People would rather barbecue burgers with Barack Obama than with John McCain.
While many are still deciding who should be president, by 52 percent to 45 percent they would prefer having Obama than McCain to their summer cookout, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Wednesday.
Even in an age when cynical sleuths can hyper-analyze stories for truth and accuracy, the occasional hoax still slips through the cracks. Such was the case with a so-called “lost Amazon tribe.”
A few months ago, mainstream news outlets reported that a photographer had found a lost tribe of warriors near the Brazilian-Peruvian border. Photos of the tribe backed up his claim.
As it turns out, the story is only half true. The men in the photo are members of a tribe, but it certainly ain’t “lost.” In fact, as the photographer, José Carlos Meirelles, recently explained, authorities have known about this particular tribe since 1910. The photographer and the agency that released the pictures wanted to make it seem like they were members of a lost tribe in order to call attention to the dangers the logging industry may have on the group.
The photographer recently came clean, and news outlets, perhaps embarrassed at having been taken for a ride, have been slow to pick up the story. Now, the word is starting to spread and articles in the Buzz are picking up steam. Expect a lot more brutal truth in the coming days.
Roadside bomb attacks and fatalities in Iraq are down by almost 90% over the last year, according to Pentagon records and interviews with military leaders.
In May, 11 U.S. troops were killed by blasts from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) compared with 92 in May 2007, records show. That’s an 88% decrease.
No one needs to be reminded that suicide is a serious matter, whether among soldiers or civilians. But the media have managed to create the impression that it is military service overseas which is the cause of suicides among American troops, when civilians of the same ages and other demographic characteristics are committing suicide at an even higher rate at home. — Walter Williams
Not surprisingly, the fools at Time think they’re in a position to play doctor with soldiers on the other side of the planet.
Mark Thompson’s June 5th cover story, “America’s Medicated Army,” reflected the general sense of unease and lack of understanding that persists around mental illness and treatment. Even while Thompson observed the efficacy of anti-depressants, the story insisted on questioning the military’s response.
A reader might be left with the impression that if a soldier is experiencing symptoms of mental illness, they’re best left unmedicated. Certainly Time would not express the same doubts if a soldier experienced a physical injury.
For decades, the American media has either portrayed the U.S. soldier as a criminal or a victim. It would be refreshing for once if journalists like Thompson would treat our soldiers as the devoted heros they are.
The above quote is actually the title of a book by liberal journalist Eric Alterman. (No, I’m not linking the book.) I didn’t buy or read the book, but the title itself tells me all I need to know. (Our time on this earth is finite.) Apparently the mainstream news media is either not liberal at all to Alterman, or, if it is liberal, it isn’t THAT bad.
Whatever. Anyone who writes a book seriously doubting the blatant advocacy of the media must be in such severe denial about the proverbial elephant standing in the living room that it’s hard to take any such arguments or assertions seriously.
Fortunately, the public is not as blind. According to Rasmussen Reports, the public would likely disagree with the sentiment that the media is unbiased or objective, at least in regard to election coverage.
Just 17% of voters nationwide believe that most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of election campaigns. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that four times as many—68%–believe most reporters try to help the candidate that they want to win.
The perception that reporters are advocates rather than observers is held by 82% of Republicans, 56% of Democrats, and 69% of voters not affiliated with either major party. The skepticism about reporters cuts across income, racial, gender, and age barriers.
When 56% of Democrats see a problem with the media, that problem must be quite serious.
Ideologically, political liberals give the least pessimistic assessment of reporters, but even 50% of those on the political left see bias. Thirty-three percent (33%) of liberals believe most reporters try to be objective. Moderates, by a 65% to 17% margin, see reporters as advocates, not scribes. Among political conservatives, only 7% see reporters as objective while 83% believe they are biased.
Given these results, it’s not surprising that 76% of voters believe the media has too much power and influence over elections. Just 3% believe the Fourth Estate has too little influence while 16% say the balance is about right.
Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Republicans believe the media has too much influence along with 80% of unaffiliated voters and 65% of Democrats.
Voters have little doubt as to who is benefitting [sic] from the media coverage this year—Barack Obama. Fifty-four percent (54%) say Obama has gotten the best coverage so far. Twenty-two percent (22%) say McCain has received the most favorable coverage while 14% say that Hillary got the best treatment.
The threat of a global Aids epidemic is over, the World Health Organisation’s top HIV expert has admitted.
Understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed said Kevin De Cock, who has spent most of his career leading the battle against the disease.
(Let me first note that if I was the head [no pun intended] of an AIDS organization, I would not keep the name “Kevin De Cock.” Perhaps change it to Sherman Le Shaft.)
Rather than being a risk to populations anywhere, the threat in developed countries is largely confined to gay men, drug addicts and prostitutes and their clients.
The concession comes just months after the United Nations admitted overstating the threat of Aids, slashing estimates of the number of people with HIV worldwide from nearly 40million to 33million.
Speaking a quarter of a century after the term Aids was coined, Dr De Cock said large-scale heterosexual spread was unlikely to occur anywhere outside sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 11 million children have been orphaned by the disease.
[...]
The impact of HIV is so heterogeneous,’ he said. ‘In the US, the rate of infection among men in Washington DC is well over 100 times higher than in North Dakota, the region with the lowest rate.
‘That is in one country. How do you explain such differences?’
Despite the scaling-down of the threat, Aids still kills more adults than all wars and conflicts combined.
In all, there were 33million people living with HIV in 2007 - around two-thirds of which were in Africa.
Around 2.5million people became infected with HIV and 2.1 million died of Aids.
In Britain, the rate of infection has tripled in ten years — to one of the highest in the EU.
In 2006, there were 8,925 cases diagnosed — only Estonia and Portugal had worse rates.
The majority of cases were in gay men and immigrants who contracted the disease overseas.
In the early 1980s, when AIDS became rampant and it ravaged through homosexual communities, the mainstream media was in quite a jam. How to report on a story that so impacted one of their protected groups without stigmatizing them? So the media proceeded to do the predictable: it pushed the myth of a heterosexual AIDS epidemic so as not to stigmatize homosexuals.
As if White had not dealt already with incredible tragedy and hardship at a young age, he was used and manipulated to serve a purpose. He could (and was) used to promote the idea that AIDS can happen to anyone, not just homosexuals, you homophobe!
Ryan White died in 1990 at the age of 19. Having only lived 1/5th of the average life expectancy, White made much of his short time on earth educating millions of people about AIDS. Pity that he was simultaneously used to serve the agenda of the mainstream media vultures.
I don’t present this video to bring attention to Obama stuttering and hesitating but to illustrate the massive double standard in the mainstream media.
If a Republican spoke this way, you can be guaranteed that the media would have covered it obsessively.
Naturally, the media has not covered this with any attention. I wonder why.
Rather than use Senator Barack Obama’s nomination as an opportunity to discuss his record, the coverage of the event was nothing more than cheer leading. No substance, no information to be found on any network.
Note that the media did not respond when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the highest court in America; or when Colin Powell was appointed Secretary of State; or when Condi Rice was appointed Secretary of State; or when J.C. Watts was elected; or when Michael Steele ran for governor; or when Lynn Swann ran for governor.
Why? Those men and women were black but they were conservative.
The Associated Press has officially lost its collective mind.
The mainstream Marxist media routinely shovels stories regarding gender, race, or class, but never like this. Now the AP devotes an entire article, which is then carried by CNN, on “al Qaeda’s refusal to include — or at least acknowledge — women in its ranks.”
Has there ever been AP story clearly and unequivocally condemning al Qaeda’s murder and mayhem?
Also note the stellar headline. As if al-Qaeda ever engages in any kind of “debate.”
Muslim extremist women are challenging al Qaeda’s refusal to include — or at least acknowledge — women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam.
In response to a female questioner, al Qaeda No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman’s role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al Qaeda fighters.
His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al Qaeda.
These poor Muslim women can’t do drive, can’t work, can’t vote, can’t leave the house without a male relative. They can’t even murder innocent people. What can an aspiring female jihadist do?
The Associated Press has the answer.
The Internet is the only “breathing space” for women who are often shrouded in black veils and confined to their homes, “Ossama2001″ wrote. She said al-Zawahiri’s words “opened old wounds” and pleaded with God to liberate women so they can participate in holy war.
Another woman, Umm Farouq, or mother of Farouq, wrote: “I use my pen and words, my honest emotions … Jihad is not exclusive to men.”
Such women are al Qaeda sympathizers who would not feel comfortable expressing themselves with men or others outside their circles, said Dia’a Rashwan, an expert on terrorism and Islamic movements at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
“The Internet gives them the ideal place to write their ideas, while they’re hidden far from the world,” he said.
