Showing posts with label MSM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MSM. Show all posts

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Bill Keller's master plan to de-select the Times

 
Clay Waters, writing at Times Watch, highlights noteworthy aspects of a speech by Bill Keller. Keller is the Executive Editor of the New York Times, the second-leading source of information for anti-U.S. propagandists (al-Jazeera remains number one by a narrow margin).

Last week, Keller delivered the "Hugo Chavez Young Memorial Lecture", sponsored by London's ultra-liberal Guardian newspaper, and "said some things to his journalistic friends he might not have felt comfortable telling a more general audience."

...At least since the election of 2000, with its attendant questions of legitimacy, some of the wide, reasonable middle of the American electorate has gravitated to angry and intolerant fringes, right and left. There are many reasons for this -- including the proliferation of partisan blogs, hate-mongering radio broadcasts and intemperate television shout shows -- but a president plays a considerable role in setting the tone of public discourse... dividing the electorate into mistrustful camps and pandering to their fears was an explicit strategy of the president's political wizard, Karl Rove.

Interesting. I've never heard these memes before. You say the 2000 election was stolen by Bush?

That the president divided the country into mistrustful camps (say, by soliciting MorOn.org to portray him as Hitler)?

And you say that Rove was the diabolical force behind it all? Fascinating. I've never heard such things before.

...After our decision to report on the government's warrantless wiretapping program, some members of the administration's amen chorus proposed that the Times be charged with treason under the Espionage Act. A right-wing radio pundit suggested that I be put to death... And another defender of the national interest posted maps to my apartment -- and my publishers' -- on the internet, for the benefit of any lunatics who wanted to drop by and set us straight. Those of you who are acquainted with New York apartment life can imagine how that went over with my co-op board.

Keller fails to relate that his paper (in June 2006) published the locations of the weekend homes of Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

...And I would argue that in this clattering, interconnected, dangerous world, journalism that cuts through the noise has never been needed more. We have a war going very badly in Iraq, and another one in Afghanistan where our declaration of victory looks very premature...

Waters' apt retort: If Keller still thinks the Iraq war is "going very badly" even after the troop surge, perhaps he should take a moment to read the front page of his own paper. Well, no one else seems to be reading it these days, so who can blame him?

...we are agnostic as to where a story may lead; we do not go into a story with an agenda or a pre-conceived notion. We do not manipulate or hide facts to advance an agenda...

Here's proof of Keller's "agnostic" approach: remember Al Qaqaa? This was the weapons cache that American forces reportedly failed to secure after the fall of Saddam's government. In the week leading up to the 2004 Presidential Election, Keller's newspaper treated this story as though a large asteroid were about to hit the Earth (which, by the way, would have been Bush's fault).

The New York Times ran a week's worth of front-page stories on Al-Qaqaa; it featured 16 total articles and columns and seven anti-administration letters to the editor over an eight day span.

Jonah Goldberg relates:

Oh, and they left something else out: The weapons might have been removed before the invasion. Over the course of the week, the Times was forced to concede, often grudgingly and obliquely, that the weapons may not have been there for U.S. forces to secure in the first place...

So, anyway, I'd forgotten about all this. Bush won the election despite the al-Qaqaa drumbeat from Kerry and his surrogates in and out of the press.

But Byron York, my NR colleague, didn't forget. He wondered, whatever happened to The Biggest Story on Earth? The answer, it turns out, is nothing. The Times has not run a single story about the al-Qaqaa story since November 1 [2004]...

Agenda? What agenda?

We strive to preserve our independence from political and economic interests, including our own advertisers. We do not work in the service of a party, or an industry, or even a country.

The Times doesn't work in the service of the United States? You won't get an argument from me on that assertion.

When there are competing views of a situation, we aim to reflect them as clearly and fairly as we can."

Rimshot? Can we get a stinkin' rimshot now?

Keller, I'm glad you haven't been charged with violating the Espionage Act yet, though heaven knows you deserve it. Instead, I'm patiently awaiting the day that you're fired for your wonderful stewardship of the Times. How's that Internet strategy working out for you, putz? Oh, and I hear that the Huntington (West Virginia) Herald-Dispatch may be looking for an editor.

Friday, December 07, 2007

CNN Headline from the year 2067

 
In a decision that could signal a successful prosecution in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, an Aruban judge on Friday ordered the re-arrest of Joran van der Sloot. The arrest represents the thirty-sixth time that van der Sloot has been detained by Aruban authorities.

