Left-wing Media Howls About Trump Press Conferences

After eight years of Obama calling only on lap-dog liberal and ultra-liberal media outlets, after his actually trying to exclude Fox News from the White House Press Corps, and after his repeated bashing of private citizen Rush Limbaugh by name, and then after the mainstream liberal media’s continual smearing of Trump with Fake News such as, for example, that he was a frequenter of Russian prostitutes and is the incarnation of Hitler, the left-wing media is now cataplectic that at press conferences Trump is calling on non-left-wing news and commentary media outlets! 

How dare Trump not call exclusively on left-wing media outlets!  The end of the First Amendment! cries one pseudo-journalist, who displays his pathetic ignorance of what the First Amendment actually means.

The days of just three liberal national TV news networks and the New York Times filtering their way all the news Americans would see are long over, and it’s about time.  Their monopoly on the news is over. 

Looking back, the left-wing media’s infatuation and “slobbering love affair” with Obama was so bad that books have been written about it, and we were spurred to mock it in this post:

Two Reporters Injured Trying To Kiss President Obama’s Behind

R Balsamo

Let's Again Play "Guess the Political Party!" at the Daily Mail: Its Liberal Bias On Full View

On the Daily Mail site on January 28, 2016 -- two adjacent articles:

The politician on the right cut off a long-winded speaker's prayer -- at worst a rude act, while at best an appropriate and well-deserved maneuver.  He is named explicitly as a Republican, twice, just in the article's headers. 

Meanwhile, the "corrupt" Chicago "city official" on the left "faces years in prison" for his corruption involving "the administration" of the City of Chicago.  His known behavior is infinitely worse than that of the first official, yet his political party is not mentioned at all in the headline.  In fact, even in the article, his political party is not mentioned.  Not mentioned either is the political party to which everyone in the "administration" of the City of Chicago belongs.  Apparently the Brits at the Daily Mail don't realize that every educated American over 21 years old knows that Chicago has been in the tight grip of the Democrat Party for generations and that every "city official" and every single person in the city's "administration" is a Democrat.  But for the Daily Mail that's a fact not worth mentioning, and they're too ignorant of American politics to know everyone would be on to their subterfuge.  They only look pathetic in their failed manipulation.  But should a Republican allegedly be rude, well, he must be called out.

As I pointed out in a previous post on the Daily Mail, this tactic appears to involve a begrudging coverage of a Democrat scandal that leaves out the Democrat part, juxtaposed with an article about some Republican peccadillo that emphasizes the Republican part, all in an effort to mislead inattentive and unsuspecting readers into thinking that both articles involved Republicans.

R Balsamo

Related post:
The Guess That Political Party Game – Daily Mail Edition

Breaking News – Black Lives Matter, Code Pink, and the Communist Party to Host Upcoming Republican Presidential Debates

In a move that comes as a surprise to some, on the heels of the successful CNBC-hosted debate the Republican Party this evening announced a new series of televised debates for its candidates for the party’s presidential nomination.  The three new debates will be hosted by representatives from Black Lives Matter, Code Pink, and the Communist Party of the United States.

Reince Priebus, the national Republican Party head who has arranged for the debates this year, said Republican Party leaders thus far like the balanced, fair, and probative questions moderators have brought to the early debates, and look forward to the new lines of questions these three groups will bring to future debates.  He rejected allegations that some previous debate moderators have shown liberal bias intending to smear his Party’s candidates, saying “the Republican Party is confident that Black Lives Matter, Code Pink, and the Communist Party will choose debate moderators who will rise to the same non-biased and professional level that we have seen from previous moderators like Candy Crowley, Gwen Ifill, Chris Wallace, and John Harwood.”   

*******

It’s déjà vu all over again.  From the last time around, at this blog:

After Ryan Pick, By Agreeing to Ultra-Liberal Debate Questioners Romney Rejoins the Stupid Party

Lessons of Hurricane Katrina

The meaning of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast ten years ago, is now in clear focus.  Law professor and commentator Glenn Reynolds writes (link) that “the extremism [in the media reporting] … did real harm.  New Orleans, a city battered by disaster, was portrayed as … ‘a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning.’ ”  But, as we now know, much of the worst said was profoundly untrue.  The motive of the ultraliberals behind all their lying propaganda was to damage the Bush presidency, and they achieved their aim quite well, but once again, as it is all too clear now, they showed they have no moral scruples and that they could care less who else was damaged in the process.  As Reynolds writes, “by playing up anarchy and danger [in New Orleans], [the liberal media] may even have delayed the arrival of aid, as rescuers feared to go in without armed escort.  Overall, a horrible media performance.”  The ongoing drumbeat of lies also probably stoked some lawlessness that would not have been there otherwise if the media had told the truth.  Moreover, the distorted reporting perhaps discouraged post-Katrina business investment to an area perceived as especially prone to violence and social breakdown.

The disaster that was New Orleans after Katrina was primarily the responsibility of the gross negligence and incompetence by the Democrat black mayor and the grandmotherly-looking, deer-in-headlights female Democrat governor, whose deadly non-management and mismanagement were vigorously covered up by the liberal media.  President George Bush played a role in not directing the federal relief agencies to step in more aggressively early on in the face of local and state abdication of their primary responsibility.  Finally, Bush and his Republican brain trust showed great political incompetence as well.  Bush’s abject failure to push back against politically-motivated lies, unfortunately a theme throughout his presidency, hurt him, hurt Republicans, hurt the ongoing political cause of true American patriots, and hurt the American body politic.  Overall a very bad showing by everyone involved.

