Don't Let the Media Choose Our Next President!

Please, please, please, do not let the media choose our next president. Do the research yourself. Go and watch the youtube speeches by the candidates. Because of the internet, you have the ability to research candidates as never before. So here is a little test. I'm going to list the name of a candidate, and for each one, I want you to write down the first thing that comes to mind.

Hillary Clinton
John McCain
Ron Paul
Barack Obama
Mitt Romney
Mike Huckabee

Now, did you write down your answers? If you did, now look at what you wrote down and ask yourself "Why do I think that?" Is that grounded in facts?

I challenge you to go and watch a youtube speech for each candidate, do the research, then go back and see if you still think the same of the candidate.

Media Bias

So how did I get on this rant? Well, when you follow a candidate that the media does not like, it is very easy to get angry and disgruntled. I want to give you some blatant examples of media bias towards Dr. Paul.

Fair and Balanced? I think not!

Fox News and the New Hampshire GOP are putting together a debate/forum on Jan 6th in New Hampshire. Fox News decided to exclude Dr. Paul from this debate/forum. At first there were all sorts of wrong and misinformation floating around on the internet, but it looks like we finally have some solid information. Fox News and Ron Paul have never been friends, but that being said, Fox News should have enough journalistic integrity to include all the candidates. But I guess not. The problem is that they have invited Fred Thompson. even though Ron Paul has consistently polled above Fred Thompson in nearly every poll. See for yourself:

New Hampshire - 2008 Presidential Polls

Fox News has yet to respond to requests dating back to Friday as to why Dr. Paul was excluded. His own campaign has had trouble getting in touch with Fox News. That seems strange now that we have Text Messages, Blackberries, email and cells phones, that somebody at Fox can not confirm or deny if Dr. Paul has been excluded. At this point it is very hard to say this is just a miscommunication.

Here is the latest word from the New Hampshire GOP who is co-hosting this event:

New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Fergus Cullen releases the following statement regarding primary weekend debates:

“Limiting the number of candidates who are invited to participate in debates is not consistent with the tradition of the first in the nation primary. The level playing field requires that all candidates be given an equal opportunity to participate – not just a select few determined by the media prior to any votes being cast.”


[Full Article]

Pop quiz: The owner of Fox News is Rupert Murdoch. Which presidential candidate has Mr Murdoch contributed the maximum amount to? If you said Hilliary Clinton, you would be correct.

Rupert Murdoch Political Contributions

He has given heavily to Republican Congressmen and to the Republican Party, but the only presidential candidate he has given to (to the best of my knowledge) is Hilliary Clinton. I do not know about you, but I found that interesting.

The truth about Earmarks

Dr. Paul was on Meet the Press last week. Tim Russert asked him about earmarks. Russert was trying to discredit Dr. Paul about his adding of earmarks to spending bills. The problem is that if you don't understand what an earmark is, it does sound like Dr. Paul is having his cake and eating it too. (Though in Russert's defense and my personal opinion, Dr. Paul did not do a good job defending his position) But if you dig a little deeper you start to see that Dr. Paul is working against a horrible system, and he is using a tool he is given. If he had his way, all earmarks would be banned.

Dr. Paul would put in an earmark to a spending bill, then vote against the entire bill. Russert's comment was this was similar to the "your were for it before you were against it". Unfortunately this shows a total lack of understanding about the nature of earmarks by Russert. So what came out of that interview was lots of articles bashing Dr. Paul's "hypocrisy". Well once again, if you go and read about what an earmark actually is you will begin to understand that it is more complex than a 30 second sound bite.

So what is an earmark? [wikipedia]

Earmarking bypasses the normal procedure by which tax revenue is pooled in a general fund and then allocated among various government spending programs as opposed to a specific program.

In other words, if during the creation of a spending bill, if you don't earmark money for a certain expense (a new highway or whatever), then the department that gets that money can decided however they want. The money will be spent either way, so Dr. Paul is trying to serve his constituents by bringing some of the tax money they pay into the Federal Government back to his district.

Here is an article from this summer on Dr. Paul's website about earmarks:

Earmark Victory May Be A Hollow One

Here is another good explanation:

In Defense of Ron Paul’s Earmarks


Paint Ron Paul as a racist

In the worst of all smears, the New York Times ran an article that said that Dr. Ron Paul has regular dinners with a White Supremacy group. The article was the worst of the worst. So after being up for two days, they pulled the article and put up a retraction.

The quote from the original article:

Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Va., usually on Wednesdays.

Oh for the love of all that is holy!

Here is the retraction:

The post also repeated a string of assertions by Bill White, the commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party, including the allegation that Paul meets regularly “with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review and others” at a restaurant in Arlington, Va. Paul never attended these dinners, according to Benton, who also says that Paul has never knowingly met Bill White.

But the problem is how many people read the first article, made up their minds, and do not go back to check the facts. Does not matter I guess. The damage is already done.

PLEASE do not let the media choose our next president! Please do the research yourself and vote the issues. That is all I'm asking. If you vote for Ron Paul, then I think you will have made a good decision, but if you vote otherwise, just make sure you are voting your mind and not your emotions. Electablity is something We the People choose, not the media. And if you have not done the research, or can not backup why you like a candidate with facts, then please Do Not Vote. Seriously. A Republic only works, with an informed electorate.