Liberals are Selective about Diversity

          The opinion section of the March 10, 2023 ICO featured the ICO DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) tribe out in full force, as is usual. It reminded me of the ICO’s aversion to diversity if such includes conservatives, since this year is the tenth anniversary of the ICO informing me that henceforth any letters I submitted of a “repetitive” nature would not be published in the ICO. I’ve collected many of my ICO rejects in a blog icocensored.blogspot.com. The only thing repetitive about them is that they offended the ICO’s liberal sensitivities. 

        Since many universities now mandate signing a DEI statement as a condition of employment, the ICO may soon require one to be published.

 

The ICO editorial lamented states’ policies concerning drag shows, favorite childhood books, and gender reassignment. About drag shows, I’m surprised that liberals don’t label them “cultural appropriation” in their quest to control intellectual activity. For example, one of my writing instructors, Myriam Gurba, accused Jeanine Cummins, author of American Dirt, of not being a legitimate author because she is not “Latinx”. I guess that would also apply to Grapes of Wrath because Steinbeck wasn’t an Okie. 

 

About childhood entertainment, liberal banning includes some Dr. Suess books, Little House on the Prairie, Barbar, Curious George, Huckleberry Finn, and a personal favorite, Song of the South. 

 

Concerning gender reassignment, many public schools allow students to socially transition — change their name, pronouns, or gender expression — without parental consent, to follow federal and state student privacy guidance. I doubt parents are told that some school policies prohibit parents to be informed of significant issues if their child requests it. I also doubt that schools are competent in such issues and could easily do more harm than good. So much for choice belonging to “the person and their supportive parents.”

 

 

 

 

Obama School Speech - San Francisco Chronicle Displays Bias

According to the Chronicle, “(T)he frenzied reaction to the innocuous news that President Obama will address schoolchildren Tuesday suggests that the ever-louder fringe of the Republican Party has lost control of its senses.” (Senseless reaction to Obama’s school talk, Sept. 5, 2009) I wonder what the Chronicle’s position was in 1991 when President George H. W. Bush delivered a similar speech. The day after the speech, the Washington Post denounced it on its front page. The Congressional majority Democrats directed a General Accounting Office investigation, then held an extensive hearing. The National Education Association added a denunciation, even though Bush’s speech was as unremarkable as Obama’s. No doubt the Chronicle editorialized then that the entire Democrat Party had lost control of its senses.

What International Crisis? Did You See Sarah Palin's New Dress?

It’s interesting to see what the Main Stream Media finds newsworthy, or in this case, what the San Francisco Chronicle selects [click this link to view the Chronicle article]. Today on the front page it was Sarah Palin’s clothes. It’s not that I mind finding out that she had to upgrade her wardrobe to run for Vice-President. I would think all but the wealthiest, or Willie Brown, would have to do the same.

“Dog bites man?” don’t you think?

I really didn’t expect to find any weighty issues on the Chronicle front page, although I expected more when Joe Biden predicted that Obama would be tested by “an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

“Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy, Mrs. Palin, girl you sure look good to me [link to lyrics of Elvis' song],” I said, but then I got serious and added: “This is an astonishing statement from a chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who has access to the same intelligence as George Bush.” Actually, I was just repeating the words of Patrick Buchanan, who also wondered why the media was so quick to drop such an intriguing prediction by Joe Biden. [link to Patrick Buchanan article]

Actually, the Chronicle had addressed the issue brought up by Joe Biden by running an Associated Press article Fact Check: New presidents often face crises, By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer, Thursday, October 23, 2008. [AP article link]

The problem with the article was that it didn’t address what Joe Biden said. Joe said Obama would be hit by a generated crisis, and all the examples in the AP article were not examples of generated crises. One was the accidental collision between a Chinese and American fighter planes, another the “Battle for Mogadishu,” then the refusal of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to step down after elections, and finally Marxist rebels stepping up attacks in El Salvador with Soviet, Cuban and Nicaraguan backing.

None of these incidents comes anywhere near being a “generated crisis.”

The AP "Fact Check" was more a Joe Biden defense than an informative article.

So I am really interested in finding out, “What does Joe Biden know that none of us knows, including President Bush and apparently Senator Obama, and when did he know it?”

If Joe knows of something on the way, why won’t he let us all in on his little secret so we can do something about it? And if he doesn’t know anything, then what in Hell is he talking about?

Maybe it’s time for Joe Biden to once again invoke the memory of President Roosevelt going on television to calm American nerves about the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Joe keeps trying to have a “Dan Quayle” moment, but the media keep protecting him from himself.

Now they’re ignoring real news to let us know everything about Sarah Palin’s new dresses.

When McCain Won, Couric Rolled her Eyes

I watched John McCain easily win the debate tonight, and now I’m listening to how the debate is being recast into an Obama win. It’s amazing how much better Obama does, how he becomes more eloquent, more responsive, when the talking heads tell you what you really saw and heard.
Right now Katie Couric sounds like an employee of the Obama campaign. Her comments seem to go only as far as to whether John McCain rolled his eyes a couple of times. However, when she asked an unbiased audience member about the debate and heard that he thought McCain did better, Katie rolled her eyes.

I think the exchange about education was the most significant. The point that we spend more per pupil and achieve less than other nations clearly is a call for reform. I didn’t hear Obama answer the call, particularly when he dismissed school vouchers out of hand, even though so many big-city Black parents are in despair over their lack of school choice.

When Obama said that vouchers in DC didn’t get the job done because there weren’t enough vouchers, and McCain came back something like “so you don’t want any?” I thought he left Obama with big egg on his face. However, Katie Couric and Company studiously avoided noticing.

