Media Fairness??
Henry Neufeld, in a post commenting on my Election Post Mortem questioned the reliability of measuring press fairness based on the ratio of stories, and went on to say, that
Debating the fairness of the various outlets is an appropriate exercise in order to try to change the market share of the various outlets, but not in order to pretend that it is the fault of the media that one candidate loses or wins.
Concerning the ratio issue, while there is some validity in the Neufeld’s comment as a general rule, I do not believe that any such differences can account for for such a wide disparity in coverage as demonstrated in the Pew Research Report, or confirmed in analysis by the Washington Post of their own election coverage. In addition, as I pointed out in my post, this was not just an issue of numbers but also reflected in the type of stories covered.
For example it is just a fact that when Iraq was going badly, it received daily coverage, and when it turned around and improved coverage drop to practically nothing. Or compare the coverage of the Dot.com bubble burst with that of the housing meltdown. In another example, I find it inconceivable that if Freddie and Fannie had been Republican programs, whose executives were former members of the Bush administration, that Bush and Republicans had pushed the legislation to encourage (force) the banks to make these loans, that there had been repeated examples over the last 10 years of Democrats warning of impending problems, and Republicans stonewalling any attempts at changes, that the press would ignored such details has they have ignored the reverse for the democrats.
So the press coverage has been very bias to the most of dishonesty and I believe that this did play a huge and I believe determinative role. Granted it probably had little effect on the well informed on either side, but it had a huge affect on the large number of votes who do not follow the news closely. After all in a Poll conducted just after the election 28% had never heard of Harry Reid.
Here is a question for those who don’t think the press determined the outcome. If people had understood that the current financial crisis was caused by Democratic programs, and that in 2005 (among many other times), Republicans including McCain warned of the coming problems and tried to pass legislation that would have adverted much of the current mess, but were blocked by a party line votes by Democratic including Obama, do you really think McCain would have lost the lead he held at the time?
Then there is the whole Chicago machine issue. Obama grew up politically in the machine, and when he had an option, he sided with the machine. What impact did the machine have on him? Neufeld says he knew about Rezko and didn’t care? How much did he know? We know he was convicted and He is supposedly talking prosecutors. We know he had close ties to Obama from early in his political career and most recently was involved in the purchase of Obama house under questionable circumstances. Here is a question the press could have asked? Will Obama fire Kirkpatrick upon taking office and put a more friendly prosecutor in his place? Is Obama at risk of prosecution? We really don’t know because this aspect of Obama life received very little coverage.
Maybe Obama rose to power in the middle of one of the most corrupt machines in the country and yet was somehow untainted by it. We know he used thug tactics to knock opponents off the ballot so as to run effectively unopposed in his early elections. But what are Obama’ actually ties to the machine? We do not really know because the press never quite got over the tingle in their legs to find out.
Frankly the press simply did not do its job and now we have a big unknown going into the Presidency. Will he govern as a far left radical? As a Chicago thug? As a center-Left leader? Broad outlines are not detailed policies, and it is not even clear what the broad outline for Obama were. We don’t really know, and that is demonstrated by all the guessing at the moment. I have my guesses, but even after watching him as closely as I did, I can only guess. I doubt most of the people who main concern were hope and change have any real idea.
As for the stories on his friends and pastor that Neufeld claims would have caused most people to turn off, I am not so sure, but it does depend on how they are presented. I believe many of them are relevant for several reasons. Most importantly, they reflect on Obama’s honesty. Is it really reasonable to believe that Obama sat in his church for 20 years, was so motivated by a sermon that discussed “white greed” that he mentioned it in his book and used it for the title, and yet had no idea what his Pastor was teaching?
In all these questionable relations Obama has show a repeated pattern of lies. First denying an knowledge or relationship and then only admitting details when they can no longer be refuted. And he has been allowed to get away with it. Given the press coverage, most people probably do think Ayers was simply a person in his neighborhood, and have no idea of how close and deep those ties were. To get some grasp of the difference, just image the press coverage and uproar if a Republican candidate was show to have such ties to an unrepentant abortion clinic bomber.
