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

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

What do Mark Steyn and Michael Savage in common?

 
What do Mark Steyn and Michael Savage in common -- I mean, besides their initials? Both are tangled in separate -- but important -- First Amendment showdowns.

In Savage's case, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) organized an advertising boycott against the conservative talk show host. While the boycott has had limited success, Savage decided to aggressively countersue, initially alleging copyright infringement by CAIR.

His recently amended lawsuit goes much further, asserting that CAIR "has consistently sought to silence opponents of violent terror through economic blackmail, frivolous but costly lawsuits, threats of lawsuits and abuses of the legal system." The suit also charges CAIR with using extortion, threats, abuse of the court system, and obtaining money via interstate commerce under false and fraudulent circumstances, describing it as a "political vehicle of international terrorism" and also linking the group with support of al-Qaida.

The suit notes that the federal government recently named CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged scheme to funnel $12 million to the terror group Hamas. Specifically, the suit includes the following claims:

* "CAIR is not a civil rights organization and it never has been. … CAIR was and is a political organization that advocates a specific political agenda on behalf of foreign interests."

* "The copyright infringement was done to raise funds for CAIR so that it could perpetuate and continue to perform its role in the RICO conspiracy set forth in Count Two and to disseminate propaganda on behalf of foreign interests that are opposed to the continued existence of the United States of America as a free nation."

* "CAIR would have to register as a foreign agent if their activities were not hidden under the false claim that they are a civil rights organization that enjoys tax-exempt status."

* "CAIR was tied to terror from the day it was formed. The group was incorporated on or about 1994 by Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad. Both men were officers of a terror organization known as the 'Islamic Association of Palestine.'"

* "CAIR's parent group, IAP, was founded in or about 1982 by Musa Abu Marzook. Marzook was IAP's ideological leader and controlling director from the date of its founding until shortly after his deportation from the United States in 1997. At all time relevant, Marzook was an operative of, and/or affiliated with, the 'Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah,' or 'Hamas.' Hamas is an international terrorist organization."

* ...In 1998, "CAIR denied bin Laden's responsibility for the two al-Qaida bombings of American embassies in Africa. CAIR's leader Ibrahim Hooper claimed the bombings resulted from 'misunderstandings on both sides.'"

* ..."On October 5, 2001, just weeks after 9/11, CAIR's New York office sent a letter to The New York Times arguing that the paper had misidentified three of the hijackers and suggesting that the attacks may have been committed by people who were impersonating Arab Muslims."

* ..."CAIR further exploited 9/11 as it put on its website a picture of the World Trade Center in flames and below it a call for donations that was linked to the Holy Land Foundation website." The Holy Land Foundation, the suit charges, is "a terror organization."

* "CAIR receives significant international funding. For example, in 1999 the Islamic Development Bank gave a $250,000 grant to CAIR to purchase land for a national headquarters. In 2002, the World Association for Muslim Youth, a Saudi government-funded organization, financed distributing books on Islam free of charge and an advertising campaign in American publications. This included a quarter page in USA Today each Friday, for a year, estimated to cost $1.04 million. In 2003, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated $500,000 to distribute the Koran and other books about Islam in the United States. In 2005, CAIR's Washington branch received a donation of $1,366,466 from a Saudi Arabian named Adnan Bogary. In 2006, Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, deputy ruler of Dubai and UAE minister of finance and industry, financed the building of a property in the U.S. to serve as an endowment for the organization. This gift is thought to generate income of approximately $3 million a year."

* ..."The Council on American-Islamic Relations is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. It works in the United States as a lobby against radio, television and print media journalists who dare to produce anything about Islam that is at variance with their fundamental agenda."

* "CAIR has links to both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorism expert Steven Emerson has stated before Congress that CAIR is a front for Hamas."

Savage's case also cites another ongoing suit against CAIR filed by the estate of John P. O'Neill, the former head of security for the World Trade Center. It alleges a RICO conspiracy involving CAIR led to the 9/11 attack.

