Now that the Super Bowl is over, there’s the usual selective outrage arguing that ‘this or that ad is racist.’ Last year, it was the Tibetans and GroupOn; this year, it is the Chinese and Pete Hoekstra’s bid for the U.S. Senate.The Democrats sense their opportunity to get the very unpopular Debbie Stabenow re-elected and turn Hoekstra’s ad into a Macaca moment.

Predictably the media is already in overdrive. “Ad Draws Protests for Portrayal of Asians,” was the headline for The New York Times article. Lawrence O’Donnell has even attacked the Asian-American girl who dared to appear in the ad, going so far as to compare her decision to play the part of a Chinese villager to a decision a friend of his made not to play Hitler’s daughter. Naturally, the squishy GOP consultants are upset, too, according to Politico. Talking Points Memo went into convulsions when discovering that the Asian girl wearing the yellow shirt was called “yellowgirl” in the html code on Hoekstra’s website.

But Hoekstra is defending himself.

Only to have Rep. Judy Chu of California call the ad “violent and hateful” and blame Bush for the economic downturn on CNN.

(more…)

Attorney General Eric Holder needs to send Charlie Savage at The New York Times a huge box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. The NYT is the biggest cheerleader for Mr. Holder and this entire administration.

We all know how well I get along with Mr. Savage. His articles are notorious for being incredibly pro-Holder. This one is no different. Actually, it’s very anti-Darrell Issa. There isn’t anything negative about Mr. Holder or the Democrats on the committee. The more I read it I realize it’s not really about the hearing: It’s almost as if Mr. Savage and the Times used it as an excuse to write an article to prop up Mr. Holder. Mr. Savage completely glosses over anything the Republicans brought up.

First off, Mr. Savage, Operation Fast and Furious was not botched. Katie Pavlich at Townhall wrote about it here. It worked exactly the way it was suppose to. It was not botched. It did not fail. If anything, Operation Fast and Furious worked out the exact way it should.

Mr. Savage is right: The Republicans did rip into Mr. Holder, but for good reason. He forgets to mention the reason why the Republicans are so mad. They gave Mr. Holder and the DOJ a subpoena on October 12, 2011 and the department has given them the bare minimum. The department is stonewalling them. They’re mad because the documents were dumped on a Friday night. Again. Mr. Savage only brings up a quote from Representative Burton about Mr. Holder stonewalling them. He could have talked about Mr. Issa’s opening statement about the DOJ not cooperating.

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Right off the bat C-SPAN should have aired this hearing. There is absolutely no excuse not to air it on TV. Since I had to stream it online I kept my TV on DirecTV News Mix to keep an eye on the news. The only network that had consistent coverage of the testimony was FOX News. I’m not shocked at all. I didn’t see anything about the testimony on the other channels. Jeff Poor from The Daily Caller helped me keep an eye on MSNBC and he didn’t see anything. He said they were hung up on Donald Trump all day. I was informed by a friend on Twitter, Doug Mataconis, that the hearing was discussed on The Situation Room on CNN for about 15 minutes. “Special Report” and The FOX Report both started off with Mr. Holder’s testimony.

Before I continue I noticed some friends on Twitter growing upset that headlines were partisan. The MSM was right: This was a partisan fight and every single Democrat coddled Mr. Holder. The Republicans were the only ones to demand withheld documents and answers from Mr. Holder.

Right after the testimony ended I began searching for coverage of the hearing on Google. First stop was Associated Press. Remember: If the AP doesn’t write anything on Fast & Furious more than likely the rest of the media won’t mention it. Pete Yost did write about the testimony, but hat’s where the excitement ends. Again, he distorts information to favor Mr. Holder and the Department of Justice. Mr. Yost fails to mention the subpoena was issued October 12, 2011. That’s 4 months ago. That is plenty of time to go through the hoops to release the documents. Mr. Yost says, “Though neither side said so, negotiations are almost certain to be the next step.” If you watched the testimony do you honestly think Mr. Issa or Mr. Holder will negotiate? Didn’t think so. Mr. Issa won’t accept anything less than the documents he needs. Then Mr. Yost describes a few dialogues, but doesn’t bother to get down to nitty gritty of the testimony.

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Trying.

Not.

To

Smile.

Failing.

