If you want to see a good example of a reporter/critic who’s grown fat and sassy in his job and has been reduced to phoning it in, take a good look at Tom Shales:

The Pulitzer-Prize winning TV critic was once one of the brightest bylines in the Post’s Style section, but like anyone who’s stayed too long in a job (Shales began at the Post in 1972 and became TV critic five years later), he’s pretty much condemned to an endless rehash of previously expressed opinions and long-held beliefs. The only thing that’s changed is that he — like, apparently, every other writer on the Post — has come out of the journalist’s “impartial” ideological closet and now feels free to opine about all sorts of things.

Case in point, this crack, which comes at the end of his professional obit of Larry King, the Methuselah of talk-show hosts who recently announced he was hanging ‘em up on CNN. After spending the bulk of his column on his assessment of King’s career — arguing the strange theory that King wasn’t loud, boorish or attitudinal enough to compete in the modern era of Confrontation TV, instead of the more reasonable assumption that King had simply run out of gas after 25 years — Shales pulls the following rabbit out of his hat: (more…)

The Huffington Post’s Cuba-based writer, Margarita Alarcon, informs us that treating Cuba, “this small island,” as “a threat to U.S. integrity so much that the Department of State puts it on its list of terrorist nations is considered tantamount to political dementia.”  In fact, Margarita Alarcon’s views closely parallel those of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency’s former Latin American head, Ana Belen Montes.

In a 1998 report entitled “National Intelligence Estimate on Cuba” and largely authored by Ms. Montes, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that:

Castro poses no significant threat to the U.S. or any of its hemispheric neighbors. No evidence exists that that Cuba is trying to foment any instability in the Western Hemisphere.

The Clinton administration based its Cuba policy on this eminently authoritative report. After all, its primary author had access to all U.S. intelligence on Cuba and led briefings on Capitol Hill, at the State Department and the Pentagon regarding Cuban policy. “On Cuba,” one government official said. “Montes was who you went to.”

Four years after issuing that report, its primary author was in U.S. federal prison having been convicted of espionage, (the same charges against the Rosenbergs) and having narrowly dodged their death sentence only with a plea bargain. Turned out that Montes, (a frequent visitor to Cuba on “academic exchanges”) had been working for Castro since the 80’s. (more…)

Leave it to the Obama administration to come up with yet another bald power grab, in the guise of “helping” us: now the FCC, invoking an ancient  law designed to regulate the telephone industry, wants to lay its heavy hand on broadband:

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to begin the controversial process of reframing broadband service under communications law, a move aimed at clarifying the commission’s regulatory authority over the sector after a major legal setback.

By a three-to-two vote split along partisan lines, the FCC approved a notice of inquiry asking for comments from the public on how the agency should proceed with Chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposal to reclassify broadband as a regulated telecommunications service, while enacting checks against the commission’s oversight authority.

Naturally, in the emerging American version of Italian fascism, major cyber-players are on board with this in order to let the government do their dirty work for them, and stamp out potential competition before it can gain a toehold in the marketplace — all, of course, in the guise of “protecting the consumer.” From My Way News: (more…)

Talk about shoddy journalism…

Now— They’re putting phantom white men into the Congressional Black Caucus parade through the tea party protesters!

This hit piece by AP’s national race-relations reporter, Jesse Washington, is a disgrace.

“Wrong video of health protest spurs N-word feud”

This was one of the worst pieces of crap journalism we’ve seen coming from the democratic-media complex in a long, long, long time…

Wrong video of health protest spurs N-word feud

Three Democratic congressmen — all black — say they heard racial slurs as they walked through thousands of angry protesters outside the U.S. Capitol. A white lawmaker says he heard the epithets too. Conservative activists say the lawmakers are lying.