"Throughout this period," the Savage suit alleges, "CAIR conspired to support terrorism and to obfuscate the roles of the various participants and conspirators in Radical Muslim Terrorism, and/or al-Qaida and/or the International Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, which... culminated in the 9/11 attack..."

Well-known columnist and commentator Mark Steyn also has a free-speech challenge.

He has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels for his bestselling book America Alone. The book's central assertion is that Western nations are slowly become subject to Islamic law (Sharia) and therefore individual liberties are increasingly under attack. That Steyn has to appear before judges in Canada may, in fact, validate his position entirely. Two weeks ago, the New York Post opined:

Steyn, who won the 2006 Eric Breindel Journalism Award (co-sponsored by The Post and its parent, News Corp), writes for dozens of publications on several continents. After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean's reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading “hatred and contempt" for Muslims.

The plaintiffs allege that Maclean's advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada's liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication.

Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported “hate speech."

Of course, a ban on opinions - even disagreeable ones - is the very antithesis of the Western tradition of free speech and freedom of the press... Indeed, this whole process of dragging Steyn and the magazine before two separate human-rights bodies for the “crime" of expressing an opinion is a good illustration of precisely what he was talking about.

...Since 9/11, Americans have been alert to the threat of terror from radical Islamists. But there's been all too little concern for a creeping accommodation of radical Islamist tenets, like curbs on critical opinions...

The obvious irony of this situation must have escaped the brilliant Canadian judicial experts who decided to allow this exercise in political correctness to proceed. Silencing controversial opinion is a decidedly anti-Western practice. That Canada would allow this case to be heard appears to be ample proof of Steyn's contention. And Savage's lawsuit may offer additional fuel to an already fiery discussion.

: For more information regarding the U.S. Government's case against the Holy Land Foundation, see the Dallas Morning News. Atlas has more details on the Savage lawsuit. Hat tips: Pookie and Larwyn.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Panel discussion: Mainstream Media Pundits wrap up 2007

 
Bill Maher: Panel, what was the biggest story of 2007? I mean, other than the United States having a mentally retarded president?

Keith Olbermann: It's obvious what the big story was: the Greatest crime of the 21st Century... the Bush Administration's outing of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame... and the subsequent pardon of criminal Scooter Libby. That story is one that our grandchildren will be discussing decades from now.

Richard Cohen: True dat.

Helen Thomas: No, no, no... the big story is the murder -- the murder! -- of millions of innocent Iraqis by the Bush administration and the U.S. military...

Chris Matthews: Helen, you raise a good point. The fact that more people are recognizing that the Bush Administration could be charged with war crimes... you know, it's no longer far-fetched to envision a modern version of the Nuremberg Trials and we could see that happen.

Bill Maher: Well, just remember how close Dick Cheney came to being killed in Afghanistan.... I mean, if that happened, it would be a really, really positive development and save the time and expense of a trial...

George Stephanopolous: I have to disagree. Not about Cheney being killed, but that the situation with oil prices strikes me as the most important story of 2007. And the fact that government can help push conservation by raising gas taxes even higher... and hasn't done so... is, to me, a huge issue. We need to raise taxes and that could save us from having to intervene in the Middle East.

Meredith Vieira: Well, a related story, that's even more important to me, is global warming. I mean, I'm running in the park in January in shorts... are we all gonna die, or what? We've really made a tremendous mess of the planet... it would probably be better if humans never existed!

Katie Couric: Those are all important, but don't forget the work of Jimmy Carter, what with his election monitoring, his winning the Nobel Peace Prize, equating Israel's treatment of Palestinians as apartheid... even at age 82, he's really done it all.

Dan Rather: Please, folks, don't gloss over the Bush Air National Guard Story that I broke on Sixty Minutes... now that the story has been corroborated --

Bill Maher: Hell, that was 2004! Oh man, he's really lost it all, hasn't he?

