28 August 2008 >>A report from the press area at the Democratic convention:
Here in Denver, there were audible cheers in the press pavilion from multiple directions when Barack Obama walked on stage. It’s outside the convention center and no regular delegates are here — only press.
Several members of the media were seen cheering and clapping for Barack Obama as the Illinois senator accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday.
Standing on the periphery of the football field serving as the Democratic convention floor, dozens of men and women wearing green media floor passes chanted along with the crowd.
As if to underscore the media’s Obama-worshipping, today’s New York Times carries this example of ostensible journalism entitled, “For a New Political Age, a Self-Made Man,” which essentially argues that the biggest challenge for Barack Obama is overcoming how great he is.
27 August 2008 @ 7:52AM >>
If Senator Barack Obama becomes president, will he use the power of government to stifle speech he doesn’t like?
The answer clearly seems to be yes, considering he is now asking the Justice Department to investigate a political ad—one that I cited on Monday—that highlights his multi-year connection with unapologetic domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.
Sen. Barack Obama has launched an all-out effort to block a Republican billionaire’s efforts to tie him to domestic and foreign terrorists in a wave of negative television ads.
Obama’s campaign has written the Department of Justice demanding a criminal investigation of the “American Issues Project,” the vehicle through which Dallas investor Harold Simmons is financing the advertisements. The Obama campaign—and tens of thousands of supporters—also is pressuring television networks and affiliates to reject the ads. The effort has met with some success: CNN and Fox News are not airing the attacks.
[...]
The Obama campaign plans to punish the stations that air the ad financially, an Obama aide said, organizing his supporters to target the stations that air it and their advertisers.
[...]
Obama’s campaign has written a pair of letters to station managers carrying the ads.
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“Obama supporters have now sent more than 93,000 e-mails to the Sinclair stations that have decided to run the ad,” said Obama’s spokesman Tommy Vietor. “Other stations that follow Sinclair’s lead should expect a similar response from people who don’t want the political discourse cheapened with these false, negative attacks.”
[...]
“Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it?” asks the ad’s narrator.
[...]
“With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the ’60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?” says Obama’s ad. “McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers’ crimes, committed when Obama was just 8 years old.”
The problem for Obama isn’t that the revolutionary organization run by Ayers and his wife bombed U.S. targets when Obama was a kid, the problem is that even today the only regret Ayers has is that he wasn’t successful in overthrowing the government.
As with Reverend Wright, this is someone Obama chose to embrace.
Does Obama not see why his refusal to explain his relationship with former Weather Underground leaders would concern people? If so, that fact alone should disqualify him from the presidency.
Americans do not want their president to be chummy with Marxist revolutionaries who tried to overthrow the very government he would be leading. To a presidential candidate with any judgment, this would be obvious.
But not only doesn’t Obama think he owes America an explanation, his campaign is actually trying to use the Justice Department to intimidate private citizens who believe that this is an important topic to address.
It’s interesting that the Obama campaign has not yet contested any of the facts in the ad. If the ad is “an appalling lie, a disgraceful smear of the lowest kind” as the Obama campaign maintains, then demonstrate what statements are false. And then maybe sue for defamation.
Why Barack Obama would choose to work for a Marxist bomber of American government buildings is a legitimate question, but in order to prevent any questions from being asked, Obama’s resorting to totalitarian tactics.
The Messiah says it’s time to shut up.
We must not question The Messiah. He will reveal The Truth to us, but only once we discard the False Consciousness to which we so bitterly cling. He’s helping us towards The Light by saving us from any knowledge that might stand in the way of His Ascension. We must not question The Messiah.
25 August 2008 @ 9:10AM >>
Barack Obama launched his political career with a fundraiser in the house of Bill Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist who—along with his wife Bernardine Dohrn—founded a radical Marxist group in the 1960s called the Weather Underground.
The Weather Underground was responsible for a number of bombings around the United States, including the U.S. Capitol building and the Pentagon.
On the morning that the World Trade Center was collapsing, the New York Timesran an article on Ayers in which he was quoted as saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” You have to wonder whether Ayers felt some level of glee watching the news that day.
The relationship between Ayers and Obama is extensive: for years, they worked together on a project called the Annenberg Challenge.
You’d think the media would delve into this relationship a little. If John McCain kicked off his political career at the house of, say, a bomber of abortion clinics, you probably would have heard about it by now. But the media, so clearly in love with Barack Obama, isn’t doing its job.
In election cycles a decade or more ago, that would have mattered more. But with the establishment media’s weakening grip on controlling coverage—ask John Edwards about that—the old gatekeepers can’t prevent this news from being discussed.
