Grudge Match: Reporters Asked to Decide Which Will Keep Job

-By Warner Todd Huston

It will be a merry Christmas for one of two reporters at the Kansas City Star. One of them will get to keep her job. The other? Welcome to Obama’s unemployment line. But there’s a twist. The KC Star has told both reporters to decide between the two of them who will stay and who will go.

The Star apparently told reporters, Karen Dillon and Dawn Borman that only one will still be employed into the new year. Management further informed the scribblers that they’d have to decide between them which will get the ax. Looks like it will be Christmas to the tune of Should I Stay Or Should I Go, by The Clash at the paper.

Dillion corroborated the unique personnel management technique but refused further comment. For her part, Borman completely refused to talk about her plight to her brethren in the media and it looks like she is the one hitting the bricks.
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Grudge Match: Reporters Asked to Decide Which Will Keep Job”


Media Ignores Union Violence: Flashback to Palin’s 2008 ‘Target’ Outrage

-By Warner Todd Huston

As unions again run amuck, this time in Michigan, the Old Media establishment has steadfastly refused to report on the union’s violence, not to mention the “violent rhetoric” coming from their advocates. But this is in stark contrast to the Summer of 2011 when the Old Media was hot to condemn the supposed “violent rhetoric” of Republicans such as Sarah Palin, Andrew Breitbart, and talk radio hosts.

In Michigan this week unions have once again shown why the term “union thug” is no misnomer by beating up people and engaging in property destruction, intimidation, and violence all in order to turn back Michigan’s right-to-work legislation passing through the state’s duly elected legislature.

During the day on Monday union goons attacked a tent set up by members of Michigan’s chapter of Americans for Prosperity. The tent was staffed with women and men, Michiganders who came out to support the Republican’s effort to pass worker’s rights legislation that would make The Wolverine State the 24th right-to-work state.

Also in attendance was occasional Fox News guest and comedian Steven Crowder. The young Crowder was actually physically attacked, punched at least four times, by one union criminal. Crowder’s crime? He dared to ask unionistas the simple question: “what is it about right-to-work that you oppose so much?”

The union thugs then swarmed AFP’s tent and tore it down with the women, and a few children, still inside.
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Media Ignores Union Violence: Flashback to Palin’s 2008 ‘Target’ Outrage”


500 Victims: Shocking BBC Sex Abuse Scandal Ensnares New York Times Chief

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a shocking tally, up to 500 people have come forward claiming to be victims of former British Broadcasting Corp. TV and radio star Jimmy Savile, British police have reported. The scandal has reached from the 1960s to today but has also reached across the ocean to the newly hired CEO of The New York Times, himself a former BBC executive.

New Times executive Mark Thompson was the most recent top man at the BBC of any long standing having served for eight years ending his tenure only this past September. Thompson resigned from the Beeb to come to America to take the helm of The New York Times just as the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal was developing.

In his pre-employment interviews, Thompson swore he had no knowledge at all about the decades of sexual abuse cases perpetrated by BBC TV star Jimmy Savile, many of which the BBC aided in covering up and hiding from both the police and the license-paying public.

But the latest news from the investigation into the Savile scandal raises questions about what Thompson knew and when he knew it and that timeline brings suspicion that he knew about the mounting scandal long before he told The New York Times that he did.
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500 Victims: Shocking BBC Sex Abuse Scandal Ensnares New York Times Chief”


Celebration: The NYTimes Finally Admitted Reaganomics Worked

-By Warner Todd Huston

Will wonders never cease? American Enterprise Institute columnist James Pethokoukis saw something he never thought he’d see. After 30 years, The New York Times admitted that Reaganomics worked!

Pethokoukis was astounded by a Times article chronicling the steadily falling tax burden Americans have experienced since the 1980s.

The AEI money writer notes that the heart of The Times’ article is that in 2010 Americans “paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago.”

