The Stout Republican

I’ll do my part Alfonzo Rachel.

Blogs and Alternative Media

I’m sorry…I always pegged Pelosi as opportunistic and conniving…not stupid…but I was wrong, because this is just stupid.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, released by Pelosi’s office late Monday, the San Francisco Democrat asked the department to weigh the public benefit of saving The Chronicle and other papers from closure against the agency’s antitrust mission to guard against anti-competitive behavior.

“We must ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the news gathering and analysis that the American people expect,” Pelosi wrote. (*SR note: Are newspapers the only ones uniquely qualified to gather an analyze news?*)

…

“I am confident that the Antitrust Division, in assessing any concerns that any proposed mergers or other arrangements in the San Francisco area might reduce competition, will take into appropriate account, as relevant, not only the number of daily and weekly newspapers in the Bay Area, but also the other sources of news and advertising outlets available in the electronic and digital age, so that the conclusions reached reflect current market realities,” Pelosi wrote.

“This is consistent with antitrust enforcement in recent years under both Republican and Democratic administrations. And the result will be to allow free market forces to preserve as many news sources, as many viewpoints, and as many jobs as possible.”

Didn’t Democrats campaign against the XM – Sirius merger because they felt it was a trust violation? Aren’t these the same people who are pushing for the “fairness doctrine” because they feel that media requires more regulation…not less? However, the moment that one of the precious newspapers (liberal media is a lie!!!) is threatened, they decide less regulation is necessary, and actually point to new media as being a reason to relax some of the regulations…except for talk radio. Talk radio is the exception to the rule. Talk radio needs “fairness”.

I can’t help but balk at the last quote, “the result will be to allow free market sources…” blah blah blah. Do you mean by loosening regulations you’re allowing the free market to work, and decide? So what does increasing regulations mean? ARGGGHHHHH!!! I don’t get this logic…I can’t make it make sense. Someone else help out here. What’s the liberal logic, or is it really stupidity?

Blogs and Alternative Media, Your Government

Sums up my thoughts exactly…the “Angry Conservative”…

Take the time to click through to the links.

Blogs and Alternative Media

Where Doth Your Traffic Come From….

Blogs and Alternative Media

Wikipedia speaks truth. It’s a matter of fact. If it’s on the Wiki, then it must be a truthism.

It’s hard in such an anonymous community like the “internets” to keep people accountable for their works…their statements…etc. However, it has been done:

Wikipedia Scanner — the brainchild of CalTech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith — offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

Inspired by news last year that Congress members’ offices had been editing their own entries, Griffith says he got curious, and wanted to know whether big companies and other organizations were doing things in a similarly self-interested vein.

“Everything’s better if you do it on a huge scale, and automate it,” he says with a grin.

This database is possible thanks to a combination of Wikipedia policies and (mostly) publicly available information.

The online encyclopedia allows anyone to make edits, but keeps detailed logs of all these changes. Users who are logged in are tracked only by their user name, but anonymous changes leave a public record of their IP address.

Anonymity seems to have backfired. So what’s the first thing that I do? Click through to the Democrats. That organization built around a moral vacuum, they must have a sordid history with Wikipedia! Not really…I don’t see Dem or Repub staffers being computer savy. Sorry…they just don’t do…normal. So, they did edit Rush Limbaugh’s site back in 05…but it’s probably just a intern trying to be funny. However, recently the Democrats have edited Apple’s WIKI to say…bad things?! Gasp!!!

There are also several instances of Apple creating advertisements that bear uncanny resemblance to already existing works. Apple’s little problem with ripping off artists

Hotair has a rundown as well…and the comments of course are going to be more numerous, and frankly…funnier than mine.

Now, the question is, in a web community where the Wikipedia changes are driven by the users…if corporations, political parties, etc. are part of that community, is there anything wrong with them acting in their own self interest to either protect, or promote their companies?

I think no.