If anything, the media’s reluctance to discuss Obama’s shady connections may end up torpedoing the Democrats’ chances of taking back the White House. Ironic that the media’s desire to see Obama elected ended up causing the Democrats to nominate someone who might be the least electable candidate.
Because the media hasn’t been doing its job covering Obama’s connection to Bill Ayers, ads like this one are going to resonate this fall:
13 August 2008 @ 8:02AM >>
Last week, Rick Husong, who runs a company called “The Loyalty,” announced that a good way to show your loyalty to the modern messiah would be to hold an “O” sign over your head while walking down the street, kind of like a do-it-yourself perpendicular halo.
“We thought, ‘Let’s try and start a movement where even while walking down the street, people would hold up the O and you would know that they were for Obama,’” Husong said.
Despite plenty of snickering and negative feedback since his announcement, Husong is pressing on, explaining to U.S. News & World Report, “Our symbol ‘O’ is about much more than Barack Obama. It’s a symbol of unity, hope, solidarity, and an end to the divisiveness that has plagued this country for too long. It is the peace sign of our generation; a sign for those who are tired of the fear, the hatred, the greed, and the ignorance. There will be resistance, democracy requires it, but we believe that the good in the American people will persevere.”
Apparently, Husong is serious and this is not some sort of parody or Republican political jujitsu demonstrating the mindless conformity of Obama’s flock.
“People came out against the peace emblem in the sixties, making accusations that it was an anti-Christian symbol, an inverted crucifix, a satanic symbol, and a Communist sign. But like our ‘O,’ the goodness inherent in the peace symbol persevered, and today it is the international symbol for peace. The hand sign for peace was first a British form of giving someone the bird, then it became a war cry for victory. Today it is a symbol of peace & love. Once again goodness persevered. We too will persevere. Bring your hands together over your head to make a large ‘O’ and join us in our fight to take America back. Vote for Barack Obama.”
31 July 2008 @ 6:06PM >>
...at least that what Senator Barack Obama is implying.
Once again, the post-racial messiah, the guy who refers to his own grandmother as a “typical white person,” is playing the race card, effectively accusing the McCain team of using Obama’s race to try to scare voters. Of course, Saint Obama can’t point to any instances of this actually happening, and because he can’t, he is at least clever enough to use the future tense:
“Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”
This isn’t the first time Obama has pre-emptively accused his opponents of future bigotry. It’s becoming a pattern.
I’m beginning to dread an Obama presidency where every policy disagreement is a sign of racism and every press conference ends in standing ovations from the media. It’s already getting old.
25 July 2008 @ 8:36AM >>
The establishment media must assume its audience are fools, claiming to be objective and unbiased while the evidence says otherwise:
An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans.
Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans - a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.
Searches for other newsroom categories (reporters, correspondents, news editors, anchors, newspaper editors and publishers) produces 311 donors to Democrats to 30 donors to Republicans, a ratio of just over 10-to-1. In terms of money, $279,266 went to Dems, $20,709 to Republicans, a 14-to-1 ratio.
21 July 2008 @ 7:12PM >>
If you’re in the news business, media bias hurts your bottom line by diminishing the public’s trust in your product. In a business where messages are the only product, being seen as an unreliable messenger is just plain stupid business.
The idea that reporters are trying to help Obama win in November has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the Times erupted, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.
Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.
[...]
In the latest survey, a plurality of Democrats-37%— say most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of the campaign. Twenty-seven percent (27%) believe most reporters are trying to help Obama and 21% in Obama’s party think reporters are trying to help the Republican candidate.
Among Republicans, 78% believe reporters are trying to help Obama and 10% see most offering unbiased coverage.
As for unaffiliated voters, 50% see a pro-Obama bias and 21% see unbiased coverage. Just 12% of those not affiliated with either major party believe the reporters are trying to help McCain.
In a more general sense, 45% say that most reporters would hide information if it hurt the candidate they wanted to win. Just 30% disagree and 25% are not sure. Democrats are evenly divided as to whether a reporter would release such information while Republicans and unaffiliated voters have less confidence in the reporters.
[...]
A separate survey released this morning also found that 50% of voters believe most reporters want to make the economy seem worse than it is. A plurality believes that the media has also tried to make the war in Iraq appear worse that it really is.
8 July 2008 >>The Economist noticed something interesting about Senator Barack Obama’s website. Most of the pages on the site—like this one—display a navigation bar showing the main sections of the site:
The “people” section on [Obama’s] website divides Americans into 17 categories: Latinos, women, First Americans, environmentalists, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, Americans with disabilities, Asian-Americans and Pacific islanders and so on. There is no mention of whites, or men.
