Do we live in the "Post-Truth Era?"

It's a good question. The first article explains why the shooting of Walter Scott was a crime, and the wealth of evidence that supports that assertion:

The North Charleston shooting is not another Ferguson

[...] When I was a cop in Baltimore and I heard of some situation that got ugly, my first reaction was usually, "Thank God I wasn't there." Because nobody knows how they'll react. For that reason, most police officers are quite reluctant to criticize others forced to make split-second life-and-death decisions. Yet every police officer I've spoken to says that Scott's death was horrible and that Slager committed a crime.

In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled that police may not shoot at unarmed fleeing suspects, even felons. In line with that decision, shooting without an immediate threat is against the law in every state, and it's against department policy in every jurisdiction. It's also a violation of the most basic human right: life. Any innocent death is a tragedy, but it's worse at the hands of police. It's not too much to ask our civil servants not to murder us.

During his attempt to catch Scott, Slager fired his Taser. When that failed, Slager could have chased Scott or let him run away. But instead, Slager drew his gun and shot. This is why cops see this case so differently: The criminal was the police officer. And Slager was arrested and charged with murder. That is the way the criminal justice system is supposed to work. [...]

The article explains in detail the differences in this case, to many of the others that have been in the headlines in recent months. Of course every case has it's own facts, which is why it's so important to acknowledge them.

Contrast the above case with this next one, about a decorated an honored Boston cop shot in the face by a career felon. The felon was then killed in a shootout with other police officers. So who was the victim? You decide:




A Boston Cop Shooting and Our Post-Truth Era

[...] According to several Boston cops at the crime scene, people began calling them pigs, shouting “Ferguson…Ferguson” and “hands up…don’t shoot.” This despite the fact—the fact!—that an outside camera from a store next to where the shootout occurred captured the image of West emerging from the driver’s side of his car to instantly shoot Moynihan, who had not even drawn his weapon.

“This is where we are now,” one of the cops said. “Everyone has their own reality. Their own facts. The truth of the situation doesn’t matter. People want to believe what they think happened. Not what really happened. That’s the recent history of almost every encounter we have lately on the street.”

Sadly, it seems as if there is no longer any real history. Just momentary reactions to events that disappear like sky-writing with items like Twitter, texts, Meerkat, Snapchat, and Instagram. And in this, our snap-of-a-finger, Chernobyl-like culture, with almost daily explosions occurring only to be eclipsed in a single news cycle, email and Facebook can resemble the National Archives.

A majority of Americans are more aware of what happened in Ferguson last summer than with what occurred on a city street in Boston on Friday night or on too many streets and neighborhoods nearly every day. Know more about the life of Robert Durst than that of a parent who is afraid to let a child play outdoors in places where guns are more accessible than text books.

We have more tools at hand, literally, to make life easier and more productive than ever. We have Google, Wikipedia, iPads, iPhones, iTunes, YouTube, Netflix, and 600 cable channels. We can shop, pay bills, order food, and get nearly everything delivered, all of it with the touch of a finger on a device in the palm of our hand.

Yet we have a criminal justice system that seems unable to deal with proven violent career criminals like Angelo West who threaten lives every day. Our jails are crowded with those doing extended time for possession of drugs while those arrested multiple times for possession of handguns are often free to walk streets like time bombs eager to explode.

We are at the point where the immediacy of the moment crowds out any thought of reflection. Everyone has a smart phone and everything is recorded. One event spills into another. Conclusions come quickly at the near total expense of consideration of what just actually happened. Reality is self defined as the mob, any mob, writes its own history, never to be contradicted by the quiet statement of truth. [...]

The facts DO matter. Instant gratification of social media be damned.

There has always been people who jump to conclusions and make shallow assessments without looking more deeply. That's nothing new. What is new is that such people have access to social media, where they can instantly amplify their misguided opinions to the world. Ironically, that same technology can also make the facts of the situation be known more quickly, for anyone who cares to bother about the facts. In our technological world of instant gratification, people are often too willing to be lazy and treat their opinions like facts. People who don't care about the facts muddy the water for everyone, and do more harm than good.

