Monday, September 22, 2008
Liberal Media's Code of Omertà Fails to Silence Sarah Palin
The seemingly secret pact between the liberal media and the Obama campaign to block all news coverage and reference to Sarah Palin is failing if we can believe our eyes. It is failing because MSNBC, ABC, The New York Times and the host of other left-leaning media just don't get it, the people of America are not going to let the media tell them who to support.
This past weekend Sarah Palin held a rally in Florida, one of the critical swing states, and there was a virtual media wall of silence about the event. MSNBC had the audacity to only report Palin said "Goodbye to thanks but no thanks," a direct reference to the Alaska bridge to nowhere. Of course MSNBC would have been a little more honest if they said in the end Palin refused to approve the project. They might have been more honest yet if they told you Obama and Biden both voted for the bridge to nowhere but that is the truth and we know the American people aren't ready for the truth.
Not a word was mentioned in the MSNBC report about the rally in Florida, a rally in which the largest crowd to ever witness a vice presidential candidate gathered to see Palin. According to the local Fire Chief Mike Tucker over 60,000 people attended. Only Obama's convention speech drew more and the Obama campaign spent over $8 million to stage that event. Sarah Palin didn't have top spend millions of dollars to draw a crowd. The media did nothing to help make people aware of the event or let the rest of the world know what did happen.
Did I mention that Obama is running for president? The 60,000 screaming, chanting fans of Sarah Palin know all about the liberal media's policy of Omertà and how it is intended to help the liberal Democratic ticket. The people responded by turning out in record numbers. Now that is hard news. The idiotic efforts of the media to dictate the results of the election and protect the leftist movement in America so they can bring about a more socialist government will backfire and their coveted policy of Omertà is going to be drowned in a chorus of chants, "Sarah, Sarah."
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Could Palin Invasion of Privacy be Obama's Watergate?
Privacy in America is guaranteed by the Constitution and an invasion of privacy is a criminal violation with dire consequences which is why it seems odd how little the Obama campaign has had to say about the illegal hacking into Sarah Palin's private email, the posting of the stolen emails on the internet, and the fact the liberal media all seemed to have copies of the emails.
About 36 years ago another well financed presidential campaign that expected to win the election did something equally as stupid, denied it to the world, and then got caught in the lie later costing the winner the presidency. Back then the President was Richard Nixon and the break in was called Watergate.
Watergate was not about approving the act, nor even knowing about the act. Watergate was all about covering up the act for campaign functionaries whose enthusiasm to win at all costs made them ignore the laws. We are far better prepared to investigate this illegal act than we were 36 years ago and it is serious enough that the FBI and the Secret Service have already launched an investigation.
If the private emails of our presidential and vice presidential candidates can be stolen all those involved must be prosecuted. The Obama campaign denies involvement. Barack Obama claims he personally runs the campaign, he has said so as a claim of his executive experience during the campaign so we should give him the benefit of the doubt on both counts.
But if his campaign was involved in any way in the theft, in encouraging the theft, or the distribution of the stolen materials by notifying the liberal media where to find them and give them talking points on what to say about them, then he should stand ready to withdraw from the race in disgrace.
In watching the various liberal media outlets comment about the stolen emails they used almost the exact words as Obama campaign representatives dismissing the seriousness of the theft and turning attention to the fact Sarah Palin had a private email account. Then insinuating she must have had the account to hide things from the State of Alaska. How stupid is that? Nearly everyone in America has a private email account including most members of the media.
Why did the liberal media and the campaign spokespersons have the exact same script? Why did they raise the exact same issue? Why weren't they outraged by the invasion of privacy? And why did they keep looking at the emails in their possession? If the Obama campaign was involved in the theft or any of these following actions it is the most serious breach of faith possible to the American public and would only demonstrate that a secret agenda must be driving them, one called Big Brother, where the right to privacy will no longer exist.
In one of the true ironies of history, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, daughter of President Richard Nixon, who grew up in the White House, is a supporter of Barack Obama and gave him the maximum financial contribution possible in the primary election. You certainly don't hear much about her from the Obama campaign. We shall await the results of the federal criminal investigation.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Is Obama Really The One? The $440 Million People's Person
Everyone in America knows we are in the midst of a serious economic crisis. First came the Bear Stearns collapse and Barack Obama refused to take a position saying we should wait and see what happens. Then came the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bail out by the government and the Lehmann collapse not bailed out. That was followed immediately by the AIG collapse that was saved at the last minute by the Federal Reserve. Each time Obama said we should wait and see what happens though our economy was a mess because of Bush.
Now that sounds like a Harvard educated response to the series of events. Is that leadership? Is that how he intends to govern through these tough times? He did promise us tax breaks and tax increases, a whole lot of them. And Biden did attempt to clarify how they would create new jobs, through public works projects. Yet another form of federal welfare destined to create dead end jobs with no career path at a cost to the taxpayer of billions of more dollars.