According to the Obama campaign, this is the exhaustive list of people that matter:
In the inclusive world of the post-racial messiah, heterosexual white males have been ethnically cyber-cleansed, and I’m probably a bigot for mentioning it.
2 July 2008 @ 9:36AM >>
Politicians like John McCain and Barack Obama show a fundamental misunderstanding of economics when they attack “speculators” as the cause of price increases for things like oil. Leaving aside the falling dollar—which increases the price of anything imported—the prices of commodities and raw materials are going up because demand for those materials has increased all over the world. And that demand has been increasing faster than supply.
Unfortunately for politicians, economic laws can’t be demagogued. A suspicious and easily-caricatured “other” is needed to attack. So even though politicians themselves have done much to constrict the supply of certain commodities (oil) and artificially raise demand for others (corn), they’d prefer to blame the price increases on someone else. So “speculators”—who actually use futures markets to shield themselves from future risk—are now the villain du jour.
Let’s say you want to buy a plane ticket to visit a relative for Christmas. You might decide to buy the ticket now or months before Christmas. Many other people will do the same. You might just like making plans early, or you might be thinking about all those bills you’ll have around Christmas. Part of the rationale for buying early is that it helps you manage future expenses better by shifting some of the burden to today. Or you might just worry that the tickets will cost more in the future.
Well, the airline does the same thing.
It takes a lot of fuel to fly, and any significant change in the price of fuel changes the economics of every flight. So, airlines can buy fuel futures, meaning that they make a financial commitment today in exchange for a guarantee to get fuel at a certain price in the future. If the price of fuel moves up significantly, the airlines are protected because their price is locked in by the futures contract. This helps prevent airlines from taking massive losses on flights in the future, and it’s what enables them to sell you tickets months in advance.
If there were no futures market, airlines would be taking a big risk by selling tickets far in the future. Without the ability to lock in fuel prices, every ticket sold would amount to a bet taken by the airline. The futures market allows the airline to shift that gamble to a third party: whoever purchases the other side of the futures contract.
The so-called “speculators” aren’t gaming the market, they’re lubricating the market. Without them, commerce would be riskier and more expensive.
It’s too bad that both major party candidates don’t get this.
23 June 2008 @ 9:09AM >>
Saint Barack Obama, the post-racial candidate sent from on high to redeem the racist American nation, is now engaging in the healing politics of Hope and Change by preemptively accusing his opponents of racism:
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Friday he expects Republicans to highlight the fact that he is black as part of an effort to make voters afraid of him.
[...]
“They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”
I admired Barack Obama back when he was the first black presidential candidate not to play the race card. But after learning about Reverend Wright and witnessing Obama’s feeble efforts to explain why he spent 20 years eagerly lapping up sermons from Chicago’s version of Al Sharpton, it became clear that Obama wasn’t some new kind of post-racial healer. He’s just better at hiding who he really is.
And now that he’s saying Republicans will attack his race before it has even happened, Obama shows that he’s not above playing the race card whenever it suits him.
Just 17% of voters nationwide believe that most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of election campaigns. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that four times as many—68%—believe most reporters try to help the candidate that they want to win.
The perception that reporters are advocates rather than observers is held by 82% of Republicans, 56% of Democrats, and 69% of voters not affiliated with either major party. The skepticism about reporters cuts across income, racial, gender, and age barriers.
Ideologically, political liberals give the least pessimistic assessment of reporters, but even 50% of those on the political left see bias. Thirty-three percent (33%) of liberals believe most reporters try to be objective. Moderates, by a 65% to 17% margin, see reporters as advocates, not scribes. Among political conservatives, only 7% see reporters as objective while 83% believe they are biased.
[...]
Looking ahead to the fall campaign, 44% believe most reporters will try to help Obama while only 13% believe that most will try to help McCain. Twenty-four percent (24%) are optimistic enough to believe that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.
Even Democrats tend to believe their candidate will receive better treatment—27% of those in Obama’s party believe most reporters will try to help him win while only 16% believe they will help McCain. A plurality of Democrats—34%—believe most reporters will be unbiased.
Among unaffiliated voters, 44% believe reporters will try to help Obama and 14% believe they will try to help McCain. Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans expect Obama to receive preferential treatment while only 8% believe reporters will try to help McCain.
Voters aren’t as gullible as some in the media seem to think.
7 June 2008 @ 11:14AM >>
Courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle, another nausea-inducing dispatch from the Cult of Obama:
Barack Obama isn’t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
[...]
No, it’s not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn’t have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.
Dismiss it all you like, but I’ve heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who’ve been intuitively blown away by Obama’s presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it’s just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.
