Bias

Drudge noted that Time magazine is running its seventeenth cover with an Obama on it in the past year. 17! That's once every three weeks!!

Surely it has nothing to do with the title (and content) to Bernard Goldberg's book on the 2008 election, "A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media." That's the actual title, parentheses and all.

It couldn't be that. Surely.

Seventeen?!?

In the tank

Okay, okay. The honeymoon between the media and President Obama has to be close to an end, right? Not so much.

Imagine the following poll about George Bush:

"Who do you find more compelling?

a. The President
b. The First Lady"

HAH! Had it been a poll initiated by CNN or MSNBC, they would certainly have included a third option:

"c. None of the stinking above"

CNN really did run that poll today, but it was about President Obama and his bride. They included the poll with this purile love-letter from "hard-nosed" talking-head Jack Cafferty (here).

So who's left to challenge what's coming out of Washington? Is it any wonder Rush Limbaugh's speech this weekend so resonated with America?

By the way, I'd take c.

Objectivity shmogjectivity

Howard Kurtz has an epiphany in today's Washington Post article (here). You really ought to be sitting down if you plan to read further. Oh, you already are. Well, have you steeled your spine? Try not to flinch. Here it is (cue the screechy Psycho music):

The press has not been objective in its reporting of Barack Obama.

Gasp! Shriek! Cough-sputter. Poor Janet Leigh!

Sorry. Kind of a "no-duh" epiphany. Gives you some idea about the tiny closet in which the press resides. Kurtz exposes example after example of treacly junior high school fawning over our next President, stuff you've likely heard or seen for yourself (and felt like you needed a bath afterward) to make his point.

While I find most of the article spot on, to my mind he has erred with where he believes the press will ultimately find itself. He anticipates an end to this gooey honeymoon, this love affair laced with eros. He concludes:

Obama's days of walking on water won't last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.

I don't think so. In the few moments of post-election sobriety, a few journalists recognized the improprieties of "the night before," but no sooner had the ink dried on their piece, they returned to the bar for another shot of Scotch on the Ba-racks with an Oba-martini chaser. Pretty soon all was comfortably numb once again.

Yes, Kennedy had his Bay of Pigs. Considering the unbelievable stuff Obama has survived politically to this point, he'd have everyone believing the Cuban mess was Barry Goldwater's fault.

I pray that I'm wrong, and that we'll see objectivity in the press at some point before 2016.

Media bias? Ask a journalist

Tonight, in a freezing-cold, rain-soaked game five of the World Series, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver detoured most about the "questionable" job of the home plate umpire. Folks, the last thing you want in what could be a deciding game is to have lame officiating.

The election version of the umpire is the media. Television news, print news, e-news. America has counted on its journalists to keep the playing field level.

In this years election, the umpire's bias has even become a joke on Saturday Night Live. Sending love letters and candy to one team does not give the other team the warmest of fuzzies.

Linked here is a lengthy article by an ABC News Journalist wherein he grieves over what has become of his profession. Please hang with it in its entirety. It gets really sobering on pages 3-5 (none of the pages is very long).

We have many unanswered questions about what side of this election primarily because the questions have been unasked. In eight days, the questions will be moot.

Who's on first? A question of trusting the news

We judge the credibility of what we hear based upon how what we hear corresponds with the reality around us and based upon the tested truthfulness of the herald. If you are unfamiliar with the person, you will be more skeptical of their story.

So it goes with the news. Truthfulness does not generally prove itself the moment a story breaks. Over time as we glean more and more about the event, we learn whether or not the particular media component has handled has handled it in an honest and unbiased manner. That's a good reason to try and collect your ideas about what's going on in the world from a number of typically reputable sources.

When the crisis in Georgia broke, I didn't know to whom I should listen or who would paint the clearest canvas? Did Georgia provoke Russia's wrath? Were horrors against humanity being perpetrated against the South Ossetians?

The fog lifted when I read Pravda and other Russian news outlets accuse the New York Times and the LA Times of being tools of Western propaganda. An example from Pravda today:

"The opinion piece in the online version of the Los Angeles Times (2008.08.12) is a clear and classic example of the type of material western readers are being bombarded with in what appears to be an orchestrated campaign of disinformation to shape public opinion against Russia."

After I'd picked myself off the floor and wiped the remnant tears of one of the best laughs I have had all summer, my continued reading of the neo-Soviet opinion led me to believe they were completely serious.

