Classic Monster Politics

Paul A. Ibbetson

What do Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney and Lon Chaney Jr. have in common? They are forever known as the faces of the classic monsters Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Phantom of the Opera, and the Wolf Man. Whether you were frightened by these classic representations or the continual evolutionary adaptations that have followed, we all know these monsters when we see them and we all do the same thing when they are thrust into our faces: we take a big step back.

As interesting as the creatures themselves is the construction in how they are perceived. With this in mind, no relevant “monster talk” would be complete without addressing the most prevalent but least identified monsters of today. This identification is made if we are smart enough to expand our minds to enlightened ways of thinking and bold enough to shine our torches into the deepest, dankest recesses in which these illusive modern ghouls take refuge. The problem in the end is that when we finally take a bold look, we are more likely to find a beast with a three-piece suit and briefcase than a creature in rags and chains. In place of ravenous, blood-sucking fangs, we are likely to find smiling faces, stacks of ambiguous laws and a well-manicure hand that can whip out a signature in total darkness. Who are these new slithering, sinister surrogates of evil? Without a doubt it is the modern-day politician.
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Classic Monster Politics”


Another Obama White House Lie About Islam

-By Warner Todd Huston

Remember that iftar dinner the president sponsored? The dinner that got him in trouble because he came out in strong support of the mega-mosque at Ground Zero, support from which he backed away the very next day? Well, it turns out he delivered another blatant lie at that dinner, one that slipped under the radar because his support of the Ground Zero Mosque was so controversial.

In his remarks at the iftar observance, Obama claimed that the “first” iftar dinner in the White House was hosted by Thomas Jefferson.

Tonight, we are reminded that Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity. And Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America. The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan—making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.

In this way, Obama tried to make it seem as if the United States has respected Islam since the early Republic and has observed its celebrations for two hundred years. But this is a major stretching of the truth. Thomas Jefferson did not hold an “iftar” dinner, unless you might call the dinner Obama references “iftar by default.”
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Another Obama White House Lie About Islam”


The Ground Zero Mosque & The War of Ideas

-By Frank Salvato

The controversy surrounding the Park 51/Cordoba House project – promoted by the Cordoba Initiative and headed by Feisal Abdul Rauf – is one that illustrates the full range of the ideological clash between the Islamic culture and the culture of the West. Whether Liberals, Progressives and apologists care to admit it or not the fundamentalist Islamist factions of the Arab world are actively attempting to advance their influence on the world; in every nation and every culture. In their attempt at establishing an elevated influence around the world this fundamentalist faction seeks not to be accepted as equals or to assimilate, but to enter into foreign cultures as a privileged and exempt class. The issue of the Park 51 Project – from this point forward referred to by its original label, the Cordoba House – is a perfect example of one particular battle theater in this culture clash: the war of ideas.

The West’s current conflict with expanding fundamentalist Islam is taking place on four different fronts, at least at the hand of the Islamists: militarily, diplomatically, economically and ideologically.

Militarily, the West is fully engaged on the internationally recognized battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent in the undefined battle theaters around the world, and especially throughout the Middle East, the Asian South Pacific, Africa and most recently, South America.

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The Ground Zero Mosque & The War of Ideas”


CNN’s Zakaria Presents Hezbollah as a Model of Religious Tolerance

-By Warner Todd Huston

Remembering that CNN’s President Jon Klein has touted its down-the-middle coverage and claims it is situated in the “center” of American politics, on a recent episode of Fareed Zakaria GPS, host Zakaria tried to claim that Lebanon’s terror group Hezbollah was some sort of model for religious tolerance. Someone should inform CNN that claiming Hezbollah is “religiously tolerant” is hardly a centrist position.

If we can discern “religious tolerance” in a group that says that the state of Israel should be wiped from the earth, then there is a new definition of “tolerance” that no one is aware of. But unbelievably here is CNN’s Zakaria coloring this murderous terror group as a “tolerant” organization.

