Easy and Difficult

Some things are difficult to figure.  They happen without warning and seem unconnected to things that have previously occurred.  Some of these things have obscure previous histories and therefore seem ever-so-fresh.

Then the history bubbles forth and lo and behold the surprising occurrence becomes not so surprising.  Some of the nonsense with Herman Cain fits into that category.  At first we think of Mr. Cain as a surprising new voice.  His history, such as we know of it, does not predict his stunning surge to the top of the political polls.  Then, suddenly, there are unexpected charges and everybody sighs, here we go again.  But wait, Cain is a black conservative and, therefore, the worst of nightmares for the far-left liberal media.  Whether you like Cain or not, you know, from history, that the media will be gunning hard for him, with the intent to eliminate him as a legitimate threat.  Are the charges bubbling forth connected to the certainty of the left's hard charge.  Do we assume they are or do we wait and see?

Had they occurred when Cain was hardly attracting any political or popular support, you would probably assume they were unconnected to the left's objectives.  But instead, they occurred just at the very moment Cain's months of hard campaigning are paying off and his poll numbers are soaring.  They occur at the very instant he is moving into the lead in the GOP race.   If you are naive you wait and if you are politically savvy, you don't. If you have the least little bit of common sense, you don't wait at all. And sure enough, the first "victim" that shows herself publicly is accompanied by liberal doyen Gloria Aldridge.  If someone making charges against obama were to appear at their first press briefing with, say, Andrew Breitbart or Sean Hannity, would you thing differently? (This isn't to say that either or these two gentlemen are as manipulative as Aldridge, they are not, and I apologize in advance).

How long ago did someone on the left first know there were people out there who could go a long way toward ruining Cain?  Right now we have no factual answer, but don't say you don't have a clue.  If it were 3 am in Washington and someone asks if daybreak will occur, don't say you have no clue.  You have a long history of knowing that the answer to the question is yes, unless hell freezes over.

There are other late revelations on the political front.  In the last week or two obama has officially delayed the huge pipeline project that even the left concedes will produce somewhere between 200,000 and one-half-million jobs  obama cited environmental concerns despite a long history of the safety of similar projects and the desperate need for both the petroleum destined to flow through the pipes and the jobs that will be created to build and maintain the pipeline.  obama said he would consider the project again next year.  the canadians are not waiting and are moving to enter into a similarly lucrative deal with asian buyers.  If this reaction by those injured by obama's intransigence when it comes to energy production seems familiar it is because it is.  Remember when obama refused to reopen Gulf of Mexico oil pumping platforms even though many were not of the kind involved in the recent terrible spill there, and were causing catastrophic job losses along the Gulf coast?  When obama blew off the platforms he didn't count on the oil companies doing all they could to cut to cut their losses.  Many - if not most - of the platforms were simply packed up and floated to places where they could be used at once.  One of the most infuriating places where these platforms turned up was the Atlantic Ocean off of Brazil.  There, the Brazilian government, in conjunction with the oil companies, were exploring and then pumping huge petroleum reserves located there.  The Brazilian government is financing the exploration project with money from guess where?  The obama administration.  So obama won't allow the United States to pump its own oil but is paying for the Brazilian Government to pump their oil?

A few days after obama threw a dagger into the Canadian Job-Producing Bonanza, he did the same thing to oil shale production in the midwest, chiefly Ohio.  He tried to say that ranchers in the midwest were in support of his position even though they were not, but the press, largely, did not cover that.  The only problems with oil shale hydrolic blasting occurred many years ago when early attempts were made at a comparatively shallow depth.  In recent decades that blasting is done at such a great depth that ground water and other natural resources are completely unaffected.  Apparently, such things as proof of safe production doesn't faze a man beholden to far left ideology, which is the most stable part of his badly depleted base.

