We Live Under a Media Coup d’État
Coup d’états come in a variety of forms.
Some are violent with arrogant colonels pointing forty-fives at the temples of their predecessors and blowing their brains out; others are stealthy with the citizens awakening on an ordinary morning to find their whole world has changed yet not a drop of blood has been shed.
The latter is what has happened in America.
We are the victims of a media coup d’état and are currently living under it.
You will see that clearly in evidence on Wednesday night when the debates commence, each one moderated by a member of the liberal media nomenklatura. It is under the guidance of this liberalism, under their own version of sharia, if you will, that the debates will be conducted and Mitt Romney judged.
We have long lived under this assumed reign of liberalism – in our media, in our schools, and through our entertainment. It is as pervasive as the air we breathe and as unquestioned. Fox News, even the Wall Street Journal, important as they are, exist under this reign and more often respond to it than initiate their own programs and investigations.
Barack Obama is a product of this coup d’état. In a very real sense, he helps them cement it, but he has, at most, four more years to reign. The real coup plotters, the New Media Class (to cannibalize Milovan Djilas), can go on in perpetuity. And that has always been their intention.
It is the media that rules us then, not politicians. Politicians come and go; journalists, pundits, commentators – in print, on television, and now on the Internet – last forever, or nearly, as they pass the baton to the next generation without a semblance of an ideological blip, seamless as a gold medal track team.
They are the ones who tell our story to us. They are our mirrors and they are indeed a new class, as resistant to change as any entrenched group of the rich and powerful. (Yes, many of them are not so rich and powerful nowadays, but the ones that count, the ones that truly rule, are. And the others stand patiently by, waiting for their turn.)
This class, more than any, determined that Barack Obama should be president and they consequently will work more assiduously than any to assure his reelection, because a failure in that would be a serious, perhaps fatal, attack on their hegemony.
The coup would be in danger of a counter-coup. That can’t be allowed to happen. No facts, no events (Benghazi, Fast & Furious, endless unemployment, a healthcare fiasco) will get in the away or be allowed to be given serious credence.
But when did this coup start and how did it get so successful?
I have been saying all along that there is treason afoot, you know, the real thing as in Benedict Arnold.
Used to be that I was ridiculed as one of those racist, right wing kooks.
I don’t get too many of those reactions anymore.
People better start waking up because if they don’t Jefferson’s tree is going to require “watering”, if you know what I mean.
Don’t think it can’t happen here? Not only can it happen, it has happened. And the next time it happens will make the Civil War look like a weekend on the mean streets of Chicago.
Here here! An important question as well. We have always been led to believe that Jewish Americans are entrenched in and control the media and Hollywood in this country. So where are they? Why are they not shouting from the rooftops against the islam-appeaser-in-chief? Surely they realize that mister Obama will allow Israel to die.
Leftists are leftists first, and then Jews, Americans, or whatever else second, a distant second.
Because Jews are left leaners, as usual they are overrepresented. But of course this is not fundamentally a Jewish movement.
As for why there are fewer protests from the Jewish minority, it would seem that a lot of American Jews have bought into liberalism at the expense of their religious heritage.
Good grief! PJMedia readers are blaming the Jews for controlling the media? How retardataire. Check your inner antisemite please. Here are some of my blogs on antisemitism, overt and embedded alike: http://clarespark.com/2012/09/29/index-to-blogs-on-antisemitism/. Jews who support typical populist and progressive policies are those who get published. As for Roger’s blog, I urge him and everyone reading it to search for and find your inner warrior, you know, the one who never gives up, especially in the face of Democratic propaganda designed to demoralize.
I was not blaming Jews, perhaps it would have been clearer if I had said “All leftists are leftists first…”, the point being that those leftists of Hollywood who also happen to be Jewish will place their leftist beliefs ahead of anything else as essentially all leftists do.
No Fred, it would have been better if you had not mentioned Jews at all to begin with.
To Bozo the Clone: I am Jewish myself and am not afraid to point out the shortcomings of Jews. Support of leftist politicians and causes that, in the end could mean their demise; avid supporters of gun control even after such things as the Warsaw Ghetto. Many are either stupid or naive.
The “Why did Jews vote for Obama” canard overlooks the mental illness known as Liberalism. Like schizophena or drug addiction, Liberalism afflicts people of all religions, but athiests seem top be more susceptible.
Then again, your statement disproves the “Jews control the media” card as well.
Most Hollywood and Media Jews do not think that Israel and Jewish peoplehood are important to defend.
The new series “Revolution” has become a TV hit. I wonder why?
Can’t be because it’s any good.
Seriously — an EMP-like event and they skip over the aftermath to get to the “real” story? Which is a bog-standard “quest” story line with all of, what, a half dozen people? Talk about taking a big story and making it a small one!
Maybe someone can get the rights to “Lucifer’s Hammer” and make a mini-series out of it.
(Oh, and the hints that it’s a man-made event. Wanna bet it was the result of Evil Corporation doing something the Brave Hero wanted to stop?)
Well said. Lucifer’s Hammer was some good post-aftermath fiction. Revolution is rather a joke. From it’s well manacured lawns more than a decade after the collapse, to all the key players having well groomed, shampooed, and bleached clothing. All small touches that series like Walking Dead and Hell on Wheels always seem to get, but major networks have no clue about.
And the writing of this is almost as bad as the acting. Almost.
Lucifer’s Hammer‘s prospects were sabotaged when a network bought a script that was a lame, watered-down ripoff of the book. Purnelle and Niven sued, to no avail.
Lucifer’s Hammer. The greatest post apocalyptic “comet hits the earth” novel of all time. Read the paperback 3 times.
I’ve watched the first two episodes, but will stop because the show isn’t very good. Just another “Lost” with a laughable sci-fi wrinkle.
But one thing stood out: the “Monroe Militia” makes the ownership of firearms by anyone other than the Militia punishable by death.
Sent a chill down my spine, and I immediately thought that this would be Obama’s desiderata.
I loved the woman who whipped out an asthma inhaler, hey did you check the expiration date on that?
No electricity, so what? We had a growing and successful nation without it, other than telegraph, it was not vital to our growth in the 19th century.
So where’s the steam power? All those steel rails crisscrossing the country, after fifteen years where are the steam and diesel(they would still work) engines? OK, harnessing humans to a drag line and whipping them up can be fun but at some point you need to get serious.
Great article, says everything I think. The takeover of the West by socialism has been insiduous. Hopefully, America will stop and reverse the rot.
BTW As a Brit who now lives as a Canadian, Benedict Arnold is a hero!
Two disagreements with you. First, if we should be so lucky as to hand Obama his walking papers, I don’t think it will damage the MSM at all. They’ll make sure to let us all know how flawed he was and how stupid we are. Second, if he does win, it wouldn’t shock me at all to have the 22nd amendment “repealed” by executive order. Or at least attempted while we watch Congress stand there muttering like they’ve done with all the other laws he has flaunted.
Yes – in the Congress we have Daryl Issa trying to hold Obama to account and…
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With all the bloviating by Issa and his Potemkin Crew – I haven’t seen one arrest or even a Criminal Indictment of anyone. Am I missing something here.
…speaking of Potemkin Crews, Eric Holder & company come to mind as do Kathleen “I didn’t break federal campaign laws..” Sebelius & her assortment of abortion worshipers.
Apparently you’re missing the trivial fact that Congressmen and their staffs have neither arrest nor indictment power — and all those who do work for Obama and Holder.
You cannot ammend the Constitution by executive order, thank you founding fathers. There are 27 ammendments to the Constitution with the first 10 being known as The Bill of Rights. The process to ammend is too long to paraphrase but suffice it to say that it contains the words ‘three-fourths’ many times.
No, but you can suspend certain rights in time of emergency.
Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the civil war.
Native born American citizens were put in camps simply for being ethnic Japanese in World War II.
Countless violations of the Second Amendment exist across the country in the name of “safety.”
Since this administration is known to never let a good crisis go to waste, and is perfectly capable of creating one if a convenient one does not already exist, it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility that a situation could occur to suspend the elections. All it would take is a media on your side and a complacent public.
And so what? When the government doesn’t care what’s in the Constitution, who cares about amendments?
“You cannot ammend the Constitution by executive order, thank you founding fathers.”
Nor can the president waive laws he doesn’t like, nor can you imprison people for blasphemy.
Dear Leader has done both in his first term.
If we were following the constitution you would be correct. But once the activist leftist judges took over the constitution became whatever the supreme court decided it would be. Of course now obama doesn’t even bother with getting approval from a leftist supreme court, or even congress, he just issues executive orders, more than any previous president combined.
I think you mean “flouted.”
Oooooorrrrrrr……They will begin on day one of the Romney administration telling of all the scandals and they will begin the body count again and they will hammer away at the real unemployment stats to make everyone FEEL as though voting for Romney was the worse decision they ever made.
I had a lot of problems with Bush, but his eight years left me with money in my pockets and I felt pretty good about the world despite 911. Zero leaves me broke and depressed no matter HOW great the media tells me he’s doing.
The notion of a free, unbiased western media is a thing of the past. It is dead and buried. Therefore, all the news that is fit to print must be gleaned by alternative media. The Obama regime has made sure to place the final nail in MSM’s coffin.
Not to be lost in the discussion, western academia is as guilty as its media counterparts, both working to destroy western civilization from within. Without their ‘intellectual’ stamp of approval, the media would be harder pressed to tell their tales.
2012/08/21/the-paradox-pitfalls-of-liberal-democracies-in-a-time-of-immoral-relativism-the-havoc-wrought-by-leftist-academia-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
I agree, behind the media’s liberal screed is a stamp of “legitimacy” from academia. Once modern liberalism became what the “smart” guys believe, it was all downhill from there. After all, everyone wants to be considered smart, whether they really are or not. So if you regurgitate the wisdom of the intelligensia, then that makes you intelligent too, right? Unfortunately, modern liberalism relies heavily on snob appeal and arrogance, which is something the MSM has really tapped into.
Absolutely. I know a great many professionals who are experts in a narrow field of law, finance, computer science, marketing, etc. Most have little interest in studying anything else. To a man and woman they all ape the conventional wisdom of the media on social and political issues.
My father used to say that an “expert” was simply an SOB from out of town. We are fed expert opinions all day long without any way of assessing their credentials or weighing their common sense or integrity.
I agree that there is rampant corruption in the news media. However, the hold of the corrupt media on America is weakening. We have Fox News, talk radio, and the Internet to get the real story of what is happening. Right now, Fox News is strongly pushing the story of Obama’s deception and coverup of the attack on our embassy in Libya. Other media have picked up this story and are going with it.
Obama assumed that he could get away with lying about the Libyan attack because the news media loves him. He was wrong.
The beginning of the turning point was Monica-gate. The MSM was determined to sit on the story but Drudge got a hold of it and they realized they could not continue to ignore it. Rather-gate was another turning point where the princes of the media started to realize they could not continue to break their own rules and get away with it.
Fox news (like Regnery Publishing) is making a mint by simply going with the stories the MSM is trying to spike.
These last few weeks have seen the MSM hubris go beyond mere shamelessness to outright desperation in their determination to protect and defend the Great Obama. They know they can no longer make a story like Fast And Furious or the Benghazi attack disappear by ignoring it but that doesn’t stop them from trying. Dunno if Obama has made them any promises but I doubt it. He means to replace them not put them on the payroll.
Like OPEC, the media cartel can go only so far before one or more of their members succumbs to temptation and breaks ranks. Univision is an example. They were supposed to be as fanatically loyal as the rest but they just blew F&F out of the water.
Mexican-Americans may normally be loyal Democrats — but blood is thicker than politics. At its core, Fast and Furious was (and still is, since most of the guns are still out there) the deliberate slaughter of Mexicans with gringo-supplied guns.
Dead Mexicans are not just some unfortunate “collateral damage” in this operation. No, the whole organizing principle of Fast and Furious, from the beginning, was to identify and match guns AFTER they’d been recovered from crime scenes — i.e., AFTER they’d been used to kill people! The Obama Gang’s attitude apparently was: “So what? To make an omelet, you gotta break a few eggs. Who cares if a few Mexicans get killed?”
