While channel surfing last night, I watched a segment on ABC’s Nightline entitled “Classroom Bullies.” This short segment about Obama’s speech to government school students is a great example of why the American people find it so difficult to trust the mainstream media. The transcript for last night’s Nightline has not yet been posted, but you can view the video at http://abcnews.go.com/nightline.

The sement begins by asking, “How does a speech that focuses on kids staying in school and doing their homework become such a burning political issue at least in some corners?” Nightline than promised a blow-by-blow “Anatomy of a Controversy.”

Nightline’s timeline begins on August 26, when the White House announced the speech. “The next day,” Nightline says, “a conservative web site criticizes the speech without even knowing what the president will say exactly.” The web site, “The Daily Paul,” which was originally set up to promote Rep. Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, did not, as Nightline claims, criticize Obama’s speech. The site criticized the “menu of classroom activities” that the Department of Education asked teachers to implement before, during, and after Obama’s speech. http://www.dailypaul.com/node/104812

That “lesson plan” was the principal part of the controversy surrounding Obama’s speech, yet Nightline made no mention of it at all during the entire segment. They attempted to convince viewers that the speech itself was the only reason people had concerns, and that that concern was being whipped up by “bullies” on the conservative side.

Nightline goes on to claim that, “By September 2, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are all over it.” A clip of Limbaugh is then shown with him saying, “[Obama] goes out and tell kids, ‘You’ve got to take personal responsibility.’ He doesn’t even do that in his own life.” However, there is a bit of a problem with Nightline’s claim concerning Limbaugh. Limbaugh was on vacation in Hawaii last week and had guest hosts from August 31 to September 4. How could he have made that comment “by September 2? Could the clip of Limbaugh have come from before he went on vacation? No. In fact, the clip was from his September 8 program, i.e., after Obama delivered his speech. Limbaugh listeners who listened to his show yesterday would have realized that immediately. However, even non-listeners would know that Nightline tried to pull a fast one since, at the end of the segment, they played another clip of Limbaugh and noted that it was from “today’s” (September program. Not only is Limbaugh wearing the very same shirt, the screen shot on his computer monitor is exactly the same as in the first clip.

Nightline then noted that when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech to students in 1991, there was “some controversy, but it was nothing compared to the preemptive and fierce nature of this one.”

Of course, Nightline once again failed to note that the preemptive nature of this one was due to the lesson plan released by the DOE a week before the speech. There was no lesson plan in 1991. Nightline also failed to note that, among others on the left, Democrats, the National Education Association, and the Washington Post, strongly criticized Bush’s speech, which, like Obama’s, had a positive message for students. In fact, the Democrats had hearings on the speech and even directed the General Accounting Office to investigate it.

Liberals love to say that Fox News has a conservative bias, yet I suspect they would be hard-pressed to cite a single example of bias as egregious as this Nightline example. Unfortunately, the mainstream media’s smear jobs against the “conservative echo chamber” occur every day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryEGmkjv8R8

And now, here is the exchange between Bob Cobb and Elaine:

WAITER: Are you ready to order?

ELAINE: Oh God. What are you getting Bob? (Maestro looks at Elaine with an annoyed look on his face)

MAESTRO: Good question. (to waiter) We’ll need a few minutes.(Maestro puts his head in his hand. He is visibly upset)

MAESTRO: You know, I’m sorry but, I didn’t mention it earlier but actually I preferred to be called Maestro.

ELAINE: Excuse me?

MAESTRO: Well, ya know I am a conductor.

ELAINE: Yeah, so?

MAESTRO: Oh I suppose it’s O.K. for Leonard Burnstein to be called Maestro because he conducted the New York Philharmonic. So he gets to be called Maestro and I don’t.

Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman’s column appeared in the Lawrence Journal-World on June 3 with the headline “Wichita doctor’s killer didn’t act alone.” That headline was contradicted by the first two lines of Goodman’s column: “It is believed that the shooter acted alone. Surely, that’s true.” Nevertheless, Goodman strongly suggested that Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly should repent for his verbal targeting of “Tiller the Baby Killer.”

Mike Hendricks of The Kansas City Star penned a ridiculous column with the headline “Tiller’s killers were many.” According to hyperventilating Hendricks, Roeder’s accomplices include “every one who has ever called Tiller’s late term abortion clinic a murder mill,” everyone who ever called Tiller “Tiller the Killer,” and “groups who spent decades fomenting hate toward a man who simply believed that he was serving a purpose by being one of the few doctors in the country performing late-term abortions.”

Of course, the suggestion that Roeder had accomplices is inane. However, there is a long history of liberals blaming the rhetoric of others for the actions of one person or a small group of people. Bill Clinton did so in 1995, when he blamed Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-show hosts for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

“We hear so many loud and angry voices in America today,” Clinton told a college group in Minneapolis after the bombing, “whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other. They spread hate. They leave the impression, by their very words, that violence is acceptable.”

