Democrats: "ClimateGate" Leak A Non-Scandal (CBS NEWS)

How else will they fund their TRILLION dollar Leviathan without it? And are you so naive to think this was ever about anything else?

Labels: democrats, global warming, left-wing media

'Cap and Trade Is Dead'

The more than 3,000 emails and documents from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have found their way to the Internet have blown the lid off the "science" of manmade global warming. CRU is a nerve center for many of those researchers who have authored the United Nations' global warming reports and fueled the political movement to regulate carbon.

Their correspondence show a claque of scientists massaging data to make it fit their theories, squelching scientists who disagreed, punishing academic journals that didn't toe the apocalyptic line, and hiding their work from public view. "It's no use pretending that this isn't a major blow," glumly wrote George Monbiot, a U.K. writer who has been among the fiercest warming alarmists. The documents "could scarcely be more damaging." And that's from a believer.

This scandal has real implications. Mr. Inhofe notes that international and U.S. efforts to regulate carbon were already on the ropes. The growing fear of Democrats and environmentalists is that the CRU uproar will prove a tipping point, and mark a permanent end to those ambitions.

I'm a little late to the party but it's just one more example of how out of touch Nancy/Harry/MSM are. Or are they? The reality is that global warming, just like the "crises" in health care and the economy, offer her ilk the opportunity to enlarge the scale/scope of government. Frankly, I think Nancy eats paste and probably "believes" the "science" of global warming. This is the Speaker of the House who accused the CIA of lying (but we're making jobs).

Labels: economics, global warming, left-wing media, pelosi, reid

...you entire crappy network is devoted to "advocacy journalism" on behalf of the current administration.

Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/U.S. said in a statement that “Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere.”

Related
CNN Drops to Last Place Among Cable News Networks

Labels: left-wing media

If only CNN/MSNBC/NYTIMES/ABC/NBC/NEWSWEEK/NPR would report on news like the burgeoning deficit instead of stories like balloon boy.

Related...

I had to read this post three times before the absolute insanity of what the DEMS are doing sank in.

First, the White House announces a $250 payment to every senior for inflation that didn’t exist. “In effect, a COLA was paid on inflation that no longer existed,” notes Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute.

Second, the White House in its desperate attempts to get its health reform passed, has tasked the all-too-willing Majority Leader Reid to walk the plank by convincing him to push a $247 billion portion of health reform as an off-budget item, in a separate bill, to be on the Senate floor this week before moving to the merged ObamaCare bill. Even the Washington Post editorial board said “Mr. Reid proposes not to pay for any of it, not even $11 billion, but simply to write a $247 billion IOU.”

Absolute madness.

Labels: connecticut post, democrats, left-wing media, obama, pelosi, reid

Don Luskin at Poor & Stupid on Walt Disney, the NY TIMES, and the SOCIALIST'S "FATAL CONCEIT".

Labels: disney, left-wing media

The gloves are off tonight over at NRO!

The media would like the American right to be represented by the likes of Bob Dole and John McCain, decent old sticks who know how to give dignified concession speeches. Last time round, we went along with their recommendation. If you want to get rave reviews for losing gracefully, that's the way to go. If you want to win, look at whom the Democrats and their media chums are so frantic to destroy: That's the better guide to what they're really worried about.

Labels: left-wing media, liberals

Sooner or later ABC/NBC/CBS/NEWSWEEK/NYTIMES/NPR is going to investigate the links between ACORN/SEIU and Obama. I'm joking (it's a joke).

We are talking about a persistent and shared political-ideological alliance between President Obama and the complex of community, labor, and party organizations controlled by ACORN. Again, the Gaspard issue is new and needs further investigation and consideration. Yet preliminary indications are that the Gaspard-ACORN-Bertha Lewis-New Party-WFP-SEIU ties are significant, and tell us something disturbing about the political ideology and intentions of President Obama.

Related
Irrational Exuberance: With a weak dollar, economic recovery might not be as broad as advertised. (Forbes)

Grant feels that our recent recession bears "comparison with the slump of 1981-1982." And while he acknowledges that Ronald Reagan was president then, and that Reagan "stood for free enterprise, free trade and low taxes" versus a President Obama who "stands for other things," he makes the more intriguing point that Obama's "policies seem as far removed from Roosevelt's as they are from Reagan's."

Related 2
ACORN's Man in the White House

Labels: left-wing media, obama

Hugo Chávez seeks to catch them young
A hastily passed education law is part of the president’s plan to take control of all aspects of Venezuelan society

What is apparent is that the law was not framed in parliament but by a team of ideologues in the presidential palace. Legislators suspect Cuban specialists had a hand in it, along with radicals from the Spanish left in Mr Chávez’s close circle.

University rectors say the hasty way the law was passed violated both parliamentary norms and the constitution. They were tear-gassed when they approached parliament as it was being debated, to try to deliver a document criticising its content. But a campaign of peaceful resistance is gathering strength.

Since winning a referendum in February abolishing term limits (thus allowing him to seek re-election again in 2012), Mr Chávez has stepped up the pace of his revolution. He has taken powers and funds from mayors and governors, clamped down on independent trade unions and broadcasters, and passed a law which will allow the government-controlled electoral authority to gerrymander constituency boundaries. A wilting economy and a lack of money to spend on his ambitious welfare programmes have begun to sap Mr Chávez’s popularity, forcing him to keep casting around for fresh scapegoats.

In his weekly broadcast on August 16th he promised a stimulus package but gave no indication of how he would pay for it. With public dissent growing, his response has been to stifle sources of independent thinking, be they private television channels, trade unions, the church or the schools and universities. However, once he has achieved complete dominance over them all, there will be no one left to blame for the country’s ills but himself.

Limestone Commentary
We're probably a failed treasury auction or two away from a banana republic. Obama had Pelosi/Reid draft the $800 BILLION and they did so with the help of special interest groups. He is doing the same thing with OBAMACARE (outsourcing) and asking the radicals to shove this transformational "bill" down our throats (despite overwhelming public/citizen opposition). Meanwhile the MSM marginalizes the opposition by portraying any act of civil disobedience as organized thuggery.

As the economy worsens he (and his enablers) thrash about searching for scapegoats. The witch hunt at the CIA is red meat for lefty radicals chasing a phantom menace while providing a thinly veiled (wink, wink on the 'we weed up') smoke screen against his untenable/unsustainable deficits (all hyper-accelerated by his partisan wish list - cap and trade, national health care).

One final thought...Obama also equals Chávez in ideological heroes. Obama has Alinsky/Wright while his South American equal has Bolívar/Gramsci.

Labels: china, left-wing media, obama, pelosi, reid

And when you trust your television
What you get is what you got
Cause when they own the information, oh
They can bend it all they want

- John Mayer

The Obama Administration is now referring to their failed $800 BILLION stimulus as a stabilization/recovery act/bill. The intent is to lower expectations now that economists have predicted a jobless recovery. The national unemployment rate is hovering near 10% and is expected to increase before a fragile recovery in 2010. In addition to deflecting blame for the failed stimulus, the Obama Administration may ask DEM lawmakers for a second stimulus bill to complement their TRILLION dollar schemes for socialized health care and cap and tax.

Turns out the $787 billion "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" (AARA) was not designed for full economic recovery, but rather to "stabilize" the downturn. That's the word from White House officials today, who held off-camera briefings with reporters on how the AARA is working so far.

The Obama Administration is spending an estimated $100,000 a week on "message people" to spin words in a "consciously dishonest way." According to Accuracy in Media (AIM):

The Obama media machine is up and running, but it could backfire if the media gain some self-respect and tire of being manipulated on behalf of the President's image and agenda.

