I take no pleasure in the misery of others, but as someone who recognizes that the mainstream media is the arch-villain in the fight for human liberty and the survival of an America that doesn’t resemble a European socialist country – yesterday, it was impossible for my heart to do anything other than leap for joy when I read that the New York Times lost $40 million in 2011.

No one wants to see anyone lose their job, but the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, and all the rest are nothing more than lairs for arch-villains, and when these hollowed-out volcanoes are bankrupted, the virtue of this outweighs what happens to the faceless henchmen who are now out on the streets looking for work. I wish them luck. I wish things were different. But this is about saving our country and humanity.

Over in England, some are openly panicking over the future of newspapers:

Trying.

Not.

To

Smile.

Failing.

This is what real journalism looks like, folks. Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes a 2,300 word piece about Newt Gingrich’s relationship to ethics charges (those brought by and against him) that ends with this rehash of his fall from grace:

In the end, nearly all of the charges were dismissed. But the ethics committee did find that Mr. Gingrich had used tax-exempt money to promote Republican goals, and given the panel inaccurate information for its inquiry.

Mr. Gingrich formally apologized, conceding he had brought discredit on the House. He had always   regarded himself as a “transformative figure” who would change the course of history, but on Jan. 21, 1997, he made history in another way.

The House voted 395-28 to reprimand him and fine him $300,000, making him the first speaker ever disciplined for unethical conduct.

That’s it. That’s how the tale ends. It’s as if they’ve quoted Newt’s history but added an invisible ellipsis over the final portion of the story. This is a doctored quote of the record. This is “agenda journalism.”

Do you think it’s relevant that after the events described above Democrats campaigned for a further investigation? Is it relevant that the IRS took them up on it, and that after more than three years determined that Newt did nothing wrong? Simply put, all the charges, even the ones Newt was reprimanded for, were bogus. Is any of that worth mentioning in a front page story on the topic at the New York Times?

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Oh look! The Justice Department decides to dump 500 pages on Congress on a Friday night! If they really want to be secretive or different they’d choose to dump documents on a Tuesday night. We’re almost looking forward to Friday nights because that’s when we can expect anything about Fast and Furious from the Justice Department.

Attorney General Eric Holder is set to testify on Thursday, February 2 in front of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee so it’s no surprise there was a dump last night. I was looking through my timeline when I saw Michelle Malkin’s tweet about the documents. The link led to NPR, which shocked me they would be the ones to have it plus they included nine pages of the documents. They beat the AP! I have found unless the AP writes about Fast and Furious the majority of the Old Media won’t touch it.

I went to sleep around midnight central time and at that time the only major outlets that covered it were AP, CNN, Washington Post, FOX News, and ABC News. This morning I woke up and saw USA Today posted the AP article. The story was the main story on the front page of their national section, but has since been replaced. It’s not even on the front page anymore. I’d give them props, but it appeared before 6AM and taken down before 9AM CDT. Sorry guys, it doesn’t count when you have it up and taken down before the majority of the country wakes up. It’s also nowhere on the FOX News home page and it’s buried in the politics section. Shame on them since they’ve been consistent with Fast and Furious coverage. CNN does receive credit because it’s still on their home page.

At The Washington Post and ABC News you have to go a search for Fast and Furious in order to find their AP article. The New York Times also buried the AP article. In order to find it you have to go to the bottom of their home page and find the tiny cube for “More News From AP and Reuters.” Click on AP and it’s under AP Politics. But you have to click AP Politics and scroll to the bottom. Even if you search “Fast and Furious” it doesn’t bring up the article. I consider this as NOT covering it New York Times! I’m very disappointed The Washington Times hasn’t even mentioned it. I haven’t seen anything on CBS News either. MSNBC buried the AP article.

Here’s the thing. I know these outlets have investigative reporters. The emails gave me more questions than answers and I’m wondering why no one in the Old Media is pointing this out. I receive Google Alerts for Eric Holder and Operation Fast and Furious. This morning a blog post from Stop The ACLU popped up addressing the same questions I had. NPR brings up this part in the emails, but ignores it and doesn’t realize the importance. Right after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry passed away Monty Wilkinson, Mr. Holder’s deputy chief of staff,  emails Dennis Burke (bold my emphasis), “Tragic. I’ve alerted the AG, the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.”

