In today’s Chi Trib column, “Obama and the war,” Dennis Byrne gives us a memorable phrase:
There’s no accommodation [by Obama] to changed circumstances [war “winding down, if not nearing its end”], only his iron-willed pandering to anti-war voters.
A principled pandering, you might say.
Here’s to “one of the most distorted, duplicitous and cynical public health panics of the last 30 years”:
After 25 years of official scaremongering about western societies being ravaged by the disease – with salacious, tombstone-illustrated [UK] government propaganda warning people to wear a condom or “die of ignorance” – the head of the World Health Organisation’s HIV/Aids department says there is no need for heterosexuals to fret.
It’s “a high-level admission that there is no threat of a global Aids pandemic among heterosexuals.”
Instead of being treated as a sexually transmitted disease that affected certain high-risk communities, and which should be vociferously tackled by the medical authorities, the “war against Aids” was turned into moral crusade.
Without foundation, and that was known as early as 1987, when there was
“no good evidence that Aids is likely to spread rapidly in the West among heterosexuals.” In Britain, most of the small-scale spread of “heterosexual Aids” has been a result of infected individuals arriving from Africa. In the UK in the whole of the 1980s – the decade of the Great Aids Panic – there were 20 cases of HIV acquired through heterosexual contact with an individual infected in Europe.
For that matter, on this blogger’s book shelf is a 1990 book, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, by Michael Fumento, which argued, a Washington Monthly reviewer said, that:
the vast majority of Americans are more likely to meet Shirley MacLaine in a different life than to contract the deadly HIV-virus, and that the only reason the news hasn’t gotten out is that a conspiracy of self-interested scientists, opportunitistic politicians, sensationalist journalists, conservative moralizers, and fearful homosexuals have manufactured the scare.
They apparently sought to incite the madness of crowds, as current a problem as when witches were hunted a long time ago. Man-made, preventable global warming, anyone?
Here’s a slam from within the profession against a biased press:
[The] press corps has been ideologized into a part of the liberal establishment. More and more, the members of the Washington press share in total the worldview taken by the dominant liberals who control the Democratic Party. More and more they share axioms that profoundly influence their coverage of day-to-day events in the worlds of politics and government.
That was not yesterday but in 1972 from columnist Robert Novak at a Kenyon College conference on “The Mass Media and Modern Democracy,” from his The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington.
He zeros in on the journos of the day:
[A] rigid conformity has emerged among the Washington press corps, which reflects in part conformity in the colleges producing the new journalists. But beyond this, the young journalist who violates these axioms can scarcely expect a rapid rise up the ladder of advancement. . . . .
The result is a gap of widening proportions between the national journalist and the mass of Americans, paralleling a gap between liberal politicians and the masses, specifically the white workingman. [Italics added]
36 years ago, and still a problem. Notice “the colleges producing the new journalists.” Tenured radicals, twisted minds.
Daley administration wants to fire this guy?
He’s the water dept. foreman who wore his GPS-equipped cell phone on the golf course when he was supposed to be working.
Winston Cole, a $106,115-a-year foreman of sewer bricklayers, got an earlier warning for allegedly driving to Indiana on city time to buy cheaper gas for his personal car and avoid paying Chicago gas taxes, according to co-workers.
What did he do wrong? He wasn’t door-banging for votes, maybe.
More to the point, who is his sponsor? Who sent him?
We know who sent Homero Tristan, just named as the city’s $147,156-a-year Human Resources commissioner, replacing a woman who left the job after a “scathing” report by the federal hiring monitor.
That would be Alderman Danny Solis, 25th Ward, whose political action committee Tristan heads, with help of his wife Isolde — kidding.
Solis’s sister, an old Hillary C. hand, recently headed her campaign but got pushed out last month and may be switching to the Big O.
With his own “cocky ignorance and the media behind” him, whom need Cocky Locky fear?
He has written the Sec. of Defense, Thomas Sowell writes, “in a tone as if he is already President, addressing one of his subordinates,” calling for a “swift response,” about battlefield suicides and back-home homicides by U.S. troops.
He reacts with political acuteness to “the widely publicized statistic that suicide rates among American troops have gone up,” ignoring what has “not been widely publicized . . . that this higher suicide rate is still not as high as the suicide rate among demographically comparable civilians.”
He also buys the easily discredited NY Times story about homicides by veterans although “the homicide rate among returning veterans [has been shown to be ] a fraction of the homicide rate among demographically comparable civilians.”
So as candidate he badgers the guy running two wars, telling him to hop to it with whys and wherefores and what’s he gonna do about it?
Instapundit lifts this from Mickey Kaus:
“Barack Obama’s choice of Jim Johnson to vet his VP prospects is already embarrassing his campaign . . . Johnson was an atrocious, tin-eared choice on many other grounds. He’s symbol of old Democratic elites–the Mondale Restoration!–and of Beltway business as usual. He’s gotten obscenely rich off of public service while pursuing a failed liberal antipoverty theory (community develpment) and taking credit for spreading around other peoples money. . . .
Why would Obama, in his first big personnel decision, choose a paleoliberal greedhead with a track record of failure? You tell me. He’s described Johnson as “a friend.” It looks as if he was at best highly susceptible to amicable overtures from someone he should have had some critical perspective on.”
In other words, the Big O. has more to learn than his hopesters dreamed or they have more to learn about cynicism from him than they dreamed.
Forget Eric Holder for now . . .
(Hopester, sighing: Well at least there’s still Caroline to help pick a veep.)
