Dan Riehl's blog

Des Moines Register Editor Carolyn Washburn takes a shot at Republicans with an obviously false statement in her piece summarizing the recent Iowa debates which she moderated:

By and large, the Republicans say they can get us to smaller government and lower taxes with economic growth and government efficiency. They don't ask Americans to make terrible sacrifices. About half wanted to tackle global warming and about half chose not to talk about it. They want local control and choice in education.

Chose not to talk about it!?! Not only did one Republican ask to talk about it, as opposed to raising his hand, Washburn wouldn't let them talk about anything other than what she had pre-scripted in her mind. From the transcript: see rest of pertinent part below the fold. Everyone there that was permitted to talked about it until she changed the subject. She also defends inviting Keyes and not Kucinich using criteria that's been pretty much debunked.

The Washington Post might consider doing something I hesitate to recommend to anyone before they simply print campaign talking points in covering an admittedly negative situation. That something is, read the New York Times. The narrative for the piece, sourced through Clinton people, is pretty clear. Hillary don't know Iowa, it was a national campaign - but "Hillary" figured it out and saved the day ... hopefully for them, at least.

Still, her initial strategy did not put special emphasis on the caucuses, treating them as part of a national campaign.

The chief concern, one person with immediate knowledge of the campaign said, was that Clinton simply did not visit Iowa enough over the summer and early fall -- a common complaint in national campaigns

The alleged outraged readers plant themselves, but that doesn't stop the Courier-Journal in Kentucky from propping them up in their opposition to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in what will be one of the closest watched races in 2008 behind the Presidential campaign. The Politico is already following the race here. This is the second smear campaign started by the likes of Think Progress against McConnell to make its way into the media. Here's the first.

There would be no controversy if Think Progress hadn't lifted a McConnell quote out of context from what was actually a positive story for McConnell:

Despite, or perhaps because of the S-CHIP stalemate in Washington, liberal media outlets including the New York Times, Think Progress and now the Courier Journal in Louisville, Kentucky continue to somewhat sinisterly flame one aspect of the S-CHIP story at the urging of Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) staffer Matt Miller, even though the narrative they've woven isn't at all supported by the facts.

I've obtained a copy of one of allegedly many emails Miller has used to try and gin up buzz around a false story targeted at the Republican Leader. And as you'll see below, it seems the liberal media likes its gin.

From: Matthew Miller ******@dscc.org
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 4:11 PM
To: Matthew Miller
Subject: KY Station Asks: Did McConnell mislead public?

In case you missed it, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported this morning that Senator Mitch McConnell’s office played a key role in spreading false information about a 12-year old boy who receives health insurance from the SCHIP program. Now Kentucky television station WHAS is reporting that McConnell appears to have misled the public when he denied any involvement in the story on Friday. McConnell is now caught between his public statement denying any role in spreading the story, and his spokesman’s admission that he did.

If the increasingly conventional wisdom that the Netroots movement is now the driving force behind today's Democrat Party is true, than a look into their actual agenda for America is something voters considering supporting Democrat politicians in 2008 might want to take a very close look at. It's posted by Chris Bowers at Open Left and looked at in plain terms, is substantial and should give conservatives and Libertarians cause for concern.

Below are just some bullet points from the larger plan.

You think the "Fairness Doctrine" is bad, you haven't seen anything yet:

Reversing Corporate Media Consolidation. Using improved ownership regulation of American media to help destabilize the impact of the Republican Noise Machine, and create a more diverse, responsive national media, is another key progressive feedback loop.

I just viewed this video via Michelle Malkin of failed sportscaster Keith Olberman naming her Worst Person of the Week and pushing a quote by Geraldo Rivera in doing it:

“Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator I’ve ever met in my life,” he says. “She actually believes that neighbors should start snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting people.

“It’s good she’s in D.C. and I’m in New York,” Rivera sneers. “I’d spit on her if I saw her.”

Now it appears Michelle has had a small ad buy which served to call attention to the quote banned by Quigo. So, Rivera's ugliness is okay for broadcast on MSNBC in another sad attempt to further demean the target in this, but it's not okay to point a finger at Rivera with his own words?

Or call it the liberal wince of the day. From Laurie David, wife of someone and producer of the Academy Award-winning mockumentary An Inconvenient Spoof Truth.

2 What was it like to work with Al Gore?

By the time I was done working with him, I was begging him to adopt me. He's like a father figure to me, one of my heroes. He's so charming and lovely and smart and funny. He makes fun of himself; he's got a great sense of humor. He's dry and he laughs at other people's jokes.

And you wonder why liberals want a nanny state.

With a clearly activist liberal Congress in place, the news Don Imus has gotten the ax and that the FCC is now beginning to look into what most likely was the Imus in the Morning Show may be more than the usual distraction in what has become a typical race flair up, egged on by the usual suspects, Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson et al.

With Representative Kucinich already talking about reconstituting the Fairness Doctrine as far back as January, a far from Conservative radio talker may have provided said Congress with just the opening it seeks. The ultimate prize the liberals in Congress are after has nothing to do with race, as always, it's about politics more than anything else.

