It is no surprise that the left doesn’t know the Constitution. After all they spend so much time trying to ignore it, subvert it and get around it. Maddow has whopping flubs pretty regularly (1, 2, 3) and when we we started to look at her statements we realized that correcting and making fun of her ignorance would become a full time job. Nonetheless this flub is pretty entertaining.
RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: Congressman Akin was not alone in stumbling over a little basic U.S. history. He had some good company in the top Republican in the House, Minority Leader John Boehner.
(VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN BOEHNER (R-OHIO.): This is my copy of the Constitution. And I’m gonna stand here with our Founding Fathers who wrote in the Preamble, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”
(END VIDEOTAPE):
MADDOW (waving hands): Nnn, Constitution doesn’t have a Preamble. Not. Nope. Stop it. That would be the Declaration of Independence. Ooh.
Actually, Rach, the Constitution DOES have a Preamble, and I doth quote:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
As you liberals so love Wikipedia, in its section titled “Preamble to the United States Constitution”
I was very sick while this went on, but it is worth noting that the same people that fact checked a Saturday Night Live skit teasing President Obama, put vile and totally invented quotes on the air to smear Limbaugh to prevent his consortium from buying the St. Louis Rams.
MSNBC says that Limbaugh would love to say that he owns a plantation full of black men – LINK.
MSNBC Admits: ‘Unable to Verify’ False Limbaugh Quote; No Retraction or Apology- LINK.
Since the fictional Limbaugh quotes were exposed, the networks spent only 47 seconds discussing it – LINK.
Huffington Post Pulls Bogus Limbaugh Quotes after not being able to substantiate them – LINK.
CNN Reads Limbaugh’s Denial of Alleged Slavery Quote, Doesn’t Retract Use. Says there are “Other Quotes” and couldn’t substantiate those either – LINK.
So Called ‘Journalists’ Claiming Limbaugh Praised MLK’s Assassin Offer No Proof – LINK.
ANC Claims “Limbaugh has a history of making racially offensive comments” but offers no quotes and no proof – LINK.
Video: MSNBC’s Matthews muses on killing Rush Limbaugh – LINK.
Roger Goodell from the NFL, a known Obama supporter, made disparaging comments about Limbaugh and got chewed out for it during a Congressioanl hearing by Represetative Steve King. You can watch Goodell squirm. He very much deserved this public humiliation.
My critics would have you believe no conservative meets NFL ’standards.’
David Checketts, an investor and owner of sports teams, approached me in late May about investing in the St. Louis Rams football franchise. As a football fan, I was intrigued. I invited him to my home where we discussed it further. Even after informing him that some people might try to make an issue of my participation, Mr. Checketts said he didn’t much care. I accepted his offer.
It didn’t take long before my name was selectively leaked to the media as part of the Checketts investment group. Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews “diamond merchants”) and 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.
Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse. I was accused of once supporting slavery and having praised Martin Luther King Jr.’s murderer, James Earl Ray.
Next came writers in the sports world, like the Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon. He wrote this gem earlier this week: “I’m not going to try and give specific examples of things Limbaugh has said over the years because I screwed up already doing that, repeating a quote attributed to Limbaugh (about slavery) which he has told me he simply did not say and does not reflect his feelings. I take him at his word. . . . “
Mr. Wilbon wasn’t alone. Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.
I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.
The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting. Among other things, at least one said he would never play for a team I was involved in given my racial views. My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?
The NFL players union boss, DeMaurice Smith, jumped in. A Washington criminal defense lawyer, Democratic Party supporter and Barack Obama donor, he sent a much publicized email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying that it was important for the league to reject discrimination and hatred.
When Mr. Goodell was asked about me, he suggested that my 2003 comment criticizing the media’s coverage of Donovan McNabb—in which I said the media was cheerleading Mr. McNabb because they wanted a successful black quarterback—fell short of the NFL’s “high standard.” High standard? Half a decade later, the media would behave the same way about the presidential candidacy of Mr. Obama.
Having brought me into his group, Mr. Checketts now wanted a way out. He asked me to resign. I told him no way. I had done nothing wrong. I had not uttered the words these people were putting in my mouth. And I would not bow to their libels and pressure. He would have to drop me from the group. A few days later, he did.
As I explained on my radio show, this spectacle is bigger than I am on several levels. There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives that reflects the blind hatred espoused by Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson. “Racism” is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests.
These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society.
“Very often the instinct for an incumbent party is to defend and justify,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster for Democratic candidates. “But in this kind of environment, the best defense is a good offense. This needs to be a cycle where Republican vulnerabilities are a central part of the debate.”
Charlie Cook, the nonpartisan political handicapper, framed the Democrats’ challenge for 2010 more bluntly. It does not track the genial, new-politics identity that President Obama has cultivated.
“They’re going to have to play really rough,” said Mr. Cook, who pegs Democrats’ chances for holding the House next year at only slightly better than even…
Democrats will “have to make the opponent the issue,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster. “No. 1, try to tie them to George W. Bush — and then make it personal after that.”
Some have seen the original list of 26, but I felt compelled to few to add to my own to 46 and lets see if we can come up with a few more. I invite you to come up with some we missed in the comments section.
1. Offended the Queen of England.
2. Offended British PM By snubbing him and offering trade gifts that were a joke (25 DVD’s that wont play in England).
3. Offended the British People by returning a bust of Winston Churchill that they gave the United States (its like sending the Statue of Liberty back to France).
4. Offended the President of France by snubbing him multiple times.
5. Bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia.
6. Praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega.
7. Kissed Socialist Hugo Chavez on the cheek.
8. Endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia.
9. Sided with Hugo Chavez and Communist Fidel Castro against Honduras.
10. Announced we would meet with Iranians with no pre-conditions while they’re building their nuclear weapons.
11. Reneged on a missile shield agreement with Eastern Europe almost ending all relations with Poland and the Czech Republic.
12. Left the country of Georgia in the cold after the Russian invasion.
13. Gave away billions to AIG also without pre-conditions.
14. Expanded the bailouts.
15. Insulted everyone who has ever loved a Special Olympian.
16. Doubled our national debt.
17. Announced the termination of our new missile defense system the day after North Korea launched an ICBM.
18. Released information on U.S. Intelligence gathering despite urgings of his own CIA director and the prior four CIA directors.
19. Accepted without comment that five of his cabinet members cheated on their taxes and two other nominees withdrew after they couldn’t take the heat.
20. Appointed a Homeland Security Chief who identified military veterans and abortion opponents as “dangers to the nation.”