Today, The New York Times released a chart purporting to compare what the candidates made and gave away in 2010.

This is a bit like comparing apples to oranges, because the New York Times, like a lot of liberals, compares Romney’s income from capital gains (which were already taxed as income) to Obama’s salary as president (which is taxed as salary), but let’s go with it anyways.

Why only 2010? Because it would reveal how generous Romney is to include more years.

“[F]ew people know which is how incredibly generous [Romney] and his wife and his family have been to people in need. This is not sort of a bombshell surprise. I think it falls in the category of boring, nice surprise,” Scott Helman, co-author of The Real Romney.

But revealing more data would also show how stingy the Obamas were.

In 2011 alone, Romney gave nearly 20% of his income to charity. Barack Obama and his wife Michelle gave only $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 to 2004 to charities, less than one percent. In 2005 and 2006, the Obamas increased their giving to 5% of their $2.6 million income.  Biden’s 2006 tax returns showed the he gave just $380 to charity out of an adjusted income of $248,459, or roughly .15%.

Just as conservatives give more than liberals, so too do conservative politicians give more often than liberal ones. Bill Clinton famously got tax deductions in the ’80s for donating used underwear. In 1997, Vice President Al Gore gave just $353 in charitable donations, or roughly .0017% of his income to charity. Multimillionaire John Kerry’s 1995 tax returns showed he gave no money to charities at all. (more…)

This is what real journalism looks like, folks. Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes a 2,300 word piece about Newt Gingrich’s relationship to ethics charges (those brought by and against him) that ends with this rehash of his fall from grace:

In the end, nearly all of the charges were dismissed. But the ethics committee did find that Mr. Gingrich had used tax-exempt money to promote Republican goals, and given the panel inaccurate information for its inquiry.

Mr. Gingrich formally apologized, conceding he had brought discredit on the House. He had always   regarded himself as a “transformative figure” who would change the course of history, but on Jan. 21, 1997, he made history in another way.

The House voted 395-28 to reprimand him and fine him $300,000, making him the first speaker ever disciplined for unethical conduct.

That’s it. That’s how the tale ends. It’s as if they’ve quoted Newt’s history but added an invisible ellipsis over the final portion of the story. This is a doctored quote of the record. This is “agenda journalism.”

Do you think it’s relevant that after the events described above Democrats campaigned for a further investigation? Is it relevant that the IRS took them up on it, and that after more than three years determined that Newt did nothing wrong? Simply put, all the charges, even the ones Newt was reprimanded for, were bogus. Is any of that worth mentioning in a front page story on the topic at the New York Times?

(more…)

Whether they choose to acknowledge it or not, everyone in media understands what Media Matters for America (MMfA) is really about.

MMfA is an online group of modern-day book burners, a tax-exempt gang of bullies and propagandists dedicated to snuffing out conservative political opinion from the national discourse. To accomplish that goal, the George Soros-funded organization uses boycotts, intimidation, and the like.

Another of Media Matters’ obvious goals is to affect the mainstream media’s political narrative using these same tactics. Any story that might damage the left is immediately targeted by MMfA, using outright lies and half-truths.

The bottom line is that Media Matters is not dedicated to correcting or clarifying or illuminating truth; they’re dedicated to a left-wing political agenda which they intend to achieve by any means necessary, including outright blacklists and censorship.

In this same vein, most of us who work in media know what Politico is really about. The online publication arrived in early 2007 and pulled one of the most effective cons in Internet history. By using all of 2007 to masquerade as a news outlet sincerely dedicated to honest and unbiased reporting, Politico was able to ingratiate itself with high-profile conservatives and conservative outlets.

It was all a lie, but we all fell for it, and through the Right’s generous links, praise, blog-rolls, and talk radio interviews, Politico rose in prestige and name recognition.  Its power and influence in hand, in 2008 Politico threw off the disguise and came at conservatives with both barrels blazing in order to see Barack Obama to the White House. In the three years since, Politico has never looked back.

What prompted me to look into the possibility of an unspoken relationship between Media Matters and Politico was this story. As biased as Politico is, to witness Politico media blogger Dylan Byers use tactics perfected by Media Matters to push for a conservative’s firing from CNN was a new evolution for Politico–and not in a good way.