The Guess That Political Party Game – Daily Mail Edition

The ever-popular Guess That Political Party Game is back, where contestants try to name the political party of a disgraced, embarrassed, or convicted politician when his or her political party is not named in a media headline or article.  So far, everyone guessing "Democrat" has been right 99.9999% of the time!

Below is a screen shot of a part of the Daily Mail's web home page right now, where three stories about politicians are juxtaposed.  First, a "Republican congressman" is caught in a minor kerfuffle about excessive spending to decorate his office.  A problem, yes, but a minor one, and what about all the money the Clintons have spent decorating?  Not a word.  Then there's a story about "GOP" politicians "rushing to condemn."  All that intemperate rushing to judgment hotheadedness.  In both headlines, the political party is the first thing mentioned.

But then comes the really big story about the man who just resigned as the governor of Oregon after being caught up in a corruption scandal with an FBI criminal investigation heating up.  Looks like he's destroying evidence!  He's "disgraced."  Now here's something meaty!  But hmmmm, of just what political party is he a member?   No mention in the large headline, or in the caption to the photo.  One clicks through to the article.  No mention in the five point summary of the report.  One reads through the article, down past all the photos and ads.  Finally, there at the very end the "disgraced" ex-governor's political party is mentioned at last – though in an oblique way at that. 

OK now – Guess That Political Party!

It's obvious the lie that's going on here.  The Daily Mail knows that by placing the big story of the corrupt unnamed Democrat just below two negative headlines about named Republicans, it creates the impression for inattentive readers that the third story is about a Republican as well.  The Daily Mail also knows that few people will click through to start reading the article, and that even fewer will read all the way to the end where the corrupt politician's political party is finally mentioned.  By mentioning the Democrat party only at the very end, the Daily Mail can try to deflect accusations of political bias by stating that it did indeed mention the Democrat party of the politician, but by placing the mention at the very end it ensures few readers of the original headline will ever know the truth.

R Balsamo

NBC News Comes Clean About 10-Year Lie. Oops.

Brian Williams, the long-time lead news anchor at the liberal NBC News and the face of its news operation, today admitted that since 2003 he has been telling an untruth about being shot down in a helicopter during the American invasion of Iraq.  Instead of being shot down, his helicopter landed safely one hour after the fighting was over.  Williams has been under pressure from army veterans who were there and have known the truth all along.

Williams was not the only NBC employee on that assignment, so many more have been involved in perpetrating this lie.  This "false story," as the liberal site Politico describes it, has been touted for over 10 years by NBC and Williams as evidence of the network's heroic news people who will go anywhere for a story.  Politico reports:  'Williams has told the story several times, including during a 2013 appearance on "The Late Show" with David Letterman.  "Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47... we were only at 100 feet doing 100 forward knots," he told Letterman. "We landed very quickly and hard, and we were stuck, four birds in the middle of the desert. And we were north out ahead of the other Americans." '

Williams claims to be puzzled about how he could have mixed up landing safely and quietly with being shot down by gunfire, but vows to get to the bottom of the mystery.  In addition, Williams, who for decades has also been claiming he is an objective journalist, insists that this story is the only thing he has made up, ever, honest.  Double honest. 

R Balsamo

Remembering the Liberal Lie of the Kitty Genovese Murder -- 50 Years Later

Catherine "Kitty" Genovese

Today is the 50th anniversary of the horrible murder in New York City of a young woman named Kitty Genovese. Amidst hundreds of murders that year, in NYC and elsewhere, that particular one became famous because of the New York Times coverage. As the published story went, a young woman returning home late at night was attacked on the street in front of her large apartment building, and her screams were ignored by scores of her neighbors, who, as the narrative went, did nothing out of fear and apathy. The story made national news as a sign of a developing social pathology.

I remember the event. I was in 6th grade at the time, in a Chicago suburb. My teacher told us students the story and led many discussions about it, and the topic came up in later classes for some years. It is one of the very few single events I can remember being discussed in those early years of mine, that’s how big a national story it was.

Now, years later, we know the media narrative was a lie. In fact, only a few people heard her screams, which were hard to differentiate from the background din of raucous city life in a rough neighborhood.  And in fact, at least one resident did call the police and at least one yelled out the window. The real story is one of a young woman walking alone late at night to her apartment building who was attacked by a mentally ill psychopath on the prowl for a victim. The murderer was, in fact, initially scared off by shouts from the apartment building but only hid nearby, returning to the still-alive victim when the police failed to arrive. The New York Times needed a sensational story to sell papers, and then as now loved a story angle that put average Americans in a bad light.

Thus the myth of the 38 apathetic bystanders was born. And it was all a lie, from the same NY Times that some years earlier suppressed the truth about Stalin’s mass starvation of millions of farmers in the Soviet Union out of sympathy for his socialistic intentions, a disgrace which the newspaper to this day has not even acknowledged let alone apologized for. Among the many real truths of the Kitty Genovese story is that the liberal media in general and the New York Times in particular cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

J Greco

One revisionist look:
http://nypost.com/2014/02/16/book-reveals-real-story-behind-the-kitty-genovese-murder/

Lying about Who’s Lying at the NY Times -- Obama "Misspoke"

The New York Times recently published an editorial about all the now-obvious lying Obama engaged in to secure passage of the health law enacted solely by Democrats.  The NY Times says Obama “misspoke”.  The word “misspoke” means, at least to those not engaged in writing and publishing for a living, a mistake, a mistaken notion of what should have been said.  Obama, however, “misspoke” often, as often as he could to anyone who would listen, with the exact same unequivocal statements about Obamacare such as “If you like your existing health care plan, you can keep it.  Period.” – words we now know the Democrats knew were lies all along.   

