Does the Press EVER Get Tired of Being Manipulated?

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.

I've noticed that the press coverage of Israel’s retaliation on Hamas has followed the usual pattern: reportage of how this is one of the “bloodiest assaults in decades,” how many bombs were dropped, how many Palestinians have been killed and wounded, how many civilian casualties Palestinian officials claim there have been, quotes from bereaved Palestinians, pictures of the damage in Gaza. Almost as an afterthought, it’s mentioned that the assault began after militants launched 300 rockets into Israel in one week, and that they’ve launched over 3,000 rockets into Israel in the last year.

Were those 3,000 rockets aimed at Israeli military targets? Of course not. They were fired blindly into Israel in the hopes of killing as many Israeli civilians and causing as much damage as possible. And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, Hamas doesn’t care how many civilian casualties they suffer in return. The more the better, because they can use the press coverage to stoke more hatred of Israel. That’s why they locate their rocket batteries in civilian neighborhoods, and turn mosques into ammunition dumps and command centers.

This paragraph from the December 28 Associated Press article is typical:

“The unprecedented assault sparked protests and condemnations throughout the Arab world, and many of Israel’s Western allies urged restraint, though the U.S. blamed Hamas for the fighting.”

See? Once again the U.S. is out of step with the rest of the world – blaming Hamas when everyone else is either urging restraint or howling for more Israeli blood. How dare the Israelis defend themselves by taking such unprecedented action?

Where is the coverage of the damage those 3,000 rockets inflicted on Israel? Where are the pictures of damaged buildings and wounded and grieving Israelis? Why is this only news when Israel gets tired of it and strikes back? And why can’t the press call a terrorist a terrorist instead of a “militant.” Can they honestly not see the bias here? Are they really so clueless that they don’t see how they’re being manipulated? Or do they just not care? Either way, it disgusts me.

Thanks for listening.

Another Trip to the Perspective Store

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

Public opinion polling over the last several months has revealed an interesting paradox: By large majorities, Americans apparently believe that the state of the country is terrible. However, by large majorities, they also describe their own status as satisfying and optimistic. As recently as October, a Pew Research poll showed that 88% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats said they were either “very happy” or “pretty happy” with their lives. This is at a time when, according to Gallup, 78% of Americans are negative about the state of the U.S. economy, and the percentage of Americans who say that an economic depression in the next two years is “very likely” has grown to 35%. I find that astounding.

Is it possible that the incessant media drumbeat of negative news is responsible for this contradiction? It’s obvious that most media outlets try to cast their new stories in superlative terms: the biggest since, the worst since, the most since, the lowest since, etc., etc. And sometimes this tendency is taken to ridiculous extremes. So as I’ve watched the continuing breathless coverage of the current recession, I have once again been driven to look for some perspective.

Most people alive today have never lived through an economic depression, and therefore have no idea what one is really like. In 1930, the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shrank by 8.6%. In 1931, GDP fell by another 6.4%. In 1932, it shrank by a full 13%. National unemployment was at 25%, and wages for those still employed fell by 42%. The unemployment rate stayed in double digits until 1941, when we were pulled out of the depression, not by brilliant government programs, but by World War II.

As for 2008 – after posting 1% GDP growth in Q1 and almost 3% growth in Q2, Q3 GDP declined by…are you ready for this?...one-half of one percent – which was, of course, reported as “the biggest decline since 2001.” The national unemployment rate last month was 6.7%. Certainly there are places in the country where the unemployment rate is much higher – Flint, MI, for example, is nearly at 11%. But there are also many places where it is much lower. Here in Seattle it’s lower than the national average - about 5.5%. And remember that many economists still consider anything under 5% to be “full employment.”

Here is a graph of the unemployment rate over the last 50 years, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

As you can see, we spent most of the period from 1975 through 1986 with a higher national unemployment rate than we have right now.

I know that’s not much comfort if you are one of the unemployed. And I know that people are hurting, and I don’t seek to minimize their pain. But despite what you may hear or read, what we’re going through now isn’t even close to depression-level badness. Not. Even. Close. We’ve come through much worst times than these, and we’ll survive this downturn, too. And we’ll do it the way we always have: by ordinary Americans coming together, helping each other out, and getting up every morning and doing what needs to be done.

Thanks for listening.

A Tale of Two Studies

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

In mid-2005, a non-partisan organization called the Bay Area Center for Voting Research in Berkeley, CA, released a ranking of America’s most liberal and most conservative cities. That list was documented in our very own Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which was bemoaning the fact that Seattle ranked way down at 16th place on the most-liberal list.

