The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704684604575381083191313448.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

My response has usually been to say, yes, there’s liberal bias in the media, but there’s no conspiracy. The liberal tilt is an accident of nature. The media disproportionately attracts people from a liberal arts background who tend, quite innocently, to be politically liberal. If they came from West Point or engineering school, this wouldn’t be the case.

Now, after learning I’d been targeted for a smear attack by a member of an online clique of liberal journalists, I’m inclined to amend my response.

I don’t happen to think that Barack Obama is not a US citizen, or that he is not qualified by citizenship to be President. (I think he’s unqualified by having never run anything larger than a nylon stocking, but that’s another matter.)

It does, however, bother me that the President of the United States was asked to display his birth certificate, and he refused. It bothers me VERY much to live in an environment where it’s scandalous even to raise the subject.

It likewise bothers me that we have not, during the campaign or since, heard from ANYONE who knew Barack Obama… other than the ones his campaign told to talk. (One or two extremely rare exceptions were immediately shushed up by the campaign, e.g. his illegal-immigrant aunt in Boston.)

This is unbelievable. Does no one remember taking classes with him at Columbia or Harvard? Is no one willing to talk on the record about what he was like as a neighbor, or a boyfriend? Is no one even willing to step forward and say the equivalent of “he bought peat moss from me once, and he paid his bill”?

(Yes, Neo, that one’s for you.)

Or try this on for size. When was the last time you saw a photograph of President Obama with a cigarette in his mouth? His last annual checkup, as I recall, included a comment about how he really should smoke less.

The man gets away with things no politician, Democrat or Republican, has ever been allowed to get away with — in large part because of the abdication of our Fourth Estate, but also because far too many of us were willing to fall in love with the man at first sight, without knowing anything at all about him.

Someday a lot of things will be known that aren’t public knowledge today — what were the circumstances of Obama’s birth (and why he was cagey about it), what his freakin’ college grades were, and so on. It’ll be depressing, I suspect, but very illuminating, to see what they were hiding from us… and what fools we’ve been.

One more example — a totally fact-free one, in this case. I predicted, at the time of Obama’s election, that during his time in office, he would have an infidelity scandal. (I made this prediction without knowing anything at all about Obama’s personal life or married life. However, this does seem to be the pattern of young Presidents who act like rock stars and expect to be treated like rock stars, e.g. Clinton and Kennedy; throw in FDR if you like. If you want to observe that these men were also all Democrats, go right ahead.)

I still have no basis to believe that President Obama has been anything but completely faithful to his wife. However, I’m now less confident that, if contrary evidence existed, we’d ever hear about it. If we can’t even see a picture of the man with a cigarette, how likely is a picture of a mistress? If we can’t even find someone who sat next to him in class at Harvard Law School, how likely would a latter-day Monica Lewinsky be to speak up?

The silence is deafening. And, I strongly suspect, that’s exactly how President Obama likes it.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

Above at 7:19 should read:

“Republicans after potent influence (or control) from 1994 to 2006 . . .”

http://weblog.theviewfromthecore.com/2004_04/ind_003503.html

The Daily Caller has more from JournoList today. I wonder how many of the list members are getting little sleep, trying to remember what they wrote, and wishing they hadn’t decided to delete a lot of old messages from their JournoList e-mail folder. 🙂

Fair enough. A gargantuan task. So, approach it from the other direction—-instead of hiring hundreds of thousands or federal positions, start to work eliminating many of those positions.

I never said it would be easy or pleasant or quick. Get the cabinet in place and have each secretary develop directives for each dept under his/her control as to which divisions will be eliminated. Don’t eliminate positions, eliminate entire divisions.

As for the federal paperwork, that’s why God created executive orders.

Only part of the problem is the size of the bureaucracy which is why I found Obama’s own promises to change business as usual without merit. The other part is those that we send to solve it.

It’s not that the Republicans are better at it than Democrats, it’s that both parties see themselves as a governing aristocracy—both parties are members of the same political elite. People like Barney Frank or Bob Etheridge reveal themselves with their arrogance as the same kind of snobbish dismissive aristocracy that the French Rebelled against in the 18th century.

For their part, Republicans after potent influence (or control) from 1994 to 2008, did not move to eliminate a single federal program or bureaucratic department. Republicans object to the expansion of govt, but after liberal Democrat programs are in place, they simply go with the flow.