Responding to criticism of the editorial’s using the term “misspoke”, the NY Times’ editorial page editor, one Andrew Rosenthal, defended the word by asserting “We have a high threshold for [saying] whether someone lied.”

This statement turns out to be a big, bald-faced lie, as Seth Mandel documents (link) in a post at Commentary online.  Not many years ago the NY Times repeatedly and explicitly called President George Bush a liar when disagreeing with him over policy.  Thus, when a Republican was president the NY Times was free and loose with the “liar” accusation, but now with a Democrat in office the NY Times can’t even use the word when evidence clearly shows that Obama and his aides discussed the ongoing need to lie as Obama was lying.  Ironic it is, the NY Times lying about its standard for calling someone a liar.   

I bother now to write this post not to document evidence of the extreme liberal bias at the NY Times, an unnecessary effort since examples are legion.  Rather, I write to express a certain sadness from the reminder that once-great institutions often corrode from the inside when no adults are left who know right from wrong, or good from bad.  We know now that the New York Times was long this way (its cover up of Stalin’s massacres by its reporter Walter Duranty [link] quickly comes to mind), and before the explosion of alternative sources to more readily grasp what is true and what is not, we just didn’t know different, or better.

Update 11/15/2013:  The NY Times by many accounts has abandoned the ridiculous "misspoke" terminology, and has adopted now the term "incorrect promise".  I am not making this up.  Honestly.

Obama Fiddles While Egyptian Christians Murdered

J. Christian Adams at PJ Media comments (link) on the toxic mix of the moral bankruptcy of Obama and his liberal media lapdogs enraptured by their demigod and their shared self-loathing hostility to Western civilization, in light of the recent antics of Obama's allies The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt -- the title captures it all:

"Christians Murdered All Over Egypt, New Puppy at White House"

See:  Roger L Simon's Obama’s Strange Love Affair with the Muslim Brotherhood

NBC News Airbrushes Out Black Republicans & Other Ongoing Liberal Racism

The ultraliberal media continues to smear Republicans with the race card, which apparently is just about all they can think of to do at this point -- their policies in the Obama years have utterly failed and they have no new ideas.  Their basic pitch -- soak the rich, give people like us more control, and all Republicans are rapacious racist, sexist, violent homophobes.  Since ideology is everything to them, their further corrosion of what little standard of decency remains is of no matter to them -- they've already shredded it down to gauze.  And oh yes, I know they'll say both sides do it, but when one side is responsible for 98.6% of the gross incivility, the canard becomes just an evasion and a character-revealing quarter-truth.

From the liberal website Politico (link):

Yahoo News has fired Washington bureau chief David Chalian [JMG: formerly of ABC News] after he was caught on a hot-mic during an online video broadcast saying that Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, had no problem with African Americans suffering as a result of Hurricane Isaac....  "They're not concerned at all. They're happy to have a party with black people drowning," Chalian said over a break during the ABC News/Yahoo News webcast, in reference to the fact that the GOP convention in Tampa is taking place as Hurricane Isaac makes landfall on the north Gulf coast.

Think Chalian is some minor hack?  Think again.  He defines the mainstream liberal media.  He is on the faculty of the Georgetown U. School of Continuing Studies Journalism Program (link); his bio there states: "He previously served as the political editor for PBS NewsHour, managing the editorial content from the NewsHour's congressional, White House, and Supreme Court beats...   Prior to [that], Chalian was the political director for ABC News. In this role, he helped oversee the editorial content of all political news...."  Think any of his vicious views biased any of his work?

One reader commenting at National Review Online:  "Yahoo hired Chalian after he produced the Charlie Gibson interview of Palin. How does his comment about the Romneys deviate in any way from his work there?".  Yahoo may have fired him just for being stupid enough to get caught on an open mic.

Meanwhile, NBC News is airbrushing any coverage of the two black politicians who spoke yesterday at the Republican National Convention.  From National Review Online (link):

The NBC News page for “Tuesday Night’s RNC Speeches” does not include Mia Love or Artur Davis. Apparently remarks by a former Democratic congressman who seconded Barack Obama’s nomination at the 2008 Democratic Convention is not among the “notable” speeches from last night. It’s enough to make Glenn Reynolds ask: “Is NBC racist? Looks that way. I mean, they’re airbrushing out the black people!”  Then again, MSNBC didn’t air the Love or Davis speeches either, nor that of Senate candidate Ted Cruz [JMG: who is Hispanic].

The ultraliberal and deceptive NBC News is desperate to preserve the media lie that there are no "genuine" blacks and Hispanics in the Republican Party.  And when they show up quite publicly, and quite inconveniently for NBC, they must be airbrushed away, just as Stalin would airbrush out of old photos people with whom he fell out.  For NBC News, it's as if they never existed, and all that's left is the lie.