At the end of his August 22 show, Zakaria turned to discuss the re-construction of a Synagogue in Beirut, Lebanon, a project that Zakaria claims proves how open minded and tolerant Hezbollah is towards Jews.
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CNN’s Zakaria Presents Hezbollah as a Model of Religious Tolerance”


New Film ‘Machete’: Cynical Exploitation of America’s Racial Troubles

-By Warner Todd Huston

The new film Machete is born of a joke. No, really. In 2006 when Quentin Tarantino was gearing up for his double feature movie experience Grindhouse, he solicited other directors and even the fans to make fake trailers for bad 70’s exploitation moves. These trailers were shown between the two features in a takeoff of the coming attractions shown between movie features in those old 70s era B-picture film houses Tarantino was spoofing with Grindhouse. Machete was one of these over the top, fake movie trailers and it featured the catch phrase, “This time they f**ked with the wrong Mexican.” It got such a rousing reception from Tarantino’s fans that he and director and partner Robert Rodriguez thought it would make a great sendup film of its own.

But the joke has soured. In this film white America is the enemy and the United States is an oppressive force. It gets so extreme that in one scene a pair of white men shoot to death a pregnant Mexican woman merely so that her baby won’t be born in the USA. The pair then cruelly say, “Welcome to America,” to the dead woman’s Mexican husband.

That is some pretty harsh stuff.
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New Film ‘Machete’: Cynical Exploitation of America’s Racial Troubles”


One Loud Jew Sends Media Spinning

-By Warner Todd Huston

The newest faux outrage comes from the mouth of controversial Jewish Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. In a sermon from Israel, Rabi Yosef as much as called for God to commit genocide against the so-called Palestinians. I say “as much as” because he didn’t actually call for genocide, but he came awfully close for comfort. In fact, even as he didn’t say it explicitly it’s hard not to see it being implied.

“Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this earth,” said Rabbi Yosef, head of the Israeli Shas party. “God should strike them and these Palestinians — evil haters of Israel — with a plague,” he added.

Naturally, the Palestinians are outraged and Reuters, the Associated Press, and other news outlets are playing the story for all its worth. By Monday it’ll likely be everywhere.
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One Loud Jew Sends Media Spinning”


For your consideration: How Many Attended The Glenn Beck Rally?‏

-By Nancy Morgan

The question on the minds of millions of Americans this morning: How many people attended Glenn Beck’s ‘Restoring Honor’ rally yesterday in our nations’ capitol?

The answer to this question has ramifications far beyond mere crowd size. It is one of the few concrete indicators of the popularity and viability of the Tea Party and their message of traditional values, less government and a return to our Founders’ vision of America.

The New York Times described the crowd merely as “enormous and impassioned.” ABC was more specific, estimating the attendance at Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally in the “hundreds of thousands.” AP chimed in at “tens of thousands.”
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For your consideration: How Many Attended The Glenn Beck Rally?‏”


Martin Luther King Would Have Been Proud of the Restoring Honor Rally

-By Michael Zak

I had the honor of attending the rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

What a great day for America! Hundreds of thousands of Americans, of all races, came together at the Lincoln Memorial to Restore Honor to our nation. Yes, Glenn Back and Sarah Palin were the main speakers, but the real stars of the event were the people in the crowd. They came from across the country in peace and friendship. The vast multitude of patriots brought to mind a similar gathering on this day, on this spot, forty-seven years ago.

Best remembered about the famed March on Washington is Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. What was his dream? Was it of a dispirited America, as brought about by the Obama administration? Was it of a county being torn apart by racial and class conflict, as caused the Democratic Party? Was it a downtrodden populace, prodded to submit to Big Government by the socialist media? No!
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Martin Luther King Would Have Been Proud of the Restoring Honor Rally”


The Media’s Racist… And The Want To Get You Killed

-By Bob Parks

Diane Sawyer is a racist. Matt Lauer is a racist. Charlie Gibson is a racist. Wolf Blitzer is a racist. Katie Couric is a racist. Kiran Chetry is a racist. Chris Matthews is a racist. Ed Schultz is a racist. Keith Olbermann is a racist. Gary Tuchman is a racist. Elizabeth Vargas is a racist. Sharyl Attkisson is a racist. Anderson Cooper is a racist. George Stephanopoulos is a racist. David Gregory is a racist. Chuck Todd is a racist. Rick Sanchez is a racist. Melissa Stark is a racist, and for those of you whom I left out (personnel and outlets), it’s just due to space.

