Vocal Minority

Primary Day for NJ, Wisconsin Recall

All right fine, to hell with my home state! Here's real time results of the Wisconsin recall election of Governor Scott Walker.

For comparison, here's how Wisconsin voted in the 2010 gubernatorial election. Walker beat Democrat Barrett 52.3% to 46.5%:

And here's the map of Wisconsin for the 2008 presidential election. In that race Obama beat McCain 56.3% to 42.4%:

Over the next few hours I will post results at various point for today's recall election.

8:45PM Central: With 13% of precincts reporting, it's a romp for Walker:

9:00 PM Central: With 28% reporting, Walker has 373,000 votes, Barrett 228,000.

9:20 PM Central: With only 41% of the precincts in, Walker is ahead by well over 15 percentage points and many media outlets are already calling the election. I mean, not even Milwaukee Country (3rd up from bottom right) is still leaning Walker.

So congratulations, Scott Walker. Congrats, Wisconsin. Congrats, Tea Party. And as one Facebook friend just posted:

Dear Obama, You're next. From, the Tea Party.

Meet the F.O.C.ers*: AG Eric Holder's "Disenfranchised Minority Voter" Lie

It's the most ridiculous and uncontroversial issue in the world, but leave it to a liberal/Democrat to make it serious and controversial. According to them, demanding an official picture I.D. to vote "disenfranchises" poor people, particularly poor minorities.

How? No freaking idea.

But this, apparently, is why most Republicans -- nay, most Americans -- believe that voter I.D. is just plain common sense.

Because it is.

Think of all the things you have to do in your lives that require an official photo I.D.: from driving a car to boarding an airplane to renting a video to borrowing a library book to buying a bottle of liquor or pack of cigarettes. I've never heard of a single example of a minority, poor or otherwise, complaining about being barred from any of these activities because access to such I.D.'s were financially or otherwise prohibitive.

Yet for some reason, the notion that engaging in the very important civic activity of voting should require a proper state issued and most likely free (i.e., taxpayer-funded) voter I.D., is raaaacist. Right?

Wrong, according to liberal/Democrats who never waste a moment poisoning an important issue with wholly unsubstantiated claims of discrimination against minorities and other poor people.

As the 2012 presidential election approaches, Eric Holder, arguably the most despicable and politically abusive Attorney General in U.S. history, is playing the worn out race card to prevent states from implementing voter I.D. An editorial in last Friday's WSJ reads in part:

The Obama Administration's re-election mobilization continues: Witness Eric Holder's attempt to play the race card and perhaps twist the law in a campaign against voter identification laws.

In the Attorney General's telling, the movement in the states to require voters to show some ID is a revival of minority disenfranchisement a la Jim Crow. A growing number of minorities, he said in a speech last week, are now worried about "the same disparities, divisions and problems" that beset the country in 1965 and "many Americans, for the first time in their lives . . . now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up" to the promise of democracy for all.

If you haven't heard about this national crisis, perhaps that's because you don't travel in Mr. Holder's political circles. He is merely repeating the howls of groups like the NAACP and the George Soros-funded Brennan Center, which claim without evidence that voter ID laws hurt minorities. ...

Mr. Holder says the Civil Rights Division led by Thomas Perez will review the policies and impartially "apply the law." If that's true, Mr. Perez's job should be easy: In 2005, Justice approved a nearly identical law in Georgia. In 2008's Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the Supreme Court likewise ruled 6-3 that an Indiana law requiring photo ID at the ballot box was constitutional.

The court's liberal lion, then-Justice John Paul Stevens, wrote for the majority that Indiana's law "is unquestionably relevant to the State's interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process." Indiana offered free voter ID cards to all citizens, so the inconvenience of picking up an ID at the Department of Motor Vehicles wasn't an undue burden and was reasonably balanced by the state's interest in reducing fraud, Justice Stevens wrote.

That isn't good enough for Mr. Holder, who says his department's priority is to "expand the franchise." But expand it for whom, exactly? The vast majority of voters already have the necessary photo ID, which they need to get through airport security or register for a grocery-store savings card.

Of course it's not good enough for Holder, or any liberal/Democrat because the whole issue is based on a lie. In other words, they're all F.O.C.

Directly related to this lie about "minority voter suppression" is another thing Democrats are F.O.C. about: Voter fraud. This crime, libs/Dems will tell you, is a Republican tactic. You all remember the Bush-Gore fiasco of 2000, right? How did Bush ultimately win? Republican voter fraud. But that wasn't enough. When Bush won decisively in 2004 against John Kerry, how did the Dems explain that? Republican vote fraud.

Yet, the vast majority of election fraud convictions of recent years has been committed byDemocrats. Just last week four Democrats in New York state pled guilty to voter fraud in a 2009 primary. And the week before that, the chairman of Indiana's Democrat Party resigned as investigations into voter fraud in the 2008 presidential primary got underway. 

And in 2010, Obama's tight buds at ACORN -- i.e., Democrats -- have been convicted in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Washington state, and elsewhere.

And need we rehash the way the bitter partisan Democrat Al Franken squeezed his way into the Senate for Minnesota in 2008?

Make no mistake: Democrat opposition to voter I.D. is all because it makes voter fraud significantly more difficult to get away with. And Democrats need fraudulent votes to win elections. They need felons to vote. They need illegal immigrants to vote. They need dead people to vote. And they apparently need Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler to vote as well. All the while accusing Republicans of engaging in voter fraud!

So pardon me for saying so, Eric Holder, but you and your race-baiting minions of liberals/Democrats are F.O.C.

*F.O.C. = Full of cr@p (But you probably figured that out by now)

ACORN in Nevada Fined for 2008 Voter Fraud

Fox News is reporting this morning:

A Nevada judge on Wednesday gave ACORN, the defunct grass-roots community organization, the maximum fine for its illegal voter-registration scheme in that state.

District Court Judge Donald Mosley was blunt and unsparing in his criticism of the discredited activist group. Citing the long history of voter registration fraud allegations that engulfed ACORN across the country, he slapped the group with a $5,000 fine for violating Nevada election law during the 2008 presidential election.

Mosley, reading the pre-sentence report, listed a series of voter registration fraud allegations against ACORN workers. He said that if the claims have been true, then “It is making a mockery of our election process. If I had an individual in this courtroom…who was responsible for this kind of thing, I would put that person in prison for 10 years, hard time, and not think twice about it,” he said. “To me this is reprehensible. This is the kind of thing you see in some banana republic, Uruguay or someplace, not in the United States.”

In Nevada, ACORN pleaded guilty to one felony count of unlawful compensation for registration of voters, stemming from an illegal voter registration scheme in its Las Vegas office during in the 2008 race.

Henry D'Andrea at Politicons says: 

However, the fine is only $5,000. ... You can bet that ACORN will be back on the streets conducting voter registration efforts for the 2012 presidential election.

And yours truly has some questions:

(1) Why is the max. fine for voter fraud only $5,000?

(2) Why are the only news sources covering this as of this writing the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Fox News

(3) What did Obama know and when did he know it? 

Oh yeah, one more: Will any of my beloved "Bush stole the 2000 election" and "Bush stole the 2004 election" friends -- and you know who you are! -- give a *&$#@?

 

Liberal Media Bias: A Tale of Two Johns at ABC News

Bob Woodruff et al. just reported this on ABCNews.com:

John Edwards Indicted By Federal Grand Jury for Conspiracy and False Statements

By BOB WOODRUFF (@bobwoodruff) , MICHAEL MURRAY, PIERRE THOMAS (@PierreTABC) and JASON RYAN

June 3, 2011

A federal grand jury in Raleigh, N.C., today handed down a six-count indictment against former Sen. John Edwards for allegedly using more than $900,000 in campaign funds to hide his mistress during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Edwards faces a maximum penalty of five years in jail for each charge, if convicted. Each offense also carries a fine of $250,000.

The charges, following a two-year investigation, include conspiracy, illegal campaign contributions and making false statements. Edwards is expected to be arraigned on the charges this afternoon. Read the full indictment.

“John Edwards will tell the court he is innocent of all charges, and will plead not guilty. He did not break the law and will mount a vigorous defense,” Gregory Craig, lead counsel to John Edwards, said in a statement.

The prosecutors claim Edwards engaged in a conspiracy to protect his “public image as a devoted family man.” It alleges that Edwards was a direct participant, if not the architect, of a plot to solicit huge sums of money from two key political donors to cover up an affair that could have literally blown up his 2008 presidential bid.

The case is built on the notion that political donors would not be doing this out of the goodness of their heart, that this was an outrageous attempt to circumvent campaign finance law to keep Edwards viable as a presidential candidate. ...

Pretty serious. But I noticed something interesting about the article having read it in its entirety: 

Number of paragraphs: 24.
Number of words: 947.
Number of instances Edwards’ party ID is mentioned: ZERO.

Think that if the indicted was a Republican, Woodruff and friends wouldn’t have told us? 

Lest one think this it’s wrong to make a generalization from a single article, ABC News’ story about Edwards from yesterday (also by Woodruff, et al.) also fails to mention his party affiliation.

