-By Nancy Salvato
In the time that has passed since President Obama was elected to and now holds the presidency of the United States, there has been something of an ominous and disturbing feel accompanying the media’s portrayal of his administration. It brings to mind news coverage of third world countries taken over by a military coup or overrun by a junta or dictatorship whose next move is to nationalize their industries or indiscriminately ravage the countryside. There is a one-step removed air about the reporting that belies the gravity of what is being discussed and makes each event surreal. There is a resigned quality to the words and to what is happening to our way of life. Have we forgotten that we live under a Constitution that provides “We the People” the power to “peacefully overthrow” those who are elected to hold office? We even have the power to “non-peacefully overthrow” those elected to power, but we’ve never had to use this recourse.
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty…And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
– Thomas Jefferson
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An Alternative to Impending Doom”
MSNBC took the occasion of a triple homicide on Chicago’s south side to push its own anti-“assault rifle” meme on February 27 by including the words “assault rifle” in the headline of its story on the incident. No other media source, however, took this unusual step. So, here we have some old fashioned bias by MSNBC.
We all saw the rocky performance that Bobby Jindal gave in his response to the president’s not-the-state-of-the-union speech earlier this week. There was a lot of wincing going on during and after his performance. But, let me stress the word “performance,” here. It was NOT the basic theme of the speech that was so bad. It was but how he delivered it.
Remember how during the run up to the election, all the left pundits and talking heads and their compatriots in the Old Media said that no white person would vote for Barack Obama? Well, despite the singular fact that Barack Obama convincingly won the popular vote in a country that sees a majority of its voters are white, the Old Media is still insisting that all southerners are slavery-loving, neo-confederates that are no different than they were in 1860.
Usually I don’t go for the hard-edged treatment of politicians as my headline here does. I don’t often call individuals “liars” and the like, though I’ve been known to do so on occasion. Generally, I prefer to assume that those that oppose my views are truthfully advocating for deep held beliefs and not using lies and obfuscation to get there — some exceptions to that, of course. I am not really the biggest fan of the wild-eyed, Olbermannesque sort of bombast and name-calling. 
These last 20 or so years has seen a bifurcated treatment of Abraham Lincoln. There are the enthusiasts and hagiographers that still revere him as the best that America has to offer — the proverbial great emancipator, Father Abraham. Then there is a second stream, enthusiasts of another sort, viewing the Civil War president in the opposite manner. That second group are the Lincoln haters. Those such as Thomas DiLorenzo, the sort that calls Lincoln a criminal and despot, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the sort that castigates Honest Abe as an unremitting racist, have been joined by a small group of Lincoln detractors trying to convince America that Lincoln is to be discounted, even hated by history.
The winter in Alaska has been a particularly harsh one this year. The early winter piled on top of economic hard times has caused some troubles for native people and those that live in remote areas in Alaska. But this is not a new tale of woe, it IS Alaska, after all. While nothing to entirely dismiss, one wonders, why CNN suddenly found this story so compelling? Could it be that they want to portray Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as just as harsh as the winter?
Terrorists, murders, oppressors and Islamofascists understandably were not very fond of George W. Bush. Neither were the fellow travelers of the aforementioned lowest rung of the human ladder in Europe, those in the offices of the ACLU and the Democratic Party fond of our late president. This is well understood. But what does the ascension of Barack Hussein Obama mean to them? More importantly, what will what it means to them mean for us? 
An extremely liberal co-worker of mine — he’s in the past said that the “rich” should be killed, for instance — asked me a serious question by which he felt he could gauge whether or not I was a “real” American in his eyes during the rise of the age of Obama. He wondered whether I wish success for Barack Obama as our president. After a few seconds of reflection I had to honestly give a qualified “no” in answer to his query. Naturally this fellow went off about how it was unAmerican to wish the president to fail and how it would damage the country. But, after he briefly calmed down, and brief calm is usually all we can expect from him, I gave him a fuller explanation.
So what do you get when you mix a Canadian TV hostess with the venerable Helen Thomas? An admission of bias so strong that it could ward off a vampire. Just why the image of the undead first came to my mind is anybody’s guess, but there you have it.