Author: Mark Noonan

What Media Bias? Part 193

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Walter Russel Mead lays it out:

…The news from Afghanistan is grim. With the latest round of deaths, we pass a milestone: 2,000 US combatants have died in what is now the longest war in American history. The milestone has been reached just as the surge in troops has come to an end without achieving the goals of pacifying the country or even launching peace talks with the Taliban. Our Afghan “allies” remain as corrupt and ineffectual as ever, with the added wrinkle that the most dangerous place in Afghanistan for US troops these days seems to be the neighborhood of US-armed and trained Afghan forces, who are shooting and blowing up their nominal allies faster than the Taliban can do it.

This is all bad news and very disturbing, but there is a crumb of comfort to be had. Because these failures happened on President Obama’s watch, the mainstream press isn’t particularly interested in relentless, non-stop scrutiny of the unpleasant news. If George W. Bush were president now, and had ordered the surge and was responsible for the strategic decisions taken and not taken in Afghanistan over the last four years, the mainstream press would be rubbing our noses in his miserable failures and inexcusable blunders 24/7…

And every last one of you reading this – especially your liberals – knows this is true.  You can say all you want that the war started on Bush’s watch; you can say this, that and the other thing to excuse Obama – but you all know darn well that if a Republican were President right now, the stories about the collapse in Afghanistan would lead the news day after day after day.  Just think for a moment what it would be like if McCain had won in 2008 and Obama was just now taking his second shot at the Presidency.  The MSM would never let this pass, not for a second…and we’d have days of news reports marking the 2,000th American death in Afghanistan.

I really do think I have to retire the title of this post – as you can see, its been going on for a long time.  But a more correct title these days would be “What Venal and Corrupt Press?”.  Because this has gone beyond bias.  This is far more than just a willingness to soften the blows for liberals and turn up the heat on conservatives – this is a disgusting failure to do the very basics of journalism:  at least attempt to bring the truth to the people.

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Citizens Pay Taxes

Mark Noonan77 Comments

And if you don’t pay taxes then you are honestly not fully a citizen.  This Fox News poll indicates that a massive majority of people instinctively grasp this fact:

A large majority of likely voters believes all Americans should pay some federal income tax — even if it is as little as one percent of what they make.

Seventy-nine percent say everyone should pay something, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday.  That includes 85 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of independents and 71 percent of Democrats.

According to the IRS, last year approximately 41 percent of tax filers did not pay federal income tax.  The Tax Policy Center estimates that will increase to 46 percent this year…

It is just being part of a self-governing nation – every adult who is physically capable of contributing should contribute, even if its only in a tiny, symbolic manner.  The fact that tens of millions of people pay no federal income tax is a scandal – unless you starved to death last year, you had some sort of income and you should have paid some part of it in to the common fund.  Citizenship is only secondarily about the exercise of rights – it is primarily about the exercise of responsibilities.  And this, indeed, is what scares people about it – especially liberals:  that every man shall be a king (and every woman a queen).  It is frightening to think that you are personally responsible for yourself and even more frightening to think if yourself as responsible for everyone else.  And so it has always been easy for frightened people to prefer a tyrant who will take responsibility for the group and the individual.

I’m heartened by this poll – I had thought that only about 60% of Americans still got what it means to be a citizen.  This poll indicates that nearly 80% still do.

UPDATE:  Off topic here but since you liberals are considering polls to be holy writ:

Rasmussen polled voters to find out which candidate is trusted more to handle the US economy. Mitt Romney leads Obama by seven points, 51-44.

Bloomberg polled the question of which candidate do Americans trust more on terrorism. The Obama administration is rapidly becoming engulfed in charges that it has attempted a cover-up after the terrorist attacks in Libya and Egypt left four Americans dead. President Obama had expected, prior to the attacks, that authorizing the mission that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden would allow him a cushion on foreign policy and especially on terrorism. Bloomberg found that there is no such cushion. In fact, Mitt Romney leads Obama on trust on terrorism by six points, 48-42.

Monday Morning Open Thread

Mark Noonan174 Comments

Really doing this because there are several things I want to shine our tiny spotlight on:

Andrew Sullivan actually writes and article entitled “President Obama:  the Democrats Reagan“.  Here’s the challenge – I had to stop at the end of the second paragraph because going any further would have brought on fits of laughter so extreme as to be health-threatening.  So, how far can you get in to it before you have to stop?

There is a poll for Pennsylvania showing Obama only up by 2 and under 50%.  My prediction?  Obama will win Pennsylvania…but if you do see the State called for Romney then we’re in for a Reagan-style, 1980 landslide.  And it could happen.

Now, just why would people turn to Romney in such large numbers?  Perhaps it is because our President is a complete fool?  Calling what has happened in Libya a “bump in the road” is an idiot’s statement.  Seriously – I see your “47%” Democrats and raise you this.