These are just excerpts, please follow the links and read the full articles for the details, the complete picture.

I'm sick of hearing people talk about their unsubstantiated opinions as if they were facts. Our Brave New World is going to have to do better than that. For all of our sakes.

     

Titanic Facts, Figures, and ... Debunked Myths

On my earlier post about Titanic Cabin Classes, I mistakenly suggested that after the third class accommodations, there was Steerage class. On further research, I discovered that 3rd class WAS Steerage, but upgraded from what Steerage class was on most ships of that time.

I also discovered a lot of other things, and thought I would share the links here.

Titanic Facts
The Life & Loss of the RMS Titanic in Numbers

[...]

3,547 - the maximum number of people the Titanic could carry.

2,223 - the number of people aboard (passengers and crew).

13 - the number of honeymooning couples on the voyage.

Read more facts about the Titanic passengers -->

14,000 - the gallons of drinking water used every 24 hours.

40,000 - the number of fresh eggs in the ship's provisions.

1,000 - the number of bottles of wine taken aboard.

Read more facts about the food on the Titanic -->

64 - the number of lifeboats the Titanic was equipped to carry.

20 - the number of lifeboats she actually carried.

28 - the number of people on board the first lifeboat out of a capacity of 65 people.

Read more facts about the Titanic lifeboats -->

6 - the number of warnings of icebergs the Titanic received before the collision.

160 - the minutes it took the Titanic to sink after hitting the iceberg (2 hours and 40 minutes).

-2 - the temperature of the sea water in centigrade.

Read more facts about the Titanic sinking -->

31.6 - the total percentage of passengers and crew who survived.

53.4 - the percentage who could have survived, given the number of spaces available on the Titanic lifeboats.

2 - the number of dogs who survived (lapdogs taken aboard lifeboats by their owners).
[...]

That's just a sampling of data, from the front page. There are multiple links that will take you further into much more data. But if you want more than technical facts and figures, how about myth debunking:

Titanic Trivia: The Facts and the Myths

[...]

Common Myths and Facts

Myth: The Titanic was touted by the White Star Line as being unsinkable.

Though many experts at the time did proclaim the Titanic "practically unsinkable" because of the addition of the watertight doors, she was not described as unsinkable by anyone responsible for her creation until after the fact. When informed of the Titanic's predicament, White Star Line Vice President P.A.S. Franklin was quoted as saying, "We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe the boat is unsinkable."

Alhough, one promotional brochure put out by the White Star Line did say, "...as far as it is possible to do, these two wonderful vessels are designed to be unsinkable."

Myth: The Titanic was trying to set a speed record, causing them to ignore the important warnings.

This was not true for many reasons, the first being that they had chosen a longer, more southern route. It was slower but they hoped to avoid ice. We also have to remember that travel and communication was not as it is today. An early arrival would have required that travel arrangements be made days or weeks in advance for the arriving passengers. If they arrived a day early, most of them would have been left standing at the docks for another day. In addition to this fact, the last boiler had never been lit. Even if it had been lit, breaking the record would have required a full 26 knots, but the Titanic's top speed was 21 knots. Even attempting to break the record would have risked severe engine damage.

Quote from an interview before launch: "'Will she ever dock on Tuesday?'
'No,' Smith said emphatically, 'and there will be no attempt to bring her in on Tuesday. She was built for a Wednesday ship and her run this first voyage has demonstrated that she will fulfill the expectations of the builders.' Mr. Ismay said that on her return trip she would steam at 21 knots the first day then gradually work her speed to see what her engines could do."

However, the captain was concerned with being on time, which most likely led to his failure to slow down in ice-laden waters.

Myth: Third class passengers were locked below deck to keep them from getting off the ship.

