The Boy Who Cried "Wolf!"

Over 2000 years ago, Aesop wrote a fable about a boy, who tasked with guarding some sheep, continually alarmed the citizens by crying "wolf!" when there was no wolf. After a time of this falsity, the townspeople came to disregard the boy's cries. Then the wolf really did come, nobody believed it, and the wolf ate the sheep.

Most of us heard some version of this when growing up. It is pertinent now because much the same is occurring with our media.

The First Amendment protects freedom of the press because it was believed, correctly, at the time that a free and independent press was necessary to help guard our freedoms from those in government who would infringe upon them.

Ever since Donald Trump got the Republican nomination, the mainstream media has done everything it could to discredit and destroy him.

They have exaggerated, lied, invented stories, and falsely reported other stories. There has been a constant drumbeat of this from the entire spectrum of the media. If anything could be reported that would harm Trump or his supporters it has been done.

They even invented the term "fake news" to discredit sites which favored Trump. This apparently has backfired to some extent.

One can expect this to continue as long as Trump is President..

The Federalist recently ran a story about "16 Fake News Stories Reporter Have Run Since Trump Was Elected." This story only touches upon the tip of the iceberg.

Over the years, the media has remained free, but not independent. It is almost entirely owned or controlled by left wing establishment elites who almost exclusively support the Democratic Party. The result has been a lot of fake news, and failure to cover news that might be favorable to Trump.

The people are no longer fooled. A poll by Emerson College recently found that 49% of those polled viewed Trump as truthful, while 53% find the media untruthful. Last September, the Gallup Organization reported: "Americans' Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low." The poll found that only 32% of Americans trust the media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly." This was the lowest in Gallup's history, and probably explains why the media effort to defeat Trump failed.

The knowledge of the corrupt media by the public leaves us in much the same quandary as the townspeople in Aesop's Fable. There is no longer any trust.

So who is going to help guard our freedoms now?

Donald Trump was elected while violating all of the old political rules in terms of tactics and strategy. He came out of the blue with a message that resonated with a lot of people in the great center (politically and geographically) of the country and won the Electoral Vote, though not the popular vote.

Many of his proposed policies are controversial

In addition, Trump may be a successful businessman, but he has absolutely no experience in governing. Running a government is far different that running a business. It is as much about leading as demanding, and Mr. Trump is unproven to say the least.

He will certainly make mistakes.

Unfortunately, there is nobody believable to call him on it. The Democrats, of course, are rabidly partisan. And with the constant crying of "wolf" by the media, there is no one left to guard the sheep.

Musing On a Rainy Friday Afternoon

There has been a lot of moisture out here in West Texas the last few months. Right now, we are at about 2 1/2 times normal, and our rainy season has just begun. I suppose its the El Nino that has been in progress, but the Winter sure felt like Global Cooling.

That does bring to mind the issue of Global Warming that all the liberals were panicked about. We have not heard a lot about that lately, since the science has been shown to have been unscientific. It appears that a lot of it was based upon scientists wanting to be politically corrrect so they could get more government money for research. The rest was based upon doctored evidence that was never disclosed, and "conveniently" lost before it could be checked.

Poor Al Gore. It now appears he will not make the billions of dollars he would have made if the "cap and trade" fiasco had passed.

The problem is, the globe does warm and does cool, and we should be prepared for it. Right now there appears to be temporary cooling, but by the time we really establish that, it may well be warming again.

That is what the earth does. It warms for a while, then it cools. In the last 100,000 years we have had several cycles of warming and cooling. Humans have always adapted to it. We need to be prepared to adapt to it again. We can't stop it, and to try would be foolish.

Back to the rain. It caused the postponement of the Tax Day Tea Party on Thursday. Too bad. I was going to go, as I did last year.

It has been very interesting to see how our political left and their minions in the media have treated the Tea Partys over the last year.

At first they were "right wing extremists" then moved on to be racists and Nazis. That did not work, of course, because none of it was true. They also tried to set up some individuals as "leaders" of the Tea Party and tried to tear the Partiers down by attacking those "leaders." That didn't work, either, mainly because the Tea Party groups are all local folks. Its a movement, not an organization.

The lastest is a New York Times/CBS poll that asserts they are rich and well educated, and not representative of a cross section of the citizenry. That will fail as well, because its not true. Obviously, the media has not covered the actual Tea Partys enough to have a clue about them. Or they don't care about the truth.

I wonder what they will try to come up with next.

Thoughts on a return to blogging

It has been a long and busy three weeks, and I have not been able to even gather thoughts in order to blog. Sorry.

There was some time to keep up with email, and to read some articles. Given what is happening in our world, there is a lot to blog about. I will try to do so with a bit more regularity than lately.

Looking about, one sees the United States, once respected, if disliked, has changed to being disrespected and still disliked.

All of that in a period of eight months.

This is because of the deliberate policies of our current government. It has sucked up to our enemies and offended and abandoned our friends. Intentionally.

Iran has just been given another pass, in spite of its threat. North Korea is ignored, to do whatever nuke development they wish.

Castro and Chavez to our south are being helped, rather than isolated, while Honduras and Colombia, our allies, are treated quite poorly.

The situation in Afghanistan is eroding, and the government is holding "meetings." There seems to be no sense of urgency, even though the President accorded Afghanistan important status when running for office.

Domestically, the economy is in the tank while the "stimulus" is spent to shore up supporters and arms of the Democratic Party. The big banking and financial institutions have been bailed out with nearly three trillion dollars of taxpayers' money, but the government entities refuse to account to the people for the money.

The majority party is trying to cram health "reform" down the throat of the 85% of the people who are satisfied with their health insurance, in order to make coverage available to an additional 11% of the people (and, of course, 12 million illegal aliens).

They are also trying to pass a "cap and trade" regime, which will enrich a few, but will constitute a huge energy tax on everyone else, even the poor. This is being done in a time of deep recession and increasing unemployment.

In the media, I notice that the New York Times has as the lead article a story about Senator John Ensign (R-Nev) and his affair, but there is not a mention anywhere of Charles Rangel (D-NY) and his series of felonies, nor of the bastard child of John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate, even though there is some here on Politico.

Enough.

A couple of weeks ago, as I sat out on my patio enjoying the evening with my puppy dog and an adult beverage, I had something of a premonition. Nothing specific at all, just a thought that something bad might happen. A friend that I told about it said he was having somewhat similar thoughts.

I think that when one considers the above, along with everything else, there is good reason to worry.

Perhaps that can be covered a bit in succeeding posts.