Blogs and Alternative Media, Conspiracy

There’s a lack of morality on the left…

I’m not talking “God” and religious derived laws and codes to live by. I’m talking the idea that people today, especially the younger generation, have been raised to believe that there is no right and wrong. That everything is relative. That is we could only see life through the prism of the person living it, then we could see why bombing children is okay if you’re a Palestinian. I was just thinking randomly on these things today as we drove down PCH to go to the movies, and I was reminded of an article Dennis Prager wrote a couple of years back. I think this is a good litmus test for future debates I might have in public. I’ve been apprehensive enough about bringing up politics, and only do so hesitantly…it’s nice to come across fellow conservatives in conversation, and usually we have to be subtle about it, feel each other out politically, and work around to admitting, “Hey, I’m a registered Republican.” At which point there’s a sigh of relief, and a handshake. If you drop the “R-word” word in the wrong crowd, you’re instantly reviled…simply for your beliefs. It’s happened more times than I care to admit. Drives intellectual conversation underground, and usually results with you sitting in silence while some at some party sits across from you, deriding George Bush (never the logic behind the beliefs, or the laws, or the ethics…just the man), biting your tonuge, because no one can hate more than someone who hates George Bush…it’s like a disease. Yet, for such a dumb monkey, he’s outwitted their entire party consistently…just weird.

Anywho…on to Prager:

All those who support the American war in Iraq should make a deal with anyone opposed to the war. Offer to answer any 20 questions the opponents wish to ask if they will answer just one:

Do you believe we are fighting evil people in Iraq?

That is how supporters of the war regard the Baathists and the Islamic suicide terrorists, the people we are fighting in Iraq.

Because if you cannot answer it, or avoid answering it, or answer “no,” we know enough about your moral compass to know that further dialogue is unnecessary. In fact, dialogue is impossible. Our understanding of good and evil is so different from yours, there is simply nothing to discuss. Someone who was asked a hundred years ago “Do you believe that whites who lynch blacks are evil?” and refused to answer in the affirmative was not someone one could dialogue with.

Here are the responses you are likely to receive:

1. The Bush administration is just as evil: for illegally invading a country that did not threaten us; for “lying” to get us into Iraq; and because it is a war for corporate profits.
2. Some of those we are fighting may be evil, but not all; some are simply fighting against foreign occupation of their country.
3. We cannot call anyone evil; only G-d can make such judgments.

I will respond to these “responses,” but what is most important is to acknowledge that none of them actually responds to the question. Anyone posing this question to opponents of the war must not let them off the hook. They must answer the question: Do you believe we are fighting evil people in Iraq?

Regarding the issue of judging anyone evil, the best response is a question: Can we judge anyone to be good (not perfect, just good)? Of course we can. But if we can’t call anyone evil, we can’t call anyone good, and we certainly know that there are good people. If there are good people, there have to be not good, evil people.

Anyone who remains unable to morally judge people who slit the throats of innocent people, who place bombs in the middle of markets, and who murder anyone attempting to help women achieve basic human rights is a moral imbecile.

As for the Bush administration being equally evil, this, too, reveals the responder’s values. It is one thing to believe the war was a mistake; it is quite another to regard it as a function of the administration’s desire to enrich Halliburton or expand the “American empire,” or because Jewish neo-conservatives pushed docile Gentiles — Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld — into waging it “for Israel.” Such views are held by people who are so angry and so brainwashed about conservatives that they have lost the elementary ability to identify real evil, which is what Islamic and Baathist terrorists and “insurgents” are.

Finally, the people fighting us in Iraq hate freedom, hate women’s rights, hate non-Muslims, and do all they can to murder innocent Iraqis and others in order to undermine the march toward freedom in Iraq. They are not fighting foreign invaders; they are fighting foreign liberators and domestic democrats.

It is worth again noting that none of those responses directly answers the question: Do you believe we are fighting evil people in Iraq?

It is one thing to oppose the war in Iraq; it is quite another to deny the evil of those we fight there. That is what the Left in America routinely does. And that is why the culture war in America is as important as the military war in Iraq.

Again, my favorite quote, “The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans believe that Democrats are wrong and Democrats believe that Republicans are evil.” I’ve been hammering on it lately in my articles, and it’s just because of the frustration I’ve had recently…you can’t get liberals to answer questions directly. They jump on tangents, quantify actions of one based on another, misdirect, and say “what about…”, but they don’t answer questions directly…and you end up being evil, not wrong.

