Unforeseen Contingencies

Just a quick observation on the role of the mainstream media in campaign.  I regularly follow New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and the New Yorker magazine.  It's impossible to believe that these haven't become active particpants in the campaign on behalf of Obama and the Democrats.  NYT and WaPo feature a constant stream of negative stories on Romney and puff pieces on Obama, with the "news" carefully crafted to omit serious analysis of failure or wrongdoing by the administration (e.g. Eric Holder's "Fast and furious" coverup, Kathleen Sibelius' apparent violation of federal law, harassment and discrimination in Janet napolitano's DHS).  Staples in the op-eds are venomous attacks on Romney, most of which are based on what can only be intentional misreadings of what he actually says.  New Yorker has a constant stream of nasty bits on Romney and Ryan, while giving Obama very sympathetic treatment.

Case in point, Romney's "infamous" 47% statement.  This morning NPR 'journalists claimed that Romney wrote off 47% of the public, saying he didn't care about them.  Barack Obama, assuming the role of Liar-in-Chief, also made this claim.  Under it own name, New York Times excoriates Romney as an evil man -- "bone chilling cynicism and revolting smugness" is what they see.

I watched the Mother Jones" video in its entirety and saw none of that.  They made it up.  In fact, one must either be extremely stupid or extremely dishonest to interpret Romney's words as "class warfare" and an attack on anyone.  Here's what actually happened.

There was a discussion of the idea that America used to be about opportunity, i.e. that people would pursue opportunities and make successes of themselves.  Romney notes how Obama is dividing Americans with class warfare, and notes how Marco Rubio told a story in which his parents, seeing people with wealth did not say "we have to get some of their wealth" but "if we work hard we can be successful too."  He also notes that it's hard to communicate this message.

Then one person in the audience asks (direct quote here) "In the last three years all everybody has been told is 'don't worry, we'll take care of you."  How are we going to do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everyone you gotta take care of yourself?"

Romney responds that he cannot expect to sway Obama's core supporters -- "the 47% who will vote for him no matter what," (he also says it might be 48% or 49%) -- and it's exactly in that context he says he can't worry about them.  Instead, to win the election, he has to convince the 5%-10% of undecided voters in the center.  he also observes -- quite correctly -- that about 47% of Americans pay no income tax, so if he campaigns on tax cuts, it essentially falls on deaf ears with them [Steele's comment: unless they are libertarians or understand economics], since Obama can call it "tax cuts for the wealthy."

One must be  very dishonest or very stupid (not mutually exclusive, I know) to conclude what NPR and NYT  claim Romney said.

The story with Rubio starts at about 15:45, and the "infamous" 47% lines about 16:50.

Here's another example.  NPR also claimed this morning that Romney said there could be no Mideast solution because the Palestinians don't want peace.  Frankly, I think that's a correct assessment of the situation, but it isn't what Romney said.  Instead, he said "I'm torn between two perspectives..." and goes on to describe both the "it's hopeless" perspective and another diametrically different one, which suggests there's reason to think that a real breakthrough might be possible, but not by pressuring Israel.  It's actually quite thoughtful and not a snap answer.  God forbid!

This one starts at about 4:40.

Look, I'm not a great fan of Romney.  If someone doesn't like him, I understand.  But the campaign ought to be fought on the issues, the press ought to honestly cover them, the press ought not to campaign on Obama's behalf, and most especially, the press ought not make stuff up.

What's happening is very, very dangerous.  I've followed these things for most of my life, and I think this is the worst example I've seen of the "news" media engaging in plain propaganda.  We saw this with their almost immediate slander campaign against the Tea Party movement, their fawning over "Occupy," and now this. It's not that statist bias in the news media is something new, because it's not, it's rather that the press is actively campaigning and distorting the news.  It's very bad to see this happening.