Pethokoukis points out that some tax hike advocates think this means that America’s tax burden is too low and time has come for a hike. But Pethokoukis disagrees.
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Celebration: The NYTimes Finally Admitted Reaganomics Worked”


Sun Times Demands Sen. Kirk’s Med Records, Ignores Jesse Jackson. Jr.’s

-By Warner Todd Huston

Withchunt: The Chicago Sun-Times once again revels in its partisanship by demanding the public release of the medical records of Senator Mark Kirk while ignoring the records of Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.

For the Times, Phil Kadner is all upset that the U.S. government should be expected to pay for the medical bills and recovery costs for Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican who suffered a stroke last year and has since been making a steady recovery.

But the same left-wing Old Media hack isn’t calling for the records of Democrat Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who claims he has “bi-polar” disorder and was out of the public eye for most of the year before finally resigning in disgrace just ahead of a federal investigation into his theft of campaign funds.
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Sun Times Demands Sen. Kirk’s Med Records, Ignores Jesse Jackson. Jr.’s”


WaPost: Next Struggling Paper Planning Paywall

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Washington Post is poised to initiate a paywall in 2013. The Post is one of the last major American papers to look into putting some parts of its publication behind a subscriber only Internet screen.

The Wall Street Journal reports that The Washington Post is preparing a “metered paywall” for its Internet site. A metered paywall allows readers to see a few articles per month before blocking any more access and informing the visitor that he must pay to read further.

But ahead of this new attempt to improve revenue, ThePost has been seeing a steep decrease in earnings.

The Post is dealing with a steep decline in its core business of print advertising. Its newspaper division reported an operating loss of $56.3 million for the first nine months of the year, reflecting a 14% decline in revenue to $160.7 million. The company lost its chief revenue officer in the spring, and the search for a replacement continues.

The Post has seen quite a lot of trouble recently with a shake up in leadership as publisher Katherine Weymouth canned executive editor Marcus Brauchi and replaced him with the former editor of the Boston Globe, Marty Baron.
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WaPost: Next Struggling Paper Planning Paywall”


The Hill: No GOP Opposition to Speaker Boehner’s Turnabout on Tax Hikes

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a myopic report on the GOP’s half of the Fiscal Cliff debate, The Hill claimed there was no opposition to Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s sudden caving in to President Obama’s demand that tax hikes accompany any solutions to the budget mess.

The Hill reported on December 4 that the GOP was “moving reluctantly toward a debt deal that would increase revenues” and that Speaker Boehner had offered some $800 billion in new taxes in his most recent fiscal cliff proposal.

How could Boehner achieve this flip flopping away from the Party’s until-now stated principles? The Hill says it’s because there aren’t any Republicans opposing the tax hikes.

The lack of immediate backlash within the conference is a key early sign for Boehner, who has made intraparty unity a priority as he seeks the strongest possible hand in negotiations over the “fiscal cliff” with President Obama.

Of course, there could be a reason for this that The Hill doesn’t mention. Boehner is purging all conservatives from his power structure.
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The Hill: No GOP Opposition to Speaker Boehner’s Turnabout on Tax Hikes”


Big Ohio Newspaper Cutting One-Third of Newsroom

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is one of Ohio’s biggest papers but neither size nor influence is likely to save the jobs of one third of the paper’s newsroom employees who are preparing for big cuts to hit as the new year begins.

Workers at the paper found out on Wednesday that 58 employees would likely be losing their jobs starting in 2013. That is one-third of the workforce Harlan Spector of the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild reported.
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Big Ohio Newspaper Cutting One-Third of Newsroom”


VIDEO: Famed Reporters Admit That They are Reporters First, not Americans

-By Warner Todd Huston

In this video, you’ll see two famous members of the Old Media, Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace, admit that if they were covering a story and were in a position to save the lives of American soldiers, they would not help the soldiers but would instead continue to “cover” the story. They both admitted that they feel they are journalists before they are Americans and that they have a duty first and only to “journalism.”

