Nom de plume: Rivrdog

NPR get it's bias on

...with a poll on the White House - Fox News feud, which to date, has boosted Fox's ratings into the stratosphere (where they are contributing to glow-bull warmening, undoubtedly, heh).

The Left must be blog-storming the poll, since it has well over a million votes so far.

Here's what we on the right need to do. Go to this site, and write NPR a short message telling them that since they have become such an obvious tool of the White House and the left, you will work with your congresscritter to defund them. They can't make it without their snout in the public trough, and they also can't make it without the donations of the Right, which contributes during their many Pledge Weeks for things like their subsidiary classical music stations, for example.

NPR needs to get the message that since they exist from the public dole and the public's charitable donations, blatant political interference of this sort will not be tolerated.

Ger 'er done, here's what I sent:

"Dear NPR,

There are few folks in the world who do not know of your leftward political bias.

Bias is one thing, but interfering in the political process, which is what the "poll" on Fox News does, is quite another.

I seriously doubt that the conditions under which you receive taxpayer dollars to continue operations legally allows this level of tinkering with the political machine.

I also doubt that you and all your subsidiary stations can make it financially without the support of conservative members of society who donate to your operations funding for some of your better programming.

When you depart from simply being left-leaning to being an out-and-out shill for President Obama's idiotic feud with Fox News, you have crossed the line.

I suggest that you remove the poll, and refuse the White House's requests to use it to further their idiotic war with Fox News.

Up to now, I've been a fence-sitter with regard to your operations at taxpayer expense.

This one event has put me in the trenches with conservatives in their move to end your political hegemony.

When the Congress changes hands next year, and the White House two years later, your very existence will be in serious jeopardy.

It is VERY shortsighted of you to climb into Obama's political pigpen and get all that pig-slime on you.

What were you thinking?

signed, a former donee."

...and THAT's what's known as activism. My good deed for the day is done.

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UPDATE: Commenter Gerry N correctly points out my poor use of English. I am a DONOR (or have been in the past) to NPR, not a DONEE. Thank you Sir, may I have another?

We're in tune with your feeeeeeeeeelings

...seems to be the tone of this Boregonian article.

Except that they're NOT in tune with my feelings as a "restrictionist" (see, I've just been pigeon-holed by the article's author).

What this writer does is nothing less than ignore the obvious: the dollars. Das Gelt.

Illegal immigration costs the nation a huge part of it's money set aside for less-fortunate citizens, but this writer doesn't talk about that, the article is about the feeeeeelings of those on both sides of the issue.

OK, the article is a dud, but let's look at it anyway.

The writer gives us the method used: Invite some people who have expressed opinions down to the Boregonian Building and submit to an interview. If you've studied the dynamics of personal conflict in meetings, as I have, you'll know that the FIRST way to gain an advantage in any interview is to hold it in YOUR office while YOU sit behind YOUR desk.

BTW, I've actually had an invitation from the Boregonian to do this (on a different subject), and I declined.

Then you publish a picture of one of the opposition ("restrictionist") interviewees that was snapped as he was talking and had a facial contortion on his face. Responsible photograpers used to throw those shots out, but they all go into the file for use as insults these days.

Then you skim over the stuff you don't want to talk about:

"Comments range from the seething ("What don't you get? ... We cannot let the entire world move to America.") to the extremist ("The Mexicans are all illegal, they're dirty, they're criminals, they're popping babies out as fast as they can make them and we just want them gone.") to the ridiculous ("You did not mention that the Spanish regard dogs as a source of food.")"

The mention of the word "criminals" in the above paragraph (emphasis mine) is the ONLY mention of this HUGE crime problem (of Latino-based gangs and drug cartel invasions) that I found in the entire article. I found NO mention of any data on the percentage of public-assistance money siphoned off by illegals.

The major problems we "restrictionists" try to bring forward are not debated here, nor are they debated in any other forum of the mainstream media. The author deliberately fails to use OUR points to support OUR position, leaving her readers with the impression that we have shallow arguments and mentality.

