Kelly McGarey's blog

Good liberals like Salon.com writer Joan Walsh don't believe in racial profiling. But political profiling, well, that's a different story.

In her August 8 article, "Spotting white supremacists," Walsh used the recent horrendous Sikh temple shooting as an occasion to dust off a widely-maligned 2009 Department of Homeland Security report that suggested that domestic terrorist incidents were likely to hail from extremists on the political right. She also used the occasion to slander conservative Matt Drudge by comparing his website to that of a white supremacist group called Stormfront [emphasis mine]:

On Monday, Joan Walsh continued her crusade against conservatives when she authored an article entitled "Mitt's loathsome lie" for Salon.com. This piece, which was supposed to focus on the Department of Justice lawsuit in Ohio to block a law which extends early voting privileges to active-duty military members, evolves from criticism to a bizarre claim that Catholic bishops are part of a "military group" and have become "become an unregistered arm of the GOP."

Walsh began by introducing the issue: a bill by the Ohio legislature (which she is quick to accuse of being "Republican-dominated") to limit early voters to active-duty military members who would be unable to vote on Election Day. Obviously, this is a ploy by the GOP, which "keeps finding sneakier ways to disenfranchise those Americans who might be inclined to vote for Democrats" to swing the Ohio vote using "GOP resentment machine logic."

While millions of Americans are happily tuning in to cheer on their fellow countrymen and root for Team USA, some members of the liberal media are not smiling.  Salon.com writer David Sirota, author of a lengthy piece published on Wednesday, is among them, and finds himself "increasingly interrupted by pangs of discomfort" watching our nation's athletes compete on the world stage. "Not because," he claims, he is "ashamed of our country or our Olympians," but because of the way that "the relationship between American nationalism and the Olympics" has been "infused with...politicized meaning."

First, he launched into a tirade about the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics which he calls "a Cold War spectacle of hyper-patriotism deliberately orchestrated to give the big middle finger to the boycotting Soviets and their allies." Then, he called the 1992 Barcelona games an excuse to use the Olympics to "to spike the ball in the end zone — or, more accurately, 360 windmill dunk over the rest of the planet" and questions why "we have to rub our strength in" and "preen on the world stage in such cartoonish fashion."

Last night's episode of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom was hilariously titled, "Bullies." Unfortunately for HBO, the humor was due to the program's seemingly endless hypocrisy and not because there was anything remotely funny in the dialogue of the episode itself.

Lauded as a ground-breaking show by much of the liberal media, The Newsroom really jumped the shark this week by trying to paint Republicans as bullies all while portraying liberal character Will MacAvoy (Jeff Daniels) and his network's executives belittled women and demonized African-Americans who dared to support conservative candidates rather than back liberal Democrats as the Left expects them to. [video embedded below]

Over the previous four episodes, Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom has become the liberal media's Sunday night darling. So, after the July 15th offering, which featured fictional news anchor Will MacAvoy comparing Tea Party members to sex offenders, a little conservative-bashing was expected. The July 22 episode did not disappoint, with the team at "Atlantic Cable News" delving into the Citizen's United Supreme Court case and effectively accusing Clarence Thomas of bribery. 

In the first few minutes of the episode, the news team becomes aware of the overthrow of Mubarak's government in Egypt. Despite the fact that one of the most volatile countries in the world has ousted its dictator, they decided to lead with a report that Republican governor Scott Walker is "trapped in a newspaper office with 75 teachers outside." They then analyze a tape of a reporter asking the Koch brothers if the Citizen's United decision increased their influence. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Airing hours after the midnight mass murder in Aurora, Colorado, MSNBC's Alex Wagner was bound to devote her program to the tragic breaking news. However, unlike other journalists, Wagner used the event as a platform for extensive commentary on the politics of the gun control debate and America's "culture of violence." Wagner, an alumna of the liberal Center for American Progress, has suggested she would favor repealing the 2nd Amendment. Back in February, after a school shooting, she bemoaned the lack of traction that gun control advocates have in pushing for more gun restrictions.

MSNBC colleague and liberal pundit Chris Hayes was the first to jump on the anti-gun bandwagon, and bizarrely focused on suicide instead of the Aurora tragedy. Hayes argued that, "the availability of a gun makes suicide fatality far more likely" even though, it "doesn't make the impulse to do it more likely," ignoring the fact that suicide has nothing to do with the events of last evening. 

The makers of TNT's Rizzoli and Isles, a show which revolves around the careers and friendship of two women, a detective and a medical examiner, apparently aren't fans of the choices made by conservative females who opt for marriage and motherhood over a career. According to the July 17 episode, it's possible that some of these mothers could be driven to kill.

