Do You Want America's Future Decided by the MSM or by The People?

We must fight for accurate information and ignore a media with an activist, propagandist agenda.  It has gotten down to that: the media vs. the people.

The above quote is from Pamela Geller's article at Human Events, The Next President. It is now more important than ever to support those who fight to bring truthful information to the People, information that the media and most of our political class do not want you to know.

Consider Iowa leading up to the Ames Debate. Here is an excerpt from DaTechguy about the fact  Robert Stacy McCain has provided far better coverage of all the GOP Presidential candidates in Iowa than anyone else:

But it is his post on his site that clinches my argument

So far in Iowa, I’ve been to events for Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. If they get a couple of local TV stations and two or three newspaper reporters to an event, that’s “good coverage.” But at today’s Romney event — held at the home of a local businessman — it was a totally different level of coverage: The Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, Gwen Ifill, Charlie Cook, Al Hunt, Carl Cameron of Fox News, etc. I counted no fewer than 12 TV or video cameras recording Romney’s speech.

That is the power of the MSM. It decides who the GOP front-runner is (and who they want it to be) and allocates coverage accordingly. Stacy McCain has covered Mitt Romney, but he has not limited his coverage to him. He has covered Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.
This more than anything else highlights the importance of bloggers and social media, they are the best way to bypass the elites determination to convert convention wisdom into fact.  RTWT

If you watched the Ames debate on Fox News, you may have noticed that the moderators tried to make it pretty much the Romney/Gingrich/Pawlenty/Paul show, giving little time to (my first choice) Rick Santorum, or Herman Cain (and they mods were basically asses to Michelle Bachmann). They also gave a lot of attention to former Obama operative Jon Huntsman. Their coverage of the debate on the morning show Fox and Friends was even worse. Neither the hosts nor their guests even mentioned Rick Santorum from what I saw, despite the fact that he did really well in the debate. Fox, like the rest of the MSM has an agenda, and that agenda is not to report events, but to engineer their outcomes. DaTechguy further illustrates this point at the Conservatory with his great piece about Why Robert Stacy McCain Is Invaluable:

During the Scott Brown election he was everywhere from the North End to a Catholic Church in Fitchburg to the last stop in the Scott Brown bus tour.
At the time of the Big Red Wave in 2010, he was not only all over the races in Massachusetts; he also covered those in New York and Pennsylvania.
He has been everywhere from Las Vegas to Alaska to Delaware, covering stories in person that the media opines on from afar.
Right now he is in Iowa—and still showing us the difference between reporting and opining:

Sneering at the GOP campaign in an editorial is probably much easier than, y’know, assigning some reporters to cover it.
But what do I know about running a newspaper? Or politics, for that matter.
Anyway, the whole point of the Sioux City Journal‘s Sunday editorial is — I’m not making this up — John Thune for President.
Seriously.
Here’s a guy who announced six months ago that he was skipping the 2012 campaign and now, in August, the local newspaper (which apparently can’t be bothered to cover any actual Republican candidates) decides to mount its own “Draft Thune” campaign.

Thus demonstrating that elitism and laziness are not confined to the Beltway.
Although I share the paper’s disdain for the importance of Ames, in the final result it doesn’t make it less of a story—and Stacy McCain has written about Iowa like few others have: Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum—he covers ‘em all. He has filed from Sioux City, Des Monies, and Roland, producing story after story in an unending arc.
All of this on airplane tickets paid for by tip jar contributors—many of them one-way fares that left it up to Fate, whether he’s find his way home again. Somehow, he always does.
Consider the resources possessed by the MSM, and the corporations that own them: Stacy McCain is providing more coverage, and in better depth, on a shoestring. He actually informs his readers.
He doesn’t pretend that he has no viewpoint; he does, and he is proud of it. Yet he gives the whole story, in context, and allows the readers to draw their own conclusions.
This is what the media was once all about shining a light on those who might attain power, rather than climbing up into the clubhouse.
I suspect Stacy will never be invited the big cocktail parties in D.C. (although I wouldn’t put it past him to sneak in and report on them) but that’s not his aspiration. His goal is to support himself and his family while actually finding out what’s going on.
Contrast this to the MSM’s goals and methods and you will learn, as Ed Morrissey put it:

They plan on making news, not reporting it.

