Are you still innocent enough to believe we have a free press? If so you should find this article fascinating. It was sent by a
long standing, dear friend, fellow memo reader and my most valued IT guru who always helps me with my computer glitches. (See 1 below.)
The press is absolutely Pavlovian. When things happen and you can predict, with certainty, how Liberals and Progressives and their press and media slaves will salivate.
Now this article reveals a new dimension of intellectual dishonesty. (See 2 below.)
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I have been on a kick for years about the impact of demographics and what it means for democratic nations. Simply put we are not re-populating at the rate that sustains.
It takes about 2.1 births to re-populate and for a variety of reasons, some discussed in the article below, Western Democracies are failing, making their future predictably gloomy. I believe our hedonistic life style, the high cost of living, raising and education of children are also to blame.
The article has a tongue in cheek message about the extinction of liberals which I do not necessarily share. Nevertheless, the article is well worth reading. (See 3 below.)
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A hawk flaps his wings and bares his talons. I agree. (See 4 below.)
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Finally something public, and even on CBS, about who Mitt Romney is.
This could even be a breakthrough.
Click on the link and get the first glimpse of what may be a change in the thinking of the CBS News team....this is probably the most positive segment that CBS has ever had on an opponent of Obama – and certainly of Romney.
A few of these and positive things may really start to happen in the polls.
Doing business the Mormon way - CBS News Video
<http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7405692n&tag=api>
Doing business the Mormon way - CBS News Video
<http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7405692n&tag=api>
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Why Government's reach must be shortened and its impact checked before it is allowed to become the uncontrollable enemy.. (See 5 below.)
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A little more political humor: "
Ladies Golf Joke
A woman was playing golf when she took a big swing and fell.
The party waiting behind her was a group from the White House that included Obama.
Obama quickly stepped forward and helped her to her feet.
She thanked him and started to leave, when he said, "I'm President Obama and I hope you'll vote for me this November."
She laughed and quickly said, "I fell on my ass, not my head!"
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Dick
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1-Proof: Establishment Media Controlled
By Joseph Farah
There was a rather low-key confession made in the New York Times last week that deserves to be blared throughout this country so that every American understands what they are reading in the establishment’s ultra-controlled, government-managed “press” – and I use that last word loosely indeed.
The admission came in the form of a story by Jeremy Peters on the politics page of the Times July 16. I’ve been waiting for others to point it out, discuss it, debate it, express shock and exasperation over it. But I’ve waited for naught.
What this shocking story reveals is that even I – one of the kingpins of the new media and a refugee from the state-controlled spin machine – underestimated the utter and total corruption of the euphemistically called “mainstream press.”
It shows that most – not some – members of the print media establishment with access to the White House submit their copy to government officials for review, “correction” and approval before it reaches the American people!
Here are some key excerpts from the piece, if you think I’m exaggerating:
- “The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative.”
- “They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.”
- “Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review. The verdict from the campaign – an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script – is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.”
- “Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations.”
- “Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all mid-level aides in Chicago and at the White House – almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail.”
- “Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them.”
- “From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position. Those officials who dare to speak out of school, but fearful of making the slightest off-message remark, shroud even the most innocuous and anodyne quotations in anonymity by insisting they be referred to as a ‘top Democrat’ or a ‘Republican strategist.’”
- “Those [reporters] who did speak on the record said the restrictions seem only to be growing. ‘It’s not something I’m particularly proud of because there’s a part of me that says, Don’t do it, don’t agree to their terms,’ said Major Garrett, a correspondent for The National Journal.”
- “It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms.”
I could go on and on. I urge you to read the entire story. This may be the most important story broken by the New York Times in years.
What it means is this: When Americans read these reports – whether in newspapers, wire services or on the Internet – they are not really reading news stories at all. They are reading approved, pre-packaged press releases from the government and politicians. But, even worse, they are not labeled as such. They are labeled as actual news.
That’s how low the national press establishment has descended. And, when you read the story in its full context, you will understand that the concerns expressed about this practice by those submitting themselves to it are not ethical concerns. They are not concerns for the truth. They are concerns about their own convenience and for the loss of “color” in their stories.
Let me state what I hope is obvious to all reading this column: This sort of willing capitulation to government censorship was not the norm five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago or 30 years ago. This is a new phenomenon – chilling and alarming to an old-timer like me who would never agree to submit his copy for approval to politicians.
These so-called journalists are selling their ethical and moral souls for access to politicians. And this practice raises expectations by politicians that they can routinely manipulate the press to their advantage. That makes the job of real journalists – independent reporters faithful to their craft – even more difficult, because they will be shut out from access.