The other suspects, brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, died of natural causes in the 2050's.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

InfoUSA visits; encouraged to participate

 
A Google search for Vin Gupta returns around 80,000 results. On the first page of results is a November 24, 2007 blog post entitled "The bizarre ties between the Clintons, Vin Gupta and InfoUSA".

Perhaps that explains why we're seeing visitors from database marketer InfoUSA. We'd like to invite InfoUSA to explain why Americans should trust its Opinion Research Corporation subsidiary, given all of its documented ties to prominent Democrats.

Monday, December 03, 2007

The perfect gift that will cause liberals' heads to explode

 
Ray Robison's new book -- Both in One Trench - Saddam's Secret Terror Documents -- promises to be a must-read. Robison carefully culled through Saddam's cache of secret documents to reveal the facts that the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) don't want you to know.

* Hussein supported Al Qaeda? Check.
* Hussein acted through proxy terror groups throughout the world? Checkety-check.
* Hussein supported terrorists with direct links to 9/11? Check and mate, biznatch.

Go ye therefore hence and order the book. What's a better gift for the holidays than a book to enlighten truth-seekers and to cause liberals' heads to explode?

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Clinton calm in hangnail crisis

 
By Glen Johnson, Associated Press Staff Writer

Washington DC - After her hangnail had been treated and her foot soaked in a warm bath, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled slowly out of her Washington home, the picture of gravitas in the face of personal calamity. The image, coincidentally broadcast the instant the network news began, reinforced the impression that the Democratic presidential favorite can face a crisis with makeup and coiff intact.

"I am very grateful that this difficult day has ended so well," she declared as she stood alone at the microphone.

Little more than three hours later, just in time for the 11 p.m. local news, Clinton reaffirmed that perspective. She embraced her doctors, nurses and their families, and lauded the paramedics who had quickly driven her to Bethesda Medical Center after the hangnail was detected.

It was a vintage example of a candidate taking a negative and turning it into a positive. And coming just six weeks before the presidential voting begins, the timing could hardly have been more beneficial to someone hoping to stave off a loss in the Iowa caucuses and secure a win in the New Hampshire primary.

Aides said Clinton was home Friday afternoon, getting ready to deliver a partisan speech in Virginia to the Democratic National Committee, when a personal assistant noticed that her the nail of her big toe was embedded into the skin and appeared to be in imminent danger of becoming infected.

Aides said Clinton immediately canceled her trip and began working the phones. She later told reporters she had paramedics on the phone in eight minutes.

Over the ensuing five hours, as Clinton staffers rounded up a convoy of police and medical vehicles, Clinton continued to call up and down the medical food chain, attempting to locate experts who could treat her painful toe.

"I knew I was bugging a lot of these people, it felt like on a minute-by-minute basis, trying to make sure that staffers knew everything that was going on so I was in a position to inform the country, to tell my campaign and to be available to do anything that medical officials asked of me," the New York senator said.

At the same time, the woman striving to move from former first lady to the first female president was eager to convey that she knew the traditional lines of command and control in a crisis, even if the events inside the hospital were far short of a world calamity.

"The doctors and nurses were the professionals, they were in charge of this situation, whatever they asked me or my campaign to do is what we would do," Clinton said.

Along with taking charge while giving the professionals free rein, Clinton offered up a third dimension to her crisis character: humanity. She said she felt pain and concern when she first heard the news of the danger an imminent infection might pose.

"It affected me not only because of the pain, but the confusion among my staff members and volunteers, but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time," Clinton said.

It was a thawing moment for a stoic figure who once snapped that she opted for professional life instead of staying home to bake cookies. She buttressed it with one final message. Clinton sought to use the moment as a national teaching opportunity, another skill often employed by presidents.

She paid tribute to the thousands of believers who set aside their lives every four years so they can propel presidential campaigns on little more than blood, sweat and tears.

"I know they were worried about me. They're invested in me, my future. They work around the clock for me. They are so committed to my cause, and I just want to commend every one of them," Clinton said. "A lot of them postpone school, leave their families, move across the country, and I'm so grateful for them every single day, and I'm especially relieved to have this situation come to a conclusion without an infection or -- worse -- an amputation."

Then, like an elegant ballet dancer, Clinton pirouetted on her healthy foot and gingerly walked back into her home without entertaining questions from the press.

Megahed and Mohamed's "Roadtrip on a Budget" Defense

 
Remember the case of the two South Florida students who were detained near a military base in South Carolina after pipe bombs were found in their car? You've may have forgotten about this terrorism trial because our mainstream media's "pro journalists" haven't seen fit to cover the story.

