L.A. Times immigration article is classic example of modern journalistic demagoguery

The article: "Kern County sheriff a defiant California maverick on immigration" by Kate Linthicum, published April 9, 2015.

http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-kern-sheriff-20150410-story.html#page=2


So he's a maverick.  Is that good or bad?  Does the media take an implicit role in normalizing illegal activity and the Malthusian issue of illegal immigration?  Well, assuming you'll have to read through to find out, the author will have achieved her objective of planting her liberal seed unless you maintain a critical eye - something that the media relies on you NOT to do, and what I estimate 3/4 of the U.S. population doesn't care about anyway.

In the above linked article, a California sheriff retains his prerogative in areas where state and federal laws don't mesh on the deportation of illegal aliens, and the journalist ends her article with this quote:

"If everybody thought the same, this would be a pretty boring place," Youngblood said. "This is where I learned my behaviors and my thoughts and my beliefs. None of which make me right." 

It's sadly conventional wisdom that journalists harbor an iconoclastic ethos in order to dismantle traditional values and institutions of the American republic.  [The American Journalist - Pew Research Center]

This article's hidden agenda is exposed at the end:  Vilify any figure opposed to liberal runaway detrimental policies supporting illegal immigration, with subtlety or not. 

Here, the author ends with a sentence that was cut-off mid-stream.  Backing up, the core of her article was how an illegal was severely beaten, and afraid to ask for help due to the possibility of being deported - in the grand scheme - due the sheriff's obedience to the rule of law.

The final part of the story focuses on seemingly mute details, such as the sheriff's traditional hearth, and the conservative presence within. 

Building up to that point, she ends the article with, "None of which make me right," prompting the ordinary reader to wonder what the sheriff said next.  Surely the interview didn't end there, with the sheriff contradicting himself. 

Congratulations - by cutting off there, the sheriff never gets to complete his thought, and the reader will walk away thinking, "Oh, the sheriff just said he was never right," assuming the litote is true: the affirmation of the negative.  A strong negative at the end of the article isn't an explicit claim that the sheriff is wrong in any conservative practices, but it is a great example of how the media conditions the public, has shifted from taking neutral positions to aiming at conservative values, and debunks common sense.

QOTD

Future students of language will wonder at the period in our history in which it was said with a straight face that diversity required uniformity, tolerance necessitated intolerance, and liberalism called for dogma. Of late, we have been told that Brandeis University is simply too open-minded to hear from a critic of Islam, that Mozilla believes too vehemently in “freedom of speech” to refrain from punishing a man for his private views, and that a respect for the audience of a show about duck hunting demands that we suspend a man for expressing his religious views in an unrelated interview. “Never,” David Benham confirmed in an interview with CNN, “have I spoken against homosexuals, as individuals, and gone against them. I speak about an agenda.” Later, he added that “that’s really what the point of this is — that there is an agenda that is seeking to silence the voices of men and women of faith.” Say, now where might he have got hold of that idea?

          Charles C.W. Cooke

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377689/new-fascism-rolls-charles-c-w-cooke

Olympic poetry

I was so perplexed by the negative news coming from Sochi from the progressive media cabal, I wrote a few haikus:

News folks in Sochi

Blind to own socialism

Lauers and other cretins

Suck eggs, media snobs

Blameless in your own failings

You think you don't have


Obsessed with gay dudes
Parade moral turpitude
Why do you feign tolerance?

QOTD

"Pres. 0's FCC has determined that jokes about Democrats do not meet a 'critical public information need' and must cease immediately." - Freedomfan

How to prepare for your cable-free life

I've written about this before:  Americans are afraid they won't know what to do in the absence of their feeding tubes.  http://makalakapisei.blogspot.com/2011/02/cut-your-umbilical.html

I was just reading this... http://forums.macresource.com/read/1/1652828 and thinking that there are all sorts of people waking up, realizing they are in the midst of a cultural dark age (well, yes and no - the "enlightened" might blame everyone else's degeneracy on Republicans and ask for more funding - Google CS 106 or the collapse of Detroit) and unplugging.

Here's how to do it:


1. Mentally prepare yourself and your family.  The lack of cable will be a big adjustment, especially if you have children that might feel that they have a "reduction in status" due to no cable - oh, the ignominy of telling one's friends, "Sorry, we don't have cable to watch," and might have to go walking instead.