John M Greco

After Ryan Pick, By Agreeing to Ultra-Liberal Debate Questioners Romney Rejoins the Stupid Party

After a courageous choice of Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, which will test the electorate's ability to think like responsible adults, Mitt Romney got very stupid very fast.  He agreed to a series of three debates with ultra-liberal questioners (link).  Obama will get asked questions like "Are you surprised how difficult it has been to get needed reforms past racist, homophobic, sexist, stupid, selfish, and evil Republicans?", while Romney will get asked questions like "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" 

He could have insisted on two questioners for each debate, one picked from each side, or insisted on a predetermined set of questions that eliminated the questioner all together.  Or he could have insisted that at least one of the three questioners be a conservative.  But no.  He agrees to all ultra-liberal interrogators.  My guess is that that stupidity will cost him one to two points in swing states.   

Roger L Simon writes (link):

I was appalled, although not surprised, to read the just announced list of moderators for the forthcoming presidential debates....  All liberals from liberal news organizations.....  I don’t have any idea why the tradition of allowing a biased media to run these events continues. It is a testament to the passivity of the Republican Party. We saw how it worked during the primary season. Now we are going to get a rerun during the main event, with more subtlety and ultimately more subversion.

Unbelievable.  After all the debate history obvious to all, this is Simply Unbelievable. 

John M Greco

A Chapter from the Liberal Media’s Brave New World

The Associated Press reports (link):

A jury ... found an Afghan father, his wife and their son guilty of killing three teenage sisters and a co-wife in what the judge described as "cold-blooded, shameful murders" resulting from a "twisted concept of honor" in a case that shocked and riveted Canadians....  Prosecutors said the defendants allegedly killed the three teenage sisters because they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socializing and using the Internet....  The jury [found] Mohammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Yahya, 42; and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

In its 930 word report, there is no mention of Islam, leaving readers to speculate as to whether it played a role in the motivation of Mohammad and his "co-wife".  The Associated Press clearly thinks not. 

Also, toward the end the article eventually identifies the "three teenage sisters" as daughters of the man convicted of the "honor killings", and strongly implies that they were also daughters of the second wife.  "Honor killings" are known as murders in some circles outside the Associated Press.

Not much to see here, move right along.

J Greco

The Wall Street Journal Runs a Front Page Liberal Electioneering Puff Piece on the Blue Dogs; Liberal Bias?

The Wall Street Journal is commonly, and mistakenly in my view, thought of as a newspaper with a “conservative” point of view, stemming, I think, first from a failure to separate and distinguish a paper’s editorial point of view from that of the “straight news” writers, and second, from unfamiliarity with the product.

The WSJ editorials are indeed conservative in point of view, but I have long been of the opinion that many if not most of the WSJ writers covering the political and economic beats are for the most part liberals. Many perhaps only mildly so, but it’s hard to tell how left they really are for their liberal slant oozes out in bits and dollops, here and there, usually restrained, in otherwise “straight” news stories. It’s in the subtleties, the different shadings sketched for liberals versus conservatives, and one has to be a regular reader to pick up on this stuff.

But here’s one sans subtlety, from the WSJ of October 26 (link). WSJ writer and columnist Gerald F. Seib has a paean to so-called “moderate,” so called “Blue Dog” Democrats and a lamentation of the bleak reelection prospects many of them are facing. This electioneering puff piece is given front page placement by WSJ editors.

The “Blue Dog” Democrats are, as is well known, Congressmen who talk like conservatives back home but vote like liberals in Washington. When their votes are not needed for passage of a liberal bill they get a pass for a “no” vote they can wave around back home to fool enough foolable voters. But their support for the ultraliberal radicalism of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi has unmasked them and destroyed the myth before suddenly attentive voters, and, as Obama’s mentor and spiritual advisor Rev. Wright famously once said, the chickens are coming home to roost.

But to Seib, on the front page of the WSJ no less, the loss of any of these so-called “moderate” Democrats is a “stark indicator” of how this election could result in a “more polarized” Congress. Apparently to him, the more Congressmen there are who oppose the ultraliberal agenda, the more polarized the Congress is. The Blue Dogs are a “human bridge” connecting Democrats and Republicans, and their loss would be a tragedy. On the Senate side, the late Ted Kennedy is held out by Seib for his ability to “cross the aisle” to “work with” Republicans, but to get them to do what I ask—of course to support the liberal agenda, and John McCain, at least until lately, is held up admiringly as one of those so snookered.

Much of the blame for the dire straits of the Blue Dogs, says Seib, goes to the “tea party movement,” which has produced a “crop” of candidates who, according to an unnamed “senior GOP House aide,” “aren’t interested in coming here to compromise.” How convenient for Seib, finding a “senior” Republican aide, rather than a Democrat one, to slam the tea party movement as loaded with rigid, uncompromising ideologues (how believable is this old bit -- using an anonymous “quote” by a Republican senior insider to slam Republicans?). Don’t you see, says Seib, even responsible Republicans think those damn tea partiers are extremists for not wanting to compromise with Democrats to support the ultraliberal agenda.

Liberals and most conservatives think the WSJ is as reliably conservative as the New York Times is reliably liberal. Would that only be so.

John M Greco

Liberal Bias Whopper at CNN – As Plain As the Eye Can See

The liberals in the media usually hide their bias a little better than this – CNN news announcer Fredericka Whitfield, while talking over a shot of a TV camera panning the crowd at a Nevada Tea Party rally that numbers at the very least well into the thousands, if not well over ten thousand, says this: "Hundreds of people, at least dozens of people - we haven't gotten a count of how many people turned out there.”

Repeat – while the TV camera pans a crowd of many, many thousands, at least, she describes the crowd as “hundreds of people, at least dozens of people.”