As William Safire noted in an April 27, 1995 New York Times essay, “The impression Mr. Clinton left, by his very words, was that the Oklahoma bombing had been incited by words ‘regularly said over the airwaves’ by his political critics.”

Of course, when McVeigh was arrested, he did not have a copy of one of Limbaugh’s books. Instead he was wearing a T-shirt with the image of Abraham Lincoln on the front with the words “sic semper tyrannis” (Thus, always, to tyrants), the state motto of Virginia and the words John Wilkes Booth shouted after shooting Lincoln. The back of the T-shirt included a tree and three blood droplets and the Thomas Jefferson quote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

In other words, McVeigh’s terrorism appears to have been inspired by the man from whom William JEFFERSON Clinton’s got his middle name, not by a conservative talk-show host.

Nevertheless, Robert Rowland, a professor of communications and rhetorical criticism at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, said that Clinton was “exactly on target.” “People on talk radio may not be saying, ‘Go out and throw bombs,’” Rowland said. “But there is a tendency for human beings to take the seeds of an idea and run with it.” Again, the “seeds” appear to have been in the form of Jefferson’s “tree of liberty,” not talk radio.

Rowland last year began suggesting what could be called a preemptive blame game regarding Barack Obama. “It is both a ridiculous comment and a dangerous comment,” Rowland said of Sarah Palin’s comment that Obama was “palling around with terrorists.” “Rhetorical violence leads to real violence sometimes.”

Of course, the statement was not ridiculous. Bill Ayers was indeed a domestic terrorist whose Weather Underground, in addition to more than two dozen other bombings, bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, and the United States Department of State Building. (Charges against Ayers and his wife were dropped because the FBI used illegal wiretaps to investigate them.) As far as being Obama’s pal, in a new afterword to his memoir, Ayers describes himself as a “family friend” of Barack Obama. Of course, the mainstream media never examined the full extent of the Ayers-Obama friendship. In addition to Obama launching his political career in 1995 in Ayers’ Hyde Park home, Obama in 1989 met his wife-to-be, Michelle, at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin, the same firm that also employed Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers’ wife. Ayers also started the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and selected Obama to be its first chairman of the board, a position he held until 2003.

Obama’s supporters attempted to make the argument that Obama was just eight years old when Ayers was a terrorist. However, Obama was a grown man on September 11, 2001, when Ayers told the New York Times, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Apologists for Ayers and Obama claim that Ayers misspoke. However, both Ayers and Dohrn were clearly unrepentant in the 2002 documentary “The Weather Underground.” (If you have a subscription to Netflix, the documentary can be viewed online at www.netflix.com.)

Interestingly, there does not seem to be any record of Prof. Rowland decrying the dangerous rhetoric used by liberals during the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency. Did he react when liberals called Bush a fascist and compared him to Hitler? Did he react when Air America host Randi Rhoads did a piece on Bush being shot? How about when the UK Guardian asked, “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?” When U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu said she would punch Bush in the nose? If Rowland said anything, he must have limited his comments to private conversations.

Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s pusillanimous chief of staff, also participated in the preemptive blame game earlier this year. “And I think people like Rush Limbaugh and now Dick Cheney, former vice president as you pointed out and as everyone knows, are doing some of that fear-mongering, too,” Wilkerson said on MSNBC (where else?). “This is not good. There are some crazy people in this country. There are Unabombers. There are Lee Harvey Oswalds. There are Sirhan Sirhans. And these are the kind of people that listen to this kind of fear-mongering and it’s dangerous and so someone’s got to start talking out about it.”

Of course, Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist, who, in addition to assassinating John F. Kennedy, had tried to murder Edwin Walker, a retired Army major general known for his conservative political views. (Liberals, including a young Dan Rather, initially tried to blame conservatives and their “climate of hate” for Kennedy’s assassination.) According to his mother, Sirhan Sirhan killed Kennedy because of his Arab nationalism. And the Unabomber? He is an environmental extremist whose manifesto sounded much like Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”? (Try this quizz at http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html) Not one of the crazy people Wilkerson mentioned was a conservative, let alone inspired by the words of conservatives.

Interestingly, Wilkerson, who spent most of his adult life in the military, was silent after Army Private William Long was murdered by Abdulhakim Muhammad, a Muslim convert, in Little Rock just two days after Tiller was murdered. Muhammad reportedly killed Long and wounded another soldier because of what he said soldiers “had done to Muslims in the past.” As far as I know, no liberal has suggested that Muhammad was inspired by Obama, Dick Durbin, John Kerry, Jack Murtha, or any other Democrat who has attacked the troops in the past.

