This is all that remains of the very popular Ford commercial that went viral on the internet and was featured on cable news channels over the past three weeks:

According to the Detroit News, Ford has pulled the ad due to pressure from the Obama White House:

Ford pulled the ad after individuals inside the White House questioned whether the copy was publicly denigrating the controversial bailout policy CEO Alan Mulally repeatedly supported in the dark days of late 2008, in early ‘09 and again when the ad flap arose. And more.

With President Barack Obama tuning his re-election campaign amid dismal economic conditions and simmering antipathy toward his stimulus spending and associated bailouts, the Ford ad carried the makings of a political liability when Team Obama can least afford yet another one. Can’t have that.

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart.com, the “star” of the popular ad, Chris McDaniel told me he was “a little bit flustered’ by Ford’s decision. He found out about it during a live radio interview this morning. “I had no idea. As soon as I got off the interview, I sent an e-mail to Ford’s VP of Marketing.” He told me, “I put myself out there on the line. You either stand behind it or you don’t.”

Ford has not yet returned Mr. McDaniel’s e-mail.

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Nestled in the hills of Laguna Beach, CA overlooking the Orange County coastline, a slight hint of salt in the breeze as Gen Y TV spoke with documentary filmmaker and political commentator, Stephen K. Bannon. With his latest film, “The Undefeated,” about to debut in 80 million homes through major cable and satellite companies, Bannon’s eagerness to talk to youthful viewers pushed his personal victory aside. For the next hour, I spoke with this truly humble gentleman about the existing opportunities and challenges that face my generation.

A graduate of Harvard Business School, a Surface Warfare Officer for the US Navy, and a former investment banker for Goldman Sachs, Bannon is a remarkable example of how filmmaking can come at any age and point in one’s life. Technology has enabled anyone with a digital camera to creatively express opinions as entertainment, and as a result, Bannon has written and directed four documentary films in less than two years. With our country’s finances spiraling out of control, Bannon has particularly shed light on issues that are currently affecting America’s wellbeing. He emphasized the importance of storytelling and the necessity for being passionate about the topic you are conveying. He further explained the amount of time and effort that must be committed to a project, and said, “be prepared to spend a year of your life” hashing out the story.

Moving into the specifics of his work, I asked why he chose to dedicate a film to Sarah Palin, to which he replied, because “her story has never been told.” He immediately followed with, “she is an incredibly accomplished executive who took on a corrupt and compromised political class virtually single-handed.”

The many misconceptions of Palin personified by the mainstream media opened Bannon’s film. He used this approach to gain an emotional reaction from the audience and demonstrate the influence pop culture has on the younger generation. But what started out as a conversation about independent filmmaking quickly turned to the state of the economy and the daunting problems that are soon to be inherited by those 18-35 years-old.

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This week President Abbas made a disastrous application for a unilateral declaration of Palestinian Statehood at the United Nations. This bid, more than anything, was a result of Barack Obama’s disastrous Middle East policy, but not according to Bob Beckel. Beckel on Friday’s “The Five” suggested that Obama’s policies had nothing to do with the UN disaster, nothing to do with the fact that Abbas refuses to negotiate, and nothing to do with Palestinians’s refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish State. It’s all the fault of the settlements, the settlements, the settlements.

Honestly, I can’t remember if he repeated the words “the settlements” three or four times but Beckel certainly made his point. He also proved that he is either too partisan to admit the truth, or too lazy to research recent  history, but either way he is wrong.

Allow me to explain the facts and for brevity’s sake I will start with the Obama Administration.

While the Palestinians have never accepted Israeli settlements, secession of all settlement building has never been a precondition to talks. Israel had long ago agreed not to build new communities in Judea and Samaria but would continue to add housing units to existing communities.

During the government of PM Ehud Barak, there were direct talks and construction continued in existing communities.

It was the Obama administration’s naiveté that made the settlements an issue. Hillary Clinton first demanded the freeze in 2009 and was quickly backed up by Obama. What the President and his advisers perceived as a minor concession (a settlement freeze including no new housing units in existing communities) was for Israel a grave sacrifice. From their point of view Obama was telling adult Israelis that their children could no longer live near their parents. He was also saying that a policy not accepted in the United States (allowing people of a certain faith to live anywhere they want) was OK as long as it appeased the Arab world.

