Well, folks... another busy weekend; a Halloween Party on Saturday night (didn't get to bed till near 3:00 a.m.) and a 70th Birthday Party yesterday afternoon at a fancy-schmancy Jersey restaurant. (A mini-wedding in terms of the set-up... and you guys know how much I love a wedding!)
So, anyway... back to the real world, today... back to state-controlled media you simply can't believe...
(*SIGH*)
Yeah, yeah... a bit of an overstatement... perhaps... but as a follow-up to Friday's newsbites front page rambling on "assault rife" vs... er... "rifle"... a quick scan of this morning's news "reporting" shows that - by and large - deliberate manipulation of pubic opinion is still being attempted by most media outlets in terms of falsely reporting (and in some cases throwing the misreporting into headlines!) that an "assault rifle" was used in the LAX shootings.
This... is... false...
Rather than bore you with a list of newspapers, magazines, web-based media, and TV networks and cable programing (yes... including Fox News) guilty of lying to you, allow me to point to the first source I found this morning which bothered to print the truth... (Though even they couldn't resist the urge to "spice it up" by their use of an accurate - but still "suggestive" headline!)
LAX Shooting Spree: TSA Worker Dead After Assault-type Rife Rampage Inside Los Angeles International Airport Terminal Three
Uh-huh.... assault "type."
Stick to the actual truth by attaching the word "type." How professional. How decent.
Actually, though... not really... because apparently an editor must have added the word "type" to the headline after the story had been keyed in and approved. Why is this my guess? Well... it comes from having read the story.
From paragraph two: "...the 28-year-old former New Jersey man opened fire with an assault rifle..."
No... actually he didn't...
Indeed, read into the story a bit deeper and you'll find...
From paragraph eight: "...Ciancia blew away TSA agent Gerardo Hernadez, 39, with his AR-15 style assault rifle.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Uh-huh... now it's no longer a generic "assault-type" rifle... it's an AR-15 "style" assault rifle.
Got it... but here's the problem... not only is the AR-15 NOT an assault rifle... but no amount of "styling" can turn a non-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon.
(*SIGH*)
I betchya that right now "He Who Name Dare Not Be Mentioned" is reading this muttering to himself, "what's any of this matter?"
(Yes... channeling your inner Hillary Clinton... that's gonna help on get to the truth...)
(*SNORT*)
Well, to answer the assumed question... the truth matters!
Accuracy matters! (Or at least it should when we're talking major media organization reporting!)
Reporters and editors at major news organizations should know stuff... know basic stuff... basic "jack of all trades" stuff like knowing an "assault rifle" is a rifle capable of automatic fire... a weapon larger than a pistol which can be used as a "machine gun" or "sub-machine gun." A rifle... regardless of clip size... which shots one bullet per pull of the trigger is still just a rifle. It's not a machine gun. It's not an automatic weapon. It's not an assault rife. (As for assault "style" rifles... please... let's stick to functionality.)
Right now "He Whose Name Dare Not Be Mentioned" is probably fixated on "answering" me by saying, "well, it can still kill!"
Why, yes... yes it can! And absent jams, clip size matters!
But, listen... friends... particularly those of you who favor even more "gun control"... why mislead... why lie... why try to create a false picture in pursuit of winning an argument if the argument is so strong as to be able to stand on its own?
It's... the... deceit...
That's what gets to me.
7 comments:
BTW... the newspaper I'm quoting in the stand-alone commentary - front page of this newsbites posting - is the NY Daily News.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/lax-gunman-opens-fire-la-airport-article-1.1503916
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304527504579171710423780446
Everyone now is clamoring about Affordable Care Act winners and losers. I am one of the losers.
My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics.
For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, life-saving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.
My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits.
* GEEZUS FRIGGIN' CHRIST...
Countless hours searching for non-exchange plans have uncovered nothing that compares well with my existing coverage. But the greatest source of frustration is Covered California, the state's Affordable Care Act health-insurance exchange and, by some reports, one of the best such exchanges in the country. After four weeks of researching plans on the website, talking directly to government exchange counselors, insurance companies and medical providers, my insurance broker and I are as confused as ever. Time is running out and we still don't have a clue how to best proceed.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Two things have been essential in my fight to survive stage-4 cancer. The first are doctors and health teams in California and Texas: at the medical center of the University of California, San Diego, and its Moores Cancer Center; Stanford University's Cancer Institute; and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The second element essential to my fight is a United Healthcare PPO (preferred provider organization) health-insurance policy.
Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team.
The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers. But in January, United Healthcare sent me a letter announcing that they were pulling out of the individual California market. The company suggested I look to Covered California starting in October.
You would think it would be simple to find a health-exchange plan that allows me, living in San Diego, to continue to see my primary oncologist at Stanford University and my primary care doctors at the University of California, San Diego. Not so. UCSD has agreed to accept only one Covered California plan — a very restrictive Anthem EPO Plan.
(EPO stands for exclusive provider organization, which means the plan has a small network of doctors and facilities and no out-of-network coverage (as in a preferred-provider organization plan) except for emergencies.)
Stanford accepts an Anthem PPO plan but it is not available for purchase in San Diego (only Anthem HMO and EPO plans are available in San Diego).
* WHAT A FRIGGIN' NIGHTMARE FOR THIS POOR GUY!
So if I go with a health-exchange plan, I must choose between Stanford and UCSD. Stanford has kept me alive — but UCSD has provided emergency and local treatment support during wretched periods of this disease, and it is where my primary-care doctors are.
* I'LL BET IN THE END THIS IS RESOLVED THROUGH ONE OR MORE OF THE DOCTORS/HOSPITALS AGREEING TO "TAKE A HAIRCUT" OR EVEN PROVIDE FREE ONGOING CARE... BUT... IT'LL ONLY BE BECAUSE TO THE PUBLICITY GARNERED VIA THIS ARTICLE.
Before the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance policies could not be sold across state lines; now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines.
* INSANE!
What happened to the president's promise, "You can keep your health plan"? Or to the promise that "You can keep your doctor"? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician.
For a cancer patient, medical coverage is a matter of life and death. Take away people's ability to control their medical-coverage choices and they may die. I guess that's a highly effective way to control medical costs. Perhaps that's the point.
This is tragic. And wrong. I just don't have words...
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/10/29/brave-new-world-2/
Post 9/11, Americans accepted the necessity for the National Security Agency to retrieve and sift through phone calls and emails to keep us secure from terror attacks.
* NOT MY PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS! NOT WITHOUT A WARRANT! NOT WITHOUT THERE BEING AN INTERNATIONAL CALL IN PROGRESS!
Many have come to accept today’s risks of an invasion of their privacy — for greater security for their family.
* I DON'T CARE WHAT OTHERS "ACCEPT." I ACCEPT NOTHING LESS THAN MY CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOMS AND LIBERTIES!
And there remains a deposit of trust among Americans that the NSA, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency are not only working for us, they are defending us.
* UMM...
* I'D LIKE TO BELIEVE THIS. HERE'S THE PROBLEM: AS WE'VE SEEN WITH THE IRS, THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, AND EVEN THE PENTAGON, POLITICAL INTERFERENCE AND CONTROL OF EVEN LOWER-LEVEL BUREACRACY HAS GONE TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.
Last week, we learned that a high official of the U.S. government turned 200 private phone numbers of 35 friendly foreign leaders, basically the Rolodex of the president, over to the NSA for tapping and taping.
Allied leaders, with whom America works toward common goals, have for years apparently had their private conversations listened to, transcribed and passed around by their supposed U.S. friends.
Angela Merkel has apparently been the subject of phone taps since before she rose to the leadership of Germany and Europe. (A victim of the East German Stasi, Ms. Merkel is not amused.)
Why are we doing this? Is it all really about coping with the terrorist threat? Or is it because we have the ability to do it, and the more information we have, even stolen surreptitiously from friends and allies, the better? Gives us a leg up in the great game of nations.
U.S. diplomats say that one of their assignments abroad is to know what the host government is thinking and planning politically, economically, strategically. That this is an aspect of diplomacy. But relations among friendly nations are not unlike the NFL. While films are taken of rival teams’ games and studied, scouts observe practices, and rumors are picked up of injuries, there are lines that most opposing NFL teams do not cross. To learn that an owner or coach of one NFL franchise had wiretapped the home phones of coaches and players of a Super Bowl rival would, if revealed, be regarded as rotten business.
What kind of camaraderie, cooperation or friendship can endure in an environment where constant snooping on one’s closest friends is accepted practice? Should we not expect a [bitter] reaction among foreign friends who discover their personal and political secrets have been daily scooped up and filed by their American friends, and found their way into the president’s daily intelligence brief?