While liberals are eager to point their fingers at conservatives even when conservatives are clearly not to blame, they seem unable to make a connection between someone’s rhetoric and terrorists’ actions even when terrorists themselves say they were inspired by that person’s rhetoric.

For example, in 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appeared on “60 Minutes” and responded, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it,” after Lesley Stahl noted that sanctions against Iraq had reportedly led to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. (I have posted the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4.)

In a 1997 interview with CNN, Osama bin Laden referred to Iraqi children, as recorded in “Holy War, Inc.” by CNN’s Peter Bergen:

“Asked what message he would send President Clinton, bin Laden answered: ‘Mentioning the name of Clinton or that of the American government provokes disgust and revulsion. This is because the name of the American government and the name of Clinton and Bush directly reflect in our minds … the picture of the children who died in Iraq.’ He was referring to the fact that, by May 1996, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990, for its continued violations of U.N. resolutions.

“He continued: ‘The hearts of Muslims are filled with hatred towards the United States of America and the American president. The president has a heart that knows no words. A heart that kills hundreds of children definitely knows no words. Our people on the Arabian Peninsula will send him messages with no words because he does not know any words. If there is a message that I may send through you, then it is a message I address to the mothers of American troops who came here with their military uniforms walking proudly up and down our land…. I say that this represents a blatant provocation to over one billion Muslims. To these mothers I say if they are concerned for their sons, then let them object to the American government’s policy.’”

Those “messages” were delivered in August 1998, when two U.S. embassies were bombed in Africa, in October 2000, when the USS Cole was bombed, and, of course, on 9/11.

Just three months before 9/11, Mohamed al-’Owhali, convicted in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, appeared in court to be sentenced for that bombing. According to CNN, “Al-’Owhali’s attorneys have argued U.S. policy toward Iraq was a motivating factor for militant Muslims such as al-’Owhali, a 24-year-old Saudi, and his leader, Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, whom the United States accuses of leading a decade-long terrorist conspiracy to kill Americans and destroy U.S. property.” Defense attorney David Baugh played a video of Albright’s 1996 interview with “60 Minutes” as an explanation for al-’Owhali’s actions.

So there you have. There is clear evidence that Albright’s rhetoric concerning Iraq led to 9/11 and other “messages with no words,” yet liberals apparently cannot see the connection there. However, they see connections between conservatives’ rhetoric and the acts of terrorists, even when there is no evidence of such connections. Of course, these are the same people who see a right to abortion and no right to bear arms in the Constitution.

The book includes the following chapters:

Sources:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/19/AR2007101900835_pf.html
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2005/10/two_experts_on_1.html

Admittedly, I’m no Spielberg, but I think you’ll get a kick out of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vn9vlZEk0o&feature=channel_page

Interestingly, many in the media made similar claims before Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president. For example, according to the January 19, 1981 issue of Newsweek, “When Ronald Reagan steps into the White House next week, he will inherit the most dangerous economic crisis since Franklin Roosevelt took office 48 years ago.”

Is Obama really facing an economic crisis greater than Reagan faced 28 years ago?

The misery index (the sum of the inflation rate and the unemployment rate) was 21.98 in June 1980. It was down to 10.07 when Reagan left office in January 1988. The misery index was 7.77 in November 2008.

Given that the misery index was nearly three times as high when Reagan became president than it is today, it appears the claim that Obama will inherit the greatest economic crisis since FDR is quite an exaggeration.

Source: http://www.miseryindex.us/raw_data.asp

In the House of Representatives, 61 percent of Democrats (152 for, 96 against) voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Ninety-two of the 103 southern Democrats voted against it. Among House Republicans, 80 percent (138 for, 34 against) voted for it.

Republicans also showed a high level of support for LBJ’s nomination of Thurgood Marshall as the first black Supreme Court justice in 1967. A large percentage of Senate Democrats either voted against the nomination of Marshall or did not vote at all.

Leubsdorf either deliberately lied in his column or he is woefully ignorant of the facts. In either case, the column should not have been published.

Another commentator, Joy Behar, has called Barack Obama’s critics “unpatriotic.”

Over 59 million Americans voted for John McCain on November 4. Should we, as Varney suggests, get out of the way? Are we, as Behar claims, unpatriotic if we criticize the president-elect?

As a fifth great-grandson of Matthew Lyon, I turned to him for answers to these questions.

According to biographer James Fairfax McLaughlin, the British executed Lyon’s father after he engaged in a conspiracy against the British Crown. With his family reduced to poverty, Lyon came to America from Ireland in 1765 as an indentured servant when he was just 15 years old.

In this country, Lyon fought against the British, became a wealthy entrepreneur, and represented Vermont in the U.S. House of Representatives. However, he maintained a “loathing of monarchy and all arbitrary and centralized power,” which McLaughlin characterized as “inbred and almost fanatical.” This loathing ultimately led to a confrontation with President John Adams and the Federalists.

