Along with playing dumb on the rhetoric of Rep. Allen West in a recent speech (no one believes he was suggesting Democrats should actually leave America when he said they could take their message elsewhere), CNN’s Soledad O’Brien played fast and loose with food stamp usage increases under Bush versus Obama to put Rep. Allen West on the spot.

O’Brien falsely asserted that the number of food stamp recipients rose more under former President Bush than Obama. Not only are her numbers off, but according to The Daily Jobs update, she failed to acknowledge that the respective increases took place over eight years for Bush and only three years under Obama. That alone is hardly an accurate comparison. And it gets worse.

Yes, usage went up by 11 million in eight years of Bush, but O’Brien claims that under Obama, the number of recipients went up 13 million, from 33 to 46 million. That’s incorrect. Obama’s baseline was 28 million, and usage has risen by 18 million to 46 million in just 3 years. (more…)

We’re having tea with the Mad Hatter.

If you look a little closer at the debate over the Obama administration’s betrayal of the Catholic Church, you’ll see that we’ve already lost.  Obama and his media allies have effectively shifted the argument away from the grounds upon which it should take place and on to grounds we never thought possible. Rather than debating the outrageous overreach of the government demanding insurance companies pay for birth control, we’re instead debating whether the Catholic Church should be required to do so. 

It’s all smoke and mirrors, isn’t it? We’re so busy arguing over the outrage of the White House forcing Catholic-run schools and social service outlets to provide birth control and the morning-after pills to their employees, that the very idea of forcing  private insurance companies to do the same, sounds perfectly reasonable. It’s a genius sleight-of-hand meant to have us look over there instead of over here.

Moreover, if you’ve watched the MSM coverage, you can see that the Constitution and Bill of Rights means nothing to our media overlords. Here we have the federal government violating the fundamental right upon which this country was founded — Freedom of Religion — and yet the media is taking seriously that a valid counter-argument is a woman’s non-existent right to free birth control.

Do you see the words “birth” or “control” anywhere in here:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And yet, all day I’ve had to read and listen to the media take seriously access to free birth control as some sort of competing right.  

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Reuters:

U.S. authorities are stepping up investigations, including an FBI criminal inquiry, into possible violations by employees of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire of a U.S. law banning corrupt payments to foreign officials such as police, law enforcement and corporate sources said.

But U.S. investigators have found little to substantiate allegations of phone hacking inside the United States by Murdoch journalists, the sources added.

The FBI is conducting an investigation into possible criminal violations by Murdoch employees of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), a law intended to curb payment of bribes by U.S. companies to foreign officials, a U.S. law enforcement official said.

The U.S. official said that if any law enforcement action was pursued by U.S. authorities against Murdoch employees, it would most likely relate to FCPA.

If it is found to have violated the FCPA, Murdoch’s News Corp, which has its headquarters in New York, could be fined up to $2 million and barred from U.S. government contracts, and individuals who participated in the bribery could face fines of up to $100,000 and a jail sentence of five years.

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- This is now beyond stupid and ridiculous. Progressives are now angry at Roland Martin because he was making jokes during the Super Bowl. There is a scary, fascist trend developing here in the United States where people too sensitive to apparently participate in society are holding everyone else responsible for meaningless remarks. It’s victimhood chic.

- Wrong: it’s the third time hyperventilating progressives were willing to freak out for nothing only to go back to their man caves with no scalp.

Dylan Byers notes that criticism of Roland Martin for a comment he made about a Super Bowl commercial — “If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!” — marks the third time this year that CNN contributors have caused some kind of controversy. The fact that CNN keeps finding itself in this position, he writes, says something about its editorial strategy

It’s a symptom alright, a symptom of progressives so antsy to drum out speech or thought with which they don’t agree that they’re willing to embarrass themselves in an all-out witch hunt.

- A FYI: Making fun of David Beckham’s underwear and soccer is now apparently “gay bashing.” Hands to heaven I’m not making this up. Who in America doesn’t make fun of soccer? Who doesn’t laugh at the giant David Beckham bollocks billboards? What does that have to do with being gay?

- WSJ: Disney, Univision In Talks to Launch 24-Hour English Language News Channel.

- Did the Freepers have enough of the Romney surrogates calling everyone who didn’t vote Romney “bigots?” Seems so. Much in the same way that Obama supporters called conservatives “bigots” for not supporting Obamacare (or just disagreeing with Obama on anything), some Romney supporters borrow language of the left and call those who don’t get in line behind Romney ‘anti-Mormon bigots.’