Something to chew on while reading and viewing and listening about the coming campaign:
Just 17% of voters nationwide believe that most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of election campaigns. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that four times as many—68%–believe most reporters try to help the candidate that they want to win.
To some that’s no surprise. Neither is this:
Voters have little doubt as to who is benefitting from the media coverage this year—Barack Obama. Fifty-four percent (54%) say Obama has gotten the best coverage so far. Twenty-two percent (22%) say McCain has received the most favorable coverage while 14% say that Hillary got the best treatment.
At the other extreme, 43% say Clinton received the worst treatment from the media. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say the media was roughest on McCain and only 15% thought the media coverage was most unfair to Obama.
And naturally, the left is least critical, the right most critical:
Ideologically, political liberals give the least pessimistic assessment of reporters, but even 50% of those on the political left see bias. Thirty-three percent (33%) of liberals believe most reporters try to be objective. Moderates, by a 65% to 17% margin, see reporters as advocates, not scribes. Among political conservatives, only 7% see reporters as objective while 83% believe they are biased.
Of course, these media are less influential these days, as people go to Internet, radio talk, and other sources, which have proliferated — to a chorus of tut-tuts from mainstreamers.
It’s how Newsweek’s Evan Thomas put it in July, 2004, when he said the media “want Kerry to win.” Caveat lector.
Tom Roeser tears into “the lay pragmatists” running the church in Chicago as in l’affaire Pfleger, sparing for the sake of Catholic tradition the hapless parsing cardinal who is looking for something or someone else to rid him of or somehow deal with this turbulent/meddlesome priest. But he digs deep into his faith in Christianity, 2,000 years old and counting:
Once more the archdiocese has kicked the can down the road. Once again its lay leadership has shown it doesn’t have the starch to run a corner grocery much less the Chicago outreach of a Church founded by Christ. But then that it has survived for 2,000-plus years with such earthen vessels indicates it shall endure to the end of time.
Amen, Brother.
On the other hand, harassment with a thousand ecclesiastical cuts has its merits, as I suggested weeks ago. If I were the cardinal, after deciding lay pragmatists don’t know everything, I would make and publicize some conditions of St. Sabina employment, beginning with a prohibition of pulpiteering by non-Catholics.
Hell, he’d never do that, would he? Which brings us back to Roeser and his philippics, which are as painful to read as they are accurate.
Ping-pong eyes? Roeser:
[K]eeping Fr. Pfleger at St. Sabina’s far too long was sign of a weakness, a caving in to a rambunctious mob, many members of which are not Catholic at all but have flocked there for a good show on Sunday morning to catch the local rabble-rouser flail around putting on his ping-pong balls for eyes routine as he shouts.
Later, from Reader D:
Headline: ‘Pattern of behavior’ costs Benson his job:Embattled running back Cedric Benson was waived by the Bears Monday, just two days after he was arrested for the second time in five weeks. “Cedric displayed a pattern of behavior we will not tolerate,” said general manager Jerry Angelo. “Everyone in this organization is held accountable for their actions. Those who fail to understand the importance of ‘team’ will not play for the Chicago Bears.”
Sounds simple enough, Cardinal George.
Here’s a typical Big O. supporter, as I judge from flipping through names at the very sophisticated Obama site. This one goes by “Swimmer.” He [there’s a photo, but I’m not sure] has 3,535 “friends,” is a member of the OPRFHS (Oak Park & River Forest High School) Alumni Group, has raised $537 from 10 givers, and has a #8 ranking — among thousands, I’d guess, who are registered on the site:
Location: Rock Island, IL
Why I support Barack Obama: Barack Obama is the ONLY candidate who can unite the country and bring us the international respect that we have lost in the Bush years. Barack will bring hope to our children and the future of America. I have been involved with this campaign since Barack announced he was running! I am SO going to be at the inaugural.
Birth Date: May 16th
Issues: equality / civil rights; civil liberties / privacy; peace & social justice; foreign policy / security; economic fairness / security; environment / conservation; smart energy policy; public infrastructure / transportation; good government / ethics; electoral reform; affordable health care; education
Registered to Vote: YesAttack problems, not people!
Note the “can unite the country” and “international respect” references, which are almost universal among supporters who have signed on to the site. And the list of issues, which is rather long.
And react as you wish to the enthusiasm and slogans.
Did the Big O. at first approve this message, as run on the Obama ‘08 website from 9:13 Saturday to at least 1:45 Sunday afternoon but was later removed?
All Jewish lobbies and organizations are interconnected and there are hundreds upon hundreds of them. The leaders of the numerous Jewish Lobby Groups go to the same synagogues, country clubs, and share the same Jewish investment bankers. And this inter-connectedness extends to the Jews who run the Federal Reserve Bank, US Homeland Security, and the US State Department.
In other words, “Jews stick together.” Americans must know how extremely powerful the Jewish Lobby is and how it operates to undermine America’s interests both at home and abroad. At home – by corrupting America’s political system, and abroad – by dictating American Foreign Policy against America’s best interests.
It’s from “How the Jewish Lobby Works,” on the site’s Socialists for Obama blog, which
is for those interested in learning how can we change this country from the current capitalist unfair system, into a real socialist, democratic system for all. This capitalist system of Bush and his cronies only benefit the upper classes. USA needs a 21st Century Socialist, Democratic and Participative system for the workers and people of this country, without fascism, without wars, but with peace, equality, socialism and love.
This peace, equality, [S-word], and love is certainly change we can believe in.
Blithe Spirit 