The One Hundred Days: Fooling Some of the People All of the Time

April 30, 2009

The thirteen softballs lobbed at President Barack Obama at yesterday’s third prime- time press conference was, quite possibly, the most pathetic demonstration of mass sycophantic servile flattery ever put forth by that once plausibly respectable group of journalists known as the White House Press Corps. What has become of that once estimable group heretofore referred to as The Fourth Estate?

Just what was The Fourth Estate? The past tense is used here because by all that remains of that once feared organization  has become an arm of the emerging Euro-Socialist state that has beset America.

Let us turn to that venerable source of information and history. In Wikipedia we find:

The earliest use of the term fourth Estate to mean the press,  is found in Thomas Carlyle‘s book On Heroes and Hero Worship (1841) in which he wrote:

“

[British politician Edmund] Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. (Italics added)[1]

”

If, indeed, Burke did make the statement Carlyle attributes to him, his remark may have been in the back of Carlyle’s mind when he wrote in his French Revolution (1837), “A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up.”^[2] In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General: the church, the nobility and the commoners.

Author Oscar Wilde wrote:

“	In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.	”
—Oscar Wilde , [3]

So, we were once dominated by journalism? The press, as referred to as  “the rack,”  was certainly at one time a formidable force bent on reporting the truth as objectively as human nature could allow. The press was given, and certainly still enjoys,  some legislated privileges such as our Constitution’s First Amendment, ample administratively supported “access” privileges, etc. What major public or private organization does not have in place a “Press Liasion Officer”, Press Officer” or “Spin Doctor”? These privileges or “rights” were bestowed upon the press because it was the right thing to do to protect the general public from all the really nasty and corrupt things that governments tend to do to their populaces. We’ve all heard the litany of what a “Strong Press” does for us all and what these defenders of the realm they think themselves to be. And we’ve all seen what complete ego-maniacs the MSM anchors have become in lording their reporting and analysis upon us as if we were sheep lined up for slaughter. This self perception of their divine mission and importance has evolved from a necessary and most noble check against tyranny into an elitist club of Socialist propagandists.

How are rational people to think otherwise? How is it that this Fourth Estate, given a status on a par with clergy, nobility, and the common man, has totally lost its vision of its original charge?

One has only to follow the conduct of that heretofore esteemed group as it reports on the day to day activities of our President to see what this once respected Fourth Estate has become.

The White House Press Corps is now an oh so select group of fawning and oh so gentile group when given the unique opportunity to question our nation’s leader about the unrelenting state of crises we find ourselves embroiled in. So what do they do? Lob softballs like “Gee,  Mr President what have you found to be enchanting in your first 100 days? What!? That pretty brunette was so enamored, according to Laura Ingraham, that if BO had asked her to dance she would have willingly submitted. Sheesh!

This is what becomes to a small and very influential group that has exclusive access to a singularly influential and charismatic personality such as Barack Obama. He’s their President. Their guy. They love the guy because he is not George Bush, is not a Republican, is not a conservative, is not cutting mesquite in the West Texas heat. They get to go to Hawaii now. They love the guy because he represents everything they learned in their commie college journalism class: that information is power and power is information. And that when this information is manipulated and controlled and distorted by the myopia of fanatical devotion one can even sell salt to sailor

Now that  both the Washington & White House Press Corps have whorred themselves into this duplicitous position of blind adoration they, in their blindness, will continue to be duped into believing that they are the heralds of a new America bent on change for the good of the masses. They will continue to proclaim their adoration and continue to issue “passes” where those predecessors less worthy of their acclaim fell to their mighty pen.

Yes, America, Mr Lincoln had it spot on with his famous quote of “You can fool some of the people all of the time…” The best modern day example of this is our once formidable Fourth Estate  whom, it seems, is now fooled all of the time. The charlatan before them will continue to manipulate them. To this end most Americans have lost all respect for the MSM that claim to “report objectively” to us. They are dupes and patsies being manipulated for pure political gain.

Oh, BTW, how’s the new puppie doing? Hope he’s adjusting well.

Rule by Retribution: The Liberal Attack on America

By any account, the young presidency of Barak Hussein Obama has at its core a profound theme of conducting the business of this country based upon retribution. There is an oh so obvious subliminal obsession with the manner in which BHO is setting about implementing the “change” he pounded into the heads of his following. This “change” is taking on the persona of a mindset so chilling that close scrutiny is in order to examine these causes. At the focal point of this change is the persona of BHO himself as agent of change. Do we yet realize that if left unchecked this persona of change will further divide this great nation?

