Could George Orwell have imagined what's going on today?

Saturday marks the 64th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell's book 1984:

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949. The Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes. Their tyranny is headed by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. Big Brother and the Party justify their rule in the name of a supposed greater good. The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to re-write past newspaper articles so that the historical record always supports the current party line. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker, but he secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.

With what's been going on lately, I can't help but wonder if we're there yet.

We have a media that is more interested in protecting their favored politician than in actually reporting the truth, often ignoring what should be major stories because they reflect negatively on their object of affection.

We have people calling for greater gun control as a means of preventing gun violence, yet Chicago - a city with gun-control laws these individuals would love to impose upon the rest of the nation - has one of the highest gun violence records in the country. How do these people not see the correlation?

We have children being expelled from school and even arrested because they have a toy gun or just drew a picture of one!

We have a monstrous government so completely out of control that the even President Barack Obama's former senior adviser David Axelrod says it's too big:

The government is simply too big for President Obama to keep track of all the wrongdoing taking place on his watch, his former senior adviser, David Axelrod, told MSNBC. “Part of being president is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast,” he explained.

The IRS targeted tea party and patriot groups. The Department of Justice bugged the phones of the press.

Now comes this from the Washington Free Beacon:

Contracted employees at an Environmental Protection Agency warehouse in Landover, Md., used surplus equipment to set up a gym and personal television spaces, a report by the agency inspector general released Monday said.
...
“The warehouse contained surplus gym equipment arranged to create exercise space for warehouse employees,” the report states. “The weights, machines, exercise equipment, and overall exercise area appeared to be well maintained. The exercise space was in excess of 30 by 45 feet. Carpet tiles from EPA inventory were placed on the floor in the gym area. This area has electrical power through an EPA power strip and provides music through other agency inventory items. Agency steno pads were used for recording workouts.”

That wasn't the only EPA story to make the news. How gargantuan does an agency have to be to give a fake employee numerous certificates of award?

“Richard Windsor” may have only been an alias for former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson, but that didn’t stop him from being awarded numerous certificates for ethics and records management.

The EPA awarded certificates naming Jackson/Windsor a “scholar of ethical behavior.” Jackson, under her secret alias, was also awarded certificates for completing training modules on email records management.

Jackson set up a secret email address under the pseudonym “Richard Windsor.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Chris Horner first discovered it in November.

Thank goodness for non-traditional media so we can know about these things, because we aren't going to get it from what passes for today's press corps - especially when you consider the latest from Erick Erickson.

The Democratic National Committee issued a memo saying Republicans were 'overreaching' when it comes to the IRS and other scandals. That was Friday - and by Monday that was the term being used by the press and others defending Pres. Obama and his administration.

We know the majority of the main stream media parrot whatever the Democrats want repeated, but apparently they're oblivious to how transparent they've become.

Add to this the recent court ruling that police can take a DNA swab of arrestees because it's just like taking fingerprints. And another court ruled that Google must turn over customer records to the FBI upon demand and without a warrant:

A federal judge has ruled that Google Inc. must comply with the FBI's warrantless demands for customer data, rejecting the company's argument that the government's practice of issuing so-called national security letters to telecommunication companies, Internet service providers, banks and others was unconstitutional and unnecessary.

Maybe it's not 1984 at all. I'm not sure that even Orwell could have imagined all this would become the norm.

The most important question on Toledo's 2013 budget

Yesterday I listed a series of questions - important questions - relating to the City of Toledo's 2013 budget.

But here's another question that is equally worthy and may be the most important of all: which member of council - or the media - bothered to ask any of these questions themselves?

I'm often told that I ask really good questions - and that may be true - but why aren't our elected representatives asking these types of questions? And absent the elected officials doing so, why aren't the media?

It's not hard to come up with the 'good questions' on the budget because they're just common sense and a little bit of basic math. When you look at the line items and you see one that doesn't have anything allocated to it for 2010, 2011, and 2012, but a large amount for 2013, don't you want to know why there is a brand new line item in the budget, especially when the city just asked for a 10-year levy in November because they didn't have enough money?

When you see the city estimate an income item that is nearly double what they've gotten or budgeted in the last couple of years, don't you wonder where that money is coming from and how they decided they were going to get twice as much?

