Prediction: What Stimulus Bill? Let's talk foreign policy.

Time for Biden's vision to come to fruition. This Spendulus bill smells and smells bad. The hoi poloi and the chattering classes all know it. Time to divert attention while the Dems start carrying the money bags home.

Watch for it.

Obama's Fearmongering is way out of hand

As we've complained here Obama is manipulating figures and exaggerating reality to gain the upper hand on ramming his trillion dollar Democrat wish list down the throats of American taxpayers. If you're a Democrat maybe that makes you smugly happy. It shouldn't. It's all a big lie. Recessions like the 1981-82 recession work themselves out with a minimum of government intervention and no resulting staggering debt.

Let's get the facts straight!

via the Wall Street Journal

This fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last
year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force
was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now. Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931, 6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%. Jobs were being lost at double or triple the rate of 2008-09 or 1981-82.

Read the whole thing.

The natural progression of economics would have gotten us out of this recession as it has 5 times since the 1930s anyway without this staggering debt package and a huge Democrat wish list that never got the full debate treatment that it deserves. Very clever, but it has no resemblance to democracy.

The media of course bought it hook, line and sinker.

And they haven't pointed out that it's worse EVERYWHERE than here.

Jourtegrity Loser of the Week 021109

Jourtegrity Loser of the week.......dumb roll please....is NY Senator Charles Schumer who said when discussing the Spendulus bill...

"and let me just say to all the chattering classes, when considering these, yes, "porky" amendments - the American people just don't care."

Thanks, Chuck, us chatterers will move on to the A-Rod steroids case. Or the octuplets - now that's news!

And what does this have to do with Jourtegrity lost? They fact that you didn't hear or read about this gem in the MSM makes it a journalistic integrity issue.

Activists masquerading as reporters

That's exactly how Noah Pollak puts it over at commentarymagazine.com when he describes how reporters have been reporting the violence in Gaza. Yes civilians died, but what are the surrounding and very important details?

The spin on the reporting of this violence is decidedly one-sided. And the photoshopping specialists are at it again as they were during the incursion into Lebanon. Via Pajamas Media

Look at both pages of photos.

NBC and MSNBC Ban Ann Coulter for Life

Someone found out that Ann Coulter spends a fair amount of time examining liberal bias in her new book Guilty. Apparently the Democrat National Broadcasting Company and its attack dog stepchild MSNBC would like Ann to talk about something else.

via Drudge:

But one network insider claims it was the book's theme -- a brutal examination of liberal bias in the new era -- that got executives to dis-invite the controversialist. "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," a TODAY insider reveals. "It's such a downer.
It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."

I'm guessing they didn't really ask the audience...

What the LA Times did in 2008

Over at Patterico's Pontifications they've written a review of what one of the Big 3 (Washington Post and New York Times being the other two) did to add to the concept that journalistic integrity is completely gone. It's stunning really, yet you know there is a large readership at all three papers who simply nod and go "uh huh, uh huh" as they read this biased and hackneyed tripe.

These newspapers can't die fast enough.

2008 Not so good for Anthropogenic Global Warming Alarmists

Christopher Booker of the Telegraph thinks AGW is a big lie. He's right of course.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

My fear is that Obama's appointment of John Holdren as his "science advisor" bodes a full steam ahead Global Warming fear fest even as many climate science heavyweights are jumping off the bandwagon. Holdren is the one who helped the Danish Government nearly imprison Bjorn Lomborg, author of the Skeptical Environmentalist when he dared to defy the whole AGW gestapo.(via Powerlineblog.com) When the government is behind a scientific fearmaking steamroller like AGW, watch out. Research money skyrockets and facts get molded to fit the meme.
Al Gore = PT Barnum

Spinning POTUS fitness.

Michelle Malkin gets it right again with a piece on the fawning over BHO's fitness results. In the piece she quotes the Washington Post's front page man love from Eli Zaslow:

Sighed smitten reporter Eli Zaslow: “The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.” Drool cup to the newsroom, stat.

She goes on to point out that the LA Times printed an op ed piece from WaPo reporter Jonathan Chait who equated GW Bush's fitness regimen with creepiness:

Recounting how President Bush ran 3 1/2 miles a day and preached more cross-training to a federal judge, Chait fumed: “Am I the only person who finds this disturbing?…What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy.”

As Michelle points out -

Fit Republican president = Selfish, indulgent, creepy fascist.
Fit Democratic president = Disciplined, health-conscious Adonis role model.

