism arrogantly proclaims its own objectivity. To do that is is to argue from the premise of superior virtue. And to do that is to engage in sophistry, which is an ironclad proof of lack of objectivity.
The real scandal is that the journalism establishment is stuffing the fecklessness of the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans down the memory hole before your very eyes, and fabricating a Republican "scandal" out of whole cloth. The real scandal is that "objective" journalism merged with the Democratic Party during the Vietnam War.
Louisiana authorities DELIBERATELY MADE THINGS WORSE Various (see article) ^ | 9/8/05 | Various
I'm interested in the issue of the promised congressional hearings on the relief response to Katrina.Clearly Congress has the authority to investigate the conduct of the Administration; Congress after all has the authority to impeach the president of the United States.
But does Congress have the authority to investigate a sitting governor? Congress doesn't select or ratify the nominations of governors, and Congress doesn't have the authority to impeach them, either. And governors don't report to the president, either - President Bush was completely stymied when the Governor of Louisiana did not elect to do what President Bush recommended.
So the issue becomes whether in fact the Republican congressional majority can do anything at all about the propaganda assigning all blame for the aftermath of the hurricane to the Bush Administration. But when the issue is framed as a propaganda issue, it should be clear that the federal government does in fact have some resources. And a legitimate investigative target.
The problem is in fact that the distiction between "objective journalism" and the Democratic Party is not a substantive difference. Liberal "objective" journalism will always hype any problem, and will always blame the nearest Republican for any given problem. And that is all that is going on in the fingerpointing over the Katrina aftermath.
The organizational reality is that the local and state governments of New Orleans and Louisiana were the first responders in the Katrina disaster; the federal government has a role only as the governor of Louisiana requestst it. And the fact is that the (Democratic) governor of Louisiana did not ask for - did not allow - federal involvement in the aftermath of Katrina until the die was cast that there would be an insurrection in New Orleans delaying rescue efforts and until unnecessary suffering in the Superdome and the Convention Center was inevitable.
True to form, "objective" journalism and the rest of the Democratic Party has been insinuating that President Bush should have done what only the Democratic governor and mayor in question were authorized to do. Print journalism is as independent of the Congress as the governor of Louisana is, but print journalism is not where the action is. The core of the problem is broadcast journalism, and broadcast journalism - all broadcasting - exists at the pleasure of Congress. It exists because the FCC censors competion in radio transmission, and the FCC exists by congressional statute.
IMHO the right thing for Congress to do is investigate the disaster response to define the limits of the president's authority to respond, and compare that to the actual behavior of the administration. And compare the performance in Louisiana with that in Mississippi and Alabama, with the differing behaviors of the governors of those states. But part of documenting the problems in Louisiana must be to discuss the coverage of the event. The broadcast coverage which is ultimately done under government sanction. The real issue is the fact that government is giving sanction to claims of objectivity from Democratic activists.
Tsunami Minister Defends U.S. on Katrina The Guardian UK ^ | 9/11/2005 | Chris Brummitt
This is a First Amendment issue. Obviously when the First Amendment was ratified, nobody thought that it gave them the right to host a web site; there was no such thing as a web site. But if anyone has the right to speak, then I have the right to speak, and if anyone has the right to use a printing press then I have the right to use a printing press.And if anyone has the right to communicate via web site, then I have the right to communicate via web site (not that I have a right to post on FreeRepublic.com; that right is reserved to Jim Robinson, who so far has been willing to grant me that priviledge).
I confess that that is not the standard which has been applied to broadcasting, but in that case there has been the fig leaf of "bandwidth scarcity," and that does not exist on the Internet. Without that fig leaf, denying me (or Jim Robinson) access to the posting of a web site on the web would unambiguously be a naked, unconstitutional power grab.
And the United States has no authority to leave the enforcement of the First Amendment to the tender mercies of the United Tyrants.
U.S. Won't Let U.N. Take Control Of Internet
News4JAX ^ | 9-29-05 | AP
