Feb 07 2009

“Troopergate,” having died some time ago, is unceremoniously buried

Category: election 2008,media,Palinharmonicminer @ 8:45 am

After nine paragraphs essentially admitting that there was nothing to the “troopergate” allegations against Sarah Palin, but without quite coming out and saying so, we finally get this in paragraph number ten from the AP:

Palin herself initiated a separate investigation by the Alaska State Personnel Board and said she would abide by it instead. This investigation found there was no probable cause to believe Palin or any other state official violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act. [emphasis mine]

The fact that the state legislature found a few witnesses “in contempt” because they failed to appear when subpoenaed but later gave written statements instead, following advice on their options from the state attorney general (who was busy challenging the subpoenas in court), hardly seems worth a comment even from the AP, but of course the media can’t resist any opportunity to throw mud at Palin, however miniscule that opportunity actually is, and regardless of the thin gruel making up the mud.

Let’s not kid around.  The Alaska legislature had all kinds of options if it wanted to take the matter seriously, none of which it took, because the whole thing was a witch-hunt from the get-go.

Media Malpractice:  How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted” is going to tell the whole story on the media in the last election cycle, coming out soon.

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Jan 11 2009

What Price Victory #2

Category: corruption,election 2008,politicsamuzikman @ 10:06 am

Or perhaps this blog could be more accurately entitled, “To The Victor Goes The Spoils’.  In either case there are immediate and profound consequences of this last election, and in my opinion troubling consequences as well.

As a result of the recent election three U.S. Senate seats are now vacant; one each in Delaware, New York and Illinois. Current law allows for the governors of those states to appoint individuals who will fill the seats being vacated by Obama, Clinton, and Biden.  For a moment, if you can, set aside your political affiliation and think about this. This means that 32,578,952 citizens of the United States are about to be represented by individuals who were not elected but rather selected for them by one person.

I seem to remember a lot of people were very upset after the 2000 presidential race when the Supreme Court had to intervene in the tallying of election results in Florida.  Even today you can find many of the liberal persuasion who claim President Bush was “selected, not elected”.  This has been one of the cornerstones of the “Hate Bush” crowd for eight years.  While the circumstances of 2000 are clearly subject to interpretation depending on your political leaning, this current situation is not.  Yet the silence is deafening.  Why don’t those same accusers raise their voices of protest in this case when “selection” is indisputable?  The answer, of course, is obvious.

What’s tragic for our country is that the selection process in each of the 3 current cases has shown itself to be entirely corrupt.  Apparently the seat in Illinois was up for the highest bidder, The Delaware selection process seems to be nepotism at it’s best and the New York seat is about to become a coronation more reminiscent of the British House of Lords than anything resembling our democratic process.  And in all three cases the issue of qualification is given little more than lip service.  Does ANYONE want to try and make the case that Carolyn Kennedy Schlossberg is actually qualified to be a U.S. senator?

Watching the way theses 3 senate seats are being filled should make us all demand a change in the law requiring a special election to fill all vacated seats.  Instead watching the news recently has made me feel like I’m watching “The Fall Of The Roman Empire“.  In case you are unfamiliar with the admittedly mediocre 1964 film, it ends with the hero, Livius, (Stephen Boyd), besting the evil Caesar Commodus in gladiator combat.  Immediately afterward he is offered the throne by the recently-deceased leader’s hirelings.  His (excellent) reply is, “You would not find me very suitable, because my first official act would be to have you all crucified.”  He then walks away with his true love on his arm while in the background a spontaneous auction begins for the throne of Rome.

I hope it does not need to be said that I do not advocate for crucifixion of political enemies.  But I do think there are many qualified men and women who simply refuse to participate in our political process either as candidates or even voters because they see the degree to which our political process has become corrupted.  Much of the corruption, not surprisingly, is tied to money.  Influence and access to political office has become the domain of the wealthy.  As more highly qualified, moral, intelligent, and knowledgeable individuals abdicate the election process, and as more political positions are gained by means other than that process, more of us will continue to ask:

Why bother to vote?

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Jan 08 2009

John Ziegler’s interview with Sarah Palin for his new film

Category: election 2008,media,Obama,Palin,politicsharmonicminer @ 10:11 am

I’ve mentioned John Ziegler’s efforts before to correct the record about How Obama Got Elected. As part of making his new movie, “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Smeared” he has interviewed Sarah Palin. Some of his comments on that interview are here. (you may need to scroll down)

the most important part of my visit to the Palin house is that there is a big difference between thinking that something is true and knowing for sure that it is. I now know that Sarah Palin is who I thought she was.