…and that’s why Univision, a Mexican network, is the only one to cover the story, and the only one to really challenge Obama on it. They take this PERSONALLY.
Shane -
“Obama assumed that he could get away with lying about the Libyan attack because the news media loves him. He was wrong.”
He’s gotten away with it so far . . . hasn’t he?
Was he?
Mr. Simon, I do not know what to say. It cannot be true. I’ll check out your theory of bias, I’ll, I’ll, ‘ll turn to the NY times. They’ll tell me how fit your argument is. They can’t be wrong. On our coins we read “In the Media We Trust”. So, there!!!
Of a more serious nature and as sort of a generalization of your “New Media Class”, you should follow the news where I live, namely in Germany. Often what I see in CNN about America at time x, becomes news in German tv a time x + 30 minutes. If I call up station A to complain about a “biased” sending, I am told that it was station B that formulated the show and my complaints should be directed elsewhere. So, onward to station B and the truth is revealed, i.e., it was station C that originated the news story. By now several hours of calling (and an inflated phone bill) have passed and I give up. The “bias” can show itself, as in America, simply with the terminology. If an Orthodox Jew, for instance, wants to defend circumcision (which hundreds of med. doctors and some jurists want to ban as “mutilation”), immediately he is an “ULTRAorthodox” and, well, being “ultra-” in Germany constitutes automatic disqualification.
However, there is, perhaps, one difference in German news media, i.e., an element of checks and balances. The two semi-state controlled tv stations are open to imput from political parties. This affords a bit of control of bias–so long as the non-bias stays within, well, certain norms. From my youthful days I remember Djilas’s theses (also those of James Burnham) about a new types of managerial classes that dictates rule which includes control of minds by creating the story lines the populace will hear. I would only disagree with you in so far as you seem to place ultimate power in the New Media Class whereas I would, borrowing a term from Eisenhower, warn of the “media/government/education/public institutions” complex. This allows for a more “dialectical” interpretation, i.e., an interplay of multiple players instead of a monocausal control.
And we US taxpayers pay for NPR. I accidentally listened to NPR the other day (someone else had driven my car and &%$#ed around with my radio settings) and almost barfed when I heard them touting their unbiased reporting.
I agree more with KL Smith above. What does the MSM win if Obama is re-elected? What do they lose if Romney wins?
That’s not clear to me.
They’re not honest brokers. I agree. They are biased toward the Democrat Party. I agree. But Obama really hasn’t done a hell of a lot for them, from what I can see. Half the country hates Obama and more than half hates the media. So I can’t see why re-electing Obama is in their interest, except perhaps in a purely partisan sense.
I’m thinking that more than a few suits at the big Liberal media outlets would prefer a Romney win. After all, Romney’s not exactly a traditional conservative. I could be wrong of course. But only a few years ago, Romney’s positions mirrored a lot of their own.
“What does the MSM win if Obama is re-elected? What do they lose if Romney wins?”
A win gives them better access, better power. To some extent, they’re motivated by the same hatreds that motivate the rest of the left — and they’re willing to sacrifice to punish the people they hate. You know — whites, males, Christians, the entirety of civilization…
Then, look at how many of the press cycle into and out of government. And look to their relatives — how many reporters are married to politicians, to life-long bureaucrats, to party apparat.
What does the MSM win if Obama is re-elected? What do they lose if Romney wins?
That’s not clear to me.
Aside from the ideological agreement, don’t overlook the possibility of a GM style bailout of the Press. They’re in bad financial shape. Obama would make a speech about the essential role the press plays in America and why it’s important for them to be bailed out. Romney wouldn’t do that. Obama just might.
Ah…now we’re onto something…a Liberal media bail-out.
Maybe so. But I’m still skeptical. I agree there is a lot of intentional bias. But I’m separating
the polling bias, which was baked into the methodology long ago, and the reporting bias which can
change daily.
I just don’t see exactly what Obama has given his MSM acolytes in return for their support.
Maybe it’s patrnage, in the form of access, jobs & money behind-the-scenes, like Mr. Crawford
pointed out.
But as polarized as the country is, where half the population doesn’t like Obama,
and more than half despises the MSM. The Liberal Dem media suits who support Obama
long ago passed a point of diminishing returns in shilling for him. The money is on the other side.
FOX has a bigger audience than CNN, MSNBC, WAPO and they Grey Lady combined.
Wake up…
Obama announced early that he was going to raise ( and spend on MEDIA ) $1,000,000,000 in this cycle — just for his own re-election.
Duh…
85% of that would be vectored to the MSM.
He’s paying them off straight out in the open.
His figures dwarf Mitt’s.
Many media properties literally live on the election cycle: Iowa broadcasters come immediately to mind. They pull down more $$$ in 45 days once each four years than they do in full, off-year, periods.
Yep.
Maybe you are right, Roger. But I don’t think so. The MSM loses viewers everyday. Who watches the TV news anymore or reads the New York Times? I know many of the opinion makers still do. Many of them comment here. Sometimes it is interesting to hear what the blathering class is up to. But honestly, do you care what Dowd or Krugman has to say? Haven’t they been proven to be idiots? Do you care what any of the newsreaders on TV has to say?
The old media is dead (at least to me); long live the new media (that’s you).
I also. I wouldn’t even know that CNN or MSDNC was on the air if I didn’t read a blog post blasting something they said or didn’t say. The NY Times, WaPo ditto.
The fact that we even now KNOW there is a media coup d’etat may mean the tide is turning. Their near-total domination is fading. One couldn’t realize there was a “day” if there wasn’t a night. One couldn’t percieve there was a Yes if there weren’t a No. The fact that we can now recognize the coup is because there is a counter-coup. That’s progress, of a sort.
In the long term, you’re right. They can’t deal with the “wild west” internet. Which is why they’re chafing at the chains of the First Amendment.
This fake controversy over this silly (but harmless) Mohammad movie is part of a slow and subtle, but definite war on the First Amendment. The media, who wax so sanctimonious about freedom of the press, seem to want limits on what the “non credentialed” can say publicly. The want freedom of the press (institutionally) without freedom of speech (individually).
Beware the heckler’s veto. That’s their next offensive.
the whole video dust up seemed rather convienient to have the entire media and administraion glom onto out of the gate, in fact some intitial reports said the embassy mysteriously put out an apology for the video well in advance of any alledged spontaneous rioting that took place, which has been proven to be cover for a well coordinated attack. Given that the administration came out swinging against the video and the American citizen despite his supposed 1st Adm. right to free speech, and the President still is blaming the video and refuses to call this a terroist attack and has the citizen under lock down, I think the message is clear. And more proof of the erosion of free speech is the media cheering for their own Mona Eltahawy’s subway vandalism of Pamela Gellars right to free speech. Orwell was right, some pigs are more equal than others.
May I remind everyone once again: “Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste”. I suspect certain powers knew and were ginning up just for such an opportunity as this.
I agree wholeheartedly – Dowd’s articles are mostly for mockery now – no one reads the Times except where a link is provided to showcase something ridiculous. The “new media” is thriving and growing, gaining polish and professionalism, and viewers.
And is dependent on an internet connection. Some radio, but information coming into radio stations, by and large comes in via internet.
Internet connections can be severed in the name of national security or an emergency declared by the White House. A recent executive order, and an update to an older executive order, declared it to be so. The definition of emergency wasn’t so clear.
It was reported in just the last few days that the Chinese cyber hacked “attacked” the White House Military Office and did in fact gain access (nuke code are kept there among other things).
How badly would an election have to be botched, and how many “new media” people would have to notice and begin to report it, before a response would be initiated by an area’s populace? How vigorous would the response from an area’s populace have to be, or be anticipated to be, in order to have an emergency declared?
Wasn’t a company in Spain awarded the contract for voting machines? Problems will allow what recourse? They lose our business?
Why are military requests for absentee voting down so very very much?
Wouldn’t election day be the perfect time, for those who don’t love us so much,to disrupt the U.S. with some hackery to sensitive places?
Does anybody have a bad feeling about this election or is it just me? If the way the media and the administration have handled the Libyan embassy and Fast and Furious fiascoes are any indicator, (and they certainly should be to anyone with a pulse), how would a problem with votes in key swing states be handled by Media, the WH and the DOJ? Same as Fast & Furious and the Libyan embassy? That’s reassuring. Would we ever know for sure? Want to rely on Chris Matthews to let you know? Could we effect correction if we did?
“… Wasn’t a company in Spain awarded the contract for voting machines? Problems will allow what recourse? They lose our business? …”
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As a matter of fact, how would anybody even *KNOW* if there was a problem?
We send them data, we get back a result.
What “proves” the result? What demonstrates that all votes were recorded and reported correctly?
Who knows if there might have been a teeny little program tucked away as a subroutine, effectively counting “1, 2, 3 votes for Romney, next Romney vote gets given to Obama; again: 1, 2, 3 votes for Romney and next one goes to Obama instead; 1, 2, 3 ….”
- – - – -
I’d really rather have elections scheduled over a full weekend, with absentee ballots only for provable hardship (age, disability, weekend job, military in service overseas). Yes, that means humans standing in lines to vote. (Don’t think it’s worth your time? Don’t vote.) And I want paper ballots that can be recounted as many times as needed. *AND*, I want the Iraqi purple-finger-indelible-ink thing. **AND** I want valid proof-of-ID; and I’d LIKE there to be some way to keep people on welfare/ food stamps/ etc from voting on bond or taxation matters. (The people who have to fork over the money should do the deciding, not the people who want to “vote themselves largesse from the public treasury”.)
Sigh. As if.
Careful there. Remember the story of the New York socialite who was famously quoted something like “Nixon? How could he have won? I don’t know a single person who voted for him!”
Just because we don’t watch NBC or read the NY Times doesn’t negate their influence.
Well, eventually what happens is what happened in the Soviet Union.
Who really believed PRAVDA? Rather, it was analyzed & attempts were made to decipher the endless BS, and everyone believed rumours & conspiracy theories (many of them true, LOL).
I’m originally from an Arab country, do you know what a joke our newspapers were? People read the back page for sports, went to the movie section, looked at the horoscope, & then sat in the cafe for hours doing the cross-word puzzles. No one bothered to read the ”news” …..
Today, you at least have the internet & an alternate media.
Unless the government begins to subsidize the mainstream media, many will fail as they lose readers or viewers.
We have the same phenomenon in Israel where the media is mostly very Left wing.
Our media has no credibility, just read the comments & you can see how much we despise our media. And, of late, the worse of them are laying-off staff or closing altogether. The major exception: the Right-wing Israel Hayom & to a lessor extent, Arutz 7.
So, hope is not lost.
Dime to a dollar he bails out the big newspapers in a second term.
Some of our media is already subsidized, a total waste of money & politicians are calling for even more ”to save democracy” (which means, in Left-speak, paying parasites that everyone hates).
I’m sure that in a second term, the left will push to ”save diversity in media” or some similar Leftist BS.
Yes, it’s called National Public Radio. And I’m sure they are very grateful for your tax dollars.
The newspapers are being “bailed out” every time government at any level publishes a legal notice in them or advertises a program or job openings. As is pointed out elsewhere, their readership and private advertising has evaporated yet many governments are legally required to publish all legal notices in the newspapers and to advertise all job openings. Many these days also advertise various programs in the papers. To some extent this is just an archaic practice, yet it is also an effective money laundry, especially the program advertising since most of the advertising is for social welfare programs and various subsidies to “low-income” constituencies who aren’t really noted for reading the paper – or anything else.
For those of us still living in places with legitimate governments, we should encourage our elected officials to repeal any laws and regulations requiring public notices to be printed in the newspapers and just have them all put up on the government’s website, likewise all job announcements. And I can see no reason in the World for a government to advertise ANYTHING, so a prohibition against program advertising seems appropriate.
Obama is a media fraud wrapped in a 1,000 lies inside 100 fabrications.