Related
Barney Frank: White House "Message People" Telling Democrats to Call Stimulus a "Recovery Bill"
Stimulating Dishonesty
Krugman: U.S. Headed for 'Jobless' Recovery (ABC NEWS)

Labels: left-wing media, obama

...from Mark Steyn about the death throes of the Fourth Estate are HOT! My leg is tingling.

This kind of indestructible, fatuous narcissism is a big part of what's wrong. What other industry conflates itself with the very legitimacy of the state? If you're insisting on your indispensability even as millions dispense with you, you're the one with the problem.

Labels: left-wing media

Disarray. That's one word to describe the status of the Obama administration's legislative program as Congress heads into its final four weeks of work before the August recess...

Related
$1 Trillion Deficit Complicates Obama's Agenda (WSJ)
Federal budget deficit tops $1 trillion with 3 months left in budget year (USA Today)

Limestone Commentary
Who will the DEMS blame?

Labels: democrats, dodd, left-wing media, obama, pelosi, reid

"The emperor needed the wealthier classes to help him run the empire. Senators in particular were the class he lived amongst and their attitude towards him tended to dictate how he would be portrayed in later histories."

- How Rome Fell, Adrian Goldsworthy

Related
Amid Criticism, Post Drops "Appalling" Plan to Sell Access (ABC)
Barack Obama Seeks to Turn America into a Third World Country
Again, Why the Diffidence?
National Security & the Cult of Personality
Congress's Travel Tab Swells: Spending on Taxpayer-Funded Trips Rises Tenfold; From Italy to the Galápagos (WSJ)

Labels: dodd, history, left-wing media, obama, pelosi, quotes, reid

A cartoon on RedState featuring John Mayer/ABC/Obama.

Limestone Roof John Mayer Flashbacks
The blogger with many visions returns...
Hillvez and Generation Y


Comic Books
IF ONLY IT WERE THIS EASY (Poor and Stupid)

Poster Art
† Death, taxes & Obamacare: Poster contest, Round Two

† Obamacare poster contest: Coming to a hospital near you!; Updated with new entries

† Bad medicine: Obamacare poster art, Round 3

Cartoons
This cartoon by Michael Ramirez is a little more poignant.

Labels: iran, left-wing media, obama

"Everywhere I went during my 10-day road trip, people vented their disgust with New York and Washington. Bashing New York and Washington is a national pastime under any circumstances, but the vitriol now is three orders of magnitude greater. Respectable businesspeople said they wanted to put John Thain, Henry Paulson, Christopher Cox, Bernie Madoff, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and numerous television talking heads before a firing squad. I’ve not heard talk like this since college, and never from business leaders.

Polls that show only 37% of Americans supporting the stimulus package overstate the support. Over the course of 10 days, I didn’t talk to a single person who thought the stimulus package made any sense. People at airports heckled White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as he promoted the stimulus package on CNN."

Source: Ten Days' Thoughts On The Economy

Related
This article in Newsweek is pure bunk. If the Democrats really believed that their [denote ownership] TRILLION DOLLAR spending bill would work they wouldn't need Republicans to get on board.

But now Obama needs to remind the American people that unless the Republicans get on board, they will bear political responsibility for failing to act in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Labels: left-wing media, pelosi, reid

An Uneasy Feeling
I distilled from the press coverage and the crowds and the punditry yesterday that for all too many suddenly a vote for Obama redeems America. Now, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, for the first time in their lives they are apparently proud of the United States.

So I am surprised that suddenly the election of a single individual means that we are united, patriotic, proud of America? Suddenly Okinawa or Antietam, or all those who died at the Argonne, are ours to claim again?

But America was always ours, the public, and the nation transcends the proposition of whether Obama gets elected or not—given that the United States, in its worst hour, was better than the alternatives at their best. So I think it would be wise to cool it on the “I am now proud of America” rhetoric. If getting your way means suddenly the dead at Iwo or those who were blown up in B-17s over Germany are at last your own and matter, then we are in deep trouble.

More from Victor Davis Hanson

As Obama begins to govern and as the public sees that he simply borrowed Bush’s foreign policy rhetoric, jazzed it up with his cadences and pauses, and then took either Bushites or Democratic centrists and called them hope and change, and as he glued new rhetorical veneers on the Patriot Act and FISA, and as he alienates many by making decisions other than voting present, and as the gaffes begin (Biden and Michelle can’t be put under wraps forever), and the Chicago fumes linger (Blago ain’t through yet), the fawning media will begin to look embarrassed, then ridiculous, and finally completely bankrupt. They offered no audit of Obama, no tough treatment, no honest examination of his flips, no balance in their treatment of Bush, and they will soon pay a terrible price for that derelection and worse, as the public sees them as the state megaphones that they have so sadly become. The only suspense? Will they play Pravda to the end?

The point of all this? Excuse me, but as a cynic I confess the politics of the left are now about power, ego, status, and the notion of control, rather than genuine concern for the planet, or the creed of egalitarianism or for freedoms of the people. The conservative grandee at least lives by his unapologetic creed, one that we sometimes abhor, but accept is consistent with the natural law of the jungle in that the stronger and more capable claim that that they deserve a greater material reward for their greater accomplishments or, barring that, even unabashedly for their greater luck in being born lucky.

But for the leftist. the desire for wealth, status, exceptional treatment, all this earns the additional wages of hypocrisy. We all know the conservative failing—that a Larry Craig or Mark Foley who preaches constraint and traditional values are themselves slaves to nefarious and destructive appetites. But ignored are their liberal counterparts in hypocrisy—that men and women of the people no more wish to live as the people than the rich they so loudly despise. If some conservatives adopt the patina of a Cato’s stern agrarian conservatism to mask their own weakness for drink, or drug, or sex, then at least grant such psychological states exist for many liberals who demand global parity as a sort of psychological get out of jail card for their cravings for money, status, and privilege.

Labels: dodd, left-wing media, liberals, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

Bush and the Bush-Haters
It can be stated without fear of serious argument that no previous president has been treated as brutally, viciously, and unfairly as George W. Bush.

Bush 43 endured a deliberate and planned assault on everything he stood for, everything he was involved in, everything he tried to accomplish.

His detractors were willing to risk the country's safety, its economic health, and the very balance of the democratic system of government in order to get at him...

Labels: left-wing media, liberals

In Love With Obama
The Post and all the other lame-stream media are in the grips of an irrational love-worship and it's annoying and dangerous. You cannot love this man unless you love-worship the government.

But the lame-stream love-struck media is very selective. They do not love the Constitution or the Bill or Rights. That is clear, because they do not promote and protect our individual liberty – just the rights that they enjoy.

They do not love the two party system. Their hatred seeps through every scolding, judgmental article they write about the loyal opposition.

They do not love church. They scoff and sneer at the religious.

They do not love the businessman. They attack and criticize his success. They cheer when the governments' loot his bank account. They grin when taxes and regulations do him in. They can barely hide their disgust with Capitalism and simple profit. I guess it's so long since they made a profit they have forgotten how it feels to succeed.

The Connecticut Post participates in the adulation with this hard-hitting reportage. The Connecticut Post can't find receivership fast enough.

Obama: Available at a store near you

Related
Left adjusts to a new patriotism under Obama

Obamamania in Overdrive as Inauguration Looms

Major Starbucks Push Will Encourage Community Service
"This is very much in line with the national call to service that's been put out," said Starbucks spokeswoman Lisa Passe. "Everyone has heard loud and clear that this is a time to act, and what Starbucks is doing is breaking down the barriers of how to connect with your local community."

Limestone Commentary
Who the **** put out that national call? ACORN?

Labels: left-wing media, liberals, obama

"In the great contest to determine the worst Times story ever, many, so many, are called, but few are chosen. To make it to the zenith of awfulness, a Times story must not only be factually distressed, it must also achieve that tone of absolute smugness that perfectly reflects and soothingly reinforces the self-righteous sensitivities of its readership."

