Here’s a new way to try and hip-up the boring, ages-old, left-wing idea of tax hikes: link it to reality TV star Kim Kardashian. That is just what ABC News tried to do on the Wednesday, January 4th edition of ABC “World News Tonight” when the venerable news program helped advertise an effort by a small group headed by a former Democrat operative that wants to hike California’s income taxes. It is a two-pronged approach of hitching a big government, big spending, high tax agenda to the TV reality show star in order to drag younger people into the left’s class warfare game.

ABC highlighted a California Millionaires Tax policy recommendation from a group called Courage Campaign. The group is headed by Rick Jacobs who is the former head of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign in California, a Huffington Post writer, and leader of this admittedly “progressive” group.

ABC reported that the “liberal group” (and kudos to ABC for actually identifying them as a liberal group for a change) is upset that Kim Kardashian, who made some $12 million in 2011, only paid one percent more than the average middle class wage in the Golden State.

Here is what the extremist high-tax group says on it’s website about this:

Kim Kardashian made more than $12 million in 2010, but she only paid 1% more in taxes than a middle-class Californian. That’s not OK, especially when budget cuts are decimating schools and critical programs for children, the elderly, and the disabled. It’s exactly why Courage Campaign and two dozen other organizations are putting the Millionaires Tax of 2012 on the ballot.

Wow, that tiny, little one percent suuuure seems small, right? But let’s look at the actual payment, shall we? Kardashian paid a tax rate of 10.3 percent and 10.3 percent of twelve million is $1,236,000! And those middle-class folks that paid one percent less at 9.3 percent? Well if the average income in California is $47.000, then they paid only $4,371. Why aren’t these middle-class louts paying their fair share? (That’s called sarcasm, by the way.)

Now, it’s not that I care at all for Kim and her brood — I never watch so-called reality TV and have never seen her show — but this is all really just class warfare. After all, let’s look at the tact here: Instead of actually talking about what Kardashian pays, this ABC flogged extremist group focuses on that “one percent” as if that makes her tax remittance tiny. They mislead the public by purposefully avoiding any mention of the amount she actually paid.

Seriously, the fact is we could out right confiscate the millions made by the Kardashinas of this country and it wouldn’t make a dent in the hole of trillions of dollars that Democrats have dug for us.

But there is one last thing to ask about this ABC report: I’m just wondering, but has ABC ever highlighted the tax policy idea of some small tea party group that made a video to sell its plan to the people? Why does this tiny, left-wing group in California rate any attention at all in a national news program?

Obviously the answer here is that ABC saw the possibility of exploiting Kardashian and enraging her young fan base in order to drive them to support a left-wing idea. It’s all about branding, you see. If the far left and ABC can leech off Kim Kardashian to sell their creaky old socialist policies, then that’s what they will do.

“No it wasn’t deceptive, that’s what everybody’s saying about it. I saw the first version of it, and it told pretty much the whole story, of how that woman had gone through an epiphany of understanding how race works.”

Related:
Nolte: Who Got to Chris Matthews?: ‘Hardball’ Defense of Breitbart Memory-Holed (July 30, 2010)
Marlow: WaPo’s Kurtz “dishonestly suggests Matthews had gotten his facts wrong regarding Breitbart including footage of Shirley Sherrod’s redemption” (August 3, 2010)

Berlin Wall at sunset, Reagan Library, Simi Valley. Photo by Dana Loesch

I was in elementary school when the Berlin wall fell but the imagery which comprises my mind’s history of it are photos of youths tearing chunks from it and crying when it fell.

I had a conversation with a friend last night about the fast growth of conservatism in new media. Having been schooled in old media and learning a new industry on an old PHP group blog right as new media exploded over a decade ago, I’ve watched with interest the tug-of-war between the left and right in terms on Internet influence. The left dominate during Dean and Obama’s campaigns but something happened in ‘08 and now conservatives are out-organizing the left on the web. More conservative blogs are created each day.

(more…)

The left-driven media in these final days before the election is making every last ditch effort they can to discredit one of the largest political movements in American history, the Tea Party. Meredith Vieira on the Today Show did her very best to throw Michele Bachmann off of the “you’re a social conservative bigot by association” cliff.  Vieira first tries to get Bachmann to denounce the Tea Party as “losing their way” because they supposedly took a stance on some social issues. Bachmann corrects Vieira so Vieira tries to play the “guilt by association” game with Bachmann. It’s interesting how conservatives are constantly forced to answer for all comments that all conservatives make but no one held Harry Reid accountable for Howard Dean’s view on the mosque. When the liberals disagreed over the Ground Zero Mosque nationally, where were the interviews asking them to denounce the each other’s positions?

