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

Saturday, May 01, 2010

'Obama's Katrina': an Illustrated Timeline

20 April 2010: An oil rig rented and operated by BP in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, killing 11 workers.

21 April 2010: All 115 workers are evacuated from the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig.

22 April 2010: The Deepwater Horizon collapses into the sea and sinks.

22 April 2010: President Obama delivers a speech on Wall Street to advocate more government intervention in the country's financial sector, but offers no reforms for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which helped precipitate the 2008 meltdown. He also delivers a speech regarding the contributions of Earth Day to environmental awareness.

Meanwhile, 200,000 gallons of oil are spilling daily.

23 April 2010: President Obama blasts the Arizona governor, state legislators, police officers and residents for backing federal laws that prohibit illegal immigration.

23 April 2010: The oil continues to flow.

24 April 2010: The president delivers his weekly radio address, which focuses on further regulation of Wall Street. He also calls upon certain segments of his original supporters -- African-Americans, Latinos, Hispanics, and women -- and asks them to mobilize for political action.

24 April 2010: Efforts to contain the spill are hampered by lack of resources and difficult weather.

25 April 2010: President Obama interrupts a weekend getaway to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham in North Carolina.

25 April 2010: Oil spreads across the gulf and heads toward the Louisiana shoreline.

26 April 2010: President Obama appears in a "Vote 2010" video, distributed by his political action wing Organizing for America, which serves as a stark appeal to blacks and Latinos -- specifically -- for their votes in November.

26 April 2010: The Coast Guard warns that the spill could become one of the worst in United States history.

28 April 2010: The President holds a rare, impromptu press conference on Air Force One, addressing "questions on the Arizona immigration law, the financial regulation bill and other issues." Obama also prepared to make his second nomination to the Supreme Court and warns of a "'conservative' brand of judicial activism in which the courts are often not showing appropriate deference to the decisions of lawmakers."

28 April 2010: large pools of oil are spotted close to the Louisiana shore line.

29 April 2010: the White House Flickr Feed is updated with a photo of the President meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and senior administration officials, including National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, which indicates that they are urgently working the issue of the oil spill.

29 April 2010: Meanwhile, local officials, the Coast Guard and private citizens continue their efforts to prevent damage to the Louisiana coastline.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Perhaps if the oil breached the Louisiana levees, then caught on fire, and then turned New Orleans into a Dresden-like inferno, the President would stop campaigning for a couple of days and actually pay attention to his own, personal Katrina. Even The New York Times has noticed, decrying the President's lackadaisical response. But I'm guessing that somehow, someway, it's all President Bush's fault.



Hat tips: The EIB Network and The Big Picture. Related: 'Who's Responsible'? and 'Eight Days in April.' Linked by: Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, the Washington Examiner, Jammie Wearing Fool and Cold Fury. Thanks!

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Olbermann: Sarah Palin is the 'Imaginary President of Right-Wing America'

William Jacobson describes the rude welcome received by WaPo blogger Dave Weigel when his findings didn't match the desired leftist talking points. Tasked with covering the conservative movement and Republicans in general, Weigel spent time delving into the Sarah Palin email hacking trial.

Weigel faced a nasty reception when his research determined that the conspiracy theories around Palin were baseless. He wrote, "Last night I appeared on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann to talk about a story that had been driven into the mainstream by the blog PalinGates. The story: Palin made three statements that PalinGates believed may have been false, and therefore grounds for perjury.... Today, PalinGates published a lengthy attack on me, including a screenshot of a friendly email I sent them before I went on the show, after my own reporting had convinced me that their first post was mostly baseless."

Welcome to the club, Dave. As an aside, this overall theme reminds me of the Karl Rove frogmarching fantasies entertained by a plethora of creepy losers.

Jacobson has a personal message for Weigel: "...thanks for being fair-minded in the face of Olbermann, whose dumbfounded reaction at 2:55 of the video [pictured above] -- upon hearing the bad news -- was priceless."

