Blogs

"Dr. Laura Schlessinger is an Elitist, a Hypocrite, and Flat Out Wrong," reads abortion monger Bonnie Erbe's April 10 blog headline.

The PBS "To the Contrary" host and contributing editor to U.S. News & World Report launched into a four-paragraph attack on the author and conservative radio host, and as usual, she not only breathed left-wing fire at a conservative target, she was factually inaccurate (paragraph breaks removed, emphasis mine):

George W. Bush has said nothing negative about his media-worshiped successor in the Oval Office. Yet that doesn't stop the liberal mainstream media for mocking the former president out of the blue -- while ignoring Obama gaffes -- for events that happened on his watch years ago.

The latest example, Time's Amy Sullivan, on the magazine's Swampland blog today entitled, "Quote of the Day":

Silvio Berlusconi on the 17,000 Italians left homeless by the Abruzzo earthquake:

They should see it like a weekend of camping.

George W. Bush is just kicking himself for not using that little gem in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Same-sex marriage proponents have finally won a victory yesterday the old-fashioned and constitutionally legitimate way: through legislative action. On April 7, state legislators overrided a veto by Gov. Jim Douglas (R), making Vermont the fourth state with legalized same-sex marriage and the first through the consent of the governed as expressed through their legislature.

It didn't take long for USA Today religion blogger Cathy Lynn Grossman to seize yesterday's win for gay activists as an occasion to repeat a left-wing talking point. Grossman concluded her April 7 blog post by asking readers:

Should you be able to vote on who loves whom or how they live together?

Of course the loaded question automatically puts proponents of traditional marriage on the defensive. Legislate love? How un-American! 

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Moulitsas was less concerned about the four Oakland police officers killed just miles from his home two weeks ago.

Shortly before Markos Moulitsas blamed Glenn Beck for instigating the senseless shooting of three Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, police officers on Saturday, the proprietor of the far-left website Daily Kos said that conservatives would rather shoot cops than organize to win the next election. 

He also wrote during the same Twitter discussion, "With no Veep to shoot people, folks are taking things into their own hands."

Such was revealed Sunday by a self-proclaimed Daily Kos diarist named Tommy Christopher who was so disgusted by these comments he has actually resigned his membership (h/t Hot Air via ConservaThink):

Ever notice the media love to report stories about people fighting the power, unless, of course, the power happens to be something the media favor?

A March 31 New York Times article about Cuba's Havana Biennial art festival highlighted several artists whose political statements were in line with the anti-American, communist outlook of the island's regime, while ignoring prominent Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who risked her freedom to protest government oppression.

During an open mic session at the festival, the award-winning Generacion Y blogger criticized Cuban policy and the lack of free expression. However, the Times did not mention her pro-free speech performance art or even cover it in a separate piece. Instead, most of the artists the paper described railed against the usual evils, such as capitalism, America and the bourgeoisie.

Afterwards, the government issued a condemnation that singled out Sanchez for “staging a provocation against the Cuban Revolution.” Fortunately, on Wednesday, Reuters reported the controversy:

The mainstream media has found little of alarm in the story, but conservative bloggers including musician Charlie Daniels have taken heed of the Obama administration's changes to the terminology the U.S. government uses to describe the war on terrorism. For example, "terrorism" will now be referred to as "man-caused disasters" and the Global War on Terror will now be referred to as "Overseas Contingency Operation."

Daniels, who performed at the 2003 Media Research Center Gala, pulls no punches in his March 27 post, where demonstrates the absurdity of the politically correct language deployed by the Obama administration:

Another episode of MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," another angry rant about a conservative disagreeing with liberal agenda - how predictable.

On the March 26 broadcast of "Countdown," Olbermann set his sights on Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, for suggesting that nature adapts to a changing climate - even when the changes predate the theory that man possessed the ability to change the climate.

"But our winner - Republican Congressman Joe Barton of Texas, back for another round of denying climate change," Olbermann said.

Olbermann quoted Barton in a March 25 hearing, leaving out passages in which Barton cited examples of how mankind has adapted to changing climate throughout history (full video here of statement).

