Headlines

Meadows blames Pelosi for impasse on coronavirus relief

Women-managed funds are outperformIng as tech exposure pays off, Goldman finds

Alleged Portland shooter was previously arrested for bringing illegal gun to riot but was released

Oregon governor blames ‘armed white supremacists’ for violence

What happens if China get Covid-19 vaccine first?

JPMorgan’s market guru who called the comeback says Trump’s re-election chances are rising

Top Democrat operative admits voter fraud is no myth

NPR promotes defense of  looting as ‘imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure’

U.S. coronavirus cases pass 6 million

ExTrump advisor Michael Flynn loses appeal seeking quick dismissal of criminal case

The numbers are in: RNC garnered 25 million more total viewers than DNC

Update: St. Louis officer dies after shot in head

STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Unintended Consequences

Heard on NPR today that social justice warriors are having second thoughts about police wearing body cameras, ... particularly since the videos from them are much more likely to be used as evidence in criminal prosecutions than in disciplinary actions against their law-enforcement wearers. 

Let me see, does the concept of “justice” change depending on it being modified by the word “social?” We really are well into the twilight zone.

Headlines

Lobbyist bought tropical land from Biden’s brother

Coronavirus live update: Outbreak has killed 106 and infected nearly 4,700

MAG: All the president’s turncoats ...

Trump denies New York Times report on John Bolton book

Pompeo’s clash with NPR grows as journalist is barred from plane

Trump says Fed should cut rates so the US could pay down its $23 trillion debt

AG Barr worried about president’s conversations with leaders of Turkey, China ...

Prof. Dershowitz gives lecture of his life ... changes mind on non-criminal impeachment

Senate Democrats’ super PAC raises record $61M in 2019

Consumer confidence jumps as job market outlook improves

Republican  leader warns party on fundraising, ‘Getting our asses kicked’

Poll: Bernie takes commanding lead in California

Headlines

NSC official testifies Trump undermined national security with Ukrainian pressure

Cash-strapped Biden campaign top donors try to beef up fundraising

Republicans fear 2020 wipeout

Biden denied communion in SC church over abortion stance

UK’s Labour Party backs early election in December

Federal judge halts Alabama abortion law deemed the strictest in the nation

Dems going public with impeachment investigation ...

NPR praises terrorist Baghdadi: ‘He was a real leader’

Sessions strongly considering bid for his old Senate seat in Alabama

US consumer confidence dips in October, missing expectations

Manufacturing now smallest share of economy in 72 years ...

Trump tweets potential Baghdadi successor ‘terminated’

Filters

“And that’s the way it is”  Walter Cronkite

Traditional news outlets, radio, TV and newspapers have acted as our information filters to the world. Their value-added has been the collection, collating and prioritizing of supposed facts about what was happening around us  ... for which they were paid, often handsomely. Basically, we consumers of news relied on these filters to present us a consistent and reliable view of things so that we might take action. And, in exchange, we bought and perused their ink or listened to their advertisers. There was a certain comfort in knowing what slant a particular outlet would bring to their reporting ... and this slant or filter often became more important than the facts themselves.

No matter how much such media claim to be fair and balanced, they always slip back into a point of view. And the only way that consumers can get a rounded view of things is to partake of multiple news outlets ... a time taxing task ... one that too few choose.  So we live and have lived on a politically polarized nation. And even more so now that many additional internet news channels, Twitter, Google, Facebook, blogs, etc. have appeared. This seems a good development, not a bad one. Variety is the spice of life. The shortest route to national consensus would be a state-sponsored  media (like PBS or NPR) as the only news filter ... a bad thing.

Our founding fathers designed our government to be inefficient and contain opposing forces. And so constant conflict within our media is also a good thing. The danger posed is that one news filter (like Facebook) becomes so dominant as to overwhelm all others. This  should worry us all.

Freedom of the Press

Our Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. This means that our media is free to report the news with whatever slant they wish. They are free  to emphasize certain facts and events and omit others. They are even free to lie and act like churlish children. Our courts have even ruled that our media can disclose government secrets if it is "in the national interest."

However, the media's freedom, like any freedom, is not absolute. This freedom does not stand ahead of freedom of speech or freedom of assembly ...  also in the First Amendment to the Constitution. If the media tries to suppress other constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, then they have stepped over the line and need to be reminded of their transgressions. I suppose that they can't be rightfully stopped ... but they can be reminded by others with communication outlets to the people (Trump) of their failings. It will then he up to the people to decide. If the people give a media outlet the thumbs down, then that  outlet can either self-correct or go out of business. This is the ultimate democracy ... people using their free market decisions if any media outlet has moved onto the dark side.