 READ THE WHOLE THING

Stacy truly is the last real reporter in America, and Conservatives are damned lucky to have him on our side. As I recently Tweeted in response to the above piece:

Think about other events over the past few years. If it weren't for Conservative bloggers, it is quite likely that far left radical nutjobs like communist racist Van Jones and Mao fan Anita Dunn would still be holding high ranking positions in the Obama administration. If it weren't for the blogs, it may never have become known that the Fort Hood massacre was islamic jihad, as was the attempted Christmas Underwear bombing, as was the attempted Times Square bombing, as was the shooting outside the Arkansas Army Recruiting office... I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea. If it weren't for the blogs, you would probably not know that the recent violent and brutal "flash mob" attacks popping up all over the country involved large groups of racist black thugs attacking white people specifically because they are white and for no other reason. If it weren't for the blogs, nobody would know about corruption like the Pigford scam, the deadly "Fast and Furious" scandal, or most of the other treasonous and illegal acts of the corrupt anti-American Obama administration and his goonion thug cronies. If it weren't for the blogs, nobody would likely know that Obama has us helping Al Qaeda and other jihadi terrorists in Libya. If it weren't for the blogs, you may have never heard of the Muslim Brotherhood or been made aware that their stated official goal for the United States of America is to destroy it from within. If it were not for the blogs, people would probably still think that the far left drug addled Tuscon killer, Jared Loughner, was a Sarah Palin operative. There are so many important things that would never have come to light if the right-blogosphere had not exposed them and banged the drum persistently until media and politicians could no longer afford to ignore them, I could easily go on all day, but I hope you get the point: the right blogosphere is critically important to our nation's future!

Conservative bloggers don't just provide information though, quite often they are the catalysts for making positive changes. Last fall, this blog was barely a month old when I put it to work, successfully, towards my own corrupt far left Congressman's electoral defeat. The right-blogs played a crucial role in giving the leftists the "shellacking" that they so rightly deserved in the 2010 election and they will be more important than ever leading up to 2012.

Unlike the well funded left, Conservative bloggers get no support from any big organizations, there are no blogger Sugar Daddies for Conservative bloggers, not even from the right, as Jimmie Bise explains at the Sundries Shack:

Let me toss a few number at you. These are fundraising totals, for the first half of 2011 (candidates’ figures from Open Secrets).

• The Republican National Committee: $36.6 million ($6.7 million in June alone).
• Mitt Romney: $18.3 million.
• Ron Paul: $4.5 million.
• Tim Pawlenty: $4.5 million.
• Michele Bachmann: $3.6 million.
• Herman Cain: $2.55 million.
• Newt Gingrich: $2.1 million.
• Sarah Palin’s PAC: $1.7 million.

If we assume that half of the donations received by the RNC and SarahPAC will get spent, in some form or fashion, on the 2012 Presidential Race, we get a grand total of $45.1 million donated in six months for a campaign where we won’t see a real election until mid-February. Mind you, I didn’t include the fundraising totals for the RNCC and RNSC, because OpenSecrets doesn’t have a tally for the 2012 election cycle yet. It’s safe to say that between them, you could probably double that total.
Why do I point this out? Well, I’m afraid I’m back on my new media hobby horse again. See, this week I’ve had a few blog posts hit my RSS reader and little of the news has been good. Let me give you some of the highlights.