It reminds me of the fact that, just last week, WND was denied credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention. Why do you suppose what has become one of the largest and most influential news agencies in the country would be denied access to the convention floor? Simply because the Democrats know we won’t play by their rules of control like the members of the establishment press club.
All I can say about these people I once considered “colleagues” is that I am so ashamed of them. I am mortified. They are humiliating themselves and a vital institution for any free society.
It seems the biggest threat to the American tradition of a free and independent press is not government coercion. It’s the willing submission of the press to being handled and managed by government and politicians.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)News versus propaganda
By Thomas Sowell
Since so many in the media cannot resist turning every tragedy into a political talking point, it was perhaps inevitable that (1) someone would try to link the shooting rampage at the Batman movie in Colorado to the Tea Party, and that (2) some would try to make it a reason to impose more gun-control laws.
Too many people in the media cannot seem to tell the difference between reporting the news and creating propaganda.
Too many people in the media cannot seem to tell the difference between reporting the news and creating propaganda.
NBC News apparently could not resist doctoring the transcript of the conversation between George Zimmerman and the police after the Trayvon Martin shooting. Now ABC News took the fact that the man arrested for the shooting in Colorado was named James Holmes to broadcast to the world the fact that there is a James Holmes who is a member of the Tea Party in Colorado.
The fact has since come out that these are two different men, one in his 20s and the other in his 50s. But corrections never catch up with irresponsible news broadcasts. The James Holmes who belongs to the Tea Party has been deluged with phone calls. I hope he sues ABC News for every dime they have.
This is not the first time that the mainstream media have tried to create a link between conservatives and violence. Years ago, the Oklahoma City bombing was blamed on Rush Limbaugh, despite the absence of any evidence that the bomber was inspired by Rush Limbaugh.
Similar things have happened repeatedly, going all the way back to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which was blamed on a hostile right-wing atmosphere in Dallas, even though the assassin had a long history of being on the far left fringe.
But, where the shoe is on the other foot -- as when the Unabomber had a much marked-up copy of an environmentalist book by Al Gore -- the media heard no evil, saw no evil and spoke no evil. If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
As for gun-control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking -- or lack of thinking. New York's Mayor Bloomberg and CNN's Piers Morgan were on the air within hours of the shooting, pushing the case for gun-control laws.
You might never know, from what they and other gun-control advocates have said, that there is a mountain of evidence that gun-control laws not only fail to control guns but are often counterproductive. However, for those other people who still think facts matter, it is worth presenting some of those facts.
Do countries with strong gun-control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.
Britain is a country with stronger gun-control laws than the United States, and lower murder rates. But Mexico, Russia and Brazil are also countries with stronger gun-control laws than the United States -- and their murder rates are much higher than ours. Israel and Switzerland have even higher rates of gun ownership than the United States, and much lower murder rates than ours.
Even the British example does not stand up very well under scrutiny. The murder rate in New York has been several times that in London for more than two centuries -- and, for most of that time, neither place had strong gun-control laws. New York had strong gun-control laws years before London did, but New York still had several times the murder rate of London.
It was in the later decades of the 20th century that the British government clamped down with severe gun-control laws, disarming virtually the entire law-abiding citizenry. Gun crimes, including murder, rose as the public was disarmed.
Meanwhile, murder rates in the United States declined during the same years when murder rates in Britain were rising, which were also years when Americans were buying millions more guns per year.
The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
Any discussion of facts is futile when directed at such people. All anyone can do is warn others about the propaganda.
The fact has since come out that these are two different men, one in his 20s and the other in his 50s. But corrections never catch up with irresponsible news broadcasts. The James Holmes who belongs to the Tea Party has been deluged with phone calls. I hope he sues ABC News for every dime they have.
This is not the first time that the mainstream media have tried to create a link between conservatives and violence. Years ago, the Oklahoma City bombing was blamed on Rush Limbaugh, despite the absence of any evidence that the bomber was inspired by Rush Limbaugh.
Similar things have happened repeatedly, going all the way back to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which was blamed on a hostile right-wing atmosphere in Dallas, even though the assassin had a long history of being on the far left fringe.
But, where the shoe is on the other foot -- as when the Unabomber had a much marked-up copy of an environmentalist book by Al Gore -- the media heard no evil, saw no evil and spoke no evil. If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
As for gun-control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking -- or lack of thinking. New York's Mayor Bloomberg and CNN's Piers Morgan were on the air within hours of the shooting, pushing the case for gun-control laws.
You might never know, from what they and other gun-control advocates have said, that there is a mountain of evidence that gun-control laws not only fail to control guns but are often counterproductive. However, for those other people who still think facts matter, it is worth presenting some of those facts.