2. Find out what services you really need.  I would say internet is probably all you might want, do you actually NEED cable t.v. (listen to games on radio, go out to watch them, or do a websearch, a lot of European sites stream them).

3. When Verizon retention specialists call begging you to remain at their teat, tell them you are unplugging from the Matrix (but be prepared for them to try to negotiate).

4. Get a library card and ask the librarian for a quick "refresher tour".  My s.o. loved this when we went through.



5. Start bookmarking websites that help make you feel connected with news, features, current events, discussion fora, links to or good substitutes for the things you feel you might miss.

6. Enjoy your new unplugged life!  I wish you all the best.

QOTD

This comes to mind today, while thinking about today's one-sided media blitz on the NRA, and a sensational UC Berkeley exhibitionist who is fond of leaving messes within the library stacks

"No-one under 60 can likely *remember* journalism before it embraced the self-aggrandizing subjective viewpoint." -unk.

Fark-worthy headline submission slips through again

How could this story not make the cut?!  A teacher who dipped crayons in hot snauce to prevent an obstinate autistic from eating them successfully launched a counterclaim to get her job back (it's still in litigation).  Cruel or unusual?  Come on!

Only 5% of all headlines submitted to Fark gain approval to be main-paged, it's kind of a geek rush to see them appear in 'print'.

QOTD

"Obama is the first president who, when I see him on t.v., I just want to change the channel."

~ Gal-pal of mine

Edit tapes to make Zimmerman sound racist? Just another day in the playbook. Journalism's playbook. Liberal journalism's playbook at NBC. Obama's playbook of liberal socialist Journalism at NBC

Wemple,  Eric. "NBC to do ‘internal investigation’ on Zimmerman segment". The Washington Post.  April 1, 2012.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/nbc-to-do-internal-investigation-on-zimmerman-segment/2012/03/31/gIQAc4HhnS_blog.html?hpid=z6

Flotsam and jetsam

Just a few notes.  Drove myself to the doctor this a.m., made the mistake of tuning into NPR.  Today's topic?  Standard NPR white people talking about [white] racism in the U.S..  Some overzealous neighborhood watch chairman shot a black person, which is no doubt a tragedy - had heard mention made very briefly in the news last week. Allegedly, this was racism, or at least NPR's roundtable wished to perpetuate that.  What a great way to start the day:  Let's start the day with some "progressive" white guilt and keep beating that drum of disunity and disharmony.

For added good measure, the fart-snifting liberal femme summed up her feelings stating,
"Blah blah racist blah racist blah blah SEXIST TOO." 
...Progressives.

---

The new desk working name is "The Desk of High-Minded Indignation."

---

Have lived in the same home for a number of years and in the midst of my average subtopian life, have watched kids sprout up quickly. (Do I change as well?)?  The kid two doors down apparently started JROTC and was explaining this to his friends while on the way home from school.  LT Poopers and I passed and complimented him on his uniform.  That has to feel good for him, and I've done my good deed for the day.  I've also done my small part to keep Communism and Islamo-fascism on uneasy footing.

---

As I learn more of

• Economies, 
• Economic liberalization and the
• Non-Aligned Movement, of
• Critiques and praise for international financial institutions
• and Agreements, 
• People protesting WTO (and not knowing why), 
• China booming and U.S. bailing,
• Cities like Detroit failing due to mismanagement and ... liberalism,  
• Public[?!] vs. private unions (go, Gov. Christie!)
• Unfirable federal and state bureaucrats
• the Difficulty of creating business
• the Overabundance of regulation (in the waiting room, I watched a newsman on the boob tube apply for a permit to sell lemonade in NY)  Check out REGULATION NATION, here: (LINK)
• the Mediocrity of the wealthy Republican candidate with nice hair and a big bankroll

I feel like I'm achieving a slow epiphany that things might get worse before they get better here.

Article: Allen West on the Marines Incident: 'Shut Your Mouth, War Is Hell'

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an widely republished e-mail exactly where liberal pundits could stick their opinions regarding the Marines allegedly urinating on a few corpses.  While the incident was wrong, it is amazing - the speed of information - and the speed to self-righteous indignation of the American media, and how quickly we seem to go after our own with the greatest zeal.  Is it any surprise that we now have sketchy "allies" like Russia jumping to get in a few hooks and jabs at the American human rights record whenever they can?  Yet they do, and it is absurd and sad. 