(more…)

Newt Gingrich

Charles M. Blow, over at The New York Times, loves to allege that Republicans are racist, racist, racist. James Clyburn, the third ranking Democrat in the House, accused Gingrich of practicing the Southern Strategy. The NAACP piled on.

In Gingrich’s populist call and celebration of the nobility of work, they hear Nixon’s ominous “Southern Strategy.” The media alone seems acutely attuned to the racist dog whistles we conservatives are supposed to be hearing, but their dogged attempt to sully the Republican Party’s strategy in the South runs afoul of historical facts. Ironically, one commentator, Jim Sleeper, professor at Yale University, plays the race card in suggesting that Gingrich plays the race card.

In 2004, the masterly Claremont Review of Books debunked this growing media narrative in greater depth than I can venture here, but the left-wing argument rests on three key assumptions: that Republicans tailored their message to attract racists, that those of us who oppose racial preferences are somehow racist, and that, having won the South in ‘68, the Republican party continued to play to racism. This is what they believe, made clear by Dan T. Carter, author of From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution 1963-1994: “Goldwater’s vote against the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, in Richard Nixon’s subtle manipulation of the busing issue, in Ronald Reagan’s genial demolition of affirmative action, in George Bush’s use of the Willie Horton ads, and in Newt Gingrich’s demonization of welfare mothers.”

The problem with each of these instances of supposed racism is that you have to believe that the issue is racism, not principle. To wit, plenty of non-racists doubt the wisdom of busing, racial preferences, furloughing criminals, and giving lavish government benefits. This is a subtle game the media plays and as tautological as it is stupid: views are deemed racist because they are defined as racist. It’s not really an argument because it already assumes its premise.

(more…)

It was so full of promise, the ideal candidate with grandiose plans to fundamentally transform America had won. The man the New York Times had worked so hard to help elect was about to usher in a period of utopian hope and change: a chicken in every pot and a Chevy Volt in every driveway. Of course, Chevy Volts turned out to be explosive junk and President Obama’s hope and change has an equally illustrious track record. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, ever the optimistic Obama cheerleader, realizes that Obama has not succeeded. Nevertheless, she constructs an argument explaining where the disconnect originated.

Following on the heels of Newt Gingrich’s overwhelming victory in the South Carolina primaries, Dowd penned a piece entitled “Showtime at the Apollo”. Her opening graph is a tear-jerker:

FOR eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected.

“I, I’m so in love with you,” Barack Obama crooned to a thrilled crowd at a fund-raiser at the Apollo in Harlem on Thursday night, doing a seductive imitation as Al Green himself looked on.

That doesn’t sound desperate at all. Imagine the thrill of being at the Apollo (as opposed to the usual $30,000 per-plate cost, the man of the people would allow participation by the peasants for a mere $200 to $5000), the goosebumps resulting from the dream of what might have been … if only Obama’s presidency was not an overwhelming and abject failure. His record is impossible to ignore, and unless Obama wants to guarantee his loss, his campaign will have to utilize other tactics. Dowd posits her winning idea:

The song would make a good campaign anthem: “Let’s stay together, lovin’ you whether, whether times are good or bad, happy or sad.” Don’t break up, turn around and make up.

The latest polls indicate that the American people have already made the decision to break up. President Obama’s class warfare messaging and embracing of the Occupy Wallstreet fecal-fest have done little to encourage Americans to make up. Neither has the high unemployment or blatantly anti-business environment created by his administration.

When those tactics fail, one of the Left’s favorite tactics is to gloss over the president’s flagging record by blaming his predecessor:

The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had a presidency with all the joy of a root canal, dragged down by W.’s recklessness and his own inability to read America’s panic and its thirst for a strong leader.

Blaming Bush is never out of style. The problem is, even DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz admits the Democrats own the economy. This dog won’t hunt anymore. Three years after Obama’s immaculation, Americans want jobs, not excuses.

Finally, Dowd gets around to expressing her true elitist confession about Obama’s failure:

(more…)

Specifically, the New York Times and Ha’aretz, Israel’s left-wing daily.

The Israeli prime minister denies making the remark, which was relayed in a speech by Steve Linde, editor of the Jerusalem Post. Linde has since backtracked, apparently.

