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Liberal Media Bias Example 9159854849815

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 11:33:15 AM
Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have all made trips to Seattle. When B. Hussein Obama makes his way into the great Northwest, Seattle's paper of record, the Post-Intelligencer treat him to front page articles above and below the fold and massive eye-catching photos.

Furthermore, the Seattle P-I articles on Huckabee and Romney lead with the fact that the trips were made to raise money for their campaigns. The article on Romney this is made clear in the headline: "Romney rules in raising money in state." The Giuliani visit didn't even warrant an article in the Seattle P-I, at least not one I could find during my brief online search.

The Obama article downplays the fact that his trip was also nothing more than a fundraiser. Instead you get paragraphs like this:

"Obama's backers began lining up for the fundraiser billed as part concert, part "Generation Obama" rally well before doors opened at about 7:30 p.m. at the concert venue Showbox Sodo. ... The event opened with a concert featuring Brad -- Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard's side project -- and Seattle rockabilly band The Dusty 45s."

It's not really a fundraiser. It's more of a "concert" and "rally" for the Obama faithful.     


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Life in Seattle, Pt. III

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 10:39:44 AM
If a homeless guy is defecating in front of our business or setting up his Tent City down the street from your child's school don't you dare try and do anything about it. You could very well find yourself facing fines or jail time in Seattle. When it comes to coddling the homeless San Francisco has nothing on Seattle.
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Political indoctrination passing as education

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Monday, December 10, 2007 3:46:17 PM
On November 16th 125 students and 6 teachers walked out of their publicly  funded classrooms in Tukwillla, WA to protest the President Bush and the American military's presence on the Iraqi front in the war against Islamo-Nazism. And the administrators refuse to take action.

One of the teachers involved was given a paid vacation for taking part in the protest: "... one teacher who left the school with students during the walkout was put on paid administrative leave ... for violating his contractual agreement ..." I imagine the other Leftist Indoctrinators ... uh, I mean "teachers" wish they had that kind of contract.

Protest the President then go on vacation. What a tough job these "teachers" have.
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Colorado Shootings

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Monday, December 10, 2007 2:41:23 PM
Some thoughts about the murders at the New Life Church and missionary training center in Colorado.

One: The Main Scream Media continues the foolish error of counting the murderer among the dead. Listening to reports I hear over and over again "five dead including the gunman." This, of course, blurs the line between victim and murderer.

Two: The murderer was shot by an armed security guard at the New Life Church in If only  an arrmed citizen or security guard was present at the "gun free" mall in Omaha; a few lives may have been saved.

Three: Will the person who attacked the missionary training center, if it is not the same person who attacked the New Life Church, be charged with a "hate crime" on top of other charges? I'm not counting on it, but if this was an attack on an abortion clinic or mosque or historically black church I have little doubt we'd be hearing about America's epidemic of hate.
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Just another day in a Worker's Paradise

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Monday, December 10, 2007 1:45:18 PM
On a recent journalism fellowship trip to the North Korean 'Worker's Paradise', Paul Feldman noted the surprising lack of propaganda. In fact, he writes, "there is virtually no political proselytizing at Mt. Kumgang [resort]".

As you read his article, you quickly learn what "virtually no political proselytizing" includes "slogans hailing rulers Kim Jong Il and his late father, Kim Il Sung, carved into the boulders high above the resort", a "large billboard painting of the late Great Leader and the Dear Leader", "waitresses who sport red dresses and tiny Kim Il Sung lapel pins" and who "pick up karaoke microphones and expressively perform ... heartfelt tributes to Kim Jong Il."

Other than that, of course, there was "virtually no political proselytizing".

Furthermore, doesn't anyone find it odd to partake in a "journalism" fellowship within a totalitarian communist state, where Bible's are not allowed in hotels, no interaction with local citizens can take place and even photos of farmers in a field is a criminally  punishable offence? I wonder if Mr. Feldman or anyone else who took part in this event would treat the event's oxymoronic nature as blithely as say an alternative energy fellowship put on by Exxon-Mobile.
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Vigilantism in a Northern California Town

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Monday, December 10, 2007 12:50:59 PM
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the slaying of a recently released rapist may have been motivated by information available on the internet.

