Snowflakes in Hell

Because it’s no longer bias.  As Glenn Reynolds pointed out yesterday, the media is in the tank for Obama:

I promised some thoughts on what to do about the news media’s outright campaigning for Obama. (And that’s what it is. Media bias used to mean that they would slow-walk stories that reflected badly on their candidate; now they just flat out ignore them, or even try to shoot them down. They’re not just in the tank, they’re functioning as arms of the campaign, and Obama’s strategy shows that he knows that and is relying on it.)

Just this morning I had to turn off the radio, because the local propaganda mouthpiece of the Obama Campaign ran coverage which started out with an Alaskan commenting that she is not to be underestimated, and then following up with the various ways people think she’s not qualified, including polls showing that only 25% of voters think she’s qualified.  Even though she’s, you know, about as qualified as Obama is.  Prof. Reynolds talks about solutions:

There’s a vast underserved population out there, for news, entertainment, movies, etc., and if people start serving it, the current “mainstream” media won’t be so mainstream anymore. So if you’re unhappy with current offerings, put your money where your mouth is.

And if you’re one of the people with creative interests, start making alternative stuff. Not just news and punditry, but entertainment, documentaries, etc. If An American Carol does well this weekend, it’ll make it a lot easier for the next film of its type to be made. If Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary work does well, it’ll encourage a lot more of that kind of work.

Think of it like cultivating a garden: Starve the weeds, feed the flowers. Like gardening, it’s work. But like gardening, if you do the work you’ll see results.

I agree.  Make sure you get out to see An American Carol this weekend.  Even though we’re booked solid this weekend with election volunteer stuff, Bitter and I are going to make time.  We need it to do well.  That sends a powerful signal to the market.

This morning Glenn linked to a piece showing that the Boston Globe is still spreading lies about Sarah Palin that have been repeatedly debunked.  This is the worst I’ve ever seen a media.  We honestly don’t have a functioning Republic as long as these people continue to peddle their shameless propaganda as legitimate journalism.  Perhaps this will be the election where the voting public realizes the emperor has no clothes.  I certainly hope so.

Dave Hardy talks about how newspapers used to report the news.

Yup, reporters were more respected then. I recall reading of the Civil War … at one point Grant needs to get a message to President Lincoln, so he just sends it with a reporter who is going to DC. He adds a verbal message. The reporter only reveals that years after the event; Grant told him that it was for Lincoln alone. After Shiloh, I think, Grant for the only time gets blind drunk and passes out. A reporter (with whom he was riding) throws his coat over him to hide his stars if anyone rides by, and only reveals the event long after the war is over. A reporter is within earshot of Grant giving orders to his commanders, and is chastised — you’re not supposed to listen in at this level! Nobody thought anything unusual of a reporter traveling with army headquarters, it’s just that there’s an unwritten rule you won’t actually listen in to Grant and Meade giving orders for the day. No need for interviews: you’re there when everything is happening, out riding and drinking with them, etc.

Read the whole thing.  I suspect a lot of the trust afforded the military of journalists had to do with the fact that information was just much harder to disperse back then.  It’s much much harder to control information these days.  That probably tends to create less trust than you could instill in people when information was much more difficult to spread around.

I also think part of the problem isn’t so much bias, but people’s perception of the media as providing accurate and unbiased information.  Blogs are certainly biased, but we don’t claim to be anything other than biased.  I think journalism would be better off if papers were just up front with the biases in their reporting, and everyone knew about them.

National Review has more to say about FactCheck.org lack of facts.  Apparently the Washington Post is joining in the deception as well.  You can’t really blame them, they do have an election to win, after all.

UPDATE: CNN Joins in with the same nonsense.

UPDATE: The Washington Independent too.

UPDATE: Firearms and freedom sums it up:

I can sum up factcheck.org’s “check” of the NRA material in 5 words: “Obama says that’s not true!”

Like I said, they have an election to win.

The Washington Post are taking Mark Warner to task for getting behind the bill to force DC to comply with Heller:

It was jarring, however, to see Mr. Warner take a position at odds with his well-groomed image of a moderate. As he knows, D.C. officials already are working to bring the city in compliance with the ruling of the high court, and Mr. Warner would never countenance for Virginia a law as extreme as that proposed for the District.