At first glance this “change ” is taking it’s shape in nullifying “all things George Bush”. The focus of most of the executive orders will lend credence to this fact. To pursue such an agenda of wholly negating your predecessor’s acts is one of profound disrespect and a slippery slope rife with land mines. To take on such acts requires a degree of arrogance that is only exceeded by a committed mission to reshape this county by acts of retribution.

Most recently, a BHO cabinet level appointee, Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, decided to maintain the de-listing of the Gray Wolf  on the federal Endangered Species list. Mr. Salazar sided with the decision of the Bush Administration and will allow the states with wolf populations to manage them like any other species. And, you will recall, in the same week BHO announced his guidelines for the various federal agencies under his executive purview to engage in decisions based on sound scientific principles and not to politicize issues that have obvious scientific basis. It would appear that not only was Secretary Salazar’s decision consistent with the guidelines set forth by BHO but it also ran contrary to the will of Liberal minded sycophants in both BHO’s close quarters as well as that in Congress itself.

Now, as a longtime respected westerner,  former Attorney General and Governor of Colorado, Mr. Salazar has forgotten more about Gray Wolves and wildlife management in general than BHO will ever comprehend. The state of Colorado can rightfully boast that it’s management of the state’s wildlife resources is, comparatively speaking, second to none. When states administer the management of wildlife resources within their borders there is more at stake than federal guidelines being followed. This issue, although of minor import, will test BHO’s resolve toward retribution. Will the science of wildlife management prevail or political retribution for a Bush Policy?

Herein lies the danger. Negating your predecessors’ programs for the sake of change and change alone runs the risk of alienating those of us that have worked long and hard to simply get it right.

To date, the campaign promise of no taxes has been repudiated as has the promises of no lobbyists, no pork, no earmarks. Time after time the promises of the campaign are falling away to become the manner of doing a Socialist’s business.

Granted, it is the right of the party in power to pursue its own agenda and see it through as well as it can via the power it derived from its electorate. But what we have here in this administration is a profound attack upon the basic sinew that binds this country together.

Pick the subject. The Economy: no plan yet. Just pouring money on it and hope that something works. International relations: with the Clinton’s running things, Hillary’s preoccupied with what Bill will do. He’s a huge distraction and she’s overwhelmed and the European visit was a sham. What ? No Bono? Energy policy: none. And with the battle over “cap and trade” looming energy providers from all sectors will unite to expose the fraud that it is. Education: no actionable plan. NAFTA: just talk, still no plan, trade war looming with Mexico. Illegal Aliens: the general amnesty program will lead to a civil war over jobs.   The list goes on and on.

The BHO administration seems quite content, for the time being (and believe me, time is running out) to excuse itself from dealing with these huge problems by discounting them as the former Bush administration’s problems and/ or creations. The excuse that we often hear: ” we inherited this (or that) problem” is now so “last year”. It is profoundly clear that with the huge amounts being spent on attempting to solve these problems that it is clearly BHO’s problem now.

Given the enormity of the problems besetting this country clearly a program of retribution has no place. The act of undoing a previous administration’s work is tantamount to a hard slap in the face. No amount of blame and displacement will negate or cover up by distraction the obvious: that the Obama administration is bent on reshaping the present form of a representative democracy into a neo-European Socialist collective. Just watch: more industies will be nationalized thus fixing wages as well as prices; unionization of workers will expand exponentially; weath redistributed thus freezing innovation and initiative; taxes expand,etc,etc. It’s all happening now. What will really ice the cake is a general amnesty for illegal aliens, thus assuring the perpetuation of the Socialists for they will be rewarded by millions of  “thank you” votes.

The rule by retibution is a very subtle, almost daily, phenonmenon that, without close watch and effect counter-measures, will, one day soon, be the demise of  a great nation.