First, you have to understand the little appreciated fact that when he comes into office a new President gets to try to “control” the Cabinet Agencies, the Executive Branch and the Military by appointing roughly somewhere between 800 and 1,200 of “his people” to be his managers and advocates, to sit atop and direct the myriad agencies and organizations that comprise the gigantic millions-strong Federal bureaucracy, and just finding the people to fill those top level positions alone (start with an arduous and exhaustive 50+ page disclosure form for high level positions requiring Congressional confirmation that throws the whole of your life, background and finances open to an investigation by Congressional staffers–hardly a nonpartisan and disinterested lot–and whose details can sometimes, somehow, be “leaked”) can be a daunting task, and many such positions are never filled and just remain vacant or are only filled for a short time and the person leaves to take another position, which usually means that an “acting” person is put in charge, drawn from the very often recalcitrant bureaucracy that the President is usually trying to manhandle into getting it to do what he wants it to do.

In practice, this means that the President appoints a head for each agency, plus perhaps a couple or occasionally a few more people to high level management positions to be his advocates, who have to first get oriented to their agencies, to its power structure and ways, and who will then likely have just a few short years remaining in which to try to see to it that that President’s policies are fully and faithfully carried out by their agency.

So, you have to imagine, say, a leader and at most a half dozen of the “President’s men,” at the top, and issuing orders and trying to control the vast pyramid beneath them, sometimes consisting of thousands of employees, but more often consisting of tens or hundreds of thousand of employees who have their own politics, who have their own priorities and agendas, who are used to doing things their way, and who can basically ignore, “misinterpret,” go slow on, or sabotage any initiatives and orders they don’t like. Thus, any such control and major change would require much more and deeper penetration and control by the “President’s men” than is presently the case.

On the other end of things, you have to realize that in addition to the complex hiring and firing regulations promulgated by the Office of Personnel Management (that can require hiring procedures that can sometimes take a year or more of paperwork and effort to get an ordinary candidate for a position hired and on the job, but which can also be lightning fast for a candidate that management likes, when it uses its power to cut through the red tape and/or it sets up a “wired” position, tailor made for the candidate they want to get the job) and in practice each individual agency can develop its own specific interpretations and exemptions from these general rules, which means that management can usually find ways to hire, retain and promote pretty much whoever they want, can also find some reason to turn down pretty much whoever they want, and despite the very lengthily, arduous and exacting firing procedures in place, can usually make life miserable enough to drive out those they want to get rid of. In one example, reported in the Washington Post a few years ago, a whistleblower informed the Post that after other Federal agencies had abandoned the practice, the Library of Congress was still using forced mental examinations by psychiatrists of their choosing–(object to such a test and refuse to take it and you “proved” you had a problem, and you were immediately fired) as a tool to get rid of those employees that it claimed had various “mental problems,” and were people that management very badly wanted gone.

Thus, in order to hire such large numbers of conservative Federal workers that you would be able to achieve major changes in the orientation and attitudes of the massive Federal bureaucracy—which I believe is now generally quite Left leaning in orientation–would require that all of the hiring officials and procedures currently in place would have to be radically and quickly restructured, particularly since time is the great ally of the bureaucracy. For they figure that long after you have spent the couple of years you have available to try to make the changes you want to, and have been bogged down by red tape and delays and ceased to be a problem and to bother them, they will still be in power and working away at their desks, doing what they want to do, the way they want to do it.

But the editors, oho, they were Hard-Line Republican! Tada! Balance! Checks! All is well with the world.

I didn’t find that that plausible back then, and as time passed, and more “journalists” moved into “editor” positions (and the bar/experience level was moved to apparently 21 for senior positions?!) it’s become laughable.

But some people still report it as the gospel truth, even today.

http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-far-weve-come.html

That’s the sort of thing that got me out of journalism (luckily). The groupthink and mantras that even then were almost parodies then.

Moreover, if any confirmation of his ineligibility were needed, that fact that he and the DNC have reportedly spent over $2 million dollars so far and kept several law firms busy flying attorneys around the country to appear in various courts to block each and every one of the reportedly more than a hundred suits that have been filed by ordinary U.S. citizens trying to force Obama to produce his long form, original birth certificate is that confirmation. You don’t go to all that trouble and spend $2 million dollars if your long firm birth certificate, that conclusively proves your eligibility, is sitting, very easily available, in your safe deposit box.

Curiously, every court, from state courts all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, has shut such efforts down, not by proceeding to call for the production of this birth certificate and settling this issue once and for all by an examination of that document, but, instead, by ruling on the threshold issue of “standing.” These courts have all ruled that those U.S. citizens and voters seeking to have the courts force Obama to produce his original, long form birth certificate to prove that he meets the test required by the Constitution do not “have a dog in this fight,” that none of them can prove that they would be harmed in any substantial way if Obama is not eligible to be President, and so these various courts are relieved of having to go forward to an actual proceeding to force the production and examination of this document. Some courts have also justified their rulings by saying that, in any case, the window to object to Obama’s status was open for just the 90 days prior to the actual election and has closed, or that since the DNC and Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker “certified” Obama as meeting the Constitutional test, these suits are moot, while other judges have berated petitioners for even raising the issue, and one judge has fined Orly Taitz, the lawyer for some of the most prominent of the questioners, $20,000 for her temerity in repeatedly pressing for answers.