(more…)

Newt Gingrich

Charles M. Blow, over at The New York Times, loves to allege that Republicans are racist, racist, racist. James Clyburn, the third ranking Democrat in the House, accused Gingrich of practicing the Southern Strategy. The NAACP piled on.

In Gingrich’s populist call and celebration of the nobility of work, they hear Nixon’s ominous “Southern Strategy.” The media alone seems acutely attuned to the racist dog whistles we conservatives are supposed to be hearing, but their dogged attempt to sully the Republican Party’s strategy in the South runs afoul of historical facts. Ironically, one commentator, Jim Sleeper, professor at Yale University, plays the race card in suggesting that Gingrich plays the race card.

In 2004, the masterly Claremont Review of Books debunked this growing media narrative in greater depth than I can venture here, but the left-wing argument rests on three key assumptions: that Republicans tailored their message to attract racists, that those of us who oppose racial preferences are somehow racist, and that, having won the South in ‘68, the Republican party continued to play to racism. This is what they believe, made clear by Dan T. Carter, author of From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution 1963-1994: “Goldwater’s vote against the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, in Richard Nixon’s subtle manipulation of the busing issue, in Ronald Reagan’s genial demolition of affirmative action, in George Bush’s use of the Willie Horton ads, and in Newt Gingrich’s demonization of welfare mothers.”

The problem with each of these instances of supposed racism is that you have to believe that the issue is racism, not principle. To wit, plenty of non-racists doubt the wisdom of busing, racial preferences, furloughing criminals, and giving lavish government benefits. This is a subtle game the media plays and as tautological as it is stupid: views are deemed racist because they are defined as racist. It’s not really an argument because it already assumes its premise.

(more…)

It was so full of promise, the ideal candidate with grandiose plans to fundamentally transform America had won. The man the New York Times had worked so hard to help elect was about to usher in a period of utopian hope and change: a chicken in every pot and a Chevy Volt in every driveway. Of course, Chevy Volts turned out to be explosive junk and President Obama’s hope and change has an equally illustrious track record. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, ever the optimistic Obama cheerleader, realizes that Obama has not succeeded. Nevertheless, she constructs an argument explaining where the disconnect originated.

Following on the heels of Newt Gingrich’s overwhelming victory in the South Carolina primaries, Dowd penned a piece entitled “Showtime at the Apollo”. Her opening graph is a tear-jerker:

FOR eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected.

“I, I’m so in love with you,” Barack Obama crooned to a thrilled crowd at a fund-raiser at the Apollo in Harlem on Thursday night, doing a seductive imitation as Al Green himself looked on.

That doesn’t sound desperate at all. Imagine the thrill of being at the Apollo (as opposed to the usual $30,000 per-plate cost, the man of the people would allow participation by the peasants for a mere $200 to $5000), the goosebumps resulting from the dream of what might have been … if only Obama’s presidency was not an overwhelming and abject failure. His record is impossible to ignore, and unless Obama wants to guarantee his loss, his campaign will have to utilize other tactics. Dowd posits her winning idea:

The song would make a good campaign anthem: “Let’s stay together, lovin’ you whether, whether times are good or bad, happy or sad.” Don’t break up, turn around and make up.

The latest polls indicate that the American people have already made the decision to break up. President Obama’s class warfare messaging and embracing of the Occupy Wallstreet fecal-fest have done little to encourage Americans to make up. Neither has the high unemployment or blatantly anti-business environment created by his administration.

When those tactics fail, one of the Left’s favorite tactics is to gloss over the president’s flagging record by blaming his predecessor:

The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had a presidency with all the joy of a root canal, dragged down by W.’s recklessness and his own inability to read America’s panic and its thirst for a strong leader.

Blaming Bush is never out of style. The problem is, even DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz admits the Democrats own the economy. This dog won’t hunt anymore. Three years after Obama’s immaculation, Americans want jobs, not excuses.

Finally, Dowd gets around to expressing her true elitist confession about Obama’s failure:

(more…)

Specifically, the New York Times and Ha’aretz, Israel’s left-wing daily.

The Israeli prime minister denies making the remark, which was relayed in a speech by Steve Linde, editor of the Jerusalem Post. Linde has since backtracked, apparently.

Steve Linde, Jerusalem Post

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:

On Wednesday, the editor, Steve Linde, addressing a conference in Tel Aviv of the Women’s International Zionist Organization, said that Netanyahu made the remark to him about the newspapers at a private meeting “a couple of weeks ago” at the prime minister’s office in Tel Aviv.