Here’s where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
20 May 2008 @ 8:52AM >>
In yesterday’s, “The Coming Nanny State Fat Camp,” I mentioned two excuses Nanny Statists will use to get government to restrict people’s food intake and force them to exercise.
If this comment is any clue, those Nanny Statists have a friend in Barack Obama:
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.
“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.
Millions around the globe have starved to death in recent years thanks to petty dictators and corrupt governments. But to Senator Obama, “leadership” means letting the rest of the world know that he blames the United States first.
America exports more food that any other nation on Earth, yet accounts for less than 5% of the world’s population.
When it comes to our net contribution to the world’s food supply, we are not the planet’s biggest problem.
But rather than implore, say, North Korea to abandon the bankrupt ideology that’s led to numerous mass starvations, a President Obama would prefer to subject the food intake of our private citizens to the approval of other countries.
Now that the senator seems to be preening for the job of Counselor-in-Chief of the Nanny State Fat Camp, his wife’s odd comments from earlier in the year suddenly make more sense:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
10 May 2008 @ 11:44AM >>
Politicians sometimes misspeak. George W. Bush is well-known for it. And if it had been the current president who claimed to have visited 57 states—with one more to go—you’d probably have heard a few dozen jokes about it by now.
Perhaps Obama is planning an imperialist presidency, and he accidentally let it slip that we’ll soon have a few more states. If so, then maybe he wouldn’t be the pushover president I worry he’d be.
I’m sure Barack Obama knows how many states there actually are. The coverage of this quote (or the lack thereof) is more telling about the media than anything else.
Update: Dale S. of Lewisville, Texas writes in to contest my math. Because Senator Obama cited Alaska and Hawaii separately in addition to the “one [state] left to go,” Dale contends his statement could be interpreted to mean we have 60 states. Fair enough. On the other hand, he could be saying that Alaska and Hawaii are not states at all. So confusing! Can’t we just go back to having 50 states?
23 April 2008 @ 8:44AM >>
Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago is famous for its political history in which the dead rise from the grave to show up on election day and cast votes for Democrats.
But, perhaps thanks to the messianic effect Senator Obama seems to have on some voters, his dead supporters go a step further. They actually open their checkbooks:
The [Los Angeles] Times’ campaign finance expert Dan Morain has found Obama campaign records reporting a $50 donation by Roy Scheider, who lists his occupation as actor and his home as Sag Harbor, N.Y. Remember him from many great movies including “The French Connection” and “Jaws” and the immortal line: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat”?
According to the campaign records, Scheider made the donation on March 10 last month.
Trouble is, Scheider died exactly one month before that, on Feb. 10 at the age of 75.
As the reporter notes, “Scheider was unavailable for comment.”
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
[...]
You have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years from now, in eights years from now, you will have to be engaged.Michelle Obama,wife of Senator Barack Obama
12 February 2008 >>
A Clinton-related conspiracy theory:
It isn’t all that hard to believe that a guy who’s alpha [male] enough to risk his entire political career and presidential legacy for a few hummers from a pudgy intern might subconsciously sabotage his wife’s ascent to power, is it?
6 February 2008 >>
If Senator Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination and goes on to lose the general election, there will undoubtedly be those who argue that his loss is a sign of racism among American voters.
So, after a primary fight in which Senator Hillary Clinton’s husband repeatedly and clumsily steered attention to Obama’s race, if Democrats subsequently reject Obama, is that a sign of racism among Democrats?
The race among Democrats is still very close, and Obama racked up some important wins last night. But it seems that Obama tends to do better in polls than he has in actual elections. He could have pulled into a commanding lead yesterday, but instead he finds himself nearly tied with Hillary in the delegate count.
Late polls had him winning last month’s New Hampshire primary and yesterday’s California contest by what, 8-13 points? Then he loses, and not by razor-thin margins. Are some Democrats lying to pollsters about their choice? And if so, why would that be?
Throughout the night, reporters on both CNN and Fox News cited exit polling data showing that Obama does much better among white male voters than he does among women, Asians or Hispanics, who support Hillary overwhelmingly.
If Hillary is nominated, it may be that identity politics prevented a black man from moving into the White House.
Who would have guessed that the one group that couldn’t be blamed for such a scenario would be white male Republicans?
Was reading your most recent post about campaign finance reform and how it relates to private citizens generating “issue oriented” content. This is such a slippery slope, on all sides, that I think the judges and congress should be more worried about than us as private citizens. These guys are still thinking about content distribution and ad placement in terms of quaint methods they can wrap their heads around. How do they plan to apply such decisions to web distribution? What about hybrids like CurrentTV? What about YouTube on your TV via AppleTV? Do people have to give equal time on their blogs and social networks? Podcasts? RSS feeds? Twitter?