I also know now, with moral certitude, that the media assassination of her, her character and her family was one of the greatest public injustices of our time and I am totally justified in devoting my life to correcting the historical record in my forthcoming film “Media Malpractice…How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Smeared”

I’ll keep linking to developments on this, but I think this is going to be a gangbuster’s film, with so much content in making its case that no one, no matter how avid a media consumer, has seen it all, and many people are going to be surprised at the strength of the case Ziegler makes.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:  Early rumblings in the main-stream media about the Palin interview are here, including Palin pointing out the obvious disparity in the treatment of Caroline Kennedy’s candidacy for the Senate as opposed to Palin’s for the veep slot, even though Kennedy is angling for an appointment and won’t even be vetted by the voters til 2010, while Palin would at least have to have been elected to start with.

UPDATE:  Of course, in the coverage linked here, John Ziegler is a “conservative film maker,” not merely a “documentary film maker.”  I wonder if the makers of anti-Bush films in the last 8 years are usually referred to as “liberal film makers”?   How about all the anti-war stinkeroos that have died in the box office in the last few years?  In the reviews, are their writers, producers and directors referred to as “liberal filmmakers”?  The double standards here are so obvious that pointing them out is like shooting fish in a barrel with a howitzer…  but I suspect Ziegler is going to be the target of a great deal of ad hominem attack and attempts to label him out of relevance.

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Dec 18 2008

Have we lost America?

Category: election 2008harmonicminer @ 6:01 pm

In my darker moments I fear this may be true.

The results are in and my candidate lost the presidency. Since I love this country, I wish the newly named President Barack Obama every success. But this was an election unlike any other. I don’t think the Republicans merely lost an election, I believe many of us lost a country.

Read it all.

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Dec 17 2008

OK, as long as no quid pro quo

Category: corruption,election 2008harmonicminer @ 4:41 pm

It’s OK with me if all Rahm Emmanuel did is twist Illinois Gov. Blagojevich’s arm to Appoint Obama Loyalists. That’s to be expected, and is neither illegal nor immoral. It is, after all, a political appointment, and normal political considerations apply.

Incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel pushed Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to appoint longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat, and even gave Blagojevich’s staff a deadline by which an appointment was expected, according to a report in today’s Chicago Sun-Times.

Citing sources “with the Obama camp,” the Sun-Times report says Emanuel began to push for Jarrett to fill Obama’s seat “just days” after the Nov. 4 election.

That story also cites a source close to Emanuel admitting it is “possible” Emanuel discussed the appointment with Blagojevich chief of staff John Harris, and that a specific date for the appointment was given.

The Sun-Times’ revelations suggest that Emanuel was more deeply involved in discussions with Blagojevich and his staff than previously reported, and was more assertive in promoting a specific candidate.

Those conversations could have contributed to Blagojevich’s apparent belief that the Senate appointment held great political value.

It is only if there was some deal to compensate Blagojevich personally that we have a problem. And, of course, if Blagojevich twisted Emmanuel’s arm to offer some kind of bribe (essentially a form of criminal conspiracy), then Emmanuel was obliged to report that, even if he didn’t take the offer.  We can only hope that it turns out that Emmanuel is the one who tipped the FBI that something was imminent.  It will not help achieve a successful Obama presidency to begin it by having a Chief of Staff resign in disgrace.

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Dec 02 2008

“How Obama Got Elected”: UPDATED *AGAIN* WITH NEW POLL RESULTS!

Category: election 2008,mediaharmonicminer @ 10:33 am

Below the asterisk line is some background I put up yesterday.  Go read it and watch the video, then come back to the top.

John Ziegler has released the results of his new poll.  The short story:  McCain voters appear to be about twice as well informed as Obama voters.  35% of McCain voters got 10 or more of 13 questions correct, while only 18% of Obama voters could do the same.  Full results of the poll and video of Ziegler on Hannity & Colmes are here.

Remember:  Ziegler isn’t saying there is something wrong with Obama voters.  He IS saying that there is something seriously wrong with the media reporting and coverage, the selection of topics to stress or even mention, the quality of the analysis provided, and so on.  In other words, Ziegler is indicting the media for abject failure to do right, because they were in the tank for Obama.

