From Accuracy in Media’s Logan Churchwell:

With the first legitimate event of the 2012 Republican presidential primary just days away in Iowa, the Associated Press today offered a clear example of hatchet jobs to come for the candidates. Mitt Romney was given an early example of what the AP means by “journalism with voice.”

I previously raised concerns over a leaked memo from AP Managing Editor Mike Oreskes two weeks ago. Charging all journalists to use the said “voice,” he did not offer any examples but, rather very contradictory directions (emphasis added):

“We’re going to be pushing hard on journalism with voice, with context, with more interpretation. This does not mean that we’re sacrificing any of our deep commitment to unbiased, fair journalism. It does not mean that we’re venturing into opinion, either. It does mean that we need to be looking for ways to be more distinctive and stand out in the field — something our customers need and want. The why and the how of the news are as crucial as the who, what, when and where.”

The AP offered a very clear example this morning for how these directions will be executed.

The title, “Romney tries to come across as man of the people” was bad enough and it only got worse from there. The AP revealed its playbook as to how they will frame the Romney campaign in 2012.

Step 1: Paint Romney as filthy rich; like his daddy before him. What better way to fan the flames of class warfare than to paint the Republican frontrunner as the quintessential political aristocrat of one-percenter roots? The AP led with (emphasis added):

“Mitt Romney reminisced before a noontime crowd about the long car trips his family took when he was a boy. ‘My dad made Ramblers, so we had one,’ the Republican presidential hopeful said…In fact, Romney’s father didn’t just make cars. He was chairman and president of American Motors, the company that made Ramblers, and a highly successful businessman before he entered politics. It’s a detail the son omitted as he sought to establish a bond with Iowans he hopes will support him in next week’s presidential caucuses.”

Toward the end of the piece, another wealth jab that now opens the Romney wardrobe and Christmas list to criticism:

“As he stood at the cash register at a Concord, N.H., toy store, picking up a few gifts for charity, a patron asked him what he gave his family for Christmas. Earlier in the day, he had bought his wife a $285 North Face jacket as a gift, he said…For his sons? ‘We sent them checks,’ said Romney, a multimillionaire. ‘Cash is always good’.”

Some may remember just how effective the smears were against the Palin family wardrobe in 2008; a standard not held to Michelle Obama.

Step 2: Suggest to readers that either Romney is too smart, or Republicans are too dumb to understand him. Not only is Romney rich and therefore uncaring, but he cannot speak the language and empathize with the common man. The AP cited Romney’s comments regarding company relocation affecting employee commutes:

“Sometimes it’s counter-intuitive,’ replied Romney, a former businessman, explaining that businesses often invent new, more efficient ways to compete…The term is called productivity. Output per person,’ he said. ‘Our productivity equals our income’.”

Anyone with a Business 101 course under their belt or basic sense gained from commercial employment can understand what that statement means, and therefore why the question was properly answered. To argue otherwise is an insult to the general intelligence of the electorate. But the AP does not stop there, suggesting that he can also be too smart and systematically-minded to be “sympathetic.”

“When one retired firefighter in New Hampshire said he was drawing a reduced Social Security check because he also had a state pension, the former Massachusetts governor was less than sympathetic. ‘If there’s a competition for who will give you the most free stuff, go vote for that guy.’ When the man said he wasn’t asking for any handouts, Romney said, ‘You knew what you were getting into. … I wish you well, but I’m not going to promise you more bucks’.”

Regardless of the approach, Romney will be made to look unfit to chat up a voter on Main Street. It also would be helpful to know the context of that exchange and the tone of the question.

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The American Spectator does a nice job of deconstructing this ridiculous piece from a progressive blogger over at the Progressive Christian Alliance. The gist of the piece is this: Jesus was an illegal immigrant baby, thus if you are against illegal immigration, you are against Jesus and the entire story of the nativity is one big political story.

