Bill Sammon, manager of Fox’s Washington Bureau, sent out an email instructing staff to call the “public option” the “government option.” Renaming government projects and entities to falsely reflect public ownership (and suggest choice, when in fact, there is none) isn’t new. Germany had the Volkswagon which literally translates to “People’s Car,” then there’s the People’s Republic of China.

So Sammon had no interest playing a game of semantics devised by the left to curate public favor by renaming what the option actually is – and? Media Matters is furious that Fox refused to play the game according to the frame that Media Matters is desperately trying to set.

Luntz argued that “if you call it a ‘public option,’ the American people are split,” but that “if you call it the ‘government option,’ the public is overwhelmingly against it.” Luntz explained that the program would be “sponsored by the government” and falsely claimed that it would also be “paid for by the government.”

Media Matters is upset that Fox didn’t use a term that would skew the field to the left.

(more…)

Like some sort of hack zombie, former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson has stumbled back onto the political stage, basking again in the media limelight and sounding off after putting his name on President Obama’s debt commission’s liberal dream prescription – increasing both taxes and the size of government.

This raises an important question:  Who the hell cares what Alan Simpson thinks?  The answer is that the mainstream media cares, for now, because his dreary conventional wisdom is useful to them – for the moment.

Simpson’s return to prominence in the wake of the conservative – not GOP – victory in the recent mid-terms is a harbinger of what we will see much of in the next couple years as MSM-approved “reasonable” and “mature” Republicans are dug-up and held-up as role models while Republicans who actually pursue conservative goals are painted as raving lunatics one step away from climbing up the bell tower with a Remington.

The 79-year old maverick (“Maverick”: A Republican who enjoys the hosannas of the press that come from attacking fellow Republicans.  Related Definition:  “Sell Out”:  A Democrat who worries about his party’s slide to the far left.) makes no bones about where his allegiance lies – with the kind of old-school, chummy, go-along, get-along Republicanism that got us into this mess in the first place.

Fortunately for us half-wits, he’s brave enough to face down our selfish, short-sighted attempts to interfere with his ability to implement his insights – and the media is only too happy to give this relic a soap box.  That is, until the label “useful idiot” becomes only half true.

(more…)

I’ve always liked getting to the heart of the matter—something the activist old media has no interest in doing during this election cycle.

November 2 is a mandate on whether America will remain a country based on the Constitutional values of Liberty and freedom, or whether we are headed to the dregs of communism and socialism embraced by the American left and its Democrat Party. Too extreme you say?

This point was made as clear as can be with the two rallies held recently on the Washington Mall.

Ignore the crowd size for a moment (Glenn Beck’s was much, much larger on Aug. 28) and you can even ignore the fact that unions clearly organized and used their funds to bus people to the event (astroturf, anyone?)

The clear choice was seen in the messages being displayed by the people at the two events. (more…)

I last heard the old Soviet Union anthem as I left Moscow two weeks before the coup against Gorbachev in 1991. That pretty much marked the end of the line for the Old Left, which had invested so much in the success of “socialism in one country.”

Their children and grandchildren are with us today, marching in our own capital city and busily undermining every single institution in our nation. Their smiles don’t disguise the loathing they feel for what America is, but they do reflect their joy at what they hope she becomes.

Unfortunately for these useful idiots, malevolent fools and active seditionists, many of us remember the old USSR and what it looked like and what it smelled like. We’ve been hearing this same propaganda for decades; the only difference now is that they’re out and proud.

They sense victory. This is what victory looks like to them. This is paradise when the velvet glove comes off: (more…)

Was Washington’s WJLA TV anchorman Doug McKelway fired because he dared appear too conservative to suit the station’s left-wing news director and general manager? It sure is hard to escape that conclusion after reviewing the incident, in any case.

McKelway had a run-in with general manager Bill Lord last month that resulted in his being fired for “insubordination.” At issue was a July piece on the BP oil spill disaster in which the anchor seemed to go against the station’s liberal grain.