In a letter to Spooner’s Vermont Journal, a Federalist newspaper, Rep. Lyon explained why he rejected the “principle of Presidential infallibility.” He also noted that under Adams “every consideration of the public welfare” was “swallowed up in a continual grasp for power, in an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice.”

After the Federalists passed the Sedition Act of 1798, Lyon established his own magazine, the Scourge of Aristocracy and Repository of Important Political Truth. In the October 1, 1798, issue, Lyon noted that when the president puts forth a proposition “injurious to my constituents and the Constitution, I am bound by oath … to oppose it; if outvoted, it is my duty to acquiesce—I do so. But measures I opposed [in Congress] as injurious and ruinous to the liberty and interest of this country … you cannot expect me to advocate at home.”

Because of his writings, Lyon became the first person imprisoned under the Sedition Act of 1798.

Barack Obama is not infallible. If he puts forth propositions injurious to the Constitution, we, like Matthew Lyon, have a duty to stand in the way. That’s the patriotic thing to do.

According to William F. Buckley, Jr. in “Up From Liberalism,” “A few years ago a witty observer indulged in a little wishful thinking. ‘If only,’ he said, ‘Mao Tse-tung, back in 1946 or 1947, had criticized Margaret Truman’s singing! China might have been saved!”

I am also indulging in a little wishful thinking after al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader, [al-Zawahri] (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D94I2RM80&show_article=1), called Barack Obama a “house negro.” I’m hoping that that insult will finally inspire liberals to support the war on terrorism.

While the Marine Corps’ official birthday is on November 10, the Marines with GS Ammunition Platoon, 4th Supply Battalion, held their birthday ball in Topeka a few days early.

The program started with a birthday message from General James T. Conway, the current Commandant of the Marine Corps. The message, which came in the form of a video, had a theme that was largely absent from the just concluded presidential campaign: Our country is still threatened by Islamic terrorists.

Conway first talked about the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983, which occurred when I was a young Marine. “Extremists have attacked our Nation, at home and abroad, numerous times since that fateful day in Beirut,” Conway said. “Their aim has always been the same—to kill as many innocent Americans as possible. The attacks of 11 September 2001 changed our Nation forever, and our President has resolved that this Nation will not stand idle while murderous terrorists plan their next strike. Marines will continue to take the fight to the enemy—hitting them on their own turf, crushing them when they show themselves, and finding them where they hide.”

Conway’s video included footage of the horrors this nation experienced on 9/11. Just two months ago, many in the mainstream media had a conniption fit when similar footage was shared during the Republican National Convention. However, not a single Marine in the ballroom had a problem with this reality being presented during a birthday celebration.

After the posting of the Colors, the Marines held their cake-cutting ceremony. According to tradition, the oldest and youngest Marines present get the first pieces of cake. When the master of ceremonies noted that the youngest Marine was born in 1990, I realized that most of the Marines in the ballroom were born after I left the Marines in December 1985. More importantly, I also realized that most, if not all, of these Marines enlisted or reenlisted after 9/11. They enlisted knowing that there was a very good chance that they would see combat in a distant land. Many of them already had four or five medals proudly displayed on their chests.

The most poignant portion of the ceremony was when Cpl. James R. “Jim” Freel, the guest of honor, addressed the Marines. Freel, a former chief of police with the Topeka Police Department, enlisted in the Marines during World War II. On February 19, 1945, Freel’s company made an amphibious landing on Iwo Jima, where he was wounded on the beach.

Freel compared Marines of his day with the current generation of Marines. “You’re better educated, have better equipment, and have received better training,” Freel said. “However, you have it tougher than we did. We went to war with the whole country behind us. Today, only half of your countrymen support you. We also had the media with us. Today the media are against you. They call ours the greatest generation. However, I believe yours is a greater generation.”

Unfortunately, we will soon have a president who is against the Marines and other members of our armed forces. Things are going to get more difficult for these brave, young men and women.

When Barack Obama was the age of these young Marines, most of whom were too young to take advantage of the offerings at the cash bar, he escaped reality by using cocaine and marijuana. It now seems that a majority of voters last Tuesday have opted to escape reality by taking a “drug” known as Obama. They were told that this drug would take away all their problems and make them happy. However, the Marines know that this will continue to be a dangerous world long after Barack Obama is sworn in as president next January. Our men and women in uniform will continue to accept and confront reality.

It would be easy to lose faith in America after the election of Obama as president. However, the young Marines in Topeka showed me that there are still many good young men and women who care so much about this country that they have taken an oath to defend it. The least we can do is support them and oppose any efforts to weaken their resolve.