White lawmaker? Huh? These were members of the Black Caucus who paraded to the capitol. There were no white lawmakers with them. The media is now just making up anything to slander the tea party protesters. (more…)

Andrew Alexander’s column today concerning the Washington Post’s reporting on the alleged “spitting and slurs” episode on March 20 offers a partially accurate thesis based on unsubstantiated details.  In short, it doesn’t work.

Here’s Alexander’s thesis:

The Post was remiss in not providing clarity by quickly dissecting what happened.

Although he should have added “and accurately” after “quickly,” we’ll take what we can get.  He also wrote,

The Post and other news organizations left the impression of a despicable, premeditated assault.

“Created” would be a better word than “left.”

And therein is the fracture in the Post ombudsman’s review.  He implies that the Post should have quickly noted that the alleged spitting incident was unintentionally and, therefore, not despicable and premeditated. (An event could be despicable without being premeditated, but I digress.)  Alexander offers no similar comment on the alleged Rep. Barney Frank incident. More on that below. (more…)

UPDATE: The bounty is now $100,000 for any audio/video footage of the N-word being hurled at Congressmen John Lewis and Andre Carson.

***

After 14 months of committing 100% to health care reform, the day after the signing of the Health Care bill was to mark the Democratic Party’s new primary concern: destroy the uprising, annihilate by all means necessary, the Tea Party movement.

The first sign that a plan was in place was the ham-fisted, high-camp posturing of the most controversial members of the Democratic caucus walking through the peaceful but animated “Tea Party” demonstrators on Capitol Hill. There is no reason for these elected officials to walk above ground through the media circus amid their ideological foes. The natural route is the tunnels between the House office buildings and the Capitol. By crafting a highly symbolic walk of the Congressional Black Caucus through the majority white crowd, the Democratic Party was looking to provoke a negative reaction. They didn’t get it. So they made it up.

The proof that the N-word wasn’t said once, let alone 15 times, as Rep. Andre Carson claimed, is that soon thereafter — even though the press dutifully reported it as truth — Nancy Pelosi followed the alleged hate fest, which allegedly included someone spitting, by walking through the crowd with a gavel in hand and a shit-eating grin on her face. Had the incidents reported by the Congressional Black Caucus actually occurred the Capitol Police would have been negligent to allow the least popular person to that crowd – the Speaker – to put herself in harm’s way.

That crowd was a sea of new-media equipment. Not only were tens of thousands people armed with handicams, BlackBerrys and iPods, so also was the mainstream media there, covering every inch of the event. Why did not one mainstream media outlet raise the specter that perhaps a video would exist to prove the events occurred? I am still dealing with the same press telling me we didn’t prove that ACORN was aiding and abetting criminal activity because we “did not provide enough audio and video evidence.” (Insert laugh track.) Is there not a blatant double standard at play here? Nancy Pelosi tipped her hand that race was a central part of her strategy. She invoked the Civil Rights Act and compared it with the universally reviled health care bill. Her caucus is doubling down on the civil-rights rhetoric. There are no coincidences.

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Fifth in a series.  Find parts one, two, three and four here.  And don’t miss this important update.

There’s an old saying in New England, something one utters when another person grabs your chair or bar stool and plops himself into it before you were ready to leave:  “You wouldn’t jump into my grave so fast.”

Well, hold the phone.  As everyone in the State of Massachusetts and the country knows, Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May 2008, and as the months went on into 2009, the prognosis was: terminal.

With the imminent vacancy of Kennedy’s seat a foregone conclusion, Martha Coakley began ramping up her campaign for his seat… as early as January 2009.

The Boston Herald first reported on this story on September 25, 2009:

Attorney General Martha Coakley has run a shadow Senate campaign for months, shelling out $126,000 from her state campaign account for expenses likely tied to her Capitol Hill bid, including $15,000 for Web site upgrades just days before Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died, records show.

The spending spree began in January but ramped up the last two weeks of August as Coakley funneled $31,000 to consultants, fund-raisers and a Web design company in preparation for her foray into the high-stakes Senate race.

(more…)