The Cold War was a clash of ideologies and empires for the future of the world. Men took drastic measures to preserve what they had. At the end of the Cold War, the old tactics and measures were not set aside, but improved upon, and now are no longer restricted for use against the likes of al-Qaida, but against allies.
At the Cold War’s end, the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick talked hopefully of America becoming again “a normal country in a normal time.”
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Seems as though the normal times are never coming back.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/11/01/the-first-hustler-runs-the-big-con/
“Nothing is lost save honor.” So said Jim Fisk after he and Jay Gould survived yet another scrape in their corrupt and storied careers in the Gilded Age
Fisk’s dismissal of honor came to mind while watching Barack Obama in Boston smugly explain how his vow — “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it!” — was now inoperative.
All along, it had been a bait-and-switch by the first hustler. In Boston, Obama could no longer evade the truth.
* ONE MORE TIME...
All along, it had been a bait-and-switch by the first hustler.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans who had purchased health insurance in the private market were getting notices their plans were being canceled. That this revelation had blown a hole in his credibility did not seem to trouble Obama. Indeed, the president appeared impatient with the complaints. These were “substandard” plans anyhow, he said, the lousy offerings of “bad-apple insurers.”
“So if you’re getting one of those letters (canceling your insurance plan), just shop around in the new marketplace. … You’re going to get a better deal.”
* BUT THAT'S A LIE TOO! THE NEW MARKETPLACE IS THE ONE WHERE PRICES ARE INFLATED! REMEMBER, FOLKS, THESE LYING BASTARDS PROMISED US "ON AVERAGE" SAVINGS... S*A*V*I*N*G*S... OF $2,500.00! (REMEMBER?!)
Behind the arrogance is the realty: Obama has the veto power. No alteration of ObamaCare, except for changes he approves, can be made before the winter of 2017. And by then, ObamaCare will be so deeply embedded in law and practice it will be beyond repeal.
* THE TEA PARTY REPUBLICANS WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG TO TRY AND REPEAL OBAMACARE.
We won, you lost, was written across Obama’s face.
* YEP. OBAMA AND HIS ALLIES - INCLUDING THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT - WON. WE ALL LOST.
President Obama conned the people into believing something he knew to be false — that all Americans would be allowed to keep the health care plans that they had and liked.
* AND OBAMA ALSO PROMISED PEOPLE COULD KEEP THEIR DOCTORS... (AND, AGAIN... THAT LITTLE MATTER OF $2,500.00 IN "SAVINGS.")
This assurance, repeated again and again, helped disarm the opposition. Americans who liked their doctors and insurance plans and were repeatedly told they could keep both were not only relieved; they became more receptive to the idea of helping the less fortunate.
Though the ObamaCare website will one day be repaired, and people may begin to sign up, the land mines in ObamaCare are by no means all exploded. We will be walking right through them.
As ObamaCare requires the cancellation of insurance plans and forces Americans to buy more expensive insurance than they want, this will inevitably raise the cost of health care for the nation.
And when the employer mandates cut in, many businesses will halt hiring at 49 employees to keep out of ObamaCare, as others cut part-time workers to 29 hours a week to escape the mandates.
This cannot but adversely impact an economy whose growth in job creation under Obama has been anemic at best for five years.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/federal-debt-jumped-409-billion-october-3567-household
In the continuing resolution deal sealed by President Barack Obama and the Republican congressional leadership last month, the legal limit on the federal debt was suspended until February 7 of next year.
* AND "FUNNY ENOUGH"... (KEEP READING...)
The debt of the federal government, which is normally subject to a legal limit, jumped by $409 billion in the month of October, according to the U.S. Treasury.
That equals approximately $3,567 for each household in the United States, and is the second-largest one month jump in the debt in the history of the country.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
The single greatest one-month increase in the federal government's debt came in October 2008, when Congress enacted the Troubled Asset Relief Program to bail out the financial industry.
* SUPPORTED BY THEN-SENATOR OBAMA... THEN-SENATOR CLINTON... AND SO ON AND SO FORTH.
In that month, the debt subject to the legal limit climbed by about $545 billion.
* SO IN JUST THESE TWO MONTHS ALONE WE'RE TALKING "BIPARTISAN" DEBT CREATION OF $954 BILLION... CLOSE TO A TRILLION... TWO FRIGGIN' MONTHS...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Post a Comment