Let me turn to sports, a much happier subject.  The football game on Thanksgiving night may be a preview of the Super Bowl, but don't tell the sports press which are seemingly married to the line that the Packers are a lock to win it all.  In recent weeks the Packers have seemed just a bit beatable, winning yesterday against a Tampa Bay team that wasn't supposed to stay in a game against the monsters of the tundra.

The game on Thanksgiving is between the once-beaten San Francisco 49ers and the AFC-North leading Baltimore Ravens, holders of a 7-3 record and winners yesterday in a battle for first place with the up and coming Cincinnati Bengals. The Ravens are led by a quarterback often skewered by the national press, an emotional running back who wears his feelings on his sleeve and rookie wide receiver (the Ravens regularly play two from the University of Maryland) whose is only now learning that he might be the most unstoppable offensive weapon in the league.  Both teams are coached by a set of brothers, one the master of delegation and one who can't stay out of anything.  Joe Flacco had one big lead weight around his neck going into this season:  he couldn't beat the Steelers in big games.  It was a misleading weight he was carrying since he had rallied the Ravens to a victory last season in Pittsburg during the regular season and had the snake-bitten Baltimore Team marching to victory at the end of the unbelievable playoff game, also in Pittsburg, when Anquan Boldin, of all people, dropped a ball.   Earlier in that game Ray Rice had fumbled after breaking into the open field and Flacco had fumbled a snap.  This season Flacco has led the Ravens to two wins over his arch-rivals.  The first came on opening weekend in Baltimore and it was a doozy.  Flacco was impeccable.  Then a few weeks back he rallied the Ravens by marching them the length of the field in the waning seconds, and hitting that rookie receiver receiver, Torrey Smith, on a 28 yard strike just seconds after the rookie had dropped a touchdown pass in the endzone.

Yesterday, Smith and Flacco were at it again.  A long completion to the former-Terrapin (and please, as might have guessed, I went to Maryland and I know you are never a "former" Terp) set up a Ray Rice touchdown run in the first half.  In the second half, a beautiful bomb to Smith  - when Flacco threw the ball, Smith had not even caught up to the two defenders also running with him, but when the ball came down in his hands he was three strides past both of them - was the game's decisive score.  The decisive play was made by the game's best pass rusher, Terrell Suggs.  With the Bengals in position to tie the score and playing a first and goal at the Raven 8-yard-line, and the Ravens only rushing three men, Suggs broke through a multi-team of blockers and sacked the Bengals' outstanding rookie quarterback, Andrew Dalton.  As he was falling Dalton made an uncommon mistake under pressure: he threw the ball away.  Since he was still in the box and clearly had no receiver in mind when he let it go, it was called intentional grounding and moved the Bengals back near the 20-yard line. On fourth down, Pernell McPhee again broke through the multiple blockers and hit Dalton as he threw.  The wobbly ball fell harmless to Earth a few feet away and the Ravens won.

To an observer, Flacco has become the leader the Ravens need him to be.  The vets on the defense now accept him as a legitimate big game leader, even if they still wonder about some of the game plans dreamt up by offensive guru Cam Cameron.  The three losses the Ravens "sport" are all to poor teams (Seattle, Jacksonville and Tennessee) and in all three games the offense was to blame because they did not score.  All three came after huge wins the week before over really good teams.  They have lost both games they played the week after beating Pittsburgh, and if they end up not getting a bye or not making the playoffs at all, heaven forbid, those two losses will be the reason why.  In the Tennessee loss the decision to put Lee Evans on the active list for the game was hard to understand. The Titans knew Evans - with his injury = could not get deep and this allowed them to swarm all over Boldin.  The following week Evens was inactive and Smith started and caught three TD passes in the FIRST QUARTER.  It may, perhaps, be hard for veteran football minds to comprehend just how fast Smith is.  His long stride combined with tremendous foot and leg speed allow him to explode past even the fastest defender.  Now that Flacco knows how to use him, it might be Katy Bar the Door.

