Journalism, Politics, and Sci-Fi

We're moving this weekend to that new house I mentioned a while back so I really don't have time for a nice long well thought out piece here. But a friend of mine sent me this article: Would the last Honest Reporter Please Turn on the Lights by Orson Scott Card and I wish I could read it aloud to the whole country. Everyone should hear this message. It's a call for a return to journalistic integrity and honesty. Card discusses the reporting of the mortgage crisis and the current presidential campaign and shows how very biased the media has been. He seems to be specifically directing his message to newspaper reporters but I believe the mainstream television media is even more guilty. It's important to note that Orson Scott Card is a Democrat. He's also an award winning sci-fi/fantasy author, loved by his fans and respected by his peers, a majority of whom are also Democrats.

These two paragraphs from Card's article really struck home for me:

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

How can we, the consumers of the media, hope to learn what's really happening in the world? How can we hope to make a well informed decision at the polls when our media, our supposed watchdogs, have taken it upon themselves to make our decisions for us? We should be outraged.

The best we can do is watch Fox News in equal doses with MSNBC and CNN, read humanevents.com to balance out what we read at nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com, listen to Micheal Savage and Thayrone on the radio to balance out the major networks' nightly news broadcasts. It takes effort and judgment and a discerning ear to sort through the bias leaning to both sides. And, sadly, there's no guarantee that you'll actually discover the truth.

I'm off to pack. Go read Orson Scott Card's article. It's also available here.

Senator Government

Now that I've opened this can of worms I might as well keep going.

My favorite part of the entire presidential debate last night was when McCain slipped up and called Obama "Senator Government". Ahh, here we have the biggest difference between the candidates.

Senator Government, true to the ways of a far left Democrat (is there actually a difference between a far left Democrat and a Socialist? really, not so much), wants bigger government, more programs, more mandates, more taxes. "Big Daddy government will come take care of you, just give us all your money and play by our rules. Oh, you don't have any money? That's ok. No, no, don't get off the couch, we'll just go get money from your hardworking neighbor to pay your bills."

As a moderate Republican, McCain is planning to cut taxes across the board, shrink government, and reduce pork barrel expenditures. Ahh, just the mere thought of a smaller federal government warms my little libertarian leaning heart. I thought I was falling in love with the old man when he called himself a federalist (he's using the contemporary "New Federalism" meaning of the word here which is actually anti-federalism -- It's a Bush thing. Bush. words. stumble. You get it.) and discussed giving more power and autonomy to the state governments. Boy, that's just too good to be true.

I was pretty upset, however, when both candidates started talking about bailing homeowners out of bad mortgages. And who's money do you plan to use to do that, gentlemen? Mine? I sure as heck hope not! I didn't take on a loan I can't afford. Foreclose that house and let the bank sell it to someone that can afford it. Or let the local community buy it and turn it into a park or a community garden. I heard a brief snippet of something on NPR the other day about people doing just that in Flint, MI. Wow, what a great idea. Keep it local, though. I do not want to see federal government involved in this! Property values in Flint plummeted long before the rest of the country started to feel this downturn. Auto companies had shut down plants and people had left and there were too many houses and no buyers. This community project reduces the supply of properties on the market -- basic supply and demand economics; and it intrinsically increases the value of the homes in the neighborhood -- more green space tends to do that. It's a win-win so long as your not picking the pockets of folks that live hundreds of miles away to make it happen.

Back to the big government thing here. Even if you don't believe that Obama's very very scary past has any relevance, how can you buy into his idea of an ever expanding government? Big government needs big money and that means big taxes. Obama may be talking about cutting taxes now, but he's going to find his scalpel isn't sharp enough to keep all the programs he wants, add more programs, AND reduce the budget. It's a logical impossibility. Bigger government ALWAYS means higher taxes.

If you really honestly think you want Big Government, take a really close look at some place that already has it. Really check it out first because once you start nationalizing it's nearly impossible to reverse course. Let's use a fairly benign example like France. France has big government and I'll readily admit, big government yields mighty fine wine. However, I would never want to actually become a French citizen. In France it's extremely difficult to get a job. Why? Because France has a slew of "labor friendly" laws preventing people from getting fired even due to poor performance... even when small reduction in force would prevent an entire company from collapsing. Employers are honestly afraid to hire folks because it's so difficult to fire them if things don't work out. Oh, and enjoy all the labor strikes. Get to know the entire Metro map well because at any given time one of the lines will be shutdown due to a strike. If you by chance own a vineyard, you will grow what the government tells you to grow. It matters not if the entire world has decided to stop drinking Chardonnay, the government mandates you grow those grapes anyhow because that's what grows best in your climate and soil. Good for wine, not so good, perhaps, for your bottom line. And if you get sick, I mean really sick, good luck. A nationalized health care system can't afford the state of the art equipment or the specialists that might be able to save you. Better find a way to get to the US where we still have semi free market medicine... unless you vote in Obama, then I think you just might be screwed.

Seriously folks, do you really want Big Daddy Government to take care of you? Or do you want a chance at the American Dream, earning a good living through hard work and smart choices, unfettered by overwhelming taxes and government mandates? Do you deserve to keep your own money spending any excess as you see fit to help out those you believe deserve your help? Or do you want the government to redistribute your hard earned wealth as they see fit, through an expensive bureaucracy and on to programs that you may or may not wish to support?

