Truth Out Loud

March 04, 2006

AP slobers all over Gorbachev

For their next trick the AP will praise Hitler for ending WW2 by committing suicide or praise Saddam for peacefully turning over control of Iraq to the new democratic government by cleverly making his army a collection of cowards.

The man who ended the Cold War and launched democratic reforms that broke the repressive Soviet regime continues to enjoy the limelight, globe-trotting on behalf of his political foundation and environmental group and taking part in charity projects.

At a meeting with foreign reporters this week, Gorbachev blamed the United States for losing a chance to build a safer and more stable world following the Soviet demise.

"Ending the Cold War was given as a gift" to the United States, but it only strengthened its arrogance and unilateralism, he said. "The winner's complex is worse than an inferiority complex, because it's harder to cure."

But what do you expect from an organization that cannot bring themselves to call people that blow up children terrorists.

Posted by Sid at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | Media Bias

December 30, 2005

It takes 5 paragraphs to find out he's a democrat

Had this been a Republican it would have been a front page conspiracy headline on the New York Times.

Admitting he paid for votes and even decided whose roads would get gravel for votes, Lincoln County Circuit Clerk Greg Stowers entered a guilty plea to a federal vote-buying charge Thursday.

Stowers, 48, admitted to distributing $7,000 to be used to influence voters during the May 2004 primary election. If he receives any prison term, it will likely be a short one.

Federal prosecutors also have an ongoing election fraud investigation into neighboring Logan County that so far has produced seven guilty pleas. Included were two Logan County officials: County Clerk Glen Dale “Hound Dog” Adkins and Sheriff John Mendez.

In addition, former Logan police chief Alvin “Chipper” Porter Jr., attorney Mark Hrutkay, former four-term Logan mayor Tom Esposito, Logan VFW president Ernest Stapleton and former United Mine Workers official French Perry Harvey have all entered related guilty pleas.

Instead of sympathetic look at a penitent democrat in a backwater 3rd tier rag.

Posted by Sid at 01:55 AM | Comments (3) | Media Bias

September 21, 2005

Old Media Dying

Everywhere you turn now days you see traditional news media on the decline. In particular it seems to be the left leaning that is suffering the most. Here in Houston the Chronicle has recently experienced a huge layoff and now we also have cuts at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, New York Times and Boston Globe. These are not the only news organizations that are struggling. These publications would have you believe it is because many are moving to the internet for their news.

Like most other newspapers, the Times Co. and Philadelphia Newspapers have been hit by declining circulation and ad revenue as both readers and advertisers turn to the Internet.

I would suggest this is only part of the problem since left leaning TV news cast are also suffering a drop in viewer ship. Viewer and listener ship of more conservative leaning sources (FOX & talk radio) are exploding.

What this really means is that people are tired of being spoon fed news telling them how pathetic, greedy and heartless Americans and our leaders are. Reading the news papers and watching TV news these days feels like returning to an abusive spouse for another beating each day. Americans are tired of having to glean a few objective facts from "news items" so distorted with bias as to make them unrecognizable from what Americans know to be true. It's a sad day when the New York Times needs to be moved to the fiction section of public libraries.

I can say this because I used to love reading my daily news paper but finally canceled it because I just could not take the abuse anymore. It's bad enough getting beat up by your local news paper but I refuse to pay for the beating. I would re-subscribe in a second if I could get actual news from it and I know a lot of people that feel the same. Sadly, I don't see things changing anytime soon. These publications are completely blind to their biases or just don't care and as we all know admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

Posted by Sid at 12:09 AM | Comments (0) | Media Bias

August 23, 2005

Paul Krugman - In House OP ED New York Times Retard

It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. In an effort to defend himself against accusations of being a liar and/or incompetent about his claims that Gore actually won the election in this article.

Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore. This was true despite a host of efforts by state and local officials to suppress likely Gore votes, most notably Ms. Harris's "felon purge," which disenfranchised large numbers of valid voters.

Krugman compounds his embarrasment in this article.

About the evidence regarding a manual recount: in April 2001 a media consortium led by The Miami Herald assessed how various recounts of "undervotes," which did not register at all, would have affected the outcome. Two out of three hypothetical statewide counts would have given the election to Mr. Gore. The third involved a standard that would have discarded some ballots on which the intended vote was clear. Since Florida law seemed to require counting such ballots, this standard almost certainly wouldn't have been used in a statewide recount.

We check the FOUR (not three) Miami Herald counts and what do we get?

• Lenient standard. This standard, which was advocated by Gore, would count any alteration in a chad — the small perforated box that is punched to cast a vote — as evidence of a voter's intent. The alteration can range from a mere dimple, or indentation, in a chad to its removal. Contrary to Gore's hopes, the USA TODAY study reveals that this standard favors Bush and gives the Republican his biggest margin: 1,665 votes.

• Palm Beach standard. Palm Beach County election officials considered dimples as votes only if dimples also were found in other races on the same ballot. They reasoned that a voter would demonstrate similar voting patterns on the ballot. This standard — attacked by Republicans as arbitrary — also gives Bush a win, by 884 votes, according to the USA TODAY review.

• Two-corner standard. Most states with well-defined rules say that a chad with two or more corners removed is a legal vote. Under this standard, Bush wins by 363.

• Strict standard. This "clean punch" standard would only count fully removed chads as legal votes. The USA TODAY study shows that Gore would have won Florida by 3 votes if this standard were applied to undervotes.

Because of the possibility of mistakes in the study, a three-vote margin is too small to conclude that Gore might have prevailed in an official count using this standard.