Mainstream media journalists delighted in joining left-wing bloggers in mocking President George W. Bush over his penchant for verbal miscues, often when speaking off-the-cuff. Of course, President Bush wasn't too prickly on this point and on occasion made self-deprecating jokes about his penchant for mangling the English language.

Yet when it comes to right-of-center bloggers playfully mocking President Barack Obama's dependence on the teleprompter, don't expect most journalists to yuk it up with conservatives.

Witness Time magazine reporter Michael Scherer's March 25 blog post with some thoughts on the president's second prime-time news conference:

                       

Photo via Newsweek's "The Gaggle" blog.

A leading HIV researcher -- and self-described liberal -- defends what the pope has said recently about condoms and AIDS.

I won't hold my breath for the secular mainstream media to notice, but that's what Christianity Today magazine reported on March 20 with its publication of an e-mail interview between deputy managing editor Tim Morgan and the director of Harvard's AIDS Prevention Research Project, Edward C. Green:

[Morgan]: Is Pope Benedict being criticized unfairly for his comments about HIV and condoms?

[Dr. Green]: This is hard for a liberal like me to admit, but yes, it's unfair because in fact, the best evidence we have supports his comments — at least his major comments, the ones I have seen.

Green went on to say that, at least as far as African countries are concerned, Pope Benedict is correct that condom promotion doesn't lessen the AIDS problem (emphases mine):

"Sex! Sex! Sex! Is that all church leaders talk about?" huffed the title of USA Today religion blogger Cathy Lynn Grossman's March 23 post.

The "Faith & Reason" blogger lamented that "[s]ummer meeting season looms for many of the nation's leading Protestant denominations and that means the culture warriors are manning the battle stations on sexuality issues." Of course there are two sides to the culture war on sexual ethics in American Protestant Christianity, but Grossman's conclusion made clear her complaint was mostly, if not entirely, with conservatives, who stand on the defensive end of assaults by liberal Christians:

How would it affect your life, your spirituality, if the gay couple next door were married by a pastor, priest or rabbi? If your church were served by gay and straight people? Can you share a pew with someone who sees these issues differently?

And that's where Grossman is off the mark. These fights over gay, lesbian, and transgendered clergy are not by and large about the laity praying in the pews but about the higher moral standards on sex expected for the clergy.

If you needed some good news to brighten your Saturday evening, this could be it: ABC's George Stephanopoulos believes Democrats have abandoned their goal of enacting a carbon cap and trade program this year.

For those unfamiliar, this is a scheme backed by global warming alarmists such as Nobel Laureate Al Gore designed to place prohibitive taxes on emitters of that dastardly carbon dioxide.

Most rational economists not under Gore's influence believe such a plan would have a devastating effect on our economy, and would likely force companies to continue exporting manufacturing jobs to countries like China and India which don't have such business unfriendly practices.

Fortunately, according to Stephanopoulos, this idea has been scrapped for the time being (h/t Hot Air): 

As if out to prove our point about media bias, the Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers seized on a one-liner by Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher made last night at the MRC Gala and DisHonors Awards. Wurzelbacher, accepting the "Obamagasm Award" on behalf of ABC's Bill Weir, made a crack playing off the orgasmic delight that Chris Matthews and others in the media expressed after watching then-candidate Obama deliver rousing campaign speeches.

"God, all this love and everything in the room - I'm horny," Akers quoted Wurzelbacher, before going on to insist that no one in the whole room, especially at her table, understood why he said that.

Former President George W. Bush is a "classy guy" who might "mature into a proper elder statesman" some day.

That's the verdict of NBC and Wonkette contributor Sara K. Smith in her March 18 article about how Bush refused to publicly criticize his successor to the presidency when given the chance at a Q&A session following at a luncheon in Canada. (h/t Twitter tipster @Thatcher):

The one thing he has not been doing, thank goodness, is following Dick Cheney's lead and attempting to inject himself into public affairs again. When asked today to comment on President Obama's performance in office, Bush said, "I'm not going to spend my time criticizing him. [...] He deserves my silence."

An Associated Press account noted that President Bush also said, "I love my country a lot more than I love politics.... I think it is essential that he be helped in office." Smith left those lines out of her story.

President Obama may need to call out Israel on its compromised "moral standing" in the world, Time's Joe Klein [file photo at right] argues in a March 17 Swampland blog post.