It's not hard to be curious - and the budget really isn't that difficult to follow.

So why aren't our elected officials and the media all over these points, demanding answers and accountability?

Quotes of the Day - newspapers and falsehoods

While the quotes below might not surprise you, their author might:

"I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables."

~ Thomas Jefferson

Newspapers lobbying legislators - who knew?

I want to share with you two posts that I did for Ohio Watchdog:

Newspapers battle against special postal rates for Valassis

This is a story about how the newspaper industry is lobbying members of congress, including Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, to oppose a Negotiated Service Agreement (NSA) with Valassis, a direct mail company.

Valassis worked with the U.S. Postal Service to increase the number of pieces they mail in established markets and, in return, the USPS will give them discounted rates on the increased amount. The mail pieces are circulars - like for Sears, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, etc.

They are the same ones you see in your Sunday papers, so obviously, the newspapers don't like the idea that a competitor might actually compete. So the newspaper industry is lobbying members of congress to oppose the NSA which is currently pending approval by the Postal Regulatory Commission which has the final say.

Brown agreed with the newspapers - surprise - and wrote a letter opposing the agreement.

The second post is an opinion piece:

It's time for the newspaper industry to come clean

The newspapers that are asking for favors from members of congress are the same newspapers that are supposed to objectively report on the actions of the very elected officials they're lobbying. They're the same entities that issue endorsements.

But they have a code of ethics that requires them to avoid conflicts of interest and to reveal them when they are unavoidable. Did you know the newspaper industry was involved in lobbying, and then editorializing about, the people they report on?

The newspaper industry has lost readers and respect, and income as those two items have resulted in less advertising revenue. Lobbying the people you write about - and not telling everyone that you're doing so - is another nail in their coffin that only serves to reinforce the bias and further undermine their credibility.

They should stop the lobbying, and refuse to endorse when the target they lobbied is a candidate.

And then, just for fun, read this opinion piece: "Don't kid yourself, daily newspapers cannot be replaced."

Be sure to read the comments - they're priceless!

Obama's budget, hypocrisy and 'out of the mouths of babes'

As regular readers of my blog know, hypocrisy and double standards are things I abhor.  Sadly, there are too many examples of these two things in the political and media world.

President Barack Obama's budget was recently introduced to Congress and, for the second time received not a single vote.

Despite both Obama and the media blaming the Republican-controlled House of Representatives for the failure, no Democrat cast a 'yes' vote.  And, again, this was the second time his budget got no votes.

Can you imagine the indignant claims of incompetence from the other side of the political aisle if this had been a Republican president who couldn't get even one vote from his own party for his budget?!?

Could you imagine what the media would be doing? 

Every newscast and the top and bottom of every hour would be proclaiming that, for the second time, the Republican President had failed in his budget.  There would be a line of people waiting to issue statements, go on talk shows and shout to the world that any president incapable of getting even one vote from his own party for his budget needed to go.

But we have a biased media who are clearly rooting for Obama, so you hear nothing ... or a mimicking of the spin from the White House.

To me, the issue isn't just the abysmal failure of the President (that's well-documented for anyone who cares to look at his record with an eye to the Constitution), it's the double standard of allowing/condoning/excusing something from your own party while protesting/criticizing/objecting when it is done by your opponent.

Don't get me wrong, Republicans do it, too.  It's human nature, I suppose, but it's wrong and we should all object.

Additionally, it's the media bias.  I don't mind - and, in fact, greatly appreciate - liberal and conservative opinions.  A respectful and fact-based (rather than emotional) discussion of a point from opposite perspectives is educational and allows all of us to learn and understand an issue more completely - even when the result is an agreement to disagree.

But today's media claims to be objective when they are not. 

The left criticizes people like Rush Limbaugh as an example of media bias.  But Limbaugh isn't a newscaster.  He's a talk radio host and makes no qualms about his conservative bias.  I would never use Ed Schultz as an example of media bias for the same reason - he's a talk show host.  But when the bias comes from Katie Couric or in the news sections of your local paper, that's hypocrisy because that is where it's supposed to be not just the facts, but a complete and fair/accurate reporting of both sides of the issue.

There is hope, though, which leads me to the second portion of my headline 'out of the mouths of babes.'

