Rumors in All the Wrong Places

The horrific bombing of the Boston Marathon finishing line was timed to detonate at four hours after the start of the race which was expected and did coincide with numerous amateur runners completing the race and their friends and families waiting to congratulate them. The bombers’ plan to injure and possibly murder as many average people in order to maximize terror was successful in targeting average people and getting huge amounts of coverage by television and news cameras. The one failure was the striking terror in the hearts of the people at the scene of the terrorist strike. Instead what was witnessed was Americans at their best with people who were uninjured not running from the scene but running into the heart of the disaster area tending to the injured applying first aid and even using pieces of their clothing to apply pressure bandages and even using belts as makeshift tourniquets. What was exemplified was the best of Americans and humanity in a crisis situation with these brave people almost immediately assisting each other and not waiting for the first responders giving the world a taste of how not to be cowed by a terror threat and showing disregard for anything other than helping people who were for the most part total strangers. We witnessed people literally giving the shirt off their backs and the belts from their trousers. This is not meant to take anything away from the first responders who also arrived quickly and wasted no time rushing into the heart of the confusion and establishing a frenetic order and began transport of the injured to waiting hospital personnel who had prepared the necessary extra trauma and emergency supplies and beds to accommodate the disaster.

Unfortunately, the same praises cannot be lauded on either the mainstream media or social media both of which were full of conjecture, conspiracies and the entire host of misinformation. The number of people espousing their own hatreds blaming the government, secret clandestine organizations, or any group of people imaginable in Tweets or on Facebook were disgusting and gave examples of the worst in people. The only redeeming facts were those who derided those posting such conspiracies or assigning blame as a venue to castigate their own bigotries. Where the hatreds appearing on social media in not something new but the mere extent of these postings is what was somewhat alarming. The misinformation spread by the mainstream media prior to any actual facts is an entirely different animal. The race by the different new networks and departments to form theories and postulations as to who was behind the bombing was revealing to their prejudices and biases. The number of times there were claims of breaking news only to be followed later by more breaking news each one contradicting the previous startling statement. News reporting, especially by the news agencies that people and the public depend on for facts, should act with more restraint and discipline instead of acting in such an uncontrolled and amateurish fashion. While it is understandable that each news department has a desire to be the first to get the news right, but shouldn’t getting the news right be the first principle? What good is being first to be wrong? Apparently, the news sources placed more emphasis on making conjecture as representing news as long as it was first and might even be the first to finally get it correct. Between reporting every rumor with breathless excitement and expressing their personal biases as honest news the mainstream media managed to further destroy any semblance of trust which had possibly remained. It was my personal experience that the most trustworthy news sources ended up being some select foreign press and media sources which I have previously found to have the patience to wait for facts before jumping onto a story, any story, as long as it is a new story. Maybe they will take a lesson from this fiasco and will learn to actually verify the facts before running before the cameras only to have to retract reports as the truth eventually emerges. And may they please learn that personal conjecture is never good news and only makes them appear more amateurish than the average poster on social media. We should and do expect more from our media and hopefully they will grow and learn that actual facts are news and opinions and guessing is not doing anybody any favors, especially in an emergency situation when so many are seeking answers and expecting the plain and simple truth from their news reporting. As the old Dragnet theme stated, “The facts, just the facts.”

Beyond the Cusp

Can the Republican Party be Saved?

Recently the Republican hierarchy released their report detailing the problems the party is facing and attempting to detail the deficiencies and propose solutions. There were numerous voting blocs where they also found problems. One prime example was their losing the under thirty vote by at least a ratio of three to one. Other such blocs included single women, the less well off, almost the entirety of minority voters, and so forth. From what I saw it was possibly debatable if they even won a majority of the registered Republicans. Ok, I made that up but it was really almost that bad. They also found that they managed to receive fewer votes in every voting group over the results from four years earlier. Somehow the Republicans with candidate Romney were unable to even hold on to the McCain voters as they received fewer votes across the board in this last election. As horrible as this news was it was not as unsettling as the solutions the report provided. The main gist of the offered solution was to move the candidates and campaigns to align them closer to the Democrat message.

