Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader took a moment this morning to remember our dead and why we fight.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader would just like to pass on this link: How Do You Solve the Problem of Sharia? - Canada grapples with the boundaries of legal multiculturalism.

While your Maximum Leader recognizes that these Sharia courts are voluntary and limited in scope; they are a roundly bad idea in practice. Religious courts have no place in the realm of secular law. Isn’t this the same fight that Henry II of England started in the 1160’s? Isn’t this the fight that was won centuries ago? Methinks it is.

Carry on.

Ahhh
But my point was that it didn’t bother the electorate that Clinton did all he could to avoid the war and he was still elected. At least he was in the Guard.

“The point for Bush and Cheney should be that they did all they could do to avoid serving”

Oh…
I guess we were a little pre-mature on the Bush Guard duty “secret” files huh?

Back to the drawing board…. chalk another one up for un-biased reporting.

It has been interesting watching the full court press put on Bush by the Democratic political machine (which is expected) Hollywood (mvies and “documentaries”), and the Unbiased media.

Its too bad that the Democrats could not have just chosen a candidate with more appeal and credibility.

This is interesting…. despite call for the “Rich” to pay more in taxes, Kerry and the Heinz fortune only paid 12% in 2003.

This one should be a classic.

Bush: OB-GYNs Kept from ‘Practicing Their Love’

The point for Kerry shouldn’t be 4+ months of combat duty. The point that should be made is that Kerry did a tour of duty in the Navy prior to that 4+ months that counted as combat duty, so he didn’t have to serve the second tour. Kerry chose to serve in combat though he didn’t have to.

The point for Bush and Cheney should be that they did all they could do to avoid serving.

Is not much to run a campaign on. So if that is what Kerry is going to try to win the election with, you can’t expect the Republicans not to attack it.

I can’t help but wonder though, how Bob Dole didn’t get elected. I mean, if the Democrats are so enamored with Presidential Candidates that were decorated Purple Heart recipients, you think that they would have flocked to the Dole camp.

Too bad Bill Clinton has a heart condition. It would have been great to see someone who left the county to escape the draft (and who spent his time protesting the war) talk about how we need to elect a Vietnam Veteran.

Irony?

Maybe that is what caused his heart condition.

Back to the trenches…

Well, if Republicans are going to queston whether or not John Kerry deserves the Purple Hearts and Silver Star he was awarded during his service in Vietnam, then I guess Bush’s service record during that same time period (”Hey look, W.! There’s a war going on!”) should be back in the debate as well.

While I’m posting, I found another series of amusing cartoons that address the lingering doubts of the undecided voter and the sensitive Liberal. Should be a nail-biter of an election come November. I’m thinking of you, Smallholder, and I bet your wife will both love these cartoons and laugh outloud. Or cry, depending on the daily polls (just like me).

How do you like your Kerry kit, Maximum Leader?

Believe.

lets not get the skivvies in a bundle guys, I was just asking my astute friends for some clarification. AND I admitted that it was probably because of my Right wing bias that I was sensitive to a perceived bias the media’s part toward the Left.

Geessh!
And YOU guys are supposed to be the open minded ones!

But did you like my Kerry ad? Come on, Hell if Mike Moore can do it!

Back to the trenches.

PS
Oh how I miss that mountain.

To add insult to injury, Greg, I am typing this while sitting in a mansion atop Wintergreen Mountain.

The esteemed foreign minister pointed to the fact that Michael Moore was hired to comment on the Republican Convention by USA Today as proof that there is a left-wing bias in the media.

USA Today also had a guest commentator for the Democratic Convention: Ann “My acquaintance with the truth is only slightly less than Michael Moore’s” Coulter. Is this proof of the right-wing bias of the media?

Of course not. It’s proof that the media is also a business. Moore and Coulter were guaranteed to write inflammatory briefs about their avowed enemies, making good copy, and, not incidentally, selling newspapers.

But don’t expect the right to admit the relative fairness of the newsrooms (as opposed to editorial boards) anytime soon. Decrying the bias of the left is easier to accomplish than dealing with the vast grey area in politics uncovered by in-depth articles. The disconnect between conservatism-for-the-masses* and the messy nature of reality does favor conservatism in less erudite contexts. “God good and gov’mint bad” plays well in the black and white world of talk radio and Limbaugh country. Things aren’t so clear when you explore the depths, and even “nuances” of problems facing our country.

* I explicitly exclude thoughtful conservatives like George Will et al. from this generalization; there is a compelling intellectual argument for conservatism that can, and is made, by the chattering classes. This intellectual conservatism doesn’t win elections.

First… ok no left wing leaning what so ever. I would imagine that since I am on the right I perceive the left bias more readily much as those on the left precieve the right wing bias more quickly.

