Posted by Richard on August 21, 2009
"Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose head, John Conyers, says he doesn't understand it. It'll be passed by a Congress that has not read it, signed by a president who smokes, funded by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?"
— Rush Limbaugh
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: big government, health care, obama | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on August 21, 2009
God help me, I really like Neil Diamond. I know that makes me a hopeless old geezer in the eyes the youngsters out there, but there — I’ve said it. By pure luck, I had the TV tuned to CBS (watching Craig Ferguson) when all of a sudden, on comes a Neil Diamond concert special recorded in New York in August 2008. I’m lovin’ it!
The cognoscenti and literati have always sneered at Neil Diamond. Not me. I think he’s one of the 20th century’s great writers and performers of pop music. And he and his backing band are still putting out great versions of some of the catchiest, most toe-tapping tunes ever. As the lyric of “Cherry Cherry” says, “Can’t stand still while the music’s playin’.”
“You are the sun, I am the moon, You are the words, I am the tune, play me.”
Neil goes back to the NY neighborhood in which he grew up, looking for the apartment in which he lived from 6 to 16. In front of the bodega on the corner, a black woman (late 20s or early 30s) recognizes him and tells him how much she loves his music. Then cut to him talking with several black youths. He says he’s coming back to his old neighborhood. One of them asks if he’s a photographer or something. He says he’s a singer and suggests maybe they’ve heard of some of his songs, naming “Sweet Caroline” and several others. Blank stares. He mentions “Red, Red Wine,” and several of them recognize it, one saying, “I know the reggae version.” Then he visits old apartment and tells current tenant about how he and his brother would roller skate in the living room until the woman downstairs hit her ceiling with a broom handle and they knew to stop. Very moving.
This bit of reality TV is followed by Diamond performing “I Am, I Said,” a song about being in LA and missing NY.
Now I’m New York City born and raised
And nowadays I’m lost between two shores
LA’s fine, but it ain’t home
New York’s home, but it ain’t mine no more
I am, I said to no one there
No one heard me at all
Not even the chair
Wow. I always loved that song, but it was really special after seeing those scenes of him revisiting the old neighborhood.
“Pretty Amazing Grace” — what a great song. Amazing work by the band. Compare depth and seriousness of that with “Cherry Cherry.” (Both good, though.)
Great horn section.
“Sweet Caroline” — pop songs don’t get much better than this. Melody, lyrics, rhythm, everything — just wonderful. But this live performance is transcendent because of the audience participation. If you get a chance to watch this, crank up the volume (it helps if you’ve got HD with 5.1 sound).
“Hell, Yeah” — wonderful, introspective, anthemic, motivational.
“America” — even more moving after the introductory video of Diamond talking about his immigrant parents (with Ellis Island footage in the background). The song is wonderful, but the audience is really wonderful. Listen to their response to this celebration of immigrants — it will dispel any notion that we’re a bunch of xenophobes.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: music | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on August 21, 2009
It's been increasingly obvious for several years that the majority of the mainstream media are no longer attempting to report the news honestly and fairly, they're attempting to create news and manipulate public opinion.
No outlet has been a worse offender in the past year or so than MSNBC. But their August 18th story about demonstrators near the VFW convention in Phoenix marked a shameful new low even for them (emphasis in 1st pgf from original; later emphasis added):
On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: "A man at a pro-health care reform rally…wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip….there are questions about whether this has racial overtones….white people showing up with guns." Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.
Following Brewer’s report, which occurred on the Morning Meeting program, host Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC pop culture analyst Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. Toure argued: "…there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president….we see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that." Ratigan agreed: "…then they get the variable of a black president on top of all these other things and that’s the move – the cherry on top, if you will, to the accumulated frustration for folks."
Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black. The man appeared at a health care rally outside of President Obama’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Arizona.
Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson has called for the firing of everyone responsible for this blatant piece of propaganda (emphasis added):
According to the Wilson letter to Capus, in the MSNBC broadcast at 10:45AM on August 18th “your anchors hysterically raised the specter of impending racial violence — while carefully cropping the very video upon which they based their duplicitous charges. Leading audiences nationwide to believe that militant whites were mounting violence against a black President, they deliberately covered up the fact that the individual they were framing was himself African-American.”
The broadcast showed a video of a man with a machine gun [wrong; it was a semi-automatic rifle] at a protest against the government-run health care legislation in Arizona, a state where citizens are permitted to carry firearms openly.
“His face and hands were cropped out so that viewers could not see that the man was black as the broadcasters breathlessly reported that he was a rightwing white militant,” Wilson explained in a statement.
“This simply goes beyond the pale, and has never in my memory been seen in what is supposed to be a legitimate news broadcast,” Wilson said.
ALG has video of both the MSNBC broadcast and a local Phoenix news interview with the gun-toting black man.
The Second Amendment Foundation has also denounced this deliberate dissemination of lies (emphasis added):
“What MSNBC purposely did not reveal with the deliberately doctored video is that the man carrying that sport-utility rifle was an African-American,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “MSNBC knows the man was black, yet all they showed in a brief film clip was a close-up of the rifle against the man’s neatly-pressed dress shirt. It was impossible to tell the man’s race.
“This is a detestable attempt to manipulate public sentiment,” he continued, “in MSNBC’s continuing effort to perpetuate a stereotype of gun owners as white racists. It was even suggested during the segment by MSNBC culture critic Toure that it would not be surprising ‘if we see somebody get a chance and take a chance and really try to hurt’ the president.
“By irresponsibly fomenting this kind of racial divisiveness through the use of carefully-edited video,” Gottlieb stated, “MSNBC is not simply reporting news, it is provoking a reaction. If any harm comes to the president, MSNBC’s hate-mongering should be blamed.
“I wonder,” Gottlieb conclude, “if Keith Olbermann is going to name MSNBC as the worst news network in the world.”
Note: I'm not defending the judgment of the unnamed black man with the rifle and pistol, or his armed friends. Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean it's the right or wise thing to do. In the interview, he seemed quite reasonable and articulate, and his point about conditioning people not to freak out when they see an armed citizen is quite valid. But if that's his goal, he should openly carry that pistol on his hip when he goes grocery shopping, buys gas, and picnics in the park. In my opinion, from a tactical and public relations perspective, just outside a presidential appearance is not a good place to make that particular point.
But that's neither here nor there. The issue here is MSNBC's cynical manipulation of the video footage to convey an outrageous lie in furtherance of their vicious disinformation campaign against those who oppose the Obama agenda and its drive toward socialism.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: fraud, journalism, media bias, propaganda | 3 Comments »