Steve Linde, Jerusalem Post

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:

On Wednesday, the editor, Steve Linde, addressing a conference in Tel Aviv of the Women’s International Zionist Organization, said that Netanyahu made the remark to him about the newspapers at a private meeting “a couple of weeks ago” at the prime minister’s office in Tel Aviv.

But on Thursday, the Prime Minister’s Office told JTA that Netanyahu “did not make the remarks attributed to him,” and Linde backtracked, saying the remarks he had attributed to the prime minister had been Linde’s own interpretation.

“He said, ‘You know, Steve, we have two main enemies,’ ” Linde had said on Wednesday of Netanyahu, according to a recording of the WIZO speech provided to JTA. “And I thought he was going to talk about, you know, Iran, maybe Hamas. He said, ‘It’s The New York Times and Haaretz.’ He said, ‘They set the agenda for an anti-Israel campaign all over the world. Journalists read them every morning and base their news stories … on what they read in The New York Times and Haaretz.’ ” (more…)

Mass media can pick sides or create caricatures on any issue. It’s not always intentional but it moves the role of reporter from umpire to advocate, which puts the burden on the public to separate the straight story from the spin.

The latest case study? The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), an animal rights group that has been leveraging the media in its advocacy campaigns for years. Advocates know if they can engage your emotions, you are closer to taking action. If they also suggest the action and it happens to be “donate now,” it’s lucrative, too.

A group called “The Humane Society” has a big advantage in the media. People like pets and have strong emotional connections to them. It’s easy to get a reaction from an audience through pictures of cute (or abused) animals. Moreover, it’s hard to appear “against” an animal protection group.

Unfortunately, having a media “untouchable” isn’t in the public’s best interests.

Consider the status quo: There is no humane society umbrella organization, but most people – 71 percent, according to recent national polling – think the Humane Society of the United States is just that. HSUS only gives 1 percent of its budget to pet shelters. Never mind the TV commercials filled with dogs and cats in cages, just like a shelter would use.

HSUS makes fundraising appeals in which more than 85 percent of the animals shown are dogs and cats even though only 1 percent of the money raised from the public is shared with pet shelters. More than 99 percent of the ads don’t have the disclaimer that HSUS assures us will protect donors from any confusion about where the money goes.

National groups raise awareness about issues. Local groups provide hands-on care for animals and the public remains largely unaware of the difference. I’ve worked for HSUS and local animal control. I understand both sides of the story.

Pet shelters can’t compete with the leverage enjoyed by HSUS. When there’s an animal-rescue situation with multiple responders, HSUS can be counted on to show up with cameras rolling for future promotions. In 2011, HSUS has put out more than 400 press releases.

So, last month, I started working on a national project to help clear up the misunderstanding called the Humane Society for Shelter Pets. Our message is simple: Know where your money’s going. Give local if you want to help pets in shelters. If you want to help a national group with political campaigns, that’s fine too.

Sadly, the response from HSUS has been rather inhumane—amplified by media complicity.

In response to my announcement that I’d joined this project, why would HSUS help another former HSUS employee make a formal complaint about me to my employer, an animal shelter in Maryland?  Or ask my local paper to write about the complaint, and include a copy of the complaint (usually a confidential personnel matter) and a letter of support from HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle, defaming the downtown PR firm that is helping us get the word out and its owner?

Sometimes it’s personal. Last year New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom wrote a hit-piece on HSUS’s critics after receiving a request from HSUS to do a story.  HSUS also helped file a baseless ethics complaint in New York State that was picked up by Albany media. It didn’t matter that the complaint was bogus. The story was already written.

(more…)

The lefties on Twitter are very upset with their favorite paper, The New York Times.  They’ve even started a hashtag (#NewNYTSlogans) attacking them for the apparent lack of dedication to truth that the paper has exhibited of late in its pages.

An article titled, “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” is what has sent them into full-fledged mockery mode and, as best I can understand it, they believe that the Times has basically acknowledged that the truth and fact checking are not top priorities in The New York Times newsroom.

They don’t sound too terribly off from opinions expressed on the right about the Paper of Record.  Perhaps we’ve reached a point where we can all agree that this old world rag is nothing but a liberal front and about as unbiased as Dan Rather?

Not exactly.   (more…)

The New York Times claims to be preparing a correction over this, but a correction a lot fewer people are likely to read is like telling a jury to disregard what they’ve just heard.

