First it was Juan Williams. In the other South Carolina debate, Gingrich actually had the audacity and indecency to address Mr. Williams by the name Williams’ parents gave him.

Obviously, Gingrich’s insensitive remark towards Juan Williams showed signs of subtly racist language. Just ask former one term president, Jimma Carta.

Next is Chris Mathews. Sure he cackles like an old lady, come to think of it, kind of looks like one too, but when it comes to calling out conservatives for being evil and racists, well his ears and intuition are to Mathews as built in sonar is to bats.

You can read the entirety of the comment and judge for yourself:

Juan

Not convinced? OK. In case you missed last night’s debate,  Gingrich “subtly” struck again. This time it was with last night’s CNN debate moderator, John King.

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Representatives from Mr. Pyle, President of the Institute for Energy Research, recently reached out to me in an effort to set the record straight on natural gas extraction. Recently, the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed that was chockfull of scare tactics, false analysis, and misrepresentations about the science and methods behind natural gas extractions. In fact, the op-ed was so misleading it caught the attention of Mr. Pyle himself. Big Journalism is where he turned to help set the record straight.

Consider these bullets before reading the rebuttal by Mr. Pyle.

• A current estimate of natural gas in America is 2,047 trillion cubic feet (enough to power our nation for the next 100 years).
• Congressional Research Service claimed that America’s supply of recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal is the largest on the planet.

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President Obama and Rep. Butterfield at the signing of Pigford II.

From the Huffington Post:

I’m writing this a little before sunrise at a hotel room in Jackson, Mississippi. I’m traveling with my family — my wife, three of our kids and two cats — and gathering facts and conducting interviews about the Pigford vs. Glickman settlement that was designed to remedy the decades of discrimination that black farmers in this country faced from their own government, specifically the USDA. The Pigford tale is one that the mainstream press has barely covered, so I’ve had no problem finding people close to the story who want to tell the world their side of it. My family has driven through four different states in the past 10 days, and I’ve videotaped more than five and a half fours of interviews, in addition to spending countless hours on the phone in both on and off the record conversations.

One thing that’s emerged from every conversation I’ve had is that America’s black farmers are this country’s unsung heroes. Farming is hard enough work on its own, but when you add the additional weight of fighting the government’s “good old boy” network that existed in many places, the resilience of the black farmers is amazing.

The dignity of the black farmers makes the mainstream media’s blanket of silence about Pigford especially offensive. A black reporter I spoke with attributed some of that to the subtle systemic racism that exists in the mainstream media, with a bias towards covering stories that affect or are about white folks. Too often, the press is able to pat itself on the back by dealing with stories about race in a surface way. They pretend that by calling the Tea Party or a Republican politician a racist, they’ve done their job and scored a victory for minorities. In fact, though, all those reports end up doing is casting heat but not light. They stir up racial tensions and let the press give themselves a pass for not actually digging into a story like Pigford.

Another thing that everyone seems to agree on about Pigford is that it’s a very complex story. It’s not something that can be explained easily between two commercial breaks or in a couple of soundbites. That being said, it’s fascinating — a long, winding trail of outright corruption and wholesale fraud weaving itself between complicated, passionate people on all sides who have struggled to do the right thing to remedy the plight of black farmers.

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The widespread feeling among the national media is that Sen. Harry Reid has the candidate he wants in Sharron Angle—to Harry, I would say be careful what you wish for.

Here in Nevada, we know Harry… and books have been written on the damage he has done to our state and the nation in his 24 years in the Senate. Few know Sharron yet, and Democrats will work hard to define her as horribly as they can.

Let me say this, what Angle did in Nevada is nothing short of remarkable. I watched this race closely (having worked with one of her opponents in the race) and saw Angle in action. I know the good and the bad. There is no perfect candidate. Races are relative. All that matters is that you are better than your opponent. (more…)

Despite repeated, uxorious, absurdly one-sided endorsements from the liberal media, the February 4 vote on President Obama’s year-old nomination of “darling of the left” Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has mercifully been postponed. The OLC, whose main duty is to defend the president’s authority in wartime, also advises intelligence and counterterrorism agencies.