Dan Rather: You know, Bill, I'm sitting right here. I can hear every word you say.

* * *

Bill Maher: Okay, it's time to discuss presidential politics. What's your take on the primaries, which begin in a matter of a few days?

Chris Matthews: The person who has strengthened their hand most is Bobby Kennedy, I mean Barack Obama. His voice, his teeth, his charisma... I mean, it send shivers down my spine, all the way to my tuchus.

George Stephanopolous: Yeah, but Obama really doesn't have much of a shot in the general election. Think about it -- what Republican would ever vote for a black man? You know that they're all racists... every single one.

Amy Sullivan: Hillary has really distinguished herself. She's shown that she's truly a moral conservative, advocating for the rights of the unborn, and making real headway in Red States.

Chris Matthews: Many would argue that the Bhutto situation has strengthened Hillary's hand... after all, she met with Bhutto once when she was First Lady... you can't teach that kind of experience...

George Stephanopolous: It's the right time and place for Hillary. Some Democrats argue that John Edwards is a cynical opportunist, he's never visited Iraq, he won't admit a mistake, he voted for No Child Left Behind, he was affiliated with Hedge funds like Fortress... all of his positions seem to be conversions of convenience.

Richard Cohen: True dat, G.

* * *

Bill Maher: Thoughts about how the media changed in 2007?

Keith Olbermann: Most Americans feel as I do: that the danger of Al Qaeda pales in comparison with that posed by Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. Fox News is the real terrorist group that we must defeat.

Richard Cohen: True dat. Word to your Moms.

William Arkin: Well, not to toot my own horn, but I feel that NBC has transformed the reportage of war. We've exposed America's mercenary -- oops, sorry, volunteer -- military that has murdered, raped and pillaged its way across the Middle East.

Bill Maher: William, we'll have to leave it at that. We've run out of time, but I want to thank our panelists for their fair and balanced positions.

Just a reminder that we'll see you next week, when we host Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Michael Moore, Vladimir Putin, Maureen Dowd, Muqtada al-Sadr, Rosie O'Donnell and Osama Bin Laden in a panel discussion on "Influencing American Media for Fun and Profit."

* * *

The hyperlinked statements, while obviously paraphrased, represent what the parties in question have said publicly. Click each hyperlink to see the original quote. Special thanks to the Media Research Center and NewBusters for collecting these statements.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Open letter to NBC Sports regarding Keith Olbermann

 
December 28, 2007

To whom it may concern,

The choice of Keith Olbermann as a commentator for NBC Sports is ill-conceived at best.  Olbermann's virulent liberal commentary on MSNBC has received plenty of attention in so-called "red states", which comprise key markets for NFL football.  Rest assured that, in general, these markets do not appreciate Olbermann's sentiments.

Just days ago, Olbermann received a runners-up award for Media Research Center's Worst Reporting for 2007, stating: "Al Qaeda really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of Fox News. Fox News is worse than Al Qaeda - worse for our society. It's as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was."

He has called the commander-in-chief a fascist, referred to Mike Wallace's son as "monkey", questioned the results of the 2004 elections, used a "Seig Heil" salute to mock another commentator, and sprinkled numerous discussions with talk of impeachment of various administration officials.  Several of Olbermann's actions have been interpreted as beyond the pale (specifically the Wallace and the "Seig Heil" incidents, the latter drawing a reprimand from the Anti-Defamation League).

The list of Olbermann's grievous mistakes and attendant apologies are many.  That you can continue to employ a virulently partisan and unpopular character in a sportscasting role deserves your reflection and, we hope, correction.

Sincerely,

Doug Ross

cc: NFL Management Team

My entry in the Rageman Photoshop Contest

 
Read Snapped Shot's latest for the back-story.

Brian, please contact me so I can email you information as to where to send my winnings. Hehe.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Megahed, Mohamed, Moussaoui: what was about to go down?