So, here's my advice, Gosia Wozniacka. If you want to gauge the emotions in the immigration reform debate, that's very noble. Just present ALL the facts of the debate first, THEN engage us on the subject of our emotions. When you DO get to the subject of emotions, look at ALL of them. You never mentioned La Raza and THEIR steamy rhetoric on the subject, did you?

That's the way it works in real life, Gosia: feelings are based on life, and life is based on facts. Without the facts, you have nothing worth the ink to publish.

Father's Day 2009

I fire up the morning news on Yahoo! and this assaults my eye, and I start to get pissed off. Don't read it unless you have room in your craw to choke down yet another "Obama is God" message from the press. I forced myself to scan it, then decided to reply.

Fatherhood isn't about how many books YOU write, it's about whether your children can read and learn from books.

Fatherhood isn't about what limited brand of human rights YOU preach, it's about whether your children respect ALL human rights and practice them daily.

Fatherhood isn't about how YOU "clawed your way to scholarships", it's about how your kids took advantage of THEIR scholastic opportunities.

I could go on, but you get the message. Don't post YOUR accomplishments on Father's Day, this day is to celebrate the fact that YOU sired children, and THEY are turning into CITIZENS under your guidance and teaching. I don't give a rip about YOUR accomplishments, I want to see the RESULTS of your work.

Here are my results. I have a .750 batting average, to use a sports metaphor:

Oldest child. Daughter. FOUGHT for YOU in the Gulf War (USMC, 2MEF, HQ BN). CARES for you as an Operating Room Nurse. SURVIVED a terrible accident and pushed herself until she recovered completely.

Second-oldest child. Son. Bachelor's Degree. On the management team of a large restaurant, where his language skills in three languages keep the place running smoothly and serving great food. A committed Christian, he has two missions teaching English in the Caucasus under his belt.

Third oldest child. Daughter. Born handicapped with Autism. Cared for by her mother (my first wife) and she has been shut away from my care entirely since she was 2. No score assigned to her. There are few words in her book.

Youngest child. Daughter (second marriage). Resident Physician in Emergency Medicine at Oregon Health & Sciences University. Helps save lives on a daily basis.

The political score: 2 liberals (oldest and youngest daughters), one conservative (my son), one unknown. To that, I reply with Sir Winston Churchill's famous observation: "When you are young, if you are not Liberal, you have no Soul. When you are mature, if you are not Conservative, you have no brains." (or similar)

Two Father's Day screeds. One, about a misguided man who has risen up to lead the Nation, and that one is all about him, not his accomplishments as a father, and the other, about the CHILDREN of a man who has defended his Nation and his community, WHILE raising children, most of whom have done well and are demonstrating their good citizenship daily.

This warrior and father rests his case, God. YOU decide.

 

Let's do a Headline Fisk!

I've never done this before, but it should be fun.

Today's headlines on Yahoo! News:

NKorea: 2 US journalists planned 'smear campaign'

Duh! They were working for AlGore. Do lefties do ANY other kind of campaign?

At U.S. Colleges, Binge Drinking Is on the Rise

This headline writer apparently just fell off the turnip truck. It was on the rise when I went to collitch over 40 years ago.

Sebelius: Health care for all will take years

Must be a LOT of turnip trucks in Kansas. Of course it will, and even if the Great Un-Do ends it quickly, it will still take GENERATIONS to pay for.

May housing construction jumps by 17.2 percent

Of course it did. Houses in the Northern sector don't get started in the winter, Dummies. The ground is either waterlogged or frozen until May.

GOP says Democrats' climate bill is another tax

The real question is: can these Masters of the Obvious unite to pull off the Un-Do?

Favre says he is considering playing again

There's something about excessive ego here....I can't seem to put my finger on it...

Guns, not charm, expel snakes from police station

AK-47s to shoot snakes? Each to their own methods, but I would have used snake shot. The hose idea is a good thought, though.

Feel free to join in with a few more in comments.

SFO & SEA daily blatts about to go under

Cry me a river, over.

Read it and DON'T weep.

Sic Semper Tyrannis, or whatever.

Bugler! Sound the Deguello!