(I’m sure it’s completely coincidental that I followed a piece about progressives freaking out over Roland Martin with conservatives freaking out at other conservatives over Mitt Romney.)

Evangelicals went for Romney hand over fist in the Florida primary, as well as in Nevada where Mormons did, too. Did you hear non-Romney supporters calling Romney’s Mormon supporters “bigots” for not voting for a Catholic or Evangelical? No. Because that language is best left to progressives. Knock it off, people.

- Now Gingrich wants more debates.

- That WHRRR WHRRR WHRRR sound you hear is the BS meter going off: “Listening to Rachel Maddow is like listening to Walter Cronkite.”

- AOL is trying desperately to get people other than your grandparents and that aunt who sends you videos of cats to care about its services.

- Google joins the censorship fun at the request of repressive governments.

- If only outlets reacted this way when the issue isn’t editing an image into a frog, but rather manipulating or omitting facts to convince the reader of an illogical narrative. NPPA president: Sacramento Bee photo manipulation a ‘betrayal.’

- Komen denies that activist media (and the hacking of its website and other related liberal bullying) had anything to do with its reverse decision.

- NYP reports Lawrence O’Donnell is having himself an office romance with Tamron Hall.

- Matt Lauer scores the Obama Superbowl interview. There were rumors of a testy rivalry between Lauer and Brian Williams for the Q & A.

(more…)

So if I understand how this works, we currently live in a media world where “Juan” is racist, where “food stamps” is racist, where pointing out that a president who enjoys basketball enjoys basketball is racist. But “cracker“? Why, that’s not improper in the least.

—–

Well, I guess it’s okay to use the slur “cracker” for the for the same reason it’s okay to use the N-word. Some in the black community use the N-word and some in Florida use the word “cracker.”

Oh, wait; it’s not okay to use the N-word.

Anyway, what does logic have to do with the mainstream media justifying and rationalizing anything they do? But justify and rationalize Jonathan Martin did when he called in to Newsbusters to justify and rationalize his use of the word “cracker.”

You can read the whole thing here, but this is my all-time favorite part:

Let’s face it, you were on MSNBC where virtually every criticism of Barack Obama they report as being somehow racist.”

“Totally agree that there is now a culture in the sort of political media universe on both sides where there is this sort of outrage industry that has been created where both sides monitor the other and try to find examples of offensive comments that can be seized upon and stirred up entirely for political gain where you have this, again, faux indignation, but it’s really just posing as indignation,” he said. “It’s all about political point scoring, and I think it absolutely takes place now on both sides.”

(more…)

Senator Marco Rubio is a bona fide political star able to communicate his ideas and vision with an eloquence few can match. He’s also Hispanic and a Republican, which freaks the left out — and by “left,” I of course mean the mainstream media.

The media’s biggest fear is Obama losing his upcoming reelection, and Rubio is the kind of VP candidate that keeps the corrupt MSM up at night. Not only could he help swing the all-important Hispanic vote into GOP territory; he also hails from the all-important swing state of Florida.

The nightmare scenario for Obama’s MSM Palace Guards is this attractive, articulate young man taking it to Obama on the campaign trail while wrapped in the mantle of history as the very first Hispanic nominated as vice president.

Unfortunately, the MSM is corrupt but not dumb, which is why over the last few months we’ve seen two major pushes from two major news outlets to discredit, toxify, and marginalize Rubio. Oh, and both of those stories were riddled with factual errors that we’re assured were nothing more than honest mistakes.

The first hit came from The Washington Post back in October. Their information was so blatantly wrong that early one Saturday morning I caught them red-handed quietly scrubbing away their mistakes from the hit piece. This is what I wrote at the time:

(more…)

For a few days last week, the leftist media (redundant, I know) tried really hard to make a “spirited” discussion between Governor Jan Brewer (R-Arizona) and President Obama (D-Chicago) into a “something.” Luckily, they’ve cried wolf (read: racist) so many times that most people just roll their eyes, pat the little media types on the head, and tell them to walk it off. There’s no crying in politics. Stop being wusses.

via The Media Research Council

After failing to fan the racial flames again, the lefty media and blogosphere (the echo-chamber) then went with the “it was disrespectful!” angle. Apparently, it is disrespectful to point your finger at the President. Now, assuming Brewer was pointing/wagging her finger at Obama, and she was doing so in a scolding manner – let’s go ahead and ignore that the infamous photo above shows Brewer pointing up at the sky, shall we? – how is it disrespectful?