Maybe it‚ÄövÑvÂ¥s a wash. But what got me thinking about it AGAIN was a visit to CNNs political page and in all the big print was the amount of money donated to the bush campaign from Wall Street as compared to the Kerry campaign. I don’t have the numbers but it was something like a 3 to 1 ratio. The way it was presented made the reader feel that Bush was in the pocket of big business. I stared at the numbers for a while, and then followed the link to the “independent” organization listing these figures.

Their site was pretty interesting, in the sense that you could plug “any” special interest group category into it to see how they were donating. On a whim, well not really, I put in Law Firms.

Low and behold there were the numbers. WOW. The lawyers REALLY like the Kerry Campaign and as a matter of fact, like ALL Democrat campaigns because they give way more money than wall street and at a Dem to Rep ratio of like 4.5 -1. Now I thought that this was much more newsworthy than Wall Street contributions but apparently not to CNN. Maybe I am reading the numbers wrong who knows but Lawyer are the biggest campaign contributors to the Democratic party. We get oil they get law firms.
So I guess we won’t be getting alternative fuels or Medical reform any time soon.

The worms.

I think that the left has opened a can of worms that might come back to haunt them (if it hasn‚ÄövÑv¥t already.
They were loving the whole 527 thing. MoveondotOrg AND the Mike Moore “documentary” anti-republican machine to boot!
Wow, Hollywood types with money, time and eager fans to peddle their influence to!

If the Republicans are anything its quick learners. You want 527 groups? You got em! Enter the Swifties!
The Democrats have already proven that these groups and what they say can be contrived and not match the facts. So I really can’t believe they should get so upset about the Swifties.

I can‚ÄövÑv¥t wait for the next step. A conservative-republican filmmaker starts to make Documentaries! Kerry has already given us enough good material.

FADE IN

1968 CAMBODIA:

EXT RIVER SOUTH EAST ASIA DUSK

Thick heavy vegetation fills the banks. Water moving slowly while swift boat bristling with machine guns flows with current. The air is heavy with moisture and bugs. Three men are on the boat deck in typical navy attire, drenched in sweat. Their Captain, a tall menacing fellow (with great hair) strokes the metal casing of the 50 caliber machine gun while the other two sailors listen and grimace.

KERRY
I told you two high school dropouts already. The only good gook is a Fuckin’ dead gook! You don‚ÄövÑvÂ¥t have to go to college to learn that shit!

Kerry rolls joint and lights it, His face briefly lit against the falling night.

SWIFTIE SYCOPHANT #1
You mean we can just kill em’ for no reason?

SWIFTIE SYCOPHANT #2
(cutting in)
You heard the man, he don’t care how or why just drop em!

KERRY
That’s right boys, no bodys watching out for us here, this is our God Damned river. If I says kill the fucking gooks, I want you to kill the fucking gooks.

At that moment, Kerry smacks a mousquito that has landed on his forarm leaving a bloody smear and bug parts

Now you see that boys? You know what that is?

SWIFTIE SYCOPHANT #1
A gook?

SWIFTIE SYCOPHANT #2
Heinz Ketchup?

KERRY
No you fucking idiots, it my purple heart #3! One more and I am out of this Shit whole.

SWIFTIE SYCOPHANT #1
I thought Purple Hearts had to be combat related?

At that moment, a Vietnamese woman who is breastfeeding her 3 month old baby walks down to the waters edge. She sees the boat and gives a smile and waves to the crew members

KERRY
I’ll show you what I am talking about boys!

He pulls the cocking handle of the 50 Caliber machine gun and aims it at the Vietnamese woman. A smile crosses his face and he pulls the trigger. The tracer rounds rip into the un-armed woman on the bank and her and her baby disintegrate under the hail of machinegun fire.

KERRY
I bet that wasn’t a baby at all. That was a bomb she was going to throw right at us!

Both sycophants stare in disbelief

KERRY
So I guess that is my 3rd Purple Heart! Right Boys? And I am putting you both in for Bronze Stars!

FADE TO BLACK

Your Minister of Propaganda doesn’t really feel like going into this in depth (and he’s not really back, just visiting), but felt some sort of response was demanded by the Foreign Minister’s casual accusations of leftist bias in the media. First of all, newspaper endorsements go both ways in a given election and always have. Will 2004 be differen? Perhaps. When 60% of the citizens think the country is on the wrong track, probably a greater number of papers are going to endorse the challenger. Either way, legitimate new organizations struggle — sometimes successfully, and sometimes not — to keep what happens on the editorial pages away from what gets reported as ‘news’ on page one. This is the real issue of ‘bias.’ With the exception of Fox News (more on that at the end), the moments of intentional overlap tend to be few and are severely dealt with by the organizations themselves. But again, endorsements are nothing new — certainly no ’smoking gun’ (or ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ in Bushspeak) there.

