Cartoon image of the day

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They were going to raise $1 billion dollars. Not going to happen. They were going to walk away with this race. Polling indicates it's within the margin of error. They were going to demonize the top of the ticket and whoever it was that Romney selected as his running mate. He picked their worst nightmare. They were going to exploit the GOP's alleged "War on Women". The Republic National Convention unleashes their "War of Women".


It's panic time, gang, and if the media's behavior over the past few days is any indication, they leave no doubt as to where their sentiments lie. Not like there was any doubt but the naked shamelessness of it all almost makes us feel sorry for America's main stream media.



Michael Ramirez summing up the current state of affairs:

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Once again, lowering the bar

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Every time we take a heart-hearted vow to stop reporting out on media bias, they do something so astounding and so unhinged from any sense of decency, we feel compelled to wade back into the cesspool.




Forget Chris Christie, Ann Romney, Mia Love or Artur Davis. The story of the Republican National Convention is becoming not the folks on stage but the people reporting on them.


Yahoo News Chief David Chalian got hot mic'ed and wound up disgracing himself during an ABC News livecast:

(Via Breitbart.com):

"They are happy to have a party while black people (in New Orleans) are drowning"

The laughing afterwards is a very nice touch, dontcha think?



In what sort of sick, twisted and demented reality does this guy exist that he would utter something so spiteful and clueless? Oh, yeah. That's right. This horse's ass is a member of the bubble-wrapped, insular, group-think collective known as the American mainstream media, aka the hallelujah chorus for the statist ruling class of this country. What a sicko. And what an absolute indictment of that aforementioned pack of soulless jackals.

He has since been let go by ABC/Yahoo. Good riddance.

Before he gets picked up by MSNBC, however, to cover the Democratic National Convention, we're curious if he will offer up similar trenchant observations should any other Act of God befall the Gulf Coast next week. Short of that, I'm sure he has a rational explanation for why the President is campaigning in Virginia today while New Orleans is getting hammered.



And speaking of MSNBC:

MSNBC wants you to think the Republican Party hates minorities. So much so that the liberal news network cut minority speeches from it’s convention coverage.

When popular Tea Party candidate Ted Cruz, the GOP nominee for Senate, took the stage, MSNBC cut away from the Republican National Convention and the Hispanic Republican from Texas’ speech.

MSNBC stayed on commercial through former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis’ speech, as well. Davis, who recently became a Republican, is black.

Then, when Puerto Rican Governor Luis Fortuno’s wife Luce’ Vela Fortuño took the stage minutes later, MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews opted to talk over the First Lady’s speech.

And Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval? Noticeably missing from MSNBC, too.

Mia Love, a black candidate for Congress in Utah, was also ignored by MSNBC.

Will MSNBC conveniently manage not to show Governor Luis Fortuno’s speech tomorrow (Wednesday night) as well?

Obviously, MSNBC will go to any and all lengths to make you think that the Republican Party is as lily-white as, well, as lily-white as MSNBC's line-up of talking heads.


While playing "spot-the-Negro" amongst the delegates on the floor of the RNC may be a fun way to pass the time for the liberal-Left, they may have a point.

Below is a shot of the convention floor just yesterday:

Oops. Our bad. Rather a picture of the Obama re-election headquarters in Chicago just a few months ago.


bye.


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Remember when gas was $1.82 a gallon...?

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... these guys don't.

Rising gas prices used to be big news, but not so these days. Although the national average climbed to $3.56 on Feb. 20, setting a February record after going up nearly a month straight, there was far less coverage than in 2008. Broadcast networks repeatedly covered the rise under the Bush presidency. Gas prices bounced around eventually reaching $3.56-a-gallon on April 24, 2008.

The Business and Media Institute analyzed broadcast network news references to gas or fuel prices between Jan. 20 and Feb. 20, 2012 and from March 24 and April 24, 2008. BMI found that in the 2008 period there were more than 4 times as many gas prices stories, news briefs or news headlines on ABC, CBS and NBC as there were in 2012 (97 to 21).

Coverage during the time periods differed not only in quantity, but in tone as well. During Bush’s tenure, gas prices were a huge economic threat and cause of suffering. The networks also used the high gas prices to attack the administration. In 2012, the networks aired mostly matter-of-fact stories on the rising gas prices, and worried primarily that they would hinder the economic recovery, not that they are making people suffer.

Dismal broadcast network reports about “skyrocketing” gas prices filled the newscasts in 2008. There were reports about businesses closing, airlines struggling and truckers protesting -- all because of the high prices. One ABC report said families were facing the “tough choice” between food or fuel. Others said that “wallets were running on empty” and consumers were told over and over that there was no relief in sight. But by the end of November 2008, prices had collapsed to $1.82.