This is the United States of America. Sure, winning office grants you a certain level of respect, but are we really going to try and score political points when someone uses their hands in an expressive manner? She pointed/wagged her finger; she didn’t flip him the bird. What kind of politically correct nonsense is the media trying to pull here?

One could argue that on day one of his Presidency, Obama – or his sycophants in the media, to be more specific – commanded a certain level of respect. But there’s a history now, isn’t there? In Brewer’s case, Obama implied the now-infamous illegal immigration law she signed was racist. His Attorney General panned the law before he had ever read it. Isn’t that disrespectful to Brewer in her capacity as Governor? Where was the media’s outrage over this disrespectful behavior? There was none. (more…)

By now, most of you already know the story. In the heat of their fierce Florida death match, the Romney campaign released a campaign ad hammering Newt Gingrich. The ad is made up almost entirely of a clip from a 1997 “Nightly News” report when Tom Brokaw was still the network’s anchor:

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Byron York, in my opinion, has done the definitive analysis looking into what really happened with respect to the Speaker’s ethics case, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Romney ad is brilliant in its simplicity and effectiveness. This morning on the “Today Show,” Romney himself explained why:

“I think the reason it was so effective as an ad was that this was not something that Speaker Gingrich could say had been distorted or that Romney was telling things that were not accurate,” Romney said.

“People heard the news, they didn’t hear it filtered, it was just straight on, no heavy music that suggested some kind of sinister background. Instead, (it is) Tom Brokaw, a very credible and respected journalist, reporting the news and I think it was pretty devastating and pointed out that what Speaker Gingrich has been trying to hide is not out in the open.”

Let’s just hope that, should Romney become our nominee, he’s just as willing to salt the earth behind him when it comes to Barack Obama. Romney’s ruthless instincts are the exact right ones when it comes to winning the nomination, but one problem with our side is that we’re usually willing to do whatever it takes to destroy our own, but for fear of the what the corrupt MSM might say, we ease off the Democrats — and lose. Remember McCain’s unwillingness to bring up the twenty years Obama spent in that creepy, racially divisive church? That’s what I mean.

This is especially frustrating because the Democrats always come at us with both barrels blazing. Of course, they never have to worry about the MSM piling on for doing so. We, however, do.

(more…)

Real Clear Politics (RCP) soothes me. Just clicking over to their homepage, which I do a few times a day, isn’t just about getting an information fix on the latest polls and headlines, it’s about reaffirming my belief that objective journalism isn’t dead.

The RCP front page epitomizes what the front page of any objective news outlet should look like.  There’s no narrative, no code that can be cracked. There’s only information and facts, and the original reporting they do is some of the best you’ll find on the Web.

Yes, Virginia, there is a journalistic ideal and it lives here.

Unfortunately, if this article was voice-over for a film, you would insert the record scratch here.

My opinion about this new wave of fact-checking we’re seeing in the MSM is clearly on record, and it would be hypocritical of me not to point it out everywhere, even when the outlet doing the fact-checking is one I respect. Yes, some things are simply black and white, but in the world of partisan politics, especially with respect to the politics surrounding what will be a bitterly fought presidential election, the nuance and shadings and contextual challenges are too murky and vast for anyone to get their arms around. Good faith, and I have no doubt RCP has plenty of that, just isn’t enough to overcome the insurmountable.

Proof of that, unfortunately, can be found in a piece published at RCP yesterday, titled “The True State of the Union.” It’s a fact-check analysis of the state of our union under President Obama, which is broken up into five chapters. The introduction into those chapters ends with this claim: “Here is a nonpartisan snapshot of where the nation is in five areas.”

(more…)

- The National Journal fact checks and compares Obamacare and Romneycare.

- Hysterical. Jeopardy contestants can’t identify Rachel Maddow:

Obviously they, along with most of the country, don’t watch MSNBC.

- Newt Gingrich isn’t the only thing Marianne Gingrich helped to propel to #1 last week.

- Twitter can now censor Tweets in certain countries:

The social network Twitter is facing a storm of criticism from users, after revealing that it has implemented a system that would let it withhold particular tweets from specific countries.

The company has insisted that it will not use the gagging system in a blanket fashion, but would apply it on a case-by-case basis, as already happens when governments or organisations complain about individual tweets.

The new system, which can filter tweets on a country-by-country basis and has already been incorporated into the site’s output, will not change Twitter’s approach to freedom of expression, sources there indicated.

