NPR's Richard Knox evidently forgot to keep up with the happenings of the H1N1 flu vaccine before delivering his report Marketing Flu Vaccine: A Tough Sell For Many. Here is some impartiality for us:

The nation is in the midst of the largest mass vaccination campaign against flu in history, but about half the population is saying they are not interested.

Many have a sense that the vaccine was rushed to production, compromising safety. Some are convinced that it contains harmful chemicals.

Neither is right, federal officials say. But they are clearly worried about vaccine naysayers and skeptics.

Did you catch the "have a sense that the vaccine was rushed to production" line, as if this were simply a matter of fear mongering? Knox must not have read that the CDC approved emergency use of the vaccine in late October: FDA approves emergency use of new intravenous flu drug, peramivir. In case you don't know what "emergency use" means to the CDC, they define it on their website: Interim Questions and Answers About Emergency Use Authorization. Here is the first paragraph:

An Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) may be issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow either the use of an unapproved medical product or an unapproved use of an approved medical product during certain types of emergencies with specified agents.

It normally takes years for the CDC to approve any drug for use in the United States. The new swine flu (H1N1) pandemic occurred just this year, 2009. So there is good reason to "have a sense that the vaccine was rushed to production" because that is precisely what happened. But acknowledging this fact apparently makes us "naysayers and skeptics," which is another unbiased portrayal of the situation, of course.

I've not heard much concern about unsafe chemicals in the H1N1 vaccine so I question this news report about that aspect of the issue. But the general concerns over the vaccine's safety are being voiced for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that the drug was indeed rushed through the CDC's approval process via the Emergency Use Authorization.

Who are these federal officials Knox references for this report? They either don't know about the recent EUA or they do know and are lying about it. Why all the deception and this manipulative news story?

Please don't misunderstand, I don't oppose the use of vaccinations, but neither to I rabidly promote it. Richard Knox is clearly supporting the use of the H1N1 vaccine with this report, which seems consistent with the general massive media effort to promote health care "reform" legislation. It should be no surprise that even this rather uninteresting issue is being propagandized to further left wing efforts to achieve government run health care.

When Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted "you lie" at President Obama during his speech to both houses of Congress it sparked a remarkable response, particularly from the news media.

Once again, NPR comes to the defense of the president, as long as the president is a Democrat (I challenge you to find news stories of NPR defending a Republican president). In the predictable selective concern over accuracy NPR's Scott Horsley investigates certain aspects of Representative Wilson's outburst in Examining Health Care And Illegal Immigrants Claim. Horsley tries to assure the listener President Obama was speaking the truth when he said illegal aliens would not be covered by the government run health care plan being proposed in the current reform legislation. This claim is just as true as the emergency funds Congress appropriated to help the victims of hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Do you remember the innumerable complaints about how a lack of oversight and enforcement led to rampant fraud of that aid money? It is the same situation all over again with the health care reform legislation and illegal immigrants. There is language in the House bill preventing illegal immigrants from benefiting from this government health care plan the president supports. But there is no enforcement or oversight making sure the plan is implemented the way the president told the nation it would be. As with the Katrina aid money, no enforcement of such protections means there is no protection. It is empty language if there is no oversight. We were pounded with this point over the fraudulent use of Katrina money, but now we are supposed to ignore the same problem with the health care bill?

Apparently Horsley didn't address the possibility that legislation crafting something for the Democrat agenda could be problematic or useless. John Hawkins interviewed Joe Wilson after the incident and published it in An Interview With Congressman Joe Wilson. Rep. Wilson said this about the issue:

So, as the President was going through the speech, when he got to the part about illegal aliens and he was saying they wouldn’t receive benefits, I knew better because I had been following the amendments of the Ways and Means Committee and also the Energy and Commerce Committee.

I serve on the other committee, Education and Labor, that has jurisdiction. I was looking at all of the amendments and I knew that the Democrats had defeated the enforcement amendments about illegal aliens and these would be the amendments that would provide for verification of citizenship. That’s the wording and I’ve actually read the 1,000 page bill. The references to the illegal aliens in the bill didn’t have any enforcement. It was simply fluff.