Olbermann's stuttering reaction to discovering that Palin would never be frogmarched out of the courthouse ended with a Tourette's-style outburst, almost as if a pejorative directed the governor's way would act as a soothing balm. He snapped out a nasty crack that Palin served as the 'Imaginary President of Right-Wing America', which Weigel ignored.

Dave, here's a gentle prediction: you'll never be invited on Countdown To No Ratings again.

You see, Strap-On Keith and reality have never been spotted in the same room at the same time.


Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Rupert unleashes the dogs of war on Pinchy

Dan from New York writes, "If you haven't already, drop the Times, pick up the Journal."

Wall Street Journal revs up New York Times rivalry


AP, 4/25/2010

NEW YORK – It might be the last great American newspaper war. And Rupert Murdoch intends to win it.

He has made a career of grabbing readers and advertisers from competing newspapers, and now he is racheting up the challenge his Wall Street Journal poses to The New York Times. On Monday, the Journal is launching a metro section that will vie for readers and advertisers on the Times' turf.

Although the new section will be available only in the New York City area, collateral damage could spread around the country. Both newspapers are jostling with each other, USA Today and regional dailies for readers. By dramatically lowering advertising rates in New York to undercut the Times, Murdoch's assault could leave both newspapers with fewer resources for other expansion plans.

... "The Times has a lot of readers and a lot of them are very loyal, long-standing folks. It's not going to be easy to peel off the Times' core constituency," says Dean Starkman, a former Journal reporter who writes for the Columbia Journalism Review. "As a business proposition, I think I'm with the majority of skeptics who think that this could ultimately damage both papers."

...Luxury retailer Bergdorf Goodman, a longtime prominent advertiser in the Times, plans to advertise in the new Journal section. "We're going to try it and see," spokeswoman Ginger Reeder says. "We always look for new ways to reach our customers." It's not yet clear whether Bergdorf will reduce its advertising in the Times.

Of course, the AP fails to note that the Times long ago ceased operating as a newspaper; today its content consists entirely of repackaged press releases from the DNC and Organizing for America.


Saturday, April 24, 2010

Suitable Attire for the Next Tea Party Protest

Now, reading The New York Times and other left-wing blogs, you would discover that this is the attire of a Nazi-slash-Klansman-slash-Right-Wing-Extremist and possible terrorist threat.

Therefore, I encourage Tea Party activists to adopt clothing that more accurately reflects the tender sentiments of the Left. Like this.

I wouldn't encourage carrying batons, though in the case of bringing weapons to polling places, apparently that's encouraged by this administration.


Monday, April 19, 2010

Bill Maher Bechumps Himself: The Same Independents and Conservative Democrats who voted for Obama are now Teabagging Racist Klanners

Continuing his quest to reach the pinnacle of nescience, the lavishly ignorant Bill Maher bechumped himself once again yesterday. On his television show, which gets lower ratings than the spin dry cycle at the laundromat, Maher and his guests proferred the standard state-approved propaganda. You know, Tea Party activists are racists.

...Maher’s guests, which included New Yorker editor David Remnick and journalist Laura Flanders, appeared to concur with Frank Rich’s take on what’s motivating the movement, concluding from the poll results that the Partiers are actually not that upset about government involvement or taxing (they like their medicare; social security), but are worried and angry that we have a black president.

Says Flanders: “All this time we’ve been told to believe that they were beleaguered poor white people worried about taxes, now we come to find out they’re actually quite well-to-do white people, worried about a black president.”

Says Remnick: What concerns me is the phrase ‘Take Back Our Country.’ When I hear the phrase ‘we want our country back’ I’m afraid that’s coded language.

Counters Maher: Let’s not say they’re racist, let’s say they’re nostalgic for an era where blacks were invisible.

Liberals love dividing people. They divide by race, religion, income, industry, you name it.

The idiot with the veiny, bulbous nose somehow forgot that 40% of Tea Party members are Democrats or independent. Those are the same swing voters who elected Barack Obama president. But now they're racist, teabagging Klanners.

