NY Times Still Seethes Over Non-Story
LOL. I can just picture a future NY Times headline: "Stupid Americans Don't Know What's Good For Them." Why do I say such an inflammatory thing? Ask the New York Times. They, along with the rest of the MSM, have done their damndest to spin the NSA intercept story, in an effort to pimp James Risen's political pap hatchet job of the administration, and it's just not working. Americans understand what the government is going through to protect the nation. (HT: Captain's Quarters.)
Americans are willing to tolerate eavesdropping without warrants to fight terrorism, but are concerned that the aggressive antiterrorism programs championed by the Bush administration are encroaching on civil liberties, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Even in the opening paragraph, the Times slips in the phrase "civil liberties," despite the fact that the intercept program doesn't target ordinary Americans. It's targeting foreign agents communicating with their handlers and supporters abroad, which is well within the confines of the program.
In a sign that public opinion about the trade-offs between national security and individual rights is nuanced and remains highly unresolved, responses to questions about the administration's eavesdropping program varied significantly depending on how the questions were worded, underlining the importance of the effort by the White House this week to define the issue on its terms.
The poll, conducted as President Bush defended his surveillance program in the face of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans that it is illegal, found that Americans were willing to give the administration some latitude for its surveillance program if they believed it was intended to protect them. Fifty-three percent of the respondents said they supported eavesdropping without warrants "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism."
The results suggest that Americans' view of the program depends in large part on whether they perceive it as a bulwark in the fight against terrorism, as Mr. Bush has sought to cast it, or as an unnecessary and unwarranted infringement on civil liberties, as critics have said.
In one striking finding, respondents overwhelmingly supported e-mail and telephone monitoring directed at "Americans that the government is suspicious of;" they overwhelmingly opposed the same kind of surveillance if it was aimed at "ordinary Americans."
Duh. And the New York Times breathlessly anticipated a much different result in the poll. Maybe a call for torches and pitchforks, and a march on Washington. But what they're learning--and it's taken them so long to learn this--is that people aren't stupid. We know what the government is doing. We know that they have the security of the nation as priority number one. And they also know, no matter how the press paints this administration, that in the hands of honest people who believe in the limits of the law, that they're not going to use this program to go after political enemies, but rather the enemies wishing to kill us.
Mr. Bush, at a White House press conference yesterday, twice used the phrase "terrorist surveillance program" to describe an operation in which the administration has eavesdropped on telephone calls and other communications like e-mail that it says could involve operatives of Al Qaeda overseas talking to Americans. Critics say the administration could conduct such surveillance while still getting prior court approval, as spelled out in a 1978 law intended to guard against governmental abuses.
Not when the FISC is busy amending his requests, and out-and-out refusing to grant ones that our intelligence agencies say are needed. The president has the authorization--upheld by the courts--to do what he's doing. He is the Commander in Chief of the military forces of this nation, and that includes our intelligence agencies. If they feel we have a threat within our national borders that needs to be addressed, it gets addressed. It doesn't get the chance to lie in wait until the time is right to strike. We take pre-emptive action against these people before they get a chance to move. To do otherwise, as the Left and the MSM continue to push as a strategy, and we're only inviting future attacks like 11 September.
The findings came in a poll conducted as Mr. Bush prepares to deliver his fifth State of the Union address on Tuesday. It found that Mr. Bush will face a nation that has grown sour on Washington and skeptical that he will be able to achieve significant progress in health care, the economy, the Iraq war and the cost of prescription drugs for older patients before he leaves office in three years.
The poll also signaled concern for Republicans as they prepare to defend their control of the House and the Senate in midterm elections this November. Investigations into Congressional corruption are taking a toll as the elections approach: 61 percent of Americans now hold an unfavorable view of Congress, the highest in 10 years.
Yes, Americans are concerned about the programs and fixes the president has proposed on domestic issues, but they won't amount to a hill of beans if we don't address the number one concern--and the most important issue on the proposed platform for 2006, which is "Win The War." TY Hugh Hewitt for that wisdom. As for the corruption charges, this is definitely going to be a humdinger of a scandal for both sides. Howard Dean lied yesterday on the Today Show when he said not one dime of Abramoff's money landed in Democrat pockets. Well, if that were true, why is Abramoff pointing figers at Sen. Reid, Mr. Dean?
