The Augusta Chronicle editorial page Consists of Just a Pack of Lies

Re: "Obama's Flawed Fox Hunt," from the October 22nd edition of the Augusta Chronicle.

Michael Ryan wrote that the Obama administration..."wants to silence dissent and destroy dissenters at home. Ground zero is Fox News."

This statement is a ridiculous lie. The Obama administration is rightfully pointing out that Fox news is little more than a propaganda arm of the republican party. They aren't out to crush dissent.

In this editorial Mr. Ryan once again brings out the tired old whine about how the rest of the mainstream media is liberal. This is mostly untrue as well. The mainstream media is owned by big corporations with pro-conservative agendas. Therefore, journalists are constrained to report in a way that's limited to stay within conservative and centrist ideologies. The mainstream media cites conservative think tanks much more often than liberal think tanks. And although journalists tend to be liberal on social issues, when it comes to economic issues most of them are conservative.

Later in this editorial, Mr. Ryan redundantly repeats the charge he makes in his first paragraph when he writes, "it is highly unusual for a U.S. administration to launch an authoritarian vendetta against an individual news station." This is utter nonsense. The Obama administration has not outlawed Fox news, they've not arrested Fox News employees, they've not even sent the IRS to audit them.

It's apparent that Mr. Ryan just likes making things up. Moreover his claim that the mainstream news has a "left of center oligopoly that has not reflected public opinion" is completely unsupported. He gives no examples of liberal media bias and ignores a recent Washington Post poll that shows that only 20% of Americans identify themselves as republicans. When push comes to shove on such issues as health care, social security, and the environment, the public is overwhelmingly liberal.

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Mr. Ryan's lies are not the only ones appearing on his editorial page. Today, Robert Smock (a regular, contributing, conservative shmuck) adds his lies to those of the editorial page editor. He wrote that Obama took a fairly mild recession and worsened it with taxing the rich. That's just a stupid lie. Obama reduced most people's taxes. The recession was already severe when Obama took office, and the vast majority of Americans understand this. Mr. Smock claims that voters have buyers remorse, but this is just not true either. Obama currently has a 55% approval rating. It's republicans who are sinking in the polls right now, probably due to their irrational and corrupt opposition to health care reform.

On yesterday's editorial page two columnists that regularly run on this page, Cal Thomas and Walter Williams, began both of their columns with ridiculous lies.

Mr. Thomas wrote that "the greatest generation lived within their means." Actually, the biggest national debt in U.S. history occurred during the "greatest generation," due to World War II. To begin a column with such a lie destroys his credibility, but it's been evident to me for a long time that Mr. Thomas is not a very smart man and has little credibility to begin with. He believes fairy tales should be taught in science class.

Mr. Williams is a free market fanatic. In his column yesterday he listed "anti-government" as a good quality for an American to have. Conservatives claim to hate government so much that they don't seem to believe in it at all. Maybe they should stay out of trying to run it then. Mr. Ryan once wrote when criticizing the democrats, "most alarmingly, they believe in government." So if conservatives don't believe in government, what do they belive in? Anarchy?

Mr. Williams falsely claimed that the U.S. is the "most prosperous nation in mankind's entire history." There are about ten nations on earth that have higher standards of living than the U.S. I pointed this out to Mr. Williams once, and he admitted I was right, and he was wrong, yet he's still telling this lie.