Michael A. Dodele, the murder victim, a 67 year old man who began his life of violence at the age of 15, was recently released after being convicted in 1987 of raping woman at knife point. Information about his crimes was available online as part of Megan's Law , which provides the public with detailed information about registered sex offenders. Mr. Dodele's listing has since been removed from the Megan's Law website.

Ivan Garcia Oliver, a 29 year old construction worker, was arrested for the murder, and I have absolutely no sympathy for him. He should and must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. He said he did this to protect his son. Now that Mr. Oliver is going to spend a very long time in prison for murder, who is going to protect his son? It seems Mr. Oliver didn't think that far ahead.

I wonder what, if any, deterrent effect a regularly enforced death penalty for murder would have had on Mr. Oliver? I would think that if Oliver knew he would die if he killed Dodele, something would have stopped him from this heinous act.

The line, in the story, that jumped out at me, however, comes from Charlene Steen, the psychologist who examined Dodele in 2007 on behalf of Dodele's defense attorney. Steen stated, "I think [Oliver and Dodele] are both victims of the Internet." Can someone explain to me what part of the internet put a knife in Oliver's hand and plunged into Dodele's body over and over again? What do you want to bet that Ms. Steen sits on the Left side of the political spectrum?
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America likes its Presidents ugly

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Monday, December 10, 2007 10:55:14 AM
... when electing a president, that is. Anthony Esolen, at Mere Comments, has been reviewing past Presidential elections and he has discovered that Americans have a tendency to elect ugly men.
"Some of them were dashing enough: Jefferson, Monroe, Kennedy.  Probably the handsomest was Franklin Pierce.  But they're rare.  The Adamses were downright homely; Cleveland and Taft were obese; McKinley, one of the gentlest of men, stared down from beetle brows as if he wanted to land an ax at the base of your skull; Eisenhower didn't relish war as Patton did, but he looked as if he might, and never more than when he smiled; Nixon looked the part of a crook, as did Lyndon Johnson; Andrew Johnson looked like a butcher invited to the wrong party; and Lincoln may have been the ugliest man in the history of our politics.
...
"The choices seem to tap into what is still a deep well of mainly healthy skepticism toward government, and mainly healthy skepticism of the ever-smiling, pretty-faced "helpers" who want to lighten your life by lightening your wallet."
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Another Comic - Another anti-Catholic and anti-military rant

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Sunday, December 02, 2007 3:47:22 AM
I just finished reading Ed Brubaker's Criminal #10. Now doubt the anti-Catholic and anti-military bits buried in this story made it all the more sweeter for the folks at Marvel publish it and the folks at the local Comic shop to stock it.

Criminal is a neo-noir comic published by Icon, an imprint of Marvel Comics. Ed Brubaker is currently one of the hottest writers in comics. Criminal #10 ends a five issue arc titled "Lawless". In this story an AWOL soldier, named Tracy Lawless, returns from Iraq looking for his brother's killer. In order to find the killer he gets becomes part of the same criminal crew with which his brother was working, and among whom is the killer.

In the comic's final chapter we learn that the bad guys' big heist involved stealing over half a million dollars from a crooked Catholic priest who was running a Christmas Eve scam. A bit later we learn that Tracy saved an Iraqi girl and murdered the 3 American soldiers responsible for killing the girl's family, which, in Brubaker's telling is "Yet another disaster in Iraq." Because everyday in Iraq is just one disaster after another, right Mr. Brubaker?

I'm beginning to realize that if I ever want to see stories where Catholics, US GIs and numerous others hated by Leftists are not depicted as the root of all evil then I'm going to have to write them myself. I also wonder what might happen to some bit of work should someone find my little corner of the internet. I'd like nothing more than to cross that bridge when it comes up.
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Tila Tequila ponders the supernatural

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Sunday, December 02, 2007 2:43:55 AM
Brent Bozell III takes on Teli Tequila's quest for fame and fortune and the Main Scream Media's obsession with sex in his latest column.

