This is not the real Anthony Weiner.

Somebody hacked him and this is an avatar named, Tony…uh….Tony….Whiner.

It’s a subtle difference in name, but makes all the difference in the world when it comes to what is going on here. Once you know what really happened, it will all fall right into place.

Anthony Weiner was a guy who attacked Republicans and made them cry when he went after them. This clearly was not that guy at the seven-minute news conference where he answered zero questions. He wasn’t asked what his name was, so since the media didn’t ask, we still can’t be sure who that was.

Even libs in the media are confused with who this new guy was who showed up at a news conference to talk about how Karl Rove, or somebody named Karl Rove, must’ve been looking over his shoulder while doing secret surveillance thanks to the Patriot Act and found his password (which BTW was “ImNotMarkFoley”) and hacked his Twitter account. (more…)

As the Weinergate story leaves behind many unanswered questions, the Twitterverse is not likely to get many truthful answers – not as long as Joan Walsh has anything to do about it.  The Salon.com editor had some harsh words for reporters who tried to cover the story from an angle that didn’t suit her own anti-Breitbart bias.

Over Memorial Day weekend, the Weinergate story developed in the wee hours of the night on Friday evening and early Saturday morning, when a lewd photo purported to be from Congressman Weiner’s yfrog account surfaced on Twitter.  Given that the story was literally unfolding on Twitter, where thousands of other users were witnessing the now infamous tweet in real time, it wasn’t exactly a “sit and wait” situation.  In the age of social media, stories make themselves – good or bad, one tweet can erupt into a firestorm in the blink of instant.  This presents both a challenge and an opportunity.  On one hand, media can wait and verify every fact, but at Twitter speed, the story will move far more quickly than standard fact finding and requests for comments can possibly occur.  On the other hand, new media journalism can fill that void and get ahead of such a story before the firestorm gets out of hand.

And this is exactly what the Big sites did when Weinergate erupted.  BigGovernment.com ran with a post just before 12:30am on Saturday, headlined “Weinergate: Congressman Claims ‘Facebook Hacked’ as Lewd Photo Hits Twitter.”  Given that the story was in its infancy but was moving so quickly online, editors merely presented the facts as they were known at the time, indicating that it was a developing story.  They also decided to publish the tweet and photo, but took caution by redacting all of the personal information of the young woman for whom the tweet was supposedly intended. (more…)

In these precarious financial times in an America currently governed from the economic left, it’s only fitting that a historic left-wing online edifice has fallen on its toughest times to date.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Salon.com is exploring opportunities to merge with or be acquired by another media company, an acknowledgment of the perilous economics of running a free-standing online news organization.

The site was a pioneer in online news, and has endured as a source of high-brow political and cultural coverage and commentary. But 15-year-old Salon has been unable to stanch its red ink. Salon Media Group Inc. has racked up net losses of more than $15 million in the past five years, with nearly a third of that coming in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010.

(more…)

This morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Lawrence O’Donnell proudly declared the obvious:  he’s a socialist.

After hearing the news today about the suspension of Keith Olbermann from the same network, I can’t say anyone’s all that surprised.

O’Donnell’s proclamation was made when “The Last Word” anchor got into a lively exchange with Salon.com contributor Glenn Greenwald.

“Unlike you, I am not a progressive.  I am not a liberal who’s so afraid of the word that I had to change my name to progressive.  Liberals amuse me.  I am a Socialist.  I live to the extreme left -  the extreme left – of you mere liberals.”

You have to give the guy credit for standing behind his views, and doing so openly.  You have to respect him for that, at least.

(more…)

Joe Klein is one angry man. In fact, Joe’s so pissed-off I think he could shoot the next Twelve Angry Men sequel all by himself. Why is poor Joe so unhappy? Because we—well, actually, mostly you conservative women out there—are just so bleeping ignorant, that’s why. As an avid Tea Party supporter, I’ll be the first to admit I’m just a mindless dolt who consistently misspells the racist, dimwitted signs I bring to the rallies. Still, I’m not nearly as ignorant as you female Tea Party supporters. I mean, you’re really bleeping dumb!