Remember disgraced Senator John Ensign (R-NV)? When he resigned last month due to a sex scandal, here's a snip from a May 13 report at ABC News:

If you play accompanying video, it takes anchorette Robin Roberts only 6 seconds before saying “Republican” for the first time. Jake Tapper picks up the report at 0:21 seconds. Merely 2 seconds and 9 words in, Tapper utters “Republican.” Here, exactly is how Tapper began this objective news story:

Just a few days ago, Senator John Ensign, Nevada Republican, brought his Senate career to its sad and pathetic end.

Now here's a similar snip from today about Edwards:

Notice anything missing?

In the video on the same page, Robin Roberts and George Stephanopolous talk for 41 seconds about the Edwards indictment, without one single utterance of “Democrat.” Then, they go to Woodruff reporting from D.C. In the 2.5+ minutes of Woodruff’s report, not once is “Democrat” said. At the 3:00-mark, the report goes back to Stephanopolous, who brings on legal analyst Dan Abrams. Again, for a minute and 45 seconds, Edwards party ID is not mentioned.

And in this Special Report from earlier today, again with Stephanopolous and Abrams, zero mention of the word Democrat in all of its 2+ minutes:

Now, just to triple check, I watched ABC News’s report on John Ensign from May 12. While his party affiliation is indeed missing from the web page, anchor Bob Weir starts his news story,

Ten days ago, Nevada Republican John Ensign ... 

So, to recap:

In neither an almost 1,000-word printed report, nor on the relevant web page, nor in a 4:45-minute televised story on John Edwards, is “Democrat” mentioned even once.

But three weeks ago, John Ensign’s “Republican” affiliation was mentioned sometimes in print and always on TV.

Coincidence? I report. You decide.

Geraldine Ferraro R.I.P.

This just in:

Geraldine A. Ferraro, who earned a place in history in 1984 as the first woman to run on a major party national ticket for vice president, has died. She was 75-years-old.

Ferraro, who was born in Newburgh, New York, passed away today at Massachusetts General Hospital while surrounded by her loved ones, a statement from her family read. The cause of death was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for twelve years, her family said.

Ferraro was one of the more decent, level-headed Democrats. In fact, in early 2008 Ferraro was lambasted by the politically correct liberati for daring to state the politically incorrect truth: Hillary Clinton's presidential nomination was snatched by an unaccomplished, inexperienced, America-hating Marxist/socialist simply because he was black (don't look at me like that; you know it's the truth).

This statement of truth and the backlash from the perpetually-offended left earned her spots on Hannity and other conservative shows throughout the spring of '08.

R.I.P.

Why Are Voters Only 'Angry' When They're Tossing Dems Out? (B. Goldberg)

Excellent question! As Bernie Goldberg handily demonstrates in his latest article, it's called hypocrisy, or double standards. Either way, it's insidious and it's the liberal/Democrat MO to dealing with almost anything.

It's also called liberal media bias, because it's the mainstream media that is helping their liberal/Democrat heroes perpetuate this myth that when Democrats are being booted out, it's because voters are angry, afraid, or irrational. But when Republicans are getting the heave-ho, it's because voters are enlightened, hopeful, and compassionate. What. Ever.

Here's a key quote from the article:

Interesting, isn't it, that if you listen to liberal journalists, the voters are always angry and stupid when they're tossing Democrats out. But they're high-minded and caring when they're giving Republicans the heave-ho.

You may recall that in 2006 and 2008, when Democrats took over both Houses of Congress, it was those high-minded, caring "soccer moms," looking out for the welfare of their families, who went to the polls to vote for Democrats. They were never described as "angry" or "irrational" or "throwing a temper tantrum" -- even though they were cleaning house just as the voters did Tuesday.

So let's review: As far as liberal journalists are concerned, when the American people vote for Democrats, it's because they're full of hope and want positive change and care about their little kiddies. And when they vote for Republicans, it's because they're angry, stupid and irrational.

Good thing there's no such thing as liberal bias in the media.

3 States (So Far) Investigated for Mailing Absentee Ballots to Military Past Deadline

This is on Drudge this evening (via WLS-AM Chicago):

Military ballots may not count in Illinois
By Adam Zielinski

CHICAGO (WLS) - The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether the state of Illinois missed the deadline for mailing absentee ballots to members of the military and other overseas American voters as part of a new federal overseas voting law.

Cris Cray, Director of Legislation at the Illinois State Board of Elections, says not all of Illinois’ 110 jurisdictions were compliant with the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE).

The law requires every state to mail their absentee ballots 45 days prior to Election Day to overseas troops, government employees and other Americans who want to vote from abroad. … Cray said it’s possible the ballots may not be counted because the state was tardy in sending them out. ...

Several New York counties including the five boroughs of New York City were found to be in violation of the deadline after the state was permitted by the Defense Department to move its deadline to Oct. 1 because the state’s primary day was four days before the deadline.

The Justice Department settled a case with New Mexico Tuesday where six counties failed to mail ballots by the deadline. ...

Hmmm, let me see now: Three states now under investigation for mailing absentee ballots overseas to employed military. It’s no secret that military personnel vote overwhelmingly for Republicans. So, could it be possible that whoever is in charge of these mailings missed the deadline deliberately so as to reduce votes for Republicans? Dunno, but stranger things have happened in recent U.S. elections!

All, right. I’m not going to mince words here: This. Stinks. To. High. Heaven. After listening to sanctimonious Democrats kvetch about “counting every vote!!!” and crying “voter disenfranchisement!!!” ever since Bush v. Gore (2000), we finally have an example of actual voter disenfranchisement and legitimate votes not being counted! (Not to mention the DOJ-dismissed voter suppression that took place in Philadelphia in 2008.)

So where are you now, Dems? Now’s your chance to show the rest of us that all your caterwauling wasn’t simply empty sour grapes rhetoric. If you really care about counting every vote, you should be getting on the bandwagon to get military absentee votes counted. Your should be openly supporting these investigations of Illinois, New York, and New Mexico.

Because if you don’t, you might leave yourself open to the accusation that you only care about “counting every vote” when those votes are expected to go to Democrats.

And we certainly wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?

Gingrich brands Democrats 'party of food stamps'

AP via Big Government

Listen & Learn: Four Segments of El Rushbo Broadcast Excellence (7/13/10)

El Rushbo was on a roll yesterday. The first hour was just a series of monologue after brilliant monologue. The audio clip below contains four of those segments, edited, as usual, for long silences, commercial breaks, and other extraneous parts.

In the first segment, Rush wonders out loud why liberals are perpetually unhappy. And rightly so. Here we have a black president, a Democrat House and Senate, the eeeeevil private sector being tarnished and torn while the government gets bigger and bigger, government-run health (s)care passed, plus all of their favorite countries are being coddled, and hated countries being scorned. We are living in a virtual liberal utopia, so why are they still unhappy? Listen to the clip to find out.

The second segment, beginning at around 5:20, is my favorite: a Limbaugh-esque reply to Obama advisor David Axelrod. Axelrod recently made the oft-repeated Democrat claim that the GOP wants to “turn our country backward.” In response, Rush does the unexpected: He agrees with him!

The transcript of the response is here, for anyone who wants to copy it and share it online or by email. It’s that good:

“Recently, Obama advisor David Axelrod stated that America would be going ‘backwards’ if they allowed the GOP to take the majority in 2010”? Well, let me tell you something: I don’t know about you, folks, but I would love to go backwards! I would love to go back about a year and a half.

I’d love to go back when people’s houses had value, and the expectation was that the value would increase every year.

I’d love to go backwards to when we had a 4.7% unemployment rate.

I would love to go backwards to where our taxes were lower.

I would love to go backwards where our health care was affordable and excellent.

I would love to go backwards when our investments had a good chance of growing.

I would love to go backwards when people’s children could get jobs with their expensive college educations.

I would love to go backwards when we had leaders motivating and inspiring young people to seek the world, to seek their dreams.

I would love to go back to that period of time. It’s just a year and a half ago and beyond. Who wants to live in an era where the president and the first lady tell college graduates to screw it? Don’t get into the money making professions. Oh, yes, Mr. Axelrod, I would love to go back!

I would love to go back to a period of time when my president actually liked my country.

I would love to go back to a period of time when my president respected my country and my president was proud of it.

I would love to go back to a period of time where my president was not trying to destroy things that he thinks have been unfair for 20 or 30 years or 230 years.

I would love to go back to a period of time where my president did not look at the United States as the problem in the world.

I would love to go back, Mr. Axelrod, to a period of time where we had leaders who could the United States was exceptional and could indeed be the economic engine and the freedom engine of the world.

I would love to go back, and we don’t have to go back very few, Mr. Axelrod. Just 18, 19 months. Oh yes, I would love to go backwards, Mr. Axelrod.

