Misc Commentary For June 5, 2007

by John Hawkins | June 5, 2007 1:52 pm

— Bernard Shaw[1] is complaining that Fox has moved cable away from straight news,

“Unfortunately, Fox News is the ratings leader . . . on the cable side of the business, and what Fox puts on the air is not news.”

What Fox does, he said, is “commentary, personal analysis.”

Calling himself “very straitlaced [and] very old-fashioned,” Shaw said: “When anchors are reporting the news, they should report the news and allow the viewers at home to decide what they think about issues.

“I don’t want to hear an anchor’s personal opinion about anything. Just report the news.

“But CNN continues to ape many of the on-air mannerisms of the Fox News Network, and I don’t like that,” he said.

What we used to have on every channel was boring, left-wing-slanted news masquerading as objectivity. Fox did two things: they leaned to the right and they have actually tried to entertain and inform their viewers. As the news business splinters off into more and more niches, more channels would be advised to follow Fox’s example to retain as much of their audiences as possible.

— I believe every single Democratic candidate for President is talking up socialized medicine. Yet, when you take a look at nations that have socialized medicine, you keep finding stories like this[2] (From Britain — emphasis mine),

“Smokers are to be denied operations on the Health Service unless they give up cigarettes for at least four weeks beforehand.

Doctors will police the rule by ordering patients to take a blood test to prove they have not been smoking.

…However patients’ groups argue that the move is about the NHS saving money rather than improving patient care.

…They claim that health trusts do not want to operate on smokers because they stay in hospital longer, blocking beds and costing more to treat.

The ruling applies to routine operations such as hip replacements and heart surgery for conditions that are not immediately life-threatening.

If smokers refuse to give up, they are still likely to be treated but may have to wait longer.”

Note that they’re not even promising to treat smokers, they’re just saying that they are “likely to be treated.” That’s the sort of quality you get when you have “free” health care.

— Well, well, well — they finally got around to indicting Mr. Freeze. Good. Also, thumbs up to John Boehner[3] for immediately going after this guy — he’s the only leader we have in DC who’s halfway on the ball, pays some attention to the base, and has any fight in him,

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) announced today he will force a vote in the House of Representatives to refer the 94-page indictment of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) to the House Ethics Committee. The resolution will instruct the Ethics panel to review the serious allegations and evidence against Jefferson and report within 30 days on whether he should be expelled from the House for conduct that brings dishonor to the institution, jump-starting a stalled Ethics Committee process against Jefferson that was started during the 109th Congress but shut down by Democratic leaders in January 2007 when they took control of the House.

— Courtesy of Kausfiles[4], here’s some interesting data from Survey USA[5] about support for particular contenders amongst Hispanic Republicans,

05/07/07
Giuliani: 46%
McCain: 22%
Gingrich: 8%
Fred Thompson: 5%
Romney: 5%

06/04/07
Fred Thompson: 24%
Giuliani: 23%
McCain: 17%
Gingrich: 15%
Romney: 5%

Note that the two biggest gainers, Thompson and Gingrich, are fierce opponents of the amnesty bill. Also, note that McCain, the champion of the amnesty bill, dropped 5 points.

Of course, there are also some anomalies. Rudy weakly, after a delay, came out against the bill and dropped considerably, although he’s still in first place. Then there’s Romney, who stayed the same despite opposing it.

Still, this poll would appear to be evidence that the open borders crowd doesn’t have a good read on how Hispanics who are inclined to vote Republican are responding to this amnesty bill.

— Scooter Libby has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years[6] and there’s a big debate over whether Bush should pardon him or not. At this point, I don’t see that Bush has anything to lose if he’s so inclined to pardon Libby. His approval rating stinks and he is working hard to ruin himself with conservatives via this immigration bill, so why not? I don’t think he’d be hurt at all by pardoning Libby at this point.