Allen West

Former Congressman Allen West (R-Fl.) had some harsh words for America's media Monday.

Appearing on Fox News's On the Record, West said, "I think that we cannot continue to go on believing that all we can do is ask the President what his favorite color is and continue to have these softball interviews" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN's Soledad O'Brien got a much-needed education about political ideologies from Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) Thursday.

When she brought up a quote from the Vice Chairman of the National Communist Party refuting the Congressman's claim there are 78 to 81 Communists in Congress, West simply replied, "I don't care what he says" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

On today's CNN Newsroom, anchor Kyra Phillips interviewed Rep. Allen West (R-FL) about several topics.  One was gay marriage (video here).  West said that it's a states' issue and he didn't want to be taken "down a rabbit hole to discuss things that really aren't that important.  This disturbed Phillips:

"You know, we have a saying in the military: You don't receive flak unless you're over the target," retired Army colonel Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) told NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell in an interview earlier this week.

"I think that too often on the Republican side of the House" that conservatives have been gun-shy about "taking the flak" from the liberal media for their conservatism. "When you start to water down your message, when you start to say I can maybe get the other side to really like me, then you get yourself in trouble" and the liberal media are "going to hate you anyway," West added. [see video of the interview embedded below the page break]

Rep. Allen West (Fla.), the only Republican member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), is considering leaving the CBC after a fellow member of the caucus practically compared Tea Party members to lynch mob members.

Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) recently told a gathering in Miami that Tea Party members "would love to see us as second-class citizens" and to see blacks "hanging on a tree."

New York Times staffer Jennifer Steinhauer reported the development yesterday on The Caucus blog. Today the Times ran a condensed version of that blog post on page A16 and headlined it "Taking Issue With Criticism," as though Rep. Andre Carson's comments were legitimate critiques of the Tea Party movement.

Using a time-honored establishment press technique, an unbylined Associated Press report out of Indianapolis this evening ("Ind. lawmaker's lynching reference riles tea party;" saved here at my web host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) twisted the real news about Congressman Andre Carson's inexcusable, hateful comments at a Congressional Black Caucus-sponsored event in Miami on August 22 by making the story largely about the reaction to what he said. By doing so, the AP largely diverted attention from Carson's clear primary targets: Tea Party-sympathetic congressional colleagues.

The AP report also opens by contending that what Carson said was only a "metaphor." Really.

"Black lawmakers are embarking on a month-long campaign Monday to address the staggering unemployment rate among African Americans, an issue that has become a growing source of tension between members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Obama administration," Washington Post's Ylan Q. Mui noted in the open of her August 8 page A3 story, "Black caucus launches minority jobs campaign."

Yet curiously absent from her 16-paragraph story, however, was any mention of the CBC's sole Republican member, conservative Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), who has been decidedly much harsher on President Obama than the caucus's Democratic members.

For example, here's West's press release for August 4, President Obama's 50th birthday:

On Thursday's NBC Today, congressional correspondent Kelly O'Donnell reported on a war of words between Republican Congressman Allen West and Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "...West, a freshman Republican who hit 'send' on a nasty e-mail to Wasserman-Schultz....Democratic congresswomen accuse West of sexual harassment."

While O'Donnell quoted from West's email – in which he referred to Wasserman-Schultz as "vile, unprofessional, and despicable" and "not a lady" – O'Donnell failed to bring up past offensive comments Wasserman-Shultz directed toward West. In the fall of 2010, Wasserman-Schultz personally led a protest outside West's campaign office, calling him an "extremist" who "wears his extreme disrespect as a badge of honor" and "thinks it's okay to objectify and denigrate women."

 On Friday’s World News on ABC, correspondent Jonathan Karl took a moment to go beyond the budget debate between House Republicans and President Obama with the GOP unwilling to support a tax increase, and noted that House Democrats have also been just as resistant to voting for cutting the growth of Medicare spending. But the same night's CBS Evening News focused on Republican reluctance to support some of the budget proposals and even gave the impression at one point that congressional Democrats were willing to curtail Medicare growth.

On ABC, after recounting some of the Republicans who have resisted voting for budget plans that have been brought up, Karl continued:

CBS hounded four Republicans from the left during a town hall on the economy which aired on Tuesday's Early Show. Bob Schieffer, Erica Hill, and Rebecca Jarvis pressed Reps. Paul Ryan and Allen West, Senator Tom Coburn, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to consider tax hikes to deal with the deficit. Schieffer also specifically accused the three members of Congress of "doing nothing" to fix the economy.

The two online questions which Jarvis took from viewers touted Democratic talking points about deficits under former President George W. Bush and how cutting the federal budget would lead to an increase in the unemployment rate, due to the laying off of federal employees. She also vigorously pursued both Rep.  Ryan and Rep. West. about the issue of jobs. In the first instance, the CBS business correspondent used an earlier answer from Haley, which emphasized the issue, to actually accuse the greater Republican Party of not paying enough attention to this issue, as well with the overall issue of the economy:

Wow, talk about digging deep.

