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Maybe He Was Misquoted

July 22nd, 2010 No comments

link Proof of the Liberal Medias Double Standard – Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld – FOXNews.com.

Looking at the top headlines in Google News today, we see:

 
Some timely articles; some on going stories and of course the usual pop fluff.  What you don’t see is the story that should be at the top of every news list.  According to Tucker Carlson, there is smoking gun evidence that there  have been conspirational discussions among many in the left leaning media on how to silence Fox News.  Again, for those who have lives and don’t pay attention to these things, the viewership of the formerly dominant network news as well as readership of once venerable papers such as the NY Times has gone into freefall.  The Fox news organization on the other hand, has surged past all networks in their viewership and ratings.
 
If you were running a business and the competition was eating your lunch, wouldn’t you try to at least figure out what they were doing rather than digging deeper into your own failed business model?  In this case, the failed business model that the ‘mainstream’ media is pushing is bias and distortion.  It’s one thing to have foamy mouthed commentators like Oberman, Matthews and Maddow express ludicrous opinions because in fairness, you have equally passionate people on the right, though perhaps not so crazed in delivery.
 
It’s quite another to have ‘serious ‘ news people like Couric, Lauer, etc pretend to report news stories with the predictible and laughable spin in the guise of informing the American public.  Unless you happen to be a regular observer of the news, you would not realize that what is fed to you was not news, it was filtered opinion.  Now comes evidence from Carlson that in fact there was a complicit effort to stifle the reporting of Fox News because they did not conform to the progressive agenda that the rest of the media did.
 
I can’t speak for most people, but if I hear a news story about a child being struck by a car at an intersection, I don’t need to hear that the accident was really caused by George Bush cutting funding to the school lunch program, therefore causing the child to move slower than he normally would have if he had access to a hot lunch.  Do people really believe that George didn’t respond to Katrina’s wake quickly enough and therefore the city flooded?  Or that he was racist in doing so since the majority of residents are black? Maybe he’s not a fan of jazz.  If this same reporting mentality were applied to sports reporting, then the main story in golf over the past year would be that white golfers have been conspiring to keep Tiger Woods from winning any tournaments.  
 
As is now the case, people are finding that there’s no point reading or listening the mainstream media.  It’s ironic and comical that the once disparged National Enquirer has broken the most dramatic news stories over the past few years, including revelations on John Edwards and now Al, ‘the poodle’ Gore, stories that news media are supposed to break.  Let’s not forget Acorn.  That story was broken by a couple of kids. 
 
That’s not to say that ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS should stop what they’re doing.  They can do what they want as long as the public doesn’t have to pay for it.  Just don’t call it news.
 
 
Categories: Culture, Politics Tags: , , , , , ,

Peter Pays Paul

July 22nd, 2010 1 comment

link UPDATE 1-GM to acquire AmeriCredit for $3.5 bln | Reuters.

Unless you happen to be paying attention, this news item would be just another of those boring finance stories.  If you whittle the story down to the basic elements, then an amusing scenario becomes more obvious. 

As some may recall, not too long ago, General Motors wound up in a bit of a financial pickle.  The short story is, they were not selling enough cars at  prices that people were willing  to pay for their products.  Not that they didn’t make good products, it was just that for a similar amount of  money, many other manufacturers offered arguably better products.  General Motors was saddled with a legacy of costs that eventually overwhelmed the company.  Principally, the main culprits were the very generous pay and benefits packages given to working and retired employees.   You would often hear the joke that GM was more of an extended care and benefits company than an automobile company.

So along with large debt payments to bondholders, GM was unable to pay it’s bills with the income from car sales.  Luckily, the federal government  decided that the fate of GM was tied to the fate of many workers and therefore America.  They would be bailed out of their financial woes.  The amount of money involved was so big that only governments had the might to write the big cheque.  Ultimately with all of the restructuring, the government OWNS GM.  So now, GM is now Government Motors, or the people’s car company.  This solved a short term debt problem, but the company still had to sell cars. 

Since the economy overall is still not as robust as the administration would have you believe with unemployment still ratcheting upwards, people didn’t have the capacity to finance car purchases.  Ironically, many of the unemployed became that way because GM and Chrysler were forced to close down hundreds of car dealers throwing those people out of work.  Todays’ news is that GM will spend $3.5 billion dollars to buy a company involved in the financing of cars.   Not just anybody, but particularly people with ‘subprime’ credit.  Hmm, this sounds oddly familiar.  In case anyone noticed, the money used to purchase AmeriCredit is actually government money, or public money.  So in essence, the public is subsidizing other people to buy cars that they otherwise couldn’t afford with their own money.  I think in real life, that’s called a circle jerk.  Nevertheless, the UAW union at GM, also a major stakeholder post restructuring, have managed to keep their members employed albeit at the expense of everyone else.  Bernie Madoff in his ponzi schemes at least bilked the rich.  In this latest government scheme, the people who can least afford to pay are getting roped in.

This is but the first of these types of ingenious rescue schemes to see the light of day.  In scenarios throughout the country, the same dilemna will surface again as public pensions for teachers,postal workers, firemen, police etc have to be funded.  An agency will have to be established in order to offer financing to people who cannot otherwise afford teachers, fire or police protection: some means of allowing people to pay money regularly in order to recieve these services…hmm how to do that…if only there was a way…

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