McKelway was sent for a stand up report near where a small protest against “dirty oil money” was held at Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. The anchor rightly pointed out that the protest was small and was peopled by little else but a group of far left fringies that are, as McKelway said, “largely representing far-left environmental groups.” The anchor went on to say that this might be a “risky strategy” because the one politician that took more BP Oil money than “anyone in history” is President Barack Obama himself.

Apparently that was all left-wing station manager Bill Lord could take and it wasn’t long before McKelway was called on the carpet for his truthful portrayal of the tiny protest. The result was that McKelway officially “resigned,” but GM Bill Lord is still claiming that McKelway was fired because of “insubordination” and “misconduct.” (more…)

No better illustration of the herd mentality of the press corps than this classic from the musical, Chicago. Just substitute the state-controlled Washington press corps for the knockabout Chitown police and court reporters, and presto: The New York Times, the Washington Post and MSNBC:

You know, when you stop to think about it… (more…)

Amen.

According to some estimates, Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally drew almost 300,000 people to Washington D.C. on August 28. Had it been a rally led by Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, the mainstream media would have used precision camera angles to exaggerate the number of participants and revel in the fact that there had been another “Million Man March.” Instead, it was just 300,000 conservatives converging on the nation’s capital, so writers like the New York Times’ Frank Rich had to strain to find some way to pervert the reason behind the gathering or defile those who supported it.

In the end, Rich settled on defiling the financial backers of the rally by “outing” them. In fact, he was so diligent in publishing their names, discussing their opposition to liberalism, and cataloging the massive amounts of money they’ve given to conservative causes, that it almost seemed like he had an axe to grind.

For example, after fingering Rupert Murdoch, Rich pointed to David and Charles Koch as the “fat cats” behind the Tea Party movement, noting that TEa Partiers “may not know who these brothers are,” (which is liberal-political-speak for “I’m getting ready to give you all the dirt I can on these two guys”). (more…)

In an era when satellite imagery allows one to count cars from space, and in a country fascinated with numbers (weekly box office take, home runs, calorie counting, etc) the MSM is having a difficult time with the math on Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally held on the Mall in Washington yesterday.  By all reasonable estimates, nearly half a million people were in attendance, and yet, confusion (or perhaps subterfuge) rules the day.

CNN.com was reporting;  “large crowds” and “People filled the park by the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool. . .”  I have a question for the writers at CNN.  If Beck’s 500,000-plus is considered a large crowd, what term would you use for the Sharpton rally held across town?  Oddly enough, no mention of numbers or size was included in the description of Sharpton’s event.  Was this done to diminish one or to equate the much smaller march with the enormous rally?

MSNBC.com reported, “Tens of thousands flock to the capital for a rally that largely avoided politics.” After attacking and analyzing the event for a week before it happened, the NBC’s minor league team mostly avoided putting the story in the spotlight, instead favoring a position on the U.S. news page.  There was a mention on the homepage with a link to a video entitled “LaRussa, Pujols speak at Beck Rally” – huh? (more…)

And…

Boom!

Pop, pop, pop…

One more to come…

You can hear the seething on the left…

Turn out the lights…

Stop the presses! This just in: The Associated Press “standards center” has issued a “staff advisory” on covering what is to be known from here on out as “the New York City mosque.” From now on, the AP “staff” – and, therefore, everybody who still actually reads newspapers that still actually use the wire service’s copy – is supposed to conform to what amounts to the Muslim Brotherhood narrative about the Islamic cultural center formerly known as the “Ground Zero mosque.”

AP’s Deputy Managing Editor for Standards and Production, Tom Kent, sent this “guidance” out to his colleagues, with inputs from Chad Roedemeier in the New York bureau and Terry Hunt in Washington: “We should continue to avoid the phrase ‘Ground Zero mosque’ or ‘mosque at Ground Zero’ on all platforms. (We’ve very rarely used this wording, except in slugs, though we sometimes see other news sources using the term.) The site of the proposed Islamic center and mosque is not at Ground Zero, but two blocks away in a busy commercial area. We should continue to say it’s “near” Ground Zero, or two blocks away.”

