woody58.com Blog » Media Influence

September 15th Looms Large

Woody — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:40:49 +0000

ANALYSIS: Democrats wary of being portrayed as defeatists if …
WHDH-TV, MA - 14 minutes ago
… lost and that the surge is not accomplishing anything.” Reid was referring to the roughly 30000 troops and support personnel sent to Iraq this spring. …

Army Stretched Too Thin to Continue Surge
Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), VA - 26 minutes ago
The Army’s 38 available combat units are either already deployed, are just returning home, or are already tapped to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere …

AP: US seems focused on reducing combat role next year
USA Today - 30 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — US military officials are narrowing the range of Iraq strategy options and appear to be focusing on reducing the US combat role in 2008 …

US Military Looks to Reduce Role in Iraq
Auburn Citizen, NY - 38 minutes ago
By ROBERT BURNS and LOLITA C. BALDOR WASHINGTON – US military officials are narrowing the range of Iraq strategy options and appear to be focusing on …

US Military Looks to Reduce Role in Iraq
Glens Falls Post-Star, NY - 49 minutes ago
(AP Photo/ Sgt. Armando Monroig, US Army) WASHINGTON – US military officials are narrowing the range of Iraq strategy options and appear to be focusing on …

Iraq Progress Report: A Time to Assess and Reflect
Mathaba.Net, UK - 52 minutes ago
No matter, his report (and the others) will state progress has been made and the “surge” is working even though details will be sketchy in what’s expected …

US Military Looks to Reduce Role in Iraq
Journal Times, WI - 1 hour ago
By ROBERT BURNS and LOLITA C. BALDOR WASHINGTON – US military officials are narrowing the range of Iraq strategy options and appear to be focusing on …

US Military Looks to Reduce Role in Iraq
Helena Independent Record, MT - 1 hour ago
(AP Photo/ Sgt. Armando Monroig, US Army) WASHINGTON – US military officials are narrowing the range of Iraq strategy options and appear to be focusing on …

Our war-weary Iraq troops could soon be fighting the Taliban in …
This is London, UK - 1 hour ago
Meanwhile, a poll of American foreign policy experts shows most believe President Bush’s military “surge” in Iraq has failed, and US troops should be …

ANALYSIS: Democrats wary of being portrayed as defeatists if …
Journal Gazette and Times-Courier, IL - 1 hour ago
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in April he believed that “this war is lost and that the surge is not accomplishing anything. …

First, I must apologize for the size of this article. I certainly never intended it to occupy so much space, but my initial search for “Iraq Surge” under Google News yielded those first ten hits.

Notice that 70% of the articles are about getting out, as opposed to trumpeting the success we’ve seen as a result. Instead of simply reporting that we may actually be succeeding, the leads on those 70% suggests bad tidings. And there are those who will still insist that there is no left-leaning slant in alleged “news” stories. I continue to claim amazement despite the repeated examples which should have, at least by now, desensitized me. Alas, that has yet to happen.

Well, enough of that, let’s get back to the reason I deciced to write this piece in the first place:

ANALYSIS: Democrats wary of being portrayed as defeatists if report shows progress in Iraq

WASHINGTON — Democrats are warily anticipating a September report on the Iraq war, realizing that opponents will use any upbeat assessment to portray them as defeatists just as glimmers of hope appear.

If anyone is confused here, raise your hand. The Democrats are worried about good news emanating from Iraq. What in God’s name does that say about them? For my money, it says that they hope things go poorly in Iraq so that they can win the White House in ‘08. I may be an admitted political partisan, but trust me when I say that if it were my party engaged in such obvious wishful thinking against America and our troops, I’d find another way to vote as I disavowed my membership immediately.

General Petraeus is doing a magnificent job, and he has a report due to the CiC in September. The mainstream media is already setting the table for the final report to Congress as a re-write by the White House. What they won’t tell you is that the Congress asked the White House for the report. They then spun that to fallaciously indicate that it would be the General himself appearing before Congress.

