John McCain, who has few fans in grassroots conservatism and even fewer in the MSM, was excoriated in the media over his recent remarks that the Arizona wildfires were started by illegal immigrants.

Jon Stewart, of course, mocked McCain on his show.

Now it looks as though these outlets may be apologizing.

Massive wildfires in eastern Arizona that have scorched 250,000 acres were probably started by Mexican drug traffickers or human smugglers, an Arizona sheriff told Fox News on Wednesday.

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Remember when undercover, hidden camera sting operations conducted by citizen journalists were criticized and ridiculed as “not real journalism”. Remember when any report produced under those auspices were supposed to be immediately disregarded as a hoax and severely edited?

And, remember wondering if the real reason these investigations were being criticized was because the targets were left-wing sacred cows like ACORN and Planned Parenthood? And wondering if the media would be more forgiving if the target was conservatives?

Here’s your answer: ABC News has sent an actor undercover as a security guard to pretend he’s challenging the citizenship of latino-looking people in a restaurant.

Here is how reporter John Quinones sets up his under-cover investigation: So, we took our cameras down to Arizona, where a controversial, new law would give police the authority to question and perhaps deport anyone who, in their eyes, appears to be in the U.S. illegally. So, I go undercover, pretending to be someone who is about to be arrested and deported, simply by the way I look.

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ABC reporter John Quinones produced a deceptive propaganda piece about the recent Arizona law (SB1070) dealing with illegal immigration. John Quinones, with the support of ABC, again peddles the mainstream media meme that anyone who is for the enforcement of our immigration laws is “anti-immigration” or “anti-immigrant.” But Quinones (and, by extension, ABC) doesn’t stop there. He goes on to completely misrepresent the law (using the Media Matters talking point) by framing the issue this way:

“So, we took our cameras down to Arizona, where a controversial, new law would give police the authority to question and perhaps deport anyone who, in their eyes, appears to be in the U.S. illegally. So, I go undercover, pretending to be someone who is about to be arrested and deported, simply by the way I look.”

The misinformation and ignorance in that statement would be laughable if it weren’t so infuriating. Here’s the full clip:

Skimming over the fact that ABC even hatching the idea of this expose’ is revealing to show how these East Coast ABC newsies clearly believe that everyone from Arizona who supported the law is racist and for racial profiling, the framing of this issue is rejected by the facts of the law:

Page 1 Line 20 of SB1070 clearly states:

“FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY  OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE…”

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I’d ask if you remember the story of a Democrat governor being attacked last year, but chances are you’d say “no.” Last year when Missouri Governor – my governor – Jay Nixon had an attempt made on his life the local media said nothing – borderline concealed – the leanings of the attacker. The story of 22-year-old Casey Brezik didn’t go national (Brezik slashed the throat of a dean he mistook for Nixon) there were no calls for New Tone because the attacker was a far left-leaning, Che-loving, radical:

In his “About Me” box on Facebook, Brezik listed as his favorite quotation one from progressive poster boy, Che Guevara. The quote begins “Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism” and gets more belligerent from there.

On his wall postings, Brezik ranted, “How are we the radical(s) (left) to confront the NEW RIGHT, if we avoid confrontation all together?”

As good as his word, Brezik’s marched on Toronto in June 2010 to protest the G20 Summit, where he was arrested, charged, and deported. “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,” he boasted.

Like many on the left, Brezik seemed to have found religion.

In reference to an article about Terry Jones and his proposed Quran burning, Brezik posted on the day before his planned assault, “This is now a Holy war. Scriptures have been desecrated. War U can’t handle. Make a choice and quick.”

In St. Louis, the alterna-weekly’s local blogger, who recklessly implied that the tea party was behind the firebombing of Rep. Russ Carnahan’s office (another act of violence carried out by … a Democrat. A disgruntled former Carnahan worker, to be exact; the same blogger also lied about about tea partiers leaving a coffin on Carnahan’s yard), took great care to only mention Brezik’s “anti-government” leanings and anarchist tattoo.

Justin Kendall of The Pitch was the lone standout in Missouri media, and identified Brezik’s “revolutionary rhetoric” and presented a well-documented post of Brezik’s past Facebook postings. A refreshing act of journalism.

The point? When such an act of tragic violence occurs, the media rushes to blame the tea party, conservatives. When they discover that the perpetrator is one who couldn’t be further from a tea partier they drop the story. I don’t want to see every crime become a political sensation but I do want the media to stop fabricating some conservative tie to every crime.

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From Newsbusters:

First Impulse: Let’s Blame Conservatives

Arizona Daily Star columnist/cartoonist David Fitzsimmons: “I must tell you as a columnist who has covered politics in this state, it was inevitable, from my perspective.”
Anchor Martin Savidge: “Why do you say that?”
Fitzsimmons: “Because the right in Arizona, and I’m speaking very broadly, has been stoking the fires of a heated anger and rage successfully in this state….The politics of the state does tend to be far to the right. I would say even rabid right.”
— Exchange at about 2:30pm ET during CNN’s live coverage of the Giffords shooting, January 8. Fitzsimmons later conceded his remarks were “inappropriate.”