Your blogger has a new goal. I am going to break the sick anti-war and anti-military editorial policy of the Oregonian newspaper.

They have made a despicable attack on veterans, hiding behind a phony shield of concern for "rising suicide rates". Since no one can get the paper to pin down their statistics sources, the claim itself may very well have been manufactured out of whole cloth. When you Google "Veterans' suicides", you get a list of antiwar sites and dead-tree media in the first several pages of results, all bearing the most virulent of anti-military diatribes. This sort of coordinated attack is not unusual for a Marxist paper out to destroy the culture and replace it with the bland conformal collectivism of drone-people.

I have decided to keep up the pressure on my local version of the corrupt media, the Daily Oregonian, and now it gets personal. I have given up believing that the paper has the interest of ANY veteran at heart or in mind when they write this slime, and the line itself has our destruction as it's ultimate goal.

Fellow veterans, this campaign of the media is pure psy-war aimed at you and I. We KNOW how to fight, so let's unite on this and start hammering back at them, from every nook and cranny of this nation.

I revised my "New Attack on the Military" post here and included a letter I sent to the editor of the Oregonian in which I accused them of abetting veteran suicides by their orchestrated anti-military and anti-war campaign. Feel free to use that letter as a model to help YOU write, or fall in step with me by pasting MY letter into yours.

The Oregonian refuses to believe that we are a credible force, us veterans, so let's show them what we are made of! The simple fact is, it's we veterans who will save this Nation from it's slide into socialist Hell, or it won't be saved. We have fought the recent election battle poorly and lost to a confirmed socialist. WE ARE the reserves of the forces of good here, and we now need to commit ourselves totally to the fight.

To the Colors!

A new attack on the military (Updated!)

If it bleeds, it leads in the Oregonian newspaper, so today's lead editorial should come as no surprise.

This is a two-bagger for them. The editorial is the usual grisly type, AND it's an attack on the military, something the Oregonian LOVES to indulge itself in.

They claim:

"More American soldiers killed themselves in January than were killed by hostile action in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Let's look at this claim. It appears to be strangely non-specific. Did they mean RECENT combat veterans, or maybe did they mean ALL VETERANS from ALL WARS when they quoted the number 24?

I'll answer that question. My source is the website "Honor the Fallen", which shows a total of 31 KIA for the month of January, exceeding the total of 24 by-their-own-hand deaths (suicides) by seven. The Oregonian never did say how many KIA there were for January, they only said that the suicides exceeded the KIA. Of course, the Editors don't say where they got the figure of 24 "suicides", either.

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UPDATE: 021409 0850 PST: According to a good military source, the website "Honor the Fallen" lists all deaths in the war zone, not just those KIA. That website IS as current as it can be made, however. The Oregonian found some wiggle room in here to make a zinger claim, and I called them on it. It appears that their claim COULD be accurate in that there COULD have been more veteran suicides than KIA's, but both parties to this little argument believe that such a claim is tenuous. I admit that it is, and the Oregonian's editor refuses to admit that it is and offer a correction. In addition, after my exchange of emails with Helen Shum, the editor, she published a compilation or anti-military and anti-war letters in yesterday's op-ed page, not including even one letter supportive of the veterans. I have taken her to task for this below.

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Let's get the mundane out of the way. There is little active combat in the 'Stan right now, because it's Winter, and difficult for either our side or the Taliban to move around much to engage each other (and the Taliban are smart enough to know that our FLIR makes winter ground combat rather one-sided against them). Iraq is in the final stages of post-combat pacification, and we are preparing to remove combat troops from that nation, so it stands to reason that the war is winding down there, which it is.

None of the anti-military articles I read while researching this post break down the suicide rate according to which war the veterans performed their service in. I'm going to assume that the vast number of anti-war and anti-military articles (just Google "veterans' suicides" and the list goes on forever, it seems) all lump them together, and they all ignore the fact that with longer lifespans, vets live longer, and even with a static suicide rate, the raw NUMBER of suicides would be bound to increase, and might even increase with a LOWERING suicide rate.