Over time, I have come to learn that the Times of either coast, LA or NY, paints in a brush that richly favors liberal ideology, socialist even. Statistical analysis bears that out. So when the Stalinists began asserting that their greatest allies in the west were churning out right-wing-pro-West propaganda, it was like trying to deny the cookie heist while chomping down the evidence.

Go Georgia!

Ponderances

There's very little so fine as golf with your sons...or golf with your father.

Labels. Got a tip-off of something goofy on B. Obama's web-site. Went there and confirmed it. Across the top of the site, the Senator has a header titled "People" and that beast is subdivided a couple of dozen ways. The factions just keep on coming. What happened to Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American?" But the leftists are playing Twister with the language again giving another shot in the arm to political correctness (by the way, we need a new, spiffier term for "political correctness." Any takers?). It seems that Native American (formerly known as "Indian" or "American Indian"), has been replaced by...are you ready?.."First Americans." Ain't that sweet?

Here's an observation by Jay Nordlinger (I'll paste it as he wrote it). An interesting observation about Truth in advertising:

"Was on the streets of New York the other day (as pretty much every day). And these people, spaced about 20 yards apart, were giving away tiny little granola bars. “Free granola bar?” they were saying. “Free granola bar?” And with the bar came a smallish, glossy card, advertising a church.

"Pretty pathetic, I thought: using a miniature granola bar to sell salvation. Almost deceptive. Shouldn’t salvation be the main event? And shouldn’t these folks have enough confidence in their product?"

Israel's president, Ehud Ohlmert, is stepping down. What's next?

Who's watching the watchers? More fun with California and education. The state (police state?) of California has found biblical education incompatible with state education. El-hi diplomas garnered through studies in curricula like Bob Jones and Abeka have been deemed deficient for state university core admissions requirements that you scored 1500 on the SAT notwithstanding. Not surprising, this is in the courts. Read the insanity here.

Drudge has a link stating five athletes have failed gender tests in Beijing and the Olympics haven't even started yet. They should have studied.

For those who know me, you'll know why I was touched by the CNN headline: "Will pond scum become the new oil?" *sniff, tear*

Did you ever think you'd get giddy seeing gas drop to $3.69? Yikes.

And to leave on a happy note, I count six blessings in the picture below. See how many you can find:

E'08: Obscenity

Have you ever witnessed a friend who became so infatuated with a member of the opposite sex that they folded up their dignity and hid it in a drawer? It's especially distasteful when the target of the affections has no particular interest in your friend, but your friend goes to ridiculous lengths to convey their impassioned feelings.

Self-respect is trashed. Character is oft compromised. Frankly, the level of saccharine fosters an equal level of nausea. Treacly. Revolting. But because you care about this friend, you ache for them. You hope that something will smack them back to earth that they might regain their footing.

I have these sentiments more and more as I watch the mainstream media (MSM) hound Senator Obama. Where are the hard questions? Where is the detached interest? If there's one group of folks who completely tank their entire purpose in life by becoming swayed, it's our news folks.

Two suitors: John McCain and Barack Obama. The prize would normally be the American people though the MSM. What has happened is that the MSM have become so smitten with the Illinois senator, that they have become the suitor and Obama is the prize. The losers? You and I.

The last week provided a sardonic example. John McCain vaulted off to New England to campaign. Who met his plane? A single reporter. One. Compare that with the coverage Obama has received traveling to Europe and Israel. The Beijing Olympics are closer in comparison to what Obama has enjoyed.

Is that a bad thing? Is it not a historic trip? It would be were he president, but he's not yet been crowned! The MSM acts as though November is merely a formality. Why wait until January for the swearing in. Let's get down to business right now.

And the MSM continues to ignore the limitations of Barack Hussein Obama, and most of America wallows in its ignorance.

Douglas MacKinnon had an interesting piece on Townhall today (here) highlighting this oceanic bias. Within it, he set up two notional candidates and began polling folks on who they would vote for based upon experience alone. Here are the two candidates (quoting):

Candidate A: Middle-aged. Studied overseas. Attended two different colleges in the U.S. before getting a degree. Went on to get a law degree. Worked community affairs in his adopted home city. Was elected to local office. Served in local politics for just over six years. Got elected to a federal state-wide office. Has one real year of experience in that job.