Then again, Rachel Maddow's critique of Congressman Paul Ryan's proposed reform of Medicare did extend beyond the word "kill." It also included the words "killed" and "killing."

Just how the GOP plan does this Maddow didn't say on her MSNBC show last night, what with inconvenient facts lying in wait to undermine her allegation of homicide.

She decided instead to repeat the same thing over and over, nine times in the first 11 minutes of the program,  as if repetition will make her wishes come true (video after page break) --

New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer piled on the ideological labels in her Friday profile of Florida’s freshman Republican Rep. Allen West, a black conservative and Tea party activist: “Conservative Congressman’s Star Power Extends Beyond Florida District.”

Steinhauer’s profile, while not overtly hostile, contained no less than eight ideological labels to describe the “conservative” West, not including the first word of the headline, while his comments on feminism and support for Israel were labeled “incendiary.” This from a newspaper that constantly refers to the truly incendiary Al Sharpton as a “civil rights activist.” A sampling:

But the most compelling part of Representative Allen B. West of Florida is his own biography, there for all to see: an African-American Tea Party activist Republican congressman and ally of hard-right Israelis who, after his beloved career in the Army ended under a cloud, defeated the sitting Democrat in a largely white, politically polarized district here and quickly became one of the right’s most visible spokesmen.
....

Mr. West’s popularity among conservatives goes far beyond South Florida. He was chosen to give the keynote speech in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and is frequently featured on the Fox News Channel and in other conservative settings where he enjoys explaining, reiterating or unleashing any number of incendiary remarks concerning what he often calls “the other side.”

MSNBC's Chris Matthews honored Martin Luther King Jr. Day by accusing white Republicans of being afraid of black people. During a Monday night Hardball special called "Obama's America," Matthews insultingly asked former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele if, at GOP conventions, black-Americans at those events were told not to "bunch up" because "you'll scare these people" and added: "Did you fear that if you got together with some other African-Americans these white guys might get scared of you?"

Steele, who was the only Republican on the panel, seemed shocked by the question as he responded to Matthews: "No! What are you talking about?" and then proceeded to cite the successful candidacies of Tim Scott, Allen West and others in the GOP field that would suggest white Republicans weren't exactly afraid of, as Matthews put it, "black folk hanging together."

The following is the full exchange from the panel that featured Steele along with the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson and Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards, as it was aired on the January 17 edition of Hardball:

(video and audio after the break)

 As he hosted a special two-hour edition of Countdown on Saturday night to cover the violent attack on Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann ended up delivering a "Special Comment" in which he called for an end to the use of violent imagery by political figures of all ideologies, even apologizing for his own history, but he also at one point seemed to describe Sarah Palin and other conservative public figures as "slightly less madmen" than the gunman who attacked Giffords. Olbermann:

We will not because tonight what Mrs. Palin and what Mr. Kelly and what Congressman West and what Ms. Angle and what Mr. Beck and what Mr. O'Reilly and what you and I must understand was that the man who fired today did not fire at a Democratic Congresswoman and her supporters. He was not just a madman incited by 1,000 daily temptations by slightly less madmen to do things they would not rationally condone.

Although the MSNBC host only provided one example of his own past misdeeds - which involved a comment he made about Hillary Clinton in April 2008 - Olbermann’s own history also includes a June 2006 case in which he depicted an image of conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh as a target of gunfire, and in October 2008 when he showed a cartoon image of FNC’s Bill O’Reilly being beaten bloody by the Stewie Griffin character from a Family Guy DVD extra scene. And just in November of last year, Olbermann complained that President Obama would likely negotiate with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over tax policy "instead of kicking him in the ass."

 On Saturday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Bob Orr filed a report on the incoming Republican congressional freshmen, and, after noting that Rep.-elect Allen West was taking a "hard line" on federal spending, and after showing a clip of the Florida Republican raising doubts about compromising "your principles," the CBS correspondent used the cliche "partisan bickering" as he warned that such views could end the recent "collaborative spirit" in Congress, and plugged President Obama’s call for "cooperation." Orr:

It's a warning of sorts that the collaborative spirit of the recent lame duck Congress may soon dissolve into renewed partisan bickering. President Obama, vacationing in Hawaii, today made a preemptive bid for continued cooperation.

After soundbites from Republican Rep.-elect Ben Quayle and the Politico’s David Mark, Orr concluded his report predicting that Tea Party Republicans could "cause trouble" within the Republican caucus:

  On Saturday’s Fox News Watch, liberal FNC analyst Alan Colmes asserted that the Tea Party was a "bunch of angry white guys who went around and put up racist signs." As a debate ensued pitting Colmes against the other three panel members, he later defiantly asked, "How many blacks did they elect?" leading Jim Pinkerton of the New America Foundation to fire back: "The Tea Partiers elected two - Allen West and Tim Scott, Florida and South Carolina."