It is interesting that the man who pushed for Muslims to build a mosque on Ground Zero, and for illegal immigrants to live in Arizona, believes that Jews should be banned from living on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Making the settlement a cornerstone of the new administration’s Middle East policy was a major naivete-driven error by the Obama administration. It was further compounded by their inclusion of Jerusalem in the mix and their constant public berating of the Jewish State. This turned the Israeli population against Obama, especially the Israeli left who would be more inclined to support a settlement freeze demand. A May 2011 Smith Poll conducted for the Jerusalem Post showed that only 12% of Israelis believe Obama is pro-Israel while 40% believe he is pro-Palestinian.

Obama’s demand for a freeze of natural community growth broke a US/Israel agreement made during the Bush administration.

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ABC has a piece today that offers some concern from professors of journalism that the Obama White House has gone further than any administration in memory toward creating a kind of state run media:

The White House Press Office now not only produces a website, blog, YouTube channel, Flickr photo stream, and Facebook and Twitter profiles, but also a mix of daily video programming, including live coverage of the president’s appearances and news-like shows that highlight his accomplishments…

Over the past few months, as White House cameras have been granted free reign behind the scenes, officials have blocked broadcast news outlets from events traditionally open to coverage and limited opportunities to publicly question the president himself.

In essence the White House is creating pool reports with itself as the pool reporter.

“The administration has narrowed access by the mainstream media to an unprecedented extent,” said ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton, who has covered seven administrations. “Access here has shriveled.”

ABC notes that the scope of the White House press operation rivals traditional broadcast networks in some areas:

The White House has amassed 1.9 million followers on Twitter, 900,000 fans on Facebook and averages 250,000 visits to its YouTube channel per month. Its website received roughly 1.1 million unique visitors in January, according to ComScore.

By contrast, ABC News has 1.2 million followers on Twitter, 150,000 fans on Facebook, and averages 21.7 million unique visitors per month to ABCNews.com, according to ComScore.

Click over to read the full article and you’ll get to the part where journalist professor David Perlmutter compares the White House operation to Communist Russian state media.

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On March 23, 2010 at 6:41pm, Sarah Palin’s infamous “cross-hairs” map was posted to her facebook page. It instantly sparked controversy. On March 26, 2010, at a rally for Senator John McCain, Palin clarified her intentions with the map and defended herself and other conservatives against charges of inciting violence during the period of heightened debate surrounding the Democrats’ overhaul of the health care system:

TRANSCRIPT:

And ya know, hearing the news reports lately, kinda this ginned up controversy about us, common sense conservatives, inciting violence because we happen to oppose some of the things in the Obama administration.

Interrupted from audience: “We do it with our vote!”

Amen, brother! That’s what you do it with, with your vote! You got it right. We know violence isn’t the answer. When we take up our arms, we’re talking about our vote. We’re talking about being involved in a contested primary like this, and picking the right candidate too–John McCain, we thank you for that.

But this B.S. coming from the lamestream media lately about this, about us inciting violence. Don’t let the conversation be diverted. Don’t’ let a distraction like that get you off track. Keep fighting hard for these candidates who are all about the common sense conservative solutions that we need. (more…)

The mainstream media has treated accusations of large-scale fraud in the Pigford settlement with overt skepticism and a distinct lack of journalistic curiosity. The press has blindly repeated the Obama Administration’s claim that there are only a handful of fraud cases among the twenty thousand or so paid Pigford claims. Worse, the media has helped promote the narrative that those raising concerns about fraud in Pigford are racist.

You’re about to watch a video clip where Othello Cross, an attorney for Pigford claimants with about fifteen years of experience on the case, admits that he is personally aware of hundreds of cases of fraud in the state of Arkansas alone. Furthermore, he explains how easy it was to commit that fraud and receive a $50,000 check from the government; it’s appropriate to deduce from Cross’s revealing statement that the actual number of fraudulent claims is likely much higher than the hundreds he knows about.

You’re about to watch this clip for the first time, but the USDA watched it over a week ago — I sent it to them for comment about 10 days ago.

After a number of phone calls to the USDA, I was given the response that Secretary Vilsack now acknowledges around ten cases of fraud, up from his original statement that there are only three known cases. If I were inclined to spin the government’s response, I’d praise the USDA for finding 300% more instances of fraud in just a few days, but the reality is that the USDA can watch a video where a pro-Pigford claimant lawyer says in no uncertain terms that he knows about hundreds of cases of fraud — over ten million dollars worth at bare minimum — and still will only acknowledge ten cases.