Second, one of the most important things a President does is fill the government with 3000 appointed positions. I think the people he has chosen to associate himself with in the past are at least a legitimate indication of the types of people he may appoint. Granted Ayes is not now going to be appointed, but frankly had it not been for the coverage, my guess is that he would have been appointed to something. Not a high visibility position, but how many of the 3000 really get any press coverage?
Obama is the most liberal candidate ever to be elected into office, far to the left of the American people. While I can somewhat understand the questions about Palin’s lack of experience, she still has more executive experience and more of a record of actual accomplishments than Obama. Yet is a sign of the press bias that these question were seriously raised against Palin running for Vice President, and ignored for Obama running for President. Sure she made some gaffs, all candidates do. At times Biden made several per week. But Obama’s and Biden’s gaffs were ignored, while Palin’s and McCain’s were news stories.
In short the press in this election were little more that an arm of the DNC.
Hitchens – God Is Not Great XXII
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At the end of chapter ten of his book “God Is Not Great,” Christopher Hitchens has a summation more fitting of his book as a whole, then of the chapter. He writes of the lost of belief in what he labels as his “secular faith.” “Thus,” he writes, “dear reader, if you have come this far and found your own faith undermined… I know what you are going through.” It is almost as if his main argument spent Hitchens was running out of steam. As I noted last time, the argument in this chapter were particularly weak, even for Hitchens.
The arguments in the next chapter on the origin of religion, are likewise feeble. At its core Hitchens argument is that the some religions have dubious origins, therefore all religions are false. His examples are the Melanesian “cargo cult,” describing how religious beliefs came out of contact with more advance cultures, Marjoe Gortner, self-professed evangelical huckster, and finally the origin of Mormonism. At its core Hitchens argument is irrational for it commits the fallacy of hasty generalization. But there are further problems from a Christian point of view. The Bible is clear that there are false beliefs and false prophets. Thus when Hitchens points to the problems of other religions, it is, if anything, a minor confirmation of the Bible on this point.
This is also no doubt the reason for the inclusion of Gortner in this list. But when we consider Gortner, immediately there is the impression of one of those IQ tests where you are asked ‘which one of these things is not like the other.’ Hitchens’ discussion of the cargo cult, and Mormonism deals with the origin of religions, which is the subject of the chapter. Gortner is a 20th century figure taking advantage of a religion that is already thousands of years old.
The example of Gortner demonstrates nothing about the truth of actual Christianity, any more than the existence of huckster and con-artist demonstrates anything about the truth of actual medicine or science. Does Hitchens seriously believe that we should denounce all of medicine because some snake-oil salesman is able to convince people to part with their money for some supposed cure? If not then why should we denounce all religion, because Gortner can do the same in the guise of a preacher?
Hitchens then has a few comments on the end of religion in chapter 12, which even for him, are more “useful and instructive” (p 169) than any actual argument. But these have no bearing on anything other than the small sect he discusses, so we will move on. In chapter 13 Hitchens comes to the question of whether religion make people better? Hitchens knows he has a difficult task, and in fact this is in some respects an issue he has already dealt with in chapter two, where he argued that religion kills. But there is a difference in the focus of the chapters, for while chapter two dealt with those who kill in the name of religion, this chapter start with those such as Martin Luther King and Gandhi, who argued for peaceful resistance in the face of injustice.
For the most part the chapter starts with Hitchens dancing along a very narrow line, granting the positive contributions of King while downplaying any religious motivations. This is difficult, for not only was King a minister, but he frequently used the Bible in his call for non-violent resistance to racial injustice and bigotry. Nor was King an aberration, for Christians played a long and key role in the this movement going back to the abolitionists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and even earlier.
