Tag Archives: Main Stream Media

Earth Day: I Forgot

So, last Thursday it was Earth Day.  In fact, it was the 40th anniversary of the 1st Earth Day.

Wanna see some predictions from the leading thinkers of the day?

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Arctic Sea Ice Extent: New High

Surprisingly this isn’t being reported by the media, but that doesn’t make it any less true.  After reaching a minimum in 2007, the Arctic has quietly been adding to its volume during all time frames.

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America: Center Right

Sad consolation I know, but I really think it’s true.  I think that most people would say that they want less government in their lives, not more.  They would like to have the ability to succeed, even if it means they could suffer failure.  I think that American’s feel hard work precedes success or comfort.  I really do.

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Riiight….

When you make a promise that can’t be tracked, you are then able to claim that you kept your promise:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s emergency spending measures last year saved up to 2 million U.S. jobs, the White House said on Wednesday…

The White House, using two different approaches to figure out the impact of the stimulus package, estimates that U.S. employment had been raised by between 1-1/2 and 2 million jobs by the end of 2009 as a result of the stimulus measures.

Awesome.  When they made a number up at the beginning of this mess, they did it because:

  1. They needed to sell this turd.
  2. They knew it was made up and couldn’t be tracked.

But serious, did they create jobs?  Let’s look here:

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

But in interviews with recipients, the Globe found that several openly acknowledged creating far fewer jobs than they have been credited for.

One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was “almost nothing.’’ Bridgewater has submitted a correction, but it is not yet reflected in the report.

In other cases, federal money that recipients already receive annually – subsidies for affordable housing, for example – was reclassified this year as stimulus spending, and the existing jobs already supported by those programs were credited to stimulus spending. Some of these recipients said they did not even know the money they were getting was classified as stimulus funds until September, when federal officials told them they had to file reports.

…several organizations that offer Head Start preschool programs and other services in Georgia reported retaining hundreds of jobs based on raises they gave their employees. In one such case, the Central Savannah River Area Economic Opportunity Authority in Augusta reported saving 317 jobs. But that represents the number of Head Start workers who received 2.3 percent raises from the stimulus funds, said Chris Whitley, the authority’s fiscal officer….

And then, finally, this one, which, by the way, is perhaps the most damaging report I’ve seen out of the MSM.  For one, it’s ABC, for another it’s recent and for another, it’s pretty harsh:

The White House has abandoned its controversial method of counting jobs under President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus, making it impossible to track the number of jobs saved or created with the $787 billion in recovery money.

Despite mounting a vigorous defense of its earlier count of more than 640,000 jobs credited to the stimulus, even after numerous errors were identified, the Obama administration now is making it easier to give the stimulus credit for hiring. It’s no longer about counting a job as saved or created; now it’s a matter of counting jobs funded by the stimulus.

That means that any stimulus money used to cover payroll will be included in the jobs credited to the program, including pay raises for existing employees and pay for people who never were in jeopardy of losing their positions.
“There were no jobs created. It was just shuffling around of the funds,’’ said Susan Kelly, director of property management for Boston Land Co., which reported retaining 26 jobs with $2.7 million in rental subsidies for its affordable housing developments in Waltham.

Take a look at some of those numbers.  The first, in Boston, claims that they created 160 full-time jobs with 7 large.  Did ANYONE check into that?  And then the idea of counting jobs as saved simply because those people got a raise is insane.  How does THAT make sense?  And finally, we get the goods from the White House.  In order to make their made up number, they are going to have to change their made up rules.  And why not?  It’s their rules to begin with.

Remarkable.

Powerful Hurricane Set to Hit North Carolina

Do you remember the hurricane that made landfall onto North Carolina beaches this past July?  Uh, no?  Maybe August then?  September-October-November?  Yeah, me either.  Wanna know why the mainstream media didn’t report any of those storms hammering the Carolina coast?  Cause we had the quietest Hurricane season in 10 years.

SAVANNAH, Ga. — The Atlantic hurricane season ended Monday with barely a whimper: Not a single hurricane came ashore in the United States.

Since June, when the season began, just nine named storms developed. Only three of them became hurricanes, and those stayed out at sea or weakened before passing over land.

Two tropical storms made landfall in the U.S., causing little more than rain and some beach erosion.

It would seem that with a vanishing hockey stick, record cold and dampening of the powerful tropical storm season that we should finally be able to make some progress in combating the Climate Alarmists.

Prolly not, see, CO2 changes climate of which can appear all kinds of different symptoms.  Including cooling and lessening of storms.

The Stunning Effect of Government

History is littered with the stories of government abuse.  Instances where brutal dictators have stolen from their nations and enslaved their people.  In other cases, these leaders actually sing a song so enticing that the people don’t even see what’s going on.  The readily hand over their treasures, their hard work and even their dignity.  All because of some false promise with no hope of delivery.  A modern-day example is taking place in Venezuela.

Five months after Venezuela nationalized dozens of oil service contractors in Zulia state, the once-bustling industrial dock on Lake Maracaibo is nearly abandoned, and the 16 red flags raised to celebrate the takeovers are already tattered and faded.

First, this should shock no one.  The very idea that a government could run a corporation is laughable.

The this gem:

A few small groups of workers remain, hoping to get the jobs they were promised after the expropriations.

At least the story doesn’t read “A few large groups…..”