The Oregonian cites another "word-only" statistic:

"Similarly, an examination of the suicides among Oregon service members and veterans over the past five years shows that more Oregon veterans died at their own hands than at the hands of their enemies in war zones."

I can give a very good reason for this statistic, if it's true. War is fought more professionally these days than ever before, and the better-trained soldiers die less frequently in combat than they used to.

Okay, that pretty much takes care of demonstrating the paper's statistical biases here, so let's take up their quest and actually discuss post-traumatic suicide.

After World War Two, it became less and less "fashionable" to be a veteran. Our society underwent an-almost 180-degree change on this over a period of 20 years from 1945 to 1965. My father was held in high esteem for his WW2 service, but my service 25 years later in the Vietnam war, not so much. In fact, it paid most veterans of my age group to keep quiet about their service while in civilian liberal society. War was just NOT a polite topic of discussion except on a military post. That situation never got better, even as the liberals and the few anti-war "conservatives" declared after 9-11 that they supported the brave troops, just not the war that our nation waged on the terrorists.

It's basically an all-or-nothing deal. You can't claim to support the troops and revile the war. That's a null set. The troops of today read the papers and the blogs the same as I do, so they KNOW that they are disrespected and unloved, and yes, even reviled by at least half the nation. That's a hard burden to carry with you, either on the battlefield or back at home after you muster out.

This brings us to post-traumatic-stress. It exists, but part of it's recent greater extent is cultural: soldiers are TOLD to EXPECT to get PTS, that it's "normal" for them to get it, and it's "okay" to get it. Then they are subjected to inferior evaluations for the condition, which has widely-varying degrees to it, and inferior treatments follow the evaluations.

The newspaper seems to think that the military put itself in for more PTS by eliminating the draft:

"U.S. military policy today relies on an all-volunteer force, which is the system that commanders say works best. But the pain that falls on that force is sharp indeed -- sharp enough to raise questions again about whether an involuntary draft wouldn't be more effective in acquainting Americans with the cost of war."

Isn't THAT hit-and-run attack on the All Volunteer Force concept just dandy?

The Editors suggest that returning to a military manning system that has been proven to have much less effective war-fighting potential, thereby leading to MORE war casualties, might be the solution? And that solution is to raise the awareness of the US citizenry with the "cost of war"? OK, I get it. Because liberal educators haven't included any teaching of the citizenry on the subject of war in their curricula for forty years, now MORE soldiers need to die and the nation has to have a less-effective fighting force just so the anti-war message can be passed?

How absurd.

Here's the bottom line, Oregonian Editorial Board: this editorial is the sickest thing I've seen published on your pages for a long, long time. You are wrong, and this proves it:

"The suicide rate is another factor to bear in mind when America considers sending troops into combat."

No it isn't. That factor would and should NEVER be considered by our military leaders, it has less bearing on military deployment than the color of a soldier's undershorts, but THIS factor might well be:

It is EVERY person's right to end their own life, since it belongs to ONLY them.

The pen is NOT mightier than the sword in this case, and in any case, a warrior ALWAYS knows more about the value of life than an editor.

We owe SO much to these men and women who carry Liberty's standard into battle. If they are so overcome by emotions when that battle is over that they can see no way out except to end their lives, WE OWE THEM THAT FINAL SOLACE.

Piss off, Oregonian, when warriors reach their Final Judgment, it is NEVER made by an Editorial Board.

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UPDATE: 021409 0857 PST: I wrote Editor Shum again today:

Editors:

 

Regardless of how a veteran dies, even if by their own hand, unless that veteran committed some heinous crime while or before dying, we STILL owe that veteran a debt of gratitude for their service of keeping the nation free.

 

In your February 13th compilation of 100% anti-military sentiment from the likes of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and others, you ignore the obvious fact that there ARE folks reading this newspaper who appreciate what these veterans have done for our nation. I bump into these people every day while out and about conducting my commerce.

 

By your action in failing to publish a single editorial reply from anyone NOT caught in the myopic anti-war shell game, you have drawn a bright line between your newspaper and the remainder of local society which DOES support the military.