While Hitchens does give brief mention to this role, he understandably downplays it, preferring to mention a few against whom he can use ad hominem attacks so as to discredit on other grounds. At the same time he points to secular people who also argued for abolition. His basic argument seems to be that while “a few” (pg 177) religious people did argue for racial justice, their calls for abolition were mixed in with other wild idea and thus could not be trusted. Nor were they needed as there were secularists who also called for abolition.
In addition to the fallacious nature of such reasoning, and special pleading involved, Hitchens’ argument suffers two additional fatal flaws. First, even if everything Hitchens says was true, he is granting that these people were motivated by religion for the good, thus undermining his own argument. Second, his argument completely neglects the difficulties of the struggle, and the key role in that struggle played by Christians and other of religious faith. Abolition in the 18th and 19th century, and civil rights in the 20th were not just abstract ideas to be accepted or rejected in a gentlemanly debate. They were huge social struggles with strong opposition in which people battled for decades, and for which some gave their lives, motivated by religious teachings of the Bible.
Looking back the best Hitchens can really claim is that perhaps these movements did not really need their religious motivations after all, and secular motivations might have worked just as well, but this is somewhat like the disgruntled Monday morning quarterback whose team did not make it to the play offs trying to claim that his team could have done better than those who actually played.
The simple historical fact is that religious motives did play a significant role in these movements. To deny that fact is to deny history. But there are even deeper problems with Hitchens argument and I will look at those next time.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
Hitchens – God Is Not Great XXI
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In Christopher Hitchens’ book “God Is Not Great,” after dealing with the Old and New Testaments, Hitchens, takes on the Koran, but I will leave it to Muslims to respond, and move on to chapter ten, where Hitchens deals with the dual subjects of Miracles and Hell. Or at least that is what the title claims, as the chapter really only deals with miracles, and even here the arguments are particularly weak, even for Hitchens.
At its core, his argument seems to be that Hume, who he claims wrote “the last word on the subject” (pg 141), argued that we have free will to decide if we will believe in miracles or not, at which point Hitchens calls upon “the trusty Ockham” (pg 141) and his razor to decide that we should not. Hitchens then has a very feeble, at best, attack on the resurrection which never really rises above attempts at ridicule, then supports this with a few examples of false miracles, primarily related to Mother Teresa.
That we have the free will to decide about miracle was hardly new with Hume, nor even a fair summary of his thought. Nor did Hume write the last word on the subject, as many words have been written pointing out the problems with Hume’s critique, including a few of my own. Still, Hitchens’ arguments, weak as they are, suffer from the two main problems common to atheist’s arguments in this area and these center around the nature of miracles and concept of free will.
For Hitchens and other atheists, miracles are suspect because by definition natural explanations of some sort are always going to be more likely. This is bolstered by the fact that many alleged miracles have been shown to be the result of natural forces or fraud. Yet error and fraud exist in all areas of human experience. So that there is error and fraud in some miracles is not a reputation of all miracles, and in fact the Bible warns us to be careful about this, a warning that Christians have not always taken as seriously as they should.
Miracles, at least in the Christian view, are the acts of a personal God. They are not forces of nature that can be measured and studied in a laboratory. That one person prayed and was healed does not mean that everyone who prays will be healed, even though there are some Christians who believe this. Such personal acts do not lend themselves to the type of evidence atheists demand, especially since the purpose of a miracle is normally not to show the existence of miracles or God. Of course the atheist often asks why doesn’t God just perform a miracle and prove that he exists ?
That bring us to free will. Hitchens main argument is that we have free will to choose whether or not to believe in miracles. Free will is a good way to understand this issue, and the problem with atheistic reasoning, as it ultimately argues against, not for, free will.
The issues and complexities of election aside, we do at least at some level have free will. As Jesus said of Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37 “how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” Now it is true that that God does not prove he exists in some undeniable way, and from this the atheist concludes that that he does not exist. I believe, however, he does not because that would conflict with our freedom to choose.
