Media Faking the Unemployment Rate

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 29, 2004

Byline: Helen Lee, INSIGHT

Media Faking the Unemployment Rate

Rush Limbaugh, The Excellence in Broadcasting Network, Southern Florida, www.RushLimbaugh.com

Do you realize the employment rate is exactly what it was in 1996 when Bill Clinton ran for re-election? Did we have a rotten economy then?

The country's GDP [gross domestic product] keeps growing, our output keeps growing, our overall prosperity and wealth keep growing, but the media are going to keep focusing on these jobs that are lost because it helps Democrats [see chart on p. 15].

Big Education's Awesome Idea

Roger Hedgecock, KOGO-AM 600, San Diego, www.RogerHedgecock.com

California state government is still in overspending mode still debating how to square soaring spending with less income. Add to that California's continued reputation as bad for business and the result is an unemployment rate one-third higher than the national average.

With all these serious problems facing them, legislators have proposed lowering the voting age to 14. That's right, the adults have screwed things up so bad they want kids to vote.

My first thought why not? How could things get worse? Then I found out who was behind this legislation. The California teachers union, for one, and its Democrat allies in the Legislature. The teachers union would love to give the vote to kids in the K-12 system would you vote against what your teacher told you in the eighth grade? Not me!

Sounds perfect for the liberal left a new bloc of voters to manipulate. What's the matter? Those illegals voting too Republican?

Be More Intelligent About Intelligence

Alan Nathan, Radio America Network, Washington, www.radioamerica.org/ Program2003/battleline.htm

Iraq war opponents like actor Sean Penn continue screaming that the not yet discovered weapons of mass destruction [WMD] prove [George W.] Bush's deception to the American people. Apparently Penn's grasp of the facts has the vicelike grip of a moose trying to open a jar of mayonnaise. Flawed intelligence does not a presidential lie make. If our intelligence community and president lied about WMD in Iraq, then so did their counterparts in France, Germany and Russia all of whom agreed with our "intel" while disagreeing with our strategy on the war.

Intelligence is nothing more than a collection of disparate pieces of information usually derived from a myriad of sources. Analysis of this collection involves assessing what's most plausible and then acting on it in a way that errs on the side of caution. What is that side of caution? That would be the action that best protects our country you know, whatever is opposite of John Kerry's vote.

Hollywood Has Head in the Sand

Laura Ingraham, Talk Radio Network, Washington, www.LauraIngraham.com

Can anyone remember the last time Hollywood seemed so bummed out over a film making a boatload of money at the box office? The Passion [of the Christ] is poised to make $350 million in North America alone, making it undoubtedly one of the biggest smashes of all time, and yet studio heads still don't get it. They haven't stopped grumbling and grousing. DreamWorks executives Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen told the New York Times that they are angry over the film. Other studio chiefs privately vowed never to work with [Mel] Gibson again. Now who's blacklisting whom?

Entertainment honchos are busy convincing themselves that the main reason the film is doing so well is the prerelease controversy. It was all just a big marketing ploy by Mel Gibson. (And we know how Hollywood dislikes hype!)

We are used to hearing the elites in the entertainment and media worlds complain that conservatives like President Bush are "out of touch" with the real world, they don't identify with the lives of real people. But real people are showing up in droves to see The Passion. Real people hunger for entertainment that speaks to their souls, that confronts the consequences of sin, that takes on the new aggressive secularism. Real people are weary of having their values and beliefs derided as backward and ignorant by the "big thinkers" in the entertainment industry.

Mel Gibson made an important film. And it's importance is not just what it shows on-screen, but what it brings out in people offscreen. Hollywood may not have learned much from the success of The Passion, but we've learned a lot about Hollywood.

Helen Lee is an associate reporter for Insight magazine.