What Katrina showed us is that a lack of oversight on public money can hurt people, and just because language exists in a bill to accomplish something doesn't mean that language is worth diddly. Horsley was satisfied in mentioning only that the language forbidding illegal aliens from benefiting from the health care bill was actually there, and that the president was technically correct in what he said on the matter. The fact that such provision was pragmatically worthless simply isn't in this news report. You see, when the president is a Democrat we're supposed to admiringly take his word for it.

Horsley at least allows William Gheen to make a statement in the aired story in which the issue of a lack of enforcement is made. Gheen makes the point that we already have rules and laws supposedly preventing illegal immigrants from benefiting from government programs meant only for people who pay into the system that fail to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. But Horsley makes sure the listener is well informed by referencing a nameless government attempt a few years earlier to weed out illegals by requiring medicaid recipients to prove their citizenship. How are we to know "only a handful of illegal immigrants were discovered" or that "large numbers of citizens lost medicaid because they couldn't provide the necessary documents" ? It would be helpful of Mr. Horsley to provide his source, as it is rather troublesome to neglect this detail. Alas, Horsley makes no mention of the amendments that Democrats defeated which were designed to provide oversight on the issue of illegals benefiting from the government run health care program. If there is no enforcement in the legislation (as was the case with Katrina aid) what good is the language of the bill? But enough with actually thinking about the issue, as a loyal liberal Horsley makes sure to suggest the concerns about rewarding illegal immigrants with a government run health care system are just a political ploy designed to gin up opposition.

The president also says opponents of these particular convoluted health care bills before both houses of Congress want to maintain the status quo. Why did Horsley say nothing of this Obama lie? His report took the time to portray the illegal immigration issue as an empty political trick, surely there would be time enough to address another questionable claim in the president's speech. The vast majority of opponents of the so-called "reform" currently being debated actually do want substantial change in America's health care system. But that doesn't mean government control is the solution to the problem. I, for one, being opposed to the idea of government control of health care totally and completely support the idea of Health Savings Accounts. With HSAs the money follows individuals, rather than the government deciding where it goes. Jim Graham, Director of Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, mentions some good alternatives in The Best Health Care Plan You've Never Heard Of. Graham has this to say:

Washington is in the midst of yet another scandal -- but not the kind you'd read about in a gossip rag. Congressional dilettantes are willfully ignoring health-care reform ideas that would cut costs and provide high-quality care to all.

Sound nuts? It shouldn't. By refusing to even consider consumer-driven health care (CDHC), congressional leaders are proving that they're more interested in putting the government in charge of Americans' health care than in actually improving patient outcomes. Decades of evidence show that CDHC-style reforms can achieve the stated goal of would-be health reformers:
high-quality care at low cost.

All the reform plans under consideration in Congress fail to address the biggest problem with our health-care system: third parties, like insurance companies or the government, pay for just about everything. Consequently, Americans have no idea how much the medical services they consume cost.

And why exactly was Wilson's outburst a "shock to Congressional protocol" as Horsley says? Democrats felt free to heckle and even boo President Bush during his 2005 State of the Union address: Flashback: Democrats Boo Bush At 2005 State Of The Union. Is it because it was only one voice yelling above the rest, or the fact that the word "lie" was used? Or is it simply that this happened to a president who was a Democrat?

I will give NPR credit for actually questioning the president's financial numbers that the health care bill would not add "one dime to the deficit now or in the future. Period." as the president claimed. In the September 10 broadcast of Marketplace Tamara Keith asked some financial analysts about those numbers in Inspecting Obama's health care claims. Their verdict? Another technically true issue, if you're willing to wait 20 or 30 years. Of course, if it takes 30 years to even out, then the president's claims are not true for the "now" aspect, are they? If government bureaucrats can't get a handle on predictions 6 months from now why should we give them credit on economic forecasts of 3 decades in the future?

