HAPPY NEW YEAR — 2008 Arrives
December 31, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized | No Comments
Voice of Liberty Podcast Episode #9
December 31, 2007 | Filed Under News, Patriotism, Podcasting, Publius Contributor, Uncategorized, Warner Todd Huston | No Comments
Happy New Year! This is our last podcast of the year and we’re looking forward to a prosperous new year and conservative gains in November’s elections. Our weekly listenership has grown into the three-figure domain – next stop – four figures. We appreciate you listening to the podcast, and we especially appreciate when you tell your friends. Our audience is growing quickly, and there are going to be some very exciting changes coming in the new year. Stay tuned for further details.
In this week’s episode, Andrea Shea-King looks back on her year. Warner Todd Huston reveals the vacuousness of political correctness. The Blue Collar Muse wonders aloud why Mrs. Clinton continues to promote the failed notion of socialism. Host John McJunkin wraps up the episode with Reason Number Eight Why Mrs. Clinton Will Never Be President.
Download Podcast-Duration: 00:29:30
Reuters: Will You People Stop Using ‘Surge’ and ‘Post 9-11′?
December 31, 2007 | Filed Under Democrats/Leftists, Education, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, Security/Safety, Society/Culture, Uncategorized, War on Terror, Warner Todd Huston | No Comments
-By Warner Todd Huston
This is the time of year for lighthearted fluff for most news agencies and it is usually a welcome respite from hard news as we all get ready to celebrate the arrival of “Baby New Year.” The year-end list is a staple of that happy, fluff and we get them up the wazoo, for sure. The list of “overused words” is one of those that we see every year, as well, and Reuters gives us a list by which they hope we wring out a few overused words and phrases as we ring in 2008. But, I am a bit dismayed over the choice of two of the words and phrases they want us to forget. The first is “post 9/11″and the other one is “surge.” The choice of words and phrases in the case of these particular two seems to be made not only with a left leaning bias, but with a bias that leads to the sort of dangerous ignorance that caused 9/11 and the surge in the first place. The ignorance of head-in-the-sand, looking the other way that allowed Islamofascism so so easily sneak up on all of us is rampant with the inclusion of these two in this list.
Reuters writer Andrew Stern gives us this first paragraph:
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A “surge” of overused words and phrases formed a “perfect storm” of “post-9/11″ cliches in 2007, according to a U.S. university’s annual list of words and phrases that deserve to be banned.
While most of the words and phrases that the public relations department at Michigan’s Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie chose for their list is innocuous fun, including “surge” and “post 9/11″ seems to me a dangerous inclusion.
Such phrases as “post 9/11″ and “surge” have also outlived their usefulness, they said. Surge emerged in reference to adding U.S. troops in Iraq but has come to explain the expansion of anything.
“Post 9/11″ has “out lived its usefulness”? How so? Has the danger of radical Islam passed us by? HARDLY! To make people forget 9/11 is a travesty and will open us right up to the sort of complacency that we wallowed blissfully in on September 10th, 2001 — a blissful ignorance that was shattered so horribly. Does Reuters and Lake Superior State University want us to return to 9/10 thinking? When one sees that they also want us to forget about Bush’s “surge” policies in Iraq, as well, it would seem that forgetting is exactly what they want. It’s all just so passé, huh?
There was also one other somewhat disturbing bit in their year-end list of over used words and phrases.
More Lazy Reporting From UPI: Internet ‘Not Ideal’ For Political Ads
December 31, 2007 | Filed Under Blogging, Democrats/Leftists, Elections, Inernet, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, Technology, Uncategorized, Warner Todd Huston | No Comments
-By Warner Todd Huston
As we point out on a daily basis, the MSM is heavily left leaning and biased. But this isn’t the MSM’s only failing. They are also extremely lazy. Leftist or not, and take little time to really think about the news nor do any research about what they are reporting. Take this UPI report for instance: “Political videos not reaching Web viewers.” In this one, the UPI is claiming that political video on the web isn’t “reaching Web viewers” and that it isn’t the “ideal way” for candidates to reach voters, but the story itself does not satisfactorily prove such a conclusion at all. When compared to the percentage of actual voting adults, for instance, the penetration might be quite favorable toward political videos reaching those they are aimed at. So, why report it as a negative? Because they neither employed reason nor research while writing their article, that’s why.