- Roger Kimball

Absent a taxpayer bailout the NY TIMES may print their last pamphlet in 2009. Fish mongers and recreational sportsman hit hardest.

The New York Times (NYT) has to repay $400 million in debt in the first half of 2009. It does not have the money. It plans to mortgage its headquarters, but it is uncertain what that will bring in an uncertain real estate market. The firm’s Boston Globe and regional newspaper operations lose money, so they will be hard to sell. NYT is controlled by the Sulzberger family which has super-majority voting shares. That won’t matter much when the company runs out of money. Another big media operation, perhaps News Corp (NWS) which owns The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, will come in and auction off what it can and keep the flagship New York Times newspaper and NYTimes.com website.

Labels: left-wing media, liberals

It may be the greatest act of malfeasance ever leveled against the American public and this weekend the NY TIMES is trying to provide cover to its Democratic author(s). Prominent DEMS like Dodd, Frank, Obama, Clinton, Johnson, and Raines are getting a free pass from Old Pinch and his merry band of folk writers.

We just had an election in which the decisive financial melt-down was, as Roger Kimball details today, directly traceable to the Community Reinvestment Act and the Fannie/Freddie implosion — Democrat debacles through and through (with Obama as a top recipient of Fannie and Freddie pay-offs, er, I mean, contributions). Yet the Bush White House evidently figured it was beneath the president to speak out about these facts, and the GOP candidate was either blind to or frozen by the appearance of this hanging curveball, somehow deciding the campaign homestretch was, instead, the perfect time for an ode to, and preening display of, bipartisanship. After all, we wouldn't want to have elections be contests between parties about issues of importance to our lives, right?

And, natch, we got smoked ... and now the people who caused the problem have been put in charge of solving it, which is pretty damn bipartisan if you ask me.

It is a big part of the Left's project to control the historical narrative. If you consistently roll over for them, they will consistently roll over you. I'm delighted to find the White House now, six weeks after the election and eight months after the Bear Stearns fire-sale, telling us all about how Democrats fought off efforts to regulate Fannie and Freddie, about how "Democratic leaders brazenly encouraged Fannie and Freddie to loosen lending standards and instead encouraged the housing GSEs to play a larger and larger role in the housing market — even while explicitly acknowledging the rising risks[,]" etc.

Related
Who caused the global economic crisis? (Hint: it wasn’t George W. Bush)

"Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Times’s little drama that casts George Bush as the protagonist of our economic tragedy is not what’s in it but what isn’t. You will search in vain for the name “Barney Frank” or the phrase “Community Reinvestment Act.” But telling the story of our economic crisis with out those elements is like staging Macbeth without Macbeth or the witches."

Capital Is On Strike

"As Shlaes writes in The Forgotten Man, if Hoover caused the Depression, FDR prolonged it by constantly attacking the investor class, whom he called the “malefactors of great wealth”–a phrase originally said by the first Roosevelt, Theodore. FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court in 1937 was driven in part by his wish to tax the rich retroactively."

(Anti-) Mustard Seeds

"I’m going to get to mustard seeds in a moment, but let me first address two anti-mustard seeds: “bailout nation” and a pump-priming Fed. Bailout nation remains an ongoing issue. It really goes to the issue of government planning, industrial policy, and Uncle Sam picking winners and losers. This obviously includes Detroit, which we will probably get a decision on later this week.

Here’s a quote from President Bush that captures all my concerns about bailout nation: “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” Oh no. Say it ain’t so Mr. Bush. Either you believe in markets, or you don’t. Unfortunately, right now, the intellectual and policy tide out of Washington is anti-market. Not good."

Labels: clintons, democrats, dodd, economics, left-wing media, rangel

I wasn't going to write about politics before 2009 but this post by Ace about Andrea Mitchell (and all her ilk) really aggravated my goiter.

They never discuss the non-college educated or blue collar vote as a demographic we can learn from, but rather a phenomenon that must be studied, like the grooming habits of lab rats. The eternal question is always why such people -- or sub-people, perhaps -- vote differently than their betters do.

In other words, to put this into the language of the left, college-educated, white-collar values are "normative," the standard to which all else is compared, and all else is considered to be deviant from the normative values, requiring theorizing of a derogatory nature to explain the deviation from the norm.

Bitterly clinging, and all that. A belief in religion and positive attitude towards hunting and self-defense is not considered a positive value, but rather elements of a retarded culture in need of diagnosis.

Labels: left-wing media

I wonder whether or not the fairness doctrine will protect Thomas Sowell from the lefty-driven antics of the Connecticut Post. The paper has once again changed the title of his syndicated op-ed column to disguise the critical nature of his subject matter [Obama]. His op-ed in the Connecticut Post was changed from Obama and 'The Left' to Democratic candidate again compared with Hitler, Lenin

Obama and 'The Left' as published in Jewish World Review and Town Hall

The more you know...

1. Usually, antics.
a. a playful trick or prank; caper.
b. a grotesque, fantastic, or ludicrous gesture, act, or posture

Labels: connecticut post, left-wing media

My other brother (not this one) is fairly apolitical but asked when I thought the animosity between the left/right was going to end. I told him that neither McCain or Obama will bring peace because the nation will remain polarized until one side is brought to heel (by force if necessary). The left will never let go of 2000 and the right will never forget the vitriol spewed at GWB for the last eight years. It hasn't helped that people on the left have been whipped into a frenzy and driven to rage by the media, academia, and the arts.

I also find it truly laughable that some of the publications that systematically demonized GWB for eight-years are now asking that Obama be afforded the opportunity to heal the nation (world) unencumbered by rancor and dissent while their unhinged minions engage in lunacy like this (see below) on fresh targets.

Barbarians at the Gates--of the White House
Nowhere has the vileness of the Left been more sickening than in its treatment of Governor Palin...I don't think there is any precedent in our history for the shameful manner in which the Left has treated Sarah Palin...It is interesting to contemplate what a semi-pornographic video about Barack Obama, playing on the same sort of prejudices and stereotypes that are so disgustingly on display in Sullivan's video, would look like. Frankly, I can't imagine such a video being made, let alone featured on the web site of the once-proud Atlantic magazine. But on the Left, anything goes--the more slimy and disgusting, the better.

Labels: left-wing media, liberals, obama

The attacks on Joe Wurzelbacher by the MSM are a bit laughable. Joe was in his yard when Obama approached him but has now earned the ire and scrutiny of the fifth estate. Joe is an affront to the establishment because he has ambition. Joe, like my old Portuguese landlord, wants to do more...to be more...to earn more. And my landlord did. He barely spoke English but he retired to Portugal a very wealthy man.

The other thing about my landlord- he didn't make his money trading paper. He earned it with sweat and I never resented him for it (even when I was writing rent checks).

Perhaps the best summary of where this country is headed is in this article by Mark Steyn.

The heart of the American Dream is aspiration. That’s why people came here from all over the world. Back in eastern Europe, the Joe Bidens and Diane Sawyers of the day were telling Joe the Peasant: “Hey, look, man. You’re a peasant in the 19th century, just like your forebears were peasants in the 12th century and your descendants will be peasants in the 26th century. So you’re never gonna be earning 250 groats a year. Don’t worry about it. Leave it to us. We know better.” And Joe the Peasant eventually figured that one day he’d like to be able to afford the Premium Gruel with just a hint of arugula and got on the boat to Ellis Island. Because America is the land where a guy who doesn’t have a 250-grand business today might just have one in five or ten years’ time.

I think the story of Tito Munoz is equally inspiring because it demonstrates the growing divide between what the liberals think is right for us and what we're individually capable of.

And Obama's spread the wealth scheme is offensive to a free and hard working people...His plan - to spread the economic "success" that his party has engineered in New Jersey and Michigan - will fail because it has since time immemorial.