[...]
Women bent on becoming militants have at least one place to turn to. A niche magazine called “al-Khansaa” — named for a female poet in pre-Islamic Arabia who wrote lamentations for two brothers killed in battle — has popped up online. The magazine is published by a group that calls itself the “women’s information office in the Arab peninsula,” and its contents include articles on women’s terrorist training camps, according to SITE.
Isn’t that nice of the AP? Now these women know where to turn to for terrorist camaraderie. Imagine Sex and the City but for terrorist lunachicks.
All it takes is one gaffe to taint a Republican for life. The political establishment never let Dan Quayle live down his fateful misspelling of “potatoe.” The New York Times distorted and misreported the first President Bush’s questions about new scanner technology at a grocers’ convention to brand him permanently as out of touch.
But what about Barack Obama? The guy’s a perpetual gaffe machine. Let us count the ways, large and small, that his tongue has betrayed him throughout the campaign:
Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” The actual death toll: 12.
Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”
Last week, in front of a roaring Sioux Falls, S.D., audience, Obama exulted: “Thank you, Sioux City. … I said it wrong. I’ve been in Iowa for too long. I’m sorry.”
Explaining last week why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky, Obama again botched basic geography: “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.” On what map is Arkansas closer to Kentucky than Illinois?
Obama has as much trouble with numbers as he has with maps. Last March, on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., he claimed his parents united as a direct result of the civil rights movement: “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.”
Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965. His spokesman, Bill Burton, later explained that Obama was “speaking metaphorically about the civil-rights movement as a whole.”
Earlier this month in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by homing in on a lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them, and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” The real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other non-Arabic languages.
[...]
And in perhaps the most seriously troubling set of gaffes of them all, Obama told a Portland crowd over the weekend that Iran doesn’t “pose a serious threat to us” — cluelessly arguing that “tiny countries” with small defense budgets can’t do us harm — and then promptly flip-flopped the next day, claiming, “I’ve made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave.”
Barack Obama — promoted by the Left and the media as an all-knowing, articulate, transcendent Messiah — is a walking, talking gaffe machine. How many more passes does he get? How many more can we afford?
Passes are exactly what Obama will continue to get. It is one of the benefits of being a member of the Democrat Party.
Ladies and gentlemen, this man wants to be your President.
Of course you do. The media trumpeted Dan’s spelling error over and over. He was a laughing stock because he made an error in spelling a word.
Years later, this same media didn’t dwell so much on Al Gore’s more significant gaffes. In contrast to Quayle’s silly spelling error, Gore revealed ignorance of basic knowledge of the United States and its history.
Gore wasn’t able to properly translate “E Pluribus Unum” either. (Source: January 1994. From a Milwaukee speech to the Institute of World Affairs as quoted in Investor’s Business Daily, October 25, 1996)
Which brings us to the presumptive Democrat nominee and Messiah of the Universe, Senator Barack Obama.
Obama posited — incorrectly — that Arabic translators deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan — forgetting, momentarily, that Afghans don’t speak Arabic.
“We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan,” Obama said.
The vast majority of military translators in both war zones are drawn from the local population.
Naturally they speak the local language. In Iraq, that’s Arabic or Kurdish. In Afghanistan, it’s any of a half dozen other languages — including Pashtu, Dari, and Farsi.
No sooner did Obama realize his mistake — and correct himself — but he immediately made another.
“We need agricultural specialists in Afghanistan, people who can help them develop other crops than heroin poppies, because the drug trade in Afghanistan is what is driving and financing these terrorist networks. So we need agricultural specialists,” he said.
So far, so good.
“But if we are sending them to Baghdad, they’re not in Afghanistan,” Obama said.
Iraq has many problems, but encouraging farmers to grow food instead of opium poppies isn’t one of them. In Iraq, oil fields not poppy fields are a major source of U.S. technical assistance.
No longer the sane, centrist news magazine, Time long ago cast aside any pretense of objectivity. Instead, it fully embraced it’s role as the Democrat National Committee’s personal bitch.
