I’m pleased that the main stream media (MSM) has been blacking out the Edwards story. It just re-enforces what many believe – there is a very real media bias and the msm no longer has any credibility.
Imagine if you will, a fictional story – a story in which a high school football star goes on to graduated college and law school, clerks for a federal judge and launches a successful career as an attorney and ultimately amasses millions in medical malpractice. He then shifts focus to politics and wins his first bid to the US Senate. By the end of his first term, he is selected to run as the Vice President by his parties Presidential nominee. He and his running mate ultimately lose the hotly contested election against the incumbent. Then his wife is diagnosised with cancer and he decides to retire from politics to support her. Several years later, me mounts his own bid for the Presidency. Then it’s revealed that he’s been having an affair – and may even have a baby as a result of this affair. And the major media outlets ignore the story completely and our ‘hero’ lives happily ever after.
Yeah – the story doesn’t pass the sniff test. Readers wouldn’t believe it. The publisher would surely kick that back and tell the writer that [s]he needs to change the ending – the whole media as a conspiracy thing won’t fly – people would never believe that.
Except it’s happening here and now. In real life.
This story can’t be contained forever. Soon this story will be common knowledge. And the longer the mainstream media chooses to ignore it, the more damage they are doing to what’s left of their credibility – but this time, it will be their credibility with the sheep. Those who so far just consume the news wholesale, without question. This could be the story that will be looked back upon as the tipping point – when the sheep finally look at their shepard and say – WTF?
The only possible spin I can see them put on this is that’s “it’s just about sex”. Except it’s not - there is a baby now. There is a sick and dying wife who has been betrayed. Larry Craig, a homophobic hypocrite from ‘who cares’ was about sex. This is much, much more from someone who 6 months ago was asking you to make him the President of the United States.
So carry on msm. Keep digging that hole. Someone pass the popcorn…
"For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our best bet is to vote for Barack Obama because his supporters have been working behind the scenes to end this practice."
The above quote is part of the final address from Dale Leo Bishop before he was executed for murder yesterday in Mississippi. Predictably, the article describes Bishop as being mentally ill, but I would argue that anyone who holds down an acquaintance while allowing another friend strike the victim in the head 23 times with a hammer is quite obviously mentally ill.
So, yeah. A convicted criminal wants you to vote for Obie so as to end the carriage of justice.
h/t: rightwingsparkle
Direct from the grey lady - 3 weeks ago:
Last week, almost 1,000 jobs were eliminated in the American newspaper industry, perhaps the bloodiest week yet of a year where many papers are fighting for their lives. You read about the great names — the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, the San Jose Mercury News — as if reading the obituary page. Rich cities like San Francisco can no longer support a profitable daily paper.Columnists, reporters, editors, cartoonists and photographers — including some colleagues here at The Times — who brought to life the daily narrative of a city or region have been swept aside. What started as layoffs and buyouts is edging toward closures and bankruptcies.
Now this.
No... No connection whatsoever.
Update: And no Schadenfreude either...
In light of D.C. v Heller, The district has responded with these proposed new rules:
- Allowing an exception for handgun ownership for self-defense use inside the home.
- If you want to keep a handgun in your home, the MPD will have to perform ballistic testing on it before it can be legally registered.
- There will be a limit to one handgun per person for the first 90 days after the legislation becomes law.
- Firearms in the home must be stored unloaded and disassembled, and secured with either a trigger lock, gun safe, or similar device. The new law will allow an exception for a firearm while it is being used against an intruder in the home.
- Residents who legally register handguns in the District will not be required to have licenses to carry them inside their own homes.
Oh – and it gets better – read the whole thing. The application process is a bureaucratic nightmare.
If this crap flies it will undoubtedly ignite another case, which, given the makeup of the lower courts will ultimately land this thing right back into the supreme courts lap - 10 years later of course. And by then the writing that’s on the wall now will be patently obvious to everyone - The system is not working. These assholes are refusing to abide in good faith to the law handed down by the supreme court.