Not only that, but they want racial violence. It’ll be a great story; it’ll help their chosen political party, and maybe even discredit some conservative talkers.

Now, I’m sure the aforementioned big heads may be all offended. Tough.

How does it feel?
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The Media’s Racist… And The Want To Get You Killed”


Obama Scrubs White House Website of Climate Change Promises, Media Mum

-By Warner Todd Huston

Despite that President Obama made Cap and Trade and other green policy plans a focal point of his early days in office — not to mention his campaign for president — the White House has quietly scrubbed from its official website many of Obama’s promises and green initiatives. I guess the era of Obama really is “change you can believe in”?

Especially interesting it the sudden disappearance of Obama’s plan to commit $150 billion on clean energy research and development.

In 2008 as Obama was preparing to take office he featured on his “Office of the President Elect” website a pledge to spend $150 billion on energy R & D. As of today, that pledge is still there.
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Obama Scrubs White House Website of Climate Change Promises, Media Mum”


Roger Ebert: Calls Sarah Palin Hitler, Says America Is At Fault for GZ Mosque Troubles

– By Warner Todd Huston

Roger Ebert is nothing if he isn’t a knee-jerk leftist, absolutely without a single original political or cultural thought in his head and his latest meandering post on the Sun-Times hosted Roger Ebert’s Journal is a perfect example.

His piece is titled “Ten things I know about the mosque” but it doesn’t seem like there really are ten things nor are they all about the mosque. After reading his wandering post one is tempted to believe that the only reason he posted the thing was to find an excuse to attack Sarah Palin, someone that has nothing to do with the Ground Zero Mosque.

Let’s deal with Ebert’s off topic attack on Palin first. For a piece that is supposed to be about the Ground Zero Mosque (and by the way he never once calls it the Ground Zero Mosque, even as the Imam that was planning the thing has called it that) Palin’s appearance at point 6 on his list makes no sense. Not only that but Ebert goes off on a tangent of a tangent by discussing Palin’s interaction with Dr. Laura and her “N” word controversy. Hello, Rog… mosque? What does Palin and Dr. Laura have to do with the mosque?

Even more absurdly, Ebert’s first few points are filled with his ruminations on the First Amendment. Then he attacks Palin for employing her own freedom of speech? It’s a whiplash-inducing tangent, for sure.
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Roger Ebert: Calls Sarah Palin Hitler, Says America Is At Fault for GZ Mosque Troubles”


Restoring Honor: A New American Awakening?

– By Jeff Lukens

If anything good can be said about the progressive left controlling our government, it’s that their astonishingly brazen and heavy-handed tactics may have aroused the American people into a new spiritual awakening. With basic liberties under assault, we are seeing a revival of values that have been dormant for a long time.

Every great moment in this country, when real progress is made, there was a spiritual awakening. The Restoring Honor Rally in Washington D.C. on August 28 may be the one of those moments. The rally’s organizer is radio and television personality Glenn Beck. Beck says that our country’s troubles cannot be solved by the same methods that got us into this mess. Like an old time revivalist, he says “We must call upon God, and He will see us through.”
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Restoring Honor: A New American Awakening?”


Reminder: Obama’s Played More Golf in 2 Yrs. Than Bush Did Both Terms

-By Warner Todd Huston

Between 2000 and 2008 one of the left’s most cherished ways to ridicule President Bush was to point out how often he went golfing. Bush’s golfing was a clear sign that he was ignoring the work he had to do in Washington and that he just didn’t care they claimed. He was a playboy, a goof off, a time waster. But now that Barack Obama has come to office all of a sudden the left has found that golf isn’t worth noting, even as Obama has played the game more in just under two years than Bush did during his entire eight-year term.

The word hypocrisy comes to mind.

In 2003 President Bush decided to give up golfing because he did not want families of wounded and KIA soldiers to see him playing a game while they served and died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being seen on the golf course in wartime hasn’t seemed to deter President Obama, however.
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Reminder: Obama’s Played More Golf in 2 Yrs. Than Bush Did Both Terms”


Why Is Ground Zero Mosque Connection to Sharia Law Push Being Ignored?