Further, as an internet marketer I am really curious to see how they ever plan on extending their reach into the numerous platforms of ad distribution: paid search, organic search, banners, email, pay for post, mobile marketing, embedded ads in video, viral marketing, guerrilla marketing, flash mobs... I could go on for hours, and that’s the point. Are these guys who think of the internet in terms of tubes really ready to delve into that world? They are ill equipped to wade into the pool beyond radio, TV and print, and quite frankly, two of those three are all but off the table for most promotional purposes and TV is quickly becoming unattractive as other methods offer vastly superior ROI. They are making bad decisions that won’t even apply to reality by the time they finally pass anything legislatively.
You can’t control political speech and advertising with today’s technology any more than you can lasso the moon. Whether it should be done or not becomes a moot point then.
I agree that political speech will be harder to regulate as media becomes more fractured and decentralized. But I wish I thought that meant politicians and bureaucrats wouldn’t try. If anything, the seeming chaos of the cacophony of individual voices in online media will probably lead some people to start arguing for tighter controls on political speech.
So as long as speech regulations are pitched as something else—such as campaign finance reform—it ends up getting supported by people who don’t pay much attention to politics but casually believe campaign finance needs reforming. And unfortunately, people have a tendency to care a lot less about free speech when it isn’t theirs being stifled.
It is interesting that, by and large, the editorial pages of the nation’s newspapers supported the McCain/Feingold political speech limitation bill. The fact that the legislation limited the speech of other private citizens—and not newspaper editorial writers—probably didn’t hurt. After all, in a world with less political speech, the power of a newspaper editorial writer is enhanced. Faced with a media environment where more people are getting news online and from independent voices, a cynic might say that newspapers saw campaign finance reform as the McCain/Feingold Endangered Editorialists’ Protection Act.
Being embedded in an old-media business, the ink-and-paper columnists might not have seen the regulations as a direct threat to their speech. But that’s only because they’re confusing their product—words and images—with the physical carrier of their product.
By encouraging the government to regulate political speech differently based on the employment status of the speaker and the medium in which the speech is conveyed, myopic editorialists have guaranteed that busybody bureaucrats will eventually try to tie down whatever medium those newspaperites flee to once the last inch of their sinking paper ship is finally dragged beneath the surface.
Whether they be political activists or not, if private citizens, like the folks who formed Citizens United, do not have the right band together to engage in political speech during certain times of the year, then the First Amendment is just a part-time right afforded to only part of the citizenry.
10 January 2008 @ 6:37PM >>
A few years back, I interviewed Michael Moore and asked him if Fahrenheit 9/11 should be considered a political advertisement, and if so, whether campaign finance laws should apply. Moore admitted the film contained his opinions, but that his film should be treated like an op-ed in the paper.
During the 2004 election, neither ads for the Bush-bashing Fahrenheit 9/11, nor the film itself were regulated under campaign finance laws.
The early reviews are in, and three federal judges appeared in agreement Wednesday that a movie lambasting Hillary Clinton seemed an awful lot like a 90-minute campaign advertisement.
Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, is challenging the nation’s campaign finance laws, which require disclaimers on political advertisements and restrict when they can be broadcast. The group argues “Hillary: The Movie” and related television advertisements are not political advertising even though the New York senator is in the presidential race.
Attorney James Bopp argued that they should be considered “issue-oriented” speech because viewers aren’t urged to vote for or against the Democrat.
[...]
The movie is scheduled for two screenings in theaters, once each in California and Washington. It is also being sold on DVD. Neither of those methods are regulated under campaign laws. The advertisements, however, are scheduled to run during the peak presidential primary season and would be regulated.
Bopp, who successfully led a challenge to one aspect of the campaign finance system last year, compared the film to television news programs “Frontline,” “Nova,” and “60 Minutes.” That prompted Lamberth to laugh out loud from the bench.
“You can’t compare this to ‘60 Minutes,’” the judge said. “Did you read this transcript?”
The movie features commentary from conservative pundits, some of whom specifically say Clinton is not fit to be the nation’s commander in chief.
The content of the film is irrelevant; if the film merely expresses opinions, it is protected constitutional speech. And if it is factually inaccurate in a way that is defamatory to Hillary Clinton, she has legal recourse for that.
It shouldn’t matter whether a film is made by a Hollywood insider like Michael Moore or an issue-based outfit like Citizens United. Groups like Citizens United—on the right and the left—are formed by private citizens with a common goal of promoting their shared ideas. The speech of Citizens United should not be more regulated than the speech of any of its individual members—or any other private citizen for that matter.