After that, Marine Colonel George M. Connell expressed his disgust with this concept. He said he had “utter contempt” for these journalists who would turn their backs on American soldiers all the while expecting American soldiers to put their lives in danger to protect the journalists.

Here is a full account of the program from which the above clip was culled as penned by James Fallows in Breaking the News, How the Media Undermine American Democracy (New York, 1997)
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VIDEO: Famed Reporters Admit That They are Reporters First, not Americans”


New York Post Criticized for Cover Photo of Man Seconds Before Death by Train

-By Warner Todd Huston

The New York Post came under heavy criticism on Tuesday for publishing a full page photo of a man on its December 4 front page taken only seconds before he was killed by a Midtown Manhattan subway train. The photo’s headline luridly read, “Doomed” and a subhead screamed, “Pushed on the subway track, this man is about to die.”

The photo showed Queens, New York resident Ki Suk Han, 58, after he was pushed onto subway tracks just as a train was pulling into the station. Mr. Han was clearly trying to climb out of the deep-set tracks, but the paper informs readers that he wasn’t able to do so and was killed by the oncoming train.

Naeem Davis, 30, confessed to the murder and is in police custody.

The paper was criticized for its “if it bleeds, it leads” style of news reporting, with one Twitter user accusing the paper of dealing in “snuff.”
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New York Post Criticized for Cover Photo of Man Seconds Before Death by Train”


Why Does Western Media Ignore Terrorists Using Journalists as Human Shields?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last week a handful of jihadi terrorists that worked with Hamas were killed in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). These terrorists were hiding among western journalists and pretending to be one of them. Sadly a few actual journalists were also killed in these pinpoint strikes, but the bigger outrage is that western journalists don’t seem to mind at all that these terrorists are using them for human shields. One has to wonder why that is?

On November 18, The New York Times went apoplectic over those “attacks on journalists” when the IDF struck several buildings that housed the studios and offices of several western and mid eastern media outlets, offices that also housed the terrorist’s operations.

The Times article gave room for terror group Hamas to claim that the Israelis were “targeting journalists” and scolded the IDF for its actions. But what The Times didn’t bother to note is that the IDF wasn’t attacking “journalists,” it was targeting and eliminating known Hamas commanders who had been hiding their base of operations among the journalists.
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Why Does Western Media Ignore Terrorists Using Journalists as Human Shields?”


The Hill: It’s The Spending, Stupid

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a very business-like manner The Hill published a report that ought to warm the hearts of all fiscally responsible Republicans and, perhaps, give hope that GOP Speaker John Boehner will hold to his pledges on taxes during theses fiscal cliff talks with the White House.

On November 28 The Hill reported that Speaker Boehner (R, OH) quickly shot down the tax balloon floated by Representative Tom Cole (R, OK) who recently proposed that the House go with Obama’s idea of passing an immediate extension of the current tax rates for the middle class.

As The Hill further notes, Boehner and the rest of the GOP House leadership are sticking with their own pledge to make sure any fiscal cliff solutions are tied to spending cuts.
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The Hill: It’s The Spending, Stupid”


NYTimes Pretending Terrorists are Journalists

-By Warner Todd Huston

Once again The New York Times has attempted to paint Israel as murders of journalists, this time by falsely labeling as “journalists” two terror commanders that the Israeli Defense Force recently eliminated.

Over the weekend The Times reported on two terrorists, Mahmoud al-Kumi and Hussam Salama, that were killed last week in Gaza by an IDF missile aimed at their car, a vehicle that The Times complains “was clearly marked with the letters TV.”

The paper claimed that the two were merely “cameramen for Al-Aqsa TV” and were but “covering events in central Gaza” when they were killed.