And speaking of going backwards, isn’t that what Axelrod wants to do? Doesn’t Axelrod want to go back to the sixties? Aren’t he and his buddies perpetually trapped in the idealism and the promise of the 1960s? Perhaps we could say they would love to go back even further, to the time of Marx. Anita Dunn might like to go back to the time of Mao Tse-tung in the 30’s and 40’s! Some of the great dictators of all time are the professed inspiration for many members of the regime. So, yeah, we’re not the only ones that want to go backwards.

Told you it was classic.

Next, at around the 8:24 point, Rush talks about the death of longtime N.Y. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in a way that he himself admitted was going to drive the liberati into apoplexy, mainly (1) As a capitalist, Steinbrenner knew when to die: before the death tax is reinstated in 2011, and (2) For a “cracker,” Steinbrenner sure made a lot of African-Americans wealthy.

Finally, at around the 10:00 mark, Rush discusses some polls—including a couple in the Washington Post of all places—that reports on the growing disillusionment with President Obama among voting blocks which are very important to the Democrats, including independents, environmentalists, the young college-educated, Hispanics, and Jews.

Enjoy these 14 minutes of brilliant broadcast excellence!

[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and extraneous talking]

(Download clip here)

Surprise Surprise: Al Franken (D-MN) Most Likely Won b/c of Illegal Felon Votes

Fox News reporting:

Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds
By Ed Barnes
Published July 12, 2010 | FoxNews.com

The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities.

That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes -- fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority's newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records.

Furthermore, the report charges that efforts to get state and federal authorities to act on its findings have been "stonewalled." ...

All right, all of you "Bush STOLE the election" liberals/Democrats. Time to put your money where your big mouths are. You say you care about clean, legitimate elections? Prove it: Demand that the truth be uncovered about this contentious Minnesota election.

Liberal Media Bias: After Letting Levi Johnston Bash the Palins, CBS Mum on His Retraction

Not once, not twice, not thrice, but four separate times in 2009 CBS had Levi Johnston on the Early Show for exclusive interviews with Democrat-hack-posing-as-journalist Maggie Rodriguez.

Johnston’s fifteen minutes of fame began when he knocked up Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol out of wedlock (that probably took about 15 minutes too) and, as a reward, was used as a media spokesperson for bashing Sarah and the entire Palin family.

(Don’t bother looking to the Early Show for guests discussing the then-new president, his radical associates, or his family. You won’t find anyone.)

As is more and more the case with the mainstream news media, Levi Johnston was not a legitimate news story; he was a political cudgel to weild against their most feared and hated woman: Sarah Palin. Plain and simple. And CBS should have been ashamed of themselves four-fold.

But yesterday something surprising occurred: In People magazine of all places, Johnston goes on the record retracting many of the charges he made against the Palins on national TV.

Kyle Dennen at NewsBusters, who documents the four Early Show appearences, writes:

One wonders when CBS will offer a similar apology for so aggressively promoting Johnston, despite his lack of credibility. At the very least, the network should acknowledge the fact that he now recants past statements he made on their air.

At the very least is right. But this morning the Early Show and no show on CBS even mentioned Johnston’s People interview. What a freaking surprise.

Maggie Rodriguez and the rest of you at CBS: If you have at least one shred of decency and professionalism left in that Dan-Rather-poisoned “news” outlet of yours, you will report on Johnston’s apology. And you yourselves will apologize to Sarah Palin and her family for using this disgruntled young punk media-hog as a weapon against your sworn political adversary with no fact-checking whatsoever.

If you don’t, then consider this episode as just the latest exposing you as nothing but a shameless propaganda arm for the Obama administration and the Democrat Party.

Ball’s in your court.

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (5/19/10)

May 19, 2010 | American Spectator
Liberals Gone Wild
By Peter Ferrara

Even though the Constitution does not include the words “separation of church and state,” liberals have long treated that concept as a hallowed fundamental doctrine of constitutional law. But no more. With the recent introduction of new Senate cap and trade legislation, ultraliberal supporters Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and others have now completely abandoned that doctrine in their quest to establish global warming dogma as the official, established religion of the United States.

Under that legislation, everyone in America will be forced to tithe to the new religion through higher prices for electricity, gasoline, natural gas, coal, home heating oil, jet fuel, food (especially meat), and every product produced or transported with such energy sources. Indeed, prices will soar high enough to reduce fossil fuel use and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions back to the per capita levels of 1870!

The legislation will further force Americans to engage in ritual sacrifices to the established religion, slashing back on powerful, roomy cars and SUVS, air conditioning, heat, PCs, laptops, big screen TVs, cell phones, iPods, backyard barbecues, manufacturing jobs, and traditional American prosperity. They will be forced to worship the modern, hip, pagan dogma with smaller “carbon footprints.” If they do not profess their true belief, they will be shouted out of public life as troglodyte “deniers,” just as those who did not faithfully maintain membership in the established Church of England were disqualified from holding public office.

But if they do faithfully follow the global warming catechism of cap and trade, they will be rewarded with the eternal salvation of a reduction in the projected rise of global temperatures of 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, based on the UN’s own climate models. Hallelujah! Praise the AlGore! ...

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May 19, 2010 | American Thinker
I Think, Therefore I Profile
By Carol Peracchio

… Whatever you do, the elites tell us, don’t profile! But is that even humanly possible? In my earlier work in hospital nursing, we profiled from the minute we clocked in for our shift. We didn’t call it profiling, of course. When I worked in the ICU, we called it “assessment.” In the ER, it’s known as “triage.” …

Profiling saves lives. Many years ago I was working nights in an ICU at a county hospital. One of our patients, a young gang member, had been shot by a rival gang. We were warned that members of that gang were threatening to come to the hospital to “finish the job.” During that shift, I was very grateful that hospital security was actively profiling everyone who came into the hospital, looking for young males of a specific race who fit the profile of that gang. The last thing I and my co-workers wanted was for a gang member to sneak in while security was questioning the elderly wife of the patient in the next bed.

The way I understand the Arizona law, police officers are expected to verify the immigration status of people they encounter during the performance of their jobs. All sorts of media, entertainment, and political stars are working themselves into a tizzy, positive that cops all over Arizona are going to start hassling random Hispanics, demanding to see their papers. As President Obama says, “If you are an Hispanic-American in Arizona, your great-grandparents may have been there before Arizona was even a state, but now suddenly if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, your going to be harassed[.]”

I find this scenario ridiculous, because if the job of policeman is anything at all like the job of a nurse, then they don’t have time to start hassling toddlers getting ice cream. Arizona is plagued with drug cartels and kidnappings, much of it tied to illegal immigrants. Believe me, the cops are busy enough. Besides, I have a feeling that the police are just as talented at profiling as nurses are. For the cops, appropriate profiling is a matter of survival. Listening to that profile instinct during a routine traffic stop can mean life or death. …

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May 18, 2010 | Daily Caller
How’s that apology thing working out, Mr. President?
By Ken Blackwell

As a candidate, Barack Obama wowed the world. He went to Berlin and gave a speech at their victory monument. It was a curious venue for such a speech. But a million Germans came out to hear him. It was a phenomenal scene. No one remembers what he said there, but it was quite a show. A year later, when he returned to the continent, as president, he spoke at Normandy. No one can quite recall what Obama said, but everyone remembers what Newsweek’s Evan Thomas said: “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above—above the world, he’s sort of God.”

If you are hailed as a “sort of God,” it’s no wonder that your head gets turned. You don’t want to seem puffed up, or succumb to the sin of pride. So you start apologizing. Not for yourself, but for your country. America has been arrogant, you tell the world. America has tried to go it alone. America has not sufficiently respected the rest of the world. And you bow. You bow a lot. …

What we are seeing is a nation standing into danger. We are watching as the United States is publicly and internationally humiliated. Our idol worship of an inexperienced and ill-equipped leader has blinded us to the mounting dangers in a world of dangers.

It would be hard to say which specific foreign policy of the Obama administration is worst. Iran sanctions? Russian relations? Attacks on Israel for Jewish settlements in Jerusalem? Trashing the special relationship with Britain? Insulting the Canadians in their own capital? Failure to secure the border with Mexico? We have an entire menu of foreign policy disasters to consider. Maybe if your perspective is from above it all, standing up there as sort of God, it looks better. For those of us with our feet firmly on the ground, it looks less heavenly.

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May 18, 2010 | NewsReal Blog
Our Current Government: A Bunch of Radicalized Slackers
BY LORI ZIGANTO

… Our current leaders have apparently given up their “laser like focus” on creating or saving jobs. That hasn’t been working out so well for them, being completely ignorant in the ways of business. Instead, they now appear to be focused on creating or saving a whole bunch of slackers. This is not the first time Pelosi has said it either. She uttered much the same drivel back in March, prior to the passage of the health care bill that had to be passed before we could see what’s in it:

“Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.”

That’s right. Working is for stuffy old fuddy-duddies and inartistic Philistines. Plus, the kids these days don’t know how to protest; we need more drum circles, man.

I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why this irked me so much. I mean, even more so than usual. I knew it couldn’t just be the putrid stench of entitlement mentality emanating from Pelosi, although that was, of course, a major part of it. I finally realized what it was; it reminds me of the tree squatters at Berkeley. College kids, full of smug ™, who think they are so much better and smarter than you, all while mooching off of their parents and bringing their laundry home for mommy to do.