Excerpted from the Weekly Standard, January 13, 2012

“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

Media attempts to sabotage Gingrich in primaries

“I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office.”

The crowd erupted in applause.

“I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that!”

“Every person in here knows personal pain, Gingrich elaborated. “To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary a significant question in a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”

“I am frankly astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate.”

When King attempted to explain that it was not his network that aired the report, Gingrich would not let him off that easy. Incensed, he roared, “Don’t try to blame anybody else. You and your staff chose to start your debate with it. Let me be clear, the story is false.”

Excerpted from The Blaze, http://www.theblaze.com/stories/fiery-gingrich-avoids-answering-ex-wife-question-blasts-cnns-king-and-vicious-negative-press/

~~~

How many ex-wives of Democrats has ABC sought out? They just don't do it. So they know what they're doing. They know they've got a president who can't win on his record. Now, that's another thing. This always gets me. Are journalists monogamous? Are journalists faithful? Are they clean and pure as the wind-driven snow?

This is what's always fascinated me. These people, the sports writer guys, the news media guys, they all get to sit in judgment as though they live perfect lives -- and then when you try to turn the focus on them, "Oh, no, no, no! I'm just the reporter. What -- what -- what I do doesn't matter." It certainly does because you are not reporting. You're passing judgment. But there's never been an investigation of, say, Brian Ross and who he is. You know, how did he get his grades? Where did he go to school? How did he get out of school? How did he get the job at ABC? Who does he know? How did he whatever? We never get that about journalists, and when you try? Ooh, they have a conniption fit! I know what some of you leftists think: "You're really going a long way here to avoid talking about Newt."

No, I don't need to talk about him. What needs to be said about Newt? It's out there. It's out there. I don't know. Fifty percent of the country has been divorced.

Excerpted from Rush Limbaugh.com, http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/01/19/drudge_screwed_up_abc_s_plans_for_the_marianne_gingrich_interview

On haphazard modern journalism

Elements that would complete an otherwise good article are far too often missing.  I read a story today about an iPad having been stolen, and the owner using his techno-geek-wizardry to try and turn the tables on the culprit through publicizing some photos.  I've seen these 'crime with a twist' stories quite a few times by now:  the bad guy snaps some mugs and posts them, and the owner sees it all happening in near real-time, and uses the 'power of social media' to identify the criminal and solve the crime ahead of the police. 

So, give us the pictures! 

This story lays down the basics, but provides no photos, to which a reader states the blindingly obvious:
Where are the pictures? What is the purpose of this story? Are we supposed to help? If so, how? Is this article intended to be a warning to consumers? Is it to highlight the capabilities of cloud-based storage? Is it to continue saturating the market with everything 'Apple' regardless of the content-less story? Where is a link to the original Yahoo article attributed?
 
LINK: http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/887347-owner-of-stolen-ipad-using-icloud-to-provide-weird-clues-to-whereabouts#ixzz1jlS6pJrR
 
Of course, it's nice not being subject to the same rules; but yah, where were the frakking pics?!  Should I post one?

Article: The BBC fails (to understand the Tea Party movement)

   A perspective looking outside-in can always be useful to pry us free from our customary sources.  Look how every aspect of life is now micro-managed in Britain (see 'Nanny State' at right), then look back to the U.S.  Then "wash, rinse, repeat." 

Excerpt:

The British generally and the BBC in particular have a real problem understanding the obsessive suspicion in which the power of central government is held in the US. This is not some funny redneck eccentricity: it is fundamental to the Constitution which gives individual states much greater sovereignty than the countries of the European Union enjoy.

   Source: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/janetdaley/100052632/the-bbc-completely-fails-to-understand-the-tea-party-movement/

Journalism's big black eyes: Does anybody remember when...?

 
   Journalism is predictable: it's full of "strategery" and hot-tempered. That's part of why I left. I'm thinking about the highs and lows since last fall, which invariably are crowded out of the public conciousness within the span of a week or two.  For example: the big shock of summer 2010, the JournoList, never to be mentioned again, seemed to expose the major rift between illiberal leftist journalism and mainstream U.S. society.  The rabble-rabble-rousers quickly abandoned the JournoList scandal (take a peek over at BigJournalism.com) and oozed on over to WikiLeaks for the time being, but the issues remain...

   Information is lined up like chess pieces. The JournoList actively discussed smearing public figures (Palin, etc.) from the safe tower of the "Fourth Estate." What happens to them now? It's a blip on the radar. According to blogger Trevor Loudon, "At least a few, perhaps many, were committed Marxists who saw journalism, not as a profession, but as a revolutionary tool." Or, people leap to conclusions, demanding blood. "Sherrod at USDA is a racist." The police officer acted "stupidly."

