A recent article by Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic entitled “Why Mitt’s Wealth Matters: It’s Policy, Not Envy” offers a meme that surely will be one line of Democrat attack against Mitt Romney should he happen to win the GOP nomination. Mr. Cohn’s article focuses on a speech that President Obama recently gave at the University of Michigan promoting his program for making college more affordable. What I found fascinating was Cohn’s argument echoing Obama’s not so subtle hint that because of Mitt Romney’s wealthy upbringing, and thus his never needing a student loan, he has no “standing,” for lack of a better term, to be targeting the student loan program for cuts as a part of his total package for reducing discretionary federal spending.

Says Cohn:

“Romney also benefited from the lottery of life – among other things, by being born into a family that could afford to provide him with the very best education at every step of the way. He seems unaware of that fact and the possibility that others, born into less fortunate circumstances, might need some of the government programs he’s promised to undermine.”

In other words, because of Romney’s wealth, he simply does not understand the needs of those who use government assistance. So what is Cohn’s argument, then? That only those who had a hardscrabble upbringing need apply for the presidency?

For a columnist who clearly is in the Democratic camp to offer such a notion is utter hypocrisy. In 2004, the “party of the little guy” offered up as their standard-bearer Senator John Kerry, who was at the time the richest man in Congress. Not only was Kerry fabulously wealthy (~$500+ million net worth), but he didn’t even earn it! He married it. Add to this Kerry’s coiffed and grinning side-kick John Edwards was a sleazy trial lawyer who amassed his own pile of tens of millions by bankrupting obstetricians using junk science, and you hardly have a representation of the 99%. So how come in 2004 the Democrats felt that immense wealth didn’t matter, yet now suddenly it is a legitimate issue? (more…)

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America was so enthusiastic about new accusations of infidelity by Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife that he boasted on Twitter: “noted: it’s been 16 yrs since Dems had to defend a WH candidate’s marraige/sex [sic] life. For GOP, its now become wkly thing;”.

Someone going by the Twitter handle “OH_Robb” responded soon thereafter by pointing out an obvious counter-example: “John Edwards ran in 2008.”

Instead of acknowledging the error, Boehlert doubled down: “Q’s abt. Edwards marriage arose after his 2008 run was over; was never part of the campaign dialogue.”

Not only was that claim untrue–the National Enquirer accused Edwards in October of 2007–but it also highlights the left-wing media bias that Media Matters is at great pains to deny. It was no accident that journalists failed to probe Edwards until after he had dropped out.

Media Matters declares that its purpose is to correct “conservative misinformation” in the American media. To that end, it also tries to dismiss conservative allegations of left-wing bias in the mainstream media, either by denying that such bias exists, or claiming that such bias, even if it does exist, has no effect on Americans’ views. On matters such as the Edwards scandal, Media Matters provides the cover-up for the media cover-up.

The goal for Media Matters is not to win a political debate but to prevent one–to shift the terms by eliminating the few conservative voices in the mainstream media. (more…)

It is absolutely amazing to watch as the media continues to attempt the character assassination of Herman Cain, who is by all accounts a decent and honorable Christian family man. The most recent allegation leveled against him involves unsubstantiated claims of sexual harassment and invisible accusers. The game plan as of the third day is obvious. Level an attack with very few details and allow the candidate to tell the story and defend himself while you tear him down.

Cain is playing it straight and has shared details on an incident where he apparently compared the height of a female employee to that of his wife. In today’s world of undercarriage tweets, this does not rise to the level of sexual harassment. More to the point, if this is all that Cain’s detractors have against him, he may just be the cleanest candidate the left wing has ever seen!

Worlds apart–that is where we are right now. In the media’s view, we should respect John Edwards, who fathered a child with his political consultant while married to a woman fighting a losing battle with cancer. In the view of the left wing, a man with over 30 years of business experience should have to defend himself against spurious charges from unknown accusers while the President they never vetted takes notes.

While the libs inhabit “Race Card World,” Americans are asking: where was Politico during the Obama campaign? Where are Obama’s transcripts from kindergarten on up through law school? Where are his college girlfriends? For that matter, media outlets, could you please produce any person that knew Obama from any time in his past? The double standard is unacceptable and will no longer be tolerated. (more…)

Politico dropped a bombshell on the candidacy of GOP front-runner Herman Cain tonight; what remains unclear is if this turns out to be a hit of the Anita Hill, or Monica Lewinsky variety. What is clear is that when Democrat John Edwards was accused of far worse, there was no immediate media feeding frenzy, as we’re already seeing play out. At the same time, it isn’t as thin as were the charges used in the attempted media lynching of Justice Thomas. As Philip Klein writes, blaming the establishment, the media, or another GOP campaign may not be enough to end the controversy for Cain’s campaign.

During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO.

The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association. The agreements also included language that bars the women from talking about their departures.