Then when she asked “Joe the Plumber” what he thought, and he started saying something good about McCain’s health plan, Katie hurriedly cut him off. Joe better figure out something good to say about Obama winning his vote, or he’ll never have Katie bat her eyes at him again.

Obama played down our public education failures very coolly. The Democrat Party, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Teachers’ Union, knows where their support base lies. Teachers have huge political clout through their unions’ political contributions (Republicans need not apply), and also indoctrinate our children in liberal ideology from Head Start through college. It’s a wonder any young people are Republicans.

Had I been McCain’s advisor, he would have done much better. I would have set the stage by describing how Bill Clinton cashed the Peace Dividend after the Soviet Union collapsed and President George H. W. Bush drove Saddam out of Kuwait, and then reaped huge tax revenues from the Dot.Com boom until its bubble popped and we entered the Clinton Recession in late 2000.

I would then have lectured Obama on how President Bush brought us back from Recession until we were struck by 9/11 (planned and organized by Al Qaida during Clinton’s administration), and about how we haven’t been attacked since (although all the “experts” after 9/11 said another attack was inevitable).

Then I would describe how our economy came back and we had a higher rate of GDP growth and far lower unemployment than the developed countries of Europe, and the stock market reached new highs. I would illustrate how President Bush, Senator McCain, and other Republicans tried to increase regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and of how they even described four and five years ago how the economy was in danger of doing exactly what is happening now, and of how Democrats like Barney Frank and the Congressional Black Caucus fought against increased regulation, calling Republicans racist for even proposing it.

And then I would show how all that started to change two years ago when Democrats took control of the House and Senate. The rate of GDP growth slowed, and unemployment started to creep up. At the same time, the “surge” in Iraq was working while Democrats called for immediate withdrawal and, in effect, surrender. To Democrats, good news in Iraq was bad for them, and so was good news about the economy.

When John McCain and 23 other Republican Senators tried again to increase financial regulation in 2006, Democrats once again blocked their efforts while receiving generous contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

If only John McCain could have shown the video clip of Barney Frank and the Congressional Black Caucus repeating over and over how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were just fine, and didn’t need more controls, it would have been all over.

Then as frosting on the cake, McCain could have shown Franklin Delano Raines, former Clinton Budget Director and Fannie Mae CEO, resigning in disgrace in 2004 when he was caught fraudulently cooking Fannie Mae’s books to generate huge bonuses for himself and other high Democrat officers.

John McCain would have wrapped up by saying that the "Democrats set the house on fire, and now they say they're the firemen!"

All this could have been, and should have been, but John McCain never punched through the main stream media filter that protects Democrats from being held accountable for their screw ups.

Now it’s too late, but all of this will come out after Obama is anointed. Then the main stream media, having reached their goal of a Democrat in the White House, will go off in pursuit of their other goal, making money.

We’ll be left asking, as always, “Why didn’t you tell us this stuff sooner?”

Another Democrat Sex Scandal - What did Pelosi Know, and When did she Know It?

Republicans always get the dirty end of the stick. Mark Foley resigned from the House in disgrace for e-mailing while gay. Even though he never got to first base with the former pages, much was made of the fact that one was under 18 when contacted by Foley.

Of course, Senator Larry Craig made endless headlines just by tap-dancing in a bathroom while gay. I wonder what higher level of coverage gay Republicans could get if they actually ever consumated their advances, like Democrats do?

Interestingly, Democrats who made a big issue of these had no problem when the late Massachusetts congressman Gary Studds plied with alcohol and had sexual intercourse with an underage, serving page.

Now the Democrat who won Mark Foley's seat, West Palm Beach Congressman Tim Mahoney, has been caught paying money and providing employment to keep a mistress quiet (and getting big bucks from FEMA to please another mistress). Although Nancy Pelosi said she just heard about his affair(s), members of Mahoney's staff said that Senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), the chair of the Democratic Caucus, have been working with Mahoney to keep the matter(s) from hurting his re-election campaign.

For those whose memories are short, and I'm sure all Democrats will fall in this category, I ask you to recall the criticism laid on Dennis Hastert and senior Republicans about the Mark Foley scandal. As you recall, they were accused of doing nothing when told that Foley made inappropriate e-mail and instant messaging contacts with former congressional pages.

What then will be said of Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, and other Democrat leaders who knew of Mahoney's affair(s), and were working with him to keep the matter(s) from hurting his re-election campaign?

Apparently these two affairs are just the tip for "Hornydog" Mahoney, the Democrats' poster boy for family values when he campaigned for and won Mark Foley's vacant seat two year ago.

The odds-on favorite answer is that nothing will be said. It's just Democrats being Democrats.

Democrats Cause Financial Crisis

This Fox News video (click here) clearly shows how Democrats, particularly Mass. Rep. Barney Frank, blocked Republican efforts to increase regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

(Here is Bill Clinton agreeing that Democrats caused the financial crisis) [click here]
(Democrats in their own words covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac scam that caused our Economic Crisis) [click here]
(Fannie Mae CEO calling Obama and the Dems the "Family" and "Conscience" of Fannie Mae - while Obama and other Democrats received the highest contributions and pay from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) [click here]
When you click on the above links, you will also see many other related videos that demonstrate the role that Obama and Democrats played in causing our financial crisis. Happy viewing!

Barney Frank’s comments are particularly egregious, because while he was saying all was well at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, his main squeeze was Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie. His "pillow talk" with Barney was worth millions.

