Democrat Media Trying Hard to Deflect Unpleasant Truths

Update:  On June 7, 2012 Rush Limbaugh covered this very same topic with essentially the same arguments that I make below.

Back in the day when Fidel Castro was taking over Cuba, people on the right asserted that Castro was a communist.  The Democrat media (which consists of the great majority of major newspapers and television networks) denied that Fidel was a commie.  He and his band of murdering thugs were merely "agrarian reformers."

Agrarian reformers.  Yeah right.

Now we have a president whose mother was a radical leftist and whose childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a card-carrying Communist:

 ....through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his “poetry” and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just “Frank.”

Various sources state that Ann Dunham was a communist sympathizer and Obama's father was a Marxist.  I have not found sufficient source material to verify this.  However, Obama's association with communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are well publicized and well known.  (Frank Marshall Davis was a close friend of Bill Ayers' father.)  Obama's socialist activism, however, has largely been ignored by the mainstream press.  For instance:

Obama’s socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for an Illinois state senate seat. Later, the Chicago DSA newsletter reported that Obama, as a state senator, showed up to eulogize Saul Mendelson, one of the “champions” of “Chicago’s democratic left” and a long-time socialist activist. Obama’s stint as a “community organizer” in Chicago has gotten some attention, but his relationship with the DSA socialists, who groomed and backed him, has been generally ignored.

However, no matter how well documented Obama's socialist and Communist ties, the mainstream media continues to deflect public attention away from these facts, to deny that they are true, and to cover them up. The Associated Press writes:

But to many historians and political scientists - and to actual socialists as well - the persistent claim that Obama is a socialist lacks credence.

He's widely seen as a pragmatist within the Democratic Party mainstream who's had ample success raising campaign funds from wealthy Wall Street capitalists. Even some of his strongest critics acknowledge that his administration hasn't sought one of the classic forms of socialism - government control of the nation's means of production.

So we see that the new term for "agrarian reformer" is "Democratic pragmatist."  Pragmatism my foot.  There is nothing pragmatic about Obama's policies, which are ruining the economy.

The last line in the AP statement above is particularly ludicrous.  The Socialist strategy has always been a gradual usurpation on the way to controlling the means of production, as well as a Gramscian "march through the institutions" and a slow poisoning of America's culture and soul, to kill resistance imperceptibly (e.g. as in the "boil the frog" analogy), but kill it nevertheless.  An out-and-out grab or even an expressed desire for such an outcome would put the Democratic Party out of business for years, if not permanently.  Even Obama isn't that stupid.

But he has made a serious effort to take control of the automobile industry and the financial sector, not to mention an out-and-out grab of the health care industry.  His carbon-credits "cap and trade" scheme would have redistributed billions in wealth from the productive to the non-productive, a key Socialist goal, albeit disguised as a way to combat [non-existent] global warming.

Yes, Obama is definitely a socialist.  Or worse.  That's a fact that not even the highly biased Associated Press can cover up.

AP's Propaganda Piece Poses as Criticism of Obama, Actually Advocates His Re-Election

Drudge has linked this subtle Obama advocacy propaganda from the Associated Press, "Around World, Obama's Presidency a Disappointment."  In spite of the misleading title, the article is actually propaganda for Obama.  I knew this by the end of the first paragraph. I dissect the article and expose its biases below.

The Associated [Obama] Press gave these reasons for the disappointment in Obama:
1.  He didn't close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay as he promised. [Aha!  So the World is disappointed in the failure to achieve a key leftist objective:  to free terrorists to keep killing infidels.]

2.  He hasn't forged closer ties with the Islamic world in spite of his promise during his Egypt speech [i.e., he hasn't sold Israel down the river yet, imposed sharia, or instituted halal meals in the White House cafeteria.]

3. "In a world weary of war and economic crises, and concerned about global climate change, the consensus is that Obama has not lived up to the lofty expectations." [The key giveaway here is the absurd notion that the world is "concerned about global climate change." Almost no one anywhere is worried about this non-existent threat except leftists, who see it as a way to control the means of production and redistribute wealth.  Also, the phrase "Obama has not lived up to the lofty expectations" is really an indirect indictment of those with the unrealistic expectations -- their fault, not that of Obama.]

4. "Many in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America were also taken aback by his support for gay marriage, a taboo subject among religious conservatives." [Only religious conservatives in third world countries are offended by the idea of gay marriage -- the use of the word "taboo" conjuring up associations with witch doctors and primitive superstitions.]

5. [Now we are getting into the real message of the article, the main point its authors were trying to make all along]: "But the Democrat still enjoys broad international support. In large part, it's because of unfavorable memories of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, and many people would still prefer Obama over his presumptive Republican challenger Mitt Romney." [The World likes Obama because he isn't Bush? Ah yes, it's all Bush's fault...]

More AP propaganda:

6. "America's stature has taken a hit in Japan since the 2008 financial meltdown, which highlighted the excesses of U.S.-style capitalism to many Japanese." [Capitalism is evil. Capitalism caused the melt-down, not (Democrat) governmental interference in the housing market.]

