More on the media that influences our family and friends

Headlines Control the Narrative. Guess Who Controls the Headlines?  "Last Thursday, Rush Limbaugh, addressing one of the Associated Press’s latest offenses against journalism,suggested that we “regard every AP story, particularly this year, as nothing more than a propaganda piece for the reelection of Barack Obama.”

"Good idea — and of course, that goes for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Bloomberg News, and virtually the entire establishment and entertainment press. Many if not most of their reports betray an ever more obvious preference for four more years of Obama."

...."The Google News feed review was a truly discouraging experience, especially when imagining how a politically disengaged user might process what I saw. Here is some of it:"

...."Last Thursday’s hands-down champ for misleading headline of the day was at the AP, also known to yours truly as the Administration’s Press."

...."The time to react to the proliferation of election-influencing device-driven deception, dreck, and drivel from the propagandist press is growing short."

Richard Fernandez: "...spreading sensational but faked news in order to produce a media jolt." "Even the most basic facts becomes surprisingly irrelevant. Media Matters, for example, apologized to Matt Drudge after accusing him of being a “racist demagogue” for running a fake photo of the victim — only to discover it was actually a real photo. You would have thought Media Matters would know true from fake to play the fact-check game, but really, why would factuality be important?"

http://terrellaftermath.com/

Media Matters’ Desperate Need to Focus on Rush Limbaugh  "Media Matters put its years-in-the-making astroturf campaign to strip Limbaugh of his sponsors into effect right as Bill Kristol, Alan Dershowitz, and others were getting media traction. That Media Matters had had its astroturf campaign against Rush just sitting on a shelf collecting dust was uncovered by Prof. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection on March 15, 2012. Lefties tried to laugh off the astroturf charge, but two days ago an excellent bit of investigation revealed that Jacobson was, in fact, right."

GOP Worries New Navy Shipbuilding Plan Cuts Fleet While We 'Pivot' To Asia

AOL Defense  "Republicans think the Navy's new 30-year shipbuilding plan marks a fundamental mistake: cutting the size of the fleet from 313 to 300 or so when we are increasing our focus on the Asia-Pacific."
....
"But one of the nation's most respected naval analysts says the new shipbuilding plan, which does see the number of ships dip to 279 in 2014 from the earlier planned fleet of 287, offered a much less glum assessment."....

Obama’s Message to Iran?

Emanuele Ottolenghi  "According to Reuters and other news sources, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have carried a message from President Obama to Iran’s leaders during his two-day visit to Iran. Erdogan discussed Iran with Obama at the Seoul nuclear summit, so it is plausible he was asked to deliver a message to Iran.

"What that message could be is, of course, entirely a matter of speculation. But like what Obama said to Russian outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev about giving him space until after the election, one could imagine a similar message to Tehran: “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” "

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/03/28/97853

DEBKAfile: Obama’s back-channel to Tehran bypasses allies Erdogan and Netanyahu

Barack Obama and Tayyip Erdogan get together

US President Barack Obama this week gave his two allies, the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, a lesson in the politics of expediency, when Tuesday, March 20, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced exemptions for 11 nations from new US financial sanctions against countries that don’t reduce the Iranian oil purchases by June 28.
"The countries benefiting from this concession are Britain, Germany Belgium, France, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Spain, Holland, Poland and Japan."....
...."At all events, the Obama administration appears to be rethinking sanctions as a bludgeon for turning Tehran away from its nuclear weapon aspirations.
Those second thoughts were closely reflected in a new assessment coming from London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies Friday, March 23, which asserted that sanctions were having an effect – “but just not the effect they were supposed to have.”
They have made the Iranians more not less committed to pursuing a nuclear weapon, it was said, and “had the knock-on effect of pushing oil prices to levels threatening the global economy.” "

Why we fear ObamaCare

   My own father died nearly destitute, largely because of my hypochondriac mother who required bags-full of prescriptions and a schedule filled with doctor appointments. 
    Another good friend was forced out of his home due to the oppressive expenses of caring for his wife with Alzheimer's; the same happened to another relative whose wife had dementia. I see what long-term illness can do to a family's finances and desperately wish something could be done to help.
    But I also see how the present solution of Pelosi-Obama's vast plan can reach into every corner of our lives; and make no mistake about it, this government or one like it will.