Another interesting Democrat enabler of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is New York Senator Chucky Schumer, who is always first and loudest with Republican denunciations at any hint of a problem or crisis.

It is a tribute to the power of the East Coast liberal elite media – New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN – that Americans think that Republicans repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 to deregulate financial markets. Actually, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed on November 12, 1999, by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which passed in Congress with a 343-86 vote in the House of Representatives, before being sent to conference committee; the final bipartisan bill then passed easily (Senate: 90-8-1, House: 362-57-15) and was signed by President Bill Clinton (one of its chief supporters).

As a further tribute to the media elite, Republicans are blamed for deregulation of financial markets even though President Bush and Senators McCain, Dole, Sununu, and Heath tried several times – 2001, 2003, 2005, and 2006 – to tighten controls on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Each time the Democrats blocked reform, accusing Republicans of discriminating against low-income families by trying to tighten controls over lending practices.

Very recently Democrats still played the race game, accusing Republicans of racism by linking Obama and other Democrats to Franklin Raines, who is black, the disgraced former CEO of Fannie Mae (and until recently, an Obama adviser). This article, The Fannie Mae Gang, by Paul A. Gigot, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor, was written July 23 – over two months ago – and nails the causes for today’s financial crisis.

It should be required reading for all Americans, because you will never hear about it from the elite main stream media, who think their mission is to carry Obama and Democrats further into political and economic power.

As the article points out, the politicians and agencies that caused the mess will come out of it stronger than ever, taking us a long way towards their ultimate objective, state capitalism.

All it takes is to keep buying your votes with deceit and lies.

Bill Clinton Accuses Democrats of Blocking Financial Regulation

“I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." So spoke Bill Clinton about Democrat resistance to effective financial regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even as Democrats and the main stream media continue falsely accusing John McCain and Republicans of causing the problem through deregulation.

Democrat senators Chris Dodd, John Kerry, and Barack Obama were the top three recipients of Fannie/Freddie campaign contributions, and Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s benefited Frank’s partner, Herb Moses, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.

When even Bill Clinton blames Democrats for the problem, why can’t the main stream news media recognize the truth?

Joe Biden’s Hot “Potatoe”

A liberal blogger (Merge Divide of Serendipity) dropped a comment disagreeing with my post that John McCain won the debate, but lost the following news analysis. In a nutshell, the media said Obama exceeded their low expectations, and McCain fell short of their high expectations.

Actually, Merge Divide wrote just about the same.

Now the focus is on the Sarah Palin-Joe Biden debate, and the Main Stream Media doesn’t quite know what to set as expectations for Biden. If they use the same criteria as for John McCain, they have to set expectations for Biden high. After all, he’s been around the Senate awhile, and is a self-confessed expert on just about everything.

Sarah Palin, of course, should be cast in the “Obama” role, a neophyte of whom little is expected.

Therefore, applying the criteria used to analyze the McCain-Obama debate, if Sarah Palin is still standing at the end, she wins because she will have exceeded expectations, and Biden will not have met expectations since he didn’t knock her out.

Overlooked in all this is the way the MSM has overlooked Biden’s “Dan Quayle” moment. Somehow it seems to me to be more egregious that Biden didn’t know that his Democrat saint, FDR, was not president when the stock market crashed in 1929, and that television was still over a decade away.

What do you think? Isn’t Biden’s comment dumber than Dan Quayle not knowing that, unlike the plural “potatoes,” the singular has no silent “e”?

I hope that the commentators spare Sarah Palin the need to ask Joe Biden about his recent stated disagreements with some of Obama’s positions, including the Democrat’s ad poking fun at John McCain for not using a computer more (even though McCain’s war wounds make computer use difficult).

I agree with Biden on the things he said Obama got wrong, but I also agree with how Obama said McCain was right on a number of points.

Obama is learning, but he has a long way to go.

McCain Wins Debate, Loses News Analysis

Senator John McCain clearly won the debate with Senator Obama, so it came as no surprise to me this morning when I found that the media declared Senator Obama the winner just because McCain didn't wipe the stage with him (Ithought he did).

(On Drudge Report, Senator McCain beat Obama by more than 2 to 1, with 68 percent of over 384,000 votes cast.)

The Main Stream Media (MSM) set expectations low for Obama (after the debate was over), and then found he met or even exceeded their expectations. Also, they set expectations for John McCain very high (before the debate, the same MSM said that he was afraid to debate Obama), but after McCain won the MSM said he did not win by enough to meet their lofty expectations.

In other words, the debate itself was irrelevant, and one way or another the MSM was going to anoint Obama the winner.

This would be a neat concept to apply to sports. If a football team was favored by nine points, and only won by eight, their losing opponent would be declared the victor.

Clearly, all Obama has to do to win a debate is show up. If he’s still standing at the end, he will be declared the winner by the MSM on the basis that he met or exceeded their expectations.

San Francisco Chronicle Lies and Half-Truths Outed

(Click on photo to enlarge)

Each week up to the election the San Francisco Chronicle is publishing a compilation of lies, half-truths, and contradictions. As to be expected, the Chronicle column is heavily slanted towards exposing John McCain, and in the process the Chronicle perpetrates more lies and half-truths than they expose.

As an example, even when exposing Obama (September 20, 2008) for linking Senator McCain with Rush Limbaugh in a Spanish language TV and radio ad, and correctly pointing out that Limbaugh has been very critical of McCain, the Chronicle overlooked the biggest lies and distortions of Obama’s ad. The Obama ad uses a Limbaugh quote in which the commentator calls Mexicans "stupid and unqualified" and another where he tells immigrants "Shut your mouth or get out." But as many news organizations have reported, the quotes came in the context of discussions of NAFTA and Mexican laws and were not directed at Mexican immigrants to the U.S. In fact, the "Shut your mouth or get out" quote was part of an illustration by Limbaugh of Mexico’s extremely strict immigration laws, not United States immigration policy.

