I have a fairly well known section on liveleak called "Dronetek: From The Source", which features videos straight from soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. You cant find this stuff anywhere else. I'd like to start posting maybe 1 or 2 a week here if its ok.
The New York Times ran a front-page story Tuesday critical of Guantanamo. The article described the case of an Afghan man who died in Guantanamo after five years' detention, allegedly on false charges of being a Taliban commander.
It turns out the writer and co-author of the piece, Andy Worthington, was a well known critic of Guantanamo and of US policy. Now the paper's editors say they "were not aware" of the author's past writings on the subject.
As the blogosphere picks up with talk of David Shuster's remark about "pimped out" Chelsea Clinton, something should be made clear. The media spent the 1990s using Chelsea and Gore kids to improve the public image of the Clintons and the Gores. When someone (like Al Gore III) misbehaved by speeding at 90 MPH, the media covered up. But they used young Al to burnish old Al for all those high school football games he attended as a devoted dad. See this NRO piece from 2000.
It's still happening now, with Chelsea used routinely to warm up Hillary's ice-queen image. Last August, Brent Bozell wrote up a particularly embarrassing piece from Jodi Kantor in The New York Times, treating Chelsea Clinton as, well, a nearly silent American Idol. "We’re told that 'people seem delighted just to watch her lips move and hear sound emerge.' As Kantor described her Jewish boyfriend, she identifies Chelsea as 'a Christmas-cookie-baking, churchgoing Methodist.'”
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) enters the voting booth to vote in the New York primary election at the Douglas Grafflin Elementary School in Chappaqua, New York February 5, 2008.
(Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Although MSNBC representatives make disgracefully offensive comments about President George W. Bush on a daily basis, it appears there is something the network won't tolerate: over-the-top remarks about Chelsea Clinton.
Such appears to be the case as MSNBC correspondent David Shuster has apparently been suspended for comments he made about the former first daughter on Thursday's "Tucker."
*****Update at end of post: Hillary's front-group, Media Matters, is absolutely thrilled by this announcement.
As reported by TVNewser (h/t NBer ricklail):
Friday’s edition of Today on NBC had several conservative-denigrating moments over the ideological direction of presumptive GOP nominee John McCain. Matt Lauer interviewed columnist Ann Coulter. He threw a spitball about conservatives being babies: "Critics of conservative voices right now are saying for the first time in a very long time, the conservatives have lost. They haven't been able to choose their nominee and it's the political version now of a 3-year-old saying, ‘if you can't play the game the way I want to play, I'm taking my football and I'm going home.’ How do you respond to that?"
Tim Russert acknowledged in his pundit’s corner that conservatives must be assuaged, but that if McCain gives an inch to his right, "the Straight Talk Express will be derailed." For liberal media types, since 2000, Straight Talk was a way to equate talking liberal with talking "straight," that liberalism has all the straight answers. Here’s a fuller bite of Russert:
While everyone is arguing over who the worst liberal is, Hillary, Obama, or McCain, Congressman Dr. Ron Paul is still doing what he does best: protecting our civil liberties and freedoms!
In an appearance on the Fox Business Network February 8, Business & Media Institute Vice President Dan Gainor criticized the media's refusal to fully report the costs associated with campaign promises being made by presidential candidates.
"You would actually think the media had talked about how much it's going to cost," Gainor said of the hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending promised by the candidates. "And in fact it's quite the opposite."
Aside from some coverage of Sen. Hillary Clinton's massive universal health care coverage proposal, much of her $217 billion in promises has gone unreported. The same goes for Sen. Barack Obama, who leads all candidates with $287 billion in new proposals, according to estimates from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.
Reporting what global warming skeptics have been saying for years, several media outlets on Friday acknowledged that biofuel production could do more harm than good when it comes to fighting "global warming."
Two new scientific studies suggest clearing land to produce biofuel ingredients will contribute more to warming than sticking with fossil fuels because of the removal of carbon-consuming trees for farmland.
That's not a shock to anyone who's been paying attention. Biofuel has been criticized as an inefficient pollutant that negatively affects even grocery prices. The shocker is that some in the media are actually paying attention to it!
The findings "could force policymakers in the United States and Europe to reevaluate incentives they have adopted to spur production of ethanol-based fuels," The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin reported February 8.
Joy Behar’s fact-free analysis continued on the February 8 edition of "The View" as she claimed the Bush administration raised taxes on the American people. Perhaps she was too overwhelmed with rage when Elisabeth Hasselbeck dared to take a shot at Hillary Clinton’s fiscal policy.
Hasselbeck joked about taxes on earned income, "just wait until Hillary is in office, you’re going to give it all back." Behar fought back: "That is so not true. Your president has raised taxes! Please! Ridiculous!"
The spat began when the View co-hosts were discussing a recent survey where the majority of women said they would prefer $1 million over a slimmer waistline. Co-host Whoopi Goldberg reminded the audience that in reality that a million dollars would be a lot less because much of that money is taxed.
GOLDBERG: Okay, let me ask you something because you think it’s a million dollars. 50 percent of that goes to the government-
SHEPHERD: 500.
Or has this election caused you switched off altogether?
I myself used to follow up to 4-5 different shows a day, but lately I've been listening to talk radio a lot less because of the election. Two hosts in particular I swore off for good because of this as well.