Or maybe its because our President lives in a fantasy world?

Why Wisconsin is in Play.  More important for me is the fact that Wisconsin is in play.  Obama won the State by 14 points in 2008.  It should be a walkover for him.  It isn’t – in fact, its probably no better than 50/50 that Obama will win it.  So, going from 14 point lead to zero point lead in a blue State and yet we’re supposed to believe that Obama’s on an easy track for re-election?  Sure, whatever you say…

Camden, NJ (Obama by 34.8 in 2008) our poorest and most crime-ridden city is looking to disband its police force because of budget constraints.  I haven’t been able to find the information so I will place a bet with anyone who asks:  I bet it has been at least 40 years since Republicans ran the place.  Any takers?  I’m sure of winning because it is only liberal Democrats who can take a prosperous American city and turn it in to a crime-ridden, impoverished pest hole.  And what liberals have done for Detroit, Camden, Los Angeles, etc, etc, etc, is precisely what they want to do to the rest of America.  Oh, do I hear a liberal whine of “no, we don’t”?  Ok, fine – then you explain to me why when you gain exclusive political control things always work out like Camden?

In Regard to the Muslim World, What Do We Do Now?

Mark Noonan99 Comments

The key take-away of the recent events in the middle east, for me, is that whatever we were trying to do in the Muslim world, it is now in shambles.  Whether one wants to take the leftwing/Islamist view that Islam is angered by our wrongdoing or if one wishes to point out that Islam has been the aggressor for more than a thousand years is immaterial – whether it is war or the olive branch we were trying to bring to the Muslim world, both our war and peace policies have failed.  We have no victorious war while also having no peace.  However we go forward, we should go forward as a blank slate.  The first thing for us to do, then, is to figure out what we want.

The Muslim world is a billion people sitting on a strategic crossroads and also containing a very large amount of the exceptionally valuable substance, oil.  This reality is just there – it can’t be argued with.  Whatever we might want, our policy has to take in to consideration that it is there and has to be dealt with.  So, the first thing we can dispose of is any concept that we can just entirely walk away and pretend it doesn’t matter.  For good or ill, the United States will be involved in the affairs of the Muslim world.  That said, we still have to define what we want our involvement to be.

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Excellent Polling Analysis

Mark Noonan53 Comments

Geraghty quoting GOP pollster McLaughlin over at NRO:

…How campaigns try to sway polling results: “In a close race, the operatives are trying to manipulate the turnout through their paid and earned media. The earned media includes lobbying and trying to skew the public polls. Historically the most egregious case was the 2000 Gore campaign’s lobbying the networks’ exit pollsters for an early, and wrong, call in Florida. This suppressed the Florida Panhandle and Western state turnout.” (Polls close at different times in different parts of the state, because the state stretches into two time zones.) “In our post-election Florida poll, we found that thousands of Panhandle Floridians heard the call and although their polls were still open for an hour in a close national race decided not to vote. Panhandle voters went two-to-one for Bush. The CBS early wrong call nearly triggered a national crisis.”

On what a realistic partisan breakdown would look like: “The 2004 national exit polls showed an even partisan turnout and Bush won 51–48. Had it been the +4 Democratic edge of 2000, John Kerry would have been president. 2008 was a Democratic wave that gave them a +7 partisan advantage. 2010 was a Republican edge. There’s no wave right now. There are about a dozen swing states where in total millions of voters who voted in 2008 for Obama are gone or have not voted since. There are also hundreds of thousands of voters in each of several swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and others who voted from rural, exurban or suburban areas in 2004 for Bush who did not vote in 2008, because they were not excited by McCain or thought he would lose. They are currently planning to vote mainly as a vote against President Obama.”

What Obama and his allies are doing now: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models…

Given that our venal MSM is entirely in the tank for Obama it wouldn’t take much lobbying or pressure to get an MSM poll – or a poll done independently for an MSM outfit – to skew their polling to advantage Obama.  Good to remind everyone at this time that back before the primaries were even over I was saying that the polling will show Obama in good shape right through election day no matter who we nominated.  First off this is because polling – for a variety of reasons – almost invariably over-states Democrat strength.  Secondly because the MSM believes it is their moral duty to have our first African-American President re-elected.  Their whole worldview is at stake here – if Obama loses, then they will feel it as a bitter, personal loss.  They also must know, by now, that they are destroying their credibility with all non-liberal Americans and they clearly don’t care…saving Obama trumps all for 90% of the MSMers (which includes, by the way, a very large number – perhaps a majority – of those who work at Fox News; maybe not the on-camera talent, but the people who select and write the stories).