While 201 first class passengers survived and 173 second class passengers survived, far more third class passengers perished. However, there was actually no attempt to keep third class passengers from getting into the lifeboats, or to divide potential survivors by class in any way. The trouble for third class was from several factors. First of all, many of them did not speak English and did not understand the orders to go to the boat deck. They had to be led to the boats, and even then many refused to board. Most of the surviving third class passengers actually had English surnames, indicating that they understood the danger and weren't as suspicious about getting into the lifeboats. Third class passengers also had much further to go to get to the boat deck, leaving them last on deck, with many still arriving after the lifeboats had already launched.

Myth: The Titanic did not have enough lifeboats because the of the owners' pride and vanity.

Actually, the number of lifeboats on the Titanic met the legal requirements at the time. The trouble lay in outdated laws that did not account for a ship the sheer size of the Titanic. However, there were more passengers than the lifeboats could accommodate, and many were launched at less than full capacity. They had the capacity to save 1,178, but in the end the Carpathian rescued only 705 survivors.

Myth: J. Bruce Ismay was a coward who saved himself, while allowing so many others to die.

Chief Executive of the White Star Line, J. Bruce Ismay was accused by many of being a selfish man who took a seat on one of the remaining lifeboats, leaving women and children to die. He was vilified by the American press for his decisions, but the press doesn't always get things right.

Ismay was described as an extremely shy man by people who knew him, a trait that was often mistaken for arrogance. During the inquiry into the Titanic disaster, a number of women came forward saying that it was Mr. Ismay himself who convinced them to board the lifeboats. Only after all of the surrounding women and children were boarded did he take his seat. [...]

And there is more, such as what was the cost of tickets in today's dollars, some premonitions people had who chose not to go, what was found on the wreck on the ocean floor, etc.

And speaking of premonitions, here is some weird stuff:

Titanic Weird Stuff

Astonishingly, the tragedy of Titanic was anticipated in stories written before the ship set sail. The most striking is “The Sinking of a Modern Liner” written in 1886 by W.T. Stead, the famous English journalist and spiritualist. By a macabre coincidence, Stead went down with Titanic. In his story, a liner leaves Liverpool, picks up passengers and mailbags in Queenstown and on its journey to New York is in a collision. There are too few lifeboats, panic ensues and the Captain brandishes a revolver to keep steerage passengers from storming the lifeboat deck. [...]

There were also other premonitions. If you follow they link, they offer a video too.


One other odd thing I found, was a growing interest in the food on the Titanic:



Study of food eaten aboard Titanic a window into passengers' lives, class system

LONDON, Ont. - In the total scope of what happened to the Titanic, it is curious that so many people seem fascinated by what its passengers ate. A century after the disaster, numerous websites are devoted exclusively to the subject and elaborate Titanic dinners are staged to recreate the final meal on the doomed ship.

About 2 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the “unsinkable” White Star Line ocean liner went down in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg, killing 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers and crew. Yet just three years later, on May 1, 1915, RMS Lusitania, another luxury British passenger ship, was torpedoed by a German U-boat just off the coast of Ireland with a loss of 1,200 lives and nobody writes about what those people had for dinner.

[...]

For "Last Dinner," Archbold studied the passengers themselves, particularly the illustrious first class, set the scene and recreated events of the final evening based on archived accounts. McCauley, a Stratford Chef School-trained French chef who was working at Canadian Living magazine, was called upon to research the food.

Three menus that survived the sinking were her starting point. One was the first-class dinner menu from the night of April 14 — the final meal. The second was a second-class dinner menu from the same night. The last was a badly water-damaged third-class breakfast menu from April 12 recovered from the jacket of a deceased passenger.

"Because we've got first-, second- and third-class food, we know a little bit about what the people were like," McCauley says. Head chef Charles Proctor, who went down with the ship, "really tried to make the food match the people.

"In second class, there were many people who raved about how fancy it was. It was like birthday celebration-type dining for them every night."

The second-class menu for the three-course meal served April 14 indicates the passengers had a choice of four main dishes: baked haddock with sharp sauce, curried chicken and rice, lamb with mint sauce or roast turkey with savoury cranberry sauce.

