In an Associated Press article published last night, Becky Bohrer writes the following: [emphasis ours]

[Governor Sarah Palin's attorney] John Tiemessen, in a letter to the publisher of Crown Publishing Group Monday, cites an email that author Joe McGinniss allegedly sent a blogger in January seeking substantiation for several rumors that have surrounded Palin’s family. That email was posted online last week by Andrew Breitbart.

The email in question was not “allegedly sent.” Both Joe McGinniss and the party the email was sent to, Jesse Griffin, are on the record verifying the email.

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Gary Eaton and Shelli Eaton, the talented songwriters behind Retracto’s theme song, have penned a fabulous tune based around a phrase I use to describe the incessant water-carrying done by the left: administration fellation. They’re a fantastic band, an amalgam of alt-country and rock’n'roll and I’m hoping that they start selling their music so I can buy it, I enjoy their sound that much. Listen at the link and enjoy.

Usually, Live Action just ignores Media Matters. After all, there’s not much there you can’t find on the AOL/Huffington Post or the Democratic Underground. We were going to let slide their usual accusations that our new video was “a hoax” and that we were “falsely smearing Planned Parenthood President” Cecile Richards –until they cooked up a little hoax of their own. In this recent matter of the missing mammograms, we think we have to set the record straight.

Media Matters made this astounding claim on Wednesday:

Media Matters claimed that Planned Parenthood clinics in Waco, TX and Tucson, AZ do in fact provide mammograms. Well, we called both Planned Parenthood clinics in Waco, TX, and the Tucson, AZ clinic, to see if our actor could make a mammogram appointment with them. Based on the results, let’s say Media Matters got some false positives:

Mary Ruth Duncan Women’s Health Center
1121 Ross Avenue
PO Box 1518
Waco, TX 76703
p: 254.759.5750

PP: This is Cindy, how may I help you?
Caller: Hi, I was wondering if I could come in for a mammogram appointment?
PP: No, we don’t do mammograms here at Planned Parenthood.

Audre Rapaport Women’s Health Center
1927 Columbus Ave
P.O. Box 1459
Waco, TX 76701
p: 254.759.5772

Caller: Hi Alice, I was hoping to schedule a mammogram appointment at Planned Parenthood. Do you provide mammograms?
PP: Have you–okay, you want to schedule a mammogram appointment? We don’t do mammograms here at Planned Parenthood.

Jean Hoffman Health Center
529 W. Wetmore Rd.
Tucson, AZ 85705
p: 520.884.5562

PP: Thank you for calling Planned Parenthood Arizona, my name is Melissa, how may I assist you?
Caller: Hi, I was wondering if I could schedule a mammogram appointment? Do you provide mammograms?
PP: No, we don’t, I’m sorry.

Breitbart’s Retracto the Correction Alpaca requested a retraction of Media Matters’ inaccurate reporting that Planned Parenthood clinics in Waco, TX and Tucson, AZ do in fact provide mammograms. Media Matters’ shot back a nasty “Request Denied” to the poor packmule, and insisted “our initial piece was in fact accurate.”

In MM’s latest screed, they drop the argument about Tucson altogether (perhaps because they realized it rested on particularly flimsy evidence–an advertisement for another group’s “mammovan” to visit the clinic parking lot back in 2009.  Plus, our video from Wednesday included a PP AZ representative admitting “We don’t provide those services whatsoever” and decided to focus entirely on Waco. And that’s where MM goes wacko.

They use a statement (which they have conspicuously not linked in their post) by PP Central TX CEO Felicia Chase Goodwin that says Planned Parenthood refers for mammograms to mean that Planned Parenthood provides mammograms:

“provides referrals and pays for mammograms and diagnostic follow up treatment for our patients at area radiology and surgical clinics.”

And then they drop the term “mammograms” altogether and cite the Texas Dept of Health’s listing of PP as a breast cancer screening provider:

“It’s not just Media Matters and Planned Parenthood who say that the Waco clinic provides cancer screenings; the Texas Department of Health says so.”

There are two types of breast cancer screening: manual exams, and mammograms. As everyone but Media Matters is now well aware, Planned Parenthood only does the former. And speaking of the Texas Department of Health, here’s an e-mail from them suggesting that Planned
Parenthood in Texas isn’t even licensed to perform mammograms:

So it should be pretty clear why Retracto wants that correction. Either Media Matters issues a correction or admits that it’s purpose isn’t media, it’s propaganda. Their call.

Relying upon multiple named sources, not Jonathan Martin’s anonymous know-it-alls, new media as an enterprise is humiliating Politico and Martin. For now, they still seem bunkered down. At this rate, it looks like something of a journalistic suicide watch for Politico and Martin, though the reputations of both as sources for credible journalism may, in fact, already be dead in the eyes of many.