AS responds:

Faith dictates that churches offer their ministry and message of redemption, embodied in the Nativity story, to all people, including illegal immigrants. But there is no covert message within the Christmas narrative offering specific policy guidance on U.S. immigration law. The temptation to extract politics out of the Nativity account should be resisted. Perhaps the most infamous example was the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1992 Democratic Convention speech comparing Vice President Dan Quayle to murderous King Herod. The birth of Baby Jesus was significant enough by itself that it needs no political sloganeering to amplify its importance.

This religious outfit dilutes God’s word with its hippified humanism. Their “about” section reads like a vague intro to a self-help book. The emphasis is based on inclusion (Jesus Himself said He did not come to bring peace, but a sword Matthew 10:34) and accepting people as they are, regardless whether or not God’s law is followed. They are situational Christians: they love the Bible when they think they can cherry pick the Word and support leftist beliefs but are suspiciously silent on Scripture where it concerns life, marriage, law, and worship.

The Bible is quite clear on following the law where it does not conflict with faith:

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.  - Romans 13:1-3

If you’re going to condescend to preach to the flock, you must preach all the Bible for consistency, as even the Devil can quote Scripture. A warning from Scripture to these so-called “progressive Christians” and their perversion of His Word:

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One of the many wonderful services Fox News has done for America has been holding up to the light the ongoing war on Christmas being waged by the left in this country. It’s hard to imagine how bad things would’ve gotten had FNC not been reporting on the small absurdities and large prejudices over the last ten years or so. For a while there, it seemed as though a small minority of intolerant leftists were going to win this thing, as it seemed as though everyone except Walmart (God bless ‘em) had gone “holiday” on us, as though “Christmas” was a bad word.

Better still, we’re hearing a lot more about people fighting back against intolerant stores and schools that take this open bigotry to absurd and unreasonable heights. And that really has been the power of FNC all along — empowering conservatives by reminding us that our values and beliefs represent majority opinion.

After all, the greatest trick the MSM devil ever played was creating a phony reality where the majority was made to feel like the minority.

More from our friends at NewsBusters:

I read the Washington Post’s article, “Violence and the occupy movement,” expecting to see a discussion of the sexual assaults and rapes being reported during the Wall Street protests. Instead, the author, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, writes about “the violence of systems that create and sustain economic and social injustice on a wide scale.” She is apparently talking about capitalism, a system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any in human history.

Brandon Darby broke the story at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com that the protests “pose special dangers for women” because of the rapes and sexual assaults taking place. He notes several such incidents:

• A 14-year-old runaway was allegedly sexually assaulted at Occupy Dallas.
• A 19-year-old student activist was allegedly raped at Occupy Cleveland.
• A man was arrested on charges of indecent exposure to children at Occupy Seattle.
• A female reporter was threatened by activists at Occupy Oakland.

Also at BigGovernment, John Nolte wrote about the protesters’ “rap sheet,” which numbers 119 cases of sexual assault, violence, vandalism, anti-Semitism, extortion, perversion, and lawlessness. These are hardly law-abiding protesters, as the lawyers at the National Lawyers Guild and Center for Constitutional Rights maintain. These incidents are occurring because of the complete breakdown of law and order in the makeshift tent cities of the Occupy movement. Under political pressure, the local and even federal authorities have ceded the space to the protesters, effectively abdicating law enforcement’s role. As a result, when police finally do move into these places, as we saw in Oakland, they are met with violence from organizers of the protests. When the police defend themselves, they are accused of police brutality. This accusation was a prominent charge made in Thistlethwaite’s piece.

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In his recent assessment of his year since he was unceremoniously — and illicitly in many folks’ estimation — fired by NPR, Juan Williams indulged one of those fallacious assumptions that just screams left-wing spin. It is the sort of straw man argument that casts aspersions on others — this time against Christians — while pretending to be the logical adult in the room, not to mention while pretending not to be casting aspersions. It is a logical sleight of hand that many liberals use.