The recent vile and infuriating apology to China – CHINA, of all places – for Arizona’s new immigration law fits much the same mold. Jay Nordlinger, of National Review Online, had a similar thought:

I hope I have read that incorrectly, or am interpreting it incorrectly. Did we, the United States, talking to a government that maintains a gulag, that denies people their basic rights, that in all probability harvests organs, apologize for the new immigration law in Arizona? Really, really? …

Do you ever get the idea that our government is a bunch of left-wing undergraduates come to power?

Yes. Because that is exactly what they are.

Obama is just like the new breed of hipsters who are on food stamps so they can shop at the oh-so-hip Whole Foods. Arugula is a right! And have you seen the price of it? No wonder they have made 26 year old adults comparable to children, who must remain on their parents’ insurance policies. They are still children. Left wing radical children, but children nonetheless. It’s mean to expect people to act like adults and work for things! Obama, and his administration, have persisted in that left-wing undergraduate vein, only they are dangerously now in power. …

*     *     *     *     *

Jewish World Review | May 19, 2010
The ‘Unintended Consequences’ of Liberalism 
By Arnold Ahlert

The essence of liberal bankruptcy can be reduced to two words: unintended consequences. Quite simply, the unintended consequences of liberalism are the result of people behaving like people actually behave—instead of how liberals believe they should behave. Perhaps the most egregious example of the left’s terminal disconnect from reality is health care “reform.” Two news stories reveal what happens when common sense loses out to ideological idiocy.

The first story comes from the Congressional newspaper The Hill. Apparently it has dawned on some people that adding 32 million people to the health care rolls—note I said people, as opposed to American citizens—might engender some unintended consequences with regard to their impact on “emergency rooms already crammed beyond capacity, according to experts on healthcare facilities.”

“Everybody expected that one of the initial impacts of reform would be less pressure on emergency departments; it’s going to be exactly the opposite over the next four to eight years,” said Rich Dallam, healthcare partner at NBBJ, an architectural firm which designs healthcare facilities.

Not everybody, Mr. Dallam. Only the clueless liberals in Congress and the White House who foisted this package on the substantial majority of Americans who wanted no part of it. …

*     *     *     *     *

May 17, 2010 | American Thinker
The Left’s War on Free Speech
By Bruce Walker

… All this devotion which the left pretends to have for free speech is just like every other profession of values by the left: it is pure fraud, smirking lies, and measured injustice. Consider the position that Elena Kagan has taken toward free speech. She wrote in 1996 that free speech could be restricted if it directly or indirectly incited people to do harm, and Kagan noted the famous example of someone yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. She equates that with the notorious “hate speech” invented by the left. …

The left displays a very curious attitude toward the rights of different sorts of speakers. “Hate speech” is almost always directed against the lonely individual conservative, who has no wealth or power to protect him. Conservatives have been noting for forty-one years that government licensed television network channels lie about conservatives, defame conservative leaders, and construct crude caricatures of conservatives as a group. Worse, for most of those forty-one years, the networks scrupulously avoided criticizing each other for ideological bigotry, acting like a true monopoly. The left defended the right of multi-billion dollar corporate giants to savage the lives of conservatives by malicious mendacity. The left never said a word about these mammoth business empires hurting the public.

So when does the left get concerned about opinions reaching tens of millions of Americans? When someone like Rush Limbaugh takes the largely ignored and financially modest medium of A.M. talk radio and, against a torrent of abuse and many boycotts, finds a profoundly resonating voice among the conservative majority of America. Then—only then!—the ancient “Fairness Doctrine” rears its peculiar head. When the identical triplets of CBS, NBC, and ABC had the same news, the same entertainment slant, the same everything—which meant conservative ideas and beliefs were scrupulously purged, the left thought the Fairness Doctrine something akin to censorship. Only when the other side gets heard does the doctrine have meaning.

The left is utterly wedded to thought control. Like all sibling totalitarianisms, the left in America is addicted to power and repelled by truth. The creation of officially defined oppressors and officially defined victims determines who has rights and who does not. The totalitarian narcotic of “Social Justice,” the drug of choice for Hitler, Stalin, Father Coughlin, and Sir Oswald Moseley, dulls the people into a twilight land in which “Freedom is Slavery” and free speech too.

*     *     *     *     *

May 19, 2010 | National Review Online
The U.S. Department of Blame America First
By Michelle Malkin

Assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner is probably not the first Obama State Department official to badmouth America in front of foreign delegations. He was just dumb enough to get caught.

Last week, the former head agitator at the transnationalist outfit Human Rights First trashed our country’s human-rights record to Chinese government officials.

Posner is an unrepentant open-borders radical who has long fought immigration enforcement and vociferously opposed post-9/11 counterterrorism measures to detain enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay. He was active in supporting the establishment of the International Criminal Court, an American-sovereignty-undermining tribunal that would trump U.S. judicial authority over war crimes and “crimes against humanity.” …

The Arizona law is indeed being “debated in our own society” — mostly by a parade of willful ignoramuses from Homeland Security Department secretary Janet Napolitano to Attorney General Eric Holder to State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley, all three of whom have gone on television to attack the Arizona law and then admitted that they have yet to read the legislation. ...

Have a blessed day!

Poll: Obama has Lost Almost Half of his US Jewish Support

United States President Barack Obama has lost nearly half of his support among American Jews, a poll by the McLaughlin Group has shown.

The US Jews polled were asked whether they would: (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else. 42% said they would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer. 12% said they did not know or refused to answer.

In the Presidential elections of 2008, 78% of Jewish voters, or close to 8 out of 10, chose Obama. The McLaughlin poll held nearly 18 months later, in April 2010, appears to show that support down to around 4 out of 10. …

Read the rest at Israeli National News.

Then & Now: Obama vs. Obama

Then:

 “Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us—the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of ‘anything goes.’ Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of America.”

— State senator Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention, July 27, 2004

Now:

“This year, the stakes are higher than ever. It will be up to each of you to make sure that young people, African Americans, Latinos and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again. …’ ”

— “In the video message to his supporters, reported in WaPo, April 26, 2010

[h/t the indispensible WSJ Best of the Web]

Not surprising the “uniter” in chief is doing what he always does, and that’s a whole lot of dividing. Divide and conquer. Alinsky would be proud.

Liberal Media Bias: AP, Others Barely Interested in Palin Email Hacker's Party Affiliation

This morning the Drudge Report linked to AP story below. It’s about the trial of a college student accused of hacking into Sarah Palin’s email account during the 2008 presidential campaign. It is of no small significance that the alleged hacker, one David Kernell, is the son of Democrat Tennessee state rep. Mike Kernell. 

At least you would think that info would be important. After all, if some punk child of a Republican politician got into Joe Biden’s email and started sifting through his tasteless joke collection, the child would be vilified in the nation’s mainstream rags and there would be calls for the politician to resign. Which is why the content of the AP story was very intriguing to me:

Palin set to take stand in Tenn. hacking trial
By BILL POOVEY (AP) – 6 hours ago

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A former college student charged with hacking Sarah Palin’s e-mail account fears some jurors in heavily Republican East Tennessee could be dazzled when the conservative star testifies.

Jury selection begins Tuesday and Palin’s testimony could soon follow in the case against 22-year-old David Kernell.

He was a University of Tennessee student majoring in economics when prosecutors say he hacked into the Yahoo! account Palin sometimes used for state business. At the time she was Alaska’s governor and the GOP candidate for vice president.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips has denied a defense motion to have prospective jurors answer a questionnaire asking if they have strong political feelings about Palin. Kernell’s attorney, Wade Davies, cited Palin’s speaking slot at a tea party movement convention and frequent television appearances. She is hugely popular with conservatives.

Convictions on all four felony charges — identity theft, wire fraud, intentionally accessing Palin’s e-mail account without authorization and obstructing an FBI investigation — could send Kernell to prison for up to 50 years.

“If I was the individual being charged I would be concerned, particularly the other party,” East Tennessee State University political analyst David Briley said. “Politics and religion are pretty close to the vest here.”

Kernell’s father, Democratic Rep. Mike Kernell of Memphis, has served in the Tennessee House since 1974. He has not been linked to the case against his son, and he declined to be interviewed Monday. …

Notice anything? It took AP until the seventh paragraph (and only the seventh paragraph) to inform/remind readers of this kid’s connection to the Democrat Party. I’m not even saying Kernell senior had a hand in it, but still, the connection is obviously there.

I also love how AP lets Rep. Kernell get away with declining to be interviewed. Real crack investigation there, guys.

But that’s not all. At the bottom of the web page there were two related articles. The first was this piece from NBC’s Knoxville affiliate:

Accused Palin e-mail intruder argues against one charge against him; trial set for Tuesday
Posted: 4/19/2010 11:12:22 AM
Emily Stroud

An internet fraud case starts tomorrow in Knoxville involving a University of Tennessee student and a former Vice Presidential candidate.

Sarah Palin will testify at some point during the trial, which is expected to last ten days.