The Chronicle criticized a McCain ad statement: “The press reports that their efforts were 'poison pills' that made immigration reform fail." According to the Chronicle, “McCain said that he wouldn't vote for his own immigration bill.” Interestingly, the Chronicle never mentioned that the reason McCain and Republicans wouldn’t vote for the bill was because of the “poison pill” amendments inserted by Democrats that were, in fact, mentioned in many press reports. Also not mentioned by the Chronicle, Senate majority leader Harry Reid killed the bill when he yanked it off the Senate floor.

So far The Chronicle has contributed more than their share of the “half-truths and distortions.”

It will be interesting to see how the Chronicle handles the statements Obama made in Florida: “If my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would’ve had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week…Millions of families would've been scrambling to figure out how to give their mothers and fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers, the secure retirement that every American deserves.”

Anyone with the slightest familiarity with Republican proposed Social Security reforms would know that nothing would change for current retirees, participation would be voluntary, and the maximum privatized contribution would be less than a third of total contributions, and could only be made to a diversified portfolio of stocks and/or bonds.

Get on it, Chronicle, and show us how McCain is at fault!

Veteran Suicides - When Will They Learn? Updated!

“More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week,” according to veterans advocates, began a San Francisco Chronicle front-page story: VA stalls on care while 18 veterans a day commit suicide, judge is told, by Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer, Tuesday, April 22, 2008.

The San Francisco Chronicle is trying to be as incompetent reporting veteran issues as CBS News and Perky Katie Couric.

Veteran suicides are terrible. The journalism in reporting them is even worse. The rate of 18 veterans a day committing suicide is for all veterans, not just veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. For comparison purposes, the acknowledged VA veteran suicide rate is 19 per 100,000 per year, which is about the same or lower than the suicide rates for both sexes in entire countries: Japan, Belgium, Finland, Cuba, France, Austria, Korea, and Switzerland. In a US male veteran to all males comparison, which is the closest I could get to “apples to apples,” the entire male populations of over forty nations have higher or similar suicide rates than our veterans, including all American males.

Our active duty military suicide rate is 11 per 100,000 per year, about half our civilian rate for same-age males. From an analysis of suicide statistics, it actually shows it is safer from a suicide perspective to be a veteran or serving on active duty.

True, but you’ll never see that in a Chronicle headline on the front page.

FIVE-STAR UPDATE!

The Chronicle finally buried a correction to the error on April 25, saying that their article "mischaracterized" the report. It reminded me of Hillary saying she "misspoke" about ducking sniper fire in Bosnia. Apparently the new way the Left avoids admitting a lie is to use the mis- prefix.

This is the Chronicle correction:
-- An article on Tuesday about the trial of a lawsuit by veterans' groups over health treatment mischaracterized a government report that 18 veterans a day commit suicide. The report referred to veterans of all wars, not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lest we forget, the original Chronicle article ran a direct quote: “More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week,” by Gordon Erspamer, the lawyer for the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit against the Veterans Administration. Does that sound like someone mischaracterized a government report?

It sounds to me like a lawyer lying through his teeth, not only to a mere reporter for a Left-wing newspaper, but to the judge trying the case.

To confirm his lie, he later gave an interview to one of my favorite columnists for the Chronicle, C. W. Nevius, and amplified the lie he told the judge. This is what CW reported from his interview of Mr. Erspamer:

"If you add up the veterans' suicides among those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and compare it to the total combat deaths, the veteran suicides are higher," says Erspamer, who introduced a VA e-mail at the trial that showed an average of 18 vets a day are committing suicide. "The VA doesn't want that out."

CW noted that Mr. Erspamer is not being paid for this (it looks like you get what you pay for), and is doing it as a personal crusade. That explains his total lack of objectivity, I suppose.

This ran in CW's column the day before the correction, and a day after I had urgently emailed the Chronicle letters editor and Readers Representative about Mr. Erspamer's lie. It is hard for me to believe that highly paid and experienced journalism professionals would have given an OK to CW's article while they had information in hand that led to issuing their misleading correction the following day (there's that mis- word again).

It's the old story of the journalism of the Left: Tell the lies with headlines, bury the truth.

John McCain’s Taxes - New York Times Still Can’t Get It Right

This is the sort of story that even The Times couldn’t mess up, especially when they assign it to a veteran reporter supported by an army of experienced, highly paid editors. All it involves is John McCain – more probably his tax accountant – giving The New York Times copies of McCain’s 2006 and 2007 tax returns, and then the veteran reporter and supporting army of editors turns out the story.

What could be simpler?

This is the story. McCain releases tax returns - Papers for wealthy wife, who files separately, aren't made public, Barry Meier, New York Times, Saturday, April 19, 2008.

Apparently nothing is simple enough for The New York Times. Although The Times reports that John McCain released his 2006 and 2007 income tax returns, The Times chose to report totals for the two years instead of the individual amounts for each tax year. Fair enough. I can handle that, although it did make me scratch my head a bit when McCain’s Navy pension was reported as $114,854.

Whoa, I said. I knew Navy Captain McCain had served about a year longer than the 21.5 years I served in the Air Force, and that he retired as a Captain (O-6) whereas I retired as a Major (O-4), but that wouldn’t make his retired pay triple mine. I checked another source and found it was only $58,358 in 2007, substantially but reasonably higher than mine.