For some proof, a review of Time’s covers in 2007 and 2008 might show a pattern:
April 21, 2007
May 14th, 2007
Nov 19, 2007
Dec 10, 2007
Feb 18th, 2008
March 10, 2008
March 17, 2008
May 5, 2008
May 19, 2008
When it’s not being the subservient mouth piece of the DNC, Time makes sure to take shots at Republicans and the War on Terror:
Mar 26th, 2007
Jan 15th, 2007
March 19, 2007
May 21, 2007
Of course, Time is not alone in this, but it is revealing to note how brazenly open Time is in its shameless advocacy. It simply cares nothing about objectivity or any journalistic standards. The primary goal at Time is a (1) Democrat (2) in the White House. In order to achieve that goal, they will openly root for Hillary and Obama and cast doubt and disrespect (or simply ignore) any Republican. Is this is the “free press” that Americans deserve? How is this agenda-driven cheer leading any different than The Daily Worker or Pravda under the Soviet Union?
One of the strangest things about the NAACP Wright pseudo-scientific speech on learning, and its enthusiastic CNN coverage and analysis, was the abject racialism of Wright. It was sort of an inverse Bell-Curve presentation, based on assumed DNA differences.
His convoluted explanation of African-American right-brain ‘oral’ culture as more creative, musical, and spontaneous versus European left-brain traditional analysis could never have been given by someone white to that audience without justifiably earning booing and catcalls.
Three comments: this was just the sort of racist ‘genetic’ difference that most Americans learned to shun, now apparently quite acceptable again, and part of the mainstream.
Second, there is no evidence that so-called Europeans could not “rap” or create an oral literature as well as Africans — remember, oral poetry as we know it , began with bards like Homer somewhere in the southeastern Aegean and continued into modern times in the Balkans.
Three, some of the most accomplished speakers of English and analytical thinkers are African-Americans, a fact everyone immediately recognizes from what they read and with whom they speak.
In short, Wright’s speech on black-right brainers, white-left brainers — replete with bogus stereotypes and crude voice imitations — was about as racist as they come and at one time antithetical to what the NAACP was once all about.
Barack Obama was connected to this racist lunatic for 20 years while more sane people would have shunned him in minutes. The fact that the media doesn’t tar and feather Wright tells you just how much they agree with Pastor Racist. Or perhaps they’re simply too afraid to be critical.
(This media saves its righteous indignation for Republicans and conservatives and only on the most important issues. Isn’t that right, George “Macaca” Allen? )
The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) today released the names of over 500 endorsers of the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change that calls on world leaders to “reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as well as popular, but misguided works such as ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.” All taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) should “be abandoned forthwith”, declaration signatories conclude.
Today reporter Pete Yost at the Associated Press wrote a paranoid story with a paranoid title leading the reader to think that police officers are now given permission by the U.S. Supreme Court to arrest anyone regardless of what state law says! Oh noooooooo!
A regular Constitutional scholar, this Pete Yost. And lazy as well. Had Yost merely read paragraph three of page one of the court’s decision, he might have read that
Hence, Virginia’s laws on when an arrest is legit or not have no bearing on the 4th Amendment and no bearing on the arrest of the Defendant Moore. Got that, Pete?
But no matter. The AP still published a misleading story, which really shouldn’t surprise me or anyone else. This media long ago discarded the pretense of objectivity, of reporting facts, truth and reality. For the AP and any other mainstream media source, it is leftist agenda 24/7/365.
The story below is the predictable reaction from critics and liberals when the moderators of the recent Dem debate, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson, dared to ask some tough questions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Apparently tough questions are only for Republicans.
So what kinds of “tough” questions were asked?
[T]he first three issues raised concerned comments made by Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; comments that Obama made about the draw of guns and religion to some rural Americans; and Clinton’s false claim that she had been under sniper fire in Bosnia while first lady.
Obama was asked about why he hasn’t worn an American flag pin on his lapel, and his relationship with a former member of the Weather Underground.
All of these issues were raised before Iraq and the economy came up.
All relevant, recent and newsworthy issues, no? Of course they are.
As for Jeremiah Wright and the Weathermen, is it not relevant to inquire about Obama’s associations? Is it not relevant to ask why a man who is running for President of the United States has difficulty publicly wearing the American flag on his suit jacket?
Is it not relevant for Mrs. Clinton to explain how she honestly believed she was being attacked by bullets when no such attack occurred? Isn’t her honesty, assuming that she has been able to retain such a trait, a relevant issue?
Oh not to Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News! Based on Bunch’s reaction, he sounded like he had to be taken to the nearest emergency room.
Will Bunch, a Philadelphia Daily News writer, posted an open letter to Gibson and Stephanopoulos on his blog. He wrote that he was so angry that “it’s hard to even type accurately because my hands are shaking.” He said the ABC newsmen spent too much time on trivial matters that didn’t concern most voters.