At a final pre-trial conference Monday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips considered several legal arguments.

He decided the state of Alaska will not have to supply copies of e-mails from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account.

University of Tennessee student David Kernell, now 22, is accused of accessing Palin’s personal e-mail account ([email protected]) in September 2008 while she was John McCain’s running mate.

Prosecutors contend Kernell answered some security questions, like Palin’s date of birth and where she met her spouse, then reset her password.

He’s accused of posting the new password on the internet so others could look at her e-mail account.

Judge Phillips ruled Monday the content of those e-mails is irrelevant to the case, so Alaska doesn’t have to provide them.

Instead , the issue is whether Kernell changed Palin’s password and then posted it on the internet so others could look at her e-mail account.

In court, attorneys argued about whether one of the felonies Kernell faces should be thrown out.

Kernell is charged with four felonies: identity theft, wire fraud, computer fraud and obstruction of justice.

If convicted on counts two and four of the indictment, Kernell faces a maximum punishment of 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and 5 years of supervised release.

If convicted on counts one and three of the new indictment, Kernell faces a maximum punishment of 5 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and 3 years of supervised release.

Jury selection is scheduled for 9:00 Tuesday morning.

At a hearing last week, the judge outlined the jury selection process for both sides. He said 100 people will be in the jury pool, with 50 called the first day. The defense will get 11 peremptory challenges, the prosecution will get 7. Fourteen jurors will be selected to hear the case, 12 actual jurors and 2 alternates.

Kernell remains free until trial as long as he meets certain conditions, including using a computer only for class work. His father is a longtime Democratic State Senator from Memphis.

In this sixteen-paragraph story, Kernell’s father’s position and political affiliation is mentioned in the very last sentence. Which tells you exactly where on the significance meter writer Emily Stroud considered that information. Morever, Sarah Palin’s political party isn’t mentioned at all.

And then there’s this piece from another Knoxville station, WMC-TV a.k.a. Action News 5:

Jury selection to begin Tuesday in case of alleged Palin hacker
Apr 19, 2010 4:28 PM EDT
By Janice Broach

KNOXVILLE, TN (WMC-TV) - Trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday in the case of a Germantown High School graduate who is accused of hacking into Sarah Palin's email account.

Monday, David Kernell and his attorneys left a pre-trial hearing at the federal courthouse in Knoxville without commenting.

Kernell, a University of Tennessee student who is taking time off for the trial, is accused of hacking into Palin’s personal e-mail account, the password then posting it on line where at least one other person accessed he account.

He is also accused of looking over the account for politically damaging information. When the account was hacked in 2008, Palin was Republican John McCain’s running mate.

Kernell’s attorneys argue the government simply put two misdemeanor charges together and called them a felony in one of the counts against him. They have repeatedly tried to get the charges against him dismissed.

Computer experts, discussing the case in the media, say it is unusual for a case like this to actually go to trial.

Jury selection will begin Tuesday with a panel of 100 possible jurors. Over the objection of Kernell’s attorneys, a judge ruled that potential jurors will be given numbers, and their names will not be made public.

Palin is expected to testify during the trial.

In this article Kernell’s father isn’t even mentioned, let alone party affiliation. For all you know, he’s just some random punk college kid with computer hacking chops. And Broach writes “looking … for politically damaging information,” as if she’s willing doing to do anything to avoid using the D-word!

In Broach’s defense, in a coexisting Special Report she mentions Kernell’s father in the third paragraph. But tell me if her treatment of the Democrat isn’t just a little too sympathetic:

Special Report: The Sarah Palin Hacker
Posted: Apr 19, 2010 1:50 PM EDT. Updated: Apr 20, 2010 7:11 AM EDT
By Janice Broach

KNOXVILLE, TN (WMC-TV) - It seemed unlikely at first: A University of Tennessee economics major from Memphis was accused of hacking the personal email account of then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who also happened to be the running mate for Republican Presidential contender John McCain.

The suspect, 22-year-old David Kernell, is the son of long-time Tennessee Democratic State Representative Mike Kernell.

“When this hit unexpectedly, I got hundreds and hundreds of calls, and we got hundreds and hundreds of emails, and it was just overwhelming,” Mike Kernell said in a recent interview. …

Awww, poow baby. And we know that neither you nor your peeps had any influence on your son’s actions. Because Janice Broach of WMC-TV and the folks at AP haven’t told us otherwise.

Whatever.

Finally, here is the second related article listed at the bottom of the original AP web page. This one is from the Memphis Commerical Appeal, the home district of Rep. Kernell:

Rep. Kernell’s son’s trial over alleged Sarah Palin e-mail hacking to begin
By Richard Locker
Posted April 19, 2010 at midnight

Echoes of the heated 2008 presidential election may reverberate in a Knoxville courtroom this week as David Kernell goes on trial on charges stemming from the hacking of Sarah Palin’s e-mail account two months before the election.

Kernell, now 22, is a 2006 Germantown High School graduate, state championship chess player and the son of 36-year state Rep. Mike Kernell, D-Memphis. He was a University of Tennessee physics and engineering student when federal authorities allege he accessed a personal e-mail account of Palin, governor of Alaska and Republican vice presidential nominee at the time. …

Ah, so finally an article that recognizes the political relevance of this entire ordeal! It’s right there in the second paragraph.

Take notes, you liberal hacks at AP and WBIR. This is the way to write an article.

Obama's First Year: So Many Lies, So Little Time [UPDATED 1/22]

After a year in office, Obama has been called many things by his critics, including radical and incompetent. Radical? Yes. Incompetent? Maybe. One thing President Hope&Change is extremely skilled at is lying. 

Now this is impressive:

Jan 21st, 2010 | Front Page Mag
The Lies of Obama
John Ellis

The accumulated weight of Obama’s deceit is overwhelming:

• During his campaign for the presidency and since, Obama repeatedly assured us that he would protect Medicare against cuts; but he now presses for passage of bills that include savage cuts in Medicare.
• To obtain passage of his first stimulus bill, Obama assured us that 90% of the jobs created would be in the private sector; but as he well knew, most of them were to be in the public sector.
• Early in the health care debate, Obama assured us that he had not said that he favored a single payer system; but he was on record as having said exactly that.
• Obama gave primary voters a firm assurance that if he became the nominee of the Democratic party he would (unlike Hillary Clinton) abide by the campaign finance limits of public funding; but as soon as he became the party’s nominee, he reneged on that pledge.
• During the presidential campaign Obama criticized the presence of former lobbyists in the Bush administration and solemnly assured us that he would appoint no lobbyists to his administration; but once elected he proceeded to appoint even more lobbyists than his predecessors.
• Obama criticized the size of George Bush’s deficit and promised to stop deficit spending if elected; but he has already quadrupled the size of the deficit he objected to and recklessly continues new federal spending in the trillions.
• When campaigning Obama criticized bills before the congress that were too long for anyone to be able to read and promised to stop that; but the bills he has been backing throughout his first year are infinitely longer (2000+ pages) than the ones he criticized.
• Candidate Obama promised an end to the corruption of earmarks and pork, but in the bills he has supported this year there have been more and bigger earmarks than ever before.
• Candidate Obama promised us that CIA personnel involved in the interrogation of terrorists would not be prosecuted; but his administration is now doing exactly that.
• Obama assured a joint session of Congress that the health bill he supported (pre-Stupak) would not provide public funding for abortions; but bitter resistance on the part of House Democrats to inclusion of language to that effect soon proved that it did.
• Candidate Obama promised that he would make sure that there was always enough time for the public to read legislation before it was enacted; but he has done exactly the opposite, repeatedly pressing for even faster passage of even longer bills.
• Candidate Obama met fears that he would be a tax and spend liberal by promising, emphatically and repeatedly, that those earning under $200,000 would see no increase in their taxes of any kind; but he now urges passage of a healthcare bill that breaks that pledge in many different ways, and his unrestrained increase in federal spending makes more tax increases inevitable.
• Candidate Obama promised bipartisanship and an end to partisan bickering; but in a display of especially ruthless partisanship his allies have shut Republicans out of all key meetings on his health care initiative, with the unprecedented result that domestic legislation of historic importance garnered not a single Republican vote in the Senate.
• Candidate Obama criticized his opponent’s plan to tax employer paid healthcare benefits, and promised he would not tax them; but the bill he now backs will do just that.
• Obama had promised that he would not sign a healthcare bill that would add one dime to the federal deficit; but the bill he now backs adds trillions in new federal spending, offset only by new sources of revenue that are both uncertain and more properly seen as offsetting the already existing deficit.
• Obama coerced congress into passing his stimulus bill by promising that if it were passed unemployment could go no higher then 8%; but unemployment is now at 10%, and he could not possibly have had good reason to exclude that possibility.
• Obama promised that his cap and trade legislation will create jobs; but its massive tax increases will certainly hobble the economy and destroy jobs, while green jobs in significant numbers can at best be hoped for, but never promised.
• Obama has repeatedly assured the American people that if they like their current health plan they can keep it; but the House bill which he supported created huge incentives for employers to drop their coverage and shift their members to a public option.
• Obama has just as often assured the public that under his health plan everyone will be able to keep their current doctor; but many are certain to lose their doctors when ObamaCare’s large cuts in Medicare funding induce more doctors to withdraw from Medicare coverage, as they also would were employers to transfer patients to a public option to save money.
• Obama assured a joint session of Congress that his health plan would not fund illegal aliens; but his allies had been busy voting down amendments to that effect. (This was the point of Joe Wilson’s outburst.)
• Obama claimed that John Deere’s CEO had told him that Deere would begin hiring again as a result of the stimulus bill; but that individual immediately announced that he had said no such thing, and that Deere would in fact be laying off more workers.
• Candidate Obama promised that Guantanamo would be closed by January 1, 2010; but it is still open.
• Candidate Obama promised that his administration (unlike his predecessor’s) would be so transparent that TV cameras (C-Span) would be there for key deliberations; but an unprecedented level of secrecy prevails as the final stages of Obamacare are negotiated behind closed doors and kept so secret that even the Senate majority whip admitted that he had no idea what was going on. Requests for Obama to honor the promise of C-Span cameras are being ignored.
• To gain traction for his attempt to return a would-be socialist dictator in Honduras to power, Obama claimed that he had been overthrown in an illegal coup; but the congressional research service pointed out correctly that ex-President Zelaya had been removed for constitutionally sufficient cause by legal and constitutional means.
• Obama claims that he wants a public option only to increase choice and competition; but the House bill would clearly reduce choice both by squeezing unsubsidized private health plans out of the market, and by setting rigid conditions on acceptable plans that would narrow available options.
• Candidate Obama claimed that violent radical Bill Ayers was just another guy in his neighborhood; but the record shows that the two had worked closely together.
• Obama assured us that his stimulus bill would create or save a million jobs; but he was claiming as fact what could never have been more than a wild (and highly improbable) guess, and his more recent attempts to justify that guess have been fraudulent.
• Obama assured us that his health plan would never ration care, or “pull the plug” on grandma; but the legislation he backs sets up panels to make crucial decisions on when to withhold care, and it makes such deep cuts in Medicare that rationing is inevitable.
• Obama now assures us that health insurance premiums will not go up if ObamaCare becomes law, insisting indignantly that people who say this have not read the bill; but the legislation forces insurers to cover preexisting conditions, which will compel them to raise premiums substantially.

