They Say They Have No Agenda

From email (warning: the following has been verified as a hoax [aka: a lie]. I decided to allow the post to remain to show what people will do to make points for or against a candidate. The point is, don't believe everything you get in email, even if it comes from a source you normally trust or sounds like it could be true. That's one reason these hoaxes stay alive: because they give the apperance of being true):

My niece, Katelyn, stationed at Baluud, Iraq was assigned, with others of her detachment, to be escort/guard/watcher for Martha Raddatz of ABC News as she covered John McCain's recent trip to Iraq . Katelyn and her Captain stood directly behind Raddatz as she queried GIs walking past. They kept count of the GIs and you should remember these numbers. She asked 60 GIs who they planned to vote for in November. Fifty-four said John McCain, 4 for Obama, and 2 for Hillary.

Katelyn called home and told her Mom and Dad to watch ABC news the next night because she was standing directly behind Raddatz and maybe they'd see her on TV. Mom and Dad of course, called and emailed all the kinfolk to watch the newscast and maybe see Katelyn. Well, of course, we all watched and what we saw wasn't a glimpse of Katelyn, but got a hell'uva view of skewed news. After a dissertation on McCain's trip and speech, ABC showed 5 GIs being asked by Raddatz how they were going to vote in November; 3 for Obama and 2 for Clinton. No mention of the 54 for McCain.

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They say they have no agenda, but when they skew the news like this, it only proves the point that they do. The media thinks the public is too stupid to see what they are doing, but they're wrong. We see it and that's one reason why they didn't get Kerry elected in 2004.

There's an old saying I heard throughout my youth, "numbers don't lie, but liars can figure."

I'll leave it to you to decide what numbers and who's figuring.

Update:

I've been advised that this is a hoax. I should have known; it has all the earmarks of a fake and I should have spotted it in a New York minute. I normally check these out at snopes.com, but I dropped the ball on this one. No excuse, I perpetuated an Internet hoax.

Thanks to both who left comments advising me of my mistake. I'll be wiping egg off my face for sometime.

I also misquoted that old adage. It should be: Figures (not numbers) don't lie, but liars can figure.

I still stand by what I said about the media (or anyone) who skew the news to "prove" their point, though. It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you sit on, or the reason you do so; if you skew the news, you are doing a disservice to your readers, listeners, or viewers. And, as in the case of fraudulent email, once it gets out there, it goes on forever.

Update: Here is more from snopes.com showing Obama meeting with the troops in Afghanistan