I concur with your assessment. If an expose’ were to ever be done on this walking poster child for Leftist child abuse of a President the press would be utterly undone.
What Ann Dunham, Frank Marshall Davis, and radicals like them have accomplished in OBlahblah is push what truly could have been a good story, and perverted it to further an ideology bent on the undoing of this country.
He was what people wanted him to be in his youth, and his life, and his presidency, but in truth he was a fiction.
I suspect we are closer to seeing the true OBlahblah when he talked about choom.
This coup began in 2008 when most of the media and political elite on both sides worked as hard as they were able to ignore the Constitutional requirement that the President be a natural born citizen. They all reacted violently to any suggestion that the issue should even be examined in any way (as if it was beneath us to follow the law – the Supreme Law) and intentionally ignored the Constitution in order not to be seen as “petty” or “raaaaacist!!” It was clear to anyone with a brain that the class of dual citizens was not included in the class of natural born citizens (as the Founders didn’t even allow dual citizenship and our own law regarding naturalizing Americans shows that we require them to renounce and abjure all other allegiances in order to become American) but the “elite” wouldn’t even entertain the possibility that a court should examine this very serious issue. They would claim, on one hand, that it was obvious that he was eligible (LOL) but on the other wouldn’t dare risk an examination byt he judiciary with its attendant discovery of actual documentation.
It was at this point that it was clear that our Constitution would not be defended. It was also clear to anyone with a brain that the Indonesian Imbecile held our nation, our institutions, and us in nothing but contempt and would work to do exactly as he threatened, to see America, Fundamentally Deformed (actually he meant for destruction, but this less extreme goal was clearly part of his public rhetoric, for those who couldn’t understand what he actually intended). Many of us stated all this and we were roundly criticized and harangued.
From then, Barky went on to show total disrespect for any notion of our law. It started with the absolutely repulsive and ILLEGAL campaign rally in a foreign nation … for foreigners! which should ahve gotten his tossed out of the race right then – not just any compaign rally but the largest one of the 2008 race … in friggin Berlin – and moved on to the insane calls (serious, but totally insane) from his people to have George Bush actually step down in December and let the Indonesian just start early, not that there was any sort of Constitutional mechanism to allow anything of the sort. But, still, most people didn’t seem to understand what was coming. Then we were treated, once the inauguration with the official benediction prayer that we should all pray for the day “when white will embrace what is right” and onto to serious violations of our Constitution from the Oval Office as this nation had never seen before. Week after week. Serious, impeachable actions. But, as with the eligibility issue, almost everyone preferred to ignore them and move on, acting as if nothing had happened. And move on we did. More impeachable offenses. More acts to tear this nation to shreds. More violations of the Constitution and every Constitutional limit on the Executive branch. Right up to this very day, after the impeachable act of Barky ruling by fiat that illegals will now be legal, law be damned, to having Barky issue yet another insane EO declaring that he, personally, will reimburse defense companies for breaking the law and that he’ll do it with taxpayer money he illegally scrounges up from somewhere … who knows where. And the tens of other such impeachable acts in between. Literally.
So. We now find ourself in the same position Honduras was in when Barky’s tin-foil buddy, Zelaya, attempted his coup and the Indonesian tried to get the US to back it, arguing that “democracy” – the vote for the Honduran presidency – overrode the Honduran constitution.
Anyone who is surprised by ANY of this just wasn’t paying attention. The signs were all there from the very beginning and have not only not abated in the meantime but have accelerated and gotten worse with each passing day. America voted for Suicide by Indonesian in 2008 and this is it. Sad and pathetic. This population of Americans will go down in history as one of the worst to ever walk the Earth. To actually elect a leader who, beside having the intellectual sophistication of a slow 8th grader, absolutely despised us and our nation. I don’t think there has ever been an example of this happening in history. People voting for their own destruction. We will be a laughing stock and a cautionary tale for millenia into the future. The greatest nation to have ever existed, thrown away by its own population for nothing. Well, for white guilt and for the lulz. Absolutely insane.
” they were able to ignore the Constitutional requirement that the President be a natural born citizen. … … It was at this point that it was clear that our Constitution would not be defended.”
This is exactly right. This was his “permission slip” to do whatever he wanted, constitutional or not.
if you’ve forgotten, and if you didn’t know, you should know now, that from the very start, David Horowitz, Victor Davis Hanson, and Charles Krauthammer, to name just a few noteworthy conservative columnists, were every bit as obstinate, overbearing, full of contempt for, and dead set against, anyone who dared to raise the question of Obama’s constitutional (in)eligibility to hold office as those in the mainstream media were. And none of them have ever blinked, either.
Agree that 2008 and Obama’s birth certificate mark a major milestone, BUT one has to recall Obama was already a Senator by then.
I put the turning point in 1994, just after Clinton’s election, when Whitewater et al was just getting going. Then as now, a neutral, objective press would have laughed their asses off at Clinton and facilitated his impeachment AND REMOVAL from office. But instead they simply could not find the issues, could not report what was before their eyes, could not deal with Bubba’s constant stream of lies. It is somewhere in that timeframe that I stopped reading the LATimes, knowing the NYTimes was even worse. The MSM had died, and was just the brain eating zombie we know today.
I grant the zombie became more aggressive in 2008.
Its the Jooooos! Oh… damn… this is a pro-Israel conspiracy site. Hmmmm.
Its the liberaaaal capitalists and their media henchmen!
Seriously, its getting kind of funny to see how so many conservatives seem to need to blame the fact that quite a lot of people plain down disagrees with them on some sort of sinister conspiracy. Sure, there is a somewhat liberal bias in the main newspapers these days. But thats because the conservatives have become so conservative as o have turned into reactionaries. When the GOP goes to election on a total ban on abortions, even in the case of rapes, that is a stance that will turn folks in the media off and cause some hostility. Its not a part of a coup etat, its not a conspiracy, its the fact that times move on and the outer reaches of conservatism sometimes sound like the islamists they hate these days in their rejection of new social values.
Try proof-reading the piece of nearly incoherent piece of junk that you wrote. I does not reflect well upon your “intelligence”.
blow it out yer arse – you know what he was saying, he’s totally correct, and you should know it. The reason you neo-cons think the media (which is not A thing – it’s many many) has become too ‘liberal’ is because you have become too conservative.
Whatever. You’re the kind of dolt that thinks that a conspiracy is required to first brainwash people before they would even consider being pro-Israel. We see this ‘logic’ all the time on the Left Internet sites, all of which promote conspiracy theory before all else.
Is it reactionary or radical to want this country to be free of the staggering debt that Obama has forced upon us? Is it reactionary or radical to want our country restored to its status of world leadership which Obama has done his best to destroy? Is it reactionary or radical to want his divisiveness of our population to stop? Open your mind a bit and read the book “The Amateur”. Find out about why Obama hates this country and everything it has stood for.
The only thing in your post that had an iota of truth was your name and that looks like its spelled funny.
Actually the media went off the reservation with Watergate and thousands of aspiring young twinks were inspired by Woodward and Bernstein slaying the liberal’s boogieman Nixon. When the talentless little lefties decided to move on from sex,drugs and rock n’ roll what better venue than the media. All it required was semi-coherence and an unshakeable leftist ideology.
“Fnord” is a reference to a series of C-grade science-fiction/global conspiracy novels.
The idiot’s use of it tells me he’s steeped in more conspiracy theories than he’ll find around here.
That is a lie about abortion. But, say for a moment it is the whole truth. Our foreign policy is on fire, literally, unemployment is at record numbers, debt is out of control, our commander in chief is missing in action. Where would abortion on demand out of my pocketbook stand in this arena of constant crisis? As a 63 year old female I can assure you that abortion has always been available; illegal maybe, but available.
I oppose slavery — that puts me in opposition to the Democrat Party. That you consider it all fine and good (“new social mores”) says something sad about you.
Bias is one thing. But the MSM ignore stories which Americans should know about to be able to understand what is happening to us and to help us make an informed choice. (Yes, I know this is deliberate.) My college + grad school educated liberal friend has zero idea of many things that are going on. For example I mentioned about the NLRB trying to keep Boeing from operating in N. Carolina and she had no idea. She thought TARP was done under Obama. She had no idea about all the good things GWB had done to help the people of Africa. And so forth. She reads the NYT, listens to NPR and thinks she is well-informed. This is why I force myself to skim through the NYT on weekends and occasionally to check in with CNN and MSNBC, just to be sure that I am not engaging in group-think. But the only kind of thing they have that WSJ, Fox, Pajamas, etc don’t have is endless stories about GLBT issues and endless bloviating about Romney’s “gaffes.” Thin and toxic gruel.
If it was only social conservatives being targeted by the MSM I might agree with you. But libertarians are targeted just as badly, even more moderate libertarians. The MSM is completly biased now toward leftism. That does not mean conservatives cant win though, since we still have alternative media, and that was enough in 2010. But it does make the job much more difficult.
I use the “Q” word in describing Obama’s media cult. The word, not so much as it is employed today, but as it was used before 1950. There is something not right about the media that are carrying Obama as if he were Nero riding in his imperial palanquin. There have been questions recently about who set fire to Rome, Nero or the Christians? After observing Obama, I’m leaning to Nero.
It is charitable to say that Obama and his media belong behind bars.
Nero wasn’t even in the city when the fires started. Upon hearing the news, he rushed back and saw to providing food and shelter for the people who lost their homes. He was a lunatic and a monster, but he was innocent of that particular charge.
(There’s REASONABLE evidence that the Great Fire’s second phase was started by agents of one of his close companies, though. The guy owned the apartment block where the second phase started, and may have torched it either to get out of the rental contracts or for the equivalent of insurance.)
LOL, an early version of slumlord Valerie Jarrett no doubt.
While this has been going on for a long while, the media’s treatment of the Benghazi attack was just so frighteningly blatant. It made it clear that they will allow NOTHING negative to stick to Obama and that is dangerously irresponsible.
“they will allow NOTHING negative to stick…”
And because of that, counterintuitively, it’s beginning to stick.
(Kermit cheer) Yay Media! /sarc
To bolster Mr. Simons’ thesis: How is it that Obama could say this
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”
and it’s not reported in any of the major media?
http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/20121001/OPINION03/121009995/diana-west–slander-and-free-speech-are-one-and-the-same
As the writer of the article points out: ” … imagine if a Republican president declared that ‘the future must not belong to those who slander the messiah of Christianity’ — or, for that matter, the prophet of Latter-day Saints.”
To me that statement speaks volumes. It is the penultimate recoqnition of what this man really is….a muslim. His time with Rev Wright merely a political opportunism.
By saying the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of islam, he lays claim to the veracity of islam. As a result, anyone of another religion that speaks out in defense of their religion, is slanderous of islam.
It also precludes examining the horrors mohammed inflicted on innocent people.
To me, Obama exudes a truely maniacal presense. If I were inclined, I might just wonder if he really was the antichrist. From my small understanding, what would concern me is the event that comes with that. Return from the dead.
That’s the October surprise that would convince me to go church….. a lot.
After the report that the White House refused 13 requests for heightened security in Benghazi before Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were murdered on September 11, 2012, I’m left wondering if Obama and his coterie aren’t monsters.
It would seem that they are not only complicit in but responsible for the murders of the ambassador and the other three Americans, two of whom were, purportedly, with him to protect him without bullets in their weapons.
Evil is afoot. If Zero gets in again, I’m tempted to think in Apocalyptic terms, as in the Book of Revelation.
Like you, DVG93, I’m left wondering which part Obama plays?
If you haven’t seen Dinesh D’Souza’s OBAMA 2016, go see it. Some friends of mine bugged me to go see it and I am glad I finally did. The movie will answer many of your questions about Obama. Strongly recommended.
If you think, as I do, that nobody acts without real incentives, then what are they for the media? There is a lot of talk about how the msm hate America. I don’t find that a convincing reason for their behaviour. It seems to me that the pc finger-wagging, the outrage and so on is just the rationale for what they really want. As countless commentary has exposed, the msm commits the very “sins” it lays at the feet of their favourite scapegoats every day.