First, let me say that I am 100% on Williams’ side in that his firing by NPR was a real breach of journalistic ethics: theirs. The comments he made a year ago that got him fired did not in any way harm his veracity as a journalist, nor were they racist or even incorrect. Heck, they weren’t even injudicious except when taking the brain dead political correctness that infests the left into consideration.

Though that was the discussion of a year ago and really is not something worth rehashing here, Williams did say something outrageous in his review of that year-old issue that deserves to be highlighted. In essence, Williams made an illogical argument about how we should think of radical Islam, and he did so by assuming that domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City Bombing could be considered as representative of Christianity as the Saudi 19 were of radical Islam.

Here is what Williams said [my bold for emphasis]:

… we have to keep in mind that America is a country founded on the ideal of religious liberty. We can’t stereotype any group on the basis of the behavior of extremists among them. We don’t indict all Christians because of Timothy McVeigh.

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Alessandra Stanley, writing for the New York Times, says this on MSNBC’s newest broadcaster, bold my emphasis:

The Rev. Al Sharpton began his new career as an official MSNBC talk show host on Monday by telling viewers not to expect James Brown.

“I’m not going to be a robotic host reading the teleprompter like a robot,” he said. “Nor am I going to come in here and do the James Brown and do the ‘electric slide’ to prove to you that I’m not stiff,” he added, waving his arms in a rough approximation of a dance move. “I’m going to say what I mean and mean what I say.”

And that may be the problem with Mr. Sharpton’s cable news pulpit: what he means to say is in lockstep with every other MSNBC evening program, making the stretch between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. a nonstop lecture on liberal values and what is wrong with the Republican Party.

[...]

And in the evening at least, MSNBC is less a news provider than a carousel of liberal opinion — potential conflicts of interest are swept aside in the swirl of excitable guests.

This is in the NYT. Kudos to Stanley for not pulling punches. She mentions the Tawana Brawley and Crown Heights, but seems to think that Eliot Spitzer somehow makes Sharpton’s past OK — and doesn’t mention the most recent of Sharpton’s stunts: Dunbar Village. A family was violated in unimaginable ways, especially a mother and her young son, and Sharpton and the NAACP defended the rapists and called them the “victims.” Outrage rang throughout the blogosphere across both sides of the political aisles.

And this man calls himself a “preacher?”

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Acting like you’re allergic to God is the wrong way to grow a big tent. Expecting Christians to willfully suppress themselves — sacrificing principle for popularity — is antithetical to the conservative ideology of individualism.

Leon Wolf takes to task the critics against Rick Perry’s prayer rally in a well-written piece worthy of a read.

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The Washington Post’s “faith” writer (and former author of “The Party” column until she penned a column airing her family’s conflicts and after complaints by her own family was demoted to writing on faith) and beltway hostess Sally Quinn says that Norway murderer Anders Breivik is a Christian because doggone it, he says he is!

“Well I say the guy’s a Christian! He talks about Jesus Christ our Lord, he actually says ‘I am a Christian …’”

To borrow from the “Merchant of Venice,” “Even the Devil can cite Scripture.”

Quinn launches into a bizarre monologue about terrorism and Christianity and Oslo and who knows what else; honestly, I began losing interest when O’Reilly demanded that she produce a Breivik quote on Jesus and Quinn had to shuffle through her talking points.