21. Ordered that the word “terrorism” no longer be used and instead refers to such acts as “man made disasters.”
23. Circled the globe to publicly apologize for America’s world leadership.
24. Told the Mexican president that the violence in their country was because of us.
25. Politicized the census by moving it into the White House from the Department of Commerce.
26. Appointed as Attorney General the man who orchestrated the forced removal and expulsion to Cuba of a 9-year-old whose mother died trying to bring him to freedom in the United States.
27. Salutes as heroes three Navy SEALS who took down three terrorists who threatened one American life and the next day announces members of the Bush administration may stand trial for “torturing” three 9/11 terrorists by pouring water up their noses.
28. Low altitude photo shoot of Air Force One over New York City that frightened thousands of New Yorkers.
29. Sent his National Defense Advisor to Europe to assure them that the US will no longer treat Israel in a special manner and they might be on their own with the Muslims.
30. Praised Jimmy Carter’s trip to Gaza where he sided with terrorist Hamas against Israel.
31. Nationalized General Motors and Chrysler while turning shareholder control over to the unions and freezing out retired investors who owned their bonds. Committed unlimited taxpayer billions in the process.
31. Passed a huge energy tax in the House that will make American industry even less competitive while costing homeowners thousands per year.
32. Quietly ended the Washington DC school voucher program dooming promising children to one of the worst school districts in the nation.
33. Reversed himself on his transparency pledges multiple times.
34. After promising lobbying reform he had a financial responsibility summit that ended up being a lobbyist meet up with government. He also signed an order relaxing the lobbyist rules.
35. Allowed multiple lobbyists in the administration after promising not to.
36. After promising a new era of bi-partisanship his party locks Republicans out of bill negotiations.
37. Helped protect the bonuses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
38. Signed a bill containing over 9,000 pork earmarks after promising earmark reform.
39. Instead of using the TARP bailout funds to buy peoples mortgages and renegotiate them with citizens as promised he used the money to buy up/nationalize banks and leave citizens in the cold.
40. Committed multiple violations of the Hatch Act (see HHS.GOV).
41. Declared War on Fox News.
42. Declared War on the Chamber of Commerce.
43. Suppressed an EPA Report showing that global warming skeptics are largely correct.
44. Participating in the dismantling of the Dollar as the world reserve currency.
45. Signed into law the reversal of Bill Clinton & Newt Gingrich’s very successful and hugely popular bi-partisan welfare reform (which was the main plank of Bill Clinton’s legacy).
46. Announced nationalized health care “reform” that will strip seniors of their Medicare, cut pay of physicians, increase taxes yet another $1 trillion, and put everyone on rationed care with government bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who doesn’t. Bloomberg: Daschle says, “Health care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them,” while former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm says seniors have “a duty to die.” If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that the President, Senators and Congressmen have their own special gold plated health care plan which is guaranteed the remainder of their lives and they are not subject to this new law if they pass it.
Here at IUSB Vision we have a category called “Palin Truth Squad“. You can see that we reported that the McCain campaign communications machine became more incompetent after the Palin announcement. It seems that Palin’s book is going to give us at least some of the details.
Later we reported that many of the McCain staffers were “David Frum” types like Steve Schmidt, that had previously overtly slandered religious conservatives and others in the Reagan wing of the party (LINK). Such people are mortified by Palin and by people such as Glenn Beck, John Gibson, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and even Brit Hume. This explains why McCain’s communications machine deliberately kept Palin away from Fox News and these other venues. They gave her a few moments with Carl Cameron at Fox, or perhaps she only did this after she went rogue, but at that time it was too little too late.
What McCain Campaign staffers did was let their emotional hostility of the Reagan wing of the party blind them to a clear asset that could have helped Palin to introduce herself to the country in a venue that would give her the opportunity to define herself clearly.
Palin should have been given interviews with Limbaugh and Hannity first, then Greta, Beck, John Gibson and then O’Reilly, Hume and Wallace so that Palin would have had the opportunity to define herself first and hone her interview skills with progressively tougher interviews in tougher venues.
To send a person who is new and undefined on the national stage to Charles Gibson and Katie Couric who set out with clear intent to destroy her (LINK2, 3, 4) with much tougher gotcha questions than those two ever asked Edwards, Obama or Biden (LINK) was foolish because since those were her first interviews, it would be by those interviews that people would have their first impression of her. As a result the McCain Campaign forfeited its opportunity to define its own Vice Presidential nominee.
If Palin had done the interviews I mentioned first and then did ABC and CBS she would have been ready, but more importantly the American people would already have had a solid first impression and definition of Sarah Palin in mind which would have put her in a much better position for a hostile interview. The result would have been ABC and CBS looking like they were playing a mean spirited gotcha game to get her and those interviews would have ended up helping her with cross pressured voters with a few smart commercials taking shots at ABC and CBS.
This is not just communications 101 folks, this is communications for dummies.
The clincher? Research now shows that cross pressured voters and independents watch Fox News. They might not always agree with Fox but they do watch it so the McCain Campaign stayed away from the audience that the campaign needed to reach the most.
The Wall Street Journal has the first tidbits from Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue:
Ms. Vincent didn’t reveal any details about the book, but did acknowledge it will describe Ms. Palin’s frustration over her treatment by the staffers she inherited from the McCain campaign after her surprise pick as the GOP vice presidential nominee last year. Ms. Palin was booked on grueling interviews with hostile reporters while talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck couldn’t even get through to her aides. Mr. Beck tells me he was stunned when he picked up the phone one day just before the election to discover Sarah Palin was on the other end of the line. “She explained that she had been blocked from reaching her audience, so she was now ‘going rogue’ and booking her own interviews,” Mr. Beck told me. “I was thrilled she had burst out of the cage they’d built for her and we were finally talking.”
What is Palin to do next?
Sarah Palin should keep building foreign policy credibility with these overseas conferences and when the time comes she needs to start re-introducing herself to the Republican base and then to the American people.
The simple truth is that a sizable chunk of the base is dismissive of her because they were overwhelmed by the elite media and SNL slander that went almost unrefuted because Palin was kept away from non-elite media venues.
Sarah Palin should come up with a phrase or an idea that sets her apart from other Republicans rhetorically and make it hers. For example: referring to the GOP as “The Party of Lincoln”, “What happened to the Party of Lincoln” or “Its time to bring back the Party of Lincoln”. It doesn’t have to be Lincoln (obviously) but it has to be something that distinguishes her from the Romney Brand and the Huckabee Brand that inspires trust.
Talk about real principles or virtues with some good foreign policy and macroeconomic details (avoid the word values because that word has baggage). Get practice in these venues and then move to moderately tougher ones. Since independents watch Fox Palin can kill two birds with one stone with a smart communications strategy. When the time comes to face the hostile NBC or ABC interview, Palin should go in bold, prepared and with one goal, WIN. She doesn’t have to be horribly tough but don’t etiquette herself out of the election like McCain did in the debates.