The 49ers are also a surpirse.  They have pulled off a stunning number of close wins, and believe they are never out of a game.  Jim Harbaugh is their new coach and he has them believing in themselves.  A key factor in the game is whether Ray Lewis can play.  He missed yesterday's game and the Ravens survived.  But they gave up way more yards than they usually do and now the 49ers can use video from the game to see where the difference is between the Ravens with Lewis and the Ravens without the man named Lewis.  I have a good feeling about the Ravens chances.  The game, going in, reminds me of the game two years back (or was it three) when the Ravens went into Dallas the night they were closing the old stadium.  All of the old Cowboys were there and most everyone thought Dallas would roll.  But Flacco kept finding Derrick Mason and Todd Heap and the Ravens broke off two long touchdown runs when Dallas thought they would be killing the clock.  The NFL network had that game, too.  I like the Ravens to win, 34-14.

Visually Impaired Sentry

     Don't get me wrong.  I do not expect anyone to read this and suddenly realize that all along they had been asleep at the switch.  It is not like that.  Instead, I think the folks who are responsible for exposing abject incompetence and total failure are intentionally looking the other way or, even worse, acting in league with those destroying that which so many thousands have died to protect. 
     The year was 1977 and I was getting ready to graduate from the University of Maryland's School of Journalism.  I was very proud of what I had done: earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism.  For four years I had listened to professor after professor rail against abuse of our duty to report the news straight up if, in fact, it was a news story we were intending to write.  Only if the article were to be labeled opinion were we permitted to infuse our opinion on the subject of the article into the article. 
     Every source for the article had to be identified, and if an annonymous source were used, it had to be corroborated, and even then it could be used only if we could convince an editor that we had made a very good faith effort to convince the source it would be far better if he or she were named in the article.  The School of Journalism, as a whole, recognized that all of us were human and that, as such, we had opinions.  If we wanted to be news reporters, however, we had better bury that opinion so deep that no reader could guess what theat opinion was.
     Whatever happened to the profession of journalism in the years since 1977 is 100% beyond me.  I do know the result of these changes, though.  It is the almost complete abandonment of every ethical principle I was taught while a student.  These days, the news story that doesn't swim with far left opinion is that rare exception to the norm.  Every trick in the book is used to get the point across.  Often times, the "trick" is treating conservative and liberal differently.  Just because a liberal does something does not mean that he will be scrutinized in the same way that a conservative is scrutinized for doing the same thing.
     Take, for example, the Herman Cain story.  Cain is charged with what I suppose is womanizing.  In one case it is alleged that he put his hand under a woman's dress while in a cab on the way to his apartment.  Read that sentence and think about it for a moment.  Another charge surrounds the aftermath of a speech the Presidential Candidate gave in Cairo, Egypt.  During the speech a woman questioned Cain about one of his points.  Cain responded appropriately.  After the speech, Cain asked two other women if they would be kind enough to get the woman's name so he could ask her out to dinner.  According to the two women, they feared that he was up to no good and decided to accompany Cain and the woman who asked the question to the dinner engagement.  Cain is said to have been a gentleman during that dinner.  Again, I suggest you read about this second "charge" in its entirety. 
      Now, compare Herman Cain's alleged activity - which he has steadfastly denied - with the admitted or discovered activities of a Democrat who was the President at the time, and here, of course, I speak of William Jefferson Clinton. 
     Monica Lewinsky and Clinton conducted a tawdry affair in the Oval Office even while Clinton's wife, Hilary, was upstairs in the White House.  When it was first discovered, Clinton denied it.  In fact, he and his functionaries had geared up to fully trash Ms. Lewinsky, destroying her and her reputation at the same time, even to the point of telling the general public that she was a mentally unstable hero worshipper whose words were nothing but lies.  Unfortunately for Clinton, there was the matter of stained dress.  It sealed his fate and saved Lewinsky's reputation, or at least what was left of it.  We are told by many who were or are still close to Clinton that he has "issues" when it comes to women.  Those issues lead him to act heavy-handed on some occassions (Paula Jones, Cathleen Willy) and downright illegally in others (Juanita Broderick).  Those issues led his staff to appoint a small and close-lipped committee to handle "Bimbo Eruptions." There is no question that had any prior president been caught in the act in the same way Clinton was caught they would have resigned or been impeached.  But Clinton was so self-centered and brazen that he ignored calls for his resignation from such institutions as the Washington Post and stayed in office even while he was, in fact, impeached by the House of Representatives.  His response to the impeachment was to hold a rally on the White House lawn for legislators enmeshed in his defense.  These pro-Clinton legislators helped him survive the Senate trial and stay in office.
