Archive for September 2012
Remember When: MoveOn.org’s Faulty Memories
Picture posted at moveon.org
No Obama didn’t do those things, yuk yuk yuk… But here’s what I do remember Obama doing.
I remember when President Obama presided over a downgrade to the credit-rating of the United States twice, violated the War Powers Act, was held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, required all Americans to purchase a product from a third-party, and abrogated bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
I remember when he by-passed Congress and implemented the Dream Act through executive fiat, sealed records from the largest US trial on terrorist funding organizations, known as the Holy Land Foundation Trial, to prevent a foreign policy disaster for his administration, actively tried to bankrupt an American industry (coal), and fired an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
I remember when President Obama filed lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN) when they tried to protect themselves, and told the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they “volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences”, and I remember when his Auto Bailout forced hundreds of independent car dealerships around the nation to close, costing this country about a hundred thousand jobs.
Those are the things I remember about this President that actually have an impact on the people of this country.
Romney’s dog, his tax returns, and his foreign accounts, have NO personal effect on me or any other American whatsoever. ZERO. NADA.
MoveOn.org, it’s time to move out!
Related articles
- Socialism is as Socialism Does (ConservativeActionAlerts.com)
- Obama 2012 Campaign Helped By MoveOn.org, AFL-CIO Super PAC Alliance (huffingtonpost.com)
- WAKING UP AMERICA: A look back at President Obama’s Amazing 42 Months in Office (twighlightslastgleaming.wordpress.com)
Romney’s Gaffe O’the Day! (ALERT: Satirical Content to Follow)
ALERT: the content of this blog post is satirical in nature and is not based on actual events, news reports, or quotes from MSM news-makers. Granted, it is extremely difficult to distinguish satire from reality when it comes to the news anymore. Hence, the alert.
September 28, 2012 – thelongversion.com – 1 hour ago
Mitt Romney, at an 11:00 am rally with supporters in San Diego, California, opened his remarks with “Good morning my fellow Americans!” at which point the newswires lit up with expressions of disbelief.
Rachel Maddow: “Forget opening an airplane window, Mitt Romney doesn’t even know the difference between morning and afternoon. Doesn’t he know it’s 1 PM IN THE AFTERNOON in New York?”
Lawrence O’Donnell: “Romney is just trying to confuse the public and deflect from his failed potential future economic policies.”
Chris Matthews:”Can Mitt Romney even comprehend the magnitude of racial prejudice in telling someone to have a “Good Morning”? Millions of Americans DO NOT have good mornings every day! Besides, it’s afternoon here in New York. This guy is SO out of touch!”
What lunacy can I make up tomorrow that can rival and possibly mirror the actual News Cycle we’re seeing in the mainstream media?
Feel free to share your own made-up gaffes in the comments section.
Related articles
The Journalist’s Creed
I’ve stated on numerous occasions here in this blog and through social media how disappointed I am with my former profession. The media, the free press, given constitutional protection by the founders of this nation to be the watchdog over the “grand experiment” that was and is America, is failing in its responsibility and, in my opinion, sacred trust and duty to inform the citizenry of the actions of its government.
The American press is negligent and derelict in its duty.
Shortly after founding the Missouri School of Journalism in 1908, Walter Williams wrote a code of ethics known as The Journalist’s Creed. I would be surprised if even a small majority of journalists have ever heard of it let alone read it or strive to work by it in their daily profession, though it stands in bronze at the National Press Club in Washington, DC for all to see.
How many walk by it daily without a second thought?
The Journalist’s Creed
I believe in the profession of Journalism.
I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that all acceptance of lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust.
I believe that clear thinking, clear statement, accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism.
I believe that a journalist should write only what he holds in his heart to be true.
I believe that suppression of the news, for any consideration other than the welfare of society, is indefensible.
I believe that no one should write as a journalist what he would not say as a gentleman; that bribery by one’s own pocket book is as much to be avoided as bribery by the pocketbook of another; that individual responsibility may not be escaped by pleading another’s instructions or another’s dividends.
