New Republic

ObamaCare supporter Anthony Wright has a suggestion for TV networks in their coverage of the town hall protests: treat the protesters the way ESPN covers unruly sports fans. In other words, avoid pointing the cameras at them. Here are some of Wright's thoughts about censoring the town hall protesters published in The New Republic:

The Fox network has done more than any other network to showcase the protesters at health care town halls. And the coverage has been a lot like Fox’s reality shows: The more outrageous, the more likely you’ll end up on TV or YouTube. A sign referencing Nazis will get you on the local news. Shouting in a Senator’s face gets an radio interview afterwards. Bring a gun, and you get your full interview on a cable news program. After the first gun-toter made the rounds, the question wasn’t why there was a dozen folks packing outside the next presidential event, but why weren’t there more?

At the top of Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith teased an upcoming segment on dispelling myths about health care reform: "There’s so much anger, this vitriol that we see day after day in these town meetings across the country....We’re going to try and determine this morning whether or not some of these bold statements are, in fact, true or not."

Smith turned to Jonathan Cohn, senior editor of the left-wing magazine, The New Republic, to find the "truth" about the President’s health care plan. Smith made no mention of Cohn’s political affiliation or the magazine’s liberal leanings but did find time to promote his guest’s latest book: "Jonathan Cohn is senior editor of The New Republic and author ‘Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis And The People Who Pay The Price.’"

On Wednesday, Cohn wrote an article for The New Republic entitled: "The Swiftboating of Health Reform," in which he attacked conservative critics of the health care plan: "It’d be one thing if the lunatics on the right had a coherent argument for why these initiatives might be ineffective or counterproductive. But they don’t even bother to acknowledge them, preferring instead to throw out scare quotes like this one from [Sarah] Palin: ‘Who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course.’"

In a one-line blog post, "Health Reform: Euthanasia and Other Rumors," Time magazine's Karen Tumulty pointed readers to a blog post at The New Republic's Web site set on "Exposing the Euthanasia Scare" that has cropped up in the debate over health care reform:

Harold Pollack dispenses with them (and their sources) here.

Tumulty failed to mention the liberal bent of either TNR or Dr. Pollack (Ph.D., not M.D.), which would have been helpful considering her terse blog post practically amounted to an unqualified stamp of approval of Pollack's August 4 item.

Albeit in kinder, gentler language, Pollack posited that opposition to socialized medicine among American senior citizens was due to racism, xenophobia, and homophobia (emphasis mine):

The left can try to brush off articles in the Wall Street Journal or the National Review about the "coup" in Honduras as "rightwing propaganda." However, they will have a much harder time applying such a label to an article about the ouster of Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya (in photo with Hugo Chavez), which appeared in the very liberal New Republic.

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should have read Festishizing the Presidency by Francisco Toro before being so quick in joining Chavez in denouncing the removal of Honduran strong man Zelaya who was acting unconstitutionally:

Sunday's coup in Honduras has been portrayed as a throwback to the bad old days when Latin American armies got drafted in as the ultimate umpires of political conflict. But in arresting president Manuel Zelaya in his pajamas and putting him on the first plane out of the country, Honduras's generals were acting out of fear of a genuine and growing threat to Latin Democracy: the looming prospect of unchecked, hyper-empowered executive power held for life by a single, charismatic individual. 

Seen in context, Sunday's military powerplay was different in important ways from the traditional Latin American putsch. The generals move came at the unanimous--yes unanimous--behest of a congress outraged by Zelaya's not-particularly-subtle attempts to extend his hold on power indefinitely. It followed a series of clearly unconstitutional moves on Zelaya's part, including his attempt to unilaterally remove the chief of the army, which, according to Honduras's Constitution, can only be done by a congressional super-majority.

In today's "Will Bush Derangement Syndrome Ever End" segment, CBSNews.com published an article from The New Republic comparing Iran's crazed leader who believes the holocaust never happened and Israel should be wiped off the face of the planet to -- wait for it! -- America's 43rd president.

Isn't that special?

