I’m Not The Only One

One of the reasons I quit journalism after seven years in the business was because I got tired of defending journalism and the biased, unethical things that reporters and editors would do on an almost daily basis.  Sure, some offenses are more defensible than others, but they still contradict what journalists say they actually do.

One of my biggest pet peeves is, during election time, when newspapers publish a list of which candidates they endorse in the upcoming race.   Often this is a list of political candidates who have purchased the most advertising space from a particular newspaper.  In some cases, an editorial would run explaining why the newspaper had endorsed the candidate.

At the Queens Courier, the first newspaper at which I worked, candidates were able to bribe the publisher to publish an article smearing their opponents with less than flattering information that was ancient history and had no relevance whatsoever aside from the fact that a candidate had paid for said article to be published.

How can the editorial board of any newspaper say with a straight face that they are unbiased when they clearly make no effort to hide their bias and publish a list of the candidates they support?  How many people actually go out and vote for a candidate simply because their newspaper endorses them?  Is it any surprise that journalism has lost most if not all of the credibility this profession once had? (more…)

One thing I kept hearing back when I was working in New York for Democrats on their election campaigns was, “No, no, no.  That’s just a political promise,” followed by a chuckle.  The issue at hand was residential zoning.  Homeowners who had been in the community for three or four decades wanted things just the way it had always been for them, and wanted the New York City Council to reform the zoning codes to restrict the development of multiple-household dwellings to be built in the neighborhood or for large homes to be subdivided into three or four apartments.

Newcomers to the neighborhood, especially recent immigrants wanted the zoning codes to remain as they were, allowing developers and property owners to continue to build multiple dwellings and subdivide existing structures to accommodate the ever-increasing demand for housing in New York City.  Dividing existing structures also made the individual apartments within the structure more affordable for people who otherwise could not have afforded to buy an entire home.  Of course, my candidate, who was the puppet of a very influential and well-connected politician, promised to fight for both affordable housing and neighborhood preservation, while in reality having no intention to assist either side.  Two political promises had been made. (more…)

It’s nice to see President Obama pretend to do something right for a change.  He recently petitioned Congress to end tax breaks for U.S. companies that hire workers overseas, in an effort to encourage businesses to hire workers domestically. As to whether this will result in more jobs for Americans is iffy at best.  After all, Obama is asking Congress not to create incentives for businesses to hire workers domestically, he’s simply asking Congress to take away the rewards Washington gives to U.S. companies who hire abroad. He certainly is not creating incentives for foreign corporations to set up shop in the U.S. and hire Americans. (more…)

California might actually be on its way to legalizing marijuana, at least up to an ounce.

Three Tuesdays from now, Californians will be going to the polls to decide on, among other things, Proposition 19, a.k.a. the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannibis Act of 2010.

For those unfamiliar with the proposal, Prop 19  mandates that people 21 and older can:

• possess up to one ounce of marijuana for personal consumption.
• use marijuana in a non-public place such as a residence or a public establishment licensed for on-site marijuana consumption.
• grow marijuana at a private residence in a space of up to 25 square feet for personal use. (more…)

For those of you whose eyes have drifted towards the header of this website, one of the large links reads “Barack Obama Research Paper“.  It was a research paper I wrote in my final semester of college.  As is the case with most aspects of liberal academia, students are strongly obligated to write left-leaning papers and complete other types of assignments that promote liberal values.

At the time, (fall of 2007) no living person was more popular than Barack Obama, especially in a public university in New York City.  I figured writing about Obama would make for an easy A, and I was right.  Later on, I came up with the idea of posting the text of that research paper on this site so I could pick up extra visitors consisting of people looking for research papers about Barack Obama.  More visitors mean more ad revenue.  Figured if I at least sell out I should have some cash in the end. As you can imagine, the number of visits skyrocket near the end of the school semester. (more…)

So President Obama is asking black people to “guard the change” come November (translation: vote for liberals only), I suppose, to avoid a changing of the guard.