A wily lawyer knows a jury can’t disregard what they’ve already heard, and so does an agenda-driven newspaper.

Forbes:

On Jan. 8, The New York Times published an article by John F. Burns about the British government’s investigation into allegations of crimes committed by employees of News Corp.’s UK newspaper division, News International. Burns wrote:

News International’s acknowledgment that the The News of the World had hacked into [a] teenager’s phone at a time when there was still hope that she remained alive, and deleted messages left by her family and friends so as to make room for others, was a watershed in the scandal.

That’s a reference to a report from last July by the Guardian. Its disclosure that investigators working for the News of the World had intercepted and erased voicemails intended for murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler was perhaps the single most incendiary detail in the entire scandal and helped trigger the wave of inquiries and resignations that followed.

(more…)

It is impossible to know the thoughts that go through the mind of a crazy man. Certainly Jared Loughner, the assassin who perpetrated the Tucson massacre which killed six and wounded 13,including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was a monster. It hardly seemed appropriate to dissect his political leanings immediately after his shooting rampage. Nevertheless, at a time when mourning is the only logical thing for people to do, the New York Times began the cacophony of finger pointing and has conveniently forgotten its heinous rush to blame.  In a editorial run in the New York Times on January 9th, 2011, they stated:

It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members.

That statement seems innocuous enough, but then the next sentences were written:

But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats.

Any pretense that it was facile to blame the right was immediately negated by … blaming the right. It was crystal clear that the New York Times and their leftist compatriots had every intention of blaming this on Republicans and Tea Party members.

As opposed to giving people time to mourn this terrible tragedy and law enforcement time to sort out the deeper issues involved, the New York Times chose to begin the blame game while advancing another significant plank of left’s agenda:

Its gun laws are among the most lenient, allowing even a disturbed man like Mr. Loughner to buy a pistol and carry it concealed without a special permit. That was before the Tucson rampage. Now, having seen first hand the horror of political violence, Arizona should lead the nation in quieting the voices of intolerance, demanding an end to the temptations of bloodshed, and imposing sensible controls on its instruments.

If only tighter gun control laws had been in place, perhaps this incident may never have occurred. Never mind that deranged men will eventually find a way to exact their horrific agendas. The law is rarely a detriment to an individual bent on breaking the law.

In a follow-up piece written after President Obama had spoken in Tucson, the  highlighted some of the president’s words:

Mr. Obama called on ideological campaigners to stop vilifying their opponents. The only way to move forward after such a tragedy, he said, is to cast aside “point-scoring and pettiness.”

It was important that Mr. Obama transcend the debate about whose partisanship has been excessive and whose words have sown the most division and dread. This page and many others have identified those voices and called on them to stop demonizing their political opponents. The president’s role in Tucson was to comfort and honor, and instill hope.

The meaning of the president’s words could not be more clear, or so it seemed. Unfortunately the New York Times did not get the memo. Remember, the New York Times pointed out in their previous piece that the right are the partisan hacks to be blamed for this event. Instead of healing the Nation’s wounds, the hypocrites at the NYT attempted to cast blame for this unimaginably awful incident on the political rhetoric of the right even as they called for an end to divisive political rhetoric. At the same they began to mercilessly pile on Sarah Palin, as if she were the cause of this event. In fact, the vilification of Palin led to a display of vile rhetoric and death threats from the left that has to be seen(*warning) to be believed.

What a surprise then, that after leading the charge against vile rhetoric … by inciting vile rhetoric, the New York Times conveniently forgets about it entirely. Never an acknowledgement they were wrong. Never an apology to Palin whom they irresponsibly blamed. It is as if the pieces they published in January 2011 and the agenda they pushed ended up in a gaping memory hole. The most effective and pithy commentary on this reality?

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From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

When Anita Dunn hasn’t been on CNN or MSNBC bashing the Republican presidential candidates and/or praising President Obama, she has been successfully lobbying for a Washington Post subsidiary by the name of Kaplan University.

You may remember Dunn as the Obama aide who once said communist mass murderer Mao and Mother Teresa were “two of my favorite political philosophers.” The Soros-funded Media Matters said she was taken out of context.

Dunn is now claiming that she is not a lobbyist, even though she works for a firm that does lobbying. Will the progressives defend this, too?

