Journolist--getting what they give

JournoList reaping what they sow?

Glenn Reynold's has an interesting viewpoint of the Journolist scandal.

"Erving Goffman think that every functioning society needs a "backstage"
where people can let their hair down and speak without observing social
proprieties. But journalists have been destroying that backstage for everyone
else for decades. Why should they be permitted to keep one, when no one else
is?"

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/aug/01/controversy-proves-collusion-among-liberal/

Tim Tebow

It seems there are a lot of haters out there.

These are the sins of Tim Tebow: He is nice to strangers. He's
never been arrested. His body is not a canvas of unsightly tattoos. He sometimes uses the word "freak" as a euphemism for the F-bomb because he doesn't curse. He is one of the greatest football players in college football history.

How anyone can stand him is anybody's guess.

The venom spews daily, in the anonymity of blog posts, in cyberspace hate groups, in the voices of callers from Alabama to Alaska. Tim Tebow, party piñata. Everybody take a whack.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/college/gators/os-george-diaz-tim-tebow-080110-20100731,0,1519657.column

The Navy Blue and Gold becoming more black and white

In practice, the Navy will be creating a list of privileged "diverse"
officers who will enjoy special benefits and career mentoring not available to
people of the wrong race, as well as a virtual guarantee of fast-track access to
the highest reaches of command. Fifty-six years after the Supreme Court struck
down the concept of "separate but equal" treatment of races, the U.S. Navy is
erecting a wall of segregation between what will amount to two parallel
promotion systems: one for the "diverse" and another for the monotone. If this
isn't illegal, it should be

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/30/high-seas-segregation/

Let's Party! Ole!

Does the Left actually believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming?

The White House has confirmed that Michelle Obama and her daughter Sasha will fly to Spain's Costa del Sol for a 5 day vacation (sans the President) from August 4th to the 8th. This raises the question when the President and others on the left claiming CO2 is an imminent threat to the planet and they want to tax carbon so people will cut back on the use of it, what kind of an example are they setting by flying 5,000 miles on vacation?

A number of other questions come to mind as well. In recession should the president's family be throwing either their money or the tax payer's money (actually both) around so freely? And while the President has admonished people for going to Las Vegas, it isn't nearly as long a flight and any money they spend will go into America's economy, clearly a trip to Spain won't.

Michelle Obama has reserved about 30 rooms for herself and her daughter,
their friends and bodyguards at a five-star hotel in Benahavis near Marbella,
hotel sources said

.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/336549,michelle-obama-vacation-spain.html


Howard Dean Charges that Fox News is racist

Once again the Democrats reach into their tool box to find there only tool they have is charging the other guy with racism.

“I don’t think Newt Gingrich is a racist, and I don’t think you’re a
racist,” Dean told Fox News host Chris Wallace, “but Fox News did something that
was absolutely racist. They took a — they had an obligation to find out what was really in the clip. They had been pushing a theme of black racism with this phony Black Panther crap and this business and this Sotomayor and all this other stuff.”

When Wallace interrupted Dean to point out that Fox News did not
air the excerpted Sherrod footage until after the Obama administration had fired her based on it, Dean shot back: “It was about to go on Glenn Beck, which is what the administration was afraid of.”

So even when it was shown that Fox didn't cover the story until AFTER the White House had fired Sherrod, they were still racists because the White House was afraid of what they would do?

It sounds as if the Democrats have watched Tom Cruise's movie, Minority Report, one too many times (In Minority Report, they would arrest people before they committed a crime).

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politicolive/0710/Dean_Fox_News_racist.html?showall#

When you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything

When you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything is an old statement to indict people who simply don't take a stand. But what happens when you are so committed to something that you will resort to anything?

The Daily Caller has released the latest batch of JournoList messages, and
it's a shocker: the journalists and other assorted left-wing
intellectuals (!) debating what apparently was the hottest topic of the hour, Sarah Palin's son, Trig. I had thought that the belief that
Trig was really Bristol's baby was an insane idea held only by Andrew Sullivan. It is an insane idea all right, but it turns out that it was believed, or at least taken seriously, by a number of liberal journalists--while some others, to their credit, tried to restore a sense of decency to the liberal
press. Beyond that, the tactics of how to spin Palin's fifth child in a way that
could damage the Republican ticket was seemingly an obsessive concern of these
journalists. It is a sad spectacle.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/07/026854.php

John Kerry and other misconceptions

Kerry for Tax Dodger

Well the man the Democrats wanted to be President in 2004 demonstrates that like a lot of Democrats (ie. the ones who are for taxes, but not for paying the taxes), he doesn't have a clue.