This is precisely why liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid. Those who allow themselves to be divided -- to be manipulated -- by arbitrary distinctions drawn by idiots like Maher are themselves ignorant.

Our founding document -- the Declaration -- and our highest law -- the Constitution -- draw no such distinctions. Millions gave their lives to defeat slavery, crush Nazism and eradicate Communism to protect our right to live freely, to set limits on an out-of-control, authoritarian government.

That is why liberalism must be defeated. The enemies of the Constitution side with evil; they side with unlimited government and inevitable tyranny. And the pathetic Bill Maher is the handmaiden of stupidity.


Update: Black Tea Videos.


Sunday, April 18, 2010

Straight out of Caracas: White House tied to anti-Tea Party astroturf group?

Cass Sunstein, Barack Obama's 'Regulatory Czar', has a history of advocacy. Unfortunately, it's for the kind of Statism that would make Mussolini cringe. Sunstein, among other egregious activities, supports the establishment of government propaganda ministries.

Writing on January 15, 2010, Glenn Greenwald at Salon noted Barack Obama’s new head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, had championed creating fake websites and using outside 501(c)(3) interest groups to act as alleged independent champions of government policy and to “cognitively infiltrate” opposition websites, etc...

Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging

That may explain websites like The Other 95, a thinly veiled propaganda site hawking the White House talking points. Some would call it astroturf.

Why this sort of site is needed, when we already have The New York Times, is a question for the Democrat National Committee. Or its contributors, who appear happy to throw money into a sinkhole.

RedState's Erick Erickson reports the website designer is affiliated with MoveOn.org and other Soros-controlled groups. You know, grassroots.

Let’s also remember that Center for American Progress, led by Obama’s transition team director John Podesta, has regular 8 a.m. phone calls to coordinate activity on the left.

It’s a play right out of Lenin’s handbook, forget Alinsky, to call the authentic “inauthentic” and then create something inauthentic demanding it be called “authentic.”

Indeed ™.


Gibbs Proposes End to White House Leaks by Axelrod Emanuel Anonymous Sources

The White House is seeking to control every facet of administration messaging by legacy media.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs approached White House reporters earlier this year in an attempt to end the long-standing practice of sourcing claims to anonymous administration officials, he told CNN on Sunday.

During that meeting with the press corps, Gibbs offered correspondents a no-background policy, in which the White House would only give on-the-record interviews if reporters promised not to cite unnamed sources, he explained to host Howard Kurtz in an interview on "Reliable Sources."

"I think we could all put what we want to say to the American people and to the news media all on the record," he said. "I've offered to end it. But it's got to be a two-way street."

The news arrives as tensions between the White House and its devoted correspondents are growing, in part because of the minimal access they had to last week's Nuclear Security Summit. Those reporters recently sat down with Gibbs to share their concerns in a meeting that lasted well over an hour.

Leni Riefenstahl could not be reached for comment.


Update: "WH Sources: Help Us Rahm, You're Our Only Hope"

Hat tip: Memeorandum.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Unhinged reporter for McClatchy (but I repeat myself) claims GOP is 'unified by hatred of Obama'

Shockingly, one of McClatchy's professional dimwits keeps banging the race card drum, given his complete inability to rationally debate policy positions. Like whether one political party is ignoring the Constitution, for example.

Thought experiment: imagine the headline, circa 2002, that reads Unified by hatred of Bush, Moonbats seek challenger.

I'll leave you with this. The stock chart of McClatchy (MNI).

Nice work, pro journalists!

Memo to the Sharpton League of Hatemongers: we hate your policies. Not because of your race. Because of your stupidity. We hate Marxism. And Marxism is the doctrine of the stupid.


Hat tip: @McClatchyWatch.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

'I am not an African-American! I am Lloyd Marcus, AMERICAN!'

El Marco has the must-see photos of the Tea Party Express rolling through a town near you.