It’s just a tab bit ironic that this should all come down to the second amendment.
The founding fathers were some pretty bright people. They designed and constructed the best form of government man has ever seen. The most significant point of their governmental design was the system of checks and balances between the various branches of government. Run properly, by people of good faith, it would stand forever. But they also realized that man was man and thus fallible, so they threw in final fail safe - a final ‘check and balance’ to the whole equation. The second amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Most people get hung up on the militia part – equating militia with a government sponsored military. But that’s not what they meant. That’s not what their own personal history reflected. To them, a militia is an armed citizenry. Period. And when you understand that to be a militia, the entire amendment makes unquestionable sense. If it helps, rearrange the comma’s thusly:
The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, [to form] A well regulated Militia, [and] being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed.
One more point often overlooked, or wrongly emphasized - the ‘security of a free State‘ part. The operative word here is ‘free’. Free as free from tyranny. Free from oppression. Free. And in case you are especially daft, the same found fathers authored another document in which they very succinctly describes their vision of a proposed ‘free state’:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The second amendment codifies and limits the new government’s role in regards to an armed citizenry, because the founding fathers wanted to insure that future generations would be able to exactly as they did should it ever become necessary.
Our American history would not have been possible without guns. And all the (remaining) freedom we enjoy today is the direct result of some very smart and ideologically charged men with guns.
It’s about that time of year again. They have a nifty little bike race around France that starts every year in early July. For the last 7 years or so I’ve been glued to the TV watching all that I could. And, although I can’t get a video feed at work, so I keep the cyclingnews.com live reports up and refreshing during each stage for hours a day during each July. Productivity suffers.
But not this year.
No, this year the Tour de France is gonna suck. For those of you who may not follow cycling, let me break it down like this… Imagine Baseball without the Yankees. Football without the Patriots. Basketball with the Lakers. Hockey without … Hell, I don’t know – insert the hockey team you love [to hate] here.
Last year was the last year for the Discovery Channel team (formally the USPS team - Lance Armstrong’s team). They went out with a bang too – placing 1st and 3rd (Alberto Contador & Levi Leipheimer). Levi might have had 2nd too but for an unfortunate time penalty. But the team folded at the end of the season and the riders were all found looking for a new team.
Then the embattled team Astana, itself in danger of folding due to several doping scandals recruited Johan Brunyeel (the former director from Discovery) to lead the Team. Johan rebuilt the team from the ground up and hired on most of the former Discovery riders including Contador and Leipheimer. Astana has had a pretty good season so far – winning and/or at least finishing on the Podium in just about every race they’ve been in.
But they weren’t invited to the Tour this year. The ASO (owners, tour organizers) cited last year’s doping scandals as the reason. Never mind that those riders, and that management structure is gone and has nothing to do with this year’s team. But that’s French logic for you – or so they’d have you believe. The truth is the problem is Brunyeel. In the last 9 years, Brunyeel’s riders have stood atop the podium 8 times. Looks like the French have finally found a way to beat him.
Lest you think mine is a minority opinion, here’s Lance Armstrong’s take on the whole thing (found shortly after penning the piece above).
Yeah, but the thing is, let's say we'd have brought in Oracle [as sponsors instead of Astana], and [the team included] Johan Bruyneel and Lance Armstrong and the CSE management team, with Contador and Levi Leipheimer and all those guys. Astana would still be in the Tour de France, but Oracle would be out. This 2008 decision was not an anti-Alexandre Vinokourov-based decision. It was an anti-Bruyneel-Armstrong decision. If they want to play games like kids, then play games, but the record will show that ASO and the sport of cycling was prosperous during our time winning seven editions. And the record will show that, since then, it has not done well. And I'm not taking any credit, I'm just saying, for the record, the facts are what they are.
I feel sorry for the riders competing this year, and even more so for the one who gets to stand on top the podium in Paris because their victory will always be tainted with the question of what might have happened if they’d been allowed to compete with the best.