Certainly a gentle reader might ask, but isn’t there an unconscious bias in favor of a certain candidate, and might not that unconscious bias in turn affect the news coverage? In fact, study after study has shown that their is indeed an bias, whether unconscious or not. However, the bias actually favors the right. In the 2000 election, negative coverage of Gore far outpaced negative coverage of Bush. Knowing both men, who do you think actually made more stumbles — and I’ll generously call Bush’s mistakes ’stumbles’ instead of ‘lies’ — on the campaign trail in 2000? Based on the total news coverage, you would think it was Gore. Now if you were trying to prove a leftist bias in the media, you would expect — actually, you would demand — that the opposite be true. Coverage of the 2004 election is following the same pattern.

As a general rule, in 2000, the mainsteam media tended to allow for Bush’s missteps while pouncing on Gore’s errors. Gore was consistently held to a higher — indeed, a biased — standard for both consistency and fact-checking: for example, whereas Bush was allowed to claim blatant falsehood concerning Texas’s educational reforms, Gore got a huge cycle of negative media coverage over the manner in which he phrased his contributions to the Internet. Part of it is the ‘echo chamber effect’ from the right-wing underground media: an incident gets passed back and forth long enough between the Drudge report and Rush Limbaugh, and eventually it gets reported as ‘news’ upstairs. There is no equivalent on the left: articles in alternative newspapers very rarely make it to the cover of the The New York Times. Another possible explanation is that the mainstream media unconsciously over-compensates for a perceived leftist bias that doesn’t actually exist, thereby shifting itself off the center. A more insidious explanation is that while editors and other media professionals may express personal sympathies towards the left, they are in fact a part of large news conglomerates that depend on the loosening of media restrictions for their continued growth and therefore quite consciously favor the right. However you choose to explain it, the bias exists.

The same right-leaning bias was true of the coverage leading up to the Iraq invasion, when the mainstream media echoed the administration’s reasoning for war with barely a spellcheck on the assertions. It’s easy to say now that ‘everybody’ thought there were WMD’s in Iraq, but in fact there were lots of voices cautioning the opposite; in an unbiased media, you would expect at least some investigation of opposing, democratic views.

Getting back to Fox News, most of the discussion surrounding the movie ‘OutFoxed’ is how everyone on both sides of the aisle already knows that Fox News has an obvious bias, and therefore it’s okay — the Minister of Propaganda remembers the Foreign Minister making an argument in this vein. However, the Minister of Propaganda recently saw the movie (he was planning on skipping it, since he thought he was familiar with the argument, but was with a group of insistent liberals), and found Fox New’s systemmatic and ongoing effort to undermine the basic fundamentals of the fourth estate to be very disturbing. He strongly encourages everyone to see the film. He is, in fact, most interested in hearig the viewpoints of the Foreign Minister and our esteemed Maximum Leader after seeing the argument layed out on screen.

Point: whether your personal politics favor the left or the right, the anti-democratic efforts of Fox News is bad for the republic. Your counterpoints are welcome (THAT’S how democracy is supposed to work).

Believe.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was just perusing the web and noticed that the Commissar said that he would investigate anyone who tracked back to this post! With that in mind… Bring it on Comrade!

Of course, your Maximum Leader supposes that we’d have to post some reactionary drivel to get the Commissar to notice us.

And just in case you missed it, you ought to check out this page of Soviet era insults. It is the greatest! Thanks Commissar for the link.

Carry on.

I know we have hashed this out before, and there are some that say there is no Left bias in the mainstream media. But with newspapers endorsing candidates (Democrats) and Michael Moore covering the RNC for USA, how can their not be a bias?

Glad to see your back MoP…

No really!

Back to the Trenches….

“Cynical and just plain wrong?” The Minister of Propaganda believes that the ad people for the California dairy industry must be the same people running Bush’s election campaign. Perhaps Schwarzenegger is the connection. Perhaps the next series of ads will have Schwarzenegger fondling cow udders. Or perhaps Schwarzenegger will be fondling Bush. Dairy farming and the War in Iraq are a natural campaign match — just like religion and politics.

God help us.

Believe.

My wife and the Maximum Leader have heard me whining about the stupid California Cow add campaign for upwards of a year. If you haven’t seen their adds, click here.

California, since it got into the dairy game relatively recently, has few small family dairy farms. A high percentage of the dairy farms are the monstrous industrial centers I have previously condemned. Since more of the cows live in industrial confinement, it stands to reason that they are LESS happy than the average American cow. Most California cows never leave their barns. But the ad campaign implies they are frolicking on grass.

That’s how cows should be raised.

But California cows aren’t.

So the advertising execs who came up with this add understand how cows should live, but then create marketing that supports farmers who raise their animals in confinement. Cynical and just plain wrong.