11/19/2005

Does the BIT follow the MSM's Lead?

What I'm talking about is, do they follow the lead of the Main Stream Media in that they are going to allow nothing into their sheets that might have a positive outlook on GWB? I sent an email to them in response to the ongoing,(and just ended, apparently), discourse between John Foster and myself, hoping to get one more chance at rebutting his last submission. But, no go on that idea I guess. Maybe I'll wait one more week and see what happens.
In the mean time, has anybody had a chance to check out LittleGreenFootballs and the new OSM blogs? Being a conservative blog, it is amazing that they include in their postings, links to some of the more vociferious lefty blogs! There were a couple of kind of nasty ones up there this morning!
Is there anything on the MSM this morning about the vote last night in the House of Reps? Those "Nasty, double dealing, posturing, political animals" the GOP, put a question to the whole mob of them last night and had an immediate vote on it. The vote was on a resolution that said in effect, that we should pull out of Iraq immediately. Well for the last few months, all of Bush's critics have been screaming for him to get out of Iraq and now here was their chance to do it! Guess what the vote was? 403-3 AGAINST the resoultion!!!! Jeez, I wonder what happened to all the rethoric of the last fews weeks? Here was your chance all you two faced bastards! No standing by your convictions for these guys! No sir, we don't want our constituents to know what we 'really' stand for. Oh yeah, midterm elections are coming up next year and there just might be a lot more people out there that want us to continue to support our people in Iraq, than there are dissenters despite what "the polls" say. Funny how all these polls are comissioned by left leaning organizations and then touted to the roof tops by the MSM as an absolute inidcator of every single persons feelings in the whole USA! I take all these polls with so many grains of salt I can't swallow them and neither should anyone else with half a brain!! Have I completely pissed off everybody who reads this! Oh well. TIFN

7 comments:

Sam said...

I like to read both sides of the issue but in this case I think there was some complicated political tricks, Everett. See, the first resolution was by a highly respected veteran named Murtha, who has been an expert on military policy for over 25 years. (And may I add very conservative, too.) He decided that maybe an exit strategy (Powell Doctrine) would be a good idea.

So the Republic leadership bumped Murtha's resolution and substituted it with a "red herring." The Democratic whips sniffed dead rotten fish and told everyone to vote against the red herring. I think those are pretty much the facts, slightly embellished by your's truly here.

The point is that many moderates of both parties are starting to get indigestion from a prolonged war effort in Iraq, which is clearly headed for a major civil war between the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. Having our armies over there seem to make the prospects of civil war and attracting more terrorists even worse. So we're stuck in a momumental Catch-22 where no matter what we do, we're doomed to failure. In fact, military strategists are not even sure how to measure success of the Iraqi Invasion. That's where we get the "Stay the course" Doctrine.

But you have to enjoy the theatrics of people who really think they have a political answer. As to opinion polls, they follow very stringent statistics but as we all know, opinions are just that, opinions, a dime a dozen.

Everett said...

Yeah Sam, I realize the whole vote thing was a setup from the start. The Repubs are just sick and tired of the daily attacks against Bush by all the Dems and the MSM, and saw it as a chance to stick it up their asses for a change. And the Dems certainly didn't like a taste of their own medicine! Anymore than the GOP does about all the distortions, lies, and half truths, and mis-representations perpetrated by the Lib/Left in the last few months. I read about 30 to 50 different blogs daily, Left AND Right, and it amazes me that those who can't stand Bush will not Listen to anyone when the printed copies of actual meetings, and what was said at them, are handed to them. Irrefutable proof, in that form is dismissed as a 'forgery' and statements like, "that never happened or that wasn't what was said!! As if they were there to hear it themselves, Yeah Right!
What to do in Iraq? We certainly CANNOT just up and leave before they are ready to take over and run their own country, but when that will happen is something that NOBODY can predict right now. We are headed right back to the sixties and a resumption of all the bullshit we in the military endured during that time. Hanoi Jane should begin to be heard from pretty soon. Her and the rest of her ilk from La-La Land!
As far as Mr. Murtha is concerned, he didn't show me too much with his resolution. It must have slipped his mind about how all this same kind of rhetoric demoralised the troops back in the VN era.
I personally want all the guys out of there and back home to. But if we don't do these sorts of things, for the RIGHT reasons, then who the hell will? Everybody is so busy stealing everyone elses money and resources they can't be bothered to look out for the little guy anymore. Or should we just say screw everybody, everywhere, and become an isolationist country? China would love that! THEY are going to be the next ones to jump right on our asses!! In another fifty or so years, this globe is going to be one huge open cess-pool where Darwins rule will apply. Survival of the fittest. I'm only sorry that my grandchildren are going to have to live in that kind of a world. I'm depressed as hell, and I never get that way!!!! TIFN