UPI claims the following:
WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) — Just over one-third of U.S. adults who have watched online video report watching a political video, a Harris Poll found.
The survey suggests online video is not an ideal way for political candidates to reach voters. However, that 35 percent figure represents millions of people.
While “one-third” of America’s adult population seems low, when we take a more full view of the statistics, we see that it isn’t as bad as it seems but we also see that this poll isn’t much help in making any determination as to whether or not political ads on the Internet are effective.
For one thing, only 73% of our adult population has internet connection in the first place according to a Pew Research finding (Download PDF file here). Now, according to the U.S. Census Bureau there are about 220 million adults in the U.S. so that means that of that 220 million, about 165 million some Americans have internet connection. One third of that 165 million, then, means that around 55 million or so adults are watching video with political content on the Internet.
55 million is a whole bunch o’folks, sure, but what does that mean to actual votes cast and are Internet videos actually making a difference in politics? There certainly is no way to know that from this report.
Let’s take a quick look at the voting stats.
Honestly, is this the best we can do?
December 31, 2007 | Filed Under Democrats/Leftists, Elections, Media Bias, Michael Bates, News, President, Publius Contributor, Security/Safety, Society/Culture, Uncategorized | 1 Comment
-By Michael M. Bates
In little more than 200 years, we’ve gone from George Washington, who could not tell a lie, to modern political figures who will never be mistaken for the indispensable man.
Barack Obama is running an ad in Iowa that ballyhoos his “scrupulous honesty.” That bouquet was tossed by Time magazine’s Joe Klein.
The candidate’s scrupulous honesty must have been sorely strained in his dealings with Democratic fat cat and wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko, soon on trial for an assortment of fraud schemes. Rezko was widely known to be under Federal investigation by the time Obama approached him, hoping he’d “develop an interest” in buying some land that just happened to adjoin a parcel owned by the senator.
Mr. Obama’s honesty was brought into question from the moment he announced his candidacy for president. That’s because the day after his 2004 election to the U.S. Senate, he forcefully vowed that he wouldn’t run for president before the end of his full six-year term.
The Chicago Sun-Times carried the story:
“‘I was elected yesterday,’ Obama said. ‘I have never set foot in the U.S. Senate. I’ve never worked in Washington. And the notion that somehow I’m immediately going to start running for higher office just doesn’t make sense.
‘So look, I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I’m the best possible senator on behalf of the people of Illinois.”’
He further elaborated: “Look, I’m a state senator who hasn’t even been sworn in yet. My understanding is that I will be ranked 99th in seniority. . . I’m going to be spending the first several months of my career in the U.S. Senate looking for the washroom and trying to figure out how the phones work.”
Responding to unrelenting reporter questions on the matter, he said that he was definite that he wouldn’t run for president in 2008. He even termed the question itself “silly.” So who’s laughing now?
Not Senator Clinton, who’s shown herself grievously honesty-challenged more than a few times over the years. One poll of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers found that Barry beats Mrs. Clinton 2-1 as the more honest and trustworthy candidate.
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Rebuild a Welfare-State-Dependent New Orleans?
December 31, 2007 | Filed Under Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, Society/Culture, Thomas Brewton, Uncategorized | No Comments
-By Thomas E. Brewton
The New York Times editorial board still believes in the fairyland of Stalinist dictatorship of the proletariat in which all the shots are called by the collective government’s commissars.
The Times editorialists implicitly are horrified at the prospect that New Orleans might be rebuilt by free-market forces responding to present-day economic reality. Their prescription is back (and I do mean backwards) to the Nanny State.
As noted in New Orleans: The Harsh Moral and Political Realities, New Orleans has for generations been rotten at the core as a consequence of the welfare state inaugurated by Huey Long in the 1920s. The last thing needed, by its former welfare-dependent residents or by its working population, is to sink again into the swamp of socialist despond.
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