Related: Anecdotaly, we recall quarterly GDP figures quite often being revised upwards after the fact while Bush was in office and conversely, those same figures being routinely revised (unexpectedly!) downward under Obama.


We suppose that when you are in the tank for a man who has been nothing but passive-agressively hostile to oil production and who has on his team an energy secretary who actually said “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” , higher gas prices at the pump are really no big deal and, in fact, are something to be celebrated. If it weren't for these damn elections every four years, though.





We'll let Victor Davis Hanson wrap things up:

Obviously putting American oil off-limits and blocking the Keystone pipeline hardly encourage Middle East producers to make up the slack by doing things that we will not. Nor can we blame the “oil men” in the White House. Under the old calumny, the Bush-Cheney oil connections led to supposed profiteering that got gas up to an average of $1.85 when Bush left office in January 2009; apparently that slur is now inoperative given that gas has roughly doubled under the wind-and-solar team.

CNN loves them some parades...

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... especially as a backdrop for coverage of a brutal communist dictatorship.







It's just so much easier than having to address the more usavory aspects of North Korea.


And towards the end of this 3 minute clip, cue the obligatory useful (Western) idiot.


H/T: Ed Driscoll

Quickies (the crosshairs edition)

A round-up of articles, columns, news items and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.


Alternate paranthetical: The week that the professional liberal-Left media industrial complex augered-in in a fiery ball of hypocrisy, wild and baseless speculation and abject unprofessionalism.


The President made a fine speech at the memorial service/pep rally in Tucson this past Wednesday, striking the appropriate tone by backhanding the liberal-Left for their unhinged and appalling accusations against conservatives, Sarah Palin and the tea party.

And even now when everybody... everybody knows this guy had no political affiliations to speak of, we have not yet heard any apologies, corrections or walking back of the truly divisive and politically incendiary language from any of the same people making them though we feel no need to attempt a more civil tone as that is something we have possessed all along. So forgive us for thinking then that many of the President's supporters and cheerleaders have quite a bit to answer for and have willfully destroyed any credibility they may have thought they had by their words and actions this past week.


And with respect to the Tucson rally, Tammy Bruce tweeted:

"I went to a Massacre Rally and all I got was a lousy t-shirt."

James Taranto points out that not all massacres are created equally:

After the horrific shooting spree, the editorial board of New York Times offered a voice of reasoned circumspection: "In the aftermath of this unforgivable attack, it will be important to avoid drawing prejudicial conclusions . . .," the paper counseled.

Here's how the sentence continued: ". . . from the fact that Major Hasan is an American Muslim whose parents came from the Middle East."

The Tucson Safeway massacre prompted exactly the opposite reaction. What was once known as the paper of record egged on its readers to draw invidious conclusions that are not only prejudicial but contrary to fact. In doing so, the Times has crossed a moral line.

Allahpundit breaks down the media's predictable disdain for Palin's video/speech as compared to that of the President's.

Seriously, how dare she inject herself into this national tragedy by attempting to defend herself against all the crap we were making up about her out of the thin blue air. The nerve.





You know, since Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated JFK and since he was also a Marine, maybe the Marines should dial it back a notch.




Charles Krauthammer on the obvious Loughner/tea party/Sarah Palin links:

Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner’s fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords back to at least 2007, when he attended a townhall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who began an article thus: “I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it.”

The always civil and thoughtful David Harsanyi of the Denver Post sees right through the non-sense and calls B.S.

We can argue about those things, I know. We can cobble together stupid remarks by radio talk show hosts or union activists or congresspeople and smear half the country. We can play tit-for-tat with Tea Party banners and anti-war bumper stickers and dig up some figurative rhetoric that sounds over the top retroactively and blow it out of proportion.

But this impending conversation about civility and our climate of hate is not only a useless one, it also is meant to discourage dissent. It is a rigged talk, because not only do we — by any standard and context available — reside in a highly civil and peaceful political system, violence is almost non-existent. The Tea Party didn't pick up pitchforks and storm the White House; they knocked off Republicans in primaries.

Now, we may want to have a conversation about our policies regarding the mentally ill or the need for more gun control (though I may disagree with the outcome) because, after all, they are relevant to the horrible events of the past week. But conservatives should be wary of any national dialogue about civility or any beer summit about the specter of political violence.

It is nothing more than a setup.

Yep. Roughly translated we believe Harsanyi is telling liberals they can take their "civility" and "conversation" and shove it in their ear.




B-Daddy is worried about a potential double-dip recession brought on, in part, by a housing market that has never been allowed to properly deflate and state economies that are an absolute mess.



Uh-oh. Tucson shooting victim not sticking with the liberal-Left's media narrative. W.C. Varones has the details, here.