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These Are the Geniuses We’re Up Against

Mark Noonan82 Comments

From Navy Times:

On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, a retired Navy four-star took the stage to pay tribute to veterans. Behind him, on a giant screen, the image of four hulking warships reinforced his patriotic message.

But there was a big mistake in the stirring backdrop: those are Russian warships.

While retired Adm. John Nathman, a former commander of Fleet Forces Command, honored vets as America’s best, the ships from the Russian Federation Navy were arrayed like sentinels on the big screen above.

These were the very Soviet-era combatants that Nathman and Cold Warriors like him had once squared off against.

“The ships are definitely Russian,” said noted naval author Norman Polmar after reviewing hi-resolution photos from the event. “There’s no question of that in my mind.”

Naval experts concluded the background was a photo composite of Russian ships that were overflown by what appear to be U.S. trainer jets. It remains unclear how or why the Democratic Party used what’s believed to be images of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at their convention…

I don’t blame the admiral – he probably didn’t know what was being flashed behind him.  But what is it with our Democrats?  Don’t they have anyone with enough military experience to differentiate between US and foreign warships?  Go look up pictures of, say, as USN cruiser and compare it to a Russian – they are remarkably different in appearance.  Though I guess the fact that both are painted gray and have all sorts of weapony looking fighting thingies on them can cause some confusion…

11 Years Later, We’ve Learned to Cringe Before the Islamists

Mark Noonan39 Comments

As I said earlier, I had written a post to commemorate the 9/11 attacks but I got so bitter about how low we’ve fallen that I deleted it – the day is not fit for such things.  Until now.  Here’s the story from al Jazeera:

Thousands of Egyptian demonstrators have torn down the Stars and Stripes at the US embassy in Cairo and replaced it with an Islamic flag on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001,  attacks in the US.

Nearly 3,000 demonstrators, most of them Islamist supporters of the Salafist movement or football fans, gathered on Tuesday at the embassy in protest over an amateur film deemed offensive to the Prophet Muhammad which was produced by expatriate members of Egypt’s Christian minority resident in the US…

So, because a film was made by someone in the United States a mob of Islamists seized our embassy in Cairo – but that’s not all; a similar mob in Libya sacked our consulate and, it seems, killed one American official while doing it.  That, of course, is enough to outrage an American patriot – but it gets worse.  Here’s the official, US response to the taking of our Cairo embassy:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

That is the whole thing.  Nothing about condemning the Islamists.  Oh, no.  We’re far too chickenshit to do that.  Our government under Obama knows precisely what it has to do – crawl on its knees to its Muslim masters!  We’re apologizing to these dirty-necked barbarians because they got mad over a film made in the one-time land of the free and home of the brave.  11 years after beasts massacred 3,000 of us we’ve learned our lesson.

I am just disgusted.  And, liberals, I entirely blame you.  Oh, don’t you try to weasel out of this – don’t you even dare.  It is your man Obama running the show.  He’s the one who apologized for all that we did from 2001 to 2009.  He was the one who was going to get these savages to love us by showing understanding and kindness.  And you cheered him on.  You liberals said we were wrong to fight them; wrong to rendition them; wrong to waterboard them.  We’re doing it your way, now – and look what it gets us.  You think the cringing, spineless apology from our embassy will stop them now?  Bloody fools – weakness to barbarians just encourages the barbarians to attack.

Oh, for just an hour of the spirit of Godfrey of Bouillon!  Someone who will do what needs to be done – drive a sword through these people as far as it will go until they learn that you don’t attack us, ever.

UPDATE:  Hopefully on January 20th we’ll be able to stop cringing.  Romney’s statement:

I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.

Team Obama is now busily trying to walk back the craven statement from the embassy but its too late for that.  Everything Obama has done since 2009 is encapsulated in that statement – its his embassy under his direction and they clearly did what they thought was in line with Obama Administration policy.

UPDATE II:  Fury is growing over this disgraceful act by our government – especially as the linked article shows that its even worse than we thought, what with embassy officials apparently “tweeting” craven statements to Islamists over this incident.

UPDATE III:  Sarah Palin’s statement:

…It’s about time our president stood up for America and condemned these Islamic extremists. I realize there must be a lot on his mind these days – what with our economy’s abysmal jobless numbers and Moody’s new warning about yet another downgrade to our nation’s credit rating due to the current administration’s failure to come up with a credible deficit reduction plan. And, of course, he has a busy schedule – with all those rounds of golf, softball interviews with the “Pimp with the Limp,” and fundraising dinners with his corporate cronies. But our nation’s security should be of utmost importance to our Commander-in-chief. America can’t afford any more “leading from behind” in such a dangerous world. We already know that President Obama likes to “speak softly” to our enemies. If he doesn’t have a “big stick” to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.