A remarkable little scandal erupted last week involving President Barack Obama's planned education message, to be delivered September 8 in public schools across the country by video. Many parents expressed their disapproval, based on an early release of the text and curriculum. Their objections were sparked because of some sections of the lesson plan which they thought seemed too political in nature to be delivered to a captive audience of school children. But what is even more remarkable is the news media backlash to these protests.

On Friday, September 4, NPR insouciantly ridiculed and mocked the protests in an unabashedly partisan fashion. In Wade Goodwyn's Obama's Schools Speech Faces Backlash, Goodwyn doesn't even try to be impartial in his report, even going so far as to accuse parents who oppose letting the government politically indoctrinate their children of not wanting to help the president improve public education. You won't find that in the transcript on the NPR website, you'll have to listen to the full 3 minute MP3 file to find it. Here's the problem with Goodwyn's biased report: he makes a straw man argument. There's no reason to believe any parent opposes the improvement of their child's education. But NPR would have us believe inserting left wing propaganda is improving public education.

So what in this whole situation could be considered political? You won't find out from the main stream media. The following stories would have us believe the only thing we need to know about the president's speech to school children is that they should work hard and stay in school. One of these is another NPR story:

• Obama's Speech Protests Examined
• White House Seeks To Tamp Schools Speech Furor
• Harwood: Opponents of Obama's School Invasion 'Not Smart Enough' To Raise Their Children
• Unwillingness to Have Obama in Classroom Symptom of Why Schoolchildren 'Are So Dumb Today,' Says MSNBC Guest

What you won't find in the main stream news media are the real reasons many parents protested. Part of the reason is because these objections have little if anything to do with the speech at all. That's part of the media manipulation, focusing all this public attention on the speech, which few if any one actually had a problem with. You can read the full text of the speech here: Text of President Obama's School Speech. The problem is with the curriculum the White House and Department of Education put together to accompany the speech.

To find out what is, or was since the curriculum was edited after the protests began, in the lesson plan that outraged so many parents you'll have to go to alternative news media. The Cato Institute's Gene Healy writes about the lesson plan in Hey, Mr. President, Leave Those Kids Alone:

The lesson plans Obama Department of Education officials came up with after several meetings with the White House make it clear that federal education bureaucrats should be kept as far away from children as possible.

One of the plans envisioned teachers making kindergartners write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. After parents rightly recoiled from that recommendation, the DOE tried to throw it down the memory hole, deleting it from their Web site.

Given some of the cultish questions that survived DOE's hasty revision, however, concerned parents can be pardoned a few overheated references to Kim Il-Sung:

How will [President Obama] inspire us?"

What is President Obama inspiring you to do?

Why is it important that we listen to the president and other elected officials?

These are question-begging questions, especially if you're one of those sensible Americans of all ages who aren't particularly inspired by President Obama, and who aren't convinced that listening raptly to elected officials is the best possible use of your time.

Worse still, the goofy pedagogical theory that informs DOE's lesson plans assumes that if we just get kids to express themselves about how a speech makes them feel, then they'll get smarter.

When they're old enough, in history class, kids ought to read and listen to presidential speeches like Ike's farewell address, LBJ's Great Society speech, Carter's malaise speech, and George W. Bush's second inaugural. And then they should be encouraged to dissect those speeches: What's the argument here? Is it convincing? We ought to ask kids to think critically about presidential rhetoric, instead of prodding them to burble appreciatively about his compassionate plans for everybody.

There is another "education" video being shown to public school students, entirely separate from the president's planned speech, titled "I pledge". I pledge features celebrities making politically partisan pledges. In Parents upset over 'leftist propaganda' video Lisa Schencker describes some aspects of the video.

Many pledges, such as supporting local food banks, smiling more, and caring for the elderly are noncontroversial. But other pledges, such as "to never give anyone the finger when I'm driving again," "to sell my obnoxious car and buy a hybrid" and to advance stem cell research cross the line, some say.