It would only be an unconstitutional infringement if our government tried to influence this process with funds or favors. If our government were to fund its own radio (NPR) or television (PBS) stations, then this would certainly be unconstitutional. No?

Headlines

Congress clears spending bill, averting shutdown

DOJ launches investigation into Planned Parenthood

5 wealthiest [US] counties are DC suburbs ...

European media says Trump 'opening Hell' with Jerusalem move

Ethics Committee clears Rep. Kevin Nunes

GOP House member resigns after discussing surrogacy with female staff members

Argentine ex-President Fernandez charged with treason ...

6th NPR employee accused of sexual misconduct

White House attributes Trump's slurred speech to dry throat

DOJ demotes official over suspicious Trump Dossier contacts

NKorea: War unavoidable ...

84% of 'underage' migrants tested in Sweden are adults

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which ones from Politico?

How McCain tanked Obamacare repeal

After vulgar rant, Trump's new comms guy vows never to trust another reporter

Border wall prototype delayed until Winter ...

GDP rises at 2.6% annual pace

Gowdy: More coverage of Bieber tour than Lynch scandal

House Dems call for Kushner to be immediately dismissed

Obama aides unmasked hundreds during election without justification

Gingrich on NPR: Mueller has hired antiTrump killers

After health care failure,Trump tweets 'let Obamacare implode'

Macron aims to clear migrants from the streets of France

Stock market +19% since election ...

Gingrich on Scaramucci: Full of himself, 'talking more than he is thinking'

Nothingburger

The Trump-Russia balloon keeps inflating daily with lots of hot air and unsourced rumors. There is some modest pushback which I have collected below. Not that you will see or hear these quotes on network news, CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, WaPo, PBS or NPR. Anyway, perhaps this innuendo balloon will someday burst and the whispering roaches will go scurrying into the woodwork ... not to emerge again until the 2020 election.

"I have not seen any evidence of such collusion ..."

"There is no there there ..."

"Bad news for the Trump-Russia tinfoil-hat brigade"

"Where's the beef?"

"Media using leaks as ammo in Trump's media assasination"

"Utter nonsense ..."

"No evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and the
Russians"

"It's a nothing burger ..."

"A path that leads nowhere"

"Nobody can locate the crime, but Trump acts as if there is one"

"There was no collusion, when does it end?"

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites. Guess which ones came from Politico?

MacDonald's Big Mac attack on Trump ...

Hawaii judge halts Trump's second attempt at travel ban

... Judges inventing new reasons to obstruct Trump ...

Trump: Travel ban 'makes us look weak'

McCain: Rand Paul 'is working for Vladamir Putin'

Trump budget cuts all funds for PBS, NPR, National Endowment for Arts

Trump's budget ripped from Bannon's nationalistic playbook

NY bill would supress non-gov't-approved speech ..

Trump's budget eliminates global-warming payments to UN

... EPA cut could save business, consumers hundreds of bio ions ...

Trump approval surges to 52% ... Politico hurries news at bottom of article

Rand Paul: McCain makes a really really strong case for term limits

On Slurs

Listening to National Public Radio today, I realized that there are a set of hate words that are bad and then, there are those that are worse. On a radio program here in Bosto, our Attorney General, Maura Healey, went through the litany of Hellary Clinton's favorite slurs on her opponents -- sexists, racists, homophobes, xenophobes, Islamophobes ... in the same order as those she included in her proverbial "basket of deplorables." These were the often epithets used to try to slime the winning side in the recent presidential election.

Apparently, since these words were ineffective at the polls, the über left is having a mega-meltdown ... and now have reached into their grab bag of slights to up the ante. Now Trump's selections for his administration were then labeled by Healey as white supremacists and alt-rights. Other media poobahs have called them KKKers, anti-Semites, Nazis and hateful bigots. AG Healey then said on this program that she had set up an 800 hot-line for people to call to rat out those who were exhibiting Hellary's suppose deplorable traits.

Surprise, surprise! Before lunch was over, this hot-line had been maxed out with calls from listeners who mostly pointed out that Healey herself was the biggest offender with her on-air labeling of  Trump voters with these newer slurs.

Now AG Healey's face must be as red as her politics ...

Crazy Toxic Stuff

From his bully pulpit, President Obummer is once again attacking the right-wing media for poisoning the minds of Americans by "pumping out crazy toxic stuff." Apparently it is not enough for the libs in this country to have most of the mainstream media in their corner ... CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, NPR, BBC, CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, Time magazine, the Atlantic Constitution, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times and (increasingly) Fox News, etc., etc.