Well, he didn’t actually approach the black community; he addressed the Congressional Black Caucus (I’ve actually heard one black conservative refer to them as the Congressional Black Caucasians!), who obviously represent all people of African descent in America.  I mean, duh, they’ve got the word “black” in their name! (more…)

You know what really sucks about all this?

Universal health care has only been embraced by one state-Massachusetts.  If it’s so great, why has only one state out of 50 adopted it?

Meanwhile, 15 states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington) have already legalized marijuana for medical purposes (not including Maryland, which won’t bust you for possession if you can prove your marijuana use is for medical purposes), meaning this healthcare policy is at least 15 times as widely accepted than universal healthcare.

But which healthcare plan do the Obama Administration and the Democratic leadership want to implement on a national level?

Sad.

Also, since the Democrats want to emulate Canada so badly, how about adopting their nationwide medical marijuana policy?

Silly me, I was actually expecting a black President, even if he is only half black, to legalize it.  If black and brown people are still going to federal prison for marijuana-related charges by 2012, I’m voting for the next white guy I see.

When the Man is looking for a terrorist, not a drug dealer or robber.

In America, blacks and Latinos are often guilty until proven innocent when the police are looking for a drug suspect.  As politically incorrect as it may sound, it makes perfect sense for police to use racial profiling against blacks and Latinos when looking for suspects of drug-related crimes.  Even though statistics suggest that white Americans are the largest consumers of illicit substances it is almost always people of color involved in the production, distributions and sale of these illegal narcotics and are most often targeted in the War on Drugs.  I’ve always said that the only way to completely put an end to racial profiling against blacks and Latinos by law enforcement is to decriminalize drugs.

That said,  I don’t believe racial profiling makes any sense when protecting Americans from terrorism.  Those Americans who support racial profiling as a counter terrorist measure are probably the same idiots who think Africa is a country and Mexico is a continent.  Why doesn’t racial profiling work to sniff out would-be terrorists?  Because the terrorists in question are of the Muslim faith, and like Christianity, Islam is a religion, not a race.  Muslims come in all colors.  Since 9/11 we have encountered white American Islamic terrorists, a Hispanic Islamic terrorist, Chinese Muslims and an array of Islamic terrorists of African descent and/or origin.  In terms of numbers, Islam in the U.S. has been the fastest growing faith, but by blacks and Latinos, not by immigration from the Arabian peninsula.  The country with the largest Islamic population in the world is Indonesia, nowhere near near Arabia but in the south Pacific.  The majority of black people worldwide are Muslim, not Christian. (more…)

It was definitely an interesting election this year.  Nationwide, Obama’s dropping approval rating has hurt Democrats in local elections.   That is certainly the case in New York and especially in nearby New Jersey, where proverbial fat cat Dem John Corzine (who deserved to lose for poking fun at his Republican opponent’s weight problem in his campaign literature) lost to the literally fat Republican Chris Christie, who oddly resembles a Sopranos cast member. (more…)

I didn’t realize how controversial the whole Notre Dame’s issue (granting President Barack Obama an honorary degree and inviting him to give their 2009 commencement speech) was until I logged on to YouTube the other day and saw the featured video was of Notre Dame students and members of the Roman Catholic community sounding off on the issue.  I was made even more aware when I learned of notredamescandal.com.

Honestly, I think people made a much bigger deal out of it than it really was.  I think the real scandal was that President Obama was offered an “honorary” degree in the first place.  Besides the fact that it is a slap in the face to all the students who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition and spent years earning their degrees, an honorary degree, which is usually a Masters or Doctorate, is nothing more than a cheap fundraising gimmick. (more…)

By now everyone must be aware of the recent editorial cartoon which ran in the New York Post.  In the cartoon a chimpanzee has been shot dead by police officers who say to each other, “Now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.”

