Bear with me here. There’s a bit of a backstory …

Ten months ago, the Detroit Fox affiliate exposed a handful of Chrysler auto workers who were spending their lunch breaks drinking booze and getting high. Working on an anonymous tip from an employee inside the Jefferson North plant, WJBK’s Rob Wolchek discovered more than a dozen employees over a ten day period punched out to get pickled.

Less than two months before the story broke, Barack Obama traveled to the very plant busted in the “Problem Solvers” investigation to tout his economic policies. To add insult to injury, Chrysler received $14 billion in taxpayer-funded TARP and bail outs from January to June 2009, paying back little more than half and sticking hardworking American taxpayers with the difference.

At the time the first story broke last September, outlets like the Huffington Post and Rush Limbaugh covered it, and it gained national media attention. Chrysler fired (“suspended indefinitely”) 13 of the 15 identified in the original video, and Fox Detroit followed up just a few days later with vox pops from employees who knew those in question.

Chrysler cited two policies in their Standards of Conduct guide that “might apply” to the above situation:

Use, possession, distribution, sale or offering for sale, or being under the influence of alcohol or drugs (other than use or possession of narcotics in medicines prescribed by the employee’s physician), on Corporation property, or while operating a Corporation owned motor vehicle, or while engaged in Corporate business.

Unacceptable conduct due to alcohol or drug abuse (other than use or possession of narcotics in medicines prescribed by the employee’s physician), or conduct that indicates a potential for impaired or unsafe job performance due to drug or alcohol abuse.

The issue seemed to have died down until Wolchek staked out a popular hangout for auto workers based on two anonymous tips from inside another plant just a few miles south of the Jefferson North plant.

The hangout? A private parking lot owned by the local United Auto Workers Local 372 (the link was dead when I clicked it).

The Detroit Free Press‘ account of this story had more than 350 comments at the time of this posting, many of them defensive of the employees spending their lunch breaks drinking and smoking and hostile toward the news media for just doing their job.

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My friend Tony Katz came up with the brilliant term “racer,” the definition of which is someone who dishonestly accuses someone else of racism for political advantage. If you watch the clip below of this Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” you’ll see David Gregory attempting to be a racer, but in the process he only ends up exposing his own bigotry:

What kind of person hears “food stamps” and automatically thinks “Black people”?

Well, that would be a bigot.

As we saw with the dishonest racer attacks on Donald Trump, Obama’s MSM Palace Guards intend to Alisnky any potential threat to their precious President with coordinated journ-o-list narratives designed to take these individual threats down one-by-one with phony charges of racism. This tactic is also designed to silence and chill criticism of the President through the use of racial McCarthyism. David Gregory knows that the record number of people on food stamps under this failed president is a devastating narrative and so, as one of Obama’s Chief Palace Guards, his job is to make sure that narrative doesn’t take hold. His problem, however, is that facts are facts, so all he can do is holler racism.

What happened, though, is that in the process of Alinskying Gingrich, David Gregory outsmarted himself and exposed his own bigotry. Worse still, on national television, he not only furthered a racist stereotype, he legitimized it. Tell me, what’s the difference between a redneck or the host of “Meet the Press” using as a political bludgeon a weapon falsely labeled “food stamps = Black people”?  There is none.

Newsflash David Gregory, Joan Walsh and Roger Ebert: Not everyone or even a majority of the record number of people currently on food stamps in this country are Black. This might also shock you, but Caucasians like yourselves are also on the dole. The three of you might want to get together and try some soul-searching.

Which brings me to Chris Matthews…

Like David Gregory, in the clip below, what Matthews wants to be here is a racer, but in the process (again, like Gregory) he only ends up exposing his own bigotry:

To Chris Matthews, Detroit equals a particular skin color; a failed city equals a skin color that’s not his own. Why?

Detroit’s problems have nothing to do with race and everything to do with failed government.

Matthews equating a failed city to a particular skin color is not only perpetuating the very worst kind of racist stereotype, it’s factually wrong. Anytime Chris or Joan want to come out to Los Angeles, I’d be happy to take them on a tour of Ladera Heights (drinks and dinner on me — bring Ebert!). Maybe a good hard look at the “Black Beverly Hills” will convince these “progressives” that “failed city” doesn’t equal “Black city.”