-By Warner Todd Huston

With the shocking report by Christine Brim revealing that the folks involved in planning the Ground Zero Mosque are heading a major push to get Shariah law forced upon the United States, one has to wonder why this startling fact has not become the talk of the town among the Old Media and the chattering classes? One would think that this news would be a final nail the coffin of legitimacy that this GZ Mosque plan ever had.

Brim asked an interesting question about the Ground Zero Mosque building’s actual blueprints. What are the six currently unassigned floors going to be dedicated to? Brim found that nine of the 15 floors seemed to have been assigned to some purpose or another but six have not been identified as going to any particular purpose. As Brim says, that’s an awful lot of empty office space.

To answer to her curiosity, Brim began to research the website of mosque planners Cordoba Initiative. What she found there should shock us all. There she found that the head of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, has been involved in a series of conferences to push Sharia law throughout the world.
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Why Is Ground Zero Mosque Connection to Sharia Law Push Being Ignored?”


Time Blames Obama AND The Media for Ground Zero Mosque Flip Flop

-By Warner Todd Huston

Writing for Time Magazine, Michael Scherer has one of the most schizophrenic pieces of political analysis I’ve seen for quite a while. In his piece, Scherer can’t quite seem to figure out exactly whom he thinks is to blame for Obama’s failed message on the Ground Zero mosque. Is it Obama’s fault for poor messaging? Or is it the media’s fault for having the temerity to ask the president a question? Scherer whipsaws from one to the other, but a closer examination cannot help but put all blame squarely on the president.

Firstly, Scherer seems to congratulate the president on the timing “perfectly scripted from a communications perspective” of his original GZ mosque message. It was released on Friday evening, that “weekly news cycle’s black hole,” when many news organizations might either miss the thing, or not continue the story on Monday when the workweek begins anew.

This congratulations, though, is a hollow accolade. The fact is, as event Scherer points out, Obama tried his best to hide his position on the mosque by attempting to put the news out when he felt no one was looking. This attempt at misdirection is hardly something for which to congratulate the president.
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Time Blames Obama AND The Media for Ground Zero Mosque Flip Flop”


Democrats Protest Glenn Beck Rally Spot but Support Ground Zero Mosque?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The intellectual dishonesty of Democrats is simply breathtaking. To show exactly how out of whack Democrat’s ideology is, they are protesting the site and date of a Glenn Beck rally over his perceived “insensitivity” but on the other hand seem wholly unbothered by the mosque planned on being built at Ground Zero.

Purported civil rights leaders on the Democrat side of the aisle are all upset over the fact that Glenn Beck has planned a rally to be held in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Beck said that he has no plans on turning his rally into a partisan political rally but intends it to be a rally to, “honor the troops, unite the American people under the principles of integrity and truth, and make a pledge to restore honor within ourselves and our country.” Beck further says that the date was not a conscious choice but just fit his schedule.
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Democrats Protest Glenn Beck Rally Spot but Support Ground Zero Mosque?”


For Liberals Deception is An Important Tactic

-By Warner Todd Huston

Jonathan Strong of The Daily Caller reports an interesting and instructive conversation that was held publicly between lefty blogger and Journolist member Matthew Yglesias and the National Review’s Mark Hemingway. During their exchange on Twitter, lefty Yglesias claimed that lying is a legitimate tactic for “advocates” to use to win the policy argument, thereby admitting that liberals think it is OK to lie in order to get their policies in place.

On his Twitter feed, Yglasias told Hemingway, “I think fighting dishonesty with dishonesty is sometimes the right thing for advocates to do, yes. That’s an honest view.”

Aside from the amusing incongruity of the statement — how can dishonesty be “an honest view” — it is telling that a big liberal like Yglesias doesn’t see anything wrong with using lies to win a policy argument. After all, many famous folks on the left have agreed that a lie or two used to gain power is not such a crime.
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For Liberals Deception is An Important Tactic”


New Father Pfleger Reality TV Show: Blessing The Mayor’s Office

-By Warner Todd Huston

Those chickens have come home to roost… or at least they will during the upcoming mayoral election in the Windy City if the new reality TV show being shopped by Chicago’s incendiary Father Michael Pfleger is concerned.