Smarmily Singling Out Sarah Palin

“You know, Congresswoman Giffords had received threats before. That’s something that we might have overlooked here. Her office was trashed during the health care debate. When she showed up on Sarah Palin’s political action committee Web site as one of those who had been targeted for defeat, it shows her in the crosshairs there. She warned herself that this kind of thing could have serious repercussions.”
— CBS’s Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, January 9.

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This week, two weeks after the AZ massacre and one week after President Obama’s call for “civility,” the MSM has proved once again that it is fair, unprejudiced, professional, and full to the brim with the best of intentions.

As a conservative, I honor the admirable achievements of the professional journalists at MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. My head hangs in humbled deference at the hate-filled remarks of Obama pals, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and Rep. Steven Cohen. Behold their collective greatness in attempting to cover-up their gaffes, lies, and hypocrisies again this week: MSM made small mention of liberal activist James Eric Fuller, who was shot in the knee at the AZ shooting and his death threat against Tucson Tea Party leader Trent Humphries. Fuller told the Post Friday:

There would be torture and then an ear necklace, with [Minnesota US Rep.] Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin’s ears toward the end, because they’re small, female ears, and then Limbaugh, Hannity and the biggest ears of all, Cheney’s, in the center.

An “ear necklace” is a reference to necklaces made from the cut-off ears of enemies in the Vietnam War era and, thus, fails Obama’s civility test.

Unlike Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Movement, the MSM did not attempt to link the incendiary statements of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin or even President Obama to Fuller’s violent actions. Durbin has called Tea Partiers “extremists” and President Obama has called on supporters to “punish our enemies.” To date, no other Fuller linkages have been made to journalists who have called Tea Partiers “terrorists,” “thugs,” “brown shirts,” and “dangerous.”

Want more?

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Liberals are despicably exploiting the tragic Tucson Arizona shooting as an opportunity to launch another “Hush Rush” initiative. A liberal pundit lamented that there is no left wing radio talk show host as powerful as Rush Limbaugh. Typical of their thinking, this lib believes it is unfair for Limbaugh to be King of the Radio Talk Show mountain. In every area of American life, this lib believes government should take control to produce equal “fair” outcomes.

So why isn’t there a left wing equivalent to Limbaugh? Lord knows they have tried. The left even launched an entire radio network, Air America, committed to trashing conservatives and America. Air America featured several “Great Left Hope” talk show host contenders to dethrone Limbaugh. They all crashed and burned including their radio network. Air America is off the air.

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New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane published an amusing non-apology apology for the Times’ sloppy coverage of the Giffords shooting.

Rather than simply come out and say, “We subtly blamed an entire segment of the population for the shootings, and this has contributed toward a wave of hate against millions of Americans … we’re sorry,” Brisbane, speaking for the paper, spends nearly half of the article apologizing gratuitously for initially misreporting Representative Giffords as dead. And in lieu of a mea culpa for stirring-up bigoted hatred against millions of Americans – which has led to FBI crackdowns on tea partiers and thousands of death threats against tea party leaders, some of which on national television nearly made it on national television but for the slick editing of disingenuous, dishonest reporters like Christiane Amanpour – Brisbane (hereafter, “Brizzy”) simply implies that the NYT merely framed the story inappropriately.

So, stirring up ethnic/racial hatred that leads to thousands of death threats is merely inappropriate framing. Techno-lynching a group of people is just an honest mistake. Right, and encouraging folks to burn crosses on our lawns is what, overzealous art patronage?

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I was pleased to read that Eric Fuller issued an apology to Trent Humphries this afternoon:

Arizona shooting victim James Eric Fuller sent his apologies Monday for telling a Tea Party leader, “you are dead.”

Dorothy DeRuyter, a companion of Fuller’s, provided CNN with a statement.

“I would like to tender my sincerest apologies to Mr. (Trent) Humphries for my misplaced outrage on Saturday at the St. Odelia’s town meeting,” Fuller said in the statement. “It was not in the spirit of our allegiance and warm feelings to each other as citizens of our great country.”

Fuller, 63, was involuntarily committed to a county mental health facility after he photographed Tucson Tea Party founder Humphries and said, “You are dead” when Humphries began speaking at the event.

Fuller “is apologetic and very sad” about his outburst, DeRuyter said. “He wishes he could go back and do things differently,” she said.

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There’s no mincing of words in this. Considering the public isn’t buying the spin and a recent study shows how Americans find Sarah Palin more believable and sincere after her Tucson remarks, this (forgive the “violent rhetoric”) backfired on the left.