- Washington City Paper notes the obvious and asks: Where are the women and non-white media critics? The problem? They rattle off a list of known progressive white male critics. When you look at only super far left progressives wherein diversity is a rhetorical device rather than observed practice, of course you’d wonder.

(more…)

George Soros’ disciple Ken Vogel wrote a front-page Politico piece laying out the left-wing site’s narrative-attack regarding Governor Mitt Romney’s tax returns. To say the Vogel article is contextually challenged would be quite the understatement, and charitable.

Ebenezer Obama

What Vogel wants you to know:

Mitt Romney and his wife earned more than $20 million in each of the last two years — including a total of $13 million from Bain Capital investments — and paid a rate of about 15 percent in federal taxes, according to tax information released by his presidential campaign Tuesday morning. …

They showed a tax rate far lower than those of his rivals, and foreign investments including a since-closed $3 million Swiss bank account and a Cayman Islands-based fund as well investments in Solamere Capital[.] …

In a conference call with reporters detailing the taxes, Romney’s campaign stressed the couples’ charitable contributions of about $7 million over the two years, and cast the tax documents as a window into the affairs of someone who has achieved the American Dream, and is intent on giving back. …

The Romneys’ tax rate was far lower than the 2010 rates paid by President Barack Obama, 26 percent, or Newt Gingrich, 31.5 percent.

Here’s the context Politico’s resident Soros’ disciple did not include in his story:

[T]he Romneys paid out 42 percent of their income in taxes and charity. …

(more…)

- Geraldo: Newt Gingrich called Juan Williams a ‘racial epithet.’

Yes, seriously. [via]

- Former John Kerry Staffer Arrested For Disclosing Identities of CIA Operatives Who Interrogated Top Al-Qaeda Leaders To The Media:

The Justice Department charged that John Kiriakou, 47, who worked as a CIA officer from 1990 to 2004, revealed the information to journalists and that one reporter passed some of the secrets onto attorneys representing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Buried in the 12th graph:

Kiriakou worked for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigator from March 2009 to April 2011, according to Senate records.

I’m sure the outrage over this will match the tantrum the media threw for Valerie Plame, yes?

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Over the past couple days, it’s been fascinating to watch and read the corrupt media’s reaction to the effective counter-attack Speaker Gingrich has launched against them. Here are a couple of  prime examples:

New York Times:

John King of CNN, Juan Williams of Fox News and Brian Ross of ABC News all ended up being hit by Mr. Gingrich in his relentless criticism of the news media last week, part of an anti-elite, anti-establishment campaign that is rallying conservative voters around him.

Translation: Angry GOP voters just want to see the MSM take a beating.

Politico:

Last week two political operatives were arrested in separate incidents, one Democrat and one Republican. It certainly isn’t news that political operatives sometimes break the law, but how the different incidents were reported is typical of how the Old Media establishment uses guilt by association to tar Republicans but rarely does the same thing to take swipes at Democrats.

The similarity in the two stories is that both of the accused are former staffers of high profile politicians. The Democrat was an Obama campaign staffer while the Republican was a staffer of the Republican Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Neither currently works for those high profile pols, but only the Republican was linked to his former boss. The Democrat’s link to Obama was mostly ignored by the media.

Story One: Some Guy Arrested

We’ll begin with the tale of Iowa Democrat operative Zachary Edwards who tried to steal the identity of a rival Republican in order to use that identity to get the Republican in trouble.

Edwards tried to use the identity of Iowa Secretary of State, Republican Matt Schultz (and/or Schultz’s brother) to illegally obtain some sort of state benefits so that he could then claim that the Republicans were illegally obtaining state benefits. This Edwards fellow hoped he could smear the GOP Sec. of State as engaging in some sort of unethical behavior. (The Iowa Republican blog has more on the fight between Schultz and Iowa Democrats)

Now, as it happens Edwards is not only a member of a politically connected Democrat consulting firm, Link Strategies — a company with long-standing ties to powerful Iowa Democrat Senator Tom Harkin — but Edwards was also a member of Obama’s Iowa team in 2007/08. Edwards’ bio has since been scrubbed from the Link Strategies page but read in part, “In September 2007, Zach joined the Obama New Media department as co-director of the Nevada New Media team and then moved on to direct New Media operations in five other primary states (New Mexico, Texas, North Carolina, and South Dakota).”

For a screen shot of Edwards memory-holed bio from the Link Strategy site, see the Iowa Grounds blog.

So, how was Edwards’ arrest reported? For one thing, it was hard to find Edwards’ Democrat affiliation and his past role as a top Obama campaign staffer in stories of this incident.

