Category Archives: Politics

What Media Bias? This Media Bias

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CAUTION: Political Post Ahead.

The pro-Obamacare slant in major media came home to Raleigh, NC, this week.

The local CBS affiliate, WRAL-TV, aired a story — Some have success signing up for health coverage online — that chronicled how a self-employed graphic designer who had a $176 per month insurance plan got a new plan “on HealthCare.gov with the help of a federally trained navigator.”

Without going into the question of why Internet-savvy people (who can presumably purchase all manner of goods on commercial websites) would need a “navigator” to guide them through the Federal health care maze, let’s get to the obvious spin WRAL put on the story.

The lady’s original plan, which she categorized as “bottom of the barrel” (whatever that means; no specifics were offered on the plan’s supposed deficiencies or how long she had been dissatisfied with it), was replaced with a better one:

She took about a week to compare plans and enrolled in one that provides better coverage than her current plan. With federal subsidies, her monthly premium for her new insurance will be $91 a month – a 48 percent decrease.

In case you missed it, the bias comes by way of the quickly passed-over phrase, “with federal subsidies,” in the information that’s missing about how much the new plan costs and how much the subsidy is. That information is not in the audio or the transcript, but it shows up on screen at about the 1:30 point, as seen below:


(Screenshot of the WRAL-TV story.)

From this we see that the premium on her new, Obamacare-approved policy is actually $344.46 per month, nearly twice what she was paying before. We might hope this new policy would be better than the one she had, if it costs that much more.

But she’s only paying $91 and change for that policy, because the silent graphic shows that over $250 of that monthly cost is listed as a “premium tax credit.” That’s more than her original policy cost, for an annual total of over $3000, paid by the enforced generosity of the U.S. population and the borrowing habits of the Federal Reserve.

Remember, this was a “success story” in the eyes of WRAL: not what I often hear touted about an uninsured person or someone with a preexisting condition getting coverage, but that someone who had health insurance and was paying for it on her own has now been forced by law into dependence on the government. Yet in preparing their approved narrative, they chose not to call attention to those facts.

I thought I felt a breeze, that story spun so fast. But I’m a failed engineer, so what do I know about journalism?

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Another Election is Over … Plus Some Space History

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“Every country has the government it deserves.” So said Joseph de Maistre, and his words ring true to me.

What is it we deserve, then? On a national level, it seems that the politics of class warfare, handouts, and cradle-to-grave coddling have again won the day, and since the resulting system is unlikely to be sustainable over the long term, it seems that we deserve to — or we have at least voted to — decline as a nation. I hate to think it, and I will work to postpone and even correct it, but we seem to be living out the aphorism about the people destroying the republic by voting themselves largesse out of the public treasury.*

Meanwhile, the calendar turned over, and it is another day. And forty-five years ago today — November 7, 1967 — Surveyor 6, the fourth in the series to soft-land on the Moon, was launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas Centaur rocket. It would be less than two years before human beings — our countrymen — walked on the Moon.


(We went there, a long time ago, remember? NASA image.)

We had ambitions then, and big dreams. Those were the days.

___
*Attributed in various forms to several different people, including Benjamin Franklin, George Orwell, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Alexander Fraser Tytler.

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Another Election Day, But the Same Heinlein Quote Applies

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On every electon day, I recall this bit of guidance from Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long”:*

If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for…but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.

And if you decide you want to vote against both sides, I am as always available as your convenient write-in vote.

I’m the Anti-Candidate — or, if you will, the “well-meaning fool” — and I approved this blog post.

___
*The “Notebooks” were included in Heinlein’s novel, Time Enough for Love.

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Cutting Through the Benghazi BS

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In all of the back-and-forth about the killings in Benghazi — all of the he-said, she-said, they-said, and who-knew-what-and-when-did-they-know-it — I haven’t heard any of our leaders lay out this simple point:

Four U.S. citizens are dead who shouldn’t be.


(Will UN Monitors Investigate This Tragedy? by roberthuffstutter, from Flickr under Creative Commons.)

Those men — Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith — posed no threat to Libya, and indeed posed no threat to individual Libyans. Their mission was diplomatic, and peaceful, and in general respectful and helpful to Libya as a nation and its citizenry. Yet armed marauders, in a coordinated assault, overpowered and killed them.

Four Americans are dead who shouldn’t be.

Why are they dead? First, for the simple reason that they were U.S. citizens.

Not because they had done or said anything specific, and not even because they worked under the current administration.* They were targeted because they represented the U.S. What does that mean for the rest of our diplomats, or for any of us who may travel abroad? Call it paranoia if you like, but it seems to me there are forces in the world that consider each of us, and all of us, legitimate targets because we are U.S. citizens.