In third class, according to a White Star Line sample bill of fare reproduced in the book, dinner was served at noon and featured items such as roast pork, beefsteak and kidney pie, fricassee rabbit and corned beef and cabbage.

With the third-class menu, Proctor "did a great job of epitomizing what a British person's diet would be at that time," McCauley says. "In the end they had (third-class) passengers from a lot of different countries who were probably a little confused by it, but his heart was in the right place."

But with first class, she says, "he hit the nail right on the head" with a staggering 11-course gourmet banquet. Nine of those courses were accompanied by appropriate wines.

[...]

She says what impressed her most was "the productivity of that kitchen. They did 6,000 meals a day on the Titanic with only 80 chefs. It was a 24/7 job. Everything was made from scratch and this was highly stylized food. It took incredible skill." [...]

If you read the whole article, you'll see, among other things, that it mentions that the book is being used by some people to create "Titanic Dinner Parties", recreating the last meals, in detail.

Gosh. Whatever floats yer boat, I guess.
     

President Obama, the "Blank Screen"

He actually said that about himself in his 2nd book:

Obama Goes From Blank Slate to Empty Suit

In the prologue to the second of his autobiographies, "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama said: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."

Stanford University professor Shelby Steele, who, like Mr. Obama, has a black father and a white mother, thinks the key to Mr. Obama's popularity in 2008 was his racial identity.

"Obama's special charisma ... always came much more from the racial idealism he embodied than from his political ideas," wrote Mr. Steele.

[...]

Being a "blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views" is a good way to be elected president ... especially when the incumbent is saddled with an unpopular war and the stock market melts down two months before the election. But after two years in office, that blank screen can look more like an empty suit.

"For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president," wrote Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus last week. She generally supports him but says "there are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action -- unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. He is, too often, more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful. The dots connect to form an unsettling portrait of a 'Where's Waldo?' presidency." [...]

No surprise there. If you vote for a blank screen, no matter what you project onto it, sooner or later you will be faced with whatever was really there all along.

It fits in with this too:

"Obama’s deep thinking is ultimately bogus"

[...] Time and again, when the impressive thing would be to make a strong and timely decision — and to make a clear case for it — Obama hesitates, vacillates, equivocates, and ends up, as in the matter of gay marriage, making a muddle of things and riling up pretty much everybody; and instead of recognizing this habit as a weakness, Obama himself shows every sign of considering it a virtue, a mark of excellence, that distinguishes him from lesser — which is to say less cognitively inclined — beings.
...
Obama’s deep thinking is ultimately bogus. It’s as if he’s posing for Rodin, elbow on knee, chin on fist — all the while staring in a mirror, pleased by what he sees.

It seems to me that many people gravitated to, and chose Obama, for reasons more emotional than rational. Emotional ideas people projected onto him, rather than observing what was really there. Emotions can be deceptive though, especially if you use them as your only guide.

Emotions, no matter how sincerely felt, that are based on fantasy rather than fact, can get you into lots of trouble. That's why human beings have both emotions and a rational mind; we are meant to use them both. They balance each other. They should be used together.
     

The bias and dishonesty of the Media as they try to exploit the Giffords shooting for political spin

Most of the people who work in the mainstream media are Democrats, and they seem to be bending over backwards to make the Giffords assassin look like a Tea Party person. They just can't stop themselves. Never mind that the shooter, Loughner, is a Truther Pothead Creep Nihilist Psycho who has more in common with Jane Fonda than Sara Palin.

Back in the 80's, when Hinckley shot Reagan, nobody called it political. They just said Hinckley was crazy. I don't see it as any different here. Loughner sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic. Described by a friend as "confrontational and non-linear". Non-linear. How sane does that sound?

A look at the actual facts is more telling than biased media spin:

How Odd: Details Emerge About AZ Shooter and Giffords, None Involve Palin

The Wall Street Journal has been kind enough to publish an article that looks at the actual facts and background the Arizona shooter, divulging details about the freak’s past, including what happened at the 2007 meeting between him and Giffords. Other details of his decline are also discussed which, weirdly enough, have absolutely nothing to do with politics or Sarah Palin. I know, shocking.