So what does Klein see as Israel's sin? Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu's choice of the hawkish Avigdor Lieberman for foreign secretary.

Lieberman's campaign for prime minister was distinguished by his call for a loyalty pledge that citizens would have to sign in order to vote in Israeli elections:

Jeff Goldberg on Avigdor Lieberman. I second the motion--and add this: I suspect that President Obama is going to have to say something about Israel's selection of a politician who has frequently made racist noises as its Foreign Minister. He should be very clear that this severely compromises Israel's moral standing in the world.

[...]

Josh Brahm of Right to Life of Central California has done the definitive dissection of the comprehensive media failure in reporting on President Obama's recent Executive Order (EO) allowing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Brahm's "9 Things the Media Messed Up About the Obama Stem Cell Story" (HT to an e-mail from LifeNews.com) is an exceptional magnum opus that must be read in its entirety to be fully appreciated. It identifies each of the nine errors, links to well over 40 specific instances of media bias and/or ignorance, and tell us why those errors are significant. I thought I was reasonably knowledgeable in this subject area until I read Brahm's work.

(CNS News has reported that the EO will apparently not going into effect until October 1 or later, because the supplemental appropriations bill he just signed [but apparently didn't read] "explicilty bans federal funding of any 'research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.'" That fact doesn't change the correctness of Brahm's "9 Things.")

Here are the nine items (absolutely no substitute for reading the whole thing), accompanied by brief quotes from Brahm's article:

The Associated Press wire relayed a short item on Friday about how outgoing Mayor Barrie Parsons Tilghman (D-Salisbury, Md.) recently slammed bloggers as the greatest threat to her fair Eastern Shore city.

Via the Maryland Daily Record:

SALISBURY — In her final State of the City address, Salisbury Mayor Barrie Parsons Tilghman warned residents of what she sees as a great danger to the city: malicious bloggers.

Tilghman said in her address Thursday that over the last five years, the presence of a small group of suspicious, mean-spirited people focused on the negative has grown, endangering the city's vitality.

Tilghman says some people are avoiding serving their city because it's not worth chancing the scorn of bloggers. But Tilghman says they need to stand up for the city.

Tilghman's final day in office is April 19, but she says she plans to remain active in the city. She says she plans to give a less formal farewell address before leaving office.

As you can see, Tilghman's Democratic Party affiliation is curiously missing from the story, even though her party affiliation is no mystery to mainstream journalists such as Andy Green of the Baltimore Sun, who took note of her retirement in a December 15, 2008 blog post:

[Update: Erbe appears to be factually inaccurate, to say the least. Reader Tim Lindell passed on an L.A. Times article from last year noting that in a 2006 debate, Palin called herself "pro-contraception" and added that "kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues."]

With the writing style and gravitas worthy of a high school newspaper columnist, PBS "To the Contrary" host and US News & World Report columnist Bonnie Erbe slammed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in her March 12 column, pitting her against her daughter Bristol who "displays a lot more personal maturity and decision-making ability than her mother" as evidenced by the breaking off of her engagement with boyfriend Levi Johnston.

Although Erbe is not a relationship expert or couples therapist, she plays one on the Internet (emphases mine):

[T]he youthful pair never looked like a loving couple. They looked like what they were: two sexually active teens who happened to "hook up" but had nothing beyond that in common. Besides, who wants to marry the son of a woman who's brought up on drug charges?

[...]

In case you were worried, former Time magazine staffer Jay Carney has "had very little trouble adapting" to his job as Vice President Biden's director of communications. From a recent interview with Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers published in the March 12 paper:

[Akers]: You left journalism after 20 years with Time. How is life on the other side?

Carney: It's great. I have had very little trouble adapting to this new role, which is completely different from what I was doing before.

Carney also insisted that while he was just sort of swept into the Obama administration during the post-election transition period, he never was a leg-thrilling puddle of drool like others in the media:

USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman sought to create a rift between Pope Benedict XVI and Italian clerics in a March 4 blog post, "'Virtually' signing off technology for Lent?"

The rage among some Italian dioceses is to call on Catholics to shut off the Internet connection, put down the I-pod and chill out on texting for the Lenten fast.

