Itz News to Me

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that 71% believe that reporters try to help their favorite candidates with favorable coverage….

Fewer than 1 in 6 believe that reporters are even trying to be unbiased. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of people willing to buy what they’re selling…

Three guesses as to which candidate they believe is being shown the most favoritism…

Popularity: 3%

Obama cited his great-uncle’s part in the liberation of Auschwitz (now corrected to Buchenwald after getting busted for stretching the truth yet again), in his Memorial Day remarks….The question that the media needs to ask, but won’t of course: was your great-uncle a “typical white person” like your grandmother?

Popularity: 7%

In an effort to unseat Al Gore as the sorest loser in electoral history, Robert Mugabe is holding partial recounts in a transparent attempt to rig the results of the presidential election which he already lost.

If you can’t read this story and think “sounds exactly like Florida in 2000″ then you’re either struggling with reading comprehension or are too busy playing the Democratic version of all three monkeys in the “See No Evil. Hear No Evil. Speak No Evil” trio…

Popularity: 7%

Roger Simon, who is a Hollywood writer by trade and ought to know, does the best job ever of explaining why fabulously wealthy celebrities often take up leftist causes which, by their very lifestyles, expose them to regular folk like you and me as complete and total hypocrites:

Much of this public liberalism of the excessive knee-jerk variety stems from a form of self-loathing. These same people do not want to be bastards – life just put them in that position. But, at the same time, they do not want anyone to take away what they have – the vast acclaim and fortune – even if deep down they wonder if they are worthy. What to do? What to do?

The solution is to create another self, a kind of mini-me, who goes out and loudly proclaims what a fine liberal humanistic person he or she is- a public projection to obfuscate the private self. Sometimes this results in actual good works, but usually it is basically blather (see Streisand’s website) or dopey showing off like Sean Penn putting in an appearance with Hugo Chavez.

Popularity: 18%

Just hours after getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar for planting questions and swearing they’d never do it again, Hillary Clinton’s campaign did it again.

This time they tried to claim it was just an innocent conversation between old acquaintences. Problem is, they weren’t. And it wasn’t. It was the same old sleazy underhanded Clinton tactics: they just figured that lightning couldn’t possibly strike twice. Who would think to even check so soon after such an embarrassing incident after all?

This brazen huckstering shows that for Hillary there is no such thing as spontaneity: if it’s not in her script, it doesn’t happen. And we thought Al Gore was stiff and robotic in 2000? He’s looking like a freewheeling firebrand by comparison to the rigidity of Hillary Clinton and her handlers. Not that I’m complaining, mind you…The more the American public sees of who and what she really is, the less likely we’ll have to hear from her after November 2008.

Popularity: 17%

In what has to be one of the saddest displays yet of Hillary Clinton’s inability to deal with challenging situations, her campaign just got busted planting questions at a “town hall”-type meeting in Iowa. Fearing that she would make yet another mistake by going off her pre-scripted evasive answers, she has resorted to both pre-selecting who would ask the questions, but the questions they will ask as well.

This is clearly a person completely incapable of thinking on her feet. If it’s not completely rehearsed and the message previously screened, she obviously can’t handle it. How in the world would she manage the unpredictable world affairs if she can’t even handle a small town in Iowa?

Popularity: 14%

Over at The Gay Patriot, he touches on the similarities between relgious zealots and the “outing” zealots. He gets it right, but for the wrong reason.

Are there similarities? Too many to mention. The fanatical belief of the inherent “rightness” of their actions, their conviction that unbelievers are “evil,” and so on. But I think he gets the “outers” religion wrong: this is all about immature attention-seeking. A read of the original article contains the money quote which completely explains the motivation:

If people call me back, the chances I won’t write about them go through the roof.