And he points us to an outstanding article by Bob Parks, which I'd encourage you to whip out at any legacy media reporter who tries to paint Tea Partiers as racists.

It's called "The Democrat Race Lie" and it's an exceptional summary for dimwits on the left.

Yes -- I mean you, Garofalo.


Bitter Spinster Columnist Visits Saudi Arabia, Observes Rampant Misogyny -- And Bashes Catholic Church For Mistreatment of Women

Funny, I didn't know there were any Catholic institutions allowed in Saudia Arabia. Yet, somehow, the creative genius of one Dowd-comma-Maureen makes the conceptual leap from the malevolent misogyny of Sharia law to... her downtrodden status as a female Catholic.

How could such spirited women [Saudi females], smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?

I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing.

I, too, belonged to an inbred and wealthy men’s club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity.

I, too, remained part of an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world.

Gee, Maureen, conflating your own petty misery with this:

That's a woman receiving lashes for alleged adultery. Or this:

That's a woman who was stoned to death for alleged adultery. Or this:

That's a woman who was beheaded for... something. Must've been bad, though.

Truth be told, Mo, conflating your view of the Catholic Church and all of its painful and ugly scandals, with an endemic, sanctioned culture of brutality and misogyny seems a tad, well, stupid. Moronic, in fact.

It's amazing how none of these brave, bold Times columnists ever screw up enough courage to attack real religious extremism.

Here's hoping Pinchy moves MoDo behind a pay-wall again -- and soon. Her material is even more pathetic than the Bush-Cheney-Plame-Neocon column she ran for roughly 200 weeks in a row.


Hat tip: Memeorandum. Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Interview with Lauren Victoria Burke, first person to report that racial slurs had been hurled at members of Congress

Blogger Lauren Victoria Burke is the "unofficial blogger of the Congressional Black Caucus" (CBC). She was kind enough to take time to answer a few questions this evening to try to shed light on reports that racial epithets had been shouted at members of Congress. She appears to have been the first person on the scene to report the incident.

Q: Could you describe your relationship with the CBC? Are you in an official capacity -- or kind of a freelance journalist?

A: I'm freelance, I've been a journalist since 1998. I started Crewof42 last year on July 4. Technically, they have their own blog, but it's kind of a joke. I'm known as the unofficial blogger of the CBC!

Q: On March 20th, I think you were the first to report (via Twitter) the allegations of racial slurs hurled at members of Congress. Is this correct and could you describe what happened in your view?

A: I don't know if I was the first to report, but I did Twitter using my BlackBerry once I'd had a chance to talk to Andre Carson. It's not like some reporter runs up to you and tells you something and you can instantly report on it second-hand. I want to find that member and determine what really happened.

I went to the lobby after the vote and saw six journalists around Carson. This was very rare, because he's such a junior guy. So there are a bunch of people around him and I heard only the tail end of the story. He saw me and knew I'd joined the group late, so he stuck around and retold the story. Other reporters probably had to find their computers, author the article and have it edited, while I just used Twitter at that time.

Q: Do you think racial epithets were hurled?

A: I'm really surprised at the publicity this story's received. Given what we know about some of the other incidents that seem far more serious than someone using the n-word. Like the gas line getting cut at a member of Congress' brother's house. Given the threats that have occurred on both sides of the aisle, I'm really surprised around the publicity this has generated.

That day was a really long one and I was outside most of the time. Every time the members vote and every time they caucus they have to cross the street. It was a nice day, and, frankly, I think they wanted to see the protest, see what was going on. They sometimes use the tunnels, but it was a nice day.

It's not completely shocking that one person out of 2,000 could have said that. If you told me that pro-life demonstrators did it, I'd have a harder time believing it. I don't understand why it's so shocking. I find it difficult to believe that John Lewis and Andre Carson made up this lie.

I think it very unlikely that a guy like John Lewis would involve himself in something like that. Anthony Weiner's running around trying to get on TV every five seconds, but Lewis is very low-key guy.

