If the White House press secretary says it, it must be true. Right?

Check this out at Real Clear Politics . . .

"White House press secretary Jay Carney says the Recovery Act [a.k.a. the so-called 'stimulus' - SLC] added several million jobs and lowered the unemployment rate.  According to Carney, the 'goals' of the stimulus package 'have been met.'"

Though Carney hasn't been on the job for long, he's definitely qualified.  He can lie with a straight face.

The cuts go on

Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to de-fund Barack Obama's Teleprompter.

Thursday, the House voted to de-fund eight "czars" working as advisors and who are, according to the bill's sponsor, Representative Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), "unappointed, unaccountable people who are literally running a shadow government, heading up these little fiefdoms that nobody can seem to identify where they are or what they're doing."  (Link to story here.)

The Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-Ohio), has thrown down the gauntlet saying, "Read my lips: We're going to cut spending."  (Link here.)

I hope that you're right, Mr. Speaker.  Too bad that the Democrats still control the Senate and the White House.

Kudos to Congressman Steve Womack (R-Arkansas) . . .

for his proposal to eliminate government funding of Barack Obama's Teleprompter.  (Link to story here.)

Mr. President, I hate to break it to you, you're no Ronald Reagan

Barack Obama's attempts to morph his image, though certainly not his ideology, into that of Ronald Reagan Continues.  Now, he's even taken to referring to himself as "The Gipper."  Link here to see for yourself.


Mr. Obama, I remember Ronald Reagan.  You're not him.  Not even close.

Happy 100th Birthday to the greatest president of my lifetime

Will America have any allies left once this guy gets done?

After today's disclosure that the Obama administration sold out the people with whom we once had a special relationship; our closest (soon-to-be formerly closest?) allies . . . the British, I have my doubts.  Apparently, in order to placate the bear, we agreed to tell the Russians about all the nuclear weapons that the U.K. keeps in its arsenal.  Information that the U.K. holds as a state secret.  (Link to story here.)

Obama's got to go.  The incompetence (it's either that or anti-Americanism and I prefer to think positively) must end.  January 20, 2013, can't get here fast enough.  I just hope that there's enough respect for the United States left by then to salvage a coherent positive foreign policy.

Definitions matter and the media is liberal

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."  - William J. Clinton

As our former president knew, definitions matter.  So does the presentation of the question.

Joshua Greenman of the New York Daily News writes this piece today concluding that "Democrats don't control the media."  And, to give Greenman some credit, I agree that Democrats don't control the media . . .  but only as he defines the terms and poses the question.

Let's start with the question itself.  Does anyone "control" all aspects of media?  Of course not.  It is not possible to "control" the dissemination of all viewpoints across all spectrums - to decide what is said, who says it, and how across every newspaper, radio station, television station, blog, and website in and out of the country.  So, of course, it is quite easy to point to examples of the non-existence of a clear impossibility.  And, Greenman does do that well.  But who couldn't?

And how does Greenman define "the media"?  Traditionally, I think, most folks would consider the "news" departments at newspapers, radio stations, and television channels to be a part of the media.  Not the editorials or op-ed columnists.  Not the disc jockeys or talk-show hosts.  And not the weatherman or the stars on the sit-coms.  You know, the media used to be all the folks who sometimes still claim unbiased neutrality and always used to claim it.  But Greenman makes sure to include all possible outlets of information including Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, neither of whom would fit into a traditional "media" definition, and neither of whom would ever claim to be neutral.

The truth is that liberals (if not Democrats) do dominate (if not control) almost every traditional media outlet (if not the entire media).

I'll give Greenman real credit for his column.  It is an interesting take on the success that conservatives have had in labeling some policies and getting a message out through a formerly-upstart cable news channel and other new "media" channels.  But the conclusion that these successes prove that liberal Democrats don't control the dominant ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and every other major newspaper in the country, is ludicrous.  And, for now, despite the rise of alternative news outlets on cable and the internet, those old-school media outlets still matter.

If you don't believe me, watch the news tonight, or read any newspaper you can find today.  Or, if you're looking for something objective, check the records of newspaper endorsements by party in recent elections.

Liberal bias exists in traditional media folks.  The traditional media just hates it when we notice.

"Global weirding"

Check out this piece from today's Boston Herald.

I couldn't have said it better myself.