He is penalizing those who are trying to better themselves. He is stifling innovation and changing the course of a great and prosperous nation. No central planners have ever created prosperity by punishing those who seek to earn more by the sweat of their brow.

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success, too. My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." - Barack Hussein Obama

Labels: economics, left-wing media, liberals, obama

This Op-Ed by Thomas Sowell reminds me of this equally complementary quote by Abraham Lincoln:

"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

Sowell's Op-Ed received a title change in the Connecticut Post from, "Do Facts Matter" to "Don't believe everyone else; this is all the fault of liberals".

Either way, Sowell provides a strong and factual indictment of the high-ranking Democrats (including Obama) involved in the housing crisis as well as the complicity of the media to investigate.

Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years— including the present year— denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.

It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.

Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.

The root causes of this crisis are being ignored by the media and obscured a cult of personality (Seattle hosts an Obama Youth Parade). Obama and his slippery cohorts have been the beneficiaries. As Sowell writes

The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain— which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.

It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?

But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.

Labels: end times, left-wing media, liberals, obama, weekend

The attempt to centralize all power in the one capital city and, indeed, in its administrative quarter, means the assimilation of all possible rival institutions from monasteries to television stations, from harbour authorities to charitable foundations. All these can be eliminated in the name of democracy or efficiency, and the result is the creation of the one government machine into which all problems are fed and from which all wisdom is to emerge. All that is initially lost is the likelihood of the government's having to listen to informed criticism from outside its inner circle of officials. Thereafter the problems centre upon the growing size and complexity of the central administration. As the civil servants multiply there is an ever-increasing distance between the citizen and the nameless people who will ultimately decide upon his application, protest, or appeal.

- C. Northcote Parkinson

The Fourth Estate has already been absorbed (see below).

A Gallup survey says 52 percent of Americans do not trust news media, up from 30 percent in 1972. Are the two tied? Of course, they are. Who’s responsible for that?

Labels: end times, left-wing media, liberals, quotes

The Anchoress gives a pep talk on media bias after stating the cold hard facts:

By the way, we’re outnumbered. Team Mainstream has all the heavyweights, the guards, the tackles and the microphones, too - so they call the plays the way they see them, regardless of what is actually happening.

This is how I know we're grossly outnumbered:

Immigration 08' (Mobilizing Immigrant Voters) - "Simon Rosenberg has worked in national politics and the media world for more than 20 years."

GOOD Sheet: Coming to America - The GOOD Sheet (progressive agitprop) is being distributed by Starbucks.

Glenn Reynolds echoes The Anchoress:

EARLIER, I promised some thoughts on what to do about the news media's outright campaigning for Obama. They're not just in the tank, they're functioning as arms of the campaign, and Obama's strategy shows that he knows that and is relying on it.)

If you want to have a media environment that isn't dominated by the Gwen Ifills and Keith Olbermanns of the world, you need to ensure that other kinds of voices flourish. That means supporting the alternatives with your eyeballs, your subscriptions, your advertiser-patronage -- basically, your money. Businesses need money to flourish. There's a vast underserved population out there, for news, entertainment, movies, etc., and if people start serving it, the current "mainstream" media won't be so mainstream anymore. So if you're unhappy with current offerings, put your money where your mouth is.

I suppose Glenn's strategy will work until the DEMS pass the Fairness Doctrine.

Labels: democrats, immigration, left-wing media, liberals

Poor Nancy is SO blind with BDS that she's lost all her faculties. I would send her a coupon for some DEPEND® Undergarments if I thought she could figure out how to put them on.

Before your infant mind buys what agitprop CNN/NPR is selling 95 DEMS voted against the bailout (40% of Pelosi's caucus).

Related (Nacht und Nebel)
How the blogger with many visions™ knows the end times are coming.

◙ Exhibit 1 - YouTube pulled the video of the brainwashed children worshipping Obama. The remix can be viewed here.
◙ Exhibit 2
◙ Exhibit 3
◙ Exhibit 4
◙ Exhibit 5

Labels: democrats, left-wing media, liberals, pelosi

Are they writing and describing the U.S. Congress?

But there was nothing to be done; the hoteliers were beyond reform. 'If you chastise them with sword, cane or horsewhip,' wrote Smollett, 'they will either disappear entirely, and leave you without resource; or they will find the means to take vengeance by overturning your carriage.'

Related
Media tries to will the US into the age of Obamalot
I’ve noted before that we are now fighting an all out ideological war for the survival of the democratic republic. In fact, I’ve been making this same argument for years now: when the press, under the cover of “objectivity,” is allowed to function as an advocacy arm for a particular ideology and its titular representatives, what follows is a necessary skewing of facts — and a carefully constructed attempt to frame “stories” with “lessons” that the public will interpret “correctly” (according to those attempting to teach the lessons from the perspective of their own personal advocacy).

Labels: left-wing media

SHOCKER: Rep. Rangel Calls Palin 'Disabled'
Charlie Rangel on Palin: “You got to be kind to the disabled”

Related
Rangel tangle: Corruptocrat fights for his life
The Hill’s Chris Good reports that the House will move forward with an investigation of Democrat Rep. Charlie Rangel’s personal finances.

"Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they'd start speaking Spanish"

Labels: left-wing media, rangel

This time from The Anchoress:

Sometimes you just have to step back and be a little frivolous, in the face of all the madness, and it is both mean and crazy out there. Can you imagine the press not talking about the invasion of Sarah Palin’s privacy, and the press’ own unwillingness to co-operate with the FBI, because a) they’re Obama-enthralled and b) they don’t want to create “sympathy” for a candidate who - like unlike Hillary Clinton back in 2000 - has SERIOUSLY had her “space” invaded. And just imagine the way they’d be screaming if one of them found their email hacked into. They forget that the people they cover are people just like them. It’s just sad to see what the press has become...

Labels: end times, left-wing media

...berserk with BDS and maybe in need of medication, out-patient services, and restraining orders.

The Atlantic should have Googled Jill Greenberg before hiring her

Atlantic Monthly Editor to Offer Apology to McCain for Photog’s Doctored Pics

The Atlantic's PR Flacks: Jill Greenberg "Disgraced Herself," But We Stand By the "Respectful Cover" That Did Run

Unrepentant Photographer Turns McCain Into a Monster

That McCain Photo Controversy...

Media Bias: Personnel Is Policy

The Atlantic's McCain Cover

McCain Photo Fallout at The Atlantic

Labels: left-wing media, liberals

While some over privileged folks chase ghosts, prattle on endlessly about community/authenticity and invent injustice and bogeymen Yoani Sánchez fights tropical totalitarianism, one blog post at a time.

Let’s Push Raul Castro into Reforming Cuba
Earlier this year a Cuban blogger named Yoani Sanchez was selected as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential list. Sanchez, who faces incredible hardships to post her writings on her blog because of the purposeful lack of Internet access on the island, also won Spain’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. She writes about the absurd nature of life in Castro’s Cuba with her beautifully descriptive prose.

Related
"On Monday, August 24, a dissident punk rocker named Gorki Aguila was picked up by Cuban police for allegedly committing the Orwellian crime of “pre-criminal dangerousness.” Aguila, who fronts a band called Porno Para Ricardo, writes lyrics that are harshly critical of the regime.

On the appointed day, Gorki’s trial was postponed, then postponed again as a throng of supporters and members of the international media waited outside the court. In the matter of just one week, Gorki Aguila went from being a relatively unknown punk rocker to a cause célèbre. Raul Castro officially had a hot potato on his hands. Finally, at 5:00 p.m. (eight hours behind schedule) Gorki was brought into one of the regime’s kangaroo courts. He faced anywhere from one to four years in prison if convicted (everyone gets convicted). Then something unusual happened. The charges were reduced to a simple case of “disobedience” and Gorki was convicted (remember, everyone gets convicted) and sentenced to pay a fine of 600 pesos, which is roughly $40, about two months’ salary in Cuba.