Is the cartoon inherently racist?  Not really, if you consider the New York Post is a publication with a conservative slant and highly critical of any Democrat, especially our new Democrat President.  The cartoon was drawn as a reference to the recent shooting by police of a chimpanzee who mauled a woman in Connecticut.  But the cartoon’s message (my interpretation of it) was that the stimulus bill was so stupid, a primate could have written it.

In all fairness, liberals have repeatedly and viciously compared former President George W. Bush to a monkey for the last eight years when they weren’t comparing him to Adolf Hitler.  Obviously there are some people who think Obama is as big an idiot as some people regard his predecessor, as demonstrated in the recent HBO documentary “Right America Feeling Wronged.” Perhaps liberals have set a dangerous precedent in comparing a President to a monkey over and over.  But President Obama’s partial black ancestry makes the comparison extremely taboo as black people have historically been compared to monkeys, ape and other primates, especially in the U.S. (more…)

Star power and connections can get you a lot of things, even jobs you’re barely qualified for.

Right now, President-elect Barack Obama is deciding whether to appoint either Governor Bill Richardson or Senator Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State.

Bill Richardson’s massive foreign policy and diplomacy experience is critical in a time when America needs to mend many fences among the international community.  During the Clinton administration, Richardson was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.  Even as Congressman in his home state of New Mexico, Richardson was tapped by President Clinton to lead various diplomatic missions. (more…)

Never in my lifetime did I imagine I’d ever see a U.S. President of color.  Though I voted for Barack, my sense of cynicism kept whispering to me that the powers that be would never allow such a thing to happen.  I reminded myself constantly of the fiasco of the 2000 Presidential election and braced myself for a repeat in this election, but was shocked to see that Obama was far in the lead in both electoral and popular votes.

In this multiracial, multicultural nation which treats its minorities better than any other nation I could think of (and the Obama Presidency is proof!), I cannot think of a better representative for the United States than this biracial son of a white American woman and a Kenyan man.  It does annoy me a bit when Obama is referred to in the media as “African-American” because I do agree with Debra J. Dickerson’s claim that Barack Obama is not African-American or black.  As a person of mixed race myself, I look up to Obama, who is by no means the stereotypical “tragic mulatto” but rather an American who rarely considers himself anything beyond that. His genetic makeup alone is an inspiration for Americans to acknowledge our nation’s original motto, “E Pluribus Unum” (Latin for “Out of Many, One) and put our differences aside as we pick up the pieces of our divided nation shattered by partisan squabbling. (more…)

Dah, comrade, vee are finally here.  Karl Marx vould be proud.

Why do I use a Russian accent?  Because in my opinion, the United States government has recently made the first necessary steps to becoming a socialist republic.

For years, corporations, their industry-wide political action committees with armies of lobbyists have been throwing millions of dollars in bribes to both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.  And now that these corporations and industries find themselves tumbling down as a result of decades of their own irresponsible fiscal mismanagement, it’s only natural that they should turn for help to the same political parties who they’ve been bribing all these years. (more…)

Okay, I just took an online quiz from the Chicago Tribune testing my knowledge of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

I scored 35% on Obama and 50% on McCain. I took both quizzes for fun, expecting I’d know more about Obama than about McCain. But according to this quiz, it is John McCain with whom I am more familiar.

How should I interpret these test results? Does knowing less about the candidate I’m supporting make me a less informed voter, or does knowing more about the candidate I’m not supporting make me a more informed voter?

Personally, I was expecting to score at least 75% on both candidates. Guess I’m not as informed as I thought I was. Although, I’m fairly certain most voters, regardless of who they support, would’ve gotten a lower score than myself.

In case you’ve already clicked on the links above and have just finished both tests, the parts of the tests I got right were their campaign platforms. The parts I failed were the questions regarding the Senators’ personal histories, although I found I knew much more about John McCain’s personal history than that of Obama’s. Still, I was expecting to score much higher than I actually did.

If you’ve gotten to the end of this entry without taking the tests, go do so now, and please share the results with the rest of the class.