Had Quinn perhaps skipped a party or two and did her due diligence on her subject she would have learned that not only is Breivik most emphatically not a Christian, but he’s also an environmental-worshipping socialist — the absolute opposite of what the progressives and the Soros News peddled in the press before the bodies of Norway’s fallen had grown cold:

The Judeo-Christian religions played an important and influential role in building the once mighty West but we also discovered that these religions contained aserious flaw that has sewed the seeds of the suicidal demise of the indigenous peoples of Western Europe and our cultures. This flaw was identified by the brilliant German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who described it as “an inversion of morality” whereby the weak, the poor, the meek, the oppressed and the wretched are virtuous and blessed by God … pg. 391

A pragmatic approach, which involves acknowledging the primal aspects of man for the purpose of preparing him for a martyrdom operation, should always take precedence over misguided piety … pg. 1434

Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers -already, you see, the world had already fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing Christianity!-then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. pg. 231

I’m not going to pretend I’m a very religious person as that would be a lie. pg. 1344

Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian. pg. 1307, 3,139

A “cultural Christian?” Such a thing doesn’t exist in Scripture. There is grace through faith and a relationship with Christ, grace that one does not achieve alone. What Breivik preaches is humanism, not Christianity. He believes he can achieve grace alone, thus a relationship with Christ is unnecessary. The lowliest pseudo-scholar would recognize this if they are true to their intelligence, which Quinn is not, either by choice or pure ignorance.

Quinn has spent the better part of her “faith-writing” taking partisan jabs at conservatives.

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Rep. Todd Akin, Missouri’s conservative Republican challenger against Democrat Claire McCaskill, said this during a recent interview over the NBC/Pledge of Allegiance controversy:

Well, I think NBC has a long record of being very liberal and at the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God and a belief that government should replace God. And so they’ve had a long history of not being at all favorable toward many of things that have been such a blessing to our country.These powerful works have liberals enraged.

Predictably, the progressive media had a meltdown, led by Think Progress (you know, the outfit who promoted the short-lived ‘Crash the Tea Party’ stunt wherein progs dressed up as klansmen and Nazis and attended rallies so that edited video could be used to smear the movement, even lifting other videogapher’s work).

U.S. Rep. Todd Akin is catching flak from some Missouri religious leaders for saying last week that “at the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God.”

Local media had to dig deep to find “religious leaders” to condemn Akin’s remark and apparently only spoke to far-left, social justice churches, one of which somehow managed to con its congregation into a modified religious faith that supports the dichotomy of infant genocide and Christ.

Faith Aloud, a St. Louis-based religious group that advocates for abortion rights, began an online petition drive calling on Akin to apologize.

The Rev. Krista Taves of Emerson Unitarian Universalist Chapel in Ellisville said Akin’s comment “shows how very little he knows about liberals, and how very little he knows about God.”

“I’m a liberal because I love God and all God’s creation,” Taves said. “ I value equality, fairness and compassionate justice because my faith informs my politics.”

Rabbi Jim Bennett of Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis said he was “deeply disturbed” by Akin’s statement, which he characterized as a “grotesque politicized attack.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reached out to two groups, one which is definitely far-left and another that uses left-leaning code words like “we are agents of social justice” on their “About” page. I’m unclear as to why the paper chose to have representatives of a completely different faith to comment on the faith of another when the beliefs of both faiths are quite varied, but this isn’t Big Religion – a way to drive a wedge? Diversity? But it still doesn’t answer why no other religious leaders – or expressed Christian ones, not one the describes itself as “interfaith” – were represented in this article besides two left-leaning groups. I’ve asked the article’s author, Jason Hancock, on Twitter why only these two groups were included for comment.

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Relatively fresh in the fight for carriage in American cable markets, Russia Today stumbled into the ring with all the grace of a drunken Moscow ballerina. Not only does RT lack the lavish funding of its competitors (think Al-Jazeera English), but journalistic integrity as well. In its place you’ll see angry anchors and the same depth of investigative reporting found in the school paper.

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The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof is a simpleton. There is really no other way to say it, no gentler phrasing possible, to explain how childish and uncluttered his tiny little mind really is. The latest example of his utter inability to think clearly can be seen in Kristof’s screed against Americans that love America. Kristof thinks that conservatives and Republicans should look with longing at the troubled nation of Pakistan and see it as a model state. He says that they are no better than Muslim extremists that employ oppression, murder, and terrorism as a tool of the state. No, he’s serious.