We have written in the past about Kaplan, which is the cash cow for the Post Company, whose newspaper has been losing money and readers. Steven Pearlstein of the Post wrote that Kaplan “has provided the handsome profits that have helped to cover this newspaper’s operating losses” and that “Although we in the Post newsroom have nothing to do with Kaplan, we’ve all benefited from its financial success.”

But that success came at the expense of students, including veterans, who got educated through Kaplan and found that some of their degrees were worthless.

After congressional investigations exposed abuses in the $30 billion for-profit education industry, Kaplan and other companies got very concerned that proposed regulations from the Obama Administration would potentially “cut off the huge flow of federal aid” to private sector colleges declared unfit to receive the money, The New York Times reported.

In the end, “after a ferocious response that administration officials called one of the most intense they had seen, the Education Department produced a much-weakened final plan that almost certainly will have far less impact as it goes into effect” this year.

Former Obama official Dunn played a key role in making sure the for-profit education companies will continue largely with business as usual.

Military columnist Tom Philpott, a former Coast Guardsman, has led the criticism of what he calls the “predatory for-profit schools” that “rob veterans of their Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits.” He quotes Theodore (Ted) L. Daywalt, chief executive officer and president of VetJobs, an online job search firm for military veterans, as saying that he learned about the problem through working with disappointed vets who thought they had used their GI Bill to earn credible degrees only to learn they were “worthless.”

“The eighth for-profit company among the top 10 institutions getting GI Bill payments is Kaplan, owned by The Washington Post. Its Post-9/11 GI Bill payments climbed in 12 months from $17 million to $44 million,” noted Philpott. These are the payments that help pay the salaries of the liberal editorial writers and columnists at the Post newspaper.

In a sign that some news competition is in play among the big papers and that some criticism of the Obama Administration is still permitted in print, the Times noted the key role played by Dunn, “a close friend of President Obama and his former White House communications director.” She had “worked with” Kaplan, the paper said. “And politically well-connected investors, including Donald E. Graham, chief executive of the Washington Post Company, which owns Kaplan, and John Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix and a longtime friend of the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, made impassioned appeals,” the paper added.

Dunn had left the Obama Administration to make money at SKDKnickerbocker (SKDK), which describes itself as “a nationally recognized strategic communications consulting firm.” This is what lobbying is called these days. Dunn’s work in the media is highlighted in her bio, where she is described as “a frequent guest on cable and network television, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 60 Minutes, Today, Meet the Press and many more.”

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Earlier today, Mark Allen, who is a contributor to the New York Times and National Public Radio, compared Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum to Dan White, the man who assassinated Harvey Milk, San Francisco’s first openly gay member of the Board of Supervisors, in 1978.

Allen’s comments reflect a continued trend in Democrat-friendly media to compare Republican candidates to notorious criminals. Recently, for example, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declared that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich “looks like a car bomber.” (more…)

December has been an incredibly busy month for Operation Fast and Furious. It all started with Mr. Holder’s outburst to The Daily Caller. Then the DOJ dumped over 1400 pages of documents on Congress on Friday, December 3rd, which the MSM ignored or buried, but The New York Times quickly spun it in Mr. Holder’s favor. Sharyl Attkisson at CBS shows us documents proving the ATF was using Fast and Furious to get stricter gun laws and the following day Mr. Holder testifies in front of Congress. Then Fast and Furious was brought up in the debate!

Now Mr. Holder and the DOJ are starting to unravel. Mr. Holder’s interview with The New York Times where he called us in the media racist. Last night the DOJ released a statement trying to explain that Mr. Holder didn’t use the race card. Anyone with a 1st grade reading comprehension knows Mr. Holder did call us racist. But the most telling thing to me at least is the Old Media has not reported on this statement. I’ve been surfing their websites all afternoon and evening and cannot find anything. I would think The New York Times would be more than happy to publish it, but nothing from them. They were so quick to make Mr. Holder the victim (even putting the article on page A1 of the Sunday edition!) you’d think they’d publish the DOJ statement! You know, gain more sympathy for Mr. Holder. Nothing. Complete silence.

Something interesting happened. On Tuesday CNN’s Jack Cafferty brought it up on his blog and The Situation Room. Not only did he mention Operation Fast and Furious, but he asked if this would be Obama’s Watergate. Mr. Cafferty’s blog is very neutral, too, on the operation. I’m incredibly impressed.