It isn’t that hard to make a decent, law-abiding, religiously-inclined people ashamed of various less-than-stellar historical episodes and periods. Americans, especially conservatives, are such a people and are ashamed – because they want a better world.
I believe that the result of this shame is that Americans have gone along with an agenda that aims to prop up various nation-state economic institutions whether they are ruinous for the economy writ large or not. These institutions include labour unions, social programs, government subsidies for certain businesses and so on. All of the beneficiaries of these institutions are beholden to the redistribution of wealth carried out by what has been called the “regime” party program – policies which have enjoyed support since the Great Depression. By supporting these policies and utilizing this easily accessed shame, the media believes, as Roger says, that it can call the tune to which various administrations dance.
But the media don’t actually have any real power – the kind that can send swat teams to your door at night or raid your business because of exotic wood or tie you up in court forever over this or that regulation or jack up your taxes.
What has changed is that various groups have independently concluded that the eighty year narrative doesn’t work any more. A coalition of these groups will bring down not only the Obama administration but the entire nation-state set of economic institutions that threaten to install what Acemoglu and Robinson in “Why Nations Fail” call extractive economic and political institutions – institutions that take from the many for the benefit of the few. Extractive institutions can stay in power a long, long time as any cursory glance at world history proves.
If the coalition wins and the narrative changes, look for the msm or newer media forms such as blogs to attempt to manage the new narrative.
“But the media don’t actually have any real power – the kind that can send swat teams to your door at night or raid your business because of exotic wood or tie you up in court forever over this or that regulation or jack up your taxes.”
Why don’t you ask George Zimmerman whether he agrees with you?
And Nakoula.
Huge generalization alert! …It seems that many of these liberals (including many of the MSM lightbulbs) do not belong to a religion that believes in goodness. They are adrift, and want to show that they are “good people” in spite of not going to church. So they sign up for “good causes” like free abortions for poor people, tenure for useless teachers, etc, etc. They also vote for a black (well, kinda black) man for president. “See? I am not a racist. I am full of love. I am a good person.” Really, this is the easy path. It is a huge cop-out. It doesn’t require them to truly analyze the issues and see–just to take one obvious example–that raising the minimum wage DOES NOT help poor people, it just explodes youth unemployment, and makes it harder for uneducated breadwinners to get their toes on the lowest rung of work. They choose by how something sounds, not by its actual impact on real people’s lives. By the way, these folks don’t donate to charity much. They just vote to have you and me give our hard-earned $$s to the feckless. The MSM guys were hot to see Romney’s tax statement. Did they mention his humongeous charitable giving? In a pig’s eye. It would be interesting to get ahold of Chris Matthews’, Rachel Maddows’, Wolf Blitzer’s, Ed’s tax returns and see what kind of $$ they make and what kind of charitable giving they do. Dollars to donuts they are millionaires who give squat, just like Joe Biden. But because they espouse the mealy-mouthed liberal line, they can feel virtuous as hell. Makes me sick.
Let’s not forget a second front of the coup: the educational system. 12 and/or 16 years of steady indoctrination by the overwhelmingly liberal teachership; it’s lucky non-leftists get anywhere at all.
I agree, any successful change in this status needs to begin with the educational system. Get rid of the politically correct/liberal leaning school programs and return to teaching the basics, the 3 Rs (reading, writing and rithmetic). Once we return to teaching the basics, eliminating the touchy feely nonsense things will start to right themselves. Colleges will graduate students that are intelligent enough to reject bad ideas, and new journalists will replace the “lame-stream-media”.
C’mon, Mr. Simon; Give your audience a little more credit. The “media” may have a loud and persistent voice, but there are many out here that live in the “intelligent underground”, that know better.
A lot of these people comment here on a regular basis.
The “Communist Party U.S.A” has been at work for decades, and will probably never die. It’s just one of the diseases we U.S. Citizens have to deal with. The Constitution and “rule of law” are an excellent antidote, but it has to be continually backed up with booster shots.
I may be a skeptic, but I’m not a fatalist. And I’m satisfied that I’m not alone in the trenches fighting against the Federal Governments propaganda war.
Success is not for the faint of heart.
I say “onward, Conservative soldiers”.
▲This▲
America is definitely at a tipping point but I want to believe the good guys/gals are gonna win this ‘un and I honestly want to believe in my heart of hearts that there are lot more of ‘us’ than ‘them’.
The NY Times motto should be abbreviated to ‘All the news that fits’…which quite accurately describes its’ modus operandi. Pretty much the same with the rest of the MSM. ‘Journalism’ is a pretty lame vocation. It, however, bestows upon its’ practicioners a sense of self-importance and power. Occasionally one of its’ leading lights slips up and utters an uncensored thought; Tom Brokaw for instance, after Obama had been in office for a while, musing that he didn’t really know a whole lot about the guy he actively promoted prior to the election. So, we are lost. But, but; the growth of alternative sources of news has been explosive, and I suspect that most stay informed and don’t rely on the MSM. At the very least now they are exposed to opposing views. A bit more insidious is the leftward slant of our popular entertainment, Hollywood and television. Unfortunately, many substitute the fantasies presented by these media for reality. The products of contemporary higher education are unprepared to think analytically, and are quite willing to accept a good story.
Roger, never fear. Lots of us out here don’t even watch the major news media. We have known that they are lying to us for years now. If Fox News goes over to the dark side though, that would be a problem but not insurmountable as long as the internet enables us all to be samzidat readers and publishers.
Mass communications methods carry homogenizing television. Can it be thwarted?
While I’m not holding my breath on this one, maybe Romney will “pull a Gingrich” and call the moderator on it when the shenanigans start. … … yeah, right, who am I kidding!
But, one can hope.
Regardless, the “alternate media” seems to be the light at the end of the tunnel. The Times and the Post and their ilk, along with the alphabet networks, have seen their zeniths come and go and many people never even turn to the traditional media for news anymore. Good bye and good riddance.
The media coup could not have happened without the tacit approval, or complicit indifference, of at least a majority of the populace. Cleveland’s Obama phone woman is now a majority. They are fine with what is happening now. They think they are getting something out of it.
Welcome to the future. Won’t last very long, but welcome nonetheless. The best we can all do is prepare for the worst.
Cleveland’s Obama Phone lady was a paid union shill – $11/hour SEIU member paid to follow Romney’s bus around Ohio. They have teams in most competitive states. It is astroturfing intended to convince you and everyone else that they are the majority. She isn’t. Either is her bloody union. We are. Time to start acting like it. Cheers -
It was so powerful that this year the Republican Party allowed the coup plotters to control the debates, even those that determined their own nominee.
It was said that media “chose” John McCain and something similar might be said about Romney.
I was astonished to hear the all liberal line up for moderators of the 3 presidential debates. Where in hell were republicans in that process ?
Exactly. Something WRONG with Romney for agreeing to these moderators.
Both as an individual and as a campaign.
Yes and no. You see, Obama wouldn’t agree to any other moderators, not even Fox.
But why would Romney agree?
Oh, please. Think. The man is out there campaigning 24/7. Do you HEAR about it at all? Of course not. He’s under a media cone of silence. The only time they report anything is when they imagine it’s a gaffe. The fact that MOST of those have been made up tells you how good a campaigner the man is. He’s doing three to four events a day… and we’ve heard what? Five “gaffes”? most of them made-up like the “he tried to get them to stop shouting Ryan” thing.
In 08 we heard of Obama criss crossing the country, of people fainting… the only reason I know when Romney is in my state is that I’m on the GOP mailing list. The rallies I’ve been lucky to be at were massively attended, and Ryan managed to get people to applause on “natural rights.”
TRUST ME if they recorded his private talk, they’re recording every one of his public events, too. The fact they haven’t found anything to talk about in those tells you he’s a good campaigner. But… he’s in the media cone of silence.
The debates are his only chance to be SEEN by people. He had to have them. And he had to take the conditions. Will he manage to score? Who knows? The media is so stacked against him that just “getting by” will be amazing. Actually if it’s possible he should NOT turn on the media — he should simply make them go so far out in the bias that it’s obvious to the greatest dolt. But can it be done? I don’t know. Reagan did it, but Reagan was an actor and was trained in these things.
If you’re a believer pray, pray constantly. If we ever needed help it is now.
It is depressing that so many of you with a voice are just coming to this realization now.
It’s been the case for a long time.
The MSM is the enemy of America. That has been the case for decades now. They want the USA we all love and respect, the USA that is the greatest thing there has ever been (with respect to nations), over, done caput.
They hate it.
Why? Because it is good and they hate good. Because it is true and they hate the truth.
Ask Socrates. He will tell you what boorish barbarians and uneducated talking heads with a bit of celebrity do to the truth.
It has ever been thus.
As it stands, it is us or them and not both. We win or they do. Period. We will never win if we don’t know who the enemy is. We will never win if we don’t fight – look at the Romney Campaign for Exhibit A on that score!
Well written!
It is my opinion it is going to take a near collapse to get the average Americans attention. Then, perhaps we will wake up to what is happening. Will it be too late at that point?
Agree with nearly all of that. Only one quibble: often, it’s not that they hate good but they don’t know what good is any more. Simple-minded MSM responses are often the reflexes put in place at J-school, two-legs-good-four-legs-bad — no more, no less.
Simon is so obviously correct it’s startling to see how many try to slice and dice his points and parse them away.
Quite off topic and self-evident but important: now is not the time for navel-gazing, parsing or preaching to the converted on this site, but to be out on the streets, on the phone, and arguing with all who support Obama.
You may dislike and despise Romney (I do). Put it on hold for now.
This is what I call “adult” behavior. Truly. Well put.
Expect the unleashed Obama to go after sites like this one in a second term. I fear.
Agreed. I’d say at least a 50% chance of that by the end of the term.
Even though you use a nickname on this site, “they” will figure out who you are and that you don’t like “them”. Yes, I know I am being paranoid, but I keep worrying about this somehow.
More and more sites insist you sign in with a facebook account , rather than signing into an account directly at the site. Don’t have a facebook account? You’re SOL. You HAVE a facebook account? Well, every thought or stance you have is then made available anywhere. Not all of us want our political opinions known on our ‘social’ or ‘hobby sites’, or vice versa : We like keeping such sites compartmentalized. Again : SOL. And remember a year or so ago when that female facebook CEO was burbling about how facebook intended some day to require real names on all accounts, so no more anonymous or pseudonymous postings (this was being presented as an anti cyber bullying measure)? If she gets her stated intent, it’ll be either keep quiet, or risk having every opinion you have on any subject you care to comment on online known to anyone who cares to search-with possible real life consequences. IOW, hold the “correct” opinions, keep silent, or prepare to suffer the consequences .
Yes. I think the whole “Mohammad movie” thing was an attempt at a Bundestag Fire to get a Heckler’s veto established.
In the former Soviet Union, it was called the “Ideological Department.” They might as well be on the White House payroll. And probably do, behind the scenes.
Stalin – “The press must grow day in and day out — it is our Party’s sharpest and most powerful weapon.”
What’s the first action taken in a coup? Before the raping, murdering, pillaging, and burning? You take over the newspapers and radio/TV stations. If you control the media then you control the narrative. If you control the narrative then the battle is 90% won.
It has been a very gradual process. I am not a fan of Glen Beck but he is right when he speaks about the Progressive movement setting out at the end of the 19th century to implement its agenda. They didn’t try to hide what they intended but patiently and relentlessly worked to render the Judeo/Christian underpinnings of the culture as, not just irrelevent, but abhorrent. This was done via the educational system and media and has taken over a century to come to the fruition we see today. So successful has this effort been that many conservatives accept elements of the progressive moral code without question. It has progressed so far and with such success that I doubt very much that it can be reversed peacefully – if it can be reversed at all.