For internals on the poll, methodology, etc., go here.

****************************************************************************************************

READ THIS FIRST, THEN BACK TO THE TOP TO CONTINUE:

I referred a few days back to a new film by John Ziegler, that features the results of polls taken of Obama voters regarding their knowledge of the candidates. Politico covered the controversy ignited by the poll and viral video (at the link above, 1.5 millions views and counting, and utterly fascinating) and discussed Ziegler’s plans for a more complete documentary on the topic.  Here’s a bit of the Politico article, which goes into more detail on Ziegler’s plans.

The controversial “How Obama Got Elected” video by John Ziegler is only part of a longer documentary that the conservative talk radio host hopes to release early next year.

Wouldn’t it be great if when they mentioned Oprah, or Larry King, or Chris Matthews, they said “the liberal talkshow host”? Sigh. Apparently in a “middle of the road” source like Politico, it’s still worth mentioning if someone is “conservative”, but not if they’re “liberal”. Par for the course, I suppose.

The viral video of interviews with Obama voters, one that Ziegler said shows the highly selective news consumption habits of Barack Obama supporters, has received more than 1.5 million views on YouTube. Thanks to an accompanying Zogby poll (later criticized by John Zogby himself), the video sparked high-profile stories on cable news shows, political blogs and other outlets, including Politico.

Ziegler, who recently branched out into filmmaking with the documentary “Blocking ‘The Path to 9/11, says the popular viral clip is only a small element of a longer video that may debut in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He’s been accumulating hours of newscasts, so much so he says he can put together a “Gone With the Wind”-length epic.

“I’m into actually showing bias,” says Ziegler, who hopes to show in his unfinished film how those who voted for Obama consumed information only from pro-Obama news sources, and, he believes, were therefore less informed.

Later in the article, we see this nugget:

“Redistributing the wealth” â€” While a radio interview with Obama dating back to 2001 got lots of play on Drudge for its alleged comment about wealth distribution, the mainstream media all but ignored it, Ziegler says. The radio interview with WBEZ-FM was, in fact, discussed on CNBC, MSNBC, and in The New York Times, among other outlets.

Does Politico think that mention on two lower rated cable channels and page H77 of the NY Times somehow contravenes Ziegler’s point?  Nothing from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, WaPo, etc., and probably only a single brief mention in the sources they cite.  Certainly nothing like sustained coverage and analysis anywhere in the “major media”.

Ziegler is certainly not alone in his assessment of the media’s performance. Near the end of the article, Politico reports:

Following a recent panel discussion at the University of Southern California that was co-hosted by Politico, Time Magazine editor-at-large and political analyst Mark Halperin came under fire for his remarks about media bias.

“It’s the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq War,” Halperin said. “It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.” After his remarks, left-leaning blogs went ballistic, as did right-wing talk radio hosts – obviously for different reasons.

What’s funny here, of course, is that if you’re on the Left, you’re only “left-leaning”, but if you’re on the Right, you’re full-on “right-wing”. Notice the different shade of meaning if the sentence was this:

After his remarks, left-wing blogs went ballistic, as did right-leaning talk radio hosts – obviously for different reasons.

Obviously, the shades of meaning are different.  And the funniest part of all is that Politico can’t help but let its bias show, even while reporting on charges of media bias.

Ziegler has continued working on the new documentary, “How Obama Got Elected”, and now has poll results of both McCain and Obama voters, which he plans to reveal in just a couple of days.  Ziegler’s thesis is simple:  Obama got elected because disproportionate numbers of people who voted for him simply didn’t know much about him, and the fault for that lies mainly with the major media.

For a preview and some background on this important exposure of media bias, watch “Hannity & Colmes” on Tuesday, Dec 2.  (Check your local listings for the FOX NEWS CHANNEL, but probably 9 pm and midnight eastern time.)  It should be fascinating.  Make popcorn.

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Nov 28 2008

So now the source of the money matters

Category: election 2008,mediaharmonicminer @ 11:41 pm

‘Unbelievable’ sum of money in Ga. runoff – USATODAY.com

Republicans are pouring millions into Georgia’s Senate runoff contest in the final days of the race as they try to prevent Democrats from adding to their Election Day gains.

