I’m not sure what this could mean
I don’t think you’re what you seem
I do admit to myself
That if I hurt someone else
Then I’ll never see just what we’re meant to be

— New Order, Bizarre Love Triangle

Well it’s official – the mainstream media now has a candidate in the GOP primary race. How else to explain the absurd level of coverage the media has granted to Jon Huntsman? A candidate who has consistently polled in the low single digits since rumors of his candidacy first appeared. A candidate who up until a few weeks ago was virtually unknown even amongst politically active conservatives. Case in point, a pollster in Iowa surveyed 481 registered Republicans in late May and only 1 respondent (a 2008 Obama voter, naturally) indicated that they would vote for Huntsman. Not even 1% – just one!

And yet this is the candidate whom Time has already deemed the “candidate Democrats most fear,” and whom the National Journal is inexplicably calling a “formidable contender.” Then there is the New York Times which recently devoted 6000 words describing how Huntsman is uniquely suited to fill the “vacuum” left, I guess, by the six-to-seven other qualified candidates in the race. And where would Huntsman be without Politico, which has effectively served as Huntsman’s campaign website in waiting, running literally hundreds of features, articles, and blurbs about him in just the past month alone?

Yes, to many in the mainstream media Jon Huntsman is apparently the Most Interesting Man in the World. (He once dropped out of high school to play in a rock band. He speaks Mandarin Chinese, and Hokkien. His blood smells like cologne.) And given that Huntsman has nowhere to go but up in the polls, it’s safe to assume I think that this is only the beginning of the media’s love affair. Just wait until you see the fawning that will ensue after the next debate when Huntsman ever-so-calmly and politely declines to engage in any meaningful critiques of the President. I can feel the tingle up Chris Matthews’ leg already.

So what gives – why so much crazy media love for Huntsman? The obvious answer of course is that in Huntsman the liberal-leaning media sees a reflection of many of their own views. He’s a Republican who doesn’t sound like all the other “crazy” Republicans. He says things they actually like (from a Republican) about civility and compromise. He’s the “adult in the room.”

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In December 2008, a few days after Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested, I discovered this photograph in a newsletter published by the State of Illinois on November 12 celebrating the election of Barack Obama:

The photo was posted along with an article discussing the selection process for Obama’s replacement in the Senate. The caption to the photo read simply:

Governor Blagojevich confers with now President-elect Barack Obama

Within hours after we published the photo on Verum Serum, and after it was picked up by Hot Air and ultimately the Drudge Report (along with other blogs), the newsletter disappeared from the State of Illinois web site. Fortunately we were smart enough to save a copy.

The question of course is this: when did this meeting take place and what exactly were Blagojevich and the President-elect “conferring” about? (more…)

It’s hard to respect a “journalist” who repeatedly insulted and mocked leading conservatives he was assigned cover, and even wished death on some of them, to a secretive email list comprised of liberal media figures around the country.  Whatever this says about Weigel’s political orientation, it speaks loudly and clearly to the fact that he was an unprofessional jerk, and that’s putting it kindly.

Weigel has mostly owned up to this fact, which I think says something positive about his character.

But as long as Weigel is airing more of his “Journolist” laundry, perhaps it should be pointed out that at one point in time Weigel aired this same kind of vitriol against leading liberal figures.

For example, do you think Dave still thinks Paul Krugman is “obviously insane”, “simple-minded” and a “cancer on the Times”? Does he still think that Krugman’s column is a “litany of propaganda, lies, and insults”?

Does he still think that Maureen Dowd “sucks” and that her work is “absolute tripe”? Does he still wonder: “why is this woman employed”?

Because I sure do (all of the above), but then I do not have a professional need to ingratiate myself with the liberal media establishment. (more…)

In the aftermath of President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, ABC and Politico, among others, have reported on Kagan’s history of political contributions. Not surprisingly, she has donated exclusively to Democrats, with Obama receiving more than half ($6300) of the $12,300 in total she contributed to national level campaigns in the preceding 10 years. (Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry were also recipients.)

The Boston Herald ran a story which also highlighted some of her contributions to state-level candidates, including Deval Patrick’s gubernatorial campaign and Tim Murray for lieutenant governor. However, every media outlet has either failed to report, or missed, a campaign contribution of Kagan’s which seems pretty notable given how little is known about her political beliefs and preferences.

In 2006, Kagan made a maximum ($500) campaign contribution to John Bonifaz who was running in the Democratic primary campaign for Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  I suspect like me most of you have probably never heard of John Bonifaz, but it turns out he is about as far left as you can get before joining the Bernie Sanders fan club. His opponent in the 2006 race actually accused him of being a closet Green Party supporter, which of course is just a polite way of calling someone a socialist. But putting aside labels, here are a few facts about Bonifaz which demonstrate his extreme left credentials:

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Nancy Pelosi said there were protesters parading around with swastikas – it turns out she was right! The images below are a sampling from a gallery posted by AZCentral.com, covering the protests in Arizona against the passage of SB 1070.

Yes, that’s Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s face adorned on the piñata being bashed, to the amusement of the surrounding crowd. But it’s OK – she’s a Republican after all.

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On this anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, with all the ginned-up media concern over the potential for tea party fervor to morph into acts of domestic terrorism, just wait until the media catches wind of this virulently anti-government song published by a very prominent political activist:

F*ck the government, they never done sh*t for me

For my people their defeat is a victory

“The man” wants the whole world under his thumb,

Plunders the globe and tries to buy us off with the crumbs…

That’s not your flag, not your government

Not your war, not your President

Now is not the time to be silent

Raise your voices, raise your fist

Against the real terrorist – Uncle Sam.

Whoa – the American government is the “real terrorist”? (more…)

So Jason Levin is the total moron who put together the “Crash the Tea Party” web site. Levin is not your garden variety moron though. I mean it takes a pretty impressive level of idiocy to attempt to covertly infiltrate the biggest and most widely covered political movement in the country at the moment using a publicly available web site to provide details and solicit support for your plan. This idea is so completely idiotic that when I first heard about it I figured Levin would turn out to be an internet marketer and that this was really just a PR ploy. But alas, it seems he really is just stupid.

However, since Levin is now getting some media coverage for his little scheme – from the AP and TPM among others – I decided to dig around a bit and see if I could add anything interesting to the public record on Mr. Levin. (Not surprisingly, Free Republic was the first to expose Levin’s real identity and has dug up a lot of other useful information about him.)

What I managed to find is Levin’s personal blog on Blogger, which unfortunately (if not surprisingly) seems to have been recently blocked from public view. Equally regrettable, the site is also excluded from Google’s web caching feature so it is impossible to view any full pages on his site.

However, by using the partial text results from this Google search, along with a Digg post, and some guesswork on key words, I’ve been able to uncover the gist of a blog post of Levin’s from May 2008 entitled “My Personal Political Manifesto”. It’s organized into ten statements of belief. Here are the partial segments I was able to uncover: (more…)