Why did The Times choose to lump two tax years together? It makes no sense to me.

But then I read the clinker in The New York Times report. To quote The Times, “He had additional untaxed income, including $114,854 from his Navy pension.” (Italics and bold print courtesy of me)

(UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times finally showed a hint of a nose for news by investigating and disclosing the nature of John McCain's tax-free Navy pension, and that it was determined based on the injuries and torture he suffered at the hands of the barbaric North Vietnamese - wasn't there a Geneva Convention issue invoved in their treatment of POWs? Or does that only apply to the United States and unlawful combatants? The New York Times, meanwhile, amply demonstrated profound ignorance of military matters to go with its shocking lack of news sense.)

(Please read the comments following this post to see the correction to my statement a reader provided. John McCain did report that his Navy pension was tax free. However, The Times did not follow up to find out and explain why normally taxed income was tax free. The commenter suggests it has something to do with McCain's injured and/or POW status, and he has been proven correct. In any case, there is a story here that The Times missed because of their ignorance of military issues. Their reporting of this issue still leaves its readers with more questions than answers.)

No wonder civilians think we retired military have it soft. Ignorant reporters and editors give their overwhelmingly civilian readership the impression that military retirement income is untaxed, when it is taxed just like any other income. The only untaxed income some military retirees will receive is Social Security, and even that is taxed if we dare to have other earned income before reaching full Social Security entitlement age.

The Times reporter and editors are not the only egregiously military-ignorant people in influential places. A few years ago California had a cadaverous Senator named Alan Cranston. One slow news day Senator Cranston decided he should grab a headline, so at a news conference he loudly bemoaned and protested military “double dippers.” According to Senator Cranston, it was almost criminal that military members would serve to retirement, retire, draw retirement pay, get a civilian job and finally pay into Social Security, and then retire from that job and draw both Social Security and military retirement; ergo the label “double dipper.”

What Senator Cranston did not know, secure in his cocoon of ignorance of the military, was that the military members paid into Social Security their entire careers, and that it was the Federal civilian employees who didn’t. Federal civilian employees would earn a civil service retirement, all the while not paying into Social Security, then get a civilian job, pay Social Security, retire from it, and then draw both a government pension and Social Security.

Dumb Democrat Cranston, sanctimoniously trying to point criticism at the Liberal-despised military, was actually casting stones at one of the most loyal Democrat constituencies, public service employees. Today, 29 percent of state and local government employees, and most Federal civilian workers hired before 1984, are still not in Social Security. All the military, going back to 1957, paid into Social Security.

Congress finally woke up long enough to throw Federal employees hired after 1984 into Social Security. Those Federal employees hired before 1984 knew a bad deal when they saw it, and most wanted no part of Social Security, even though it is a Federal government program, and they were Federal government employees.

Given this vast trove of Liberal ignorance of the military, it’s no surprise that The Times messed up a simple report about John McCain’s taxes. Just like they messed up on military murder rates, and CBS News messed up on reporting veteran suicides.

To Liberals, ignorance of the military is bliss, and they are nothing if not blissful.

Pork The New York Times

I read an editorial in The New York Times, Spare the Pork, but Dish Some Candor, published: March 15, 2008.

As usual, The New York Times spared the candor.

The Times noted correctly that politicians posture over pork while spending like drunken Democrats – OK, The Times never used those words – The Times as usual felt that the biggest spending problem was that President Bush cut taxes “on the rich” and spent money fighting terrorism – OK, that President Bush spent money on the Iraq War, which The Times thought was fighting terrorism until it looked like George Bush became too popular after Baghdad fell, at which point The Times changed their editorial minds.

Since when is cutting taxes equated with pork spending? The answer, of course, is it always has been at The New York Times.

Are the editorial writers of The New York Times surprised tax cuts benefit the wealthy? They shouldn’t be, since it is well known that the “top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes (in 2003). The top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent, and the top 25 percent paid 83.9 percent.”

Possibly the all-seeing, all knowing editorial writers of The New York Times don’t know this common knowledge, or at least don’t know it when it is inconvenient to the point they are making.

They probably also know, but choose not to let on they do, that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the highest earners has increased steadily, while the share paid by the bottom half of all taxpayers has steadily shrunk to less than five percent of the total.

But in all New York Times candor, isn’t there something missing from their analysis of government spending? A hint. Aren’t the editorial writers for The Times ignoring the vast majority of government spending?

If I were to ask Democrats-in-the-street what George Bush is wasting all the government’s money on, their answer would be “his illegal war!” (A war that was authorized by Democrats and Republicans, and was raging three years ago when President Bush was reelected. But I digress).

While defense spending as a percent of GDP has fallen to half of its level in the 1950's and 1960's (including the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan), entitlements spending (now eight percent of GDP)has quadrupled and is now twice as large as defense spending and growing at a phenomenal rate. The tax cuts and Iraq spending are not driving the growth of the deficit, it's Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Where in The Times "candid" analysis of pork and government spending did their editorial staff divulge the simple facts that Social Security and Medicare will be overwhelmed by Baby Boomer retirements and the needs of our rapidly aging population? They didn't, because they haven't figured a way to blame the Baby Boomer demographic disaster on George Bush - yet.

Regardless of taxes cut or not, or the continued expense of Iraq, Social Security will be bankrupt within a decade, and Medicare and Medicaid already are.

How can that be, you ask?

Simple. Medicare and Medicaid are now paying out more than they are taking in. In less than a decade Social Security will be doing the same. Since The Times didn't candidly tell you about the real porky problem, they also didn't tell you what it means to your future, again regardless of what President Bush or any other president has done or will do about tax cuts or the Iraq War.