These little bloopers are always revealing. She forgets that she’s not writing an article for print, where the reader would rely on her representations. She forgets, because she apparently isn’t very bright, that she can’t lie on TV about a picture that we the viewers are also seeing.

Newsbusters has the video here, and Gateway Pundit also weighs in here.

NewsBusters also says that a reporter for the liberal web site Politico estimated the crowd at 20,000, although he then tarred speaker Sarah Palin with the standard liberal “inciting violence” smear; no report that he hurled the other standard liberal smear – that the Tea Partiers are all racists as well. Perhaps he’s saving that one for his next report.


John M Greco

Related Post:

Liberals Who Read Only Liberal Media Don’t Know the Half of What’s Really Going On – Case in Point: The Obama Team’s Bungled Freeman Nomination

Liberals Feigning Ignorance of History, To Their Advantage, So They Think

Two recent statements by liberals have astounded me for the boldness of their dishonesty, or, as Obama would say, of their “bearing false witness.” It happens all too frequently, unfortunately. For example, how about the immeasurable dishonesty from Democrats lately about Obamacare being budget neutral, not raising taxes, “bending” the medical cost curve downward, not negatively impacting Medicare (despite the hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts in black and white right in the bill), etc., etc.

I know these falsities are made to fool the foolable and to influence those inattentive to politics and history. But here’s what has struck me lately.

First from a liberal “journalist” at The Atlantic magazine, whom I see is still around – I would read the occasional article by him back 15+ years ago when I flipped through his magazine. Courtesy of Peter Wehner at The Corner at National Review Online, James Fallows writes this (link) at The Atlantic online:

I am not aware of a case of a former president or vice president behaving as despicably as Cheney has done in the ten months since leaving power … Cheney has acted as if utterly unconcerned with the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people now trying to make difficult decisions. He has put narrow score-settling interest far, far above national interest.

I could only shake my head reading this bald lie. I immediately thought of the multitude of outrageously disparaging comments made by Al Gore about Bush and Cheney during their 8 year run. Fallows is not an idiot – he surely remembers them. But as an apparent ultraliberal enslaved to his ideology, he can’t acknowledge that. He pretends Gore’s comments didn’t happen and thinks most of his readers won’t know any better.

Wehner reacts (link):

Let’s see if we can help Mr. Fallows by going way, way, way back in history — to, say, the George W. Bush presidency, when former vice president Al Gore charged that Bush had “brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon,” and that Bush had “betrayed this country” and was a “moral coward.”

Funny, but I’m not aware that Fallows had anything critical to say about Gore at the time, even though what Gore said about Bush is far more personal and ad hominem than anything Cheney has said about Obama. You would think that Fallows, if he were concerned about the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people then trying to make difficult decisions, would have spoken up at the time. But shockingly he did not.

And there’s this whopper -- on November 6 Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, apparently responding to a report that one person of tens of thousands at various anti-Obamacare rallies had a sign with Obama as Hitler, said: “Imagine just a few years ago had somebody walked around with images of Hitler…” (link). Gibbs is either an idiot or a liar, and I suspect he’s not an idiot. If there was one constant about the many anti-Bush rallies over the years, it was the heavy doses of Bush as Hitler imagery (and Bush as a chimp as well). Just watching the occasional TV news show I saw countless examples. Yet here’s Gibbs, pretending none of that happened, and seizing on one supposed case to slur all opposed to Obamacare.

The Weekly Standard picked up on this bald lie and ran a collage of photos from rallies and exhibits with 56 images of Bush as Hitler (link; also nearby). As with Fallows, Gibbs surely remembers all that, but won’t acknowledge it, preferring to pretend the ubiquitous Bush as Hitler and Bush as a chimp imagery never happened.

I honestly don’t know why people like Fallows and Gibbs lie like this, when their falsities are so obvious to anyone half awake during the Bush/Cheney years. As I said, I know they say these things to fool the foolable and to influence those inattentive to politics and history, but in doing so they only reveal their debased morality.

Addendum: In the past, when liberals were in control of almost all national media, before conservative talk radio, the internet, and Fox News, Fallows and Gibbs would have gotten away with their statements uncontroverted media-wise in any effective, widespread way. But that was then. In today's world, easily refutable falsities won't fly any more (ask Dan Rather), though Fallows and Gibbs seem not to know that yet, almost certainly because they only read and watch liberal media, and they know those outfits won't call them on any fibs. Old habits die hard.

John M Greco

Obama, Losing Arguments on the Merits, Attacks Fox News

The Obama administration’s attack on Fox News, the only one of the many TV news organizations not slavishly smitten with Barack Obama, continues. Headline from a post (link) yesterday at the mildly liberal The Hill: “White House officials on Fox News: 'It's not a news organization.'” The other day White House Communications Director said Fox News was the communications arm of the Republican Party.

John Hinderaker at Powerline writes (link):

One might wonder why the Obama administration is so outraged that a single network fails to toe its line. The administration acts as though it deserves a monopoly on the news. Isn't that unreasonable? Maybe, except the fact is that the Democrats do need a monopoly. Their problem is that controlling almost all news outlets isn't quite enough, because without a complete monopoly, inconvenient news still gets out--ACORN, Van Jones, Anita Dunn, and so on. If it weren't for Fox, criticism of the Democrats wouldn't be illegal, it would just be nonexistent. Or invisible, anyway. Hence the administration's frustration.

