Playing with your mind

Today I am going to talk about how the news media plays with your mind; that is, gets you to think the way they want you to think.

I suspect most people don't even notice how, most of the time, when there is a favorable news article about both of our leading presidential contenders, Senator Obama's name and, or photo appear first or is on top or on the left side and Senator McCain's photo is below or on the right, as well as his name being after Obama's.

On the different news media sources I normally read or watch, that is true at least 90 percent of the time, with the exception of Fox News. They make a great effort to make it as close to 50 50 as they can.

Accidental? NO. According to the alphabet? No, McCain's name comes before Obama. Age? NO. Seniority in the Senate? NO.

So what is the reason. It is a case of the liberal news media trying manipulate your thinking by playing with your subconsious mind.

Any first year journalism student, or psycology student learns these facts about the sub-consious mind.

First, in any favorable story about two or more people or enities, the one listed first or or whose photo is above or on the left is subconsiously considered to be of greater importance or better than the one below or or the right or listed second. This is not accomplished by a one time action; it has to be repetitive, again and again and again until it is implanted in your subconsious so that you are not even aware you have become biased toward one over the other because your subconsous has been maniputlated.

This attempt by the liberal news media to manipulate and control your thinking is not limited to McCain and Obama. Any liberal news story about any two politicans from both parties is going to be the same, showing a photo of the democrat on the left or top, and the republican on the right or below. The same is true of their names, democrat on the left or first, republican on the right.

Conversely, in any adverse or negative story about a democrat and a republican, you will almost always find the republican listed first, again because they want your subconsious mind to think the republican is of greater guilt.

One other little trick they use. If there is a highly negative article about any Republican, you will find the word Republican or Republican party in the headlines, the sub heading, the first paragraph, a couple of more times in the body of the story and in the last paragraph. If it is about a Democrat, if the word Democrat is used at all,it will be in the last paragraph. Why the last paragraph? Because the media knows most readers read no further than the first two or three paragraphs in any news story and never get down to the last paragraph. If there is no mention of party affiliation concerning a politician, you can take it for granted the individual is a democrat.

Taxing the wealthy

One of the favorite themes of liberals is the need and desire on their part to heavily tax the wealthy. Sometimes I think not a single one of them ever took a course in economics.

The liberals in Great Britain tried that approach in the 1950's. They nearly taxed the wealthy out of existance. What happened? Britain's economy plummeted. It wasn't until the conservatives took control and greatly lowered their top tax rates, were the former wealthy able to make a recovery. Along with their recovery, Britain's economy was able to make a return to it's former level.

Naturally, our liberals never learned a thing from that lesson.

Why is it important to the economy of a country to to maintain a wealthy class of citizens?

It is nearly impossible to maintain a healthy economy without the ability to create large numbers of new jobs. How are most new jobs created? By high risk venture. What does that mean? It means most new jobs are created by companys and corporations who are involved in businesses with a high risk factor.
Who has the money to invest in high risk ventures? It is the wealthy class of people. One of the reasons why they become increasingly wealthy is they can afford to invest in high risk businesses. Take away their wealth and you take away their ability to invest in high risk ventures.

I find it curious liberals take the attitude they do toward the wealthy. There are far more multimillionaire liberals in congress then there are politicians who are not millionaires. Or at least there was the last time I saw any figures on that.

A President's Control over the national economy

Today I am going to write about what control a President, any President, has over our national economy.
You will find most non-political economists will tell you a Presdent has very little direct control over our economy.
He can propose to congress but a congress controlled by the democrats is going to pay very little attention to what a Republican President proposes. I expect the same is true of proposals by a Democrat President to a Republican controlled congress.

The President can also sign into law or veto economic laws passed by congress but congress has the perogative of overriding his veto. If it goes into law either way, a President is required to administer and carry out those laws regardless of how he feels about them.

A Presdent can urge the various committees concerned with the economy to take certain actions but he has no direct control over whether they follow his advice or not.

He can also urge action by the Federal Reserve Board but again, he had no control over them so can only recommend and advise.

He can go before the public and try to aleviate their concerns but this only works if the news media will carry his message. Democratic Presidents seem to have no problem here but Republican Presidents have great difficulty in getting their message heard.

When an economic downturn is caused by a single situation such as a shortage of oil, a President can order oil to sold off from our country's oil reserves. This usually is only a very temporary fix and involves great dangers if a national emergency develops right after the reserves have been depleted.

A President can order an investigation into a situation causing econmic problems but most of the time all this accomplishes is to postpone any actions which might improve the situation. It also takes the burden off of Congress which is usually where the problem needs to be fixed in the first place.