My friend Jason is 14 years old.  He's a tennis aficionado, as his brand new business cards explain.  At the age of two, he informed his mother (and anyone else who would listen) that he wanted to take tennis lessons.  She made him wait until he was five, thinking the interest would quickly turn to something else (or multiple other things) by then.  But on his fifth birthday, he asked if he could finally start tennis lessons.  And he did.

I'm definitely biased, but not so much as to be able to recognized that he is truly skilled in this sport.  And he loves it.  I believe he's even ranked in the boys - 14 & under group.

Jason is not just a good tennis player, he's also a good person, both on and off the court.  He's a stickler for the rules and  exhibits a true Corinthian spirit in his chosen sport.  (Corinthian - someone who plays sport with the highest possible principles, way exceeding normal sportsmanship.)

He recently decided to start a tennis blog, writing about the sport he loves.  JJ's Tennis View is well written and Jason has a good - and unique - perspective on the sport.  He recently predicted an upset in a women's match, and was correct (something he was especially proud of, being 13 at the time, because no one else did).

Jason and his mom are going to her home town of Charleston for spring break where he will be attending the Family Circle Cup.  He plans to write about the matches, but, being 14, wants to support one of his favorite players, get his t-shirt signed by others and generally be a kid.  Good for him!

His mom researched media credentials for him, thinking that might give him better access to the players for his blog.  He would definitely qualify under the guidelines issued by the Family Circle Cup - but Jason declined.

Now why, you might wonder, would a tennis fan like Jason decline special access to his favorite players?

I just thought it would be unprofessional if I was jumping up and down with signs and shirts for players as a media worker. There's already enough media bias!!!

Indeed.

But if a 14-year-old can understand this, why can't the main stream media?

Networks ignore occupiers' call for anti-capitalist revolt

My apologies, but there will be light postings over the next several days as I work with a client on a project.

In the meantime, here is a great article from the Business & Media Institute on how the Networks Won't Admit Occupiers Want 'Socialist' Revolution - Marxism abounds at Wall Street protests, but ABC, CBS and NBC barely mention call for anti-capitalist revolt.

The Occupy Wall Street protests marked off a full month of occupation Oct. 17, and the network news media continue to gloss over protesters calls for "revolution" as well as the socialistic mentality espoused by many of the protesters.

One protest speaker was videotaped saying, "Long live the revolution! Long live socialism!" Others in Chicago and Philadelphia marched with Communist flags. And Oakland, Calif. occupiers articulated their desire for income equality, a new political system and disgust for the bourgeoisie (whether they be landlords or hot dog stand owners.)

Socialists, communists and Marxists roam the Occupy Wall Street rallies, yet zero network news stories since the protests began used any of those three words to label protesters or their goals. Network reporters won't even explain that protesters are calling for a revolutionary-style change.

Business & Media Institute analyzed 115 news reports, briefs and anchor reads that mentioned the Occupy protests. BMI found that only 6 percent (seven stories out of 115) have even mentioned the word "revolution" in stories about the protests. In one of those instances, the word was actually describing the violent Middle East uprisings that supposedly inspired the occupiers. The other mentions were in passing and none stories explained what "revolution" means to the occupiers.

In their own words it means the overthrow of capitalism, potentially through violence. The Occupy L.A. speaker who cheered "Long live socialism!" advocated using violence, as in the French revolution, because it "made fundamental transformation, but it was bloody." He went on to advocate such a bloody revolution here in the U.S. saying: "So ultimately bourgeoisie won't go without violent means. We'll have the revolution yes, revolution that is led by working class. Long live revolution. Long live socialism." He was cheered on by members of the crowd.

Read more....

Blade's state deficit figures don't add up

This is a screen shot of the front page of today's Toledo Blade.

You'll note that in the lead story, "States face deficits as stimulus dries up," they have a graphic of the budgets of Midwest states.

According to the credit on the graphic, the data is from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which the paper describes as "a Washington think tank."

They're really a liberal group that pushes for more federal spending for social programs, as their website explains.

Interestingly, the description of the Tax Foundation, which is also quoted in the story is: "The conservative Tax Foundation,..." However, their web page actually gives instructions for how journalists should refer to them:

How Should Journalists Describe Us?
The Tax Foundation is a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, D.C.

