Jul 22 2010
You Can’t Manufacture Credibility & Respect
The democrat party, as a whole, is learning a harsh lesson these days. Where they naively thought success was measured by the amount of crap produced, they are now learning that the quality or success of their labors is the greater measure by far. If they could do one thing well they would be on the road to redemption. But they are not doing anything well, accept creating a historic backlash in the electorate.
When 90% of the country opposes you, you are doing something very wrong. When 90% of the country opposes the fruits of your labor, they will undo what you created with amazing speed and energy. The House of Representatives is lost to anyone who aligned themselves with the Democrats on their economic stimulus dud, their bailout raid on the treasury, their transformation of health care into an IRS tax, or their delusions about carbon dioxide (the air we breath out) and global climate.
It is the liberal/progressive movement, in all its incarnations and flavors, that has truly self-destructed through out this period of political ascension for the left, which peaked in 2008 with the election of an inexperienced liberal president. These left wing ideologues have replaced civil, creative, optimistic and mature approaches to solving this nation’s problems with derogatory, simplistic, alarmist and juvenile fantasies. They have become corrupt and conspiratorial, relying on propaganda and messaging instead of generating sound ideas that generate public support..
They cannot grasp why trickle-out government spending (which only goes to selected contractors in a few niche markets) failed to broadly spur the economy and generate jobs like across-the-board tax cuts can (cuts which do not discriminate, are instantaneous and hit every nook and corner of the country). The liberals hid the reality of Obamacare, where their version of saving medical costs is to limit available services. Health care is now all about diverting billions of dollars into creating a massive bureaucracy to oversee everyone’s participation in Obamacare – not a dime of which will be spent on doctors or patients, new drugs or preventive care. How will these ‘watchers’ save a life? How can they when they are siphoning off needed dollars?
It is no wonder 90% of the country is in opposition – they all have the common sense and intelligence to see why liberal fantasies are recipes for disaster. But the damage being done to the left is not just to a political party.
The next blow to hit  is going to be the “Journolist” Conspiracy. While serendipitous moments of like-minded thinking can be expected in the leftward biased world of ‘journalism’ – and tolerated – the realization that a cadre of left wing zealots have attempted to control the nation’s media focus and help their ‘team’ get elected smacks of a high crime. These people are allowed their own opinions, but they are not allowed to twist the nation’s through coordinate misinformation and lies.
Take the ugly war on Governor Sarah Palin, and put yourself or someone you know in her shoes. She is simply someone who arose out of Main Street to do what she felt was right (and succeeded). But to the far left, she was a threat:
“What a joke,†added Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker. “I always thought that some part of McCain doesn’t want to be president, and this choice proves my point. Welcome back, Admiral Stockdale.â€
Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign†would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here – scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia wing-nut a heartbeat away …… bang away at McCain’s age making this unusually significant …. I think people should be replicating some of the not-so-pleasant viral email campaigns that were used against [Obama].â€
Emphasis mine. If you can stomach it, a review of the mad Andrew Sullivan and his obsession with the Palin’s youngesrt son Trig/ It is a classic case of an emotionally disturbed human being. Sullivan has single handedly created a completely new variation of ‘stalking’.
This is not America, this is some insecure lefty railing against his personal demons. As we all know the best anyone could claim was Palin and Obama had similar levels of inexperience on foreign policy, etc. Palin clearly had much more administrative experience than the community organizer who claimed running a Senate campaign was good enough. But the anti-christian thing is just ugly. Just as ugly as the most crass racism.
This Levy tool is likely a planted agitator, set in place to lead the not-so-bright others on journolist to do the bidding of his masters. Otherwise he is a delusional nut. Either way he represents the worst of humanity, let alone America.
As we uncover this cadre of propagandists, creating half truths from the depths of their insecurity with diversity of opinion, we come face to face with a classical inner demon of humanity: fear. Liberals hate Christians/Catholics for some weird and inexplicable reason. Maybe the feel inferior to them, who knows. I am not religious, but being in a church does not make me feel hate towards those in attendance. I know I am of a differing view, but that does not make me despise them.
Liberals hate fiscal conservatives. They want to have people rely on the mythical goodness of government instead of having to work and compete for personal success. Is it because they have allows felt out-classed, not quite up to the challenge? What drives this fear of the open market which the rest of us – existing in that open market – embrace and support?