Do we, for example, have the freedom to choose whether or not we will accept gravity or if the Moon exists? Not in any meaningful sense, and if God met the atheist’s demands, neither would we have any meaningful choice to believe in God. Rather than proof, God has given us evidence. Evidence that points to his existence, and evidence for miracles. As I argue in Christianity and Secularism the resurrection is not only the best explanation for the events surrounding the death of Jesus Christ, it is the only explanation that explains both the empty tomb and that the disciples really believed that had seen the risen Christ, two things that even some skeptic and critics of the resurrection believe need explanations. Yet, while strong evidence, it is not proof. God has left us the freedom to ignore the evidence and to reject the resurrection despite the evidence.
The atheist view does not, despite Hitchens claim, allow such freedom. In the atheist view, barring absolute proof, the miraculous must be rejected in favor of the natural. For the atheist there is no weighing of evidence pro and con, a miracle is either proved or rejected, with a standard of proof so high that if met it would eliminate any meaningful freedom to reject God.
So ultimately, this is a matter of how you frame the question. If, as the atheists see it, this is a question of proved or rejected, then miracles, and belief in God will be rejected. If however this is seen as a question of evidence pro and con, then the evidence supports the belief in miracles such as the resurrection, and the belief in God. God has given us the freedom to choose. What we do with that freedom is up to us.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
Post Mortem
Finally it is over. One of the worst aspects of this whole campaign has been how long it lasted. For almost all voters who have clearly developed political philosophies and beliefs, or even just clear party affiliations, their minds were made up long before the rest even began thinking about the election. This is especially true for those like myself who saw serious problems with both candidates. Now, at least it is over.
I was never a huge supported of the current president. While not as moderate as is father, I saw him as a moderate – conservative who would increase the size of government and thereby cause the party to loose in the future. I turned out to be correct in that analysis. While far better than Obama, McCain would have been worse than Bush. So while I would have preferred a McCain victory as it would have been better for the country, I can at least take some solace in the fact that I will not be put on the spot of being asked to defend the expansion of global warming laws, etc.
As to why we lost? There are many reasons. Bush’s failure to defend much less aggressively defend himself and his policies are a huge factor. One question I frequently hear is “Why doesn’t he defend himself” or “Why doesn’t the White House get this information out.” The closest thing to an answer is that the President supposedly does not want to fight old battles.
While it may be ok for Bush to trust in the judgment of history, and I do in fact think that Bush will look far better looking back in a few years, that does little good for the party that must continue to fight on. It is as if quarterback who was retiring, decided to simply go through the motions during the second half of the game.
Still a good candidate could have overcome that. That brings us to McCain. McCain was the wrong candidate at the wrong time. Limited by his own campaign finance reform laws, and estranged from the base of his own party, McCain ran a campaign the elites have been seeking, a positive campaign that for the most part avoided negative attacks.
The elites pushed McCain because they all thought this was going to be a election on the war and foreign policy, and because they wanted to get rid of all those pesky conservatives. As it turned out foreign policy wasn’t even an issue. One thing that often plagues Republicans is their success. Bush has been so successful defending against terrorism and the surge has worked so well, that these have ceased to be issues.
Even with this McCain still could have won, because Obama has his own serious flaws. What ultimately tipped the balance was the press coverage. Going back as far as I can remember, (i.e., the 1960s) the press as always tilted to the left. But this year it flat fell over, and ceased any pretense of objectivity. In fact as a recent Pew Research Report showed, the only major network that showed any sense of balance was actually the nemesis of the left Fox News, which had equal percentage of negative stores on McCain and Obama, and slightly higher percentage of positive stores for Obama. On the other hand on MSNBC over 70 pecent of the McCain stories were negative, compared to only 14 percent for Obama.
There is a simple rule I teach in critical thinking: if most of what you hear about something is negative, you will tend to have a negative view, if most of what you hear about something is positive you will tend to have a positive view. The Pew report showed that in press coverage, except for Fox which was balanced, the press for Obama was mostly neutral or positive, and for McCain was mostly negative.