But on Thursday, the Prime Minister’s Office told JTA that Netanyahu “did not make the remarks attributed to him,” and Linde backtracked, saying the remarks he had attributed to the prime minister had been Linde’s own interpretation.

“He said, ‘You know, Steve, we have two main enemies,’ ” Linde had said on Wednesday of Netanyahu, according to a recording of the WIZO speech provided to JTA. “And I thought he was going to talk about, you know, Iran, maybe Hamas. He said, ‘It’s The New York Times and Haaretz.’ He said, ‘They set the agenda for an anti-Israel campaign all over the world. Journalists read them every morning and base their news stories … on what they read in The New York Times and Haaretz.’ ” (more…)

- Keith Olbermann reminisces about what was his career, albeit it on MSNBC, while at MSNBC’s old offices.

- Irony defined: progressives angry at Dana Loesch’s illustration of their hyper-dramatic Marines reaction say worse to her online. Definitive reading from SooperMexican:

Not only should that give pause to any rational thinker who is not blinded by their hatred of Conservatives, but it is substantiated by the advocacy of just such acts against Dana Loesch from those supporters of the filthy liberal view. I’d like to provide some evidence of this, by documenting just some of the tweets Dana received in the course of this controversy. Of course, all of this is perfectly fine, since the situational ethics of the left allows for any violent act to be wished on Conservatives and, at the same time, hypocritically demands conservative “civility“.

- Loesch and Bill Maher make front page of the Daily Mail. This presents the question: why aren’t Huffington Post (to where Maher contributes), Media Matters, Think Progress, Politico, and Mediaite going after Maher? Why no petitioning to HBO? Is Maher getting a pass because he’s a man? Is Loesch targeted more because she’s a woman? Why are these entities not going after Mark Levin or Michael Savage?

- THIS:

Today, the NY times is setting up the next media fiction to save the destroyer in the White House. Get this: the NY Times is advancing the idea that the Marines are responsible for the failure of Obama’s “peace” negotiations with these soulless savages. As if.

Think about the timing of the tinkle news drop. You. are. being. so. played, America.

- Irony defined:

The Daily Show
The Association of Opinion Journalists (the new name of the National Conference of Editorial Writers) has a project to restore civility to public discourse. Froma Harrop, the group’s president, explains how the project squares with her own comparison of the tea party to al-Qaida in a syndicated column. (To give credit where it’s due, The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto pointed out the issue before “The Daily Show.”)

“A lot of them don’t get irony or humor.”

“How the f*ck could I get through to both of her?!”

- The Wall Street Journal puts down its crumpet, looks down its monocle at you, and discusses the horrors of the unwashed masses leaving fingerprints all over journalism. (Don’t tell it that Twitter has been breaking the big stories first. Like bin Laden.)

- “Those who do dare to speak up are promptly attacked for it. Big Journalism’s Dana Loesch describes the backlash she’s received for a few statements she made on her radio program yesterday to the effect that the reaction to the incident has been overblown.”

(more…)

The lefties on Twitter are very upset with their favorite paper, The New York Times.  They’ve even started a hashtag (#NewNYTSlogans) attacking them for the apparent lack of dedication to truth that the paper has exhibited of late in its pages.

An article titled, “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” is what has sent them into full-fledged mockery mode and, as best I can understand it, they believe that the Times has basically acknowledged that the truth and fact checking are not top priorities in The New York Times newsroom.

They don’t sound too terribly off from opinions expressed on the right about the Paper of Record.  Perhaps we’ve reached a point where we can all agree that this old world rag is nothing but a liberal front and about as unbiased as Dan Rather?

Not exactly.   (more…)

The New York Times claims to be preparing a correction over this, but a correction a lot fewer people are likely to read is like telling a jury to disregard what they’ve just heard.

A wily lawyer knows a jury can’t disregard what they’ve already heard, and so does an agenda-driven newspaper.

Forbes:

On Jan. 8, The New York Times published an article by John F. Burns about the British government’s investigation into allegations of crimes committed by employees of News Corp.’s UK newspaper division, News International. Burns wrote:

News International’s acknowledgment that the The News of the World had hacked into [a] teenager’s phone at a time when there was still hope that she remained alive, and deleted messages left by her family and friends so as to make room for others, was a watershed in the scandal.