Once again, it's quite simple. Entitlement benefits will have to be cut and/or postponed, and payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare will have to be increased.

It's as simple as that. The huge Baby Boomer population, which for decades has been shoveling huge mounds of payroll taxes into a hole of steadily expanding benefits, will now be drawing those benefits out, but the hole is empty.

No matter what sort of shell-game explanation is attempted to explain the Social Security Trust Fund, the simple truth is that Social Security and Medicare are pay-as-go programs. Current workers pay current recipients, and any excess is applied to the cash-flow demands of other government programs. When entitlements programs operate at a deficit, fund will have to be taken from other government programs.

Compounding the problem, the worker base contributing payroll taxes is steadily shrinking in proportion to the benefit receivers, but at the same time recipients are living longer, and benefitting from better and more expensive medical care.

Thanks to The New York Times and other liberal enablers, all of our attention is being directed towards the irrelevant and inconsequential and not at the looming disaster before us.

Read The Times article yourself. I linked to it at the beginning of this post. Have The Times editors in any way or form measured and analyzed the truly significant aspects of government spending? If taxes were not cut, would the deficit go away? Or would the deficit grow because higher tax levels reduce economic activity resulting in lower tax revenues?

Don't laugh. Even a Democrat, President Kennedy, noted that paradoxically it was necessary to cut taxes to stimulate economic growth and thereby increase total tax revenues.

If The New York Times editorial staff would read history with candor they might learn the wisdom that JFK and the Democrats once had. But then they couldn't blame Bush for everything.

Democrat Politician Sex Scandals

(I've written many letters to the Editors of the San Francisco Chronicle over the years, often to correct their errors and ommissions. Professionals usually carry E & O insurance, but the Chronicle just lets their errors fly, because they know they can, and because they can edit out annoying letters like mine. One of the nice things about blogging is knowing that at least some of my letters will be read, no matter what the Chronicle editors do.)

Editor

In the San Francisco Chronicle’s expose of sex scandals since the 1970s involving U.S. politicians, (Sex Scandal Lineup, March 13, 2008) you included Florida Rep. Mark Foley (Republican), but erroneously wrote that he was “accused of sending sexually explicit e-mails and instant messages in 2006 to teenage congressional pages.” He actually sent the communications to ex-congressional pages, no longer government employees, all 19 or older.

Not surprisingly the Chronicle omitted Massachusetts Rep. Gary Studds (Democrat), who in 1973 plied a 17-year old congressional page with alcohol, had sex with him including penetration, and took him on an official trip to Europe. Studds was reelected many times, even though the violations concerning giving alcohol to a minor, transportation over state and national borders for sex, and abusing a superior/subordinate worker relationship seem much more serious than Foley “e-mailing while gay.”

Also not surprising, the Chronicle omitted Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank (Democrat), although a male prostitute he hired ran an escort service from his apartment in 1990.
President Clinton made the list, of course, but I was surprised the Chronicle omitted that as a result of his perjury concerning relations with Monica, he was disbarred from his Arkansas law license for five years, ordered to pay $25,000 in fines, and was forced to resign or face disbarment from the Supreme Court bar.

Sen. Brock Adams, Washington-Dem. (1988), numerous accusations of drugging, assault and rape; Rep. Fred Richmond, New York-Dem. (1978), soliciting sex from a 16-year-old; Rep. John Young, Texas-Dem. (1975), increased the salary of a staffer after she gave in to his sexual advances; and Rep. Mel Reynolds, Illinois-Dem., convicted of 12 counts of sexual assault with a 16-year-old. President Bill Clinton pardoned him before leaving office.

Mr. Editor, you could have done your entire article with Democrats alone. I suppose you needed a couple of Republicans for “balance.”

The New York Times – Where Editors Retire on the Job

The New York Times has again distinguished itself with the sort of lazy, sloppy editing it has become famous for, particularly when it involves John McCain.

In a 28 February 2008 article, McCain’s Canal Zone Birth Prompts Queries About Whether That Rules Him Out, By CARL HULSE, The Times reports: “To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.”

This will come as quite a shock to the British, and to the first seven Presidents of the United States, who were all born on British soil as British subjects.

Our eighth President, Martin Van Buren, is arguable, since he was born in 1782 in New York, and the British considered all inhabitants of their American colony at that time to still be British subjects.

William Henry Harrison was President number nine, and was born in Virginia in 1773, three years before the Declaration of Independence. He was definitely born a British subject.

The Treaty of Paris in 1783 ended the war and recognized the sovereignty of the United States over the territory bounded by what is now Canada to the north, Florida to the south, and the Mississippi River to the west.

So, New York Times, since when is being born on foreign (British) territory to foreign (British) parents equal to having an official birthplace inside the fifty states?

This is not just an academic exercise. Thousands of American citizens have been born overseas to parents serving in the military service of the United States. Usually the place of birth for military dependents has been on property owned or under the control of the United States. To a much lesser extent, there are also and have been American citizens (civilians) born of American parents working overseas.

My oldest grand-daughter was born in a US Army hospital in Germany, which wasn’t unusual since her father, my oldest son, spent ten years stationed at Army posts in Germany. Although each of my three sons was born in the United States, each was born within a year of a time when I was stationed at overseas Air Force bases, first in Turkey, and later in the United Kingdom.

I would be incensed if an American like John McCain was barred from seeking our presidency because he was born overseas as a result of his father’s military service.

