While there have been recent scattered protests (dubbed "Tea Parties" after a rather famous one in Boston one 235 years ago) against huge government expansion, economic control, bailouts, borrowing and spending, the day of the individual tax deadline, April 15th, was a day of concerted protests.  The "Tax Day Tea Party" was an event held at over 500 locations all across the United States.

In case you’re still wondering what all the fuss was about, a budget deficit graph may help.  (Click on the image for the source.)

Yes, we’ve had budget deficits in the past.  These and the ones to come are in a class all by themselves.  Hence the outrage from all over the country.

From Michigan to South Carolina to California (where the state GOP chair got boos) to Ohio to Kentucky to Atlanta (the largest crowd in the nation, as far as I know, at over 15,000).  This was no localized phenomenon.  This was a national movement.

More below the fold…

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Paul Harvey died today at the age of 90.  I’ve been listening to Paul Harvey on and off since high school.  Here was a guy who was entertaining to listen to, even while he was telling me the news.  He made it interesting.  His broadcasts were "visits" rather than "programs", and Saturday was all about human interest stories.

And you gotta’ hand it to him; he at least had the intellectual honesty to call his program "Paul Harvey News and Comment".  These days, comment is passed off as news.  Would that today’s broadcasters held to that same standard and had that same transparency.

My favorite recurring line of his was "Self-government without self-discipline is self-defeating."  This would be the lead-in to some story about a government somewhere either behaving badly or reaping the consequences thereof.  These days, the government of the Palestinians seems to be a daily confirmation of that line, but perhaps the United States today, throwing out fiscal discipline, will also find that to be self-defeating.

I absolutely loved his "The Rest of the Story" feature, even if some of the items were, indeed, urban legends.  Most were not, and they gave us a look at the people and events of the news in a different light, and they always ended with, "And now you know the rest of the story".  In college, during my show on the radio station, I’d read from one of his books that had collections of them.  I even wrote a "Rest of the Story" story of my own.  Once, I recorded a number of his segments off the radio and made my own cassette tape full of them.  And to give you an idea of his tenure, I also did that years later, recording off the Internet and making a CD.  Sometime I read books to my kids, but before the evening’s chapter, I’ll pick up one of those collections and read something from there first.  That is how my children knew Paul Harvey, and why even my thirteen-year-old was a little saddened when he heard of his passing.

My dad introduced me to this fine broadcaster, and my kids knew something of him.  Thus was the staying power of the man, who ended every broadcast with, "Paul Harvey…Good day!"

And now we know the end of the story.

…for weaker and weaker definitions of "hate", notes Eugene Volokh.

From a UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center study titled Hate Speech on Commercial Talk Radio:

Types of Hate Speech

We identified four types of speech that, through negative statements, create a climate of hate and prejudice: (1) false facts [including "simple falsehoods, exaggerated statements, or decontextualized facts [that] rendered the statements misleading"], (2) flawed argumentation, (3) divisive language, and (4) dehumanizing metaphors (table 1).

What a definition!

The example they give should give you pause.  If "exaggerated statements" will get you thrown in jail, we’ll all be either imprisoned or silenced. 

And note that this particular study only looked at "Commercial Talk Radio".  Obama may have come out against the "Fairness Doctrine", but if we get a back-door version of that, this may be how it happens.

Some good news from this administration:

President Obama opposes any move to bring back the so-called Fairness Doctrine, a spokesman told FOXNews.com Wednesday.

The statement is the first definitive stance the administration has taken since an aide told an industry publication last summer that Obama opposes the doctrine — a long-abolished policy that would require broadcasters to provide opposing viewpoints on controversial issues.

"As the president stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated," White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com.

The "Fairness Doctrine" is really just targeted at radio, where conservative voices dominate.  You typically don’t hear those promoting it complaining that there’s too much liberal bias in this newspaper or that TV network; it’s always a complaint about conservative opinions and ideas.  So the idea that this is about "fairness" is just a smokescreen.

Blogger Dan Riehl is skeptical, though.

Instapundit posts word that Obama does not want the Fairness Doctrine back. Great.

That makes him look like quite the moderate. But the actual doctrine was always a stretch. Get back to me in 3-6 months after we see what his FCC does in terms of "localism."

That’s always been the play more likely to get done. Until I hear something from the FCC, the WH release is what I’m growing accustomed to with Obama: just words.

It is possible to have the effect of a "Fairness Doctrine" without the name, so indeed we’ll see.  But it is nice to get the word from the President.  We’ll hold you to that, sir.

The media has, once again, set up 2 different standards for Republicans and Democrats, this time regarding the spending on inaugurations.

Four years ago, the Associated Press and others in the press suggested it was in poor taste for Republicans to spend $40 million on President Bush’s inauguration. AP writer Will Lester calculated the impact that kind of money would have on armoring Humvees in Iraq, helping victims of the tsunami, or paying down the deficit. Lester thought the party should be cancelled: “The questions have come from Bush supporters and opponents: Do we need to spend this money on what seems so extravagant?”