Big Journalism’s Retracto weighed in last night, calling for Politico’s Jonathan Martin to correct the record after publishing a smear of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin with false facts, the bulk of them reported based upon anonymous sources. Popular talk radio host and best selling author Mark Levin, was out of the gate early, leading a charge of what is now several named sources calling for Politico to address Martin’s journalistic malpractice.

This is a flat out lie. Sarah Palin never backed out of any interview with me. Period. And John Martin, the reporter, never contacted me to ask me directly. I insist on a retraction.

Sarah Palin herself has also now weighed in via Twitter, pointing out how full of Retracto crap is Jonathan Martin, also pointing out the reporting of Shane Vander Hart, which accumulates solid, named sources directly refuting Martin’s shameful bit of hackery.  There’s still more of Vander Hart’s work on this story here. (more…)

For the record: Mr. Christopher informs us that he did, in fact, write his post without any assistance.  Although, to be fair, we didn’t ask him to swear on George Soros’ purse strings…

———–

We think maybe Tommy Christoper took some night classes in creative writing at Middlebury College or something because his response to Retracto’s correction request from last week show a distinctive shift in writing style.  It’s almost as if he had help crafting his very carefully worded response.  We know that the ownership at Mediaite boasts some very impressive legal minds, with skills in crafting words in just the right way, so maybe this response was more of a team effort.

From the opening paragraph, Christopher attempts to re-frame his own argument making it much easier for him to respond to Retracto’s specific correction requests.

Last week, I posted a response to Andrew Breitbart’s claim that he had proven, with the help of the New York Times, that nothing “racially charged” happened on March 20, 2010, when several black members of Congress claimed that they heard racial epithets directed at them by a crowd of protesters. He challenged the MSM to “air the exculpatory evidence” that he had posted, which I did.

Since then, some of the writers from Breitbart’s “Big” sites have responded to my response, and in doing so, have walked back on Breitbart’s original claim. They have demanded corrections to my piece. I am always happy to correct the record where necessary.

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If you want to see a good example of a reporter/critic who’s grown fat and sassy in his job and has been reduced to phoning it in, take a good look at Tom Shales:

The Pulitzer-Prize winning TV critic was once one of the brightest bylines in the Post’s Style section, but like anyone who’s stayed too long in a job (Shales began at the Post in 1972 and became TV critic five years later), he’s pretty much condemned to an endless rehash of previously expressed opinions and long-held beliefs. The only thing that’s changed is that he — like, apparently, every other writer on the Post — has come out of the journalist’s “impartial” ideological closet and now feels free to opine about all sorts of things.

Case in point, this crack, which comes at the end of his professional obit of Larry King, the Methuselah of talk-show hosts who recently announced he was hanging ‘em up on CNN. After spending the bulk of his column on his assessment of King’s career — arguing the strange theory that King wasn’t loud, boorish or attitudinal enough to compete in the modern era of Confrontation TV, instead of the more reasonable assumption that King had simply run out of gas after 25 years — Shales pulls the following rabbit out of his hat: (more…)

It’s always disheartening to see someone from your own camp take a bad hit as Dave Weigel has.  The Washington Post blogger, who was hired to provide coverage “inside the conservative movement and the Republican Party,”resigned over recently leaked emails from the Journolist listserv, in which he used some less than flattering language in his personal commentary about many of the people he was covering.

While I’ve always been respectful of Weigel’s insights and his writing, I would be being less than honest however if I’d said there wasn’t something about his posts that I’d also found worrisome.  The revelation of the Journolist emails only strengthened my gut feeling, especially when I saw how nasty the rhetoric was in the emails.  Frankly, that part surprised even me.

It’s not that I wasn’t open-minded to the views that Weigel has always presented; I could appreciate that he has criticisms of the right.  But as someone assigned to provide conservative insight, his commentary sometimes struck me as being penned more from a liberal viewpoint than that of a conservative or libertarian one.  It almost seemed more targeted to pleasing Media Matters’ readers.  And since I already follow a number of liberal journalists to balance out the material I read from conservative and libertarian leaning authors, Media Matters’ tone isn’t exactly what I’m usually looking for.  But perhaps there was a reason his posts sometimes seemed that way to me. (more…)

MEMORANDUM

To:                   Eric Boehlert, Media Matters
From:               David Axelrod

Personal and Confidential

SUBJECT:       BREITBART

“O’Keefe’s humiliating guilty plea”—is that the best you could do?  Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear yesterday.  We don’t want to embarrass Breitbart; we want to destroy him.  O’Keefe is the instrument–if we act decisively.

Forget BP and Sestak.  Put Stossel, Beck, and O’Reilly on the back burner for now.  Call in your people who are sitting in toilet stalls around Washington hoping to snag a Republican congressman on the next john over.  Devote all your resources to mounting a sustained effort to morph O’Keefe’s “entry under false pretenses” charge (hey — they could get everyone in Congress on that beef! Little joke there) into a McVeigh-level atrocity sponsored by Breitbart.

