This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Media

  • Nutroots picking nits

    Apparently, the nutroots are clinging to every half-wit rumor they can these days. the media has given Obama and Biden a complete pass on every misstep while focusing on the minutae of the McCain/Palin ticket.

    The latest? Well, McCain and Palin are anti-Semites. Why? Because John McCain was endorsed by that Hagee fellow who has never been part of the McCain campaign or advisor…just a casual acquaintance of McCain’s. And apparently Hagee once said that God was disappointed in the Jews. So McCain must be an anti-Semite. The connection is indisputable. Oh, and Pat Buchanan once complimented Sarah Palin…proof positive.

    Oh, and the other day, a former POW who had been imprisoned with McCain supposedly compared an America with Obama at the helm would be like the Holocaust. But is that what he said? Hardly. Some journalist put the words in his mouth. The story from Capitalwire (subscription only);

    “All we have to do is open up the history books and look at what the fruits of demagoguery are,” [Colonel Tom] Moe said. “When any individual or group tries to pick up a target of opportunity to blame social problems on … the results can be catastrophic. And you can choose any point in history that you want.”

    Asked whether Obama’s statements could cause an event like the Holocaust, Moe responded: “If you like.“

    I screen captured the article so readers wouldn’t have to subscribe to Capitolwire;

    Col. Moe hardly called it a Holocaust.

    Don Surber catches AP nitpicking in Alaska;

    Today’s attack is on how many snowmobiles the Palins own:

    “In the past two decades, the Palins have owned 43 vehicles, including at least 17 snowmobiles. In 2000, the most recent year for which information is available, there were 33,576 registered snowmobiles for a total of 221,600 Alaskan households, which means the average household did not have even one snowmobile, according to the Division of Motor Vehicles and the U.S. Census Bureau.”

    Yes, the Palins gorge on snowmobiles while the poor go hungry. I’m no expert but wouldn’t a champion snowmobiler own snowmobiles? Kinda hard to win a race with a rental, although knowing how cheap I am, I would try.

    Imagine that, a family of seven people in Alaska, one of whom races snowmobiles,  over the last twenty years have owned 17 snowmobiles. What a waste of money. Next you’ll tell me they’ve owned 20 snow shovels over the same period. Uppity rich folks with their 20 snow shovels.

    The nutroots are also in a tizzie because CNN reported that a “language monitor” determined, somehow, that Biden spoke at an 8th grade level while Palin spoke at a tenth grade level;

    The analysis by the Austin, Texas-based Global Language Monitor said Palin, governor of Alaska and the GOP vice presidential nominee, used the passive voice in 8 percent of her sentences, far more than the 5 percent used by the Democratic senator from Delaware.

    The analysis noted that the “passive voice can be used to deflect responsibility; Biden used active voice when referring to [Vice President Dick] Cheney and [President] Bush; Palin countered with passive deflections.”

    One of the netroots went berserk;

    Oh, and there you were, you fancy-pants, elitist, latte-drinkin’ beltway insider, know-nothin’ sillyhead… foolishily thinkin’ that Biden’s reasonably informed, fluid and measured responses were markedly better than the inane gibberish and awkwardly folksy patois of Palin. How remarkably dumb of you.

    I guess anyone who thought Biden sounded “reasonably informed” would be surprised that he performed at an 8th grade level.

  • No media conspiracy here

    Yeah, there’s no media bias in favor of the Obama ticket. Well, unless you include some of this stuff;

    An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings sets the mood by quoting Tony Blankley;

    This is no longer journalism — it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Volkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.) And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly and even half way honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs — the press.

    From Little Green Footballs apparently the media doesn’t mind  being free of recording the Biden gaffes;

    Earlier this week the networks threw a major tantrum when the McCain campaign tried to limit their access to Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s meetings with foreign officials.

    Today, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden met with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and completely excluded the press.

    And not a peep from the mainstream media.

    From Ace of Spades, I guess we’re still going to be subjected to the most ridiculous rumor thus far this century in perpetuity;

    The Washington Post yesterday asked the McCain campaign on the record whether Trig Palin is Sarah Palin’s biological son. Howard Kurtz, one of the most prominent media journalists in the world, asked that question.