Fast forward to 2009. The nation is still at war (two wars, in fact), and now also faces the prospect of a severe recession and federal budget deficits topping $1 trillion as far as the eye can see. With Barack Obama’s inauguration estimated to cost $45 million (not counting the millions more that government will have to pay for security), is the Associated Press once again tsk-tsking the high dollar cost?

For the (unsurprising) answer, read the whole thing.

NewsBusters is getting the word out, even before Obama is inaugurated, that his choice for Veterans Affairs was not thrown under the bus by the Bush administration.  The myth, which lingered for years, is being given new life, most recently by the Associated Press "news" organization.

Obama also spoke about his latest Cabinet selection, retired Gen. Eric Shinseki to head the Veterans Affairs Department. Shinseki was forced into retirement by the Bush administration after he said the original invasion plan for Iraq did not include enough troops.

His retirement had been announced nearly a year before his testimony.  They also note that FactCheck.org debunked this when it started making the rounds over 4 years ago.

The "narrative" or the news?  The AP has decided which side to err on.

In a blog post, the YouTube crew has set up some new rules for "mature content".  They’re not banning it, but they are taking steps to ensure that folks don’t stumble into what they don’t want.

As a community, we have come to count on each other to be entertained, challenged, and moved by what we watch and share on YouTube. We’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to make the collective YouTube experience even better, particularly on our most visited pages. Our goal is to help ensure that you’re viewing content that’s relevant to you, and not inadvertently coming across content that isn’t.

I just have to give the YouTube folks a big "’atta boy" for this.  Taking common sense steps to keep, not just porn (which they don’t accept anyway) but even "suggestive content" out of the limelight ought to be cheered when it happens.  If you really want to find it, you can, but if you don’t, you don’t have to sift through it.  This is especially true for kids; YouTube is a nice resource to have for many purposes, but it can be a minefield.

More like this please. 

CNN makes an astounding discovery.  Many people are comparing Barack Obama to famous presidents of the past, but the news organization is urging caution.

But will Obama be a great one? Even a good one?

The Americans who are comparing him to those remarkable predecessors are putting a lot of faith in a man they barely know.

In the words of Warner Todd Hudson (to whom the hat tip goes):

And why do we "barely know" Barack Obama, CNN? Is it perhaps because the American media never took the time to vet this man? Is it because all we’ve gotten is hero worship from the media?

The man’s been campaigning for 2 years; the media should have made sure we had more than just bare knowledge of the candidate, but his background, his associates, and even his middle name were considered taboo topics.  But now they tell us we don’t know enough about him.  Thanks.

In what’s sure to be a common theme in the mainstream media in the coming months, the LA Times is just now really investigating Barack Obama’s background.  In this article, it notices that his resume is quite thin.

In his books, speeches and campaign commercials, Sen. Barack Obama has harked back to his days as a civil-rights attorney.

It is fundamental to his autobiography and was displayed on his campaign Web site and woven into his appeals for votes. In one of his television ads leading up to the South Carolina primary, Obama recalled "working as a civil-rights attorney to make sure that everybody’s vote counted."

Senior attorneys at the small firm where he worked say he was a strong writer and researcher, but was involved in relatively few cases before entering politics.

Hat tip: NewsBusters.

Of course, this information was available for the past 2 years, and yet only today does it get reported.  How…interesting.

This web site hosts a poll of Obama voters who were asked questions about the US government and the presidential candidates in particular.  The level of non- or mis-information is truly amazing.  There is an accompanying video of 12 of those respondents showing how little they knew about Obama or Biden, but how much they did know about negative reports on Sarah Palin (or mistook what Tina Fey said as a Palin quote). 

While the general lack of knowledge about who Barney Frank is, or who controls the US Congress, may indeed cross political boundaries, what I found interesting is that, of the Obama voters asked, 86% did know that the RNC paid $150,000 for Sarah Palin’s clothes, 93.8% knew she had a pregnant teenage daughter, but only 43.9% knew in who’s home Obama kicked off his political career.  Only 1 of the 12 highlighted in the video even knew the name Bill Ayers.  And yet we were told that the public had heard the Ayers/Weather Underground connection and, based on the continued Obama advantage in the polls, must have considered it uninteresting.

Well perhaps they never heard the information in the first place.  Watch the video and find out where these folks gets their news, and that’ll go a long way to answering that question.

For this who may need a refresher, a tip from LaShawn Barber.

Reading this Newsweek story for a Pajamas Media TV segment I’m taping in an hour tomorrow, one paragraph stopped me cold (emphasis added):

“If this week’s exit polls tell us anything about religion, they remind us that there are tens of millions of voters in this country who believe in God, read their Scripture, pray, regularly attend a house of worship—and do not consider themselves born-again Christians.”