The bias of The Blade in failing to describe a liberal think tank as 'liberal' is not a surprise to regular readers. But calling another group 'conservative' in spite of their instructions on how to be described is an error the reporter should not make and the editors should not allow.

But I digress.

The real issue in this post is an even more blatant error in the above graphic - figures that don't add up.

You'll note that the chart shows, for various states, the 2011 budget, the projected 2012 shortfall/deficit and the percentage of the budget that deficit represents.

But it incorrectly calculates the Michigan percentage. A $1.8 billion deficit is 21.7% of an $8.3 billion budget.

The article also states:

"Michigan's new governor, Rick Snyder, announced in his state of the state speech on Jan. 19 that he would seek to eliminate the "job-killing" Michigan Business Tax that generates a hefty $2.2 billion a year for Michigan's tax coffers and replace it with a 6 percent corporate income tax.

What that means for the state's $1.8 billion shortfall is not yet known. On paper, at least, Michigan's budget is in better shape than Ohio's because it has a deficit of 8.6 percent of its 2011 budget."

(Note, again, the clear bias by putting 'job-killing' in quotes and referring to the tax revenue as 'hefty'...)

But the story and the graphic cannot both be correct.

If the $1.8 billion deficit is 8.6% of their 2011 budget, the 2011 budget would have to be $20.9 billion - not the $8.3 billion listed on the graphic.

If the $8.3 billion budget number is correct, then the deficit is actually 21.7%, much worse than Ohio's 14%.

Over the weekend, I attended the Western Regional RightOnLine conference - an Americans for Prosperity training session for on-line activists. Throughout the sessions, the speakers emphasized the value of citizen journalists - individuals who serve as a check and balance on the increasingly unreliable and biased main stream media.

Thank you, Toledo Blade, for so quickly providing me with a perfect example to share with my fellow bloggers.

Today's news stories are equivalent of push polls

A combination of events over the weekend prompted me to again take a look at the state of our current media.

It's no surprise that declining credibility, increased biases and a lack of reporting facts have led to a loss of customers for newspapers and many of the TV news broadcasts. The availability of facts on the Internet and the increased usage of Internet sources for news gatherers has brought those three areas into clear focus for many people.

As a result, the main stream news (a generic term not meant to include everyone) has not gone back to basic reporting, but rather has increased their spin content as if more of the same will somehow produce a different outcome.

The attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the manufactured racism charge and outrage over a statement from WSPD talk show host Brian Wilson are just the most recent examples.

With the shootings in Arizona, we didn't even have an accurate account of the victims and their conditions before talking heads, politicians and leftists started blaming Sarah Palin and the tea party groups. As of the writing of this post, a Google search on "left blames Palin and tea party Arizona shooting" yields 329,000 entries. Even our own representative, Marcy Kaptur, blamed rhetoric and 'anger' for causing people to lose their minds and, presumably, do crazy things like go on a shooting spree (comment played on WSPD on 1-10-11).

We know today that the shooter was more left than right in his limited political views, but was, more importantly, a sick man who should stand alone in his accountability for his own actions.

In the case of Brian Wilson, the talk show host made a reference to today's education process being like teaching animals learning a trick - just because they can do what they are taught doesn't mean they've been educated, he opined.

But because Wilson used a monkey as the animal example, he must have been expressing a racist view - at least, that's the spin.

In both of these cases, it wasn't just the reporting - or lack thereof - of the facts; it was the way the media decided to go about gathering responses to the incidents.

In the Rep. Giffords case, talking heads immediately starting asking people if the 'hate-filled rhetoric' of the right was to blame for the shooter's actions. The focus wasn't on who the shooter was and any type of investigation into the man and his motives. No - the spin was immediately that his attack must have been prompted by the words and political positions of Sarah Palin and various tea party groups.

Interestingly, while prominently noting that Palin had Rep. Giffords as a target in the last election, they failed to mention that DailyKos and the Democratic National Committee also used similar imagery for the district. The main question being asked of people is not 'what made this guy do such a horrendous thing' but 'how much influence does angry, hate-filled rhetoric from the right have in the case.' The assumption is that whatever people on the political right have said must have caused this man to shoot a Democrat. And politicians, not wanting a good crisis to go to waste, are eagerly responding - or driving the message even further.