 
Tampa Bay 10 just broke some intriguing news regarding the third University of South Florida student arrested on alleged terrorism-related charges.

For the third time in months, the University of South Florida is taking a hit for housing three students with alleged terrorist ties... "There [might] be others that may be involved in this thing too, that we don’t even know about today," said retired FBI agent Oscar Westerfield.

Now the recent arrest of Karim Moussaoui is raising eyebrows. According to a USF police report, Moussaoui got a written warning for trespassing at the Embassy Suites on campus, just one day before his arrest by the FBI.

Hotel Security Director Robert Forteau told police he was patrolling the parking lot around 2 a.m. when he saw Moussaoui milling around. When he approached Moussaoui, that's when the situation escalated.

The report goes on to say Moussaoui was verbally abusive, called Forteau the “n-word” and refused to leave the parking lot. By the time USF police intervened, Moussaoui was gone.

They tracked him down on campus, but his name didn't turn up on any watch lists, so they let him go.

Westerfield believes that something may have been about to do down. Moussaoui's attorney, Steve Crawford, denies any knowledge of that incident.

Moussaoui, a Moccoran foreign-national, studied computing engineering on a student visa and was arrested by the FBI on December 13th, just days before his graduation from USF. Moussaoui faces charges for firing weapons at a local shooting range with fellow students Megahed and Mohamed.


That pair had been arrested in July in South Carolina for possession of incendiary devices, thought to be pipe bombs.

Westerfield believes that the arrest so close to the graduation date meant that he was "getting close to leaving the country."

Pity the mainstream media hasn't taken an interest in this story.

The John Edwards Love Child Saga, the NBA and the MSM

 
The blog doing the most heavy lifting on the reputed John Edwards Love Child saga is Death by 1000 Papercuts. While the story has been curiously ignored by the mainstream media, DBKP has continued digging.


The story keeps getting curiouser and curiouser, as reported Edwards love interest Rielle Hunter is allegedly being housed by a retired NBA player.

Question: What former NBA player's latest charity outreach involves providing housing for unwed, pregnant women?

Hint #1: The player and various family members have each contributed the allowable limit each to the John Edwards campaign, for a total of over $15,000.

Hint #2: The unwed, pregnant woman is actually just one: Rielle Hunter, the former producer of videos for the Edwards campaign that traveled around the country last year with the presidential candidate.

DBKP received a tip that Hunter is now living in the house of a former NBA player who is also an Edwards backer.

Again, this caused us to ask questions.

Was Rielle Hunter a professional basketball fan?

What is the connection between Hunter and the NBA player/Edwards contributor?

Will this cause any curiosity in a Mainstream Media that seems determined not to exhibit any?

Okay, so I was curious. Went to OpenSecrets and did a donor lookup.

The only ex-NBA player and heavy Edwards donor I found is Eric Montross, who is listed in Chapel Hill. That's not to say Montross is hosting Rielle, but if the DBKP story is accurate, he's someone for the MSM to check into.

Fittingly, DBKP hammers the mainstream media for its non-coverage of the John Edwards Love Child story.

[The story] doesn't excite Bob Schieffer...

A presidential candidate's alleged mistress moving close to campaign headquarters, driving around in a BMW owned by the campaign's former Director of Operations, living in a house owned by the campaign's backer, having her bills and living expenses paid for--well, who is paying them?

Doesn't matter.

That wouldn't likely excite Bob Schieffer, either.


...Unnamed source, you say?

"...it appears to me that there's absolutely nothing to it"

Good thing Deep Throat had the good sense not to leak to the Enquirer.

Bob Schieffer would have passed on that one.

But DBKP's doesn't mean to be picking on Bob Schieffer. We like Bob and always enjoyed watching "Face the Nation".

Bob's is shorthand for the attitude of the Mainstream Media.