Some say the twin mortgage companies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the root cause of what has happened. Well they were created by a Democratic administration and run by former Clinton insiders so I think that might be a Democratic problem that triggered the catastrophe. Some say a bill sponsored by Republicans that was passed in 2005 and impacted on the investment and commercial banks was the cause but that same bill was approved by 90 of the 100 Senators including the Democratic leadership.
For the past two years Nancy Pelosi has controlled the House and Harry Reid has controlled the Senate, presiding over Democratic majorities. If they control the Congress why didn't they fix the problems? In fact since they did control both the House and Senate why didn't they do anything the past two years after making all kinds of wonderful promises? Empty promises - broken leadership.
Now they want you to give them control of the White House as well. So how fiscally responsible is the candidate for president for the Democrats? Well, he is spending more than twice as much in the 2008 presidential campaign then anyone else in history, having already raised over $440 million. McCain has raised $190 million. And while he claims the largest donor base in history, the million plus donors don't get access to him.
No, the only contributors that get personal pictures with Obama and get to sip wine and get served by waiters in tuxedos are the Hollywood elite who pay $30,000 to have dinner with him. Now the price of the evening ticket to be with Obama is equal to 60% of the median annual family income in America, meaning the average family would have to work from January until July 15 to pay for a single ticket. If you want to take your spouse you will have to work 14 months for the tickets! The savior of the common people only dines with the richest of the rich, how Ivy League, how elitist and how disconnected with the common people he claims to champion.
While he sips wine in Beverly Hills we patiently wait for Obama to tell us how he will really help the people. While he dines for dollars, very big dollars, with Barbra Streisand and Bon Jovi at million dollar private parties people are suffering. While he waits to see how things work out before he takes a position Wall Street continues to crumble under the weight of its own corruption and greed. While he throws hundreds of millions of dollars at us to convince us he is THE ONE, people are fighting wars and digging out from hurricanes so there is an America left for someone to govern, but I am not certain what he has demonstrated is a convincing argument he is REALLY THE ONE.
Nancy Pelosi Really Believes We Are Stupid
Of course Pelosi is also the one that promised to change history in her first 100 days as the most powerful person in Congress. That was over 500 days ago. We are still waiting for the first action to change history and in the meantime the approval rating of Congress has deservedly sunk to its lowest point in history, just 9% of Americans approve the job they are doing. It should be the job they are not doing.
Now her Obama energy bill promised the world we would be energy independent but as with everything Pelosi does you better read the fine print. She allowed off shore drilling for oil but only beyond 50 miles knowing full well that the vast majority of oil reserves are between 3 and 50 miles.
She also required approval by the state for the drilling but did not share any of the oil revenue with the state. So why in the world would they approve anything? It was a joke, it passed on a party line vote, and her own Democratic leadership in the Senate already declared it dead. And wasn't that the purpose all along?
If we are ever going to be energy independent we must first drill a big hole and drop in Pelosi and the Democratic leadership but then we would be sued for toxic poisoning by Democratic class action lawyers hired by the DNC to cover up the broken promises buried with the Democratic leadership.
Or maybe we should just vote them all out of office.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Liberal Elitists of the World Unite - Intellectual Constipation Reaches Epidemic Proportions
Wake up eggheads, Sarah Palin got it right, you got it wrong. The Bush Doctrine is not preemptive strikes as ABC News and Obama backers shouted all over the cyber world. The Bush Doctrine, if any of you have any interest in the truth, is the National Security Strategy of 2002 that identifies the US position concerning terrorism and includes four pillars in the struggle.
The four pillars include (1) rejection of moral relativism and commitment to fostering the spread of democracy in the Middle East, (2) treating terrorism proactively, on a global basis, and not as law enforcement issue, (3) willingness to engage in preemptive attacks against terrorists and terrorist supporting states, and (4) unwillingness to support a Palestinian state until Palestinian leaders "engage in a sustained fight against terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."
Palin addressed the global view on terrorism, and she was right. She even asked Gibson to be more specific when he asked about the Bush Doctrine and he didn't change the question. Finally, he clarified his question, acting like a professor correcting a student, and said the Bush Doctrine was preemptive strikes. Guess what professor, wrong! You left out the other three pillars.
You also didn't correct Obama when ABC News on Rick Klein Reports asked Obama about the Bush Doctrine back on July 26, 2007. Obama said Clinton would continue the "Bush Doctrine" of only speaking to leaders of rogue nations if they first meet conditions laid out by the United States. No mention of preemptive strikes, no mention of the Obama mistake on such a critical national security issue and he was a sitting US Senator running for president.
Now are there dual standards in this race? Are female VP candidates expected to know what US Senators don't know. Can the news media simply call them wrong when they are right? Is there no requirement for the news media to check the facts? Perhaps the media madness that prevails within the Washington elite establishment should be cleaned out first.
ABC News Continues Media Efforts to Distort Palin Message
Perhaps this was his effort to appease the criticism he received from the liberal left of being too soft in interviews with the McCain ticket and reacquire "macho" liberal approval but the result was a blatant attempt to trick Palin.
