IngeMusings

The casual news consumer looks at the news as simply stuff that happened that day. They have no idea that there are machinations at work behind the scenes that try very hard to present the daily events in a certain light. After studying politics for a certain amount of time, you start to see that the news is a form of theater--particularly TV news.

When the curtain goes up, I don't see a hard-hitting anchorman dutifully reporting the important events from around the world. I see actors, stages, scripts, directors, and producers.  Except they aren't there to entertain me--they are creating a program to manipulate us into viewing the world as they do

Why go through the effort of indirectly influencing us--can't they just come out and directly appeal to our reasoning abilities with straight facts? Unfortunately, liberal elites in the news tend to think of people as stupid, or uninformed, or unevolved, or too lazy to listen to reason. So, they need to be manipulated, as one manipulates a child.

Have you ever told a toddler to eat his vegetables like a big boy? Look, we adults ate all of our vegetables, don't you want to be like us?

That's how the media treats us, and here's an example.

I walked into a sandwich shop in Simi Valley Monday. Glancing up at a CNN anchor interviewing Jay-Z on a big screen hanging on the wall, I saw Jay-Z giving his support for President Obama's stance on gay marriage.

After Jay-Z finished, the anchor looked into the camera and said lots of people listen to Jay-Z, leaving the "and you should, too" part unspoken.

That's what you do to children. It's a tiny example, but it's still insulting to the intelligent. 

After more than 35 years in the Senate, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana was ousted Tuesday by a tea party challenger in a Republican primary that showed how hard it is for a veteran lawmaker known for his ability to compromise to win reelection in the current political environment.

I just got back from an all-American family vacation in Arizona. If I had done it in California, I'd have been slapped with fines and gone to jail.

The short weekend excursion involved driving without seatbelts, riding in the bed of trucks, firing fully automatic weapons indoors, pulling off the road into the desert and firing high-powered rifles, driving more than 65mph down the highway, and riding ATV's in non-designated areas.

When we crossed the California border on the way home, you could feel the smothering oppression set in again.

Amazingly, we were able to have all that fun, which would have landed me in prison if I tried it in California, in a responsible manner and everybody had a good time.

Liberals would have been horrified by what we did, even though we did it with common sense.  In one part of the trip, we pulled off onto a desert path in a pickup truck (I can hear liberals gasp).  I took one of my sons into the bed of the truck and we ambled into the desert slowly and carefully, as he grinned from ear to ear. He would have not experienced this in California, unless I have seatbelts installed in the bed of my truck.

At another point in my trip, the kids went off with mom while we fired pistols, shotguns, and rifles against the side of a desert mountain off of a highway, which would have caught law enforcement's attention in California unless we drove out to the middle of nowhere.

Earlier, we had visited a shooting range where we fired a machine gun, which would also have been illegal in California. A worker there noted that people in Arizona get to carry concealed firearms on their person, which would get you arrested in our lovely state unless the government granted you a special permit. I didn't see any shootouts in Arizona even though all these people are carrying guns.

The next day we took a pontoon out onto Lake Havasu. Want to have a beer on the lake? Go for it. In California, better check the rules for each lake. Lake Piru, for example, banned alcohol in 2010.

The all-American vacation that was normal a generation ago is all but banned in California, and the trend is that it's getting worse.

I wish Earth Day and May Day were on the same day, because then it might be easier to persuade liberals of the errors of their ways.

It's sometimes hard to get through to people with a different ideology than yours, so sometimes it helps to speak to them in their own terms. Since Earth Day environmentalism and May Day anti-capitalism go hand in hand and the two days are close together on the calendar, let's discuss capitalism in terms of environmentalism.

Environmentalists don't want delicate ecosystems impacted by mankind's intrusion into nature. One small environmental change brought on by humans may impact the mating habits of some rodent, which causes fewer rodents, which impacts the eating habits of an animal one link higher on the food chain, and so forth until the ecosystem is destroyed.

Almost all organisms enter into relationships with one another where their growth and survival often depends on other their symbiotic relationship with other organisms. Flowers are colorful to attract bees, and bees spread the pollen to other flowers. The bees flourish and so do the flowers.

 Humans also enter into symbiosis with other humans. Two people, two groups, two classes, or two nations may work together to advance mutual interests, even the "99%" and the "1%". Poor and middle-class people are typically paid by rich people to perform some function at some company, a company that usually makes ever-more affordable items that the poor and rich people can buy to further enhance their quality of life.

Both groups benefit, like bees and flowers. However, those in the Occupy Movement and other socialists see this relationship as exploitative. They view the relationship between the wealthy and the non-wealthy in terms of parasite and host. One takes from the other without providing any benefit.

Ironically, there's ardent support on the Left for those that take much from others but don't contribute much themselves-- the chronically unemployed, chronically dependent, criminals, and regulators.

Instead, the view the parasites as those that started companies that employ many people and create products that people want at prices they are willing to pay for them.

Their solution is to upset that ecosystem with a heavy hand, something they would never do to other natural relationships, completely oblivious that when you impact one link of the food chain you impact them all, often to the detriment of every organism in it.

In introductory biology classes we learn that ecosystems are made up of producers and consumers. It's no coincidence the same terms are used in economies as well. Progressives would do well to take their conservationist approach to the environment and apply it to the economy.

One of the problems with judging the infamous Rodney King video by the edited clip we always see is that we never see what led up to the incident. We know there was a high-speed pursuit, but we don't see the part where King fought the officers before they swarmed him.

The full video shows that King, a convicted robber, wasn't the innocent bystander the media portrayed him as. Here's a description of some of the events that you don't see on the news (from a Wikipedia entry):

Koon then ordered the four other LAPD officers at the scene -- Briseno, Powell, Solano, and Wind -- to subdue and handcuff King in a manner called a "swarm", a technique that involves multiple officers grabbing a suspect with empty hands. As the officers attempted to do so, King physically resisted. King rose up, tossing Officers Powell and Briseno off his back. King then struck Officer Briseno in the chest.[12] Seeing this, Koon ordered all of the officers to fall back. The officers later testified that they believed King was under the influence of the dissociative drug phencyclidine (PCP).

Tellingly, the Wikipedia entry mentions what happens to King's two passengers--that's right, there were three people in the car.

Officer Tim Singer ordered King and his two passengers to exit the vehicle and lie face down on the ground. The two passengers complied and were taken into custody without incident.

If the cops were racist and just wanted to beat on black people, why was there no incident with the ones that didn't attack the officers? King, on the other hand, was a physical threat to them:

King initially remained in the car. When he finally did emerge, he acted bizarrely: giggling; patting the ground; and waving to the police helicopter overhead.[9] King then grabbed his buttocks. Officer Melanie Singer momentarily thought he was reaching for a gun