Whatever drives these people, they have gone beyond the bounds of acceptable actions. You cannot bribe and force into law left wing policies that fail, and then expect credibility and respect. You cannot rely on gutter character assassination, followed by unproven cries of victimhood, to endow you with public sympathy (don’t being calling ‘cracker’ a ‘racist’ unless you got some hard and indisputable evidence). You cannot use a conspiracy of thug-like propaganda tactics to inspire people or win their hearts. The Journolist Conspiracy illustrates how the left tried to manufacture credibility and respect for their side out of falsehoods and lies aimed at their opponents. It just does not work that way.
The liberal/progressive movement has been based on brutal and simple minded strategies. America was built on inspiration, dedication and honor. It should be no surprise the two would not mix well.
It seems to me that Academics of most stripes and Urinalists are merely kids that never had to grow up and participate outside their High School/ College comfort zones. They surround themselves with like minded Professional Students who advance based on ideology rather than merit! They spread their delusions and their small minded peers tell them they are enlightened.
Their influence on our young is sad to behold. No-one should be allowed to teach until they have proven they can also produce and substantiate their rediculus theories!
These small minded twits influenced the young and got a small minded ideologically driven Community Organized propped up as a president and the Professional Liar is taking them down with him. Fortunately as the record attests many of the young no longer buy this B.S. as is evidenced by the numbers that chose to serve our country in the U.S. Military.
An institution by the way that is wrestling with its’ own politically correct demons.
Andrew Bteitbart and Stanley McChrystal should be given medals for speaking truth to the delusional athough I fear McChrystal may have some of those delusions himself due to his R.O.E. , unless of course he was just following orders in which case he is a national hero for resigning and bringing the ineptitude of Liberal War fighters to the fore.
AJ,
Pay close attention to this Hot Air peice:
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/07/21/whistling-past-the-journolist-graveyard/
“… The public is looking for ways to forget it voted for Obama. A narrative of fraud and deception is building around the 2008 election, as the polls for this disastrous presidency plummet. People who don’t want to admit they voted for Obama have an appetite for believing they were tricked into doing so. Laying blame at the feet of a media they increasingly distrust will be very attractive.
A rational, informed electorate wouldn’t have allowed Obama to survive the Reverend Wright scandal. A great deal of media manipulation was necessary to slip him past such obstacles, and into the White House. It will be somewhat comforting to think it was all an expensive prank by the JournoList frat boys.
I don’t think it’s healthy, or desirable, for the public to let itself off the hook so easily. America must fully understand the Obama mistake to ensure it is never repeated. However, I can see why people would prefer to embrace a simpler explanation. There will be a real hunger to find one in the material released by the Daily Caller. That’s one of the big reasons this story isn’t going away any time soon. It has the coarse texture and rotting smell of the very last straw for the unhappy consumers of the mainstream media, and the angry marks of the Obama swindle.”
There is nothing like the anger of a mark realizing he has been swindled.
AJ,
Also, what Daniel Greenfield just said at canadafreepress.com
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/25610
The media has reached the end of the road. It still makes noises about public service and informing the public, but everyone knows by now that these are buzzwords that mean op-eds and talking being run as news stories, commentaries being run as broadcasts. No one is buying it anymore, and no one cares. The culture of political conformity has destroyed the media. Its war on the Bush Administration and anointment of Obama were the last gasps of political propagandizing from a collapsing brontosaurus that once defined how Americans got their information. What began as great edifices of journalism that served information coast to coast and around the world, now come to their end as shoddy political blogs ranting about who dares to disagree with them. The media’s obit is written, and there’s no one even around to read it anymore.
The sad thing is that the MS journalists have used those on the “Journolists” for their talking points, as if there was a there-there. It is now so clear how nightly news was generated from these jurks sitting around devising stories to bring down those who they decided were unfit to lead this nation.
“Bush lied”, what a great lead, never mind that Hillary, Kennedy, Kerry, Gore, and the echoed Bush. They found a line that got Bush! They found a line that would bring down his presidency, the left applauds, they shout, they feel glee, they found a line and MSM was happy to go with it. Just think of the number of Americans that died in Iraqi for that story line to discredit Bush, and how fast the left took to the line for political power. Oh God, I feel sick.
This is what MSM has come to!