Host Jon Scott began the segment by assuming that the liberal Colmes would not have any complaints about the mainstream media’s coverage of the elections. After Colmes voiced his approval of the media, Scott sarcastically posed: "For instance, the Tea Party. Tea Party always got favorable coverage, right? Or fair coverage?"

Colmes then unleashed on the Tea Party: "Oh, they got, look, the Tea Party was a bunch of angry white guys who went around and put up racist signs at these at, these events on lawn chairs who had nothing better to do on weekends than sit on lawn chairs with signs suggesting Obama was a Muslim who wasn’t born in this country."

It seems that whenever you hear about a "rightwing" hate crime nowadays, it turns out the the perpetrator turns out to be a leftwinger...much to the disappointment of liberals who continue to maintain the fiction about a violent Tea Party movement. And the latest case of a violent "rightwinger" who turns out to really be a leftwinger comes from my own county of Broward here in South Florida. With my condolences to the left who have been "robbed" of yet another example of supposed Tea Party "hate crime," here is a report on the arrest of the suspect by Bob Norman of the Broward Palm Beach New Times:

The woman charged by the FBI with making a threat that led to the lockdown of more than 300 Broward County schools after hearing the words of right-wing talker Joyce Kaufman isn't a member of the Tea Party -- she's a member of the Green Party.

Pot calling the kettle clueless . . .

On his MSNBC show this evening, Ed Schultz twice called newly-elected Republican congressman Allen West  "ignorant."  For good measure, Schultz said West "didn't have a clue."

Schultz was incensed that West had observed that Washington, DC--home of big government--was relatively immune to the economic woes that have befallen the rest of the country.  View video after the jump.

By interesting coincidence, I had occasion to overfly Leesburg, VA in the DC suburbs this past weekend, and for the first time saw what McMansions look like [see photo I snapped after break].   Now why would Loudoun County, Virginia have the highest per-capita income in the country? Steel mills?

CNN's Don Lemon tossed softballs at leftist writer Tim Wise on Sunday's Newsroom, mostly reading back excerpts from his latest column, which the anchor labeled a "withering rebuke of...the 'white right.'" Lemon even twice emphasized how Wise has apparently received death threats over the column, where he slammed "conservative old white people [who] have pretty much always been the bad guys."

The CNN anchor interviewed Wise for nearly eight minutes during a segment 10 minutes into the 7 pm Eastern hour. Lemon began with "withering rebuke" label and continued that the author "begins with a disclaimer that he is not referring to all white people, and that his essay is not anti-white. He says it is addressed to- quote, 'The white community that is right-wing.'" He then turned to his guest and seemed to compliment him before asking his first question: "I was actually- I have to be honest- a little bit stunned when I read this because your language is unusually rough and raw. We know that you tell it like it is. You called the election results a temper tantrum and you sound mad as hell....do you regret using any of this fiery rhetoric?"

The leftist writer emphatically stood behind his incendiary column:

 ABC’s World News Sunday gave attention to black Republicans who have a good chance of getting elected in this year’s congressional elections, focusing on Tim Scott of South Carolina and Ryan Frazier of Colorado, and even showing a clip of Allen West of Florida. Anchor Dan Harris set up the report: "Two years after the historic election of America's first African-American President, there is now a huge wave of black candidates running against Barack Obama. Many of these candidates have the full support of the largely white Republican Party and the Tea Party."

As correspondent Ron Claiborne filed a report, early on a soundbite was shown of South Carolina’s Scott explaining why he believes in the Tea Party movement. Scott: "I think if you believe in conservative government, if you believe in free markets or capitalism, if you believe in not spending money you don't have, you're a Tea Party member as well."

Claiborne soon informed viewers that the South Carolina Republican is expected to make history: "If Scott is elected from this Charleston district, he would be the first African-American Republican elected to the House of Representatives from the Deep South since 1901. This year, 42 African-Americans ran for the Republican nomination for House seats; 14 of them won. And, like Republicans everywhere this year, they are harsh critics of President Obama."

In Friday's 3PM ET hour of live coverage on MSNBC, anchor Peter Alexander asked black Republican congressional candidate Allen West of Florida about "aligning" with the tea party movement: "the Tea Party has raised concerns that it may have, I guess, racism built within it. We have seen some racist signs at past events...are African-American candidates aligning themselves with the tea party?" [Audio available here]

West responded: "The principles and values that I espouse, limited government, lower taxes, individual responsibility, and accountability, liberty, and honoring the traditions of our constitutional republic, are connecting me with those grass roots Americans that attend tea party rallies. And I've spoken at four to five of those rallies and I've not seen any racist type of signs."

On Wednesday, Alexander talked with correspondent Luke Russert about the fact that 32 African-Americans are running for Congress as Republicans. Russert noted with surprise how "these candidates are actually soliciting support from the tea party, a group that a lot of folks have claimed to be racist against African-Americans."