Mid-July, 2006 -- Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut), speaking for the cameras as reported on FOX, said every administration up to the end of the Clinton administration was deeply engaged in Israel, but the administration of President G.W. Bush has disengaged from that part of the planet.  One wonders what Senator Dodd has been smoking.  

Dean raps Bush on defense
Democratic chairman speaks at conference

By Philip J. LaVelle
(San Diego) UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 16, 2006 
                  
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean accused President Bush last night of being weak on national defense and absent in the escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.  In remarks at San Diego State University, Dean urged activists to fan across the nation – including deep into the heart of Republican-rich "red" states – to tell voters that Bush has failed as president – including in national defense, which Republicans tout as their core strength. 

Dean must smoke some odd materials, too.  The rise of Islamic world terrorism took place during the Clinton Administration.  And, the American military suffered  nearly terminal damage under Cllinton's "leadership."  Have people forgotten Clinton's mass closing of bases?  The mass retirements by officers who could no longer stand serving under that Commander in Chief?  How about his firing of the last Tomahawk missle in the military's inventory?  Hell, how about the Eagle Scouts rejecting their certificates of accomplishment because they were signed by Clinton?  The only people in uniform who supported Clinton were members of the North Korean military!

All that reversed when Bush took office.  Bush runs the military the way Reagan ran the military.  He sets the goals, lets the generals tell him how to accomplish those goals and gives them the tools they need to prove it.  Clinton bombed Chinese embassies from the air by accident, flattened aspirin factories, failed to support Marines in action, did nothing about the Sudanese genocide of Christians by Moslems and did nothing following the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and the World Trade Center buildings which later came down on 911.

I hear the Dems recently pulled the ads they've been running in American media.  The ads that used photos of flag-draped coffins of soldiers.  It worked during the Vietnam period because there was no alternate media in America, but that situation has changed.  Walter Cronkite is no longer the most trusted man in the nation.  Because of the new alternate media -- radio, FOX tv, newspapers like the Washington Times and magazines like this one -- the day is gone when the ruling Democrat socialist elite can say any damned thing they want, and have it automatically accepted by the American public.

In Oregon, long ago, there lived a man named John Wilder Mincey.  In his youth, he was a freelance news cinematographer in Vietnam.  He once told me his reaction to what people like Cronkite did to his war footage.  In a word, he said that what the American journalists of the time said while running his footage was a lie.  What they described on the network news had nothing to do with what he watched unfold on the fields of battle in that war.

And, so it goes today.  The Democrat leadership remains a pack of liars (or fools -- it is sometimes hard to tell which) backed up by what is now called the Mainstream (or Main Street) Media.  What has changed in the interval is the rise of the conservative media, so what the public has access to these days is choice.  I define the difference as follows.  A member of the old media must report what is beneficial to the world view of the Left.  A member of the new media must try to figure out what actually happened and let the public know about that.

The job of the old media is to filter news so you get a painting.  An artistic interpretation which has a point to make, an idea to sell.  The job of the new media is to strip away the filters and give you the raw meat.  How you cook it after that is your business.

Recently, a locally (Portland, OR) famous free distribution "journalistic" product -- we'll refer to it here at this time as a weekly newspaper -- ran a piece by a staffer of theirs who not long ago won a Pulitzer.  This piece had a graphic which showed an elephant with a paint roller, covering a blue Oregon with red paint.  The title of the piece was "Red Dawn."  A poorly written piece which relied primarily for source information on people who were sad when the Berlin Wall went down, the essay nevertheless made one valid point.  The political makeup of Oregon, like that of America, has changed in the past few decades.  It is turning to the right.

That is what is frightening people like Howard Dean. It's happening at the grassroots level.

Oregon had one of those anti-gay marriage initiatives not long ago.  It passed.  The Democrats and RINOs have run this state since God Knows When, and even when responsible for an 8% unemployment rate (you read that right, 8%) still held the governor's mansion.  But there is a different feeling in the air, of late.  Due to the efforts of people the weekly newspaper didn't interview, the national trend has even touched this last stronghold of fearless yellow liberal journalism and socialist thought.  A Republican who is not a typical Oregon Republican (a RINO, or liberal Democrat who wears a tie) is making the forces of Leftism nervous as you read this.  A fellow named Ron Saxton who holds some views which make conservatives shiver also holds some views which, in Oregon, are borderline shocking.  This gubernatorial candidate with an "R" after his name, questions the value of feeding more money into a public school system which turns out a bad product.  

That, in Oregon, is heresy. Shocking in liberal Portland, and in Eugene, the home of the University of Oregon, treason.  One doesn't publicly criicize a school system which has succeeded in exchanging witchcraft for Christianity, redistribution for aggressive self dependency and abortion for morally responsible behavior.

America is indeed changing.  Both nationally and in longtime leftist enclaves like Oregon, liberals are facing problems.  That explains the panic.  It explains blatent lies like this Dean charge of a Bush weakness in the area of national defense.  Such charges no longer float around unchallenged in the journalistic air.  Even here in Oregon, it is now legal to suggest that the public school system lacks credibility.  Last week, somebody openly said they approved of the concept of profit.

Once more, we have to give the nod to Bob Dylan.  The times, indeed, are a'changing.  Perhaps not in the manner he and Joan Baez would prefer, but nevertheless changing.

(LL)

© 2006 Oregon Magazine