Media

Quote of the Day

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From commenter “OldSalt” in this discussion at Belmont Club:

One of the major irritants I have about 9/11 is the defacto blackout on all newsreel coverage that day by the MSM. It’s a crime. American’s need to see the result of the failure of deterrence, of the failure of their government to adequately protect them by developing an adequate military, and by projecting power forward to any location that doubts American resolve (e.g. Georgia, for one example, Venezuela for a second example). All the “military power” in the world is useless and wasted if those holding the reigns have insufficient resolve or courage to deploy it, and deploy it sufficiently to “sell it” to the world.
 
Americans need to see the results of true American failure. They need to see American’s just normal and “ordinary” as themselves making the extra-ordinary decision forced upon them, i.e. to jump to their deaths from 100+ stories to avoid the suffering of burning to death. That was the choice that our politicians left them, when they failed to do their job. (I hold the Clinton Administration and their hold-overs, and the then-Democrat Senate for failing to approve nominations 9 months after the election, primarily responsible. However, there is certainly enough blame to go around, and to cover 20 years of “pretending” by both parties.)
 
I wish to GOD to see one of the networks grow gonads and put the entire 9/11 day of media coverage on the air. My God, the men going to war today weren’t even teenagers in some cases, and they deserve to know the full context of why the are going to war! However, the liberal MSM knows that the factual media coverage immediately begs the question of “why did it happen?”, “who could or should have prevented it?”, and truthful answers to those questions would be certain to impact the “future political viability” of some of the MSM “journalists” favorite politicians. And so, the blackout continues, even on the so-called “right wing” Fox. Not even profit moves their decisions; it’s an absolute blackout.

Doing the Dirty Work, As Predicted

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The MSM has openly joined one side of this election.

They have openly chosen to do the dirty work to protect their anointed candidate, His Holiness Messiah Barack I.

I said that they would mobilize to destroy Gov. Palin.

This piece shows that the MSM is doing the opposition research that the Obama campaign — that sole demonstration of Sen. Obama’s executive competence — should have done months ago, when it was clear to anyone paying attention that Gov. Palin was a VP prospect. this radio interview gives a flavor of the “circus” going on in Wasilla, Alaska right now. Very much worth listening to.

This is the stuff that opposition researchers usually do. I would expect the Obama campaign and the DNC to go after the personal records of Palin’s family and friends like this, but the media? Did they go after Barack Obama this thoroughly on personal history?

Or even better — remember Geraldine Ferraro? She was treated like a princess. Why didn’t the news media swarm into her neighborhood digging hard to find out about her husband’s mob connections? Why was Ms. Ferraro not treated as an enemy combatant? Easy. She was a liberal Democrat. She fit the MSM’s narrative about what a woman politician looks like, what she thinks and says. Anyone who defies that stereotype is a threat that has to be destroyed.

May they all get frostbite in Alaska.

Lipstick on a Pig — D’oh!

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Just when we had finished chuckling over “my Muslim faith” J. Danforth Obama sets off the Quayle-O-Meter again.

Seems like a day cannot pass without the leaden-tongued messiah failing the Quayle test.

He’s gaffe-o-riffic!

That clattering and banging you hear is the MSM flinging themselves bodily in front of their darling, trying to change the subject.

Thought experiment: Imagine Obama had a female VP and John McCain had said this. What would the reaction have been from the MSM? Not too hard to imagine, is it?

If McCain and his team are smart, and they have been lately, they will say nothing about this, or just laugh it off. Barack has disdain for anyone who dares to stand in the way of Divine Destiny. This arrogance is very unattractive. And it speaks for itself. Loudly.

UPDATE: So they made an ad out of it. Maybe it is good, if it gets under the skin of some undecided voters. I notice even in a five second spot Barack says “uh”. He is not a good speaker unless reading from a script.

UPDATE 2: Heh:

∅bama has made a statement about pigs in lipstick that seems to insult Sarah Palin. In fact it seems to have insulted a lot of women.
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If it was unintentional – ∅bama is a stupid politician.
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If it was intentional – ∅bama is a stupid politician.

OK. OK. Let’s not get cocky. Obama is human and makes mistakes, and will no doubt land some heavy blows before this is over — however it comes out. But he does not seem to have a good “gut” when things are not going totally his way, or when his opponent goes off of his pre-programmed script.

Jim Bennett on Sarah Palin

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I have been as guilty as anybody of indulging in Palin-Mania, or Palin Obsessive Disorder. Like most people, my thinking has been overly fact-lite, if not fact-free, about Gov. Palin.

So, as the need to think about other things asserts itself, it is a relief to read a brilliant summary from Jim Bennett based on facts and history, which presents Gov. Palin’s story as a coherent narrative.

Bennett’s article in the Telegraph is the single best thing yet written by anybody about who Sarah Palin is and what she has accomplished.

Most news reports and other commentary, both fair and foul, have dwelt on “exotica – the moose shooting, her Eskimo husband” without comprehending or explaining how “a woman can go from being mayor of a town of 9,000, to governor, to prospective VP within the space of a few years.”

Bennett explains how Palin worked her way up in a rugged political environment, how she built her political base, and how she came to realize “that Alaska had the potential to become a much bigger player in global energy politics.”

As with most poor, distant places that suddenly receive great natural-resource wealth, the first generation of politicians were mesmerised by the magnificence of the crumbs falling from the table. Palin was the first of the next generation to realise that Alaska should have a place at that table.
 
Her first target was an absurd bureaucratic tangle that for 30 years had kept the state from exporting its gas to the other 48 states. She set an agenda that centred on three mutually supportive objectives: cleaning up state politics, building a new gas pipeline, and increasing the state’s share of energy revenues.

She proceeded to execute this strategy, as chairman of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and as Governor.

Far from being a reprise of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin was a clear-eyed politician who, from the day she took office, knew exactly what she had to do and whose toes she would step on to do it.
 
The surprise is not that she has been in office for such a short time but that she has succeeded in each of her objectives. She has exposed corruption; given the state a bigger share in Alaska’s energy wealth; and negotiated a deal involving big corporate players, the US and Canadian governments, Canadian provincial governments, and native tribes – the result of which was a £13 billion deal to launch the pipeline and increase the amount of domestic energy available to consumers. This deal makes the charge of having “no international experience” particularly absurd.

The prospect of Palin in Washington has caused “her enemies in Alaska” to break out in a cold sweat, according to Bennett, “at the thought of Palin in Washington, guiding the Justice Department’s anti-corruption teams through the labyrinths of Alaska’s old-boy network.”

Obama would not be the first person who has gone down to defeat underestimating Mrs. Palin.

Read Bennett’s piece for the rest of the details.

UPDATE: Two responses by Helen Szameuly, here and here are very much worth reading.

UPDATE 2: A balanced, fair, unemotional assessment of Palin’s track record as mayor and governor, on economic issues. (Via The Right Coast.) See also this equally good one contrasting Palin and Obama on ethics and reform. Both from CATO. Both are nice companion pieces to Bennett’s article.

UPDATE 3: Michael Barone weighs in with a capsule history of Obama’s career as a community organizer, and his initial entry into politics. His conclusion, we need not treat this part of Obama’s career with “reverence”.

Barone is also astute to observe that community organizing only makes sense, if it ever does, where the political process does not work. A one-party machine-run city is the perfect example, and Chicago is the epitome of that. Alinsky was the doppelganger of the first Mayor Daley, for a reason. Most places, if there are rotten services or whatever, that is an invitation to a political challenge by the “out” party. Only where that political option is foreclosed does it make sense to resort to guerilla activity on the Alinsky model, a/k/a “organizing”.