Seventy-nine Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives cast votes Thursday against an amendment to H.R 2112, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2012 that would have blocked the government from paying out $1.25 billion to a suspect class of people, many of whom have been outed as con artists backed by hungry class-action lawyers. Today, I’m wondering (albeit with my tongue firmly in cheek), “Where is the mainstream media coverage of this story?”

Four months ago, the Washington Times used its editorial page to lambaste Pigford as “Race hustlers are shaking down taxpayers for payoffs, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is falling for the scam.” On yesterday’s vote, however, the newspaper was silent. And they’re not alone.

While Lee Stranahan’s article at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and my piece that followed cast some light on the matter, none of the alphabet networks or dinosaur newspapers appear to have reported on the vote. In fact, a Google News Search this morning of the word “Pigford” — the shortened version of the name of the class-action lawsuit, Pigford v. Glickman, against the USDA — turned up only eight results.

I suspect news anchors and editorial writers are avoiding the subject, since it could come back to bite the rear ends of the candidates for whom they will be “carrying water” in the 2012 elections. For that reason alone, members of the new media and the Tea Party Movement alike should make it a hot-button campaign issue.

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This article first appeared at the Huffington Post.

The latest James O’Keefe success story against NPR has taken a predictable pattern — panicked press releases and firings, followed by denunciation of O’Keefe in a belated attempt to discredit him. Naturally, conservatives are crowing about it, but I wanted to give a little perspective to those Huffington Post readers–whatever your political stripe–who share my passion for free speech, honest debate, and fairness in the media.

Over the past year, the mainstream media has collaborated with the White House in an attempt to paint the Tea Party as racist. Remember the protests on Capitol Hill last March against ObamaCare, and the media’s lie that members of the Congressional Black Congress had awful racial slurs hurled at them by Tea Party members that weekend? Did you know that there’s video evidence that it isn’t true?

Not just one video, either. Four of them. Yes. Four. Of. Them.  There’s not one shred of objective evidence that corroborates the “Tea Party N-Word” story. But the mainstream media has allowed the lie to live on as one of the central “proofs” of Tea Party racism. It’s been debunked, but it’s raised time and time again by those claiming “reality” as their mantle.

The mainstream media promotes the idea that the Tea Party is racist because they want to delegitimize an authentic, grassroots movement that stands up to big government. And the “Tea Party N-word” story ties all the other lies about the Tea Party together–that it’s violent, that it’s extreme, that it’s a “mob.” If you want to see what a violent, extreme mob looks like, go to Madison to see the crazed throngs the media refuses to scrutinize. (more…)

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

So said Benito Mussolini, the leader of the closest governmental form of fascism in human history.

The media narrative relating the tea party movement to fascistic pining, based in the divisive rhetoric of the political left, emphasizes the institutional malpractice committed by establishment media on a daily basis.  It is as if J-School requires one to ignore history and the most basic of researching skills.  Nowhere can the enfeeblement of a culture through the corruption of entitlement be better seen than within our modern establishment media.  Why bother to understand the subject (or better yet,  examine objectively) when the paychecks will come anyway?

Case in point, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Chris Hedges, who laments the collapse of political discourse within our nation, while contributing to the very thing he laments.  Truthfully, the article is nothing more than a communist diatribe against Wall Street and globalization (which is rather amusing considering the global goals of the communist left).  But what really bears mention regarding this article is the intellectual dishonesty apparent immediately through the use of false imagery:

This image drives Hedges’ narrative of the “mass of increasingly bitter people whose alienation, desperation and rage fuel emotionally driven and incoherent political agendas,” otherwise known as the tea party movement.

How do I know this image has nothing to do with the tea party movement?  I witnessed this “plant” first-hand, and Sharp Elbows (famous for slaying the beast, Phil Hare) of the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition shot the video in which we ran this infiltrator out of our rally.

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The AP story announcing the shift in Administration policy is incorrect.  The Obama Administration has, in fact, redoubled its efforts to rid the world of extremist jihadists and terrorists — as long as they are connected with the Tea Party movement.

Even as it continues to do its Orwellian best to redefine our enemies from U.S. Hating Religious Fundamentalists to “disgruntled foreign nationals,” (as if they were a particularly impatient man on line at the Post Office), it has, using the full force of the government and mass media, begun scouring the country for genuinely disenfranchised Americans it can re-brand as dangerous — excuse me, “potentially” dangerous domestic terrorists.

Only in America in 2010 could groups defending the constitution be transformed by the press corps in villains who by their very beliefs may possibly, someday, inspire a demented individual to commit an act of violence be presented as a greater threat than groups and even countries who have actually made part of their charters the destruction of America and her allies. (more…)

No clearer difference can be seen in how the Old Media and its left-wing compatriots treat mass killers, terrorists and nutjobs than the way Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Joe Stack have been portrayed by the Old Media and the left. Abdulmutallab, the jihadi Christmas Bomber, was treated as an aberration unconnected with any larger group — despite that he trained with al Qaeda — and Joe Stack, who flew a plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, has been held up as the epitome of the “teabaggers” and the “anti-government right” despite that not a single tie to those folks has been yet discovered.

Immediately after Abdulmutallab tried to blow himself and a plane full of passengers into martyrdom on Christmas Day 2009, President Obama’s administration declared this guy an “isolated extremist” and said he had no connection to our Islamofascist enemies. Obama was helped along in this by many Old Media news sources.

On Dec. 26, for instance, CBS reported that Abdulmutallab was a loner: “As of now, he appears to be a lone actor with no conspirators. A report the following day said of the jihadist bomber, ‘We’re not aware of anybody else,’ one official told Orr. No further arrests are imminent.” (more…)

So anyone with a pulse saw the Austin plane crash for what it was–an ugly event caused by a bitter weirdo. And nearly everyone was thankful it didn’t turn out worse.

But I guess Washington Post contributor, Jonathan Capehart, is pulse-less. After reading Joseph Stack’s suicide note, J.C. wrote, “I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we’re hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement.”

Well, for me – I’m struck by how boringly predictable a respected journalist like Capehart can be.

I use “respected journalist” just for fun. Capehart is a tool.

I mean, seriously dude, you couldn’t have resisted, for a moment at least – that urge to… go there?

Look, I know you hate those damn teabaggers, but linking them to this horrible crime seems like a parody of jackasses like yourself. Maybe that was your goal: your comments were just an elegant satire on left-wingers! In that case, bravo. (more…)