Right off the bat C-SPAN should have aired this hearing. There is absolutely no excuse not to air it on TV. Since I had to stream it online I kept my TV on DirecTV News Mix to keep an eye on the news. The only network that had consistent coverage of the testimony was FOX News. I’m not shocked at all. I didn’t see anything about the testimony on the other channels. Jeff Poor from The Daily Caller helped me keep an eye on MSNBC and he didn’t see anything. He said they were hung up on Donald Trump all day. I was informed by a friend on Twitter, Doug Mataconis, that the hearing was discussed on The Situation Room on CNN for about 15 minutes. “Special Report” and The FOX Report both started off with Mr. Holder’s testimony.

Before I continue I noticed some friends on Twitter growing upset that headlines were partisan. The MSM was right: This was a partisan fight and every single Democrat coddled Mr. Holder. The Republicans were the only ones to demand withheld documents and answers from Mr. Holder.

Right after the testimony ended I began searching for coverage of the hearing on Google. First stop was Associated Press. Remember: If the AP doesn’t write anything on Fast & Furious more than likely the rest of the media won’t mention it. Pete Yost did write about the testimony, but hat’s where the excitement ends. Again, he distorts information to favor Mr. Holder and the Department of Justice. Mr. Yost fails to mention the subpoena was issued October 12, 2011. That’s 4 months ago. That is plenty of time to go through the hoops to release the documents. Mr. Yost says, “Though neither side said so, negotiations are almost certain to be the next step.” If you watched the testimony do you honestly think Mr. Issa or Mr. Holder will negotiate? Didn’t think so. Mr. Issa won’t accept anything less than the documents he needs. Then Mr. Yost describes a few dialogues, but doesn’t bother to get down to nitty gritty of the testimony.

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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:

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This may be an all-time record for a “hit piece.”

If there is a Hall of Shame for journalism, the Reuters piece done on Marco Rubio will be at the front entrance emblazoned in flashing lights next to the Dan Rather forged Bush documents.

A senior staffer at Reuters told Politico that the column on Rubio was a “fiasco” and a “disgrace.” Politico can’t even stomach the article.

The Daily Caller found seven errors in the piece; later, Reuters admitted to three more.

Here’s the initial column–actually, I won’t call it that–here’s the initial hit piece on the Florida Senator and Reuters can now read it let it stand as Exhibit 1 of many in their bias against conservatives.  The column deals with Rubio’s finances and they make so many errors in it that it seems almost silly to repeat them here. A couple errors worth mentioning, Reuters said Rubio voted against ObamaCare and against the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayer. Both votes happened before Rubio became a Senator. Other than that … (more…)

Reuters this morning published a grossly inaccurate story on Senator Marco Rubio. Among the eight fallacies:

Rubio also voted against Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who is of Puerto Rican descent, and more recently blocked the confirmation of another Puerto Rican, Marie Carmen Aponte, as ambassador to El Salvador.

Rubio was not a senator at the time the Sotomayor vote was cast.

Reuters also asserts:

He also voted against Obama’s healthcare overhaul, which is popular among many low-income Hispanics.

Rubio was and is against it but could not have voted for it at the time because he had not been elected. Obamacare passed in March 21, 2010. Rubio was elected on November 2, 2010 and assumed office on January 3, 2011.

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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…)

You couldn’t pay me to go to journalism school, but I imagine they spend considerable time talking about the importance of headlines. Most readers, myself included, simply don’t read much past the headline unless they have a personal interest in a story… or are stuck in a doctor’s office. So, often, the headline is the story or, at least, the story the news outfit wants you to take away.

So, I was struck today to see different news agencies, within minutes of each other, reporting very conflicting news on the same set of facts. First the AP headline:

October durable goods orders fell 0.7 percent

Now, check out the Reuters headline for the very same report:

Durable goods orders ex-transportation up in October

Of course, the Reuters headline is no doubt completely true, but how is excluding a major sector of the economy remotely helpful to readers? Is Reuters now just going to report the bits of the news it likes and ignore the inconvenient bits. It reminds me of the classic Marion Barry line addressing rampant crime in DC:

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Roger Aronoff:

The incident involving a live microphone that took place last week at the G20 summit in Cannes, France involving President Barack Obama, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was an important revelation on several levels.

First, it revealed the true feelings that Obama and Sarkozy have toward Netanyahu, which is quite different from their public pronouncements and actions. No big surprise in either case. But the bigger story is how corrupt the media are to go along with the attempted deception.