That’s a reference to a report from last July by the Guardian. Its disclosure that investigators working for the News of the World had intercepted and erased voicemails intended for murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler was perhaps the single most incendiary detail in the entire scandal and helped trigger the wave of inquiries and resignations that followed.

(more…)

It is impossible to know the thoughts that go through the mind of a crazy man. Certainly Jared Loughner, the assassin who perpetrated the Tucson massacre which killed six and wounded 13,including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was a monster. It hardly seemed appropriate to dissect his political leanings immediately after his shooting rampage. Nevertheless, at a time when mourning is the only logical thing for people to do, the New York Times began the cacophony of finger pointing and has conveniently forgotten its heinous rush to blame.  In a editorial run in the New York Times on January 9th, 2011, they stated:

It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members.

That statement seems innocuous enough, but then the next sentences were written:

But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats.

Any pretense that it was facile to blame the right was immediately negated by … blaming the right. It was crystal clear that the New York Times and their leftist compatriots had every intention of blaming this on Republicans and Tea Party members.

As opposed to giving people time to mourn this terrible tragedy and law enforcement time to sort out the deeper issues involved, the New York Times chose to begin the blame game while advancing another significant plank of left’s agenda:

Its gun laws are among the most lenient, allowing even a disturbed man like Mr. Loughner to buy a pistol and carry it concealed without a special permit. That was before the Tucson rampage. Now, having seen first hand the horror of political violence, Arizona should lead the nation in quieting the voices of intolerance, demanding an end to the temptations of bloodshed, and imposing sensible controls on its instruments.

If only tighter gun control laws had been in place, perhaps this incident may never have occurred. Never mind that deranged men will eventually find a way to exact their horrific agendas. The law is rarely a detriment to an individual bent on breaking the law.

In a follow-up piece written after President Obama had spoken in Tucson, the  highlighted some of the president’s words:

Mr. Obama called on ideological campaigners to stop vilifying their opponents. The only way to move forward after such a tragedy, he said, is to cast aside “point-scoring and pettiness.”

It was important that Mr. Obama transcend the debate about whose partisanship has been excessive and whose words have sown the most division and dread. This page and many others have identified those voices and called on them to stop demonizing their political opponents. The president’s role in Tucson was to comfort and honor, and instill hope.

The meaning of the president’s words could not be more clear, or so it seemed. Unfortunately the New York Times did not get the memo. Remember, the New York Times pointed out in their previous piece that the right are the partisan hacks to be blamed for this event. Instead of healing the Nation’s wounds, the hypocrites at the NYT attempted to cast blame for this unimaginably awful incident on the political rhetoric of the right even as they called for an end to divisive political rhetoric. At the same they began to mercilessly pile on Sarah Palin, as if she were the cause of this event. In fact, the vilification of Palin led to a display of vile rhetoric and death threats from the left that has to be seen(*warning) to be believed.

What a surprise then, that after leading the charge against vile rhetoric … by inciting vile rhetoric, the New York Times conveniently forgets about it entirely. Never an acknowledgement they were wrong. Never an apology to Palin whom they irresponsibly blamed. It is as if the pieces they published in January 2011 and the agenda they pushed ended up in a gaping memory hole. The most effective and pithy commentary on this reality?

(more…)

The New York Times recently endorsed having children boycott a Christmas performance of “The Nutcracker” merely because there was money from the Kochs involved in supporting it. Additionally, it would seem that art is no longer purely for art’s sake. According to the Times, it’s only worth can be to support the political views of Times’s editors and staff. Evidently, if Koch money is involved in its production, or showing, the art in question should be attacked by “Occupy” protesters, that according to the Times.

These examples cited by the Koch’s in response do more than stretch the bounds of incredulity. They amount to character assassination and an embracing of the worst form of guilt by association. One might have hoped that such tactics were in large part destroyed along with the Iron Curtain of Soviet fame. It’s frightening, as well as tragic, if not all that surprising, to see them re-emerge on the pages of the New York Times.

The first, by art critic Anthony Tommasini, complained about our support for the arts, compared us to the deposed King Ludwig of 19th-Century Bavaria and the Renaissance Medicis and therefore urged that the situation “would seem to make the performing arts a natural focus for the Occupy activists.”