So when the Petraeus report is submitted to the CiC, and then presented to Congress, expect cries of “re-writes” and “edits” to abound. But above all, expect any reports of progress to be dismissed just as easily as the lead subjects I presented were spun to reflect negatively from a simple search on Google.

And then come back and tell me that the right has too much sway in the media arena.

-Woody

More Subterfuge…

Woody — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 14:51:33 +0000

People have a propensity to believe not so much what they hear, but what they see, which is understandable to a degree. When you combine a lie with visual proof which appears to validate the lie, it becomes child’s play to convince people of pretty much anything you desire them to believe.

Now add to the mix deliberate omissions of fact or distortions of the facts, and it becomes even easier.

     First case in point.

     This is a picture that was widely circulated to bolster Al Gore’s hysterical claims that man is destroying the planet. It clearly shows a pair of polar bears sitting on top of some melting ice. We were led to believe that they were stranded there and once the ice melted away, the bears subsequently drowned.



     UK’s “The Daily Mail” was one outlet that circulated this photo with a heart-wrenching caption:



They cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming.



     The only problem is, as the photographer, Amanda Byrd points out is this; the bears were not stranded. They were not far from shore and could easily have swam back safely. Additionally, the photograph was taken in August on the fringes of the Arctic ice cap. Denis Simard Of Environment Canada summed it up best:

You have to keep in mind that the bears are not in danger at all. This is a perfect picture for climate change…you have the impression they are in the middle of the ocean and they are going to die…But they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim…They are still alive and having fun.

       We also hear about the Larsen Ice Shelf in the Antarctic collapsing. There have been famous photos of this phenomenon all over the place, too.

     What this picture does, along with the shrill rhetoric which usually accompanies it, is give the impression that your SUV’s are melting Antarctica. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

     “How can that be?” you may ask. “The proof is there for all to see!”

     Aha, that’s just how it’s supposed to work. The fact is that much of the main land mass of Antarctica is gaining ice, something the satellite photos are unable to detect because the ice is building up, not out. And the thing that most people probably have not taken into account, and the thing that no global warming fanatic will ever tell you, is that the Larsen Ice Shelf is at the very edge of the Antarctic Circle, some of it outside the circle.



     Interestingly enough, the Antarctic Peninsula is only about 745 miles from the Argentine Peninsula.

     It makes the warming doom and gloom seem much less traumatic when you see the entire picture, so to speak.

     If you’d like to see more evidence of the chicanery the environmental crowd uses to convince us all that we must alter our entire lifestyles, you can check out another article I posted a while back pointing out the Subterfuge In Global Warming Articles.

-Woody

The Truth Of Goebbels’ Lies

Woody — Sat, 05 May 2007 00:42:44 +0000

    If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. -Goebbels

     Joseph Goebbels, the King of Propaganda, knew all too well how to get the “message” out. That is, the desired message, the one designed to blind people to the fact that they were being fed lies as truth and to make them accept the fallacy willingly.



     For those few of you who have no idea who this man was, he was Hitlers biggest cheerleader and one of the madman’s closest associates during Hitler’s reign of horror. And as Propaganda Minister to Nazi Germany, one of his first acts was to order the infamous book burning of those written by Jews or anti-Nazis of any stripe.



     OK, so now all of you know who he was even if only on a semi-cognizant plane. At least you know he was a cretin of the highest order, that is the most important thing. Well ok, the second most important thing, the first being his words at the outset of this article, and the embracement of those words by today’s media and liberal talking heads, e.g., Hollyweird.



     We are hammered over the head on a constant basis by liberal talking point lies to the point that people begin to follow as lemmings, much as some will stumble upon some demonstration and, in a state of comfortable numbness, begin chanting along with the rest of the crowd simply because it “feels right”. Fervor and overt enthusiasm has that effect on some people and many will chime in without a single question as to the reason for the protest. Frightening when you stop to think about it, really.