Even worse than the bias coverage is what didn’t get air time. One of the reasons the war on terrorism, and the war in Iraq were not a more important factors was that they are going so well that they don’t get covered lest it support Republicans. Thus the focus was on the economy which does have serious problems, but even here the reason for those problems was not covered, for at its core the current problems go to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Democrats.
Thus with all these negatives, what is amazing is that was as close as it was, and that the predicted Democratic blowout did not occur.
So where do we go from here. One good thing is that the Republican party will need to reform, and there is currently no clear heir apparent for 2012. I think the move to the center, with McCain will been seen as the mistake that it was. While the Left constantly likes to speak of the demise of conservatives, The simple fact is that we have not had a really conservative President since Regan. Bush 41 was nominated as Reagan’s VP and Bush 43 as Bush 41’s son, and neither was really conservative. Nor was McCain.
Perhaps the closest thing to an heir apparent would be Palin, and as a result the relentless attacks on her will continue. In fact I expect that before long the elites will be saying how McCain would have won if only he had not picked Palin. As a fairly conservative woman, she would be a real threat and therefore must be destroyed by the left.
Whoever the next candidate is, if they hope to win, they will need to be able to go around the press to speak effectively to the American people. A leader must be able to communicate their vision of where they want to take America and what they hope to accomplish and not just during the campaign.
One danger I do see is a repeat of the Clinton years. Clinton won in 1992 and like now, the democrats controlled Congress. After two years things were so bad that the Republican won control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Then the Republican Congress turned things around so well that by the time 1996 election Clinton was able to take credit and won reelection.
As for the two big fears I had with Obama, the war in Iraq seems to be going so well that hopefully his withdrawal will not actually have much effect. The other concern was the Judges. There is little hope in the short term there. The only hope of retaining the constitution will be for some future President and Congress, to force a constitutional crisis that moves the court back into is constitutional role of judging rather than making the law. But then frankly I have been moving more and more in the direction of that belief even before this election. Barring that, we will increasingly cease to be a democratic republic , and instead be ruled by a council of Kings, who fundamentally set the policy for the country, while the President and Congress will be relegated to merely working out the details and administering their decrees.
One final positive, will be clarity. For months now there has been the Obama of his supporters, or should I say the many Obamas as Obama was so many things to so many people. Then there was the Obama that his detractors saw. About the only thing his supporters could agree on was that the detractors were wrong. But they could never really tell us who Obama was. Now we will find out. Frankly, I think that over the next few months it will many of his supporter that are surprised at what is about to happen and the change that is coming. But either way, over the next six months, we will finally get to see the real Obama.
Six Days to Go….
Six days to the election. By this time next week we should know who the next president will be, at least I hope we will, and will not be facing another election like 2000. Note that I did not say we will know who won the election. Given the widespread voter fraud that has already been going on, if it is close, we may never really know who actually won.
The stakes are high. Our country is at war against radical Islam that threaten civilization itself, and if victorious would throw the world back into the middle ages. Russia is reemerging not only as a global power but as a very dangerous one that is more than willing to invade its neighbors and kill those who get in its way, even when they live in other countries. Iran is ruled by religious fanatics that believe it is their mission to bring about the return of the 12 Imam by means of an Armageddon like conflict. That would be bad enough but they are also getting closer to having nuclear weapons, and if the statement of its president are to be believed, will use them as soon as they get them.
Then there are what in more normal times would be considered very serious problem, but in the current international climate are relegated to the second tier status. North Korea remain dangerous and unstable, China continues a rise to dominance, while not as dangerous as Russia at the moment, it is still a major concern. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is threatening to extend it despotic rule through the region. We live in very dangerous times.
On the home front, we likewise face serious threats. The obvious one at the moment is the current financial crisis. But there are the more lingering problems. While gas prices are down, unless the economy tanks, that is only temporary and our dependence on foreign old remains a problem. Rising health care cost remain a huge problem. But even more important than the problems is how we will address them. Republican and Democrats have vastly different visions of what our country should be that go to the very core of what it means to be American. Will our country continue to be focused around the individual and liberty as it has historically been and as Republicans want, or will we change to be more like Europe centered around the government and equality as the democrats seek?