Do you see the problem? The celebrity video was not "just" about staying in school and working hard. There is social engineering going on here. It's not all bad social engineering, what with encouraging children to support local food banks and care for the elderly. But let's at least acknowledge this goes beyond mere education. Then there is the stuff about buying a hybrid and supporting stem cell research - how can any thinking person NOT see these statements relate to highly charged political issues?

Schencker's piece continues:

Gayle Ruzicka, president of conservative Utah Eagle Forum, said the video was blatantly political. She said other offensive pledges included, "I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama," "I pledge allegiance to the funk, to the united funk of funkadelica," and pledges to not use plastic grocery bags and not flush the toilet after urinating.

"It's very inappropriate to show a radical, leftist propaganda piece that political to children," Ruzicka said. "If parents want their children to learn about those things and do them in the home, wonderful, fine, but it's not the place of the school to show a one-sided propaganda piece to children without parents knowing about it."

"They shouldn't be troubling our youth with the woes of the world and making them feel like we're in slavery or they have to worry about how many times they flush the toilet or if they have a plastic water bottle," Cieslewicz said, referring to pledges in the video to "end slavery."

Let's pose a hypothetical: "I pledge to be of service to George W. Bush." Now try to argue this is not a political statement, especially were it is to be delivered in a message to young students. Try to argue such a statement would not be met with widespread outrage by the very people saying there is nothing wrong with President Obama's message to students. That is partly what bothers so many conservative parents. People who see no problem with the "I pledge" video also seem to have no problem with the White House lesson plan that accompanied president Obama's back-to-school speech.

And no where in the main stream media are we being informed about the genuinely political and/or troubling aspects of the video or of the president's education message. Instead, we get more of the same loyal protection and obfuscation by left wing journalists trying to portray dissent as uncaring or racist, and alarmed parents as nincompoops who need government's help in properly raising their children.

Of the several news stories on NPR about the protests surrounding the president's speech I have yet to read or listen to one that actually tried to keep the public well informed. In every case so far (I admit I could have missed something) NPR wasn't even interested in being impartial - each story was designed to attack any opposition to the president's plans and to support the president in any and all aspects of his agenda. When was the last time you heard or read a story from NPR that supported anything President Bush tried to do?

This small scandal really doesn't merit this kind of media attention. There is tremendous left wing indoctrination in the public schools already. But the left-leaning news media chose to make this story a big deal, even if it wasn't the real story at all. The misrepresentation of conservative opinions and policies is standard procedure at NPR, and I'm afraid it has been for quite some time.

It seems there are really only two qualifications required to be a Supreme Court justice for the current Democrat administration: a left-leaning agenda and being sufficiently minority. That's the impression given by some recent news stories on the SCOTUS nomination of Sonia Sotomayor.

• Historic nomination: Hispanic Sotomayor as justice
• How -- and why -- Barack Obama picked Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court

President Obama has made a big deal out of Sotomayor's genuinely inspiring life story. Granted, he has the difficult challenge of getting a Supreme Court nominee confirmed by a sympathetic Congress with the distant microscope of a sympathetic press, both of which are quite taken with the gender and race aspects of this particular nomination. Okay, so that's not such a challenge after all. But getting this nomination approved by Congress before anything seriously inconvenient is divulged will be a challenge.

There's nothing wrong with the president nominating an idealogue who supports his own bias and world view, that's what any president does. However, Sotomayor is being treated not as an ideologue, but rather as an idealist. And there's the rub; an entirely different treatment by both Congress and the news media (the very people who decry partisanship, and laud bi-partisanship) from other recent federal court nominees. You may not remember how President Bush's judicial nominees were treated by Congressional and journalistic Democrats, so here's a brief reminder:

• Flashback: Nets Were Quick to Tag Alito and Roberts as 'Ultra' and 'Hardline' 'Conservatives'
• In 2003, Miguel Estrada Was Dismissed As Bush 'Affirmative Action Candidate'
• The Democratic Party: Reject Samuel Alito
• A Spectre is Haunting the Constitution: Alito
• The Supreme Court's Wrong Turn -- And How to Fix It
• Alito the Extremist, Ginsburg the Moderate?
• Lauer Gives Extremist Tag to Alito: "He Is an Ultra-Conservative"
• Alito seen as extremist threat to mainstream rights