It would be outrageous if the IDF were targeting journalists, we all agree. But just who were these two that were killed, anyway? Were they just run-of-the-mill journalists? It turns out they were not journalists at all.
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NYTimes Pretending Terrorists are Journalists”


PolitiFact’s Bias Charted

-By Warner Todd Huston

A new chart has debuted showing the stark bias that purported “fact checker” PolitiFact commits against the right side of the aisle in its attempt to separate truth from fiction in politics. The chart demonstrates how Republicans and conservatives have come in for scolding by PolitiFact far more often and with much greater virulence than have Democrats and liberals.

The chart was assembled by calculating the number of “pants on fire” awards to what PolitiFact claims are lies by our national political figures.


Click to make chart larger

As Chuck Rogers explains,

We assembled this chart by sorting PolitiFact’s complete list of “Pants On Fire” rulings. We filtered out any rulings of chain email or anonymous Facebook posts (although these were virtually all conservative viewpoints), as well as politicians or organizations who had only one “Pants On Fire” ruling (but again, even these were mostly conservatives).

The most impressive result is how PolitiFact treated Mitt Romney. His “pants on fire” awards are more than twice than that of any other politician except Michele Bachmann. And, according to PolitiFact, Bachmann herself is far and away a worse liar than any other pol besides Romney.
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PolitiFact’s Bias Charted”


NYTimes Rips Israel for Bombing Gaza Media Offices, Ignores 4 Terror Leaders Inside

-By Warner Todd Huston

The New York Times is full of outrage at the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) for its surgical bomb strikes launched against a few buildings in Gaza that held offices and studios of several international media outlets. But in its report the “paper of record” forgot to add one little fact: four highly placed terrorist leaders that were killed that day were also based in those same buildings.

The Grey Lady reported the bombings mostly from the Palestinian point of view, of course, giving Hamas leaders all the space they wanted to excoriate Israel for replying to a constant wave of rockets indiscriminately launched into its territory with surgical strikes aimed at specific terror assets.

In its November 18 article, The Times reported that Salama Marouf of the Hamas media office called the rocket hits “an immoral massacre against the media.”

The production studios hit were used by such international media outlets as Sky News, Fox News, CBS, the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya Channel, and Germany’s ARD TV as well as the Hamas propaganda machine.
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NYTimes Rips Israel for Bombing Gaza Media Offices, Ignores 4 Terror Leaders Inside”


Washington Post Softens Criminal Actions of Dem. Corzine in MF Global Fraud

-By Warner Todd Huston

In its November 15 print version, The Washington Post published a story about the criminal financial malfeasance of former Democrat Governor and MF Global Chief John Corzine. But, the Post seemed to have trouble properly identifying Corzine as a Democrat not to mention that it buried the story deep in the paper.

Corzine was the subject of a report this week issued by the House Financial Services’s oversight subcommittee that, while it stopped short of calling Corzine’s actions outright felonies (the committee is leaving that determination to prosecutors), the report raised deep concerns about the magical disappearance of $1.6 billion in investor’s money.

If Corzine were a Republican, who doesn’t believe that The Washington Post would have made sure that the story of the release of this report would have been front-page news? But, no, this story was buried back on page A18.
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Washington Post Softens Criminal Actions of Dem. Corzine in MF Global Fraud”


NY Times Dismissing Palestinian Rocket Attacks on Israel?

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a classic example of the media accepting the terrorist’s ideas that Israel is the bad actor in the Middle East, The New York Times had an interesting way to describe the more than 150 rockets that Palestinians have launched on Israeli civilians over the last week or so. The Times wrote that those attacks were “called rocket attacks” by Israel as if the Israeli’s were simply making unsubstantiated claims about the attacks.

They were “called rocket attacks” New York Times? No, they were rocket attacks, they weren’t just “called” rocket attacks. That these rocket attacks happened is not a claim but a fact.

It was in the third paragraph of its November 15 piece that the Times used the deprecating language saying, “The ferocity of the airstrikes, which Israel called Operation “Pillar of Defense” in response to what Israel called repeated rocket attacks by Gaza-based Palestinian militants, provoked rage in Gaza, where Hamas said…” (My bold for emphasis)
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NY Times Dismissing Palestinian Rocket Attacks on Israel?”