The Cain campaign has responded here:

Inside the Beltway media attacks Cain

Fearing the message of Herman Cain who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington, Inside the Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain.

(more…)

Silky Pony’s mugshot was just released:

As with Bill Clinton before him, Anthony Weiner has managed to spotlight the ironic discrepancy between what feminists say and the things for which they stand.

A NY head of NOW remarked to the New York Daily News that the group is “trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

The head of the Brooklyn/Queens chapter of the National Organization for Women said she could separate Weiner’s sexcapades from the liberal track record that earned the group’s support.

“I wasn’t happy to discover that my congressman is a 14-year-old boy,” said Julie Kirshner, president of the NOW chapter.

“But he happens to be one of the best politicians out there, so we’re in a bad position. We’re trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Feminist Amanda Marcotte, who previously carried water for John Edwards, called the reporting of a congressman’s lewd photo scandal “new standards” of which we should all fear. She was taken down eleventy notches by The Other McCain:

Note how Ms. Marcotte deploys “ideologue” as an epithet against Breitbart when she is herself an avowed adherent of the ideology of feminism. Indeed, if it weren’t for her idolatrous devotion to feminism, Ms. Marcotte would have nothing to write about. Her entire raison d’êtreas a writer is to filter the world through a feminist lens.

She is one of those writers who, despairing of achieving notoriety in the larger literary world, seeks a readership in some ghetto niche occupied almost entirely by third-rate talents, so that her occasional second-rate contributions appear conspicuously impressive by comparison. And in her feminist niche, the only standard by which anyone may be judged is according to their zealous devotion to The Sacred Cause:

Weiner has an outstanding record supporting sexual rights of others, with100% ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and has a strong record of support for gay rights.

See? He votes the right way. And isn’t that what really matters?

[...]

Amanda Marcotte is her own insoluble problem, and the appeal of politics to such an irreparably warped personality is that it appears to make sense of her alienation from society. All she needs to do is to re-frame her grievances in an ideological context — to say that “sexists” or the “right-wing smear machine” or some other such politicized bogeyman is to blame for her own unhappiness — and suddenly she is no longer a whining malcotent, but a heroic crusader for social justice.

Maybe she’s just waxing fangirl to score a spot on Weiner’s mayoral campaign? She asserts that investigation into or reporting on Weiner’s acts constitutes a “violation of sexual privacy.” Two tough lessons progressives have to learn here:

1. When you open the door of sexual investigation you can’t close it again. It was fine for the left to absurdly question the parentage of Trig Palin; it was fine to make hay out of the GOP perverts, so it’s newsworthy to report on Weiner. These are the standards the left themselves set.

2. There is no expectation of “sexual privacy” when there is a possibility that you Tweeted photos of your schlong from your congressional office or congressional gym.

(more…)

Alternate headline: “Paul Krugman Will Not Read This Article”

Second alternate headline: “Paul Krugman: Lolcats > Conservatives”

Over the weekend a prominent figure in the art world, a liberal, came up to a group of us from Team Breitbart following a conversation that took place both on air and off, and told us we, particularly Big Journalism EIC Dana Loesch, are very respectable spokespeople for our side.  Needless to say, we were flattered, but while I certainly didn’t attempt to sway him off of his position that we’re super cool, I would contend we are merely representative of the quality people in our movement, as opposed to exceptions to the rule that conservatives are racist, bigoted, intolerant, etc.  Clearly the sweet accolade from the sweet man had a very powerful and illustrative subtext to it: he just doesn’t know many conservatives… if any.

One of the reasons for the existence of this very blog is because many of us contend that a substantial portion of the movers and shakers on the left, like the aforementioned gentleman, tend to live in bubbles.  This is a common theme across several of the Bigs.  Hollywood, the mainstream media, and academia, to name a few high profile arenas, are so overwhelming left-of center that it’s rare to find Republicans inhabiting them at all, much less outspoken Tea Partiers like the ones who make up the Bigs team.  On the other hand, those of us on the right are constantly forced to contend with the best thought the left has to offer, or else we’d be forgoing academics in one of the world’s most educated societies, we’d be abstaining from entertainment in the country that redefined it, and as good as the fantasy of doing away with what we call “the mainstream media” sounds, that’s a process that would take decades to complete, if it’s even possible (or beneficial).

So we’re forced to listen, whether we want to or not.  The schools, entertainers, and media outlets have us as a captive audience while these movers and shakers can comfortably build a career in the world of ideas without as much as consulting with those held by (at least) half of us.

Case in point, Nobel Prize-winning Princeton Economics Professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.  Last week, Krugman was asked which websites he reads frequently, and after providing a list of liberals and leftists like Greg Sargent, Josh Marshall, Digby, and Atrios, he copped to not reading any conservatives online on a regular basis: (more…)

Journalists love whistleblowers. Just not when the whistle is blown on them.