     Many of the same reporters and news organizations are now calling for Herman Cain to drop out of the Presidential Race.
How do they justify this in the wake of their diametrically opposed behavior in the Clinton affairs?  They don't.  And that is part of the point.  The press is so far in the left's pocket that they aren't even called upon to explain their behavior.  And so they don't.  They simply say that Cain should go.
     And that leads to the larger and much more ethically troubling point.  The Press has sat almost completely still during the first years of the Obama administration, even though these uears have seen the unquestioned worse presidential administration in the nation's history.  There has been abject failure on every front, highlighted by economic statistics that are so bad that they actually portend of the end of America's Economic and Political dominance on the international stage.  If his occurs, as it surely will if, God Forbid, obama were to be re-elected and continue with his suicidal policies, the press will have sat by and merely watched without doing a single thing to fulfill their duty as the fourth estate. 
     Point out to me one mainstream news source that has covered Obama the way the national media covered Eisenhour, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Sr., and even Clinton.  At least the press covered the Clinton debacle after trying, at first, to avoid it.  Michael Isiakopf, in his book on the subject, explains how the horrified editors of Newsweek - at that time still a somewhat respected purveyor of analytical news - actually refused to run his accounts of the Lewinsky affair until they were shamed into it by Matt Drudge's revelations on his web site.
     Now, at a time when a burgeoning alternative press has literally made fools of the editorial policies and practices of the mainstream press, the old guard seem unfazed as abuse after abuse of previously canonized press practices are revealed by sources such as Powerline, Drudge, and the two major demons of the mainstream, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh (it is a given that "talk radio" should have substituted for Rush Limbaugh, but Limbaugh was such a trendsetter that his role cannot be overemphasized, and those who followed him: Mark Levin, Shawn Hannity and Hugh Hewitt, although extremely influential and competent, pale in comparison to Limbaugh's reach, effect and profound influence.)
     If ever an objective history is written of these recent years, they will not be kind to the mainstream press.  Each and every outlet has been totally silent to the overall story of extreme incompetence, disasterous failure and complete abandonment of national values, national marks of achievement, national ethics and indeed, national norms.  Last night, while watching the Ravens' football game, a promo ran for the Sixty Minutes episode to show following the game.  The lead story on what used to be a real news show was an investigative piece on congressional conflicts of interest.  No matter what the story was about - and without watching I could predict with almost utter certainty that most or all of the congressman scrutinized would be Republican.  Am I correct?  The real story is how many pieces Sixty Minutes has done over the last three to four years on the utter disaster that is the obama administation.  Each and every area that a national administration influences - international affairs, domestic spending, domestic economies, crime rates and every other area - are areas of total failure by obama and his functionaries.  And not only are they failures, the policies of obama have guaranteed that these areas will be ones of total failure for years to come.  And there is ample evidence that obama intends this to be the case.  His use of so-called czars, which are nothing more than administrators assigned to positions of authority without any oversight by Congress.  How many investigative pieces on the obama administration have been undertaken by CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, National Public Television, CNN or the New York Times or Washington Post.  Maybe there has been one or two but I don't know of them.  But CBS was out there going after conflict of interest by the Congress, and slanting the story, I'm betting, against the loyal opposition.  Terrific.  Boreish, misleading and slanted, but terrific.