In a piece hysterically titled "Meet Iran's George W. Bush," author Laura Secor said Iran's upcoming elections (this is from last Monday) were similar to ours in 2004 for reasons that every American save the REAL Bush haters -- and you know who YOU are!!! -- should find thoroughly offensive (h/t Gateway Pundit via NBer Blazer):

Keep in mind this is supposed to be a "modest," not laughable, proposal by the New Republic: replace Roland Burris in the U.S. Senate with Michelle Obama. And if she is not available, then send Barack Obama's mother-in-law to the Senate. I kid you not. Stand by for yet the latest chapter in Obama worship as you read this "modest" proposal by Jason Zengerle of the New Republic titled, "A Modest Proposal to Solve the Burris Problem":

Roland Burris is obviously going to put "U.S. Senator" on his mausoleum, but I can think of another entry that might belong there, as well: "Destroyer of the Illinois Democratic Party."

Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned due to his involvement in a prostitution ring, is slowly attempting to edge himself back into the public eye with his new column in Slate. The problem from the POV of The New Republic is that Spitzer is trying to make himself relevant again much too quickly without showing the proper remorse. As a result, The New Republic gives Spitzer some atonement advice written by Jacob Gershman which does the former governor no real service since anything he does now will come off as a cynical attempt to return to the public eye:

Mark Pinsky, writing for the New Republic, has an idea of what to do with all the journalists currently being laid off by the dying newspapers around the country: put them on the public payroll by hiring them for a resurrected Federal Writers Project. This was the New Deal project which provided funding for works which were primarily of a leftwing nature. And any current version of this government program is likely to have the same political ideology as its predecessor. Pinksy explains his dream of subsidizing unemployed journalists (emphasis mine):

Barack Obama sounds like he wants to reach back to the New Deal's Works Progress Administration to jump start the economy with an economic stimulus proposal featuring infrastructure repair. If so, it may be time for the man who would be FDR to take a look at another successful--but largely forgotten--jobs program from the Depression era: the Federal Writers Project.

Most liberal commentators have preferred not to dwell on Barack Obama's broken promise to accept public financing of his campaign. For years, liberals have been at the forefront of demanding such public financing with pious lectures about the corrupting effects of money on politics. So the McCain-Feingold public financing law was passed and guess who was the first presidential candidate to opt out of that system? The Lightworker who flat out lied to the public when he earlier pledged to accept public financing. So when Obama announced he was breaking his public financing pledge a few months ago, there was some minor grumbling from liberals but since then they have entered the cone of silence on this issue due to their embarrassment about this topic. However, one liberal has spoken out about Obama's broken pledge. To condemn him?

The New Republic associate editor, Eve Fairbanks, needs to send a royalty payment to her senior editor, Michelle Cottle. Actually, Fairbanks might as well bypass Cottle and send the payment directly to your humble correspondent since The New Republic senior editor ripped me off when she wrote that the Washington Post compared Todd Palin to Hillary Clinton just a half hour after I made the same suggestion. Since the Washington Post story never mentioned Hillary, where do you think Cottle got her story idea from? The following update to my September 22 blog post explains:

Your humble correspondent is of the opinion that, without even knowing who wins the election in November, one can easily determine the winner by simply looking at the screen shots of liberal members of the MSM on the day after the election. Are the faces of Brian Williams, Katie Couric, Chris Matthews, etc. mournful? That will pretty much tell you who won the election the previous day. Likewise, simply by reading an analysis of last night's debate in Oxford, Mississippi in liberal publications, one can determine who won that debate without even watching it. It is called reading the liberal tea leaves and, since the NewsBusters Eye of Sauron has been upon them lately, The New Republic has been chosen as an example.