Gibson, out of the blue, asked Palin about the Bush Doctrine. She immediately asked him to be more specific. As she attempted to explain he asked the same question several more times, never bothering to explain what part of the Bush doctrine he intended to address. Finally after she gave increasingly more detail about the Bush doctrine he finally asked specifically for her position on preemptive strikes against terrorist targets.
ABC promptly sent out the edited questions and the liberal media jumped on the exchange as more evidence of her lack of knowledge of foreign affairs. Well shame on you Charles Gibson, until now ABC had not joined the stampede of news outlets leaning to the left but you have reestablished your news credentials as a master of media manipulation and should get a standing ovation at the next socialist convention in America.
The truth, in case anyone cares, is the Bush Doctrine is a four pillar approach to terrorism in the world, exactly as Palin described. Preemptive strikes are one of the four pillars thus her request to him to clarify his ambiguous question demonstrated far more understanding of the Doctrine than ABC News. His repeated response of refusing to clarify it was clearly intended to make her look bad.
According to the book, yes books have been published about the Bush Doctrine, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Norman Podhoretz identifies the four pillars of the Bush Doctrine: (1) rejection of moral relativism and commitment to fostering the spread of democracy in the Middle East, (2) treating terrorism proactively, on a global basis, and not as law enforcement issue, (3) willingness to engage in preemptive attacks against terrorists and terrorist supporting states, and (4) unwillingness to support a Palestinian state until Palestinian leaders "engage in a sustained fight against terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."
Palin was right in asking for him to be specific. Her answer was right about the Bush Doctrine being the worldview on terrorism. And once again Gibson demonstrated how the mainstream media in America is hell bent on distorting the record, words and experience of Sarah Palin. Oh yeah, when he finally asked the real question she nailed it like she did on all the rest.
ABC has already issued misinformation on the exchange trying to limit the Bush Doctrine to the issue of preemptive strikes but the Bush Doctrine was detailed in the National Security Strategy of 2002 for all the world to see and its odd ABC missed such an important document.
Finally, when the same ABC (ABC News Rick Klein Reports) asked Obama about the Bush Doctrine back on July 26, 2007 during a conference call to reporters, according to ABC Obama "said Clinton would continue the "Bush doctrine" of only speaking to leaders of rogue nations if they first meet conditions laid out by the United States." Clearly Obama didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was so in terms of truth, Palin 1, ABC News 0.
Perhaps when Sarah Palin gets to Washington her first mess to clean up should be the media as they are more tied to the lobbyists and special interests than the politicians.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
9-11 The Day America Changed
On my way to a meeting with journalists in 1993 on the 15th floor of the Trade Center, I got no further than the lobby when the explosion underground prevented further access. On 9-11 I was working at home in New Jersey, in Atlantic Highlands directly across New York Harbor from Wall Street and the Trade Center.
From where I lived you could see the buildings and smoke when suddenly all of lower Manhattan disappeared in a dense cloud with the collapse of the buildings. It was a sight I will never forget. I hope all Americans join me in honoring the heroes of the NYC Fire and Police Departments, the 3.000 victims and families of the victims. Over 100 children were born after 9-11 to widows who lost husbands in the catastrophe.
Letters to the Editor on Biased Media
However, in the past two years we have pointed out many instances of right wing media abuse against Barack Obama showing that true journalism in America is a lot closer to being dead than we might think. Truth is even the left wing media took many unfair shots at Obama in their frenzy to get Hillary elected.
With the era of the blogger regular news organizations have insulated themselves from responsibility for many stories that would never meet the test for objective journalism. They do this by using blogs to front for them by running unsubstantiated stories, rumors and outright lies.
That said, I would like to ask readers to help me compile a more complete list of biased media from both the right and left fringe, sites that are prone to publishing without validation and whose agenda is not reporting news but promoting their beliefs.
In earlier stories I have identified the following as some of the right wing media, FAUX, or Fox News Network, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Hannity. Other shows include Fox and Friends.
Left wing media includes NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Olbermann, Matthews, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR sometimes and Time Magazine among others. Since the media is dominated by the left wing there will naturally be more. However, I do not waste time with biased blogs as there are hundreds for each side and to mention them is to not really serve the public interest.
I am asking you to send me your additions to the list of purveyors of false truth so we can keep a running record of who not to trust in our nation's media. Actually, you can trust them to sell their own agenda and if you believe their agenda that is your right as an American but these groups hardly qualify as objective media and people need to know it.
Let me know who you would add to the list.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Obama Says Governor Palin Not Experienced to Lead Nation
To make such a claim, the Obama campaign and the entire biased liberal media echoing the same propaganda surely must be suffering from temporary memory loss. The governor is not qualified to be president? Can animosity be so blind? Having been in many campaigns I know it is not the candidate but the campaign staff that undertakes these missions so I do not hold the candidates totally responsible.