Meanwhile, a few months ago, the FBI released its crime statistics for 2007, covering almost 8,700 cities across the country. You can download this in Excel format HERE. That format is pretty handy, because Excel makes it easy to sort and massage the numbers. One number that is useful for comparison purposes – and easy to calculate once I had the spreadsheet – is the “violent crime rate,” usually expressed as the number of violent crimes per 100,000 people. By “violent crimes,” the FBI means murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

Out of curiosity, I sorted the FBI’s list by the violent crime rate, and compared it to the 2005 list of America’s most liberal cities. Of the 40 cities with the worst violent crime rate, 19 were also among the 40 most liberal cities in the 2005 study. Only one was among the 40 most conservative cities.

"Liberal" and "Democrat" go together like "round" and "circle," and, sure enough, it turns out that most of the cities on the most-liberal list have been governed by Democrats for literally decades: Detroit hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1962; St. Louis since 1949; Oakland since 1966; Atlanta since 1962; Philadelphia since 1952; Washington, D.C., since 1965; New Orleans for nearly a century!

And before you tell me that poverty is a more significant indicator of violent crime, let me also point out that only 18 of the 40 worst cities were above the national average in percentage of people below the poverty level in 2007. Only four of the ten worst were above the national average.

But here’s an interesting point to consider: Jason Alderman, a director of the Center for Voting Research, was quoted in the PI article as saying, “The list [of most liberal cities] is dominated by cities that have strong and proud and long-standing African American populations,” which, the PI pointed out, “tend to vote overwhelmingly for liberal candidates.”

So…my question today is: Why? Why, when black Americans suffer disproportionately as victims of violent crime, poverty, and unemployment, do you continue to elect local politicians from a party whose track record – over decades – demonstrates clearly that they’re not making things any better for you? And how can clear-thinking Americans seriously believe that the Democrats stand the best chance of solving our current problems and getting the country going in the right direction after looking at their track record in the cities where their power has been entrenched the longest?

Thanks for listening.

Reflections on Christmas Morning

He did not come in glory when He first came to earth,
And most' the world ignored His humble birth,
But the heavens were singing in celestial harmony,
And a star guided some souls to their knees...
Those with ears to hear and eyes to see.

And the miracles followed, but the skeptics believed
They were lies spread by those who'd been deceived.
With an appetite for power, they mocked everything He said,
While the ones truly hungering He fed...
Those who hungered after righteousness He fed.

And the light that He gave
Was to lift and to save.
And the burdens that He came to bear
Are the ones we can't carry, and need to share.

I give thanks for His sweetness, I have faith in His power,
And I know He'll strive with me every hour,
For He suffered in darkness, kneeling in Gethsemane,
So the light of His love could shine on me...
So the light of His love could shine through me...

- excerpt from Arise, Shine Forth by Michael McLean,
who I am proud to call my friend and brother in Christ,
as performed in his masterpiece, The Forgotten Carols

For more perspective on the true meaning of Christmas, I strongly recommend:
http://www.reflectionsofchrist.org/.

Oh, and thanks for listening. Merry Christmas.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking on behalf of those who just can’t be bothered.

The irony is just delicious. You couldn’t make up stuff like this if you tried: The news moved over the wire a week or so ago that some of the anti-war groups are getting concerned about President-elect Obama’s plans for his cabinet and national security team. To quote Paul Richter of http://www.allvoices.com/, “The activists – key members of the coalition that propelled Obama to the White House – fear he is drifting from the anti-war moorings of his once-longshot presidential candidacy.”

Kevin Martin, the Executive Director of the group Peace Action, is quoted as saying, “So, in the short term, we’re going to be disappointed. They may turn out to be all pro-war, or at least people who were pro-war in the beginning.” And this is the quote I just love: “There’s so much Obama hero worship, we’re having to walk this line where we can’t directly criticize him.” (Gee, you just noticed that?)

Well, Kevin, let me share with you one of my favorite Obama quotes, and one that we will all have plenty of occasions to ponder over the next four years. I’ve shared this in previous posts, but I think it’s appropriate to emphasize it once again. It’s from Audacity of Hope: “I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them.” Looks like you did some of that projecting, and it was your turn to be disappointed.

Many people have stated that we “don’t know who Obama is.” I disagree. The mainstream media certainly didn’t go out of their way to tell us, but if we’ve paid attention, we actually know a lot about who he is. We know where he came from, and the forces that shaped him. We know he was a student of Saul Alinsky – the radical “father” of community organizing. We know who his friends and associates were. We know that, by his voting record, he was the most liberal Senator in the United States Senate – he was to the left of Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, and even Ted Kennedy. We know that he believes in raising taxes on the wealthy and giving some of that money to lower income folks – and that is income redistribution no matter how much he tries to deny it. We know he believes in unrestricted abortion rights. We know that he believes in bigger government.