The Scratching Post: Meat: good. Fur: bad. Why?

Quote of the day

"We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird. I sit by the door with my purse handy. If you see it on the news one night, know that I got out fast..."

That from Lynda Sorenson in an email regarding Jared Loughner of whom she was a classmate at community college in Tucson.

Thus far, any and all accounts of Loughner point to him simply being a deranged wacko but my oh my has the press tried to paint him as being motivated by something other than just his own lunacy.

Captain Ed has a good round-up of the media hypocrisy that exists with respect to how different shootings are handled, here.

Just remember that when jumping to conclusions, Loughner was a white male. That's about all you really need to know in order to get started.

It simply cannot be

The sometimes infuriating Joe Scarborough on a specific trend he notices in the media:

“This is curious and it was our staff that did it this time. I’m always curious when there is a controversial issue … that mainstream media doesn’t like, they’ll always will say a George W. Bush appointee or a Reagan appointee … when a Democrat does something unpopular they never say Clinton appointee. Never. Never.”

Love the body language and words of co-host Mika Brzezinski. She simply refuses to accept the possibility that there may be some media bias out there. It was her Pauline Kael moment.

Same as it ever was

From the pages of America's paper of record and via W.C. Varones:

Republican insurgents from the far right did well in Tuesday’s primaries. What their campaigns lack in logic, compassion and sensible policy seems to be counterbalanced by a fiercely committed voter base that is nowhere to be seen on the Democratic side.

The "insurgents" of 2010 are simply the "temper tantrum"-throwing two-year olds of 1994 according to the state-run media.

In November of 1994, right after Republicans took control of Congress for the first time since the 1950s, Peter Jennings went on ABC radio and delivered a commentary that tells you everything you need to know about elite, liberal journalism.

“Some thoughts on those angry voters,” Jennings began. “Ask parents of any two-year-old and they can tell you about those temper tantrums: the stomping feet, the rolling eyes, the screaming. It’s clear that the anger controls the child and not the other way around. It’s the job of the parent to teach the child to control the anger and channel it in a positive way. Imagine a nation full of uncontrolled two-year-old rage. The voters had a temper tantrum last week. …Parenting and governing don’t have to be dirty words: the nation can’t be run by an angry two-year-old.”

"The others" of the ruling class don't appreciate disobedience.


As always...

Don't sweat it. They're just numbers.

The U.S. may lose 824,000 jobs when the government releases its annual revision to employment data on Feb. 5, showing the labor market was in worse shape during the recession than known at the time.

Chalk up one more tally in our anecdotal observations of how the economy and unemployment numbers are treated differently under two different presidencies.

Under Bush, GDP numbers were quite often revised upwards... in defiance of low expectations? Under Obama, however, GDP numbers, such as for the 3rd quarter of last year, get revised downward (twice!) and unemployment numbers get bumped up... in defiance of high expectations?

... sneaky little Asians

For a nice little microcosm of the current state of inner city public education and the media, please check out KT's post on school violence in Philadelphia, here and please also check out some of the brilliant insight in the comments.

A different slant on newspaper bailouts (UPDATED)

First, a little light reading on an accusation made by a former ACORN employee that the New York Times spiked a story on President Obama’s association with the community organizing umbrella group because it would be “game changer”, here.

Now, a little more about this business of bailing out newspapers, the current proposed bill that would prohibit newsies from endorsing candidates and whether or not they warrant it, which we posted on earlier this week.

Pops made a very good point which we’ve decided to liberate from the comment section. He said:

The concept that newspaper could not endorse a candidate as an "educational" publication is meaningless. The main endorsements are performed in the choice of articles to be run and the manner in which the articles are presented. I quit the LATimes when I found anti-Bush commentary in the cartoon page.

He’s spot-on. The ban on official endorsements is absolutely toothless as the newspaper is free to run whatever news stories they want and which can be used to effectively slant or steer the narrative in whichever direction the editor wishes.

We recall with great clarity during the run-up to the 2004 election that one could set their watch by two anti-Bush and/or anti-Iraq war stories showing up on the front page of the L.A. Times (one above the fold and one below) every. single. Sunday. (We’re not quite sure that is the proper analogy but we’re rolling with it.)

For those of you out there that want to whine that we’re just reflexive, right-wingers who want to trash Old Media because it’s the popular thing to do, get over yourselves. We still link to the major dailies in the country on the right hand margin (including the L.A. and New York Times) because it’s free, we don’t fear liberal bias and we, yep, still read them because we know we (and you) are skilled enough readers to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Exit question: For those who are opposed to a bailout of the newspapers on the rationale that newspapers would be fearful of biting the hand that feeds them, how is the current state of journalism, in effect, any different?

