Don's Tuesday Column

           THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   3/29/2016

              Media and non-Trump stories

A few things may have slipped by your awareness over the last week. News media have obsessed over the Republican food/mud fight, which I primarily lay at the feet of Mr. Trump and the conduct of his (non-presidential, in tone) campaign. By the way, would it surprise you to know that, of all the coverage of Republicans for the month of February, a 50.4 percent majority of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news time went to Donald Trump, with Rubio, Cruz, Bush and Kasich receiving about 18, 17, 8 and 3 percent respectively? That amounts to over 3 hours for Trump and 171 minutes for the next 3 combined.

I ascribe it partly to media agenda—they might consider nominee Trump to be a sure-fire future gusher for attack journalism in service to the Democrat candidate (apparently Hillary Clinton). Also, to crafty, successful manipulation by the media-savvy Trump, of the nearly-unquenchable thirst for low-ball, low hanging news feeds. “Ask yourself whether you think the media’s lopsided coverage of Donald Trump has the Republican Party’s best interests in mind.” (Steven Hayward)

I see it all as thinly veiled, in-kind contributions to Obama’s third term. Consider the implications of the fact that “Network News Loves Covering Trump but Not His Liberal Past,” (Rich Noyes, 03/04). Has the mainstream news media given Republicans an excusable motive for supporting someone who, if his past positions, affiliations and contributions were to stand alone, would not get even a second look as a standard-bearer? Of those 187 minutes of Trump coverage, only 4 minutes from all three networks focused on Trump’s ideology. Hmm.

Among the news items given relative short shrift by the Trump “reality show” campaign coverage are: new aspects of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal showing that convenience and secrecy drove her choices, Obamacare’s ongoing crash-and-burn, and Emperor Obama’s cozying up to Cuban and South American dictators. We had knee-jerk descriptions of Juan Castro as a  (fill-in-the-blank-title) non-dictator; we heard apologies for the CIA’s involvement with the overthrow of Chile’s communist dictator-in-the-making, Salvador Allende, by General Pinochet. It was a top-to-bottom “sympathy for the (leftist) devils” trip by Obama.

From Wikipedia (under Salvador Allende): “As president, Allende adopted a policy of nationalization of industries and collectivization; due to these and other factors, increasingly strained relations between him and the legislative and judicial branches of the Chilean government—who did not share his enthusiasm for socialization—including the Christian Democrats, whose support had enabled Allende’s election, denounced his rule as unconstitutional and called for his over throw by force.” There is not one example of successfully implemented widespread prosperity under socialism—only poverty, economic devastation and death.

Allende’s policies were and are the hallmarks of dictatorial communist/socialist rule, just like Chavez’s/Maduro’s Venezuela. Only brute force and armed might can 1) take from private ownership that which the private sector has built (Chile’s industries and Venezuela’s oil companies) and 2) impose despotic collective economic models on a nation’s populace.

Cuba’s sad, impoverished state exists solely due to communist rule by the Castro brothers, whose jails have held, and continue to hold, political prisoner populations proportionally rivaling any other dictatorial socialist worker’s “utopias.” Obama’s attitude? By any observation, it can only be described as mildly bothered, if at all.

“Cuban dissident leader Antonio Rodiles spoke to Mike Gonzalez about President Obama’s trip to Castro’s socialist paradise: ‘Even if Obama’s speech galvanizes some brave Cubans to demand their rights, the Castro Praetorian guard will crush them with impunity. We know this because that happened while Obama was in Cuba. Sources on the island said some Cubans gathered spontaneously after the speech to demand the rights enumerated in it, only to be brutally repressed by the Castro security forces. Yet the president not only did not leave in protest, but he failed to voice any objections or even mention it, at least publicly.

“‘Indeed, during the three days of the Obama visit, dissidents were beaten, arrested, dragged through streets, stripped naked, and threatened with the rape of their daughters. Dissident leader Antonio Rodiles, himself beaten and detained on Monday along with his wife, told me the Obama visit had occasioned a festival of repression.’”

If this moves you, look up “Carlos Eire: The Speech Never Given,” Powerlineblog.com. Rejected by the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Yale history professor’s piece is a devastating refutation of Obama’s happy talk and mild support for the Castros' Marxist rule.

Also at Powerlineblog.com and well worth your time, is “Obama on Freedom vs. Totalitarianism—Whatever Works,” under the “Communism” label. In addition to a much-photographed tango dance, Obama had some words of encouragement for a Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative meeting. “During his remarks, Obama stumbled through an embarrassing discourse on ‘capitalism vs. communism.’ The would-be leader of what used to be called the Free World treated the issue as just another false choice…

“Obama instructed his young listeners that the question isn’t this system vs. that system, but rather ‘what works.’ In Cuba, he claimed (falsely), communism is working great when it comes to health care…(free) markets tend to generate wealth, though they must be heavily regulated.” To Obama-crat leftists, however, there is no limiting principle to any regulations. Problems stemming from regulation always necessitate further onerous rule-making. And so on.