I believe that advertising, news and editorial columns should alike serve the best interests of readers; that a single standard of helpful truth and cleanness should prevail for all; that supreme test of good journalism is the measure of its public service.
I believe that the journalism which succeeds the best-and best deserves success-fears God and honors man; is stoutly independent; unmoved by pride of opinion or greed of power; constructive, tolerant but never careless, self-controlled, patient, always respectful of its readers but always unafraid, is quickly indignant at injustice; is unswayed by the appeal of the privilege or the clamor of the mob; seeks to give every man a chance, and as far as law, an honest wage and recognition of human brotherhood can make it so, an equal chance; is profoundly patriotic while sincerely promoting international good will and cementing world-comradeship, is a journalism of humanity, of and for today’s world.
It isn’t perfect, but neither is the profession occupied by imperfect human beings. That, however, does not excuse the blatant disregard for most of the tenets of this creed by our current broadcast media, print media, and news organizations.
I challenge any and all who call themselves journalists, at any and all professional levels to read the creed and then perform a sincere inventory of his or her journalistic practices.
This country needs a voice it can believe, verify, and trust. Who will be the journalists to accept that charge? Who will follow the creed and all other ethical codes of conduct?
Please step forward. Now.
Polling to Discourage the Conservative Electorate? Interesting Weighting of the Major Polls.
I’ve been having a fun conversation via Facebook with a good friend who also happens to be a pretty ardent liberal (he is a good guy and fair-minded). I believe the mainstream media is indeed bias toward the left agenda, he thinks I’m nuts. Numbers don’t lie however, and this information on how the major polls are weighting their results says more than any verbal sparring match.
Ever since the arguably skewed CNN poll of a few weeks back, conservative voters have been looking at the methodology of polling companies with an increasing amount of skepticism. The fact that most polls have used a model that tries to mimic the voter turnout in 2008, when Democrats beat Republican turnout by 7 points (as opposed to presidential elections like 2004, where turnout between the two parties was relatively even), has not improved this state of affairs.
And now, the suspicion of poll bias appears to have yet one more piece of evidence to support it. Via a tweet by anonymous poll analyst NumbersCruncher comes the following graph showing the degree of over-sampling of Democrats employed by the most recent polls (all of which show Obama leading Romney):
Blogger keithbacker at Battleground Watch sums up the graph this way:
The real take-away which I have mentioned the times I blog national polls is that many of those national polls are HORRIBLE for Obama, namely the ABC/Washington Post and CBS/New York Times polls where you have large Democrat over-samplings but rather small leads for Obama. This means if Obama doesn’t meet or beat his stellar 2008 turnout advantage he’s in for a drubbing on election day. These over-samplings serve a few purposes but mainly drive down enthusiasm for Republicans while assisting the Obama campaign with “bandwagon” supporters who simply like being on the winning team (they’re real and they count).
If pollsters in conjunction with the Obama campaign create a negative feedback loop for Republicans such that the marginal voter doesn’t show up (definitely a well documented top priority for the Obama campaign) and assist with the bandwagon voter — a small but meaningful voter in close elections — then Obama can create the perfect storm he needs to eek out a close victory following one of the worst four-year performances for any President in modern times (Carter is the only arguable comparable).
That is the what and why pollsters are doing the massive Democrat over-sampling this election cycle.
(Rasmussen Reports polls are weighted D +1, not D -2 or R+2 however you see it)
This is a telling bit of information, and shows the power of polls to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Granted, most of the polls using a high Democrat over-sampling may be doing so simply as a means to estimate conservatively what could happen, if things stay the same from 2008. This is not unreasonable, given the enthusiasm gap that has recently been measured, but that enthusiasm gap is itself arguably reinforced by polling. The Romney ground game will need to push back aggressively if it wants to make up for that negative feedback loop.
Thanks to http://theblaze.com for this summary.