New York Times Says it’s OK to Destroy the Life of a Pro-Family Official

-By Warner Todd Huston

There is an intriguing letter in an advice column in The New York Times from last July. Many are wondering if this anonymous letter refers to the newly revealed extra-marital affair indulged by now former CIA Director and General David Petraeus. But a closer look at the advice the Times gives out proves that the so-called “paper of record” can’t even keep its anti-conservative agenda out of simple advice columns.

The letter from an anonymous reader is tantalizing. It sure sounds like someone describing Petraeus’ ill-advised affair.

My wife is having an affair with a government executive. His role is to manage a project whose progress is seen worldwide as a demonstration of American leadership. (This might seem hyperbolic, but it is not an exaggeration.) I have met with him on several occasions, and he has been gracious. (I doubt if he is aware of my knowledge.) I have watched the affair intensify over the last year, and I have also benefited from his generosity. He is engaged in work that I am passionate about and is absolutely the right person for the job. I strongly feel that exposing the affair will create a major distraction that would adversely impact the success of an important effort. My issue: Should I acknowledge this affair and finally force closure? Should I suffer in silence for the next year or two for a project I feel must succeed? Should I be “true to my heart” and walk away from the entire miserable situation and put the episode behind me? NAME WITHHELD

While that is quite an amazing parallel to what we now know about Petraeus, the more telling thing in this columns isn’t what the reader says in the letter. It’s the advice given that is the real shocker.

“Don’t expose the affair in any high-profile way,” The New York Times begins.

Well, that might seem sensible. But wait, there’s more. The Times violates its own advice and reveals that there is a least one reason that someone may want to out an affair and destroy the very important work of such a government official.
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New York Times Says it’s OK to Destroy the Life of a Pro-Family Official”


L.A. Times: Hey, Did We Mention That You Romney Voters are ALL Racists

-By Warner Todd Huston

Sandy Banks of the L.A. Times has figured out why anyone would vote against Barack Obama. Why, they are all racists, of course. Oh, you don’t use “the N word,” she tells us, but we know what you Romney voters really think.

Banks dropped all pretense of logic or fairness in her November 4 piece going right for the throat and claiming that the nation’s “kumbaya era” is over merely because a white man dared run against Barack Obama for the office of President of the United States.

Like all these hate-filled screeds that cast any non-Obama voter as a racist, Banks doesn’t bother trying to actually explain how a nation that elected a black man for president could suddenly, at the drop of a hat, revert to pre-civil rights oppression, she just states it straight as if it is obvious fact.

This has been the single most disgusting attack against Romney voters and, if Obama loses his bid for reelection, be prepared to see every last left-winger on TV and in the commentariat claim that the only reason Obama lost is because the country is filled with hood-wearing, Jim-Crow-loving, racists.

Banks notes that she and her “reporter” friends hear from people “on the campaign trail” who explain to them why they are voting for Romney this time.

When those flag-waving voters are asked what they mean, their take on the president makes it clear: He’s Kenyan-born, he’s a closet Muslim, he has European-socialist tendencies.

But, even those claims, she says, are lies fostered by Romney voters. Such voters, Banks says, are using Obama’s failure over the economy, his failures in foreign policy, and his bowing and scraping to our enemies as a “proxy” to hide their racist hearts.

No one is using the N-word these days. The “foreign” label is its proxy — a signal that Obama is the “other” in a nation trying to come to grips with seismic economic changes and unsettling demographic shifts.

Banks goes on to use that boring, pervasive idea popular among her fellows that code words explain how racism is as bad in America todayas its ever been. She can’t find any overt racism, of course, so she has to pretend she can read between the lines to find it.