It appears there may be another reason they are dead. Not because of a video presentation, but because increased security that might have been afforded was — for reasons as yet unknown — not provided. It is fruitless at this early stage, as investigations proceed, to speculate on whether a legitimate need went unmet, or whether the reasoned allocation of limited resources produced a scarcity where a surplus was needed. I am willing to wait for the professionals to determine what was known, and when, and whether the preparations and responses were reasonable, but in the end the tragic truth will remain:

Four of my countrymen are dead who shouldn’t be.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, it was heartening to see some Libyans step forward to express regret over the attack that killed four men they knew, at heart, to be friends of Libya. It would be more heartening to see those who love peace take steps to apprehend and punish all the perpetrators, and then to work diligently to moderate the extreme rhetoric and the frequent recourse to violence we have seen in Islamofascism.

But no amount of contrition or action on the part of moderate Libyans will bring back our people.

Four U.S. citizens are dead who shouldn’t be.

And we have every right to be pissed off about that. I’ll even go so far as to say that if you’re a U.S. citizen and you’re not pissed off about the fact that four of your countrymen were killed for no good reason, then I think you need to re-evaluate your loyalties.

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*If the Ambassador and his staff had been associated with the current administration instead of the U.S. as a whole, would they have been targeted? Possibly. The current administration has shown itself to be friendly, if not actually accommodating, to those who do not support the best interests of the U.S.; however, it has largely (and correctly, in my opinion) continued the national security policies of the previous administration.

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Missourians, You Have Another Choice: the Anti-Candidate!

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Actually, that goes for just about anyone, anywhere, but most especially for my friends in the Show-Me State who are as appalled as the rest of the thinking world at the idiocy spouted by Representative Akin.

Remember, the Anti-Candidate is available to be your write-in vote for any election, any time, anywhere.

You DO have a choice this November. As the Grail Knight said to Indiana Jones, “Choose wisely!”

I’m the Anti-Candidate, and I approved this message.

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August 14: Sons of Liberty Day

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On August 14, 1765, the recently-formed “Sons of Liberty” made themselves known in a very public way.

Starting as “the Loyal Nine,” the group formed in Boston in the summer of 1765 in response to the Stamp Act. By August their agitation produced a violent response, when on the 14th a mob burned the Stamp Distributor in effigy and ransacked his home. Four years later, the Sons of Liberty gathered at Boston’s “Liberty Tree” to commemorate the event and one of the participants compiled a list of those present.

According to this USHistory.org page, however, “The success of these movements in undermining the Stamp Act cannot be attributed to violence alone. Their most effective work was performed in newsprint [as] accounts of the most dramatic escapades spread throughout the colonies.”

The most famous of the Sons of Liberty’s escapades was the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. That particular protest contrasts with recent protests we’ve seen ….


(Click for larger version.)

Well might we ask ourselves, who are today’s true-born Sons of Liberty? And for what liberty do they fight?

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Think I'll Run for Congress, 'Cause I've Got Some Bills to Pay

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More of my musical nonsense …


(Write me in for any office, anywhere, anytime.)

Filmed in the Baen Barfly suite at Dragon*Con, a little ditty about “the only sport for adults.”* Here’s the chorus:

Politics, that’s the life for me
It fits my arrogant, megalo-maniacal personality
I’ll get my name in the papers and my face on your T.V.
And take good care of myself, my friends and my family — yes, that’s the life for me

You won’t find honesty like that in any standard campaign commercial, will you? So I think of this as the theme song for the Anti-Campaign.

Watch it here: Playing Politics.

Many thanks to Tedd Roberts for both the videography and all the YouTube magic.

Hope you get a chuckle out of it — the melody is a little monotonous (sorry), but consider the subject matter. And remember, if you don’t want to vote for any of the folks on the ballot, you can always write my name in!

I’m the Anti-Candidate, and I approved this message.

___
*Attributed to Robert A. Heinlein.

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A Pre-Election-Day Reminder

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If you can’t find anyone you want to vote for, you can always write in the Anti-Candidate.

… we’re not on the ballot for … any elected office (so far as we know). You won’t see our name on those irritating little signs in your neighborhood. You won’t see any obnoxious “I approved this message” ads on television. In fact, if you’re committed to one party or one issue and you find a candidate who will represent you adequately, we encourage you to vote for that person.

