This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Media

  • CNN dumpster dives for India expert

    In today’s Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz recounts an interview that CNN did with Deepak Chopra on the Mumbai attack last week. Apparently, an expert on the Middle East only needs to demonstrate the proper accent in order to qualify as an expert;

    Deepak Chopra, healer, New Age philosopher and digestion guru, advocate of aromatherapy and regular enemas, holding forth on CNN on the meaning of the attacks.

    […]

    What happened in Mumbai, he told the interviewer, was a product of the U.S. war on terrorism, that “our policies, our foreign policies” had alienated the Muslim population, that we had “gone after the wrong people” and inflamed moderates. And “that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay.”

    All this was a bit too much, evidently, for CNN interviewer Jonathan Mann, who interrupted to note that there were other things going on — matters like the ongoing bitter Pakistan-India struggle over Kashmir — which had caused so much terror and so much violence. “That’s not Washington’s fault,” he pointed out.

    Given an argument, the guest, ever a conciliator, agreed: The Mumbai catastrophe was not Washington’s fault, it was everybody’s fault. Which didn’t prevent Dr. Chopra from returning soon to his central theme — the grave offense posed to Muslims by the United States’ war on terror, a point accompanied by consistent emphatic reminders that Muslims are the world’s fastest growing population — 25% of the globe’s inhabitants — and that the U.S. had better heed that fact. In Dr. Chopra’s moral universe, numbers are apparently central.

    So what gives this blowhard the credentials to wax endlessly on foreign affairs? Well, he was born in India, other than that, nothing. Somehow he thinks his license to practice voodoo medicine gives him a special insight into world politics and the art of warfare. So why did CNN even ask him the question? Other than the fact that they knew what his answer would be, no good reason.

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  • More front page news about nuthin’

    Perusing the news today, i came to this story in the Washington Post, entitled “Administration Moves to Protect  Key Appointees” about the Bush Administration entrenching some of their political appointees to career civil service jobs. The story appears above the fold on the front page;

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  • Obama’s base

    Reminiscient of the Sal in Harlem audio,   John Zeigler, the radio talk show host that first broke the story of John Kerry’s “botched joke” about our troops being stuck in Iraq because they’re dumb, is releasing a documentary called “Media Malpractice” in which he interviews some Obama voters and asks them simple questions like “What do you think about Barney Franks” and “What party controls Congress” to measure the impact the media had on voters in the recent election. The results will surprise no one who is regular reader of this blog. Here’s 10 minutes from the documentary;

    At his website, How Obama Got Elected, Zeigler admits that an interview of 12 people isn’t scientific, but he commissioned a Zogby poll to do a real sample and Zogby got similar results;

    512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

    97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

    Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

    57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

    81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

    82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

    Read the rest at the link.

    The media refused to discuss any negative information about Barack Obama or Joe Biden and yet they made big deals about John McCain’s non-existent affair with a lobbyist, questioned the parentage of Sarah Palin’s son, and swallowed completely fake stories about Joe the Plumber. Just so we could have the first affirmative action President. I still remember the wringer that the Bush family went through from the beginning of the 2000 campaign, and yet the Obama and Biden families have come out of the campaign still smelling like roses.

    Of course, the media did the same thing for the Gore and Kerry campaigns, but somehow it didn’t work out for them well enough. It seems with practice comes perfection.

    Hat tip to Gateway Pundit.

  • What they really think of us

    Ever wonder what Democrats think of you? Don’t care? Me neither. Much. But today we get some really good examples.

    From Newsbusters‘ Warner Todd Huston; the co-chair of Barack Obama’s Transition Team, Valerie Jarrett, appeared on Meet the Press and reassured the nation that “Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one.” That’s what we want, right? A king to “rule” over us. Here’s the video;

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  • Too little too late

    A shocking bit of news from the Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell this week. It seems she thinks that the Post was a little too easy on Obama over this year.