Yes, changes are occurring in Cuba. The going rate for calling Fidel Castro a “c*ck sucker” on the island was reduced from a lengthy prison sentence to a $40 fine, a bargain that is sure to increase the levels of remittances to the island. This was most certainly a change that Raul Castro never envisioned having to make when he ascended to his brother’s throne."

Limestone Commentary
America is great because you can be wildly unproductive, use all kinds of excuses for it, and still call any elected official a c*ck sucker (or retarded cowboy fellow). Even better, Hollywood, academia and the MSM will help you.

Labels: cuba, left-wing media, liberals

Poll: 51 percent say reporters are trying to hurt Palin

Over half of U.S. voters (51%) think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and 24% say those stories make them more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in November.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) also believe the GOP vice presidential nominee has better experience to be president of the United States than Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Labels: left-wing media

"But Sarah Palin didn’t court this anger with more anger. That would be a turn-off. What most frustrates Americans is that we are a happy, optimistic, can-do people ceaselessly harangued by media solons, delusional academics, post-sovereign Eurocrats, and the Democrats who love them. While we free and feed the world, they can’t tell us enough that we’re racist, imperialist, torturing louts. We know it’s a libel, an endless stream of slander. But we also know it’s an absurd libel. We’re tired of hearing it, but taking it too seriously would give it power it doesn’t deserve..."

This is every lefty I've ever met. America is ALWAYS wrong and patriotism is the religion of a Neanderthal. The only enlightened people are the intellectuals from the right schools in the northeast, San Franciscans, and Europeans.

Labels: left-wing media, liberals, obama

Some thoughts from Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin.

Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

And Victor Davis Hanson has given us a new definition.

Palinize: to slander and caricature a working-class female public figure for the noble advancement of liberalism.

Labels: left-wing media, liberals, obama

According to ACE CBS and NBC didn't broadcast the speech. I'm watching on C-SPAN now and Lieberman is speaking ("Country matters more than party."). The Lieberman speech is sharp and it will provide dozens of soundbites (now I know WHY the NUTROOTS tried to purge him).

The Fred Thompson speech (transcript) had some memorable lines. He gave a rousing and vigorous defense of Sarah Palin.

Thompson on Sarah Palin
Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit.

Thompson on Foreign Policy & Soaring Rhetoric
The respect he is given around the world is not because of a teleprompter speech designed to appeal to American critics abroad, but because of decades of clearly demonstrated character and statesmanship.

Thompson on the Democratic Nominee
To deal with these challenges the Democrats present a history making nominee for president.

History making in that he is the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee to ever run for President. Apparently they believe that he would match up well with the history making, Democrat controlled Congress. History making because it's the least accomplished and most unpopular Congress in our nation's history.

Thompson on NEW & EXPANDED Democratic Taxes
Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases.

They tell you they are not going to tax your family.

No, they're just going to tax "businesses"! So unless you buy something from a "business", like groceries or clothes or gasoline ... or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small "business", don't worry ... it's not going to affect you.

They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the "other" side of the bucket! That's their idea of tax reform.

Thompson using Obama's own words from the Saddleback Civil Forum
And we need a President who doesn't think that the protection of the unborn or a newly born baby is above his pay grade.

Labels: left-wing media, the good guys

The 24/7 non-stop coverage of Bristol Palin's pregnancy by the New York Times and CNN was all the encouragement I needed to make a donation to the McCain campaign. There's always one naked display of over-the-top bias by the MSM that incites me to action and this was it.

The Sarah Palin nomination has obviously made some folks at the DNC/MSNBC/NYTIMES/OBAMA syndicate nervous. Andy McCarthy notes that the NY TIMES devoted most of its homepage to "critical analysis" of Palin (Sarah and Bristol) this morning. My favorite article was "Palin Daughter's Pregnancy Interrupts Script". How about some NY TIMES reportage on terrorist William Ayers and his connection to Hussein Obama?

The democrats routinely behave irrationally when "a member of their own" rejects their bankrupt ideology.

Related
A Nation in Crisis: The Bristol Palin National Pregnancy Crisis, Day 2
"Liberated Women", MSM Scramble to Reinforce the Glass Ceiling

Labels: left-wing media

"But public sentiment might just as easily have switched the other way is press criticism of Soviet objectives, not to mention Soviet atrocities in Eastern Europe, had been as free as it was over Churchill's intervention in Greece. When he sent in British troops to frustrate a Communist takeover, the American newspapers were quick to accuse him of imperialist ambitions."

Countdown to Victory by Barry Turner

The good news now is that a majority of Americans believe the media is biased and in the employ of liberals.

Labels: left-wing media, liberals

There's enough marketing savvy/sizzle in Obama™ the brand to make AdvertisingAge® - The Need for Partnership at a Time of Fragmentation. Obama™ the brand, with it's shiny doubleplusgood newspeak and iPod aesthetics, has many intelligent people fooled.

Related
The Brand Called Obama

Old Glory in Berlin
The television feed of Obama's internationalist speech in Berlin frequently cut to Germans waving American flags. Perhaps it's just the cynic in me, but I noticed that they all appeared to be the exact same size and make. It was almost as if some outside entity (a presidential campaign, perhaps?) handed them out in order to deliver the best possible visual images during the speech. Video of anti-American Europeans once again embracing the stars and stripes in an organic display of hope and unity would certainly be powerful stuff. The question is whether the Obama campaign manufactured this image for political gain. If they did, the press bought it hook, line and sinker.

The digital divide
The gap between technologists supporting Republicans and Democrats continues to widen. In addition to financial support, influential technologists like Chris Hughes are now providing strategic support to Obama.

"In a great collaborative effort, Barack Obama partnered with Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, to develop a web presence and better employ the social networking that helped engage younger voters and clinch the Democratic nomination. The campaign also had a very well-organized grassroots effort with first-hand knowledge of the political climate and voting protocol in each state and the expertise to resonate with local communities. The collective skills of these local partners helped the "Obama brand" connect with its audience and raise capital in record proportions."

The left was quick to embrace the tools built by the technologists. A quick survey of reddit on Friday showed mostly anti-conservative, anti-Semitic or general BDS articles. The "what's hot" of reddit included; Send Rove to jail petition passes 100,000, John McCain Covered Up $4 Billion Theft For Friend, and Lev Leviev, Israel's richest man, buying blood diamonds, funding illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, undermining the prospects for Middle East peace.

I'm not sure the technologists are enough to be the margin of victory for Obama in 2008. What is evident is the technologists represent yet another lever in the arsenal of mind-molding establishments that Democrats can depend on in the general election. And what's most frightening about Al Gore's relationship with Steve Jobs (and Sergey Brin's with Obama) is the technology available today assuages the liberal need for a sense of order (more aptly defined as Fascism).

Labels: democrats, end times, left-wing media, liberals, obama

David Gergen, a man whose shallow thoughts have reached the ears of too many presidents, made the point that Obama is a great story, and his campaign knows how to make things newsworthy, while McCain is boring, and his campaign is boring and therefore not newsworthy. That, not bias, according to Gergen, explains the majority of the additional coverage he gets. What constitutes newsworthy? Gergen cited the fact that McCain is going to give his convention acceptance speech in the normal convention venue, while Obama is going to do his at a stadium packed with 70,000 people. To me, this is evocative of something Leni Riefenstahl might have documented. But the word Gergen used, over and over was "sizzle."

Source

Labels: left-wing media, obama

...in a cycle of non-stop, the-world-is-ending bad news.

The Rapid Decline of the New York Times



The money quote...

