Good Video on Media Bias…

No one can honestly dispute that the majority of the main stream press leans pretty hard left.  There are some notable exceptions such as Foxnews or the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, but the majority are shills for the Democratic party.

Ten years ago in my grad student days at Columbia, I dated a woman who was attending the Pulitzer School of Journalism.  She described the environment at the journalism school as very hard left.  Though a self-labeled liberal Democrat, she said she felt like a right-winger during class discussions about politics.  She was unaware of any Republicans attending the school….

Indeed, polls among journalists show that the political skew is overwhelmingly left.  This is by no means a new phenomenon and for years it has been something that political candidates have had to plan for.  However, this election cycle has been something special.  For the first time, journalists are going a step beyond bias and are now actively abdicating their roles as news reporters if it helps Obama.  Here are some examples of “missed” reports that would end Republican presidencies:

  • Obama chooses The View over world leaders at the UN while our embassies burn
  • Bombing citizens with drones and re-labeling them as combatants to keep your numbers clean
  • Openly ignoring your own intelligence reports to publicly blame terrorist attacks on obscure youtube videos

It really is a dangerous line that the American press has crossed.  Former Democratic pollster and strategist Pat Caddell has a rant about it that is worth watching in its entirety:

Time For the Invoice

So, what is the cost to each of us and our children for the spectacular job Bush and Obama have done prolonging, I mean, saving us from certain doom and destruction?  A group from Stanford economists from the Hoover Institute lay out the numbers for us in the WSJ today.  If it doesn’t frighten you then you are obviously one of our international readers (welcome to www.realitybatslast.com!)

The Magnitude of the Mess We’re In

9-18 Update by Bryce- Reading this column about the ‘Mess We’re In’ prompted two thoughts:

1. Who in their right mind would want to be the Captain as the USS Titanic tries to make it’s way forward through these waters? None of the problems enumerated in the article have easy solutions; just very painful and difficult ones. And if you are a conservative Captain, the press will be sabataging every move you make.

2. Republicans would be wise to avoid the Messianic thinking that swept Obama into power. Dear Leader cannot make these problems go away. Not Obama; not Romney. Turning this big ship around will take much more than the election of a new Captain. A new Captain is necessary, but certainly not sufficient.

Who Is The Real Radical?

The battle is between those who believe in individual liberty and those who believe in a large and expanding government. Let’s face it, many Republicans believe in a large and expanding government, as demonstrated by their actions in recent decades. So the philosophical alternatives of strictly limited government and massive, growing government do not represent our real-world choices. Still, there are stark differences between the visions of the two parties.

Our founding documents were clearly designed to strictly limit the power of government over the lives of free men. That was the expressed goal, as described here. But “Progressive” politicians think they have a better idea. To them, government is the answer to lifes challenges, not freedom. With enough spending, with enough government programs, with the right people in charge, everything will be wonderful. This is the socialist utopian delusion.

George Will’s latest column explains the progressive belief that “society may be perfected through the instrumentality of government”. It is George Will at his best.

We regularly hear that the Tea Party folks are radical extremists. Will explains the real radicals.

Happy Birthday, Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman, great defender of freedom, would have been 100 years old yesterday.  His television series, “Free To Choose” was one of the best things ever shown on public television.  Watching Friedman clips on YouTube is time well spent because he so simply and concisely explains principles of liberty.

This is one of my favorites:

Two Friedman quotes:

“If you put the Federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”

SAID IT!!!! (Thank you Sununu!)

Imagine if you lived in a free nation… A place where you could live, work, and play without being subject to the whims of a regulator.  Where you could follow your dreams without answering to anyone or anything, as long as your dreams didn’t infringe on the right of others to do the same.   Our forefathers imagined such a place.  After thousands of years of oppressive regimes and states where the lives of the population were governed in detail by the whims of tyrants, they decided to try freedom.  The experiment worked.  For over 200 years, this nation has improved the quality of living in the world on an exponential level unimagined by any ancient philosopher.   Now imagine how you would feel to watch that dream crushed by the same sorts of bureaucratic populist tyrants whose experiments in control and social engineering have crushed the spirits of their people and driven them to your shores for hundreds of years.  You would be angry right? Maybe just a little?

Luckily, you have your 200 year experiment of success all around you and easily googlable.  You wouldn’t have to struggle hard to debunk their sad little twisted talking points taken from the outright lies of the Obama campaign team or the “king’s clothes” intellectuals like Krugman.   You would simply state the facts and maybe sometimes laugh at them a little when the intellectual twister gets over the top.  Instead, what we seem to get are pundits on the right that have a frozen petit mal seizure in the face of an argument and then regurgitate some pre-rehearsed talking point.  And we wonder why the right isn’t as jazzed up as they should be…

Here is how it is done:

Imagine living in a Russian submarine on a dive for three months surrounded by unwashed sailors who only eat raw fish and chain smoke in your 6’ X 6’ bunk bed quarters.  When the submarine surfaces, you get to be the first sailor to open the hatch and take in a deep breath of ocean arctic air in Siberia 300 miles from the nearest town.  Watching the above clip kind of felt like that.

Here is another fresh breath for you:

The master at work.  Krauthammer, Ryan, and West can also get it done, but the list gets short after that….