Monday, July 18, 2011

Final Score for All Star Game: Arizona a Big 1, Detractors a Big 0

Last week on July 12, Phoenix hosted the Major League Baseball All Star Game, and despite calls from liberal activists and media activists to boycott Arizona, the event came off as a great success for the city and the state.

As many of you know, Arizona’s state legislature passed Senate Bill 1070, which was signed into law by the courageous Governor Jan Brewer.  The legislation enables law enforcement officials to check on the immigration status of anyone they stop on suspicion of violating another law.  When the bill was signed, the national media did a terrific job of distorting the law to the extent that many people who were ignorant about the law actually believed that police were just randomly stopping anyone they suspected of solely being here illegally.  It didn’t matter to the activists and the liberal advocates in the media that the law specifically prohibited law enforcement officials from solely stopping anyone just to check immigration status.

Nevertheless, a campaign developed to get Major League Baseball to move the All Star Game from Phoenix as a form of protest to the anti-immigrant legislation, which was not really anti-immigrant.  Baseball commissioner Bud Selig refused to buckle to the pressure, and so activists and advocates used their misinformation campaign to call for a boycott of Arizona during the All Star festivities.

Fortunately for the State of Arizona, truth won out, and the boycotts failed.  All the events of the All Star week were packed, and the game, itself, was a complete sellout.  Early indications are that the event was an economic boom for both Phoenix and the state.

Of course, there were a few demonstration by activists trying to get people to avoid the events.  However, in most cases these activists were actually outnumbered by pro-Arizona demonstrators.

There were also a few added bonuses for Phoenix and Arizona during this period.  A liberal columnist from the Washington Post Writers Group, Esther Cepeda, came to Arizona and wrote a glowing piece about her recent 10-day visit to the state.  She began her article by admitting that she came looking for the intolerance that activists had reported existed in Arizona.  What she found was quite different.  Cepeda wrote, “Unless I inadvertently lucked into some Utopian Twilight Zone, everywhere I went – fast food joints, town squares, water parks – Hispanics and Whites seemed to work and play together peacefully.”  She also noted in her story that “Arizona is full of lots of really, nice regular people.”

Finally, Forbes Magazine recently declared Phoenix one of the top ten cities best positioned to proper in the coming decade.  The magazine indicated that although Phoenix has not done well in the recession, it still has more jobs now than in 2000.  Forbes also stated that “demographics remain surprisingly robust.”

There you have it.  Despite the efforts of major media and liberal activists to paint Arizona as a racist, bigoted and intolerant state, Arizona has seemingly won the debate in the minds of regular Americans who have embraced the truth and ignored the lies and distortions.  It is heartening to know that sometimes the truth really does win out.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Maybe the Morning Show at MSNBC Is Really a Comedy

A few days ago I wrote a post about the show called “Morning Joe” on MSNBC claimed the Rod Blagojevich verdict was a miscarriage of justice because the participants on the show could not tell the difference between an acquittal and a hung jury.  A few days later, that same morning crew set up political analyst Mark Halperin for a suspension.

When I say set up, I don’t believe it was intentionally done, but when you listen to the give and take in its entirety, you wonder why everyone was suspended.  Halperin, who is senior political analyst for MSNBC and Time magazine, asked before he spoke, “Are we on a seven-second delay?  He made it clear that he might say something offensive, so he wanted to ask if protection was available, so what he said wouldn’t go out on the airwaves.  The co-hosts of the show, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, assured him that he could speak freely.  Scarborough went as far as to say, “You fall down, I’m going to catch you.”

Unfortunately for Halperin, the co-hosts seemed not to take him seriously, and when Marks said that President Barack Obama came off as “kind of a d__k,” the show went up for grabs.  All of a sudden, Scarborough, the man who said he was going to catch Halperin, suddenly changed his tune and said he couldn’t believe Halperin said what he said.  There was no seven-second delay, so Halperin was out on a limb with the rest of the morning sawing it off.

I don’t know Halperin at all, but I do know that he tends to liberal advocacy in his reporting.  However, I may be the only person who doesn’t think he should be suspended.  What he said on the air was an inappropriate comment about any sitting President.  There is no question about that.  Nevertheless, he did warn everyone on the show that he was about to say something that could be deemed offensive.  Whether intentional or not, it certainly appears that Halperin was hung out to dry.

There are two major observations I am taking away from this unfortunate scenario.  The first is that is appears that even Obama cheerleaders, like Halperin, are starting to realize that the current President may not be anything more than smoke and mirrors.  The other is that if I were Halperin, I would never trust Joe Scarborough again.