Joy Behar later references the Vieira interview and shows total ignorance when it comes to Bachmann. Again, Behar tries to hold Vieira to the same standard that Vieira held Bachmann and it still didn’t take with Behar’s guests. Behar then goes off on Bachmann’s opposition to Obamacare and completely loses all form of sanity. She maniacally proclaims over and over again that Bachmann is against children. Behar really tries to argue that Bachmann, the woman who has had at least 23 foster children as well as children of her own, is anti-children. Behar not only insults her viewers by her lack of research on criticizing a candidate but she also insults and diminishes the children that Bachmann has cared for. I suppose it’s too much to expect a reasonable interview from Behar when on The View Behar shows she isn’t even familiar with one of the most cited CNN polls concerning the Ground Zero Mosque. Not to mention the fact that she stormed off stage in pseudo disgust on national television. (more…)

The good doctor of East Hampton and Vermont, Howard Brush Dean III, analyzes Glenn Beck:

Card-carrying hack John Heilemann, totally clueless as usual, also chimes in. (more…)

In Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother increased chocolate rations from 30 grams per week to 25 grams per week.  You read that right.  There are no objective facts; there is only the word of the Ministry of Truth. The 21st century Thought Police,  i.e. the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and the JournoList, don’t just get the facts completely wrong, but they double down and congratulate themselves as if they’d gotten them right, so long as the misinformation they spread serve their political purposes.  This mainstream media totalitarianism was on full display on Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources this weekend on CNN:

As we documented last week, Chris Matthews aired a highly entertaining segment of Hardball where he blasted Howard Dean for not watching the original Shirley Sherrod footage and rightfully pointed out that Breitbart had included footage of her redemption in the original video.  Apparently, the Thought Police tracked Matthews down between shows and made him re-tape the segment with Politico’s Breitbart beat writer/lefty double agent Ken Vogel replacing Dean; the discussion changed from the actual substance of Breitbart’s multimedia presentation to popcorn “the state of journalism today” malarkey. (more…)

Chris Matthews strayed from the liberal talking points today. But don’t worry, it only happened for a little while. Two hours, in fact, before he was back to his old self, lashing out irrationally at conservatives. We’re not sure where Matthews’ original bout of intellectual honesty came from, but we’re pretty sure that some sort of JournoListy Intervention occurred to get him back on message.

For those of you who don’t know (and according to the latest ratings, that’s most of you), Matthews does a 5pm “Hardball” on MSNBC that repeats at 7pm. Today, during the 5pm hour, Matthews had as his guests hardcore leftists Joan Walsh of Salon.com and former Governor Howard Dean. The issue at hand was Shirley Sherrod’s promise to sue Andrew Breitbart. Well, that wasn’t the real issue at hand. The idea was to beat holy hell out of Breitbart, but things didn’t exactly go according to the JournoListy Playbook.

Believe it or not, Matthews defended Breitbart.

In the early part of the 5pm segment with Walsh and Dean, there appears to be some confusion over whether or not Matthews was aware of the fact that Breitbart posted two excerpts of Sherrod’s speech as opposed to the whole 35-plus minutes. But later in the segment — and this is important — after this discrepancy is cleared up and the full excerpt in question has been aired for Matthews and the “Hardball” audience (this, according to Newsbusters), a fully informed Matthews still defends Breitbart making the crucial and oft-ignored point that… (more…)

***UPDATE:  “Hardball” Defense of Breitbart Memory-Holed

***

Today, on MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews acknowledged (and appears to be the first member of the mainstream media to acknowledge) that the video Andrew Breitbart posted in his July 19th Big Government article about an NAACP audience’s reaction to a particular moment in Shirley Sherrod’s speech, does in fact include Ms. Sherrod discussing her redemptive revelation (transcript from Newsbusters):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, there you go. [Quoting Ms. Sherrod] “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.” So … that part, that part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape.

This then prompts Mr. Matthews to ask his guests, Governor Howard Dean and Joan Walsh, a question that answers itself:

Yeah, but why do you think if this was a complete slime job, why do you think Breitbart kept that in there, Governor? Why did he keep in that part – let me let the Governor in here. Why did he put the redemptive part in here at all?

Dean admits he has never even viewed that 2:36 video in its entirety! Nor has he even read Andrew Breitbart’s original article, which states:

Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Of course that has not stopped Dean from appearing on multiple networks and ripping Fox News as being racist for having played the video of Shirley Sherrod released on BigGovernment.com (yes, the same 2:36 video he has not watched all — any? — of). (more…)

This time, the stupids are on the other side:

Howard Dean, the Democrat-Media gift that keeps on giving.

Remember — (more…)

Modern American leftism is, at heart, a culture of thugs and bullies who simply assert what they wish to be true and never let facts get in the way whatever ridiculous argument they are trying to make. Which is why it’s such a pleasure to see an honest newsman like Chris Wallace stand up to them:

More please.

Washington, D. C. (AP) – Shades of Michael Steele.  Two days after the Justice Department filed suit against Arizona for criminalizing illegal behavior, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean is under fire over unscripted remarks he made last week at a University of Mexico symposium on immigration.

The event was sponsored by the National Council of La Raza [The Race] and Reconquista, a loose affiliation of groups whose goal is to reclaim the southwestern United States for Mexico.