The first story chosen for this liberal tea leaf reading is titled, "They Both Lost." This was way too easy. What the title really tells you, without even having to read the story, is "McCain Won." The article itself merely confirms what was pretty much shouted out in the title (emphasis mine):

The New Republic has come up with a new way to drag conservatism through the mud---Simply describe racists as "racially conservative." Get it? They are implying that if you are a conservative then you must somehow be a racist. Your humble correspondent caught them using this term in a story headlined on The New Republic front page as: "Are People Who Hang Up On Pollsters More Racist Than Those Who Don't?" The story itself pretty much goes nowhere since no voting trend by people who refuse to talk to pollsters can be discerned. However, the story does link conservatism with racism (emphasis mine):

Martin Peretz, the editor-in-chief of The New Republic, didn't make many friends with the hard core left which nowadays makes up a large part of Democrat activists with his latest article: "Red Dusk: The Rosenberg bombshell."  It is about how many in the American left, despite the evidence that Julius and Ethel Rosenburg were indeed Soviet spies, still can't accept their guilt just as they can't accept the culpability of communists and communism in general (emphasis mine):

In America and in other Western societies, however, there still remain coteries of intellectuals and other high-minded people who have trouble absorbing the simplest historic truths, truths which ordinary workers in highly ideological Labour England, say, have had absolutely no difficulties absorbing. Even more so among unionized workers in the United States. The blindness of these meta-minds does not quite absolve Stalin of his crimes--but it willfully looks away from those of Castro or Che, who still hold a special place in the hearts of people calling themselves progressives.

Jonathan! Oh Jonathan! Paging Jonathan Chait! To paraphrase a certain wide stance senator, you've been a bad boy, a naughty boy. In fact, you're probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy. You see, you've written a long smear of Sarah Palin in the New Republic where you are The senior editor and yet a certain name was missing in your attack. What was that name? Why, Joe Biden. And why is Chait so reluctant to so much as mention Biden nowadays except in passing? Simple. When it looked like Biden had not a chance in the world of ever being nominated for president, Chait felt free to write what he really thought of the verbose senator last year (emphasis mine):

First we had a former national chairman of the Democratic National Committee laughing over the effect of Hurricane Gustav hitting New Orleans would have on Republicans as they prepared to hold their convention this week. Now we have a writer for The New Republic, Nate Silver, worried in the other direction in an article titled, "How Gustav Could Benefit the Republicans." Silver lists the ways he perceives that Republicans could benefit from this storm:

1. Allows McCain to Appear Magnanimous. By potentially delaying or canceling his "date" at the GOP convention, McCain appears as though he is giving something up to tend to the Gulf Coast. Sympathetic and neutral-to-sympathetic media outlets may view this as underscoring McCain's "America First" theme.

What a difference a few weeks make. It wasn't too long ago that the liberal media were already congratulating themselves on Barack Obama's "inevitable" victory. Many of those reports crossed the line into flat out gloating in which the election itself was a mere formality on the road to the coronation of the Lightworker. Well, that was then and now it appears that Obama's halo of perfection has become quite tarnished to the extent that the liberal New Republic is worrying if their erstwhile messiah is heading towards a "long, disappointing fall." John B. Judis, a senior editor of The New Republic, bites his fingernails with a revealing article titled, "Avoiding A Long, Disappointing Fall." Dr. Judis gives his diagnosis along with suggestions for a cure as to what is ailing the Obama campaign (emphasis mine):

AP political reporter Charles Babington, who recently touted "ample evidence that Obama is something special," is now warning that Obama is bracing against "race-based ads." Recent examples of "racially tinged" TV images like Obama wearing a turban and native Kenyan gear are "harbingers" of conservative 527-group ads to come. Babington then typically recounted the usual liberal-media suspects on racial politics – the Willie Horton ad and the crumpled-letter ad from Jesse Helms.

But he typically ignored acidulous race-baiting liberal commercials like the NAACP in 2000 suggesting that George W. Bush was dragging black victim James Byrd to death behind a pickup all over again, and the Missouri Democratic Party ad in 1998 that claimed: "When you don’t vote, you let enough church explode.When you don't vote, you let another cross burn." Babington implied that the history of nasty racial politics is a one-way avenue:

Like choosing Rosie O'Donnell to vouch that someone isn't a 9-11 conspiracy nut?