As the orgy of blaming Palin and ‘crosshairs’ and ‘inflammatory political rhetoric’ continues, the actual tipping point for the AZ shooter seems to have been a breakup with a girlfriend, drug abuse and resentment at Giffords for what he thought was a disrespectful response at a 2007 ‘Congress on Your Corner.’

In one of the rare stories that doesn’t mention or blame Sarah Palin or the Tea Party, we get a clearer look at the alleged gunman and what seems to have sent him on his rampage Saturday morning. And, surprise, it wasn’t Palin, political rhetoric, or ‘prejudice and bigotry.’

Suspect Fixated on Giffords
Accused Gunman Went to Congresswoman’s Event in 2007; ‘I Planned Ahead’ [...]

It goes on with excerpts from the Wall St. Journal article. It reveals an unhappy youth who got into illegal drug use and became increasingly anti-social and disturbed. Who raged against the US Constitution. Certainly not a Tea Party person. When will the MSM start reporting the facts, instead of "spin"? I won't hold my breath.


Here is a good reminder of where the real hate is coming from:
The progressive “climate of hate:” An illustrated primer, 2000-2010

It's a shame that during this National tragedy, that the Left has to resort to lies and distortions to try to exploit it to their advantage. They have no shame. For them, "The ends justifies the means". Facts be damned.     

Does the Truth about Ted Kennedy matter?

We aren't supposed to speak ill of the dead, or so some people say. Yet many people are speaking ill of the living, about those who don't think Ted Kennedy was such a good man. Here is some typical nonsense from USA Today:

Kennedy funeral rings with hope, Twitter with vitriol

Are you and I the judges of atonement? How much is good enough?

Today at Ted Kennedy's funeral Mass, one priest said, wove together "memory and hope." But what of the judge on high -- if you, like most Americans, believe in a God who makes final judgment?

Like most Americans, you may believe all good people go to heaven. So who is good enough? Was he a good enough Catholic? (Although Pope Benedict XVI has so far made no public message of sympathy for his passing) A good enough Christian? A good enough man in the end? Not to judge by the vitriol on Twitter ... [...]

There are a whole bunch of people who want to ignore many things Kennedy did in his life, just white-wash it away like it never happened. Those who don't go along with that, are being targeted as unkind and mean spirited at best; as bitter, judgmental, unfeeling Monsters at worst.

But what about the plain facts?

In the comments section of the above article, someone posts the inconvenient facts that the Left wants to whitewash:

As soon as his cancer was detected, I noticed the immediate attempt at the "canonization" of old Teddy Kennedy by the mainstream media. They are saying what a "great American" he is. I say, let's get a couple things clear & not twist the facts to change the real history.

1. He was caught cheating at Harvard when he attended it. He was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him.

2. While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. Oops! The man can't count to four! His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England (a step up from bootlegging liquor into the US from Canada during prohibition), pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea, where a war was raging. No preferential treatment for him! (like he charged that President Bush received).

3. Kennedy was assigned to Paris, never advanced beyond the rank of private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged. Imagine a person of his "education" NEVER advancing past the rank of Private!

4. While attending law school at the University of Virginia, he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark.. Yet his Virginia driver's license was never revoked. Coincidentally, he passed the bar exam in 1959. Amazing!

5. In 1964, he was seriously injured in a plane crash and hospitalized for several months. Test results done by the hospital at the time he was admitted had shown he was legally intoxicated. The results of those tests remained a "state secret" until in the 1980's when the report was unsealed. Didn't hear about that from the unbiased media, did we?

6. On July 19, 1969, Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts . At about 11:00 PM, he borrowed his chauffeur's keys to his Oldsmobile limousine and offered to give a ride home to Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker. Leaving the island via an unlit bridge with no guard rail, Kennedy steered the car off the bridge, flipped, and into Poucha Pond.