… How shameful is that for our society when this disgraceful record is never the subject of a reproachful editorial in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or CBS news? Richard Nixon was removed from office, and Bill Clinton impeached for a single lie. Who could look at Obama’s record without concluding that his lying is in a completely different league to theirs? …

One year down, three more to go. How’s that hope n’ change working out for ya?

UPDATE 1/22: Missed this 1/19 Human Events article by Susan Dale on the same subject. It lists fewer broken promises, but elaborates on them more.

Sarah Palin Joins FNC. Good or Bad?

Good idea or bad idea?

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has signed a multi-year deal with FOX News to serve as a contributor across all FOX News platforms, announced Bill Shine, Executive Vice President of Programming.

In making the announcement, Shine said, “Governor Palin has captivated everyone on both sides of the political spectrum and we are excited to add her dynamic voice to the FOX News lineup.” As a contributor, Palin will provide political commentary and analysis for FOX News Channel (FNC), FOX Business Network (FBN), FOXNews.com, and FOX News-produced special event political programming for FOX Broadcasting.

In addition, she will host periodic episodes of FNC’s “Real American Stories,” a series exploring inspirational real-life tales of overcoming adversity throughout the American landscape that will debut in 2010.

Palin added, “I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at FOX News. It’s wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news.”

Personally, I do not think this was such a wise decision, and it has nothing to do with her capability to be a news analyst. I’m sure she’ll be very competent. It’s all really predicated on her political aspirations. If she’s planning to run for national office again, I predict the mainstream media will be taking this opportunity to start stocking their arsenal. They’re going to pick apart for her every single word in a way no other public figure gets analyzed. (Remember when Going Rogue came out? Associated Press had 11 authors write up a fact check “news story.”) It’s going to be an endless hunt to paint her as stupid on the one hand and extremist on the other. Remember: Only conservatives—especially female or minority conservatives—get to be under the media microscope, warts and all.

I’m also worried about the association with Fox News. It makes no difference if FNC really is more fair and balanced than the mainstream media. It’s the latter that dominates and controls the public mentality, and I have enough Kool-Aid drinking MSM-watching, NY-Times-reading liberal/Democrat friends who are simply convinced that FNC is nothing but a fringe extreme right-wing outfit and a propaganda arm of the Republican Party (as claimed Obama's former Mao-worshiping Whatever Czar Anita Dunn). I’m afraid if Sarah runs again on the national ticket in 2012, this connection will come back to bite her in the butt (cute as it is).

What do you think?

Liberal Media Bias: MRC's Notable Quotables of 2009 Are Here!

They gushed like lovestruck schoolgirls over an unaccomplished, incompetent, and immature new president.

They downplayed said president’s motley crew of tax-cheating White House appointments and communism-endorsing czars.

They perpetuated his flawed conception of the United States as—that is, until he fixes it—an arrogant, racist, imperialist, wealth-stealing, pollution-spewing, Islam-oppressing, terrorist-torturing, saber-rattling threat to world security.

They covered his every trip abroad as if a rock star’s world tour.

They bolstered the administration’s image by unquestioningly parroting their excuses for their failed, disastrous policies.

They dutifully cheerled for every piece of legislation coming out of the Democrat White House and Congress, expressing virtually no concern their constitutionality, legality, or popularity with the American people.

They explained away opposition to said legislation by Republicans and the general public as bitter partisanship, talk-radio-fomented anger, militia-initiated anti-government hatred, and good ol’ fashioned American racism.

They treated Tea Parties and town halls as disturbing uprisings of perpetually angry, white supremicist, gun-toting militia types merely having a temper tantrum after losing an election to a black man.

With blatant disregard for fact-checking, source verification, journalistic professionalism and objectivity, they painted Sarah Palin as an intolerant, extremist, moronic country bumpkin.

With blatant disregard for fact-checking, source verification, journalistic professionalism and objectivity, they painted Rush Limbaugh as a woman-hating, violence-inciting racist.

They fixated on the scandals or indiscretions of conservative/Republican politician no matter how miniscule.

They downplayed the scandals or indiscretions of liberal/Democrat politician no matter how enormous.

They treated the infrequent crimes of conservatives/Christians as an indication of some dangerous pattern inherent in conservativism/Christianity.

They minimized the recurrent crimes of radical Islamists by warning us against the temptation of treating them as an indication of some dangerous pattern inherent in radical Islam.

They covered the deaths of famous conservatives/Republicans in a “Ding-dong the Wicked Witch is dead” sort of way.

They covered the deaths of famous liberals/Democrats in a “The heavens are weeping for this devastating loss to mankind” sort of way.

They helped perpetuate the man-made global warming climate change hoax by ignoring, dismissing, or criticizing opposing scientists and their data.

They helped perpetuate said hoax by ignoring or downplaying the leaked emails revealing the deliberate manipulation and deletion of inconvenient data.

Who are they? They are ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBCPBSNPR, a.k.a. the mainstream media.

The year 2009 was sure busy for these protectors of Truth. For that reason, I am thankful to the Media Research Center and their 48 judges for selecting the most outrageous media quotes of 2009. Below are my personal favorites from this 18-page compilation. As was the case last year, my favorites don’t include statements made by commentators like Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Joy Behar, and Rachel Maddow. As revolting as their statements are, I feel MRC does a slight disservice by conflating opinion-makers with news anchors or reporters. There are ample examples of pervasive left-wing bias offered this year by the Katie Courics, Bob Schieffers, Jack Caffertys, and Andrea Mitchells of the media world.

The Coronation of the Messiah Award for Fawning Inaugural Coverage

“What a day it was. It may take days or years to really absorb the significance of what happened to America today....When he [Barack Obama] finally emerged, he seemed, even in this throng, so solitary, somber, perhaps already feeling the weight of the world, even before he was transformed into the leader of the free world....The mass flickering of cell phone cameras on the Mall seemed like stars shining back at him.”
— NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on the January 20 Nightly News.

Master of His Domain Award for Obama Puffery

“The legislative achievements have been stupendous — the $789 billion stimulus bill, the budget plan that is still being hammered out (and may, ultimately, include the next landmark safety-net program, universal health insurance). There has also been a cascade of new policies to address the financial crisis — massive interventions in the housing and credit markets, a market-based plan to buy the toxic assets that many banks have on their books, a plan to bail out the auto industry and a strict new regulatory regime proposed for Wall Street. Obama has also completely overhauled foreign policy, from Cuba to Afghanistan. ‘In a way, Obama’s 100 days is even more dramatic than Roosevelt’s,’ says Elaine Kamarck of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. ‘Roosevelt only had to deal with a domestic crisis. Obama has had to overhaul foreign policy as well, including two wars. And that’s really the secret of why this has seemed so spectacular.’”
— Time’s Joe Klein in the magazine’s May 4 cover story on Barack Obama’s first 100 days as President.