Global Warming Fraud- A View from the Cave

As I often wonder how the pure science of the history of the atmosphere of this planet, as it is manifested in the evidence produced in a mere 300 years of research, can be so distorted as to actually place blame on man-kind, I find ample proof that this science we commonly call “weather” is reshaped by influences that have nothing to do with science or the atmosphere. To wit: the term “climate change” is now used often enough by the MSM (main-stream-media) and Liberals to have actually caught on. We all know that if a lie is told often enough it soon becomes the truth. So “climate change” other than “it’s raining now, but tomorrow it will be sunny” has come to mean something like “man made global warming is killing us and we better do something now to fix this problem or we will all die”. What the MSM, et al, fails to do is substantiate this “blame”, if you will, that mankind has caused this problem. The “we are to be blamed” theorists relish the opportunity to now make this issue a political one with a political solution. Enter the Liberals. Seeing that a guilt trip pressed upon the masses for this terrible man- caused malady can be leveraged and turned into votes (and therefore the prized dependency on government that Liberals create for their fellow man) the Liberals have seized this complex phenomenon to make it a basic platform issue. Notice that the “Gloom & Doom” tactics used in the global warming issue was used most recently in our “global” economic meltdown situation and that “if we don’t do something about it now we are all going to die” to justify a “stimulus” package passed by a Liberal Congress. See how it works? Ok, so why do this? Money. Money in the form of cap & trade offsets, hybrid cars, wind generators, solar, ethanol, etc.  None of which will have any effect on either “man-made” global warming or just the plane and simple fact that, yes, the earth’s climate does change in a natural cycle generated by both terrestrial and extraterrestrial phenomenon. Hoot Griz! Extraterrestrial? Now he’s done it! Yes, by that I mean the Sunspot cycle. In his wonderful little book The Little Ice Age author Brain Fagan documents the cyclical 11 year pattern of maximum  to minimum sunspot activity as it correlates to patterns of both warming (maximum activity) and cooling (minimum activity). Sunspot activity has continuously been observed and documented since the seventeenth century. During the Little Ice Age (1300-1850) there was, however, a period of little or no sunspot activity between 1639 and1700. It was so cold in Southern England that the Thames River froze so frequently that London’s mid-winter  Frost Festivals were held with regularity (“See you at the rink at Hampton Court”). This dramatic effect, caused by a lack of warming from solar radiation, greatly shifted the eleven year pattern to an aberration of seventy years. All this occurred long before the start of the Industrial Revolution which is to be blamed, of course, as the beginning of the “man-made” causes of the current “global warming crises”. Again, periods of sunspot maxima are warm; periods of sunspot minima are cool. Our Sun powers the weather on Earth. The Arctic and Antarctic ice core studies support this cycle, as well. So, here we have a body of science, free of bias and free of politics, that not only suggests that the strongest influences are not man caused yet there’s no discussion about that wonderful element we have come to love and, most recently, fear- CARBON. Life on earth cannot exist without it. It is a basic ingredient of protoplasm, the juice of life. During that great mix up of elemental and compound creation there emerged a gas called carbon dioxide. A by-product of respiration, internal combustion engines, and oh, the Earth itself. In concentrated amounts it is deadly. It also collects in the Earth’s atmosphere and “shields” solar radiation from reflecting off the Earth. It is called a Greenhouse Gas because highly concentrated levels prevent the cooling of the atmosphere. The atmosphere warms. It is also a proven fact that the highest concentrations of carbon dioxide have occurred not from man caused events but, again, from the Earth itself. Still cooling off from it’s creation the Earth spews forth immeasurable tons of CO2 into the atmosphere via volcanic eruptions. Name them: Mount Tambora, Santorini, Mount St. Helens, Krakatau, Soufriere, Mayon, and Vesuvius to name a few of the some 5,560 eruptions to have occurred since the last ice age. The effect of these eruptions is that not only does the particulate matter spewed forth into the atmosphere block solar radiation and lessen warming the CO2 gas builds up in the upper atmosphere to gradually warm the Earth again.

Man caused “climate change” as capitalized by the Liberal MSMs to lay the foundation for fraudulent “alternative energy” sources and bogus controlling instruments  such as “cap and trade” will soon become the next battleground and test point between Conservatives and Liberals. What is at stake is around $650 billion worth of American taxpayer money. Agencies administrating these cap and trade programs will simply pass the extra costs on to the consumer. It behooves every concerned American to become informed about what global warming is, its causes, its cycles and the inevitable fact that these events are not of “our” doing but are driven by forces far beyond our control or regulation. Drop the politics and recognize the inevitable: every gram of carbon that started here is still here.

Pazzia….Oh Mama Mia!

San Francisco- Having traipsed around San Francisco for most of my life I’m quite competent in sleuthing out a new trattoria or two every few years or so. The best personal discoveries, of course, are from friends, strangers, and the occasional foodie blogger. The most recent occasion derived from a friend who had eaten at Pazzia (in SoMa on 3rd ST) TWO nights in a row.  Ever in search of good Italian food no matter where it is to be found my interest was, no doubt, piqued. So, having scored two rooms at a friend’s time-share on Saturday, August 23, my wife Merry, I, and friends Mike & Brenda  set out to see just what this “Pazzia for two nights in a row” was all about. After wine on the hotel terrace it was time to set out. The goal was to schlep on down to the SoMa via public transport. Having been denied access to the Powell St. Cable Car twice by both a crowd of foreign visitors and surly Brakemen we cabbed on down for a third of the cost.