But don’t believe me. Just read irascible Joe’s latest rant, “Ignorance as Authenticity,” immortalized for all time—or at least for a week or two—in Time. Mined from which, I bring you this nugget of angry Joe gold:

There is no way she [Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell] could ever be confused with a member of the elites; there is no way she could be confused with an above average high school student. Her ignorance, therefore, makes her authentic–the holy grail of latter-day American politics: she’s a real person, not like those phony politicians. In that sense, she—and the lifeboat filled with other Tea Party know-nothings—follow in the wake of our leading exemplar of ignorant authenticity, Sarah Palin (who seems every bit as unaware of public policy—she certainly never talks about it—as she was when a desperate and petulant John McCain chose her to be his running mate). There is something profoundly diseased about a society that idolizes its ignoramuses and disdains its experts.

(more…)

I’ve always found Salon to be one of the most informative web sites on the entire Internet, though not for the reasons you might think. Like many other sites that feature and attract progressives, Salon serves as a chronicle of the “liberal condition,” collecting the insecurities and psychological projection of its writers and its intended audience.

And so I find myself gazing with sick fascination into the mind of someone named “Keka,” a desperately frightened soul that warns us that a new age of White Supremacy, night riders, and lynchings are on the way, because she saw a bumper sticker at a fast food drive-thru.

I wish I were exaggerating:

I saw it. But I couldn’t believe it.

There I was, in a fast food drive through, behind a man whose back window decal, in small white letters, sent me a message that sent a chill down my spine—just as he’d hoped it would, no doubt. It said:

THIS COUNTRY WAS BUILT BY WHITE MEN WITH GUNS

Now, I was there because I needed something to eat badly. I’ve been tending a new puppy that behaves and has to be tended like a newborn, so you only get so much “break’ time if you’re keeping to your schedule. I had just enough to grab a bite, get some work done…and get ready for play time number…I’m not sure which.

But I lost my appetite entirely, when I saw that decal.

I’ve lost my appetite for America, period, to be honest—he’s just one of the many reasons. Forget that fact that if he really believes this, this guy must never have read a history book in his life—it’s the fact that he felt comfortable driving around with that ridiculous statement on his back window that galls me most. But I saw it comin’.

What a delicate, brittle flower of liberal womanhood is our poor friend Keka! A man with a historically debatable message on his vehicle has her all but ready to revoke her citizenship. My, oh my. (more…)

Gabriel Winant at Salon.com has a high-minded and sober criticism of Bill O’Reilly’s “Ambush Video” of Al Gore.  Winant decries this kind of “gotcha” journalism as mis-leading and exploitative:

O’Reilly, as Salon has pointed out before, is fond of the ambush interview. It’s an unfair gimmick to begin with, and the O’Reilly Factor has always relied on that inherent unbalanced quality to produce some incredibly misleading and exploitative footage. Yesterday, the Factor showed footage of its ambush specialist, the impossibly smug producer Jesse Watters, badgering Al Gore before a lecture at Duke University.

Nice to see Salon.com take a such a stalwart stance on this kind of thing.  To think, a punk kid with a camera tracking down and following a public figure to try to get them to say something damaging on video.  Oh wait, isn’t that exactly what Editor-in-chief Joan Walsh of Salon.com gleefully celebrated in February after her reporter, Mike Madden, used the same tactic on Big Journalism publisher Andrew Breitbart?  The title of her article:  ”Breitbart’s Breakdown: a Video Tour.”

Mr. Winant should probably run these things by Ms. Walsh before posting them, otherwise Salon.com might appear to have a double-standard when it comes to this sort of thing. (more…)

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.

(more…)

While some people debate the merits of the current healthcare legislation in Congress, or attempt to expose corruption in our government, Max Blumenthal instead engages in character assassination using the most questionable sources.

Recently, as has been well-documented on BigJournalism, Blumenthal branded James O’Keefe a racist for attending a debate at which Jared Taylor spoke. He did this despite the fact that O’Keefe sided with Taylor’s opposition, a black conservative named Kevin Martin.

The video below summarizes Blumenthal’s Alinsky tactics and highlights clips from the most recent CPAC where he continues his viciousness. As Andrew Breitbart wondered, what does Blumenthal really stand for, if it isn’t for destroying people’s lives?

**Post updated with higher quality video and audio.

For those you who haven’t been following our extensive coverage of Max Blumenthal’s character assassination attempt of James O’Keefe, a fringe blog called One People’s Project was the key source in Blumenthal’s research.  Darlye Jenkins, who runs the blog One People’s Project, stopped by CPAC, according The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel, “for the express purpose of confronting [Andrew] Breitbart.”  Here is footage of that confrontation:

The reason why One People’s Project was not the focus of our ire during the Blumenthal scandal is because, as Breitbart succinctly put it in this video, they are not accountable to any standard of journalism.  Unlike for Salon.com, there is little at stake for them if they fail to tell the truth (not to mention the scope of their readership and influence is comparatively minuscule).  That still is the case, and it goes without saying we are giving Mr. Jenkins and his blog publicity simply by posting this video, but we’ll indulge him this time around.

