Conservative Blog Reporting on Media Bias and the Liberal Agenda

Their political philosophy is ever bigger government, taking over every aspect of the American life, along with ever-higher taxes required to fund their utopian dreams.  The government takeover of 17% of the private economy has been their goal since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The more of our life they can control, the larger their political base becomes, and the faster they can complete their work, that is, destruction of our capitalistic system and a population that is completely dependant upon the government.

True and lasting reform can only be done on a bipartisan basis.  Healthcare reform cannot be owned by one party, and it certainly cannot be done to satisfy an ideology or appease special interest.

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The British politician, Edmund Burke is quoted in Thomas Carlyle’s book “Heros and Hero Worship in History” as follows. “Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important far than they all.”

Edmund Burke would be aghast at the power and influence of the fourth estate today. Political columns are written within hours after an event has taken place and then transmitted across continents and even around the world. Within just a few more hours they are printed, distributed, read and accepted either as gospel or biased opinion. Television and radio report information to hundreds of millions, perhaps a couple of billion, as it takes place. Commentators add their own spin within minutes and add improbable elements to that spin as the story is analyzed and dissected among themselves and with “experts” until it becomes as worn as a months old newspaper passed among greedy readers.

It is indeed true today that the fourth estate is far more important than our government. The media has more power than ever before to get people elected or removed permanently from public service. Interestingly enough, media today is generally owned by massive conglomerates with elements that might be dependent upon elected officials for income from government contracts. Our government officials and the media consequently operate in total complicity to assure the health of their mutual interests. In this incestuous relationship the fourth estate has become more important, more powerful, totally complicit with and integrated with the government. It influences legislation much more than it did in Burke’s day. That influence is clearly for reasons much less pure today than they were in the 1700’s.

PeacockWatch is especially concerned about the objectives and intentions of MSNBC. In a recent article PeacockWatch took MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to task when he said of Obama’s speech at West Point “he went to maybe the enemy camp tonight”. On November 30th, 2009 we have Keith Olbermann saying in an MSNBC article on Afghanistan that “the Pentagon is a bunch of perpetually 12-year old boys”. Matthews later offered an apology for his statement. However, that apology was thrown into disbelief by the context of his overall comments. His apology falls into the category of total fantasy given his associate Keith Olbermann’s insult to our military defenders.

The dislike these two men have for the military becomes easy to understand when one remembers that it is the military men and women who have fought so hard against socialism and Marxism in the last few major wars. And socialism and Marxism are what MSNBC is supporting so strongly today when they champion the present administration and its group of czars. If our military is strong, and continues to be the most respected of all government agencies, then socialism and Marxism will have a more difficult time in the rest of the world and not have the full support in the U.S. that Obama and his spokespeople at MSNBC desire.

Just as part of the agenda of MSNBC is to denigrate our highly respected and heroic military it is also focused on supporting the public option health plan (See PeacockWatch article “NBC’s Support for ‘Public Option’ at an All Time High”) which is the cornerstone of the move toward socialism in the U.S. and “The Big Lie of Global Warming” which is a supporting strategy.

It has been reported, though only very minimally on MSNBC, that the health care program means a takeover by the government of another 1/6th of the U.S. economy which would be the dream of any avowed socialist. It was also recently reported by the NY Times and CBS (with great publicity from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann) that support for the health care public option according to a December 4th through 8th poll is now at 59% with only 29% opposed. On the contrary, a Bloomberg poll during the same period, and not mentioned at all by MSNBC, shows that 62% of Americans are mostly pessimistic about the benefit of a health care bill that Congress would pass. A Quinnipiac University poll as reported by the Washington Times shows 52% of voters oppose and 38% support the current Congressional health care reform bill. There are many other polls with varying results but MSNBC consistently reports only on those that support the current administration for which they are the primary media outlet and from which their parent organization receives great financial favor.

Edmund Burke was right about the importance of the “fourth Estate”. One wonders how corrupt the media was in the mid-1700’s and if elements of it were as strongly influenced by a particular party as MSNBC so clearly is today. Whatever the answer, it is clear that MSNBC and its commentators Olbermann and Matthews have it as key objectives to denigrate our military through subtle and not so subtle opinion commentary and to report only that information supporting the take over of health care by the federal government. Those two key MSNBC objectives support one overarching Obama administration goal of transforming the United States of America into a socialist empire as quickly as possible.

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New mammogram guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federal advisory board, recommended against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years, even though mammography screening reduced breast cancer rates by 15% in women ages 39 to 49.

The new guidelines went so far as to recommend that women no longer conduct self examinations.

Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States.  About 192,370 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 40,170 women will die of the disease in 2009, according to data from the National Cancer Institute. Government statistics estimate that 1.44 percent of women who are now 40 years old will get breast cancer over the next 10 years.

According the recommendation:

The harms resulting from screening for breast cancer include psychological harms, unnecessary imaging tests and biopsies in women without cancer, and inconvenience due to false-positive screening results. Furthermore, one must also consider the harms associated with treatment of cancer that would not become clinically apparent during a woman’s lifetime (overdiagnosis), as well as the harms of unnecessary earlier treatment of breast cancer that would have become clinically apparent but would not have shortened a woman’s life. Radiation exposure (from radiologic tests), although a minor concern, is also a consideration.