What is the toxic right-wing media? Some talk radio such as Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Howie Carr, etc. and a few Internet blogs/news sites, such as the Drudge Report, Powerline, Breitbart, Michelle Malkin, Fletcher's Castoria, etc. And even these new media outlets are being manipulated and surpressed by virtually all the social media sites ... which are now clearly lining up on the left.

Are we Americans still allowed to pick and choose how we get our news and opinion? It would seem that, if Obummer has his way, the answer is "no". Those perceptive writers of our Constitution anticipated demagogues such as our current president and gave us the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press ... now expanded to all our media outlets. But this freedom seems too much for our current political leadership. And, if you peruse the many comments on this blog, this poison supposedly is corrupting my thought processes to the point where I am requested to use only thought-police-approved sources.

I don't recall ever castigating any commentaters on this blog for how they get their news or opinion ... so why should I be so conscripted? All too often the arguments I make here are refuted by Trump-style pejorative comments, not reasoned logic ... something one should not expect from ACLU card carriers. So I would dearly appreciate it if our president and his acolytes stop calling me and mine names or asking us to limit our reading only to lefty-endorsed outlets. Refute us with your burning reasoning ... not that of Obummer-approved spin-meisters. This is dangerous rhetoric coming from our POTUS.

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites.

Washington Post pushes theory that Trump and Putin poisoned Hillary

B-1B nuke bomber flies over SKorea to rattle Kim ...

Report: John Kerry's State Dept. funneled [$9+] MILLIONS to his daughter's non-profit ...

Hillary featured in 'Women's Health' magazine ... another boo boo

NPR station publishes anti-Trump comic [book] for teachers, students to use in class

Scientists besieged by polar bears at remote Arctic post

Bill Maher: 'I'd vote for dead Hillary'

South Korea tires of North, vows to reduce Pyongyang to ashes

Obama talks about himself 137 times in a speech for Hillary

NFL players holding America flag goes viral

NYT editorial: Candidates must release full medical records

Harvard profs denounce school's return to 'Putitan' worldview

Six Word Stories

Yesterday on NPR I heard Peter Berg discussing an interesting literary challenge ... to write an ultra-short story in only six words. He related that Earnest Hemingway was once given this dare and he supposedly came up with "For sale. Baby shoes. Never used." Mr Berg gave many other examples of such creative efforts. The only other one that I remember is, "Days are long. Years are short." However, if this concept strikes your fancy, you should go to Berg's website and read more ... see: Six Word Stories ... or Google for more possibilities.

I obviously can't leave this subject without also trying my fingers with this challenge ... so here goes:

"Lifetime of lying ... rewarded with presidency."

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites.

Town [Arlington, NY] orders American flags removed from fire trucks

L.A. Times poll: Clinton +1

BBC: Opposing Shiriah law is 'Islamophobic'

Hillary told FBI Colin Powell advised her to use personal e-mail

Germany moves to ban far right party

Spat: EU tries to claim Britain's gold medals as its own ...

Canada fines comedian $42K for a joke

Trump turns presidential in Louisiana as Obama chills

Uber starts self-driving cars in weeks

NPR: Should we be having kids when there is global warming?

DHS Secretary defends golfin' Obama's absence in Louisiana 'Busy schedule' 'Can't be everywhere'

IRANSOM: Obama Admin admits cash for prisoners

I Spy NOT

I have in the past criticized the current CIA Director, John Brennan, as being an ineffective Obummer toady ... see: Head(s) Should Roll, It's My CIA Now and Acolytes. But now his warts are on full display with his recent comments in an NPR interview that our nation should not be engaged in spying ... see: Powerline Blog. Our spy agency should not be engaged in spying? What a complete boob!

This mismatch between talent and position is a lot like a community organizer becoming president of the United States ...

Beggin'

The PBS (Public Broadcasting System) stations in Boston are beggin' again ... all four of them at the same time. It seems that at least once a month we have to suffer through a week of self-help lectures by some nutritionists or financial gurus telling a mesmerized audience how to improve their lives. (Where do they get these people? They remind me of the bots in Apple's 1984 commercial.) It's either that or a Big Band or Sock Hop music CD offerings that ring the cash register for these "free" television stations.

These PBS stations also now run commercials just like the other greedy-capitalist ones. They also get close to a half a billion dollars of taxpayer monies and foundation sponsorships that must also run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, And those annual auctions! Yet still they prey on the naivete of the American public by asking for even more money. Like most everything else in our society, they have an angle and and angel in big government.

