28 September - Surfing Report

 

A Most Unpopular Decision

From the Huffington Post : Michelle Kosilek, Inmate Born As Robert Kosilek, Eligible For Legal Fees Reimbursement In Addition To Sex Change

 

Skepticlawyer » ‘A Plea in Law for Equal Marriage’

“What I’m most afraid of when I go back, isn’t being killed. What really petrifies me is being attacked and tortured.”

"In Guatemala if you are different you are cut off from your family, from society and by the government. You cannot get an education. You cannot get medical treatment because if you arrive at the hospital as a woman and your papers say that you are not, they refuse to treat you even if you are bleeding to death. They would rather let you die than treat you.”

The reason, according to Fernanda, is that Guatemala is a Catholic country, where the church has a great deal of power, and its fear spreads out through society and makes people resort to vigilantism. “I know no transgender people in Guatemala over 35 ..."

 

Throwaways

How Norman Spack transformed the way we treat transgender children - Lifestyle Features

"I was naïve," he says now. "I thought that all the kids I saw in the streets were runaways. And I had been told about the rules about runaways, like that they could be housed for three days without calling the parents. But one of the street workers said, 'They call them runaways. These kids are throwaways. Our goals aren't to get the kid home. Home is not a safe place.' "

The Co-candidates

A shared belief in the unimpeachability of certain institutions is the keystone of political legitimacy. The most obvious example is the electoral process and the courts. The media — along with associated institutions like the academy and Hollywood — are lesser, but similar examples. If the public don’t ‘believe’ in their judgments then all hope for a suspension of the political season until the next campaign are lost.

Maybe even the phrase “next campaign” is obsolete. Today’s campaign never ends. Harlan Ullman, writing a guest editorial for the UPI says that modern political campaigns never come to a halt. The United States has now entered the era of the ‘perpetual campaign’. It is all spin, all the time.
The media is part of the political system now*; part of the spoils game too and sadly, part of the process of putting in “the fix”.  The unavoidable consequence of this is that beneath the smokescreen of the formal Presidential election the media is also running for re-election just like any other candidate.
(  The panties* of political meddling may be more obvious..... doesn't mean they weren't there before. Have you read Mark Twain ?  Do you realize 'parlez ment' refers to formally organized bitching sessions ; not change ? )

  . stevesmith

Ezra Levant of Canadian Sun News regularly talks about “The Media Party” and their habit of broadcasting only the news that fits their agenda. They hide news that doesn’t fit their agenda. The Media Party operates in Canada and the U.S. and in the U.K., for the leftist camp. I assume it operates in other Western countries and has a similar agenda.
I guess that PJM, Hotair, Sun News, Fox News and other outfits or blogs represent “The Non-LSM Party”. Apparently to every Media Party there’s an equal and opposite reaction, the consequences of which are as yet unknown.

el baboso
I keep saying, if you think what the Internet has done to the mainstream media is something, wait until you see what it does to mainstream politics!
This is why the pre-Cold War arrangement of two or more dailies in each major town, each representing a distinct political view, was so much healthier for the republic. After Watergate, the media started fancying itself as the “fourth estate.” They are careful not to use that label anymore, but they saw the opportunity to grasp power after 1973, and they’ve been riding the tiger ever since. Now the urban mono dailies (as Mark Steyn calls them) are dying along with the brief hold on power. The press should be partisan. It should bicker. There should be no monopolies on information.