That would make about as much sense as a child of illegal immigrants being eligible to be President because its mother sneaked across the border and had her baby in a United States border-town hospital.

Oops, I almost blew that one, didn’t I?

That child of illegal immigrants is eligible to be President, but there are Democrats that insist that the children born of Americans while serving their country overseas are not.

That’s so typically Democrat. Reward illegal acts like sneaking across the border to produce an “American” baby, while penalizing Americans in service to their country.

And as always, aided and abetted by sloppy New York Times reporting and editing.

Media Lies - What's A Blogger To Do?

The New York Times, CBS News, the Associated Press, and The New Republic. What do they have in common?

They publish lies dressed up as news.

Bloggers obviously don’t have the resources of the major news media. We don’t have employees educated and trained as investigative reporters, supported by voluminous files and archives, overseen by seasoned editors. You name just about anything the main stream media has, we bloggers don’t have it.

However, when you compare the knowledge and experience of the blogosphere on specific issues compared to what the main stream media can apply to them, bloggers have an overwhelming advantage.

The most dramatic illustration of this point was the blogosphere vs. 60 Minutes and the forged Texas Air National Guard papers. Bloggers were able to marshal vast expertise examining the forged documents that 60 Minutes had neither the means nor the will to access.

Recently I’ve found myself engaged in unequal combat with elements of the main stream media, and I must modestly admit that they were “no contests,” and that I emerged victorious without breaking a sweat – or spending a buck.

I also humbly admit that very few know of my victories, including the main stream media I so thoroughly trounced. My satisfaction is that of putting a fly in their ointment. I’ve noticed that when the subjects I posted on are Googled, my article pops up along with the offending one.

For example, when the title of a November CBS News article entitled “Suicide Epidemic among Veterans” is Googled, my post totally debunking their article by proving the veteran suicide rate is lower than the rate for average citizens, and for nations such as France and Japan, appears as the fourth item on the search page following their tale.

Similarly, when “New York Times veteran murder rates” is Googled, my post disproving the New York Time’s article, in which I demonstrate that the veteran’s murder rate ranges from one-half to one-fifth of many American cities, and is even lower when you take women, children, and old men out of the comparison, appears as the third item on the Google search page.

My recent post exposing the Associated Press for fraudulently reporting that the Heritage Foundation ranked Europe as the economically freest region of the world hasn’t had a chance yet to attain first page Google search ranking because the AP release is still showing up as a fresh “news” item in many newspapers. It’s a shame, since it is so patently wrong and misleading, but the AP is not subjected to intense review by the main stream media that disseminate their releases.

Bloggers have to do it for them.

Not long ago a swarm of bloggers including me jumped all over The New Republic for publishing lurid and defamatory stories written by Private Scott Beauchamp supposedly based on his ongoing experiences in Iraq entitled “Baghdad Diarist.” Since many experienced Army veterans meticulously exposed gaping flaws in Beauchamp’s stories, I decided that since I’m an Air Force veteran with little or no knowledge of Army equipment and practices, I would concentrate on things that could be fact checked on the Internet without ever leaving Gualala, Northern California.

It was easy to decide that stories about joy riding in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and using it to kill stray dogs were ones that any editor, regardless of military experience or lack thereof, should have easily been able to determine were untrue. All that was needed was to Google “Bradley Fighting Vehicle,” and compare its picture to the descriptions of killing the dogs.

Even a great fool would have noticed that the 21-inch wide treads of this thirty-ton vehicle were incapable of neatly slicing a dog in two, as described by Private Beauchamp. Looking at the picture, the great fool would also notice that the driver, sitting low at the left front, couldn’t possibly see a dog at the right rear, let alone make precise changes of speed and direction to do the impossible and ensnare the dog in its tracks.

Although reported otherwise by the editor of The New Republic, a spokesman for the manufacturer of the Bradley concurred it was extremely unlikely to impossible for a Bradley driver to do the things Private Beauchamp described.

Faced with this deluge of untruths and half-truths from the main stream media, what’s a blogger to do?

So much BS, so little time.

New York Times Blows Military Murders Report

A New York Times report, disputed by the military, indicates that 121 recent Iraq and Afghanistan service veterans and active duty military, from a population of about 300,000, committed a killing or were charged with one in the six-year period beginning with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

This is a rate of about 8 murders per 100,000 people per year.

According to the New York Times:

Few of the 121 veterans received more than cursory mental health screening at the end of their deployments, the veterans, their lawyers, relatives and prosecutors said. While many showed signs of combat trauma, they were not evaluated for or diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder until after the homicides, according to the interviews.

The report noted that some of the killings did not seem to have any connection to service in Iraq or Afghanistan, and at least 25 were the result of fatal car crashes.

Disputing the New York Times report, Army spokesman Paul Boyce said that Army statistics "show little or no increases in positive drug use, driving under the influence crimes or domestic abuse in the past years among the more than 300,000 soldiers who have deployed in this war."

Wanting to put this exposé in context, I thought I should see if there are comparable statistics available. For comparison, I thought I would pick a California city, for instance, Oakland. Its population is almost 400,000, of which less than 200,000 are males, and of the population of males, many are children or elderly.

So what about killings in Oakland, committed by a population of adolescent through middle-aged males which probably is less than half of the 300,000 that have seen service in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The most recent information I found was that there were 145 murders in Oakland in 2006 alone, which didn’t include fatalities from auto accidents. The Oakland murder rate for 2006 was 36.4 per 100,000, or 4.5 times higher than the military rate.

If females, children, and the elderly are factored out to make it more of an “apples to apples” comparison, the murder rate actually is over 80 per 100,000 per year, or ten times the subject military rate.

