Another excellent segment from Glenn Beck. He ties all sorts of stuff together, but the left still thinks he’s doing this all for ratings. Watch this and tell me what you disagree with.
I’d like to say a few things about this video and its value to us as parents. On the surface its presentation and tone are friendly and it is easy to believe that it is a well-researched mini documentary, but that’s the scary part. It IS well presented, but it’s mission is not to inform, it is to persuade. It is a blatant attempt to mislead and actually lie to our childre; this video should NOT be in our schools, unless an opposing viewpoint is offered for equal time.
The video came out last year, and that far right-wing network CNN (sarc) did a short segment on it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vTJdpbUYhY
The “Story of Stuff” video portrays America and corporations in general as bad, a concept that I wholeheartedly disagree with. Leonard complains about “stuff” but fails to talk about how the manufacture, sale and consumption of “stuff” has helped make America the greatest nation on Earth.
For starters, Annie Leonard is the host. As with any presentation the audience should know what the speaker’s credentials are and why we should be listening to her. Leonard has worked for some of the most liberally oriented organizations in America.
- Greenpeace International – Far left environmental activist group, its history and violence is well-documented.
- GAIA – A Dutch group who’s vision is stated in its web site: “for all people to live in settlements containing all elements of society much like a holograph, where every part contains the whole.” It is anti-corporation, but interestingly enough, GAIA is funded through a massive hedge fund based on currency trading.
- Health Care Without Harm – The Tides Foundation is one of its many funders. HCWH has “a vision of a health care sector that does no harm, and instead promotes the health of people and the environment. To that end, we are working to implement ecologically sound and healthy alternatives to health care practices that pollute the environment and contribute to disease.” This sounds great, but the group is quite liberally biased.
- Global Greengrants. This group is a non-profit that provides grants to green projects and activists. Its board treasurer works for George Soros’ Tides Foundation, its board chair runs the Tobacco Free Project based in San Francisco.
- Essential Information – Founded in 1982 by Ralph Nader, Essential Information is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization. Very anti-corporation, anti-industry.
Based on her resume Annie Leonard is what most people would consider biased. As to the facts and errors in the video, it has been thoroughly explained and debunked. These videos are worth watching more than once.
- Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5uJgG05xU
- Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZzHU3ZfTtY
- Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgLrZc7cws8
- Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XeW5ilk-9Y
If you lack the time or attention span to watch the four videos above I’ve provided a small sample of the problems that lie within. Keep in mind that the following five errors appear in just the first three minutes of the video. The italicized statements are from the video verbatum, you can also download the script with footnotes in PDF format.
The source of this statement is the “War Resisters League.” Obviously they are biased enough, but the math is just horrible. To reach this conclusion they removed Medicare, Medicade and Social Security costs from the equation to inflate its number. Why? Because it serves their purpose of persuasion. By the way, the Congressional Budget Office confirms that military spending consumes 20%, not 50% of tax dollars. That’s a BIG difference.
2) “It’s the government’s job is to watch out for us, to take care of us. That’s their job.”
This is a very liberal interpretation of the PreAmble to the Constitution. The government exists to protect us from invasion, to handle foreign trade, and that’s about it. The STATES have more rights. The state is NOT our parent, our teacher or our baby-sitter. We get Life, Liberty and the PURSUIT of Happiness, not the GUARANTEE of happiness.
3) “Of the 100 largest economies on earth now, 51 are corporations”
Source: IPS, which acknowledges that it operates as a training center for radical organizers. This is a radically left anti-corporation organization. It is based on sales revenue, not profits. It is meaningless. Yes, Exxon/Mobile sells more product than the entire country of Chad. So what? This is just more anti-corporation rhetoric.
4) “we’ve seen a little change in the government where they’re a little more concerned in making sure everything is working out for [corporations] than for us.”
Again, more liberal anti-capitalism bias. The video shows the government shining the shoes of fat corporations. She completely ignores the influence of unions, lawyers and environmental activists on corporate behavior.
5) “In the past three decades alone, one-third of the planet’s natural resources base have been consumed. Gone.”
100% false. Pure liberal bias based on a book by environmental activists. It cannot be proved because it is a useless statement. As one of the videos above says, land with oil underneath it was useless until we discovered oil and learned how to use oil. Resources are replaceable.
