More on media bias

art credit: kwizoo.com

If your neighbor or relative relies on, say, the New York Times or ABC news or local TV news for his/her information, you can be 100% sure they are NOT getting the news. I’ve had a tiny bit of success in persuading family and friends to expand their sources of news, as that approach is less confrontational than criticizing particular news sources. 

I always start by suggesting the online aggregators. The Drudge Report is an obvious place to start. Next on my recommended list is RealClearPolitics, not because it is at the top of my own list, but because it posts news and analysis from the far left to the far right, and everything in between. It’s user friendly. The site itself doesn’t provide for reader comments, so it as close to neutral as possible. (I also suggest conservative talk radio - any conservative talk radio -- for those who don't want to go the internet route.)

A voter who begins to realize that the reports they are relying on are incomplete, heavily edited, selective, etc. will perhaps go to the next step and further expand their sources of news. A few people I know have had the ultimate Epiphany when they realized to their shock and horror that The Plain Dealer, The New York Times, CNN [or fill in the blank] are not fair and balanced. (For what it is worth, I don’t rely on Fox much, either.) But if you have any relatives or friends who will tolerate a conversation on the media and news, maybe they’ll consider a suggestion that they try expanding their sources of news, at least for a few days just to see what they find.

Steve Feinstein at American Thinker posted an article (“Pre-Empting the Liberal Media”) on media bias and its role in shaping public opinion. Here are some extracts:

Liberal mainstream media bias for Hillary Clinton is the single biggest factor so far in this election season contributing to her lead in the polls. The nightly news on NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, the NY Times, Washington Post, the morning and late-night TV shows, CNN, MSNBC, and all the websites associated with these sources are strongly and openly behind Hillary and her “first woman” status. Many so-called journalists have dropped any pretense of objectivity and are quite unashamedly and openly supportive of Clinton, while they derisively dismiss Trump as an unserious nonentity. 

Ostensibly, it is Trump’s presence in this year’s race that has caused liberal bias to be so prominent, but no rational observer could possibly think that the media would show any less favoritism towards First-Woman Hillary if her Republican opponent were Cruz, Rubio, or Kasich.

Hillary has many well-known vulnerabilities and character flaws: her role in Benghazi debacle and the subsequent rewriting of history in order to avoid accountability and blame, her non-accomplishments in every major foreign affairs arena where she played a role as Secretary of State, her private e-mail server and her continual distortions and parsing in an attempt to deflect scrutiny and shift responsibility (“Colin Powell told me to do it!”), and of course, the widening-by-the-day Clinton Foundation corruption controversy.

These factors are completely independent of who her opponent happens to be. . . .

. . . The "circular firing squad" that Republicans have created this year because of Trump -- who won the primaries fair and square, regardless of anyone's personal feelings about him -- is truly idiotic and inexplicable.

The Republicans need to remember who their real opponent is in 2016 -- it’s not the “untraditional Republican” Donald Trump, it’s the liberal media propping up an astonishingly deficient Hillary Clinton.  . . .

The entire article is here.

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Illegal immigrants don't want to be Americans; they want money: Kevin O'Brien

Below is an excellent column by the Plain Dealer's Kevin O'Brien on the difference between immigrants wanting to come here here for a better life and to become an American citizen and illegal immigrants coming here and sucking the system dry....

From Cleveland.Com -- 

Back in 2008, before then-Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora’s world started to crumble in earnest, I penned a little song parody about his throwing a couple of Plain Dealer reporters out of a news conference. They were questioning him about a county employee whose hiring looked a lot like cronyism.

It was titled “That’s Dimora”and was sung to the tune of “That’s Amore.”

A couple of days later, a delegation of guys — most of whom you’ve probably at least heard of — dropped by the editorial writers' department to chew me out for disrespecting Italians. Every one of them was as American as an apple pie chaser after a big plate of lasagna. Solid citizens. Here for the duration. Completely invested in the United States of America.

In one particular case, American and proooooooud of it.

They obviously had great love for their ethnic heritage, but they weren’t straddling continents. Their lives were here. Their families were here. Their businesses were here. Their future was here. And the most meaningful parts of their past were here.

I’m confident that if someone ran an Italian flag up the schoolhouse pole above Old Glory, to a man they would have taken offense. Because, to a man, they love this country. Somewhere along each of their lineages, some gutsy forebear risked everything to come here — legally, one would surmise — and stayed to make a life and to contribute to a better, stronger America.

They didn’t forget their heritage, but they aren’t confused about where their allegiance lies.

Contrast that with the vast majority of “immigrants,” who arrive illegally and with no interest whatsoever in contributing to a better, stronger America. They’re immigrants only in the sense that they have entered from another country. They stay as long as it suits them, or until they get caught.

Citizenship is the very last thing on their minds. Money is the very first.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush got the money motivation absolutely right when he rhapsodized about illegal “immigrants” on Sunday, during an event at the George Bush Presidential Library. The rest of it, he mangled beyond recognition:

“The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally, they come to our country because their families — the dad who loved their children — was worried that their children didn’t have food on the table. And they wanted to make sure their family was intact, and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family.”

