Obamaville March 2, are you kidding me? The Ides of March run amuck!

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Once upon a time, actually in the time of William Shakespeare, his words, "Beware the ides of March," served as a warning, a dramatic foreshadowing, for Julius Caesar who was killed off on that date according to Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar.

Since the event happened in 44 BC, and Shakespeare wrote the play in 1599, we Americans, not into Old English and Shakespeare anymore, changed the meaning to be a forewarning of potential severe weather, as in beware the ides of March, in like a lion, and out like a lamb.

Well the bad weather seems to have come in February this year, perhaps we need to change the meaning of Shakespeare's warning once again.  I do not know about you, but just two days into March and the world seems to be engulfed in a dangerous malaise of bizarre news, events, and chaos.

For example, the Iraq army is attacking ISIS, the same Iraq troops who cut and ran the last time they met.

The charismatic leader of the Russian opposition to President Putin, Boris Nemtsov, was murdered just outside the walls of the Kremlin in Moscow the day before the biggest opposition protests against Putin in recent years.

The Dow Jones, S&P 500, and NASDAQ stock markets all set record highs this week and it is only Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington to address congress tomorrow.

Obama and his senior advisors refuse to meet with Netanyahu even though they are in the final stages of a deal with Iran, who is committed to the annihilation of Israel.

Terrorism continues to dominate headlines so congress and the president fail to agree on how to fund our only defense against the terrorists, the Department of Homeland Security.

Speaking of terrorists, the latest act of brutality by ISIS was the release of 19 Christian prisoners, which no one can figure out.

Putin continues to grab land from the Ukraine while the USA plays footsy with a bunch of bad guys around the Middle East.

In yet another act of terrorism, ISIS might have declared war on Twitter who is trying to stop the 90,000 Tweets a day from ISIS alone.

North Korea and their leader with the new haircut threaten to destroy the Stars and Stripes, namely America, probably because he cannot buy the movies he wants.

As America closes in on energy independence, congress approves the Keystone Pipeline but Obama vetoes the dastardly project.

Speaking of Obama, his buddy, the Reverend Al Sharpton, still has unlimited access to the White House even as he has failed to pay millions of dollars in taxes he owes the USA.

Then there is MSNBC, who finally realized their claims that Morning Joe was the top rated news show on cable are not only misleading, they are false.

MSNBC also has the Reverend Al Sharpton show, which has consistently lost ratings, and might just be the lowest rated news show on cable.  In the background, someone is investigating the Reverend to see if major corporate sponsors of his foundation are protected from racial protests because of their payments.

In sports NASCAR made a rules change that has enraged all the top drivers by disqualifying their cars.  This comes after completion of their first season under major new rules changes concerning the NASCAR driving championship.  Every major driver and the most winners on the NASCAR Sprint circuit failed to make the finals.

Disgraced NBC News anchor Brian Williams, thrown off the air because he thought he was a famous entertainer as well as news anchor, has opened the door to charges other news people on television have enhanced, stretched, or just plain lied about their experiences.  Really, we do not have a biased media do we?

To top off the 2nd day of March, the artist who painted an official portrait of President Clinton fessed up today and said he put the shadow of Monica Lewinsky in the portrait to show his disgust for Clinton's affairs.

More bizarre Clinton news, Hillary people say she will make her presidential announcement on April 1 so does that make it an April's fools joke?

The truth is, even though the Ides of March officially take place March 15, we have a great jump on it with the bizarre incidents listed.

Normalcy is non-existent.

Mediocrity is a distant dream.

News reporters are not supposed to be the news.

Our president claims to represent the two thirds of the public who refuse to vote.

No one cares.

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Putin goes where Obama fears to tread - A real news conference

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How about that?  The bully leader of the bad boys of Russia (according to the White House), President Vladimir Putin, went where Obama has feared to tread most of his presidency.  Putin held a no holds barred press conference with, you won't believe this, USA television network CNBC whose claim to fame is reporting on finances.

There were a couple of huge scoops in newspaper jargon in how this went down because every TV network in the world would love to interview Putin in the middle of the USA Russia tensions.  CNBC is owned by NBC who used to be one of the water carriers for the Obama Administration.

Putin spoke at St. Petersburgh, Russia to an International Economic Forum hosted by Geoff Cutmore from the CNBC London office, a second scoop.  By the way, in contrast Obama got Putin thrown out of the last world economic summit.  Putin's speech was followed by a no holds barred news conference in which Cutmore had no restrictions on questions.

For over an hour the Russian President did what our own president cannot do, respond to any question asked by the media no matter how sensitive.  The few times Obama ever holds a news conference, the same Obama who promised as president to give us transparency but in truth gave us a stone wall, the subject and time have always been restricted and the press was hand picked by the White House for most appearances.