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After ripping Kirsten Powers two weeks ago forcing an apology on Twitter, Kirsten Powers has penned a piece over at the Daily Beast that dissects the missed opportunity for President Obama in his healing hands speech/pep rally:

But there was another job: shutting down the nonsense about how Sarah Palin or right-wing talkers caused the shooting. This matters not only because it’s important to tell the truth, but also because it would set the stage to move on to really examining the true causes of this nightmare massacre.

Obama mostly chose to be vague on this point, “For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.”

He did add to his prepared remarks that incivility did not cause this tragedy, but he stopped short of a full rebuke of the complete irresponsibility of those who have been stoking anger at conservatives who—as far as we know—had nothing to do with this.

When the president did lay blame, it was on Americans in general. Among the many odd assertions he made: suggesting that “what a tragedy like this requires” is that “we align our values with our actions.” We were told to “expand our moral imaginations.”

Huh?

A mentally ill gunman opened fire at a Safeway. A lack of “aligning” or “imagination” really wasn’t the problem.

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While praying for the recovery of the Safeway victims all last week, we also documented the media’s attempts to defame the tea party by tying the actions of Jared Loughner to the conservative movement — all of this done while lecturing America on civility and rhetoric:

Pointing Fingers Rather Than Saying a Prayer

Media Praises The New Civility

Thoughtful, On-Target Palin Responds To Attacks; Left Loses Last Grip On Reality

Tucson Aftermath Not the Left’s First Political Witch Hunt

A Modest Proposal to End The Progressive Media Tuscon Hate Talk

How the media wanted Loughner to play out

Fire Krugman, Olbermann Now For Blood Libel Against Palin, Americans, In AZ Shooting

The Sheriff and The Media

YouTube Asked to Remove Video of Left’s Threats Against Palin

Targeting A Media Beneath Contempt

Maddening Rhetoric

Media Racially Profiles Giffords Shooter

The result? Death threats against Sarah Palin are at an all-time high, I myself have received threats as has Andrew Breitbart (who made the first call for civility last Saturday), Big Journalism contributor Liberty Chick, talk radio host Jon Justice, and more hardworking conservatives and tea party activists than I can expediently include, including many who do not wish for their circumstances to be known as they are fearful for their families. Yesterday during a taping for a national broadcast, Tucson Tea Party organizer Trent Humphries had his life threatened on camera by Eric Fuller, a victim of the Safeway shootings.

Despite zero evidence to connect Loughner to any conservative, despite the President’s words that discourse “did not cause this tragedy. It did not,” none of the insinuations, suggestions, or coverage presented above from certain media and leftist blogs has been corrected, retracted, or remedied by way of apology.

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The leftwing Daily Kos on June 25, 2008, called for putting a “bull’s-eye” on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ district. The Kos called it a “target” list that included Mrs. Giffords, who now fights for her life after an attempted assassination on the Second amendment champion. The author of the “target” list on Kos goes on to say that perhaps Giffords should be “primaried.” In other words, Giffords was a traitor and should face a primary challenge to take her out. “Not all of these people will get or even deserve primaries, but this vote certainly puts a bull’s eye on their district,” the Kos publication reported.

Then, two days before a nutcase attacked Giffords, the Daily Kos printed the words:

“My CongressWOMAN voted against Nancy Pelosi! And is now DEAD to me!”

The eerie writing referred to Congresswoman Giffords who had voted against Nancy Pelosi as minority leader in the House.

The Daily Kos scrubbed these writings from its website, but screen copies of the offensive screeds remain, thanks to quick-thinking readers.

So what are we to make of these rants in the face of the tragedy in Tucson that left the congresswoman with a bullet-wound to her head and an uncertain future, and six innocents dead: Judge John Roll ,63; Dorthy Murray, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; Christina Greene, 9; Phyllis Scheck, 79; and Gabriel Zimmerman, 30? Should we blame the Daily Kos and others who used their First Amendment rights to criticize Giffords at one time or another? Should we look toward ways to shut down the Daily Kos and others who publish outrageous and sometimes untrue diatribes? In a Democratic Republic like our own, the resounding answer has to be “no.”

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Correction: Mediaite reports that the slogan “Rocking the Vote” did not appear on the “Together We Thrive” t-shirts.  While the author of this article cautiously noted in the text that we had not verified the claim made at the Canada Free Press that the slogan had appeared on the shirts, our original headline implied that we knew the information to be fact.  We have updated the headline to reflect what is reported in the column.

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Did it seem odd to you that even the Fox all-star panel would have us believe that the President with the most micromanaged image in recent memory had no control or influence whatsoever over the preparation, format, and tenor etc. of the commercialized, pep rally memorial we witnessed this week, and that the White House can blame the embarrassment entirely on the University of Arizona?  The entire event was about Captain Greek Columns - who gave a half hour speech – and his time to shine and show off his magical healing abilities.