hdgreene
Washington DC and neighboring counties are about the one place where houses are worth more than they were in 2007. It’s an area where per capita income has grown while the rest of the nation struggles. We work for them. They are bad bosses. They make fun of us to our faces. We should go on strike.
In 2008 I described the “DC Power Circuit” to my Democrat friends when they wanted to talk politics. The DC Power Circuit includes Politicians, Lobbyists, big business, big banks, Big Bureaucracy, the Government Unions, Trial Lawyers, Academia (Ivy League especially) and, of course, the Media. They are jealous of their power. They favor the creation of Cartels run by the Power Circuit (Obamacare is a Cartel). It is interesting that Romney — who would only bring some competent management to the operation — is seen as such a threat. It shows how reliant on incompetence they’ve become.
I call the process at work endoltment. They are not born dolts. For them becoming a dolt requires an ongoing act of will. They individually aspire to join an elite where endoltment has spread like a zombie virus, leaving the whole class believing they are the enlightened ones. To maintain the illusion they must ignore contrary evidence — and isolate contrary opinion. They must insult their own intelligence before they insult ours. That “dirty trick” video may well be them hearing what they want to hear and seeing what they want to see — and not for the first time (that day, even). Endoltment is a progressive process. It requires those who suffer from the progressive dis-ease to spread it. When the entire world has achieved endoltment they believe their minds will be at peace — and, of course, at large and in charge.

PA Cat
From Commentary:
“Media Shocked GOP Hasn’t Conceded”
[reference is to a story in Politico]
“For the media to declare the race over and to start covering the campaign from the frame of reference of whether Republicans are coming to terms with their inevitable defeat takes media bias to new levels of self-parody.
Make no mistake about it: having to cope with this level of distorted coverage is a handicap for the Republicans. A docile and adoring press is a major asset for President Obama, and anyone who doesn’t think it has helped him hasn’t been paying attention. But when journalists start pushing the envelope in the manner of this Politico story, it ought to worry Democrats. Media bias only works to the advantage of liberals when it is done in a manner that can be represented, however falsely, as objective. Once liberal scribes start jumping the shark, as they have done in this case, it discredits the entire enterprise. More to the point, it helps feed a backlash that can both anger and motivate conservatives to greater efforts.”
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/09/25/media-shocked-gop-hasnt-conceded-liberal-media-bias-romney/

PA Cat
Just clicked over to the Pat Caddell (Jimmy Carter’s pollster, FWIW) video that was posted a few minutes ago. It’s well worth watching.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/09/28/video-the-media-have-become-an-enemy-of-the-american-people/

GDI
Mark Twain (Following the Equator, 1897):     :) 
“The old saw says, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’ Right. Still when there is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it.”
(And don’t forget, Twain was at one time a newspaper reporter, so he’s speaking from experience.)

. Sgt. Mom
The mainstream media are lost to us, as are most of what Codevilla called the ruling class. Somehow or another, we have got to take it all back – against the wishes of the new aristos -
http://www.ncobrief.com/index.php/archives/ruination/
No matter how long it takes. Otherwise, the grand and wonderful American experiment dies.

RWE
Eggplant #22:
“It’s strange that there are plenty of patriots willing to risk their lives fighting against the Taliban but there were no competent/patriotic politicians willing to defeat Obama.”
That’s because you are allowed to shoot the Taliban. Also bomb, rocket, shell, and strafe them. If you had to talk them to death while allowing them to lie all they want, and that was all, fighting them would be much less popular.
That reminds me, I need to get that order for an M-1 off to the CMP.

  R Daneel
wretchard – 10 years ago I would have never thought we would have to include our own inside the threats to the nation but here we find ourselves. Can we even step back from the brink without massive loss?
Subotai – Greetings from Texas.

[How many here believe that it is quite possible that either the results of the election will be falsified, the election stands a chance of being cancelled, or that the Left may well refuse to yield power if they lose? Or that there are two very different legal systems for those favored and those disfavored? Your trust in the legitimacy of the political system is not complete, which means its illegitimacy has to be considered part of the equation.]