What?  Do Journalists even bother to do research anymore?  Virginia’s gun laws are in numerous ways more liberal than those proposed for the District of Colombia by Congress.  In fact, that is the case in most states.  Here’s what you can do in Virginia you can’t do in DC, even if the proposed Heller enforcement bill becomes law:

1. Get a license to carry a loaded firearm concealed.
2. Carry concealed on a reciprocal license if you’re from another state.
3. Carry any firearm loaded, openly, without a license.
4. Buy a machine gun, suppressor, or short barreled rifle or shotgun.
5. Own pistol ammunition that you don’t own a pistol for.

Mark Warner doesn’t have to countenance a law as “extreme” as the District’s for Virginia.  Virginia law is already better than the proposed law for D.C.!  And I won’t even get into the fact that Arlington and Fairfax Counties have crime rates that are a fraction of those found on the other side of the Potomac.

Mark Morford, who introduced us to Obama the Lightworker, has a new piece out on Sarah Palin:

It’s more accurate to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her vagina monologue and her self-determination and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy, comatose McCain campaign — that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic, but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere.

It is absolutely amazing anyone, including a major newspaper, takes this guy seriously.  Hat tip to Volokh.

Caleb points out this piece of garbage article in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

It has been years since groups such as the Montana Militia, the Posse Comitatus and the Sagebrush Rebels, and individuals such as Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski have made us wonder why so many “angry white men” populated our rural regions.

Maybe it’s because ignorant and prejudiced academic pricks like Catherine McNicol keep consencending and thumbing their nose at rural white men.  I know this sounds crazy, but that tends to make people angry.  I’ve run into just as much intolerance and racism in urban areas as I have in rural areas, and to be honest, some of the most ignorant and provincial people I know don’t occupy America’s heartland, but our coastal urban centers.  Tolerance has to be a two way street, and it’s a shame that obviously well educated academics like McNicol don’t understand that.

It’s even more disturbing that the Philadelphia Inquirer, a newspaper that serves a city that should understand being looked down at and spit on, would print such utter bigotry.

You know, we in the gun blogosphere tend to snicker at the Brady’s over the top fear mongering.  I have to admit, it would be a lot more funny if there weren’t a lot of folks in the media buying it.  Look at this article from Homeland Security Today:

Even more seriously from the standpoint of homeland security according to the report, H.R. 6691, the report claims, would even allow open carrying of .50 caliber sniper rifles, capable of destroying armored personnel carriers, aircraft and bulk fuel and ammunition sites. These guns can penetrate several inches of steel, a three and a half inch storm sewer cover, or a 600-pound safe. They are accurate at up to 2,000 yards, and can inflict effective damage to targets over four miles away.

Except the Marine Corps demonstration video that showed a .50BMG shooting through a safe, and several inches of steel, was with a special high explosive armor piercing round that’s only available to the military, and rounds that aren’t .50 can penetrate a half inch of mild steel (which is what manhole covers are made from).  Reporters don’t know this, so they are fooled.  The Brady’s may have gone way over the top with this, but most of the media is too ignorant to question it.  It may be dishonest, but it works.

ABC News edited key parts of Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin.  Now, I’m not a professional journalist, but I would think if you need to edit a segment for length, you cut out questions, along with the answers.  It appears to me that all the answers that reflected the depth of her understanding of issues ended up on the cutting room floor.

But hey, ABC News has an election to win.  All is fair in politics right?

One in Texas, which might be perhaps the oldest shooting club in the United States, and one in update New York.  Both are smallbore/airgun clubs, but hey, you can have a good time with both.  The Texas Club, New Braunfels Schuetzen Verein, has been in existence since 1849.  If they are indeed the oldest club, it’s interesting to ponder what effect immigration played in the 19th century in transforming the shooting culture, particularly in bringing European style shooting clubs to the United States.

It will be interesting to see the effect heavy Russian immigration has on the shooting culture here in the Philadelphia area, which has developed a very significant community of Russian and Eastern European shooters, both men and women.  I haven’t noticed them too much in the area club culture, but at the public ranges, Russian is a common language on the range in this area.