Johnsen endeared herself to Obama and his followers by fervently urging during the presidential campaign, at Slate, that we “restore our nation’s honor” by condemning the U.S.’s “past transgressions” and rejecting “Bush’s corruption of American ideals.”

This – in particular, Johnsen’s zealous stand against the Bush Administration’s counterterror policies on matters such as interrogation methods as well as against its alleged excessive secrecy – resonated powerfully with anti- anti-terror progressives.

Slate contributor Glenn Greenwald, for example, effusively hailed Johnsen’s call for national breast-beating and purification, praising her nomination as “Obama’s best yet, perhaps by far.” When the Democrats first began to lag in mustering the votes to approve the nomination, Greenwald took umbrage: (more…)

Last week, Air America announced its official closure and intention to file Chapter 7.  For those who had been following news surrounding the weeping willow of talk radio, this was no surprise.  While making a thin-kid splash with pseudo-celebrities back in 2004, the liberal network had a rocky history, replete with scandal, two bankruptcies and acquisitions.

Last week, Big Journalism’s James Hudnall reminded readers that Air America’s problems are not new.  According to Hudnall, “After a scandal involving misappropriated funds from black school children it promptly filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy two years later. Franken, Rhodes and Garofalo abandoned ship.”  (Come to think of it, perhaps that last part wasn’t so bad after all).

While Air America’s demise is surely a sad day for the precious few  who enjoyed leftist radio programming, there’s no need for liberal lamentations.  The left still dominates Hollywood, the university system and mainstream media, where adherents can find ongoing solace and a sympathetic informational stream – a triangular dominance of sorts.

What is most interesting about Air America’s silence is the clamor coming from angry liberals, particularly those at the painstakingly partisan Media Matters for America.  As can be expected, Media Matters’ Jamison Foser issued a statement that attacks conservative critics entitled, “The Right might want to hold off on gloating over Air America’s demise.” (more…)

Air America announced today, with little fanfare, that it is ceasing operations and filing for bankruptcy, citing “tough economic times” as the reason. Quite honestly, I’m shocked that they didn’t blame Bush. Or global warming.

It’s not the economy, stupid.

Talk radio continues to thrive and do exceptionally well – in the conservative market. There is a reason for this, and it has nothing to do with unfairness but everything to do with the free market.

Mainstream media operates as little more than a mouthpiece for the current administration. Every nightly news anchor from Katie Couric to Brian Williams has an acknowledged bias — different from people like Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck who have admitted biases, whose programming operates not as news, but as op/ed.  Newspapers more often than not also have a slant — this according to a Pew Research Center poll:

Seventy-four percent said news organizations tend to favor one side in dealing with political and social issues. Eighteen percent said they deal fairly with all sides.

The accompanying headline for this poll? “Public Trust in US Media Eroding.” (more…)

The mainstream media’s headlong and heady descent into denigrating George W. Bush over the last decade signaled a dark moment in media history that has surely damaged American consciousness. Caught up in “Bush-bashing,” the MSM reached a critical turning point, and likely one of no return.

At times consciously and even triumphally, the media increasingly abused the traditional journalistic standards of independence and neutrality in favor of functioning as a virtual arm of the liberal Democratic Party. They took on, in effect, a new and disturbing identity.

So consumed by politics, power and status did the MSM become during this period that bashing the former president became standard media fare. This death by a thousand cuts proceeded unabashedly, unabatedly, and largely without challenge by Bush and his staff during his presidencies.

Jim A. Kuypers concluded as much in his study, Bush’s War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age, in which he meticulously documents how the agenda-driven and “anti-democratic” media not long after the 9/11 terror attacks began pervasively distorting the former president’s statements, failing to report critical parts of his speeches, and even “framing” (manipulating stories) to portray the president as an enemy.

Among countless examples: (more…)