2008 Election, Immigration, Media, MRIOTD, Politics, Russia, Uncategorized, Venezuela

Today’s Special

News of Venezuela’s referendum which would crown the hemisphere’s idiot, Hugo Chavez, as dictator for life, and usurp the democracy movement is sounding all too familiar. Too close to call. Opponents are acting confident that they won by an 8 percent margin. The government has not released the results yet. Will be interesting to see what Chavez does if he loses.

UPDATE: 1-hour later: Chavez loses referendum 51% to 49%. OK, now stand back and watch how well Chavez takes this news.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin did what Chavez hoped to do. His political party won by a landslide. Of course, it helps when you only allow the opposition (pro-Western) party on the tightly controlled state airwaves and characterize them as provocateurs in the pay of foreign overlords. Scaring voters of a ‘western plot’ also helps.

A small victory for democracy in Hong Kong. But we’ll take it.

Things aren’t going well in Iowa for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Aside from polling second to Sen. Barack Obama in Iowa, she was booed by a group of 3000 fellow democrats in Des Moines when she spoke in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. Iowans correctly read that as nothing more than lipstick on a pig named ‘ amnesty.’ I read that as Iowa democrats are not liberal like she is. It highlights her arrogance, not leadership, to even go there after seeing how badly and how broadly the country rejected Bush’s comprehensive plan.

And qualifying for the Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day, the media comes to her aide in the aftermath of the hostage ‘crisis’ in one of her campaign offices like this.

When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.

and this explains why.

It was a vintage example of a candidate taking a negative and turning it into a positive. And coming just six weeks before the presidential voting begins, the timing could hardly have been more beneficial to someone hoping to stave off a loss in the Iowa caucuses and secure a win in the New Hampshire primary.

 

2008 Election, Media, Politics, Uncategorized

LA Times On The ‘Corrupt News Network’

I don’t remember when I’ve quoted anything from the LA Times that I agreed with. That’s how often it happens. Their take on last week’s CNN/youTube debate however is both unique and right on. In defense of CNN’s use of democrat operatives and members of the Clinton campaign, CNN put out this statement the next day . . .

“The whole point of these ground-breaking CNN/YouTube debates is to focus on substantive questions of concern to real people and to throw open the process to a wider range of Americans all around the country. CNN cared about what you asked, not who you were.”

CNN did not do either. The first and most obvious bit of journalistic malpractice is the selection of Democrat campaign operatives like Keith Kerr to hold the microphone in a Republican debate. The next thing, and maybe less obvious is they didn’t focus on the most important issues on the minds of Americans. They focused instead on what was important to CNN. Tim Rutten of the LAT begins . . .

THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can’t afford to be sick with anything that won’t be treated with aspirin and bed rest.

So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a “debate,” what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.

After citing examples of CNN’s “intellectual venality” in the questions it picked, Rutten continues. . .

[I]t pales beside the wickedness of using some crackpot’s query about the candidates’ stand on Biblical inerrancy to do something that’s anathema in our system — to probe people’s individual religious consciences. American journalists quite legitimately ask candidates about policy issues — say, abortion — that might be influenced by their religious or philosophical convictions. We do not and should not ask them about those convictions themselves. It’s nobody’s business whether a candidate believes in the virgin birth, whether God gave an oral Torah to Moses at Sinai, whether the Buddha escaped the round of birth and rebirth or whether an angel appeared to Joseph Smith.

It certainly makes a case for the uselessness of this kind of debate format, and the irrelevance of CNN, the most trusted name in news, when it comes to politics. It also makes the case for journalists to go back to asking, and taking responsibility for, their own questions. I couldn’t agree more with Rutten’s conclusion.

In any event, CNN has failed in its responsibilities to the political process and it’s time for the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties to take the network out of our electoral affairs.

related links:

LA Times, CNN: Corrupt News Network| The Lunch Counter: Joe Scarborough and Me | Not Just A Plant, But A Whole Nursery

Race Relations

‘The Black KKK Claimed Another Victim’

Jason Whitlock, award-winning sportswriter for the Kansas City Star, takes a critical look at the murder of Sean Taylor. This was written two days before the perpetrators were arrested.

True to form, Whitlock spoke of truths few press representatives and even fewer black leaders dare to today (emphasis added, h/t Larwyn, reader is cautioned that some of the language is a tad raw at times)

What’s amazing about this column, and others by Whitlock, is that if Martin Luther King, Jr., was alive today, he’d completely agree with these sentiments.

h/t Noel Sheppard @ NewsBusters
Jason Whitlock: Taylor’s death a grim reminder for us all

Continue reading ‘The Black KKK Claimed Another Victim’ →

Pensacola, War On Terror

Will Muslim Americans Please Stand Up?

Like anything else in society, making generalizations about race and religion hide some truths that, when it comes to life and death, matter. So to say [American Muslims are NOT our enemy!] that an entire class of people are not our enemy is wishful thinking, and wreaks of naivete. Of course, it depends on what your definition of ‘enemy’ is. I think it is fair to say that most American Muslims are fine, peaceful, and productive citizens. It is also fair to say that some terrorist cells are already here in America.

The Pew Research Center did a survey of American Muslims. It shows that 1 in 4 American Muslims aged 18-29 actually support suicide bombings.

* More than one in four Muslims (or 26%), aged 18-29, said “Suicide Bombing is Justified.” 2% percent of them say it can often be justified, 13% say sometimes, and 11% say rarely. Add to that, the 5% don’t know/refused to answer this easy, instinctive question, and it’s even worse–for a total of 31%–almost a third of young American Muslims, who support homicide bombings. This younger group of Muslims is the most radical, the study found, and it’s the largest group of Muslims in America. It is also the future of “America’s” Islam.