Journalists love transparency.  As long as they’re not the ones being exposed.

No steadfast journalism rule is unbendable when it comes to justifying and protecting the racket that is modern journalism, specifically, political journalism in the United States today. The ends justify the means for the Democrat Media Complex. They lie when they claim to be objective. They lie when they claim to be unbiased, because these so called “truth seekers” are guilty of engaging in open political warfare. And when the whistle is blown, they simply double down. “Journolist” — like Media Matters, but more insidious, if that’s possible — is an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, technology and “the masses” uncovered the conspiracy:

Talk radio and the Internet have allowed outsiders the ability to challenge a multiple generational shift from journalism being about the story, to journalism being crafted toward a partisan end. From Newsweek killing the Lewinsky story to the Swift Boat veterans (until the undermedia pressure got too big) to the Dan Rather implosion to the open attempt to keep the Al Gore masseuse story under wraps to the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter debacle to the Van Jones admission of missing the story to the networks ignoring the ACORN video footage to the media playing up trumped up charges of racism in the Tea Party — while ignoring exculpatory evidence — to the mother of all media-as-political weaponry: the non-vetting of candidate Obama, the mainstream media has shown that it is in an ideological death spiral. And the ground is right here.

American journalism died a long time ago; today Tucker Carlson got around to running the obituary. What The Daily Caller has unearthed proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that most media organizations are either complicit by participation in the treachery that is Journolist, or are guilty of sitting back and watching Alinsky warfare being waged against all that challenged the progressive orthodoxy. The scandal predictably involves journalists posing as professors posing as experts. But dressed down they are nothing but street thugs. They deserve the deepest levels of public consternation. We must demand that they do. (more…)

Despite all of the attention the former vice-president’s been getting for his role in the National Enquirer’s Al Gore Sex Attack scandal, Gore–or his spokespeople–have made only a couple of statements to the press. Taken together, the two statements prompt more questions about Gore’s behavior than they answer.

A few days after the National Enquirer broke its initial Al Gore Sex Attack story, the former VP, speaking through friends, seemed to have only a slight recollection of the sleazy events that allegedly took place in his Portland luxury hotel room.

According to a source friendly with the Gores, Al Gore confirmed he received a therapeutic massage in his hotel room that night, and likely from the therapist making the accusation. But, the source said, Gore remembers getting a massage without incident and the therapist leaving on good terms.

In fact, New York magazine headlined their June 25 account of the above information with  Al Gore Recalls a Pleasant, Uneventful Massage. (more…)

***Updated

In a bombshell new development in the Al Gore sex scandal — broken exclusively earlier today by The ENQUIRER — the Oregon District Attorney says there’s “the possibility of a criminal prosecution.”

In a statement just released by Multnomah County (OR.) D.A. Michael D. Schrunk, the official reveals that “our office was notified by the Portland Police Bureau that further investigation of this matter had been conducted by it in 2009 and we were provided with the reports from that further investigation.”

Schrunk goes on to add: “If the complainant and the Portland Police Bureau wish to pursue the possibility of a criminal prosecution, additional investigation by the Bureau will be necessary and will be discussed with the Portland Police Bureau.”

The D.A. says the police first briefed his office in late 2006 and early 2007 on the allegations but was told “the woman was not willing to be interviewed by the Portland Police Bureau and did not want a criminal investigation to proceed.”

Former Vice President Al Gore was accused of sexually attacking a woman in Oregon in 2006, according to police reports uncovered by The National Enquirer. Just as in the John Edwards scandal, the Enquirer’s investigative team has alleged not only Gore’s cheating but also possible criminal acts, and yet the mainstream media so far has refused to pick up the story. The Enquirer’s story on Wednesday gives very specific details of the sexual assault allegations against Gore: (more…)

Will 2004 Democrat VP nominee and two-time presidential candidate John Edwards soon be indicted by the feds for campaign-finance violations?  The National Enquirer says Edwards will be indicted — and in the John Edwards Scandal, where the Enquirer leads the Mainstream Media follow.

What a difference a few years make.

When Edwards was one of the leading Democrat presidential candidates, the Enquirer broke story after story while the MSM refused to ask, refused to report and refused to inform its readers of the events.  This continued for months, while Edwards was considered for both an Obama running mate and attorney general slot.

Even after the Enquirer caught Edwards visiting Hunter and their daughter in a late night rendezvous at the Beverly Hilton in July 2008, there was no coverage in the traditional press for weeks.  After initially labeling the Enquirer’s report as “tabloid trash,“ Edwards finally confessed on ABC’s Nightline on August 8, 2008. (more…)

One small detail in an AP/Washington Post article of Feb. 10 has outed ABC News: the news network withheld a crucial detail in its reporting of the Andrew Young/John Edwards sex tape story.

