Liberal Media Blasts Republicans on Earmarks

I was reading this article on MSNBC, written by the Associated Press, “Pork becomes ‘earmarks’ — 11,000 of them” and after looking at it objectively, the reality of it is, sure it blasts Republicans, but it drops an Atomic Bomb on the Democrats.

After reading, a first page of 3, section highlighting “Obama’s aquarium earmark” then waiting for the counterpoint on John McCain, which I did not find, I began searching for McCain’s earmarks on Google. Quickly, I found out, in the last year John McCain supported no earmarks. Wow, I was amazed, possibly there is something I can commend him on. Then again I can look at it skeptically and think what a great pander & political calculation this is to ensure the votes of the fiscal conservatives voting block come to McCain. This would be on par with Hillary Clinton’s vote for the war authorization to look strong on defense for future political ambitions.

I did some more searching, just to find out what Obama’s “serious grievances” were that required his name highlighting a front page topic as no direct connections were appropriately defined by the AP story. I came across this information at CBS Sportsline of all places,

Barack Obama was #83 out of 104 bringing in $91 Million to his state.
John McCain was one of only 6 Senators to not accept any earmarks.
Barack Obama was #101 out of 500+ Members of Congress
John McCain was one of only 18 Members of Congress to not accept any earmarks.

and I still am perplexed why the “Liberal Media” considered Obama first page worthy. Let’s be realistic here, Obama is in the lowest 20% of all Senators for earmarks, yet he represents the 5th largest state in the country and 4.2% of the US population.

Now let’s address the insignificance of his 101st ranking in the comparison between all member of Congress. Barack Obama represents a state of 6.2 million people, there are two Senators per state, so theoretically Obama represents 3.1 million people. Going off 300 million people in the U.S. and comparing that to 435 seats in the House of Representatives, makes each Congressperson representative of ~690,000 people or 22% that of Obama. If we were to bring everyone to an even level, population to earmark dollars, where would Senator Obama stand on the 535+ Members of Congress. Would he be in the top 20% or would he be in the bottom 20% range, where lower is better? So on a pure representative nature of bringing to your constituents, I see no objective reasoning for drawing attention to Obama on the matter of earmarks.

Also within this “Obama Section,” the AP posts this scroll window of eight “Earmark beneficiaries help benefactors’ re-election” which contains 3 Republicans & 5 Democrats. Nope, no bias here. The “Liberal Media,” the Associated Press, decided it was in their objective journalism interest to not only draw attention to Obama based on flimsy evidence unsupported by adjusted ranking reality, but further enforce the “message” that Democrats are the prominent party of “wasteful” spending.

Reading on, I find mention of Democratic Representative Murtha and some sort of weak defense that his district represents many military interests, then comes Jack Abramoff & Randy “Duke” Cunningham on page 3 buried under the auspicious “A few caught in controversies” header. Huh, lets see if there is any John McCain connected to any of these shady characters and it doesn’t take too much research to show Senator McCain degrees of separation from Abramoff can be counted on one hand and would win you the “Kevin Bacon 5 degrees of separation” game.

The Democratic Party website leads me in the direction I am objectively looking for with this statement, “On Jack Abramoff, John McCain Drives Straight Talk Express Into Double Talk Detour” from January 11th, 2008. Could the AP just have had a “Senior Moment” and forgotten about these remarks, or are they just more concerned with offering “unbiased, objective reporting” bordering on more opinion than fact?

Why is this issue not addressed “objectively” and why are the Republican “evil doers” on the last page, which frankly I had a hard time reading to, when Obama’s “wasteful” connections are spotlighted? Liberal Media or Objective Journalism? I have a difficult time deciding.

Now not to draw this out too much longer, I notice the map the AP positions as representative of the biggest consumers of pork and I wonder briefly what other map of the U.S. I have ingrained in my head.

Hmmm, might it look much the same to the 2004 Electoral College map for a Republican victory to the White House, such as this one?

Then to go a step deeper, the Congressional representation after the 2004 elections by ESRI.com,

and it shows which party controls the Congressional District. The graphical elevations, only show voter numbers so is not relevant. What is important is how much closer this representation of those “feeding off the federal trough” tend to be states with higher numbers of Congressional Republicans.

Apparently, we as readers and viewer of MSM and “Liberal Media” looking for objective analysis, must just be content with receiving biased reporting so we can draw the conclusions they would like us to make, instead of factual rationalizations. I can’t understand why, all my discussions with in name only “fiscal conservatives” ends with not only their conclusion but absolute assertion, that Democrats are responsible for all the economic woes of this country. Democrats, the party of “free entitlements” & welfare, while at the same time who is really responsible for pork barrel welfare?

Sure this is just superficial associations being drawn, to which I agree, but since when has the MSM and the “Liberal Press” not needed to have concrete connections between two people and decided to prove one is the carbon copy of the other? It has been such a long time since this has occurred, I can’t even recall it ever happening.

One other item of note that I did not see reported objectively, given the “horrendous swindle of taxpayer money with Democratic fingerprints all over it”, was a proportional connection to this fiscal bondoggle. In paragraph #2, the AP reports, “More than 11,000 of those “earmarks,” worth nearly $15 billion in all, were slipped into legislation telling the government where to spend taxpayers’ money this year”, yet fails to mention the latest estimates for the Occupation of Iraq per month “is approaching $15 billion a month” according to one of Pork’s biggest supporters, Republican Senator from Alaska Ted Stevens, as reported in The Washington Post. Who coincidentally was the biggest proponent of “The Bridge to No Where” in Alaska, the golden goose of earmarks. Even worse the $230 million slated in that pork deal, was only a down payment on a estimated $1 billion dollar project or in relation, 6.7% of the dreaded earmarks in this latest bill.

So in conclusion, openly admitting I am a Barack Obama supporter, I find the irony of a “Liberal Media” not backed by fact. To the contrary it appears to be right leaning and inserts subtle biased opinion in place of objective journalism.

While the Associated Press was shelling the Republican Island of Iwo Jima from their safe position of USS Journalistic Integrity off shore, it is clear they were dropping “Little Boy” on Wake Island.