Interestingly, among those who formerly used the now-proscribed descriptor “Ground Zero mosque” is none other than Feisal Abdul Rauf, its imam and chief promoter. He called it that even though the proposed venue has always been two blocks away from the World Trade Center site.

Perhaps Rauf used this moniker because his planned location for the mosque was part of the real estate attacked and damaged on 9/11 – the home of the Burlington Coat Factory until it was struck by a landing gear from a plane that struck one of the Twin Towers. Perhaps he used that term to brand his “Cordoba House” because body parts from the victims of those attacks have been found all over Lower Manhattan, including the old Burlington factory area, making it part of the hallowed ground.

Or perhaps, Imam Rauf called his project the Ground Zero mosque because he wanted to associate his 15-story, $100 million complex as closely as possible to the location where nearly 3,000 Americans and other innocent people – precisely because they were murdered there by people who wanted, as he does, to “bring shariah to America.” (more…)

Heaven help Richard Kim. That’s not my wish, it’s his—expressed in a piece entitled “Loose Tea” he wrote for the venerable left-wing magazine, The Nation. Honoring the liberal playbook by attacking the Tea Party on everything except substance, Kim starts out by criticizing the symbolic venue chosen for the recent tax day assembly of the D.C. Tea Party.

When tea party organizers chose the Washington Ellipse as the setting for their Tax Day protest, they were undoubtedly thinking of its theatrical potential. Behind looms the Washington Monument, an obelisk to the hero of American Revolution and Constitution and a fitting symbol of the tea party’s esprit de corps. In front stands the White House, whose occupant, according to protesters’ signs, is busy plotting more taxes, more communism and the end of America. Those who took the podium borrowed from the surrounding majesty to endow their struggle with an epic righteousness: “We are going to keep faith with every generation since 1776 that has successfully passed the baton of freedom to the next generation. We will not allow that…chain of freedom to be broken on our watch,” declared Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. But beyond the rhetoric and amid the crowd of a few thousand, the concerns were on a smaller scale–like about incandescent light bulbs.

Apparently when Tea Party people use symbolism, it’s a “kaleidoscope of kookiness,” but when then-candidate Obama erected $140,000 worth of fake Hellenic columns at Invesco Field for his 2008 acceptance speech, it was different.  At the time, L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne wrote a paean to Obama’s use of styrofoam that the great Pindar himself would have killed to have penned: (more…)

If you ever have been, are now, or are hoping to become a reporter in the future, this video ought to make your blood boil:

It’s not just the cop’s rudeness and bullying, although that’s bad enough.  Petty tyrants love to shove other people around, but when those hired to “protect and serve” start acting like they’re armed bureaucrats who don’t have to answer questions from the rabble, then we’re in trouble.  Especially when it was not an emergency, and lives were not in danger.  There had better be a pretty darn good reason from barring citizens, and their representatives in the media, from a public park, and this sure doesn’t seem like it.

What’s even more disheartening, though, is the way the reporters passively accept getting shoved around, and meekly shuffle backwards while complaining into their cell phones.  And they weren’t sounding off like they had a pair, either.

What a pathetic display of cowardice, ineptitude and unprofessionalism.  Believe it or not, there was a time when reporters were more than regime stenographers, when they laughed at a little obstruction like a guy with a badge and a gun, when they knew and asserted their rights as citizens and as practitioners of the only profession specifically protected by the Constitution.  When this guy was the face of journalism: (more…)

The day after the federal government hijacked one-fifth of the U.S. economy in order to give health insurance to unemployed 26-year-olds was a giddy day for CNN’s Rick Sanchez. The 3 p.m. EDT host for the low-rated cable news network couldn’t contain  excitement for the healthcare hijack that had just taken place in Washington.