Sam said...

Hey, a lot of like me here supported an engagement in Iraq and I support the troops there - did you know that even the Coast Guard is over there?

The question is HOW the war is being conducted.

It is inevitable that after some frustrations, all the "fair weather fans" and "Monday morning quarterbacks" would jump on the bandwagon and use liberal (or conservative) media outlets to promote their re-election causes. Many of these media companies get MILLIONS for their work. Hey, they have First Amendment rights, too. Have at it, you hearty fools!

You mentioned isolationism, which seems to be another trend but let me tell you, our US ports aren't safe from terrorists. Nope, not in the least. Thats because all the money is going to Iraq. So we increase container inspections from 1 to 2 percent, get a gamma-ray detector for scoping the containers and none of them work, and then say we won the day?

May I add the Block Island is a maritime port, a perfect target for terrorists, even though it is a little one? And, there's no Coast Guard on the Island anymore?

But I digress. Don't get to bummed out, Everett, and take heart that the US Congress will be on vacation for the next two weeks. Sheesh, maybe some relief for a while.

When we lived in Austin the TX Legislature would meet every second year and it was always a joke. "Gets yer women, kids, and babies off the street, here comes the clowns and bandits!" Arrests for prostitution, speeding, and drinking always seemed to double when those jokers were in town. Cheers,
Sam

Anonymous said...

I will comment on the title of this posting.

Is the BIT like the MSM??? Most certainly...but even worse. At least in the MSM there are choices. You can change the channel to a station with your political mindset (which is baffling because reporting is supposed to be about objectivity). You can find both side of an issue with the MSM by going to different sources.

With Block Island Issues however, this option is not available. One man controls all of the print information on BI, Royal Montgomery, and folks he just moved here within the last decade. I've been told by employees of the BIT that they have to have their stories in well before press time. This is done so Montgomery can edit and alter their stories to fit within his view of things. The meaning of stories or even the reporting of Local government proceedings have been totally altered in this fashion.

There have even been stories that put Montgomery's friends in the town hall in a bad light for running the town in the manner in which it is run. These have ended up on the cutting room floor by Montgomery. All of the reporters have to conform to Montgomery's views to work there...they must selectively report. Montgomery's editorial is not confined to his weekly pontifications on page 2, it consumes the paper and filters out information that he does not want us to hear. So much for journalistic ethics.

Now, if this were to happen and there were other sources where the information could be readily accessible it would not be nearly as bad. Unfortunately though, there is only one paper and thus one source of info. The makes Montgomery's bias/filtering exponentially more damaging. WE have no other ways to obtain the information which affects us all on a daily basis. Having a full time job and a family make going to all of the meetings an impossibility.

Montgomery really abrogates his responsibility to all of us by the way he conducts his "paper of record.” It is obvious he does not care about the Island, because if he did he would provide us with the information and allow us to make our own decisions. Instead he only provides us the information which compels us to arrive at his conclusions.

Sam said...

If I called Pippa on the phone what would she say to that? She would probably remember me because we had a near-riot over my letter about the Block Island Ferry having crappy air emissions.

And I'll be darned, they printed my letter and then a real spankin' response from The Family. I should have goaded them further about how many Camels you would have to smoke to equal one boat trip but did not, but the point is that sometimes the system works. You're right though, most of the time the BIT seems like a third-world paper dominated by a despot king. It is power of the pen and he bought it, baby, did he ever.

MSM sounds like some kind of chocolate covered peanuts, by the way. It is crafted by exactly the same kind of despot, one with much more commercial power and bucks.

Anonymous said...