John Roberts and Samuel Alito in particular were ridiculed and excoriated by Congressional Democrats and main stream journalists, with plenty of slander and misrepresentation to boot. And what sort of criticisms do journalists have for Sotomayor? Charlie Savage makes a fair effort to explain potential problems one could have with her in his NYT piece A Judge’s View of Judging Is on the Record. In this piece several statements of Sotomayor are presented. Since conservatives are commonly subjected to an "I know bigotry when I see it" decoder-ring attitude from leftists it seems only fair to acknowledge, as Savage does here, that Sotomayor's statements seem to satisfy Barack Obama's imperative of a judge's "empathy" for ruling from the bench.

• Obama’s “Empathy” Standard
• Obama Supreme Court Candidate Sonia Sotomayor—Part 2

But it appears there is a concerted effort, at least in the general news media and left leaning political circles, to avoid taking a closer look at Sotomayor's record. For example, the May 27, 2009 AP story Push to confirm first Hispanic to Supreme Court makes no effort to detail any potential difficulty with the nomination other than a token quote of unspecified "serious problems" from a Republican Senator. Likewise, NPR's Nita Totenberg spends the vast majority of two news stories on the magnificence of the entire situation, with numerous statements from Sotomayor supporters. There is only one statement included in each story of any possible criticism. (As a side note, suddenly the fact that no one has read all of Sotomayor's legal decisions is presented as pertinent, where as this same lack of preparedness was widely treated as irrelevant regarding the largest spending bill in American history earlier this year). Totenberg tries to portray Sotomayor as a moderate while informing us Republicans will try to portray her as extremist or activist, with the suggestion it is only a few fringe right wingers who would ever think such a thing.

• Obama Picks Sotomayor For High Court
• Obama Picks Hispanic Woman For Supreme Court

Totenberg and President Obama do actually address one specific legal decision of Sotomayor. Others have recently addressed that case in other places as, so far, the only specific instance of her vast and riveting experience the American people seem to be aware of:

• Looking Back At Sotomayor's 1995 Baseball Ruling
• On a Supreme Court Prospect’s Résumé: ‘Baseball Savior’

The lack of any substantial information about this nominee should be concerning. No where in the left wing media, and certainly no where in Congress, are we getting real information other than the heart warming story of Sotomayor's difficult life and her inspiring ascendence to a high federal court.

The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen did some work of truly investigating concerns over Sotomayor. On May 4, 2009 Rosen's The Case Against Sotomayor (a title Rosen regrets) brings us some valid points about temperament and such, though from a sympathetic point of view. There are legitimate questions as to her ability to work well with others and her intellectual competence for the job on the SCOTUS.

Regarding the ostensible unwillingness to challenge President Obama's nomination Alan Dershowitz explains quite well that Congress is the body of representation, and that "diversity" (liberal code for "you are a bigot if you disagree with me") should not be a deciding factor when nominating someone for a seat on the nation's highest court: Diversity on the High Court. Randall Kennedy reminds us a compelling personal story was irrelevant to leftists when Clarance Thomas or Sarah Palin were the political hot topics of the day: Sotomayor’s Biography Should Be Irrelevant.

President Obama and the Democratic Party seem to be operating on the idea that Sotomayor's race, gender, and years of judicial experience are the only relevant factors here. There is no apparent interest in the quality of that experience, or worse - a  left leaning agenda allegedly behind that experience is treated as validation. The fact that the Supreme Court has had to overturn as much as 60% of Sotomayor's decisions which reached them is entirely ignored. The biggest concern conservatives have about Sotomayor is her seeming willingness to disregard the Constitution altogether if she feels it interferes with her sentiments. Evidently alternative news media will have to bring this information to light.