The truth. In the last 32 years a former state governor has served as US president during 28 of those years! Four of the past five US presidents were governors including the last two Democrats to serve as president. Bush, Clinton, Reagan and Carter all went from the statehouse directly to the White House and the American public had no trouble entrusting the future of the nation to them.
Fact is whenever America faced the darkest hours the voters turned to the governors to save the day, not the professional politicians in our nation's capitol. In modern times former governor Teddy Roosevelt became the youngest president in our history in 1901 when President McKinley was assassinated and Teddy helped us through economic chaos.
Former Governor Wilson guided us through World War I while former Governor Franklin Roosevelt brought us through the Great Depression and World War II. The Cold War was brought to an end by former Governor Reagan while former Governors Clinton and Bush drove the ship of state through the era of rampant international terrorism.
In total 18 former governors beginning with Thomas Jefferson went on to serve as president of the US, 42% of all US presidents. Four of the past five presidents were governors. So before anyone states that governors are not qualified or able to run the United States perhaps they better take a refresher course on the history of the US. In America the will of the people decides who has the necessary experience, not the claims of the candidates or the wayward whims of the media.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Major Historical Milestones Reached by Pro-Abortionists - 50 Million & 1 Billion Barriers Shattered
Perhaps more staggering is the fact that there have now been over one billion abortions performed in the world in the period of 1920-2008 according to estimates of the United Nations Population Fund. That means total abortions equal over 16% of the entire population of the world.
The total abortions performed in America between 1973 and 2008 according to estimates from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and "The Global Abortion Summary" by William Robert Johnson is now equal to the total abortions performed worldwide in a single year, yet another major milestone. The United States now performs 3.7% of the worldwide abortions annually.
With the Democratic party (Nancy Pelosi Democratic House Speaker) and presidential candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the forefront of protecting abortion rights it remains one of the most sensitive political issues of the year. Recent efforts of the media and liberal organizations to condemn the Republican candidates John McCain and Sarah Palin for opposing abortion have intensified interest in the issue.
The success of the pro-abortionists in America can best be understood when you realize that the total abortions performed in America is nearly equal to the entire 2000 population of the country of England or the country of France.
Palin Stops Obama's Bridge to Nowhere
The NBC team of Dobermans self-appointed to protect the liberal left, Matthews and Olbermann from MSNBC, continue as stalking horses for the Obama campaign even after their network banned them from future campaign coverage because of their radical views.
Today, incensed by the Sarah Palin ability to power McCain into the lead, they have resorted to lies, innuendo and distortions on their cable programs to rally the socialists to the cause. Unable to find any facts to support their character assassination of Sarah Palin, they are trying to raise issues intended to upset the voters.
Under the guise of "character" they claim Palin lied regarding her views on the infamous "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska, as if a non-existence bridge is the final determinant in a persons career in public service.
According to the leftist propagandists Palin supported the pork barrel bridge project before she became governor and then opposed it after she became governor. Curiously Obama used the exact words the very same day to attack Palin.
Of course Palin never did support the $400 million bridge project to a very small island but did support a "link" to the island. The pork barrel advocates translated a link into a $400 million boondoggle when all Sarah Palin wanted was a ferry service to link the island to the mainland. Once she was made aware what they did she fought the wasteful project.
Two gross distortions from the liberal left including Obama. Palin never supported a $400 million bridge and the governor of any state does not create pork barrel projects. Only the US Congress, the House and the Senate, can create such projects.
So just who created the $400 million boondoggle? A senator from Alaska and it was approved by the US Senate. And who actually voted for the project, Senator Barack Obama, not Governor Sarah Palin. It was part of nearly $1 billion in pork barrel projects approved by the free spending liberal Barack Obama in Congress. Did I mention Congress is controlled by the Democrats?
The only question left in this campaign is who will win the hearts and minds of the American voters? Will it be the mud slingers from NBC and the leftist elite or the gun slinger from the Alaska backwoods?
Monday, September 08, 2008
Something About Sarah - Our Radical Elitist Liberal Socialist Media Don't Understand
Unfortunately for the strategy planners in our elitist media they are completely out of touch with mainstream America so they have thus far managed to make fools of themselves with their double standards, senseless whining and wholesale massacre of decency and honesty in reporting. And while they are sipping their lattes and raging about how McCain is hiding Sarah Palin from them, little Sarah is kicking their butts from here to Moscow in the polls.
All the while these self-appointed egomaniacs who were so smug in shoving Barack Obama down the throats of American voters are choking to death at the sight of a moose hunting mama from Alaska who has survived the firestorm from the media and quietly driven McCain to a ten point lead in the polls.
There is something about Sarah all right and it scares the media stars to death. Little Sarah has managed to connect directly with the American public thus stopping the media from being the only source of information for the people. They have never witnessed a media sensation that does not need them to interpret, package and manipulate their story.