This is the racebaiter’s oldest trick. As race relations improved in America — now to the point where but a relative few care much about race — the chiefs of the racebaiting industry have to employ mind reading exercises and plumb wild-eyed inference to “find” their racism so that they can continue to make money off of it.
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L.A. Times: Hey, Did We Mention That You Romney Voters are ALL Racists”


Wash. Post on Romney’s Mormon Plot to Take Over the Country

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Washington Post must not have noticed that the United States is supposed to be a land that is tolerant of religions, especially where it concerns out electoral system. This week the Washington Post has published a long story filled with innuendo that Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith is somehow engaged in a conspiracy to make him president.

The more than 3,000 word piece is also filled with pop psychology and subtle rhetoric all intended to make the reader simultaneously suspicious of Romney and his religion as well as doubting that any of his life is his own idea but is, rather, merely programming instilled in him by his father, his wife and his religion. This isn’t the only time WaPo writer Jason Horowitz investigated Mitt’s suspicious Mormonism, either. In June, Horowitz wonders if Romney’s Mormonism was “fair game” for attack.

At the outset of his newest near slanderous piece, Horowitz calls Mitt a “political scion” because his father was once the Governor of Michigan. Of course, George Romney was also a successful career auto man, as well. Why isn’t Mitt an “auto scion”? We know why. Horowitz is trying to cast Mr. Romney as a member of some privileged class who expects public office is to be bestowed upon him because it is somehow a birthright.
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Wash. Post on Romney’s Mormon Plot to Take Over the Country”


National Journal Details Obama’s Hurdles

-By Warner Todd Huston

The idea that President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is in some trouble is dawning on many in the Old Media, these days. The latest to notice that Obama has found some unexpected obstacles — mostly troubles of his own making — on the road back to the White House is the oft times left-leaning National Journal.

For the Journal, Major Garrett identifies some of Obama’s hurdles that he calls “four Ls and four states.” According to Garrett, these are the eight main items that Obama has to deal with successfully to win in November.

First and foremost is Libya and Obama’s weakness and dissembling about the attacks on our embassy in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of our Ambassador and several of his security team and staff. This is a major soft spot for Obama, one that has come so very close to the election that Obama will not likely have enough time to successfully spin it away. Obama is very vulnerable on Libya and Romney should be able to exploit this in the last remaining weeks of campaigning.
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National Journal Details Obama’s Hurdles”


Frank Rich Laments: ‘Cockroach’ Tea Party Will Still Win In The End

-By Warner Todd Huston

One-time theater critic turned left-wing screedist, Frank Rich, is down in the dumps over that darned ol’ tea party. Far from being down and out, Rich says, the tea party is alive and well and living within the Republican Party itself. Far from being a political fringe, the tea party is still strong and in the GOP mainstream. Worse, in Rich’s eyes, it will beat liberalism every time because it isn’t just a phase, it is America’s core political ideology.

Now, the amazing thing is that Rich’s general point, that conservatism and tea party ideals are here to stay and have always been here in one form or another, is completely correct. After all, though Rich doesn’t seem to see this truism, tea party ideals were not fashioned out of whole cloth. They are explications of our founder’s most cherished ideals.

No, what is amazing about Rich’s piece is that while he has the final conclusion right, he goes on for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph in a long winded piece misstating, garbling, and downright dissembling about the facts, the history, and the events that lead to his conclusion.

Early in his piece he sets up his premise.

“History tells us that American liberals have long underestimated the reach and resilience of the right, repeatedly dismissing it as a lunatic fringe and pronouncing it dead only to watch it bounce back stronger after each setback.”

This certainly rings true.
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Frank Rich Laments: ‘Cockroach’ Tea Party Will Still Win In The End”


Wash Post Reporter: Ryan is an SVU Perp of the Week

-By Warner Todd Huston

Washington Post reporter Dan Zak saw a different vice presidential debate than nearly everyone else in the Old Media establishment. Zak saw the debate where Joe Biden was brilliant, Martha Raddatz was fair, and Paul Ryan was like “the perp-of-the-week” on an episode of TVs Law and Order: SVU. That is exactly what he said on Twitter as he watched the debates.