But, what is even more telling about this poll that the Times is highlighting is the following, which would be the demographics involved in it:
Republicans: 29%
Democrats: 34%
Independents: 33%
Other: 4%
Hardly a fair and balanced poll, huh? And that's what sticks in my craw the most. In an effort to skew the poll to begin with, they didn't take a fair representation of the political demographics. This is part-and-parcel of the MSM's agenda journalism. People have screamed to high heaven for over a decade of the slant that the news portrays, and we're just now starting to see the cracks in the MSM's foundations. We, as bloggers, have found the chinks in the armor, and we're exploiting them for all their worth. Why? Simply put, we demand honest reporting. As Hugh Hewitt pointed out earlier this week, the MSM is failing miserably, and the people are taking notice.
The story about the NSA intercept program that has been pushed by the New York Times is a prime example of this agenda journalism. They want to hold the president and the administration up to a level of scrutiny that they refuse to do with other elected representatives. No one was there hammering on Ted Kennedy for his antics during the Alito hearings. No one was there calling for heads when the MSM started running stories about classified programs being used in the war. No one called the MSM on the carpet for perpetuating the myths that we're torturing illegal combatants captured on the battlefield. And no one cried foul over Dan Rather's peddling of phony memos, or Eason Jordan's accusations about troops targeting journalists in Iraq.
No one except bloggers.
The days of the MSM are entering their twilight, and this story highlights that point more than ever. To push an agneda, the New York Times is willing to use skewed polling demographics, and spin to push that viewpoint. They're no different than any other MSM source out there, and it was with great reluctance that I even allowed the links to those sources to go up on our site. However, unlike the MSM, bloggers don't run away from things. We engage, and we do it on a far more intellectually-honest basis than the MSM. And bloggers do it on a daily basis.
Publius II
LOL. I can just picture a future NY Times headline: "Stupid Americans Don't Know What's Good For Them." Why do I say such an inflammatory thing? Ask the New York Times. They, along with the rest of the MSM, have done their damndest to spin the NSA intercept story, in an effort to pimp James Risen's political pap hatchet job of the administration, and it's just not working. Americans understand what the government is going through to protect the nation. (HT: Captain's Quarters.)
Americans are willing to tolerate eavesdropping without warrants to fight terrorism, but are concerned that the aggressive antiterrorism programs championed by the Bush administration are encroaching on civil liberties, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Even in the opening paragraph, the Times slips in the phrase "civil liberties," despite the fact that the intercept program doesn't target ordinary Americans. It's targeting foreign agents communicating with their handlers and supporters abroad, which is well within the confines of the program.
In a sign that public opinion about the trade-offs between national security and individual rights is nuanced and remains highly unresolved, responses to questions about the administration's eavesdropping program varied significantly depending on how the questions were worded, underlining the importance of the effort by the White House this week to define the issue on its terms.
The poll, conducted as President Bush defended his surveillance program in the face of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans that it is illegal, found that Americans were willing to give the administration some latitude for its surveillance program if they believed it was intended to protect them. Fifty-three percent of the respondents said they supported eavesdropping without warrants "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism."
The results suggest that Americans' view of the program depends in large part on whether they perceive it as a bulwark in the fight against terrorism, as Mr. Bush has sought to cast it, or as an unnecessary and unwarranted infringement on civil liberties, as critics have said.
In one striking finding, respondents overwhelmingly supported e-mail and telephone monitoring directed at "Americans that the government is suspicious of;" they overwhelmingly opposed the same kind of surveillance if it was aimed at "ordinary Americans."
Duh. And the New York Times breathlessly anticipated a much different result in the poll. Maybe a call for torches and pitchforks, and a march on Washington. But what they're learning--and it's taken them so long to learn this--is that people aren't stupid. We know what the government is doing. We know that they have the security of the nation as priority number one. And they also know, no matter how the press paints this administration, that in the hands of honest people who believe in the limits of the law, that they're not going to use this program to go after political enemies, but rather the enemies wishing to kill us.
