John Stephenson's blog

Check out this video of Glenn Beck discussing with Bobby Jindal how the media has ignored the numerous flip-flops of Barack Obama.

How many flip-flops can he get a free pass on? He flipped on FISA, the second amendment, gay marriage, Iran, Iraq, welfare reform, NAFTA, and the list goes on.

If you haven't heard about the Massachusetts Democrat representative James Fagan going on a rant against child rape victims yet, its most likely because there was limited media coverage.

Here is what he said:

“Let me tell you why it’s so wrong, It’s so wrong because in these situations . . . that 6-year-old is going to sit in front of me, or somebody far worse than me and I’m going to rip them apart. I’m going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined. That when they’re 8 years old they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep. When they’re 19 years old they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody. And that’s not because I’m a nice guy. That’s because when you’re in court, and you’re defending somebody’s liberty, and you’re facing a mandatory sentence of those draconian proportions, you have to do every single thing you can do on behalf of your client. That is your obligation as a trial lawyer.”

Watch this video where Chris Matthews displays his utter lack of class with Keith Olbermann. While almost every other journalist and blogger on both sides of the political spectrum are giving condolences and highlighting Russert’s deserved credit of being one of the most fair and unbiased journalists of today’s media, Chris Matthews used the opportunity to go off on an anti-war rant. He added insult by comparing him to the “American people” in the sense of being fooled by the Bush administration into supporting the war. Besides displaying how opposite he is than Russert on the subject of bias, he had to go on and add his own elitist touch by presenting himself as a superior journalist.

Ed Morrissey:

This is pretty serious stuff that the American public surely would like more details on. Can we expect the MSM to follow up on this with some questions? Probably not, but they need to.

Marc Ambinder notes how the Democratic Justice Department will be interested in making a case against senior Bush adminstration officials in the future.

Thomas Lifson reminds us of Obama’s take on this:

Barack Obama’s plan for imposing unity on the nation after he takes office apparently entails a close look at war crimes trials for Bush administration officials. He has even said so in an interview with Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News.

This kind of change — putting your predecessors on trial for their conduct of policy — may not be what most Americans really want or expect from someone with Obama’s gauzy rhetoric of unity. But unity has a dark side in the hands of people who regard their opponents as criminals. America has two centuries-plus of history lacking the totalitarian practice of jailing the predecessors when a new president takes office.

Add another one to the ever-growing list of radical connections and friendships of Obama.

Ed Morrisey:

Khalidi, a Yasser Arafat toady, got $75,000 through Obama and Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers from the Woods Foundation, and later Khalidi returned the favor by hosting a fundraiser for Obama. Obama “lavished praise” on Khalidi in 2003 when the former PLO functionary took a job at Columbia University, according to an LA Times article last year. It’s hardly ancient history, and Khalidi is hardly an acquaintance.

It is absolutely sickening how the media worship Barack Obama!  Check out how blatant this SF Chronicle article is:

Here’s where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Cassy Fiano writes:

His wife going off on a rant about how evil "whitey" is, and conspiracies that he is a covert Muslim trying to infiltrate our democracy are nothing more than rumors. However, there are plenty of things the media don’t put enough focus on that are true about the Obamas. Instead they would rather focus on things like his playful fist-bump. They have to keep their priorities on the important issues that matter to people.

Of course I wouldn't expect the media to report on rumors that have no substance, but there is a list of facts on the Obamas that have gotten little,  if any,  coverage.  I put together quite a list.  I'm sure it is incomplete. 

Please feel free to add to the list in the comments.

I just wanted to provide a little follow-up to Brad Wilmouth's excellent coverage of Keith Olbermann's outrageous performance of telling the President to "shut the hell up". If you didn't hear about this you can find the transcript of his rant here. (See also video embedded below page break)

I wanted to provide this follow-up because I thought the readers at NewsBusters would enjoy this video of Fox and Friends nailing MSNBC and Olbermann for their bias.

Amazingly, Barack Obama claims to have visited 57 states!  I'm going to be generous and chalk this gaffe up to exhaustion, because it is difficult for me to fathom that someone who wants to be the President of the United States could actually be this stupid.  Watch the video.

I will give Obama the benefit of the doubt on this, and you can bet the media will give it a complete pass.  Marc Ambinder reminds us that the media wouldn't do the same if this had been McCain.

But if John McCain did this — if he mistakenly said he’d visited 57 states — the media would be all up in his grill, accusing him of a senior moment. Just saying….

Of course the leftwing media would have a field day with this if it had been McCain, however since it is Obama expect to hear crickets.

There is a huge blogswarm going on about this photo, from Chicago Magazine, of Obama's unrepentant terrorist associate, Bill Ayers stomping on the American flag. The photo was taken in 2001, the same time Barack Obama served on the Woods Fund Board with Ayers. This was also the same time that Ayers donated to Obama's campaign.

Marathon Pundit has similar photo, and many political bloggers are saying it long past due for Obama to disown his association with this controversial radical.

The question that remains is, will the media pick this up or will they write it off as old news? Its worthy of recycling this to further probe into Obama's judgement, the one thing he says he should be measured by.