 

Let's work to support our soldiers as they return from war, and offer them our unconditional respect and love. We will then see the suicide rate drop.

 

Your editorial policy of only recognizing the anti-military and anti-war voices in this discussion makes the Oregonian part of the suicide problem, not part of it's solution.

 

For shame, Oregonian, your editorial words are killing veterans. I demand that you cease your attacks on them.

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Let's play a game...

...Of Who is getting Bailed Out next!

All over the nation, newspapers are failing. While mostly due to business factors such as people getting their news from more instantaneous (and free!) media, and advertisers leaving the dead-tree pages in droves for the Internet, it also has something to do with taste.

I don't have the stats, and am relying on personal observation here, but the act of reading a daily newspaper is something a mentally mature person does. Mature people are MUCH more likely to be be conservative than your usual off-the-street cross-section.

The newspapers have forgotten that fact though, and they have moved, with a FEW exceptions, ever leftward, abandoning their core constituency of readers for the tastes and political philosophy of the younger, poorer set which doesn't want to buy a subscription. In newspapers (I had a job at one in my yute), it's all about the subscribers, not the buy-from-a-machine or newsboy action.

Slow death for the papers is the result.

Maybe it's time for that end.

Now, reading my new morning read, Bill Wilson's blog from Americans for Limited Government (which chimes in on my PDA reliably at 0500, unlike MY dead-tree newspaper), I see that the state government of Pennsylvania is considering the purchase of the Philadelphia Enquirer, the largest paper in the state, but also the house organ of the eastern liberal establishment (Western PA tends to be much more conservative). The folks in Western PA will have to pay for this purchase though their taxes, even though they don't get and wouldn't read the liberal eastern newspaper.

Go here to read this pointed essay on just why you don't want your government owning (bailing out IS owning) any section of the Fourth Estate.

It's easy to Blame The Gun

This morning, if it bleeds, it leads on the editorial page of the daily Oregonian.

Taking advantage of the tragic shooting this past weekend in downtown Portland, the Oregonian blames the gun store:

"After all, this is where Erik Ayala acquired the 9 mm, semiautomatic handgun he used Saturday night in the worst mass shooting in Portland history. Surely, you might imagine, this was the place to intervene, to keep the necessary distance between a suicidal young man and a handgun that can spit 11 deadly bullets in a matter of seconds."

Intervene in a gun shop? The thought boggles my mind. I envision a crowd of anti-gunners picketing gun shops, and their destruction of a lawful business being tolerated by the Socialist government, as it was in the case of the fur store which recently went under because the city refused to chase PETA and their crowd of nasties from the store's entrance.

Try this handy-dandy bullet-point list on for size, says the Editoral crew:

"But in the United States, when you go looking for answers to a mass shooting at a place like 99 Pawn, here's what you find:

• Easy access to guns, and a nation that wants to keep it that way. Under federal and state gun laws, Ayala's handgun purchase was perfectly legal.

• No chance for the kind of sweeping gun controls that would have been necessary to keep a gun out of Ayala's hands. There is no broad public support, and no appetite in Congress or in the Obama administration, to take up serious new controls on guns.

• Existing gun laws under legal challenge. The U.S. Supreme Court found Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban unconstitutional and ruled that under the Second Amendment, U.S. citizens and, presumably, legal immigrants in this country, such as Ayala, have an individual right to bear arms."

There was no mass shooting at the gun store, as the subject-object inversion in the first sentence of that paragraph would have you believe. I thought editors were supposed to EDIT.

Of course, all that pious rhetoric above ignores the fact (highlighted later in the editorial) that the gun store proprietor did everything according to the book, and even saved the cops their usual legwork by telling THEM that he had sold the gun, as soon as a photo of the shooter was released and broadcast.

That little juggling of facts isn't the real nub of this Constitution-intolerant editorial, however:

"Under all U.S. and Oregon gun laws, Ayala was fit to own a semiautomatic handgun. He didn't have to steal it or buy it on the streets. He simply had to show up at 99 Pawn with a government-issued photo ID, three months of utility bills and a clean criminal record.