Candidate B: Middle-aged. Went to college and got a degree. Served in the National Guard for six years. Became a sergeant. While in the National Guard, earned a law degree. Became an investigator for a consumer-protection division. Was elected to a federal office. Was re-elected to a federal office. Was elected to a federal statewide office. Was re-elected to a federal state-wide office. Served in the executive branch for four years.

How would you vote? If you're like most folks and don't see through the ruse, you'd take Candidate B going away, based upon experience alone. Candidate A? You guessed it, Barack Obama. Candidate B? I'll let you go to the article. Cruel, yes, I know, but it will bring a smile to your face.

But you will also see how distorted and tilted the coverage has become during Election 2008. Sad.

The "Wright" question

Barack Obama has caught more flak than a B-29 over Ploesti over his association with Jeremiah Wright (I can't bring myself to use the title "Reverend" with such). If that wasn't bad enough, Father Michael Pfleger of a black, liberation-theology Catholic Church continued the stream of vitriol against America and sent the Illinois senator scrambling for media cover once again.

The onslaught could not be avoided. Obama finally jettisoned his membership in the church whose doctrines you by this time know full well. It is interesting to note that he resigned the membership not because of what Wright or Pfleger preached but because he did not want to be a further distraction to the church. He doesn't denounce the church or its doctrine at all.

While that's an eye-popper worthy of a post all by its lonesome, that's not my subject. Here's what's rattled my cage these these last three months: the media and most of America have accused these orators (they're not preachers) of bigotry and treason, of hate-speech and coddling terror. The one thing they've not been accused of, at least in print, is being heretical.

You see, media opinion is not the standard. Public opinion is another poor yardstick (lemmings, anyone?). What matters is the ultimate standard, the unchanging, inspired, inerrant Word of truth, the Bible. Are these gentlemen adhering to God's word. If they are (I actually typed that with a straight face), then God is pleased. If they aren't, then God is way distressed.

In post-Christian Americana, in the land of engorged tolerance, we have no viable reason to target Wright and Pfleger other than we don't like what they're saying. If God's word is true, unchanging and unalterable, then we can say with absolute clarity that these two men are fruit loops.

That's why Obama should have shunned them...20 years ago!!

Just another day? Twister version

China's experiencing aftershocks touching 6.4 on Herr Richter's scale. Aftershocks!

Eight more dead in our country from twisters today. The video shot of yesterday's tornadoes provided such graphic detail of the phenomenal power behind such storms. On live television we witnessed a huge farm warehouse turn to debris easier a child would sweep away Lincoln Logs.

Am I alarmist? Here's a graphic from NOAA showing the tornado count over the last four years:
We're 250 tornadoes ahead of the highest previous three seasons...with no signs of abating.

Alarmist? I do know that God controls the winds and the rain. God has seen fit to unleash meteorological and geological calamities in the last few years of magnitudes that I've not seen. Things seem to be packing far more tightly than in times past. Is it a portent of Christ's return? Possibly. At the very least, it should cause serious examination about whether we, our families, and our nation are right with God.

We can mock the Hagee's, Falwell's, and Robertson's until the cows come home, but God does use "natural" disaster to get the attention of His people. But will we listen? And if we hear, will we understand?

Just another day? Mother's day + one

I thought it was some sort of April Fool's joke when I opened up Drudge this morning and saw 7.9 on the Richter scale in the heart of China. Then I realized it was May. Other tidbits:

-- China's earthquake with over 10,000 dead at this time.
-- Vlad Putin all the rage as the overwhelming Prime Minister of Russia.
-- 665 tornadoes already this season (highest since 1998) and 22 dead this past weekend.
-- Up to 1,000,000 dead from the cyclone in Myanmar as disease and starvation takes over.

I pray that God would quiet the earth. I pray more that the peoples of the earth would quiet themselves and humble themselves before their Creator.

Just another day?

A scan across the headlines:

• Myanmar death toll passes 22,000 (another said it could reach 50,000...do you know where M. is? I had to look it up. Hint: formerly known as Burma)
• Israel throws 60th birthday bash under cloud of uncertainty
• Oil prices rise to record near $123 a barrel on prediction of $200 oil
• Chile volcano eruption prompts total evacuation
• Volcanic smog blankets Hawaii in toxic gas
• 96 arrested in San Diego State U. drug raid
• Tanks and rocket systems roll across Red Square in Moscow
• New disease outbreak in China; 12k children infected

At least the Twins are in first place (but it is only May).