I’m rather shocked to find that a police officer was willing to break one of the cardinal rules of safe gun handling: “All guns are to be treated as if they are loaded.” This means that you do not leave one in a room to see what kids do with them.  I’m also incensed at this:

The gun was placed in a toy crate and the kids were allowed into the room, one group at a time.

I don’t know about you guys, but my kids’ toy crate isn’t a place I’d think to store a gun.  Is it possible that perhaps the kids thought it was a toy gun, rather than a real Glock 32?  I mean, even if I saw a gun in a toy crate, my first instinct would not be “real gun” though you can bet I’d investigate a realistic looking gun in a toy container.

Delaine Mathieu, and Seargant Fryar should be ashamed of themselves.  You can teach adults to safely store firearms without breaking the rules of safe gun handling by putting a gun in the kids’ toybox.  You wouldn’t think a bunch of internet gun nuts would have to point that out to them.

UPDATE: The Brady Campaign is also promoting unsafe gun handling with children.  There is no greater good excuse for the ignoring the four rules.  The rules exist to prevent accidents, and to the extent that the shooting community has drilled these concepts into the heads of gun owners, accidents have declined.

UPDATE: Apparently this journalist wasn’t the first rocket scientist to think “Kids and Guns.  Let’s put them together and see what happens!”

There’s a positive article about kids and the shooting sports in the Baltimore Sun, and the Chicago Tribune asks whether the whole suicide angle presented by the gun control groups might be crap.

Inquirer reporter Natalie Pompilio has written an article on the book Armed America by Kyle Cassidy.  The reporter interviewed me for the article, but it doesn’t look like I made it into the final cut.  But that’s just as well, since it turned out just fine without me.  I also helped put her in touch with Dan, who I think made much better print than anything I had to say:

Daniel Pehrson, 26, bought his first gun for target shooting but began carrying one for personal protection. Recently, he was glad he did.

The Spring Garden resident was walking near Front Street and Girard Avenue when three teenagers surrounded him. One pulled a stun gun, zapped it a few times, and said, “Hey, check this out.”

“I drew my gun and they ran like hell,” Pehrson said, noting that the small pistol barely left the side of his leg. “It was a difficult and an easy choice. . . . The last thing on earth I want to do is think about hurting someone.”

What if, he wonders, it had been his girlfriend walking alone unarmed when the men circled? What if he’d been listening to his iPod and someone decided the $250 device was worth more than his life?

Pehrson runs a nonprofit organization - the Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association - that aims to provide information about the state’s nearly 500 pages of gun laws. In Cassidy’s book, Pehrson looks barely out of his teens, a pile of pizza boxes in a corner.

My congratulations to Ms. Pompilio on a very good article.

Anti-gun folks continue to pronounce that the sky is falling because of Heller.  I have to admit, it’s fun to watch.

Reporter Fran Wood manages to write a good article about Heller that is not full of hysterics and inaccuracies.  That’s more than I can say for The Chicago Tribune, the ACLU, and the Associated Press.

This has to win a creativity award for the most utterly ridiculous gun control proposal I’ve ever seen in my life:

We propose a new way to prod gun makers to reduce gun deaths, one that would be unlikely to put them out of business or to prevent law-abiding citizens from obtaining guns. By using a strategy known as “performance-based regulation,” we would deputize private actors — the gun makers — to deal with the negative effects of their products in ways that promote the public good.

It then goes on to speak of a performance based system where gun makers would be rewarded for drops in gun violence, and penalized for increases in gun violence.  This presumes that there’s anything manufacturers can do about the fact that their products make their way onto black markets.  But they have an idea for that too:

How would gun companies go about reducing gun deaths? The main thing to emphasize is that this approach relies on the nimbleness, innovation and experimentation that come from private competition — rather than on the heavy-handed power of governmental regulation. Gun makers might decide to add trigger locks to their guns, or to work only with dealers who meet certain standards of responsibility. They might withdraw their semiautomatic weapons from the consumer market, or even work hand in hand with local officials to fight gangs and increase youth employment opportunities. Surely they will think up new strategies once they have a legal obligation and financial incentive to take responsibility for the harm their products cause.