In these momentous times, one would expect that momentous candidates would emerge. Having watched the two candidates since the early days of the primaries, I find my initial view has only been confirmed as we come into the closing days. In any normal year, both of these candidates would be fundamentally unelectable. Their only hope at the moment is that their opponent is likewise unelectable.
McCain, is a candidate at war with his own base. He won the primary, because nobody really excited the base and McCain attracted independents and moderates and with the help of a willing press, was able to exploit a base divided among other candidates until it was too late. As a general rule, a candidate who does not have his base going into an election loses. Now McCain has been able to counter this in three ways. First he down played all the issues that anger the base. That helped but it only gave him lukewarm support. More important has been the selection of Palin as VP a pick that fired up the base in ways that even those like me who hoped for her selection could not have imagined. Finally there is the outright fear among the conservative base of what would happen in a Obama presidency, which brings me to Obama.
Obama is rookie with little executive experience. His great speaking skills, at least when reading a teleprompter, would earn him some future consideration, after a few terms in the senate, or even better after serving as Governor. So in a normal year an Obama presidency would not be given serious consideration. Obama was able to win the primary because of this speaking skills. He is one of those rare gifted speakers who allows people to think he is supporting their hopes and dreams, when he is actually saying nothing at all. This got him to the point of a two person contest with Clinton, where because of the strange delegate rules the democrats have, she was never able to overcome his lead, despite winning most of the remaining primaries.
Such a weak primary finish would normally have spelled doom in the fall election, especially since while you can get by on hope and change in a primary, in the fall voters generally want more specifics. And here was Obama second major weakness. He relies on flowery rhetoric because he is far to the left of even many democrats. If he is elected I think people looking back will see a couple of passages from his book to have been very revealing, but largely overlooked. He wrote that when he went to work for an Investment banking firm he felt “Like a spy behind enemy lines” and that he learn the trick of getting what he wanted if he was “courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves.” True to form Obama will not make his sudden moves until after the election.
In fact the more you examine Obama the less electable he seems. Obama is basically an inexperienced rookie who is at the far left of even the democratic party. He matured politically in the Chicago machine, long noted for its thug tactics and in fact won his initial elections by getting his opponents off the ballot. He has allied himself with some of the most extreme elements unacceptable even to most democrats.
It is inconceivable that a republican candidate who either attend a white supremacist church or who allied himself with an abortion clinic bomber would even get serious consideration for dog catcher. But Obama sat for twenty year in a black nationalist church and was allied with a terrorist who bombed the Pentagon, and that is just the beginning. One of his early financers, one who was part of a questionable deal that allowed Obama to purchase his current home, was just convicted and is apparently talking to prosecutors. This raises at least the possibility that if elected Obama could need a special prosecutor before he is even sworn in.
Enough questionable associations have come to light to reveal a pattern. Obama’s first reaction is to lie and deny. Thus clips of Pastor Wright were out of context and not representative of his pastors views. If and when the first lie no longer works, Obama moves to a new lie. Thus now we are expected to believe that he sat for twenty years in his church and even quoted passages from sermons about “white greed” and yet did not realize what he was actually hearing.
With Bill Ayers, Obama first lie was to claim he was just some guy in his neighborhood. When this turned out be false, then Obama claimed he did know who Ayes was and that he thought he had been rehabilitated, without the conflict in these statements really being challenged. Similar patterns of lies and denials occur with ACORN and other questionable figures surrounding Obama.
All this should doom Obama chances, but whereas McCain was able to counter act some of his weaknesses, Obama likewise has been able to counter act his. It is simply a fact that negative information has no effect if it is not know, and the major media has been doing all it can to shield the public from this information.