This is child abuse and I stand by that statement 110% and challenge anyone to DARE debate me publicly on the subject.
The growing list of these video’s is a real indicator of just what bad judgement many teachers have, but also to the degree the NEA will go to abuse the public trust for their own partisan reasons. How many times must we learn the lesson that cults of personality have consequences?
The caption with the video says: Sand Hill Elementary School in Asheville, NC
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
How often is this going on when we don’t find the video?
From the College Politico with absolute video proof. It proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Obama as Hitler signs are at tea parties are clearly from LaRouche Democrats and not traditionalists, libertarians or conservatives. The elite media such as NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC have been showing these signs and presenting them as if they are typical of people at the protests when they are not.
Since any close-up of the sign or interview of people carrying them makes it clear they they are from LaRouche it is next to imnpossible to believe that the elite media did not know who these signs were really from. They made a choice to slander you.
UPDATE: Rachel Maddow at MSNBC uses the LaRouche Democrats Obama=Hitler sign to smear tea party protesters.
This is a screen shot of Maddow’s show that appeared on Newsbusters.
Paul Williams has a video showing the glaring hypocrisy of the left on this matter. This is a must see if there ever was one.
Polls and voting data don’t support Carter’s remarks
There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”
That comment comes from former President Jimmy Carter, which is fascinating considering Carter once ran for governor of Georgia proclaiming himself to be a “Lester Maddox Democrat.” (Maddox, a former Georgia governor, was an avowed segregationist who opposed integration under the Civil Rights Act.)
In fairness to President Carter, I do believe in redemption, and that people can change. But more and more people are inclined to say anyone who disagrees with Barack Obama must be racist.
J.C. Watts
It hurts me when the left and the right use race for political gain, and it depresses me further that it’s so awkward for us to talk about honestly and objectively about race. However, the implication that disagreeing with the president is racist also saddens and perplexes me.
Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000 and now a CNN analyst, nailed it when she said, “No one wins in touching race in such a shallow way. It raises defenses and creates backlash.”
The race issue blew up two weeks ago when Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called Obama a liar on the floor of the House during the president’s address to a joint session of Congress. Although Democrats booed President Bush in that same chamber during a State of the Union a few years ago, it was still wrong for Wilson to do this.
He called the president’s chief of staff and apologized. I would have preferred he do it on the floor of the House, which is where the incident occurred.
There has always been a certain decorum in the people’s House. Boos and yelling “You lie!” are not part of that decorum.
Some try to defend one yelling “You lie!” because others boo, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Of course, we see this logic in politics from Democrats and Republicans both.
Be that as it may, was Wilson’s outburst racist? The congressman said it was not, so I take him at his word, and the opposition we’ve seen to the president’s agenda would not equate to racism based on the data released in the last year.
– President Obama did not get the majority of the white vote in 2008. Is that evidence of racism? No. This has been the case with Democrat candidates for years, including President Carter.
– President Obama did slightly better with the white vote in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004.
– Before President Obama proposed a government takeover of the health care system, his approval rating with white voters was 57 percent.
– Between Election Day and the launch of Democrats’ health insurance reform efforts, President Obama did well with independent voters. But he has lost about 18 points with this demographic in the past two months. Most of these independent voters are white.
The data simply do not support President Carter’s claim.
Are there some people who didn’t vote for Obama because he’s black? Certainly. Just as there were some who opposed John McCain because he is white.
There are people of all colors who believe it is wrong for the government to take over our health care system.
There are people of all colors who believe we will have no choice but to ration health care when we put between 35 million and 40 million more people in the system but yet have the same number of doctors.
There are people of all colors who believe we already ration care through Medicare and Medicaid.
There are people of every color who believe it is bad economic policy to raise taxes, especially in a weak economy.
I would remind you that in the last two years of the Bush administration, conservatives were taking shots at President Bush for all his profligate spending, and it was never framed in terms other than “Republicans are mad at Bush for all the spending.”
How inconsistent that the media loved disgruntled conservatives being disenchanted with Bush, but abhor criticism of President Obama.
There are people of all colors who believe we are literally mortgaging our children’s futures with this spending spree. These people would have felt the same with if it were President Hillary Clinton, Kerry, Bill Richardson or any other president proposing the nationalization of 16 percent of our economy and spending like there’s no tomorrow.
Ironically, I wonder how President Carter would view things if it were President Clarence Thomas proposing tax relief, protection for the unborn, raising the troop levels in Afghanistan or exploring for oil right here in the United States.
As Arsenio Hall used to say, “It’s something that makes you say ‘Hmmm.’ “
J.C. Watts (JCWatts01@jcwatts.com) is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. He writes for the Review-Journal twice monthly.
Yes she really said this. So does this mean that we don’t have to do our homework any more and we can still get an A because telling me I need to take personal responsibility makes you a racist…..
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor of African-American studies at Princeton, was invited on to National Public Radio to expound on the use of “racial code words” in “the current opposition to health care reform.” For example, explained professor Harris-Lacewell, “language of personal responsibility is often a code language used against poor and minority communities.”
Mark Steyn responds:
“Personal responsibility” is racial code language? Phew, thank goodness America is belatedly joining Canada and Europe in all but abolishing the concept.
Mark Steyn
“Code language” is code language for “total bollocks” [eg total bullcrap - Editor]“Code word” is a code word for “I’m inventing what you really meant to say because the actual quote doesn’t quite do the job for me.”“Small government”? Racist code words! “Non-confiscatory taxes”? Likewise. “Individual liberty”? Don’t even go there! To an incisive NPR racism analyst, the elderly gentleman telling his congressman “I’m very concerned by what I’ve heard about wait times for MRIs in Canada” is really saying “I’m unable to overcome my deep-seated racial anxieties about the sexual prowess of black males, especially now they’re giving prime-time press conferences every night.” With interpreters like professor Harris-Lacewell on the prowl, I’m confident 95 percent of Webster’s will eventually be ruled “code language.”
My colleague at America’s National Review, Jonah Goldberg, proposed a simple thought experiment: suppose Hillary Clinton had won the election and proposed the current health care reforms. Does anyone doubt that conservatives would be equally opposed to it? Would that, too, be “racist”? A reader wrote back: no, if they were opposing Hillary’s health plan, they’d be sexist. Er, okay, how about John Edwards? Would opposing his health care reforms be oleaginous trial-lawyer creepy adulterer-phobic?