All filmmakers—in fact, all citizens who value their free speech rights—should be concerned about this decision. Michael Moore should be concerned. Because even though he has the benefit of Hollywood’s infrastructure and support (and therefore has no need to become involved with an organization like Citizens United), his films are financed and distributed by corporations that may one day find themselves subject to the same regulations now being imposed on Citizens United.
Any attempt to regulate political speech is direct assault on the First Amendment.
12 September 2007 >>
In the course of defending myself against accusations of quote doctoring, a reader discovered that MSNBC silently changed a quote in an article about journalists’ contributions to political causes.
A few days ago, I was criticized by a reader for allegedly removing an important part of a quote. The reader said I was “bad for democracy” and that I “should be ashamed of [myself].”
I replied that the quote I cited in my post appeared that way in the article at the time I wrote my post. My only defense was that I copied and pasted the text out of the article and did not change it. But the text that the reader cited did differ from mine, and I could not prove that the text had changed since my post appeared. MSNBC had apparently changed the quote without mentioning the change, even though the article does list another correction.
Yesterday, another reader did a bit of forensic websurfing and found proof that I was not lying:
Hi Evan,
The reason that the internet is so great is that information is rarely ever lost. It’s there if you know where to look. You can, for example, use the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
It seems that the page has been updated only twice. Once on June 25th, when it was created, and once on June 26th. The June 25th version has the Mark Singer quote exactly as you posted it. But then it’s changed in the June 26th version. And, oddly enough, this change is not included with the other correction noted.
Hope this was helpful!
Best Regards,
[Name withheld]
As happy as I am to be vindicated, I do think it’s odd that MSNBC added to Mr. Singer’s quote apparently to take some of the sting out of it. Especially when the network obviously has a policy of noting corrections—after all, they posted a different correction notice to the very same article.
So what led to the change in Mr. Singer’s quote? Did he demand it? Or did someone at MSNBC just think he needed to be softened up a bit?
10 September 2007 >>
In an e-mail entitled “Why you’re bad for democracy,” a reader takes me to task for this post, in which I passed along a study analyzing the political contributions of journalists. (The study said that reporters give $9 to Democrats and liberal causes for every $1 given to Republicans and conservative causes.)
The e-mailer wrote:
It’s so funny that someone who blogs about biased reporting does what you did:
You quote Mark Singer as saying...
“If someone had murdered Hitler â€â€? a journalist interviewing him had murdered him â€â€? the world would be a better place. I only feel good, as a citizen, about getting rid of George Bush, who has been the most destructive president in my lifetime. I certainly don’t regret it.â€?
In fact, the quote, in the very article to which you linked, was...
“If someone had murdered Hitler â€â€? a journalist interviewing him had murdered him â€â€? the world would be a better place. As a citizen, I can only feel good ABOUT PARTICIPATING IN A GET-OUT-THE-VOTE-EFFORT to get rid of George Bush, who has been the most destructive president in my lifetime. I certainly don’t regret it.”
You actually then proceeded to suggest that he advocated the murder of Bush (”Ah yes, the fine reporter would have killed President Bush”), when in fact, he was actually EXPLICITLY supporting the notion of ousting him by the vote - which in case you didn’t realize it, is actually what democracy is all about.
I know you’re not too stupid to know the absolutely massive distance in meaning between your quote and the actual quote. So I can only assume you deliberately chose to misquote him. So you could skew it to your own biases. If that’s not “Michael Moore-ish”, then I don’t know what is!
You should be ashamed of yourself.
The reader is correct in pointing out that the article now contains the Singer quote as rendered in the e-mail.
However, the quote as shown in my post is a direct copy-and-paste from the MSNBC article as it appeared at the time of my post. That’s always how I quote chunks of text from other sources. I’m too lazy to retype all those long quotes.
Whenever I modify something I’m quoting, I enclose all changes in brackets, even if I’m just changing the case of a single letter at the beginning of a word. If I’m removing anything from the quote, I note this using an ellipses enclosed in brackets: “This is a quote from which I’ve removed a few [...] words.”
I do this whether I’m removing a word, a sentence, or a paragraph.
The only exception to the rule of using brackets is if I’m changing the case of a publication that for stylistic reasons capitalizes words or several words at the beginning of a paragraph or section.
This is a standard that I’ve used since starting Brain Terminal over six years ago.
I can’t guarantee that I haven’t missed something, and if I have in any way rendered a quote inaccurately, I hope vigilant readers will let me know. I will post the criticism, I will note the mistake, and I will somehow correct the original post.
Still, I do know that the quote in my original post is a direct copy-and-paste. In this case, MSNBC must have modified the page after my post.