Her agenda violates their code. She opposes corruption, extravagance and waste which is contrary to their lifestyle. She thinks it is okay to have a happy family life, be a mother and love her husband which certainly violates every code of conduct for the Hollywood and east coast elitists. She opposes abortion but doesn't make a big deal of it.
She is optimistic which means she doesn't need a briefcase full of prescription drugs to make it through the day. She is popular even though she doesn't have a manicurist, pedicurist, hair stylist, personal trainer and analyst. She buys her clothes in retail stores. She drives herself to work. She laughs and smiles too much.
She raised the money to pay for her own college through beauty pageant scholarships. She joined the PTA to improve education. She ran for mayor and governor to fix problems in politics. And if all that isn't enough she is a successful small town politician, small town businesswoman, small town mother and life long member of the National Rifle Association.
You would think someone with all those attributes would appeal to the women's lib groups, the equal rights and freedom of choice groups. But no, they really didn't mean liberation for all women, choices for all women or equality for all women, just those women who passed their litmus test and embraced their socialist agenda.
Sarah Palin has held a mirror into the face of the supposed leadership of our media, women's issues and pretenders claiming to be defenders of our freedom and rights. The hysterical reaction of these people to Sarah is nothing more than the horrifying reaction when peering into the looking glass and seeing the hypocrites these people have become.
Oh yes my friends, there is something about Sarah. A light in the darkness, a ray of hope in a storm, a candle in the night and a source of comfort for those in need. Sarah represents the strength of who we are and could be and not the image of who we aren't and don't want to be. If I were the elitist media I'd be running for cover before Sarah starts firing back.
MSNBC Keith Olbermann Meltdown
MSNBC, the 24 hour a day flagship of NBC is rapidly distinguishing itself not for quality reporting but for rampant infighting, over-inflated egos and a new socialist agenda. The people know it as the network that has watched their Nielsen ratings disintegrate in just two weeks. Expecting to lead political coverage of the conventions, it took just two days for the floor to drop out from MSNBC as they finished dead last in convention ratings.
The on air meltdown was led by MSNBC host Keith Olbermann with more than a little help from analyst Chris Matthews. Olbermann and his open warfare tried to stop Republicans from being part of his news show and part of the panel of analysts, and even tried to stop Tom Brokaw, the last ray of objective hope for NBC network from appearing.
Olbermann complained constantly about his lack of security protection in Denver as if anyone had threatened the big mouth. When he got to St. Paul things deteriorated. His paranoia reached a peak when the first day of the convention was cancelled because of the hurricane in Louisiana and Keith fled back to NYC. He then refused to return to the convention saying he would stay in New York and cover hurricane Hanna which never hit NYC.
So there he was, hosting St. Paul convention coverage from NYC, presiding over the greatest collapse in ratings from week to week possibly in history. His ceaseless rantings about the Republicans and raging about Sarah Palin never let up and when he told his national audience that the film honoring the 9-11 victims at the GOP convention was in such poor taste that he had to apologize to the world that his network even allowed it to air, well that about did it.
Now that Sarah has powered the GOP into the lead Olbermann must be in a straight jacket and today NBC finally stopped trying to cover up for the idiot and announced Olbermann and Matthews would no longer be part of network political coverage during the 2008 election.
Good thing too as the network was in danger of being known as the Obama Network and slipping from liberal to socialist to NBC, the National Bureau of Communism? This is exactly what is meant by the elitist liberal media.
Whew!
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Sarah Palin New Media Star
Well the elite media may hate her but America has come to her defense as Plain Sarah Palin stunned the elitists by capturing over 37 million viewers on television last night at her coming out party according to the latest Nielsen overnight ratings.
Obama's cornation at the Democratic convention broke all the old records for viewers as Joe Biden drew 24 million viewers, Hillary Clinton drew almost 26 million viewers and Barack's rock concert at the 80,000 seat stadium drew 38 million viewers.
So how in the world did the hockey mom from moose country who emerged from the Alaska frontier just five days ago have just 1 million fewer viewers than the most promoted, visible and exposed (over $150 million has been spent on the Obama campaign) candidate in Democratic party history?
Guess what? The elite media put the Obama lovefest on ten national networks while the country girl was only put on six networks, yet another example of media manipulation and still she nearly toppled the reigning king of political media.
If you believed the media Obama should be running away with the election. Based on spending and exposure he really should be. But what is the truth behind the numbers?
Annie Oakly from moose country nearly equals his record for the largest political television audience in history on four less networks. A week ago no one even knew her.
Obama has captured about 18 million votes while spending hundreds of millions of dollars over 18 months while Sarah has spent a week in the public eye being mauled by the media.
Obama is the darling of the liberal media, yet just 21% of American voters are liberal, 45% are moderate and 34% are conservative.
While Obama captured 18 million primary votes, so did Hillary Clinton. There will be about 125 million votes cast for president this year which means 107 million have not voted for Obama this year.
Registered voters are split about 37% Democrat, 37% Republican and 26% Independent.