And then the tragedy:

“We demand our jobs. Because we haven’t gotten an answer, we’re still here,” said Demostenes Velasquez

I love it.  Our jobs.  Like, you know, they’re his.  And someone came and took ’em.   “We haven’t gotten an answer!”  as he just STOMPS his feet.  Okay, sorry.  Mr. Velasquez is prolly just a little angry and will move on as soon as this reporter walks away, right?  Wrong:

Demostenes Velasquez, who for months has lived under the scorching sun in a tent improvised from remnants of oil union election pamphlets.

At least he has the Union to thank for his shelter.  But that’s about all their going to give him, cause even THEY have left.  But check out the brother.  Living for MONTHS in a tent!  I’ve never heard such outrageous bullshit.

But the best part?  The BEST part?

Despite the protests, most of the workers don’t blame Chavez or his revolution, but individual managers of the state oil company.  “Five months ago, our President Hugo Chavez announced the glorious news (of the nationalization) that would benefit the town, but some (PDVSA) managers have contradicted it,” said Velasquez, a self-proclaimed “Chavista” who dresses in the red clothing popular with champions of the president.

I should be surprised that we elected Obama.  Maybe I should be surprised that it took us this long.

But hey, a little sacrifice is nothing compared to the benefit of the oil industry, right?  Ooops.

Experts said production in west Maracaibo has a capacity of up to 1 million barrels per day (bpd). But experts say its rate of decline has accelerated since nationalizations.

The oil industry slowdown has reverberated throughout the economy. According to the Association of Retailers and Industrialists of Lagunillas, commercial activity in the region has contracted between 30 and 70 percent.

Yeah.  This is gonna work out just fine.  Just fine.

Oil tanker

A few small groups of workers remain, hoping to get the jobs they were promised after the expropriations.

What You Will Never Hear On Main Stream Media

The other day a story broke about the Texas man that requested his Latino employees to Anglicize their names.

The tough-talking former Marine immediately laid down some new rules. Among them, he forbade the Hispanic workers at the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel from speaking Spanish in his presence (he thought they’d be talking about him), and ordered some to Anglicize their names.

No more Martin (Mahr-TEEN). It was plain-old Martin. No more Marcos. Now it would be Mark.

Not sure where I fall on this one.  I mean, jeez.  On the other hand, he has a point.  If a customer can’t understand your name, it makes it hard to relate to that customer.  Maybe he should have made it clear that he was going to have the employees change their names when he hired them; I don’t know.  But what I DO know is this clip from CNN is awesome.

Just listen to the females reporter’s voice as she “interviews” this guy.  Her tone is simply dripping with intent and scorn.  Then listen as Rick Sanchez weighs in.  I’ll tell ya this much; the Main Stream Media will NEVER play this for you!

Crossing the Line

Okay, so the Fox News folks are a little defensive because Obama tried to bar them from an interview.  It was nice to see Obama lose that by the way.  But really, at some point the battle between news source and political theory has to stop.  And I think that Fox News may have done that today.

fox stop pelosi care

I just don’t think that Fox should be campaigning to “Stop Obamacare”.

Unbelievable

It had to be sensational journalism, right?  The headline had to be built to create viewers and/or rating or something, right?

Nope.

It’s true.  The White House tried to bar a Fox News reporter from the round robin interview given to the press pool.  Awesome.

Media Bias: Brad and Britt Have It Wrong

This morning on the Brad and Britt show the conversation was concerning the continued attack on Fox News from the White House.  I only was able to catch a small part of the show, but the general gist was that, in fact, Fox News as an organization is slanted to the Right.  I got this impression from the conversation between Brad and Britt regarding the Fox Radio reporters that the show dealt with for the first 3 years of the station’s existence.

Britt commented:

During this time he and Brad often spoke to those reporters and during those conversations, where it was just one on one, the reporters would often come across as genuine and fair, as if they were liberated from the corporate expectations of Fox.

I waited for the comparison to ABC Radio and its reporters.  I would expect that if Fox had certain expectations than ABC must also.  And if the Fox reporters felt liberated in one on one conversations with peers, it would hold that ABC reporters would feel the same way.  I was rewarded with no such point.  So I was left with the feeling that:

  1. Yes.  Fox News does expect a Conservative slant.
  2. Yes.  That expectation is wrong.

So I started to wonder.  Many folks say that America is a “Center Right” nation.  So maybe Fox is just right on the money when they report as a “Center Right” network.  Which in turn got me to thinking, how far “right” is Fox?

So I checked.  And this is what I found:  A report titled:  A Report on Media Bias

It turns out that two researchers conducted a study.  And a rather clever study at that.  The researchers

count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks and other policy groups.  We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate.  By comparing the citation patterns we can construct an ADA score for each media outlet.

Then, by ranking these ADA scores, the report was able to rank not only how liberal or conservative a news outlet is, but also how far from “Center” it is.

The results?  Surprising only in the fact that SO many sources are liberal, by how far and even how traditional conservative sources are really liberal:

Media source and ADA Score

Media source and ADA Score

Sources are listed in the order of the distance they are from center.  The lower the number, the more conservative; the higher the more liberal.  Average is 50.06.   So, where does Fox news sit?  5th.  They are the fifth closest to center with a 39.7 ranking.  Every other source from 6th through 20 is further from center than Fox and all of them save 1 has a liberal bias.

The report is informative in 2 other aspects:

  1. Aaron Brown doesn’t host on CNN any longer.  That honor goes to the decidedly more liberal Anderson Cooper.
  2. MSNBC isn’t even on the list.  Yowza.

So I ask you gentle reader; who is really in the tank for who?