7. He swam to shore and walked back to the party passing several houses and a fire station. Two friends then returned with him to the scene of the accident. According to their later testimony, they told him what he already knew - that he was required by law to immediately report the accident to the authorities. Instead Kennedy made his way to his hotel, called his lawyer, and went to sleep. Kennedy called the police the next morning and by then the wreck had already been discovered. Before dying Kopechne had scratched at the upholstered floor above her head in the upside-down car.

The Kennedy family began "calling in favors", ensuring that any inquiry would be contained. Her corpse was whisked out-of-state to her family before an autopsy could be conducted.

Further details are uncertain, but after the accident Kennedy says he repeatedly dove under the water trying to rescue Kopechne and he didn't call police because he was in a state of shock. It is widely assumed Kennedy was drunk, and he held off calling police in hopes that his family could fix the problem overnight. Since the accident Kennedy's "political enemies" have referred to him as the distinguished Senator from Chappaquiddick. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and was given a SUSPENDED SENTENCE OF TWO MONTHS.

Kopechne's family received a small payout from the Kennedy's insurance policy and never sued. There was later an effort to have her body exhumed and autopsied, but her family successfully fought against this in court, and Kennedy's family paid their attorney's bills.... A "token of friendship"?

8. Kennedy has held his Senate seat for more than forty years, but considering his longevity, his accomplishments seem scant. He authored or argued for legislation that ensured a variety of civil rights, increased the minimum wage in 1981, made access to health care easier for the indigent, funded Meals on Wheels for fixed-income seniors, and is widely held as the "standard-bearer for liberalism".. In his very first Senate roll he was the floor manager for the bill that turned U.S. Immigration policy upside down and opened the floodgate for immigrants from third world countries.

9. Since that time, he has been the prime instigator and author of every expansion of an increase in immigration up to and including the latest attempt to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. Not to mention the pious grilling he gave the last two Supreme Court nominees, as if he was the standard bearer for the nation in matters of "what's right". What a pompous a**!

10. He is known around Washington as a public drunk, loud, boisterous, and very disrespectful to ladies. JERK is a better description than "great American".. "A blonde in every pond" is his motto.

Let's not allow the spin doctors to make this jerk a hero -- how quickly the American public forgets what his real legacy is.

If Ted Kennedy did some good things in his life, fine. But the truth is the whole story, not just the cherry-picked good parts. No one is perfect, we are all flawed, yet some people's lives lean more in one direction than the other. The Kennedy fans want us to forget or not speak about his flaws, so they can stack the good side of the scale in his favor.

I don't particularly enjoy speaking ill of the dead. I just happen to care about what the facts are, what the truth is. The Left is now pissing in the soup, and trying to vilify those of us who won't drink it.

I say, no way, no white-wash. The truth is what it is. Deal with it.

If that makes me mean-spirited in some people's eyes, so be it. I can only say that, leaving Mary Jo to suffocate to death, clawing at the floor in his upside down submerged car, while he phoned his lawyer and then went to bed, could be interpreted as far more "mean" than anything anyone could say about him now.

It's a travesty that Kennedy was ever allowed to serve as a senator after what he had done was known. If the majority of people in this country now think he was a great man, they are either ignorant of the facts, or we, as a nation, are in big trouble.

As for comments like this, from the USA Today article:

Are you and I the judges of atonement? How much is good enough?

I'm not the judge of his soul. I liked what The Anchoress said about the life and death of Ted Kennedy on her blog:

[...] Some will focus on his personal sins -the assumed repentance or lack of same (of which they will likely have no real knowledge, just hunches) and some will presume to know the state of his soul, but those will be the inveterates, working from long-habit. Most Christians will, I think, understand that “the favors of the Lord are not exhausted, his mercies not over and done” and will simply pray in hopes that Kennedy had made a contrite and humble confession of his failings and sins.

Others, of course, will suggest that Kennedy’s pro-abortion positions, in and of themselves, should damn him forever in the eyes of God.