How does he justify this simple-minded, hyperbolic, partisan hate-speech? Not very well, I’ll tell you that much.

He makes all sorts of idiotic charges against Republicans, but the best way to understand how unthinkingly childish his screed is, is to simply imagine that everything he says conservatives support he must imagine that liberals are against. After all, the only way to see his calumnies as such is to imagine he thinks that he stands on the opposite side of the ideas of which he accuses conservatives of being in favor.

Let’s take his points and then imagine what the opposite is and you’ll see what I mean.

He says that Republicans are for the lowest tax burden. If this is true and he finds this a negative point, then we must assume Kristof wants the absolute highest tax burden, a crushing tax burden that destroys all capitalist endeavors. That would be the opposite, wouldn’t it?

Next Kristof says Republicans want a limited government so that, “burdensome regulations never kill jobs.” The only take away here is to understand that Kristof sees this as a bad thing. He is smarter than we are, you see. So, Kristof, then, wants a government that is so burdensome that it kills jobs. He must. He finds the non-burdensome government to be a negative against Republicans doesn’t he? (more…)

Tim Rutten is a left-wing, hack writer from L.A. He is always good for contemporary left wing trope but the other day we discovered that he is also good for the sort of uninformed blathering that leftists of his ilk pretend is American history. Chiefly that of America’s religious history and the so-called “wall of separation between church and state.”

In a June 1 piece about Mitt Romney, Rutten regaled us with his “reading” of Mitt’s current political reality. Rutten proposed that any question about Mitt’s Mormonism was somehow a threat to the United States.

Before I get to Rutten’s warped take on U.S. history, let’s take this business about the attacks on Mitt’s Mormonism.

To make his point, Rutten proves himself keen on unduly enlarging the supposed attacks on Mitt Romney’s Mormon religion from both today and in his earlier run for the White House. While there were attacks on Romney for his religion in 2008, those attacks were relatively minor and never really made much headway against his candidacy.

Certainly there are many thousands of Christians that don’t think Mormonism is a Christian religion. I believe that it is a correct assessment, too. But so what? Whether Mormonism is a Christian religion or not has nothing whatever to do with Mitt Romney’s suitability for becoming president of the United States. Only a small minority of Republican voters hold Romney’s Mormonism against him. I’d guess that number would dwindle to even less should Mitt become the GOP nominee, too. (more…)

Richard Cohen is what passes for an opinion editorialist in the Washington Post — not a learned one, just a bloviating one. Cohen’s latest, “The Myth of American Exceptionalism,” is at the same time as self-loathing as it is historically stupid. Not only does this nonsense Cohen ladled out upon us all serve an example that you don’t have to actually know anything to be in our modern Old Media establishment, but it is evidence that the profession of editor is long dead.

In his ten paragraphs Cohen indulges every left-wing trope that one can find. Whites are all racist, we don’t do enough for “the poor” in America, Christianity is the root of all evil, and it all started in the 1850s when the Republican Party was born. Most ridiculously, Cohen a-historically seems to think that the art of compromise died in American politics when the GOP was born. This last bit alone is guffaw worthy to say the least.

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Here is how the AP describes the video below: “Mobs set two churches on fire in western Cairo on Sunday as clashes broke out between Muslims and Christians, killing up to 12 people and injuring more than 200.”

“Clashes between Muslims and Christians” makes it sound like a scene from “West Side Story” with two sides causing equal amounts of trouble. But there were no Mosques burned in the clashes, only Christian Churches. (more…)

In another example of a sort-of cultural suicide where western media types assume that all Muslims are blameless – while all Americans are at fault in this clash of civilizations between Islamism and the West – we have a recent episode of MSNBC’s Hardball with one-time Democratic operative Chuck Todd standing-in for host Chris Matthews.