Well now we have a real election. No matter who wins history will be made. For once the media elite will be on the ballot through surrogate Obama. And once again the American voters, Joe Six Pack and Soccer/Hockey Mom, will determine the future of the world.
GOP Convention Stuns Democrats and Liberal Media Partners
What is it about a media that thinks lies, insults, distortions and smear campaigns have any place in America? The biggest loser this election year is the media, and journalists in general, who have forgotten their responsibilities to report the news and not make the news. There is no objective news being reported in America and the colleges and universities seem to be hell bent on turning out media stars and power brokers, not defenders of the truth.
Of course both the liberal and conservative media suffer from the same ego driven disease, foot in mouth syndrome, and they certainly don't get it. People are seeing through the crap being dished out in the endless news shows and cable forums all being done in the "public interest". I don't need some socialist telling me what I need. Now I don't care if a socialist reports the news as long as they can be objective but they don't even know what that means.
Reporters are more interested in becoming media stars in their own right so they can make the killing selling books and other works of nonsense and become analysts spouting even more of the silly opinions that penetrate their stories.
Broadcasters are licensed and the license says they will report news, not propaganda. America has moved a giant step closer to the media that functioned under the Soviet Union. They got their people in power, then eliminated the opposition. In the end the Russian people knew the media lied and the lies would soon bring down their empire.
Here in America today the lies being told by the mainstream media are blatantly obvious. People are seeing the truth as every year fewer and fewer people watch the nonsense. It is a sad state of affairs and one with little evidence it can be corrected.
Facts are ignored and untruths are published. Causes are pursued, people are smeared, social and moral issues are distorted and manipulated yet the reporters actually keep a straight face throughout the performance.
The media is this year's biggest loser. If we are not careful, the people will be the next biggest.
Sarah Palin, Governor
Well the media and liberal left has certainly ignored recent history to make such an unsubstantiated claim in order to smear the new VP candidate. Where in the world have these experts been the past 32 years? During that time governors with NO federal experience have been elected President of the United States by the American electorate in 28 of those 32 years. Four of the past five presidents have been governors with no federal experience.
That's not all. The federal government has 2.7 million employees, the governors have 5.1 million. The feds spend 2.5 trillion while the governors spend 1.7 trillion. Hummm. Twice as many employees at the state but half the spending. Perhaps the governors know what having a balanced budget means. And just so there is no misunderstanding, Congress is controlled by the democrats, not by Bush.
So now the first female governor to be nominated comes along and suddenly governors are not qualified to be president? What about Reagan, Clinton, Carter and Bush? Maybe the liberals don't think governors can handle it but the American voter sure knows better.
Speaking of the eastern liberal media in America, they should also remember that no eastern president has been elected in 48 years. What the socialists say is good for America is not what the voters think. Don't know what they put in the water out east but it sure isn't democracy, individual rights and freedom.
I think the rush to bury Sarah Palin is a huge tactical mistake by the liberal media and the more liberal democrats.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Who really Controls America? The US Government or Big Money?
Take for example the case of Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks on Wall Street and in the world. For months their financial analysts have been downgrading banks, investment houses and companies driving stock prices down while at the same time other Goldman analysts have been driving the price of oil futures through the roof as explained in a recent CPT article.
A little over a week ago an analyst from Deutsche Bank in Germany downgraded the rating and value of Goldman Sachs citing exposure of the banking giant to credit weakness. He was joined by another analyst from Oppenheimer & Company. The result was a 6% drop in the stock value of Goldman the same day from a previous high of $178.00 to $167.30.
In the next few days analysts from Ladenburg Thalmann and Thomson Financial joined the field downgrading Goldman who thought they had avoided public notice of their credit problems. By Wednesday, August 20 shares in Goldman went for $158.25, a loss of $20 a share in little over a week.
The next day Citi Investment Research projected additional asset problems for Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley due to credit problems yet to be reported by the giant firms and the stock dropped to $156 a share, a loss of $22 per share and a bit too much for the Goldman gang to stomach.
The next morning Goldman declared the price of oil, which had dropped to $114 per barrel from $149, would spike back up to $149 before the end of the year in what could be considered a last desperate attempt to stop the downward spiral of their stock and drive it back up. Of course Goldman is one of the largest traders of energy and oil stocks in the world and a temporary oil price spike might help refill the coffers.
Oil did indeed spike the next day by an astonishing $6.00 a barrel, a huge daily profit for a firm that might have a few trillion dollars at play on oil futures, while the stock market was being driven down nearly 400 points in two days because of the credit crisis. Fortunately, after one day of temporary insanity on Wall Street a calm Warren Buffett was on television Friday morning telling the world a whole different story and the stock market shot up 200 points while the oil price had the largest one day loss in years, over $6.00 to completely wipe out the Goldman hike of the day earlier.
Goldman has made the following oil price forecasts this year. December 2007 oil projected to reach $105 in 2008. May 2008 oil projected to reach $141. June 2008 oil projected to reach $200 by year end. August 2008 oil projected to reach $149 in 2008. Oil did indeed reach a record high in 2008 being pushed to $149 a barrel and driving gas, diesel and heating oil right through the roof.