If I don’t get a direct answer to this question, before an argument regarding the war, then I won’t discuss, because the basic moral common ground isn’t there.

Blogs and Alternative Media, Iraq

I was listening to the radio the other day, and one of my favorite pundits of the right, Mark Steyn, was on Hugh Hewitt’s show and said something that i think deserves another look.

HH: I want to switch over to media for a second. In the Boston Globe today, there was a headline, Giuliani Watchers Wonder If He Will Overplay 9/11 Card. Now I find that somewhat repulsive to refer to 9/11 as a card to be played, or sort of a theater run that may be coming to its end, as opposed to a crisis and a state or frame of mind. But then I thought about it more. That really is how the left views 9/11 now, as an event to be manipulated.

MS: Well, the fact of the matter is that there are two views on 9/11. And leaving aside the kook left for a minute, the soft left, summarized by the Boston Globe, doesn’t think it was an act of war. They think it was something sad that happened, it was sad it happened, like a tsunami, like a tornado, and it blew in out of nowhere, and people were killed, and we should all hold hands, and have a candlelight vigil, but it’s not something with implications, strategic implications to the United States. And so that’s why they see it as a card. They think Giuliani is exploiting a sad, tragic event that we were weepy about it five years ago, but it’s over, move on. And Giuliani sees it as something that is the great central challenge to America’s national security interest. That’s not a card. The people who think of it that way, I mean, that’s a very revealing edit from the Boston Globe, because it actually gets to the heart of the difference…

HH: Yup.

MS: …you know, that great divide between people who see it as an event of profound implication for American policy, and others who think it’s just like an ice storm or a tsunami.

I think we have a real left-right divide here. I think Steyn summarized it effectively and succinctly…attack vs. disaster…action vs. vigil.

But hey…why pay attention? It’s all a bumper sticker. A picture speaks a thousand words…especially when it’s f-in South Park.

Blogs and Alternative Media, Terrorism

…the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere.

Joe Klein (leftist), who works for Time magazine (left), examines the intolerance of the left in his most recent article. Really…no kidding…what rock have you been sleeping under….

But…wait for it…wait for it…

Some of this is understandable: the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered.

Ah yes…there it is…whatever lunacy the left has, they’re only trying to mimic the behavior that has worked for the right. Yes, Rush has shown distain, and ridiculed the left…but I think there’s a fine line between Rush’s sense of humor, and the leftist bloggers that I visit regularly who cheer it up at each health issue Cheney or Snow face.

As I write this now…Hot Air just pops up with a related article on my RSS feeder…curse his eyes! Anywho….reading…reading…nugget:

It’s the fact that he seems to care so much what the nutroots thinks of him in the first place that’s whiny and embarrassing. Of course they’re unfair and fanatic in enforcing ideological discipline; to borrow a phrase from Ellensburg himself, that’s who they are and that’s what they do. If you’re going to feed the trolls, don’t be surprised when they follow you home and you end up in a moronic running feud like this one.

There are certainly a lot of running feuds in the blogs…look at basically the whole right wing blogosphere vs. Greenwald vs. Sullivan. Throw the current Lindsey Graham sentiments into the fray somewhere and you got yourself a regular hootenanny.

In eloquent summation…I believe the leading right-leaning blogs are far more civil than the leading left-leaning blogs, just as a matter of observation. I think it’s probably because as a general rule (I’m making sure I’m very clear with my emphasis here so no one throws a hissy fit with the “but but but”) Conservatives address issues and idea, Liberals attack people…example: “Stop the immigration bill” vs. “I hope Cheney’s heart explodes…oil….profiteering…Halliburton….rabble rabble rabble”

Blogs and Alternative Media

I’ve posted before in the past about why I do this site…

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Blogs and Alternative Media

“Matt Drudge, who may or may not be a willing accomplice to the distortion of news reporting, must be held responsible for the dissemination of the bias in the liberal press…”

Whaaaaatt?

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Blogs and Alternative Media