Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank tends to use an unusual barometer to select his topics.  He likes to write about subjects for which he has a very strong opinion, but very little knowledge. His latest column, “Joe Lieberman joining Glenn Beck: a shanda” proves my point.  Unfortunately Milbank would not know a shanda (Yiddish for embarrassment), if one jumped up kissed him on the lips and wished him a gut morgan (good morning).

The purpose of this column was to criticize Senator Joe Lieberman for joining Glenn Beck for his August rally in Jerusalem called “Restoring Courage.”

“I’d love to participate,” Lieberman confirmed when The Post’s Felicia Sonmez found him in a Capitol hallway. “It’s just going to be a rally to support Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

This nearly caused me to plotz [faint].

Notice how cleverly Milbank stuck a Yiddish word into his column to prove his Jewish “street cred?”

Joe Lieberman, first Jew on a presidential ticket, was embracing Beck, the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes in the mass media. One of the most visible Jews in America was making common cause with a man who invoked apocalyptic Christian theology in promoting his rally in Israel.

I admire Lieberman, and I’ve defended him over the years when he defied party and faction. But if he shares a stage with this creature, he will surrender the decency that has defined his public life. [my emphasis]

Its interesting that Milbank uses Yiddish to establish his Jewish “street cred”, but calls him the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes” If Milbank truly wants to prove his Jewishness, perhaps he should learn the concept of, “motzi shem ra“is the spreading of malicious lies,” which according to the Rabbis is a severe sin. With this comment, Milbank is showing he buys into the George Soros/ Media Matters strategy of trying to destroy Glenn Beck by branding him as an anti-Semite (the history of this strategy is outlined here).

For those of you who are not familiar with the Beck rally allow me to present this explanation.

Israel is in the most precarious position she has faced since the 1967 War. Palestinian terrorists are on three of its borders, Fatah in Judea and Samaria,  Hamas in Gaza,  Hezbollah in Lebanon. Adding to the threat is that the Syrian regime is  facing collapse, so it is tying to divert its people’s attention from hating it leaders to hating Israel, Egypt is becoming radicalized and most of the parties with potential to twin the next election and take over leadership of the country are promising to tear up the Camp David treaty. And Iran, close to developing the capability to send a nuclear warhead into Tel Aviv continues to threaten to wipe the Jewish State off the map.

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All week we’ve been exploring America’s ten most left-biased working journalists and now we come to spot number four on the list. And so, for his close attention to pushing the spin and as one of the most active members of the Old Media’s Obama Butt Covering squad, we are pleased to award the number four spot to NBC Political Director Chuck Todd.

Todd is one of those journos that came from Democrat political circles — having worked for Iowa Democrat Senator Tom Harkin’s 1992 presidential run — and then crossed over into the world of “journalism.” With that you just know that he can be as unbiased as the best of them in his reporting. Well, if he can we’ll never know it because so far he has not been. Just the opposite, really.

Todd has done a bang-up job for the left in his journalism career. Likely Todd’s loyalty to the Democrat Party is probably why he felt the need to slam Senator Joe Lieberman last year, for instance. Proving his blindness to real political analysis, Todd claimed that Joe Lieberman was the “polar opposite” of the Senate’s lone socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (officially an “independent”).

In a discussion on the Today Show about the then yet to pass Obamacare bill, Todd said of Lieberman and Sanders, “Meanwhile, the Senate’s two Democratic independents, polar opposites ideologically, are split over the bill’s government-run public option and both are threatening to scuttle the process if they don’t get their way.” (more…)

The question has been asked here before but it bears repeating. Where were the Connecticut media for 20-some years while the state’s attorney general asserted repeatedly (and falsely) that he had served in Vietnam? Why did it take an out-of-state newspaper to expose the reality that Dick Blumenthal had only served stateside in the Marine Corps Reserves after several draft deferments?

Blumenthal has enjoyed some of the most adulatory press of any public official in the state. And he is assiduous in seeking coverage. It has been said before that, unless Chuck Schumer is visiting, the most dangerous piece of real estate in Connecticut is that little space between Blumenthal and a TV camera.

Inasmuch as he’s always been acutely aware of his public image, how could such a man stand idly by while media outlets printed flattering information about him that he knew was inaccurate? How could he, in his own words at yesterday’s press conference, “misspeak” about his service “on a few occasions” and the news media let him get away with it? Most of those “occasions,” by the way, were gatherings of veterans’ groups. (more…)

In the wake of revelations by the New York Times that Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal lied about serving in Vietnam, the Beltway media has already gone into its protective crouch: yesterday’s breathtakingly defiant and disgraceful press conference is being hailed as a win. From Politico, which ought to know better:

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s defiant response to a report that he falsely claimed to have served in Vietnam appears to have salvaged his Democratic nomination for the Senate.

“Defiant?” That’s one way to put it.

But the controversy touched off by a story in The New York Times has robbed the Democratic Party of another safe seat and reopened the door, if narrowly, to Republicans’ retaking control of the upper house this fall. Blumenthal’s self-inflicted wound is the latest in a surprising series of retirements, deferrals, misfortunes and intramural bloodbaths that have transformed a map seen a year ago as heavily favoring Democrats into a grab bag of Republican opportunities deep in Obama country.

Boo hoo. A series of unfortunate events is robbing the Democrats of their historic opportunity to inflict unwanted hope and change. (more…)

The day before election day 2008, when all political commentary was flowing toward the candidates running for office, I used my column space to write a heartfelt thank you to President Bush (“An Election Day Note: Thanks, President Bush“).

At the time even Republicans were using every trick in the book to distance themselves from the 43rd president. Even before the Florida recount of 2000 I told Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund that the Democratic Party — then led by the Clintons, John Podesta and a team of Whitewater-to-Lewinsky era smear artists including Sidney Blumenthal — would use President Bush as an example to Republicans as a thorough payback for Impeachment.

Florida was a sign of things to come as the left recognized that Bush’s friendly “uniter-not-a-divider” persona could easily be turned on its head. Ted Kennedy’s rejection of bipartisan spirit after he and Bush crafted the “No Child Left Behind” legislation foretold how all Democrats, save for Sen. Joe Lieberman, would treat the 43rd president: with graceless contempt. (more…)