My bet is should they pursue this path it will lead to the death of the Republican Party. When the base voters who are the lifeblood of your political party are not getting to the polls your problem is not that you are too far removed from the other party, it is that you are not offering them anything distinctly different from the other party. The solution is not to attempt to be perceived as the Democrat Lite Party but to be the heart and soul Republican Party. Show a difference and celebrate that difference. The Republican Party has not given the feeling that they are proud, confident, or even that they believe in their party. They sound almost apologetic whenever they sound all that different from what the Democrats stand for. If you want a near perfect example of the real problem is that is cursing the Republicans all you need to do is listen to the “old guard” of the GOP during the debates on virtually any legislation where immigration reform is one of the most glaring examples. Another problem is the seeming lack of unity and cooperation between the different factions that make up the Republican Party. Sometimes it appears as if as a whole the Republicans do not stand unified for anything and are without honest and driving principles. We had a perfect example after Rand Paul’s efforts to make a serious protest over the evasiveness and apparent policy which would allow the use of drone strikes on American civilians inside the country’s borders in place of arrests and a trial if the President so deemed necessary with his thirteen hour filibuster and a number of the senior Republican Senators demeaned his efforts on the floor of the Senate. Such disagreements should never be fought out in the public square but should be discussed and resolved within the party. When was the last time you heard one Democrat Senator demean another Democrat on the floor of the Senate? Such would never happen as the Democrats have party discipline and would not stand for parading the party laundry in public.

Another problem the Republican Party needs to work on is simply getting their message out and being heard. Since the mainstream press is actually a willing partner in any Democrat candidate’s campaign, the Republicans have to find a delivery for their message which does not rely on the mainstream press. They definitely need to work on their Internet usage and make more and better use of U-tube, Twitter, Facebook, and all other forms of social media as well as blogs and the new media. There are a good number of conservative bloggers who would be anxious to support getting the republican message out if they only would be included in the campaign planning and get some assistance in coordinating with the candidate. They could offer releases to these bloggers once they had compiled an extensive list. But the most important challenge facing the Republican Party hierarchy and planners is a message around which the membership can rally and be excited over. The current state of the Republican can be summed up in two words, disjointed disarray. Until they can establish something that can be advertised as the Republican core beliefs around which every party candidate tailors their message, the Republican Party will continue to wander leaderless in the political wastelands.

Beyond the Cusp

From Numerous Rockets to Sizeable Rocks

The one item that never appears to change is that Palestinian violence against Israelis is rarely given the coverage it deserves by the mainstream media. When the western press covered the last Israeli interdiction against Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the plethora of terrorist entities in order to end, or at least greatly lessen, the numbers of rockets being fired almost daily onto civilian areas in southern Israel the case being reported made things appear that the rockets that were being fired into Israel during their operations might have been simply in response to the Israeli offensive. Little to any coverage was given to the months that preceded the Israeli offensive where rockets being fired upon Israeli civilians within range of Gaza had been ramping up ever since the previous interdiction a few years earlier. Anybody watching the news reports would not have been informed that in the six weeks previous to Israeli intervention there had been numerous rockets fired daily into Israel some of which reaching as far as Ashkelon, Beersheba and almost to southern Tel Aviv. The reason behind this given by those in the media is that the rockets being fired into Israel by Hamas and other terrorists in Gaza is such a common event that it is not news worthy. On the other hand, an Israeli response to these rockets happens only seldom and thus it is news worthy as it is not the norm. So, shooting rockets at Jewish and Arab Israeli civilians are not worth coverage because it happens so regularly that it is simply a normal event that is not worth mention by the press. But that begs a question of why does the press not bother to point out that Israel is responding to barrages of rockets that had been nearly constant for months and even years? They will claim that it was mentioned that Israel was responding to a recent barrage of rockets. A recent barrage of rockets is completely different than a constant barrage of rockets daily for months and months. But the press is delinquent at mentioning such truths.