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It’s true that Paul Krugman says some outlandish things- from heartily embracing the criminal Occupy folks to continuing to believe whole heartedly in Keynesian economics well past its sell date, Krugman is happy to beclown himself. Given the opportunity, and the Gray Lady seems to give him many of them, he never misses the chance to show off his condescending ignorance of pretty much everything. So, what corner has his quill painted him into today? He is taking Politifact to task for its “Lie of the Year.” He is outraged. Outraged! The folks in charge of fact-checking over at Politifact said that it’s not true that Republicans voted to end Medicare. This isn’t the place to discuss the merits of Politifact’s piece; you can read it and decide for yourself.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

No, it’s Krugman’s wonderful hissy fit that is noteworthy.

“The answer is, of course, obvious: the people at Politifact are terrified of being considered partisan if they acknowledge the clear fact that there’s a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. So they’ve bent over backwards to appear “balanced” — and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.”

Well, okay, it is important to give credit where credit is due. There is a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. Not quite what Krugman meant though- Politifact certainly does have an issue with being considered partisan. As reported on these very pages, multiple times, the fact-checking website is anything but clean of partisan bias. Most of it is aimed squarely at skewering the more conservative side of the spectrum.

Which brings us to Krugman’s real issue. It’s the same thing that has caused leftists world wide to threaten patriots like Brandon Darby or denigrate those they formerly lionized like David Mamet. Once you’re on the liberal plantation, you’re there for life. If you try to espouse any view that isn’t lock step with progressive groupthink you are immediately branded an infidel with all it entails. The greatest crime to Krugman and is ilk is apostasy.

(more…)

The Department of Justice released a statement about the uproar caused by Eric Holder using the race card.

“That is a complete distortion of the attorney general’s comment. His comments both in the article and elsewhere made clear that he believes much of the criticism is launched against him are unfortunately the typical Washington gotcha game. A simple reading of those comments show he was referring to how he is identified with the president given their close relationship and all they share in common including their ideology. The position of the attorney general has been a target for partisan attacks, and given the critical work that this attorney general he is doing at the Department of Justice, it’s no surprise that some are engaging in such tactics. His critics rightly view the attorney general is a progressive force, and given our current political environment, there will those who use any opportunity to score political points.”

Here’s what we supposedly confused [bold my emphasis]:

Of that group of critics, Mr. Holder said he believed that a few — the “more extreme segment” — were motivated by animus against Mr. Obama and that he served as a stand-in for him. “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” he said, “both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

So exactly what did we distort? There’s a key word in Mr. Savage’s sentence: animus. This is Merriam-Webster’s definition:

1: basic attitude or governing spirit : disposition, intention

2: a usually prejudiced and often spiteful or malevolent ill will

3: an inner masculine part of the female personality in the analytic psychology of C. G. Jung — compare anima

I’m going with definition 2. Those of the “most extreme segment” which, let’s be honest here, include Sharyl Attkisson, Cam Edwards, Matthew Boyle, Katie Pavlich, and myself, have a spiteful or malevolent ill will towards President Obama and Mr. Holder because of their relationship and they’re African American. Could the DOJ please explain to us how that doesn’t mean he played the race card? Mr. Holder said we have a prejudiced and often spiteful or malevolent ill will against him and President Obama because of their skin color. That’s calling us a racist. RACIST. Yes Mr. Holder played the race card. He said we are attacking him because he is African American.

(more…)

The formidable Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal notes a glaring (im)moral equivalence in the New York Times’s obituary for Kim Jong-Il:

The real mystery is why, in free societies where few journalists and politicians are ever at serious risk of reprisal, truth-telling seems to be in relatively short supply. North Korea is a vast modern-day Auschwitz. Yet when George W. Bush named Pyongyang to the Axis of Evil, it was Mr. Bush who was roundly mocked. Note the balance of contempt in the New York Times’ write-up of Kim’s death from Sunday night:

“President George W. Bush called [Kim] a ‘pygmy.’ . . . Yet those who met him were surprised by his serious demeanor and his knowledge of events beyond the hermit kingdom he controlled.” O, misunderstood Dear Leader, if only we had known you better.