Two stories at Memeorandum couldn't be more well timed to show just how marginalized liberal media is becoming in America today.

The liberals at Think Progress are celebrating a debate to be hosted by CNN, as opposed to Fox. As one may still appear on Fox, they are keeping the pressure on Democrats.

Then along comes Zogby with some actually relevant information, unlike the foolish post above where liberals are thrilled at the prospect of speaking to a smaller audience.

Americans are identifying and rejecting liberal media bias as much as ever, meanwhile the liberals, CNN and MSNBC struggle to marginalize themselves even more. Ya gotta love it!

Amid controversy over former Vice President Al Gore's decision to buy carbon offsets from himself, NPR's All Things Considered jumped into the fray to supposedly get to the truth. Unfortunately, as you can tell from this short broadcast and a few facts, what they did amounted to a cover up for Gore.

On Sunday night, when the movie An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar, its star, Al Gore, took the stage with a message about global warming. He called for people the world over to change the way they live, so that they have less impact on the environment.

Not so fast, said a libertarian think tank called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. They called up the Nashville Electric Service and asked about the bills for the Gore's 10,000-square-foot home.

Don't bother looking for it via Google News. There hasn't been a single major story published on him since Charles Rust-Tierney appeared in Court. A local source sent me this, which Google either didn't capture, or hasn't spidered, yet. Previous coverage here and here.

Alexandria, Va. (WUSA) -- A public defender from Arlington now finds that he is the accused. Fifty-one year old Charles Rust-Tierney appeared in United States District Court in Alexandria Wednesday.

 h/t Jules for this:

The man suspected of kidnapping a 13-year-old boy and leaving him tied to a tree in the woods in a ransom scheme reportedly is an illegal alien who had already been deported once.

Police are searching for Vincente Ignacio Beltran-Moreno, 22, an illegal alien who has already been deported once, for the kidnapping of 13 year old Clay Moore at gun point. It's believed to be a ransom attempt but Moore escaped on his own.

Here is the AP's sanitized version of the suspect's background. picture here.

As you'll see below, the alleged big news today of a Brit withdrawal from Iraq is not really news. It actually appears to be less than was planned months ago. And pardon me for yet once again pointing out what an idiot Glenn Greenwald, now at Salon, is while making the point.

You can click through to read Greenwald's latest on Blair's withdrawing of troops, or read the MSNBC version distortion here. But I'll post all you need to know.

Greeted with news that Blair is removing 1,500 troops in some number of weeks, Greenwald and the MSM are treating it like big news.

First Greenwald quotes Blair in the LA Times on Jan. 24:

The LA Times ran an obviously photo-shopped image which lgf debunked.

Y-net has run with the story. Comparing the LA Times image to the one from Iran makes it clear this was bogus PR from Iran.

An Iranian state news agency used the Photoshop program to manipulate photos in order to try and back up claims that the US was behind a spate of bombings in southeast Iran , a popular American blog said.

Charles updates the story with multiple links. Click around and you'll see the truth. Why would they have to manufacture evidence if they had any, as they claim?

Amazing. The AP puts everything over the wire ... well, almost everythng.

Realizing we don't yet know all the details, apparently the AP has decided to not put the story of a Muslim cab driver running down two students after a religious dispute over the wire. Why might that be? They can't all be writing about Anna Nicole Smith?

Lost in today's reporting around Cesar A. Borja is the significant role Hillary Clinton seems to have played in helping a bit of fiction play out on the National stage.

For days, a New York City police officer, Cesar A. Borja, who died of lung disease last month, was held up as a symbol of the medical crisis affecting the thousands of emergency personnel and construction workers who labored on the smoking remains of the fallen World Trade Center after the 9/11 attack.

The Times on Line took Hillary to task for providing her very own skutnik at Bush's recent State of the Union Address:

Amid unfounded and frivolous charges that the Bush administration and the American Enterprise Institute are involved in pay for play science on Global Warming, it seems Theresa Heinz Kerry previously directed an unrestricted cash gift of up to a quarter million dollars to a nuclear scientist become climatologist, now leading the charge of doom-sayers on Global Warming. Additionally, one scientist recently quoted by the New York Times now appears to be disagreeing with his own extensive research and an exclusive preview of a soon to be published research paper from another Harvard scientist raises serious questions about a key item Global Warming proponents have recently enlisted in their cause.

Think Progress is claiming that the Washington Times published a false report regarding a request from Speaker Pelosi “demanding permanent access to a large military jet for herself, her staff, other Members and supporters.” While TP attempts to spin things as though they can support that claim, they cannot.

On February 1, the Washington Times published a story titled “Speaker pursues military flights,” which claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had been “pressing the Bush administration for routine access to military aircraft for domestic flights, such as trips back to her San Francisco district.” Former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) also used military aircraft to travel to his district. However, the Times reported, Pelosi is “demanding permanent access to a large military jet for herself, her staff, other Members and supporters.”