[Raises hand] Me for one. Those who do not have not been paying attention or may be frightened. Kim Du Toit described what has happened to the dependent classes in his essay on what has happened to the American Male. {Google it = The ………… of the American Male}
It is evident that we now live in a Corporatist state for a while. Dismantling it will be a generational job.
( Dismantling it, he says. It's just getting started. )

maineman
Gallup had Carter up by 6 at the end of October. Reagan won by 10. That was after the campaign’s only debate.
Reagan faced a similar media bias but in a day when the media held more sway. They were less unreasonable then,* so people had less reason to doubt every word they said. But Reagan must have known what he was dealing with, since it had been palpably present since at least the Nixon-Kennedy years.
What Reagan did was talk over the media, directly to the American people.
Look for Romney to keep things on the quiet side and try to do that during the first debate.

* The Perception Alteration file might make you wonder at that idea

Obama at the UN: A Speech That Had Nothing to Do With Either His Policies or the Real Middle East

(By the way, what’s really amazing and what no one has noted is that almost every word of the speech could have been given by President George W. Bush. Obama has totally accepted the dangerous “neo-conservative” approach to the region, despite the fact that this label makes his supporters foam at the mouth.)

( And obviously would not have anything to do with state policies and strategies - especially for 'war by other means' - that continue regardless of who 'won' what )

The anti-American riots? Obama described them as follows:

An assault on the very ideals upon which the United Nations was founded — the notion that people can resolve their differences peacefully; that diplomacy can take the place of war; and that in an interdependent world, all of us have a stake in working towards greater opportunity and security for our citizens. … Today, we must declare that this violence and intolerance has no place among our United Nations.

That passage is unintentionally funny.
( It slays me too. 'Who Would Jesus Bomb' is so right. What is the square of 'hypocrisy' ?  )
After all, the minister of railroads in Pakistan, a country which has received billions in aid from the Obama administration, has just offered a reward for murdering an American citizen without fear of any consequences for his regime.  (  Imitating Obama, perhaps. And yes, I mean murdering an American. )

Shocker: Matt Damon’s Anti-Fracking Film Is Funded By Middle Eastern Oil Interests

Clearly, hydraulic fracturing and the energy boom it has set off here in the United States has been inconvenient for our oil trading partners in the middle east. But I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that one of the biggest middle eastern oil interests just happens to be funding Matt Damon’s cinematic assault on fracking:

A new film starring Matt Damon presents American oil and natural gas producers as money-grubbing villains purportedly poisoning rural American towns. It is therefore of particular note that it is financed in part by the royal family of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. …
While left-leaning Hollywood often targets supposed environmental evildoers, Promised Landwas also produced “in association with” Image Media Abu Dhabi, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Media, according to the preview’s list of credits. A studio spokesperson confirmed that AD Media is financing the film. The company is wholly owned by the government of the UAE.

....middle easterners know that if we stop fracking we aren’t going to turn to wind mills and solar panels.
We’re just going to buy more of their oil.
(  Huh. Didn't read the memo about energy being exported to China...or touch on the truth of Damon's story )

snidelywhiplash667 • 8 hours ago

Mideastern oil states also are worried about the effect that increased US/Canadian production will have on the price of oil - with North American fields in production, both their market share and their profit margins will take a hit. Double whammy.

Shocking New Romney Scandal: He Employed THE Standard Model of Investment While at Bain

There Has Been A Dramatic Increase In Warantless Electronic Surveillance Under Barack Obama

 

Breaking: Obama Administration Deliberately Lied to American People on Libya

U.S. intelligence officials knew within 24 hours of the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that it was a terrorist attack and suspected Al Qaeda-tied elements were involved, sources told Fox News — though it took the administration a week to acknowledge it.

The account conflicts with claims on the Sunday after the attack by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice that the administration believed the strike was a “spontaneous” event triggered by protests in Egypt over an anti-Islam film.

“Officials knew” equals ‘the administration lied’.  Next important question:  Why did they lie?  For terrorists?  This is the implosion I was talking about on my blog.

 ( Not just any terrorists. Al Qaeda are the U.S. supplied foreigners behind the 'spontaneous' Syrian, Libyan, etc. Arab Spring uprisings...on behalf of NATO )