Jay Nordlinger at National Review Online writes (link):

The White House war on Fox News is quite interesting. My impression is that the Obama people are very, very unused to criticism or “pushback” — especially from the media. They are used to support…. So Fox looks very exotic and alien to them…. Obama-supporting networks are normal and legitimate; the one non-Obama-supporting one is weird, freakish — probably un-American.

John Podhoretz once remarked that all conservatives are bilingual: We speak both conservative and liberal. Liberals are monolingual, because they can afford to be. To the Obama crowd, Fox News is a foreign tongue. When conservatives hear liberal bias, they say, “Yeah, so? The sun rises in the east.” When liberals hear conservative bias, or even a point or bit of news uncongenial to liberals, they’re apt to say, “Eek, a mouse!”

Peter Wehner writes (link) what many no doubt have begun thinking -- this is all "vaguely Nixonian."

Rather than debate the merits with opponents, Obama and his team seek to vilify opponents – a sure sign they continue to lose policy arguments and continue to slip in popular opinion polls. This behavior is unseemly and beneath the dignity of the office of the presidency. It bodes ill for Obama, his presidency, and the body politic.

John M Greco

Democrat Kennedy Proposes New Approach to Government – One Rule for Republicans and a Better One for Democrats

It’s hard to be surprised by any story of rank liberal hypocrisy, for they come at us these days like mosquitoes on a muggy summer night, but I admit this one took me aback for a moment. Dying of cancer, Democrat Senator Edward (“Ted”) Kennedy chooses to exit the political stage the same way he has occupied it – as an immoral shameless opportunist.

Kennedy was the driving force (link) of the movement in Massachusetts that changed the rules in midstream to deprive Republican then-Governor Mitt Romney of the ability to appoint a replacement to fill out the remainder of Sen. John Kerry’s term should Kerry have been elected president in 2004. Prior to that change, a vacant senate seat was to be filled by governor’s appointment, but Kennedy convinced fellow Democrats in Massachusetts government to change the rule so that vacancies would be filled by special election. Now because he is sick and realizes that his own Senate seat may become vacant before the next regular election, and since the Massachusetts governor is now a Democrat rather than a Republican, Kennedy wants to completely reverse course and change the law back to having the governor appoint a replacement (link). While the Democrats are at it, to save time and money why not just pass a law that allows Democrat governors to fill by appointment but requires a special election if the governor is a Republican? And as a typical example of liberal media bias, this deceitful Chicago Tribune article (link) never mentions at all the fact that the Massachusetts law is what it is today because Democrats made it that way to prevent a Republican governor from making a replacement appointment.

Lots of pejorative adjectives occur to me I would waste half a day typing out. This is the Kennedy who left a woman to suffer a horrible, slow death in the car he drove off a Chappaquiddick Island bridge while driving drunk as he swam away and slithered off to sober up and gather the Kennedy family lawyers and media retainers to concoct a cover story that the liberal press willingly endorsed as co-conspirator.

This man has lived his life as a pampered, unprincipled trust-funder in the lifelong pursuit of raw power in the name of the “people,” basking in the adulation of a proletariat he has long been luring down the road to a socialism we have seen before – for most of us, the heavy hand of pervasive government control “for our own good,” but for the elites like him running the government, special privileges and dachas in the countryside.

John M Greco

Liberals Who Read Only Liberal Media Don’t Know the Half of What’s Really Going On – Case in Point: The Obama Team’s Bungled Freeman Nomination

From time to time I’ll be speaking with a liberal friend – I have two in mind – who will seem incredulous when I mention a "hot” political story. Incredulous because they had never heard of it, and incredulous because I would give credence to a story they hadn’t seen mentioned in the New York Times or the Washington Post or on NPR or Public Television or CBS, NBC, ABC, or even in the local Chicago papers (both of which -- one worse than the other -- are oriented toward the liberal). One friend benevolently implored me to stop reading “those conservative” web sites.

Of course, the “joke” is on them. It’s their understanding of events that’s incomplete, because they rely on liberal news sources once thought to be “objective” but which now only carry stories that promote the liberal agenda and often completely ignore stories that undermine their liberal views or liberal leaders. Conservative sources, on the other hand, because their viewpoints infrequently penetrate the dominant liberal “mainstream media,” not only offer news and information one can get nowhere else but, and here’s the important point, they also take note of the liberal media and the stories they are covering and not covering. In taking note of what the dominant liberal “mainstream” media is covering, they thus give readers “both sides” of stories.

This asymmetry -- liberal sources filter and carry stories only to further liberal aims while conservative sources cover both sides -- calls to mind that old TV series Upstairs Downstairs and the more recent movie Gosford Park. In these stories the “upstairs” British aristocrats know only their world, and sometimes that not even well, while the “Downstairs” help, who live and function in not only the Upstairs world but also in the real Downstairs world, see the complete picture. The Downstairs crowd knows both worlds, while the Upstairs crowd knows only its own artifice.

The recent story of the ultimately unsuccessful nomination of former Saudi ambassador Charles Freedman to be the Obama Administration’s new Chairman of the National Intelligence Council is an excellent case in point. The aspect of the story of interest here is not how someone so Anti-Israel and so pro-Saudi could be nominated – that’s easy to figure. My point here is how the icons of the liberal “Mainstream Media” didn’t cover the mushrooming controversy over his nomination. Clearly the liberal media wished to shield Obama from yet more embarrassment and scorn. For some, like the New York Times, the first mention of this whole controversy was when the nomination was withdrawn. Liberals reading only the NYT or the Washington Post must be wondering -- what the hell just happened?