As a quick refresher, the pair of USF students were traveling on a lonely highway, just miles from a sensitive military installation. In the car with them: pipes filled with fertilizer, Karo syrup, kitty litter, bullets, fuses, a laptop with a history of web searches on Jihadist martyrdom, Hamas and Qassam rockets and video instructions for turning remotely controlled toy cars into detonators.

In July, Mohamed (pictured at right) had posted the YouTube video on the use of toys as detonators. The video's narrator says that it was intended "to save one who wants to be a martyr for another day in battle."

Authorities were also concerned about Megahed's recent love affair with firearms. He had purchased a rifle with a telescopic sight, discussed buying a Beretta handgun, and had joined a shooting range. Megahed also possessed "multiple Egyptian passports" under different names and visited a Sears photography center in July to acquire additional passport-sized photos. Megahed's recent travel to Egypt, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria had also raised prosecutors' fears.

The apologists

In August, shortly after their arrests, the usual suspects -- CAIR and MAS ("Guilty Until Proven Innocent is Not American Justice") -- claimed that "racial profiling" was to blame.

In a perfect storm of racial profiling and shoddy police tactics, several cases have evolved throughout North and South Carolina where unnecessary arrest detainment has given way to a racial profiling study conducted by ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation, and headed by attorney Azadeh N. Shahshahani, Muslim/Middle Eastern Community Outreach Coordinator...

Although due process has not been as timely as it should have been MAS Freedom-NC is pleased to announce the pending release of Youssef Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed...

MAS is still awaiting the "pending release" of the pair.

Latest news: the defense strategy

The strategy of the defense team is becoming more apparent. Yesterday, an AP article ("Student Says Supposed Bomb Was Fireworks") stresses the fun-loving innocence of the pair:

[Mohamed was] charged with trying to aid terrorists [and] says the supposed explosives found in his possession were just cheap fireworks that could only travel a few feet, according to a court filing.

Ahmed Mohamed said he made the fireworks, called "sugar rockets," because it was cheaper than buying fireworks at a roadside stand, the defense filing said.

Mohamed told investigators that he became interested in fireworks just before July 4, public defender Adam Allen wrote...

In a similar vein, the St. Petersburg Times' synopsis of the defense ("Two road-tripping college kids on a budget") characterizes the pair as tourists on a shoestring budget.

In a pleading filed Friday, Megahed's attorney, Adam Allen, said Mohamed and Megahed were headed to Sunset Beach, N.C., the cheapest way possible.

They bought a global positioning system at Wal-Mart in Ocala, he wrote, so that they could find the cheapest gas prices at Wal-Marts and Murphy Gas Stations along the way.

When a deputy stopped the pair near a naval base on Aug. 4, Mohamed, 26, volunteered that he had "fireworks" and fuses in the car, Allen wrote, but Megahed, 21, didn't know about them.

According to the pleading, Mohamed, who had been in the United States only six months, became fascinated with fireworks before July 4, when he learned they were widely available. But after visiting several fireworks stands, he decided they were too expensive.

So, he turned to YouTube for instructions on how to make "sugar rockets" with stump remover, sugar and cat litter. Mohamed brought the fireworks on the beach road trip with his buddy in hopes he could find an open field to try shooting them off again, Allen wrote...

Reviewing the 'road-trip on a budget defense'

The price of a Garmin eTrex GPS at Wal-Mart ranges from about $105 to $260. And let's say the GPS magically allows you to find gas stations where fuel is a whole 10 cents-a-gallon cheaper than normal.

Thus, to pay for the $105 GPS, the pair would have had to consume over 1,000 gallons of gas. At 24 miles-per-gallon, that's roughly around the world: 24,000 miles.

I'm not sure I would've gone with the "I had to buy a GPS to find cheap gas" argument.

And you can buy one heck of a lot of fireworks for $105 -- the price of the GPS.

This is just a hunch, but I'm guessing the defense team doesn't consist of Louis Nizer, Samuel Leibowitz, or Clarence Darrow.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

CNN's YouTube Debate: alternate 'undecideds' you didn't see

 
There have been many complaints about CNN's stereotyped questioners at the recent GOP debate. But, if time had permitted, the alternate YouTube questioners -- as chosen by CNN -- were even more representative of typical Republicans. That is, as Republicans are imagined to be by liberals progressives.

I wanna know which o' y'all own a machine gun?

Arggggh! Should gays be allowed to appear in public?

Which candidate's wife wants a dinner date with me?

Do you believe in equal rights for Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Eye-talians, Irish, Hispanic-types, and other non-pure-whites?

Which of ya'll are goin' to hail???