The whole crew at MSNBC will be pounding on Breitbart’s mania to foster civil chaos in America as long as it takes to make the charge resonate.  He will be Olbermann’s first “Worst Person of the Millenium.”  The Times and Post have assured me they’ll give the matter their full Abu Ghraib treatment, starting with above-the-fold articles this weekend.  Williams, Couric, and Sawyer will jump on the story after a decent interval, citing a “raging controversy.”  Time Magazine’s cover next week, I have on good authority right from Rick Stengel, will feature a caricature of Breitbart setting fire to an SEIU T-shirt in front of the White House, with the headline: “What Are the Limits of Dissent in Obama’s America?”

When public indignation reaches white heat (or even if it doesn’t), the entire House Democratic caucus (and a few Republican simpletons) will demand that Attorney General Holder appoint a Special Counsel to investigate the Breitbart affair.  He will immediately agree.  I understand Ramsey Clark will make himself available to Justice, and believe me there are plenty of empty cells down at Gitmo. (more…)

James O’Keefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor today for his guerrilla-reporting stunt last January in the New Orleans offices of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu.  The charge that he has admitted to, “entering federal property under false pretenses,” is a far cry from the phone-bugging and Watergate Jr. distortions first screamed by the MSM in high-octane hyperventilation mode when the story first broke in January.

MSNBC devoted the top slot in each of its prime time shows to the story and created a special “Watergate Jr.” graphic, and Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann each took their turn at the James O’Keefe piñata, whacking away with full faith in the yummy morsels they expected to come tumbling out.

The big problem was that everything they “reported” to their viewers was based on pure conjecture and wishful thinking.  If they had spent ten minutes reading the initial report from the federal investigators they would have seen that there was never an allegation of wire-tapping or bugging.  But the facts, readily available to any journalist curious enough to find the truth, didn’t stand in their way of wall-to-wall “Watergate, Jr.” coverage. It was a typically disgraceful performance by the leftist American media.

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Max Blumenthal has an amazing thesis:  All conservatives and Republicans are beneath contempt.  He also has an amazing line of work.  He is underwritten by various media organs to prove his thesis.

In a previous era, Blumenthal and said media organs (Salon, Independent Film Channel, Huffington Post, etc.) were able to get away with this pathetic arrangement.   But now, we are on to Max, the spawn of Sid “Vicious” Blumenthal – he who attempted to ruin Monica Lewinsky’s life by falsely portraying her as Bill Clinton’s “stalker.”

The Blumenthal operation is now under the extremely close scrutiny of a camelid named “Retracto.”

The movement formerly known as the “Tea-Baggers” (with their flip cameras and new media skills) and various conservatives who have had enough with the excessive Alinsky tactics used most egregiously by Max and Sid but representative of main stream media’s odious guilt-by-association, repeat-the-same-lie-until-it-sticks, smear-any-conservative-as-racist-sexist-homophobic skill set, are now fighting back.

If the last two weeks have not humiliated him enough — and this Huffington Post rage-fest from yesterday with its title “Feeling the Hate at CPAC 2010 With Andrew Breitbart, Hannah Giles and the Crazy Mob” suggests they have not – then perhaps this coup de booger will tell him that we say what we mean and we mean what we say.

Max gallivanted around CPAC looking for prey.  He was treated with respect as he sought to make good and decent people look foolish on camera.  He decided he would go after a 20-year-old girl, one Hannah Giles.  And perhaps due to sexism or ageism he underestimated her ability.  Max should have called Bertha Lewis before he went after this young heroine.  Instead, he went to a gunfight with a knife – and a dirty nose.

Ladies and gentlemen, the much awaited, “Max Blumenthal Picks a Booger Out of His Nose at CPAC” video:

Max Blumenthal, this is what you do for a living. I can do it too (**wink **wink** Independent Film Channel).

Salon has already corrected his initial attempt to paint James O’Keefe as a White Nationalist.  They corrected his baseless assertion that O’Keefe planned the “Race and Conservatism” forum held at Georgetown Law Center, but he continues to hold that James O’Keefe is a racist, and that he was in some way involved with the “execution” of the forum.  His source for this claim?  Daryle Jenkins, whose credibility was recently eviscerated by Kevin Martin from Project 21.

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No commentary necessary.  But go ahead anyway:

Sing along here.

“Retracto”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Credits:
Shelli Eaton- Lead vocals
Michael Broderick – Lead guitar, background vocals
Gary Eaton – Guitar, bass, drums, tambourine, background vocals
Retracto - Vocals
Music and lyrics by Gary Eaton

Retracto

The ass says he doesn’t have a horse in this race
But Retracto knows he does now he’s got egg on his face
The donkeys on the left got owned by a kid
They can say it was a crime but Retracto knows what he did

Retracto
The Correction Alpaca
Retracto
He’s comin’ at ya (more…)