But even here thing have changed. For many decades the press has tilted to the left. But with Obama, the press as for the most part drop any pretense to objectivity and are little more than an arm of the Obama campaign. Thus Sarah Palin has had more critical scrutiny by the major media in the short time since she was nominated than Obama has had in the entire campaign. Oh sure, a few things have slip out. Problems surrounding Obama’s connection with Rev Wright and Bill Ayers were known about for months before they finally got some coverage in the major media. When they did slip out, Obama make one of his denials, and the major media would quickly shift the focus of coverage to how nasty the campaign had been. In fact it is quite possible that Joe the plumber has received more critical investigated from the major media for asking a inconvenient question than Obama in running for President.
But the press coverage has gotten even worse than that. We are current in the worst financial crisis since the depression. And yet the major media seems singularly uninterested in finding out what actually happened. Just think back to the coverage following the Dot-com bubble, and the daily reports on Enron and CEOs such as Ken Lay. This is certainly far worst, so why no coverage?
While the details are extremely complex, the root of the problem is actually very simple. In a program started by Carter, and expanded under Clinton, government pushed banks to make risky loans. This was done through semi government corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, on the one side and democratic groups such as ACORN threats to protest banks as racist on the other. Since the normal financial and oversight rules do not apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac these loans and there result financial instruments that came from them went largely unregulated until they spiraled out of control resulting in the huge financial crisis. Republicans saw the growing problem and tried many times to enact legislation that would prevent it over the last 8 years, but were blocked each time by Democrats, who because of Senate rules could kill any bill if they remained united which they did. Thus the current financial crisis.
While the root of the problem is simple, if reported it would doom Obama as some of his Financial advisors were executives earning tens of millions of dollars at the institutions at the root of the problem. So there is no serious reporting on the causes other than the vague reference to “corporate greed” which because of bias coverage lead many to falsely conclude republicans are responsible. Thus very democrats that caused the mess are allow to run around claiming this is the result of the Bush’s economic policies despite the fact that they block every attempt to avoid it.
One other example. The major media recently went into a frenzy on how angry and mean McCain supporters were, all based on a questionable report of one reporter, a report that Secret Service agents investigated and could find no one at the rally that hear the shout of “kill him.” Yet this was quickly portrayed in the major media as a common and systematic problem at republican rallies. Meanwhile, and unreported by the major media, is the growing problem of actual threats and violence by the left, cars being keyed because they have McCain bumper stickers, attacks on McCain campaign head quarters, death threats spray painted on Senator Coleman garage. But rather report what is actually happening on the left, the media prefers to report on made up stories about the right.
So who is going to win? Unknown. Some polls show the race tied, some show a wide victory for Obama. But one thing we have learned this year is that the polls can’t be trusted even when they agree. Obama had a big lead over Clinton in New Hampshire but lost. The simple fact is that the polls don’t even agree and Obama has consistently shows better in the polls than the election.
Then there is the issue of voter fraud. Some Democratic seemed to have convinced themselves, despite the facts, that Bush stole the election in 2000, and that this gives them the right to cheat this year. Problem with registrations are already showing up across the country in key states often tied to ACORN which receive $800,000 from Obama for their efforts. In Ohio, which was key last time, the Democratic Secretary of State seems to be going out of her way to make it difficult to catch any fraud. But then considering that Obama comes from the Chicago machine, this is to be expected.
On the other hand, given the internet and talk radio, some things are slipping out about Obama, despite all the attempt to hide them. The more recent examples would be his views on income redistribution, which slipped out with Joe the Plumber and then were confirmed from tapes of a interview before he ran for President, and his ties to a former PLO spokesman. But then the undecided middle is for the most part the least interested and least informed and thus the least likely to care.
Ultimately it comes down to this, the more people learn about Obama, the less likely they are to vote for him. If the major media can keep people focused on hope and change and not on who Obama actually is, and what he will actually do, then he will win. If McCain can break through the press barrier and can get people to focus either on who Obama is, what he will do, or on Obama and other democrats role in the current financial crisis, then McCain will win.
Hopefully, we will know next week at this time.