In most cases a President does not have the power to start issuing orders and the problem is solved. This is just not the way it works. It doesn't matter whether the President is a Republican or Democrat, I repeat, their powers to control the eonomy, for good or bad, are very limited. Again I say, "The President Proposes; Congress Disposes"'.

Congress's influence on the economy

Today I am going to talk about the influence Congress has or can have on our country's economy.

You may remember back in your civics class you were taught that:
The President proposes; Congress disposses.

Just what does that mean. It means the President send proposals to congress on what he would like the congress to do about certain issues and problems. That is all they are, proposals. The President's budget is an example of a proposal. You've heard people say with contempt, "the President cut the budget", meaning he cut spending in a certain program. The President does not have that perogative, to cut spending. The Presdent's spending and taxation proposals are sent to the House of Representatives where they are considered and debated in various committees. What finally comes out of those committees and sent to the floor of the house seldoms reflects what the President proposed. The one period of esception to this was the first six months after Lydon Johnson was sworn in as President after President Kennedy was assassinated. Kennedy had spent his entire three years in office trying to get a raft of social programs passed. These were not from his ideas but were Harry Truman's. Truman never made any attempt to get them passed as he knew they would go no where. Kennedy found that out when each of his social programs were rejected by a congress controlled by his own party. As a tribute to Kennedy, Johnson rushed one proposal after another of these social programs to congress. At the time, Congress was overwhelmingly controlled by the Democrats. Under pressure from Johnson, each of these proposals were rushed through Congress so fast Republicans complained they were not even given an opportunity to read them before they were expected to vote on them.

Most, if not all, of these proposals (programs) were written in such a way they would not go into affect, and their vast cost would not show up in Presidents budgets until several years after they were signed into law. When the financial affects did start showing up in huge amounts, a Republican was in the White House. There was a sudden huge increase in Federal spending and he was blamed by the Democrats and the liberal news media for those huge increases, even though thinking people were well aware they were caused by all those expensive social programs rushed through by congress and President Johnson.

Our economy was doing great up until a year and a half ago. Despite the huge tax cuts pushed through by President Bush, taxes collected by the IRS had increased to their largest amount by the end of the 2006.
Then the democrats regained control of both houses when congress was sworn in in January 2007. Within six months of their taking control, our economy started going down hill. Were they to blame.
Consider my statement of yesterday to the affect that what happens to our economy depends a great deal on consumer confidence. When consumers lose their confidence in the economy, they slow way down on their spending and that, of course, causes the economy to go down hill. Starting a year a half ago, did consumer confidence go down because the consumer had no confidence in the democratically controlled congress? I don't know. This possiblily has never been raised by any editorialist or politician that I know of. But control of congress was the one major change in our national picture which took place in the last 1 1/2 years, a time corresponding to our economy going down hill.

Congress's control over the economy has as much to do with inactivity as with being active. When a problem is developing in our economy and congress takes no action and does nothing about it, they must accept the blame for what develops because of their inaction. Problems with the housing and the banking industry had been developing over the past two years but the democratically controlled congress ignored these pending problems.
The tax cuts pushed through by President Bush are due to expire in the near future but congress has failed to do anything about this. In fact, democratic leaders have mostly talked about increasing taxes. This has had to have had an affect on consumer confidence.

Tomorrow I will enlarge on what are within the perogatives of a President in regards to our nation's economy. Either tomorrow or the following day, I will also talk about the affects greatly increasing taxes on the so call rich has on the economy.

News Media and Congress

In yesterday's posting, I said I would say more in today's blog about Congress and the news media having far more control over the economy than a President.