Zak must have thought he was brilliant with this Twitter observation: “35 min in, Biden is Det. Olivia Benson and Ryan is the perp-of-the-week. #SpecialVeepsUnit,” he tweeted.

If you aren’t familiar with the TV show, each week it features yet another sex criminal “perp” that has attacked a little child, raped a woman, or murdered someone. The show is one long cavalcade of sickos, weirdos, and creeps chased by cops that imagine they are above the law employing the sort of shoddy police work that would lead them to be either fired or put in prison themselves.

That wasn’t all Zak had to say about GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan. He also characterized him as a child, Tweeting, “My #VPdebate review coming soon: ‘A man debated a boy Thursday night on national television, and both were ultimately schooled by a woman.’”
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Wash Post Reporter: Ryan is an SVU Perp of the Week”


Wall Street Journal ‘Corrects’ Source on Obama Event Attendance

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last week a story appeared at The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog that made an unsupported claim that President Obama packed 18,000 people into a Wisconsin arena that only sports 5,000 seats. At the time it was posted, The Journal did not offer a source for the 18,000 attendee count, but today there has been an addition updating that source.

Now, according to Washington Wire, that source has been identified as Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

The Wall Street Journal wasn’t the only news outlet that blindly regurgitated the 18,000 attendee claim. Politico and the Associated Press both used the seemingly impossible number.
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Wall Street Journal ‘Corrects’ Source on Obama Event Attendance”


Why is the EPA Funding a Private Newspaper?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Environmental Protection Agency has been indulging its inner propagandist by spending at least $3.5 million to float newspaper that is purportedly “reporting” on the EPA’s pet issues. Unfortunately for the readers of this newspaper, the fact that the EPA is its sugar daddy is never told the reading public.

So much for an independent press!

The newspaper in question is the Chesapeake Bay Journal, a free publication that appears monthly across the Mid-Atlantic states. Environmental themed articles from this paper have also appeared in such newspapers as The Baltimore Sun.

This is no partisan issue, either as this has been going on for at least two decades.
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Why is the EPA Funding a Private Newspaper?”


Roll Call Claims a ‘Republican Split’ Over Romney Embassy Comments, Offers no Examples

-By Warner Todd Huston

Along with the rest of the Old Media establishment, Washington D.C.-based newspaper Roll Call also attacked Mitt Romney for having dared to criticize the Obama administration for its failures in the Middle East after the attacks on our embassies in Egypt and Libya. To push the anti-Romney narrative, Roll Call claimed that a “rift” had developed among Republicans over Romney’s reaction. Strangely, the Capitol Hill newser didn’t offer much by way of proof that such a rift exists

Immediately after the attack in Cairo, Egypt, our embassy released an ill advised statement that essentially blamed America’s tradition of free speech for the violence. Mitt Romney immediately responded that this was a “disgraceful” statement for a U.S. embassy to make and criticized the Obama administration for it.

After all, America’s embassies operate under the control of the President of the United States and when an embassy speaks it is rightfully assumed that they are speaking with the President’s voice.
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Roll Call Claims a ‘Republican Split’ Over Romney Embassy Comments, Offers no Examples”


Baltimore Sun, Pitying Man Who Passed AIDS to Teen

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Baltimore Sun published a story this month revealing sympathy for a man being prosecuted for having passed the AIDS virus to a 13-year-old Maryland boy. Not sympathy for having done this horrid deed, of course, but sympathy for, in the Sun’s opinion, his being “over charged” by state prosecutors for the separate crime of knowingly passing the virus to the child, a felony under state law.

The 36-year-old man, one Steven Douglas Podles, contacted the boy through a gay hook-up phone ap called “Grindr.” He blithely claimed that all users of the ap are “supposed” to be 18, so he assumed the boy was of age. Regardless the state has charged him with a series of sex crimes including a little-used law that criminalizes the passing of the AIDS virus to unaware victims.