   And what happened to the outrage over WikiLeaks? Not one, not ten, but NINETY THOUSAND documents compromised? Well, founder Ass-ange under house arrest, but not really under lock and key for his treachery of the western world, but awaiting possible extradition for an easy gotcha of sexual assault.  Why do they always try to take down the big fish with secondary charges?  To bank away time while the legal beagles work out the details on making the larger case stick?  I don't understand how this cretin still lives.  Another imponderable is how the right is temporarily misleading itself on the legitimate termination of Anwar al-Awlaki  earlier this month. And any American daring to champion Wikileaks deserves to be tarred and feathered.
  I wish we placed the same importance on civics as we did the LeBron James decision... seriously.  Remember that one?  Over the span of a year, he went from hero to zero to hero after he left the Cavs for the Heat.  (Remember the Ohioan gaggle led by the Governor himself that begged him to stay as if he were a religious figure...?)  Now he's doing self-deprecating McDonald's commercials while ESPN does the PR analysis (Unbelievable.)  I guess you have to come up with lo-o-o-ts of filler to round out the 24 hr. infotainment cycle.

QOTD: "Politically correct lockjaw"

   If John McCain had asked the same questions that Donald Trump now asks, he'd be President. But McCain got political correct lockjaw on the so called 'debates' and he was afraid he would be called a racist. His handlers seemed to be working for Obama, McCain did a disservice to the American People and we got someone that to this day we don't know who he is, where he's been, what he believes, if he's a Moslem and all the other questions about the communists in his background and now he's ruining the country most think on purpose. Trump would have asked the questions and would have been President, John McCain did a huge disservice to this country.

- From an article: "Trump rides birth certificate issue," Washington Times, 10 April 2011.  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/10/trump-rides-issue-of-presidents-birth/

Charges dropped against Steven Seagal

On the heels of the news that the harrassment extortion suit against him was dropped, Steven Seagal will debut in a new show. The same jour-nihilists that ran with the story of indictment should now be proclaiming Seagal's innocence from the rooftops. But - social irresponsibility and the media go hand in hand, and we can only hope that as the media rolls around in dirt, the public will question and interrogate the motives instead of blindly believing.

Bonus: Quote of the day

"Steven Seagal goes through more phases than Barbie. So far, we've seen Mafioso Seagal, Reggae Musician Seagal, Environmental Activist Seagal, Gangsta Seagal, Asian Seagal, Jimmy Buffet Seagal, and Southern Lawman Seagal. It looks like his Southern phase is going to extend just a bit longer, with the news that Seagal will topline the TV crime procedural 'Southern Justice'."

- Wookie Johnson, Screen Junkies.

Oh no, what will happen to pro basketball's LeBron James?

Whether or not you love or could care less about LeBron James, I urge you to watch this video and engage in some critical thinking.

Article: "How modern liberals think"

"Nah, she deserves it." 

I really think I hit on something recently when I was playing on the meanings of "discrimination." Evan Sayet offers great insight into America's "progressive" blindfold, examining ideological phenomena in the west, like viewing 80-somethings in the security line as equally suspect as 27 year olds yelling "Allahu Akbar." ('Allah what?" "Oh nothing, I just sneezed.") Based on this kind of thinking that normalizes non-discrimination as a moral imperative, the United States is "bad" anytime it chooses to confront the causes of societal ills (e.g. teenage promiscuity), takes decisive action (Iraq), and so on, that fielding any view other than an aburdist one is WRONG! 

Moreover, we are willfully ignorant:

"After Times Square and South Park incidents, TV execs issue unwritten ban on any mention of Islam in comedies or dramas, with even the Daily Show's "senior Islamic correspondent" getting muzzled."
- Fark.com

Read on.

By Evan Sayet

     I call myself a 9/13 Republican. I grew up a liberal New York Jew; you don't get much more liberal than that--although it was lower-case "l," not what's considered Liberal today. I graduated from high school knowing only one thing about politics: that Democrats are good and Republicans are evil.

     I tell a story. It's not a true story, but it helps crys­tallize my thinking that brought me to become a conservative. I say: Imagine being in a restaurant with an old friend, and you're catching up, and suddenly he blurts out, "I hate my wife." You chuckle to yourself because he says it every time you're together, and you know he doesn't hate his wife; they've been together for 35 years. He loves his daughters, and they're just like her. No, he doesn't hate his wife.

     So you're having dinner, and you look out the window and spot his wife, and she's being beaten up right outside the restaurant. You grab your friend and say, "Come on, let's help her. Let's help your wife," and he says, "Nah, I'm sure she deserves it." At that moment, it dawns on you: He really does hate his wife.

     That's what 9/11 was to me. For years and years I'd hear my friends from the Left say how evil and horrible and racist and imperialistic and oppressive America is, and I'd chuckle to myself and think, "Oh, they always say that; they love America." Then on 9/11, we were beaten up, and when I grabbed them by the collar, and I said, "Come on, let's help her. Let's help America," and they said, "Nah, she deserves it."

     At that moment, I realized: They really do hate America. And that began me on what's now a five-plus-year quest to try to understand the mindset. How could you possibly live in the freest nation in the history of the world and see only oppression? How could you live in the least imperialist power in human history and see us as the ultimate in imperi­alism? How could you live in the least bigoted nation in human history and, as Joe Biden said, "see racism lurking in every dark shadow"?