Related articles
- Are Public Opinion Polls Exaggerating Obama’s Lead? (reason.com)
- CBS: Obama Leads in Our D+13 Poll (breitbart.com)
- CBS/NYT Poll Oversampled Dems By 13% (sweetness-light.com)
- Polling methods or bias can taint results (charlotteobserver.com)
Rolling Stone: From Music Mag to Smear Machine
As I started reading the Rolling Stone “expose” on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital by Matt Taibbi which is scheduled to be published in the September 13th addition, I was genuinely interested to see if someone had actually found a crack in the Romney “character” armor.
Nope.
It didn’t take long to realize this was going to be nothing more than an envy laced, bigoted, intellectually dishonest, source-less, opinion piece that doesn’t even pretend to adhere to some resemblance of objective journalism. All of which was revealed in the first two pages.
What happened to the days when Rolling Stone was about seeing your favorite Rocker on the cover?
As a retired broadcast journalist and former news director, I was trained in the old school ways of news gathering and reporting. When journalists did their best to leave personal bias and ideology out of the story and clearly labeled opinion as such. Not these days.
The title, Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, really should be changed. It should read “My Angry Personal Narrative About How I Believe Mitt Romney Got Disgustingly Rich, and Why it Pisses Me Off”, By Matt Taibbi.
That title would be a far more accurate indicator of the story to follow. Oh Taibbi used all the proper dates, names, and second-hand quotes, he just organized it and spelled it out the way he sees it as opposed to how it actually happened according to those who were actually there and participated in the many Bain deals on both sides. What we read in Rolling Stone is an interpretation. Taibbi wasn’t there. He didn’t participate in any discussion of any deal Bain ever did. He didn’t even research it very well. Where are the interviews? The smoking guns? Where is the irrefutable evidence that everything Taibbi is telling us is the absolute undeniable truth?
He appears to rely on old rehashed stories and quotes from other publications but even then we only get snippets and selective quotes with little or no context. He names sources such as, former Bain employees, one Wall Street trader, or a prominent Wall Street lawyer. Tough to cross-examine those witnesses.
He did interview a guy who was once at KB Toys, but I don’t know why. The Bain KB Toy deal happened long after Romney had left Bain to run the Olympics and then to run for Governor of Massachusetts.
In fact Glenn Kessler, fact checker at the Washington Post had this to say about Bain, Romney, and KB Toys. “Can you really say Romney was responsible for the closing of 600 stores at KB Toys in 2004, given that the initial Bain investment took place in 2000, when he was at the Olympics, and he had clearly left Bain by 2002? It would have been fuzzier if the investment had started under Romney’s confirmed leadership, but I could find no evidence of his direct involvement in this deal.”
Taibbi’s narrative about Ampad is just as shaky. If you want to know the facts about Bain and Ampad or even GST go to this link at Factcheck.org. It’s not quite what Taibbi leads us to believe. I’ve also written about the GS Technology deal. You can read about it here.
Taibbi’s method of fact gathering and reporting resembles one of a reporter who decides to do a write-up on a football game while seeing only the final score but then proceeds to tell you how he thinks the game was played based on the outcome. Even though he was never in attendance.
I get it. Your guy looks like he could be beat and all you’ve got to date is that Mitt Romney cut a kids long hair when he was 18 and he strapped a dog kennel to the roof of his car… I get it. But I don’t get the disdain for success and the need to demonize those who attain success by so many in the media and on the left. I really don’t.
Perhaps it was Taibbi’s time spent in Russia that led him to despise individual success and see it as an affront to the welfare of the collective.
This story might have been easier to swallow if it held even a tiny hint of objectivity. Bain did have many success stories. Companies who did make it after they were acquired and are still doing quite well. A true story would include those truths too, would it not? But why ruin a good smear with good news about a good man you want to look bad?
I get it.
I’ve been told Matt Taibbi wished he had been a novelist rather than a journalist. After reading this piece of fiction I’d say he got his wish.
The Long Version 