Prof. Lacewell majored in English….what a shock. This far left propagandist should consider herself most fortunate that she doesn’t find me in her class because I would have a ball exposing her nonsense in front of the students daily. I would love to debate this professor. I have debated other professors and handily bested them all and for most of them it was on topics in their own field of study. The simple truth is that most far left professors are creatures of indoctrination and are in essence half educated nitwits. They are not disciplined thinkers and they lack almost any sense of introspective so defeating them isn’t tough. I realize that this is a sweeping statement but unfortunately it is a sweeping statement that matches a pattern of behavoir that fits far left academia like a glove.
President Obama’s diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to “step down” in favor of minorities, prescribed policies to make liberal talk radio more successful, and described Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in Venezuela “an incredible revolution.”
Mark Lloyd’s provocative comments – most made during a tenure at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank – are giving fodder to critics who say Mr. Obama has appointed too many “czars” to government positions that don’t require congressional approval. They are also worrying to some conservatives who fear the FCC might use its powers to remove their competitive advantage on talk radio and television.
Many of the remarks have been unearthed by conservative-leaning writers and bloggers and discussed on cable television amid a broader critique of Mr. Obama’s penchant for czars that exploded with the ouster this month of “green jobs czar” Van Jones.
In one of his more eye-opening comments, Mr. Lloyd praised Mr. Chavez during a June 2008 conference on media reform, saying the authoritarian Venezuelan president had led “really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution.”
~
At another conference, Mr. Lloyd spoke about the need to remove white people from powerful positions in the media to give minorities a fairer chance.
“There’s nothing more difficult than this because we have really truly, good, white people in important positions, and the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions,” he said.
“And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions, we will not change the problem. But we’re in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.”
He added: “There are few things, I think, more frightening in the American mind than dark-skinned black men. Here I am.”
Andrew Breitbart published the audio of the conference on his Breitbart.com Web site on Monday. Mr. Breitbart said the recording was made during a conference on media reform and racial justice in May 2005.
You can view the actual document HERE at Andrew Brietbarts web site.
This should not surprise anyone. Especially when we examine at large the quality of journalism majors we have seen and especially when we see the dismal quality of some professors at the IU Bloomington J School (LINK). Forunately, Ken Klimek, who teaches many of the journalism classes here at IUSB, has a pretty strong emphasis on media ethics.
Apparently NBC “Dateline” producer Jane Stone or someone else who has access to her Blackberry has a problem with groups that oppose ACORN and with an ethnocultural minority.
When Stone received an email urging Congress to defund ACORN from Alex Rosenwald, director of media outreach for Americans for Limited Government, the following sentence came back to Rosenwald from Stone’s account: “Bite me, Jew Boy!”
As editor, I also subscribe to the Columbia Journalism Review. It is completely ideological and might as well be written by the Democratic National Committee.
Keep in mind that antisemitism on the academic left from which Obama comes from is very high to put it mildly. Also keep in mind that Obama sat in a radically antisemitic church for 20 years.
Yet another “capitalism & America is evil” video shown to students.
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
UPDATE: Lou Dobbs on this indoctrination video called “The Story of Stuff”
“How The World Works” Took this video apart piece by piece.
By the way for those of you who didn’t get it. The assault weapon ban had nothing to do with machine guns and never did and semi-automatics he refers to aren’t machine guns either. They shoot one bullet with each pull of the trigger like most guns built since 1900.
If you think that this is not typical or was rigged, there is empirical evidence to support this right HERE.
The elite media calls the people at tea parties violent and racist (LINK), yet at every known event of violence has been committed by ACORN/SEIU thugs. There was violence at several anti-war protests, at the GOP convention and at this event, the G20 summit in Pittsburgh with 60 arrested, 6 hospitalized and businesses vandalized.
Why is CNN not featuring the nuttiest sign they can find at this protest like they do at a Tea Party, why are their reporters not getting in the face of a protestor to challenge, harass, name call and mock them like they do at Tea Parties (LINK) ….where is Susan Roesgen now? [By the way, here is how Roesgen and CNN portrayed left wing protestors wielding Hitler/Bush signs - LINK]
The National Park Service confirmed that the 9/12 protest called by Glenn Beck was the largest event in DC history and there was not one arrest…not one.
For Example.
CNN reporting on Left Wing protestors:
Notice how they do not zoom in on the nuttiest sign and present it as typical. They do not get in a protestors face to challenge them, mock them, ask them a question and don’t let them answer it, they don’t call them sexual names like “tea baggers”. It’s all just hunky dory… but…
CNN reporting on Tea Parties:
So let us take a close look at the signs at the anti-war protests and ask the protestors a few questions. Since NO ONE in the elite media would do this with any fair, we rely on film maker Evan Coyne Maloney:
Yet it is the Tea Party people who are nutty, violent, racists…. yea right.
UPDATE – The B-Cast TV program does a special on CNN’s insulting coverage of the Tea Party protests and how they spun the Fox News ad – LINK.
This is a documentary about how sing alongs, peer pressure, the want of recognition, feeling of importance, and fear of humiliation was used to indoctrinate children into the Hitler Youth.
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.” – B. Obama
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
[Editor's Note - So what the Democrats and this professor is saying is that if Joe Biden were president the Tea Parties would not be protesting the wasteful spending, the corrupt pork earmarks for corporate lobbying clients, the porkulus bills, the broken promises, the government take over of health care and the banks etc? So I ask, was it racist when they opposed HillaryCare in 1994?
By that standard anyone who criticizes Michael Steele (a black American) the head of the Republican Party a racist. So by his own standard is the entire DNC racist and the professor below a race traitor? Yup thats it, anyone who criticizes any Republican is a racist because they just can't take it that the leader of the Republican Party is a black man. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.]
This man is a professor of law. He speaks in these brad brush strokes and avoids specifics on policy.
I would LOVE to debate this guy Lincoln/Douglas style. I also like how he says that he is not a leftist and then spouts every far left talking point right down the line including these baseless attacks on Glenn Beck. This guy was so transparent and phony that most thinking Americans could see right through this guy. Unfortunately this guy is representative of a great deal of college professors and administrators.
I also found it interesting how he portrayed what the National Park Service has called the largest DC event in US history; the 9/12 protest called by Glenn Beck. About 1.7 million people participated and he focussed in on the few nuts that showed up to attempt to mainstream themselves with any political movement. We also reported how plants from ACORN have been showing up to some Tea Party events with racist signs of high production value to attempt to get in front of a camera (LINK). No one who did any genuine reporting of the event said that those types of signs were even close to representative to the crowd.
So while the elite media and this professor show contempt (more contempt) for tea party protesters, I wonder where all these people were when left wing nuts took to the streets in droves with plenty of hate to spread around ….and yet they got glowing coverage from the elite media…. well as a reminder I have the video…. Watch each in total…especially the endings.