This may contradict the pope, who just recently extolled social networking to forge worldwide understanding and approved a Vatican channel on YouTube. (I wonder if they shut that down for Lent?)

Grossman apparently has trouble reconciling the Vatican's desire to engage social media outlets to reach out to young Catholics and evangelize potential converts with the pastoral counsel from priests and bishops that fasting from too much of a good thing -- such as text messaging -- may help sharpen one's spiritual devotion during the Lenten season:

Taxpayer-subsidized journalist Bonnie Erbe has some advice for Democrats: use the 2010 Census and subsequent redistricting to your maximum advantage to gerrymander and "gender-mander" the Congress chock full of left-wing constituencies.

Writes the PBS "To the Contrary" host on a March 3 post at her Jefferson Street blog at US News & World Report (emphasis mine):

Depoliticize the Census? Surely they jest! Taking politics out of the Census is like taking milk out of the cow or coal out of Newcastle or diamonds out of Tiffany. Politics is the lifeblood of the Census—without politics, there is no Census.

The Census is part of the spoils of victory for whichever party controls the White House at the turn of each decade. Gerrymandering—using Census data to create voting districts that artificially lean toward one end of the political spectrum or the other—is as uniquely an American tradition as Thanksgiving. The thought of trying to depoliticize the census is, well, decidedly un-American.

British journalists are nonplussed, to say the least, that President Obama didn't schedule a full press conference for today's White House visit by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

USA Today's The Oval blog has the story:

Though there was never any announcement on this side of the Atlantic that there would be a full-blown joint news conference today when British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stops by to meet with President Obama, some British journalists are rather cranky this morning about the fact that there won't be one. Some who flew over with Brown last night thought there would be an Obama-Brown newser, and were surprised to hear when they arrived that there wouldn't. They see it as a snub.

"Embarrassing," says Benedict Brogan of The Mail. Embarrassing, that is, for Brown.

"Mr Brown might lament," writes Toby Harnden of The Telegraph, "that despite the so-called 'special relationship' Britain is now getting the same treatment as the president of Uruguay but he need not despair. I'm told there's a chance he might get drinks with Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday evening."

Blogger and former Washington Times staffer Robert Stacy McCain has an article over at The American Spectator's Web site that blows away the stereotype many in the MSM seem to have about Rush Limbaugh's audience being nothing more than "angry white men."

In "Taxi Driver Dittos, Rush", McCain relays a brief story of his interaction with a D.C. cabbie originally from Nigeria who loves Limbaugh.

Here's an excerpt:

Cabs lined up with engines idling outside Washington's historic Omni Shoreham Hotel about 5 p.m. Saturday afternoon. Drivers were waiting to sweep away thousands of guests who soon would depart the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), but nobody was leaving yet, and so the drivers waited.

"When does Rush speak?" asked a stocky driver in a blue hooded sweatshirt.

"He just started speaking," I answered.

"Oh, man, I wish I could be there," the driver said. "He is great."

The death of Paul Harvey has resulted in some very respectful notices in the media, like Richard Corliss of Time magazine. (Except for this sentence: "The rosy sentimentalist was also a fretful conservative; he backed Joe McCarthy's search for imaginary Communists in the State Department." ) Brian Maloney at Radio Equalizer is highlighting Internet scribblings offering a more impolite reflection, of the rot-in-Hell variety. Ken Layne, the operator of the liberal blog Wonkette, trashed Harvey, and Rush Limbaugh:

The best thing about Paul Harvey -- humble old Paul Harvey with his solid family life and one (just one!) wife who was with him until her death in 2007 -- is that his peak audience was millions bigger than Rush Limbaugh's largest audience.’

Fat sex-creep Rush peaked with 20 million listeners in 2003 (all downhill since then!), while Paul Harvey peaked with 22 million. And while Paul Harvey was long mocked by hipsters and comedians, he sure wasn't hated. In fact, Paul Harvey was one of the most admired people in America for half a century. Rush Limbaugh is despised by most Americans, while his only fans are mouth-breathing angry losers.

On the front page of today's Style section, Washington Post staffer Jose Antonio Vargas promised readers a look at the "gay political blogosphere" in "Gay Bloggers' Voices Rise in Chorus of Growing Political Influence."