Putin had no problem and no fear facing the demons from America, the liberal press.  In fact he was totally relaxed, frequently used humor to make a point, and laughed at the charges Obama made against him when questioned.

Go to the following link for a full story on the astonishing event.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101700307

Just yesterday Putin stunned the financial world by concluding a 30 year energy agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping as Obama style US foreign policy continues to drive the rest of the world away from us and into each other's arms.

Perhaps equally amazing was the announcement also today that NBC news will air a TV prime time special next Wednesday of a multi-hour interview with NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden also filmed in Russia and which had to have the blessing of the Putin administration.

As noted before, NBC was the pied piper for President Obama for years but the recent actions demonstrate that NBC has discovered telling the truth may be a far greater way to win the ratings in America.

What remains to be see is if MSNBC, the center of left journalism in America, will also tire of apologizing for the president's actions or lack of actions and get real.  Mainstream Americans will always be in the middle of the political pendulum or what President Reagan described as conservative with compassion.

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Obamaville March 1 - Pundits Punt on Veracity

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Apples are Oranges to Media Experts

Time goes by ever so slowly in the race for the Republican nomination but a few things are already quite obvious.  First, there is no effort for some media to hide, disguise or claim balanced coverage because media objectivity has been thrown to the winds with a little over 8 months left in the campaign.

Not that it makes a lot of difference because the public long ago assumed media bias was a new facet of journalism in America.  Of course Fox News is the conservative standard but they are not necessarily Republican leaning as no one has done more to undermine efforts by Romney to pick up conservatives than the Fox personalities.

Sometimes it seems they are in cahoots with MSNBC and their parent NBC the way they keep implying Romney is struggling to get the backing of leading conservatives.  Back in the days of honest philosophical differences all the Republican candidates used to pledge to support whomever won the nomination at the convention.

That was how Reagan was so successful in capturing cross over voters from the Democrat and Independent ranks.  Now it seems the candidates put themselves above the party by threatening to withhold support for the eventual nominee, threatening a third party candidate, and even threatening to back someone new who might be seduced into entering the race at the last minute.

Loyalty to party seems to have become a lost principle.  Accommodation of all views from conservative to moderate to liberal also seems to be lost on our present flock of politicians.  Perhaps they have hopes of demanding a litmus test on proper conservative attitudes before pledging support, a narrow minded view that has failed miserably in the past.

It would seem rather obvious from the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush years in the presidency that America has become far more moderate than conservative conservatives might like but reality is a powerful motivator to put philosophical loyalty in the middle where it belongs if one intends to serve all Americans.

Reagan proved you could be conservative and compassionate while the Bush family and Clinton proved being moderate was the only way to survive.  No doubt the nation needs a strong dose of fiscal conservatism to get out of the mess the liberals and conservatives have left us but eliminating budget deficits, reducing the national debt and fixing the entitlement mess also requires a lot of compassion to minimize the damage on people.

On the Democrat side of the media ledger very few media outlets show any desire to be anything but an extension of the Obama press office.  In the fifteen presidential elections I can remember I've never experienced anything like the media intimidation from the White House.  Not even Johnson or Nixon had the mainstream and cable media eating out of their hands like Barack Obama.

I suspect it is partly a response to the often heavy handed treatment of the media by Bush II insiders who never trusted the media and probably for good reason.  Backing Obama gave the media a chance to get even.

There is clearly a left leaning tendency on the part of most of the media which has come to the surface as the media lost all sense of balanced coverage and objective reporting.  And of course there is the fact Obama is Black, a Democrat and clearly wants big government, all draws to a liberal media.

It has been a long time since the liberals had a chance to influence the government gravy train, to dominate the news through reporters and anchors, and to control most of the cable news talk shows where they can sell books and book speeches.

Over the past few decades there were liberal stalwarts including The New York Times and Washington Post on the print side and PBS on television but the success of cable mouthpieces, first conservatives and then liberals, broke down the objective principles of journalism and opened the floodgates to news media stars interested more in making news than reporting it.

Rush Limbaugh is one of few media stars honest enough to admit that the role of talk shows is to entertain.  I suspect most of the public still thinks they report the news, fair and balanced news, choosing to ignore the advocacy and lack of objectivity of most of the media stars.

CNN has come a long ways from the days when Ted Turner ruled falling off the cliff of objectivity into the abyss of liberalism.  Some supposedly news shows like Soledad O'Brien and others make no attempt to hide their anti-conservative bias while the prime time news tries to downplay it but always stacks the panels of "experts" with liberals and Democrats, usually liberals as well.