Or maybe they think the constant antisemitism that is so common at far left protests isn’t racist at all…..
UPDATE- Gary Bauer speaks on the issue (Via The Anchoress):
Bauer noted that when Obama was inaugurated, he had an approval rating of 75 percent. Yet, today, his approval rating is in the neighborhood of 50 percent. If racism is the explanation, Bauer wondered aloud, are we to believe that the quarter of the electorate that seems to have abandoned President Obama just discovered that he is black?
As Bauer made his argument, it was obvious that he was speaking directly to the reporters present. He went further by asking the crowd the question (and this is from memory so it may not be exact), “If a party were to run a candidate who was black, Asian, or hispanic and who was pro-life, in favor of free markets, traditional morality, and strong national defense, would you support that candidate?” The crowd erupted in massive, enthusiastic applause. Bauer joked with the crowd and the reporters present, “I can’t wait to run home and see that positive reaction from the crowd toward racial diversity played on CBS, NBC, and ABC!” Of course, the enthusiastic reaction in favor of a candidate of color who is also a conservative doesn’t fit the press narrative and the audience reaction would never be played on the news. Bauer knew that. The crowd knew that. And so did the press.
Andrew Brietbart is a the head of a new media empire. When it comes to online news it is almost guaranteed that you have ran across one of his many news and information web sites.
Brietbart News played an important role in exposing the corruption at ACORN.
His main news site is http://www.breitbart.com/ and it contains links to news from all over the world.
Much of his news and links are imbedded in other web sites, so if you have not been to these sites yourself, it is almost guaranteed that you have seen Brietbart News content imbedded in another web site.
Of course the “in the tank” elite media will cover Obama on this one. Most of them didn’t cover the scandal or just reported it once so they can say that they reported it.
Now before the far left starts to object in comments let me remind you that the left and the elite media covered the Jack Abramoff story constantly. Abromoff was a corrupt lobbyist who donated money to politicians, most of whom were Republican. Most of these politicians had nothing to so with Abramoff save for just accepting political donations like most politicians do.
So let me see. Barack Obama was a community organizer for ACORN. Then he took a job training their people how to organize others. Obama came back and acted as a Lawyer and worked with ACORN to file CRA lawsuits against banks to get them to lower mortgage loan standards and make more high risk loans. Obama’s campaign than pays ACORN $800,000. The Obama Administration tells ACORN that they will be in the White House with him. ACORN and SEIU share offices and SEIU people are at the top levels of the Obama Administration. ACORN is invited to work the census and other federal tasks.
UPDATE – In this video Glenn Beck plays clips of President Obama telling how he has a long history with ACORN/SEIU and knows them well. Even if you don’t care for Beck you can still hear Obama’s own words to see for yourself.
George Stephanopoulos
Is it just me or are the ties between Obama and ACORN much closer than Abramoff and the Republicans he donated campaign funds to?
The one who at least asked a question about ACORN was George Stephanopoulos. Obama said that he didn’t know much about the scandal, which George didn’t seem to believe and is hardly believable since ACORN has always been so near and dear to Obama’s heart and life.
Only one of the five television networks that interviewed President Obama for their Sunday shows bothered to ask him about Acorn, the left-wing community organizing group whose federal funding was cut off last week by an overwhelming vote in Congress.
“Frankly, it’s not something I’ve followed closely,” Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn’t even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. “This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It’s not something I’m paying a lot of attention to,” he said.
Mr. Obama added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a federal cutoff of funds to the group.
Mr. Obama took great pains to act as if he barely knew about Acorn. In fact, his association goes back almost 20 years. In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary.
Mr. Obama’s success made him a hot commodity on the community organizing circuit. He became a top trainer at Acorn’s Chicago conferences. In 1995, he became Acorn’s attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law’s loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names.
In 1996, Mr. Obama filled out a questionnaire listing key supporters for his campaign for the Illinois Senate. He put Acorn first (it was not an alphabetical list). In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama became the leading critic of Voter ID laws, whose overturn was a top Acorn priority. In 2007, in a speech to Acorn’s leaders prior to their political arm’s endorsement of his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was effusive: “I’ve been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”
But the Obama campaign didn’t appear eager to discuss the candidate’s ties to Acorn. Its press operation vividly denied Mr. Obama had been an Acorn trainer until the New York Times uncovered records demonstrating that he had been. The Obama campaign also gave Citizens Consulting, Inc., an Acorn subsidiary, $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as “staging, sound, lighting,” only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature.
Given his longstanding ties with Acorn, President Obama’s protestations of ignorance or disinterest in the group’s latest scandal seem preposterous. Here’s hoping White House reporters will press the president to clarify just how much he really knows about Acorn and when he knew it.
UPDATE II – Obama doesn’t know much about ACORN any more he says…. hmm than why are so many members of the ACORN Advisory Board all over his White House LINK ?
Yes, so I imagined. While Glenn Greenwald, for example, was accusing those on the right of being “chickenhawks” for not serving in Iraq, he was never quite able to explain why he wasn’t accumulating Congressional Medals of Honor and Taliban tooth-necklaces in the war he supposedly supported, Afghanistan.
And no, this isn’t just about some seedy, nasty liberal bloggers.
It’s about our lying POS POTUS, too.
Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy. There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments [sic] it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”
But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.
You claimed to support a war in which American soldiers were fighting and dying, leaving friends and limbs on the battlefield, as a cynical political strategy?
You… um… voiced support of a real serious-as-death war to cadge votes out of a duped public?
We won’t forget, champ. And we won’t let you forget, either.
Again we see a leftist projecting his pathological darkness on to others. They accused Bush of fighting wars for this very reason. And now, when it’s safe to say so (they think), they concede: We supported a war for the reason we accused Bush of doing so for 8 years.
UPDATE – Michelle Malkin finds the teacher who did this to these students and the school. One has to melt with respect at Malkin’s ability to track down the details of a story.
The school is B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington Township, New Jersey and the teacher is Charisse Carney-Nunes. Follow the link above to see more details!
UPDATE II – UH OH! Megyn Kelley at Fox News is now on the story. Administrators at B. Bernice Young Elementary School are hiding under their desks now. I bet they have stopped answering the phones there as this story is going viral. You heard her, its on Drudge Report so the world has seen it now.
UPDATE III – Malkin found a response from the school from a fellow blogger Exurban League HERE:
Dear Burlington Township Families:
Today we became aware of a video that was placed on the internet which has been reported in the media. The video is of a class of students singing a song about President Obama. The activity took place during Black History Month in 2009, which is recognized each February to honor the contributions of African Americans to our country. Our curriculum studies, honors and recognizes those who serve our country. The recording and distribution of the class activity were unauthorized.