As Andrew Breitbart points out, the media simply doesn’t want to cover Pigford. I also sent this video to a few major media outlets that stated they wanted to “research” this. I haven’t heard back from any of them. (more…)

Congratulations to the editors at the Washington Post.  Seventeen months after the Eric Holder Justice Department dismissed a slam-dunk case against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation, the Post gets around to printing a thorough vetting of the dismissal.  The story is slated for Saturday’s print edition.  While other media like Breitbart/The Bigs, Fox News, the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Investors Business Daily, Pajamas Media, and Drudge have had dozens of stories on the corrupt New Black Panther dismissal, the Washington Post at last is in the game.

The story is a shocker too.  The shock comes from the middle of the road and factual nature of the story.

There are small problems with the story.  For one, the Washington Post is the only outlet that calls King Samir Shabazz by his old “slave name” (Shabazz’s own words) of Maruse Heath.  Even Heath doesn’t call himself Heath.  Of course this takes some of the sting off Shabazz’s rants against Jews and calls to kill “cracker babies in their crib.”

The Post’s decision to change a man’s name for him is controversial.  It has no place.

But overall, the story is very bad news for Eric Holder.  It debunks many of the myths spun by the administration.  Inside DOJ sources describe deep hostility to protecting whites at Justice.  DOJ sources say panther prosecutor Christian Adams never allowed his conservative views to influence his work, contradicting administration spin.  And perhaps most damning of all to Holder, sources defending the administration defend the idea that whites aren’t protected by the Civil Rights laws.  The latter is the blockbuster news in the Post piece. (more…)

Folks who watched CBS “Face the Nation” yesterday were greeted by a once-in-a-lifetime miracle occurrence: host Bob Schieffer taking a contrary position to one of the Administration’s talking points. Talking to White House political director David Axelrod about the President’s charge that the Chamber of Commerce is using foreign donations to support GOP candidates, he asked:

SCHIEFFER: Now, I want to ask you about that because the New York Times looked into the Chamber specifically and said the Chamber really isn’t putting foreign money into the campaign. That it does charge its foreign affiliates dues that bring in less than $100,000 a year. A lot of organizations, including labor unions, do that. But the Chamber has an annual budget of $200 million. Along with that it keeps these foreign dues separate. They do spend heavily in politics — $25 million so far. They expect to spend $50 million. But this part about foreign money, that appears to be peanuts, Mr. Axelrod. Do you have any evidence that it’s anything other than peanuts?

AXELROD: Well, do you have any evidence that it’s not, Bob? The fact is that the Chamber has asserted that but they won’t release any information about where their campaign money is coming from. That’s at the core of the problem here. What we’ve seen in part because of a loophole that the Supreme Court allowed earlier this year, we now see tens of millions of dollars being spent by the chamber and a number of organizations some of which just cropped up. Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove run one of them. Tens of millions of dollars from undisclosed donors under benign names like the American cross roads fund. They’re spending heavily in all of these elections. One race in Colorado, there are six different organizations running negative ads against the Democratic senator there, Michael Bennet. No one knows where the money is coming from. My question back to you and for your next guest is, why not simply disclose where this money is coming from? And then all of these questions will be answered.

In other words Axelrod and the Democratic Party pulled this charge out of nowhere, threw it against the wall and are praying it sticks, or as Schieffer said: (more…)

WikiLeaks is poised to release another 15,000 secret military reports, this time about the war in Iraq. A rarely spoken context for the WikiLeaks controversy is the shared hostility of WikiLeaks and leftist Democrats toward U.S. military involvement in the world.  The Make-Believe Media, most notably the New York Times and Associated Press, intentionally or inadvertently, run a smokescreen for this shared interest.

After I wrote an article illustrating the White House’s conflicting responses to WikiLeaks’ release of 76,000+ secret military Afghanistan war reports, I received an unsolicited email from someone who called herself “Sarah,” and who claimed to work for The Sunshine Press, publisher for WikiLeaks.  Her return email address checked out, but I have since received no response from her to my further emails. (There is a Sarah Tisdall listed on the WikiLeaks web page.)

“Sarah” sent me a statement, with corroborating media sources, that belies the White House line that it had no realistic opportunity to vet the documents, and brands New York Times’ reporter and White House WikiLeaks liaison Eric Schmitt as a sneaky double dealing rat fink.

WikiLeaks have consistently asserted that they offered White House officials the opportunity to review the Afghan War Diary documents to help ensure that no innocent informers were named, despite White House claims that they had no contact from the publishers…. WikiLeaks received no response.

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The L.A. Times’s James Rainey predictably seizes on the Sherrod story, in a futile attempt to rehabilitate his reputation after his mishandling of the ACORN story last year. If I told you that Rainey’s attempt at column is highly dishonest, would you be surprised?