In it we get this fascinating bit of Ms. Tequila's rumination on the supernatural realm:

"Maybe God put me on this path so that I would be able to share with everyone else who may be going through the same things?"

Not God, my dear smut peddler, but more likely something else is at work advancing your career.
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Why college, especially graduate school, will not make you smarter

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Saturday, December 01, 2007 1:25:58 AM
How can anyone learn anything when offered courses such as this:

ENGL 90610 - Fictions of the Public Sphere in U.S. Literature and Culture - Glenn Hendler

Using and critiquing concepts of the public sphere from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as from recent critical theory and cultural studies scholarship, this course will explore the history of the gendered and racialized distinctions between public and private, domesticity and the market, reason and sentimentality in U.S. literature and culture before 1900. Several historical problems will structure our theoretical, critical, and literary readings, including: the development of domestic ideology; the rise of social movements such as temperance, feminism, and abolition; and the role of popular literary forms in the development and critique of both working-class politics and imperialist ideology. Central issues in many of our readings will be the politics of represented emotion, especially the key sentimental concept of sympathy, and the varying ways in which the reading and writing of literature were meant to prepare potential citizens – especially boys and men – for participation in politics, economic exchange, and civil society.

This is offered at the University of Notre Dame English Department. This is better than a bottle of Stoli if one's goal is to kill off brain cells.
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China Mieville on Tolkien

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Saturday, December 01, 2007 1:19:15 AM
Found this quote from China Mieville, highly lauded fantasy and science fiction author, while browsing Alan Jacobs interesting corner of the internet:

"Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious – you can’t ignore it, so don’t even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there’s a lot to dislike – his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien’s clichés – elves ‘n’ dwarfs ‘n’ magic rings – have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was ‘consolation’, thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader."

Why am I not surprised to learn that Mr. Mieville "is also active in socialist politics – he ran for Parliament in the last election. His book, “Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory Of International Law,” [is] based on his Ph.D. thesis ..."?
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Neil Gaiman is one heck of decent guy

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Thursday, November 29, 2007 11:40:52 PM
There are not may writers, in any genre, as well known, and for good reason, as Neil Gaiman. His events are attended by hundreds of fans clamoring for his attention. To get his autograph at the 2007 San Diego Comic Con you had to wait in line for a chance for a number that would allow you to wait in line for Neil to inscribe whatever book you happened to be carrying.

Politically, I'm sure there would be little agreement between Mr. Gaiman and myself. He has written a story, "Babycakes", to benefit what I think is a rather despicable organization, PeTA. Thanks to the absurd literary theory classes I took as an undergraduate, I can get around the niggling detail of the writer's intent by reading the story as analogous to our current abortion plight (thank you, Terry Eagleton).

Now I discover that not only is Neil Gaiman one of the best fabulists working today, he's just one heck of a decent guy, to boot.

It seems one of Neil's fans wanted to propose to his girlfriend (the fan's girlfriend - not Neil's ... oh, to heck with it) and he wanted Neil's help in making it a memorable moment. To make a long story short, which may be too late already, Neil kindly agreed and created one of the best dedications ever.

Congratulations, Jason. I wish you and Maui many happy years.

And thank you, Mr. Gaiman, for showing us how much you respect and care about your fans. Hat's off to a great writer who has not let his fame go to his head.
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It is a Civilizational Crisis not an ideoligical one

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Saturday, November 24, 2007 6:24:42 PM
I just found the Fall 2007 issue of the Intercollegiate Review, published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The opening editorial made an interesting point.