Chicago’s gadfly Father Pfleger, close friend of Minister Louis Farrakhan, outspoken anti-gun crusader, sanctuary city supporter, and liberation theologist is the Southside religious leader who once openly wished for the death of a local businessman and also once said, “America is the greatest sin against God.” Pfleger has been the subject of many “reviews” by the Catholic Church and was once suspended after attacking Hillary Clinton as a “white person” who felt privileged because of her race.

New show producer, Bud Billikin of Chicago’s South Side Productions, Inc., has announced that the new show will follow the Father Pfleger as he embarks on the adventure of a lifetime, a run for Mayor of Chicago.

On Friday Pfleger is expected to announce his run against long-time Democrat strongman Richard Daley whose father, a Mayor before him, was famed for having “helped” JFK win the White House in 1960.
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New Father Pfleger Reality TV Show: Blessing The Mayor’s Office”


Lefty Conspiracy of the Day: *GASP* RNC Convention Logo Has Muslim Minaret in it!

-By Warner Todd Huston

The extremist, left-wing site Talking Points Memo (better known as TPM) thought it had a zinger of a story about the “RNC’s 2012 convention logo.” The logo, TPM crows, seems to have *GASP* a Muslim minaret in it. TPM even helpfully added a copy of the logo with a nice red arrow to the “minaret” image to help its readers determine which graphic element was the minaret (as seen to your right).

What is the subliminal message, TPM wonders? What nefarious motives could the GOP possibly have to include a Muslim icon in their logo? What is going on here TPM demands to know!

And don’t you know, this could be big news among the racists of the GOP who hate all Muslims and want them bombed out of existence, right? TPM dearly hopes that this minaret gaffe will blow up and cause a nuclear meltdown among the hatemongers of the GOP.
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Lefty Conspiracy of the Day: *GASP* RNC Convention Logo Has Muslim Minaret in it!”


Palin is Nasty Because She ‘Rolls Her Eyes’ or Something

-By Warner Todd Huston

What’s the Old Media’s latest nit-picking Palin apostasy? They claim she rolled her eyes at a nasty, negative constituent. Mean, rotten, evil Sarah the “eye roller” should be tarred and feathered over this, I guess.

Here’s how The New York Times’ The Caucus Blog is reporting it:

In a video that has been widely reported, Ms. Palin asks a woman standing next to a large “Worst Governor Ever” banner what she does for a living. The woman — Kathleen Gustafson, according to news media reports – responds that she’s a teacher. That leads to a response that prompted several outlets to comment that Ms. Palin rolled her eyes — or at least looked like she was rolling them.

This supposed “eye rolling” occurs after the woman told the Governor that she was a teacher (about 1:10 into the video). Many of the left-media are claiming that Palin rolls her eyes and gives a “knowing glance” to her supporters as if to say, “oh, a teacher, now we know this constituent is a left-wing, loony.”
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Palin is Nasty Because She ‘Rolls Her Eyes’ or Something”


New York Times : Afraid of Gun Crazed, ‘Motley Carnivals of the Tea Party Movement’

-By Warner Todd Huston

The New York Times sent Mattathias Schwartz to find out what was going on at Jack Dailey’s firearms training camps across the country and what he found apparently made the writer fear that America was going to the lily white, revolutionary, tea party dogs.

Schwartz went to learn about Jack Dailey’s Appleseed Project firearms marksmanship training camps and what he found were folks of “uniformly white skin” whose ideas were influenced by those “motley carnivals of the Tea Party movement.” And apparently Schwartz fears that they all want to institute a violent revolution in America. Yes, it’s all about those scary “militias” despite that the Appleseed Project has no connection to any.

“Determining whether this revolutionary talk constitutes a threat comes down to finding the fine line between expressing anger and inciting the angry to action,” Schwartz writes, “a distinction that is clear as a matter of law but less so in cultural practice.” Then right away Schwartz invokes the Timothy McVeigh incident as if every American that wants to observe his Second Amendment rights is an Oklahoma bomber in waiting.
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New York Times : Afraid of Gun Crazed, ‘Motley Carnivals of the Tea Party Movement’”


When a Civil Rights Group Hires All Whites… What do You Have?

