Halffull.org

I know some of you out there enjoy and respect Bill O’Reilly and FOX News, and hey, that’s your prerogative. I try to leave that network alone, except for my weekly forays into trashy TV and The Simpsons.

However, last night an ad caught my attention. It was an ad for a later segment on FOX’s version of “Sixty Minutes.” The ad showed a list of names of soldiers recently killed in Iraq, presumably taken from some liberal network, and the announcer intoned “Lists of American soldiers killed in Iraq: newsworthy, or liberal propaganda? Find out at 10 pm.”

My question is this: How could a list of names be considered propaganda? Obviously one could present the names in a heart-wrenching fashion with lots of pictures of doves and crying widows and orphans, but the list itself, assuming that it is accurate, is not propaganda. It is a list of names of dead people who happened to be soldiers killed in Iraq.

I admit some forces in the media have a liberal bias: Newsweek and The NY Times, to name two. There is a difference, though, between putting a spin on the news and not reporting it at all. Look over there! Fags trying to get married! There is no war in Iraq! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! We are winning the war on terror! Not releasing the names of the dead, assuming that the families have already been notified and that the deaths are true, seems to me less like liberal propaganda than like refusing to report the facts.

So I get sent this article on Townhall.com. Apparently, San Francisco State University is having a budget problem, and their big solution is to cut the School of Engineering. Either classes or the entire school, I’m not sure, it sort of sounds like both. [ed - entire school.] Either way this could be heralding the beginning of the end, as prophesied in Atlas Shrugged: the fuzzies getting their hands all over the fundamentals of our world.

What do I mean? Allow me to illustrate with an example. Rather than hire a respected core of engineers to construct a building, the people who want the building decide to have a referendum and let the community decide. Everyone gets to have a lot of meetings and voice their opinions. Then “experts” such as people who majored in urban issues or psychology or sexuality or women’s studies get involved and begin to throw in their weight. Eventually a lot of materials are purchased but the building either doesn’t get built past the first floor or it collapses soon after it’s finished. Why? Because let me explain something to each and every one of you. Continue Reading »