33 states, including Maryland, have made transmission of the HIV virus a crime and some defendants have been charged with attempted murder based on such statutes.

The Sun’s piece is mostly an excoriation of the whole idea of making it a crime to purposefully pass the HIV virus to unsuspecting partners.
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Baltimore Sun, Pitying Man Who Passed AIDS to Teen”


Brit Columnist: We Hated Bush But Obama’s Just as Bad

-By Warner Todd Huston

Left-wing, British columnist Owen Jones was not a fan of George W. Bush, it seems. While this is no surprise for as screaming a left-winger as Jones, what is a surprise is that he has decided that President Obama is no real improvement over the “repulsive” Bush.

In a recent column in The Independent, Jones went on a monotonous rant of name-calling against Bush — the same sort of nonsense with which we are all woefully familiar. All his name calling there is easily forgettable, naturally, but when he finally got that Bush Derangement Syndrome out of his system and he got to his criticism of Obama eyebrows might raise for leftists everywhere

The focus of his ire is, of course, Obama’s campaign of death from the skies as evidence in his drone program. This is a sore spot for the international left, to be sure. Carping about Obama’s drone policy has been rumbling during Obama’s whole presidency.

Interestingly Jones uses a line that rings true where it concerns the low level of grumbling that Obama has been confronted with over his use of drones. Basically, Jones notes that if Bush had done it the complaints wouldn’t be bubbling just under the surface but would be an international furor of the highest order.
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Brit Columnist: We Hated Bush But Obama’s Just as Bad”


Obama’s Negative Campaign Excused as ‘High Stakes of Campaign’

-By Warner Todd Huston

The lengths to which the media will go to excuse the entirely negative campaign that President Obama is running seems to know no bounds. The latest is the dismissal of the interference that Obama and his minions are planning during the GOP convention. It is being excused away as if he has to engage in the negative attacks, as if some outside force is making him do it.

Not only is Barack Obama running the most all around negative campaign in many decades, he’s about to break another tradition of campaign civility.

In the past, Democrats have kept a low profile during the GOP nominating convention and when the Democrat Party held its convention, the GOP would similarly remain quiet. This was, of course, a gentlemen’s agreement each civilly allowing the other to have their moment in the spotlight.

“Traditionally, there was a kind of courtesy extended to the party having the convention — the [other] party would basically stay out of the public eye,” Ross Baker, political scientist at Rutgers University told The Hill.

But not this time. This year Obama is about to embark on a tactless, mean-spirited series of visits to Florida during the GOP convention quite despite the civil comportment of past candidates on both sides. This is a break of the protocol that has existed for decades and proves that Obama is really running a gutter campaign.
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Obama’s Negative Campaign Excused as ‘High Stakes of Campaign’”


Apologize! Boston Globe Slams VP Biden Over ‘Chains’ Remark

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last week the talk of the news cycle centered on yet another “gaffe” by Vice President Joe Biden. In front of an audience half filled with African Americans Biden made the outrageous claim that Republicans want to put blacks “back in chains.” Many left-wingers and Democrats rushed out to defend Biden’s idiocy, but this weekend the Boston Globe parted company with defenders and demanded that Biden apologize for his remarks.

One of the untenable claims that Democrats are using to try and excuse Biden’s comments is that the audience in Danville, Virginia didn’t have many blacks in it. Therefore, Biden lapsing into black dialect and saying Mitt Romney wants to put “ya’all back in chains” surely wasn’t an example of Biden talking to blacks. But it its very first paragraph, the Globe demolishes that faux fact saying that Biden was addressing a crowd made up of “hundreds of African Americans.”

The Globe is correct on that point. Video of the event does show that the audience was about half African American.
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Apologize! Boston Globe Slams VP Biden Over ‘Chains’ Remark”