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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (73737)	9/2/2009 10:41:47 PM
From: goldworldnet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Thanks Brumar for all you do at SI. :) * * *

To: Brumar89 who wrote (73737)	9/3/2009 4:10:39 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 90947

"Your meeting doesn't get covered unless it blows up." Media Mislead With Coverage Of Town Halls By E.J. DIONNE JR. Investor's Business Daily Wednesday, September 02, 2009 4:20 PM PT Health care reform is said to be in trouble partly because of those raucous August town hall meetings in which Democratic members of Congress were besieged by shouters opposed to change. But what if our media-created impression of the meetings is wrong? What if the highly publicized screamers represented only a fraction of public opinion? What if most of the town halls were populated by citizens who respectfully but firmly expressed a mixture of support, concern and doubt? There is an overwhelming case that the electronic media went out of their way to cover the noise and ignored the calmer (and from television's point of view "boring") encounters between elected representatives and their constituents. It's also clear that the anger that got so much attention largely reflects a fringe right-wing view opposed to all sorts of government programs most Americans support. Much as the far left of the anti-war movement commanded wide coverage during the Vietnam years, so now are extremists on the right hogging the media stage — with the media's complicity. Over the last week, I've spoken with Democratic House members, many from highly contested districts, about what happened in their town halls. None would deny polls showing that the health reform cause lost ground last month, but little of the probing civility that characterized so many of their forums was ever seen on television. "I think the media coverage has done a disservice by falling for a trick that you'd think experienced media hands wouldn't fall for: of allowing loud voices to distort the debate," said Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, whose district includes Columbus, Ohio. At her town halls, she said, "I got serious questions, I got hostile questions, I got questions about how this would work, I got questions about how much it will cost. I also got a lot of comments from people who said it's important for their families and businesses to get health care reform." Rowdy In Texas Rep. Frank Kratovil hails from a very conservative district on Maryland's Eastern Shore and says it didn't bother him that he was hung in effigy in July by a right-wing group. "As a former prosecutor, I consider that to be mild," he said with a chuckle. The episode, he added, was not at all typical of his town hall meetings where "most of the people were there to express legitimate concerns about the bill, wondering about how it was going to impact them" and also wanting "to know the truth about some of the things that were being said about the bill." The most disturbing account came from Rep. David Price of North Carolina, who spoke with a stringer for one of the television networks at a large town-hall meeting he held in Durham. The stringer said he was one of 10 people around the country assigned to watch such encounters. Price said he was told flatly: "Your meeting doesn't get covered unless it blows up." As it happens, the Durham audience was broadly sympathetic to reform efforts. No "news" there. Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas is one member who did attend gatherings dominated by boisterous opponents of health reform. At a meeting in Waco, a man asked him what constitutional authority the federal government had to get involved in health care. Edwards replied, "Article One, Section Eight," which includes authority for Congress to provide for the "general welfare of the United States." Right-Wing Focus Then Edwards asked the man if he opposed "the federal government being involved in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and children's health care." The man said he was, and the room roared its approval. "I will wear it as a badge of honor that I was shouted at by people who oppose Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and children's health," Edwards said. The shouters, he added, did not speak for most of his constituents, but for "the Ron Paul libertarian position that represents 2% to 5% of the country." When I reached Rep. Tom Perriello last week, he divided the crowds at the 17 town halls he had held to that point in his largely rural Virginia district into three groups: conservatives, for whom the health care battle is "about big government, socialism and all that"; the left, for whom "it's about corporate accountability"; and a "middle" for whom "it's about health care costs" and the problems with their coverage. But the only citizens who commanded widespread media coverage last month were the right-wingers. And I bet you thought the media were "liberal." © 2008 Washington Post Writers Group ibdeditorials.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (73737)	9/3/2009 5:10:59 AM
From: Sully-	2 Recommendations Respond to of 90947

h/t to Brumar89: Okay, this makes it official - this adm really aspires to be Big Brother Via Josh: Links to the gov't sites Solicitation Number: WHO-S-09-0003 RFQ NUMBER: WHO-S-09-0003 RED ALERT: White House plans massive spidering operation of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. looking for detractors Yesterday, The National Legal and Policy Center discovered an extremely troubling solicitation from the White House. As if the administration's media specialists aren't in enough trouble -- collecting "fishy" email information on citizens, for instance -- a recent RFQ raises new and troubling questions. NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites... The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.” Note that this is the third troubling development related to White House new media operations. The first controversy erupted after the administration began collecting information on critics of the Obama health care transformation program. The second related to spam emails sent by David Axelrod, an Obama senior adviser. Now the White House intends to harvest vast amounts of data on American citizens who use social networking sites. The scope of the program as described in the RFQ is astounding: • Capture of comments by detractors and supporters of Obama: the RFQ specifies that the White House will capture "comments by both Obama critics and supporters, with no restriction as to how the White House would use the information." • Transparency: there is none. The RFQ includes "extremely broad secrecy terms preventing the vendor from disclosing to the public or the media what information is being captured and archived (page 7, “Restriction Against Disclosure”)"; • Collection of data on citizens: the RFQ prescribes a massive data collection effort including capturing of comments on any website or social networking service; • Collection of any and all types of content: text, markup, graphics, video, audio, etc. Think the NLPC is overstating things? Read the salient details in the request for quote (RFQ) and judge for yourself: The contractor shall provide the necessary services to capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content published by EOP on publicly-accessible web sites, along with information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP offices under PRA maintains a presence, throughout the term of the contract.... The contractor shall include in the information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP maintains a presence both comments posted on pages created by EOP and messages sent to EOP accounts on those web sites. Publicly-accessible sites may include, but are not limited to social networking sites. The contractor shall provide a user-friendly way of organizing and searching captured information... ...Capture of comments and publicly-visible tags posted by users on publicly-accessible websites on which an EOP component subject to the PRA maintains a presence. Vendor must be able to either: (i) Capture all comments posted to a list of websites provided to vendor; or (ii) Capture a sample of comments posted to a list of websites provided to vendor, according to a sampling methodology that will be provided to vendor and approved by EOP. This RFQ is an outrage. And this administration appears to be completely out of control. Obama makes Nixon look like a rank amateur. Update: "Back in the USSA" and "If the Bush White House had let a contract like this one." directorblue.blogspot.com