Georgia’s Senate race, one of two still undecided, is drawing national attention as it heads to a runoff Dec. 2. The outcome will determine whether Democrats have a chance to control the 60 seats they need to block Republican-led filibusters.

Both candidates are aggressively fundraising, but Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss is benefiting more from interest groups and large donors than Democratic challenger Jim Martin.

Funny how the corrupting influence of money on elections wasn’t much of a subject during the Obama campaign.

Look for newspaper articles on the homeless to dry up almost entirely after Obama is inaugurated, even though in the current economic times there must surely be more of them. The media is so predictable that it would be funny, if it wasn’t dangerous.

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Nov 22 2008

The huge, huge credibility problem for the major media

Category: election 2008,mediaharmonicminer @ 9:17 am

In what appears to be a sort of penultimate post for the time being, the Bidinotto Blog has a post titled Belated mea culpas from the MSM.   There are links in the post, and some of them link to other links, so if you’re in doubt, there’s plenty of information there and linked there to make the point.

The gist is simple:  all over the media, print and broadcast, “journalists” and “ombudsmen” are finally admitting what any slightly intelligent person already knew, that the media essentially abdicated its responsibility to do honest reporting and full investigation of Obama and Biden, to follow up leads, to air information rebutting their claims, etc., while going overboard in attacking Palin and McCain.

It isn’t up for discussion:  they’ve basically admitted it.  And their admission has great credibility in itself, because it is an admission against interest.  So, now, what will they do?  I’ve already weighed in on that.

I suspect that over time, the nation may well develop a huge case of buyer’s remorse, and blame it on the used car salesmen masquerading as journalists who lied by what they said, lied by what they didn’t say, lied by what they claimed not to know, and lied by not looking for anything that might turn out to be damaging to the Obama campaign.

While it’s been a joke in the center-right blogosphere that the major media are another wing of the DNC public relations machine, or even just directly an arm of the Obama campaign, that appears to be the literal truth.

And in the final irony, the Democrat Congress seems poised to impose a “fairness doctrine” on talk radio, and to push Obama to sign it, or even just do it administratively via the FCC.  There will never, of course, be a “fairness doctrine” for broadcast television….  THAT would be prior restraint of free speech.

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Nov 09 2008

Very, very cold comfort

Category: economy,election 2008,healthcareharmonicminer @ 10:05 am

George Will offers cold comfort at the end of his piece assessing the election in historical context.

………….
Although John McCain’s loss was not as numerically stunning as the 1964 defeat of Barry Goldwater, who won 16 fewer states and 122 fewer electoral votes than McCain seems to have won as of this writing, Tuesday’s trouncing was more dispiriting for conservatives. Goldwater’s loss was constructive; it invigorated his party by reorienting it ideologically. McCain’s loss was sterile, containing no seeds of intellectual rebirth.
…………..

As this is being written, Republicans seem to have lost a total of 55 House and 11 Senate seats in the last two elections. These are the worst Republican results in consecutive elections since the Depression-era elections of 1930 and 1932 (153 and 22), which presaged exile from the presidency until 1953. If, as seems likely at this writing, in January congressional Republicans have 177 representatives and 44 senators, they will be weaker than at any time since after the 1976 elections, when they were outnumbered in the House 292-143 and the Senate 61-38.

…………….

Still, the Republican Party retains a remarkably strong pulse, considering that McCain’s often chaotic campaign earned 46 percent of the popular vote while tacking into terrible winds. Conservatives can take some solace from the fact that four years after Goldwater won just 38.5 percent of the popular vote, a Republican president was elected.

The conservative ascendancy that was achieved in 1980 reflected a broad consensus favoring government more robust abroad and less ambitious at home — roughly the reverse of Tuesday’s consensus. But conservatives should note what their current condition demonstrates: Opinion is shiftable sand. It can be shifted, as Goldwater understood, by ideas, and by the other party overreaching, which the heavily Democratic Congress elected in 1964 promptly did. [emphasis mine]

The problem, from the perspective of conservatives, is this: 1932 marked the beginning of Democratic ascendancy leading to the Social Security system, 1964’s elections led to Medicare and Great Society, and 1976’s led to the fall of Iran to Islamic extremists, the Carterization of our military, etc.

Of COURSE the Left will over-reach again. It can’t help itself. Obama has shown no ability or interest in resisting the Left-most tilting of the most radically Left Democrats in his party, and those who put him in office will be expecting payback, and they will get it.  The press will not love him unconditionally forever, as they have during the campaign, and will for a few months more, at least.