If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me or Dr. King, Principal of B. Bernice Young School, directly.
Sincerely,
Dr. Christopher M. Manno,
Superintendent of Schools
So, a public school had an official lesson using impressionable children to praise Barack Obama. The song they used even co-opted lyrics from “Jesus Loves the Little Children” with Obama’s name inserted in place of God.
A commentor at Michelle Malkin states, “Thank goodness somebody recorded it lest this school have more clandestine political brain washing sessions for the children.”
UPDATE V – Principal of elementary school praises Obama and says that she would do it again – details HERE.
This isn’t the only one folks… we also have THESE.. HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE … Glenn Beck finds yet another video HERE.
MINI-UPDATE – Pat Dollard finds yet another school indoctrination video singing to the ‘Dear Leader’ -LINK.
MINI-UPDATE II – 9-28-2009 Yup another new indoctrination video LINK !
UPDATE IV – Hotair.com posts the following video for comparison –
UPDATE VI – Ed Morrissey from Hotair.com has a GREAT NEW POST on this issue with an update from Fox News:
Ed Morrissey:
Parents angry over Obama song at NJ elementary school in which the school and the district double down on stupid.
“There was no intention to indoctrinate children. There was no political agenda underlying the activity.”
Uh, sure, pal. Those kids wrote the lyrics about equal pay all by themselves? I know that’s a big issue among the playground set. They also just happened to replace God with “Barack Hussein Obama” in saying that people are “equal in his sight,” because that’s exactly the phraseology one would expect from a roomful of kids of the “London Bridge is falling down” age.
The administration in this community may need to go back to school themselves to learn a little common sense and strategy. The teacher who led this group retired before the video hit the Internet. How much difficulty could it cause to admit the obvious and apologize for stepping over a line with these children? They’re certainly not learning a lesson about accountability, although they do seem to have adopted the ACORN strategy of blaming people for the video’s release to the Internet rather than the fact that one of their teachers was indoctrinating kids into Obama-worship, quite literally considering the song, its lyrics, and its origins.
Talk about taking the words out of my mouth and every other parent who has a historical perspective that goes beyond breakfast. Well stated Ed.
UPDATE VII- Parents appear on FNC with Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sean Hannity:
UPDATE VIII – Factreal.com posts a history of “sing-along indoctrination” and here is a sample:
They are calling it the Community Reinvestment Modernization Act (CMRA). The Old Community Reinvestment Act played an important role in lowering mortgage standards and creating so many of these high risk loans that broke the system. While the CRA was just one layer of a multi layered problem created by government that culminated in the largest economic collapse since the Great Depression, it was still an important layer, so naturally the far left wants to do it AGAIN.
As we have reported before and have taken a lead in reporting on, the original CRA was intended to make it illegal to stop “redlining”; the practice of not giving loans to people based on race. But CRA was used by the Clinton Justice Department to make it an affirmative action program for loans, forcing banks to give mortgages to people who had no business getting a home loan simply because it was very unlikely that they could pay the loan back. They say it was about giving loans to poor minorities, when it fact it was about getting loans to Democrat constituent groups.
The rub is, that giving out high risk loans did not do them any favors. Many thousands of people in high risk loans defaulted, they lost their homes, their credit was destroyed and mortgage securities based on those loans brought down AIG, Lehman Brothers and dozens of banks.
Of course ACORN was at the heart of this problems as they filed CRA lawsuits to force banks to make high risk loans, under the faux guise of “fighting racism”.
We reported on this activity extensively HERE and HERE.
ACORN and SEIU have already created an atroturf support group to help get it passed – LINK.
The CRMA takes the old CRA one step further and mandates that loans be given to minorities regardless of income. Is giving a home loan to anyone regardless of income a wise move?
Dems push expanded Community Reinvestment Act; deny Act’s role in mortgage meltdown; GOP cites ACORN connection
By: BYRON YORK
Chief Political Correspondent
09/16/09 4:13 PM EDT
A number of experts believe that aggressive enforcement of the 1970s-era Community Reinvestment Act contributed to the mortgage meltdown, and thus to the greater financial crisis, by requiring financial institutions to lend to unqualified borrowers. Now, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is responding to that situation by proposing to expand the scope and power of the Community Reinvestment Act.
This morning House Financial Services Committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank held a hearing on H.R. 1479, the “Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009.” The bill’s purpose is “to close the wealth gap in the United States” by increasing “home ownership and small business ownership for low- and moderate-income borrowers and persons of color.” It would extend CRA’s strict lending requirements to non-bank institutions like credit unions, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders. It would also make CRA more explicitly race-based by requiring CRA standards to be applied to minorities, regardless of income, going beyond earlier requirements that applied solely to low- and moderate-income areas.
Republicans on the committee strongly oppose the plan. “Instead of looking to expand the number of institutions that must abide by Community Investment Act regulations,” California Rep. Ed Royce said in prepared opening remarks at today’s hearing, “I think we should reassess the role this and other government mandates played in the financial collapse and consider scaling it back.”
In private conversation, other Republicans were more emphatic. “There is clearly arguable evidence that the CRA is at the root of this financial meltdown,” says one GOP committee member. “So what do they do? They try to expand CRA.”
But Democrats, led by H.R. 1479 sponsor Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, claimed that expansion of CRA is much-needed. “Congress has passed a number of laws designed to combat redlining and eliminate housing discrimination,” Johnson said at the hearing. “Unfortunately, we all know that redlining still occurs.”
Then there is the ACORN angle. Republican critics point out that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has used the CRA to pressure banks to pour money into ACORN and its affiliates, allowing ACORN to facilitate loans to clearly unqualified borrowers. Now, with ACORN under fire after a series of undercover videos showing ACORN workers in Baltimore, Washington DC, New York, and California openly encouraging prostitution, tax evasion, and other crimes, Republicans on the committee are citing the CRA-ACORN connection as yet another reason the Act should not be expanded.
Johnson’s bill has 51 co-sponsors, including some of the most liberal members of the House, like Reps. Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, Bobby Rush, Steve Cohen, and Barbara Lee. Given the Democrats’ tremendous numerical superiority in the House, if the majority wants to expand CRA, Republicans will be unable to stop it.
UPDATE – Byrom York gives an analysis of the CRA that is spot on and tells the same story we told when the collapse took place. Well done Byron.
