Should The Media Publish Lies and Propaganda?

There's an AP story released today that says the following about the Russian attack on the Sunni forces in Syria that have nothing to do with ISIS:

Russia launched its first airstrikes in Syria on Wednesday against what it said were Islamic State targets. But U.S. officials and Syrian opposition leaders have said the strikes hit areas not controlled by the Islamic State.

Is that something that AP ought to have said?  The Russian claims are clearly false and are designed only to make it appear that they are fighting ISIS when they are not.  Remember, the Russian attacks were on the city of Homs for the most part.  There are no ISIS forces in Homs.  There are no ISIS forces in the suburbs of Homs.  There are no ISIS forces anywhere near Homs.  What the Russians are doing is about the same as if they bombed Boston and claimed that they were attacking Canadian targets.  In other words, this is not a question of credibility; it is a question of sticking with the obvious truth or not.  AP chose to print the Russian lies without making clear that they are lies.

There's a good reason why such a big part of the American people don't trust the media.  The constant reporting of lies and propaganda as if it were true certainly does not help media credibility.

 

The Outcome Has Been Obvious For a Long, Long Time

The goal of the left for decades has supposedly been the end of poverty by government redistribution of wealth.  Our tax system takes from the wealthy and the government uses that money to give to the poor.  In fairness, the government also uses the money to subsidize political friends, to run the armed forces, and to waste as a result of fraud and graft.  The government runs all sorts of relief programs from regular welfare to Medicaid to Obamaphones to food stamps etc.  These payouts to the poor grow year after year, but we still always seem to have roughly the same amount of poverty.  The programs don't help, but we still go on spending trillions of dollars for the same unsatisfactory result.

The inability of these relief payments from the government to work is not mysterious.  Any clear minded observer could have recognized the inevitable failure when the programs were first starting.  Here, for example, is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to say in the State of the Union Address in 1935:

The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.

The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.  I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further sapped by the giving of cash, of market baskets, of a few hours of weekly work cutting grass, raking leaves, or picking up papers in the public parks. We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance, and courage and determination.

 

September's Employment Report -- Truly Awful

The government put out its report on employment for September.  There were 142,000 jobs created during the month, but the numbers for the two prior month were revised substantially lower, so the total jobs are only up 80,000 from the figure reported last month.  The economists who predict these things were expecting an increase of over 200,000 jobs, so this is a big, big miss.  On top of this, there was no real increase in wages.  The unemployment rate stayed at 5.1%, but that was only because more people gave up looking for work.

These numbers are so weak that they almost guarantee that the Federal Reserve will not raise rates in October.  (Of course, it's the Fed, so you can't be absolutely sure.)  These numbers also make clear that the higher GDP growth in the second quarter was just a bounce back from the terrible numbers of the first quarter rather than the start of a more robust and normal recovery for the economy.

It would be nice to think that someone at the White House would pay attention to the slowing economy and propose something to get it moving again.  Most likely, however, the next few weeks will be all about gun control and befuddlement regarding foreign policy.  Obama has announced many, many times that he is pivoting to the economy, but somehow he never comes up with any proposals.

 

How to Ruin SNL

Hillary Clinton is going to be on the season premiere for Saturday Night Live this weekend.  She's trying to improve her image according to the news reports.  Only Hillary and her advisers could think that she can fix her problems through attempts at comedy.  After all, Clinton's big problem is that she is a liar and is perceived as dishonest by about two thirds of all Americans (the others aren't paying attention.)  Do they really think that people who recognize Hillary as untrustworthy will suddenly say, "Wow, we thought she was a liar, but now that she went on SNL, she's clearly honest."

The main problem, however, is not the idiotic view by the Clintonistas that her honesty problem can be solved in this way.  NO, the big problem is that Hillary is not funny and that will hurt SNL this week.  Anyone who saw Hillary's last appearance on SNL in 2008 may remember that it was strained and boring.  In truth, Hillary ought to compete on Dancing with the Stars.  At least in that case we could get a laugh watching her dance (or try to).