What was, just a generation ago, regarded as perversion and fringe radicalism is becoming, very quickly, “mainstream”. People accept as normal beliefs and actions that once would have resulted in arrest and jail time or social ostracism. Present all of history as nothing more than a chronicle of competing cabals and manufactured “narratives” aimed solely at shoring up power and the corruption and the naked amoral ambition so in evidence today is taken as “normal” or greeted with apathy. Elevate those who devote their lives to the pursuit of money, power, sex and fame as role models and no wonder the country is in the state it is in.
Those who dare to try and thwart this “progress” are shouted down and labled as “prudes”, “extremists”, “radicals” and “fanatics”. Once it was only a small fringe that engaged in this kind of calumny but they persisted over decades and worked their way into positions of influence and now they have largely succeeded. They don’t need everyone to go along with them. They just need 50% + 1 under our system to impose their will. And they are very close to achieving that.
True enough, Roger. Although, I would begin the genesis of the coup to an earlier day, when the indoctrination began in Hollywood, academia and …Walter Cronkite. When Cronkite decided it was ok to openly lie about the Tet Offensive result…and nobody touched him on that lie, and LBJ gave Cronkite the power to decide who ran for President, it began in earnest.
Radicalism was alive in Chicago at the DNC and outside its walls. Indoctrination was well under way ..with a number of front groups disguised under innocent sounding names.
When we crossed the Rubicon, is when the JournOlistas decided that they could forge documents, photoshop pictures, stage events, redden eyes on magazine covers, distort audio tapes, distort video, …and wait to see if they would get caught.
We crossed the Rubicon when over 400 “journalists” got together to intentionally infuse themselves as an arm of one candidate and NOBODY in the industry stood up and said how very wrong that was and how harmful to the Republic was a media that had clearly “chosen a side”.
It’s not that they “lean toward” leftism or that they themselves are a “bit liberal”. This is nonsense. If the word “liberal” is to have ANY meaning whatsoever, it would be nearly polar opposite of the despicable conduct and utter lack of scruples attached to the Propaganda and Lies Ministry.
Lies of omission and commission are not “letting a little liberal bias” seep into the “news”. Gross malfeasance and intentional distortion are not subconscious acts. You don’t subconsciously forge documents, stage Green Helmet guy, redden eyes on magazine covers, completely sit on your hands on Fast N Furious/Benghazi/…distort the Zimmerman tape, fail to vet a Presidential candidate …or never ask him a tough question in 6 years.
As for the debates…the “commission on Presidential debates” was supposed to be a “bipartisan” one. It’s not. The Republicans are of the David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Joe Scarborough strain. We NEVER get the most watched news station asking questions…the one with the most viewers. Fox News is automatically eliminated…as a tit for tat, MSNBC is eliminated, as if that is a “fair comparison”.
We are nothing more than the resistance, Roger. I have been screaming this at the top of my lungs for years. We have crossed the point of no return. The media empire is the enemy of freedom and liberty. I have written it in nearly every post or comment I write. They are the face of treason.
Ditto. Can only add that it’s over. Go Galt now.
It goes back far, far before Cronkite. The first really visible manifestation of media pro-communist bias was Duranty’s reporting from the then-newly formed USSR. There had to have already been a LOT of sympathy for communism in literary, political, and media circles already for Duranty, “we have seen the future and it works,” to win a Pulitzer in 1932. The Comintern had no difficulty finding fellow travellers to spy for the USSR or to infiltrate the government and academia in the ’20s and ’30s. We look at media coverage of WWII as relatively unbiased but was it really? And what would it have been like had Germany not attacked the USSR. Generally, the whole left including much of what was then the mainstream media went from isolationism and non-intervention in the European war to “Second Front Now” over night. It is a good thing that we had the atomic bomb and a President willing to use it as we faced a war-weary nation, mutinous troops, and Soviet agression in Asia. There is a good argument that the Hiroshima bomb was dropped on Japan and the Nagasaki bomb was dropped on Moscow.
The burgeoning federal government of the New Deal and WWII brought many leftists and outright communists from academia into positions of power and influence in the federal government and in the state analogs to federal programs extending the Comintern’s influence far into the Countryside, not just the urban areas and capital cities. As is their wont, the Left, especially the unions, overplayed their hand and provoked a tremendous backlash in the late ’40s and early ’50s which forced the open communists underground and many had to defect. The British at least got to see their foremost mole, Kim Philby, appear in a KGB uniform on the Kremlin Balcony; we never found ours. Interestingly, one man whose history is intertwined with Comrade Obama’s, Harry Bridges, head of the West Coast Longshoremen, did defect and show up on the Kremlin Balcony. US counter-intelligence and anti-subversive programs kept communist influence and provocation relatively in check though it was far more influential in the so-called Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-war Movement that is generally admitted. Neither Rosa Parks nor Martin Luther King were just ordinary Southern Blacks who decided to rise up and much of the leadership of the “Free Speech” and anti-war movements were openly communist. It’s no coincidence that the fount of college leftism was Berkeley, the same campus that gave the KGB staff at the SF consulate so much assistance in their industrial and atomic espionage.
And then the foremost anti-communist and the man hated almost as much as Senator McCarthy, Richard Nixon, once of the House Un-American Activities Committee, made a stupid mistake on his way to slaughtering the Left’s candidate in 1972. When the WaPo and NYT brought Nixon down and the very leftist Congresses of ’74 -’78 gutted the CIA and FBI’s counter-intelligence and anti-subversive programs, it became safe to be an open communist in the US again. There is a reason there was so much opposition to President Reagan going back to old OSS guys to run the CIA and to once again start to pursuit of moles. Unfortunately, it didn’t last and neither Bush actually knew or seemed to care how to run the federal government and other than putting a few trusted friends in the visible places, left the Democrats in charge of the federal government. Through Clinton’s and GWB’s administrations the Democrats were able to take advantage of Republican porking proclivities to funnel vast sums of federal money to unions and Democrat front groups bulking them up to a strenght unseen since the ‘Forties.
I don’t, however, agree with Mr. Simon that this was a media coup d’etat. The media well willing accomplices and fellow travellers but this was a leftist engineered coup d’etat involving some groups of prominent leftists, left-leaning foundation money, Soros’ Cabal provided leadership, and, I believe, a lot of sovereign wealth from the Middle East underpinned the attack on the US economy in September of 2008 that insured Comrade Obama’s election. I know that he was steeped in communism from birth but I don’t know just how he became allied with Ayers and became the made-man of the hard left that abandoned the Clintons over WJC and HRC’s willingness to accomodate and compromise with counter-revolutionary forces in the US but it is evident that the Clintons were rather roughly shoved aside and basically told to cooperate and they could be comfortable and look important but there also had to be a powerful threat in there somewhere. There are only a very few forces in the World that can effectively threaten a former US President and a sitting US Senator. I also believe that only a threat would account for McCain essentiall throwing in the towel after the attack on the US economy. I think Palin wasn’t trusted enough to be let in on it and that accounts for the friction between Palin and the McCain people; she didn’t know she was supposed to stop trying to win the election. And I also disagree with Mr. Simon that Comrade Obama will only have at most a further four years; the people who installed him are not going to relinquish control over the US just because some silly election didn’t go their way.
You are right about Duranty and the NYT, but the real coup d’etat is found in the records of the FCC. The federal government seized control of the airwaves in the 1920s and ’30s, and its licensing policies created the “big three” networks as well as controlling who owned local radio and television stations.
This was political patronage at its most blatant. It is not accidental that LBJ, hiding under Lady Bird’s skirt, owned Austin’s only TV station for so long. And for a couple of generations, holding a TV broadcast license was simply another way of printing money.
to be let into the sneaky scheme is a testament to her honesty and good moral character.
Had she been told of it she’d have blown the whistle on those idiots right then and there.
Or it could be a testament to the fact that you don’t have to be around Palin long to figure out that Palin is all about Palin and has never been loyal or trustworthy politically with anyone including the Alaska electorate that launched her rocket to stardom.
If John McCain had won, he’d have been the most miserable man in the World as he spent his term wondering when he was going to feel that knife in his back. She’s done it to everyone who has ever helped or promoted her.
I am quite sure the real skinny on how Obama’s handlers engineered his complete supplantation of Hillary would make for some truly frightening bed-time reading.
Last night on the tube Erin Burnett was interviewing Darryl Issa about the inquiry into the Benghazi terrorist attack that the WH desperately doesn’t want us to think about. He started out thanking her for covering the story! An amazing reflection of the current media reality. It brought home just how common it is for major TV stations to ignore “inconvenient” stories.
Actually, and I think that at least some of you will agree with me. This all boils down to the basic theme of good vs evil. The forces of good, us, want a strong, competitive country. The forces of evil, them, see this country as having overstepped our boundaries, and they want us to be a second-rate banana republic.
But when did this coup start and how did it get so successful?
The American Marxist counter-revolution began in 1913 with the 16th amendment and passage of the Federal Reserve act – excessive taxation from the former and inflation from the latter.
“The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property… In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend… In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.” Karl Marx
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” Vladimir Lenin
The American Marxist counter-revolution picked up steam in 1933 the so-called New Deal.
“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom. So it was that a revolution took place within the form. Like the hagfish, the New Deal entered the old form and devoured its meaning from within. The revolutionaries were inside; the defenders were outside. A government that had been supported by the people and so controlled by the people became one that supported the people and so controlled them… For a significant illustration of what has happened to words, of the double meaning that inhabits them, put in contrast what the New Deal means when it speaks of preserving the American system of free private enterprise and what American business means when it speaks of defending it. To the New Deal these words, the American system of free private enterprise, stand for a conquered province. To the businessman the same words stand for a world that is in danger and may have to be defended… You do not defend a world that is already lost. When was it lost? That you cannot say precisely. It is a point for the revolutionary historian to ponder. We know only that it was surrendered peacefully, without a struggle, almost unawares. There was no day, no hour, no celebration of the event; and yet definitely, the ultimate power of initiative did pass from the hands of private enterprise to government. There it is and there it will remain until, if ever, it shall be reconquered. Certainly government will never surrender without a struggle.” Garet Garrett
This ^^^^^.
Where are those in the press who like going against the grain, or perhaps want to gain fame for something? That historically was the personally trait that kept many of them honest; now, they seem content being sheep. At the end of the day, the press is a just a legion of note-takers, ready with their pen and pad to write down what you say.
I saw first hand media bias as a combat solider in Vietnam in 1967. As a 19 year old kid I knew truth had little to do with coverage by the press. I have not trusted them since.
How about this:
The media are regarded as “public servants” and anything they do that is not in the best interest of the public, like obviously biased, dishonest reporting is “rewarded” with (fill in the blank).
The print and electronic media must only be staffed with representative numbers based on the American population, like for instance: 20% of the people claim to be Liberal. That would take care of most of the problem in one fell swoop.
As Kissinger said, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The MSM has become corrupt as a result of having a near monopoly on reporting of news. That is changing fortunately. Maybe that is why they are doubling down and openly trying to force their narrative on the public. If PJMedia, Brietbart and Drudgereport keep pushing, their ‘new’ paradigm (telling the truth) will prevail.
No regime can consolidate and last if the dissent is allowed to spread the true news.
Therefore…
Internet is the next target of the totalitarians.
Unless we jump start the new American Revolution on November 6th…
Right. We’re going to do that with a cultist in chief. I don’t need to wonder at how the God of all creation views that. You could resurrect George Washington himself for president and he couldn’t make a difference.
Trust a Hollywood literary pol to underestimate Hollywood’s influence.
“All the President’s Men” has a great deal to do with the degenerate condition of journalism today. Correlate J-school attendance with the release of the Watergate film and the influence of Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford becomes clear. An entire generation of future social studies teachers, dentists, lawyers and accountants changed their career plans after seeing Hoffman and Redford save the nation from Richard Nixon.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin“ accelerated our descent into civil war; “Silent Spring” popularized environmentalism; “The Ugly American” influenced our entrance into Vietnam; “Apocalypse Now” (ostensibly an anti-war film) filled the ranks of the military; “All the President’s Men” filled our newsrooms with talentless, overcredentialled hacks absent any semblance of honesty, patriotism or talent.