The sad thing is that the MS journalists have used those on the “Journolists” for their talking points, as if there was a there-there. It is now so clear how nightly news was generated from these jurks sitting around devising stories to bring down those who they decided were unfit to lead this nation.
“Bush lied”, what a great lead, never mind that Hillary, Kennedy, Kerry, Gore, echoed Bush. They found a line that got Bush! They found a line that would bring down his presidency, the left applauds, they shout, they feel glee, they found a line and MSM was happy to go with it. Just think of the number of Americans that died in Iraqi for that story line to discredit Bush, and how fast the left took to the line for political power. Oh God, I feel sick.
This is what MSM has come to!
From the Free Republic site via the American Thinker blog:
The following 65 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv.
1. Ezra Klein
2. Dave Weigel
3. Matthew Yglesias
4. David Dayen
5. Spencer Ackerman
6. Jeffrey Toobin
7. Eric Alterman
8. Paul Krugman
9. John Judis
10. Eve Fairbanks
11. Mike Allen
12. Ben Smith
13. Lisa Lerer
14. Joe Klein
15. Brad DeLong
16. Chris Hayes
17. Matt Duss
18. Jonathan Chait
19. Jesse Singal
20. Michael Cohen
21. Isaac Chotiner
22. Katha Pollitt
23. Alyssa Rosenberg
24. Rick Perlstein
25. Alex Rossmiller
26. Ed Kilgore
27. Walter Shapiro
28. Noam Scheiber
29. Michael Tomasky
30. Rich Yesels
31. Tim Fernholz
32. Dana Goldstein
33. Jonathan Cohn
34. Scott Winship
35. David Roberts
36. Luke Mitchell
37. John Blevins
38. Moira Whelan
39. Henry Farrell
40. Josh Bearman
41. Alec McGillis
42. Greg Anrig
43. Adele Stan
44. Steven Teles
45. Harold Pollack
46. Adam Serwer
47. Ryan Donmoyer
48. Seth Michaels
49. Kate Steadman
50. Matt Duss
51. Laura Rozen
52. Jesse Taylor
53. Michael Hirsh
54. Daniel Davies
55. Jonathan Zasloff
56. Richard Kim
57. Thomas Schaller
58. Jared Bernstein
59. Holly Yeager
60. Joe Conason
61. David Greenberg
62. Todd Gitlin
63. Mark Schmitt
64. Kevin Drum
65. Sarah Spitz
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brendan Condon, Free To Prosper. Free To Prosper said: You Can’t Manufacture Credibility & Respect http://bit.ly/bBuZHK :: Strata-sphere […]
Funny how some conservative bloggers are claiming that Andrew Breitbart has lost credibility with the release of the highly edited Shirley Sherrod video when the above members already had their credibility destroyed.
I don’t believe that Andrew Breitbart is losing credibility over this video and I don’t believe he had any intent in causing Sherrod to lose her job. And if Sherrod decides to sue Andrew of the loss of her job, she won’t win it.
Ya think that the journolism is about to be dead? There are still too many naive enough to believe them.
Even if he did Breitbart did mess this up (and I do not believe he did) you do not loose your credibility after one mess up. The MSM has constantly been screwing things up for so long that they have no credibility in determining someone else credibility. It like saying the murder’s saying we cannot trust a jaywalker.
# lurker9876on 22 Jul 2010 at 10:50 am
“Funny how some conservative bloggers are claiming that Andrew Breitbart has lost credibility with the release of the highly edited Shirley Sherrod video when the above members already had their credibility destroyed.”
Don’t be sucked into this line of thinking – Breitbart did NOT fire Shirley Sherrod!!
What is most damaging about the Sherrod affair is the incredibly clumsy way the White House (yes, Vilsack is part of the Obama administration) handled it. They’re try to quickly change the subject so as to limit the damage. But the damage is done…
Look for more revelations to come…
This is a crime against journalistic eithics and integrity. Why aren’t they held accountable by their peers and employers? I fear the corruption is too deeply imbedded and far reaching. Will the last real journalist please stand up?
PS. Sad day for America and the importance of a free and fair press to our Republic.
Sherrod has some history indicating her racism and marxism. Plus she and/or her husband worked with Bill Ayers.
Archtype, agreed that Breitbart did not fire Shirely. WH Adm did and the way she was fired was appalling!