"The future looks grim indeed for Pinch Sulzberger and the company he leads. Slowly accelerating decline is the best case scenario at the moment. For a man born to wealth unto the generations, prominence, prestige, and a legacy to uphold, it must be humbling to see the future of the family patrimony crumbling before him."

Since the government is bailing out everyone these days the blogger with many visions™ predicts that Congress will float a bill to subsidize these old dinosaurs in 2009.

Related
Vanity Fair Asks Why People Hate the NY Times

Then there's the question of the paper's attitude. "Almost in inverse proportion to its own survivability, The New York Times becomes more and more holier-than-thou," says Michael Wolff. "You’ve lost your way journalistically, you've lost your way from a business standpoint, you've lost your way from an authoritative standpoint, and yet you are still so holier-than-thou."

Update
This puff piece in Advertising Age on Pinch Sulzberger is oxymoronic.

Despite this expansion into the Journal's core competency, Mr. Sulzberger avoids talk of direct confrontation. As a London correspondent for the AP from 1976 to 1978, when he joined the Times, he saw British papers react when Mr. Murdoch took over the Times of London. "It didn't help them, because they stopped remembering who they were," he said. "We're not going to."

I'm not sure it's working Pinch. The cranks who buy your rag aren't enough to offset your complete lack of business acumen.

Update 2
Belief Growing That Reporters are Trying to Help Obama Win

The New York Times’ refusal today (Monday) to run an op-ed piece by John McCain challenging an article in the paper less than a week ago by Barack Obama is sure to further fuel the belief that much of the major media is biased in favor of the Democratic candidate.

The public is validating (via Rasmussen) what many conservatives have long believed.

The money quote...

A Rasmussen Reports survey earlier this year found that just 24% of American voters have a favorable opinion of the New York Times. The paper’s ratings divided sharply along partisan and ideological lines, with liberals far more supportive of the paper than conservatives.

Update 3
Genuine Shock: New York Times Runs Obama Editorial, Refuses to Run McCain's

The Gray Lady Rejects McCain
The story of the senator's discarded op-ed explains why the New York Times is dying.

Labels: left-wing media

I haven't written too much about politics lately...Some of it is exhaustion and some of it is just circumstantial. I'm unhappy with the GOP and haven't written them any checks. The source of my unhappiness isn't the economy (sub-prime, high gas prices, inflation, and/or the dollar) or Iraq. The economy is cyclical and will emerge from it's funk (UNLESS the politicos interfere with it). According to the mainstream media we've been living in Hooverville anyway since day three of the Bush Administration so we've known nothing BUT economic misery for 7+ years!

History will judge Iraq and when you separate your emotion and consider the facts (if you can find them) a different picture emerges.

[UPDATE: This doesn't fit the DEM talking points -- World praises progress in Iraq as Baghdad seeks debt relief]

I was watching a documentary on Harry Truman on PBS and it was Truman who went and asked a Republican Congress for buckets of money to aggressively fight communism in Turkey and Greece (what a damn war monger).

My real unhappiness with the GOP has to do with corruption and a reckless abandonment of core principles. This has been done, in my opinion, for the purpose of appeasing the leftward lurch of the mob and for selfish gain. I would much rather the party remain true to the principles of limited government, private property, individual responsibility (devoid in any lefty dictionary) and free markets AND re-trench in the minority. It is, and has always been, our responsibility to take punishment for defending history, protecting the permanent things, respecting tradition, and promoting the individual over the collective. We're destined to lose (to be bloodied) but so it goes.

The party of course has tried to scare me straight. I receive solicitations from the GOP saying things like "stop the Democratic takeover." But from what? What are you offering that isn't a little less left than Pelosi/Obama/Reid? Quite frankly I'm exhausted and would much rather make some pop-corn and watch Jimmy Carter Part II. I gaily look forward to the morning in February when the mainstream media realize that, with the ghosts of Bush exhausted, that there's no one left to blame.

Sure. The mainstream media may find the 1 or 2 remaining Republicans in the House to blame but it won't sell on Main Street forever. Obama's honeymoon will be short and if his policies (open borders, naked appeasement, nationalization, higher taxes, tariffs, and BIGGER government) doesn't yield quick results, his friends in the mainstream media will struggle to find enough polish for that turd. Nancy took over as Speaker of the House in 2006 and less than two-years removed Congressional approval ratings are lower than the President's. Nancy is blaming "obstructionist" Republicans for now but soon that smokescreen will be gone. If the federal government is run like the People's Republic of California there will be enough economic pain to remind voters that socialism has failed from time immemorial. Whether or not voters do anything about it (and if the GOP can find their virgin soul) is the subject of another post.

Update
A list for the GOP:

• Reform (and cut) entitlements
• Cut spending
• Tort reform
• Lower taxes (and tax reform - flat tax)
• More trade agreements
• Treat lobbying as a criminal activity (eh, it's 6:00 AM)
• Marriage amendment
• Fight judicial activism
• Help the UN relocate
• School vouchers
• Immigration reform (beginning with border security)
• Fight (not prosecute) the global war on terror
• Privatize mass transit
• Promote private property as best means of protecting the environment and promoting conservation
• Broad incentives to industry for exploring alternative fuels (cut spending and "re-invest" those tax dollars here)
• Eliminate earmarks/pork barrel spending
• Re-introduce compulsory civil service
• Drill in ANWR (drill in the 48 states), build refineries, and build nuclear facilities (environmentalists be damned)

Labels: democrats, left-wing media, obama, the good guys

It appears in the Washington Times and it's whipped ALLAHPUNDIT into a fighting frenzy. It just makes me depressed and reminds me that our country's journalism programs (universities) are manufacturing marbles for the echo chamber.

Right underrepresented in press's diversity
Only 6 percent of the national press corps describe themselves as "conservative" in a population that includes reporters, editors and producers from major television and radio networks, daily newspapers, news wires and online sources.

Those who consider themselves "very conservative" amount to just 2 percent, according to a wide-ranging survey of 585 journalists and news executives released yesterday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Source

The same anti-American elite academic radicals who support Obama.

Labels: democrats, education, left-wing media

...and with that quote from John McCain I warm to his nomination.



Update
I lifted this from NRO but it captures my sentiments!

I'm the typical conservative who has not been happy with the McCain ascendancy, but the NYTimes has accomplished what Tojo did with Pearl Harbor. They have awoken a sleeping giant. We have been reminded who the real enemy is and it is not Senator McCain. I'm ordering my bumper sticker today.

Labels: left-wing media

This is from the front page of the Connecticut Post on Tuesday, January 29th.

Attacks on current regime dominate Hartford speech

I thought it was reportage/news on the Chávez or Ahmadinejad regime but it was actually an "objective piece of journalism" from the imagination of Ken Dixon on Hillary's campaign stop in Connecticut.

Labels: left-wing media

Jim A. Kuypers, assistant professor of communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, examines media bias in president's speeches

"Immediately following 9/11, the mainstream news media (represented by CBS, ABC, NBC, USA Today, New York Times, and Washington Post) did echo Bush, but within eight weeks it began to intentionally ignore certain information the president was sharing, and instead reframed the president's themes or intentionally introduced new material to shift the focus."

This goes beyond reporting alternate points of view. "In short," Kupyers explained, "if someone were relying only on the mainstream media for information, they would have no idea what the president actually said. It was as if the press were reporting on a different speech."

Kuypers "detected massive bias on the part of the press." In fact, Kuypers calls the mainstream news media an "anti-democratic institution" in the conclusion.

Limestone Commentary
Is there some connection between media bias and fascism? The cartoon may hold the answer.

Related
Might Google Buy the New York Times?