I'm firmly convinced that the blogosphere renders the MSM increasingly irrelevant by the day.

Update: DBKP calls our attention to a curious statement in the December 19th Enquirer article:

...Young placed Rielle in a rental home in the Governor’s Club, the same gated community where he lives in a multimillion-dollar home with his wife Cheri and their young children. That home is owned by an Edwards’ backer and is less than five miles from Edwards’ national campaign headquarters in Chapel Hill, N.C.

A former “Director of Operations” for Edwards’ campaign, Young’s last official position with the campaign was “North Carolina Finance Director.”

He left that job about a month ago – about the same time Rielle settled in Chapel Hill.

A source close to Young vehemently denies that he funneled campaign money to Rielle – who drives a BMW SUV registered in Young’s name.

What an odd denial! Who accused Young of funneling campaign funds to support Rielle in the first place? I wonder if any member of our crack mainstream media will bother to check into this interesting thread.

Update II: Here's something I missed from Newsweek in December of 2006 (hat tip: Luke Ford):

The [Edwards campaign] Webisodes are the brainchild of Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker who met Edwards at a New York bar where Edwards was having a business meeting. "I didn’t think it was John Edwards," Hunter recalls, "because the public persona did not mesh at all with the person who was sitting in front of me." Hunter pitched Edwards on the documentaries as a medium for bringing the "real John Edwards" to the people. Edwards still has a ways to go. In the midst of a short theme sequence that begins each Webisode, the camera lingers over the former senator’s behind as he tucks a starched white shirt into his pants [LF: 1:12 into this video]. Still, Hunter, now under contract with Edwards’s organization, says she sees the untucked John Edwards coming more and more to the fore.

The 'untucked' John Edwards?

Update III: Jezebel certainly doesn't mince words.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Jonah Goldberg's new book: Liberal Fascism

 
One of the most frequent insults hurled by liberals at the right consists of labeling the latter group "fascists." Across the left's media spectrum, whether it's the diarists at Daily Kos or Air America Radio or MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, the epithet is used with an almost casual disregard.

Jonah Goldberg's new book turns this routine assertion on its head, carefully employing twentieth century history as a backdrop. The book Liberal Fascism lays out an impressive and well-researched argument that is sure to ripple through the punditsphere for months.

In fact, the reviews are stunning, as much for the reviewers as anything else.

Replacing manufactured myths with enlightening research, Goldberg begins by showing how the Italian fascism, German Nazism and American Progressivism (forebear of modern liberalism) all drew from the same intellectual foundations the idea that the state can create a kind of social utopia for its citizens. He then traces fascism's history in the U.S. -- from Woodrow Wilson's war socialism and FDR's New Deal to today's liberal push for a greater alliance between big business and government. Finally, Goldberg reveals the striking resemblances between the opinions advanced by Hitler and Mussolini and the current views of the left on such diverse issues as government's role in the economy, campaign finance reform, campus "speech codes," education, environmentalism, gun control, abortion, and euthanasia.

Impeccably researched and persuasively argued, Liberal Fascism will elicit howls of indignation from the liberal establishment...

* How fascism, Nazism, Progressivism, and modern liberalism are all alike in principle, in that all believe that government should be allowed to do whatever it likes, so long as it is for "good reasons"

* How, before World War II and the Holocaust, fascism was considered a progressive social movement both in the U.S. and Europe -- but was redefined afterwards as "right wing"

* How the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term "National Socialism") who loathed the free market, believed in free health care, opposed inherited wealth, spent vast sums on public education, purged Christianity from public policy, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life

* How the Nazis declared war on smoking; supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control; and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities -- where campus speech codes were all the rage

* Adolph Hitler, Man of the Left: how his views and policies regarding capitalism, class warfare, environmentalism, gun control, euthanasia and even smoking are remarkably close to those of modern liberals

* How Woodrow Wilson and the other founding fathers of American liberalism were far crueler jingoists and warmongers than modern conservatives have ever been