OK. For the record, there is no such thing as a Christian who has not been born again. To say you believe in God, go to church every Sunday, etc., doesn’t mean you’re a Christian. People worship all kind of gods and go to church for various reasons. The questions is, is Christ your Lord and Savior? If someone has been forgiven, he has been born again, no matter what cultural or social connotations the term born again (white fundamentalist Bible-thumpers?) has been burdened with. Those saved by grace through faith in Christ understand what the term means biblically.

Born again or rebirth in Christ refers to the process that takes place when Christ saves/forgives someone. Here’s the imagery: the former man was crucified with Christ, and the new man was resurrected with Christ when he rose from the dead. The new man is renewed, regenerated…re-born. Day by day, God guides us, chastises us, and loves us, molding and shaping us into the image of his Son.

If you believe the Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died for your sins, and you trust in this sacrifice alone for the forgiveness of your sins, born again applies to you, whether you’re white, black, blue, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, or whatever else they’ve got.

I’m not quite sure what Newsweek writers think the term means.  Perhaps this usage of it shows how many people in church go through all the motions, but don’t see themselves as born-again.  (Although the usual case is that it’s the other way around; they go through the motions, never have a relationship with Jesus, and do consider themselves born-again.)  Perhaps this is the media adding its own connotations to the term.

Whatever the case, LaShawn gets it right.

Short answer:  Not very well, and it doesn’t appear they care.

Long answer:

The adulation given to Barack Obama was far more than can be accounted for by his historic run for the Presidency.  It got so bad before the election that Michael S. Malone, a tech journalist for ABC News, got to the point he was "deeply ashamed to be called a ‘journalist’".  Michael explained, back in late October:

For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions.  But I always wrote it off as bad judgment, and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.  Sure, being a child of the ‘60s I saw a lot of subjective “New” Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from ‘real’ reporting, and at least in mainstream media, usually was.  The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.

But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.  I’d spent my entire professional career scrupulously pounding out endless dreary footnotes and double-checking sources to make sure that I never got accused of lying or stealing someone else’s work – not out any native honesty, but out of fear: I’d always been told to fake or steal a story was a firing offense . . .indeed, it meant being blackballed out of the profession.

[…]

But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current Presidential campaign.  Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates.  But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass – no, make that shameless support – they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press.  I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather – not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake – but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

[…]

The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.  Middle America, even when they didn’t agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a Presidential candidate.  So much for the Standing Up for the Little Man, so much for Speaking Truth to Power, so much for Comforting the Afflicted and Afflicting the Comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

Read the whole thing(tm).  Malone is more certainly not against reporters digging for the dirt (he supported the "reportorial SWAT teams" sent to Alaska to see what they could find about Gov. Palin).  What he is aghast at, however, was how utterly unbalanced this hardball treatment was. 

Aside from the viciousness given mostly to Republicans and their supporters, the Pew Research Center found that McCain’s news coverage was incredibly lopsided.

Slightly fewer than a third of the stories about Obama were negative, whereas more than a third were positive and about the same number were neutral or mixed. More than half of the stories about McCain cast him in a negative light, whereas fewer than 2 in 10 were positive, according to Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The study suggests that advancement in the polls does translate into more positive coverage, but with the polls so tight this season, bouncing around in the high 40s & low 50s for so long, that explanation doesn’t really fit.

The Washington Post ombudsman, Deborah Howell, also says that her paper tilted towards Obama and didn’t really cover the issues well.  The big question is, will this translate into better coverage?  With the media still in the tank for Democrats after decades of being that way, it doesn’t seem likely.

Just ask Chris Matthews:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yeah, well, you know what? I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work, and I think that —

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Is that your job? You just talked about being a journalist!

MATTHEWS: Yeah, it is my job. My job is to help this country.

The phrase "speaking the truth to power" is about to drop quickly out of fashion in national media circles.

They spent money on this?

Sexual content on television is strongly associated with teen pregnancy, a new study from the RAND Corporation shows.

Researchers at the nonprofit organization found that adolescents with a high level of exposure to television shows with sexual content are twice as likely to get pregnant or impregnate someone as those who saw fewer programs of this kind over a period of three years. It is the first study to demonstrate this association, RAND said.

Next week, RAND comes out with their study that gravity leads to falling.

The suggested remedy is equally obvious.

A central message from the study is that there needs to be more dialogue about sex in the media, particularly among parents and their children, said Anita Chandra, the study’s lead author and a behavioral scientist at RAND.

Although the Hollywood culture is certainly a major contributor to the oversexualization of the media (and they could do their part, but won’t, and will whine publicly and loudly if you suggest they do), parents still need to be the gatekeeper.

As my kids would say, "Thank you, Captain Obvious!"