If it's possible for the New York Times to jump the proverbial shark, they went one better. Given this, it would appear they jumped right out of an ever rising sea due to global warming and landed in a rest home by a beach in Iraq:

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.

More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

You see, those commercials weren't slick messages often containing bottles launched from Madison Avenue and designed to sell products like beer at millions of dollars a pop. They were all metaphors for a nation deflated, if not defeated, and dangerously obsessed with Bush's misguided war.

Images available here.

h/t Instapundit - Ann Althouse calls attention to an image of Polar Bears making the rounds, again - it was allegedly taken by Dan Crosbie in 2004 and is currently number one on Yahoo's photo list. The image I have up at right also involves Dan Crosbie from the same period in 2004 during a scientific trip during which they carried rifles to run off polar bears while planting equipment in the ice - ice that was much thicker than they expected it to be. (pertinent excerpted text at bottom)

There's a growing blog debate going on as regards peace activists spitting on returning veterans during the Vietnam era. It begins here at Slate in an article claiming the charges are false.

The myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran refuses to die.

At Volokh, Jim Lindgren points out some weaknesses in search mechanisms that could lead to the stories not showing up in contemporaneous reports, leading to the assumption that it didn't happen.

Always up for a Google challenge, I decided to take a look and can confirm that spitting and more did in fact take place. Stored on a government server found via advanced Google, there's this first person account - also available in pdf.

One would think there'd be outrage all around on the Left given reports of a sitting female Democrat Representative allegedly being called a whore by the chairman of a caucus. But look around, there's hardly a peep from the Left.

The mainstream media hasn't exactly gone out of its way to carry the story either. A search for Sanchez's name at Google News produces an insulting 150 or so links.

Note to Representative Sanchez, next time someone calls you a whore, make sure it's a Republican. Otherwise it seems such things simply aren't news.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez has quit the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, accusing the chairman, Rep. Joe Baca, of telling people she's  a "whore."

I am posting this as the mainstream media hasn't picked it up.

While not being able to keep up with all of his many accomplishments over the years, I do speak from personal experience when I say Rush Limbaugh's 1992 Best Seller The Way Things Ought To Be may have done more to carry discussion of conservative ideas and the concept of political freedom into elements of American popular culture where it was never thought much about before.

So it's good to see Mr. Limbaugh finally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize:

Many on the Right have always been suspect of the MSM media when it came to reporting on the Iraq War. While the first official shot may have been CNN showing video of enemy snipers at work, it seems that open hostilities have been declared now that President Bush has begun the infamous surge.

Within the past two days, the New York Times violated a standard ethical constraint when it broadcast video of an American Marine being shot, also reporting his death without officially contacting his family. They are reported to have suffered greatly in the process of viewing it. If there's any justice, they will sue the Times for the little bit that it's still worth.

The Left side of the blogosphere, or Nutroots, appears to be set to, not only encourage, but financially reward, the worst types of political activism, some of which we observed during the last election cycle.

I've just agreed to accept the position of Director of Activism at blogpac.org.

The above was recently posted by Mike Stark at DailyKos. You might recall that Stark's particularly distasteful brand of activism includes physically confronting campaign aides to ask candidates such pressing questions as: Did you spit on your wife, or use the word nigger lately? He's also known for his great judgment, as when he deliberately held up an extremely vulgar sign during a national broadcast on the Fox network. One can only imagine what types of activism Stark will use designated funds to support.

While the MSM may try to spin today's DC war protest as a major event, apparently relatively few people showed up to hear actor Tim Robbins call for the impeachment of President Bush. He also suggested Bush would end his presidency in a bunker, as did Adolf Hitler. Yes, he said that, I listened via C-Span.

There's legitimate reason to claim anti-war support isn't what some might like to make it out to be.

Organizers expected hundreds of thousands of protesters. Early reports are indicating tens of thousands may have showed up. But the real problem for the anti-war movement is this from Talk Left almost four years ago to the day.

Speaking in Davos, Switzerland, foot in mouth Senator John Kerry, perhaps now liberated to be a total clown, suggested that the problem with America is Americans, recommended sending former President Clinton to settle matters in Iraq, while also claiming America is an international pariah because of Bush - and somewhere along the line he found time to pose with former Iranian President Ayatollah Mohammad Khatami. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

Speaking at Harvard University, the Ayatollah Mohammad Khatami denied that Hizballah is a terrorist organization, and called it “a symbol of Arab resistance.” that story at lgf

In a fit of rapture over newly elected Democrat Jim Webb, going so far as to speculate that he might be presidential ticket material for team D, Newsweek's Johnathan Alter left the lede at the bottom of this piece. Too bad those who might appreciate it most will likely never get to the bottom of Alter's little Webb romance.

A Powerful Response
Jim Webb tore up his party's playbook—and helped point the Democrats in a new direction.

Alter also failed to point out that a poll Webb used to claim the military doesn't support the war actually favors increasing troop numbers, as proposed by Bush - that item at bottom.