With Wilson's comments, the local paper took 14 seconds of a 5-minute discussion and asked people to respond to the out-of-context comment. They didn't want to ask about the premise of Wilson's statement - that our schools are teaching to the test rather than teaching students how to think. No - they wanted people to see racism in the reference to monkeys, implying through their choice of African Americans to interview, that Wilson must have been referring to only to black students in the school system. In further updates, interviewees take 'offense' at students being called monkeys. Of course, the reaction from school board members and others involved in the school system has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Wilson's station is calling for a complete and total overhaul, even perhaps a dissolution, of the system.

In both these cases, this spin from the media is the equivalent of a push poll - asking a loaded question in order to generate a pre-determined response. From Wikipedia:

A push poll is a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll. In a push poll, large numbers of respondents are contacted, and little or no effort is made to collect and analyze response data. Instead, the push poll is a form of telemarketing-based propaganda and rumor mongering, masquerading as a poll.

The American Association For Public Opinion Research identifies such polling as a violation of their code of ethics and says this:

Political advocacy calls made under the guise of a survey abuse the public’s trust. They gain the attention of respondents under false pretenses by taking advantage of the good will people have toward legitimate research.

When disguised as research, these calls create negative images of legitimate surveys, especially when they distort issues or candidate characteristics in order to influence opinion.

They go beyond the ethical boundaries of political polling by bombarding voters with distorted or even false statements in an effort to manufacture negative attitudes.

The hostility created in this way affects legitimate surveys by reducing the public’s willingness to cooperate with future survey requests.

So how is a push poll any different from what the media is currently doing on a regular basis with their questioning and efforts to manufacture outrage?

The 'reporters' take an editorial or opinion position - often a political one - find an instance or event and then go around asking people to comment on their conclusions, using, in the resulting story, the quotes they obtain that fit their pre-determined position.

That's not journalism, but it is the equivalent of a push poll...which the media all decry - unless it's their own.

But it's worse - because it's presented as news, which they then claim is an unbiased presentation of facts, and it is, for many, the only source of the information they will see.

And then, depending on the source of the 'news,' the clearly agenda-driven story will be repeated by other media outlets or used as a basis for their own coverage of the instance. If it's sensational enough, it will be repeated by others around water coolers or on the Internet and become the impetus for even more outrage and 'demands' for action.

Perhaps we should modify the AAPOR code to apply to journalism:

Advocacy questions and stories made under the guise of unbiased news abuse the public’s trust. They gain the attention of readers under false pretenses by taking advantage of the good will people have toward legitimate reporting.

When disguised as news, these questions and the reporting of the answers create negative images of legitimate news, especially when they distort issues or candidate characteristics in order to influence opinion.

They go beyond the ethical boundaries of legitimate news by bombarding readers with distorted or even false statements in an effort to manufacture negative attitudes.

The hostility created in this way affects legitimate news reports and media in general by reducing the public’s willingness to believe what they read.

But if we did so, then what would the media do?

Their only alternative would be to report actual facts without trying to 'interpret' them for us or lead us to think/believe a certain way.

I won't hold my breath.

Toledo Blade fails to 'fact-check' Obama claims

Yesterday on WSPD, we talked about the interview our local paper, The Blade, did with President Barack Obama in advance of the G20 Summit. One of the questions had to do with the future of the newspaper industry and Obama said:

"I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding."

However, in the same interview, Obama uttered a two bald-faced lies:

"When I came into office, we were losing 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen so that small businesses and large businesses alike couldn't borrow. You couldn't get an auto loan even if you had good credit. People were losing their homes at an extraordinary pace."(emphasis mine)

As this chart from the Wall Street Journal shows, people were buying cars and getting car loans in January when he was sworn in (though the numbers were down), yet the editors and reporters never questioned this statement.

They never 'fact-checked' the claim. And when a president compliments your industry on doing just that, don't you think you should?

Here's another 'fact' that didn't get checked: "losing 700,000 jobs per month."

According to CNNMoney.com, job losses in November 2008 were 584,000 and job losses in December 2008 were 524,000. Total losses for the months of September and October 2008 were 792,000, so clearly neither month was '700,000.'