Rainey first deceptively suggests that Ann Coulter has labeled Breitbart a fraudster:

But certain media outlets have played the story and the political ramifications for the Obama administration (and there are questions to be answered) as if they sprang out of the ether. There’s a continuing rush to talk about effect, and very little desire to talk about cause — the steaming pile of misinformation delivered on a platter by one individual with a giant ax to grind.

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative agitator behind websites like Breitbart.com and BigGovernment.com, likes it this way. Stirring the pot, gobbling up chunks of cable television time, doing whatever it takes to further his political beliefs, even if it means putting one woman’s reputation through a meat grinder.

The severely edited video posted on Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com shows Sherrod, who is black, telling an NAACP gathering in March that she had once scrimped on assistance to a white man in danger of losing his farm. Not included in the video posting was the bulk of Sherrod’s talk, in which she recognized the error of her ways a quarter of a century ago and helped the white man, saving his farm. As a result, the farm advocate and the white family formed a lasting friendship.

Breitbart headlined the video as “proof” that “the NAACP awards racism,” when in fact it showed one woman trying to teach a lesson about the shortcomings of racial discrimination.

Conservatives including David Frum and Ann Coulter have acknowledged that the video Breitbart posted is a fraud. But Frum, a former speechwriter in the Bush White House, wrote that he has seen this act too many times to expect Breitbart to apologize for “distributing a doctored tape to defame and destroy someone.”

Reading that passage, any reader would naturally conclude that Coulter has said Breitbart knowingly posted a deceptively altered video. But it turns out Coulter said nothing of the sort. Instead, she has proclaimed Breitbart innocent of fraudulent intent, opining that Breitbart was set up (a notion that Breitbart himself has dismissed): (more…)

As the mainstream media trips over itself to analyze and re-analyze the Shirley Sherrod controversy, Andrew Breitbart is under fire for ostensibly unethical behavior. Andrew is more than capable of defending himself, but I wanted to offer a few quick thoughts on this imbroglio:

(1) This President often decries the 24-hour, hyper-reactionary media cycle, yet his administration responded with warp-speed to toss Sherrod overboard. Can it now safely be asserted that the Obama administration “acted stupidly”?

(2) The administration’s thoughtless abandonment of Sherrod indicates a hair-trigger climate of paranoia about all issues racial within the West Wing. It seems J. Christian Adams’ whistle-blowing has taken its toll, and Team Obama is nervous about the degree of scrutiny its racially-tinged political machinations have received. On the heels of the New Black Panther kerfuffle, another major race flap just wouldn’t do–thus, a low-level African American female was deemed expendable, and was unceremoniously dumped. The White House now claims they didn’t press for Sherrod’s dismissal, yet is apologizing to her. Hmm.

(3) MSM critics are pouncing on Breitbart & Co. for “smearing” Sherrod by exploiting out-of-context remarks. As others have noted, many of these same critics were remarkably mute as the ACORN videos were revealed, yet eagerly jumped into the fray to prematurely crucify James O’Keefe when he was arrested in Louisiana. These duplicitous observers were also conspicuously subdued as Andrew Breitbart beat back the “N-word” accusations invented by the Congressional Black Caucus. The story selection speaks for itself. (more…)

Yesterday Andrew Breitbart appeared on Hannity and CNN’s John King USA to discuss NAACP racism and the firing of Shirley Sherrod:

***

Breitbart’s argument is simple and straightforward: Regardless of what else is in Sherrod’s speech, the first video released on BigGovernment.com features Sherrod telling a tale of racism that is received by the NAACP audience with laughter and cheers. They weren’t cheering redemption; they were cheering discrimination. Upon hearing the cheers, Sherrod fails to offer any immediate clarification and even smiles right along with them.

Breitbart’s main objective by releasing the video was to call out the NAACP, an organization who has recently gone to great lengths to condemn the Tea Party’s alleged racism, for sanctioning racism in it’s own organization. Sherrod immediately became the scapegoat for the embarrassed NAACP and USDA, but she was never the target, the NAACP itself was, and the delight the audience took in the racist part of Sherrod’s speech leaves them exposed. (more…)

You know things are really starting to go south for the Obama administration when its journalistic functionaries and spear-carriers on the left are starting to openly fret and worry as they begin to feel November’s chill wind blowing. The visions of historic change, social justice and a plum government job are gradually being replaced by nightmares not just of defeat but repudiation. The racket has been exposed by its own audacity.

