One easy piece about the mainstream media

I read an article today in yahoo.com and it made me giggle. I took a screen shot of the article in case yahoo decides to change it and pretend in never existed.

Romney Camp Breaks Precedent, Bars Press From Israel Fundraiser

JERUSALEM - In a precedent-breaking move, the Romney campaign said today it will bar reporters from attending a high-dollar fundraiser in Israel Monday morning.

The claim that Romney broke a precedent seems rather implausible - I intuitively knew this could not be true. Obama is known for being very secretive (and sleazy) about his fundraising - and this includes the fact that his team disabled all fraud protections in his credit card system of fundraising (both in 2008 and in 2012) - which in turn allowed untraceable contributions to his campaign.  I did a quick google search, and in 5 seconds found this article:

Obama holds DC fundraiser for re-election campaign

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/18/3712054/obama-holds-dc-fundraiser-for.html#storylink=cpy

      

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is raising about $1.5 million at a Washington fundraiser to benefit his re-election campaign.

Obama met with 25 supporters at the upscale Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Wednesday, a day after several fundraisers in San Antonio and Austin, Texas. Tickets for the event started at $60,000 per person. The fundraiser was closed to reporters.

The Obama campaign says the proceeds will go to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee of Obama's re-election campaign, the Democratic National Committee and several state Democratic parties.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/18/3712054/obama-holds-dc-fundraiser-for.html#storylink=cpy

Apparently, Romney was not breaking any precedent - Obama has barred reporters from his fundraiser only 10 days prior. The claim against Romney is obviously false - and it takes 5 seconds for anyone interested in the truth to refute the accusation.

While I was writing this, I suddenly remembered another funny thing - and I have a feeling that you probably don't remember it. During the Democrat primary fight of 2008, Huffington Post quoted Obama speaking at a fundraiser, and his now infamous talk about the American people who "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment..." Here are some details which are less known about this quote. For starters, Fowler, the journalist who had access to the Obama's fundraiser, was initially very reluctant to report his words. According to the NYT:

"Ms. Fowler told me in an interview Sunday night that she was initially reluctant to write about what Mr. Obama had said because she actually supports him..."

"...she stewed for several days over whether to write about the comments about small-town voters. “There are no standards of journalism on the Internet,” she said. “I’m always second-guessing myself. Is this the right thing to do? Am I being fair?”
She said she initially decided not to write about them. “I thought I wouldn’t put it out there, this really might damage his campaign,” she said. “I talked it over with my husband, and like many people, he didn’t see anything wrong with the remarks. He didn’t think it was newsworthy.”

Another interesting detail was that Huffington Post which employed Ms. Fowler was also reluctant to publish the quote from the Obama's fundraising because they understood the negative implications for his campaign. Huffington Post journalists were forced to call Arianna Huffington (who was at that time thousands of miles away in French Polynesia, staying on billionaire Obama backer David Geffen’s 454-foot yacht) and asked her permission to make the quote public. Ms.Huffington was also reluctant to publisize this information and according to her:

“Roy (Sekoff) and I were on the phone multiple times. I agreed with how he and Marc (Cooper) decided to handle it, placing Obama’s thoughts in context and avoiding sensationalism.”

The article appeared on Huffington Post 4 days after Obama's speech. The reaction to the publication was swift - the liberal supporters assaulted Ms.Fowler for reporting Obama's comments. For example, Joseph Palermo, a professor of history, and a Huffington Post author wrote an article entitled "Faux Obama supporter Maihill Fowler sets up smears on Obama", which predictably ended with a familiar accusation of that Fowler was a racist.

According to the NYT, multiple commenters on the hard-left wing website dailycos could not forgive Ms.Fowler:

"If we let her go, others will do it... We’ve got to show the ‘journalist’ that they can’t manufacture dissent. This isn’t about Obama, this could easily be a story about Iraq or Iran. This is the type of disingenuous reporting that we have to stop. We need to make an example of her.”

Ms. Fowler herself conceded that

"Obama campaign had never objected before to her having written about fund-raisers (though admittedly, nothing much of interest had happened). And the invitations said nothing about being closed to the press."