I understand that Brietbart tried to find a more complete video but wasn’t able to. Turned out that NAACP had an almost full video (there was one place that seemed to be edited out). And what’s worse is that Ben Jealous claimed that he was snookered by FOX when he happened to be snookered by himself because he was in attendance of Sherrod’s speech.
Remember how Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric was so edited out?
Context matters and Breitbart’s heavily edited video certainly had enough context to do the trick…IOW, met his goal. His goal was to prove that NAACP is certainly not innocent of racism. And he did exactly that. He had no intention of destroying Shirley or causing her to lose her job.
I don’t see why Breitbart had to apologize either.
Funny how the “journolists” and some conservative bloggers are making the Breitbart story bigger than Ezra Klien’s Journolism site.
Archtop
Excuse my departure from the topic. I am guessing at your namesake. Are you playing a Les Paul or another Gibson “arch top” model?
OL
Well I know you did not ask me, but I prefer the double cutaway SG models. I have a recent bought Gibson SG and a circa 1980 Ibanez Artist (looks just like this one)
oneal laneon 22 Jul 2010 at 1:41 pm
Yes I own and play guitars, but my hobby is building them. I have built a couple of archtop style guitars: one like an Gibson L5 cutaway, a second like a Gibson 335, and a third like an ES-175. Guitar building is lots of fun, and (warning) can be quite addictive.
Right now, I’m working on a Hofner-style bass…
Here’s the book I used to guide me through the process:
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Archtop-Guitar-Robert-Benedetto/dp/1574240005
And as for a place to go to online to learn from other guitar building addicts, I recommend the Musical Instrument Maker’s Forum (MIMF):
http://www.mimf.com/
[…] that the politicization of justice is a very bad thing. Indeed, it was a scandal of more… You Can’t Manufacture Credibility & Respect – strata-sphere.com 07/22/2010 The democrat party, as a whole, is learning a harsh lesson […]
Would someone please tell me how “so I took him to one of his own kind” can be taken ‘out of context’ and is NOT really a racist comment?
somehow I don’t believe that is possible…
AJ, Archtop.
When I was a teen I had a copy of a 335 in cherry red. It was a “Ventura” brand with a Bigsby type trem on the tail and rosewood fretboard. I dark honey/tobacco sunburst Gibson SG when I was about 19 and kept it for a while. I got out of playing in my mid 20’s and sold them both. Regrets!!
I started playing again about a year and a half ago. My brother gave me a “Fat Strat” clone that was made in Japan in the early 1980’s. cherry red with ebony neck. “Quest” brand. It had belonged to a guitarist friend out of New Orleans that OD’ed himself.
I fell in love with the Fender Stratacaster and now have a MIA Olympic white/maple, an MIM Black/maple, a couple of Korean Squier II’s with real sweet maple necks screwed onto plywood bodies, and some Squier bullets. I bought the Squiers for tinkering with. I have upgraded the pickups and trem and trem blocks, machine heads etc. Turned them in to respectable sounding low end guitars.
I have a Baby Taylor and a couple of other low end acoustics. The only other guitar I am interested in is a 335. I cannot afford a Gibson so I hope to get an Epiphone Dot in ebony. Can’t get enough of BB or Freddie King and those humbuckers.
Arch, I understand the attraction to building and modifying guitars, I could very easily get hooked on it and had to ask myself if I was going to either play them or work on them. I chose to focus on playing them, but still learn enough to set up and refret a Strat.
I am playing through a Fender “Blues deluxe reissue” and a GDEC 15 and Danelectro Hodad II
Guitar keeps me sane in this insane time in America.
I stand with Breitbart. I heard ole Shep Smith say he was a totally discredited source. No. He has been the only one to effectively wage war on America’s #1 enemy. That enemy elected a president after trying everything under the sun to lose a war.
I made a hobby of watching their campaigns until I could identify almost immediately when a new one started. They slicked it up to the point that they produced Plamegame, AWOL, Bush Lied, and a zillion others. I quit that hobby because you really needed to read the NYT and watch MSNBC to get in on the ground.
What bothers me about this list is that the heavy players must use another one. They have to be in direct contact with the DNC to do the big campaigns. Look at how the media wrote the script and acted as witnesses in Plame.
Usually they are not so obvious as their ‘freedom march’. Jesse J even leaned over and swatted a few signs to try to get a racist response. They have never had to work so hard.
Surprise and bless Breitbart.