The idea that everything's got to be on videotape for it to have happened just really surprises me.

Q: Sam Stein at the Huffington Post wrote a 400-word story shortly after your blog post went up. He included several interviews with members of the CBC. Was this something you were aware of?

A: I don't know him at all, I was outside a lot that day. I didn't see him, but it was pretty chaotic, a lot of people in the street, huge crowds, I wouldn't have known him. I only deal with what I know, I'm not interested in reading someone else's report. We had to track down -- first-hand -- John Lewis and Andre Carson. You can't just report on what the Huffington Post's saying.

Q: Actually, it's interesting you say that, because that's precisely what McClatchy did, according to their online editor, Mark Seibel.

A: McClatchy's guy, Bill Douglas, I don't know if he was talking to Carson or not. We were waiting, along with Douglas, waiting for Obama to leave and all of the security to clear out. Bill Douglas was there for the John Lewis story. Carson reported the n-word was used three times... I've seen reports of 15 times.

I think the story is hotter than normal because of John Lewis' involvement. If it were some other members, I don't know. But John Lewis is like... sort of a... historic figure, actually. He's 70 years old, very respected and carries a lot more weight.

Q: There are more than a dozen videos of various portions of the walk both to and from the Capitol, and no one has been able to pinpoint any racial epithets. Even Rep. Jackson seemed to be videotaping. Do you think it's concerning there is no evidence of the allegations in an age where virtually every second in public is taped?

A: What I think about recording in this situation... I really don't know if the sound any particular sound would be picked up. Remember, a lot of these are flip-phones or small digital cameras, not exactly heavy-duty professional microphones. One thing that doesn't come across is is how loud it was out there.

A unidirectional mike wouldn't necessarily capture it. It was a wall of sound and, while some of the tapes I've heard are better than others, I'm not that impressed by the theory advanced by Mr. Hannity and Mr. Breitbart that it had to be recorded to have happened.

You know, Barney Frank and Joe Crowley walked out there together and no one is going to tape every second and capture every word. So I'm not impressed with the fact that if it wasn't taped it never happened.

There's a common-sense element to it. If you're there and you see something unusual going on... and people are really emotional about it, people are pissed and angry... logically, you'd think something had happened. Jesse Jackson was one of the people that heard about it sooner... he came off the House floor and stormed into the Speaker's lobby... highly unusual... you see people do stuff like that and, believe me, is it possible they could make this up? Andre Carson would have to have had a psychotic break and then John Lewis would have had to corroborate it... many things are possible but that seems highly unlikely.

And when you have 2,000 people [Ed: I've seen reputable estimates of 15,000], the way the Tea Party should have played it... actually, the way they did play it, is that a single person could have done anything. But even the spitting incident that no one's disputing, including the Capitol police --

Q: Actually, the reports I've seen indicate that no one was arrested, and the media was off-base on that, and that there are disputes that the incident actually took place. How do you see it?

A: What happened was that the Capitol Police grabbed who Cleaver thought it was, but he didn't want to ID the wrong person. Now the Capitol Police are allowed to hold someone for 45 minutes without charges and they did so, but released him because Cleaver just wasn't sure.

Now this is a felony assault, this spitting incident, and a lot of the attorneys on staff were very upset. The police should have pursued an assault claim, since this was a federal official it was a felony. But Cleaver was unsure that was the right person and decided to drop it.

Q: I know you probably don't want to speak for the CBC, but do Tea Party activists strike you as racists or hate-mongers?

A: No matter what the group is, you have a middle of the road people, you have some people on the soft edges and then you have the extremists. You could be talking about Greenpeace, the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, whatever. During the Civil Rights era, you had Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

Frankly it's hard to judge percentages because the Tea Party is so new.

All I know is that if you look at incidents that have been proven, there appears to be a fringe active. When I see members of Congress having their windows broken, faxed drawings sent to them with pictures of nooses, physical acts like the gas line being cut... those are physical, active things. We didn't report half the things that have happened because it's just too much.