-By Warner Todd Huston

As we are sonorously and endlessly told, the Southern Poverty Law Center is all about exposing the “hate” and working for “civil rights” in America. But a new website, Watching the Watchdogs, has tracked down the salaries and identities of SPLC’s top officers and it is interesting to note that they are all white people. Not a “minority” in the bunch. And they are all making a pretty penny, too.

So, what do you have when a “civil rights” organization that tries to fight the “hate” out there, an organization that claims it is all about protecting America’s minorities, hasn’t hired any minorities? Maybe the word “hypocrites” comes to mind?

In June I also wrote a piece on the SPLC. In it I noted that the entirety of the Old Media use the SPLC as their number one source for information on “hate groups” and the danger of so-called “white militias,” but I ask what other sources there are for the “hate groups” that the SPLC claims it is tracking. The answer is, none. There are no other sources and the Old Media simply swallows the SPLC’s claims whole.
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When a Civil Rights Group Hires All Whites… What do You Have?”


Rosie O’Donnell Says Her Marriage was a Political Protest, Gays Treated Like Holocaust in America

-By Warner Todd Huston

In yet one more example among thousands, we see why loud-mouth, extreme left-wing talker Rosie O’Donnell is wholly unworthy of a national forum. In a recent segment of her satellite radio show Rosie Radio, O’Donnell idiotically claimed that gays were being “rounded up” in America so that a “pink triangle” could be slapped on them just like they were during the Holocaust. But just as obscenely, O’Donnell admitted that her marriage to Kelly Carpenter was only a political statement, one of “civil disobedience,” instead of a marriage of love proving that the whole issue of “gay marriage” has nothing at all to do with rights or “love” but is solely one of politics.

On her show, O’Donnell said of her 2004 marriage:

George Bush, in the middle of a war, had an all-station news conference to announce how horrible it was for the safety of America that gay people were getting married in San Francisco, which pissed me off enough to get on a plane and go get married.

Of course, as in most of what this hack says, O’Donnell lied about what George W. Bush said in 2004. As Tim Graham reminds us, Bush did not call any “all-station” press conferences but in truth only issued a statement from the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
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Rosie O’Donnell Says Her Marriage was a Political Protest, Gays Treated Like Holocaust in America”


Michelle Obama: It’s Good To Be Queen

-By Ann “Babe” Huggett

One of the fun games I used to play at cocktail parties was theorizing what a current politician had been in a former lifetime. Snickering over Henry Kissinger being a reincarnation of Cardinal Woolsey or Benito Mussolini popping back as Janet Napolitano only shows how obscure things can get after a few tequila shooters. However, there is nothing obscure about the current comparison between First Lady Michelle “Let ‘em eat arugula” Obama and France’s 18th Century Queen, Marie “Let ‘em eat cake” Antoinette.

Unlike with Marie Antoinette, Michelle’s critics don’t have to go apocryphal when it comes to her living large on the taxpayers’ dime. In a nation where food stamps, unemployment benefits, mortgage foreclosures and a steadily declining standard of living are fast becoming the norm, Michelle Obama is on her eighth vacation this year, living la vida ultima maxima with 40 of her closest gal pals at the Hotel Villa Padierna, one of the poshest hotels in the world let alone Marbella, Spain.
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Michelle Obama: It’s Good To Be Queen”


Lefty Media Matters Caught Editing Beck Audio Sherrod-Style

-By Warner Todd Huston

You’ve got to hand it to the good folks at Mediaite. These guys are on top of everything in the media world. This time Mediaite has uncovered the fact that Media Matters, the left-biased media slanderers paid for by George Soros, have been caught doing precisely what they claimed that New Media maven Andrew Breitbart did to Shirely Sherrod a few weeks ago. Namely foisted an edited tape on the world in order to slander someone in the public eye. This time, instead of revealing a race worried USDA official, Media Matters is attempting to put false words in the mouths of a pair of side kicks of radio and TV talker Glenn Beck.