 Still, according to Ms.Fowler:

We had a fundamental misunderstanding of my priorities. Mine were as a reporter, not as a supporter. They [the Obama team] thought I would put the role of supporter first.”

Does not this quote pretty much describe the Obama's relationship with the mainstream media today - that he sees and demands the media to be his supporter first?

The NYT article about Obama's unfortunate choice of words inexplicably becomes an article about Ms.Fowles, and whether she made the right choice reporting to the public the truth. Do not forget that NYT is a newspaper written by the liberals for the liberals, and some level of sincerity among comrades is expected. For example, Marc Cooper has this to say about the Obama's fundraiser:

 “It was indeed a fund-raiser to which the press was not invited. Or if you wish, it was closed to press. Therefore it wasn’t on or off the record. Off the record is when journalists consensually agree to witness or hear something on the condition they not report it.”

Note, that the tempest in the teapot occurred during the Democratic primary, and the media was divided between the hard-left supporters of Obama and the hard-left supporters of Hillary Clinton. It's highly unlikely that either of them would have given any ground or leaked any damaging information when Obama was facing McCain.

More interestingly, this past story puts today's firestorm about Romney's closed fundraiser in an interesting light - apparently, Obama had journalists barred from his fundraisers since 2008 - and yet, this never was an issue for the media.

What's more, Ms.Fowler was hardly the only one who recorded Mr.Obama's clinger speech, apparently, "The place was jammed with others using video cams and cell phone cameras. " But only Ms.Fowler took the courage to publicize Obama's comments. Still, Ms.Fowler, a self-described reporter did everything in her power to minimize the effect of the article. According to the NYT:

The important quotes were buried deep in the narrative, almost as if they were couched to soften the blow. She also said she thought posting on Friday would mean fewer people would see it.

In the end, this had little effect on the 2008 elections, and Obama became the president. But he learned his lesson, and today, no one is allowed to bring the cell-phones to his fundraising events. Apparently, Obama is trying to protect the public from learning more about his promises to his rich supporters.  Evidently, no one could recall any presidential candidate who would put so strict restrictions on the reporting, but the media is not reporting about this truly unprecedented development.

And speaking of foreign fundraising - just a few weeks ago same Obama held multiple fundraisers in Switzerland, Sweden, France and China. Not a peep from the media.

I cannot avoid the conclusion that the media will try to hide anything damaging to the Obama regime. Note how little attention was paid to the Fast-n-Furious program or multiple scandals with the taxpayer dollars being sent to the Obama's friends and fundraisers. Do not miss the non-story about Obama's bundler and a major Democrat politician Jon Corzine, who presided over the disappearance of 1.2 billion dollars - and who continues to collect money for Obama. Of course, it's impossible to forget how NBC had to break a story about Fast and Furious - only 1.5 years after it was reported by other media outlets. What was the reason why NBC was forced to break its silence about the Obama's secret operation to arm Mexican drug lords with automatic weapons? A bi-partisan vote in Congress to hold Eric Holder in contempt due to his refusal to provide sufficient evidence to the House investigators.

On the other side, mainstream media outlet are making wild claims against the republicans or perceived right-wingers, and these accusations often have no basis in reality. For example, the claim that Romney's decision to bar journalist from one of his fundraisers is clearly false as this article demonstrated. In recent months, the NBC was caught editing Zimmerman's recording to make him sound like a racist, while ABC launched an obviously groundless accusation that the Colorado shooter was connected with the Tea Party. Media giants like yahoo, NBC and ABC have multiple people hired specifically to check the correctness of the facts they publish, so it is beyond doubt to me that such "errors" have to be done on purpose.

Lesson #1: If mainstream media makes an outrageous claim about a Republican, it's very probable that this claim is untrue. The reader is advised to check the facts and find out if they support the accusations.

The good news....