Outlets often quietly change text after an article’s original publication. I sometimes update posts after they’re published if there is a simple typo or of I decide that different wording conveys my thoughts and feelings more accurately. I’ve seen a number of establishment media outlets change text after publication without noting it.
In the future, I should keep screenshots of quotes I cite in order to have more fixed documentation than a simple web link can provide.
But even with the new wording, I don’t think Mark Singer sounds any more sympathetic.
A good writer knows that mere juxtaposition can cause readers to draw inferences that the writer doesn’t want to explicitly state. In this case, Singer doesn’t want to come out and say it would be a good thing to kill President Bush, but here is what he said (at least as it appears in the MSNBC article as of now):
1. Singer says there should “probably [...] be a rule against” journalists making political contributions.
2. Singer then says, “But there’s a rule against murder.”
3. He then states it would have been good to murder Hitler (thereby implying that a rule against murder isn’t necessarily a good thing).
4. And then he starts talking about “feel[ing] good about participating in a get-out-the-vote effort to get rid of George Bush, who has been the most destructive president in my lifetime.”
Either the leap from item 3 to item 4 is an addle-brained non-sequitur, or Singer is saying (1) it’s not necessarily good that there’s a rule against murder, but there is and (2) that’s why I contribute money to anti-Bush causes. And if it isn’t necessarily bad to murder someone as destructive as Hitler, is it such a leap to assume that Singer would support murdering someone he considers “the most destructive president in [his] lifetime.”
I suspect Singer didn’t put those statements in that order by accident. If he’s smart enough and a good enough writer to work for the New Yorker, then I don’t think he’s careless with words.
My take on it is, he’s equating President Bush with Hitler and hinting that Bush’s murder would be a positive event.
24 August 2007 @ 8:48AM >>
While the media focuses on the influence of political donations coming out of industries like oil and pharmaceuticals, there’s a new powerhouse in town that, for some reason, isn’t getting nearly as much attention:
Professors and others in the education field have given more to federal candidates running in 2008 than those who work in the oil, pharmaceutical, and computer industries — a sign of how academia has become a much bigger player in the political cash sweepstakes.
Of the more than $7 million that academics donated in the first half of this year, more than $4.1 million went to presidential campaigns, particularly Barack Obama’s, according to a study released this month by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The Illinois senator brought in almost $1.5 million, while Hillary Clinton received nearly $940,000.
Republican Mitt Romney was in third place, with about $448,000, but overall, three-quarters of contributions went to Democrats.
[...]
The clout of academic money in presidential and congressional races has grown dramatically in recent years, according to the center’s analysis of Federal Election Commission data.
Education ranked 34th among industries in terms of employee contributions in 1996 with a total of about $8.8 million, but nearly doubled to $16.5 million in the 2000 election and more than doubled again to $37 million in 2004, when it ranked eighth among all industries.
For the 2008 campaign so far, education ranks 14th. Among the industries whose employees have given more are law, medicine, Wall Street, and real estate.
Analysts say the donations in this presidential election cycle are largely due to widespread opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq war.
“It has really been surprising to us the extent to which the education industry has started kicking into presidential politics,” said Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. “It’s not a group you would normally think would have a lot of money to kick around $1,000 contributions. The motivation seems to be that they want a Democrat in the White House, and they want to keep a Democratic Congress.”
22 August 2007 @ 9:12AM >>ExpertVoter.org implements a simple, but powerful idea: provide voters direct access to the YouTube statements of presidential candidates running for office.
The main page is arranged in a grid, with issues across the top and candidates down the side. Candidates are also grouped and color-coded by party.
To hear a candidate’s stance on a given issue, just click the thumbnail image in the appropriate box. To hear all the candidates speak about a particular issue, you can sequentially click down the column for that issue.
And unlike what you might find in the reportage of the establishment media, lesser-known candidates are included as well.
YouTube also has a page that is a good starting point to the candidates, but I find ExpertVoter’s layout provides a better overview with far fewer clicks. The site is a good example of how the Internet can do a better job at informing the electorate than the old media.
2 July 2007 >>
A student at Georgia Tech reports that the school has officially endorsed Barack Obama for president. At least that’s how an e-mail from the Dean’s office makes it sound:
In the email message sent through the Buzzport announcement system, usually reserved for official Institute business, all 17,000 Georgia Tech students were informed about Obama’s visit and solicited to volunteer for his campaign. The message stated:
Senator Obama is also in need of a lot of volunteers to help him publicize while he is in Atlanta. If you are interested in volunteering you can check the box that says volunteers on the RSVP page.
Volunteers will be needed for Wednesday (street publicity team),
Thursday (sign making party) and Saturday (helping with the actual event) you can also reply to this message if you’d like to volunteer.