Among  the many benefits of the wonderful renaissance in the South of Market neighborhood that occurred in the last twenty or so years, foremost of which is ATT Park, there has been an upwelling of small, but oh so fine eateries. Among these is Pazzia. Located at 337 Third St (415-512-1693). When we poured out of the cab at around 6PM we were immediately greeted by the charming and petite Giulia. Seated immediately, we were among 4-5 of the occupied tables. The trattoria is small and can seat perhaps 50-60 at capacity. The ambiance is open and airy. City traffic is noisy outside but lends to the lively involvement of the patrons and staff. One, from any view, has a direct look at all the staff as well as the cooking and prep area at the rear of the room. Intimate and engaging is the ambiance here. Yes, it’s noisy. Yes, it’s worth it.

On to the meal. This is obviously a working stiff’s kind of place. No frills. A one page menu with the regular offerings is presented along with a fresh copy of the piatti del giorno (that’s the Daily Specials for you folks in Rio Linda). Now, fresh is fresh and believe me, when you see a pile of thick- stalked broccoli and other vegetables in front of the cook you gotta believe me when I say FRESH. The bread was promptly proffered as well as water. Within minutes we were upon the menu and a double order of bruschetta and misto all’italiana was upon us. Was I glad to see that double order of bruschetta arrive! Did I say fresh? What could be worse than to have the bruschetta arrive with the oil and the tomato juices softening up the crustted pane bianco in a sorry mess? Not so here. The blend of obviously Farmer’s Market tomatoes, basil, olive oil, and seasoning was a perfect mixed blend of what real bruschetta should always be: a sublime yet light, flavorful topping upon a crisp slice of pane bianco that blends upon the pallette and makes your eyes roll back in their sockets! The misto was as sublime as it was varied: provolone, mozzarella d’ bufalo, prosciutto, fresh sprigs of arugula and pepperoncini sprinkled with oil. This antipasti led me to think the ingredient came from Peck in Milano!

As we finished the antipasti we were swept upon with the four different piatti del giorno. The four of us have dined well in Italy and expect a trattoria state-side to live up to the high standards we come to expect.  A taglierine of “home made” spinach pasta with salmon, panchetta, olives in a white sauce was brought to Brenda. She promptly became quiet in her zeal. It was pronounced quite good. Mike had the, again, “home made” Lasagne of besciamella in meat sauce. I observed the arrival of this dish and when I next looked up to Mike he was done. Again, speechless, a hearty nod indicated his approval. Merry was beset upon her Petto Pollo with great vigor as well. The chicken breast was stuffed to gushes of mozzarella and prosciutto, accompanied by that, oh so fresh, lightly grilled brocolli and patatas frits. Merry was enthralled and quiet as well. Since she’s a woman of few words and even less impressionable, I tasted her entre and can say it was most excellent. As a gatherer and lover of seafood as well as an accomplished cook of same I ordered the Spagetti alle Vongole. Having eaten this a few times in Italy on the Ligurian Coast I can say that those vatos en la cucina d’ Pazzia know what to do about this dish. The pasta was perfetto al dente and the clams were just the right seasoning and doneness. I added a little olive oil from the table and dug in for a true delight.

By now, 7PM, there was a waiting crowd of some dozen souls outside. The staff, led by the lovely Giulia, was promptly and politely greeting the newcomers to advise them of the wait. I looked around and the place was packed. As I scanned the room I saw the Honorable John Burton (D-SF, retired) in the corner nursing a rum and coke and reading a book. Good enough endorsement for me, I say. The empty main dishes were cleared and we verbally selected our dolci. Mike: the Tiramisu; Brenda & Merry the Lemon Cake; I, the Biscotieni with Grappa substituted for the Vin Santo. The tiramisu was light and not soggy (uggh, I can’t stand soggy tiramisu!); the Lemon Cake could have been made on Capri: Va bene! The grappa with soaked biscotti was smooth and surly as one would expect.

Now, the wine, you wonder. What of the wine? Well, Brenda had the wonderful foresight and we the selective luck to bring along an unbelievable A. Raffanelli 2000 Zinfandel. This small Dry Creek Valley vineyard produces what are quite possibly some of the best wines in California, if not the world. The $20 corkage was well worth this priceless pairing for all our dishes. Why didn’t we bring two?! I did not look at the wine list. And there are about a dozen pizza choices on the regular menu.

All prices are reasonable and fair. Service excellent, prompt, and friendly. The Italians do not hover like American waiters. I wish this country’s servers could learn some lessons on service from Europeans!

Go early, call ahead, or wait your turn. It’s worth it. Pazzia in SoMa is fantastico!

Antonio d’Gris