Sanchez gave us 25 minutes of non-stop gloating from supporters of the healthcare take-over. Sanchez gave us Obama, Biden, Pelosi, more Obama, Biden’s over-the-top and profane characterization that this is a really big deal, more Obama, Ted Kennedy’s widow telling us this is a really big deal, more Obama and a really long pen-signing ceremony to celebrate the occasion. We also got some yucking-it-up moments from Democratic members of Congress telling the President they had cast some tough votes on a really big issue.

Then Sanchez gave us Analysis 101 with David Gergen and another reporter, conversing with him on how the Republicans keep talking about over-turning the legislation but the reality is they won’t be able to do it. Sanchez assured us that he knew it was all talk – and that it couldn’t be done. When Gergen tried to bring up the fact that public opinion was on the Republicans’ side as evident by the most recent poll showing a large number of Americans were not pleased with the takeover, Sanchez jumped in to say that in his humble opinion: (more…)

The irony would be amusing, were the stakes not so serious. The very day that the United States Congress passed sweeping legislation that will undermine the economy, increase debt and send tax rates soaring, a leading liberal media outlet criticized the elected officials who have been in charge of the president’s home state for repeatedly passing legislation that has: undermined Illinois’ economy, increased Illinois’ debt and sent Illinois tax rates soaring, thus poisoning the business environment and employment prospects in the state. It appears that government’s mission isn’t to tax and spend. Who knew?

It will be hard to believe, but when Illinois Democrats passed all of the legislation that got Illinois into this cesspool of a fiscal crisis, both they and the MSM assured voters that the there was nothing to worry about. These great new programs, they said, will actually make the state more prosperous and, if you disagreed with that proposition, then you were obviously a crabby conservative trying make political hay at the expense of what was obviously the best thing for the people of the state of Illinois. Sound familiar? (more…)

You can dump only so much manure on a plant before it has to thrive on its own, and the same principle applies in journalism. An initiative that lacks grass roots can wither in the sun despite liberal doses of mainstream media Miracle-Gro—which explains why Air America found a more receptive audience in the press than in the public, and why Martha Burk’s protest against the men-only membership policy at Augusta National Golf Club drew fewer demonstrators (a couple dozen) than the total number of New York Times stories hyping her who-cares crusade (more than 100).

Having enjoyed seedling-of-the-month treatment in the MSM greenhouse since late February, Coffee Party USA—the supposedly less strident alternative to the Tea Party—designated Saturday its National Coffee Party Kick-off Day. With gatherings in “more than 350 coffee shops in 44 states,” according to its Web site, the fledgling political organization was hoping to make a statement. Instead, it merely raised questions, exposed truths and, worst of all, inspired ridicule.

So, Coffee Kiddies, you want to be like the big boys and girls in the Tea Party treehouse? Sit down and have a cup of reality. Here are 10 reasons why your Coffee Party Kick-off didn’t amount to a hill of beans: (more…)

Many people over the last few weeks have noticed the fawning media coverage on behalf of the Coffee Party movement. Moreover, no skepticism or research was done to investigate the claims made by the newest Coffee Party leaders. Simple Google searches, however, have revealed that they are simply former Obama campaigners upset that the Tea Party has been able to thwart their Leftist agenda.

As a result, I decided to join the Coffee Party’s gathering on March 13th, in Washington, D.C., to learn what it was really all about.

The meeting started by people introducing themselves and saying why there want to be part of the Coffee Party. Many were upset about the the Tea Party movement. Others had absolutely incoherent reasons for being there.

One thing that I noticed was that many attempted to appear nonpartisan and open to discussion. However, their personal tweets have demonstrated that, that is not their agenda. In fact, when I sat down to talk to some of the people off camera during the group therapy sessions (see video below of the sessions), I heard the phrase “Teabagger” thrown around quite a bit.

The video below captures most of the event. There were about 100 people attending. Thankfully, after being there I could see that this is most certainly not going to grow into the Tea Party movement, unless of course the media keeps propping it up as something that it is not.

Video follows after the jump: (more…)