The taxpayers of Georgia may want to ask themselves why they are paying for officials of a public university to recruit volunteers for a political campaign.
26 June 2007 >>
A reader recently sent me a link to a very well-done simulation that shows how political mapmakers analyze party registrations on a house-by-house basis to draw district boundaries favorable to keeping incumbents in office. The process, called gerrymandering, has been used by both parties over the years, and is proof that abusing power to extend power is a corruption of character not limited to any particular party or ideology.
There are few things that have the potential to unite Americans of all political persuasions, but ending practices like earmarks and gerrymandering should be among the top—if only they got sufficient attention.
21 June 2007 @ 10:06AM >>
MSNBC took a detailed took at political contributions made by reporters and found some numbers that, to me anyway, aren’t terribly surprising:
[We] identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
[...]
The pattern of donations, with nearly nine out of 10 giving to Democratic candidates and causes, appears to confirm a leftward tilt in newsrooms — at least among the donors, who are a tiny fraction of the roughly 100,000 staffers in newsrooms across the nation.
The donors said they try to be fair in reporting and editing the news. One of the recurring themes in the responses is that it’s better for journalists to be transparent about their beliefs, and that editors who insist on manufacturing an appearance of impartiality are being deceptive to a public that already knows journalists aren’t without biases.
“Our writers are citizens, and they’re free to do what they want to do,” said New Yorker editor David Remnick, who has 10 political donors at his magazine. “If what they write is fair, and they respond to editing and counter-arguments with an open mind, that to me is the way we work.”
The openness didn’t extend, however, to telling the public about the donations. Apparently none of the journalists disclosed the donations to readers, viewers or listeners. Few told their bosses, either.
Several of the donating journalists said they had no regrets, whatever the ethical concerns.
“Probably there should be a rule against it,” said New Yorker writer Mark Singer, who wrote the magazine’s profile of Howard Dean during the 2004 campaign, then gave $250 to America Coming Together and its get-out-the-vote campaign to defeat President Bush. “But there’s a rule against murder. If someone had murdered Hitler — a journalist interviewing him had murdered him — the world would be a better place. As a citizen, I only feel good, as a citizen, about getting rid of George Bush, who has been the most destructive president in my lifetime. I certainly don’t regret it.”
Ah yes, the fine reporter would have killed President Bush—who is just like Hitler—but darn it, that’s illegal. So instead he gave $250 to a left-wing group.
There’s a longstanding tradition that journalists don’t cheer in the press box. They have opinions, like anyone else, but they are expected to keep those opinions out of their work. Because appearing to be fair is part of being fair, most mainstream news organizations discourage marching for causes, displaying political bumper stickers or giving cash to candidates.
Appearing to be fair is about as related to being fair as appearing to be pregnant is to actually being pregnant. A woman I know was once asked how far along her pregnancy was. She wasn’t pregnant. And she was not amused.
If Mark Singer had not contributed $250 to America Coming Together, he would appear to be more fair. But in the absense of that contribution, he would still be a journalist who implies that President Bush should be murdered because he’s morally equivalent to Hitler.
Sure, Singer might appear more fair, but would you trust him to actually be fair?
On affirmative action, Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, said he thinks that someday when his two young daughters apply to college, they “should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged” and there is nothing wrong with that.
“I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and been brought up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed,” he added. “There are a lot of African-American kids who are still struggling.”
Obama said that “if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it, that affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society.”
If Obama actually opposes race-based affirmative action outright, I’d consider it an act of political courage. Supporting racial preferences is a default Democratic position, and given the current state of American racial politics, it is a position that black Democratic candidates in particular are expected to take. To demonstrate that you don’t always take the default party position can be refreshing to people, especially when doing so runs the risk of getting you labeled as a traitor to your race.
But does Obama really oppose racial preferences? When he was running for Senate four years ago, Obama wrote a letter to Black Commentator addressing a number of topics, including affirmative action:
I favor affirmative action, but I’m still going after the votes of white union members who oppose affirmative action, because I think I can convince them that it’s Bush’s economic agenda, and not affirmative action, that is eroding their job security and stagnating their wages.
So, there you have it. Obama recently hinted that he opposed affirmative action, but four years ago, he he opposed it quite explicitly. Unless he just-as-explicitly says he has since changed his mind, I take the more definitively worded position (”I favor affirmative action”) to represent his actual beliefs.
Maybe Obama’s recent statement is just an example of his “going after white union members who oppose affirmative action.”
If he now speaks out against race-based affirmative action, he would be applauded by many people, including me. A viable black presidential candidate opposing affirmative action would be a milestone in American racial politics. Will it be Obama?