I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. This well-produced video — funded by some of the most liberal, anti-American, anti-capitalism groups in existence — has done damage that we as involved parents need to correct. I shudder to think how many parents are not aware of this and how many millions of minds have been falsely persuaded toward this liberal eco/green way of thinking.
President Obama more than once took shots at the Bush administration by mentioning the mess that he has inherited. This is directly in line with the campaign mantra of “eight failed years of Bush policies” that half of America bought into. But when you look at the facts you learn that Obama is on the team that helped create the problem we are facing. This has been well documented (and equally ignored by Democrats and their pet press cronies). Despite 9/11, Bush II enjoyed a strong economy for six years. What changed? 1) Democratic control of Congress, and 2) the much anticipated burst of the housing bubble. Republicans don’t entirely own this process, in fact, Democrats own the vast majority of the responsibility. But that’s not what the President said in his first press conference this week. (for some perspective on the first presser, read this and/or this.)
“As I said, the one concern I’ve got on the stimulus package, in terms of the debate and listening to some of what’s been said in Congress is that there seems to be a set of folks who — I don’t doubt their sincerity — who just believe that we should do nothing.”
As Ed Morrissey said yesterday, Republicans in both the House and Senate have offered at least two alternative stimulus packages. None of them demanded that Obama “do nothing”. In fact, it was the Congressional Budget Office and not Republicans that suggested that doing nothing might have a better effect than the Obama/Pelosi/Reid stimulus bill.”
Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, among others, are in complete denial of how this crisis was created. And Team Obama campaigned on the “eight years of failed Bush policies” slogan that is frankly a bald-faced lie. In fact, according to Barron’s, “Contrary to a view popularized during the 2008 presidential election season, the current economic crisis was not the result of deregulation. The Bush administration made many mistakes, but deregulation was not one of them. Not only was there no major deregulation passed during the past eight years, but the Bush administration and a Republican Congress approved the most sweeping financial-market regulation in decades.”
Let me repeat that. “The Bush administration and a Republican Congress approved the most sweeping financial-market regulation in decades.” Even Liberal financial genius George Soros has opined on the cause of the crisis.
Consider how the crisis has unfolded over the past eighteen months. The proximate cause is to be found in the housing bubble or more exactly in the excesses of the sub-prime mortgage market. The longer a double-digit rise in house prices lasted, the more lax the lending practices became. In the end, people could borrow 100 percent of inflated house prices with no money down. Insiders referred to sub-prime loans as ninja loans—no income, no job, no questions asked.
Our economic situation was not created by “eight years of failed Bush policies.” It was not created by big oil or Dick Cheney. It was born in1977 under Jimmy Carter in the form of the CRC; it was strengthened in1995-1999 by Bill Clinton and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Rubin “brokered a deal between the administration and Congress that allowed banking deregulation to move forward. Shortly after the compromise was reached, Rubin took a top position at Citigroup, which went on to embark upon mergers that would have been rendered illegal under Glass-Steagall. As the New York Times put it, Rubin would be leading “what has become the first true American financial conglomerate since the Depression”—a conglomerate that could exist only because of legislation he had just shepherded through Congress.” (source)
Our liberal friends are saying “But Bush was a de-regulator! It was the deregulation that did it man!” Wrong. GWB started raising red flags in 2001, and disclosed at a Congressional hearing in 2003 that “a new agency would have been created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.” What was the Democratic response to this suggestion? ”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not in a financial crisis,’‘ (source: see 2:25) said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee in 2003. Personally, if we can jail the CEOs of Enron and Worldcom, I think Frank should be in jail for his poitical and financial negligence. He is willfully denying the truth that has put America in a scary place.
So, I implore President Obama to stop with the scare tacticts and stop with the lies. Stop blaming the previous president for the country’s woes and start doing something about it. And I don’t mean do anything, I mean do the right thing. Swift, knee-jerk actions made under diress do not usually have positive outcomes. Slow down, think this through. And for God’s sake please include both parties in the problem solving process. Nancy Pelosi’s exclusionary leadership is in direct conflict with her campign promise of a more cooperative, collegial approach that allowed for dissent and debate. Fifty Democrats are asking for help to control the Speaker, but I don’t think it is working. Maybe a cage match between Pelosi and Obama is needed to determine who is actually leading our country?