     So what have we been hearing for the past oh,…6 years? Let’s examine. The list is long and if I miss a few I make no apologies. Keeping up with the moonbat media is hard work. And of course, the first one is obvious:



    BUSH WAS “SELECTED” PRESIDENT.

     Those of us who remain shrouded by the protective cocoon of knowledge know that this is a lie and yet we are accosted daily by people who derive most of their information from shows such as “The View” and “The Daily Show”. And so we have multitudes of people running around with “Bush Stole The Election” bumperstickers and matching attitudes. Where we actively seek out our information to be… well, informed, those folks are bombarded with the lie simply by zoning out to watch TV. Think it doesn’t sink in? Think again.



     BUSH LIED ABOUT THE WAR AND “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”.

     Despite the clear evidence that virtually every leading democrat was saying the same thing about WMD’s as Bush, there is a defense offered by the left for their dear politicians. “They didn’t start a war based on the lies. Bush did!” The fact remains, he couldn’t have done it without them! And the myriad quotes by Dems saying the same about Saddam were made largely before Bush was President. Not to mention that the moonbats seemingly defend the so-called “lies” of their people simply because they didn’t start a war. Amazing.

     While he was aboard the Lincoln and the “Mission Accomplished” banner was prominently displayed, Bush never said that the war was over, as many are led to believe. He said that the mission of removing Saddam Hussein from power was accomplished, and it was, and rather quickly I might add.



     SADDAM WAS NOT A THREAT AND HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11.

     Please. Saddam was thumbing his nose at the world by not giving full access to inspectors as part of the cease-fire agreement from the first Gulf War. He was shooting at our planes on a daily basis as they patrolled the no-fly zones north and south of Bahgdad, and he was privately funding suicide bombers’ families.

     And would someone PLEASE find any kind of evidence that Bush EVER said that Saddam was connected to 9/11? It simply was never said by our President. But Rosie O’Donnell makes that argument with regularity and people buy it every time. Good little Goebbels, she is.



     OK, I gave the impression that this was going to be a long piece, but truth be told, I’m exhausted, and I am done. This has “Part II” written all over it, and I will probably indulge in the next day or two, but for now I’ve said “all I have to say about that”. Comments are welcome and if anyone would like to add to the list, please feel free.

-Woody

No Outrage From The Press?

Woody — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:08:50 +0000

    My ears hurt from the deafening silence. They would welcome at this point the deafening shrieks from the main stream media regarding the “torture” of the illegally detained Brits. All I have heard from this group however, is the congratulations and gratitude for the magnanimity of the Iranian government for releasing those they had captured and imprisoned…illegally!

   Imagine, if you will, a man kidnapping a young girl and holding her for two weeks while her family and the entire country wonder what will be her ultimate fate. In the rare instance that the perpetrator actually relents and sets such a hostage free, do we then throw a party for him because he was so kind as to let her go and live? Is he made a hero in the eyes of those he harmed along the way? The obvious answer is a resounding NO. More often than not, we would be finding ways to keep her father from killing the son of a bitch while privately wishing we could let him through untouched.



   The British Sailors and Marines are speaking out on the treatment they received and it’s getting ugly. So much so that I expected the Human Rights Watch group to kick into high gear, demanding retribution from Tehran. Maybe an apology? Perhaps a threat that “we’ll not like you anymore”? Nope, nada. The sound of crickets chirping, which I normally find a soothing sound at sunset on a summer night but which I find infuriating in this context.



   Ahmadinejad has achieved a masterful public relations coup and our press here and abroad are vibrating like the strings of the best played Stadivarius, cooing their accolades and making him the “good cop” in this international incident.