U.S. News and World Report says that the January 2009 job losses were 598,000, while the New York Times reported February 2009 job losses of 651,000.

So when the president said we were losing 700,000 jobs per month when he came into office, was he lying? Or just, perhaps, exaggerating?

Regardless, why was there no 'fact-checking' of his numbers and claims?

The "fact" is that much of the checking occurring today is being done by the blogosphere, just like I have with these two examples.

It was the blogosphere that fact-checked and exposed the faked memos about George W. Bush's National Guard service which was reported by Dan Rather and later became known as Rathergate.

It's been bloggers and Glenn Beck who've exposed the extreme positions of the various czars appointed by Obama. And there are terrific websites that focus on investigative reporting. One of them, Texas Watchdog, not only 'watches' government, but helps train bloggers and reporters so they can learn how to "uncover waste, fraud and corruption in state and local governments."

One reason many newspapers are seeing a decline in circulation and many television news networks see their numbers falling is because of this very 'fact.' They've stopped 'reporting' and started spending too much time 'putting stories in context' for us - telling us what we should think about events rather than reporting the facts so we can decide on our own. As a result, people have turned to other outlets, like blogs, for additional information so they can make an informed decision and not rely upon some talking head reading from a teleprompter.

Then there are events like Wolf Blitzer's appearance on the Celebrity Jeopardy charity tournament. Blitzer is the anchor for CNN's The Situation Room and the lead political reporter for CNN. Yet despite his vast experience and knowledge, he finished the easy-question Jeopardy episode in the hole - significantly - with a score of minus $4,600.

Is this the type of person Obama thinks we need to 'trust' to put news stories into context for us?

As the examples I've documented above prove, it is arrogant and pretentious to think that only the main stream media can provide the type of news coverage that fulfills the function of a free and independent press and helps keep our governments in check.

Lack of tough questioning during campaign hurts Obama now

I have opined in various forums that the press was too easy on President Barack Obama during his campaign and his first months in the presidency.

And I'm not the only one. Numerous strategists, campaign professionals, bloggers and journalists have noted that he gets quite a lot of 'easy' questions - soft balls - because, it is believed, of an affinity for the man and his positions.

My concern, in noticing his lack of tough questioning, was not just the unfairness (you know how liberals love 'fair') and double standard, but the results of such lack of vetting and preparation.

When the media ask candidates tough questions during a campaign, two things happen: 1) the public gets to see how the candidate responds to difficult issues thus informing the public about the character and the positions of the candidate; and 2) the candidate gets practice for what should be even tougher issues and questions if he should win.

For the first point, having been in the situation, I can tell you that nothing prepares a person more than having to stand in front of cameras and microphones with lights and no one whispering in your ear and have a difficult question thrown at you. Such questions and challenges (for they are challenging you) require you to know your position and be able to articulate it, to respectfully disagree with what an opponent has claimed, to demonstrate your poise in handling the situation, and, hopefully, sway people to your side.

What the public saw with Obama was emotional, for the most part. He sounded good and looked good, but there was very little substance (details) in much of his positions. He really didn't get the type of questions that required him to delve into policy or philosophy, so the public didn't get to see that aspect of him. If you wanted to know those sorts of things, you had to seek out such information on your own. As a result, many people did not really know his positions, just his general approach of 'hope and change.'

On the second point, Obama, because he did not have the tough questions and probing in the campaign, now finds himself unprepared for the type of questions he's beginning to get. He's being challenged on the health care issue and had to admit he hadn't actually read the bill he's promoting, but he's supporting it anyway. He also finds his words about the bill contradicted by the actual language in the legislation.

Additionally, he's being questions on details of the health 'reform' - details he was not expected to produce during the campaign. Remember when he said that 95% of Americans would see a tax cut? Rarely, if ever, did anyone sit him down and ask him to explain various points of this promise, like: what impact will such a 'cut' have on the deficit; if he's giving tax cuts to 95% will he increase taxes on 5%, what about the people who don't pay anything in the first place; how will he pay for the cost of his promises if he's cutting those taxes; will fees or other charges go up instead? Reporters, if they did ask such questions, didn't insist on real answers, just accepting whatever words came from Obama's mouth.