Then again, if you find you’re not satisfied with the candidates already on the ballot — and you can’t pick one to vote against, as Robert A. Heinlein suggested — just vote against all the candidates and write in “Gray Rinehart.” It doesn’t matter what office: put us down for any or all of them. (Be sure to spell the name right: we wouldn’t want the election officials to get confused.) On the off chance that we win, we probably won’t show up anyway, since we agree with Thoreau that the government governs best “which governs least.”

You can read more on the Anti-Campaign page.

I’m the Anti-Candidate, and who else in their right mind would have approved this message?

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Freedom of Speech Is Not Free

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Subtitle: “Elizabeth Moon, Juan Williams, and Liberal Hypocrisy”

It interests me, in the way all coincidences interest me, that on the same day National Public Radio declared its disinterest in free speech by firing Juan Williams for expressing a contrary opinion, the Society for the Furtherance and Study of Fantasy and Science Fiction (SF3) disinvited guest of honor Elizabeth Moon from the 2011 WISCON (its convention in Madison, Wisconsin) for having expressed her opinion on her own LiveJournal account.

Both examples demonstrate the cost of free speech; not the cost of defending it, which Ms. Moon paid as a U.S. Marine, but that free speech can sometimes cost the speaker quite a lot.

It will not surprise anyone who knows me that I stand with Ms. Moon and Mr. Williams.

I have never met Mr. Williams, and have only met Ms. Moon once: I spoke with her briefly after the “Politics in Science Fiction” panel at Dragon*Con that was the impetus for her LiveJournal post. I found her to be delightfully thoughtful, even if I do not agree with everything she said during the panel. I think everyone should read what she wrote about citizenship and consider it carefully.

Let me be clear that NPR has the right to hire and fire in order to maintain its “standards,” even if those standards have more to do with their political agenda than journalistic integrity; however, they should be forthright about their agenda. SF3, which has a crystal clear agenda as the “leading feminist science fiction convention,” has the right to invite whomever it wishes to be its guest of honor; however, to cancel a standing invitation because they find an author’s recent statement distasteful is bad form and hardly conducive to examining the issues in a reasoned, dispassionate debate.

I find it extremely interesting that the decision by SF3 (which, so far as I can tell, did not come with any detailed explanation) came a month after the WISCON directors decided specifically not to rescind Ms. Moon’s invitation:

Even though we strongly disavow … elements of Ms. Moon’s post, we have not rescinded her invitation to be a Guest of Honor, nor do we plan to do so. The WisCon planning committee selected Ms. Moon earlier this year based on her past work and our feeling that she would make a positive contribution to WisCon. After extensive conversation in recent days, and having spoken directly with Ms. Moon on the subject, we continue to believe that her presence will contribute to the Con.

I’m curious as to what changed in the last month.

The deeper problem here is that these kinds of actions — metaphorical excoriations of public figures, and the inevitable backlashes — raise everyone’s hackles, mine included, and make rational discourse even more difficult than it usually is. Our political reflexes kick in, whichever side of the aisle we sit on. We are less prone to listen, more prone to shout.

Indeed, I wonder how loud the shouting would be — how much louder it would be from the left — if any organization, anywhere, fired or disinvited someone who, say, called right-wingers racist because they disagree with the President’s policies, or who maligned the military because it seeks to impose good order and discipline under the law, or who ridiculed all Christians because a misguided few seem to have stricken “God is love” from their Bibles.* It is an interesting thought experiment, but only that, because those opinions, it seems, are protected … and even celebrated.

And the hypocritical message repeats, loud and clear: free speech is free when it agrees with X; free speech is free when it doesn’t offend Y; free speech is free when it is mine, rather than yours.

___

*Saint John’s first letter, chapter 4, verse 8 (paraphrased): Anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

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On the Road to Dragon*Con, the Anti-Campaign Surfaces

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Driving through the Triad on the way to Dragon*Con yesterday, right around Thomasville, I noticed a blue Dodge pickup truck with a very interesting political message on the tailgate. Neatly spelled out in precise white letters was the simple message:

SOMEONE ELSE
FOR
PRESIDENT

— which sums up why I started the Anti-Campaign.

I have no way of contacting the gentleman in the truck; he pulled off I-85S at exit 106 (Finch Farm Road). If anyone knows who drives a dark blue Dodge pickup with North Carolina plates and a University of Georgia-style “G” affixed to the roll bar, let him know that I appreciate the sentiment.

And if you feel the same way about any of this year’s political races — that you’d rather have someone else, anyone else, than the candidates on the ballot — feel free to write in my name.

I’m the Anti-Candidate, and I approved this message.

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