• Pete Ingemi, Da Tech Guy, is in urgent need of $1,800.
• Iowahawk had a monster flood sweep through his man-cave.
• My friend BiasedGirl is now a two-time victim of the Obama Recession.
• Stacy’s tip-jar is feeling a bit neglected and he has some bills coming due.
• It’s yearly fundraising time at Chris Muir’s Day by Day Cartoon.
• The Lonely Conservative is feeling, well, lonely!
• Thomas LaDuke, another victim of the Obama Recession, was looking at some pricey auto repairs and, though that need was met, still finds himself out of a job.
• Dan Collins and Joy McCann are trying to make a go of a conservative community with all manner of good stuff for your eyes and ears.
• Duane Lester, father of a rather large family, made a ridiculously inexpensive e-book he’s selling to make ends meet.
• Zilla, whose husband works one job and is trying to get a business off the ground in his “spare” time, is on the ragged edge.
• Wendy Sullivan is trying to get some real help to a very worth cause.

Quite the contrast, eh?
On one hand, the professional politicians — not just the candidates but their staff members who jump from campaign to campaign each season — are doing pretty well. On the other hand, folks in new media are sucking wind to pay their bills each month. But why should that be? Which group does more to aggressively advance conservative causes; take on pernicious media bias; and dos battle with the well-paid and full-time hacks in Media Matters, Think Progress, and the Democratic Party every day? I’ll tell you, from the looks of my e-mail inbox and my RSS reader, the new media Army of Davids is beating the socks off the professional political class on a daily basis.
Let me point something else out as well. Every election cycle, the Republicans rattle their voluminous tip-jars for candidates we then have to fight for two, four, or six years to do the things we put them into office to do. They plead poverty and reap millions, then spend those millions on overpriced and arrogant advisers like Mike Murphy and Ed Rollins. They pay tens of thousands of dollars to “geniuses” like Fred Davis who produced such flops as “Demonsheep” and “I’m You”. When I mention this, though, my friends who have been on the inside of political campaigns assure me that we on the right must hire these people, that their expertise is indispensable.
I wonder, though. If they’re so darned good, why did their candidates lose so badly? Why don’t they have a few recent successes under their belts?
Let me point out one other thing. The Republican National Committee, for all its millions, has virtually no new media presence. They have one, perhaps two people, who work their tails off to cover the whole nation. No one is making videos and pushing them out on YouTube or Vimeo with any great frequency. No one makes regular outreach efforts to bloggers. I can’t recall that Chairman Priebus has had more than perhaps a couple conference calls with bloggers since January. Surely the RNC could have set aside a million or so this year, hired 6 or 8 established bloggers and videographers, and set them to work at the soft underbelly of the Democratic Party, but they haven’t. Now I understand that Michael Steele left the committee in horrible financial shape. I get that the “establishment” sees new media as the junior varsity. What I don’t understand is why anyone with any internet savvy at all would look at the Return On Investment (ROI) potential of new media and not at least give it a try. It’s not as if the RNC hasn’t spent money on media aplenty already.
But what does that have to do with you? I’m glad you asked.
[...]
Here it is. Every month, we’re bombarded with donation requests from politicians and parties who assure us that the $20, $50, or $100 we send them over and over again will be well-spent. They promise us that they will use our money wisely and we believe them only to learn, usually after  another losing election, that they spent the cash on overpriced fripperies and could have done just as well with half the money. I think they could do just as well with a little bit less. Their consultants and ad “geniuses” can bring their rates down a touch without falling into the peril of eating Mac and Cheese a couple times a week.
So here’s what I”m suggesting. Instead of donating to a candidate or a party, donate to a blogger or a podcaster. Make a regular habit of it. If you’d normally give $100 to a candidate, give a blogger $20 a month for five months. Heck, give $20 to five different bloggers. Let them know, in paying green fashion, that you support and appreciate what they do. Tell your friends, too and point them to the same bloggers to whom you donate. Get a little contest going among your friends and family to see who can get the first blogger to post about how their tip jar exploded because of all the cash that you all stuffed into it. Make it last at least through the end of this year and see how it works. If you can keep it up into 2012, when the new media will be even more important, do it. I know times are tough, but I think we can all come up with $10 or $20 a month somewhere.
And there’s another benefit. If you put that money into new media you can see what you get every day — blog entries, podcasts, videos, or any combination thereof. As Stacy said, it’s not a donation but a payment. You’ll get something out of it — real solid news or commentary you can send to people you know or use to bolster your own political chops. You also get regular, direct contact with the person to whom you’ve donated either through e-mail, other places like Twitter or Google+, or the comment section of the site. You can’t buy that from a candidate unless you pony up tens of thousands of dollars and even then, you won’t get that contact every day.
So your money buys not only global reach and regular output but also real access to real people who are hitting their licks for conservatism every day. If that’s not a deal in a day when parties are not exactly the model of transparency, I don’t know what is. And there’s no better time to start than now. RTWT