Democrats on path to repeat housing disaster
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
September 22, 2009
With all the attention paid to the health care battle, ACORN, and the president’s “Full Ginsburg” appearances on five Sunday talk shows, few people noticed a hearing with an exceedingly boring title — “Proposals to Enhance the Community Reinvestment Act” — held last week in the House Financial Services Committee. But the session marked a key moment in the ongoing battle between Republicans and Democrats over what caused our current financial woes — and how we might best avoid getting into the same trouble again.
At the hearing, and in others across Capitol Hill, Democratic majorities are pressing hard to expand some of the very policies that led to the reckless home lending that in turn helped lead to the great financial meltdown. If Chairman Barney Frank and his fellow Democrats have their way, we’ll do it all again — and more.
At issue last week was H.R. 1479, the Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. It would expand and strengthen the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks to make loans in low-income areas that many lenders had traditionally shunned.
After the meltdown, some conservatives blamed the CRA for almost solely causing the crisis by requiring banks to make risky loans to unqualified borrowers. It was an unfair charge. “CRA had at best an incremental role in the U.S. housing debacle,” says J.D. Foster, an economist at the Heritage Foundation. But CRA did help create the conditions in which disaster could occur.
The problems began in the 1990s, when Congress made it harder for lenders to do business if they had not passed the CRA “exam” — that is, if they had not met the government-imposed standards for loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers.
“From 1995 on, there was an incredible push by the Clinton and Bush administrations in every way they could — CRA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other ways — to increase the homeownership rate,” says Russell Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University. “What that did was to push up the price of housing, and that made it imaginable to lend money to people you never would have lent money to, on terms you wouldn’t have done before.”
In particular, Fannie Mae began to aggressively promote homeownership using the Community Reinvestment Act to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them. Fannie went to bankers and said, make as many CRA loans as you can; we’ll buy them and take them off your hands. “Our approach to our lenders is ‘CRA Your Way,’ ” top Fannie executive Jamie Gorelick told the Mortgage Bankers Association in 2001. “Fannie Mae will buy CRA loans from lenders’ portfolios; we’ll package them into securities; we’ll purchase CRA mortgages at the point of origination. …”
Fannie promised to buy billions and billions of dollars worth of CRA loans because it was under pressure to do so from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which in turn was under pressure from Congress, which set ambitious quotas for low- and moderate-income loans.
The policy ended in a lot of people losing their homes. Now, Johnson’s bill would ensure more of that by applying CRA’s lending requirements not just to banks but to non-bank institutions like credit unions, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders. It would also make CRA explicitly race-based by, in Johnson’s words, “requiring CRA exams to explicitly consider lending and services to minorities in addition to low- and moderate-income communities.”
Republicans on the Financial Services Committee strongly oppose the plan. “Instead of looking to expand the number of institutions that must abide by CRA regulations, I think we should reassess the role this and other government mandates played in the financial collapse and consider scaling it back,” California Rep. Ed Royce said at the hearing.
In private conversation, other Republicans were more emphatic. “There is clearly arguable evidence that the CRA is at the root of this financial meltdown,” said one GOP committee member. “So what do they do? They try to expand CRA.”
That’s an overstatement of CRA’s role in the housing mess, but it’s right about the Democratic plan. Denying that CRA, Fannie and other institutions played any role in setting the stage for disaster, they’re proposing more of what helped get us into trouble in the first place. It’s no way to fix the problem.
Listen to Limbaugh very carefully. As he reads the NYT article on the ACORN scandal he points out the information and important details that the article leaves out. Then Limbaugh does a brilliant job of expressing the attitude and tone of the article which is filled with buzz words (words that evoke an emotional response or narrative) designed to invoke an attitude in the reader. I did a 40 page paper on this very type of propaganda. it is called “Attitude Change Propaganda Theory”. With this type of propaganda you are given only some of the pertinent information and that information is delivered with an attitude that can include a false narrative.
This type of propaganda is taught in journalism schools so it is unlikely that the NYT isn’t perfectly aware of what this piece is really all about.
[Editor's Note - So what the Democrats are saying is that if Joe Biden were president the Tea Parties would not be protesting the wasteful spending, the corrupt pork earmarks for corporate lobbying clients, the porkulus bills, the government take over of health care and the banks etc? So I ask, was it racist when they opposed HillaryCare in 1994?
Is anyone who criticizes Michael Steele (a black American), the head of the Republican Party a racist? By this standard the entire DNC is racist. Yup thats it, anyone who criticizes any Republican is a racist because they just can't take it that the leader of the Republican Party is a black man.]
The Media Research Center provides this segment from ABC News. This is one of the most irresponsible pieces I have ever seen. ABC takes short clips and runs them together with a false narrative and cry racism. This just isn’t propaganda its bad propaganda because most people see right through this.
This whole idea that pointing out socialist and/or corporatist (corporatism is the economics of fascism in the strict academic sense) policies and corruption is racist is rather silly, especially from a political science perspective.
Charles Krauthammer responds to this nonsense from the NYT, Maureen Dowd and ABC quite correctly:
Indeed, the entire point at hurling the racism charge when substantive arguments are against you is to put the mark of the beast on someone and try to either shut them up, or make others afraid to listen to you in fear that they may be called a racist too. ABC and the rest of the elite media culture have gone from the watchdogs for the people to the watchdogs of the Democrat Party. With Obama as president, the elite media has abandoned the whole idea that it is to have a somewhat adversarial and skeptical view of government.
Every bloggers friend Gateway Pundit has this picture that he posts on his web site from time to time and in this case it is warranted.
For contrast, here is some RESPONSIBLE media coverage of the first Tea Party events back in March:
UPDATE – GOP Chairman Michael Steele responds rather brilliantly in the face of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell who was trying desperately to best him:
UPDATE II – Glenn Beck responds. Beck points out that NBC’s Brian Williams said that the 9.12 Tea Party was a “violent crowd”. There were no arrests at the event…not one.
Beck continues and shows how NBC is even doctoring and misrepresenting video to make a racist charge against protesters.
While NBC doctored the video and told you that the man with the gun was a racist white man. The raw video clearly shows the man is black. Come to find out he is part of a public awareness group that wears guns openly at events to educate people on the states open carry law.
UPDATE III- Gary Bauer speaks on the issue (Via The Anchoress):
Bauer noted that when Obama was inaugurated, he had an approval rating of 75 percent. Yet, today, his approval rating is in the neighborhood of 50 percent. If racism is the explanation, Bauer wondered aloud, are we to believe that the quarter of the electorate that seems to have abandoned President Obama just discovered that he is black?