First up is Ruth Marcus, of the deeply compromised Washington Post. What used to be merely a center-left news organization that nevertheless played relatively fair and boasted some outstanding writers has devolved into a poor imitation of the Huffington Post, replete with White House operatives and partisan hacks. By comparison with many of her colleagues, the liberal Marcus looks like Stewart Alsop. Here she is, writing about Obama’s recess appointment of Dr. Death Panels himself, Donald Berwick:

As a matter of politics, the president’s choice of Berwick was, well, the polite word would be bold. The less polite word: boneheaded. Administration officials argue that Republicans would have seized on any nominee as an opportunity to re-litigate the health care debate. But Berwick offered opponents a loaded gun with his talk about rationing, his discussion of health reform as a matter of redistributing wealth, and his effusive praise for the British system. If the president wanted to buy a fight like this, he ought to have been better prepared to wage it.

And as a matter of good government, the president’s move to snub the Senate and install Berwick by recess appointment was outrageous… A recess appointment should be a last step in cases of egregious delay, not one of the first. That standard was nowhere near met in Berwick’s case. Berwick was nominated to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on April 19, less than three months ago. He had not yet had a hearing. His committee vetting wasn’t complete.

Well, duh. For a Chicago pol, whose path to prominence came not via intellectual brilliance or personal charisma but through behind-the-scenes machinations to get opponents thrown off the ballot or have their sealed divorce records made public, “by any means necessary” is not only a tactic, it’s a categorical imperative. (more…)

From the moment Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer signed her state’s much maligned immigration bill (SB 1070) into law on April 23, 2010, mainstream news outlets voiced outrage as part of their attempt to carry water for Obama administration, water they’ve carried some two and half months now, while they waited for Obama & Company to decide what they might do to stop Brewer.

And now they’ve decided to sue, as news broke earlier today that Attorney General Eric Holder is filing suit to keep the immigration law from going into effect.

The Associated Press’ (AP) story on Obama’s course of action states that: “The federal lawsuit escalates the volatile national debate on illegal immigration.” Nowhere, however, does the story mention the role the AP and other news outlets played in creating the “volatile…debate.” Instead, it’s as if Brewer signed the bill and outrage ensued without any provocation from the media whatsoever.

What provided a platform for the left-wing politicians pushing for a boycott of Arizona if not the media? (more…)

It’s been a pretty remarkable week, news-wise and media-wise, and to say the two are related would be an understatement. We’ve seen the lid finally blow off the long-simmering Al Gore sex scandal, which certainly serves to explain the otherwise mysterious Al Gore divorce. We’ve seen a group of alleged Russian spies, at least one journalist among them, rolled up by the FBI. We’ve seen the public revelation of the so-called “JournoList,” a listserv groupthink email chain compromising roughly 400 lefty journalists and bloggers, for which Andrew Breitbart has offered $100,000 for the complete contents. And we’ve seen yet another example of the revolving-door relationship between Democrat journalists and Democrat politics when a Washington Post blogger turned out to be an Obama Administration operative.

I think you know where we’re going with this.

Journalists — whether through action or inaction — are at the center of every one of these scandals. And the amazing thing is, they not only don’t care that they’ve lost the trust of the public, forfeited their claims of objectivity and destroyed the nature of the reporter-reader relationship — they’re proud of it!

The old Soviet Union used American journalists as willing accomplices: from John Reed to Walter Duranty to I.F. Stone, the Soviets knew that one path to the destruction of the Principal Enemy lay through the press, and they diligently pursued western reporters, dangling  ideological solidarity, blackmail or money. Heck, Warren Beatty even made a movie about Reed: (more…)

Various lefty organizations have petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to start monitoring “hate speech” on radio and on the internet. According to this story, the groups include:

Free Press, the Media Access Project, Common Cause, the Prometheus Radio Project, and the League of United Latin American Citizens. Their statement, filed in the Commission’s Future of Media proceeding, comes in support of a petition to the agency submitted over a year ago by the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

“Hate speech against vulnerable groups is pervasive in our media—it is not limited to a few isolated instances or any one media platform,” NHMC warned the FCC in 2009. “Indeed, many large mainstream media corporations regularly air hate speech, and it is prolific on the Internet. Hate speech takes various forms, from words advocating violence to those creating a climate of hate towards vulnerable groups. Cumulatively, hate speech creates an environment of hate and prejudice that legitimizes violence against its targets.”

Such anti-First Amendment nonsense — one could argue that “hate speech” is precisely what’s protected by the First Amendment; the difference between freedom of expression and incitement to violence seems to elude these people — is just part of a larger front war against free speech that the left seems determined to open up, and which the right must oppose vigorously. To give even an inch on the bedrock principle of the First Amendment is to admit defeat, since there can be no compromise on “no law.” (more…)