Strange priorities of the federal government
Amid the talks about the deteriorating infrastructure, school closings, laid off teachers, policemen and firefighters, the Obama administration finally found that magic bullet that would fix the economy. In addition to the bullet trains (bankrupt California is planning to spend 68 billion dollars on the railway from nowhere to nowhere), the US military are now annually overspending 2 billion dollars on fuel - due to their reliance on the so-called "green fuel". While the regular fuel cost is $4 a gallon (Obama promised that under his plan, the energy prices will skyrocket), the US navy are buying the so-called "bio-fuel" which costs $26 dollars per gallon. There is no information yet on which Obama bundlers and supporters are involved in the bio-fuel "business", but it's beyond doubt that the regime is building up another giant Solyndra, while at the same cutting our military. Nothing spells "priorities" better than another a scheme to syphon military money into another Chicago-style program.

War against terrorism (Obama edition)
One year ago, the Obama administration launched the Global Counterterrorism forum. Here is what the State Department has to say about it:

...U.S. is committed to strengthening the global counterterrorism (CT) architecture in a manner that complements and reinforces the CT work of existing multilateral bodies. The Administration’s signature initiative in this area is the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), which is intended to ensure the necessary international architecture is in place to address 21st century challenges.

The U.S. proposed the creation of the GCTF to address the evolving terrorist threat in a way that would bring enduring benefits by helping front line countries and affected regions acquire the means to deal with threats they face. It is based on a recognition that the U.S. alone cannot eliminate every terrorist or terrorist organization. Rather, the international community must come together to assist countries as they work to confront the terrorist threat.

So, who did president Obama invite his anti-terror forum? According to the State Department:

The 30 founding members of the GCTF are: Algeria, Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

One pleasant (and unexpected surprise) is that president Obama did not follow the example of UN - so Iran, Syria and Sudan are not invited to join his anti-terror forum. On the negative side, it's rather disconcerting that while Obama decided to invite Egypt (currently run by the terrorist group "Moslem Brotherhood"), Turkey (controlled by Islamists and supportive of Hamas), Saudi Arabia (infamous for supporting multiple jihadist movements) and Pakistan (actively involved in terrorism against India, as well as Afghanistan), he forgot about the state of Israel - a country which is on the front-lines of the war against the terrorists. Apparently, Obama needed to make a choice - either to invite terror-supporting nations like Pakistan - or the terror-fighting state of Israel. And apparently, it was not even close, the Jews were kept in the cold, and terrorists were kindly invited in. Another disturbing fact is that both the U.S. undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights Maria Otero or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused to include Israel in the list of the victims of terrorism  during the opening ceremony in Madrid this year.

What is Obama expecting to achieve by abandoning US ally and playing to US enemies? Let's ignore for a minute the fact that Obama was the disciple of the rev.Wright school of anti-semitism and anti-white bigotry. Even if Obama's intentions were patriotic, his attempt to get sympathy from hateful moslem regimes by betraying Israel will be futile. The best analysis of this situation was done by D’Artagnan, when Cardinal de Richelieu offered him to join the his Guards:

...all my friends are in the king’s Musketeers and Guards, and that by an inconceivable fatality my enemies are in the service of your Eminence; I should, therefore, be ill received here and ill regarded there if I accepted what Monseigneur offers me.

In fact, this is exactly what is already happening now. The government of Pakistan is severely punishing its citizen who helped US to find and assassinate Osama ben Laden, while at the same time it delivered the American super-secret helicopter with China. The newly elected president of Egypt is publicly demanding that US frees the convicted terrorist with American blood on his hands. Turkey is extending its support to Hamas while threatening Israel with war. Indeed, the more Obama grovels to the terrorists and their supporters, the more he isolates Israel - the more brazen the Islamists will become. This is a universal truth, which is probably not known to Barack Obama. Of course, there is a possibility that he simply does not care.

What to expect from the "Arab Spring"
I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I was watching this video.  According to Jonathan Tobin, an Egyptian show imitating Allen Funt's "Candid Camera", invited three Egyptian celebrities for an interview with a German TV program - and suddenly announced to them that the show was actually produced by the Israelis. The reaction of Egyptian "intellectuals" was rather peculiar:

All three of the prominent victims of this stunt were outraged at the thought of even being in the same room with people they presumed to be Jews, let alone appearing on an Israeli program. Two grew violent, with one burly male even assaulting the young female interviewer.