* * *

Yep. Just "randomly selected undecided voters". Like the gay General who coincidentally happened to be a Hillary Clinton staffer.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

My Newspaper: buh bye, legacy media!

 
Bonus flashback post from January...


The Fedex truck pulled up this morning.


They dropped off my newspaper replacement. It's a very specialized printer called NewsPrinter.


You plug it in and then attach the USB jack to your computer.


Then watch your computer monitor.


A really cool application automatically starts and it interviews you. It asks just a few questions. What time each morning do you want your newspaper printed? How many pages? And do you want to preview an on-screen copy?


If you're okay with the layout, you quit. Elapsed time since Fedex arrived? About four minutes. When you wake up in the morning, your newspaper is already printed and waiting for you at the printer. And it's up-to-the-minute.


The software can even tell where you're located, so the Local section will default to your area.


Want to change the defaults? The software can actually step you through an easy configuration. Need coverage of your favorite football or baseball team? Just choose the team's logo from the list. The neatest thing about NewsPrinter? You can completely customize every aspect of the newspaper down to the tiniest detail.


Getting older? You can completely adjust the size of the typeface and headlines.


So who makes money from NewsPrinter? How's the business-model work? I'm not really sure, but the printer manufacturer didn't charge me for the printer. I pay for paper (of course) and special inkjet cartridges, the price of which I'll admit are slightly inflated.


The content is provided by blogging networks and, I think, the McClatchy news service. The news service has a partnership with the printer manufacturer and gets a cut of NewsPrinter ink cartridges.


I have two words for legacy media and the New York Times, specifically.

Buh. Bye.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Linda Bat-Boyd and Life at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

 
The nuclear physicists who run the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have decided to accelerate their campaign for impeachment. It seems to be a strategic element of management's stewardship, which has resulted in the loss of 40% of the paper's subscribers in the last decade.


Illustration accompanying Linda Bat-Boyd's Seattle P-I Op-Ed

Actually, Linda Bat-Boyd lays out her case for impeachment brilliantly:

Impeachment is squarely on the table, and momentum is building. A year ago, almost no elected official breathed the word impeachment. Now impeachment has hit the House floor, and our electeds have gone on record. Millions of Americans are demanding an end to executive abuse of power.

After six years of state of emergency, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, continual war and occupations, our Constitution is deeply in crisis. Americans are in danger of losing our system of government and civil rights if they do not roll back the Bush administration's assault on the rule of law.

Yes, momentum is building, only it's to have you forcibly committed to a local mental health facility, Linda.

Of course, Linda fails to describe a single instance of said abuses. Consider her "slamdunk" case:

The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments are all now subject to the caprice of government officials. The Military Commissions Act allows U.S. citizens to be detained without due process if they are declared enemy combatants. Without our permission, this country has become an exporter of torture.

One teensy, weensy little problem, Linda: you've failed to mention even one real instance of abuse. That's because you can't. Even the so-called instances of "torture" by American troops -- the controversial cases of non-lethal waterboarding -- are actually practiced by our armed forces on themselves.

As ABC's News Blotter reported earlier this month:

For all the debate over waterboarding, it has been used on only three al Qaeda figures...

The most effective use of waterboarding, according to current and former CIA officials, was in breaking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [KSM], who subsequently confessed to a number of ongoing plots against the United States... A senior CIA official said KSM later admitted it was only because of the waterboarding that he talked.

Ultimately, KSM took responsibility for the 9/ll attacks and virtually all other al Qaeda terror strikes, including the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl...

But Linda Moonboyd doesn't care about beheadings. After all... it's not torture, it's just murder. As for the Al-Qaeda Torture Manual, well, that doesn't count. They're misguided "minutemen," I suppose.

And as for "lying us into war" or "manipulating intelligence": Hillary Clinton saw the same intelligence that that the President and VP saw... and voted for war. Should we impeach Hillary as well?

Super Special Photo-Gallery Feature for Progressives Only!

Don't recall what Madeline Albright, Nancy Pelosi, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, Jay Rockefeller, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry said before and after the invasion of Iraq? Our super-fantabulous stop-action photo gallery takes you into the way-back machine to revisit all of the Dems' hi-larious hi-jinks in glorious MoonbatVision™!