The second piece, appearing in the “Ethicist” column by Ariel Kaminer, applauded a reader for keeping her granddaughter away from a performance of “The Nutcracker” because we donated to the production. “Tolerance has its limits,” Ms. Kaminer explained, and “Tchaikovsky makes strange bedfellows.”

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One of the Old Media’s favorite ways of attempting to hide the ideological track of a story is to somehow forget to mention which party someone in the news hails or to whom they owe their fealty. In this case, it is what they don’t report that misleads. This week we find a classic what-they-don’t-say story concerning the judge that blocked sections of South Carolina’s new immigration law. For those unaware, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel temporarily blocked segments of South Carolina’s new immigration laws because he claimed that some of its provisions impinged on federal prerogatives, things over which the state has no jurisdiction. The South Carolina law was opposed in court by Obama’s left-wing, activist Department of Justice headed by Eric “Fast And Furious” Holder and a gaggle of civil rights groups. Judge Gergel agreed with these attackers and issued an injunction to stop implementation of the provisions in question.

The Old Media reported a lot of details in the story, of course. We learned all about who opposed the provisions, who scoffed at the injunction, in what District Judge Gergel hailed, and in some of the reports we even get to hear what Republican South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley had to say about it all. But there is one thing few news outlets seemed to report that might help readers understand the decision better. Judge Richard Mark Gergel is an Obama appointee. (more…)

- Janet Robinson, Chief Executive of the NYT, steps down with a hefty $15m exit package:

A Times Co representative declined to give any more details on Robinson’s departure beyond the statement issued last Thursday, and did not make her available for comment …

… News of Robinson’s severance agreement comes during the same week that a wave of buyouts hit the newsroom of the flagship New York Times and the company disclosed that it was in talks to sell 16 regional newspapers to Halifax Media Holdings. More than a dozen newsroom staffers reportedly took buyouts, among them well-known bylines including sports writer George Vecsey, metro columnist Clyde Haberman, and business reporter Diana Henriques.

Against the backdrop of an 80 percent decline in the Times Co’s stock over her seven-year tenure as CEO, the size of Robinson’s exit package prompted some criticism in the newsroom. Times Co shares are down 25 percent this year alone.

- Ron Paul bolts from CNN interview upon being asked about those newsletters:

Sure, Paul still has a number of questions to answer about these and the passage of time doesn’t diminish the offensiveness of newsletters filled with this stuff using his name to make him profits, but don’t you wish the media would have asked this of Obama about Jeremiah Wright?

Speaking of those newsletters:

Transcript, starting around 1:45

I also put out a political type of business investment newsletter that sort of covered all these areas.  And it covered a lot about what was going on in Washington, and financial events, and especially some of the monetary events.  Since I had been especially interested in monetary policy, had been on the banking committee, and still very interested in, in that subject, that this newsletter dealt with it.  This had to do with the value of the dollar, the pros and cons of the gold standard, and of course the disadvantages of all the high taxes and spending that our government seems to continue to do.

(more…)

It’s true that Paul Krugman says some outlandish things- from heartily embracing the criminal Occupy folks to continuing to believe whole heartedly in Keynesian economics well past its sell date, Krugman is happy to beclown himself. Given the opportunity, and the Gray Lady seems to give him many of them, he never misses the chance to show off his condescending ignorance of pretty much everything. So, what corner has his quill painted him into today? He is taking Politifact to task for its “Lie of the Year.” He is outraged. Outraged! The folks in charge of fact-checking over at Politifact said that it’s not true that Republicans voted to end Medicare. This isn’t the place to discuss the merits of Politifact’s piece; you can read it and decide for yourself.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

No, it’s Krugman’s wonderful hissy fit that is noteworthy.

“The answer is, of course, obvious: the people at Politifact are terrified of being considered partisan if they acknowledge the clear fact that there’s a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. So they’ve bent over backwards to appear “balanced” — and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.”

Well, okay, it is important to give credit where credit is due. There is a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. Not quite what Krugman meant though- Politifact certainly does have an issue with being considered partisan. As reported on these very pages, multiple times, the fact-checking website is anything but clean of partisan bias. Most of it is aimed squarely at skewering the more conservative side of the spectrum.

