Evil on the loose in Colorado and questions for obama

Sitting and listening to obama making remarks about the slain people in Colorado, shot by an evil 24-year-old at a movie complex, a movie complex showing the new Batman movie to packed audiences.  Immediately after obama's remarks, police reveal that the suspect's apartment was booby-trapped with up to nine bombs.  One of the bombs was set to explode if someone opened the front door.  Strangely, police learned of the booby-trap from the suspect, who also told police that his car, parked just outside the movie complex where all of the shootings occurred, was set with bombs.


So this profoundly evil person randomly kills one dozen or more people, including at least two extremely young children (ages 6 and 7 according to reports) while injuring dozens more, but in its aftermath he surrenders peacefully and alerts police to additional mayhem about to unfold.


obama has cancelled his "campaign" events scheduled for today.  Governor Romney has, as well.  It is striking to hear obama in this moment, sounding like a leader, sounding like the leader we thought he could be.  Even those who voted against him believed he would be a formidable leader.  Many feared that his leadership abilities would mask the senselessness of his politics, who anyone even slightly familiar with his background knew would be ultra-left.


Well, his policies and plans are all ultra-left.  His problems are two-fold: first, his leadership qualities have largely disappeared, perhaps because he wasn't prepared for the backlash, not just from the right (which he had to expect) but from the center and center-left.  It appears that his determination to get his obamamess approved clouded both his political perceptions and those of his inner circle.  In those first days they mouthed words that indicated they were more than willing to sacrifice a second term for the president and a democratically-controlled congress if they could get obamamess through congress.  Not many people believed that.  And they clearly didn't really mean it.  But there is every chance it will come true.


People supporting Governor Romney are still trying to get their arms around the reality that the far left has vice-grip control of the news media.  Many people grew up loving newspapers, eagerly scooping up the home-delivered version early in the morning and using it to get their days off to an informed start.  Everyone was aware - in a background kind of way - that people in the media were liberal.  But we also trusted their basic honesty and truthfulness.  We trusted the actual reporters to bring us the news straight up, saving the opinions for the editorial page and op-ed page.  


As a journalism major at the University of Maryland, I learned the theory behind the posture of the press.  It was based on the English writer, philosopher and statesman, John Milton, and his famous observation that in a free market place of ideas the truth will always emerge.  Reporters, then, believed in the basic goodness of their system; if they told the facts - the "truth" - it would contribute to the public's clear understanding of what was going on.  Reporters believed in the basic truths and rationality of their liberal positions, and they believed they contributed to the goals of their political beliefs by informing the public.  If being liberal was good, then the truth would benefit good and, vis-a-vis, the liberal cause.


Between those years - the period of time in the immediate aftermath of Watergate - and the election of President Bush in 2000, the media underwent a profound change.  It was as if they collectively decided that they didn't have to bother pursuing truth, unless it happened to be in league with their political beliefs.  Now the front page of the New York Times and the Nightly News on NBC resemble the DNC talking points.  In the next months those forums will be filled to the brim with pro-obama press releases and anti-romney hit pieces.  What the unsophisticated keep missing is the way the press controls the news by what they print and, just as importantly, what they do not print.


Late last week the Congress held a function that was advertised as a meeting between new members of the Egyptian Parliament and United States' congressmen with the overall goal being to educate the new Egyptian legislators on the intricacies of democracy.


But some of the Egyptian "legislators" were members of groups that were on the US list of known terrorists.  Folks on that list are prohibited from coming into the United States.  One of these "legislators" was a devout follower of the Blind Shake, now serving a life sentence for conspiring to blow up more than a few public places in and around New York City.  That was bad enough, but at least one of the "legislators" was himself a convicted terrorist.  Yet the State Department - which issued the visa to this man - said they were unaware that he was on a known terrorist list.  Is this merely some kind of bureaucratic foul-up, or has the obama administration decided it knows more about who should be allowed in the US than the people who put this man on the terror list.


This incident highlights the massive problem with the mass media.  There have been no reports whatsoever about this incident in any media outlet save for a few center-right blogs. What's far worse, the lone-Muslim in congress, Mr. Ellison of Minnesota, has released a snarling hit piece on Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, who has learned of the event and publicly criticized it.   


The 2008 campaign was nothing short of a coverup of obama's past.  Instead of the microscopic vetting currently unleashed on Governor Romney, obama has still been able to sail along literally untouched by probing mainstream reporters.  Few will forget the televised conversation between NBC's Tom Brokaw and Public TV's Charlie Rose (now on CBS) which took place a few nights before election day, 2008.  They both candidly admitted they knew nothing about obama.  Nothing at all.  They didn't know his history, they didn't know his views on many issues, and they didn't know exactly what he meant when he voiced that "hope and change" mantra that is now nothing more than a lead weight around his neck.  Yet these men were both highly visible members of the national media, the same people who tell us they have a Constitutional Duty to inform the public.  It was their duty to vet obama, to find out how he got into Harvard and who paid for it, who he learned his politics from, who influenced him, who he would rely on once elected and, most importantly, what legislative initiatives was obama likely to undertake once in the oval office.  How could a man who had a simmering dislike for the British and Israelis and a fast-blooming interest in the dictatorial methods of Mr. Chavez and Mr. Castro and even 

Iranian President (and resident madman) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad become President without anybody knowing about that.  Obama didn't have to lie to conceal these peculiarities, the press never asked him about these issues.  

Few in the general population knew any of this before the 2008 election.  What is unsaid is that the media - which has abandoned any pretense of objectivity - knew that if they did vet obama, obama wouldn't be elected president.  

Now it is four years later and despite abysmal economic conditions brought about by unrelenting federal spending, massive and unrelenting unemployment that has hit the middle class extremely hard and bludgeoned minorities, especially the black population, gargantuan defense cutbacks, a far-left foreign policy that many think has isolated Israel against a world gone mad while showing open disdain for longtime allies like England, India, Canada and even France, and now an openly stated hatred of our basic economic system - that would be capitalism - combined with an open and viral dislike (is "hatred" too strong a word?) for private business and those who operate it, obama is only an eyelash behind Governor Romney in the national polls. 

I hope - and it is only that, a hope; it is not even close to being an expectation - that someone in the media will ask obama some tough questions before the November elections.  It might be that some of these questions will have to be posed by Governor Romney in the debates.

For instance: might some reporter inquire about these topics?

What did obama mean when he told Mr. Putin that he would be able to be more negotiable about nuclear weapons after the election.  I'm guessing that obama is familiar with Jonathan Shell's Fate of the Earth and its support of unilateral nuclear disarmament.  Does he agree with that premise?

If Israel decides its people are in real danger from nuclear weapons that can be launched from its sworn enemy Iran, will be support it, militarily if need be, if Israel launches a military action against Iran?

How bad must the economy get before you put a brake on tax increases and federal rule-making?  Would you ever consider cutting income taxes and corporation taxes?  Would you ever consider adopting the kind of reforms adopted under President Reagan?

Without such a vetting, how can any of the obama fans amongst the press decide that he should be president again, or is a better candidate than Mr. Romney?  What policies of obama are they just crazy about?  What policies of Romney do they dislike, and why.