"... we have presumed a 'universal' history in which the West represents the vanguard of mankind, behind which all humanity will at length follow, so that all will inevitably become 'like us' - enlightened, largely secular, liberal democrats. We have not considered the possibility that 'modernization' may lead to quite different destinations. The Cold War struggle with Soviet communism was an ideological conflict precisely because both communism and Western liberal democracy laid claim to the status of the 'vanguard within the vanguard' in the West's universal history. The current interaction with a resurgent Islam [I would write Islamo-Nazism] in not an ideological conflict, however, precisely because Islam rejects the universality of the West's history.

"American conservatives have [at] hand a rich repertoire of arguments, concepts, and theories concerning ideological struggle, a legacy of our leadership role in the Cold War. We lack, however, similar resources for understanding a 'civilizational' conflict. We need new thinking for a new historical circumstance."

I think this is onto something. Mark C. Henrie, who penned the quote above, is accurately describing why conservatives are failing spark the majority of the population's imagination and failing to convey the threat the West currently faces. Boris's comments (in my post about Horowitz) regarding "the Nation's main ideological problem" also fail to address this situation and only seems to propose the same solution as the Left. The Left would shut down anyone who doesn't meet some vague and always changing standard of "political correctness". Boris, as the conservative side to that same coin, seems to want to shut down anyone who fails to meet some vague standard of "responsible words leading to responsible action."

Furthermore, in response to Boris's comments linked above, being entitled to one's own opinion is not an "ideological problem". Being entitled to one's own "truth", however, is a very serious problem indeed.
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David Horowitz - a prophet for our times

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Saturday, November 24, 2007 1:21:17 AM
David Horowitz bravely mans the ramparts against the growing Islamo-Nazi threat and the radical Left's "unholy alliance" with these purveyors of hate, violence and death.

In one of his latest reports, titled "The Problem for our Country", he details the extent to which the Left is shutting down debate in America, especially on American college campuses.

In the above linked commentary, Mr. Horowitz writes, "I have been rushed on the stage in such unlikely locations as the Pacific Design Center ... " Allow me to elaborate on this event as I was there as part of the voluntary security, and I was one of those responsible for dragging the protesters out of the theater. While introducing a film on behalf of the Liberty Film Festival, two radical Leftists jumped up and rushed the stage, screaming "Fascists have no right to speak!" over and over again.

As Mr. Horowitz rightly describes in his many articles, the Left will not debate their opponents. They label them, dismiss them, marginalize them. The Left is adopting Lenin's strategy, ‘In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent’s argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth.’ If they could have forced David out of that theater that night at the Pacific Design Center, they would have.

How long will Americans stand for this? Dennis Prager has stated there is a Civil War going on in America today, though I may disagree that it is non-violent (read what David Horowitz has experienced and look at what happened to Jim Gilchrist at Columbia). I am in firm agreement with him. David Horowitz keeps telling us what the Left is doing to kill debate and open the doors for America's enemies.

"There have been more than 9,000 terrorist attacks since 9/11, including the murders of Western infidels such as Theo Van Gogh, whose crime was attempting to warn others. A petition is currently being circulated by leftist professors, like Eric Foner, at Columbia, which among other things condemns its president for criticizing the Islamo-fascist, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when he was a guest at the school. There have been (and will be) no such petitions to condemn the campus radicals who mounted a hate campaign against conservative students and the speakers they invited to discuss the threat from Islamo-fascists like Ahmadinejad. And therein lies the problem for our country"

How long can this go on before history repeats itself and Americans sadly start killing Americans?
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The Mist - Major Spoiler Alert

Posted by Daniel Crandall on Saturday, November 24, 2007 12:46:32 AM
Because I don't want Frank Darabont, Stephen King or anyone else associated with this movie to make one dime from it - you can read a synopsis of the ending, which the anti-Christian bigoted critics are raving about, over at The Movie Spoiler.

Basically, the evangelical Christian fanatic is killed. Five people then escape the store, but are killed by the David (Thomas Jane) when all seems lost and they think the monsters are about to get them. Out of the mist the Army arrives and tells David that everything is safe and all the aliens are dead.

Maybe, this movie is as much a commentary on assisted suicide's futility as it is scary evangelical Christians.
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