The fact that journalists lean overwhelmingly left is accounted for by the monopolistic stranglehold of the uniformly leftist J-schools and the megabuck media outlets they supply. A young conservative interested in a career in journalism is shut out.
Policeman are required to take racial sensitivity classes led my minorities. Journalists ought to be required to take political sensitivity classes run by conservatives.
““Uncle Tom’s Cabin“ accelerated our descent into civil war”
ITYM, “then ending of the blight of slavery”. It was the slavers who chose war.
Well, it’s said that when he was introduced to Mrs. Stowe, President Lincoln said, “So you’re the little lady that brought on this great war.” Appocryphal perhaps, but there is definitely some truth in it.
Long before Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a northern abolitionist inventor named Eli Whitney invented a machine called the cotton gin. Abolition at the time was mainly an intellectual position. Slave ownership did not make economic sense. Profits from slave labor didn’t cover the costs of feeding and caring for slaves. Southern slave owners were voluntarily emancipating their few remaining slaves. Slavery in America was dying a natural death.
Abolitionist Whitney’s invention changed all that. Before Whitney, only squishy sea island cotton from which seeds could be easily squeezed was profitable. Dry upland cotton with stubbornly clinging seeds was worthless. The cotton gin was a simple machine in which a rotary combs shredded upland cotton, separating the dry fibers from their clinging seeds. Abolitionist Whitney’s invention led to massive cultivation in the South of suddenly profitable upland cotton. What followed was the massive importation of African slaves to work the cotton fields and run large scale gins.
History is full of ironies and unintended consequences. Abolitionist Whitney launched slavery in the South as we remember it; abolitionist Stowe hastened the coming of the Civil War.
Most of the increase in slave population was the result of natural increase, not importation. The cotton gin wasn’t invented until 1793 and it took some time to both bring it into production and distribution and the clear the piedmont areas of the Southern states where short staple cotton could be grown. Clearing the heavily wooded wilderness was either very, very labor intensive and thus expensive or time consumning. Slave importation was ended in 1808. While there was some smuggling after 1808 the British Navy took a very dim view of slave ships and it was risky and expensive business to smuggle slaves. The worn out and now uneconomic Tidewater Plantations of the Southern Seaboard became essentially slave farms breeding slaves for sales to the burgeoning commercial cotton plantations that spread accross the Southern upland like locusts.
There weren’t actually many plantations like Tara in the uplands and most were at most twenty or thirty years old by the War. Nearby most of them was the rude log cabin that pater familias lived in when he struck out for the new land in the first decade or two of the 19th Century. King Cotton and The South of Gone With the Wind only existed about 50 years.
How we got here is less interesting to me than what we’re going to do about it. Some great ideas above. Certainly, the rise of conservative blogging, Fox News, talk radio, have all been a great start at countering the MSM. But for the most part, these outlets are all preaching to the choir. It’s time to take it to the “enemy” and begin to reach the great masses of unaligned Americans.
I believe the key strategy is to acquire another TV network – so Fox is no longer the only TV voice in the wilderness. NBC is a lost cause – a dinosaur – and ABC is owned by Disney and not going anywhere. That leaves CBC. Via Wikipedia: “In late 2005, Viacom split itself and reestablished CBS Corporation with the CBS television network at its core. CBS Corporation is controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, its parent.”
A group should begin a plan for a corporate takeover of CBS. For the News division, the business plan would be obvious – leap ahead of NBC and ABC with a strategy of “neutrality”. Use public metrics to show that the choice of stories and the on air reporting and commentary runs right down the middle. This would actually be a winning business strategy.
Good practical solution.
Fox News is in desperate need of competition. They have really gotten lazy.
alaweed bin talal’s chunk of Fox ownership is the reason, not laziness
When Apple, in the 1980s, developed their Apple II computer, they faced the behemoth of IBM as a roadblock to their survival. How, they asked themselves, do we put a dent in IBM’s market share?
The answer was as simple as it was brilliant: sell their computers to schools at cost. The kids will then learn computing on Apple machines – not IBMs – and when it came time for mommy and daddy to plunk down cash for a home machine, Billy and Betsy would insist on getting one they already knew how to use: the Apple.
The same strategy was used by the Left, not only in America, but globally. Use the schools, “teach” the kids, and – whoosh – you have a monopoly on the market share of “truth.” Your “truth.”
Until we can break the hold the Left has on our education system, this war will always be won by the Leftist Media. Always.
And the teachers unions know this; which is why they fought Scott Walker of Wisconsin tooth and nail.
What can you do? First, don’t hand you kids over to state-run schools. If you must, make sure you “unlearn” them at home by teaching them proper values. Churches go a long way to help. Get involved with your kids… don’t abdicate their moral education to a bunch of socialists.
There’s a real grain of truth of what you say. My wife and I chose to pay a small fortune to send our kids to those “Christian” schools on account of noticing that very fact many years ago. And I never regretted for a minute of being with parents of like mind.
Those Christian schools apparently did an outstanding job, as both kids more than excelled in the higher education when blended with the Roman citizens, forewarned that they would now be exposed to Caesar’s dictates.
Frankly, I am shocked why more don’t recognize this simple fact: Don’t be surprised if you hand your kids to Rome, they turn out to be members of the legion.
Your history isn’t accurate; the Apple II hit the market in 1976, five years before the IBM PC, but the thrust of your point is valid.
The Left does control the sign-on pages of the internet. AOL, Yahoo, MSN are all leftist. They choose the stories for the unwashed to see.
The PJ Media, Drudge Report, Breitbart, Newbusters, are excellent. I used to follow Realclearpolitics until the majority of the stories are from the left. Also RCPs polling data giving equal weight to Dem polls distorts their averages and the Dems know it.
Listen to Fox Radio News and the first words every day are. “President Obama says….”. AP last week was putting 1.3% GDP growth in a positive light.
You left out the 800-lb gorilla of the left-wing internet gatekeepers, Google. Interestingly, Google, through their Youtube subsidiary, is bucking the left’s attempt to censor the Mohammad movie.
Never got the memo?
Since our main stream media won’t bring the divider in chief’s failures to our attention, I guess it’s up to us. Our divider in chief was quick to take credit for bin Laden’s death, do you suppose he will take credit for the latest casualties on our borders?
What casualties on our borders?????
“The cunning of the fox is as dangerous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both.” Thomas Paine, The Sunshine Patriot. True in 1776 and true in 2012.
I’m with Roger.
And I’m going to the Holy Bible and my Savior in prayer for guidance.
Some change may be required. If America will not heal itself, perhaps we should be somewhere else. Where? I don’t know. But I’m looking just in case.
“… for all these things are just the beginning of birth pangs.”
http://www.biblestudying.net/studies.html
Long before the media gained the power to control the minds of the mass of western humanity … back when the media itself was fractured and many sides to every issue where discussed and debated … these peoples exhibited a panoply of pronounced tendencies to go wrong. It is no accident of history that war and dictatorship is the natural state of men. The very idea of a government of, by and for the people is a recipe for disaster. Unless that people has some overarching societal determinism guiding the populace in the ways of honesty and responsibility.
For a time America believed in God and believed in itself. That time is over. Chaos is stalking this land. It took great courage to institute a government more concerned with individual freedom than collective security. We are no longer a courageous people. Nor an educated people. Even our elites are mere brainwashed narcissists mechanically grubbing up wealth like mongol raiders. Wisdom is not to be found and mercy counterfeited for use in campaign slogans.
Admit it all you political mannequins. Christianity created this nation. Indeed even so horribly misapplied as with the Popes and then Calvin, it has been Christianity that has nourished and brought us thus far. You will not save this land with all the political wrangling in the known universe. And no politician stating as much could ever gain power again here … in this wasted remnant of a nation. Your ‘truth’ is a lie. Your understanding darkened. Materialism reigns.
The forces behind the media’s decline began during and immediately after WWII with several factors at work. There was unnatural amount of unanimity about WWII in the press albeit for entirely different reasons as the American left shed their pacifist pretenses to help save Stalin’s bacon. This wartime unanimity tended to blur previous distinctions about which media venues held what biases. It also established unrealistic standards going forward. After the war there was a push to turn many fields from trades and vocations into professions by establishing academic credentials. (It hasn’t worked out well in public education, either.) The desire for an objective media fed into this as did the growing influence of radio and TV as those media favor more erudite types over the cynical wise crackers seen in The Front Page. Then at perhaps the height of public esteem for journalists the US Supreme Court entirely absolved the profession of the need to be responsible when in NY Times v. Sullivan it made it all but impossible for anyone to sue for liable. It’s been downhill ever since, though the emergence of journalists as celebrities themselves in the cable TV age has steepened the decline.
Obama is the media’s decision to have a last moment of glory. Many of the smartest people got out of the profession in the 1990s when the big companies offered buyouts for senior editors and producers in order to diversify their newsrooms. By the mid 00′s those who had decided to stay knew they had made the wrong decision. Readership and ratings are in terminal declines. Rather than just fading into obscurity they shed the last pretense of objectivity and are going out with full throated support for their agenda.
Nailed it.
Ironically, it turns out that Government-owned media is a less robust model of thought control than the privately-owned model we have in the USA. Most Russians were profoundly skeptical of Pravda, rightly seeing it as a mere propaganda outlet for the ruling party. Outside of the conservative hard core 35-40%, most Americans do trust the news judgements of the MSM, and regard the Republican claims of bias as special pleading. The ground for acceptance of leftist bias is set in the education system K-12, which becomes more explicit in the colleges. Most people graduate with 4 years degrees with a firm understanding of the leftist canon, and that open disagreement with any of its teachings (particularly on race, immigration or gender) will result in dire consequences for one’s career and social life. As Roger points out, this amounts to a coup, by a cadre that is unelected and unaccountable. How conservatives can effectively revolt against this cadre of Media/Academic rulers is the better long range question to consider than winning the next election.
Good point. People are a lot more skeptical of NPR and PBS than MSNBC and NYT. What amounts to a government media operation hides from suspicion in private clothes.
That may change if the government tries to bail the legacy media out.
Latest surveys indicate 60% of all American distrust the MSM…
With conservatives at 80%+ and Democrats at 40%.
As soon as they can sit up kids are getting KoolAid from politically correct TV shows like Sesame Street….
I don’t know why republican candidates agree to debates in which the “moderator” is on the other side. They should insist on a format which reduces the role of the moderator to that of a timekeeper, with the candidates themselves asking all the questions. If the dem won’t agree to debate in that format, at least the public gets to see who really wants a serious debate.
It began with the illusion that media could be even-handed.
Simon, must disagree with you here. The conventional analysis of this is that the Columbia School of Journalism changed their view of things in the late 1960s and started teaching their heads full of mush students AGAINST this. IOW *you* are agreeing with Columbia that media cannot be even-handed, so should embrace their inner prejudice and spill it all out on the page. And that’s what changed the most in whatever year you think, say 2008.
Through the 1950s, 60s, and still mostly IMHO through the 70s and 80s, the press *attempted* to be objective and even-handed, and left the editorializing to the editorial pages. Then it changed, and now they don’t really even pretend to objectivity, they don’t think it’s really possible. They assert a highly biased view *as* objectivity, of course. But if they *claim* to be objective, as we keep hearing NYTimes and WaPo defenders, that is pure taqiyyah, it is not the least bit credible. I guess that’s what you are criticizing, but you are giving up the meme to them even so. They are NOT EVEN TRYING to be objective, do not fall for their LIES, because then they have finessed you, and you have nowhere to stand.
Ooops, left out the finish to this recitation, that “a free press” does not require that any one publisher *be* objective. A free press simply means you are free to print an opposing opinion in some other publication.
And, it is bizarre that ALL the major corporate outlets should swing left together – even Fox recently has given up the ghost, especially their broadcast channel, not that they were ever more than neutral.
Thomas Jefferson famously supported a very biased (leftward) print outlet.
The communists have always been very clear about this, as were the nazis, first take over the schools and the media, then do as you please with whats left.