* How Wilson's crackdown on civil liberties in the name of national security far exceeds anything even attempted by Joe McCarthy, much less George W. Bush

* How Mussolini and Hitler both thought -- quite rightly -- that they were doing things along the same lines as FDR

* How, in the 1930s, FDR's New Deal was praised for its similarity to Italian Fascism -- "the cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery," said an influential member of FDR's team

* How, just like modern liberals, Mussolini promised a "Third Way" that "went beyond tired categories of left and right" in order to "get things done"

* Mussolini's and Hitler's not-so-secret admirers: how many prominent progressives -- from W.E.B. Dubois in the U.S. to George Bernard Shaw England -- publicly praised German Nazism and Italian Fascism

* Liberal fascism and the cult of the state: how progressivism shared with fascism a conviction that, in a truly modern society, the state must take the place of religion

* How the modern heirs of the fascist tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood...

"'It is my argument that American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion,' Jonah Goldberg writes near the beginning of Liberal Fascism. My first reaction was that he is engaging in partisan hyperbole. That turned out to be wrong. Liberal Fascism is nothing less than a portrait of twentieth-century political history as seen through a new prism. It will affect the way I think about that history -- and about the trajectory of today's politics -- forever after." -- Charles Murray, author of Human Accomplishment and coauthor of The Bell Curve

"In the greatest hoax of modern history, Russia's ruling 'socialist workers party,' the Communists, established themselves as the polar opposites of their two socialist clones, the National Socialist German Workers Party (quicknamed 'the Nazis') and Italy's Marxist-inspired Fascisti, by branding both as 'the fascists.' Jonah Goldberg is the first historian to detail the havoc this spin of all spins has played upon Western thought for the past seventy-five years, very much including the present moment. Love it or loathe it, Liberal Fascism is a book of intellectual history you won't be able to put down -- in either sense of the term." -- Tom Wolfe, author of Bonfire of the Vanities and I Am Charlotte Simmons...

It's available January 8th. My advice is to buy two. One for you; one for a progressive friend.

Hat tip: The Corner

Update: the morbidly obese James Wolcott -- writing at the morbidly moronic Vanity Fair -- is on a whining frenzy, what with Goldberg receiving positive reviews from Tom Wolfe and all. The envy is almost palpable and the sweat rolling from Wolcott's furrowed brow almost visible. One feels an urge to plug an IV into the rotund progressive, not to help his blood pressure, but instead to release some of the highly compressed gas circulating within his Mooreian frame.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Media Research Center announces the 2007 Worsties!

 
The Media Research Center has announced the winners of its 20th Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting. And the winner is... drumroll, please... ... ...

Cue the damn drumroll! I said cue it!

Ah, forget it.

Budget cuts here at blog central... sorry about that.

The Media Research Center today awarded McClatchy News Service the dis-honor of the worst Notable Quotable of 2007, for a headline trying its best to contort good Iraq news into bad: “As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch” (October 16, 2007).

First Runner-Up goes to MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann in October’s Playboy magazine: “Al Qaeda really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of Fox News. Fox News is worse than Al Qaeda - worse for our society. It’s as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was.”

As an aside, can you believe Olbermann has a part-time job as a sportscaster? His demented MSNBC soliloquies -- which typically average eleven viewers -- have cemented his spot in the Pantheon of Moonbats®.

Funniest award winner?

“You know, I wanted to sit on a jury once and I was taken off the jury. And the judge said to me, ‘Can, you know, can you tell the truth and be fair?’ And I said, ‘That’s what journalists do.’ And everybody in the courtroom laughed. It was the most hurtful moment I think I’ve ever had.”
      — Co-host Diane Sawyer... on ABC’s Good Morning America July 12, following a report on how some people try to avoid serving on a jury.