Surreptitiously filmed, Dean’s appearance was posted on YouTube Monday afternoon and pulled Tuesday morning, hours after President Obama ordered the FCC to put its boot on YouTube’s neck until it takes down all the anti-Alinksy videos currently posted and replaces them with fawning, misty reminiscences of the good old days of the class struggle.

A high-ranking administration source told ABC News that President Obama dissociates himself from Dean’s comments for the time being. “We sent him as an observer, not a participant.  The chairman should not have revealed private discussions he had with the president about how to make the border with Mexico more porous while appearing to secure it.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs weighed in at his briefing yesterday, calling Dean’s comments a Republican dirty trick designed to muddy the immigration waters.  “It’s fishy,” Gibbs said.  “Who really organized the conference?  Who invited Dean?  Who gave him the floor?  This smells, my friends.”

Transcript follows: (more…)

It’s always disheartening to see someone from your own camp take a bad hit as Dave Weigel has.  The Washington Post blogger, who was hired to provide coverage “inside the conservative movement and the Republican Party,”resigned over recently leaked emails from the Journolist listserv, in which he used some less than flattering language in his personal commentary about many of the people he was covering.

While I’ve always been respectful of Weigel’s insights and his writing, I would be being less than honest however if I’d said there wasn’t something about his posts that I’d also found worrisome.  The revelation of the Journolist emails only strengthened my gut feeling, especially when I saw how nasty the rhetoric was in the emails.  Frankly, that part surprised even me.

It’s not that I wasn’t open-minded to the views that Weigel has always presented; I could appreciate that he has criticisms of the right.  But as someone assigned to provide conservative insight, his commentary sometimes struck me as being penned more from a liberal viewpoint than that of a conservative or libertarian one.  It almost seemed more targeted to pleasing Media Matters’ readers.  And since I already follow a number of liberal journalists to balance out the material I read from conservative and libertarian leaning authors, Media Matters’ tone isn’t exactly what I’m usually looking for.  But perhaps there was a reason his posts sometimes seemed that way to me. (more…)

JOE BIDEN: [on phone] Sure, sure, I’ll tell him.  No problem.  [hangs up]  Charlie Rangel, Boss.  Said he appreciated the offer but would rather you didn’t come to Harlem to campaign with him.

OBAMA:  Good grief.  Harlem?  I’m that toxic?  We are gonna get smoked in November.  Lame duckdom, here I come.

JOE BIDEN:  Loser talk, Chief.  Stay away from the press with that attitude.  MoDo nailed it in her column about me —I’m your go-to PR guy. Now, either hole up at Camp David and watch your world crumble, or trust me to turn things around.

OBAMA: Rescue me, Joe.

BIDEN: All right. But we’re gonna hafta take a page outta Dolly Parton’s book and think outside the buxom.

OBAMA:  Outside the . . . ? (more…)

Once upon a time former Governor, Presidential candidate, and Chairman of the Democrat National Committee called the GOP the “White Party.”  CNN commentator Lou Dobbs took Dean to task for his language.

So was Dr. Dean, and those among the Left who share his understanding of history, accurate?  Is the GOP the party of white people?  Let’s test the good doctor’s diagnosis.

Fifteen questions follow.  The correct answers are provided at the end. No peeking!

Question #1.  During whose administration did the signature of an African-American first appear on U.S. currency? During that of a Republican or a Democrat President?

Question #2.  Was the first African-American diplomat appointed by a Republican or a Democrat President?

Question #3.  Was the first African-American popularly elected U.S. Senator a Republican or a Democrat? (more…)

Who had the line of the night?  Was it Obama’s condemnation of the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito mouthing of the words “that’s not true,” or was it this instant classic from MSNBC’s most gaffe-prone host?:

Your reactions below. Oh, and to be fair, make sure to watch Matthews embarrass Dem. Rep. Alan Grayson and then Howard Dean, both post-Brown victory last week.

UPDATE: Matthews issues a “clarification” of his statement to Politico:

I think he’s done something wonderful.  I think he’s taken us beyond black and white in our politics, wonderfully so, in just a year.

Some among the heaviest of Obama Kool-Aid drinkers are awakening to the performance gap between the campaign myth of Obama versus the reality of his inability to govern. America’s Fourth Great Awakening has begun.

Historians widely recognize three Great Awakenings. The First Great Awakening (1730’s-1740’s) spread across the United Kingdom and the Colonies with a religious fervor among what became the mainline Protestant denominations: Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc. The Second (1790-1840’s) witnessed Christian conversions, camp meetings, and evangelical excitement giving birth to the Holiness movement and, indirectly, the spread of a new sect – the Mormons. The Third (1840’s-1900’s), interrupted by the Civil War, was a period of religious enthusiasm that fostered social activism, as illustrated by the Social Gospel Movement.

Today, we’re entering the Fourth Great Awakening. It’s the revival of the Obama Kool-Aid drinkers from their stupor of infatuation with candidate Barack Obama. Mort Zuckerman is their new poster boy, and his newfound sobriety is clearly painful for him. (more…)