7. "Democrat presidents tend to be a little bit more hesitant to define the world as good and evil, which tends to be more attractive to Australian ears." [The actual message:  Republicans are cowboys, neanderthals who are insensitive to the fine nuances of global  politics and our shared humanity with other peoples (like Al Quaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah) who merely have a different perspective.  If they saw off your head or fly planes into skyscrapers, hey, who are we to judge?  It is this flaky, indecisive, self-doubting inability to take a stand that so appeals to leftists everywhere.] 

Conclusion:  This AP article is a Red Herring. It pretends to discuss the world's disappointment with Obama, but its real goal is to diffuse that disappointment and redirect it towards reelecting Obama. The piece is a textbook study of liberal propaganda in the mainstream media.

Associated Press Tries to Discredit Palin's New Book

The Associated Press is decidedly leftwing, as anyone well knows who has followed the news for years.  I don't recall them "fact checking" any of Obama's ghost-written books, or Kerry's, or Gore's; but maybe I just missed them.  In any case, a team of AP journalists are poring over every page of "Going Rogue" by Sarah Palin.  Surprise, surprise, they have found errors, noting that "Palin has gone rogue on some of the facts."

Well that sounds pretty scary all right.  Did Palin lie about important events or facts?  Well no.  The AP has only uncovered "errors" in immaterial facts (some of which aren't errors at all, but merely differences of opinion), none that would change either Palin's argument or undermine her credibility.  However, they're hoping you'll just read the headline and carry away the false impression it was designed to create.  Kathy Shaidle at Frontpage's Newsreal says this:

One man decoded the Rosetta Stone. Two guys with manual typewriters waded through “Watergate”. But today, it apparently takes eleven “reporters” to read a book (“It was hardcover!”), unearth “errors” that aren’t very important and in some cases aren’t even “errors”, then write a 700-word article about their epoch-making discoveries.

It should be noted that virtually every book that is published contains some errors.  Publishing houses have editors and fact-checkers who pore over the book before publication, and they find most of the errors, but not all.  Many if not most of the AP's efforts above were to argue with Palin about "who cares" topics, like the types of hotels she stayed in during the presidential campaign -- really important stuff, to be sure.

Read it all here.

Associated Press Billing Bloggers for Quotes

The Associated Press has started billing bloggers for quoting excerpts of its news stories on blogs. The AP is demanding $2.50 a word, even for excerpts, which appear to clearly fall within the "fair use" rules. As a consequence, word is going out through the blogosphere to boycott AP stories. For our own protection, it's a good idea.

The idiotic AP doesn't seem to realize that by excerpting their news stories and supplying a link to the news site, bloggers are doing them a favor. Such activity merely directs much more attention and readers to the AP story and the AP approved news site. In the process, the news site's sponsors get a lot more bang for their advertising dollar. How is that a bad thing??

I am not going to go back through hundreds of posts to find previously excerpted AP material. However, I do not plan on excerpting any in the future.

Join the boycott of the Associated Press.

When the Litigious Left Attacks

There were two disturbing occurrences in the blogosphere this week. A Jewish "rabbi" had his attorneys threaten to sue Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs for printing unpleasant truths about their Hamas-supporting, anti-american client, Michael E. Feinberg. That's him in the picture to the right, reacting to counter-demonstrators at a "peace" protest. Swell guy.

Feinberg's shysters have demanded removal of the critical material and a retraction on Pam's website. She responded by publishing even more unflattering facts about Feinberg, including pictures and videos. The above picture was one of them. Basically she says, "Sue me. I can hardly wait for the discovery phase." Rightist attorneys are already offering their services to Pam.

The second disturbing leftist attack was by the Associated Press on Brian Ledbetter, the owner of the website "Snapped Shot." The AP has threatened to sue for use of their copyrighted photos that appear frequently on the site. However, the AP photos probably fall under the "fair use" exceptions of the copyright law because Ledbetter publishes the photos to criticize them and show how biased they are. In a lawsuit Ledbetter might have a substantial chance of winning. But lawsuits are enormously expensive and time consuming and few ordinary citizens can afford the cost or time away from work. Bullies like the AP know this - they can afford it but know their critic cannot.

Why are AP and other news photos fair game for criticism? Because they can be used to deliberately create false impressions, and like an editorial that must be reprinted before it can be rebutted, offending photos must be republished.

A couple of cases in point are two photos published recently of Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama, two opposing candidate for the Democrat presidential nomination. The mainstream press, which includes the AP, are supporting Obama. Or could you tell by looking at the photos on the left?

The Obama photo was taken when Obama's head was directly in front of a bright light, giving him a holy look, as if the light emanating around his head were from a halo. You can almost hear the heavenly chorus, can't you? No bias there.

The second photo was taken of Hillary as she spoke to a high school in the midwest. The high school's mascot is the Red Devil, the same name given to local miners who emerge from the mines covered in red clay. The photo was taken with the devil looking over her left shoulder and gives a very clear impression of evil.

So you have two examples of press misuse of photographs to make editorial statements, namely, that Obama is a saint who has come to save the world, and Hillary is evil and a companion of the devil.

This is why Snapped Shot had a legitimate mission in its fair use of AP photos for purposes of criticism - and it's also the reason the AP wants to shut him down.