What we don’t know is how he will govern, because he has no track record by which to judge his governing style. Nobody knows. Not me, not Kevin Martin, not you. That’s why so many of us were nervous about seeing so many people vote for the nebulous values of “hope and change” – because hope is not a strategy, and change is not always for the better. But Obama just may be smart enough to understand that to be successful, he has to govern from the center, which, by the way, means that a lot of the people on the far left who helped elect him are going to end up feeling like Kevin Martin.

And, believe it or not, even though I didn’t vote for Obama, I do want him to be successful, because if he isn’t, it will be a disaster for the nation. I will speak out against policies that I think are bad ideas, and I will attempt to present rational arguments to support my viewpoint. But unlike many at the other end of the political spectrum – who would rather see America lose a war that would place our nation in grave danger than see George W. Bush get credit for the victory – I will not root for Obama’s failure. But I also won’t forget that quote…and you shouldn’t either.

Thanks for listening.

A Moral Slippery Slope

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

Well, Washington State has hit the national news, thanks to the PC-driven decision to allow an atheist-designed placard to be included in Olympia’s Christmas Holiday display. The placard reads, “There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.” Ebenezer Scrooge would be proud. (“Christmas! Bah! Humbug!”) Now the fact is that this placard is as much a statement of faith as John 3:16, because this is not an issue that can be settled through the scientific method. But it does make me want to ask a few questions.

Perhaps I’m just one of those whose minds are enslaved, but it seems to me that if there is no objective, absolute standard of good and bad, right and wrong, the ultimate destination at the end of this train of thought is pretty disturbing. For example, how do you justify to your children what they “shouldn’t” do? Because you said so? Because you’re bigger and stronger than they are? What happens, then, when they finally become bigger and stronger than you? Do you appeal instead to the standards of the society we live in – the rules we’ve agreed upon that allow us to live together in peace?

But if “right” and “wrong” is solely determined by societal consensus as expressed in the laws we pass, there’s another problem: not all societies agree. Some, for example, believe that women are nothing more than property and forbid them from leaving their homes without being accompanied by a male relative, that amputation is an appropriate punishment for thievery and stoning for adultery, that it’s perfectly all right to kill people who won’t accept their point of view, and furthermore that their duty is to impose their society on everyone until it controls the entire globe – by force if necessary. In the absence of absolute standards, who is to say our society is “superior” to that one, or any other. How can you even mount a basic argument for the dignity of man without any justification for why man “should” be entitled to any?

How then do you judge between societies? It's all well and good to say that societies "should" win or lose in the arena of ideas, and that the "best" society is the one whose ideas appeal to the greatest number of people, but...says who? Why should that be the standard of judgment? What if the majority opinion-holders are not the strongest? Why should their opinions win out over those who are stronger? Why not simply say that the society with the strongest military is the best - since we obviously have societies in our world that are not content with competing in the arena of ideas and believe that they have a duty to advance their society by any means possible?

If a society is bent on bringing the entire world under its control, and has the military might to do so, why shouldn’t it? How can anyone say it’s “wrong” for them to attempt it, if there is no absolute standard of what “wrong” is? Ultimately every value judgment can be rebutted with, “Says who?” and at the bottom of this slippery slope of moral relativism is the law of the jungle…and I don’t see how you can avoid ending up there if you’re intellectually honest. Because an appeal to any kind of objective standard, as opposed to the subjective consensus of some group of people, puts you unavoidably on my side of the argument.

It seems to me that the logical survival strategy for a truly atheistic society would be to amass as much military might as possible, always be watching for other societies that may pose a threat, and squash them like bugs before they’re able to mount one. (Hmmm… sounds a lot like the philosophy of the old Soviet Union.) Of course, one of the great ironies of our world is that the same people who refuse to recognize any absolute moral authority in their own lives seem to also be the ones who refuse to make value judgments between societies, and who – contrary to all available evidence – adhere to the “if we’ll just be nice to them, they’ll be nice to us” approach to foreign policy. This intellectual inconsistency seems to me to be disingenuous at best, and just plain dumb at worst.

A lot of people simply want to be able to do what they want to do and not have anyone else make moral judgments about their behavior. I get that. But for Christ’s sake, people (and I mean that literally), at least be honest with yourselves about your motives. Because, by your own way of thinking, why shouldn’t you be judged and criticized by other people? What gives you the “right” not to be? It isn’t “fair?” Says who?

I’ll take a message of hope and “glad tidings of great joy” over that world view any day. And I thank God every day of my life that I am privileged to live in a society whose founders were wise enough to understand where the basic rights of mankind come from: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” That is the world view that set this nation apart from any other that had ever existed on the face of the planet and that led to its greatness.

Thanks for listening.