~~~          ~~~          ~~~         ~~~
     So what you're left with is not really adults, but citizens of voting age who cannot judge their own positions but are virulently antagonistic to any posi­tion other than their own. Why? Because when you've been brought up to believe that indiscrimi­nateness is a moral imperative, any position other than their own must have been arrived at through the employment of discrimination. This is why Bush is Hitler; this is why Reagan is Hitler; this is why Giuliani is Hitler.

     How is Rudolph Giuliani like Hitler to a thinking person? In one way: Hitler discriminated against the Jews; Giuliani discriminated against the crack-addicted prostitutes mugging people in Times Square. Hitler discriminated against the Catholics; Giuliani discriminated against the criminal over­lords. Hitler discriminated against the gypsies; Giuliani discriminated against the terrorists on 9/11 and beyond. In other words, any form of discrimi­nation is wrong.

     The Modern Liberals know that theirs is a posi­tion arrived at through the moral imperative of indiscriminateness; therefore, any position other than their own must have been arrived at through the employment of discrimination. So this makes you not just wrong on your issues and your stances. They don't even think about your issues and your stances. They don't have to. Even if they were will­ing to, even if they were able to, they don't need to. Would you sit and contemplate Hitler's Social Secu­rity policy? No, you would fight Hitler.

From The Heritage Foundation, via Free Republic.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Lecture/Regurgitating-the-Apple-How-Modern-Liberals-Think

Have Americans finally given up on big government?

Excerpted from the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Hating-the-government-finally-goes-mainstream-90852389.html#ixzz0lJxJ2xNi
by Chris Stirewalt

A year ago, the tea parties caught most everyone by surprise.

It was a conservative flash mob and hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets.

Republicans scrambled to get to the head of the parade and Democrats claimed that it was all a put-up job by their enemies in the special interest wars. The press tried to treat what had been a spontaneous outburst as if it were a traditional political party and asked all the questions they teach in journalism school: Who's in charge? Who are they opposed to? Is it racist?

This year, the political parties and the press will not be caught off guard. Republican politicians will address tea party rallies, Democrats will denounce the supposed puppeteers of the movement and the press will look for hate speech.

But few will glean the real meaning of the protests or the booming support for Ron and Rand Paul.

It's not about the Pauls themselves or the guys with the "Don't tread on me" flags It's about the people at home who might not be willing to march in the park or join the next Paul money bomb, but who don't blame the folks who do.

Libertarian sentiment has finally gone mainstream.