OK, Mexico is a hell of a mess. It’s corrupt. Its oil riches have been horribly mismanaged, and what hasn’t been squandered has been stolen by the people in charge. It’s drug-ridden, gang-ridden and poverty-ridden. Getting out of there has to have tremendous appeal.

But they can’t do it legally, so their lives stay there, even when their bodies are here. And going back with a bag of dollars earned up north in the land of opportunity has a lot of appeal, too.

Their apologists remind us constantly that the United States is “a nation of immigrants.” And so it is. But let’s not flatter today’s illegals by calling them immigrants. They’re just visitors, here on their own, individually conceived guest-worker program.

The immigrants of previous generations came here looking for opportunity and wealth, too. But the vast majority did so with no thought of returning. They packed what they could, booked passage on ships, said goodbye to everyone they knew and disembarked days or weeks later at Ellis Island. They were committed to being in the United States because they were convinced that the United States was the best place in the whole world to make a life.

They came to be Americans, not to be Italian or Irish or Polish people merely residing in the United States, with roots and plans no deeper than a mailing address.

That, too, was an act of love — love for the things they understood America to stand for.

They came to be Americans, not just to take what they could get and head for home as soon as they thought they had enough or felt the law closing in. They didn’t break the law to come, in hopes of being hired by an employer willing to break the law, under the nose of a government that declines to enforce the law. They came to learn and assimilate into the culture, not to change the culture so it resembled what they had left behind.

America, meanwhile, doesn’t exist because the Founding Fathers made an act of commitment to their families. Far from it.

America exists because of enormous risks — to lives, to fortunes, to sacred honor, to families — taken by people who believed strongly enough in the ideals laid out in the Declaration of Independence to commit everything to them.

You won’t find any such commitment in today’s illegal “immigrants.” They’re here to use America. And while they’re here, they, in turn, are used to increase the political power of groups that cynically play on the emotions of good-hearted, soft-headed people — like Jeb Bush.

It’s good that he spoke up the way he did, because in doing so he torpedoed his already extremely slim chance at the Republican presidential nomination. That was a public service. So was giving Americans reason to re-examine the point of immigration.

If immigration is to make any sense, it must benefit both sides — the new arrival and his new nation. In no way does the scant benefit of cheap labor begin to offset the damage that is being done to American law and culture.

Kevin O’Brien is The Plain Dealer’s deputy editorial page editor.

Cleveland 9-12 hosts Weekend Protest at the Plain Dealer

A big problem in our country today is the MSM, the fishwraps called newspapers and how they routinely misrepresent the facts to fit their agenda. A perfect example of this would be the recent Sissy March in DC. Approximately 10,000 gays, queers, he/she's and freaks had a sissyfest in DC for Gay Rights. The MSM and newspapers couldn't give this event enough coverage and was the topic of the day(s).

On the other hand -- 2 million conservatives from across the country gather in DC on 9/12 and the coverage was scant at best and crowd estimates were not even close to being accurate. Here in Cleveland we are routinely subject to the eye-bleeding print of the paper not fit to line a bird cage or potty train a puppy with -- The Plain Dealer (or Propaganda Dealer for some of us).

The tree-killing rag, The Plain Dealer (PD), routinely misreports conservative events or news at a national and local level. This rag, the PD, is one of the main reasons Cuyahoga County is in the situation we are in today as the PD routinely endorsed and gave out blanket endorsements for many of the officials involved in the Cuyahoga County corruption scandal. Not to mention how they always spread the propaganda for the silver butt bullet projects pressed by the so-called leaders of this area.

Topping off the propaganda being spewed by this slowly dying fishwrap would be none other than Connie Schultz and her vile scribblings. If Schultz is not pushing propaganda for her husband Senator Sherrod "Single Payer" Brown she is usually heaving attacks on anything conservative -- or better yet, anything that is not in line with her progressive thoughts.

The below rallies being hosted by the Cleveland 9.12 is only the start for what many of the conservative groups have in OH for the PD. Along with this, a campaign targeted at the few advertisers the PD has left will soon follow shortly thereafter.

From the Cleveland 9.12 Group --

Operation: Can You Hear Us Now?

Over 120 rallies across the country are scheduled for Saturday, October 17 to protest bias in the mainstream media. The Cleveland Downtown 9.12 Project is holding two rallies.

[1] Rush Hour Rally

Friday, October 16, 4:30-6pm
The Plain Dealer 1801 Superior Ave. Cleveland, OH 44113

[2] Nationwide Media Protest Rally

Saturday, October 17 1pm-3pm
The Plain Dealer Production Center
4800 Tiedeman Rd , Brooklyn , Ohio 44144

Over 1.2 million Tea Party Patriots and 9.12 members marched on Washington , DC to protest legislators who are no longer listening to their constituents. Rally-goers protested, e.g., reckless spending, big government, and corruption. Much of American did not know about this protest (the largest in US history) because most of the mainstream media failed to report it. So we are taking the protest to the media itself.

For further information, please go to the national website at http://www.operationcanyouhearusnow.com/

Watch the 60-second video promotion of the two Cleveland rallies at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2_cuP2Evg0

Contact: Diana Price, Cleveland Downtown 9.12 Project Dianaprice49@yahoo.com