Labels: clintons, democrats, left-wing media

Excerpts from "American Honor" by Bret Stephens from the Wall Street Journal. While his op-ed is about the revival of John McCain's political fortunes, it also strikes at two tenets of liberal faith- (1) America needs to be loved by the global community (Davos) and (2) that we need to be put in our place. He also, by channeling McCain, indicts the media elite (mainstream media) for their obtuseness:

He [McCain] rails against a news media that only begrudgingly recognizes American military gains, repeatedly citing as Exhibit A Time magazine's refusal to name Gen. David Petraeus as its Person of the Year for 2007.

More importantly, Stephens, again channeling McCain, takes aim at the one belief that has sustained liberals throughout the entire war in Iraq. He writes:

Above all, he [McCain] not only warns against the policy consequences of a failure in Iraq, but also stands against a philosophy, or psychology, that seeks to make a virtue of failure.

This is another Vietnam legacy. Beyond the purely pragmatic argument that the war in Southeast Asia was unwinnable, there was also a sense among opponents of the war that defeat would, in some deep way, be balm for America's soul. "For all the anguish felt over the loss of American lives, can we acknowledge there is something proper in the way that hubristic American power has been thwarted?" asked antiwar writer James Carroll in 2006, explicitly making the connection between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

About the Democratic candidates, he writes:

For the Democratic candidates in this race, it has only a conditional and tenuous relation to the word "victory" in its usual sense. If it means anything at all to them, it seems to be mainly in the sense of the good opinion of America's traditional friends, many of whom opposed the Iraq venture from the start. This kind of honor, also known as ingratiation, is gained by improving America's poll numbers in global opinion surveys.

Labels: democrats, left-wing media

I'm doing my political "week in review" recap and just read this article by Mark Steyn that has me in fits. He writes:

Last Thursday, Nancy Pelosi, as is the fashion, used the phrase "the children" like some twitchy verbal tic, a kind of Democrat Tourette's syndrome: "This is a discussion about America's children...We could establish ourselves as the childre's Congress...Come forward on behalf of the children...I tried to do that when I was sworn in as speaker surrounded by children. It was a spontaneous moment, but it was one that was clear in its message: we are gaveling this House to order on behalf of the children."

His article dovetails nicely with the fictional war stories told by Beauchamp, published by TNR, and commented on brilliantly by Peggy Noonan.

I'll jump here, or lurch I suppose, to something I am concerned about that I think I am observing accurately. It has to do with what sometimes seems to me to be the limited lives that have been or are being lived by the rising generation of American professionals in the arts, journalism, academia and business. They have had good lives, happy lives, but there is a sense with some of them that they didn't so much live it as view it. That they learned too much from media and not enough from life's difficulties. That they saw much of what they know in a film or play and picked up all the memes and themes.

In terms of personal difficulties, they seem to have had less real-life experience, or rather different experiences, than their rougher predecessors. They grew up affluent in a city or suburb, cosseted in material terms, and generally directed toward academic and material success. Their lives seem to have been not crowded or fearful, but relatively peaceful, at least until September 2001, which was very hard.

I'm not sure the children need the kind of help Nancy is offering.

Related
"We seem to have lost some of the common sense that came so readily to previous generations in our country. We have too many people in this nation who seem to have a minimal knowledge of history and economics, who are ready to abandon the capitalism, independence, and common decency that made this nation into the greatest country this earth has ever seen -- all in exchange for the largely empty promises of demagogues who will "take care of us."

Source

Labels: democrats, left-wing media

The unspeakable American culture
Journalism's elite don't dare speak of the patriotism that holds this country together.

Jonah Goldberg

In a recent speech at the National Press Club, Katie Couric expressed somber disapproval of the jingoistic excesses after 9/11. Among the things that vexed her: "The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying 'we' when referring to the United States." From what I can tell, nobody among the journalistic swells bothered to ask, "Who isn't 'we,' Kemo Sabe?"

For cosmopolitans like Couric, however, the very best thing you could say about those heroic astronauts was that they weren't part of the national "we" but of the global "we," for the only "we" that counts is that of "we are the world." That also seems to be the view of the elite crowd that chews the foie gras at places like Davos or wherever the Clinton Global Initiative meets. For such globalists, it just seems obvious that the U.S. Supreme Court should consult polls of Africans or the laws of France to glean the real meaning of the American Constitution.

In Europe and Canada, the cure for every malady seems to be multiculturalism. This is the odd notion that all cultures are equal -- except for that of your own nation, which should be made to constantly bend to the aggrieved sensibilities of minority cultures.

Read more

Labels: democrats, left-wing media

Ace is on fire regarding the uselessness of lefties - intellectuals, media, entertainment, education, leadership, internationlists, and the rank-and-file - in responding to the crisis in Burma (sorry NPR).

They'll kill as many monks as they like, because they know their "opponents" here are a bunch of ineffectual, elite faux-intellectuals whose idea of opposing mass-murder is chuckling at a delightful Calvin Trillin poem in The New Yorker.

There's only one group of men who can stop them, and the international swells despise those men for their uncouth ability to actually get shit done despite not having the proper credentials from good prep schools like Phillips and Deerfield.

Here are excerpts from his original post:

It's a Good War, to liberals and chin-strokers, because the US is doing absolutely nothing there to abate slaughter and tyranny. Which makes reporters and academics effectively our "front line" of defense -- which is how they want it. Their "defense" amounts for nothing, of course, and saves no lives and destroys no tyrant's bunkers, but they get to be the stars of this do-nothing immorality play, which is better than the non-college-educated morons in the US military who got stuck in Iraq getting to be the stars.

So we can all cluck, cluck about how horrible this all is and pretend that it matters a whit that we are collectively "horrified."

But it's a lie, because it doesn't matter how we feel about it. It's what we do about it that counts. And were Bush to announce airstrikes of opportunity on government forces tomorrow, the MSM and our very-concerned media and academic classes would suddenly find all of this not nearly as "horrifying" as they find it now.

Read it all...

It's only a matter of days before the Save Burma signs start appearing in the lawns of the 375K homes here in Connecticut.

Related
This is from the Belmont Park Post Parade Magazine(s) World News Bullets

"After the Myanmar military's brutal crackdown on three days of demonstrations, the streets were quieter Saturday, with may protesters losing hope and pleading for intervention by the outside world."

What exactly does the UN do?

Labels: democrats, left-wing media

...the media is a cohort of like minded lefty automatons.

Footnote: In an embarrassment to the industry, some staffers at a Seattle Times news meeting cheered when Rove's resignation was announced. To his credit, Editor David Boardman made the incident public and warned that staff meetings should not "evolve into a liberal latte klatch."

Source

Labels: left-wing media

...staffed by privileged, pretentious and obnoxious ninnies.

Labels: left-wing media

There is considerable buzz this morning about the results of Pew Global Attitudes survey and its revelation that Americans are pessimistic.

I don't ever remember the country being this polarized so evenly (50/50). Also, what fool would dismiss the effects of a 24/7 all media blitz telling us how bad things are because of GWB. As John at Power Line writes:

"I seriously doubt that nearly all Democrats really believe the nation is more or less doomed to decline; if a Democratic President is elected next November, the country's prospects will brighten considerably in their eyes. There is a reason why the theme song of winning campaigns has traditionally been, Happy Days Are Here Again."

One day some enterprising graduate student will write her thesis on how much that positive media blitz is worth. I know that as soon as a DEM is in the White House all of us will once again live in the land of milk and honey (and no one will ever have to listen to Jon Stewart again). Happy days indeed!

Labels: democrats, left-wing media

Labels: democrats, left-wing media

The effort to bring back the Fairness Doctrine is entirely about fear. Durbin and his associates are afraid that they have lost the debate, and they want to shut down the forum rather than acknowledge it. Either that, or Durbin and Barbara Boxer and anyone else who wants the government to dictate the content of political speech think you're too stupid to find differing points of view.