First I will tackle the news media and the control they have over the economy.
Consumers make up nearly 65% of our economy. How the consumer is made to feel about the economy affects their spending and that has a tremendous impact on the economy. Americans are very impressionable people. When they are told over and over again what terrible shape the economy is in, they began to believe it and start cuttting back on their spending. Now this really gives the news people something to jump on. They pound away at how the economy is slipping, scaring the consumer even more and they cut back even more on their spending. If this is kept up long enough, they cut back in their spending to the point the economy slips into a recesssion. A good example of this is what happened in 1991. In June of that year the economy was in great shape; consumer confidence was very high, President Bush's approvel rating was also very high. In that month my son in law and I both noticed the different network news departments were putting on leading Democrats on a daily basis to tell the public about how the economy was going to start going down hill. We were both alarmed about this. My son in law said "My God, they are going to talk us right into a recession". I started switching from news channel to news channel day after day to see if this was going to continue. Sure enough, all three networks, CNN and Public TV were all doing the same thing, every single day, often allowing five minutes or more out of their daily broadcast. If they didn't feel the Democratic leader was coming on strong enough the tv anchor person would ask leading questions to make their pitch even stronger. I started going to the library and checking the weekly news magazines to see if they were also making this same pitch. They were. Obviously this was a well organized effort by both the national news media and the top Democratic leaders to talk this country in to a recession.
Their efforts were not rewarded during the rest of June nor the month of July. There was very little negative movement during August but in September, the consumer confidence level started dropping as did President Bush's approval rating. As soon as the Democrats and the national news media saw this they really started turning on the heat. As consumer confidence dropped, so did the economy. Within a few months the economy dropped into negative territory. Six months later we were in a recession. President Bush tried to talk to the country about the economy to restore people's faith in it but the networks refused to carry his speeches, saying they would just be polical speeches. Talking to the people to restore their confidence is one of the few tools a President has in controlling our ecomomy but that only works if he is allowed to reach the people. (By the way, four years later, all the networks were carrying President Clinton's speeches right up to election day with out any regard to whether or not they were political. I don't think Clinton ever gave a speech in his life which was not political). By the summer of 1992 offically we were no longer in a recession but leading Democrats and the national news media continued to try to convince the public we were still in a recession right up to election day. Of course, President Bush lost his bid for re-election, primarily because we were talked into a recession by those opposed to him. This, I believe, shows you the kind of power the news media has on influencing the direction our economy takes.
One thing that amazed me was how few people I talked to had taken any notice about what the Democrats and the news media was doing to this country. They were so obvious and blatent in what they were doing, I still don't undersant why the whole country wasn't in a uproar. In my opinion what they did was downright criminal because there were people who lost their lives because of that recession.

By the way, this might be a good time to explain to those of you who do not know, just what constitutes a recession ( I mean offically, not what the democrats and the national news media wants you to believe it is, when a Republican is in the White House. Their definition does not apply when a Democrat is President).

We are in a recession when the country experiences two or more consequtive quarters of negative economic growth.

I am continually hearing people, news editorials and Democratic politicians talk about our being in a recession now. We are NOT! During the second quarter of this year (January 1 through June 30) our economy experienced a 3.3 per cent growth. I have not seen any reports of what our economy did during July and August but even if they were both in negative territory, we would still be four months short of being in a recession.

I had planned to cover how Congress has a great deal of control over our economy in today's posting but I believe today's blog is quite long enough so will take that up in tomorrow's posting.

It is time to add some thoughts

It has been quite some time since I have added anything to this blog so will bring you up to date on happenings in my family. I will also add some thoughts to the political situation.
First, my wife and I are great grand parents again. A little baby boy was added to the family last week when our only grandson and his wife gave birth to him. We are thrilled.
A month ago my wie had a total hip replacement operation. It was kind of rough going for a while but, last night we went to a dance and she (we) danced to walzes, going clear around the floor.
Also since my last entry, I had a case of pneumonia which laid me low for a while. Apparently I have a dsiposition for pneumonia since this is the third time I have been afflicted.

Now to to political thoughts.
To say I am thrilled with the selection of Sarah Palen to be Senator McCain's running mate is to put it mildly. With all the wild charges being brought against her by the liberals, I sense they are becoming desparate.

The following statements by Obama and Sen. Biden were gleaned from their speeches at the recent democatic convention. I find most of them to be downright frightening.
Obama said:
1. A lifetime of hard work entitles you to a retirement with no financial or health care worries.
2. You should never be on your own: government should always be there to support you.
3. People should not be personally responsible for themselves financially.
4. Economic strenth is not measured by profits. (huh?)
5. Government has a moral obligation to provide every person a world class education.
6. Children's needs come before parent's needs/
7. Companies pay their CEO's bonuses before paying retired persons their pensions.
8. It is the obligation of those who are rich to give to hard workers who have nothing.
9. Allowing people to control their own retirement investments will result in financial diseaster.

Here are exerpts from Sen. Biden's Convention speech:
1. The President controls whether you get a pay raise, the price of gasoline and natural gas, health care benefits and the price of your home. (None of these are with a president's capability or responsibilty. If Sen. Biden has such a poor grasp of what is within a president's capabilities, we certainly do not want him one heartbeat away from the presidency.)
2.If the President is doing his job correctly, you should not have any financial worries. (Almost any economist will tell you a president has very little control over the economy. Both congress and the news media have far more control over the economy that a President has. More about this in tomorrow's blog.)
3. If you work hard and play by the rules you should have no financial worries.
4. It is wrong to give tax breaks to companies that earn profits.