We’ll indulge him because we believe this encounter is illustrative of tactics the left employs far too often when they engage in verbal fisticuffs–calling their ideological opponents “racists” or some other invective, selectively ignoring essential details of the story when it’s advantageous to their cause–but it’s also illustrative of tactics the right doesn’t use often enough.  Breitbart is one of the few high profile conservatives in the media today ready and willing to take the fight to the left the way they’ve always taken it to us (I’m a former Berkeley College Republican, I know).  As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina famously said, “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.”  Breitbart has turned the left’s tactic back on them and the net result is an offensive conservatism that’s been largely absent from political discourse in recent memory.  And if the cheers at the tail end of this video are any indication, we would probably benefit from a few more confrontations like this one. (more…)

**Post updated with higher quality video and audio.

A funny thing happened on the last day of CPAC.  Max Blumenthal, recently corrected and embarrassed “journalist” from Salon.com paraded through the convention with a camera crew.  Like last year, he was looking for a confrontation of some kind.  I’m not sure what Max uncovered in his fact-finding mission, but I know that as he was leaving, a confrontation found him.

As luck would have it, Andrew Breitbart was walking in the front door of the Wardman Park Marriott Hotel at the exact moment Blumenthal was walking out.  Breitbart took this opportunity to address his beef with Blumenthal head-on and assailed Blumenthal for his attempt to link James O’Keefe to white supremacists.

Toward the end of the conversation, Blumenthal says to Breitbart that he did not call anybody any names.  At this moment I jumped into the fray and challenged him on the point.  I reminded him that he had, in fact, called O’Keefe a racist.  Blumenthal attempted to deny it, but as you can see from the video, he was only able to stick to that story for so long.

(more…)

It’s quite a stretch to call The Nation’s Max Blumenthal a journalist.

A real journalist is free to have an opinion and even to express it, but he doesn’t fabricate things to make his subject look bad. A real journalist tries to understand his subject and help his audience understand it instead of just subjecting it to abject ridicule.

Blumenthal, who leaped to conclusions in his since-corrected Salon.com article to slander Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe, is an ethically challenged agitprop creator and self-indulgent performance artist. His slurring of O’Keefe, who helped to expose the criminal inclinations of ACORN, as a racist is the same thing that ACORN does when it’s attacked. If you disagree, you’re a racist. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!

This left-wing extremist, who wrote the book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, is so consumed by his hatred of the other side that he can’t think straight. His work is littered with factual errors, non sequiturs, selective use of evidence, glittering generalities, and hyperbole.

Blumenthal hates the Christian right, evangelicals, supporters of Israel, tea party activists, conservatives, and Republicans. This is not an exhaustive list. To him, conservatives are a “movement that’s filled with people who can’t handle individual freedom and the pressures of democracy.” Conservatives also are needy losers seeking redemption, according to Blumenthal: (more…)

Max Blumenthal is attempting to stand behind his story.

His article at Salon.com remains unchanged even though the Village Voice and Dave Weigel at The Washington Independent have written detailed corrections contradicting Blumenthal’s post.

At his personal website he recounts a discussion he had with “Isis,” a photographer who, according to Blumenthal “does tend to be a little apprehensive about speaking to folks.”  It seems that at this point, “Isis” is the last remaining eyewitness that Blumenthal says supports his assertions made on Wednesday at Salon.com.

As a reminder, here are the assertions that Salon.com made that “Isis” is supposed to corroborate  (there are many, many more false allegations at Salon.com, and Blumenthal has not made any attempt to retract or explain them, but these are the assertions that are related to the mysterious “Isis”): (more…)

In Max Blumenthal’s article “James O’Keefe’s race problem” for Salon.com of February 3, 2010, Mr. Blumenthal makes a number of unverifiable and provably false claims regarding James O’Keefe’s attendance at a 2006 conference called “Race and Conservatism.”  Below are the list of quotes containing misinformation and an explanation of why they need to be addressed by the editors of your publication.

From left: Marcus Epstein, Jared Taylor, Kevin Martin, and John Derbyshire at what Max Blumenthal dubbed “a white-nationalist confab”

We kindly request corrections to all:

According to One People’s Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O’Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism.