Well there is still one place in CNN where you get balanced news coverage, that is the HLN (Headline News) Morning Express Show with the ever bubbly Robin Meade who has gradually taken over the morning news and entertainment slot and has the only six hour time slot, 6 am until 12 noon, on television.  She is also the only news personality who is part Native American.

MSNBC might as well be located in the Obama White House because even their so called Republican voices or pretenders defend Republican principles like France fought off the German invasion in World War II.  In other words, from Joe Scarborough's ego to former GOP National Chairman Michael Steele's outsider status they are far more concerned with protecting their own personal image than defending the Republicans.

NBC as a matter of principle still seems to project the GE party line which means you give homage to anyone who gets you $9 billion in tax free profits a year and Obama did just that.  Yet sometime NBC contributor Tom Brokaw and Meet the Press anchor David Gregory have both continued to avoid being caught up in the liberal stampede.

CNBC, the financial news network, is the exception to the rule in the NBC family as any blatant liberal bias would cost them their dominate position as the financial news source of America.  Of course their preoccupation with Warren Buffett, staunch billionaire Obama backer, who gets more CNBC air time than anyone on the globe, is an ongoing source of aggravation to conservatives but Buffett always has some common sense financial advice, not to mention he is the most successful investor on Wall Street over the past 50 years so he deserves to be heard no matter what his political beliefs.  No one can say he is not a successful capitalist.

CBS used to be the most liberal network but NBC might have stolen the crown away.  At ABC you at least have a balance between anchor Diane Sawyer from the Republican battlefields and George Stephanopoulos, a Clinton/Obama creation, although George has far more air time to promote the liberal cause with other ABC news programs.

Ironically, if you really want balanced news coverage of politics in America your only hope is to turn to BBC whose world news coverage dwarfs anything on American networks and whose political coverage of America may sometimes be bewildered by the bizarre political and campaign process, but always seem to give it objective coverage.

Now you still have one last choice when it comes to the mainstream and cable news coverage and that is to turn off the television.  You might even do it for health reasons.  It would certainly lower your blood pressure.  It would keep you from believing all those lies.  And it might give you a chance to find out what your kid is doing on the Internet social media.

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Is GE censuring MSNBC News Shows against competing Interests? Today T. Boone Pickens got cut off.

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Perhaps it is a good thing GE has sold NBC to Comcast because it will finally get GE out of the habit of cutting off news show guests on MSNBC who take positions opposed to the GE/NBC party line. For the second time in the past few weeks a guest on MSNBC Morning Joe Show was cut off mid-sentence while making a powerful point that was contrary to GE financial interests.

This time it was energy advocate T. Boone Pickens who has devoted millions of his own dollars and two and a half years to trying to get Congress to wake up to using natural gas to lead the nation on a responsible path to energy independence. GE is the powerful lobby for alternative energy because they want to own the infrastructure for electric autos.

The minute Pickens said natural gas could replace our 18 wheeler fleet of 8 million trucks in just 7 years, and eliminate 50% of the OPEC oil dependence of the US, he was opposing the GE electric view of the future. Pickens gave a very sound argument for the conversion pointing out that in terms of comparable cost for fuel, just $4 of natural gas equaled $22 of oil. At the same time gas was 40% cleaner and there was no refining of natural gas like there is oil.

All of these arguments show that electric cars are still not going to compete on a large scale until well into the future when GE has bet on lobbying congress for huge short term electric infrastructure money. So as Pickens was rattling off a list of short term benefits of natural gas over electric he suddenly was cut off at 7:55 am and when the broadcast returned there was Senator Kerry replacing Pickens and arguing for the carbon tax, investment in infrastructure for electric, and saying the American public must stop looking at huge energy tax increases as tax increases? What in the world is he saying other than spend and tax more and buy GE stock?

Just last November 4 we wrote a story titled "Was Queen Noor Al-Hussein of Jordan Censured by NBC over Middle East Views during MSNBC Morning Joe Appearance?" In her case she was just explaining how the Israelis were undermining the peace process in the Middle East and was cut off by NBC.

Since GE and NBC operate the television networks over publicly licensed airways it would seem NBC and GE might very well be using unfair business practices to censor guests who do not pitch the company party line. When private corporations involved in business heavily dependent on government regulation and control attempt to influence public opinion by cutting off opposition views in mid-sentence, there is a serious problem in our system.

It seems the FCC or FTC should look into these cases of potential censorship to see if the public airways are being unfairly used to promote the special interests of the owners. As for the Morning Joe Show, they should be a lot more courteous to the guests that oppose the GE and NBC party line rather than being used by the corporate interests as a de facto lobbying arm.
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