Do countries with strong gun-control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.
Britain is a country with stronger gun-control laws than the United States, and lower murder rates. But Mexico, Russia and Brazil are also countries with stronger gun-control laws than the United States -- and their murder rates are much higher than ours. Israel and Switzerland have even higher rates of gun ownership than the United States, and much lower murder rates than ours.
Even the British example does not stand up very well under scrutiny. The murder rate in New York has been several times that in London for more than two centuries -- and, for most of that time, neither place had strong gun-control laws. New York had strong gun-control laws years before London did, but New York still had several times the murder rate of London.
It was in the later decades of the 20th century that the British government clamped down with severe gun-control laws, disarming virtually the entire law-abiding citizenry. Gun crimes, including murder, rose as the public was disarmed.
Meanwhile, murder rates in the United States declined during the same years when murder rates in Britain were rising, which were also years when Americans were buying millions more guns per year.
The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
Any discussion of facts is futile when directed at such people. All anyone can do is warn others about the propaganda.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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3)
3)
Why Liberals Will Become Extinct
By Michael Minkoff
What do the destruction of the traditional family, abortion-on-demand, homosexual rights, and the sexual revolution have in common? Aside from being pet projects of the liberal agenda, they are also driving the biggest (and least publicized) crisis of Western civilization: below replacement fertility rates. A fairly recent documentary film, Demographic Winter, outlines the causes and civilization-destroying effects of the precipitous downturn in fertility among Western nations.
Though liberals like to talk about the “over-population” problem in the world, it turns out that the recent global population boom has coincided with a severe reduction in global fertility. This means that the global population is larger because people are living longer, not because new humans are being born in record numbers. In fact, most industrialized countries (including almost all of Europe, the United States, Russia, China, and Japan) have fertility rates below replacement level (2.1 children per woman).
Our populations are aging, and the economic and social effects of this barrenness are starting to take their toll. Without population growth in the most crucial demographic—young workers and dependent children—economies grind to a hault as the liabilities of retirees exceed the productive capacity of the dwindling workforce and the market for new goods decreases. And that is exactly what has happened. It has gotten so bad in Russia and Sweden, that civil governments in those countries are paying families to have children. And these policies themselves are failing.
One of the most startling features of the film is the fact that its interviewees all point to one factor that could turn the global crisis around: a return to traditional values and traditional families. The interviewees (mostly sociologists and government officials from various countries) do not approach the problem from a religious perspective. Most of them seem almost embarrassed that their beloved science has driven them to conclusions that are far from politically correct. One of the sociologists, Phil Longman, a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New American Foundation, says explicitly:
If it helps, just so you know where I’m coming from—I’m not churched. I work for a progressive secular thinktank. Right. And you can say this in your documentary. . . . This is not a faith-based analysis. This is an analysis that may eventually bring me to faith, but it’s not driven by faith. It just turns out… this is where the facts take you.
After all is said and done, liberals can’t win. Secular humanists kill their children or don’t have any. Broken families ruin their children. Homosexuals can’t have children. According to the laws of natural selection, liberalism cannot survive. It is not fit to survive. In fact, believing in the liberal agenda is a veritable survival disadvantage.
Liberals seem like they are winning much of the time. But even when they win, they lose. The accomplishment of their agenda is the very tool of their extinction. As Longman says elsewhere:
If people are not having enough children as a whole to replace the population, does that imply eventual human extinction? I think the answer actually is no. Because there are still children being born. It’s just that they’re disproportionately being born to people of faith.
That is why liberals would love for you to fill their barracks (also known as public schools) with your children. Don’t do it. Have as many children as you can train up well, and you will be doing more for the cause of truth and justice than you can possibly imagine. In the end, this battle is not one of words, ideas, guns, or power. It is one of children. Blessed are those parents whose quiver is full of them.
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4)'The things done in every Marxist insurgency are being done in America today'
By Lt. Gen. (ret.) Jerry Boykin
Earlier this year, a former senior Pentagon official who has battled Marxism around the globe released a video warning that Barack Obama is following in the footsteps of Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin and others who have led communist revolutions in their nations.
Retired Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, a decorated former Delta Force commander, U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and Purple Heart recipient, explained in the video a six-step plan used by revolutionaries to bring about Marxism elsewhere and drew parallels to Obama’s actions in the U.S.
Boykin’s warning resounds eerily today in particular, as the nation is reeling from the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a massive federal overhaul of health care and on the anniversary of Obama’s pledge to establish a “national civilian security force” – two events Boykin warned were markers of a “Marxist insurgency” in other nations.