The huge houses like Goldmans might have made billions in profits on oil using a variety of strategies like ownership of the futures market, commissions off stock sales, and a host of alternative financing schemes outside the regulatory control of the government including institutional funds and swaps. For the first time this year Goldman did not get its way and drive up the price of oil for longer than a day. One can only hope they were in and out of the market fast enough to make a killing overnight or their own strategy might have backfired and cost them in futures contracts.
Now who really controls America? Did I mention that as of August 22 Goldman Sachs people have given $456,702 to the Barack Obama campaign and $174,820 to the McCain campaign. Before you think Obama receives twice as much money from financial institutions as McCain consider this. During the entire campaign people from the financial sector including Wall Street have given a total of $22.4 million to Obama and $21.6 million to McCain. I wonder how they classify that investment?
Here is how Goldmans rewarded employees last year and what they will be missing this year. The following appeared in a New York Post story by Paul Thorp, December 19, 2007.
Toiling at profit powerhouse Goldman Sachs is so lucrative that even a secretary's bonus can exceed Gov. Eliot Spitzer's whole $179,000 paycheck.
As the Wall Street giant yesterday celebrated its fourth-straight year of record profits - despite a general wipeout at most banks - Goldman Sachs was also jubilant over the record bonuses it's handing out in early 2008.
Overall, Goldman will pay employees a total $20.19 billion in pay and bonuses, or an average $661,490, up nearly 23 percent from $16.46 billion a year ago.
While the average is only a statistical snapshot, the real bonus packages - to be distributed in the first quarter of next year - are equally impressive, ranging from around $3,000 for a mailroom clerk to $20 million for top bosses.
"It's not unusual for an administrative assistant or a secretary of a very senior person to get more than $200,000," said Alan Sklover, a compensation lawyer who represents Wall Street executives.
"There's a great value for someone who gets you on the plane in the middle of the night and plans your daily life," he said.
"The higher up the boss, the bigger the bonus for his support staff, which at Goldman Sachs is often paid by their bosses of out of their own bonuses."
With Goldman the envy of Wall Street as the only bank awarding any big bonuses, the formula of how the $12.1 billion pot of bonuses alone is distributed is based on two principles: favoritism, and how much profit your department generated, experts said.
A junior trader who helped Goldman keep ahead of the rest of Wall Street rivals could expect to get a bonus of between $500,000 and $2.2 million - on top of their regular pay. A more senior trader would get up to $3 million or more.
CEO Lloyd Blankfein is expected to reap up to $70 million in pay, stock and bonuses.
"Its hard not to be a Goldman executive and walk away a multi-millionaire," said Sklover.
Vice President Picks by CPT
As for the Republican ticket, we believe McCain should pick Mitt Romney of Massachusett, a successful buinessmen and governor and expert on the economy whose youth and energy will complement McCain.
Both candidates will greatly aid their respective tickets and the US will be assured of a strong, responsible, moral ticket to lead our nation. In the next few days we shall see.
Oil Price Speculation - Who do you believe?
We pointed out the failure of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to monitor and regulate the futures industry and the need to commit federal resources to investigating links between investment houses losing billions in sub prime mortgage markets and the same houses using alternative investment techniques to manipulate the multi-trillion dollar institutional funds and drive up the commodity prices.
In spite of denials from the financial analysts, government, Treasury and oil industry that such practices were being used, the CFTC finally launched an investigation in late May and on August 21 The Washington Post published an article saying evidence of widespread speculation possibly involving over 80% of the contracts sold on the New York Mercantile Exchange have been discovered in the preliminary investigation.
Of course the CFTC and Wall Street are saying The Washington Post is wrong but Wall Street has tried to cover up every scandal by the financial Dark Angels of Wall Street that stole blood money from American and world citizens including the schemes since 2000 resulting in about $35 billion in fines. As for the CTFC, if they were doing their job we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. But I love it, who do you want to believe, Wall Street and the CTFC or The Washington Post?
The same giant investment houses responsible for the sub prime disaster manage your money, the institutional funds of America. These are the mutual funds that target persion funds, endowments, and other high net worth entities and individuals. Institutional funds usually have lower operating costs and higher minimum investments than retail funds. Often their main objective is to reduce risk, so they invest in hundreds of different securities, which makes them among the most diversified funds available. They also do not tend to trade securities very often, so they are able to keep operating costs to a minimum. Although in the past investors typically needed at least $1 million in order to invest in an institutional fund, nowadays some discount brokers offer access to these funds for smaller amounts. (Definition from InvestorWords.com.)
A capital pool of up to $35 trillion to $70 trillion may be in these institutional funds. Now this includes your retirement, insurance, IRA, 401K, and even investments if you have deep pockets. Since you may be like me and have trouble grasping the size of a trillion dollars, let alone 70 trillion, just remember that the total size of the dreaded US National Debt is $9.6 trillion, meaning the institutional funds are a heck of a lot bigger than the total national debt.