"Disparate Gay Bloggers Create a Virtual Village of Many Voices," the headline on the jump page noted:

On the Internet, no group -- however controversial or on the fringe -- is invisible. Everyone is but a Google search away. And the sheer diversity of blogs written by gays, lesbians and transgenders proves that, like all minority groups, the gay community is not monolithic. Though they may blog about the same topic -- say, Prop. 8 -- it doesn't mean they'll arrive at the same conclusion.

Yet nowhere in his 20-paragraph profile does Vargas look into the generally conservative bloggers who maintain GayPatriot.net, a site that describes itself as "the Internet home for the American gay conservative." Indeed, Vargas spent the lion's share of his article focused on Pam Spaulding, a liberal  black lesbian blogger from North Carolina. Vargas sums up Spaulding's insights on Prop 8: "religious anti-gay whites" are equally responsible for the passage of the ballot referendum as socially conservative African-American voters.

Wow. Truly insightful.

By contrast, GayPatriot bloggers also opposed Proposition 8 yet take liberal gay activists to task for their shrill invective against proponents of the ballot initiative. Here's one such excerpt from a February 8 post by Daniel Blatt, who blogs as "GayPatriotWest" entitled, "Will Gay Groups Criticize Mean-Spirited Tactics of Angry Prop 8 Opponents?":

Whether it's a shot at competitor Newsweek for putting Markos Moulitsas on the payroll, or a brief moment of clarity, Time magazine has named the disgustingly liberal website Daily Kos as one of the most overrated blogs on the Internet.

I kid you not. 

Such a revelation seems even more odd given the absence of any conservative websites in Time's "25 Best Blogs of 2009."

But before we get there, here's what the magazine had to say about DK:

So much for any pretense of balance. Looks like David Shuster has taken a page from Keith Olbermann's playbook: play exclusively to your crowd; exclude any alternative voices.

Announcing this evening a new regular feature focusing on the blogosphere on his 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue show, Shuster made it clear that conservatives need not apply.

DAVID SHUSTER: Every day at this time, we're going to bring you a key issue in the progressive blogosphere.

Are you a conservative? Then you're a d***, and there's something wrong with your brain. At least that's what "24" actress and comedienne Janeane Garofalo believes.

According to the former Air America radio host, a conservative starts out an “a**hole,” and the politics come later. She asserted, “The reason a person is a conservative republican (sic) is because something is wrong with them...It really is neuroscience.”

In this February 12 interview with the environmentalist celebrity blog Ecorazzi, Garofalo also claimed the “irrational” emotion center of the brain, the limbic system, is what creates conservatives (text reformatted, profanity edited, all bold mine):

The reason a person is a conservative republican is because something is wrong with them. Again, that’s science – that’s neuroscience. You cannot be well adjusted, open-minded, pluralistic, enlightened and be a republican. It’s counter-intuitive. And they revel in their anti-intellectualism. They revel in their cruelty.

"So which is worse? Denying the Holocaust? Or condemning New Orleans?"

That's how Chicago Tribune religion blogger Manya Brachear began her Feb. 11 The Seeker blog post, practically considering the Pope to be another politician who must watch out for how his PR blunders affect his poll numbers (emphasis mine):

Shortly after Pope Benedict XVI quelled concerns last week regarding the excommunication of a Holocaust denier, he caused another stir closer to home. He reportedly tapped a bishop who once described Hurricane Katrina as God’s punishment for sin and debauchery in New Orleans.

According to the Times of London, Father Gerhard Maria Wagner, an ultraconservative parish priest at Windischgarsten in Austria, published his theory of divine retribution in his parish newsletter four years ago.

Hat-tipping gay blogger Andrew Sullivan, Time's Amy Sullivan (no relation) expressed impatience at the Obama administration for not moving yet on ending the ban on openly gay personnel serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Sullivan is chagrined that a Kansas National Guardsman was reportedly discharged after Army brass discovered her MySpace page in which she declared she is a lesbian.

Here's the February 11 Swampland blog post in full, entitled, "They Didn't Ask, She Didn't Tell, and Yet...":