Stacy McCain is well known around the right blogs as the master of Tip Jar rattling, and, God Bless him, he doesn't just do it for himself - Stacy often rattles the Tip Jars of other bloggers in need too, like he did a few weeks ago for both me and DaTechguy when we found ourselves in dire straits.  Stacy explains why he is the master, in response to another person who acknowledges his mastery, here:

Your praise of me as “the master of getting people to hit the flippin’ tip jar” is high praise indeed. But if I am the master, why is that so? Because there’s no shame in my game, that’s why.
Bloggers who do good work ought not to think that they’re begging for charity when they rattle the tip jar. It’s fee-for-service, a direct contract between writer and reader, eliminating the middleman of a corporate publisher. There have been times when I’ve had an idea and thought to myself, “Should I write this column freelance for someone else, or should I publish it on my own blog?” Well, (a) where will it be seen the most and have the greatest impact? and (b) which will pay me more? As a shameless capitalist, (b) is always a heavy factor in such decisions and, so far as (a) is concerned, we know that Rush Limbaugh reads Instapundit, right?
So if I decide to save something really good for my blog, and it then gets the Instalanche, this is an optimal result in terms of readership. The only way it could be more widely read is if it were linked by Drudge and, quite honestly, a Drudge link would instantly melt our servers. Ah, but what if my post gets Instalanched — which can sometimes drive an extra 15,000 hits in a day — but none of those people hit the tip jar? If my actual income from that is zero, exactly what is the rationale of writing my best stuff here on the blog? Why shouldn’t I send all my “A” stuff somewhere that will pay me, and just put the “B” stuff on the blog? And if what I write on the blog is just a bunch of “B” stuff that nobody’s willing to spend a dime for, exactly what the hell is the point of blogging at all?
Such are the thoughts that occur to me when the Dark Mood descends, when I’m flat broke and I feel like this whole thing has been a complete failure. And the one thing that can help lift the Dark Mood is when I check my e-mail inbox and see that cherished message — as welcome as the laughter of my own children — “Notification of Donation Received.”  READ IT ALL HERE

Conservative bloggers provide a valuable service, so it is not unreasonable to hope for some sort of compensation via Tip Jar hitting in return for that service from the people who benefit from it. Is it?

The Lonely Conservative also wrote about Tip Jars recently (and very kindly used the post to direct help to me in my dark hour):

Stacy McCain explains the joys of the “Notification of Donation Received” email.

Every time somebody hits the tip, I get a message with the subject line “Notification of Donation Received.” And today, in response to my thank-you, one of the regulars wrote back a brief note, saying that he was also going to hit Pete’s tip jar. He paid me a compliment, and so I replied: ….
The core readership of any particular small-to-medium blog — people who visit a site on an almost daily basis — may only be 50 or 100 or 200 people. And $10 is the cost of two Happy Meals at McDonald’s. Despite the Obama recession, I’m absolutely certain that a core blog readership of 100 people could support any site to the tune of $1,500-$2,000 per month just $10 or $20 at a time. …