Members get threatened all the time, on both sides of the aisle.

I'm an American History major, and racial issues are woven throughout the history of the country. Let's not be naive, there will always be a fringe out there that has a racial component. Race is omnipresent.

Q: As I see it, a lot of the Tea Party activists are worried about the encroachment of the very kind of authoritarian, centralized government that our country's founders broke away from. The federal government has become this omnipresent force, far beyond what the states that formed it had ever envisioned. I mean, the size of your toilet tank is now regulated by federal bureaucrats...

A: Yes, I would agree that most of the teabaggers [Ed: sic!] are focused most on taxes, on financial issues. I mean, the liberal stereotype was reinforced when the first thing Obama does when he took office is to spend $787 billion on a stimulus package!

And the latest bailout of people that have been foreclosed on, I totally disagree with. If you're dumb enough to spend too much on your house, my tax dollars should not be borrowed against for that.

I understand the Tea Party sentiment and also understand you can't control everything everyone says.

Q: Are there issues that actually divide the CBC -- for example, school choice? Or is there unanimity in the policy positions?

A: These are 42 people just like everyone else. You get the fights, the loud meetings. You have hard workers and the lazy ones, who should retire. You get the entire gamut, just like if you picked 42 people off the street.

One of the hidden things that no one talks about regarding the CBC is I think most are pro-life!

Many are very religious, and while you wouldn't expect it, many of them I think really do believe in the pro-life side.

The school choice thing is a classic, because few members send their kids to public school. When Democrats do it, it's hypocritical, because they spend so much money on public schools then won't send their kids to the very same schools.

But the group itself is just like any other group. Quite a fascinating group of people. And members of Congress get a bum rap, that they're lazy, but the schedules they keep -- party has nothing to do with it -- are just unbelievable. They're very hard working.

Q: I don't think too many folks would argue that they don't work hard... just that they're disconnected from their constituents! They don't represent what the people seem to want.


I'd like to thank Ms. Burke for her time. Her website is CrewOf42.
A: The health care bill was the quintessential example of technicalities... members doing something that looked very elitist. Like, "I'm smarter than you are, and you'll find out what's in the bill when we pass it."

The Obama administration from the beginning did not present it well or very clearly.

A lot of the Republican ideas from Price and Ryan could very easily have been incorporated into the bill.

But what we've seen is just complete polarization. The media helps foist it as they run from story to story trying to one-up each other. What we have now is just political polarization.


Linked by: Gateway Pundit and Jammie Wearing Fool. Thanks!

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Timeline: Anatomy of a Tea Party Smear by the Democrat-Media Complex

This post updates yesterday's article entitled 'A tale of two time-stamps: Smoking-gun proof that Democrats, the Huffington Post and McClatchy conspired to smear Tea Party activists?'. I want to personally thank McClatchy DC editor Mark Seibel, who has been incredibly helpful in providing transparency into his side of the story.


This article attempts to reconstruct the events of 3/20/2010, in which Congressional Democrats were reportedly harassed by Tea Party activists with racial and sexual slurs during their walks to and from the Capitol building. Reports that black Congressmen had been called the "n-word" spread within minutes into mainstream media reports.

3/20 14:30


At around 2:30pm, members of the House uncharacteristically walked from the Cannon Building to the Capitol in the middle of a massive Tea Party protest. Michelle Bachmann said this journey was unprecedented in her experience. She stated, "In three years I have never seen Nancy Pelosi cross the street, the way that you saw in that picture... They deliberately went through that crowd perhaps to try and incite something."

There were a variety of videotapes of the incident (for example, the walk to the Capitol is covered here and here, the walk from the Capitol here, here and here). Furthermore, as you can see above, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. appears to have videotaped the walk, presumably to catch protesters in the act of hurling racial slurs.


3/20 14:34


Lauren Victoria Burke, a self-described "unbought and unbossed" blogger reporting upon "the 42 members of the Congressional Black Caucus" tweets the first report of the use of the "n-word". @CrewOf42 is Burke's Twitter handle.