“Togethere We Thrive” sure sounded a lot more campaign like than memorial like. Usually the themes for memorials – assuming they’re meant to feature those we’re supposedly remembering – are not about “thriving” or “prospering” or anything of that sort. It was a jarring oddity. Now we have an idea where it came from. Not only did the slogan for this Obama 2012 campaign kickoff, ”Together We Thrive,” originate from President Obama’s campaign organization Organizing for America, but it was the title of a post calling for revolution:

“For too long Americans have been set one against the other.  It is a side affect of a free market society,” Berry IV posted.  “How can profits be maximized, how can I get the work down for the lowest possible costs.  This continually sets one group against the other, especially in the blue collar sectors of America.  It has become part of the American Business model, whether it was indentured servants, slaves picking cotton, sharecroppers, the industrious people that built the railroads or today’s migrant workers.  As long as we remain divided, fighting for the scraps that America has to offer it will be one group against the other.

“What I see in Obama is a chance for revolution. (Italics CFP’s).  A chance for every group to be heard; A chance to live the American dream that has been denied to so many…

“In a previous career, I was the global leader of Diversity for a global fortune 500 corporation.  I have studied the affects of diverse groups working together and the results can not be denied.  Together we Thrive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Revolution was just a metaphor, you say, not a call for political violence?  Doesn’t matter anymore, apparently.

But worst of all is that according to Judi McLeod of the Canada Free Press, at the bottom of the t-shirts is the DNC slogan “Rocking America and Rocking the Vote.”

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You can’t retract hate. You can’t retract idiocy. You can’t retract bigotry. You can’t retract irresponsible claims masquerading as journalism. It’s time to fire Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, and New York Times’ Editor-in-Chief Bill Keller for printing and broadcasting blood libelous statements intended to directly link Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party movement, and conservatives in general to the Arizona massacre on Saturday.

These phony journalists and commentators should be fired for unethical media practices, for libel, for slander, and for perpetuating the culture of hate and bigotry they falsely claim to be so passionately against.

Not even a day after the tragedy, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote an editorial called, “A Climate of Hate,” and he did so without any facts. He laced his January 9th editorial diatribe with his wish-filled assumption that Jared Loughner’s insane killing spree was linked to Sarah Palin and conservative, tea party, and talk radio rhetoric.

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For the past nine months, the great state of Arizona has been the subject of withering media attacks by an insulated chattering class whose lack of perspective may one day be studied in graduate psychology programs (because journalism school will be indistinguishable from clown school by then). The horrific attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by a lone, obviously deeply disturbed gunman has opened the state and my hometown of Tucson up to more irresponsible derision from the echo-chamber MSM.

Note to HuffPo and the New York Times: one psycho does not a culture make.

I won’t even bother linking to the various hit pieces in the above-mentioned publications, they’re so prevalent right now one doesn’t have to search hard to find them.

Let us begin, rather, with the notion of a “culture” in Arizona, which implies some sort of static population that’s developed its ideals over time. The state had 1,775,399 residents in 1970. The most recent census puts that figure at around 6.4 million. That kind of growth is a bit too rapid to attribute to the friskiness and fertility of the natives. The fact is that Arizona is a melting pot within a melting pot, quickly adding people from all over the United States for the past forty years. People have been flocking there for the weather and the jobs, by the way, not to join a militia. If anyone wants to attribute certain attitudes to “the people of Arizona” those same attitudes should be applied nationally, as most of the state’s population has streamed in from elsewhere.

My next point is purely anecdotal but important for context. A lot is being said about the availability of guns in Arizona. My grandfather owned a gun store. I got my first real rifle when I was six (a Savage bolt-action .22). I grew up around a lot of guns, as did almost all my friends. To this day, we all remain remarkably free of homicides and accidental shootings.

I mention that because I get the sense when reading anti-gun articles that those writing them assume gun owners default to grabbing a weapon for conflict resolution. Most probably wouldn’t admit that but the implication is there.

The simple truth is that Arizona has always been home to people who own guns legally and don’t go on shooting sprees. The tendency by anti-gun people to assume that possibility is always lurking is not only irresponsible, but also unsupported by facts.

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Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik knows exactly what he’s doing. He has become a media darling because he is telling them exactly what they want to hear. Facts be damned, he’ll keep enforcing their template until this foolishness takes hold.

Hey Sheriff, tone down the rhetoric, will ya?

To this point, the activist old media puppets sit there on set and nod approvingly to everything Dupnik says when he points the finger at right-wing talk radio for causing Jared Loughner to go nuts and kill 6 people, with one notable exception. Meghan Kelly of Fox News asked Dupnik to defend his position with facts, he could only respond that he was just giving his personal opinion.

Personal  opinion?

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