Which brings us to Krugman’s real issue. It’s the same thing that has caused leftists world wide to threaten patriots like Brandon Darby or denigrate those they formerly lionized like David Mamet. Once you’re on the liberal plantation, you’re there for life. If you try to espouse any view that isn’t lock step with progressive groupthink you are immediately branded an infidel with all it entails. The greatest crime to Krugman and is ilk is apostasy.

(more…)

After running a slew of anti-Israel op-eds, the New York Times invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to submit his own.

Netanyahu’s refusal, signed by senior adviser Ron Dermer and reprinted in the Jerusalem Post, is a masterstroke.

***

Dear Sasha,

I received your email requesting that Prime Minister Netanyahu submit an op-ed to the New York Times. Unfortunately, we must respectfully decline.

On matters relating to Israel, the op-ed page of the “paper of record” has failed to heed the late Senator Moynihan’s admonition that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but that no one is entitled to their own facts.
A case in point was your decision last May to publish the following bit of historical revision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas:

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.

This paragraph effectively turns on its head an event within living memory in which the Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan accepted by the Jews and then joined five Arab states in launching a war to annihilate the embryonic Jewish state. It should not have made it past the most rudimentary fact-checking.

The opinions of some of your regular columnists regarding Israel are well known. They consistently distort the positions of our government and ignore the steps it has taken to advance peace. They cavalierly defame our country by suggesting that marginal phenomena condemned by Prime Minister Netanyahu and virtually every Israeli official somehow reflects government policy or Israeli society as a whole. Worse, one columnist even stooped to suggesting that the strong expressions of support for Prime Minister Netanyahu during his speech this year to Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” rather than a reflection of the broad support for Israel among the American people. (more…)

- The other day the New Wonkette was salivating over hidden meanings in Gingrich’s office gewgaws; now the NYT is poring over Gingrich’s 1971 dissertation. Yes, really.

Mr. Gingrich would be our first president with a Ph.D. since Woodrow Wilson. Does his work as a historian tell us anything about him? Or, for that matter, anything about why, despite certain events in 1776, he considers “anticolonial” an epithet? To address these questions, a good place to start is his 1971 Tulane doctoral dissertation: “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960.”

For Pete’s sake. This is the stupidest thing the NYT has written today. Can you imagine if the NYT pored over Obama’s college thesis, or hey, even his college records, which have never been release despite repeated requests? Can you imagine the NYT going over Fast and Furious emails they way they’re rifling through Gingrich’s thesis — or devoured Sarah Palin’s emails?

- Al Jazeera opens a new bureau in Chicago.

Previously on Al Jazeera:

Why It’s Time for Rep. Peter King to Investigate Al-Jazeera
Another Al-Jazeera Journalist Suspected of Terror Ties
U.S. Officials Suspected Al-Jazeera Ties to Al-Qaeda
How Al-Jazeera Kills Americans

- Mitt’s media blowback:

Mitt Romney’s vulnerabilities as a candidate are well known, yet a seemingly new one surfaced last week: his unusual brittleness in the face of media questions.

With one prickly interview with Fox’s Bret Baier on Tuesday — in which the candidate appeared uncomfortable and even angry fielding basic questions about his record — the former Massachusetts governor set off a round of speculation about his ability to operate outside hermetically sealed campaign events, reminding his rivals and the media of the extreme lengths to which he has gone to evade the national press.

On a Fox panel that night, Juan Williams called the interview “disastrous,” Jonah Goldberg said Romney appeared “uncomfortable” and Baier said people thought Romney seemed “irritated and tense” — sentiments that were echoed across the other networks that night and in print the next morning.

For a candidate who has been in the national spotlight as long as Romney, his discomfort with Baier was telling. And it reflected a deliberate and long-standing strategy of dodging tough questions and questioners.

- Fox moving to the center?

“That government is best which governs least,” or so Henry David Thoreau believed, at least. Apparently though, Mr. Thoreau would have been at odds with today’s editorial board at the New York Times, for they managed to find a dark cloud amidst the silver lining of the improving November unemployment numbers that only true statists (and also those hopelessly afflicted by self-flagellating “white guilt” that is the hallmark of the left) could divine.

The Times points out that, although 120,000  jobs were created last month bringing national unemployed down by .4% overall, some 20,000 government jobs were sacrificed at the altar of increasing state, county and city budgetary woes. It was the largest drop for any sector of the economy.