Thankfully, God knows more, and sees more, than the rest of us, because eventually we’ll all need to count on his mercy, as we face his justice. For all that we know of Kennedy, there is much we do not know. A family member who works with the very poor once told me that when he was in a real fix and unable to find help for, for instance, a sick child in need of surgery, a phone call to Kennedy’s office would set the “Irish Mafia” of professional people -doctors, lawyers, pilots and such- into brisk motion. I think an examination of the life of every “great” person (and I mean “great” in terms of power and influence) will expose deep flaws and surprising episodes of generosity. [...]

She says a lot of thoughtful things on the topic, follow the link if it interests you.

Here on my blog, I'm just wanting to provide the complete picture that the Media won't give you. At best, Ted Kennedy was a mixed bag, a man with serious character flaws. At worst... well, you decide.


Related Links:

Kennedy's Kopechne jokes

What About Questioning A Kennedy?

Ted Kennedy is dead. Now, "Chappaquidicare"?

Youtube: Kennedy liked to joke about Chappaquiddick?
     

What!?! AP isn't gushing with Obama praise?

Is the honeymoon over? It may be for some reporters, I was surprised to see this article from the Associated Press:

FACT CHECK: Obama disowns deficit he helped shape

WASHINGTON – "That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him — and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years — who shaped a budget so out of balance.

And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.

[...]

A look at some of his claims Wednesday:

OBAMA: "Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit.... That wasn't me. Number two, there is almost uniform consensus among economists that in the middle of the biggest crisis, financial crisis, since the Great Depression, we had to take extraordinary steps. So you've got a lot of Republican economists who agree that we had to do a stimulus package and we had to do something about the banks. Those are one-time charges, and they're big, and they'll make our deficits go up over the next two years." — in Missouri.

THE FACTS:

Congress controls the purse strings, not the president, and it was under Democratic control for Obama's last two years as Illinois senator. Obama supported the emergency bailout package in President George W. Bush's final months — a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.

To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war, a drain on federal coffers for six years before he became president. But with one major exception, he voted in support of Iraq war spending.

The economy has worsened under Obama, though from forces surely in play before he became president, and he can credibly claim to have inherited a grim situation.

Still, his response to the crisis goes well beyond "one-time charges."

He's persuaded Congress to expand children's health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He's moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion. [...]

Wow. Considering the source, and how most of the MSM has been gushing with praise, this is almost strong criticism. If you read the whole thing, there are more Obama statements, about health-care and Social Security, that are given the "Fact-Busting" treatment in this style.

I could get used to this! Is it an aberration, or a new trend by the AP? I guess we'll see as time goes on.
     

Sarah Palin Smears, Lies, Rumors and Gossip

If you can't argue with what someone says, assassinate their character. That's what the left is making a massive effort towards doing to Sarah Palin.

I've been reading things this past week that are just ridiculous. Total fabrications. Even the MSM is quoting lunatic posts from the Daily Kos as if they were facts! How is anyone supposed to debate about things that are just made up out of thin air? Whatever happened to journalism? Checking facts?

Here are two sources for Palin fact checking:

FightThePalinSmears.com

We are not connected to or supported by the McCain/ Palin campaign. Strictly supported by ads.

Many of the major lies are listed in the left sidebar for quick and easy reference. Breaking stories in the center. Lots of links. References and resources in drop down menus from the top.

Palin Rumors

Cripes, this has gotten ridiculous. Folks, look, let’s just run through a list here. (Updated.)

An extensive list, with embedded links. The list numbers 53 items, at the time I'm publishing this link.

Fortunately, the true facts do matter to many of us. Wouldn't it be nice if the MSM thought the truth was important, too?

Here is an introductory video about Sarah Palin, that was meant to introduce her at the RNC. They cut it from the program due to time restraints, which is unfortunate. It's only about 4 minutes long, and it would have cleared up some things about her.



By not showing the video before she gave her speech, the teleprompter was thrown out of synchronization. Sarah gave that great speech just from her notes. Looking on the bright side, we found out she doesn't NEED a teleprompter.