– he can ignore the press and media.
I commented on this in a prior article. We truly require some version of McCarthy-era hearings on the power and effect of the News on the Electorate. That they are a DeFacto a Qauasi-Governmental agency, uncontrollable by the electorate, that can have profound effect on outcomes on a national stage, all based on their belief system, screw the rest of us. Fair means or blatantly foul.
I suspect the Founding Founders underestimated them and their potential venality.
Sorry, typos. Strunk and White would be appalled.
Ever since the week after the September 11 attacks, when I first really became focused on what our national political class was saying and doing, I have wondered how we ended up with such distinct and separate realities here in America. The “echo chamber” as it has been dubbed is real and powerful. I would say that of all the problems holding our nation back from healthy change on both sides of the political-idea-policy-aisle is the news media. It created the two separate realities, perpetuates them, reinforces the lies, creates the narratives and selects the stories. Chris Matthews and the rest of the insane on MSNBC are more dangerous than Obama could ever be. Very true. I do also believe that although he resinates with me and is very entertaining, people like Rush and Fox News hosts are also helping to perpetuate this massive problem. And I mean MASSIVE. The news media’s grip on the truth and on politics is all encompassing. Our only hope is to focus on state and local politics where we can help enact real change without having to battle the national media powers. On the state level, the common folks still can hold sway in local elections and set the tone for what the national governing class has to deal with county to county and state to state. The best part is, over the last few decades, coverage of many state and local political struggles has gotten less and less coverage. Let the revolution begin in our own villages, towns and counties.
Roger the real media coup already took place, it took place in 1974 with the resignation of Nixon. Comparing Watergate to anything the Obama Administration has done to date is comparing stealing a kid’s lollypop to a bank heist.
This ^^^^.
Fox News is pretty damned popular. It isn’t perfect (by any stretch), but, I think it’s telling that a conservative channel is a number one news channel.
The MSM and their pittance of pathetic sheeple can keep blaring their horns…but, the truth will always out (come blood, bullets or bullshit).
Simpler explanation: the media have been heavily penetrated by communists occupying key positions.
Sound crazy, too tin-foil hatty? Couldn’t happen? Recall that Whitaker Chambers was a Party member (back before it rebranded itself) and a senior editor of TIME magazine. In Witness he detailed how Party members helped each other advance by heaping awards and recognition on each other, and how they all sang from the same hymnal (JournoList, anyone?).
And that was in 1950.
Totally concur. The Commies in the media have definitely pervaded and defined the ‘message’ [i.e. 'submit' or suffer]. Luckily, WE the UNsheeple are still able to get our message out too.
Video Not Safe For Work:
Throw it on the ground!
Please, please stop referring to it as the MSM, “Main Stream Media.” It is the MMM, “Malleable Marxist Media.”
Please see “Outing the Moronocracy: Ending the Rule of the Blind, the Stupid, and the Disgraceful in American Society.”
Oh my. What crybabies.Fox news ( the most popular of the cable news networks), Wall St. Journal, the rise of the conservative blogosphere, Limbaugh, Hannity etc. Your point oview seems well represented in the media. also despite what is probably a liberal bias in a portion of the media, Nixon, Regan and Bush jr. won two elections each, Regan won two landslides, also also 1994 and 2010 were great years for the conservative wing of the GOP. I know of no requirement, constitutional or legal which says “fair and balanced”. With vast increase in sources of information, the problem is not an insufficiency, but the failure of people to take the time to find out.
the failure does not seem to be due to media bias, but perhaps to the candidates who are offered to the electorate.
I doubt you would be so glib about the MSM bias if all these news outlets were suddenly running a story that you are a pedophile. How could you possibly mount a defense of your slandered reputation if the news outlets were determined to characterize you in the worst possible way and misrepresent everything you have said or done, even to the point of omitting or falsifying the truth about you?
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) By James BamfordEmail Author March 15, 2012
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1
Groups Concerned Over Arming Of Domestic Drones
May 23, 2012
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/05/23/groups-concerned-over-arming-of-domestic-drones/
EFF Them! They can’t put any significant proportion of us in jail. We WILL be screwed though when they put the chips in our hands. Oh well. EFF Them anyway.
Update: Obama associate Daniel S Mahru sentence delayed until after election.
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/10/02/update-obama-associate-daniels-s-mahru-sentence-delayed-until-after-election/
Oh please. Can we assume then that Roger Simon is unaware of Fox News? The Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Rush, Michael Savage, the three harpies – Ingraham, Malkin and Coulter and the other bigots and liars who populate the rightwing media machine? I would be remiss to leave PJ Media off the list. if there ha sbeen a media coup it has been on the proto-fascist, looneytunes Right, as corporate consolidation and all the vested interest that implies turns news operations into entertainment outlets and feeds a steady diet of rightwing ideology into the American mainstream.
lol
I hope that’s just a sarcastic attempt to replicate mind-numbed lefty drivel because if you’re serious with that crap, you’re a complete idiot.
Bigots [blondes] and Liars [luscious ladies] and Hot Fox girls oh my.
Sucks to be a fugly lefty, eh? Especially an unpopular one. *sniffle-cry-sob-pout*
Oh the emotions run strong with this one…
Oh, darn. I missed that part. That must be my good friend, Ludwig “Fox sluts and whores” van Quixote.
Tell you what, then: how about a media trade? We’ll give the Left every single news outlet and commentator you just listed, and any others you didn’t think of. In exchange, we’ll take all the major TV networks, CNN, Headline News, MSNBC, Time, Newsweek, the major daily newspapers (from the NYT to the WaPo to the LA Times, and everything in between), Slate, Politico, The Daily Show, The Today Show, GMA, all the journalism schools, the major journalism prize-awarding bodies … oh yeah, and Hollywood. Sounds like a no-brainer win for your side, no?
Nik (hey you spelled your name wrong unless that’s the metrosexual spelling) you sick little liar, where to begin? I love your quote about the three harpies, Malkin, Coulter and Ingraham. I will take these three intelligent , attractive women any day over what the left offers. Foreign policy on the left is the three stooges Rice,Power and Hillary, social commentary is the three uglies, Whoopie, Behar and BaBa WaWa (how old is she about 114?) Politics gives us the botox queen Nancy Lugosi, Maxine Waters (D- Cripville) and Debbie Wasserman Test. You always have Madonna , Jean the living STD Garafolo and Roseanne who defies description.
Thanks for making me laugh — You’re sooo right — Dem chicks are Uuuuglyyy!
“if there ha sbeen a media coup it has been on the proto-fascist, looneytunes Right…”
Fascism and Marxism are both “Left” because both forms of centralized government power rely on excessive collectivization of the people’s property. Since “Right” means individualism and “Left” means collectivism, the term “Fascist Right” is an oxymoron. The terms “Fascist Left” and “Marxist Left” are not self-contradictory.
“Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation’s economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property – so long as the state reserves to its self the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property. If “ownership” means the right to determine the use and disposal of material goods, then Nazism endowed the state with every real prerogative of ownership. What the individual retained was merely a formal deed… which conferred no rights on its holder. Under Communism, there is collective ownership of property de jure. Under Nazism, there is the same collective ownership de facto.” Leonard Peikoff – The Ominous Parallels
http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/
Charles Murray put his finger on the cause of this in this 2010 post.
Short version: the General Social Survey has tracked political self-identification (liberal/moderate/conservative) since 1969. From 1969 to 2008, the “Traditional Upper [Class]“, “Traditional Middle”, “Technical Middle”, “Working”, and “Lower” segments all moved slightly to the right. The “Intellectual Upper” segment moved far to the left.
The myth of the objective press arose in the early 1900s. Prior to that, newspapers usually had explicit political affiliations. (The Chicago Times masthead read “Loyal to the Democratic Party in victory and defeat”. Then “quality” papers like the New York Times decided that was improper, and focused on “objectivity” and “non-partisanship”.
There were some good results. The NYT won a deserved reputation for accurate, comprehensive reporting of important news. (The NYT still does this sometimes – when their ideology doesn’t get in the way.) The “non-partisan” press attacked corruption in both major parties, rather than covering up for their allies.
But this led to the inflated self-image of the press as high-minded guardians of Truth and Justice. Watergate confirmed it massively. The press already leaned left by the 1960s; now they began to think of their political views as The Truth. Over the next generation they marched to the left with no self-consciousness about it.
I don’t know that there’s any cure. Cultures can be self-reinforcing matrixes, rejecting all change and enforcing existing norms, even when those norms are destructive. Usually it takes some devastating outside force to break up the feedback loop.
Scales do fall from eyes, and when they do, I would not be in the position of ‘man behind the curtain’ who all want us to ignore.
After all we created AlQaeda. Ask Hillary!
Reality Check: One on One with President Obama, Why Is The U.S. Supporting Al Qaeda In Syria? Be sure and pay close attention starting at the 50 second mark. You will not hear this anywhere but from this reporter!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrerl8EwqH0&feature=plcp
To all of you posting here and to Roger Simon:
So what are you going to do about it? Will you still go to the movies? Yes. Will you still read the rags like NYT and Time? Yes. Will you care what Rolling Stone and HBO do and say? Yes. You will continue to try and split hairs and talk about what is good about Hollywood etc… and give them your $ when they are helping promote the end of the Republic. It’s time to face these people head on and not on the edges and in the shadows. Pat Caddell – a Democrat – has done the right thing.
take action or shut up
The lame stream media died when they sold their soles to back, lie for, support this unpatriotic failure, economic dunce, and chicago style thug politician.
If we vote obozo out, then we also get rid of the lame stream media, because they should not be able to recover from the truth becoming evident.
How bad is it for the lame stream media. a recent offer for 52 week home delivery of the Sunday paper, in Los Angeles, was selling for 11 cents an issue.
Psychological Warfare Operations, or PsyOps. Read the military definition. Then Google “Yuri Bezmenov”, watch the 1983 interview of this KGB defector who describes in detail the 3 stage plan to destroy America from within. The first is “Demoralization”, infiltrating into the media, universities, churches, etc, and gut them fron within. We are now living in the final stages, where chaos and crisis are created to such an extent that the people embrace the seizing of total power by the Elite. The Bill of Rights are like a series of Walls designed to protect our eternal, God given rights. If the First Amendment has been destroyed, which is the next Wall holding the Elite back from Total Power? After the First Amendment…comes the Second Amendment.
This is pathetic – Fox News, Drudge, WND and a host of other sources ARE mainstream media.
Everytime you hear a story or poll you don’t like, you immediately attribute it to the evil mainstream media and it’s evil bias. Meanwhile, the entire existence of Fox News is devoted to playing personal attack dog and damage control for the Republican Party.
Might it just be possible that Americans simply have grown tired of the same rehashed GOP talking points and simply tuned out? Might it be possible that the media is just reflective of the actual mood of the country?
Occam’s Razor, folks.
I don’t buy the coup premise. Instead I’d posit something far simpler, namely that Americans are too stupid and lazy to adequately self-govern, and we won’t whip ourselves into shape until the costs of inadequate self-governance accrue to each and every individual American after some fashion. I suspect those costs will accrue during Obama’s second term, and they’ll be dear.
If we’re too stupid and lazy, we can thank the “vanguard of the proletariat” that took over academe and the intelligentsia and created the current curricula in the schools that have graced us with so many rocket-scientists.
The key philosophy involved here dates all the way back to Dewey and James. At least a century and a quarter!
For many supporters, who still believe in the myth of Obama but are not so far gone they cannot see what he hath wrought lo these last few years, a second term for the president is like a colonoscopy — they have to say yes. But really, who looks forward to it?
The once unstoppable Obama movement has constipated to a halt. He was once a god, and now he is man — a nasty, unsuccessful man, who blames everyone and everything for his serial failures.
After all is said and done, what is he left with? The same hardcore group of delusional ideologues who would vote for him even if they came home from work and caught him beating their grandmothers to death with his Nobel Prize — but these voters were never in play anyway.
Read more of my article: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/its_over.html#ixzz28A9GLoTN
Oh SNAP!
