So What's the Problem?

By Grant Davies

It's obvious from the media coverage of the Presidential election this year that the most important things to be considered by the voters are: whether President Obama thinks business owners created their own success, and whether Mitt Romney worked for a company that owned some companies who outsourced some work. (Presumably the media thinks that's a bad thing.)


As much as I hate to sound like some kind of conspiracy nut, I think that it's a continuing strategy to distract voters from the actual issues. Worse yet, I think it's working, again.


I know it will shock some of you, but most of the media is left-leaning. (Okay, since they have readily admitted it in the past I know it's not a shock, but I can't resist being a smart ass.) And since they lean left, I'm quite uncertain why they care which one of these guys gets the nod.  After all, they get what they want no matter which of these big government advocates is in office. But distracting the voters from Obama's unbelievably poor performance seems to be job one. Here we go again.  


So I feel obliged to bring up a few points that some of you may want to mention at the next backyard cookout you attend this summer when "beered" up neighbors or relatives start talking about which guy is the bigger liar, or "outsourcer," or non-citizen, or Mormon, or friend of a distasteful clergyman. Or maybe they want to chat about who likes/dislikes gay people more, or whether "rich" people should pay more taxes because they don't pay their fair share. Or whether Tea Partiers are racists. Or whether it's getting too hot or cold because people are alive.


In that case here are some of the points I think you might mention: 

• The country is still in a recession/depression.
• The country (FED) is still printing money like crazy.
• Prices are rising precipitously as the value of the money falls. And you ain't seen nothin' yet.
• The government is spending money it doesn't have like there is no tomorrow. (They might be right on that point.)
• Social Security is on the verge of collapse.
• Medicare is on the verge of collapse.
• Cities are declaring bankruptcy.
• States are on the verge of the same.
• Greece may be bailed out by somebody, but there is no one who can bail out America.
• The President has seized the power to assassinate anyone, even US citizens, who he thinks might be a terrorist. No arrest, no arraignment, no witnesses, no trial. Congress has gone along with it and he has already done it.
• Here at home, the right of Habeus Corpus has been abolished by executive order. Also with the approval of congress.
• The Supreme Court just decided that the Constitution presents no barrier to government intrusion on our lives as long as the law in question is determined to be a tax.
• One half of the adults in the country pay no federal tax.
• Almost one half of the citizens are receiving some form of government funds. They will never vote for anyone who says those payments are to be cut back, much less eliminated.
• New regulations are being made by the thousands, mostly by unelected people. There is no end in sight.
• Wars are still being fought, also with no end in sight. And no one can figure out what would constitute victory or defeat.

So, if you think everything is just dandy and the above list has either been concocted by me out of thin air, or the list is correct, but the items on it are not a problem, then by all means chat about why Republicans or Democrats are the bad/dumb guys and have another beer. Argue about what the media wants you to focus on.

But just in case I'm right about any of the list being an actual issue, you might want to get a helmet. You know.. just in case.

Eating Trayvon

Image courtesy of Craven's World

By Grant Davies

All the facts concerning the tragic shooting of a teenager in Florida by a neighborhood watch patrol member may not be known for quite a while. In fact, they may never be known if reporting what actually happened is left up to a media obsessed with inflaming such tragedies while ignoring the real stories that don't sell as well.

Most people who have already made up their mind about the event only know what they heard in the media, and they only heard what they wanted to hear. And as usual, they only heard it from whom they wanted to hear it from. So let's concentrate on what we do know.

We know that there are tragedies everyday in the world, but only certain tragedies grow into major stories. And the ones that grow best are the ones that are watered with copious amounts of potential profits.

We know that race pimps like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and U.S Representative Bobby Rush can smell fame and fortune from thousands of miles away as long the dead people are black and the people who killed them are not.

They don't seem to have a very good sense of smell for gunpowder in their own back yards. The streets of Chicago and other big cities are literally littered with the corpses of the black children who are being slaughtered by other black youngsters. The perpetrators are largely gang thugs who often times dress up in the hoodies and droopy pants that have become the uniforms of a whole generation of fatherless killers.

Rep. Rush dressed up in just such a costume and showed up on the floor of the U.S House because he thought it would show solidarity with the dead teen in Florida. Someone had the good sense to toss his imbecilic rear end out of that less than august assembly, for all the wrong reasons. The truth is he was showing solidarity with gangsters, not victims. The same gangsters that have murdered our black children in such horrifying numbers.