“We hear a lot about Marxism and socialism, and there are those, particularly in the media, who would say that we should ‘tone down our rhetoric’ about socialism because ‘we’re not moving to socialism,’” Boykin states in the video. “Well, The reality is … I’ve studied Marxist insurgency. It was part of my training. And the things I know that have been done in every Marxist insurgency are being done in America today.”Boykin laid out a step-by-step plan he says is the model of how Fidel Castro instituted Marxism in Cuba, Mao Zedong in China, Stalin in Russia and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela:Nationalize major sectors of the economyRedistribute wealthDiscredit oppositionCensors opposing viewpointsControl gun ownershipDevelop a constabulary force to control civilian populationBoykin then illustrates how each of these steps have begun to materialize in the U.S.:
From a form of “nationalization” through government bailouts, to “hate crime” legislation aimed at silencing the pulpits, to the federal government labeling tea partiers and veterans returning from overseas as potential domestic terrorists, to efforts underway to get the U.S. on board with a United Nations small arms treaty, which would regulate private gun ownership.
Boykin takes particular aim at Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which he says federal administrators have already admitted is a wealth-redistribution plan (step No. 2) and he says includes within its 1,000 pages plans for national security forces at the president’s disposal, akin to national police forces socialist tyrants like Adolf Hitler used to complete their revolutions.
Specifically, Boykin alluded to a speech Obama made four years ago today, in Colorado Springs, Colo., on July 2, 2008, in which he pledged to establish a “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded [as the U.S. military].”
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5)
FEULNER: Centennial of a free mind fighting for free markets
Milton Friedman pioneered the path to prosperity
Even if you’ve never heard of Milton Friedman, you’ve likely heard some of the famed economist’s pithy sayings.
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert , in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” “Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink, and make the combination worthless.” And a classic he popularized: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
Friedman, who would have been 100 years old on July 31, was for free markets before free markets were cool.
At a time when it was fashionable to assert that collectivism was the wave of the future, he championed the moral and practical superiority of free markets. At a time when “economic” freedom was ranked below “political” freedom, he showed that they are inseparable. And when others looked to government to accomplish their social objectives, he reshaped American politics through his advocacy of monetary restraint, deregulation, the volunteer army, school choice and the flat tax.
Friedman’s defining attitude was an infectious confidence. A student skit from his alma mater, the University of Chicago , in the 1950s included the line: “Mr. Friedman, is it correct that you have discovered Truth, and that you are now simply verifying it empirically?”
Once, when hiring an administrative assistant who lacked an economics background, Friedman reassured her: “You don’t have to worry about not knowing anything about economics. There are many people who studied economics for years and don’t know anything about economics. Stick with me, and you’ll learn the correct way.”
Friedman’s parents emigrated from a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late 19th century. As a child, he showed a talent for mathematics, graduating from high school before his 16th birthday and dreaming of becoming an actuary for an insurance company. But at Rutgers College , Friedman fell in love with economics. Graduating in 1932, at the darkest moment of the Great Depression, he was offered a scholarship to the University of Chicago .
His work on monetary policy soon became legendary and led to the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society, among other accomplishments. “People at MIT and Harvard didn’t know what they were going to work on until Miltonmade a speech,” said a fellow University of Chicago Nobel laureate, the now-deceased George Stigler. His influence transformed an academic department into a movement, the “ Chicago School ,” of which Friedman was the spiritual leader.
Friedman remained a maverick, unafraid to criticize slipshod economic thinking, whatever its source. When President Nixon imposed wage and price controls in 1971, Friedman wrote in the New York Times: “The controls are deeply and inherently immoral. By substituting the rule of men for the rule of law and for voluntary cooperation in the marketplace, the controls threaten the very foundations of a free society.”
He thoroughly discredited the idea, common since the Great Depression, that capitalism is inherently flawed and requires the “fine-tuning” of government to avoid excess and disaster. This has been the central conceit of the Keynesian state, administered by educated sophists, adjusting tax-and-spend policies to tame the business cycle.Friedman attacked these beliefs at their root. He argued that the Great Depression was not caused by the “defects” of capitalism, but by government incompetence.
Economic and social freedom, Friedman reminded us, is not a state of nature. It’s also not a state of grace. It creates the space where souls can make their own choices, informed by bishops and rabbis, poets and philosophers. “The central and supreme object of liberty,” said Lord Acton, “is the reign of conscience.” In the end, they are inseparable.
Friedman’s solutions may have been an antidote to 20th-century problems, but they’re just as relevant — and needed — today as when he first wrote about them. On this centennial of his birth, let us toast his irreplaceable contributions to the cause of freedom by rededicating ourselves to his ideals.
Ed Feulner is president of the Heritage Foundation (heritage.org).
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