Nothing reveals more about someone’s character more than how they behave in a desperate situation, and in their desperation to protect Obama, we are learning a lot about the likes of David Gregory, Joan Walsh, and Chris Matthews.

And when you watch the rest of the MSM continue to intentionally ignore Herman Cain, you will learn a whole lot more. Because that’s the other part of the MSM’s sinister agenda. Gregory and Matthews and Politico’s Ben Smith and all the rest of Obama’s operatives know that nothing takes the oxygen out of the room like hurling the charge of racism. So what better way to deep-six our ideas and criticisms of Obama than by sucking all the air out of the room? They know that no matter how foolish the racial charge or how well our side responds, that this is the moment that becomes the story. Newt can be brilliant for every other second he sits with Gregory, but by dropping the race-bomb Gregory knows no one will remember or talk about how brilliant Newt was. All they’ll remember is the racial nonsense and this effectively kills any chance someone on our side has to get their message out there.

It’s all part of the plan.

These are bad people not dumb people.

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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It’s come to this. The totalitarian Ministry of Newspeak er, I mean Media Matters for America has so much Soros money that they actually employ a guy to watch what we are saying on Twitter, even if it’s trash talk with buddies over a football game.  I’m not joking.  Even more outrageous, all of the thousand-plus contributors here at “The Bigs” are under this scrutiny.  And whenever any of us do something that the self-appointed thought-police at MMfA deem worthy of criticizing, we are all labeled with the same moniker:  “Andrew Breitbart Blogger.”  Here’s how they came after me, for sending a Tweet about an NFL game:

Let’s start at the beginning:  First of all, I am an American man.  Being an American man, I love the NFL.  I am also from Detroit.  Being an American man from Detroit who loves the NFL, it therefore goes to reason that I hate the Chicago Bears.  Everyone with me so far? (I’m trying to make this so simple that even the joyless, agoraphobic shut-ins like those staffing MMfA will understand.)

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The great Joel Kotkin, peerless observer and chronicler of the nation’s urban and municipal woes, takes on the Golden State and wonders: what the hell happened to what was once the nation’s greatest state. The answer will not surprise you:

California has long been a destination for those seeking a better place to live. For most of its history, the state enacted sensible policies that created one of the wealthiest and most innovative economies in human history. California realized the American dream but better, fostering a huge middle class that, for the most part, owned their homes, sent their kids to public schools, and found meaningful work connected to the state’s amazingly diverse, innovative economy.

Recently, though, the dream has been evaporating. Between 2003 and 2007, California state and local government spending grew 31 percent, even as the state’s population grew just 5 percent. The overall tax burden as a percentage of state income, once middling among the states, has risen to the sixth-highest in the nation, says the Tax Foundation. Since 1990, according to an analysis by California Lutheran University, the state’s share of overall U.S. employment has dropped a remarkable 10 percent…

What went so wrong? The answer lies in a change in the nature of progressive politics in California. During the second half of the twentieth century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city—as something to be sacked and plundered. The result is two separate California realities: a lucrative one for the wealthy and for government workers, who are largely insulated from economic decline; and a grim one for the private-sector middle and working classes, who are fleeing the state.

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**** Update 2: Commissioner Selig won’t reverse the call.

**** Update: Major League Baseball reviewing umpire’s call.

Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga wuz robbed of a perfecto last night at Comerica Park in the Motor City by a call at first base by umpire Jim Joyce that will rank as one of the worst calls ever. One out from perfection…

Out by a mile.

Okay — you’re the sportswriters, so have at it.

Thirty little buses in New York City…my, how they roll. Through our organization Stop Islamization of America, Robert Spencer and I have placed ads on New York City buses, offering help to Muslims wishing to leave Islam. Our ads ran previously on buses in Miami, but in New York they’ve received international notice. The religious liberty bus ad campaign was covered in the last few days by every major network: ABC, NBC, CBS (New York), CNN and FOX, as well by Associated Press, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, Britain’s Daily Mail, Russian television, and many more–too many news outlets to list here.

It’s no surprise that most mainstream media outlets that have covered the story have just repeated talking points from the unindicted co-conspirator, Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood front, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). AP said: “some Muslims are calling the ads a smoke screen for an anti-Muslim agenda.” Which Muslims are saying that? Farther down in the article we find out: (more…)

Wasilla, Alaska (UIP)— Shocking news last night as former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin announced that she is following in the footsteps of the noble senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, and is switching parties to become a Democrat.