(more…)

This left-wing, journOlist-infested outlet can’t bring themselves to dig into Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the number of unemployed who stopped looking for work, the doubling of gas prices since Their Precious One took office, or some human interest angle on the thousands of workers who might have gained employment with Keystone, but this stupidity ranks a prominent spot at the top of the front page:

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Speaker Gingrich is handling the corrupt MSM’s race-baiting in the exact opposite way John McCain did. Which means he’s doing it right.

Rather than surrender legitimate arguments and be cowed into leaving Obama alone on issues that matter, Gingrich is confronting these media attacks head on, and I for one am currently forgetting all about his misguided Bain attacks as I fall in love all over again.

Oh, you are going to enjoy this:

—–

That is exactly how you take it to NBC, the ”Today Show,” and Ann Curry. This biased trio is intentionally and cynically using race in the hopes Gingrich will stop launching what have been every effective attacks against Obama and his failed record.  And if you recall, this is exactly the same tactic the MSM used against McCain. Only McCain fell for it and we all know how much good that did him… and America.

Gingrich’s method of dealing with these racial pot-stirrers is to stay on offense by throwing the argument right back in the left’s face by pointing out the failures of liberalism and the left’s current unwillingness to do anything other than further impoverish urban America with a bigger welfare state.

Better still, Gingrich is not backing off the fact that President FailureTeleprompter is The Food Stamp President, and he shouldn’t back off. Facts aren’t racist, no matter how much Obama’s shameless MSM Palace Guards want them to be, and if the MSM wants to keep the food stamp argument alive, the Speaker is apparently more than game to help them along.

(more…)

As though we need any more documentation to prove just how biased and corrupt Politifact is, here’s a fascinating example courtesy of Tom Bruscino over at Big Tent:

So yesterday I got an email from Louis Jacobson of PolitiFact. It said:

Good morning,

Hope all is well! I wanted to throw a new military-related PolitiFact fact-check your way.

In last night’s South Carolina debate, Mitt Romney said, “Our navy is smaller than it’s been since 1917. Our air force is smaller and older than any time since 1947.” …

All best,
Lou J.

Here is what I wrote back:

Lou,

1. On the Navy question, Romney appears to be accurate using the standard Navy metric, which is number of active ships. In 2003, the US Navy dropped below 300 active ships, and is currently at about 285. The last time the number was below 300 at the end of the year was 1916, when it was at 245. By the end of 1917, the number was 342. An excellent source is the Naval Historical Office, here: http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org9-4.htm

(more…)

Buried in the middle of this article posted at ABC’s The Note, you will find, in my humble opinion, the real news in this story, and it’s likely buried because it’s horrible, terrible, not-so-very good news for the MSM’s Precious One:

CNN/ORC poll asked voters who they saw as best able to “get the economy moving.” Just 40 percent chose Obama, while 53 percent picked Romney.

This is major news for two reasons. First, Barack Obama sits at a lowly 40% on what is going to be the most important question of this campaign. Secondly, Mitt Romney, the GOP frontrunner, is polling over 50% on this question. 

What else is 2012 going to be about? I know the MSM is going to try and sell what’s left of their souls to make it about anything else, but good luck with that.

(more…)

Long, long ago, the Associated Press simply decided to stop being objective. Other than the final act of officially declaring their left-wing bias, the AP has done just about everything else required to announce that they are on a crusade, among other things, to ensure Barack Obama’s reelection. But even then, you would think credibility would mean something to the AP. Biased or not, no one wants to come off as a hack, but hacky the AP is, especially with respect to today’s story about President Obama’s fourth-quarter fundraising for his reelection campaign.

When you read the AP’s reporting, it’s obvious what the AP is up to. The goal is to create the impression that Obama and the DNC represent an unstoppable political juggernaut, that they are unstoppable cash machines firing on all 12 cylinders of competency and popularity:

U.S. President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, together with the Democratic National Committee, raised more than $68 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina said on Thursday. 

Messina told supporters in a video message that 98 percent of the donations were made up of $250 or less, illustrating growing grassroots support for Obama, a Democrat, as he works to hold on to the White House in November’s election. …

The campaign beat its goal of raising $60 million in the final three months of 2011. 

Obama’s fundraising totals dwarf those of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, whose campaign said on Wednesday it had raised $24 million in the fourth quarter.

By hiding the context in this report, the AP intentionally lies through omission to put some wins in Obama’s sagging sails.

Here’s what the AP chose not to report:

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