“By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself,” Bunch wrote.
Shales also criticized the early line of questioning, and said ABC’s coverage appeared slanted against Obama. He mocked Gibson’s closing thank you to the candidates for a fascinating debate.
“He’s entitled to his opinion, but the most fascinating aspect was waiting to see how low he and Stephanopoulos would go, and then being appalled at the answer,” Shales wrote.
Normally liberals reserve such bile for Rush Limbaugh.
Someone tell me how Will Bunch’s juvenile whining is any different than a screaming three year old at a grocery store whose mother refused to buy him his 500th toy?
The Bunchster was not alone:
Greg Mitchell of the trade publication Editor and Publisher said it was “perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate this year.”
Yes, embarrassing it was. For Obama and Clinton.
The comments on ABC News’ Web site were angry, sometimes profane and occasionally funny. “Why not have Paris Hilton moderate next time?” one poster wrote. One man repeated the word “bad” 48 times. A sampling found opinion was running against the network about 8-to-1.
They must get their way at all times, these liberals. Truth, fact, logic and relevancy are, well, irrelevant. And if you dare deviate one iota from the Democrat Blueprint, then you must be shallow or stupid; you must be Paris Hilton. So convinced they are of themselves and their opinions, so lacking in maturity are they, the act of asking relevant and recent and newsworthy questions of two people who want to be President of the United State of America is nearly a crime against humanity.
“I’d like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult,” Maher told his audience. “Its leader also has a compound, and this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats. That’s right, the Pope is coming to America this week and, ladies, he’s single.”
Catholic League President Bill Donohue responded that Maher “lied when he said the Pope ‘used to be a Nazi.’ Like all young men in Germany at the time, he was conscripted into a German Youth organization (from which he fled as soon as he could). Every responsible Jewish leader has acknowledged this reality and has never sought to brand the Pope a Nazi. That job falls to Maher.”
Maher, a political liberal, has often been a magnet for controversy, making audacious statements targeting religion in general and ridiculing Christians especially. His mother was Jewish but he says that he “was raised Catholic.”
On May 24, 2002, Maher told CNN’s Larry King Live: “I never even knew I was half-Jewish until I was a teen-ager. I was just so frightened about the Catholics and everything that was going on there in the church — and I was never, you know, molested or anything. And I’m a little insulted. I guess they never found me attractive. And that’s really their loss.”
Last year, Maher made news after strongly implying on his HBO show that the world would be a better place if Vice President Dick Cheney had been assassinated. “I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow,” Maher said on March 5. “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.”
On his May 18, 2007 edition of “Real time with Bill Maher,” the host compared communion to homosexual oral sodomy and called for turning homosexuality into a religion.
“Gay men, don’t say you’re life-partners, say you’re a nunnery of two,” said Maher. “We weren’t having sex officer, I was performing a very private Mass, here in my car. I was letting my rod and my staff comfort him. Take this and eat of it, for this is my roommate, Barry. …
“And for all those who truly believe there is a special place for you in Kevin. And speaking of Heaven, one can only hope that as Jerry Falwell now approaches the Pearly Gates, he is met there by God Himself, wearing a Fire Island muscle shirt, and nut-hugger shorts, and saying to Jerry in a mighty lisp, ‘I’m not talking to you.’”
Maher frequently has well-known celebrities, politicians, and journalists on his program.
Mary Ann Kreitzer, president of the Catholic Media Coalition, an umbrella group of Catholic organizations, called the comments, “a horrifying anti-Catholic diatribe.”
When your comedy is so lousy that you must resort to smearing an institution that has followers on every continent of the globe, that has withstood centuries of history and turbulence, then been instrumental in the development of Western civilization, then you’ve failed as a comedian. This is not uncommon for liberals like Maher. The Catholic Church is the perfect target for individuals who resent any limitations on their words and actions. Liberals especially resent limits on killing unborn babies in the womb, pre-marital sex, pornography, birth control, and sleeping in on Sunday morning.
Yes, an oppressive institution, this Catholic Church. No wonder Maher is salivating venom when he speaks.
No Comments » | 
Barack Obama / The Messiah, John McCain, the Fake Conservative, What Liberal Media? | Tagged: Barack Obama / The Messiah, John McCain, the Fake Conservative, What Liberal Media? | 
Permalink
Posted by tsfiles