This was a disservice to the man, the candidate, and now, to the President. He is unprepared for the types of challenges he's getting on the issues. He's being asked why, when he promised the stimulus would keep unemployment from going above 8%, the rate is now 10%. He's being asked why, if he doesn't want to 'own' General Motors, he's taken it over. He's being asked why ... and he's starting to get that question a lot, mainly from people and, increasingly, from the media.

Had he been challenged regarding these types of things during the campaign, he'd be better prepared for them now. He'd know that platitudes won't cut it when it comes to talking about medical care for you when you're sick. He'd know that 'feel-good' messages might win you a vote, but it won't win you long-term support if you can't back it up with facts, logic and reason.

As a candidate, I was the underdog in all four of my campaigns. I was the Republican in a Democrat-leaning jurisdiction, my opponents were always much more well-known and better financed, and I was often described as 'young' which was portrayed as a negative at the time. I knew, going into these races and in office, that I had to be twice as good as my opponent just to be perceived as equal.

Perhaps my upbringing in a family business had something to do with that approach - always having to prove myself to my co-workers so they knew I wasn't just 'handed' a position in the company. I earned it.

The media helped me during my time in office - not by supporting my positions, but by challenging them. They asked me the tough questions, they evaluated my answers, they critiqued my campaign promises and compared them to my performance. Their examinations prepared me for the even tougher challenges I faced when making decisions in office.

As a result of what I went though, I was a better elected official. I was routinely more prepared than my colleagues, always had documentation to support my positions, always read everything that came across my desk - myself, and was never without a solid position that I knew how to articulate in the 30-second sound bite. Even my detractors complimented me on my preparedness with one saying that knowing how prepared I would be made him work to be as prepared as well.

President Obama has had no such experience, so he relies upon hand-picked attendees at town hall meetings, pre-screening questions at press conferences and teleprompters. While I don't want to say he's afraid of an unscripted event, he certainly appears to avoid them at all costs, perhaps knowing that he isn't prepared for the randomness and isn't confident in his own ability to handle the unexpected.

If the media had done their job, this wouldn't be an issue.

So what should he do? Some might call me presumptuous offering advice to "the president," but that's what I'm going to do. I think he should do his homework and then go out and participate in unscripted events. Let people question him about all the difficult things and be honest in responding with answers, not just words. Allow the follow-ups when people don't think he's really answered the question. Experience now what he didn't on the campaign trail and use it to get better.

Yes, it will be difficult at first, because mistakes will be made. But that is how we learn. Pres. Obama, being a smart man, will learn quickly ... and that will be good for him - and for us.

UPDATED! What happened to the search for truth?

As I have a degree in journalism, I often go back to what I was taught in school about reporting versus opining and the ideal that journalism and media reporting was all about the search for the truth: to report the facts absent our own personal biases and to be sure to get both sides, never just accepting the words a person says without checking their veracity.

One of my personal pet peeves is when reporters 'quote' individuals who are, in fact, telling lies. When confronted with the facts that prove the lie, the reporters' standard retort is, 'it's an accurate quote.' Of course the quote is accurate, but the quote is a lie and, without any verification on behalf of the reporter, the lie becomes the truth because, obviously, if it wasn't true, the paper would have included the facts, right?

Magnify that a thousand-fold and you've got what's going on in today's main stream media - or lame stream media, as one of my fellow bloggers calls it.

Today I sent out an email link to a video I thought my fellow State of Ohio Alliance bloggers might want to see. It's from one of my fellow Samsphere blogs, Red State, and it details the way Democrats defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac against increased scrutiny and additional oversight.

DarkeGOP blog also saw the video and decided to add it as part of the comments on an ABC news story about the issue. His comments were deleted.

What is ABC so afraid of? That people might actually know the truth?

Or that they will be caught ignoring it?

Spread the word! Go out and make your own comment on the ABC website, including the link to the video...let's see just how badly they want to keep that video from the news!

UPDATE: Just got an email from a friend who, after reading my blog, went out to the ABC blog site and posted a comment with the link. The comment remains, but ABC removed the link. My friend also posted on a second story and the link was removed from that one as well. There was another post that just listed the name of the referenced video, by a user named 'cultural amnesia,' but that post is also missing.

What is it they don't want you to know?