Mr. Bush, at a White House press conference yesterday, twice used the phrase "terrorist surveillance program" to describe an operation in which the administration has eavesdropped on telephone calls and other communications like e-mail that it says could involve operatives of Al Qaeda overseas talking to Americans. Critics say the administration could conduct such surveillance while still getting prior court approval, as spelled out in a 1978 law intended to guard against governmental abuses.
Not when the FISC is busy amending his requests, and out-and-out refusing to grant ones that our intelligence agencies say are needed. The president has the authorization--upheld by the courts--to do what he's doing. He is the Commander in Chief of the military forces of this nation, and that includes our intelligence agencies. If they feel we have a threat within our national borders that needs to be addressed, it gets addressed. It doesn't get the chance to lie in wait until the time is right to strike. We take pre-emptive action against these people before they get a chance to move. To do otherwise, as the Left and the MSM continue to push as a strategy, and we're only inviting future attacks like 11 September.
The findings came in a poll conducted as Mr. Bush prepares to deliver his fifth State of the Union address on Tuesday. It found that Mr. Bush will face a nation that has grown sour on Washington and skeptical that he will be able to achieve significant progress in health care, the economy, the Iraq war and the cost of prescription drugs for older patients before he leaves office in three years.
The poll also signaled concern for Republicans as they prepare to defend their control of the House and the Senate in midterm elections this November. Investigations into Congressional corruption are taking a toll as the elections approach: 61 percent of Americans now hold an unfavorable view of Congress, the highest in 10 years.
Yes, Americans are concerned about the programs and fixes the president has proposed on domestic issues, but they won't amount to a hill of beans if we don't address the number one concern--and the most important issue on the proposed platform for 2006, which is "Win The War." TY Hugh Hewitt for that wisdom. As for the corruption charges, this is definitely going to be a humdinger of a scandal for both sides. Howard Dean lied yesterday on the Today Show when he said not one dime of Abramoff's money landed in Democrat pockets. Well, if that were true, why is Abramoff pointing figers at Sen. Reid, Mr. Dean?
But, what is even more telling about this poll that the Times is highlighting is the following, which would be the demographics involved in it:
Republicans: 29%
Democrats: 34%
Independents: 33%
Other: 4%
Hardly a fair and balanced poll, huh? And that's what sticks in my craw the most. In an effort to skew the poll to begin with, they didn't take a fair representation of the political demographics. This is part-and-parcel of the MSM's agenda journalism. People have screamed to high heaven for over a decade of the slant that the news portrays, and we're just now starting to see the cracks in the MSM's foundations. We, as bloggers, have found the chinks in the armor, and we're exploiting them for all their worth. Why? Simply put, we demand honest reporting. As Hugh Hewitt pointed out earlier this week, the MSM is failing miserably, and the people are taking notice.
The story about the NSA intercept program that has been pushed by the New York Times is a prime example of this agenda journalism. They want to hold the president and the administration up to a level of scrutiny that they refuse to do with other elected representatives. No one was there hammering on Ted Kennedy for his antics during the Alito hearings. No one was there calling for heads when the MSM started running stories about classified programs being used in the war. No one called the MSM on the carpet for perpetuating the myths that we're torturing illegal combatants captured on the battlefield. And no one cried foul over Dan Rather's peddling of phony memos, or Eason Jordan's accusations about troops targeting journalists in Iraq.
No one except bloggers.
The days of the MSM are entering their twilight, and this story highlights that point more than ever. To push an agneda, the New York Times is willing to use skewed polling demographics, and spin to push that viewpoint. They're no different than any other MSM source out there, and it was with great reluctance that I even allowed the links to those sources to go up on our site. However, unlike the MSM, bloggers don't run away from things. We engage, and we do it on a far more intellectually-honest basis than the MSM. And bloggers do it on a daily basis.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 3:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home