This news comes just five days after Palin appeared as the keynote speaker at a Tea Party rally in Searchlight, Nev., where she appeared in her former guise as an angry white female and told the crowd of at least a dozen or so people that she was tired of government intrusion into her life and that she was going to do everything she could to “send Harry Reid back to Searchlight where he would be lucky to be elected as part-time street sweeper.”

Sometime since then, Palin said, she had an epiphany and realized “the weather of Nevada must’ve unfrozen my cold, steely Alaskan heart,” and that she had awakened from her icy slumber of neocon-ism.  “What the hell was I thinking?” She also resigned as a Fox News contributor, effective immediately.

Reaction was swift from the Democrats across the nation. (more…)

Talk about social promotions! Laura Berman, a writer for The Detroit News, recently penned a column about Otis Mathis’ inability to write a coherent sentence.

Berman offered readers several examples of Mathis’ unique talent. Here’s one of his emails:

If you saw Sunday’s Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason’s he gave for closing school to many empty seats.

Another:

Do DPS control the Foundation or outside group? If an outside group control the foundation, then what is DPS Board row with selection of is director? Our we mixing DPS and None DPS row’s, and who is the watch dog?

Mathis, a product of the Detroit public schools, is none other than the president of the Detroit school board – a man who “repeatedly failed an English proficiency exam” at Wayne State University (also in Detroit) but was shrewd enough to mount a legal challenge against the requirement. (more…)

It would seem that the Associated Press wants to consider its January 25 story by Devlin Barrett (“Feds detail Christmas Day attack”; also saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes) the last word on what occurred in the hours immediately following Flight 253’s landing in Detroit on Christmas Day.

But if that’s indeed the case, Barrett’s report also serves to prove that the wire service had no business revising originally accurate reports to remove what were apparently inconvenient facts relating to the incident.

To refresh by way of my Big Journalism post on January 15, AP’s initial reports on Christmas afternoon and early Christmas evening told readers that “the man claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over U.S. soil,” and that it had even used the M-word (“Muslim”). But, I wrote, by the middle of the next morning, “The supposedly solid AQ connection somehow became tenuous and unproven,” and the M-word was gone.

This scrubbing conveniently gave the Obama administration precious time during the weekend that followed to regain its bearings after significant initial clumsiness. Ultimately, I noted that AP’s revisions “allowed the President of the United States to inform us (on the Tuesday after the attack), without challenge and as if it was a recent discovery, that — shazam! — the attack might have had something to do with AQ.” (more…)

Fourth of a series.  Find parts one, two and three here.  And don’t miss this report, either.

Martha Coakley declares that terrorists are “gone from Afghanistan” and has no idea the Taliban are either terrorists or our sworn enemies.

No one ever accused Martha Coakley of having any foreign-policy experience.  After all, as a career lawyer, prosecutor, state attorney general and lifelong Democrat party hack, the “Massachusette” can’t rationally be expected to be as up on the nuances of the “war on terror” as, say, Joe Biden.

Still, her remarks during her one debate with Scott Brown on January 11 should trouble anyone who hopes that a potential successor to the warm body currently occupying the deceased Lion of the Senate’s seat would have, shall we say, a greater grasp of the geo-political situation.

First, in her own words, her foreign-policy credentials:

I have a sister who lives overseas and she’s been in England and now lives in the Middle East.  I’ve spent a lot of time on my own traveling, ‘cause I’m interested in it.  Less so as attorney general, and my responsibilities don’t take me overseas.

Unbelievable?  See for yourself:

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A quote often attributed to Otto Von Bismarck in the 1930s — but really belonging to poet John Godfrey Saxe over 60 years earlier — tells us that “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.”

“Original Old Media reporting” belongs on Saxe’s list.

In all three cases, the temptation to look away is great. In all three, we must resist. All require strong surveillance to ensure a quality product.

For all of their considerable accomplishments, New Media watchdogs have not done a particularly good job of proactively monitoring wire service and other original-source stories as they move through the assembly line from breaking news to supposedly settled narrative. As a result, as often occurs when legislators and sausage plants aren’t closely watched, product quality is often pathetic, and is sometimes downright dangerous. (more…)