    Liberal solutions unfailingly bring about mediocrity in everything they touch and you can be sure this will happen to medical practice.
    I saw socialized medicine during a three-month stay at the Camp Lejeune hospital where dependents of Marines seeing doctors were given the standing appointment time of 0800. There the room was filled with mothers and children, waiting in folding metal chairs for their turn with a doctor to come. Their number gradually grew smaller through the day while the remaining children grew more and more restless with no place for them to play, only to run around the rows of steel chairs where their mothers continued to wait. By the afternoon, there were only a couple of families left, waiting since 8 am. All this because the hospital was government-run and had no incentive to encourage patients' selection of them as medical provider.

    I desperately wish those mentioned here could have been taken care of, but never by committed socialists whose supporters hang Che posters and communist flags in their offices.  TD

Tony Branco cartoon

Hanson: Faith-Based Energy Policy

Victor Davis Hanson:  

Obama is like a sound-track for the Disney ride "Pirates of the Caribbean," warning danger ahead and yet not animated enough to do anything to help

"New oil development will create thousands of jobs, worry speculators that America will soon release lots of oil on the world market, and provide a window to produce alternative energies without slapdash, Solyndra-like boondoggles. Drilling is a win, win, and win choice — and so known to everyone except the president and his shrinking number of reactionary advisers, who prefer green faith to hard science."

http://netrightdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Cartoon-The-Stick-Up-ALG-600.jpg

Morning Bell: And Now the Supreme Court Must Decide

Heritage: This author feels the law may be struck down, but I'm afraid to get my hopes up for the same reason  I'm concerned that Obama will be re-elected: I'm a pessimist; someone who thinks the glass is only half-full. TD
"In making his final argument in defense of Obamacare, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli alluded to the Constitution’s preamble and its call to “secure the blessings of liberty” in his justification for Congress’ actions. Paul Clement, arguing on behalf of Obamacare’s challengers, eloquently responded to Verrilli’s call to the Constitution:

Let me just finish by saying I certainly appreciate what the solicitor general says, that when you support a policy, you think that the policy spreads the blessings of liberty. But I would respectfully suggest that it’s a very funny conception of liberty that forces somebody to purchase an insurance policy whether they want it or not. And it’s a very strange conception of federalism that says that we can simply give the states an offer that they can’t refuse, and through the spending power which is premised on the notion that Congress can do more because it’s voluntary, we can force the states to do whatever we tell them to. That is a direct threat to our federalism.

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/03/29/97888

Seven of Obamacare’s Biggest Failures from the Last Two Years "The parts of the law already in effect were thought by its proponents to be its most popular, but as detailed in Heritage’s “The Obamacare Two-Year Checkup: More Reasons for Repeal,” the law is already proving ineffective in some cases and harmful in others. Here are some of the biggest failures of Obamacare highlighted by the paper:"...

American society is being torn to shreds with not a bit of concern expressed by President Obama

Roger L Simon: Obama, the Democrats, and The Society for the Preservation of Racism  "The reason is evident. Increasingly, racism – and more generally the division of our country into racial and ethnic interest groups — is all the Democrats have. The rest of liberal/leftist ideology is disintegrating all around them, as fragile and illusory as the welfare state itself.

"Without racism – or more exactly the putative existence of racism – the Democratic Party would be an association of overpaid trade union executives, unemployed Occupy movement sympathizers and trial lawyers. In other words – mighty small."

'Kill Zimmerman' Twitter account launched  "The account probably won't survive the day, but it is illustrative of the extreme level of hatred on the left generated by this tragedy. And, of course, the double standard of "civility" that the left constantly uses when whining about the political discourse in America."  Extreme language.

I think we can be sure these people are Obama voters. Can you imagine what they would do around this country if Obama was, oh, say impeached for something or perhaps lost the next election by a very narrow margin. Imagine the violence if the next election went for the Republican the way the Gore-Bush election did. TD

Neal Boortz: Are you freaking kidding me? Skittles should donate profits?  ...."After all, the ruler of this country has spoken out against the profit motive and has gone to great lengths to cast business profits as an evil plague on mankind.  That’s what Marxists do."... 

From Black Quill and Ink: Insider Warned Us – Obama’s Racial Division Plan Now Underway   "With a major dip in the polls and his health care bill in real jeopardy of being overturned, Obama is becoming desperate to win reelection. His secret weapon…RACE RIOTS AND CIVIL UNREST."

"The race card, the racial thing – whatever it’s gonna be called, it is the number one asset this administration believes it has to win in 2012.  Their own polling data has shown that to be true over and over again.  But how far are they willing to push that?  Race.  The charges of racism?  I believe all the way if they have to.  And they are gonna get people stirred up.  And if Barack Obama doesn’t win re-election, watch them stand back while the riots break out, and watch them mouth the words “Burn baby burn.” "

 Milton Reid , blogging at Black Quill & Ink

Rich Terrell