Read the whole thing.
I just looked at my Pay Pal account and there are three transactions: two donations to bloggers going through a rough stretch, and a donation to Soldiers Angels Foundation. Under “Payments Received” there is nothing. Not that things are terrible around here, but it sure is appreciated on those rare occasions that one of you decides to hit the tip jar.  MORE HERE

I think that is the case with a lot of right bloggers, they give more often than they receive and they reach out to help others even when they themselves could use help. I know that when someone hits my tip jar and after my family's immediate needs are met, I like to use anything left over to hit the Tip Jars of my fellow bloggers whenever I can, because I know first hand how that can brighten one's day and even help to stave off the crushing DOOM! which threatens us all. Sadly, Lonely Con updated her post with the observation that it seemed that only fellow bloggers cared about her post at all. You know, that ain't right. Why don't you, dear reader, think about making that right by dropping a couple of bucks in the tip jar at her place?

As has been mentioned by other bloggers, we struggle to make ends meet at the Resister house, and even five bucks can make a huge difference in whether or not the DOOM! gets its foot in my door most days, but there are others whose needs are more pressing at the moment and I hope you will find it in your heart and your wallet to send some encouragement their way via their Tip Jars, and maybe also some kind words & prayers too:

Lisa Graas is a hardworking pro-life advocate who also happens to be the preeminent go-to source for accurate and timely information about Rick Santorum's presidential campaign, in addition to being an all around terrific Conservative blogger. This month, Lisa's family is up against the DOOM! and she could really use some help to get through the next few weeks. In addition to hitting her Tip Jar, you can also buy one of the fine books she is selling from her personal bookshelf.

Stacy is still out in Iowa, doing all the hard work that the "press" should do but won't. His trip is entirely funded on Tip Jar donations, and your generosity will help him continue providing the very best reporting that can be found anywhere. Hit his Tip Jar, buy him a beer or a sandwich or return ticket home, and be sure to let him know how much his efforts are valued and appreciated.

Like me, DaTechguy managed to avert DOOM! last month through the kindness of the blogosphere, but I'm sure a few extra bucks could help give him a little cushion to keep the DOOM! away and make things a little more comfortable for him and his family.

At And So it Goes in Shreveport, Pat is using what lands in her Tip Jar to help a police officer who was wounded in the line of duty, and his family.

1389 Blog - Counter Jihad! needs help upgrading their computer equipment & paying for servers due to the increase in readership. See, they need help to continue working for you, so help them, please!

On the Outside Looking In is a Conservative blog by a young lady who is in a situation that never should have happened in America but is happening to more and more of us every damned day. She did everything right; she worked hard, had no debt, owned her home, and had a substantial savings account. Then the economy tanked, the commissions she earned at her job were cut, followed by her hours. She depleted her savings account trying to hold on until things got better, but of they never did, and while she is still working, she is now homeless and living in her car - and her car is broken! Her vehicle (which she is forced to live in) requires $600 in repairs, which she obviously can't afford, so she now has to get on a bus to carry her clothes back & forth to the laundromat just to be presentable for her low earning job. She often has to go hungry, and even when she can buy food, cold soup from a can is not exactly something most folks would enjoy for dinner (or their only food for the day). I follow her blog, I know she is becoming discouraged, you should stop by her place and offer some kind words and for goodness sake, please hit her Tip Jar! Ten or twenty bucks would go a long way with her, she could eat or maybe buy a movie ticket to have someplace cool to relax for a few hours out of the heat, $60 or more would enable her to rent a room for a night so she could enjoy something most of us take for granted which is sleeping in a bed and being able to shower. If a dozen or so of you dug a little deeper and maybe asked some of your friends to also, perhaps she could get her car fixed. I have been without a car since February due to an expensive repair we can't afford and while it sucks for me, at least I do not have to live in that busted car. Help her, please! At the very least, PRAY FOR HER and maybe take a few moments just to comment at her blog and let her that know people care. Here is an excerpt from a recent post of hers, written this past Tuesday:

So I see President Obama said yesterday that creating jobs was easy.  So easy that he failed to do it in two plus years.  Those shovel ready jobs that he joked were not quite as shovel ready as he thought. 