Todd was discussing the riots in Afghanistan sparked by Islamist ire over the burning of a Koran by a Florida pastor. During the interview Todd and a guest stated that the Christian Bible was just a book written by men while the Koran was the “direct word of God.” The two implied that this excuses Muslims from murdering people over the book burning.

In the segment Time Magazine’s World Editor Bobby Ghosh told Chuck Todd that the riots and murders perpetrated by Muslims in Afghanistan were obviously understandable because the Koran is apparently more holy than the Christian Bible. Ghosh averred that it’s important to “keep in mind” that the Koran is “not the same as the Bible to Christians.” Why, you might ask? Why it’s because the Koran is “directly the word of God.” On the other hand, the Bible is just a book “written by men.”

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For some strange reason the left-wing Internet site Slate.com thinks that the City of Detroit needs a statue erected to an anti-Christian, anti-American pop icon. That’s right, Slate thinks that Detroit needs to diss Jesus, slam capitalism, and attack the United States of America as an evil, violent nation. Strange recommendation for a city that literally drove America’s capitalist success story, isn’t it?

Well that is precisely what Slate is suggesting in an entertainment feature about raising a Motor City statue to the Hollywood sci fi movie character Robocop. After all, the Robocop movie was a purposeful slam on the United States and Christianity, not some celebration of her genius. This is exactly what the film’s director has said numerous times. Strange that Slate wants to use a character that presents what it claims is bad about America as something worthy enough to which to build a memorial.

For Slate’s Patrick Cassels, a 20-something actor, “Internet enthusiast,” and entertainment writer, announced his support of the statue to the violence-soaked movie icon mostly because it is an attack on “Regonomics” and corporations. But, as if supporting a paean to Marxism isn’t grating enough for building a statue in an American city, he spends no time at all on the anti-Christian theme of the movie.

Regardless a statue to Robocop is a great idea, Cassels asserts. “Robocop,” Cassels claims, “is a great ambassador for Detroit.” He thinks that a Robocop statue has “something important to say about the place and its plight.”

The film, Cassels says, “addresses some of Detroit’s most challenging issues, issues that were pressing in 1987 and remain so today.” Issues like the decay the city has fallen to, its poverty, and its financial doldrums are sharply drawn in the movie. Cassels is, of course, correct about that. But Cassels pinpoints the wrong reasons why these dire circumstances exist in the real Detroit.

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I love it when Atheists proclaim to know more about people of faith than those people know about themselves.

The March 3 hatchet job on Christians perpetrated by the Secular Progressive Atheist Clown Phil Zuckerman is another case in point.  Now, Christians don’t need me to defend them.  They are the MSM’s favorite religious target.  The sad thing about Zuckerman is that it isn’t enough for him to just espouse his own lack of faith.  He has to attack other people’s faith.  I guess that’s part of the “new tone.”

Never mind that Zuckerman’s way into the article is to make a completely false statement derived from a Pew Poll.   Never mind that demonizing Christians for their support of the death penalty is done without mentioning that even left-leaning Californians support the death penalty.  Never mind that Zuckerman could have presented an intriguing non-partisan sociological study of religious and political beliefs among Evangelicals (he is a “Professor of Sociology” after all).

No, Zuckerman’s huge revelation — his entire reason for writing the article — is that Evangelical Christians are hypocrites when it comes to reconciling their religious and political beliefs.

Hypocrites.  Imagine that.  People…actual human beings….are flawed.  They say one thing yet do another! (more…)

I’m always highly skeptical of Benny Hinn types who claim to preach from a perspective of faith but then do so without ever citing a single line of Scripture – or worse yet, pervert that which is written. That latter proves that even the Devil can talk faith, a lot like Huffington Post’s Diana Butler Bass.

Bass begins her column with the last-distch effort of shaming Governor Scott Walker as a “bad” Christian by listing an unaccountable list of religious types — who I’m sure have no political leanings at all — as a way of saying God stands in opposition to Walker and Walker has no respect for these religious figures. While Walker’s actions have zero to do with his faith and everything to do with the mandate he was given on November 2nd — I’ll be her Huckleberry: let’s use Bass’s context for the sake of this piece.