The Right will be back.  But as I’ve written before, the damage the Democrats can do in even a single term of “unified government” is very large, and two terms gives them time to lock in a course that is virtually impossible to change.  Remember those Star Trek episodes where somebody has locked the navigation controls of the Enterprise to go to a certain destination, and it is simply impossible to undo the change?  It’s just a bit like that.  Sure, we can take the ship back.  But we’ll still be heading for the Delta Quadrant.

1932 led to Social Security, which some may still think is a good idea, but which ultimately has been poisonous to our society, because it encouraged dependency, poor planning, people retiring while they were still productive, and it has provided a bottomless well of money for Congress to waste on OTHER things for years (WHAT “social security trust fund”…  you’re kidding, right?), but for which the bill is about to come due in a HUGE way, as the boomers retire, and younger people find out about the Faustian bargain that was made by their grand-parents and great-grand-parents.

1964 led to the Great Society, the effect of which was to create a permanently dependent urban underclass, largely black, incentivized to be non-productive and to think itself unable to thrive on its own without government help, leading to a 70% black unmarried birthrate and a huge majority of fatherless homes; and Medicare, which has been one of the biggest levers driving healthcare prices higher and higher (along with the notion that medical “insurance” should pay for routine minor medical care…  about like paying for car insurance that covers tuneups and oil changes, guaranteed to hugely boost the price of both).

Some will point out that 1964 also led to the Civil Rights legislation, and that’s true.  But it’s also true that strikingly higher percentages of Republicans than Democrats voted for it, so this cannot be chalked up to a victory of Democrat government.  And, in any case, the Civil Rights Act preceded the Democratic landslide (both presidential and congress) 1964 elections that led to the 1965 establishment of Medicare and the Great Society programs.

1976 led to a president who made no attempt to help Iran avoid an Islamic extremist government, and who made America a laughing stock around the world for his ineptness in dealing with the hostage crisis in the American embassy in Tehran.  And while Carter deserved some credit for the Egypt/Israel accords, even that was mostly Sadat’s initiative (not a response to Carter’s policies), in contrast to Reagan’s policies actually having a large effect on the crumbling of the Soviet Union.

So sure, the Republicans can get power back at some point:  the question is how much damage will have been done by the Left, and how many newly intractable and irreversible realities will be in place due to Democrat-created entitlements that the public comes to see as its due?

We seem destined to go down the road that Europe has already proved is a dead end.

There are a couple of other factors, however, that may mean the Republicans will not “be back” for quite some time.  Nothing recognizably like the Republican party as it has been can even hope to gain the ascendancy again if the Democrat reign succeeds in the following:

1)  ending secret balloting for unionization, by pushing through union card check (allowing union goons to appear at your front door and to “invite” you to sign…  very persuasively, of course) and bringing back the old terror tactics of labor wars not seen since the 1930s, when labor and employers each hired thugs to strongarm employees into submission.  It may not be clear to younger readers, but while union members can vote for whomever they choose in congressional and presidential elections, the unions themselves use union dues to back uniformly Democrat candidates.

2)  legalizing large numbers of formerly non-voting (we wish) illegal aliens, and making them beholden to Democrats by essentially buying their votes with entitlements.

3)  trade protectionist legislation (if the USA is re-unionized, it will be difficult for even a Republican congress and presidency to reverse this without unacceptable repercussions).

4)  creating yet another entitlement, health care, so that more people will be dependent on government.

5)  the “fairness doctrine” to silence dissenting voices from the Democrat majority, heard mostly on talk radio (strictly speaking, this would be reversible by Republicans, eventually, but it’s listed here as something that would militate against their ever having the chance).

6)  ACORN style registrations (without successful legal challenges, possibly tossed out by Left-leaning judges appointed by Democrats) of more and more voters who stand to receive from the government, but don’t pay much in the way of taxes, and have not traditionally voted in such large numbers.

Mr. Will’s comments are very, very cold comfort.

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Nov 08 2008

The demographic breakdown

Category: economy,election 2008sardonicwhiner @ 9:47 am

From Daily Kos, here are a couple of charts showing the demographic breakdown of the election.  It’s pretty eye-opening, especially if this is new info to you, and then I have some conclusions.

Continue reading “The demographic breakdown”

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