As noted in this post here by Larry O’Connor, we contacted Mr. Jenkins, who identified David Weigel as his source for the claim that Mr. O’Keefe was manning the table.  Mr. Weigel has denied that Mr. O’Keefe manned the table and has no knowledge to suggest Mr. O’Keefe was involved in the orchestration of the event at any level. In an interview with BigJournalism.com, Mr. O’Keefe denied having planned the event.

(more…)

It started with a blog post at something called One People’s Project, in which someone named Daryle Jenkins claimed:

(In 2006) ..there was this white supremacist forum that we had called attention to and eventually attended that featured American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor and National Review’s homophobe extraordinaire John Derbyshire. It was originally supposed to be held at the building of the conservative activist organization Leadership Institute until it was forced to move to another location…..

There was also a photographer there, and lo and behold this picture has surfaced of a now familiar face attending the forum - James O’Keefe.

O’Keefe was manning a table at a forum of suit-and-tie Nazis.

A DC area photographer snapped a photo of O’Keefe as he maintained a literature table near the panelists.

The photograph that One People’s Project shows as its proof (above) is cropped and just shows O’Keefe from the shoulders up.  It doesn’t show that he is sitting at all, let alone at a table, let alone “manning” the table at the event apparently hosted by the Robert Taft Club.

Max Blumenthal — son of Clinton apparatchik “Sid Vicious” Blumenthal — at Salon.com picked up on the story and extrapolated even more: (more…)

Update: HuffPo issued the following correction Saturday:

Correction: This article originally stated that Fox News led the charge against Bill Clinton in the 1994 midterm elections, when Fox News did not start broadcasting until 1996. The story has been corrected.

We thank them for their diligence.

Earlier this week, my colleague Frank Ross highlighted an error in a post by Robert Reich cross-posted at Salon.com, RobertReich.org, and the Huffington Post.  Here is the essential segment from Ross’ post:

Former Obama economic advisor, Clinton Secretary of Labor, and Berkely Prof. Robert Reich claimed yesterday in his column at Salon.com that Fox News played a role in the conservative resurgence of 1994:

In December 1994, Bill Clinton proposed a so-called middle-class bill of rights including more tax credits for families with children, expanded retirement accounts, and tax-deductible college tuition. Clinton had lost his battle for healthcare reform. Even worse, by that time the Dems had lost the House and Senate. Washington was riding a huge anti-incumbent wave. Right-wing populists were the ascendancy, with Newt Gingrich and Fox News leading the charge. Bill Clinton thought it desperately important to assure Americans he was on their side.

But Prof. Reich overlooked one minor detail: Fox News Channel’s first broadcast wasn’t until October 7, 1996.

Salon.com did their due diligence and formally corrected the error, as you may have noticed here, here, or here.  Prof. Reich even edited out the mistake on his own site (though he replaced the case study in Fox Derangement Syndrome with another out-of-context jab at Fox).  Still, three days later, Huffington Post has yet to correct the bogus claim.

At this time, we kindly ask the Huffington Post to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

Update 1/27 4:47pm PST: Salon corrected the mistake.  Reich’s article was cross-posted at Huffington Post (yet to be corrected) and at RobertReich.org, where the professor took out the error and replaced it with a dig at Fox News.

Former Obama economic advisor, Clinton Secretary of Labor, and Berkely Prof. Robert Reich claimed yesterday in his column at Salon.com that Fox News played a role in the conservative resurgence of 1994:

In December 1994, Bill Clinton proposed a so-called middle-class bill of rights including more tax credits for families with children, expanded retirement accounts, and tax-deductible college tuition. Clinton had lost his battle for healthcare reform. Even worse, by that time the Dems had lost the House and Senate. Washington was riding a huge anti-incumbent wave. Right-wing populists were the ascendancy, with Newt Gingrich and Fox News leading the charge. Bill Clinton thought it desperately important to assure Americans he was on their side.

But Prof. Reich overlooked one minor detail: Fox News Channel’s first broadcast wasn’t until October 7, 1996.

The plan for FNC wasn’t even outlined until January of 1996, so what could explain such a patently false claim?  Is the professor suggesting that even in 1994, Fox News’ imminence did in fact play a role in the political upheaval of that year?  Or is this a moment where Fox Derangement Syndrome enters the realm of full-blown paranoia? (more…)