This wouldn't bug me so much if they were operating lean and mean. But this is clearly not the case. Bill Moyers was pulling down $6 million a year for his propaganda-rich shows ... see: More for Moyers. And the president of PBS received an annual salary of over $600,000 back in 2011 (see: Newsbusters Story). I'm sure it is considerably higher now. And there are many other executives at PBS and NPR (National Public Radio) earning  six and seven figure salaries. Even Big Bird makes well over $300,000 per year ... see: International Business Times Story.

So we see, its is not just corporate America that has a lock on greed ...

RIP Click Tappet

aka Tom Magliozzi, popular host of NPR's "Car Talk,"died yesterday at age 77 from Alzheimer's ...

Weasel Words

Last night, Mr. Mendacity gave his State of the Union Message. I could not bring myself to listen to his modern-day equivalent of “War is peace.  Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” (George Orwell, 1984).  But there were listeners, some of whom found that Obama was stretching the truth well past the breaking point.  Even NPR this morning  found many of his more audacious remarks to be questionable.  To catch up on his speech, I found the following fact-check listing of many of Obama’s truth-twistings.  It is well worth a read:  Breitbart Analysis.  (Actually, even the Lily Ledbetter analysis is incomplete.  There have long been laws that guarantee equal pay (for women) for equal work.  The Lily Ledbetter law did nothing more than extend the period over which lawyers could sue employers for such misfeasance.)  After pulling out your hair over these whoppers, you might consider a stiff martini.

I have also heard that, last night Obama bragged that his administration has created six million jobs since he took office … an oft-repeated misdirection.  This may be true in the sense that six million Americans have found new jobs.  But what he doesn’t enumerate is how many Americans have lost jobs during this same period.  When His Royal Highness took office in January of 2008, there were 145.4 million workers.  Now, there are 143.3 million workers in this country … which means that there are now 2.1 million fewer workers … while at the same time our population has grown by 10.9 million (Source Bureau of Labor Statistics).  Basically, 6 million Americans may have found jobs, but 8.1 million have obviously lost jobs.  If one were measuring the height of the tide last year this way, it would be 2 miles high because one would never count for all its ebbs.

The real sad part of this narrative is that obviously maybe half of all Americans are taken in by this claptrap … the uninformed voter if you will.  Are you one of them?

Silence!

Has anyone but myself noticed the recent decline of talk radio?  Last week in Boston, the FM talk station, WTKK, went to an (atrocious) all-music format.  It had been almost exclusively talk and mostly right-leaning talk ... except for Margery Eagan and Jim Braude in the morning hours.  They had had a conservative Michael Graham filling up the drive-time slot and that occasional righty, Mike Smerconish in between … see: Gaulitics.com.  Even that power-mouth Rush Limbaugh, after a little over a twelve month move to AM’s WXKS Talk 1200 from the feeble-AM-signaled WRKO 680, recently was forced to move back … just a little humbled (see: Boston Radio Watch ).  WXKS then went to a silly all-comedy format.

Over the last year here in Boston we have seen quite a parcel of other silenced right-wing voices … Lara Ingraham disappeared (and, in her last months, pleading for more advertisers) as well as Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Jeff Katz, Jay Severin, and Michael Savage. And, as of now, the only oral oasis for us crypto-Nazis here in Boston is WRKO (whose signal fades fast after sundown … very annoying in the winter time) which carries just the few voices of right-reason remaining -- Jeff Kuhner, Howie Carr, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin.  (Of course there is still FM-radio’s NPR here in Boston (WGBH 89.7) … on which one can hear how to make Nina Tottenberg’s cranberry sauce, listen to Terry Gross castigate conservatives and learn about All [Liberal] Things Considered.)

But the real reason for this blog entry is that I sense that this shrinkage is not happening by accident.  I strongly suspect that there is an invisible hand at work behind the scenes that is somehow convincing advertisers (and station managers) that it would be better if they were not abetting this brand of right-wing political talk radio.  And when Rush Limbaugh offered up a derogatory name for Sandra Fluke after she “testified” to Congress about her need for free contraceptives, even this ratings giant lost significant advertisers.  President Obama has not minced words about his disgust over conservative talk radio and the messages that it conveys (see: American Thinker).  And as Joe Biden says, President Obama carries a big stick and, as we have seen, he is not afraid to use it.

And so, at least in Boston, the pond for conservative talk radio is rapidly drying up.  This was one of the few alternatives to the mostly-liberal Main Stream Media ... but has drawn the ire of both it and the party currently in power. As long as they are going after the Second Amendment to the Constitution, why not scuttle the First Amendment also?