A quadruple amputee can count on his toes and fingers the number of times local mosques in Pensacola have denounced radical Islam. Them not speaking up and getting out in front of this Islamofascist movement to denounce it doesn’t make them bad. But it doesn’t make make me feel safe to know that such a large group of people are getting a pass either.

American Muslims face a special challenge in this post 9/11 world. And their silence breeds bias which only they can assuade. It’s not the majority of Muslim Americans (69%) I’m concerned about. It’s the other 31%.

related links:
American Muslims Support Suicide Bombings | Muslim Silence Breeds Bias

2008 Election, Media, Pensacola, Politics, Uncategorized

Joe Scarborogh, And Me, On CNN’s Plant At Republican Debate

On the ‘Morning Joe‘ show this morning, Pensacola’s own Joe Scarborough gave his take on what the mainstream media has been playing really low key, if mentioning IT at all. The IT is the planting by CNN of questioners at last nights CNN/YouTube sponsored Republican debate.

He didn’t go into all the other phony questioners mentioned here, but he really didn’t need to to make his point. The retired ‘openly gay’ general not only had his video question aired, but CNN flew him from California, all expenses paid, so he could be in the audience and actually participate in the debate with the candidates. THAT was no coincidence. Nor is it a coincidence that he is on the “LGBT Americans for Hillary”1 committee. A national steering committee of over 65 leaders in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

The video from Morning Joe is HERE.

I saw the ‘debate.’ And from the opening bell with the folk singer, (folk singers are a staple for liberals (Baez, Mitchell, Young, Taylor)), it quickly became apparent from that tune, and from the way the questions that followed were framed, hitting all the stereotypes the left ascribes to republicans and conservatives, that CNN’s intent was to demean the candidates by casting them all as racists, homophobes, hypocrites and bigots. To their credit though, I thought all of the candidates handled the idiotic questions just fine. Unfortunately, for the few Americans who actually watched the debate, there was little to be learned from the candidates that everybody didn’t already know.

Chalk it up to a waste of time and a failed attempt to disparage the republican field of candidates. CNN did however manage to show themselves to be, to borrow a Chris Wallace phrase, ‘hyper-partisan’ in the staged event, to the point of making them look like total fools in the political arena.

1I have a screen capture of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign website in the event someone edits or removes the web page showing the general’s affiliation with her campaign.

2008 Election, Media, Politics, Uncategorized

CNN Republican Debate: Not Just A Plant, But A Whole Nursery

While the news that CNN redacted the transcript of a democratic plant, among 6 democratic ‘undecided’ plants, in the Nov 15 Democrat debate they sponsored is still coming out, there is news today that a Hillary campaign operative was a plant in last night’s CNN sponsored Republican debate. The retired general, Keith Kerr, is actually a member of Hillary Clinton’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual Americans For Hillary Steering Committee. Anderson Cooper’s mea culpa below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28CCf4cEDpI[/youtube]

Was CNN a victim, an accomplice of Clinton Inc., or just incompetent? A cursory search on the net reveals that this questioner was also on the Steering Committee of “Veterans for Kerry” AND was interviewed twice by CNN in 2003. But it doesn’t stop there. Michelle Malkin’s blog discovers many more.

It certainly makes a case for the uselessness of this kind of ‘debate’ format, and the irrelevance of CNN, ‘the most trusted name in news,’ when it comes to politics. It also makes the case for ‘journalists’ to go back to asking, and taking responsibility for, their own questions.

related links:

Free Republic- Transcript of CNN Interview with Gen. Keith Kerr 12/11/2003
Digging out more CNN/YouTube plants
Hillary plants question in Republican debate
CNN Hides Its Tracks, Edits Debate Transcript
More Planted Questions At CNN Democrat Debate

2008 Election, Media, Politics

CNN Hides Its Tracks, Edits Debate Transcript

1 Comment

I’ve heard it all now. CNN, “the most trusted name in news” redacting the transcript of theLaShannon Spencer, Arkansas Democrat Operative November 15th Democrat Debate. This doesn’t even come close to the fake news conference that FEMA held a few weeks ago.

It’s about LaShannon Spencer, who was identified as a member of the First African Methodist Church, but she is also an Arkansas Democratic Party operative. Hardly the ‘undecided’ she was purported to be.

Here is CNN’s version of their transcript. Try to findCNN, the most trusted to lie. the exchange. Maybe CNN is the most trusted name in news to lie for an agenda? Yeah, that’s it.

h/t Reality Hammer | Newsbusters | Doug Ross @ Journal | Rush Limbaugh

Judiciary, Politics, Race Relations

Justice Clarence Thomas / Rush Limbaugh Interview

Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court has published his memoir called My Grandfather’s Son and has been doing interviews on all the usual media outlets that people do who come out with a book, except one. That would be Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. For the first time ever, Rush used his radio show airtime to interview Justice Thomas for 90 minutes. Minus the news and commercial breaks it boils down to just under an hour.

For kids today, Justice Thomas’ life story, the problems he faced and how he dealt with them in a segregated South, serves as a blueprint for how to deal with adversity and make the American dream your own. It is truly awe inspiring regardless of the color of your skin and I hope you take the time to hear his story in his own words.

Best I can say about the interview is, regardless what prejudices one might hold about Rush, or Justice Thomas, or blacks, or whites, or conservatives, put it all aside and listen to this interview, his story. In my humble opinion, his book, if not this interview, deserves a hearing in elementary schools everywhere.

Hear the entire interview HERE.

Belly up to the counter. Politics are on the menu and Ross is on the grill.