Photo credit: Jeff Sciortino for Chicago Magazine.

Chris Matthews remains clueless that support and opposition to Obama for the majority of Americans has nothing to do with the color of his skin. Opposition to Obama has much more to do with his policies and the controversial company he keeps. Listen to the advice he has for Obama:

See Video Here.

MATTHEWS: You got to talk like a firebrand because if you‘re carrying their fight for them, they‘re going to like you. You know, a lot of white people root for black athletes because they‘re winning for the home team. People are quite willing to pick up black heroes, if they‘ll win for their side.

We called out the lack of media coverage on Obama’s friendship with William Ayers of the radical terrorist group from the 1960’s called the Weather Underground over a month ago. Until last night’s debate the media coverage was almost zero, with the exception of Fox News’ Sean Hannity. However, Obama was finally cornered with the question at last night’s debate by George Stephanopoulos. His answer was very lacking, and quite revealing on how radical his thinking is. In his attempt to spin, he actually compared his friendship with a terrorist to his friendship with Republican Tom Coburn.

Update:  The media finally wakes up and starts covering this.  I wonder how much Newsbusters had to do with that.

Click here to see video honoring Michael Monsoor and a roundup of blog reactions to the posthumous Medal of Honor ceremony. Many in the blogosphere paid their respects to a true hero, but the media were unsurprisingly absent.

Via Blackfive:

Google News shows that no one, other than local news in San Diego, is covering the awarding of the Medal of Honor to US Navy SEAL Michael Monsoor.

This is quite evident of the MSM's bias. I don't know how you can argue in favor of them today. This story is one that should be told across the nation.

I hope the media gives this the legs it deserves.  It may be early in Hillary's career, but it gives a clear picture to the roots of her character and its quite disturbing stuff.

Jerry Zeifman, the man who served as chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, comes out calling Hillary a career liar and says she wanted to deny Nixon the basic right to counsel!

 Update III:  Even more Obama lies exposed by his own handwriting!

Update II: It was then-Sen. John Kennedy that arranged a grant for a scholarship program to bring Kenyan students to America. The rest remains under question.

Update: Video of Obama's Selma Speech

When Mitt Romney stated that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King Jr., there was wall to wall media coverage reporting how he had to start backpeddaling. Even after witnesses came forward claiming they had seen his father march with him, the media story of Mitt fabricating the story still persists.

Just as Noel Sheppard and Rich Noyes noted rare kudos to the "better late than never" coverage done by CBS in exposing Hillary's fabrications on her Bosnia trip as First Lady, I too was shocked that a major news outlet was actually giving the story coverage.  I know that many Newsbusters readers were as well.

Be prepared to be doubly shocked.  CBS did follow-up coverage with video again tonight.

Hillary had originally hyped her foreign policy experience with a lie that she landed there under sniper fire and that the welcoming committee was cancelled.  Newsbusters exposed the lie and CBS video surfaced showing the world beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hillary was caught in a lie. 

Update: I wonder how the media will spin Obama's church claiming that the "White Church is the Anti-Christ?"

On Anderson Cooper’s CNN blog, Roland Martin spins out of control in an effort to help sweep up the mess left from pastorgate. He claims that Rev. Wright was only quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force. He is particularly claiming that the controversial sermon that includes the quote, “chickens have come home to roost” was a quote from Peck. He goes on to provide what I guess is supposed to be the quote in question. However, if you watch the start of this video, Wright reveals exactly who the quote comes from....Malcom X!

Hey MSM! Since all has been forgiven by most of you for Obama’s warm friendship with the radical racist and anti-American conspiracy nut Jeremiah Wright, and many of you are crowning him, once again, as the next JFK or Lincoln for “bringing the discussion of race to a higher plane…would it be utterly presumptuous of me to suggest that this should lead to opening a few more cans of worms? I mean, since most of you, with few exceptions, have decided to ignore the lies and contradictions revealed through Obama’s speech and instead trip over yourselves to focus on how “courageous” and “eloquent” his speech was…I’ll concede…let us move on, because there is plenty you have ignored that we can move on to. Jeremiah Wright is not the only radical company that Obama keeps.

Its been a rewarding yet predictable day as one liberal after another have fallen all over themselves to praise Obama's speech. One of the more outrageous ones was Chris Matthews stating the speech went beyond the "I Have a Dream" speech, and compared it Lincoln. Now the NY Times bows down to Obamessiah as he rises from the ashes.

There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.
Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better…

Flipping the channels I am seeing the media fawning in awe over Obama's speech on race.  Chris Matthews even compared his speech to Abraham Lincoln.

It seems that, once again, the media have fallen for an elegant farce.  They lavish over his oratory skills and pretty phrases, and ignore the meat of it.  If you haven't heard the speech yet, make sure to watch the video with a blog reaction roundup.

Once again the media fail to comb through the rhetoric and ask the questions that need that remain unanswered.  For example, if Obama was so troubled by Wright’s words… why keep bringing his daughters?