Ah yes, the old canards.  Since they admit that Heller might mean they can’t just flat out ban these guns, now they need to offer incentives for no one to make them.  Because a revolver is so measurably less deadly than a semi-auto pistol?  Does it even matter if the “gun death” being spoken of is a suicide?  How does supplying trigger locks work unless someone uses them?  If this is what Heller has reduced our oppoents to, perhaps Heller is a bigger victory than I had imagined.

UPDATE: As a reader points out, this is pretty much the same type of business as the lawsuits the PLCAA was meant to put a stop to.  I mean, would we hold Ford accountable for drunk driving rates, or Zippo accountable for reducing the incidence of arson?  Drug makers for reducing drug suicides?

Go see the video Jacob has up, and be outraged.  He also has the Brady Campaign reaction.

If you open carry in Wisconsin, and have been harassed as a result of it, Milwaukee magazine is looking to do a story on this.  I would be very careful talking to the press.  In fact, this is something where state leaders in the movement really need to step up and make sure the media is getting the right message, and coaching people on how to deal with them.  Treating the media like friends of gun owners can turn into an embarassing mistake very quickly.

Because what they think apparently matters.  At least the WaPo seems to think so.

AP is apparently expecting us to pay by the words for words exerpted from their articles.  It sucks to be part of a dying medium, I’m sure, but fair use is fair use.  Here’s another fun tidbit:

It gets better! If you pay to quote the AP, but you offend the AP in so doing, the AP “reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher’s reputation.”

The mainstream media is declaring war on blogs.  We have to be ready and willing to circle the wagons to protect our medium.  Do we have laywers who would be willing to work cheap in the event a blog gets sued?  I think it’s time to start lining that up.  A lot is at stake.

Dr. Helen links to a list of the top ten male bashing ads.

The city gets two gun laws outright thrown out before anyone has even tried to enforce them, and the other three are dismissed on standing, which is not the same as the laws being upheld, the city has gone and declared victory.  Now the AP seems to have gotten it right, but the city media?  Hook, line and sinker baby.  Joe Grace, I have to hand it to you.  You’re a brash and brazen scheister, but you’re good.  Anyone who can do media relations for a guy as corrupt and crooked as John Street has to be.

The Philadelphia Metro should be ahsamed of itself, though.  When you’re just a propaganda arm of City Government, what good are you as journalists?  Are you doing any service to the citizens of Philadelphia?

Pro-Gun Progressive points out how wrong the Baltimore media is getting things.

No, really.

“Today we’re having a conversation on whether an SKS 47 (photo)  should not be banned from use in the city of Philadelphia. Can you imagine having a conversation, having to fight back a challenge to some who would say that that should be okay, we should not ban that weapon.”

Click on the article, and see the picture, which features a Kalashnikov type rifle, and an SKS type rifle.  I’m not sure which one is an SKS 47.  These idiots don’t even have any clue what they are talking about banning.

Now they are freaking out about the National Park Rule Change.

Since the rule wouldn’t apply to every national park, the provision could also create confusion among the well-armed vacationing public.

Besides, what’s the point?

Federal parks already are some of the most crime-free settings in the nation. Introducing gun-slinging tourists into the mix isn’t going to improve safety.

I don’t even have the energy to refute this crap anymore.

This time from Annette John-Hall.

As expected, the NRA continues to cling to the age-old argument that guns are the least of the problem.

“It’s the same song-and-dance out of Ramsey, focusing on the firearm and not at the root of the problem,” NRA spokesman John Hohenwarter said. “The problem is the revolving door of the courtroom and the lack of intervention for these kids who grow up to be criminals.”

But none of those things killed Liczbinski. A criminal armed with a body-armor-penetrating weapon did.

Ms. John-Hall, if you can read this post here, and tell me that one more gun law is going to matter, you’re either a fool, or worse.  Let’s stop pretending here.  The city isn’t even enforcing the laws we already have.  So why do we have them?  You should  be making the city politicians answer for this, not the NRA.