-PJ
Investor's Business Daily is reporting something we haven't seen much of in the media since the 1970s: concerns about global cooling. You read that correctly: cooling.
Kenneth Tapping, a researcher at Canada's National Research Council, wants to look for evidence of increased sunspot activity, according to IBD. "The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century."
A "solar hibernation" in the 17th Century "corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715," IBD reported. "Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe."
Conservative columnist and outspoken John McCain critic Ann Coulter will deliver a speech today at 4 p.m., only, it won't be under official CPAC auspices. The speech will be webcast over at Townhall.com's Web log.
Update/Clarification: Coulter's remarks are part of a reception held at CPAC to be hosted by the Young America's Foundation (YAF). Coulter is not speaking as an officially-sanctioned CPAC guest but rather as the guest of honor at a YAF reception.
Something rather fishy occurred within the past few hours at CNN.com.
Some time Friday, the cable network's website posted a piece entiitled "Treasury chief: Tax rebate checks to go out in May" which included the following (emphasis added, h/t NB reader Chandy):
The package, which passed the Senate 81-16, will send rebate checks to 130 million Americans in amounts of $300 to $600 for people who have an income between $3,000 and $75,000, plus $300 per child. Couples earning up to $150,000 would get $1,200.
The checks are an advance on next year's refunds, and most, if not all of the money, will be deducted from taxpayers' refunds in 12 months' time.
If you click on the link to the article, the above-bolded sentence is nowhere to be found. Yet, it certainly did exist, as CNN.com indicated the following blog linking to this piece asking:
NewsBusters readers should recall that in September, as many in Congress condemned the "General Betray Us" advertisement placed in the New York Times by George Soros's MoveOn.org, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said on the Senate floor:
Now, all of America understands MoveOn.org and other groups like it are called the nutroots of our society. These people are nuts and they don't care who they hurt, they don't care who they smear they don't care who they libel.
On Wednesday, during a conference call with bloggers, Hatch once again lashed out at these far-left leaning entities that are unduly influencing Democrats in order to block key legislation concerning FISA (27-minute audio available here):
Conservative bloggers embody the political and patriotic spirit of Ronald Reagan argued Ace, winner of the 2nd Annual CPAC Blogger of the Year Award (read his blog Ace of Spades HQ here), as he accepted the honor earlier this afternoon at the conservative gathering.
Heritage Foundation blogger Robert Bluey introduced Ace, who lamented that while it may take another generation for another Reagan to rise to the presidency, everyday Americans can and should work to hold the political classes to account no matter the political climate.
Ace offered the recent debate over immigration/amnesty as one issue where bloggers were crucial in derailing a legislative compromise worked out behind closed doors on Capitol Hill and being foisted on the American public without the details being fully disclosed to the American people.
"Good Morning America" weatherman and resident environmental alarmist Sam Champion wondered on Friday if global warming could cause "the ultimate climate disaster" and force humanity to abandon Earth and live in space. (Throughout the day's themed program, various GMA hosts filed reports on space and astronauts.)
So, as a transition to a piece on liberal environmental issues, Champion segued, "And now to our series 'Global Warming: Global Warning.' Could global warming one day force us into space to live?" (The ABC weatherman appeared in a pool as part of a previous space segment on weightlessness.) Champion used the segment to preview a new documentary called "Six Degrees" that will air on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday. He failed to inform viewers that the author upon which the special is based on, Mark Lynas, is a hard-left environmentalist who once threw a pie in the face of Bjorn Lomborg at a reading of Lomborg's book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist."
Over the past few months, there has been great debate concerning which candidates media have been pushing in order to assist them attain the presidential nominations of their respective parties.
On Friday, former "Crossfire" co-host Bill Press, who currently has a talk show on Sirius radio, wrote a column at World Net Daily on this very subject.
For a variety of reasons, his opinion might raise a few eyebrows (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer motherbelt):
I had the honor of attending the Presidential Banquet last evening at the 2008 Conservative Political Action Conference. Speakers included Bob Novak and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, as well as former ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson (who good naturedly needled Novak in a speech introducing and praising his career in journalism).
Blackburn spoke eloquently about having the "best district" in America and how faith, family, and a can-do volunteer spirit characterize her constituency. "Not once," Blackburn emphasized, did anyone she spoke to on Wednesday in the aftermath of devastating tornados, "ask where's FEMA?"
Blackburn, NewsBusters fans may recall was the target last September of an inaccurate and unfair ambush at the hands of MSNBC's David Shuster. For an archive of NewsBusters posts on that, check here.
See also Mark Finkelstein's Sept. 26 post complete with MSNBC's David Shuster apology for ambushing Blackburn:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well you know a lot of Republican talk show people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, I think authors, successful authors, I must say, like Ann Coulter, they wouldn't be so unhappy to have Hillary Clinton to beat up for four or eight years, especially four years. And Mr. DeLay would probably love to have Hillary to beat up for two years and then win back the house in '10. I mean I could see the strategy -- sometimes in bad weather you let the other team have the ball. You elect to kick rather than receive. Let them have the ball in the Ice Bowl. Let them try to move it past the second or third yard while you come down hard on them. The people like Bill Kristol out there, the neo-conservatives. Imagine Hillary Clinton as president for a couple of months with about a one-point advantage coming into office? They will crash around her, hitting her with everything they've got.
Chris wasn't done with his diatribe . . .