There it is in a nutshell, in effect it’s a simple immature impulse: “Oh yeah. You don’t think I’m important enough to call back. Well, I’ll show you!” This guy obviously has an overinflated sense of self, and he has found a way to garner lots and lots of attention to himself. From his “neighborhood activism” (which amounts essentially to a whole lot of complaining: notice the distinct lack of positive accomplishments mentioned) to his “outings,” he is like the second grader who - failing to get positive attention - will do anything he can to get negative attention. He demands that you shine the spotlight on him: you will pay attention to him one way or the other. If you don’t, you’ll pay the price…

It’s Occam’s Razor: go for the simplest explanation possible. The extended analysis going around the internet is misplaced and unnecessary. Want to know the intricacies of this guy’s psyche? Ask any parent of a small child…

Popularity: 13%

For all the current talk about problems within Republican ranks, the truth is that when it comes to outright fraud and corruption, nobody does it like Democrats. From mafia-controlled unions to backroom politics, the biggest local “machines” such as the infamous Tammany Hall which controlled New York politics have always been Democratic. But that was the past you say. Lots of people and organizations have unsavory pasts that they’ve moved beyond. True. It’s just the Democrats aren’t one of them.

Witness New Jersey. In what at first blush seems just another local politician gone bad story, the money quote is literally the last sentence in the article:

More than 100 public officials in the state have been convicted on federal corruption charges in the last five years.

How many? More than 100. Convicted. Not charged, convicted.

If there had been more than 100 Republicans convicted across the country in the last five years, the media would be pounding on them day and night. But there hasn’t been a peep about New Jersey. Why? Because they’re Democrats. And the silence is deafening. Where are 60 Minutes, Dateline NBC, 20/20, the New York Times, or the Washington Post on this story? An entire state subverted by corrupt party politics at every level right down to the school boards, and no one thinks that’s national news?

Media defenders always conveniently ignore how many stories don’t get run because of media bias. There’s no bias? Really. Then defend this….

Popularity: 16%

I said this a long time ago, and I’ll repeat it again: History will judge President Bush kindly.

For those of us old enough to remember Reagan’s time in office remember that many of the same criticisms being leveled at the Bush administration are simply retreads of the exact same criticisms - from many of the exact same people and institutions - that were made toward then President Reagan: arrogance, tyranny, insensitivity, stupidity, yada yada yada.

The reality is that many of those criticisms are not aimed at Bush’s ineffectiveness, but the fear that his policies actually are effective. I’m not going to waste my time arguing on behalf of his PR machine which has been woefully inadequate since Karen Hughes’ departure. The Medicare drug benefit for seniors which Democrats wanted to block rather than have seniors believe that the Republicans were anything but willing to euthanize the elderly, implementation of testing in schools over the objections of the teachers union which is offended by the prospect of actually forcing teachers to do their jobs rather than run social experiments on our children, and the prosecution of militant Islamists rather than continue the Democratic appeasement policies of Carter and Clinton will all be what is long remembered while the critics of those policies will be resigned to the “dustbin of history.”

Even now the Democrats are running scared of any perceived success of the surge in Iraq by attempting to continually move the goalposts away from success on the ground to avoid any hint of a victory against tyranny and Islamism in the Middle East because the truth of the matter is that Bush said one of the rationales for the war is a “draining of the swamp.” And it truly is doing that despite the protestations of war critics. Democrats want to either: a) run away from Iraq before it truly takes hold, or b) get into office themselves so they can take credit for the heavy lifting being done today.

History will tell a different story than today’s New York Times just as it does of the Reagan administration: and just like today, they’ll all “remember” how they supported those policies too…

Popularity: 17%

It’s not original thought I’m sure, but Rep. Tancredo says what I’ve been thinking lately myself: Enough’s enough.

The whole Katrina fiasco has been a mess for far too long for one simple reason: unlike other areas of the country, people from New Orleans seem pathologically either unwilling or unable to take responsibility for themselves and their lives. Other areas of the Gulf Coast have moved on and picked up their lives, but in New Orleans it’s a constant waiting game to see how much more wealth can be redistributed from other areas of the country.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: what happened in New Orleans is the complete responsibility of the state and local officials - and, by proxy, the residents who continually voted incompetent and corrupt officials into office again and again. They knew for 40 years that the levee system was inadequate, but rather than spend all those tourist tax dollars on fixing it, they kept lining their pockets with the proceeds. Then when the inevitable happen they blame people in Washington for their own failures.

I also blame pandering politicians in Washington who would rather throw our tax dollars at the whiners rather tell them that they have a responsibility to not rebuild a city below sea level in a hurricane zone.

You’re free to think what you want, but for me: enough’s enough….

Popularity: 6%