Her first tweet reporting the incident came at 2:34pm, just four minutes after -- according to Cashill's timeline -- the CBC departed the Cannon Building for the Capitol. @CrewOf42 tweeted that Rep. Carson said he'd been called the "N-word", the HuffPo DC bureau chief re-tweeted the news. There was no link and no attribution associated with this message.

Her tweet was posted from the web, which means she posted from either a high-powered smart-phone, a full-blown laptop or a desktop.


3/20 15:42


Lauren Burke posts the following on her blog.

Reps Andre Carson and John Lewis had racial epithets hurled at them while walking from the Cannon Building to the US Capitol to vote about 45 minutes ago. Andre Carson reported to me and several other journalists in the Speaker’s Lobby off the House floor that he and Lewis were repeatedly called the N word while on the ir way to vote. About 300 demonstartors were yelling and waving signs outside the Longworth and Cannon House Office Buildings as GOP members made their way from a Caucus meeting in Cannon and Democratic members were leaving a meeting in Longworth.

Put simply, these were flat-out fabrications. If they were "repeatedly" slurred, why don't the tapes capture even one of the epithets? Andrew Breitbart has offered $100,000 to anyone if they can come up with audio proof -- and there have been no takers.


3/20 16:36


According to Twitter's time-stamp, the original McClatchy article hits the web.



3/20 16:51


According to a screen-cap of the content management system provided by online editor Mark Seibel, McClatchy reporter William Douglas' original article was entered into the system.

Bill's first version of the story was posted at 5:01 p.m. (Eastern) Here it is in its entirety: "WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said Saturday that some demonstrators gathered outside the Capitol to protest the health care overhaul legislation called him "ni--er." [Ed: Redaction mine]

Lewis, a longtime civil rights activist who is head of the Congressional Black Caucus, said some demonstrators also spat on black members of Congress as they left the Capitol after meeting with President Barack Obama.

The claim could not immediately be confirmed."


3/20 16:56


The Huffington Post's Sam Stein breathlessly punches out a story advancing the allegations of rampant racial smears.

In just minutes, Stein cranks out a 400-word piece including interviews with Rep. James Clyburn and a staffer, has it edited and then posted.

First Posted: 03-20-10 04:56 PM

A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) had been spat on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a 'ni--er.' And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a "faggot," as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president's speech, shrugged off the incident... But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed...


3-20 17:12


McClatchy updates the article with version 2 of the story, according to Mark Seibel's CMS archive.

WASHINGTON — Demonstrators outside the Capitol, angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted the N-word Saturday at Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama in the 1960s, and shouted obscenities at other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, lawmakers said.

“They were shouting, sort of harassing,” Lewis said. “But, it’s okay, I’ve faced this before. It reminded me of the 60s. It was a lot of downright hate and anger and people being downright mean.”

Lewis said he was leaving the Cannon office building when protesters shouted “Kill the bill, kill the bill,” Lewis said.

“I said ‘I’m for the bill, I support the bill, I’m voting for the bill,” Lewis said.

A colleague who was accompanying Lewis said people in the crowd responded by saying “Kill the bill, then the N-word.”

“It surprised me that people are so mean and we can’t engage in a civil dialog and debate,” Lewis said.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., said he was a few yards behind Lewis but distinctly heard the N-word shouted out.

“It was a chorus,” Cleaver said. “In a way, I feel sorry for those people who are doing this nasty stuff – they’re being whipped up.. I decided I wouldn’t be angry with any of them.”

CNN reported that protestors inside the Capitol also used a slur to refer to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., an openly gay member of Congress.


In short, within 16 minutes, McClatchy's writer(s) added three interviews and a CNN report to the original story, whose allegations appear to be entirely false.


3/20 16:15


HuffPo editor Nico Pitney tweets several messages, one to Sam Stein reporting he "personally witnessed Barney Frank being called a "faggot," protesters then continued with lisp-heavy chants"; the other re-tweeting a Huffington Post message with the original allegations.