Read the whole thing, it foreshadows how the POTUS and POTUS elect have and will be comparatively referenced in all areas in the Main Stream media.

Seems fair to me.

The Global Warming Scamarama Moves On

The emperor has no clothes. The elephant is in the room. Now one must understand (according to AP, our neutral newsservice of record) that cold is actually hot. I'm beginning to understand how so many people voted for Obama's line of nothingness.

Don Surber has it right.

More Misleading Crap from the AP

Maybe you saw this headline. US Forces Kill 6 Afghan Police. Did you read the whole story? Many people don't. And AP knows this.

Jourtegrity Lost in real numbers

dThe numbers from the Center for Media and Public Affairs regarding the bias shown by the electronic news media during the election cycle released today didn't even include the two biggest offenders; CNN and MSNBC.

"President-elect Barack Obama received 68% positive evaluations on the network evening news shows during the general election. His treatment was twice as favorable as John McCain’s 33% positive and Sarah Palin’s 34% positive evaluations."

How can we believe what we hear/see on the network news if they're willing to "manage" their newscasts to fit their political agendas? It's simple. We can't.

Tougher still, is to get this message out when the perpetrators of the crime control the means of communications to the masses.

At least the WashPo is talking about it

The topic of this blog - journalistic integrity, is under siege and has been for awhile. You simply can no longer trust that you will get a balanced look at anything anymore in the Main Stream Media. For the second time now in the last two weeks the Washington Post has allowed their ombudsmen/women to take a retrospective look at the WaPo's coverage.

It isn't pretty. The annoying concept buried not so subtley in this article is that you just can't find quality conservative writers to balance out the overwhelming number of liberal writers. Journalism after all, it contends, draws people (liberals) who want to change the world. Presumably Republicans are drawn to money grubbing occupations and weekend security guard jobs at Gitmo.

The body of the article at least lists a number of incidences that have come into question. It is by no means a complete list and as expected, it is a list of the least offensive of blue journalism's biased missteps. The final comment by Deborah Howell suggests there is hope.

"One more factor will kick in soon. After Obama is inaugurated, he will be the authority the news media challenge. It happens in every administration."

I'm not holding my breath on that one.

I will now stop pulling my hair out

Obama's not a bad guy. Cute kids, his wife seems nice enough - maybe she doesn't really have a chip on her shoulder. His lack of experience is my main problem with him and the fact that he's never had any kind of executive experience. Never had to balance a budget, fight with the firefighter's union, work with Democrats and Republicans on anything. McCain did not hold executive office either mind you, but he did work across the aisle - alot. Lots of legislation, no pork. Obama's got all the answers but only to the questions he wants asked. Or get off my plane, now. And there in lies the rub.

The reason this blog is entitled jourtegrity (my own made up name - if you believe the google search engine)is because Obama was never vetted by the Main Stream Media. We know who they are - CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, the major newspapers; New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and the weeklies; Time, Newsweek et al. Most egregious of them all is the Associated Press, a once neutral pipeline of journalistic daily boilerplate feeding hundreds of newspapers nationwide - but now a clear and shameful extension of the Democratic National Committee. I didn't forget Fox, they are members of the Main Stream Media also, and very powerful I might add, but they're simply too far in the tank the other way to take seriously.

So what has happened? I would call it a total collapse of journalistic integrity. The sellout began when Bush eeked out Gore for the 2000 election. The ink stained wretches and teeth whiteners were so incensed that they began bashing Bush and his administration incessantly for the last 8 years with a short break to feign support for a short period after 9-11. This set up the "3rd Bush Term" narrative for Obama to run against McCain. How could he win? We have been told daily that Bush is the Worst. President. Ever. Frankly, for McCain/Palin to come within 5% is an accomplishment of epic proportions

So, if you happened to be among the 47% of Americans who voted for McCain/Palin and you paid attention at all to the way this election was covered, you had to be pulling your hair out like I was. Truth is I was actually starting to drink more because of it (no, really!). And I've found that I've been a little depressed. I have degrees in Broadcast Journalism and Political Science and was sure that what I was seeing was temporary, and held my faith that the tenets of fairness and neutrality, the holy grails of journalism, would win out. How could this many people be willing to collectively destroy a once proud profession? Still unbelievable to me but I'm hoping the parade of real journalists who can no longer stay quiet has begun.

The NYT had an article the other day that suggested that "so maybe we were a little biased, sorry". And as I predicted the positive stories about Iraq are rolling in - somehow just missing the election cycle.