    Steve Gilbert at Sweetness and Light catches Biden in a baldfaced lie that he never said that Iraq should partitioned;

    Mind you, Mr. Biden’s latest claims can’t be explained away as a gaffe.

    To claim he was never for partition is just a flat out lie.

    So where is the media to bring this the attention of the voters? Why haven’t they bothered to mention that Joe Biden, the self-proclaimed foreign policy expert of the Democrat Party has been wrong on every foreign policy pronouncement?

    A two-fer from Blue Crab Boulevard;

    I realize that the abject “main stream” media will suppress this, just as they suppressed the contents of Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s vile speech at the UN. But had a major Republican fundraiser done this, the media would be positively spasming right now.

    An Obama fundraiser – a major one – has proudly met the Iranian president and overtly offered to subvert American law to suck up to the vicious, little anti-Semite.

    And that lie about Sarah Palin charging rape victims for their own rape kits? Gateway Pundit and Confederate Yankee put that to rest finally.

    ** There is not one single record of the Wasilla police department charging any rape victim for an examination.
    Not one.

    The Finance Department searched all financial records on our system for fiscal year 2000, 2001 and 2002. There are no records of billings to or collections from rape victims or their insurance companies in our system. The financial computer system goes back to the beginning of fiscal year 2000, and accounts receivable backup documentation goes back six (6) years per our records retention schedule.

    But that doesn’t prevent the New York Times from publishing an opinion column that asks questions that have already been answered;

    Ms. Palin owes voters an explanation. What was the thinking behind cutting the measly few thousand dollars needed to cover the yearly cost of swabs, specimen containers and medical tests? Whose dumb idea was it to make assault victims and their insurance companies pay instead? Unfortunately, her campaign is shielding the candidate from the press, so Americans may still be waiting for answers on Election Day.

    They’re showing the world why the media was so supportive of campaign finance restrictions…so they could have the only show in town and elect their candidates.

  • On earmarks

    An email from doubleplusundead led me to Cuffy Miegs‘ artful dissection of a Wall Street Journal article on Governor Sarah Palin’s supposed “airport to no where”;

    The Wall Street Journal’s credibility takes a hit today as it reports on Gov. Palin’s federal funding requests for Alaska. The problem? The WSJ sloppily declines to identify which of these requests were hypocritical earmarks and which requests were normal legislative appropriations:

    Somehow, the Wall Street Journal thinks that taking earmarks from Congress is the same as giving earmarks from Congress and uses a governor’s requests as evidence of her (and McCain’s) insincerity about ending earmarks.

    A governor’s responsibility is first to her own taxpayers and with a Congress more than willing to shell out money for pet projects of it’s members to buy job security, it was also her responsibility to get as much free money to make life easier for as many residents as possible. Does the Wall Street Journal think that if Palin hadn’t spent that money that Congress would have written the rest of us a check to return that money to the taxpayers?

    I’ve said on this blog in the past that the closer government is to the people, the more liberal it should be – a governor knows better how to spend money in her state than a bureaucrat in Washington. If government sees it’s job as redistribution of wealth to benefit the least of us (I don’t agree, by the way, but government does see itself as that these days), and we know damn well that government is going to spend every dollar they get (and more), who can fault a governor for getting as much of that money as they can for their own people to improve their own states?

    The problem is in Washington, not in Alaska. Fault the Democrats AND Republicans who refuse to break free of the culture of buying votes with tax dollars.

  • Who’s attacking whom, here?

    The day after his campaign ran an ad mocking John McCain’s war injuries, just a few days after he referred to Sarah Palin as a lipsticked pig, Barack Obama warned supporters to look out for sleazy ads and unwarrated attacks on him, according to the Washington Times;

    Sen. Barack Obama told voters not to fall for Republican attempts to “distort my record,” keeping up his attacks on Sen. John McCain, whose campaign criticized the Democrat for talking politics during a hurricane.

    During a rally that was scaled back as Hurricane Ike swamped Texas, the Democratic presidential nominee said Republicans “will try to undermine your trust in what the Democrats are trying to do,” but warned voters in the blue-leaning swing state that “the times are too serious for those strategies to work.”

    “If we don’t [start] the changes that we need starting right now, then our children may not have the same kind of America that we want them to have,” Mr. Obama said.