The Fairness Doctrine never made any sense at any time, but today's communications market make it especially inappropriate. We have millions of Americans debating issues on the Internet at places like Captain's Quarters. News sources from around the world can be accessed within seconds (or minutes, if you're stuck on dial-up). Talk radio occupies a small niche in a cornucopia of information sources.

Anyone who claims that Americans can't access all sides on an issue is either being deliberately disingenuous or is hopelessly obtuse. I'll leave it to the reader to decide which applies to Dick Durbin. In the meantime, kudos to Norm Coleman for staying on top of this assault on free political speech.

Source

There's a reason why lefties are often caricatured as smug, pretentious, snooty, condescending and preachy.

Labels: democrats, left-wing media

Blue on Blue? Moore attacks CNN (Sanjay GOOP-ta) for allowing Iraq war (ironic since Clinton and DEMS had intelligence prior to GWBs election on Sadaam's WMD's).

"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." -- Bill Clinton in 1998

Moore has the audacity to accuse CNN of carrying water for GWB? CNN is the broadcast wing of the DNC propaganda machine.

Labels: left-wing media

Symbolic

The soaring new New York Times tower — already known for its weird toilets (when flushed, they apparently sound like a kitten being strangled), its weirder elevators (no buttons, and no indication of what floor they're on), a leak problem (editor Bill Keller's office got soggy in a recent rainstorm), and a mouse problem (reported by Gawker) — still has a few more surprises between the floorboards: maggots. "It's hard to put out a newspaper when you're worried about what might fall on your head," one Times staffer told us this week. "One of the photo editors was sitting at her desk and maggots started falling from the ceiling tile on to her head."

Labels: left-wing media

A DEM majority may be the only thing that protects this POS one day.

Labels: left-wing media

...and Libby won't serve 1 day in jail!

Snow then opened the floor to questions. But the White House press corps had not a single question on these important topics. What followed was--by my count; sometimes it is hard to distinguish individual questions in the general hysteria--92 questions about Scooter Libby.

Source

Deep breaths Nancy. Deep breaths.

Labels: democrats, left-wing media

Why won't Nancy Pelosi do anything about this?

Oil prices rebounded Monday from early declines to settle above $71 for the first time in 10 months as traders focused on a refinery outage in Kansas and new accusations about Iran's role in Lebanon and Iraq.

Early in the day, investors sold to lock in profits from last week's rally, which drove prices above $70 a barrel for the first time since August. But as the day wore on, light, sweet crude for August delivery rose, settling up 41 cents at $71.09 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange and up from a session low of $69.57. On Friday, oil prices rose to close above $70 a barrel for the first time in 10 months.

Source

As an aside, why are the DEMS heroes and "courageous" when acting as obstructionist(s) in the minority while the GOP is demonized for doing the same? You don't need to answer since I'm playing on the theme of the day- media narrative.

Related
Dem Congress fails to deliver on promises...

Labels: democrats, economics, left-wing media

Labels: left-wing media

FOX NEWS ran a program last evening ("Banned on PBS: Muslims Against Jihad") about the tax-payer funded documentary that PBS refused to air about the difference between moderate Muslims and the radicals who want to kill us. (they also aired the documentary). I blogged about it here, here and here.

Tune in this weekend, as FOX News Channel presents the documentary the Public Broadcasting System didn't want you to see.

FOX NEWS Description
It's a film about the difference between moderate Muslims and the radicals who want to kill us. It asks where are the moderate Muslims and why aren't they speaking out against the jihadists? And it was financed with $675,000 of taxpayers' money.

It was commissioned as part of the PBS series "America at the Crossroads" about the post 9/11 world, but PBS executives rejected it.

PBS claims the filmmakers were "alarmist, overreaching and unfair."

The filmmakers say they were censored because of liberal bias at PBS.

On a topic this important, we think you have the right to decide for yourself.

You can learn more about the FOX NEWS program here and here.

Labels: left-wing media

I like the factoids (did you know) at stophernow.com in the left-hand navigation:

As a senior at Wellesley College, Hillary Rodham wrote her thesis on the tactics of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky. In 1993, this thesis was hidden from view at the request of the Clinton White House.

The Hillary Show is frightening (and thus achieves its objective). Rodham is just as polarizing as GWB. She's a little bit Oprah and Rosie insofar as her new age(ish) belief in the power of self and her virulent disdain for tradition and religion. I suspect that Hillary decided a long time ago that religion was a nuisance and something she must endure as a politician. It's been my experience that secularists develop a kind of arrogance- that those who believe in anything but themselves (and maybe the collective wisdom of the village) are simpletons.

And this brings up Hussein Obama and the narrative being pushed by his brethren in the MSM. According to RED STATE (Obama To Christians: We Are The Way, The Truth, and The Life — Not Christ.):

We should be prepared for a lot of this in 2008. The Democrats, in cooperation with the MSM, have decided to start pushing the idea that Christians are outside the mainstream of American values. We Christians are, to borrow a phrase, dividers not uniters.

Obama sounds a little like Rosie who said something very similar.

The fact remains that it's the left acting as an aggressor and overreacting to those defending people who believe in something greater than the state (and themselves). As RED STATE writes:

It is the left that has advances a secular agenda. It has tried to remove God from our coinage and our pledge. It is the left that has been most aggressive in denying students the right to pray in graduation ceremonies. It is the left that would rather starve the homeless than allow churches to participate in federal aid programs. It is the left that has forced church affiliated healthcare providers to provide services that go against church teachings...

***UPDATE***

Court bars suit against faith-based plan.The caption at Hot Air:

Supreme Court rules on faith-based initiatives: Bush 1, atheists 0

Labels: clintons, democrats, left-wing media

***UPDATE***

I was waiting for a good quote on the subject and just found this...

If the producers at 60 Minutes could deal honestly with the fact that they were just plain old liberals, they would have thought to say "Hey, maybe we're missing something?" Instead, high on arrogance and addle-brained by denial, they plunged ahead and ran that Memo story, destroying Dan Rather's career and proving for all time what conservatives have been saying about 60 Minutes and Dan Rather for decades.

- Jonah Goldberg

While the legend of Gunga Dan grows the cloak protecting the press as nothing more than a shill for the DEMS disintegrates. The rage/hatred/animosity the press has for President Bush now makes perfect sense (and I suspected this all along). They failed to defeat him three times and that has only fueled their reckless bias.

The rage will only abate when they have an adminstration that shares their progressive worldview. Once they have the right administration the "news" will get decidedly more optimistic and we can all stop cowering in fear and enjoy a type of bliss that can only come from ignorance.

This is the second article this week about journalists leaning left. The timing is perfect because the Center for American Progress is launching an all-out assault on talk radio. The Center for American Progress was founded by former Clinton chief-of-staff John Podesta (more).

MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

Source

Labels: clintons, democrats, left-wing media

We have complained from time to time about the CNN Airport News Channel that we are forced to endure during waits for flights. Now my conservative cousin from New York informs me of another insidious intrusion CNN is foisting upon an even more captive audience...

Source: Powerline

Limestone Commentary
I ALWAYS try to find a gate w/out the CNN AIRPORT TELESCREEN. It's like living with Debbie Downer 24/7 and why would anyone want to start a vacation with some CNN stooge droning on about our "climate in crisis"?

Labels: left-wing media

...within corporation.

Go ahead, drink it in.

The BBC has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded.

The report claims that coverage of single-issue political causes, such as climate change and poverty, can be biased - and is particularly critical of Live 8 coverage, which it says amounted to endorsement.

It warns that celebrities must not be pandered to and allowed to hijack the BBC schedule.

After a year-long investigation the report, published today, maintains that the corporation’s coverage of day-to-day politics is fair and impartial.

Source

Labels: left-wing media