There doesn't seem to be much money, fame or power to be gained by exposing the causes of those murders. The perpetrators just don't have the right profile and the actual cause of the mayhem might be embarrassing to the race pimps.

A few years ago a famous black comedian had the guts to expose the real reasons for the multiple tragedies that befall the residents of the inner city. After the initial news blurbs about a prominent black man talking about the alarming number of children born out of wedlock and abandoned by the men who sired them without bothering to father them, all he got for his trouble was derision and scorn. Worse than that, he was ultimately ignored by a media who saw no profit potential in exposing their own complicity in promoting the policies that contributed so much to the problems.

So today we have a media feasting on the corpse of a kid named Trayvon, who died a tragic death, while the same buzzards don't dare to land anywhere near the real story of the horrors of growing up in the thug infested inner city where the pimps made their fortunes by blaming white people instead of power hungry politicians.

Regaining Our Rights by Blacking Out the News Media

News media bias has been debated for a very long time and much of the debate has centered on whether bias exists in the first place. Of course, the people in the media have either denied it or said that only the amount that can be attributed to individual human frailty existed and in any case was balanced out by the sheer numbers of contributors.

Even though they do their best to paint those who claim a left leaning bias as loony conspiracy theorists, many of us are not buying that line. We have seen first hand that it exists in many forms, from the recent crazily slanted coverage of the two separate political movements known as the "Tea Party rallies" and the "Occupy everywhere camp outs" to the way the Republican presidential candidates must debate the "moderators" before they can debate each other. It's so obvious it pains me to watch as some folks twist themselves into pretzels to claim otherwise.

I wouldn't classify the problem as much more than an annoyance for the most part. After all, there are still enough alternate sources for the news that people (if so inclined) can figure things out without too much trouble. The Internet has broken the monopoly the networks had on national news. Even relatively small blogs like this one have an impact because there are so many of them.

Having said that, the most insidious type of bias is the kind that is used to decide what is and what isn't news and then use that tactic to decide for us things we need to decide for ourselves. The news blackouts are the most dangerous bias the "news" media uses to usurp our liberties.

It's not some grand conspiracy, it's the natural result of the wishes of people who really desire to shape events rather than report on them. And why not just ignore people and events that do not fit our narrative? It's human nature. But whatever the reason, and whether or not you excuse the people who practice the deceit as "absent malice", the effect on your rights is the same.

What liberties am I talking about? The one I have in mind is the right to choose our own candidates for office.

Back in the now defunct USSR, elections for office were held on a regular basis. But since there were only approved and selected candidates on the ballot, (often only one) very few bothered to vote. People knew it was a sham. And in this country, the turnout for elections is abysmal for similar if not exact reasons.

People simply don't turn out for elections when they hold candidates of both parties in equal contempt. The candidates are selected in a process that is so convoluted that the most common practice when casting one's ballot is to select the lesser of two evils. Having to choose between Barack Obama and John McCain in the last Presidential election is all the evidence you need to convict the current system.

But even the crazy order of primaries that give out of proportion power to some states at the expense of the rest of us is becoming less of a hazard than the news media blackout of certain non-approved candidates. We are allowing a few networks and pollsters to dictate to us who our choices will be and we do so at our own peril.

If we continue to allow this to happen we might be dumber than those in the "Occupy Wall Street" protests who cannot explain what their beef is or what they want to be done about it. And that number seems huge.

One well credentialed candidate (Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico) is excluded from the polls and then denied access to the Republican debates because he isn't polling high enough. It's a purposeful blackout. Another candidate who wins most of the straw polls and consistently polls in third place (Ron Paul) is systematically ignored in the vast majority of "news" stories that follow such debates. Also a purposeful blackout.

These tactics are designed to deny us the choices which we are entitled to and turn them over to the kingmakers who would be the target of the OWS protests if they were sober. It's all legal of course, and should be. But that doesn't mean we ought to stand for it. It seems as though the left leaning media has reconciled itself to their chosen one, Barack Obama, losing the White House in 2012 and now is turning it's attention to cutting their losses by choosing his replacement.

Empowering ourselves by blacking out the media itself, at least intellectually, may be what we need to do as a first step toward turning the country around and heading back toward the place it used to be. It was never perfect, but it slowly has become dreadful.

It's our country. No matter whom we choose to lead us, let's choose them ourselves.