If anyone needed to be impeached, it was Bill Clinton and not for the reason he was actually impeached. The Progressive Review recaps the unbelievable track record of wrongdoing by the Clinton Regime:

- The only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance
- Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates*
- Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation
- Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify
- Most number of witnesses to die suddenly
- First president sued for sexual harassment.
- First president accused of rape.
- First first lady to come under criminal investigation
- Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case
- First president to establish a legal defense fund.
- First president to be held in contempt of court
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad
- First president disbarred from the US Supreme Court and a state court

- Number of individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes: 47
- Number of these convictions during Clinton's presidency: 33
- Number of indictments/misdemeanor charges: 61
- Number of congressional witnesses who have pleaded the Fifth Amendment, fled the country to avoid testifying, or (in the case of foreign witnesses) refused to be interviewed: 122

The number of times that Clinton figures who testified in court or before Congress said that they didn't remember, didn't know, or something similar during the many, various investigations: Bill Kennedy 116, Harold Ickes 148, Ricki Seidman 160, Bruce Lindsey 161, Bill Burton 191, Mark Gearan 221, Mack McLarty 233, Neil Egglseston 250, Hillary Clinton 250, Bill Clinton 267, John Podesta 264, Jennifer O'Connor 343, Dwight Holton 348, Patsy Thomasson 420, Jeff Eller 697.

- FBI files misappropriated by the White House: c. 900
- Estimated number of witnesses quoted in FBI files misappropriated by the White House: 18,000
- Number of witnesses who developed medical problems at critical points in Clinton scandals investigation (Tucker, Hale, both McDougals, Lindsey): 5
- Problem areas listed in a memo by Clinton's own lawyer in preparation for the president's defense: 40
- Number of witnesses and critics of Clinton subjected to IRS audit: 45
- Number of names placed in a White House secret database without the knowledge of those named: c. 200,000
- Number of women involved with Clinton who claim to have been physically threatened (Sally Perdue, Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Juantia Broaddrick): 6

Of course, let's not even delve into the Chinagate Missiles-for-Money Scandal, the still-redacted Barrett Report, and still-redacted Cox Report for other corruption (or perhaps even treason) investigations that were "stone-walled" and/or censored by the Clintons' lawyers.

Or Pardongate, in which Presidential pardons and commutations were seemingly traded like baseball cards... but for large sums of cash instead.

Or the litany of terrorist attacks sustained by US and Allied interests under the Clinton Regime without even a semblance of a plan to combat extremists and their state supporters.

Dear Linda, those are the sorts of thing that you can use for real grounds for impeachment. Not a demented fantasy world, for which you can point to no real instance of abuse of power. Now get back on your meds and stop bothering the working folks..

Postscript: Linda Bat-Boyd is allegedly a Washingon state senator and is director of Washingtonians For Impeachment: FlamingTreasonousWashingtonMoonbats.org; Citizens to Impeach George and Hillary Cheney: www.IAintPlayingWithAFullDeck.org; and Progressive Morons for a Better Seattle: moron.org.

Bonus Line o' the Day: Poet, Philosopher, First Lady

 
MVRWC asks (hat tip: Maggie's Farm):

At [what] point will a Clinton candidacy prompt the following question of Laura Bush “Do you feel qualified to run for President, after eight years as First Lady”?

[And] What would be the reaction if she said “being First Lady doesn’t qualify you to be President”?

The reaction? Anarchy. Cats and dogs, sleeping together. Truly, the end of the world.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Line o' the Day: Debate Chaos

 
LGF Commenter US Beast, responding to accusations that CNN rigged debate questions in order to lob softballs at Hillary Clinton.

Now lets be fair here. You can't expect CNN or the Dems to allow ordinary citizens to question these candidates. Ordinary citizens just aren't intelligent enough to understand the mental gymnastics it takes to arrive at the positions held my these mighty intellects. The average Joe or Josephine cannot comprehend what kind of intellectual fortitude is required to ignore the world as it is and achieve the world they hallucinate envision.


And remember, it was a bunch of these ordinary citizens that voted for George W. Bush, not once but twice.

Can you imagine the embarrassment it would cause if an ordinary citizen asked a question like: "Each of you talks about 'ending the war in Iraq'. None of you ever mention the word 'victory'. Has 'victory' become a dirty word for the Democrats or are you all a bunch of candy-assed defeatists?"

Chaos. It would result in absolute chaos.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Redacted: CNN's transcript of the Democratic Debate

 
CNN's entire Democratic debate appears to have been a sham from the first minute to the last.

And now it's been nearly a week and LaShannon Spencer -- one of CNN's "undecided voters" (and former political director for the Democratic Party in Arkansas, which CNN forgot to mention) -- remains missing from the transcript of the Las Vegas debate.

Redacted is in the news, only it's the concept that CNN is cleaning up its post-debate mess and not the movie.

But it's only been a week. Perhaps CNN needs more time to finish up its "rush" transcript.