    But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama’s acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

    Oh, no kidding? Ya think? Spend a little too much time trying to dig up crap on the Republican candidates that on the guy who was paling around with terrorists, felons and racists? Oh, and maybe they weren’t tough enough on on Joe Biden, too;

    One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission.

    And, as Newbusters Matthew Balan wrote, other reporters are starting to mention how creepy the Obama culture of personality suddenly seems – but they didn’t notice until he gave his victory speech.

    I suspect between now and January we’re going to see a bunch of admissions of bad behavior from the media – but they’ll trickle out and they’ll be empty admissions with no apologies. But will they change their behavior?

    Found at doubleplusundead.

  • Cry havoc and let loose the regulators

    The Washington Post runs an article this morning entitled “Widespread complaints about a ruderless government” and it’s basically about the Federal workforce whining that they haven’t been able to regulate the private sector for eight years.

    When President Obama takes over in January as manager-in-chief of nearly 2 million federal employees, he will need a plan to reinvigorate a frustrated and demoralized workforce, career employees warn.

    In numerous agencies, federal civil servants complain that they have been thwarted for months or even years from doing the government jobs they were hired to do. Federal workers have told presidential transition leaders they feel rudderless, their morale impacted by the Bush administration’s opposition to industry regulation, steep budget cuts or the departures many months ago of Bush political appointees.

    I guess that’s another of the low bars the media ex[ects Obama to step over – writing enough regulations to keep the federal reg writers busy. Well, if they haven’t been busy in the last eight years, why have eight more volumes been added to the Code of Federal Regulations since 2000 – that’s an average of one every year. Sounds like the regulators have been busy all along, doesn’t it?

    Then, as if we, the reading public, are complete imbeciles, the Post adds this to the article;

    Federal employees said that they are not a passionately partisan group, but some are hopeful about an Obama presidency, assuming that their lot will improve. Several took heart from Obama’s campaign trail statements that he wanted to make federal government work “cool again.”

    Not “passionately partisan”? Funny, but the reports I got was that there was a pall over many offices after the 2004 election as if someone had died. Many offices had to have their arms twisted to post the usual photographs of the President and Vice President in 2000. I’ll betcha that Obama’s picture will be up before the Inauguration.

    The thing is, the government regulates nearly everything – I once found a diagram in the regs that specifically lays out the dimensions for theater seats – and every time the government writes a regulation, someone looses at least a little bit of their liberty. To me, federal employees gleeful about the prospect of writing more regulations is a very, very bad thing. It’s too bad the Post, which claims to  be part of the free media and watchdogs of the people, doesn’t think so, as well.

  • I dispute this whole “historical” thing

    I have these thoughts zooming around in my head and find it hard to work without writing them down.

    I think it’s absolutely unAmerican to think of this as an historical moment in our nation’s long journey. It’s unConservative – and that’s been our whole problem with minorities, but it comes with the ideological territory.

    In our Declaration of Independence, it’s written that “…all Men are created equal….” It doesn’t make a racial distinction. Jumping ahead almost 183 years martin Luther King Junior said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. ”

    Those two phrases taken together are incongruous to this assertion that Obama being elected is historical – and those are the two phrases that have governed my entire adult life and affected the way I treated people, even affected my choice of a wife and the subsequent children that resulted thereof.

    It would only seem to be significant to someone so shallow and steeped in their melanin level as to place some sort of significance on something so inconsequential.

    I’ve opposed Obama from the beginning, but not on any sort of racial level, because race is insignificant. I’ve opposed him on an ideological basis – and much more than “my club against his club” (the way Democrats seem to think of the R vs. D struggle).

    If we’re all supposed to be merely men and women, fashioned in the image of our Creator (whoever you think that is), I find it offensive for the media to keep pounding in my already-cluttered brain that this is somehow significant in our history.

    I’m sure some pointy-headed smart ass won’t hesitate to point out my failed reasoning by calling me a racist – or something equally vacuous.

  • Affleck does Olbermann

    Ben Affleck finally finds his niche in entertainment – mocking crackpots.