BIT unbiased? Its clear to me that Royal Montgomery pulls his punches in his reporting about goings on in Town Hall. Anyone who has ever been to Town Hall comes back with the same impression. The staff has zero accountability, they work "flex hours" so no one knows who should be in working and when someone is expected back who isn't in, the billing for town utilities is sloppy, deadlines aren't met, etc. Yet we've never read this in the BIT.

Speaking of the town administration, there is a lot of talk about the growing number of town employees. This increased head count comes with lots of additonal costs like health insurance. Montgomery has never done a series on the rise of the bureaucracy at Town Hall, the huge expansion in family health benefits for working just 30 hours (I think), and related costs. The Town is going to spend us off the Island.

Anonymous said...

Dear bloggers,

I don't want to get into the arrogance of the publisher of the B.I. Times, his housing situation, or the housing his daughter has been able to get to. I'll let the more informed comment on those interesting topics.
But I would like to make a couple responses to the bromides I keep hearing about 1.) the paper, and 2.) the alleged bureaucracy at Town Hall.

It's absurd and also very funny to see yet another blog proclaiming that Bruce Montgomery writes the editorials for the BI Times.

Well, I can tell you I'm good friends with a couple of people on the staff there and I know that Montgomery has never written an editorial on Page 2 in all the years he's owned the paper. He barely keeps up with town politics; he doesn't really care. His opinions are found only in his strange cartoons and in his advertising.
What does he care about? He cares about his job at the paper, which in his case is to come up with ads and make sure the advertisers are happy. Therefore, he cares very much what certain businesses on the island think, especially those that advertise every week year-round, but he cares little about the town, because they do the bare minimum in advertising, usually only what they're legally obligated to do, legals and notices. Name me one paper in the world where the advertising department writes the editorial page. Likewise, if you knew any town officals, you'd know that most of them don't particuarly care for Montgomery, either.

So, hear this: the editors work on the editorials, and only the editors do. That's why this comment below is so bizarre:

"There have even been stories that put Montgomery's friends in the town hall in a bad light for running the town in the manner in which it is run. These have ended up on the cutting room floor by Montgomery."

Or take this comment:
"Speaking of the town administration, there is a lot of talk about the growing number of town employees. This increased head count comes with lots of additonal costs like health insurance."

If you went to a town meeting from time to time, or spoke with someone who does, you would know that the town sometimes discusses hiring new people, such as a town planner, or a public works director, but the fact is, the Town Manager and many town officals aren't eager to hire anyone new b/c new hires exact such a strain on the budget.
Ironically, it's the people, the taxpayers, who have asked the town to consider hiring more people that are experts instead of relying on so many volunteers. What new employees are you talking about? I notice your blogs don't mention any names. Recently, the town brought on an able person who's the town's GIS administrator, and she's been very helpful in performing difficult mapping projects. If you ever walk into Town Hall, you will find there are few town employees, and most of them say they are overworked, understaffed, and behind in their work because of all the tasks above and beyond their job descriptions that they are expected to do. Many departments are run by one person, and that one person is that department's sole employee.
Now I agree that town employees do get paid very well and they get impressive health benefits - the argument for doing so, though, is a reasonable one.
It's very hard to entice people to take an interest in a job that requires quiet living in an isolated place, with hard-to-get housing, and that's why health benefits and a decent salary are the main things the town has to offer anyone from the mainland, or from other kinds of jobs. Personally, I don't consider health benefits, in an age where health care costs are so terribly high, that unreasonable. And keep in mind these salaries and benefits aren't much different from what the town employees and school teachers on mainland Rhode Island receive.

And this remark!: "It is my understanding that Pippa, Kevin and especially John Foster run that whole operation" is perhaps the strangest blog on this page. Pippa, for one, is no longer the editor, as the masthead says. Kevin Weaver has moved off island and now lives in another state. John Foster, far from running the paper, is the paper's production manager. That's a nice title, but it means that he makes the words and the pictures look nice on the page, hardly a job of great power. If you knew John at all, you would know he's always telling people he has no relationship with the content of the paper and contributes only with an occasional letter, as any member of the public would.

I really enjoy this forum you all have though, and thanks for the stimulating conversation.