What occurred is that the two presidents were speaking in what they thought was a private conversation, but what they overlooked was that the mics they were wearing were live, and a simultaneous translation of their conversation was being broadcast to the journalists outside the room. Those journalists were not to be given headphones until the session resumed, but a number of them had their own and were listening as a translator repeated the comments of the two men.

Initially, in the conversation, Obama was critical of Sarkozy for not letting him know in advance that France would be voting to allow the Palestinians membership in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). After they were voted in to the organization, the U.S. Congress voted to cut off its portion of the funding for UNESCO, as it is required by law to do if Palestine is admitted as a member of any international organization before it reaches a peace agreement with Israel. Obama, whose spokesmen have made clear that he once again will ignore Congress and do what he can to help UNESCO, was also reported to have asked Sarkozy to try to help persuade the Palestinians to stop their bid to gain full UN recognition as a state.

Sarkozy then said of Netanyahu, “I cannot bear him, he’s a liar,” to which President Obama reportedly said, “You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day.” (more…)

Some of my friends criticize me because they believe I am too hard on President Obama. They say they can’t believe that there is not one of his policies which I support wholeheartedly. Even a broken clock is right two times a day, they say; isn’t there one policy to which you can urge “let’s help Obama on this one”? And I would reach down to the bottom of my soul and really try to come up with something, but I always failed … until today. I have finally found something we should all help Obama implement. He doesn’t like talking to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu all the time; all of America should be behind our President insuring that he doesn’t have to talk to Bibi every day.

During the G20 meetings, President Barack Obama and French President Sarkozy got caught talking in front of a hot mic.

The conversation began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move. But then the two got personal:

“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama. The POTUS replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”

Nothing leads to good political pundit material like pair of catty politicians speaking candidly an without realization that they’re in front of an open mic.  In true Los Angeles Times fashion, the “journalists” in the room agreed not to report the comments (remember during the 2008 campaign the Los Angeles Times withheld a potentially damaging video tape of Barack Obama toasting his friend and former PLO press spokesman Rashid Khalidi).  Then all of the reporters in the room signed a pledge to withhold the damaging information (although there is no truth to the rumor that Abe Foxman of the ADL insisted on the written pledge).

What happened next is what usually happens in cases like this. (more…)

Reuters delivers amazing news–President Barack Obama’s speech will save the American economy, and the world!

President Barack Obama’s jobs package could lift economic growth by one to three percentage points in 2012, add well over one million jobs and lower the unemployment rate by at least half a percentage point, judging by early estimates…

Once demand picks up, the private sector will kick in and begin hiring, and the fiscal props can fall away.

It would deliver the economic medicine prescribed in recent weeks by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the International Monetary Fund to prevent a worrisome slowdown in global economic growth from turning into recession.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also can assure his fellow finance officials at the G7 meeting of top industrial nations in Marseilles on Friday the United States is pulling its weight.

Amazing! Don’t tell me words don’t matter. (If only the president had done this years ago!)

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From Accuracy in Media’s Michael Watson:

In a news analysis article, Reuters looked at Republican efforts to stymie the activism of the Environmental Protection Agency, which has increased its regulatory efforts under President Obama. Reuters, in keeping with the post-Giffords “new civility,” characterizes the Republican efforts as an “assault of similar vigor” to that which accompanied the debt ceiling increase.

Reuters’ second paragraph asserts that Republican opposition is “backed by wealthy conservative lobbyists.” The report asserts that the EPA is the “last bastion of hope for [President Obama’s] environmental policy” after his “push for a climate bill in Congress collapsed last year.”

It collapsed in a Democrat-controlled Congress for good political reason, too. Popular opposition to cap-and-trade in the U.S. led to the loss of two long-held Democratic House seats in 2010 as well: Morgan Griffith (R-VA) defeated the former chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, Rick Boucher, who co-authored the cap-and-trade proposal in a Virginia coal-country seat that Boucher had held since 1983. In Minnesota’s Iron Belt, retired Northwest Airlines pilot Chip Cravaack defeated Jim Oberstar, the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who had served since 1975 and supported President Obama’s cap-and-trade plan as well as an extension of the Clean Water Act opposed by his constituents. Elsewhere, in Australia, a similar effort by the Australian Labor Party to institute a tax on carbon dioxide has seen that party fall to devastating lows in opinion polls.

Reuters notes that Richard Nixon’s administration established the EPA, calling it “ironic” that Republicans now oppose its expanded authority. Of course, Nixon was no Goldwater-Reagan conservative. He once said that “I am now a Keynesian in economics” and instituted wage and price controls.

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Earlier this evening Reuters reported, as per Senator Jon Kyl, that Republicans had agreed to a compromise on tax hikes:

They also published an account on their website.