Oh, the hurtfulness. Boston Herald piles on, with New England boat builders
wondering why, in times of hardship, Sen. Thurston Howell … I mean John Kerry,
D-Mass., had to outsource his luxury, going halfway around the world to buy the
$7 million yacht he was berthing across state lines in tax-free Rhode Island:

http://www.julescrittenden.com/2010/07/25/lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-clueless/



I guess Kerry only believes in stimulus spending with other people's money.




Journolist proves the Main Steam Media was in the bag for Obama




The release of postings from Journolist shows how members of the MSM plotted to disparage Sarah Palin and downplay the Rev. Wright story.

Chris Hayes, a top editor for the liberal magazine The Nation, urged his
colleagues in April 2008 to avoid the subject of Wright because talking about it
at all would hurt Obama. Hayes directed his message specifically to the
straight-news reporters reading his post, saying: “Our country disappears
people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi
civilians — men, women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive me
if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack
Obama’s pastor.”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_fix_was_in_gImIPWyKJdEWhZasJmFIUO#ixzz0un9vEpWa


Can the Democrats retain the House?

Noting that he has long been forecasting that the Republicans are close to
bouncing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Cook evaluated the case made by Democratic strategists who insist that their party has a good shot at retaining the House. And it's not a bad argument.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/07/26/campaign-2010-why-democrats-think-they-can-hold-the-house/

I don't think they can or will. In fact, I think this election will be a tsunami against the Democrats. I'm not looking at the race by race differences, but the election in general. As was said in the article over 50% of the Republicans are jazzed while only 28% of the Democrats are. Add to this how the independents are favoring the Republican candidates by a 46% to 34% margin and you have the makings of a major shift by the country. Look for the Republicans to gain over 60 seats (this is my SWAG).


NHS to Ration Basic services

Some of the most common operations — including hip replacements and cataract surgery — will be rationed as part of attempts to save billions of pounds, despite government promises that front-line services would be protected.

Patients’ groups have described the measures as “astonishingly brutal”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7908742/Axe-falls-on-NHS-services.html

Dr. Donald M. Berwick, the new head of Medicare in the United States admires the NHS and believes in rationing. Perhaps this explains why Obama decided to make him a recess appointment before he answered a single question in the Senate. And it should make anyone who is paying attention nervous about Harry Reid's promise that there will be a public option.

Today's craziness in the news

The left may be abandoning the left

It seems the netroots aren't happy with Obama and the Democrat Party.

But as Netroots Nation, a conference of 2,100 liberal activists, opened here
Thursday, it was clear that anger among some prominent progressives is still raw -- and it could imperil some Democrats this fall.

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos blog and an organizer of the
first such annual conference five years ago, said he and his followers are
disinclined to help Democratic candidates simply to preserve the party's big
majorities.

"There's a lot of Democrats I'll be happy to see
go," Moulitsas said in an interview. "I'll celebrate when Blanche
Lincoln is out of the Senate. There is a price to be paid for inaction and
incompetence. We're not getting much done with 59 [Democratic senators], so if we're down to 54, who cares?"

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/07/what-happens-in-vegas-netroots-meltdown.html

The Myth of White Privilege

An op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal today by Jim Webb addresses this issue.

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own
government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of
slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of
this logic to all "people of color"—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575379630952309408.html

This is probably very timely with the NAACP charging the TEA Party with racism, etc.

No Great Right Wing Conspiracy, but It Appears the Left Had One.

A good review of what the Journolist scandal is all about.

In other words, JournoList is a symptom, not the disease. And the disease is
not a secret conspiracy but something more like the "open conspiracy" H. G. Wells fantasized about, where the smartest, best people at every institution
make their progressive vision for the world their top priority.

As James DeLong, a fellow at the Digital Society, correctly noted on the Enterprise Blog, "The real problem with JournoList is that much of it consisted of exchanges
among people who worked for institutions about how to best hijack their
employers for the cause of Progressivism."