I am so glad that he thinks it is a joke.  He lives in the White House for free and I live in a car and hope that I have enough money to buy food towards the end of every month.  So funny.  So amusing. 

I don't blame presidents for the economic downturns.  They happen on regular basis.  That is just the way a free market works.  What I do tend to blame them for is how they interfere with them and how they talk about them.  The first President Bush can tell you that acting like people are not hurting is not a good strategy.  I don't remember that all that well, but I have heard other people who do talk about it.  People said he seemed out of touch to the struggles of everyday Americans. 

What is going on now is much worse because it has lasted so long.  We are getting close to four years now.  There are people who have lost two or three jobs during this time.  There are people who are working three or four part time jobs.  There are people who have had to move in with family.  And then there are people like me who are homeless because they don't have family that can help them.  We are going to have a "lost decade" as has been described as what happened in Japan. 

Not everyone is going to be able to survive a lost decade.  I know that I am lucky compared to many other homeless, but that doesn't make my situation any easier to deal with.  It doesn't make my back hurt any less from sleeping in a car.  It doesn't make cold soup taste any better.  It doesn't make the endless hours that you are trying to fill go by any faster.  READ THE REST

HillBuzz was at the forefront of exposing the Pigford scam, MONTHS before even Breitbart's Big sites picked up on it. Founder Kevin DuJan and the other contributors made HillBuzz into a very popular destination for news analysis, humor, activism and an all around friendly place for Conservatives to meet & greet in the comments threads. HillBuzz became so popular, in fact, that they needed to upgrade to a bigger website with better servers and stuff. It was a massive undertaking and the end result was awesome, but shortly after the roll-out of the revamped HillBuzz, Kevin was laid low by a serious illness that kept him out of commission for months. The HillBuzz admin valiantly kept the place going as best they could, but Kevin is a powerhouse and his absence was sorely felt by all. Thankfully, Kevin has recently returned and he came back like an unstoppable force of nature. HillBuzz is, well, buzzing, like never before and it is a thing of beauty to behold - but they need money because the upgrade was expensive and tip jar donations had kind of died off while Kevin was ill. Donating to HillBuzz is an excellent way to support the cause of liberty as it is far more than just a blog, it is an incredible grassroots base of operations for effective Conservative activism.

It isn't just the bloggers who are trying to avert DOOM! who should be enjoying a little Tip Jar action once in a while, and really, they shouldn't have to bleg, nor should they feel bad for shaking and rattling their Tip Jars.

If there is a blog you enjoy reading, that you learn things from, that maybe makes you smile or motivates you to get out and (metaphorically) kick some leftist ass, a  really great way to encourage that blogger to keep doing what they do is to drop a couple of bucks in their Tip Jar. I can guarantee you that every single dollar is greatly appreciated.

Conservative bloggers provide a valuable service for the cause of freedom and it is not unreasonable that the people who benefit from their efforts (be it by having access to information that would otherwise be unavailable, a good chuckle at some well written snark, seeing corruption exposed or giving voice to a righteous cause) might consider throwing a few bucks in a blogger's Tip Jar, especially if it is done in lieu of contributing to some political machine which only produces the cramming of establishment RINOs and unelectable losers down our throats and limits the chances that a real Conservative will win a crucial election.

If you're tired of holding your nose in the voting booth and either voting for what you hope will be the "lesser of two evils" or going third party when you know that there is not a snowball's chance in hell of that candidate's victory in anything but a local election, then you really should be doing what you can to support the right blogosphere, because it is the front line against a powerful and well funded opposition to your Liberty and the Army of Davids needs all the help it can get to fight for you and alongside you against the C.R.A.P.T.A.S.T.I.C. Goliath.

If you liked this post, here's a great way to show it:

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