“It didn’t take long for Barack Obama — for all his youth and inexperience — to get acclimated to his new role as the calming leader of a country in crisis....Rookie jitters? Far from it....For the past three months, Obama has spoken in firm, yet soothing tones. Sometimes he has used a just-folks approach to identify with economically struggling citizens. He has displayed wonkish tendencies, too, appearing much like the college instructor he once was while discussing the intricacies of the economic collapse. He has engaged in witty banter, teasing lawmakers, staffers, journalists and citizens alike. He has struck a statesmanlike stance, calling for a renewed partnership between the United States and its allies....”
— AP Washington correspondent Liz Sidoti in an April 25 dispatch, “Obama quickly, confidently adapts to presidency.”

The Crush Rush Award for Loathing Limbaugh

“Limbaugh’s perceived racist diatribes are too many to name but here’s a sampling: He once declared that [words on screen] ‘Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark,’ said Limbaugh.”
— CNN’s Rick Sanchez promoting a made-up quote on the 3pm ET hour of Newsroom, October 12.

Damn Those Conservatives Award

Host Dylan Ratigan: “Some Republicans and conservatives celebrating Obama’s failed attempt to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. Down with Chicago! Contessa Brewer has the latest.”
News anchor Contessa Brewer: “Can you imagine this, that some people actually went as far as to cheer?”
Ratigan: “Sure. I mean, there are people that are actually trying to derail health care in order to take down Obama, even if it means half the country dies.”

— Exchange on MSNBC’s 9am ET Morning Meeting, October 5.

The Poison Tea Pot Award for Smearing the Anti-Obama Rabble

“You know, … this is a party for Obama bashers. I have to say that this is not entirely representative of everybody in America....It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network, Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing, I’ll toss it back to you.”
— Correspondent Susan Roesgen during live coverage of the tea party protests, CNN Newsroom, April 15.

“They’ve waved signs likening President Obama to Hitler and the devil; raised questions about whether he was really born in this country; falsely accused him of planning to set up death panels; decried his speech to students as indoctrination; and called him everything from a ‘fascist’ to a ‘socialist’ to a ‘communist.’ ...And all that was before Mr. Obama’s speech was interrupted by a representative who once fought to keep the Confederate flag waving over the South Carolina state house. Add it all up, and some prominent Obama supporters are now saying that it paints a picture of an opposition driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President.”
— ABC’s Dan Harris on World News, September 15.

Spread the Wealth Award for Socialist Sermonizing

“Why not just nationalize the banks?...People are angry. There’s so much taxpayer money going into the banks. Why shouldn’t the government — why shouldn’t you just fire the executives who wrecked these banks in the first place and tanked the world’s financial system in the process?”
— ABC’s Terry Moran interviewing President Obama for Nightline, February 10.

“In Britain, a government takeover of a bank last year helped to temporarily calm fears in the financial markets there. Nationalization may have a psychological impact as well, and Uncle Sam wrapping his arms around failing banks in this country might provide a big dose of confidence for the American consumer.”
— Katie Couric on the February 19 CBS Evening News, talking about the Obama administration possibly taking over American banks.

Long Live Camelot Award for Lionizing Ted Kennedy

“Mary Jo wasn’t a right-wing talking point or a negative campaign slogan....We don’t know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she’d have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history....[One wonders what] Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded. Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.”
— Discover magazine deputy web editor Melissa Lafsky, who formerly worked on the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog, writing at the Huffington Post, August 27.

“America mourns the lion of the Senate....There is, of course, no royal family in this country. The Kennedys, perhaps, the closest we’ve ever had....For nearly half a century in the Senate, Ted Kennedy spoke for people who had no voice — the poor and the disabled, children and the elderly.”
— Anchor Katie Couric kicking off the August 26 CBS Evening News.

The Half-Baked Alaska Award for Pummeling Palin

CNN’s Jack Cafferty: “Here’s the question: ‘Would you rather listen to a speech by Sarah Palin or a speech by Newt Gingrich?’ Go to CNN — or would you rather just stick needles in your eyes? [Over loud laughter off-camera from a man other than Cafferty, presumably Blitzer] Go to CNN.com/CaffertyFile and you can post a comment on my blog. I forgot about the third option.”
Anchor Wolf Blitzer: “What do you think, Jack? You want to listen to Palin or Gingrich deliver a speech?”
Cafferty: “I’m not interested in listening to either one of them.”

— Exchange on CNN’s The Situation Room, June 9, talking about Palin and Gingrich’s appearance at a Republican fundraiser the previous evening.

“She’s been an astronaut and a rock star. Pop icons Beyonce and Shakira. She’s won American Idol too. She’s even run for President twice. [Over footage of Sarah Palin] Some would argue she also ran for Vice President in 2008.”
— ABC’s David Wright in a retrospective marking the 50th anniversary of Barbie for Nightline, February 16.

“She’s a joke. I mean, I just can’t take her seriously....The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it’ll never happen. Republican primary voters just are not going to elect a talk show host.”
— New York Times columnist David Brooks talking about Sarah Palin on ABC’s This Week, November 15.

The Un-Fairness Doctrine Award for Slamming Media Conservatives

“Let me be precise here: Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue. But I don’t understand why the White House would give such poisonous helium balloons as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity the opportunity for still greater spasms of selfinflation by declaring war on Fox....The best antidote to their garbage is elegant, intelligent governance.”
— Time’s Joe Klein on the magazine’s “Swampland” blog, October 23.

“[Robert] Novak titled his 2007 memoir, The Prince of Darkness, and he was indeed a very dark force in cable TV news contributing mightily to the toxic culture of confrontation, belligerence and polarization that so defines cable TV and American political discourse today. There is no way to be nice about his impact on cable TV during its formative years....I am talking about Novak’s sneering TV persona and the role it played in reaching back to the dark political style of the 1950s Richard Nixon — and leading us to the polarized, angry space that cable TV and the conversation of American politics now inhabits.”
— Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik August 18 on his “Z on TV” blog, two hours after news broke of Novak’s passing.

“Was there a tone in this country that was actually started with the election of our first black president that is bringing the crazies out of the woodwork, and are they being motivated to move by right-wing pronouncements, like he’s dangerous, he’s a socialist, he’s a Muslim, and he isn’t even a U.S. citizen? This is what we hear on some TV and radio outlets, which, by the way, according to our Constitution, they are entitled to what they believe and even propagate.”
— CNN Newsroom anchor Rick Sanchez setting up a segment suggesting “hateful talk” can be blamed for the Holocaust museum shooting, June 11.

Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award for Obsequious Obama Interviews

“You’re so confident, Mr. President, and so focused. Is your confidence ever shaken? Do you ever wake up and say, ‘Damn, this is hard. Damn, I’m not going to get the things done I want to get done, and it’s just too politicized to really get accomplished the big things I want to accomplish’?”
— CBS’s Katie Couric in an exchange with Obama shown on The Early Show, July 22.

“It seems to me that there is a sort of meanness that’s settled over our political dialogue. It started this summer at these town hall meetings....President Carter is now saying that he thinks it’s racial. Nancy Pelosi says it could be dangerous. What do you think it’s all about?”
— CBS’s Bob Schieffer to President Obama on Face the Nation, September 20.

“House Speaker Pelosi worried about the opposition, the tone of it, perhaps leading to violence as it did in the ’70s. There’s more recent examples of anti-government violence — occurring even in the mid-’90s. Do you worry about that?”
— David Gregory to Obama on NBC’s Meet the Press, September 20.

Barry’s Big Brain Award for Journalists Bedazzled by Obama’s Brilliance

“I like to say that, in some ways, Barack Obama is the first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office. I mean, from visionary leader of a giant movement, now he’s got an executive position that he has to perform in, in a way.”
— ABC Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran to Media Bistro’s Steve Krakauer in a February 20 “Morning Media Menu” podcast.

The Audacity of Dopes Award for Wackiest Analysis of the Year

“We have an FBI, and we’re not prejudiced against somebody who’s worked at the FBI. It’s an honorable place to work. And the KGB, I think, was an honorable place to work. It gave people in the former Soviet Union, a communist country, an opportunity to do something important and worthwhile.”
— CNN founder Ted Turner on Meet the Press, November 30, 2008.

“Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”
— New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in a September 9 column, “Our One Party Democracy.”

The Obamagasm Award for Seeing Coolness In Everything Obama Does

Correspondent John Harwood: “He had this fly that was persistently buzzing around him....He swatted his hand and he said, ‘I got the sucker.’ He threw it onto the ground. It was a, you know, Dirty Harry ‘make my day’ moment.”...
MSNBC anchor David Shuster: “Amazing...An amazing interview....It never fails — great weather, rainbows, incredible speeches, and three-point basket. A fly and he nails it. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.”

— Exchange on MSNBC after Harwood’s CNBC interview with President Obama concluded, June 16.

“Between workouts during his Hawaii vacation this week, he was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions. The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.”
— Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow in a December 25, 2008 front-page story about Obama’s vacation fitness regimen.