The new guidelines are being criticized by groups such as the American Cancer Society and the American College of Radiology, not to mention hundreds and hundreds of outraged women who are survivors of breast cancer.

This is clearly the direction that the Obama administration wants to take America with future healthcare services.  Cutting back on critical diagnostic tools that has proven to have saved thousands and thousands of lives to save money is only the tip of the iceberg in future rationing of healthcare under government controlled medical services.

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It seems that none of the news media is focusing on two related issues that are undermining democratic capitalism in America. Certainly PeacockWatch understands why MSNBC isn’t touching on these intertwined subjects. That network is too networked with the current Washington establishment to want to contaminate its rice bowl. The mystery is why all other news networks aren’t jumping all over this problem which is independent of whatever political party is in power. And “power” is one of the operative words here.

“Potentates exist at every level of government and feather their nest at our expense”

Our government leaders at all levels have set themselves up as potentates with great privileges. These privileges have increased dramatically over the decades but so subtly that they are deemed by government leaders to be their right and perceived by citizens to be normal. However, it is neither right nor normal for municipal, state and federal leaders to have magnificent offices and salaries far above the average of the population they supposedly “serve” while creating record levels of debt. These are levels of debt that are bankrupting one after another of our cities and states and now our federal government. The government leaders gleefully incur this debt because through that excess of expenditure they guarantee their position of privilege.

This position of privilege is both figurative and literal. Walk into the city hall of most cities of a population of 30,000 or above. You will probably see carpeting, paneling, wallpaper and light fixtures far above what most of us can afford to put in our homes. Go into the council chambers of these cities and you will almost surely find raised daises behind which the mayors and council members look down on the population they are separating themselves from and which they “rule”. The effect is much more exaggerated at the state level and is carried to a ridiculous extreme at the federal government. Most notable is that as the chambers become more ostentatious (read expensive and paid for by the taxpayer) the more haughty the attitudes of the government leaders become. Walk into the offices of government leaders of medium to large cities, states and the federal government and you have a high probability of finding paneled offices, plush carpet, private offices for receptionists, marble, magnificent desks and a large staff all of which are paid for by a public that hasn’t been paying sufficient attention to this creeping transfer of control.

“Government leaders in privileged positions are guaranteeing their position and much above average office furnishings by acting as brokers of the redistribution of wealth…”

It is important to note that these government leaders in privileged positions are guaranteeing their position and much above average office furnishings by acting as brokers of the redistribution of wealth. These government leaders take a cut every time taxes are raised. And taxes go up on the average at a rate greater than our pay raise increase rates and faster than the rate of inflation! Why is that happening! Raising taxes is just a way for legislators to transfer wealth around. This is similar to the activities of brokers of stocks and bonds. Sometimes, as we have learned, brokers make larger commissions if they “push” certain equities. As the money involved in financial trades moves around each person who handles the money takes a cut. They get their cut no matter whether the transaction makes or loses money for the customer. By the same token government leaders get their cut in the form of increased salary and privileges every time they move tax money around. They also get their cut in the form of legal contributions as they pass laws that favor those making the contributions. These contributions may be to their reelection campaigns by ardent admirers who appreciate the elected official’s political position. However, one has to wonder if the contribution precedes or comes after that political position. The more tax money they move around the bigger their cut is because the more money there is available

The government leaders in the United States Congress push so much money around that they now feel they can pay themselves an average annual salary of over $170,000 per year; far above that of the average income of the taxpayer who pays their salaries. And that is just the salary for the legislator. Then there are the office expenses, the salaries of staffers, the expenses for their travel and all the benefits they receive. They also provide themselves with a great medical plan that, by a law they sponsored and passed over 50 years ago, is illegal for the rest of us to take part in. Not only do we taxpayers pay for their entire medical plan we also pay for medical professionals they have on staff for whatever they need to have taken care of. And we pay for major hospitalization for them at military hospitals. The more money they redistribute across our nation the more they feel like they can pay themselves, the bigger the cut they feel they can take, in the form of salary, benefits, privileges and staffers.

No wonder the government votes for bailouts of massive corporations and for a national health plan that is one-sixth of the nation’s economy. This gives them much more control over even more money. This is an even greater amount of wealth that they can redistribute in any manner they wish including to their own special interests who will then, in turn, contribute more to their campaigns. As they control even more massive amounts of wealth they will feel free to confer even more salary, luxury, staff and privilege on themselves.

As PeacockWatch has pointed out before, massive amounts of money become massive amounts of power in our society. Power corrupts and massive power corrupts massively. Power generates a desire for even more power. As citizens we have already made the mistake of ever so gradually betraying the desires of our founding fathers by transferring control from “we the people” to the government. Are we going to totally give up our power to the gluttony of the potentates in Washington by allowing them to pass a public option health plan that gives them control over one-sixth more of our economy and, in-effect, sends on the average over one-half of our hard-earned salaries to the government in the form of taxes and fees? The “health plan problem” can easily be solved by giving all Americans the same health plan that our legislators have. But, that isn’t what the legislators really want. Their desire isn’t to solve the “health plan problem”. Their desire is to get more power and control over more of our economy and take their cut. Their desire is to fully transfer power from “We the People” to the potentates by giving themselves more control over the economy and the redistribution of wealth.

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