The latter message read "RT @huffingtonpost: Congressmen called 'ni**er,' 'faggot,' spat on by Tea Party protesters (with protest pics) http://bit.ly/aWAu0V".


03/20 17:19


McClatchy's Mark Seibel describes the posting of the third version of the story:

The second version, posted at 5:12 p.m., corrected when the incident had taken place (it was on the way to the Capitol that the n-word incident happened, not on the way back) and was nine graphs long. The last graph cited a CNN report on the Barney Frank incident. That citation was changed to HuffPost in version 4 at 5:19 p.m. after I was alerted by a Nico Pitney tweet.


As Jim Hoft and Kevin Jackson (author of The Big Black Lie) wrote several days ago:

The state-run media is now pushing their anti-tea party propaganda from sources at the anti-military Jew-hating conservative-hating Huffington Post. And, they’re reporting this propaganda without a single piece of evidence.

At least one report said that it was “a chorus” of racist hatred. Another report said the Congressional members heard the n-word at least 15 times.  Reporters from ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX News, (including Bill O’Reilly), MSNBC, and so on, repeated this horrible story.

Unfortunately, it was a fake. The media had no evidence... Nothing. As the story was a complete fabrication. It was totally made up.

In fact, several videos were later released that proved that there was no "chorus" of racist hatred and no one screamed the n-word. It was all a lie.


Democrats in Congress wanted to provoke a racial incident. That's why their media drones started tweeting word of the incident just seconds after their walk began.

And a state-run media complex -- as liberal as the day is long -- acted either as ignorant dupes or as active accomplices (take your pick) to market the scam.

From all appearances, this entire incident appears to have been scripted by Democrat representatives to provoke a racially divisive incident. But because the Tea Party movement is freedom-loving, it embraces all races, creeds, religions and colors. Because the freedom tent is the biggest tent of all. And the tyranny tent gets smaller by the day.



Update: Andrew Breitbart writes:

The Democratic Party is trying to signal to the black community and to progressive media types that the way to push back against the Tea Party and Republicans is to use the reliable race card by provoking a racial incident. The ensuing rhetoric about the bill and about the nature of the Tea Party is based upon repeated talking points. Propaganda. Everyone is on message that Republicans and Tea Partiers are racist — a divisive and dangerous argument, so lacking in any shred of evidence save for the fact that the majority in the Tea Party, as in America itself, is white. This is Duke lacrosse politics at its worst.

Those in the movement who are Hispanic or black are given the Clarence Thomas treatment: mocked, ridiculed and marginalized. The Democratic party cannot afford for minority groups to break from the pack, so they show that apostasy is met with high-grade ridicule. Those willing to withstand vile and hateful un-American taunts are some of America’s greatest patriots...

...We’ve called their bluff. And they have tried to back off. They realize that this race warfare can backfire, just as it did with the railroaded Duke lacrosse players, as it did with professor Madonna Constantine and her faked noose incident at Columbia and the Sergeant Crowley boner by Barack Obama who stupidly said the white police officer had behaved “stupidly” in handcuffing Skip Gates.

The first Alinsky president is now using surrogates to split this nation into two hostile parties so he can puppeteer the have-nots against the perceived haves. The non-response to my $100k challenge is a tacit acknowledgement that the Congressional Black Caucus and Barack Obama don’t have the stomach for doubling down.

The other part of the strategy that is built into the N-Word Capitol Hill Walk is the strategy to incite. The media is doing their job for them by speaking of an unhinged white Tea Party mob. Absent any evidence other than creatively selected hand-crafted signs from the fringe of the audience that are presented to represent the whole, the media is simply repeating assumptions that Democrats and media elites have against fly-over types. What we have here is hardcore media elitism mixed with politically correct class warfare.


Linked by: Michelle Malkin, Gateway Pundit and Patterico. Thanks!