Posted on 10/20/2008 9:42:59 PM PDT by Kaslin
It may seem hardly worthwhile going to the polls to vote this election year, since ACORN and the media have already decided that Barack Obama is to be the next President of the United States.
Still, it may take more than voter fraud and media spin to put Senator Obama in the White House. Most public opinion polls show Obama ahead, but not usually by decisive margins, and sometimes by a difference within the margin of error.
There has been a history of various polls over the years projecting bigger votes for the Democrats' presidential candidate in October than that candidate actually gets in November.
Some of these polls seem like they are not trying to report facts but to create an impression. One poll has been reported as using a sample consisting of 280 Republicans and 420 Democrats. No wonder Obama leads in a poll like that.
Pollsters have to protect their reputations but they can do that by playing it straight on their last poll before election day, after having created an impression earlier that a landslide for the Democratic candidate was all but a done deal.
The general media bias is more blatant than usual this year.
There was more media outcry about Sarah Palin's response to "gotcha" questions than to Joe Biden's talking about President Franklin D. Roosevelt going on television in 1929 after the stock market crash-- at a time when FDR was not yet president and there was no television to go on.
An editor at Time magazine has admitted that there has been bias but expressed a desire in the future to be more fair to both sides. Just the fact that he expresses the issue this way shows that he still doesn't understand the real problem.
The point is not to be "fair" to "both sides." The point is to be straight with the readers, who are buying the magazine to learn something about the facts of the real world, not to learn about its reporters' ideology and spin.
There is another factor at work in this year's election that makes polls and predictions more unreliable than usual. That factor is race.
Barack Obama's string of victories in early Democratic primaries against far better known white candidates shows that large segments of the American population have moved beyond race.
It is Barack Obama and his supporters who have hyped race, after his large lead in the polls began to shrink or evaporate, as more of the facts about his checkered career came out.
Almost any criticism of Obama has been equated with racism, even if there is no connection that can be seen under a microscope.
Barack Obama himself started this trend when he warned that his opponents were going to try to scare the public with various charges, including a statement, "And did I say he was black?"
McCain said no such thing. Palin said no such thing. But those who support Obama-- and this includes much of the media-- are acting as if they just know that this is the underlying message.
Congressman John Lewis has likened Senator McCain to George Wallace. Congressman John Murtha has condemned a whole section of the state of Pennsylvania as "racists" because they seem reluctant to jump on the Obama bandwagon.
Senator Harry Reid has claimed that linking Obama to deposed and disgraced Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines is racist, since they are both black-- as if the financial and political connection between the two does not exist.
Much is being made of the fact that, in past elections, some white voters who told pollsters that they are going to vote for a black candidate did not in fact do so, so that a black candidate with a lead in the polls ended up losing on election day.
This is supposed to show how much covert racism there is. It might instead show that people don't want to be considered racists by pollsters because they are leaning toward someone other than the black candidate.
In other words, the media themselves helped create the charged atmosphere in which some people give misleading answers to pollsters to avoid being stigmatized.
All in all, going into the voting booth this year is not an exercise in futility for those who don't want to be bum's rushed into voting for Obama by the media's picture of a done deal. If nothing else, genuine voters can offset some of the thousands of fictitious voters registered by ACORN.
*ahem*
Dr. Sowell’s articles should be required reading for all Democrats.
Bookmark
Believers in Obama
Negative Advertising
The Real Obama: Part IV
The Real Obama: Part III
The Real Obama: Part II
The Real Obama
Do Facts Matter?
Idols of Crowds
Changes in Politics
Whose “Special Interests”?
The Galbraith Effect
…As Well As Several Other Issues
Are Facts Obsolete?
Conservatives for Obama?
Cocky Ignorance
Obama and McCain
Irrelevant Apologies
Success Built on Work Ethic
An Old Newness
A Living Lie
Obama’s Speech
Race and Politics
Non-Judgmental Nonsense
Dr. Sowell makes so many good arguments in this article it’s too difficult to pick just a few. I hope posters read it in it’s entirety! : )
He’s dead on the mark with all of it and especially the enemedia.
If they could get their fingers out of their noses, they could see to read I s’pose, but actually I think it’s better they not be REQUIRED to read Dr. Sowell.
They wouldn’t understand his sanity. It would be an exercise in futility.
The point is not to be "fair" to "both sides." The point is to be straight with the readers, who are buying the magazine to learn something about the facts of the real world, not to learn about its reporters' ideology and spin.
I was just trying to explain to someone about the essence of media bias. When 85 percent as surveyed in mainstream media are self-described Democrats and Liberals, they naturally presume the rest of the world is the same, and interpret it that way. In conversation, their presumption is that one is a liberal -- heaven help coming across the occasional (15 percent) Neanderthal Republican. Somebody who probably buys unthinking into MSM spin just confidentially told me that Republicans aren't creative types -- we were talking about communities, not politics. And I turned out to be one of the 15 percent! I took umbrage (I don't roll well) and said I was a Republican. I added that I knew many working, productive professional artists who are Republicans. You'd be surprised how many there are. I said, "Don't buy that template. It's mistaken."
And am I the only one (looks like I'm in good company with Thomas Sowell) who is getting sick of hearing the word "fair" popping up as the justification for or complaint against things? Fair Schmair! Fairness is wholly a human creation; it doesn't exist in nature, never has, and never will. Interpretations of "fairness" vary as wildly and mercurially as anything humans do.
Justice, on the other hand, is like a law of physics, and by default a law of nature. We humans can administer justice on a small level as we think fits the current definition of "fairness," but true justice is dealt, and always dealt, though in unexpected ways and in seeming coincidence, by a much Higher Hand.
We all know for certain sure that justice will take care of the MSM when the wash comes out.
Thank you for the ping!
There are able, intelligent, successful black leaders. But the media (mostly white) and the middle black leadership, avoid and marginalize the best of black leaders. It is as if the liberal establishment had a positive stake in the failure of the black community.
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "Whatever Is True and Honest...."
The Declaration, the Constitution, parts of the Federalist, and America's Owner's Manual, here.
The Left media dominance creates situation when in many places people's exposure to other side is extremely limited and their perception of others is skewed. And it is more a problem for the liberals, because their media immersion rarely presents a contrasting point of view, or that point of view gets to them second-hand, through interpretation (and distortion) by fellow Leftists.
For conservatives its much harder to get insulated from the opposite view, because its so penetrating. You can't turn on TV or open a newspaper without stumbling on it. Even on talk radio stations, the news section, that is affiliated with other then FOX news distributor, will present news through the filter different than the talk show you are listening.
So, its not a surprise that for many liberals anybody to the right is a right-wing nut, without recognizing that certifiable left-wing nuts are much more in control of the Dems party, then any right-wingers’ control of GOP.
On a personal note, one very nice old lady lowers her voice every time she asks if I am a republican (she keeps asking, can't believe her ears), like its STD or something shameful. Hah, in some areas of Maryland, it might be, lol.
Its interesting, that getting most of my news from FR and similar, and listening talk radio, I had no idea that Franklin Raines is black. This article is my first source of this info. Somehow all these right-wing racists kept neglecting to mention this fact!
My kids went to a lecture by Ben Carson, famous Hopkins surgeon. They were impressed so much, that one even asked what he needs to do to become a surgeon like Carson. They went to the lecture with their friend’s Mom. Only after Bush presented Carson with a Medal of Freedom a half year later, and I saw the photo in a paper, I learned that Carson is black. Somehow, in all the discussions with kids and the carpool Mom, the subject of Carson’s skin color never came up...
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