It's up to you. Vote with your brain, folks.

On no! Politics!

oh dear... I can't hold it in any longer. I try to avoid talking politics in public because I have a lot of friends on both sides and about half of them might not like me anymore after reading this.

In general I don't like radicalism. The far religious right with their creationism in public schools, anti-abortion, anti-queer, anti-science outlook incites the same level of rage in me as the far left that think it's the government's job to ensure the same level of comfort and luxury to everyone no matter how hard they work or how valuable their skills. The far right wants to legislate morality, the far left wants to use my hard earned money to pay someone else's bills.

Barack Obama is about as far left as left gets. John McCain is a moderate Republican. Can you see where I'm going here? Is it clear who I'm planning to vote for?

Here's why I fear Obama:
- Health care: Obama has said outright that he believes that health care is a RIGHT. Health care is NOT a right. It is a service provided by highly trained and highly skilled individuals that deserve to be well compensated for their work. You may not agree with me here but nationalizing health care will shred our world class medical system.
- Ayers: Obama says he was only 8 yrs old when Bill Ayers was blowing things up. Obama says he was just a neighbor. But Ayers hosted the party when Obama launched his political career. Obama and Ayers worked together on an education project in Chicago. Ayers is a radical leftist with a history of violence and even if they aren't buddies, he and Obama are definitely running in the same circles. And the "I didn't know" defense doesn't work here either. As a politician you really should know who you're associating with.
- Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Obama's own pastor, his teacher in spiritual and moral matters, is a scary scary man. He preaches anti-Americanism and spews hatred from the pulpit. I really don't understand how Obama weaseled away from this one. Even the media, so clearly in love with Obama, thinks that Wright is wrong. How can everyone simply shrug this off?
- Acorn: Obama was their lawyer. Maybe it's not a huge conspiracy. Maybe the folks that run Acorn are just too stupid to teach their canvassers that registering false voters is against the law. And that's not the only scary thing Acorn has done. They also strong armed banks into giving home loans to low income folks, most of whom couldn't actually afford to make the payments. Now the entire world economy is suffering in part because of such loans.
- Citizenship controversy: Phillip J. Berg, a lawyer and a Democrat, has filed a lawsuit against Obama asking Obama to produce proof that he's a natural born US citizen (a constitutional requirement for the presidency). Obama has yet to produce more than a short form copy of his birth certificate and the short form will not hold up in a court of law. Obama was apparently born in Hawaii (though his grandmother claims to have been present at his birth in Kenya). Even if he was born in the US, there's evidence that he had forsaken his US citizenship so he could attend school when he lived with hist stepfather in Indonesia. In order to attend school in Indonesia at that time you had to be a citizen of Indonesia and neither Indonesia nor the US allow for dual citizenship. His school paperwork claimed he was a citizen of Indonesia. That would mean he returned to the US through immigration and is now a naturalized citizen (NOT a natural born citizen) or an illegal alien. Berg's website all about the lawsuit is here. Maybe it's all a big conspiracy theory. If it is, why in the world won't Obama just get a legal copy of his birth certificate and render the whole thing moot?!?

Obama has me shaking in my boots. He associates with some people and organizations that are downright frightening. Buster noted something rather astonishing while we watched Obama on TV the other day. Obama delivers eloquent oratory. He has the ability to inspire an audience and make people want to agree with him and believe in him no matter what he's saying. Buster said it reminded him of Hitler. I was initially shocked by the comparison but I had to agree. Obama's charisma has carried him past the controversy with Wright and it seems to be floating him by Ayers and Acorn as well.

Now, I believe people can change over time. Once upon a time I was a practicing Lutheran. Later, in college, I became an atheist Objectivist Libertarian. Now I'm an agnostic independent. But I do find that my past informs my present. I still have libertarian leanings and I still rely on a personal moral code taught to me by my parents and reinforced by my childhood church.

Obama is trying to sweep his past under a rug. He's trying to tell us all that Ayers and Acorn and Write are all "distractions". Perhaps. But perhaps his past informs his present. How could it not? At the very beginning of his political career he associated with a man so far to the political left that he was willing to bomb buildings and homes to make his point. Obama was a lawyer for a far left organization with a sketchy past and fraudulent present. And Sunday after Sunday Obama sat in a pew and listened to his spiritual leader preach anti-American sentiment, hatred, and reverse racism. And he seems reluctant to produce documentation to prove that he's constitutionally eligible to hold the office of president. Could that mean he's willing to bypass the constitution to get what he wants? How can all this be irrelevant?

Here's what I really think: Obama is so far to the left of left that you might as well call him a radical socialist. And that, all by itself, is enough to make me run screaming.

McCain is not perfect. I don't agree with his stance on abortion but I know he can't really do anything about it so I figure that one is a non-issue. What I know of his health care plan sounds sketchy if not worthless, but at least he's not trying to socialize medicine. He's getting up there in age, and he's chosen a VP without a whole lot of experience. But I think I can trust him to choose good advisers and I believe that Palin would maintain those advisers if she had to take over the presidency.

I do like McCain's plan for Iraq. And I do believe that even though McCain helped to write the economic bailout plan that eventually passed congress, he would work to restore free market banking.

Most importantly I believe in McCain's integrity. And that, more than anything else, is why I'm going to vote for him.