For a liberal activist, that's forgivable, I guess. But academics? Reporters? Editors? Even liberal opinion writers aren't supposed to "coordinate" their messages with the mother ship.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/07/23/journolist__the_liberal_mother_ship.html


Population experts and the Mainstream Media

"Population Expert" Paul Ehrlich? How absolutely and totally wrong do your predictions have to be before the Mainstream Media stops calling you an “expert” in your field? The New York Times laid down a marker in its deeply sympathetic Tuesday obituary for alarmist climatologist Stephen Schneider, in which writer Douglas Martin identified Paul Ehrlich as a “biologist and population expert.”

I guess if you still call Ehrlich a "population expert" you need to still call Bernie Madoff a financial genius.

Journolist and other news of the Day

Journalist and Palin

Journalist was a political forum for left wing journalist. It is now shut down, but we are finding out more and more about it and as we do it becomes more apparent that rather than simply a forum where journalist could share ideas, leads, etc. it acted as a if it were part of the Obama campaign staff.

In the hours after Sen. John McCain announced his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the last presidential race, members of an online forum called Journolist struggled to make sense of the pick. Many of them were liberal reporters, and in some cases their comments reflected a journalist’s instinct to figure out the meaning of a story.

But in many other exchanges, the Journolisters clearly had another, more partisan goal in mind: to formulate the most effective talking points in order to defeat Palin and McCain and help elect Barack Obama president. The tone was more campaign headquarters than newsroom.

http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/22/when-mccain-picked-palin-liberal-journalists-coordinated-the-best-line-of-attack/#ixzz0uPdUUmID

Journalist and Palin part 2

Here are a few more specifics we are finding out.

Suzanne Nossel, chief of operations for Human Rights Watch, added a novel
take: “I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a
woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views.”

Mother Jones’s Stein loved the idea. “That’s excellent! If enough people
– people on this list? – write that the pick is sexist, you’ll have the networks
debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket,” he wrote. . . .

Time’s Joe Klein then linked to his own piece, parts of which he acknowledged came from strategy sessions on Journolist. “Here’s my attempt to incorporate the accumulated wisdom of this august list-serve community,” he wrote. And indeed Klein’s article contained arguments developed by his fellow Journolisters.

http://volokh.com/2010/07/22/latest-journolist-revelations-attacks-on-palin/

More Bad News if your are a Incumbent and it's even worse if you are an incumbent and in control

Underscoring Congress' image problem, half of Americans now say they
have "very little" or no confidence in Congress, up from 38% in 2009 --
and the highest for any institution since Gallup first asked this
question in 1973. Previous near-50% readings include 48% found for the
presidency in 2008, and 49% for the criminal justice system in 1994.

http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2010/07/congressional-approval-at-historic-low.html

So this Democrat congress has less confidence in it than the Bush administration did as it left office.

Fortunately for Obama there are no Mulligans in elections

The Democrat strategy of trying to "blame Bush" won't work for a number of reasons, but the biggests reason is that the people think Obama should have done a better job. Having spent in less than two years $3 trillion more than he had, Americans are rethinking the whole "hope and change" thing.

Democrats will be gulping this morning at the Quinnipiac Poll’s latest
results. For the first time in the survey’s history, Americans believe by a 48%
to 40% margin that President Obama doesn’t deserve re-election. Almost as stinging, a plurality believe the country would have been better off if John McCain had beaten Mr. Obama in 2008.

http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/22/plurality-of-voters-believe-the-country-would-have-been-better-off-if-john-mccain-had-beaten-mr-obama-in-2008/#ixzz0uPhCMjEm

Racism?

With all the noise about Shirley Sherrod, you might not have seen this. It appears race and gender were factors used by the government in deciding which dealerships to shut down when they took over GM and Chrysler.

Decisions on which car dealerships to close as part of the auto industry
bailout -- closures the Obama administration forced on General Motors and
Chrysler -- were based in part on race and gender, according to a report by
Troubled Asset Relief Program Special Inspector General Neal M. Barofsky.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/race_played_role_in_obama_car.html

It appears post racial as practiced by the Obama Administration means discriminating against a different racial and gender groups.