Two such cases can be found already. Before Obama made his SCOTUS pick there were a few contenders. Ilya Shapiro wrote about that May first, for the Cato Institute. In Who Will Replace Justice Souter? Shaprio brings up "Ricci v. DeStefano ... an appeal of a bizarre opinion Sotomayor joined that denied the claims of firefighters who had been passed over for promotion because of their race." Richard Epstein with Forbes.com wrote on May 26 in The Sotomayor Nomination about the infamous Kelo v. New London case. Epstein says this:

Here is one straw in the wind that does not bode well for a Sotomayor appointment. Justice Stevens of the current court came in for a fair share of criticism (all justified in my view) for his expansive reading in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) of the "public use language." Of course, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is as complex as it is short: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." But he was surely done one better in the Summary Order in Didden v. Village of Port Chester issued by the Second Circuit in 2006. Judge Sotomayor was on the panel that issued the unsigned opinion--one that makes Justice Stevens look like a paradigmatic defender of strong property rights.

In the mean time, let's see if Sotomayor is treated like this during her confirmation hearings.

Cheney, Master of Pain May 16, 2009 by MAUREEN DOWD

Maureen Dowd has done many obtuse things. But bloviating over torture in defense of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is just the most recent. Her latest opinion piece defending Pelosi isn't really about her.

Dowd can't help but blame Bush and Cheney for Pelosi's moment in the hot seat over what she new about supposed torture, when she knew it, and why she did nothing in protest long ago in the early years of the Bush administration. But this is the most obvious symptom of what is called Bush Derangement Syndrome: blame the Bush administration for everything that can be construed as bad and refuse credit for anything good.

Take, for example, the issue of water boarding. The Democrat narrative pounds on the notion that water boarding is torture, without question, and that this is a settled fact not open for debate. Never mind that there is still disagreement among national security professionals about the issue. But Dowd is curiously concerned about torture, especially when considering her opinion on another moral issue in the middle of a semantics battle: killing unborn children. Dowd fully embraces the notion that unborn children are not people, and so killing them is perfectly alright. If Dowd has such a low threshold for what qualifies as torture I must ask why is her semantic threshold for murder so high?

Another example of Bush Derangement Syndrome is shown in what Dowd calls the administration's "dark arts in broad daylight". I assume she is talking about the misdeeds (I can call it that, if abortion proponents can call abortion "reproductive rights" or "women's rights") of a few guards at the Abu Graib prison. In Dowd's mind those abuses of terrorist prisoners are automatically chalked up as standard Bush policy (but don't tell her those abuses were condemned even by the Bush administration and those responsible were prosecuted for their crimes). Perhaps she is referring to Newsweek's bogus story about Guantanamo Bay prison guards trying to flush a Koran down a toilet, a story Newsweek had to retract (not to mention it caused riots around the world which were responsible for some deaths). Or maybe Dowd is referring to some news media concocted lies about the Bush administration claiming Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, journalistic lies which Orson Scott Card had the courage to expose. Or perhaps she means the absence of WMDs in Iraq, of course with no mention that what George Bush said about Iraq's WMDs after 9/11 is precisely what we were told numerous times by numerous Democrats for years before 9/11/2001. Even this little piece of history escapes notice by Dowd:

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.

-- Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998

But this mental disorder of Dowd's doesn't stop with past anti-Bush propaganda; it continues on today. After rehashing past news media abuses and manipulations about the Bush era Dowd continues with the torture issue referring to Ali Soufan, "the ex-F.B.I. agent who flatly calls torture 'ineffective....'" Of course, mentioning Peter Baker's April 21st NYT story indicating torture has been shown to be quite effective doesn't fit with the Bush-is-Hitler agenda. Instead, it makes sense to Dowd to continue harping on the myth that the Bush administration claimed Saddam Hussein had something to do with the 9/11 attacks by quoting other leftist reporters and bloggers who have also bought into that revised history provided and apparently still promoted by the main stream news media.

If Maureen Dowd would actually do the job a journalist is supposed to do she would be just as cynical about Nancy Pelosi as she is about Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush and any Republican. But, alas, Bush Derangement Syndrome has claimed yet another leftist victim. But I don't hope her kidneys fail, I hope Dowd gets the psychiatric help she clearly needs.