They were wrong. Kyle specifically detailed how the revenue would come from liquidating government property and use fees.

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Senator Jon Kyl’s office has been slammed since Reuters Tweeted this less than an hour ago:

Myself and other conservatives reTweeted this and voiced disdain for the reported compromise. We were in disbelief that the GOP would cave with zero concessions on something so integral to private sector sustainability.

We were wrong — Reuters made it up.

Kyl’s actual remarks, just posted at Breitbart.tv:

Earlier this afternoon Reuters reported: “Republicans have agreed to $150 billion to $200 billion in increased tax revenues as part of budget talks, says Senator Kyl.”

A look at the Senator’s actual words in the well of the Senate reveals that he was specifically NOT talking about tax increases, but the sale of government property and other use fees.

Reuters needs to correct their timeline and issue a retraction.

Apologies to Senator Kyl.

A good catch by Jonah Goldberg, via the PJ Tatler. Reuters incorrectly identifies shamed former congressman Anthony Weiner as a Republican in its latest piece on the #Weinergate scandal:

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Screencap from the Breitbart.com newswires:

A Reuters headline editor doing some wishful thinking, perhaps? Obviously this should be corrected.

Alternate headline: “Paul Krugman Will Not Read This Article”

Second alternate headline: “Paul Krugman: Lolcats > Conservatives”

Over the weekend a prominent figure in the art world, a liberal, came up to a group of us from Team Breitbart following a conversation that took place both on air and off, and told us we, particularly Big Journalism EIC Dana Loesch, are very respectable spokespeople for our side.  Needless to say, we were flattered, but while I certainly didn’t attempt to sway him off of his position that we’re super cool, I would contend we are merely representative of the quality people in our movement, as opposed to exceptions to the rule that conservatives are racist, bigoted, intolerant, etc.  Clearly the sweet accolade from the sweet man had a very powerful and illustrative subtext to it: he just doesn’t know many conservatives… if any.

One of the reasons for the existence of this very blog is because many of us contend that a substantial portion of the movers and shakers on the left, like the aforementioned gentleman, tend to live in bubbles.  This is a common theme across several of the Bigs.  Hollywood, the mainstream media, and academia, to name a few high profile arenas, are so overwhelming left-of center that it’s rare to find Republicans inhabiting them at all, much less outspoken Tea Partiers like the ones who make up the Bigs team.  On the other hand, those of us on the right are constantly forced to contend with the best thought the left has to offer, or else we’d be forgoing academics in one of the world’s most educated societies, we’d be abstaining from entertainment in the country that redefined it, and as good as the fantasy of doing away with what we call “the mainstream media” sounds, that’s a process that would take decades to complete, if it’s even possible (or beneficial).

So we’re forced to listen, whether we want to or not.  The schools, entertainers, and media outlets have us as a captive audience while these movers and shakers can comfortably build a career in the world of ideas without as much as consulting with those held by (at least) half of us.

Case in point, Nobel Prize-winning Princeton Economics Professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.  Last week, Krugman was asked which websites he reads frequently, and after providing a list of liberals and leftists like Greg Sargent, Josh Marshall, Digby, and Atrios, he copped to not reading any conservatives online on a regular basis: (more…)

Imagine the following scenario taking place on the world stage:

Scene 1: Employees of one of the world’s largest oil companies are found to be in league with a right-wing film producer in an effort to produce a documentary aimed at helping the company fend off a lawsuit in a third-world country’s court that, if lost, could cost the company more than U.S. $100 million.

Scene 2: New York-based lawyers, said to be working on behalf of thousands of poor plaintiffs in their suit against the oil company, ask a U.S. federal court judge to order the right-wing film producer to provide his court with outtakes from the documentary, and the judge says, “Yes.”

Scene 3: Recognizing that the outtakes are now part of the official court record, members of the news media request copies of them. In turn, the federal judge orders that copies of the outtakes should not only be provided to members of the media requesting them but to members of the general public.

Scene 4: After obtaining the outtakes, members of the media spend countless hours airing video snippets, painting the “Big Oil” company in the worst light possible and, in so doing, aiding and abetting the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Unfortunately, a real-world scenario diametrically opposite the one described above seems to be taking place now. Below is a list of the players involved: (more…)

The oldest gay-rights organization in Latin America is taking Fidel Castro to the International Court of justice in The Hague for “crimes against humanity.”

“What?!”  snort the “enlightened.” You rubes got the news exactly bass-ackwards!  In fact, last week Fidel Castro apologized graciously for his regime’s past mistreatment of gays. His graciousness has been accepted graciously by all enlightened parties.  The AP, Reuters and CNN picked up the story and it went media-viral. Any Google search finds it in spades.