To a leftist, for whom the state is ultimate arbiter of economic, moral and social policy, this represents a “troubling trend that’s been building for years.” The Times goes on to lament: “Those layoffs mean a lower quality of life when there are fewer teachers, pothole repair crews and nurses.” It’s said as though these decisions are made in a vacuum that has nothing to do with the shrinking revenue base unable to match increased spending — spending usually carried out by detached bureaucrats whose job it is to walk into their office each morning, snap open their briefcase and proceed to spend other people’s money. Yes, layoffs always hurt. I would rather have three cops walk my street than two. I’d rather have two firehouses than one within a mile of my home. As for teachers, that depends on who’s at the blackboard.

The problem for statists is, as my own Governor Christie will tell you, there are a finite amount of dollars available  to one crafting a budget. States, counties, and cities cannot print their own currency to keep the money flowing, and issuing bonds merely shifts the burden to the next generation while piling on even more debt making the inevitable day of reckoning that much more severe. The federal government, now drowning in $15 trillion of its own mismanaged debt, can no longer extend the lifeline that has served as a substitute for local fiscal discipline. As with other aspects of left-wing big government/low growth models now collapsing under the uncompromising weight of mathematics, what these employment figures show is that the great reset to where 2+2=4 again is now impacting the statehouse and courthouse as well as the White House. (more…)

Now that they’ve officially been hung out to dry by both the elite media and the Left, Occupy Wall Street has apparently decided to die with a whimper instead of with dignity. Five lonely Occupiers in Chicago. Three in Indiana. And when that evil (not really) Rush Limbaugh makes an appearance in the very heart of Occupied territory, New York City, and only a dozen or so neo-hippie crybabies bother to show up, methinks that’s a death rattle I hear.

But you have to remember ’twas New Media that killed Obama’s astro-turfed, anti-American army of poopers, rapists, vandals, drug abusers and trespassers — and that without New Media the MSM would’ve gotten away with their evil (yes, really) master plan, which was to recreate the sixties’ anti-war movement. The whole of the MSM intended to give these Occupy degenerates the same oxygen they gave anti-war degenerates forty years ago. The worst people in the world would be spoon fed the encouragement and legitimacy required to spin them into something they are not. And all of this was going to be made possible through the covering up of a hundreds of sins both big and small.

The only problem for the MSM, though, is that this isn’t the sixties and, therefore, they no longer control every portal of mass communication. Thus, armed with our own cameras, the power to disseminate information without funneling through the media’s corrupt filter, and armed with THE TRUTH — video by photo by investigative report, Occupy collapsed under the exposed weight of their own hypocrisy, noxious beliefs, and craven misdeeds.

In the form of a victory lap, here are my top ten New Media moments:

10. The Copper-Pooper Photo That Went ‘Round the World

A moment captured on film frequently comes to define a movement. Just as the flag-raising at Iwo Jima defined WWII and one brave soul stopping a contingent of tanks defined Tienanmen Square, so will the Copper-Pooper Photo forever define Occupy Wall Street. Anarchy, depravity, incivility, and the utter pointlessness of it all captured forever.

The photo might have been snapped by the mainstream media, but it was New Media that wouldn’t and will never let it die.

(more…)

One of the core beliefs of the Occupy movement – the idea of the 99% vs. the 1% — is not only laughable on its face but has been picked up and expanded on by lauded liberals like economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. There are a few different ways to judge the Occupy movement. You can look at the Who; the people in leadership positions for the “leaderless” movement  like Lisa Fithian or Muhammed Malik. You could examine the What; as of this writing, the 350 or so incidents of violence, sexual assault, and property destruction.

Paul Krugman, sporting a blue collar

Bring up either of these to an Occupy defender, however, and you’re sure to be met with the argument that these people and events are isolated incidents and not representative of the Occupy movement. It’s a desperate argument, the philosophical equivalent of the timeless epistemological question “How many facial hairs need to grow on a man before you can say he has a beard?” And just because no specific numeric answer is correct doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as a beard. Occupy passed the tipping point weeks ago, which is why even sympathetic mayors were forced to shut down the lawless tent cities nationwide. However, as easy as it is to criticize Occupy on the basis of its leadership and behavior, it’s more important to attack the “why” — the ideological foundation that the whole mess rests on. Occupy has a number of key ideas behind it that aren’t isolated, concepts that are clear and unique to the Occupy movement. One of those ideas is the “We Are The 99%” slogan and the corollary attack on “the 1%.” (more…)