Of all the people Mika Brzezinski might have selected as a character reference for her father when he was portrayed as a problem for Obama with Jewish voters, Pat Buchanan isn't the first one who springs to mind. Yet that's who Mika [subbing as host for Joe Scarborough, home in Florida awaiting the birth of a baby] called on to defend her dad on today's Morning Joe.

The odd endorsement came at about 6:35 AM EDT today, after Mika highlighted an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal by Global View columnist [and former Jerusalem Post editor] Bret Stephens entitled Obama and the Jews. Stephens's item contained these lines [emphasis added]:

View video here.

If you're a believer in the Larry Kudlow creed, that "free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity," then look out, because George Soros is going to make you cringe.

A May 13 USA Today article by David J. Lynch profiled the Hungarian billionaire who said he sees traditional free market theory as "flawed."

"Of course, real life never matches up exactly with the theory's assumptions. But they represent, economists say, a useful way of making sense of a complex world," Lynch wrote.

"To Soros, the conventional approach is rubbish. Instead of a world of near-identical actors, coolly assessing their economic interests and acting with clear-eyed precision, he sees a world (and markets) governed by passion, bias and self-reinforcing errors," Lynch wrote. "Because fallible human beings are both involved in, and trying to make sense of, this world, they inevitably make mistakes. Those mistakes then feed on themselves in ‘reflexive' ways that, when taken to extremes, result in situations such as the now-deflating U.S. housing bubble."

Sen. John McCain may not have won the favor of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter, but he has some upside in the eyes of The New Republic Editor Franklin Foer.

Foer appeared at Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., on February 1 to promote his new book, "Election 2008: A Voter's Guide."

"[I] think that McCain has certain political virtues that other Republicans don't, which is that he actually has kind of a record of being, of being conciliatory - that there's actually - I mean, I don't what it means for the electoral future of the Democratic Party, but there are the possibilities for doing some interesting things with McCain as a leader, and I'm mostly thinking about global warming - where McCain has the best track record on energy and environment on the Republican side in the Senate," Foer concluded. "So, I think you have some really good possibility for a Nixon-to-China type solution to climate change if he decides that that's going to be the thing he is going to use to build a bridge."

Slate.com Editor Jacob Weisberg can now add "medicine" to his list of expertise. Weisberg told an audience the awkwardness some claim Bush shows during speeches can be attributed to a learning disability.

Weisberg linked it back to a pattern of dyslexia in the Bush family.

"I agree with that," Weisberg said when presented the possibility that Bush has a "learning disability." "The other thing I've done is collect ‘Bushisms' over the years and I sort of joke this book is my penance for doing that, because one of the things ‘Bushisms' do is I think they make Bush sound stupider than he is, or stupid in a way he isn't. And I do think he does have some sort of language processing impairment that is probably akin to dyslexia, and dyslexia does run in the family. But, I don't think it is dyslexia because if you watched the State of the Union, you could see he has no trouble reading a teleprompter."

Although former U.S. Congressman, Joseph Kennedy III has been criticized for his Citgo commercial last year promoting discount heating oil provided by the Hugo Chavez Venezuelan government as a PR ploy, his latest commercial goes way beyond mere syrupy praise. Kennedy is now using the most recent Citgo commercial as a launchpad to blast the U.S. government and "Big Oil" as you can see in this video. After an introduction similar to the previous commercial showing poor people suffering from the cold, Kennedy goes on the attack:

...Yet our own government cut fuel assistance. And the Big Oil companies with oil and money to burn all said "no" when we asked for help. All but one. Citgo. Owned by the Venezuelan people, is donating millions of gallons to non-profit Citizens Energy...

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee.

After the article "Shock Troops" in The New Republic had been challenged by critics , a documentary filmmaker/blogger by the name of JD Johannes narrowed down the search of the author to Alpha Company, 1-18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division on July21.

Three days after that on July 24, the military began a formal investigation, which included taking statements from soldiers in Alpha/1-18IN.

Scott Beauchamp gave his initial statement on July 26, published here for the first time.

1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, rotated out of Iraqi several weeks ago to their home base in Schweinfurt, Germany. This included noted fabulist Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Whether Beauchamp is still in Germany or has been allowed home on leave is rather irrelevant; he matters quite little now that he has established that he will not support his dark fantasies on the record.