The “news” agencies to which Fidel Castro bestowed Havana “press” bureaus indeed ran with his “apology” regarding his historic jailing, torture and murder of gays.  But true to their Cuba-“reporting” the MSM has completely “overlooked” the World Court complaint by Brazil’s Grupo Gay da Bahía, which is to say, what prompted the apology in the first place.

Again, true to form, the MSM pack—yipping, yapping, tails wagging, tongues hanging — followed the snickering Castro’s every cue as he led them off the trail of this damaging accusation in the World Court. Again, dutiful to their mission as outlined by Castro upon granting their Havana bureaus, they rushed to bark up every wrong tree and report bald misinformation. (more…)

The newest faux outrage comes from the mouth of controversial Jewish Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. In a sermon from Israel, Rabi Yosef as much as called for God to level genocide against the Palestinians. I say “as much as” because he didn’t actually call for genocide, but he came awfully close for comfort. In fact, even as he didn’t say it explicitly it’s hard not to see it being fully implied.

“Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this earth,” said Rabbi Yosef, head of the Israeli Shas party. “God should strike them and these Palestinians — evil haters of Israel — with a plague,” he added. Naturally, the Palestinians are outraged and Reuters, the Associated Press, and other news outlets played the story for all it was worth.

Rabbi Yosef, of an extremely conservative sect and party, has been known to say wacky things like this before. Not long ago he told Israeli youth to abandon all electronic products like smart phones and computers because they were evidence of “street debauchedness,” what ever that is.

As reported in many places, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement distancing himself and the government from the extreme rhetoric of Rabbi Yosef, as well he should.

The government’s press release says that they “don’t represent the views of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or the Israeli government. Israel entered into negotiations out of a desire to progress with the Palestinians toward an agreement that will end the conflict and ensure peace, security  and good neighborly relations between the two nations.” (more…)

Five people lost their lives in the Lebanese attack, one Israeli officer, three Lebanese soldiers and a reporter from a Hezbollah-run Lebanese newspaper.

Most of the mainstream media used Reuters and AP reports which falsely said that Israel was on the border or on the Lebanese side.  Additionally the reports were written in a way to give the impression that Israel was the aggressor.

Reuters labeled the above picture as (emphasis mine):

An Israeli soldier is seen on a crane on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Israeli border near Adaisseh village, southern Lebanon August 3, 2010. Israeli artillery shelled the Lebanese village on Tuesday, wounding two people, after Lebanese Army troops fired warning shots at Israeli soldiers.

Forget the fact for a minute that if Reuters didn’t bother to check which side of the border Israel was on, or that the tree-trimming operation was coordinated with the UNIFIL “peace keepers,” but warning shots? Warning shots don’t kill people. The Lebanese bullets killed Israeli officer Lt. Col., Dov Harari, who was not near the fence but was monitoring the tree cutting operations from a distance.

The AP also told a fictional version of the story: (more…)

Here’s what happened yesterday morning along the so-called Blue Line, the internationally recognized, UN-codified border between Israel and Lebanon. Israeli soldiers were trimming trees and clearing brush as they routinely do, because that kind of natural cover has been used by Iranian-backed Hezbollah soldiers to kidnap Israelis and start wars.

Behind them there was a group of commanders who were supervising the operation, because Israeli protocol calls for troops working near the border to be supervised from afar – again, in case Iranian-backed Hezbollah soldiers try to kidnap Israelis and start wars.

Israel’s physical border fence is very specifically built several meters on the Israeli side of the border inside the Jewish State’s territory, so that the Israelis can safely trim trees and clear brush, because – you know.

At some point soldiers dressed in Lebanese Armed Forces uniforms launched an ambush, with snipers trying to kill the supervising commanders in the distance. The Israelis promptly retaliated, wounding several of the LAF-uniformed soldiers. Then the Israelis – after receiving an explicit request from the other side of the border – suspended their fire so that the wounded could be evacuated. The Lebanese used the momentary humanitarian gesture to again open fire on the Israeli troops – this time it was an RPG at an Israeli tank – and the Israelis again retaliated. Israel is reporting one IDF soldier killed, one wounded.

There’s a post to be written about how this is the predictable outcome of the U.S. pouring weapons and logistical training into the LAF, even though the Lebanese political hierarchy and several LAF units long ago fell under Hezbollah’s control. Of course some of that security assistance will inevitably find its way into a battle with Israel. Of course it will be. But that’s not this post. (more…)