Bush wins 3 of the 4 counts. The one he looses is by 3 votes and it's considered unreliable. See here for the proper drubbing of Krugman. I hope all you people out there that think Bush stole the 2000 election are paying attention. Pointing this out really gets old.

Posted by Sid at 12:31 AM | Comments (0) | Media Bias

June 13, 2005

I canceled my local paper out of disgust

I did something I never imagined I would do. I canceled my subscription to the Houston Chronicle. I have read the paper daily for about 4 years now. It's been part of my usual routine at lunch. But, over the last 2-3 months I have been finding it less and less enjoyable.

As a rule I don't mind dissenting arguments but the main stream media and the Houston Chronicle in particular have decided that every current ill in the world must be somehow blamed on George W Bush and every historical ill must be compared to George W Bush. A more recent undertone has developed that implies our military is a collection of perverts and miscreants.

The last straw came the other day when two editorials about Nixon and deep throat had to be used as vehicles to criticize our current president as a crook and suppressor of free speech. Then to top it off one of the editorial cartoons depicts a dark and mean looking sleezeball at a military recruiting table asking if he can be assigned to do interrogation.

I refuse to continue to pay to have my intelligence insulted by these infantile attempts at back door propaganda.

When I called to cancel the nice lady on the phones first question was "Is it because of the editorials?"

She was either a mind reader or it was one of those days.

Posted by Sid at 12:09 AM | Comments (0) | Media Bias

May 29, 2005

Not so bad Gitmo

While Newsweek has retracted its deadly tall tale about interrogators shoving the Koran down a toilet to rattle Guantanamo detainees, the magazine’s “flush to judgment” fits what Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald calls the prevailing “torture narrative.” Possibly harmless Muslims languish without trial in U.S. custody. America’s soul dies a little as each GI’s sucker-punch shatters one more Arab’s jaw. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

“You people are no better than and no different than the Nazi concentration camp guards,” a Red Cross representative said in April at a U.S. detention facility in Iraq, according to a Pentagon source quoted in a May 23 Wall Street Journal editorial. Amnesty International Wednesday called Gitmo “the Gulag of our times.”

Journalists and Bushophobes should stop crying for these Islamo-fascists long enough to read a largely overlooked Pentagon document on Guantanamo detainees. They appear pampered, chatty, and lethal.

“Americans are very kind people,” one English-challenged detainee said in the March 4 paper. “If people say there is mistreatment in Cuba with the detainees, those type speaking are wrong, they treat us like a Muslim not a detainee.”

Among 167 detainees freed from Guantanamo, the Pentagon has identified “about 12” who have resumed terrorist operations. Last October, two Chinese engineers were kidnapped in Pakistan. “Former detainee Abdullah Mahsud, their reputed leader, ordered the kidnapping,” the report states.

The rest here. The report here.

If nothing else. Ask yourself how the detainees got korans in the first place. And then ask yourself if the US government would buy and distribute Christian bibles.

Posted by Sid at 12:58 AM | Comments (0) | Media Bias

May 28, 2005

Why even publish it?

The Riots of the Faithful by Orson Scott Card. Read it all, it's well worth it.

Even if the allegations about Quran desecration were completely and absolutely verified, why in the world would you publish the information during wartime? It's not that the Media themselves regard the Quran as sacred. It's just paper to them. And surely they would have to agree that if such actions might somehow gain the cooperation of a potential source of useful information (though that seems extremely unlikely to me), it would be infinitely preferable to physical torture.

But they dwell so blindly within the cocoon of their sheltered world, where it's just awful for somebody to offend "multicultural" people (though just fine to be openly vicious to American Christians or Israeli Jews), that it doesn't occur to them that they could just keep their mouths shut and avoid damaging America and putting Americans all over the world in danger.

They might even realize that by not reporting this story, true or not, they would save Muslim lives. If patriotism couldn't rein them in, then surely simple humaneness should ... one might suppose.

After all, who benefits from the publication of such a story at this time?

Only one group: People who want to bring down or weaken President Bush and everything he stands for, no matter the cost.

Posted by Sid at 12:50 AM | Comments (1) | Media Bias

May 26, 2005

MSM just can't seem to get it

The article headline reads "FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran". Well I guess that means an FBI agent witnessed guards flushing a koran. Right? Nope, Wrong.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.

The detainees have been making accusations like this since day one and it's old news. So what must we conclude?

"Unfortunately, one thing we've learned over the last couple of years is that detainee statements about their treatment at Guantanamo and other detention centers sometimes have turned out to be more credible than U.S. government statements," said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer.

It seems that when FBI agents report that detainees complain about their treatment that makes it officially confirmed as true.
I am sorry, but this kind of characterization of events cannot be explained by simple incompetence.

Posted by Sid at 07:25 AM | Comments (0) | Media Bias

May 25, 2005

Our press is the enemy

Every time I see things like this I get sick. Tell me again how they support our troups?

Posted by Sid at 05:21 PM | Comments (0) | Media Bias

May 23, 2005

BBC may dramatically improve news coverage

The BBC has found a great way to improve coverage and reduce costs.

BBC strikes could lead to news blackout

Posted by Sid at 12:13 AM | Comments (0) | Media Bias

May 14, 2005

"U.S. Ally Fires On Its People"

Has CBS gone STARK RAVING MAD? The U.S. has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. But it is extremely important that it looks sanctioned by the U.S. I guess.

Thousands of terrified Uzbeks waiting to flee across the border into Kyrgyzstan stormed government buildings, torched police cars and attacked border guards Saturday in a second day of violence spawned by an uprising against the iron-fisted rule of U.S.-allied President Islam Karimov.

Posted by Sid at 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | Media Bias