 

Obama's Statement on the Oregon Shooting

I just watched president Obama make an impassioned statement at the White House in response to the mass shooting at a community college in Oregon.  It was a typical Obama statement, long on emotion but short on facts or solutions.  Here are just a few key points to consider:

1.  Obama made a pitch for the need for gun legislation before we know anything about who the shooter is, whether or not he got his gun(s) legally, and why he was shooting people at the college.  Clearly, if the shooter turns out to be a terrorist inspired by ISIS, the appropriate response is different than if he was a mentally ill paranoid who thought he was being persecuted.  If the guy bought the gun illegally, that is quite different than if he went through background checks and got the weapon legally.  Obama, however, does not care.  He took the opportunity to turn this into a political event rather than a tragedy.

2.  Obama made a pitch for gun legislation but he never proposed anything in particular.  In fact, Obama has not proposed anything in particular regarding guns for the seven years he has been president.  If Obama were actually serious about the need for gun legislation, he ought to have made a concrete proposal, but, of course, he has not.

3.  Obama talks about how he has been fighting for gun legislation for his entire term.  During 2009 and 2010, however, when the Democrats had total control of Congress by lop-sided majorities, they did nothing at all regarding guns.  Instead, they left the issue as one to use in future campaigns.  They want a campaign issue rather than a solution.

4.  Obama talked tonight about the clear evidence that in places with stronger gun laws, the level of gun violence is lower.  I guess Obama never heard of Chicago.  It has very strict gun laws as well as levels of gun violence that far exceed those in the rest of the nation.  Last weekend, for the second week in a row, over 50 people were shot in gun violence in Chicago.  The president from Chicago wants us to ignore his home town.

 

The Oregon Shootings in the Gun Free Zone

There has been a mass shooting event at a community college in Oregon.  At this point, we don't know much other than that there seem to be ten dead and that the shooter is down and the situation is back under control.  It is a terrible crime.  It is also something that happened in a so called "gun free zone".  That's right; no guns of any sort are permitted on the campus out there in Oregon.  In other words, another of those silly anti-gun moves by the liberals has been shown to be futile when it comes to stopping mass shootings of this sort.  Without a doubt, there will be a large number of liberals who will come out today with calls for tighter gun controls to "stop" events like this.  Of course, there is very little that could be a tighter restriction than the banning of all firearms from the campus, and that didn't work.  Just remember that as you read the calls for further gun laws in the next few days.

 

Today's News About Syria and Russia

In the seemingly never-ending saga of the Syrian Civil War and the lack of any coherent, non-delusional American policy on the subject, we hear today that Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has just signed an order to draft an additional 150,000 Russian men into the armed forces.  That's another 150,000 soldiers that Putin can deploy into Syria or into Ukraine should the war there need additional forces.  Today, the Russians also conducted another 30 airstrikes on Syrian forces opposed to the Assad regime; none of the 30, however, were actually strikes on ISIS.  The Russians are still targeting everyone but ISIS among the opposition to Assad.

It doesn't take much to figure out Putin's short term goal.  He wants to remove all the non-ISIS opposition to Assad, so that the world will have a choice between Assad and ISIS only.  No sane country would pick ISIS from among those two choices.  Russia, however, will then be leading the charge against ISIS and it will regain its standing among the nations of the world that was lost when Russia invaded Ukraine.  The longer term goal is more opaque.  These new 150 thousand soldiers may be placed into Syria as support for Assad.  A Russian force that size could subdue the ISIS fighters and then could control Syria for years to come.

Meanwhile, president Obama is doing nothing.  In Washington, they are still claiming not to know what targets the Russians hit during the last two days.  There are pictures in the world media of smoking ruins and civilian casualties in Homs, a city with NO areas under the control of ISIS.  Nevertheless, the Obamacrats and their allies in the media talk about investigating to find out which groups were targeted by the Russians.  On top of this, American military satellites were observing the Russian attacks in real time.  Obama knows exactly which targets the Russians hit but he is still claiming the need to investigate to find out what he already knows.

Action today by Obama could still head off the Russian offensive against our allies in Syria.  With maximum pressure placed on the Iraqis, we could have Iraqi airspace closed to Russian military aircraft.  That would cut the main air supply route for Russian forces in Syria.  Should the Russians continue to overfly Iraq without permission, the might be need for greater action to cut the supply lines.  Special forces could also assist our friends in Syria to defend themselves against attacks by the Russians.  That would make Putin think twice about committing his military into a long and costly battle in Syria.

Sadly, nothing will be done by Obama.  He and his whole foreign policy team seem to think that words alone will stop Putin.  They are wrong.  The old expression says that actions speak louder than words.  When dealing with Putin, however, words mean nothing, nothing at all.