Oh, The Noise, Noise, Noise Noise!
CAUTION: MINDLESS STRAW MAN CONTENT! TURN BACK NOW!
Gosh, but there is a lot of noisy noise being generated twenty-four hours a day by a lot of people who get paid a lot of money to stir the pot. I would go so far as to call these people cynics.
I grabbed three panels of a recent "Tom Tomorrow" comic as one illustration.
Right now, there are quite a few folks who can't stand the fact that "their guy" lost the 2008 presidential election. To them, the current fairly-elected head of state is evil, incarnate looking to forever ruin our beloved country. He is a hard-line Islamist/Socialist who (gasp!) reads his speeches off a TelePromTer and whose wife is out to make the previous first lady look bad, on purpose!The whole "Tea Party" movement to protest phantom tyrannical tax increases smacks of some sort of phony grass roots movement. I remember these sort of things were referred to as "AstroTurf" back during the swift boat veterans for the truth era. (Get it? Artificial grass roots!)
But, you know, there are enough of these amazing media pundits out there so that it cuts both ways.
For instance: The Bush Theocracy. Wow! Remember when Dubya created The Church of America and punished those who did not immediately sign up? Yeah, me neither!
How about when President Bush ordered endless truckloads of arsenic to be dumped into the nation's drinking water supply? Oh, yeah. Um, it was more a matter of restoring the acceptable levels of allowable arsenic to what they were while Bill Clinton was in office.
Then there's the absolute and total ban that GWB enacted on all scientific research during his presidency. Oh, yeah. He simply didn't want to approve federal funding for stem cell research. And, gosh, there's not another private concern or another country in the whole world that could've continued stem cell research. Only through USA Federal Tax Dollars could this be done.The "mainstream media" is selling us out!
I've seen both conservatives and liberals bellyaching about the blatant bias and distortions the "mainstream media" is inserting into each and every important news story. The liberal point of view is sensitive to things like the current financial melt-down being called "The Obama Recession" while the conservative point of view seems to be that the real truth is limited exclusively to the "talk radio" and "Fox News" outlets that beam into every market 24/7.
Is there any objective source of information anywhere?
I doubt it.
Now, excuse me while I tune out some of this racket.
Calgon, take me awa-a-a-a-y...
posted by Craig D at 7:05 PM
3 Comments:
Hi Craig,
I am one who believes that our country is, currently, at a crossroads of national character; we can ill afford to have any informed citizen simply tune it out.
As a person without an allegiance to either the Republicans or the Democrats, I may be able offer some impartial insight in response to your post. I am a Conservative. As such, I did not have a representative voice in either candidate for the 2008 election. Started by President Bush (and motivated by his Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson), the Federal government committed unprecedented amounts of (future) taxpayer dollars to rescue private business entities (the TARP bill). Instead of reversing this interfering practice, the Obama administration decided to, literally, triple down on it with the (Stimulus) spending of future monies that will either have to be borrowed or printed. There is no country, including China, that will have the necessary resources or inclination to lend us this money in the future. We will be printing trillions of new dollars in a few short years and, as a result, we will be rewarding Mariel and her generation with unprecedented hyper-inflation, guaranteed. In regard to fiscal responsibility, our two political parties have been, essentially, behaving as one.
I am also very much involved in the "Tea Party" movement.
Some of your premises about the tea parties seem to be informed by the liberal mainstream media. One case in point:The media has been aggressively persistent in characterizing the tea party movement as a protest against "tyrannical tax increases". Without a doubt, a small contingent of our participants may wish to focus their argument upon the issue of taxation alone -or potential taxation ... but, the overwhelming consensus of those involved in the tea parties is to make the argument against an ever expanding Federal government, one that is grasping for more and more power and control over traditionally private enterprises. Our voices are raised in equal intensity against BOTH the Republicans AND the Democrats ... and all of the outrageous spending consented by both parties.
Also, there is absolutely NO reasonable evidence that the tea party movement is anything BUT a grass-roots movement of the purist kind despite the propaganda put forth by the MSM. It is, EXACTLY, two months old; it was directly inspired by Rick Santelli's "rant" on CNBC (02.19.09) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZB4taSEoA which, immediately, became a sensation on YouTube. Thousands of people, like myself, were onboard with a tea party protest immediately after hearing Santelli's broadcast that evening. The Youtube clip first became featured on social networking websites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) and by Conservative bloggers (Michelle Malkin, etc). When the Republican deep pockets (Newt Gingrich) and media outlets (Fox News) first learned about it, the dates and details had already been long set in motion. In fact, Republican politicians were not even allowed to participate in the events for the most part. It was NEVER about partisan politics. I still have magic marker and glue stains on my living room carpet as proof that I spent about $300 of my own money for sign boards, markers, paint, printer ink, paper, glue and foam-core boards. If some "sugar daddy" was financing this effort, I never got the memo (and somebody owes me 300 bucks!). Our local organizer for the Indy event, a small plumbing business, is still in debt for nearly $30k of their own personal finances.
Most (not all) of the tea party participants share my same desire to return to a small federal government which is inspired by our constitution. We, basically, want the Feds to kill pirates at sea and pave our interstates. (I also want them to finance manned missions to Mars but, I don't think others share my passion for that priority :-)
We DO NOT want them to manage our banking and insurance institutions, control our airline and car companies, provide us with universal health care or welfare, provide us with Social Security or Medicare, provide us with a Green environment, restrict or regulate our energy development, manage our educational system, etc, etc ...
In my humble opinion, President Obama has a LOT of extra scribblings on his "to do" list.
Thanks for the response, Ian.
As I had mentioned, off-line. I had one more "political" rant left in me and this was it.
My point, if indeed I had one, was that I don't care for the knee-jerk noise that emanates from both sides of the political spectrum.
The endless SPIN that obscures facts (or justifies idiocy) is what's making Craig a big ol' middle-aged grouch. (I hope you noticed my bi-partisan disdain.)
It is agreed that President Obama has much on his "to do" list.
Thanks, as always, for being a pal and for dropping by!
Craig,
You have a fine blog here, very entertaining. It's always fun to come by, on occasion, to nibble on one of your posts and offer some of my own slantings in return :-)
Keep writing, my friend ...
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