How about another California city, such as Richmond, with a population of just over 100,000? From 2001 through 2006 Richmond had 202 murders, or a murder rate of about 33 per 100,000 per year, or over 70 for murder-prone males.

How about the peace-loving Liberal paradise of the world, San Francisco, where about 300,000 adolescent through middle-aged males live?

In just 2005 through 2006, San Francisco had 182 murders. Even if you use the entire population of San Francisco of about 750,000, that still leaves a murder rate for San Francisco of over 12 per 100,000 per year, or over 25 for murder-aged males.

The New York Times found few of the military killers received more than a cursory mental health screening after deployment. Therefore, I suppose the New York Times study is supposed to lead its readers to conclude that the military should and could reduce the murder rate by giving detailed mental health screening at the end of Iraq and Afghanistan deployments.

I wonder if the New York Times would extend that to New York males, whose murder rate per 100,000 New York males per year was over 15, almost double the subject military rate?

Apparently they don’t receive even cursory mental health screening, despite their much higher need for some form of screening or treatment, as evidenced by their high murder rate.

Actually, if I were just comparing murder rates for military veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan deployments with the rates for American cities, I would conclude that the way to dramatically reduce the murder rate for cities is to enlist and deploy their males to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Whatever our cities are doing now obviously is not as effective as the military's program.

You won't find this in the San Francisco Chronicle, or the New York (All the news that's fit to print) Times.


Establishment Survey (W-2 payroll employment)Total employment as of December 2000 = 131.878 million

Total employment as of August 2004 = 131.475 million

So, the truth is that 403,000 W-2 jobs have been lost since George Bush took office; not the 900,000, 1 million, or even the 2 million that you see, from time to time, in various liberal and partisan-Democratic circles.

On the other hand:Household Survey (W-2 employment, 1099 contractors, self-employment, etc.)Total employment as of December 2000 = 135.836 million

Total employment as of August 2004 = 139.681 million

Hmm. I don't think the Associated Press, the New York Times, MSNBC, or Reuters, want to run the following headline: "Economy generates nearly 4 million net jobs under George W. Bush." So, therefore, it would appear that the establishment survey is the one with which the liberal media will continue to be preoccupied.

Liberal Bias Is A Proven Fact

Steve,
Since Mr. Finz “quoted” his grandmother in an earlier letter, I will “quote” mine: “You can lead a liberal to wisdom, but you can’t make him wise.” If I had known that the ICO would have allowed me more than 300 words for my letter, such as the over 400 words allowed Mr. Harry in his pointless “Hollow Argument” rebuttal, I would have included many more examples of studies documenting liberal bias in the media. Instead, I cited a web site, http://www.mediaresearch.org/ , that provides the results of many studies. I had hoped that open-minded truth seekers would go to the web site, there to learn for themselves the findings of liberal bias. Instead, Mr. Finz focused on just one of the findings I included, and didn’t even mention the others. Quoting myself:

“Also, a 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that members of the media were four times as likely to identify themselves as ‘liberal’ than as ‘conservative.’

Over a 16-year period, the Republican presidential candidate always received less than 20 percent of the media’s vote.”

Another study found that 89 percent of Washington-based reporters said they voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. Only seven percent voted for George Bush, with two percent choosing Ross Perot.

I could go on and on, but the ICO will edit me for brevity at the 300-word point, so I trust interested readers will seek truth themselves. I did not make the findings up – the Los Angeles Times, Kaiser Family Foundation, Gallup Poll, Harris Poll, the American Association of Newspaper Editors, the U. S. New and World Report, the Freedom Forum, Editor & Publisher magazine, major colleges and universities, and many others are responsible.

As the studies found, most Americans (including liberals) believe there is a liberal bias in the media. Mr. Finz and Mr. Harry should challenge these studies with facts, rather than opinions.
My oldest son, Sgt Bruce Combs, arrived safely back from Iraq via Kuwait on December 5. Alice and I are very proud of him and all he served with, who are working hard to protect even the ignorant and ungrateful amongst us.

The Last Word In Liberal Media Bias

Editor,

Since Mr. Finz chose to attack both my intelligence and honesty concerning the media’s leftist bias, I would like to rub his nose in the following surveys by the American Association of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) in 1988 and 1997. The most recent ASNE study surveyed 1,037 newspaper reporters found 61 percent identified themselves as/leaning "liberal/Democratic" compared to only 15 percent who identified themselves as/leaning "conservative/Republican."
Also, a 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that members of the media were four times as likely to identify themselves as "liberal" than as "conservative."

Over a 16-year period, the Republican presidential candidate always received less than 20 percent of the media’s vote.

There are many more polls and surveys on this issue, but a good starting point is www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics , which gives cites and links to each study.

There are also many quotes from news professionals admitting or pointing out the liberal bias in the news, but as always CBS News' Andy Rooney gets the last word. When discussing Bernard Goldberg's book Bias, which argues that the dominant media are biased in the liberal direction, on CNN's "Larry King Live" in June 2002: "There is just no question that I, among others [in the media], have a liberal bias. I mean, I'm consistently liberal in my opinions. And I think...Dan [Rather] is transparently liberal. Now, he may not like to hear me say that....But I think he should be more careful."

A postscript: This week we celebrated a man who made cutting taxes a defining moment of his presidency and boosted the U.S. economy to record heights. He also launched preemptive attacks against two brutal dictatorships. Today JFK would not be welcomed in his own party.

My oldest son, Sgt Bruce Combs, left Iraq for Kuwait and may be home in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving, we pray.