The crucial detail?  ABC News had already seen the now-infamous Edwards-Hunter sex tape before the interview — and then acted on-camera as if it hadn’t.

That crucial detail raises questions as to why ABC News purposely mislead both its viewers and readers of its website–essentially covering up its own coverage of a cover-up.  This action was repeated in recent ABC interview of Young and corresponding news reports on Rielle Hunter’s restraining order regarding the sex tape.

On February 10th the Washington Post published an AP report on the Andrew Young contempt of court hearing in North Carolina.  Titled “Ex-Edwards aide faces pressure after tell-all book,” the report focused on Rielle Hunter’s attorney’s “frustration” over Young changing his story on where the tapes were located. (more…)

Readers rarely get a chance to see the re-writing of history, but they’re seeing an attempt in the recent reporting by the Legacy Media of the John Edwards Scandal.

Several recently-published books (Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s Game Change and Edwards’ ex-aide, Andrew Young’s The Politician) examine the John Edwards scandal and Edwards’ elaborate cover-up of his affair and love child with campaign videographer, Rielle Hunter.

Halperin and Heilemann would have readers believe that they were on the trail of the story from the start–and perhaps they were.  It’s just that they didn’t bother to inform the readers of their employers, TIME and New York, while the scandal and cover-up were occurring.

Both books have prompted reports and discussions of the Edwards Scandal, particularly on ABC, which scored a series of exclusive interviews of Young, intent on publicizing his book.  The interviews along with other information is featured prominently on ABC’s website under John Edwards Scandal: (more…)

Never heard of Leo Hindery?  Here’s his profile:

Leo Hindery, Jr., is Managing Partner of InterMedia Partners VII, LP, a New York-based media industry private equity fund which he founded in 2005 and which is a successor to six previous InterMedia investment funds that he formed beginning in 1988. The investments of those earlier funds were sold in 1998-1999.

Until October 2004, Mr. Hindery was Chairman (and until May 2004 Chief Executive Officer) of The YES Network, the nation’s largest regional sports network which he founded in the summer of 2001 as the television home of the New York Yankees, where he won five executive producer Emmys for outstanding programming. From December 1999 until January 2001, Mr. Hindery was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of GlobalCenter Inc., a major Internet services company, which was then merged into Exodus Communications, Inc. Until November 1999, Mr. Hindery was President and Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Broadband, which was formed out of the March 1999 merger of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) into AT&T. (AT&T Broadband encompassed all of AT&T’s video, local telephone and Internet services operations.) Mr. Hindery was elected President of TCI and all of its affiliated companies, then the world’s largest cable television system operator and programming entity, in February 1997.

Mr. Hindery is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and from 2003 through December 2007 was Senate-appointed Vice Chair of the HELP Commission formed by an Act of Congress to improve U.S. foreign assistance. From December 2006 until February 2008, he served as Senior Economic Policy Advisor for presidential candidate John Edwards.

Okay, so Leo got snookered by John Edwards. And, there’s been some criticism of some of his business activities. That doesn’t discount his importance within the Democrat Party — or what he’s saying now. (more…)

Doesn’t it strike you as odd that of the two most recent losing Democratic presidential tickets, in 200 and 2004, the erstwhile vice-presidential candidate has become either a pariah in his own party (Joe Lieberman) or, well… this guy:

That would be John Edwards, ambulance-chasing poseur, fraudulent populist and all-around bad belly.  Even his long-suffering wife, Elizabeth, has finally had enough.

Hard to believe a major political party would run a first-term senator, little-known outside his home state, and then not vet him, isn’t it?  Even harder to believe that the Mainstream Media would later consciously and deliberately cover up his extramarital hanky-panky and love child while he was a candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination, and instead give us the myth of the good family man, with the wife suffering from incurable cancer, the champion of the Little Guy and the man who proved, once and for all, that there really are Two Americas — and that he lived in both of them. (more…)

Should the National Enquirer get the Pulitzer Prize for its multi-year investigation of the John Edwards affair, scandal and cover-up? That’s a question that’s been asked lately: in some cases, at the same Mainstream Media papers which participated in the news blackout of the Enquirer’s Edwards’ coverage.

Edwards, who had been Sen. John Kerry’s running mate in 2004, was one of the front-runners at the time the Enquirer broke the second installment of the story on December 18, 2007.

The Enquirer released an abundance of easily-verifiable information at that time: Rielle Hunter, a former Edwards campaign worker, was pregnant with what the Enquirer reported was Edwards’ love child; she had been moved within five miles of the Edwards campaign headquarters in Chapel Hill, NC; Hunter was living an exclusive gated community, a few houses down the street from Edwards’ former Director of Finance, Andrew Young; and, she was driving around in a BMW registered to Young.  Add all this to the fact that information about Hunter had disappeared from the Internet and other publicly-searchable databases and the MSM was handed a great story. (more…)