Media Matters touted what they felt was a big, big story. They claimed that two of Beck’s sidekicks were falsely claiming that MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was “responsible” for the Manchester shooting. To prove it, Media Matters presented a tape of the two hosts actually saying that Olbermann is responsible for the murders.
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Lefty Media Matters Caught Editing Beck Audio Sherrod-Style”


WaPost’s Kurtz Cries About ‘Nasty’ Media

-By Warner Todd Huston

In an August 2 editorial the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz cried a river over the rancor he saw in today’s media calling it a “nastiness index” that continues to rise. But his lament is not only off base in many ways, it is also historically illiterate and is built on only one real complaint: the left no longer has a lock on what is considered newsworthy.

Kurtz starts off with this lament: “Media outlets, which once merely chronicled this era of hyper-partisanship, now seem to be both the purveyors and often the targets of ugly attacks.” Kurz sadly says that it has all become “journalism as blood sport, performed for the masses.”

Oh the humanities. We just hate to see the media business cater to the great, unwashed masses, don’t we? (By “the masses” he means us, folks.)
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WaPost’s Kurtz Cries About ‘Nasty’ Media”


Prominent Democrat’s Hubby Buys Newsweek for $1

-By Warner Todd Huston

Sidney Harman, the 91-year-old retired business executive and husband of California Rep. Democrat Jane Harman, purchased the flailing news magazine Newsweek yesterday. The price tag rang in at an astonishing $1.

Granted one dollar doesn’t buy what it used to, but that is quite a price for a whole business operation, isn’t it?

Still, I don’t blame Mr. Harman for not wanting to put real money toward buying a magazine that has been losing millions on a yearly basis. In fact, $1 might be an exorbitant cost as things stand right now.
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Prominent Democrat’s Hubby Buys Newsweek for $1″


Is The Tea Party Like A Starfish, Like the Apache… Like al Qaeda?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Politico’s Kenneth Vogel has an interesting piece on a book that Tea Party activists are starting to glom onto as an administrative guidebook of sorts. The book, “The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations,” is a book that explains how leaderless organizations work and can be effective. Of late tea partiers have accepted the tome as a way to explain the success of their movement as well as a way to legitimize their hold on a certain amount of power into the future.

The book, written by two lefty Stanford MBAs, has become what Vogel calls an “unlikely” guidebook for a conservative movement.

The principle of the book is in its title. The spider of the title is the typical top-down organization. Cut the spider’s head off and you have a dead spider and presumably, in the analogy, a dead organization. However, a starfish can regenerate itself if it loses an arm. Further that severed arm can also become a starfish that lives on because there is no “head” per se in a starfish. Cut up a starfish and you have many smaller starfish, not a dead one.

The thought is that the tea party movement is like a starfish. No head, no hierarchy, no way to “kill” it in the traditional sense.

Now, I must say one thing about Vogel’s piece. It will certainly destroy the left’s contention that the tea party movement is an “astroturf” effort. For the entire first year of its existence the left has tried to claim, falsely, that the tea party movement was invented by Fox News, or is a top-down creation by folks like Dick Army, former Congressman and top man for FreedomWorks.
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Is The Tea Party Like A Starfish, Like the Apache… Like al Qaeda?”


Down Economy: America’s ‘Oldest Family Farm’ Up For Sale

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a sign of these dismal times, the oldest family farm in America is up for sale because its owners just cannot survive this down economy. After 378 years of contiguous family ownership and operation, the Tuttle family of Dover, New Hampshire is selling its 134-acre farm.

Founded in 1632 by John Tuttle fresh off the boat from the Old World, the Tuttle family farm has moved on with the times, improved and changed to continue operating. But, at long last, this economy is too much for them to bear.

Curiously, the Associated Press worked very hard to downplay the economic side of this argument in its coverage and instead played up the fact that the Tuttles are aging and have decided to discourage their own sons from taking up the family business. The APs story also turned the focus away from the bad economy and toward blaming WalMart and the “growth of supermarket chains.”
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Down Economy: America’s ‘Oldest Family Farm’ Up For Sale”