Hat tip: Jammie Wearing Fool

Monday, December 24, 2007

Understatement o' the Day

 
More brilliant work from The Politico:

Huckabee running as a rebel? How'd they guess? Was it his surrogates attacking Rush Limbaugh? Was it calling the National Review the "chattering class"? Executing a Kosian attack on the Bush administration, claiming it has a "bunker mentality"? Harshly criticizing Condy? Or quoting scripture to compare those that oppose him to those facing God's wrath?

Line o' the Day: Paul Krugman's Despicable Agenda

 
Noting Bruce Bartlett's criticism of Paul Krugman, Blue Crab Boulevard commenter Mwalimu Daudion observes:

My wife is a black African (born and raised in Africa). I am white, and our biological son is one of the few people who can accurately claim to be “African-American”.

I mention this not to play the Absolute Moral Authority card (a gambit designed to try to silence opposing points of view), but to point out that when it comes to race relations there is no theoretical component for us. We are living these issues in our everyday lives.

That is why I find the tactics of Paul Krugman and the MSM to be nothing short of evil. Krugman cares nothing for rooting out racism in politics and society (if he did, he would find a target-rich environment in the modern Democrat Party of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jimmy Carter, etc.). He cares only for keeping the black community in a permanent state of rage and fear - and voting the straight Democrat ticket. Krugman and the MSM take no responsibility whatsoever for the extensive collateral damage they cause by the lies they routinely tell in the pursuit of power.

As far as the MSM is concerned, facts must always be made subordinate to the narrative when political power is at stake. This is the reason I believe that the MSM pushes phony racism stories like the Jena 6, the Willie Horton ads, the fake Duke rape case, the “macaca” incident in the Senate campaign in Virginia last year, and the Reagan-as-KKK-sympathizer.

Mwalimu: as winner of our prestigious Line o' the Day award, please email us to arrange the delivery of your prizes. Due to budget constraints, they're limited to a slightly used Christmas tree (available December 26th), two No-Name-O brand snow tires, and a 32 oz. can of Boll-Weevil-Be-Gone Outhouse Sanitizer.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Lenin Lite wins Time's Person of the Year Award

 
Fausta alerts us to mainstream media's version of "earth-shattering news": Russian President-for-Life Vladimir Putin is Time Magazine's Person of the Year.

The 2007 honor went to the Russian leader because of Putin's "extraordinary feat of leadership in taking a country that was in chaos and bringing it stability," said Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor.

Hate to break the news to you, Richard, but the major contributing factor to stability in Russia was oil prices, not a penny-ante dictator like Putin.

Time's headline: "A Tsar Is Born." Who's writing these captions: Paris Hilton?


Time Magazine's Richard Stengel congratulates Vladimir Putin

Macsmind's line is a keeper: Time names KGB Agent of the Year.

Good luck with fixing your circulation woes, Time. Meanwhile, General David Petraeus is the Person of the Year from the perspective of most Americans. Perhaps Time has decided to stop concentrating on the American market, though, which would explain their choice of Lenin Lite.

Update on 12/21: The Guardian reports that Putin may have enriched himself during his reign by as much as $40 billion.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Nixon Redux

 
Once in a long while, Democratic Underground is useful for something other than counterintelligence.

Frank Rich: Mrs. Clinton’s shrill campaign continues to cast her as Nixon to Mr. Obama's Kennedy.

Image: Delusional Duck

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Gateway Pundit exposes the Real Faux News

 
Leftie pundits enjoy calling Fox News "Faux News." Their case is so compelling that FAIR's Fox News Watch has posted exactly two (2) stories in the last year.

Back in the little land we like to call reality, Gateway Pundit has the must-read digest of real faux news.

In roughly six and a half weeks the mainstream media reported 6 bogus stories from Iraq and Afghanistan... There certainly could be more... They all reflected poorly on the US and US military.

Isn't it past time that the media be held accountable for their horrible record?

If business results are any measure, most folks are holding the MSM accountable -- by completely ignoring them.