On March 10, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced that Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. has requested that his selection [by the Obama Administration] to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council not proceed. Director Blair accepted Ambassador Freeman’s decision with regret.

Earlier, on March 5, Michael Goldfarb wrote (link) at the Weekly Standard Blog:

So far the Washington Post and the New York Times have failed to run a single news story on the controversy surrounding Freeman's appointment to a key intelligence post. The AP [Associated Press] is busy writing about Sasha and Malia's new swing set. Perhaps an official investigation, launched with bipartisan support in Congress and involving a steaming pile of political hypocrisy, will be enough to warrant a report.

Here’s Mark Steyn writing after the withdrawal of the nomination at National Review online in a post titled “Don't read all about it!” (link):

I'm glad to see the back of the Saudi shill Chas Freeman, but I wonder what Mr and Mrs America will make of it tomorrow morning, reading for the very first time how the "Outspoken Former Ambassador" (as the AP's headline has it) was scuttled by a controversy their newspaper saw fit not to utter a word about. As far as I can tell, the only papers in America to so much as mention the Freeman story were The Wall Street Journal, Investors' Business Daily, The Washington Times, The New York Post, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Augusta Chronicle, and The Press Enterprise of Riverside, California.

But if you rely for your news on The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Detroit News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Miami Herald, or The Minneapolis Star-Tribune - just to name a random selection of American dailies currently sliding off the cliff - the end of the story will be the first time you've heard of it.
The US newspaper has deluded itself that it's been killed by technology. But there are two elements to a newspaper: news and paper. The paper is certainly a problem, but so is the news - or lack of it. If you're interested in news, the somnolent US monodaily is the last place to look for it.

Finally, on March 11, only after the nomination’s withdrawal did the liberal New York Times and the Washington Post cover the story. How did they do? Did they finally reveal the details? Here’s Mark Steyn again, writing (link) at National Review online the day after the withdrawal:

Following my [earlier] remarks on American newspapers' suicidal antipathy to news, I see the Washington Post has now run its first news piece on the Chas Freeman story: “Charles W. Freeman Jr. withdrew yesterday from his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council after questions about his impartiality were raised among members of Congress and with White House officials.” Actually, I don't think his best friends would claim there was ever any question about his "impartiality." And, from that textbook example of reportorial torpor, [the coverage is] notably shy on details on exactly what "questions" were raised….

Meanwhile, what excuse has the New York Times given for not covering this story, so embarrassing to Obama? Michael Calderone writes (link) at the liberal-slanting website Politico:

For nearly three weeks, the nomination of Chas Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council has been a hot-button issue among bloggers…. But one outlet that didn’t weigh in until last night was the New York Times. Dean Baquet, the [NY] Times Washington bureau chief, told Politico that there had been “a relentless effort to get coverage for Freeman and his issues," but the paper had to make choices with how to best use resources and personnel. “The main reason we haven’t covered it until something happened is that this is not high enough a job for us to cover relentlessly …” Baquet added….

Greg Sargent, [writing ironically at a website owned by the Washington Post Co.], … wrote that the Times “overall silence is even more bizarre when you consider that its hometown Senator — Chuck Schumer — played a major role in Freeman’s ouster, airing his opposition in private conversations with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.”

So, now that the New York Times and the Washington Post have discovered this important story, how is their coverage? Not so good, according to James Kirchick writing (link) at Contentions March 12:

[In today’s article,] the New York Times today essentially reprints Chas Freeman’s conspiratorial view of how his appointment as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council went down, in a story headlined “Israel Stance Was Undoing of Nominee for Intelligence Post.” There is no mention of Nancy Pelosi’s anger at Freeman’s support for the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the 87 Chinese dissidents and human rights activists who signed a letter in protest of his appointment. “The reality of Washington is that our political landscape finds it difficult to assimilate any criticism of any segment of the Israeli leadership,” the Times quotes Robert W. Jordan. Who’s he? Like Freeman, a former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia…. Go figure. Having largely ignored this story for the past two weeks, the Times now puts this misleading piece on page 1…. A Washington Post story by Walter Pincus, meanwhile, is no better. Pincus, like the Timesmen, makes no effort to look past Freeman’s claims that he was done in by the “Israel Lobby,” ignoring the China angle….

My liberal friends would be wise to stop relying on the New York Times and the Washington Post for their news and information.

John M Greco

Wall Street Journal's Liberal Slant Makes Readers Play the "Guess Which Party" Game; Must Only Republicans Pay Taxes?

Most people think that the Wall Street Journal has a conservative point of view. As a long-time reader, I believe this is true for its editorial positions, but its straight news reporting is another story. While not blatantly liberal as those of most other newspapers, WSJ news reports sometimes have subtle slants and omissions that attentive readers can pick up. Knowing this, I was not surprised about the disquiet among some Journal reporters when Rupert Murdoch bought the paper, when they likely feared the imposition of more stringent neutrality rules.

Documenting the ubiquitous liberal bias in news reporting is a full time job, to say the least; sites such as Newsbusters (link) and Media Research Center (link) show us that. But we all must contribute our fair share to the effort, so here's mine for now.