What does matter is that Franklin Foer and The New Republic have lost yet another excuse in their continued failure to account for the actions of the magazine's editors since "Shock Troops" was first questioned July 18, over four months ago. Now that Beauchamp is out of the war zone and back in western civilization, Foer is unable to claim that he military is muzzling his communication or that of his fellow soldiers.

Rumor has it that Franklin Foer is presently attempting to pen his final justification of the story, and that it will be published in a December editor of the magazine.

Michael Crowley's takedown on Hillary and the media in The New Republic is fascinating -- and in some cases, overdoes the hostility between the two forces. But liberals should note that even The New Republic forwards the notion that David Brock's Media Matters collective is a transparent proxy for Team Hillary, and brings numbers to the table:

Many reporters also suspect the Clinton camp of employing outside proxies to attack troublemakers in the media....Many in Washington believe the campaign feeds material to Brock's site, as when Media Matters went after New York Times reporter Anne Kornblut last July after Kornblut misrendered a quote that led to an erroneous story claiming Hillary had criticized fellow Democrats. Not only did Clinton aides fume to the paper's editors, but Media Matters pummeled Kornblut and the Times for several days. (A count of Media Matters stories from October found 39 headlines defending Clinton, compared to 15 for Obama and just one for John Edwards. A Media Matters spokesman strongly denied favoritism.)

Crowley goes on to recount how Hillary likes to intimidate reporters on her beat like Kornblut, now with the WashPost:

Scott Beauchamp doesn't matter.

He's a twice-AWOL serial liar with a pending mental health evaluation who can't write believable military fiction EVEN WHILE IN THE MILITARY. He's powerless, has been tried, found guilty and punished, and at this point, a distraction. We've been focusing on the wrong things.

What matters is the New Republic's advertisers. No, not their editors, their advertisers. [see below the fold for a list of same]

After weeks of saying nothing, the editors of the New Republic magazine have stepped out of their batcave to inform the world that they still believe in Scott Beauchamp's "reports" from Iraq.

For his part, Beauchamp is starting to look more and more like Memogate's Bill Burkett, the Texas moonbat who repeatedly told different versions of his story to Dan Rather and Mary Mapes:

Beauchamp’s refusal to defend himself certainly raised serious doubts. That said, Beauchamp’s words were being monitored: His squad leader was in the room as he spoke to us, as was a public affairs specialist, and it is now clear that the Army was recording the conversation for its files.

It's one thing for an editor to stubbornly defend a reporter whose story has come under fire when the reporter in question vehemently insists he is telling the truth. It's quite another when an editor stands by a discredited story that even the writer responsible for refuses to vigorously defend.

Such appears to be the case with The New Republic's Franklin Foer.

Here's how Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz reported the development in the October 25 paper (emphasis mine):

In a recorded Sept. 6 conversation, the writer, Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, said from Iraq that the controversy had "spun out of control" and had become "insane" and "ridiculous" and concluded: "I'm not going to talk to anyone about anything."

Drudge scooped me (arrgghhh!) with two documents related to the Beauchamp/TNR story. I had asked for in a FOIA request submitted more than a month ago to the U.S. Army. Those documents including a transcript of the call between Scott Beauchamp, TNR editor Franklin Foer, and TNR executive editor Peter Scoblic on September 7. I first wrote about the conversation itself previously.

The other document was the Army's official report, which I first discussed with the investigating officer, Major John Cross, on September 10.

Knowing the documents exist is one thing; having them is quite another. Now that they have been posted on the public record, these disclosures should end careers at The New Republic.

Have at it:

Jonathan Chait is one of the Founding Fathers of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Way back in '03, the New Republic senior editor authored one of BDS's early, seminal works: "The Case for Bush Hatred," whose very sentence was the subtle: "I hate President George W. Bush."

Ah, but Jonathan Chait isn't a mere one-hatred man. As of this morning, we can conclusively state that in addition to his animus toward our nation's chief executive, Jonathan Chait also hates lower taxes.