Category: Media matters

If the truth isn’t on your side….lie

What is it with liberals and fraud? First there was Rathergate where a known Bush hater supplied CBS news with memos he claimed were from a former commanding officer of George W. Bush. My favorite justification of that fiasco was that the memos were “fake but true”.

Last week, ABC News reported that a memo circulated by Repulicans was trying to exploit the Terri Schiavo case for political gain. Powerline again blows up another liberal lie by demonstrating that memo is also clearly a fraud. It wasn’t written by Senate Republicans.

Since those frauds were so successful, the liberal group People for the American Way apparently thought they would follow those examples. They don’t want U.S. Senate Republicans to be able to confirm President Bush’s appellate court judge nominees. For four years Senate Democrats have been using filibusters to prevent the nominees from coming to a vote. This means that effectively there must be 60 votes to confirm a judge instead of the simple majority (51) required by the constitution. Senate Republicans want to prevent the filibusters by changing procedural rules.

In response, the PFWA group has produced an advertisement to convince the public that what the Republicans want to do is wrong and dangerous for our country. The spokesman in the ad claims:

I’m a Republican. A common sense Republican. I like that my party controls the White House and the Congress. But I also know that our democracy works best when both parties are speaking out and being heard.

Here’s where it gets funny. Radio Blogger did a little research into finding out who this “common sense” Republican is. It turns out he doesn’t hold any elected public office. He isn’t a prominent businessman either.

His name is Ted Nonini and he is the treasurer of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City. Yep, he is an officer in a union. That is, he is an officer in a union that endorsed John Kerry in last year’s election.

Do you really think an officer of an organization that supported John Kerry is really glad that Republicans hold the presidency and majorities in congress? Please.

Good news is not news

All the news reported by mainstream medai coming from Iraq seems to be bad. The AP News headline today tells us that two more U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq. You’d think the terrorists…excuse me, “insurgents” (wouldn’t want to offend the terrorists you know) were winning.

Well here is a story from an Australian news radio outlet that you won’t hear about in the States (hat tip James Taranto). It might make people think the Iraqis want a democracy:

The Iraqi police have investigated a case in the village of al-Mudhariya, which is just south of Baghdad. The villagers there say that before the election insurgents came and warned them that if they voted in last weekend’s election, they would pay.

Now the people of this mixed village of Sunni and Shia Muslims, they ignored the threat and they did turn out to vote.

We understand that last night the insurgents came back to punish the people of al-Mudhariya, but instead of metering out that punishment the villagers fought back and they killed five of the insurgents and wounded eight. They then burnt the insurgents’ car. So the people of that village have certainly had enough of the insurgents.

Great news. People of Iraq killing terrorists? The silence in the U.S. media is deafening.

Vox Blogoli VI

Hugh Hewitt has once again asked for bloggers opinion on Jon Meacham’s Newsweek article Religion: The Birth of Jesus.

In the article, Meacham claims that the story of Jesus’ birth is fiction – invented by the gospel writers to either cover up Jesus’ illegitimate birth.

This is not an investigative journalism piece. Meacham starts with a theory – the Nativity is false – and provided only biased evidence in a misguided attempt to prove it is true. Albert Mohler pointed out how Meacham’s sources were from liberal scholars, mostly the Jesus Seminar. Meacham didn’t cite one source that thought the Nativity was factual – only statistics quoted in such a way as to make it seem that people who believe the story is factual are unreasonable.

He also uses selective interpretation to prove his points. Like this example:

It is also striking that in parts of the Gospels Mary herself appears unaware of her son’s provenance and destiny. (In Mark, when Jesus is casting out devils at the beginning of his ministry, “his friends” the sense of the Greek is “family,” or “household,” which would presumably include his mother thought he was mentally disturbed and tried to stop him, saying, “He is beside himself.” If Mary had received Gabriel’s message, then she should have known her son was not mad, but the Messiah. And even if she were not around in this story in Mark, had Jesus been born in such extraordinary circumstances, it is logical to assume that those closest to him would have known at least something of it—enough, anyway, to see Jesus as someone with a special role or destiny of which the exorcisms were a likely part.)

Whenever a Bible doubter quotes from the bible, you MUST look it up yourself. They are most likely taking the verse out of context. Meacham is referring to Mark 3:21. The King James Version says Jesus “friends” came to him. The New American Standard Version says “His people” came to him. I will concede that the original text may be translated as “family” here. But to see if that is accurate for this verse, you need to keep reading. In Mark 3:31 the narrative continues,

“Then His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent word to Him and called Him.”

In context, there are “friends” or “people” who come to him. Then his mother and brothers (catholics believe brothers really mean cousin in this case). The point is, there is a distinction made between friends and family. Meacham puts words in Mary’s mouth claiming she said “He is beside himself.” The gospel writer is clearly making a distinction between Jesus friends in verse 3:21 and Jesus family in verse 3:31.

Previously, I claimed that Meacham’s attempt at proving the Nativity is false is misguided. That is because Albert Mohler points out that Meacham claims to be “a believing Episcopalian.” Since the virgin birth is central to the story of Christ, how can someone believe the sacred texts of Christianity or lies, yet still claim to be a Christian?

It is a contradiction that can’t be answered. If the Bible lies, then the Bible cannot be believed. A person who says he is a Christian but does not believe the Bible is truthful cannot be a Christian. You are either misguided in believing the Bible is false, or misguided in claiming to be a Christian.

This seems to be a trend in liberalism this year. First we have John Kerry who claims his Catholic faith is important to him, yet does not believe he can use his faith to make decisions that will affect others. In fact, he must make decisions that go against his faith (such as supporting abortion). Now Meacham is trying to reinforce that view by claiming the religion that he believes in is a lie. The only conclusion we can draw from his position is that people should have their religion, but should not use it to form the guiding principles of their lives.

Meacham’s article was not written to illuminate us on the meaning of Christmas. He is trying to tell us that Christmas is a lie and we should reject religion in general and Christianity specifically. It is alright to be a Christian as long as you know that Christianity is not worth believing in.

Meacham’s example isn’t convincing though. He has shown faulty logic and biased “reporting”. What he has proved is that liberal writers cannot be trusted to provide a truthful discussion of Christiantiy.

Useless headline of the day

Dolphin’s quarterback Jay Fiedler was benched at half-time in Saturday’s game against the Titans.

An AP headline tells us “Dolphins’ Fiedler Not Happy About Benching.” AP must have Captain Obvious writing headlines.

When in the history of sports has a player ever said, “I’m happy the coach benched me. Did you see how bad I was playing? I was just about to ask him to bench me when he gave me the news. Hopefully, I’ll be sitting the bench next week too.”