The goalposts have definitely been moved.  The least they could do is to call him out on his lie:

First the controversial pastor disappears from Obama’s website. Then his church plays the victim card. Now Trinity Baptist have removed the “black values” from their about us page! Is the new pastor bringing a new vision and vaules system? Lets hope so, but lets not forget the values they adopted before and are rooted in.

The 160-word section has since been deleted from the About Us page, replaced by videotaped testimonials from church members extolling the virtues of the church, including a white official from the parent United Church of Christ who said she feels welcome at predominantly black Trinity.

“These black ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever blacks are gathered,” the original webpage said.

Here is the entire text of the section before it was redacted:

After blaming America for everything from HIV to 9/11, it was inevitable that the church would continue playing the victim card. Now they accuse the media for character assassination! But as others point out, isn’t it character suicide when the “victim” provides the posion?

The Chicago church attended by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) issued a statement Sunday contending that coverage of his pastor’s inflammatory remarks amounted to character assassination and “an attack on … the history of the African American church.”

Obama distanced himself from inflammatory comments by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., retiring pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ, after they circulated on YouTube last week and were played repeatedly by cable news channels.

Wright, condemning society as racist, said, “God [expletive] America” and referred to the “U.S. of KKK-A.”

The latest comes from the AP’s whitewash where after ignoring the controversy for as long as possible, they put out a piece titled Obama Decries Racial Rhetoric. The piece then omits the pastor’s actual comments from the readers, and minimizes them as “inflammatory.”

Sen. Barack Obama on Saturday decried “the forces of division” over race that he said are intruding into the Democratic presidential nomination contest.

“We have to come together,” he told a town-hall meeting at a high school.

He cited videos of inflammatory sermons given by his pastor that are now being used as political ammunition against him — remarks that Obama has denounced.

“If all I knew were those statements I saw on television, I would be shocked,” Obama said.

Obama’s lead sinks seven points overnight! I think we all know he can thank his pastor for this.

This isn’t going away either. In his “denunciation” of the racist remarks screamed by his pastor of 20 years, Obama said he never heard any of these remarks while he attended. Investigative bloggers will dig around to see if that statement holds water. They already are.

Rocco DiPippo finds an old Newsmax article that claims an eye witness account of Obama nodding in agreement with a statement made by his pastor about the “United States of White America.”

The MSM is reporting on Obama’s STRONG condemnation of his pastor’s controversial, racist, American hating remarks. Sister Toldjah finds the defense laughable. Despite the holes in Obama’s repudiation, such as the fact that he was a member of Wright’s church for twenty years and apparantly never heard one of his extreme remarks or the fact that Barack didn’t find the remarks enough to leave the church….Sweetness & Light dig up the inconvient truth: Obama Knew What His Pastor Was Saying. Despite this fact, Obama still put the man on his campaign.:

Update: Obama finally comes out with strong repudiation. Is it enough? He will also be interviewed on FOX tonight.

Now, everyone has heard Obama's pastor of 20 years preach his racist message of America hate, and Obama has come out with his very weak response. We have also saw the study on how the network media failed in its coverage.

Sometimes we instinctively know the truth. Sometimes it is easy to demonstrate this with a hypothetical question that has an obvious answer.

So, I am asking this simple hypothetical question:

Update: Don't expect Obama to repudiate these remarks.  He still hasn't addressed his friendship with the terrorists of the Weather Underground. 

Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been Obama's pastor for 20 years.  Obama named his book, "Audacity of Hope" after a sermon of his, and he and his wife were married by the pastor.  He is even a part of Obama's campaign.

Now video has surfaced of Rev. Wright preaching a very radical message where he accuses the government of creating drugs and giving them to the poor, creating AIDS to destroy blacks, and blaming America for 9/11. 

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

The newspaper that endorsed McCain, once again tries to stir him up. McCain’s temper is one characteristic he needs to watch carefully if he wants to win this. (See Video Here)

Politico:

Bumiller, who took over the McCain beat from Marc Santora in January, quoted a 2004 story in which McCain said the Kerry meeting never happened, according to ABC News. McCain, whose temper does flare up at times, told Bumiller that everyone already knows this story, despite her persistent questioning.

Brietbart:

Republican Sen. John McCain, showing a flash of the temper he is known for, repeatedly cut off a reporter Friday when asked whether he had spoken to Democratic Sen. John Kerry about being his vice president in 2004.

There has been plenty of debate over whether military detainees should be put through civilan courts in the U.S. The ACLU think so and even want the detainees in Gitmo to be dragged through American courts. The AP throws all objectivity out the window and picks a side of the debate. Unsurprisingly, they choose the side of far left liberals.

The Associated Press, reporters groups and advocates for press freedoms urged the Supreme Court on Friday to reject Bush administration arguments that people held by the military in Iraq have no access to American courts.

Barack Obama has been running his campaign in the style of a revolutionary. Just how radical and liberal Obama is has been well hidden by the campaign. If you haven't heard about his friendship with the leaders of the radical group, the Weather Underground, you can thank the media. (Video Here.) Just how radically left this man is can be seen in what company he keeps.

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

…“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.”