A quick note on blogs and journalism

Listening to 620 this morning, Miller and Bilstadt took Badger Blogger to task over this story.

I really am annoyed at the tired old canard that bloggers aren't journalists because they don't have that piece of paper saying they are "journalists" - please, show me a MSM outlet that hasn't - intentionally or otherwise - changed a story, made an error, or otherwise screwed up.

Does Jason Blair ring a bell?
How about CBS's "Memogate"?

The MSM doesn't like blogs because we pose a direct threat to their powers of gatekeeping. We report angles and sides of the news that don't get coverage elsewhere.

As Sykes pointed out, Badger Blogger has done tremendous work in other cases - most recently the botched murders in Madison and working to change Wisconsin's drunk driving laws in the wake of the Bukosky/Bella deaths.

Do people post crap on blogs? Yeah. Do people post lies? Yeah.

But many blogs strive to offer opinions and viewpoints people cannot get elsewhere. And, clearly, it's effective. The aformentioned post has 66 comments and Badger Blogger is nearing 500,000 hits.

We're called the "alternative media" for a reason.

And we don't need a degree to realize the traditional MSM is rife with bias, errors, and the like.

Can I brag?

First semester report card just showed up.

4.0

Wow.

Something up with Haloscan?

My comments - and the comments on other blogs that use Haloscan - have disappeared.

What gives?

Obama: Open mouth, insert foot

Hat tip, Patrick at Badger Blogger



No doubt he was playing to an audience rife with Oregonians and environmentalists, but these remarks by Barack Obama should make people question his candidacy and what sort of administration he would run:


Pitching his message to Oregon’s environmentally-conscious voters, Obama called on the United States to “lead by example” on global warming, and develop new technologies at home which could be exported to developing countries.


“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.


“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.



A few questions come to mind:



1. Would Obama's administration support rationing gas, SUVs, or food? Would I be told I can only buy $50 worth of food each week? $25? Would he criminalize driving more than 10 miles a day?



2. Would Obama support those radio-controlled thermostats, giving some government bean-counter the right to set your home's temperature at 60º in January or for arbitrary reasons (but still expect you to pay your "fair share" of energy costs)?



How can anyone support Obama? Seriously - I want to know. How can you look at him saying something like this and think he's a good candidate? This flies in the face of so many things: national sovereignity, the "American Dream" and personal choice being the big three.



If I own an SUV, pay for the gas, and need it to transport myself and my family - who the hell is Obama to tell me I can't?



If I go to the store and buy food and I pay for groceries - who the hell is Obama to tell me what I buy is "too much"?



If my son is cold and I pay the utility bill - who the hell is Obama to tell me I can't raise my thermostat a degree or two?



This is ridiculous. This man cannot be president of the United States. The leader of some socialist dictatorship, maybe, but not the United States.

This is pretty cool

New blog

After careful consideration, I'm starting a new blog. I'm calling it Unapologetic Catholic and working over there to really live out and incorporate my faith into my daily life and writings.

This wasn't an easy decision, because it means blogging here at Modern Commentaries will be significantly lighter. I'm not shutting down or deleting this blog. I've invested four years and over 1,000 posts here. I'm proud of it.

I will be encouraging Dave to pick up the slack and post here more. But I needed a clean slate to start over because I see the need to delve deeper into my faith.

You can check the blog here: Unapologetic Catholic.

Happy Mother's Day

From FBOFW.com

To all you Moms out there, for all the fantastic hard work you do, I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day.

I give you all permission to take the day off...

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Yeah, I know that's never gonna happen.

Babies are God's way of saying humanity should continue

Congrats to the Duggar Family, who are expecting #18 in January...

A good editorial on "universal healthcare"

If Hillary or Obama win in November, this could well be our future:

From Investors' Business Daily:

Americans have been led to believe that Sweden, a country with one of the longest-running universal health care systems, is a medical paradise, where everyone gets free first-class treatment and lives are long and prosperous. Not so.

The ugly secret of universal health care is rationing. Proponents act as if it won't happen under their plans. But it will. There is not an unlimited supply of health care, not in a fully private system, not in a fully public system, not in a mixed system.

The question, then, is: Who will mete out health care services? In a private system, rationing will be done by individuals. In a universal, single-payer system, it will be done by bureaucrats.
In the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Sven Larson, president of Hill City Skunkworks in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., provides a few examples of just how bureaucratic rationing has impacted lives Sweden.

Larson's most troubling example is that of the baby boy who died within a few days of birth due to a lack of care, even though his parents followed the process of the system. Also disturbing is the story of the 3-year-old boy who died of heart failure because no health care professional had the time to treat him. It was a case of "too many patients and too little staff," Larson wrote.

At the other end of life's aging spectrum is the man in his 60s who died shortly after being diagnosed with cancer. The man had been seen at a local clinic 14 times over 18 months but was not referred to a specialist nor given a blood test "because of budget restrictions imposed by government bureaucrats." Imagine how his family felt when it learned that the cancer was treatable in its early stages — at the very time he was making futile visits to the local clinic.

Then there was the man who "was denied the option to pay full cost" from his own pocket for medicine to treat his multiple sclerosis, because, Larson writes, "the bureaucrats said it would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine."

Those incidents could happen in a private system. But at least there decisions to forgo or delay treatment are made by patients and their families, not state functionaries. There's also the fact that in a private system, citizens wouldn't have to pay a 12% to 14% tax to fund a system that can't take care of them, as they do in Sweden.

I want to draw your attention to the large text above. This man, who could afford and was willing to pay for his treatment out of pocket, was denied that option because it created "unequal access to medicine".

Which reinforces my position that "universal healthcare" is designed to give everyone equal access to sub-par, limited, rationed medical treatment. It's about punishing those who are wealthy by denying them the ability to pay for medical treatment.

And, in England, they're considering withholding treatment from the obese, smokers, and the elderly...

The best way to reduce health care costs is to disengage health care from employment. Create a truly free market, where insurance companies have to compete for your insurance dollars. And employers? Rather than making insurance a benefit, employers should offer what they would contribute to a company-fixed insurance plan to the employees, thereby giving employees more money with which to buy insurance in the free market.

Look at auto insurance. It is not tied to one's employment, it is a competitive industry. Auto insurance companies offer perks for safe drivers, discounts, and the like. And consumers have the ability to shop around for quotes and get the best deal.

Why in the world can't we do this with health insurance? I know I could get a darn good plan for what my employer contributes to my health insurance, and have more money in my pocket in the long run.

I do not want someone like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or any politician deciding what medical treatment I can and cannot recieve - all while *still* taking my tax dollars. How screwed up is that?

And yes, I understand there are those who truly cannot afford health care. Assisting them is fine...but why me? Why should my ability to choose what treatments I can and cannot receive, or what treatments I need be denied? Not to mention having the opinion of the person with the medical degree overruled by some government bean-counter...