In the January 24th Wall Street Journal, the article "Mayor's Admission Roils Portland," (link) requires readers to once again play the favorite liberal game of "Guess Which Party." It slips the author's mind, and those of his editors as well, to mention the wrongdoer's party affiliation. Since we know that stories about wrongdoing by Republicans never fail to mention party affiliation early and often, on reading the article I knew for a certainty that Mayor Adams is a Democrat, a fact I later happened to see mentioned explicitly in another source -- an Associated Press report at Fox News (link) (even here the word "Democrat" does not appear until the 10th paragraph, but hey, that's better than not at all). For the WSJ, in its 10 paragraph article there was no room to mention that the guy is a Democrat. We last played this game just a few weeks ago when newspaper stories surfaced about the corruption of the mayor of Baltimore, who, by coincidence, turned out to be a Democrat as well.

Liberal slant in a WSJ news story is not an isolated instance. For example, in the same January 24 edition, in an article (link) covering the debate in the Senate over Obama's nomination of tax-cheat Tim Geithner to head the Treasury Dept. (which includes of course the Internal Revenue Service), the first sentence is: "The delay in confirming Timothy Geithner as President Barack Obama's Treasury secretary is slowing the administration's ability to assemble a team to help tackle the worst financial crisis in decades." Get that? It's not Obama's fault to have nominated a tax cheat. It's not the Democrat's fault to have kept the tax evasion story under wraps from November until springing it on Republicans at the last minute. No, it's those damn obstructionist Republicans compromising Obama's ability to confront this financial crisis. After all, Republicans should know from the recently revealed tax "issues" of Geithner, Caroline Kennedy, and U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel, Democrats all, if they didn't know it already, that only Republicans are expected to pay their taxes if they want to serve in government.

On the subject of liberal media bias, here's Byron York writing at The Corner at National Review Online the other day (link):

In 2001, during the confirmation of John Ashcroft to be attorney general, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee forced a one-week delay in the committee's vote on Ashcroft, saying there had not been enough time to answer all the questions about the nomination. On January 24, 2001, the Washington Post reported the story under the following headline:

Vote On Ashcroft Is Delayed A Week; Democrats Cite Need for More Review

Yesterday, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee did precisely the same thing for the nomination of Eric Holder to be attorney general. Today, the Washington Post is reporting the story under the following headline:

Republicans Obstruct Holder's Path to Justice Department

Those damn obstructionist Republicans.

John M Greco

Fox News Online Joins the Liberal Media in Bashing Republicans Palin & McCain Via "Memorable Quotes" of 2008

On Christmas Day, Fox News' web site featured a big teaser-ad-like promotion titled “They Said It”, with pictures of Obama, Palin, Jeramiah Wright, and John McCain, and a link to an article. The unsigned article itself was titled: “2008: The Political Year in Quotes. FOXNews.com runs down the most memorable lines of the 2008 political year.” (link)

But, as it turns out, Fox News lied in the teaser. The quote they "use" for Palin isn’t hers at all – it’s Tina Fey’s Palin-mocking line delivered on the comedy show Saturday Night Live: “I can see Russia from my house”.

In the text supporting its choice of the quote, Fox News justifies its misrepresentation:

[Quote by] Tina Fey. Okay, so Fey was embellishing for comic purpose. The actual quote delivered by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to ABC News in September was: "You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." But the "Saturday Night Live" impersonator distilled the essence of Palin's remark -- a bizarre statement on foreign policy experience -- for a politically attuned audience that had begun to question the Republican vice presidential candidate's qualifications for higher office.

The Fox article includes quotes from four politicans who ran this past election cycle: Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin. The quotes selected from Democrats Obama and Clinton were positive ones and the Fox narratives about them were very complimentary. Fox even included among the memorable quotes a very positive one from Ted Kennedy: "Together we have known success and seen setbacks, victory and defeat. But we have never lost our belief that we are all called to a better country and a newer world. And I pledge to you that I will be there next January."

However, for Republicans, Fox News changes its tune. They ridicule Palin using a quote from someone else and call her own statement "bizarre" (an opinion with which I disagree). And here’s the entry on John McCain, which even includes a rebuttal from Obama (while no rebuttal quotes from Republicans were present in Fox's fawning over the quotes from Democrats):

"The fundamentals of our economy are strong.” -- John McCain heard the end of this one on Election Day. The Republican presidential nominee made the rose-colored remark at a rally in Florida on Sept. 15, as Lehman Brothers was filing for bankruptcy and the stock market continued to tumble. Barack Obama and his Democratic supporters seized on the comment as a sign that McCain just didn't understand the mess he would inherit should he win the presidency. "What economy are you talking about?" Obama asked in response. McCain later clarified that he was talking about the American worker.

Could anyone possible think that the above stuff wasn’t written by liberal Democrats? It’s the typical liberal media bias – celebrating Democrats and smearing Republicans, couched so often as it is in ostensibly “balanced” or non-idelological articles. The cowards who wrote this didn’t even have the decency, as they set out to smear Sarah Palin, to find words she actually said. If Fox News wants to criticize Palin or McCain -- fine, just be out front and honest about it.

Fox News may indeed have some marquee commentators who hold conservative views, but despite its reputation as a "conservative" enterprise, as with the Wall Streeet Journal, when you look under the surface (or off the editorial page) there are plenty of liberals planting their digs and insinuations.

Meanwhile, the Media Research Center has its own "best quotes" of 2008 compilation (link); I haven't reviewed them all yet, but I'll bet they're all actual quotes.

Update 12/29/08: Tina Fey selected as "Entertainer of the Year" for trashing Palin on the liberal Saturday Night Live TV show (Gateway Pundit post here). However good Fey's impersonations were, at least the award-givers, unlike Fox News online, knew that Fey and Palin are two different people.

John M Greco