The episode begins with the murder of a prominent psychologist and author of a book called, "No Need to Breed," which advocates for childless marriage. Their primary suspect is a stay-at-home mother of nine who is also the founder of a pro-family website that has spoken out against the victim in the past. As with most people in this day in age, the subject has a profile on the site where she posts website. This causes Officer Rizzoli to scoff, "it's because she leads such a fascinating life that she wants everyone to know what she's doing at all times." [Video follows page break]

As the November election approaches, the left-leaning media is taking every opportunity to take shots at presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and Vanity Fair is no exception. In the magazine's August issue, journalist Nicholas Shaxson attempts to mar the public perception of Romney's business record and moral center under the guise of "[delving] into the murky world of offshore finance."

Shaxson starts with the supposed experiences of an unnamed source, known only as, "a person who worked for Mitt Romney at Bain Capital" who claims that Romney urged him to lie about his identity in order to find out secret revenue and sales data on its client's companies for Bain's financial gain. Shaxson then fast-forwards to this year's Republican primary contests and claims that Romney only released details about his finances after "other Republican candidates forced him to do so" and that "only highly selective disclosures were forthcoming."

The Washington Post's popular Fact Checker political column isn't known for being particularly balanced when it comes to choosing which statements to dissect. So, it was surprising when the column's author Glenn Kessler, who usually chooses to go after statements made by prominent Republicans, fact-checked a tweet made by President Obama.

On July 3, @BarackObama tweeted, "FACT: In 2010 and 2011, Romney paid less than 15% in taxes on $42.5 million in income—much less than what many middle-class families pay." Kessler decided to dig into this statement and gave it "3 out of 4" Pinnochios on the Fact Checker scale.

During the June 24th premiere of Aaron Sorkin's new HBO drama, The Newsroom, viewers were introduced to Will MacAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels), a popular news anchor with scathing opinions about the United States. Episode two continued the liberal talking points, this time portraying conservative opinions on immigration as both racist and stupid.

On the July 1 HBO broadcast, MacAvoy turned to Arizona's immigration law. Somehow, instead of a qualified expert, the only people that the fictional production team are able to find to advocate for the law are a ditzy beauty queen who claims that she didn't win a pageant because she agreed with the law, an extremely racist 'author' of self-published anti-immigration literature and a member of a citizen-run border-patrolling militia.  [See video below.  MP3 audio here.]

The blogosphere is abuzz today after anti-conservative bully and gay activist Dan Savage tweeted, “The GOP’s house faggots grab their ankles right on cue...Pathetic” in response to GOProud’s endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 election. 

GOProud, which describes itself on its website as, “the voice of gay conservatives and their straight allies,” voted last night to endorse the presumptive Republican nominee in his bid against Obama in November. Lisa DePasquale, the interim Chair of the Board of Directors issued a statement to the press, saying that the organization is, “prepared to commit significant resources to help make Mitt Romney the next President of the United States.”

To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the infamous 1972 break-in at the Watergate, Andrea Mitchell on Monday hosted John Dean, President Nixon’s former legal counsel. The MSNBC anchor and the conservative critic actually connected the scandal to the 2010 Citizen United Supreme Court case. 

During the interview, Dean complained that the “financial reform that came with Watergate is gone because of Supreme Court decisions.” Mitchell promptly agreed, calling it the“the nail in the coffin” for these supposed post-Watergate reforms. Mitchell continued her off-topic rant about the Citizens United ruling, complaining that if it "ends up being the law of the land for all future campaigns” it will be detrimental to the political system since, “there's no transparency as to where the money is coming from."  [Video follows page break;  MP3 audio here.]

Since his very public endorsement of same-sex marriage on May 9, President Obama has become the unabashed hero of the LGBT community – a fact the liberal media has openly cheered. On Thursday's NBC Today, White House correspondent Kristen Welker described Obama being "greeted by thundering and sustained applause" at a Hollywood fundraiser Wednesday night.

Welker proclaimed that gay community had been, "newly energized after the President's recent endorsement of same-sex marriage." On CBS's This Morning, correspondent Bill Plante highlighted President Obama's "warm welcome from campaign donors in the Los Angeles gay community" at the LGBT Leadership Council Gala.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post could barely contain its glee over the event: "...the president had to plead with the audience to sit down after a long and emotional ovation and chants of 'Four more years!' Twin screens on each side of the stage displayed huge 'Obama Pride' logos."