    I think it’ll be pretty hard for the McCain campaign to distort Obama’s record since he doesn’t have one. Regardless, here’s a quick perusal of headlines in today’s news. From the International Herald Tribune;

    From AFP;

    From The Age;

    From SeaCoast Online;

    In fact, if you do a Yahoo search in the news on “Obama+attack” you get 11,000 results that begin like this;

    Now a search of “McCain+attack” results in 11,000 hits, too (the first three articles were the same, so I cut one out)

    So who is attacking whom here? I remember John McCain extending his hand on the night of Obama’s nomination in an ad that was gentlemanly. He didn’t even bother to campaign that night so Obama could have his night to himself. Obama repaid that gesture by conducting an interview while John McCain accepted his party’s nomination.

    The only thing that has changed about the way Obama is conducting this campaign from Democrat campaigns in the past is the face. Oh, and did I mention he has a funny name?

  • So, who asked you?

    In the last few days, I’ve noticed a bunch of celebrities weighing in on Sarah Palin. Don Surber has Linda Carter, Vintage Duh! (on doubleplusundead) has Pink and Jen at Demure Thoughts has Matt Damon. Gateway Pundit quotes that  Pamela Anderson says Palin should ‘suck it” – deep thoughts from the first woman assembled from random body parts to please rock stars.

    ABC News asked a slew of “celebrities” like Margaret Cho and Meg Ryan. Margaret-fricken-Cho, for Pete’s sake.Even Lindsey Lohan sobered up long enough to write a comment on her MySpace page.

    Who’s asking these morons their stupid opinion on Sarah Palin? More importantly, (besides conservative bloggers) who cares? Is there so little going on in the entertainment world that entertainment reporters are relegated to asking the political opinions of boneheads who make their respective livings by repeating phrases someone else writes for them? Of course, we all know what their answer is going to be…they can’t buck the Hollywood party line and keep “working”. I guess if the leftist media needs some anti-Palin chum, the best place to troll is among the lockstep pinheads of Hollywood.

    I believe it was John McCain who once said “Washington is Hollywood for ugly people and Hollywood is Washington for stupid people.”

  • Gov. Palin follows the rules

    The front page for the Washington Post this morning looks like this;

    Now do you see the article in the bottom right corner (with the headline that just fits above the fold);

    Looks pretty suspicious doesn’t it? Looks like that Palin woman tried to screw taxpayers…but the actual article tells a different story. Well, if you have the fortitude to read past the first paragraph. Here are the first two paragraphs that lay out the case;

    Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

    The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

    But further down, we see that it’s really just a Washington Post popcorn fart of a story;

    The state finance director, Kim Garnero, said Alaska law exempts the governor’s office from elaborate travel regulations. Said Leighow: “The governor is entitled to a per diem, and she claims it.”

    The popular governor collected the per diem allowance from April 22, four days after the birth of her fifth child, until June 3, when she flew to Juneau for two days. Palin moved her family to the capital during the legislative session last year, but prefers to stay in Wasilla and drive 45 miles to Anchorage to a state office building where she conducts most of her business, aides have said.

    Palin rarely sought reimbursement for meals while staying in Anchorage or Wasilla, the reports show.

    Now, the Washington Post gets upset over a few thousand dollars spent by a governor, but do they get upset over Charley Rangel’s tax payer-funded leased Cadillacs? Or Nancy Pelosi’s demand for a military aircraft to ferry her to her California district?

    But the headline bit gets the attention-deficit crowd all worked up (from the article’s comments section);

    kkampf527 wrote:
    Everyday more and more comes out about Gov. Palin. I hope americans are paying attention. She’s not change, she’s more of the same.

  • MTV Awards Obama commercial

    Yeah, I know, you probably didn’t know that the MTV Awards were last night either. But, boy we know it now. The first thing I saw about it was on Fox & Friends this morning where they showed a clip of Britney Spears’ stand ovation for being a coke-snorting skank and having makeup people who can cover it all up so well. So I was pretty sure that I didn’t miss much…just a bunch of self-important, dope-addled ne’er-do-wells patting each other on the back for taking instructions from other people well-enough to fool teenagers into buying whatever they are selling.

    Then, I dialed up Gateway Pundit;

    The British actor-comedian, Russell Brand, the host of the MTV Music Video Awards, started off the night calling those Americans racist who do not vote for Barack Obama. He followed that up by saying that President Bush was retarded.
    The MTV audience loved him.