   If only they could see far enough to afford the same to the U.S. Military…

-Woody

A Lesson In Enemy Tactics

Woody — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 19:11:21 +0000

   I’ll begin with the saga of the British sailors’ capture by Iran and the events subsequent, but make no mistake; this tactic and the disease it engenders goes much deeper than we care to realize. It is a standard tool of the left and its all too willing media accomplices here in America, and it threatens our very existence. I know, some of you have already begun the obligatory eye-roll, thinking that I engage in alarmist bloviation. That’s fine, but read on and see how you feel at the end, then let me know if the inside of your eyelids look better than what I describe, fair enough? Good, let’s go…

   Aside from the overtly insane, e.g Rosie, who from the outset claimed that the British sailors’ capture was an orchestrated event to pave the way to war with Iran, there were also many media outlets in the free world wondering aloud if the Brits had indeed strayed into Iranian waters and whether Iran had a right to their actions. The UK claimed immediately that it had GPS proof that their people were in Iraqi waters, but no one bothered to ask for that proof. Then we were treated to multiple photos of the sailors laughing and “being treated well”, which aside from failing to be dismissed as Iranian propaganda was not even mentioned as a violation of the Geneva Conventions, something the left claims to hold dear. Apparently only when we could possibly be perceived as violators of such.



   Now the sailors are free and they are speaking out about the treatment they received at the hands of their captors. They are saying that they were “blindfolded, bound and stripped” and that they were “under constant psychological pressure”, all things that are considered torture if inflicted by Americans by today’s standards. The reaction thus far? Iran is stealing a page from the Democrats playbook in responding that the sailors were treated well and are now being forced, by their own government, to lie about Iran! Wait for it, kids…there will be a stampede by leftist “experts” such as Sean Penn and his ilk to be the first aboard the Iranian bandwagon on this.



   I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the Clintons are the pioneers of this tactic. They mastered the art of doing whatever they pleased and then turning the guns on those who had caught them in the act, accusing the discoverers of engaging in a witch hunt. In my mind that is akin to pleading to the judge that your speeding ticket is the result of the police actually doing their jobs because they had the unmitigated audacity to monitor your speed.



   So now we have Ahmadinejad claiming a “vast Western conspiracy” and it remains to be seen if his tactic will take hold here at home. I fear that it may. With the shrinkage of the world brought about by the advent of the world wide web, the examples of our corrupt politicians are being mimicked and utilized to the advantage of those who wish us harm. They know what sells here, and they have donned the classic plaid sport coat of the best used car salesmen of all time. They are becoming the hucksters who can bring us down and we cannot allow that to happen.



   Sometimes I feel as though I have been the victim of a diabolical plot to make me think I’ve gone insane and that all that I knew to be true was a lie. That is what the enemies of America, both home and abroad, have been successful in doing. They have subverted truth and made believers out of willing dupes who think that if the newspaper says it, it’s true. Many of us know better, but we fight an uphill battle much as the sane person does when trying to escape the asylum.



   Pray that propaganda loses.

-Woody

What’s In A Name?

Woody — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:19:48 +0000

   They’re not terrorists, they’re “freedom fighters”. How many times have we heard this ridiculous defense of the indefensible by not only left-wing fringe elements in Hollywood and the like, but from our so-called “mainstream media”? Haven’t noticed? Let’s review then, shall we?



   Have you noticed that the mainstream media is utterly incapable of calling a terrorist a terrorist to begin with, preferring to use adjectives such as “insurgents”? The word “insurgent” implies that those committing dastardly acts of aggression against coalition forces are hometown boys, fighting for their country. Freedom fighters, if you will.



   While there are probably some Iraqis who have joined this “cause”, they are probably the Iraqi counterparts to our own Left-coast Liberals. But many of them are from across the Syrian and Iranian borders, which would exclude them from the classical nomenclature and make them what? Terrorists? Nope, not to our media and most certainly not to our actors and singers. Still insurgents and freedom fighters.



   So let’s go under the assumption that there just might be a sliver of truth to that assertion or at best, an innocent ignorance on the part of these sympathizers. Let’s call them freedom fighters, but let’s analyze why this should be so. What would a freedom fighter want for his trouble? And why?