I happen to think that saying that U.S. citizens and voters would not be and have not been harmed if Obama is not eligible, nor have the right to see the proof that Obama has complied with the Constitutional requirement is utter bullshit, and that the courts are simply not willing to delve into an issue so obviously fraught with the direst of consequences for the judges and courts who might touch this radioactive issue, and for the U.S. if they were actually given judicial scrutiny. So, they punted.

I also happen to think that the questions and issues, outlined in the legal brief originally filed by Philadelphia attorney and former Democratic Party official Philip Berg, which first sought this birth certificate, deserve very close attention.

Berg’s brief raised the question of the operation and requirements with regard to Obama’s citizenship status of the web of U.S., Kenyan and Indonesian laws, regulations and procedures in effect at the time of Obama’s presumed date of birth, of the legal effects of Obama and his mother’s travels, and of Obama’s residence in Indonesia to age 10 when he traveled to Honolulu, a brief which raised questions about the statements by Obama’s Kenyan paternal grandmother and sister, who (until they were silenced) very proudly proclaimed that they were present and witnessed Obama’s birth in Kenya at a Mombassa hospital, which has a record showing the birth of the son to Barack Obama Sr. at about the time Obama is supposed to have been born in Honolulu. A brief that raised questions about the absence of an original, long form birth certificate that would have listed the name of the supposed Hawaiian hospital where Obama was born, and which would bear the signature and name of the doctor who delivered Obama.

Curious, isn’t it, that none of Honolulu hospital records attesting to Obama’s birth there have ever been produced, and that none of the doctors, nurses or other staff of the Honolulu hospitals where Obama was supposedly born–again, curiously, not one hospital has been specified but two, one specified by Obama and a different Honolulu hospital specified by his sister–have ever come forward to say, “yeah, I delivered Obama, or I was there when Obama was delivered, or I saw him and his mother in the hospital after the delivery” or that no family friend or acquaintance has come forward, either, to say, “yeah, I visited Obama’s mother and saw the newborn Obama in the hospital,” or to say they “saw them right after they arrived home from the hospital. ”

And, finally, a brief that raised questions about the details and effect on Obama’s citizenship status of his parent’s citizenship status, and about the legal effects of the residency history and age of Obama’s mother at his birth; none of these very pertinent questions has ever been answered to this day.

Of course, Obama & Co. and the MSM have also been extremely successful in using the Alinskyite tactics of ridicule and name calling to marginalize all those who have dared to question Obama’s eligibility to be President, by labeling them with their newly coined pejorative term of “Birther,” the utterance of which is supposed to shut down all further debate, and it has been pretty successful in doing so. And now, of course, we can see, via the recent revelations about “Journolist,” just how such a smear campaign by the MSM, designed to protect Obama from his enemies and to marginalize and destroy them, is organized and coordinated behind the scenes.

Bottom line, Obama has very carefully obscured, artificially constructed, or brazenly lied to our faces about everything so far–about his background, about his basic outlook and philosophy, about his political orientation, about his positions, plans and goals, about his actions, and the results of those actions.

So, why would it be so unbelievable that Obama would also very brazenly lie about his citizenship status, and about his Constitutional eligibility to run for and to be President, when he calculated that with the connivance of the DNC and Congressional Democrats, with the support of the MSM, with an increasingly Leftist and gun shy Judicial system, and a trusting electorate that has had no experience of and is, therefore, not on the lookout for such monumental and brazen fraud, he could get away with it, and no one would have the temerity to or could successfully question his credentials.

It’s hard to fight back against the posture of the day because the truth is harder to tell and requires time to relate, unlike a smarmy talking point. Moreover, one doesn’t want to stoop to that level. These Journo-lists are very insecure and immature and probably will never grow up.

Palin has learned the trick, though. Ignore them and communicate directly with people over the internet to get a mature point of view across. FOX News also scares liberals, as it negates their message and pulls the undecided towards reason and maturity.

We have been through this before and will come out all the stronger from the antics of the Dope. In the 1930’s communism and fascism were the darlings of the intelligentsia. They had good homes in HArvard, Yale, Columbia and a slew of other academic havens. Mussolini was all the fad until Italy invaded Ethiopia. FDR prided himself on saving the country from fascism as he brought us ever and ever closer to it. And, capitalism was not so well regarded then. The Dope could not administer the marxist poison to us slowly, so he woke up a sleeping capitalist giant in the Tea Party. Soon enough (maybe 2102), we will be free of excessive regulation (which is the prime cause of our loss of jobs), tax policy will modified reflect reality and growth and the economy will take off. I hope I am around to see it.