After the hosts are informed that it was a joke, and they are being interviewed by their fellow Egyptians, both the guests and hosts became friendly again. The hosts even praised the art celebrities for being "patriotic" - i.e. expressing hatred for the Jews and the State of Israel.

It's undeniable that this short video demonstrates what is likely to occur in Egypt when the Moslem Brotherhood completes its take-over. It's also obvious that any attempts to achieve peace by pressuring Israel for unilateral withdrawals will not lead to progress. The problems in the Moslem communities are so deep that tiny Israel cannot solve them - even US is powerless. Maybe it's time for Obama to return his Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama's memoirs - a treasure trove

Some of my friends are liberals. And when we get together, we drink, joke and argue about politics. One thing that always amazes them is the fact that I actually read Obama's "Dreams from my father". What surprises me is that not only they did not read it - but that apparently no one has read it, at least if you judge by the fact that so few people discuss Obama's policies in liu of what he wrote about himself. And the most amazing thing is that even Obama's opponents are so shy of mentioning the racist/crazy stuff that our first affirmative action president proudly expressed in his books. And again, they probably don't quote his books because they haven't read them. Honestly though I don't blame them - it's a tedious book written by a narcissistic racist obsessed with his feelings and it's very loosely based on facts. But nevertheless, it's a pretty revealing book - and one day I believe Americans will be astounded when it is revealed what kind of man they elected as their president.

But let's not jump ahead of ourselves. For a few weeks, American people were subjected to reports about Romney's alleged bulling of a homosexual. Interestingly enough, even the family of the gay kid disputed the original article, and some witnesses apparently were misquoted by Washington Post. Even yahoo, the left-leaning media outlet noticed that the story stinked to high heavens. Last but not least, this episode allegedly happened in 1965, nearly 50 years ago.

So, while we are reminiscing about the past, I think it is only appropriate to look at Obama, and see what were the "funny" things he did when he was young - say, when he was a university student at the Occidental college. And since no one in the media is ready to do this, I guess the work is being outsourced to the Hyphenated-American.

For now, I will ignore all the racist ideas that Obama so proudly shared in his memoirs, and instead concentrate on one episode which an attentive reader (Nabokov's favourite term) would find rather revealing of comrade Obama. This one story that I picked for this post is told by Obama's close friend and roommate Reggie, and he is telling it to a girl named Regina. Here it goes...

"Let me tell you, Regina, Obama and me go way back. Should have seen our parties last year, back at the dorms. Man, you remember the time we stayed up the whole weekend? Forty hours, no sleep. Started Saturday morning and didn't stop till Monday..."

"I am telling you, Regina, it was wild. When the maids show up Monday morning, we were all still sitting in the hallway, looking like zombies. Bottles everywhere. Cigarette butts. Newspapers. That spot where Jimmy threw up..." Reggie turned to me and started to laugh, spilling more beer on the rug. "You remember, don't you man? Shit was so bad, those little old Mexican ladies started to cry. 'Dios Mio,' one of 'em says, and the other one starts patting her on the back. Oh shit, we were crazy..."

Regina, the semi-fictional character in the Obama's memoirs is upset at Obama and his friend and tells them both the obvious truth...

"You think that's funny?" she said to me. Her voice was shaking, barely a whisper. "Is that what's real to you, Barack - making a mess for somebody to clean up? That could be my grandmother, you know. She had to clean up behind people for most of her life. I'll bet the people she worked for thought it was funny too".

It later became known, that Regina, a Black consciousness that led Obama to light, was apparently white. The good news is that rev.Wright, the mister "White Man's Greed Keeps the World in Need" (that's too a quote from Obama's memoirs - back from the days when Obama was proud to be a friends of a socialist bigot) is still real and very much black - and upset about them evil Jews who are leading his favourite pupil comrade Obama astray.

