Two prayers....

God's will be done and may He have mercy upon us all.

About Me

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A Catholic who follows Rome & the Magisterium. I'm against gay "marriage", abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, human cloning. Altar girls, Communion in the hand, Eucharistic Ministers and "Protestant" music in the Church doesn't bother me at all. A proud American retired submarine sailor. Our borders should be secured with a 10 ft. high fence topped by concertina wire with minefields out to 20 yards on both sides and an additional 10 yards filled with warning signs outside of that Let's get energy independent NOW! Back Israel to the max, stop appeasing followers of the Pedophile Prophet. Pro 2nd Amendment, pro death penalty, Repeal all hate crime legislation. Back the police unless you'd rather call a hippie when everything hits the fan. Get government out of dealing with education, childhood obesity and the enviornment. Stop using the military for sociological experiments and if we're in a war don't micromanage their every move. Kill your television, limit time on the computer and pick up a book. God's will be done and may He have mercy upon us all.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

The real "Inconvenient Truth".

Work with me for a while, okay?

I read
this over at Human Events. O'Reilly has the curse of Irish descendants, a large ego and the knack for promoting it, but he DOES have a fair perception of many things.

What disturbs me about Gore even being nominated is another story I'd read a few months back when his documentary was first released. In it he admitted to exaggerating the facts and using hype and hyperbole to get attention on global warming. He justified it by claiming it was necessary.

So a documentary that it's author admitted contained at least a fair amount of sensationalism is now considered for Oscar nomination. Isn't a documentary supposed to be objective and balanced? No one seems to even blink at the admitted bias in it. Did I miss something here?

It's even more disturbing when seen as typical of our times. Recently Reuters News admitted some of the photos an independent stringer provdided of the war in Lebanon were doctored. He was let go and that was that. No questions addressed as to the many other photos he's successfully submitted to them over recent years. How many lies have been accepted as truth here?

The same with the AP and their recent problem with Jamial (sp?) Hussein. They dug like hell to finally locate a guy they claim is him. This was only after some prominent bloggers started raising questions. What seems to get lost in the shuffle is the question of how many falsehoods were generated by this guy? The story that tipped Michelle Malkin & Curt at Flopping Aces had to do with mosques getting torched and six Iraqis being killed. None of which it turns out was true. What about everything else this guy provided?

How many more like the two I just referenced are feeding major news outlets and, by extension, you and I a bunch of pure crap? And do I need to mention Dan Rather and his fraudulent story about the President's time in the Guard?

If some of this seems vague it's because I DON'T pay any more attention to mainstream news than I have to. Like many of us I knew there was a bias there long before Bernard Goldberg wrote a book with that title.

But a fair amount of people get their news that way. And the problem of bias and agenda driven news stories is getting worse.

For example, there's been a lot of coverage over the antiwar protests held yesterday in Washington. Yep, they hammered their message home and it was faithfully reported. Tomorrow I'll get the local fishwrap and it's a dollar to a donut bet the story will be on Page 1, above the fold.

Unlike the previous march of last week that was held there. Did you hear about that one? Tens of thousands marchers for an all day affair in our nation's capital. Didn't hear it? Neither did I.

Until I went to the blogs and found out. The Catholic blogs concerned about pro-life issues. Yeah, THAT march about THAT politically incorrect issue. The story that made page A10.

What was it Orwell said in "1984"? Think it was, "He who controls the present controls the past, he who controls the past controls the future."

Our news media is unreliable, worse yet our history books are more of the same.

The War Department went to public schools until college. She tells of being a kid and wishing she were black or Hispanic because of the positive spin put on all their role models. She was "just a white girl". In one high school class a substitute English teacher even told her and the rest of the whites they were inherently racist and unable to understand what it was like to be black. One football player walked out, had his mom complain to the district and that teacher wasn't seen at the school again. But how many times over the years had the nitwit made similar statements to children and was never called on it?

Bias of this sort is wrong. No matter who does it. Yeah, I can understand not everyone is anti-abortion. Not everyone fully supports the war in Iraq or believes Israel should be backed. Not everyone is white and might feel their group has been slighted in history books. Okay, let's talk about it then.

If we're really going to debate issues let's do it like adults. Let's stop the hype and hyperbole, the unspoken arrangements where only certain items are deemed newsworthy. Let's stop the bias.

Because right now, IMHO, many people are like myself. We filter every single bit of information we receive. It's in self defense. So I read and listen to everything with my own bias going. I intentionally exclude anything that doesn't go with my own views.

Because you really can't trust anyone to be "fair and balanced". You come to believe the problem with an open mind is that someone will always try to fill it with their own BS. I get into discussions and afterwards realize I'm not listening to my opponents and they're not listening to me. We're only taking turns spouting off our opinions.

It isn't just me that sees this lack of true communication. Some years ago I had a conversation with another gun owner who, like myself, believed we should at least have a nation wide debate on true gun control. Not prohibition but a screening out of possible nut cases that seemed to pop up with increasing frequency in tragic news stories. Like myself, "Pete" was exasperated by the inability of either side to listen to the other. He was demonized by his gun owning buddies for being a "traitor" with an ulterior motive. The anti-gunners almost fainted when they heard he wasn't for a complete ban. No middle ground anywhere. Like myself he finally shut up. The hell with both sides.

Typical of any issue. Take any of the current hot topics; abortion, stem cell research, immigration, the war on Islam, etc.

Nobody listens to anyone else. Our minds are made up and we don't need facts. Because we've found out too often the facts are selectively presented to us. Just like in Gore's movie.

Sooner or later it will lead to a confrontation. Not necessarily an armed confrontation, it could be at the ballot box over various laws and amendments. Rational thinking won't win out, only partisanship.

And for the greatest nation in the world, a country that was started as one under the rule of law as determined by rational, educated leaders, that's a damned shame. Those leaders didn't agree with each other on a heck of a lot. In some areas they detested one another. But they had the ability to objectively weigh true facts and their implications. They were able to put partisanship aside for the greater good.

We don't have the same objectivity in our news providers and we don't get past partisanship. And I doubt those leaders ever planned to have us go to the ballot boxes like lemmings marching to the sea.

We The People deserve better, we deserve to be better.

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