   The normal brain will instantly answer “freedom” and “for his children”. Makes sense, doesn’t it? And yet we have a bunch of terrorists setting off IED’s not only to kill our soldiers but also to inflict as much damage on the Iraqi civilians who are trying desperately to achieve what? FREEDOM! And the insipid tactics that they have also brought into play negates the logical reason why they would be freedom fighters…they are blowing up their children! Do a Google search on this story of the children in the car-bomb and try to stay awake as you see…not much reaction from the presses. Then compare that reaction to Haditha.



   For more fun comparisons, let’s try the issue of torture and the Geneva Conventions. Rosie O’Donnell was seething over Abu Ghraib and still is. She just can’t seem to escape the nightmare of the torture we inflicted on those poor men, oh the horrors of it! What was her reaction to the British sailors being captured and paraded, blindfolded, through the streets of Tehran? “It’s a contrived story to drum up support for an attack on Iran”. She doesn’t even know that blindfolding and parading uniformed soldiers is a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, and yet she is feeding this disinformation to millions of viewers on national television. As hard as it may be to comprehend, there are people out there who believe what Rosie O’D says. Frightening, to say the least.



   Last, but not least, we have this bit of “patriotism” from Portland, Oregon.“Photos taken by Rachael Palinkas, a Linfield College student, showed masked protesters burning an effigy of what appears to be a U.S. soldier in the Park Blocks.”

People like this claim that they do it because “they love America”. Last question, I promise: Why do they wear masks?

Perception vs. Reality

Woody — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 22:57:57 +0000

   There are so many glaring examples of liberal hypocrisy, combined with mainstream media enabling, that I scarcely know where to begin. But we have all seen it and at least half of us have ignored it. To revert to a reference to movie lore, I can only equate this selective memory to those “flashy things” the Men In Black used. Is such a thing possible? In all honesty, I simply cannot subscribe to such fantasy but to be fair, I have no other rational explanation. Call me kooky, but what in God’s name is going on here?

   I’ll begin with the Sandy Berger affair, which is arguably the quintessential case of double standard. In preparation for the impending 9/11 Commission hearings Berger, whether at the behest of Clinton or not, did something that would have been national news for weeks had he been a Republican. He broke the law, seriously. And whether or not you make the connection to the reason why he did this, the fact remains, it looks bad, and the Woodwards and Bernsteins of journalism should have been on this story like…well, like Woodward and Bernstein on Richard Nixon.

   Such lame explanations as, “Oh, Sandy was just sloppy that day” have been more than adequate for a media and populace supposedly thirsty for truth. Again, imagine the parties involved being reversed. Imagine Richard Nixon explaining the blank 18 minutes of tape away with something like, “Heh heh, I was trying to tape Pat snoring and put the wrong reel on the machine”. Of course the media would have slapped their collective knee and scolded Tricky Dick for being an incorridgable cut-up, right? Fat chance.

   Let’s try the Rose Law Firm records. Hillary had a laptop with all the information required by investigators, but what happened? Uh…it vanished. “Nope, I must have misplaced it”, said an impish Hillary.

   No problem, was the response, and the media simply nodded and went about their business, which was to attack those who had the audacity to attack their beloved Clintons. And then, 3 days after the statute of limitations expired in the case, Hillary stumbles down to breakfast and says, “Wow! Someone call the FBI, I just found my laptop!” Media response? “YAWN!!!”

   Finally, to ultimately demonstrate that the media is more than a group of people with no agenda, eager to simply provide the news, we have this:

   The Duke Lacrosse case. This story was unavoidable when it looked like a group of rich white boys was about to be hanged for raping a black woman. Story after story about how justice in America was finally for real, and no longer would blacks be made victims by whites. Well as it turns out, it was whites being victimized by not only a lone black woman, but by a liberal agenda which is totally out of control.

These boys are all but completely vindicated now (a statement which makes its own sad statement, incidentally), and there is barely a whimper from the MSM. They slash and burn on their alleged “quest for the truth”, and when the trail turns cold, they simply move on like a camper out to piss off Smokey The Bear. They leave the ashes of their campaign smoldering and never bother to glance back.

-Woody