So, there is your "president", a privileged man who messes things up, and then giggles at the poor women who are forced to clean up after him. And apparently, according to the memoirs, this was because of his "perceived injuries" from the evil white people - the injuries so deep, that he was trying to escape "the white authority" by discarding morality, honesty, hard work and diligence as a "white thing". Mind you, this crazy train of thought is claimed by Obama, a man raised by a family of privileged white people. According to the memoirs, Obama is later convinced by the fictional black girl Regina (as well as some unnamed blacks men) that being an honest decent human being is not necessarily a trap set by the evil white people - but this dramatic discovery does not come easy to our genius-in-charge. Here is the appropriate passage:

I had stopped listening at a certain point, I now realized, so I wrapped up I had been in my own perceived injuries, so eager was I to escape the imagined traps that white authority had set for me. To that white world, I had been willing to cede the values of my childhood, as if those values were somehow irreversible soiled by the endless falsehoods that white spoke about black.

Except now I was hearing the same thing from black people I respected, people with more excuses for bitterness than I might ever claim for myself. Who told you that being honest was a white thing? they asked me. Who sold you this bill of goods, that your situation exempted you from being thoughtful or diligent or kind, or that morality had a color?

All this craziness is in the autobiography of a "bright" young man - a man who was supposed to bring Hope, and Change, and Reconciliation to our nation. I wouldn't be surprised if it took decades for Michele Obama to convince her husband that washing one's hands after using the bathroom was not a white man's conspiracy to destroy black identity. Or maybe, he does thinks it is a white conspiracy - we will never know - unless the media asks him at this next press-conference.
P.S. The episode describing a drunk Obama and his friends messing up the room in the dormitory, as well as his discovery that honesty, integrity and decency are not necessarily the evil white man's inventions are on pages 109-110 of "Dreams from my father".

The opiate for the masses

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

Karl Marx

You fear the powerful eye of genius, that is why you encourage ignorance. This opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you. And that is why where you reign no establishments are to be found giving great men to the homeland; the rewards due knowledge are unknown here, and as there is neither honor nor profit in being wise, nobody seeks after wisdom.

Marquis de Sade

Their so-called religion acts merely as an opiate: irritating, numbing, calming their pain out of weakness.

Novalis


Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.

Vladimir Lenin


And now for something closer to today's American politics, a recent article from the New York Times:

WHO is happier about life — liberals or conservatives?... Scholars on both the left and right have studied this question extensively, and have reached a consensus that it is conservatives who possess the happiness edge. Many data sets show this. For example, the Pew Research Center in 2006 reported that conservative Republicans were 68 percent more likely than liberal Democrats to say they were “very happy” about their lives. This pattern has persisted for decades.

The article then goes into a long explanation of why conservatives are happier than liberals - but I propose a different point of view. Maybe the cause-n-effect equation is reversed. How about this hypothesis - unhappy people need the opium to dull their pain - and they turn to liberalism as a result.
Re-read the quotes I provided above, and substitute the word "religion" for "liberalism", and you will see an alternative explanation, an explanation which rings true to many.

 Everyone knows the stories of the children of rich people, who without any talents or skills turn to political activism. This happens so often, that the people invented the terms to diagnose this condition: "limousine liberals", "champagne liberals" and "trust-fund liberals". Also, one should not forget the second (and much more numerous class) of liberals - the so-called "victims" of perceived "racism", "sexism", "lookism", "agism" and all other types of discrimination.

In truth, it's undeniable that liberalism often acts as an opiate to many people, a meaning to otherwise useless creatures like Ted Kennedy, and an excuse for millions of failed human beings in the ghettos and projects. If we want our society to progress, we need to rid ourselves of the liberal illusions that cloud our minds. This is the only way to revive our nation.


P.S. In my post the term "liberalism" is used exclusively to describe a bizarre American left-wing ideology also known as "progressivism". There is no doubt that true liberalism, the ideology that was birthed in Britain by Adam Smith, Hume and others has very little in common with American "liberalism". In fact, I consider myself a classical European liberal - following the footsteps of  Adam Smith, Frederich Hayek and Milton Friedman.