He left with his new gun and directions to a nearby indoor firing range.

And that is all there is to it." (Emphasis added)

Get it, readers? We're ALL blamed for the nightclub shooting because we haven't demanded universal disarmament, which has been proven, over and over, to only disarm the law-abiding, and almost never disarm the truly dangerous like Ayala.

This is where the pen is INDEED mightier than the sword. Our founding Fathers decided, in their Eternal Wisdom, that an armed society is a safer society, and the new Republic they were inventing needed protection from the demonstrably overbearing Crown (read: Federal Government in our times), so they permitted the citizenry to be armed, and a lawful commerce in arms to proceed. With a few pen-strokes, the Editorial Board wants to negate all that wisdom and it's result, our Constitution.

If any of the members of the Editorial Board of the Oregonian read this, how about suggesting a countervailing idea? How about suggesting that MORE, not less, citizens become armed? Had there been a few armed citizens on that busy thoroughfare a few nights ago, the shooter would likely have been stopped before he did the damage he did do. Perhaps if many more citizens went about their daily (and nightly) business armed, guys like Ayala would consider another way to make their 15 minutes of fame.

Editorial Boards have only a self-given mandate for their agendas. It's bad enough that this Board ignores the Constitution when they make these suggestions, but it's intolerable that they make those suggestions on the dead and wounded bodies of the innocent victims of this horrible tragedy.

The Editorial Board of the daily Oregonian owes the families of each of these victims an apology for their callous pandering.

"Driving in a New Direction" - Editorial rebuttal

The daily Oregonian puts this editorial in their second slot today. In it, they attempt to cheer for President Obama and gloss over all the problems associated with his "climate change" initiatives, particularly the one he expressed yesterday about trying to ram a CAFE change down the auto industry's throat in too short a time.

The editors said,

"That's a dramatic, but shrewd, acceleration. It may put the automakers in more of a crunch, but it pushes them towards a much stronger economic position in the long run."

Sorry, I disagree. Firstly, it ISN'T "shrewd" at all to kill off the automakers before they ever get any of the wunder-cars out the door. Their position is so precarious now that ANY economic forcing will probably drive them into Chapter Eleven. Secondly, the "much stronger economic position in the long run" has yet to be either calculated, or written down into a business model. It is pure blue-sky supposition at this point.

The other thing we noted that Obama was strong on yesterday was countermanding POTUS Bush43's order to the EPA refusing Kalifornica's "right" to impose it's overly-strident anti-pollution regulations on the entire automobile industry, not just on the cars that are for sale in Kali. Bush43 was correct to do that, since the Federal Government DOES have a regulatory interest here that is being usurped by individual states. Federal Courts have held that a State may restrict or control what pollutants are emitted into the air in that state's own airshed, but MAY NOT control what other states allow in THEIR air. Kali has ZERO legal basis for attempting to force it's standards on the rest of the country. It has even less of a scientific basis for doing so since it is a state upwind (generally) from all the rest of the country.

The editors state their position, then, in the next sentence, deny that position:

"Let's stop right here and acknowledge that a single Federal standard in both realms, of fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas regulation, would be ideal. Obama should be pushing for just such uniformity. But giving the states that are ready to lead a license to go forward could be the quickest route to a federal standard on greenhouse gasses."

Wow! Just Wow! The Editors are telling us what the best idea is, then they advise us to accept a countervailing idea. This is really all about State's Rights vs. Federal Rights. The Oregonian Editorial Board manages to advocate both in the same breath, for the same subject. THAT deserves some sort of "Impossibility Award". It's also a very slippery slope. The Founders were careful to write guidance into the Constitution spelling out what was a State right and what was a Federal right, then they also wisely provided the Supreme Court for deciding conflicts between the two, for any future claims which might arise.

Writing on the same subject, US Rep. Peter DeFazio (D, 4th District, Lane County) advises that the "cap and trade" system advocated by both Governor Kulongoski and President Obama will not work. His letter is a good read. Pete DeFazio can be left of Karl Marx at times, but about half the time he is directly on the path of common sense. This is one of those common-sense times.