Your article was pure ‘awesome’!
Thank you!
P.S. “Constipated to a halt” is a keeper. LMAO!
Not to get too ‘parsin’ with the lingo’ but, is “constipated to a halt an oxymoron?
*giggles*
The real question is what replaced JournoList? Is the coordination now accomplished via email only? Have they taken to twitter DMs, private facebook groups? What are they doing and who is working on the infiltration to expose this?
On CBS radio (NYC) this morning, they did their 30 seconds on the presidential debates (about the same time as Dancing With the Stars gets). They preemptively sold the story that Obama hadn’t debated in four years (meaning of course that he was at such a huge disadvantage); then had an audio clip of him arriving at his campaign HQ with pizza to cheers from his supposed working class friends. Then a Romney clip was selected to obviously reinforce his big mean Republicanness. Message received: Obama is just plain folks and buys pizza for his buds–and don’t you just KNOW that Romney has never even seen a pizza.
Is it too late? Yes, I’m afraid, it is. We, as a nation, have been sufficiently “dumbed down”. Too many Americans (not to mention the “undocumated”) have drank the cool-aid. They may be less than half of us. Only the 47%. But combine them with the few who seek power, and you come up with a majority. And so, it is not a matter of if, but only a question of when. I say this not to be discouraging. But rather to invoke each and every one of you to fight all forms of tyrrany with your final breath.
I read sometimes the anti-Israel articles in the Fox news and theamericanconservative.com.But the government`s international broadcasting Free Europe-RFE/RL is as Russian say,unfastened.There are their permanently favourable:Serbs,Armenians,Ossetians,Abkhasians,Iranians-Russian clients and unfavorable: Kosovars,Georgians,Ukrainians,Azerbaijanians,Israelis,Americans (!).The open support of Russian imperial interests is the Obama`s stright directive to the international broadcasting.The Russian empire restoration is the last stroke in Obama`s foreign policy disaster.
You’re missing the most important piece Roger. The communist piece.
The media weren’t sitting around the coffee shop chatting about the events of the day and suddenly change from dogged beat reporters to maestros of the information stream. It was deliberate. And journalist are way to stupid to dream anything up themselves. They are too busy primping. It has been a multi-decade strategy to capture the information stream…and it’s not just the media either. It’s not exactly a mystery who’s behind it either.
Conservatives could do the same thing, but conservatives, by nature, are interested in supporting their families and building things. Leftists, on the other hand, are interested in power. Power is their families and their construction project.
They didn’t get it down quite right in Russia. The gulags and death camps were a bit too oppressive, even for the peasants once TV could show them how other people were living. The marxist forefathers (i.e., the rulers who have controlled every society prior to 1776 and most after) should have taught the stupid Russian commies some lessons, but the eager beaver commissars were just too greedy. You can take every creature comfort away, but you have to give something back; religion has been the usual cost-free gift from the ruling classes. But boiling the lobster slower is working a lot better for them with the last dredges of western civilization. It’s just about cooked now. Now they have millions of ranting followers just dying to throw achievers into the gulag so they can collect their free stuff. The useful idiots will soon be living in the gulag themselves, but as they have been persuaded, the gulag is better than living in a world where somebody has something they don’t have. Better to all be serfs.
November is the last stand for people who prefe living free to obama bucks.
More fuel for the fire.
CNN caught being bought by state of Bahrain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eGDVzJNMKs8
Those who conduct, and participate in, Coup d’Etat, rarely escape unscathed.
It was true then, it will be true today.
Beautiful elegiac prose poem. Thanks Roger. I was reminded of Robert Frost’s Once By The Pacific:”… It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken…
I wonder if you saw the first new episode of Homeland? I had an exhilarating sense that it would serve as a mass culture reminder that we are in a war, that Islam is the totalitarian ideology trying to destroy us. Anyone watching the show couldn’t help thinking of Obama as protector and defender of that alien, totalitarian ideology.
Seems a little disjunctive with the narrative that 60% don’t believe what they see in MSM. If nobody believes them, how can the be so influential?
“Television rules the nation.”
Daft Punk may have been on to something with that.
The media bias did not begin in 1972. It was already in full force when Edward R Murrow, who had brought the Frankfurt School communists to Columbia, was allowed to lie about Senator McCarthy. It was there in the 1930s, when the media led people to believe that FDR’s fascist regime was helping their economy and that to be a good American, you had to support FDR.
The media is but one tool of the new class. They control the commanding heights of culture, which includes popular cultural and media, the schools, universities, and many religious institutions.
The coup has been going on for fifty years. The left has infiltrated every institution, private, educational, and governmental. The courts are full of leftist judges, the schools are full of leftist teachers, the DOJ is full of leftist attornies, classic Marxist tactics. And half the nation, like lemmings headed for the cliff, “love big brother”.
I have to wonder if Joseph McCarthy was right all along. His being discredited by the media, left the door wide open for the leftist assault. If Obama is re-elected I fear we are lost.
The coup d’etat is not limited to the mainstream news outlets. The public education system was taken over at least forty years ago by the Left. It was not by chance that Bill Ayres took a Ph.D. (Ed.D. really.) That means that one or two generations have already been indoctrinated in Leftist ideas and ideals. There is some Marxism in the mix too. Just test anyone under age thirty with the phrase “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” and ask them where that came from. The answers you will get are shocking.
It’s ALL about religion. ALWAYS has been, ALWAYS will be, EVERYWHERE.
schade, this is what the world has come to,
good article Roger
Sadly, a lot of the people in the media really believe that they are not partisan. An old friend, who works for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation—well-known for favouring “progressivism” and only too happy to propagandise for misanthropic global awarmism at any opportunity—recently appealed for more funding for the already handsomely funded national broadcaster on his Facebook site. When I explained that I should not nag my local representative, writing that the ABC was far too partisan and that it sycophantically supported the Government’s wicked plans to curtail free speech, he spewed a long rant which included this: “actual climate scientists are almost unanimous in their agreement that the earth is warming due to CO2 imbalance, the only people still disagreeing are dilettantes from vested interest some right-wing economists and conservative politics. [sic] The ABC kept giving “balance time” to these wankers for too bloody long. [...] we all have our opinions here, but 99% of us would die before we would resort to the unprofessional practice of allowing those opinions to colour our work.”
Much of the endemic and unrecognised bias, I submit, is fostered in schools, with the practices advocated by John Dewey, and by his malign influence on generations of academics in the universities’ faculties of education.
It seems that the liberals control the language and the conversation.
For example ‘gay’ means happy and cheerful and homosexuals are NOT happy and cheerful. I suggest everyone stop using ‘gay’ and call them homosexual
The media coup was in 1980 when they aided in covering up Reagan’s treason leading up to the election. Try to catch up, guys.
Care to elaborate on “Reagan’s treason” ?
Reagan’s “treason” was being nominated by the Republican Party.
The American Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution are treason in the minds of Marxist counter-revolutionaries, treason against the Communist Manifesto. It is true that Ronald Reagan believed in these foundations of the American Revolution, and so it is true that Ronald Reagan committed treason against the Marxist counter-revolution.
Your teachers and professors lied: Lefty and smart are not synonyms. Or do they teach you ignorant punks about things like synonyms these days?
Well said, Roger. This is, in fact, the surfacing of Gramsciian Marxism, which has been moving below the water for many years, infiltrating our schools, universities, churches and cultural institutions, exactly as Antonio Gramsci intended when he initiated “a long, slow march through the culture”.
Have we reached a turning point? If so, I will look forward to Bret Baier moderating a debate in 2016.
The media had the Truth and real bio of President Obama born in Topeka Ks , yet chose to print a false one for over 4 years and suppress any eye witness accounts? Millions have been made on this and lawsuits go nowhere as officials have the truth. I finally filed and affidavit with the state of Kansas that the president was eligible due to hi birth in Topeka Ks and the staff diligently searched for the records at Forbes Air force base Hospital as I was able to provide the real dad’s name that the Media has never published. and will not share publicly now as the president may not know and the staff also said: We don’t think he knows. The Sec of the State of Kansas is now receiving flak because he is bound by confidentiality. The President needs to request his real birth record form the state of Kansas And ask the US justice dept to have a real investigation for the first time in 50 years of the three dead in a vicious racial attack over an interracial couple that could have left his mother and he dead when still in the womb, along with is real Dad as told to my Mother by his mother who shared it with me after the three bodies washed up on a sand bar much later. When one suppresses the Truth, murderers have gone free for 50 years. all this on Face book , Blogger and twitter . struts 7/26/12 and includes details each day in Daily Recap of the circumstances surrounding his birth in Topeka Ks Thanks for the article as the media really proved how well they collectively chose to suppress the truth about a birth certificate, what more are they suppressing? Linda Joy Adams
To have a coup there must be an opponent. The media in power is only an illusion so no coup has occurred. Only a lethargic, disinterested electorate. The illusion is now beginning to shatter under the twin forces of uncontrolled information (internet) and reality. As folks begin to wake up from their lethargy – poor economy forever, racist Justice Dept., foreign policy disasters killing their sons/friends, &etc – the illusion fades. And what follows won’t be pleasant for the legacy media.
I must come to the defense of Jim Lehrer, a fellow Oklahoman. When he anchored the PBS Newshour, it was the best hour of news on TV. And I think Margaret Warner is the best journalist in the media (faint praise, I know). I still give yearly to PBS because of the Newshour (though beware Gwen Iliff; you will be getting the usual liberal drivel).
So Give Jim a break. I think (and hope) he will be a fair moderator.
There are honest lawyers and politicians, statisticians and Trotskyists. There is no such thing as an honest journalist.
Actually, I think the situation looks a lot like Fascism. Elements of the main stream media have gone from any semblance of reporting to creating the “news” according to a government provided script.
From Wikipedia: “Fascism advocates a state-controlled and regulated mixed economy; the principal economic goal of fascism is to achieve national autarky to secure national independence, through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.[24] It promotes regulated private enterprise and private property contingent whenever beneficial to the nation and state enterprise and state property whenever necessary to protect its interests”
The “state”, in the person of the current POTUS has co-opted the privately owned media, the “fourth estate”, from the legitimate position of watchdog from outside the government to that of lapdog doing the bidding of the government.
The good news is that the media thoroughly beclowned itself in 2008. They are no longer trusted or respected by anyone. The coup failed.
The bad new is that, for some inexplicable reason, conservatives have insisted on behaving as though the big three networks and the NYT/WaPo axis of stupidity are still kings of the world. There was literally no reason the GOP had to let some washed-up, annoying leftist run so much as a single one of its debates. They would have been televised one way or another. Nor has there been anything preventing Fox from doing the kind of serious investigative journalism on Fast and Furious that Univision just did.
The right simply doesn’t do it because the right views itself as the eternal dhimmi. The right actually accepts the left’s claims to cultural superiority, and accepts the left’s demand that “neutral” means “run by liberals.” The only mainstream Republican politician I’ve seen who understands this is Newt Gingrich. He never, ever lets a liberal decide what the ground rules are. I don’t think he would have made a good nominee, but if you watch him speak, his complete disregard for the media works.
See, the left-wing media is the emperor with no clothes. The “no clothes” part comes from their dropping viewers and readers. They don’t *have* to be treated with deference, because no one except the far left is in awe of them to begin with.
Obama should resign, but he is arrogant and doesn’t believe in democracy.
The elections are fake!!!! They have already ‘accidentally’ reported the results of the Nov.6 election on CBS. They are destroying democracy!
Take a look at this:
http://patdollard.com/2012/10/disturbing-cbs-news-affiliate-accidentally-runs-khyron-dated-november-6-declaring-obama-winner-of-2012-election-4340-40237966-votes-to-38116216/
http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/2012/10/21/very-fishy-ohio-abc-station-already-has-declared-obama-the-winner-cbs-station-in-arizona-does-too/
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/21/cbs-news-affiliate-calls-2012-presidential-race-for-barack-obama-weeks-ahead-of-election/#ixzz29zidtm00