Michelle, the Media Belle Award

Correspondent Dawna Friesen: “Her husband is, of course, the big star of the show, but this is Michelle Obama’s first foray on to the global stage as First Lady. And you can bet that her every move, her every fashion decision will be dissected and analyzed, especially when the couple go to meet the Queen. But she’s got a lot of good will on her side. … Ask the British about Michelle Obama, and you’ll hear a lot of what you hear in the States.”
Woman on the street: “Oh, I think she’s really cool. She’s got a lot of really good styles. It makes a change from politicians’ wives to look good.”
Man on the street: “She looks supportive and that’s what a man needs in life.”
Second man: “I have been totally stunned at the awesome nature of Michelle Obama.”...
Friesen: “Then there’s those arms, the envy of a lot of British women....”
— NBC’s Today, March 31.

“In 1961, when Jacqueline Kennedy came to Europe, she enchanted even the crustiest of world leaders, and she’s remained a tough act to follow for every First Lady since. But Michelle Obama looks more than equal to the task of impressing and delighting even the grandest of them....To be honest, most Europeans were going to like whoever replaced President Bush. But there’s no doubt Michelle and her husband have an extra je ne sais quoi.”
— CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer on The Early Show, March 31.

Media Hero Award

“I’m honored to be joined today by the Godfather of Green, the King of Conservation: Former Vice President Al Gore.”
— Katie Couric opening her November 2 “@KatieCouric” CBSNews.com webcast.

“The Thinking Man’s Thinking Man: Al Gore’s New Plan for the Planet.”
— Cover of the November 9 Newsweek.

“This woman has a life story that you couldn’t make up! I mean, you know, she’s born in the public projects, in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, a single-parent household, she goes to a Catholic school, she gets scholarships to the best schools in the country, Princeton and Yale, she overcomes all that while dealing with diabetes all her life, and she is Hispanic....This was the political advisor’s dream candidate.”
— CBS’s Bob Schieffer during live coverage of Obama’s selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, May 26.

Not enough for you? Then visit my post on MRC's 2008 Notable Quotables here.

Jewish Support for Obama Tanking - Or Is It?

Last week the Republican Jewish Coalition joyfully issued this press release:

Jewish support for Obama continues to tumble
Wednesday, December 09, 2009 By: RJC Press Office

According to a Quinnipiac poll released today, Jewish support for President Obama has tumbled to 52%. In January, Obama’s approval rating among Jews was 83%; by September it had fallen to 64%, according to a Gallup poll.

The Quinnipiac poll asked respondents whether they approved of President Obama’s handling of specific issues. Only 52% of Jewish respondents approved of the way President Obama is handling the economy, and 49% approved of his handling of health care.

Among Jewish respondents, only 36% were satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. today.

Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks said, “Overall support for President Obama is falling in this country; Rasmussen polls have pegged him with around 48% approval and 52% disapproval for the last few weeks. [As of Sunday, Dec. 13, the numbers are even lower: 46% vs. 53%.] Even among Jewish voters his numbers are declining quickly.

“Voters are becoming more aware of the details of President Obama’s agenda for this country. The glow of the ‘hope and change’ mantra has faded in the face of the higher unemployment, higher taxes, and higher national debt that his agenda will impose on us and our children.

“In addition, the Jewish community has been troubled by the efforts of this administration to pressure Israel on the issue of ‘settlements’ and has raised questions about the sovereignty of Israel over a united Jerusalem. These and otherwise actions by the President have fueled the growing ‘buyers’ remorse’ on the part of Jewish voters.”

This was gleefully reported by some talk show hosts as well, such as “Rite Jew” Steve Malzberg. But while this news is welcomed by some, I view it skeptically. For one, the polling sample used by Quinnipiac is only 2,313 registered voters, a rather tiny portion of the entire American populace. Rasmussen also uses a small sample: 1500 Likely Voters over a three-day period. Given that Jews make up anywhere from 1.8–2.2% of the U.S. population, it’s possible that these samples comprise only a couple dozen Jews. 

While the Gallup poll seems much more comprehensive—nearly 15,000 adults over 18 polled over the month of September (their most recent)—the number of Jews sampled is 379. While still a small number, I’d trust their 64% number over Quinnipiac’s 52% until Gallup conducts a more up-to-date poll.

I also can go from personal relations: My own list of Facebook friends contain more than 379 Jews, and I can safely guess that of those who voted for Obama—probably 90%—very few of them have jumped off the Obama bandwagon. In fact, I have many Jewish friends who, in the face of my criticism of President Golden Calf and his policies, have become even more supportive of him.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m sure some American Jews have sobered up from their Obama-Kool-Aid Bacchanalia and have seen the truth. I’d just rather have more reliable polling samples to confirm this. So consider me cautiously optimistic.

Liberal Media Bias: AP Fact-Checks Sarah Palin's Book. What About Al Gore's?

In a few days Sarah Palin’s much-anticipated Going Rogue hits the stores. But this morning Ms. Palin is already meeting some criticism for allegedly false statements. Before the book is even released, a gaggle of Associated Press—yes, Associated Press!—writers took it upon themselves to embark on a fact-checking mission:

FACT CHECK: Palin's book goes rogue on some facts
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Sarah Palin's new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time.

Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer's dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition.

Palin goes adrift, at times, on more contemporary issues, too. She criticizes President Barack Obama for pushing through a bailout package that actually was achieved by his Republican predecessor George W. Bush — a package she seemed to support at the time.

In Palin’s 400+ page memoir Calvin Woodward and his team of assistants found only a handful of questionable statements. This would hardly be a news story were the author of the book not the leftocracy’s the most hated and feared woman.

Now, in theory I have no problem with a news outlet parsing a popular new book and addressing misstatements, exaggerations, and falsehoods. If an author is gilting the lily, they should be called on it.

What I do have a problem with is the apparent enthusiasm with which a news source went after this book. You’d be hard pressed to find the mainstream media so ambitiously fact-check the publication of a liberal/Democrat public figure.

In 2003, Hillary Clinton’s Living History memoir came out. Taxpayer-funded NPR granted her no less than four interviews. In one of them, NPR did not fail to note that Hillary “criticizes the Bush administration for a ‘power grab on so many fronts’ which she calls an attempt to implement a ‘very radical, right-wing agenda.’” (This would be the same NPR which seems not to have a problem with the Obama administration grabbing power on so many friends in order to implement a very radical, left-wing agenda.)

Interestingly, one of the most critical reviews of Hillary’s book came from Maureen Dowd at the NY Times. But Dowd’s complaints were not with any questionable statements, but merely with her writing style and content. No matter. Hillary was vindicated in 2004 when Clyde Haberman skewered Dick Morris in the Times’ review of Rewriting History. The Washington Post was also not very kind with Morris’ 300+ page retort to Hillary’s fantasy memoir.

You have to go across the pond to London’s Independent to find an article questioning the veracity of Living History.

It was actually Bill Clinton’s My Life memoir from June, 2004, that got more criticism by the press, e.g., USA Today. But that didn’t stop the media from ooh-ing and aah-ing over the sales records Clinton was breaking, and it certainly didn’t stop Clinton from being applauded on all the news shows, from Oprah to 60 Minutes. 

The headline on CBS News’ Politics page on June 14, 2004 blared “The Return Of The Comeback Kid” and declared: “Bill Clinton is back.” Instead of critiquing the nearly 1000-page tome, the Chief Political Writer David Paul Kuhn wondered how much Clinton’s book was going to hurt George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

Again, when Dick Morris and Eileen McGann hit back in December, 2004, with Because He Could, the mainstream media circled the wagons. Chris Suellentrop in the Washington Post mocked the 270-page attempt to set the record straight as an “extended blog entry with a dust jacket.”

And what of the pièce de resistance, the opus d’opus, the king of all books which are loads of B.S. from front cover to back cover: An Inconvenient Truth by Albert Gore, Jr. Five years after the release of this deceptive piece of propaganda and its accompanying movie, the mainstream media is still enamored with Al Gore and his cause.

But the inconvenient truth is there are more lies in one chapter of An Inconvenient Truth than in Sarah Palin’s whole book. This is handily demonstrated, for instance, by Marlo Lewis, Jr. at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose monograph A Skeptic’s Guide to AIT meticulously deconstruct’s Gore’s book page by fallacious page.

If the Associated Press or any mainstream news outlet were anywhere near as ambitious at fact-checking An Inconvenient Truth as they are Going Rogue, Al Gore would be a humiliated has-been and the campaign to fight man-made global warming climate change would be at the top of every list of humanity’s greatest scams.

Get ready for some more Gore-lovin' from the mainstream media; the thinking man's thinking man has a new man-made global warming climate change book out this month. You think Calvin Woodward and the gang at the Associated Press are going to be fact-checking this or any of Gore's books? Sure, and pigs will be flying out of my skinny white butt.

Like I said, in theory I have no problem with—and even welcome—the media conducting a principled analysis on a public figure’s memoir.

But the selective fact-checking crusades are just a little too transparent.