Yet none of these prayers or sermons has swayed Scott Walker. He has steadfastly stayed on his original course, unfazed by the full weight of Roman Catholic authority or the mainline social justice tradition pressing upon him and urging him toward compromise and change.

Wait – but the left prattles incessantly about separation of church and state? Yes, except in the instances where they think they can prostitute faith for political purpose. The amazing thing about the United States, as evidence by Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists which the left only knows enough of to be comically dangerous, is how and why we are not a nation under the domination of a denomination. Freedom of religion and from religion, in a country blessed by God, a gift you are given regardless.

Walker hasn’t been swayed because the “swaying” occurred on November 2nd when Wisconsin voters went to the polls and voted for exactly what Walker is doing now: saving Wisconsin’s economy. Bass’s beef isn’t with Walker, who is just a representative of what the people wanted, but rather, with the people. The left can’t say that, though, because it deflates their populist narrative, so they focus on polarizing a bogeyman, in this case, Walker.

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As the protests in Egypt have raged on now for more than a week, President Obama and members of his administration continue to practice restraint in their communications and careful selection of the words that are spoken.  Hillary Clinton has cautioned against anything that could increase chaos.  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told television networks that the “complex, very difficult situation in Egypt requires careful progress toward a peaceful transition to democracy rather than any sudden or violent change that could undermine the aspirations of the protesters.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs echoed the sentiments that while Egypt needs to change, it’s not the place of the United States to publicly support or oppose the removal of Mubarak.  Likewise, most Republicans are also on the same page as the Obama administration, speaking out in support of democratic reforms in Egypt, yet taking great care not to back or oppose Mubarak either way – at least not publicly.  Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, “I don’t have any criticism of President [Barack] Obama or Secretary [Hillary] Clinton at this point.  It’s important for U.S. officials “to speak as one voice during this crisis.”  As many have noted, Egypt is perhaps one of the only issues that’s rendered an overwhelmingly bi-partisan response.

But one man in particular is not exactly in agreement with that bi-partisan response:  George Soros.  And he’s warning us to toe the line – his line, that is.

The leftist billionaire who made his fortune on the back of US capitalism is taking aim at all the “rigid and ideological supporters of Israel” and “the religious right” for standing in the way of democracy for Egypt.

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I can’t make this up.

Inspired by the YMCA when it was founded in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has been under a ban since 1948, and its real size is difficult to gauge. The group was brutally repressed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then, it has at times been propped up as a foil – especially for Western audiences – with periodic crackdowns that have sent many of its members to prison.

In what way was the Muslim Brotherhood “inspired by” the YMCA? By the way the YMCA doesn’t assassinate leaders? Or that it’s comprised of people whose Christian faith would get them killed in many Arab countries? The Brotherhood was aligned with Nazis during the 30s and, after the fall of the Istanbul caliphate, filled the void of Muslim unity. It wasn’t “inspired” by the YMCA; it was “inspired” by the hole left after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

I love the editorial buffing the author of this piece gives the Muslim Brotherhood. Will Englund goes out of his way not to trip up the “peaceful Muslim Brotherhood” narrative with any pesky facts about murder or riots.

But as Egyptian society begins to weave a whole new cloth, the Muslim Brotherhood, alternately used and demonized by Mubarak over the years, has been slow to contribute. An organization dedicated to the creation of a more thoroughly Islamic Egyptian state …

That last sentence is kitten-speak for sharia law. And the reason they opposed Mubarak and that there existed such contention in their relationship? Mubarak stood in their way.

For most of its existence in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has refrained from violence against the state. It is not the organization of radical jihadists that it is sometimes made out to be.

Really? Remember this guy?

Anwar Sadat

He was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

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