As Bauer made his argument, it was obvious that he was speaking directly to the reporters present. He went further by asking the crowd the question (and this is from memory so it may not be exact), “If a party were to run a candidate who was black, Asian, or hispanic and who was pro-life, in favor of free markets, traditional morality, and strong national defense, would you support that candidate?” The crowd erupted in massive, enthusiastic applause. Bauer joked with the crowd and the reporters present, “I can’t wait to run home and see that positive reaction from the crowd toward racial diversity played on CBS, NBC, and ABC!” Of course, the enthusiastic reaction in favor of a candidate of color who is also a conservative doesn’t fit the press narrative and the audience reaction would never be played on the news. Bauer knew that. The crowd knew that. And so did the press.
UPDATE IV - The B-Cast news program did a special on how the elite media is dishonestly portraying the protests as “racist” LINK.
UPDATE II – Representative Pete Hoekstra told Newsmax that this “new intelligence” that Hillary spoke of has not been shared with the Intelligence Committee in Congress. Normally a big change in foreign policy such as this is shared with the committee well before hand. Is anyone surprised?
Eastern European countries have been among America’s strongest allies. They sent troops and equipment to Iraq when many other countries would not. They have erected statues of Ronald Reagan as their new role model for freedom since throwing off the chains of Soviet tyranny.
I am old enough to remember how angry the far left was when we “evil conservatives” in both parties brought the Soviet Empire to its knees. I was there and saw it first hand.
I have also been fortunate enough to get to know some students from Eastern Europe that have come to study at IUSB and Notre Dame. They are amazing people. I have a special place in my heart for Eastern Europeans. I like their culture. I like their deep appreciation for freedom. I appreciate their good nature and straight forward thinking. Poland and The Czech Republic wanted those defense systems and deserve them. While Western Europe talks the talk about being American Allies, Eastern Europe has walked the walk.
It is no secret that this writer has been very concerned about the actions of the Obama Administration, but this is the first act that has caused me genuine outrage. First Obama threw Georgia under the bus, now this.
Those who have been paying attention to Russian and European politics knows that Putin is evil and must be resisted.
The left said that Bush was alienating our allies, while ignoring the fact that Western European people were tossing out anti-American governments and electing pro-American ones. Where are they now?
PRAGUE – President Barack Obama has decided to scrap plans for a U.S. missile defense shield in the Czech Republic and Poland that had deeply angered Russia, the Czech prime minister confirmed Thursday.
NATO’s new chief hailed the move as “a positive step” and a Russian analyst said Obama’s decision will increase the chances that Russia will cooperate more closely with the United States in the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
Premier Jan Fischer told reporters that Obama phoned him overnight to say that “his government is pulling out of plans to build a missile defense radar on Czech territory.”
“The same happened with Poland. Poland was informed in the same way about this intention,” Fischer said.
He said Obama assured him that the “strategic cooperation” between the Czech Republic and the U.S. would continue, and that Washington considers the Czechs among its closest allies.
In Poland, officials declined to confirm Fischer’s remarks, saying they were waiting for a formal announcement from Washington.
The plan, proposed by the Bush administration, aimed to defend the United States and its European allies against a possible missile attack from Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East. In all, 10 interceptor rockets were to have been stationed in Poland and a radar system based in the Czech Republic.
And…
“The United States is reckoning that by rejecting the missile-defense system or putting it off to the far future, Russia will be inclined together with the United States to take a harder line on sanctions against Iran,” he said.
Czechs and Poles, along with some other Eastern Europeans, have complained of what many perceive as neglect by the Obama administration.
That, in turn, has prompted a U.S. diplomatic effort to reassure the countries that America — which helped liberate them from decades of communist-era isolation and helped bring them into NATO — still values them as friends and partners.
The decision to scrap the plan will have future consequences for U.S. relations with eastern Europe.
“If the administration approaches us in the future with any request, I would be strongly against it,” said Jan Vidim, a lawmaker with Czech Republic’s conservative Civic Democratic Party, which supported the missile defense plan.
So Obama thinks that if he throws Eastern Europe under the bus that Russia will help us with Iran. Russia has been selling Iran new technology for missiles and air defense systems to help prevent anyone from trying to take out Iran’s nuclear program (LINK). What do you want to bet that Russia changes some of its rhetoric with Iran but does very little in moving its policy towards the Iranian nuclear program.
UPDATE: Poles and Czech’s say they have been betrayed:
WARSAW, Poland – Poles and Czechs voiced deep concern Friday atPresident Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense shield planned for their countries.
“Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back,” the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama’s new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous “gray zone” betweenWestern Europe and the old Soviet sphere.
Recent events in the region have rattled nerves throughout central and eastern Europe, a region controlled by Moscowduring the Cold War, including the war last summer between Russia and Georgia and ongoing efforts by Russia to regain influence in Ukraine. A Russian cutoff of gas to Ukraine last winter left many Europeans without heat.
The Bush administration’s plan would have been “a major step in preventing various disturbing trends in our region of the world,” Kaczynski said in a guest editorial in the daily Fakt and also carried on his presidential Web site.
Our analysis:
The spin from the Obama Administration is that the missile defense system for Eastern Europe was never about Russia it was about Iran. The elite media will pick this up and repeat it but any genuine examiner knows full well that the system was to protect against Russia and Poland. This was obvious but rarely stated and is evidenced by the fact that Russia even threatened military action if missile defense technology was placed in Eastern Europe. On the other hand if it is Russia and the Obama Administration’s goal to only limit and protect against Iran’s missiles than why is Russia selling anti-cruise missile defense systems to Iran? Why has Russia not used it’s influence in Iran to put more pressure on the Iranians to abandon their nuclear weapons program.
Now for the final unspoken truth. Eastern Europe will have to create its own defense pact because the Obama Administration simply cannot be trusted to uphold NATO’s promise of mutual defense after this change in policy. Eastern Europe simply cannot depend on NATO for their security and as a result Eastern Europe may conclude that they will have no choice but to go nuclear themselves.
Liberty & Tyranny on best seller list for 24 weeks.
(CNSNews.com) – Without ever having been reviewed by either the New York Times or the Washington Post, Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto has now sold one million copies, according to its publisher, Threshold Editions.
Levin is a nationally syndicated radio host, president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, and served as chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Ed Meese in the Reagan Justice Department.
Liberty and Tyranny has been riding high on non-fiction bestseller lists ever since it was released in late March. It debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times best seller list and has remained in the Top Ten on that list for 24 straight weeks. It is currently No. 7. (Levin’s previous two books, Men in Black: How the Supeme Court is Destroying America and Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover’s Story of Joy and Anguish, were also New York Times best sellers.)
Despite Liberty and Tyranny’s tremendous sales and high ranking on the Times’ best seller list, the Times itself has never reviewed the book, only giving it a few blurbs in its ‘Inside the List” feature that runs in the Sunday edition.
The Washington Post has also never reviewed the book.