    It didn’t bother them a bit that this foreigner just came to America to tell them how to vote and then called their current leader a retarded cowboy.

    Yeah, so I don’t who this cum bubble is so I checked on Wikipedia – an excellent source for useless crap. Of course Wikipedia verified what I already knew; the guy’s an unmitigated failure. Why else would he be hosting the MTV Awards? Apparently he’s famous for coming in third in a stand-up comic competition. Only in Europe.

    From Michelle Malkin a transcription of some of his comments;

    Now, as a representative of the global community and a visitor from abroad, I don’t want to come across a little bit biased, but could I please ask of you people of America, to PLEASE ELECT BARACK OBAMA. Please! On behalf of the world. (Camera pans to singers Chris Brown and Britney Spears applauding and cheering.) Some people, I think they’re called racists, say that America is not ready for a black president. But I know America to be a forward-thinking country, right. Because, otherwise, you know, would you have let that retarded cowboy fellow be president for eight years?

    We were very impressed. It was nice of you to let him have a go. Because in England, George Bush wouldn’t be trusted with a pair of scissors.

    Well, I think England is ready for a Pakistani King, see what you can do about speeding that along, Rus. After all, if you don’t have a Pakistani King, you’re all a bunch of racist, gap-toothed, drooling morons who have already banned scissors from its citizens to prevent another civil war. D’ya like that?

    Honestly, only those dope smoking cum bubbles at the MTV Awards could’ve tolerated another dope smoking cum bubble telling them how to vote “as a citizen of the world”. Dumbasses.

    Michelle Malkin also has some of the backlash from the MTV audience. You know you’ve screwed up when those fans of Pimp My Crib start complaining about the content of the programing. But this just furthers the theory that Obama is the American Idol candidate. Well, that and there’s an actual thread for discussing how much you love Obama at the American Idol forum.

  • Update on Code Pink’s RNC Insurgency

    My original post yesterday;

    An emailer sends this about the woman who tried to rush the stage;

    Woman who rushed RNC stage last night during Palin’s speech is Code Pink founder and Obama fundraiser Jodie Evans. Person who gave her the credentials is probably Fort Wayne Realtor Ann Eckrich

    Jodie Evans is a top OBAMA FUNDRAISER….with extreme radical ties

    Jodie Evans, co-founder of the radical group Code Pink, rushed the stage while Sarah Palin was speaking.

    Code Pink has a Flickr account which includes this photo of Jodie being interviewed earlier in the day wearing a name tag “Annie Eckrich, Indiana”

    Code Pink’s press release says they were given tickets by a GOP delegate;

    Co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, who were given their tickets to the speech by a Republican delegate who was frustrated with the Republican party and Sarah Palin, caught the attention of Palin with their banners and shouting about 15 minutes into her speech. Palin stopped talking for a moment to turn to look at them. (Read a Washington Post description of the incident).

    Ann Echrich is an alternate delegate and RNC contributor

    Founding Bloggers, who got a whiff of my post this morning, took it a step further and called Ms. Eckrich;

    We just got off the phone with Annie Eckrich from Indiana.
    She was at the convention each day.
    She DID NOT GIVE CODE PINK PERMISSION TO USE HER IDENTITY!
    CODE PINK STOLE HER IDENTITY!!!

    Founding Bloggers, one of whom is Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit, promises audio and video of that conversation.

    Also, by way of Free Republic, Newsbusters‘ Mark Finkelstein writes;

    There is another much more intriguing explanation out there. According to Shay at Booker Rising, which describes itself a newsite for black moderates and black conservatives [emphasis added]:

    I took the shuttle bus back to Minneapolis, and I overheard a convention organizer named Phil telling a convention delegate that the protesters on Wednesday night got through because of media credentials that were traced back to MSNBC (he told her that each credential has an individual bar code for each convention invitee). They suspect MSNBC this time as well.

    What a tangled web…theft, media conspiracies, subversion. Stay tuned.

    UPDATED: Michelle Malkin links William Amos‘ video post to Medea’s false explanation for how they got the passes.

    UPDATED AGAIN: Here’s the audio of Founding Bloggers’ telephone interview with Ms. Eckrich.