This morning Becky Quick of CNBC, a young up and coming reporter and favorite of billionaire Warren Buffett did a three hour interview with Warren that should be required viewing for everyone in America and on Wall Street. This Midwestern born financial reporter was excellent while Buffett, in his typical low key Nebraska style offered wisdom so powerful that the stock market went up over 100 points and the oil prices dropped over $2 just during the time of his interview.
Stay tuned. As Warren Buffet, our favorite financial guru known as the Oracle of Omaha and the richest man in the world says, "You only find out whose been swimming naked when the tide goes out. Well we found out that Wall Street has been kind of a nudist beach. There has been one discovery after another of firms that either didn't know what they were doing or did things they shouldn't have knowingly."
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Has the NBC Peacock Lost it's Mind?
Okay, you invest a few hundred million bucks in staging the Olympics expecting to make a fortune in ad revenue and how does it go? Well this Olympics is rather unusual because of Michael Phelps and the USA women's gymnastics team. Remember that Americans love the Americans in the Olympics.
According to TV Week NBC continues to reap the benefit of the Phelps effect, adding another $15 million to its already impressive Olympics ad sales total.
The network said Tuesday that it sold the extra ad inventory within the last week. Add in $10 million it sold in the first couple days of the Games, and NBC has increased its Olympic ad revenue haul by $25 million since the Games began. Overall, NBC has billed more than $1 billion to advertisers for the privilege of hawking their wares during the Olympiad.
Seth Winter, NBC’s senior VP of sports sales and marketing, said retail, packaged goods, movies and pharmaceuticals were among the categories driving the recent ad sales. More than 100 companies have bought time on the Games, as have both presumptive U.S. presidential nominees.
While NBC doesn’t seem to be having any trouble convincing advertisers to get on board the Beijing bandwagon, the network nonetheless touted a new Nielsen IAG study detailing the value of Olympics advertising.
The study said brand recall for Olympics ads was 130% higher than other prime-time shows, and that message recall was more than twice as high. Also, viewers were three times more likely to positively respond to an ad screened during the Olympics, compared with those seen in regular prime-time shows.
NBC said that more than 196 million viewers have watched the 2008 Olympics on the various NBC Universal networks during the first 10 days of the Games. That’s 11 million more than watched the first 10 days of the Athens Olympics.
From TV By the Numbers comes the following:
Tuesday, August 19
Though down a fair clip from last week’s average of 32 million, the Olympics still compelled over 25 million people to watch. Since even NBC had predicted this week wouldn’t be as large as last, I imagine they are pretty tickled with these numbers. It will be interesting to see if NBC can break the total reach record of 209 million set in 1996 with the Atlanta games. Through Monday’s broadcast (but not including yesterday) NBC was at 200 million after 11 days and still adding ~5 million total viewers per day.
I don’t know if it’s possible for the networks to figure out, but there’s something about the Olympics that draws in the more youthful demos and it’s performed very impressively among 18-34 year olds. NBC had a 20% share of all 18-34 year olds watching TV for the night. The other broadcast networks combined (including Spanish language and ION, but not MyNetworkTV) combined for 18% share among 18-34 year olds.
So even with the Olympic-sized success of NBC, the broadcast networks combined for only ~38% of all 18-34 year olds. 62% were watching cable or local programming. The same thing is basically true for the 18-49 demographic as well.
What in the world is wrong with all that news? Record ad revenue and record viewers sounds like a good deal. But there are some things missing, like figuring out where in the world to find the events on the tube. NBC has spread the broadcast over all the following networks.
NBC
NBC HDCNBC
CNBC HD
USA
USA HD
MSNBC
OXYGEN
TELEMUNDO
UNIVERSAL HD
NBC OLYMPIC BASKETBALL CHANNEL
NBC OLYMPIC SOCCER CHANNEL
That means you have to look in 12 different places to find what you want. The daily schedule does not tell you if you are watching last night's reruns or new events. Even when you are watching them it does not tell you if they are earlier results.
As if that is not bad enough the primary network broadcast, NBC, wasted two prime hours over the weekend showing a live broadcast of the women's marathon in which no women were contenders when there were basketball, baseball and volley ball matches with American teams doing quite well.
The NBC policy of waiting until the last hour or two of the evening network broadcast to show the premier events means Michael Phelps or the women's gymnastic team is performing nearly at midnight on the east coast, long after many kids have gone to sleep.
Also missing are profiles of non-American athletes which were highlights of earlier games so the fans could get to know some of the top foreign competitors. We have no clue who the top world performers might be in many sports since NBC is not running profiles.
If they set records this year, and I do expect a major drop off in viewers now that Phelps and the women's gymnastic team is off television, the records will be far below what they could have been if the NBC production had been geared to the viewers as well as the advertisers. On the good side, some of the best ads on TV have appeared during the Olympics.