UPDATE #1: Fox News has obtained an answering machine message of NYT reporter Stephanie Strom explaining to ACORN whistle-blower, “Anita” that her bosses spiked the story on the Obama/ACORN relationship. Link here, to Hot Air which has the audio of the recording. Also in video clip, Dick Morris recounts how the Times, which originally broke the Clinton/Whitewater scandal, told Morris that they would kill any further investigation if they could get access to an exclusive interview with Bill Clinton for whom Morris worked for at the time. And your tax dollars will be going to preserve this “journalism”?

Now if we could only find this channel....

Chris "The Thrill" Matthews of MSNBC gives an objective assessment of the inaugural proceedings:

(Sorry, inbed no worky. Please click here.)

You know its bad when even Keith Olbermann makes a light-hearted attempt to talk him down off the ledge. Matthews, however, remained undeterred. Hilarious.

… Sluuuurrrp.

Suit, Lies and Videotape

"The more important point is that the Obama campaign, to my knowledge, has played no role in the decision made by the Times."

In a normal election, making the explicit point that the candidate’s campaign had nothing to do with a media outlet’s decision would seem to be redundant but given that this is no normal election and given that the media’s treatment of the subject candidate vis a vis the other candidate has been extremely suspect, this statement speaks volumes.

More here from Alan Dershowitz on the videotape the L.A. Times refuses to show as they allege it came from a confidential source - excuse #4 that was 3 days in the making.

We don’t believe them anymore.

H/T: LGF

Quote of the Day

The “mainstream” media, or what is left of it, has favored and fawned over Obama from the start--even before the current parade of official endorsements. Much of the coverage has been egregiously slanted. Just ask Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Who said it? Capt. Ed? Brent Bozell? Ann Coulter? Nope.

That assessment would come from none other than one working in the belly of the beast in the person of Howard Fineman, Newsweek's senior Washington Correspondent and columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington Bureau Chief.

Exit question: To highlight the absurdity of Big Media's behavior, ask yourself what got all the play last week? Biden's paranoid-delusional rant about Obama's foreign policy inexperience or Sarah Palin's wardrobe?

Catching up with Friends

We’re back in the proverbial saddle today… back from Boston and in front of a keyboard and screen of a computer that hopefully has all those new-fangled functions like cut’n’paste, hyperlink, multiple windows, etc. fully operational.

We may post some thoughts on the course we took later, especially with regard to some of our newly-minted naval officers. Not good. Now that we're back we checked in at our "Friends of..." and noted the following:

KT’s exit question: If government has come in to bail-out auto manufacturers and huge lending institutions, what’s to stop them from coming to the rescue of Big Media whose circulation, ratings and ad revenues are in a seemingly irreversible slide?



(Click to enlarge. Please note: these are not absolute numbers…. these are just the changes in one calendar year. schnikeys)

Some telling numbers linked to in the piece that contend there is a vested interest in Big Media becoming a government protectorate.

And with whom would you rather be serving aboard a U.S. Navy combatant or in a foxhole: an openly gay individual or a convicted felon? Foxie has an interesting post, one in which we don’t necessarily agree but hey, she served…and we, uhhh... sort of served and thus Advantage: Foxfier, in that regard.

Also, did M.T. Suit really diss wounded servicemen and women over in Germany, as his trip over to Europe and the Middle East, billed as a Senatorial fact-finding mission, was ostensibly a campaign rally and thus off-limits to base hospitals? Read more, here.

A quick word about the Cotton Candy Kid’s roadie: We’re a little late to the game so we won’t waste too much time on a subject that has been flogged to death but his speech to the Germans was pretty standard fare for the man which means that there were one or two things in the speech that were perfectly Obamaesque and thusly mildly to moderately irritating.

“I know my country has not perfected itself.”

Never mind the implicit critiques of this country’s foreign policy made on foreign soil that are contained in that statement, what is explicit is “the city on the hill” that the Messiah envisions for all us unwashed and this notion of a “Heaven of Earth” that has been simultaneously one of the goals and theoretical underpinnings of Socialist/collectivist thought. The condescension and presumptuousness is irksome and is in direct contrast to what we see in the genuine humility (of someone who has freaking been there and not merely visited there) of John McCain.

“The Christian… imagines the better future of the human species… in the image of heavenly joy…. We, on the other hand, will have this heaven on earth.” - Moses Hess, A Communist Confession of Faith, 1846

Google: When even an attempt at an honest effort is asking too much.

From "TV Watch" on Google's Start Page:

10-11:30PM PBS, TV-PG P.O.V.: Election Day Relive the 2004 election all over again. Unfortunately the results will stay the same. *Check local listings

Perspective

Democrats opining on media bias: We’re not quite sure what this guy’s point is. Its just politics… Suck it up, Rendell.