Fortunately the rocket fire has halted for the time being as it always does for a few weeks or months after Israeli interdictions end. Instead a new threat has picked up any slack left by the quiet on the Gaza front. The new assault has been a sharp increase in the rock assaults on Israeli licensed vehicles in Judea and Samaria. Along with the rocks are other projectiles such as bricks, cinderblocks, and Molotov cocktails. Currently a two year old girl named Adelle lies in the same hospital with her mother and two older sisters, Naama age six and Avigayil age four, unconscious fighting for her life as a result of one of these rock attacks just last week. A woman on her way to her relative’s home for the Seder service Monday night had her car rammed from behind and when she stopped four men exited the ramming vehicles, slashed all four tires and broke every window on her car then fled. She was actually very fortunate that they fled and did not assault her beyond frightening her half to death by their assault on her vehicle. There have been some accidents caused by these rock assaults which have resulted in death as the driver loses control and the car careens off the road with fatal results as was the case with Asher Palmer and his one year old son, Yehonatan. Yet, if you live outside of Judea and Samaria you may have not heard that much about these attacks, even more likely if you do not live in Israel. If the press were actually interested in reporting the news and framing the Israeli situation evenly and without bias, then these stories would be in the news almost daily. Where every time Israel causes an injury to a Palestinian, even if the injury was caused in the process of defending from an attempted terror attack, the press is right on the story often page one above the fold. But Palestinians assaulting Israelis with intent to murder, or at the very least cause great harm or severe injury, such items are a common activity not worthy of reporting. But should Israel respond then it will be reported that the Israeli response is disproportional to the actions perpetrated by the Palestinians who are simply defying the occupation. Never mind that the history of these attacks goes back to 1929, 1933, and 1939 when the Arabs in the British Mandate lands held pogroms against the Jews also living in the Mandate lands.

One of the more infamous attacks took place in Hevron and as a result of the Arab on Jewish aggression the British forced every single Jewish family to forfeit their homes, businesses and lands in Hevron because it was more expedient to make further victims of the Jews than to enforce the law and punish the Arab attackers. This exiling of the Jews from Hevron is at the root of many of the problems in Hevron today as the Arabs there claim the Jews left their homes abandoning them and have no right to return and claim them now. A similar reason is given for the attacks on Israeli vehicles with bricks, large rocks, cinderblocks, and fire bombs where they claim these attacks are intended to drive the Jews off of Palestinian Arab land and force the Jews back to Europe and America or wherever they came from. This begs another question that is never asked; where are the Jews who have lived in Israel, particularly Jerusalem, for the last three thousand years supposed to move and where are the Sephardic Jews who were evicted from their homes in numerous Arab countries supposed to go, back to Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, where? Half of Israeli Jews lived in the areas that is now Israel and also Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and in Arab countries. Only the Ashkenazi Jews came mostly from Europe, the United States, Canada and other Western Nations. The frequency and severity of these rock and projectile attacks has greatly increased since the end of the Gaza operation almost as if the Arabs of the Palestinian Authority are taking up the slack for the temporary pause in the rocket attacks out of Gaza. Eventually Israel will be forced to take actions to end these attacks as well. When they finally lose patience and take measures to prevent these attempts to murder and harm Israeli citizens, expect the news to emphasize the severity of the Israeli actions and report that it is all over the Palestinians throwing stones at Israelis. They will leave out that their targets were vehicles on highways and that the stones weighed in at a formidable size better described as large rocks, bricks, and cinderblocks. Some of the rocks are actually stones but those are often launched with slings and we know from the Bible what a stone and a sling can accomplish. The press is not going to change until people demand the truth unvarnished and without slant, or at least with some slanted for each side. Balance is the key and coverage of Israel and the Palestinians is reporting as unbalanced as it comes.

Beyond the Cusp