Redstate

Posted at 7:40am on Apr. 26, 2008 Millbank Continues The Post's War Against Feith

By California Yankee

Please excuse the piling on, I know Erick already posted on this, but I am still compelled to add my two cents.

Dana Milbank continues the Washington Post's campaign against Doug Feith's new book, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism.

The paper's effort to diminish Feith's book began two weeks ago when Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung wrote a hit piece on Feith's book without waiting for the book to be released or bothering taking the time to read the unedited manuscript of an embargoed book of some 528 pages less than six hours before they managed to obtain less than six hours before they went to press.

It seems a little unethical that Ricks and DeYoung forget to mention that they both have books being sold, books which take a bit of a different view of things than the three Post writers' versions of what is contained in Feith's book.

I feel at least as qualified as DeYoung, Milbank or Ricks to write about Feith's new book. Even though, like the three of them, I have not yet read War and Decision. At least I took the time to talk to Feith about the book and his experiences before writing this. Earlier today I was fortunate enough to participate in a conference call with Doug Feith and other bloggers including some RedState colleagues. As Pejman Yousefzadeh posted, we engaged in an interesting hour-long discussion about the book.

Read on, there is more.

Posted in Biased Media | Dana Milbank | Doug Feith | Iraq | War | War and Decision — Comments (0)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:32am on Apr. 22, 2008 The Liberal Media's Fickle Temperament

By California Yankee

Michael Leahy's Washington Post temperamental hit job on Senator McCain shows just how fickle the mainstream media wing of the Democratic party can be.

Coverage of Leahy's hit job, ignores Senator Lieberman's downplaying McCain's temper and focuses instead on former senator Bob Smith's, made for television, negative campaign sound bite:

Posted in 2008 | Biased Media | Fickle | Temperament — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:56pm on Apr. 14, 2008 Voters Disagree With Obama's Comments Demeaning Small Town America

Dont Tell Me I Cling To Religion And Guns Because I'm Bitter.

By California Yankee

Rasmussen reports finds that 56% of voters nationwide disagree with Obama’s statement that people in small towns “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Only 25% agree with Obama and 19% are not sure.

Rasmussen confirms what many of us have been saying -- this is a bigger problem for Obama in November:

Partisan and ideological differences suggest that the comments are more likely to be a factor in the General Election than in the Primaries. A plurality of politically liberal voters—46%--agree with Obama’s statement while 33% disagree. Moderate voters take the opposite view and disagree by a 51% to 27% margin. Seventy-four percent (74%) of conservatives disagree with Obama’s statement, only 12% agree.

Democrats are fairly evenly divided—34% agree with Obama and 43% disagree. Generally, Obama supporters agree with him while Hillary Clinton’s supporters disagree.

Republicans overwhelmingly disagree with the statement and unaffiliated voters disagree by a two-to-one margin.

Voters under 30 are evenly divided on Obama’s statement while their elders strongly disagree. Fifty-three percent (53%) of African-Americans agree with Obama’s statement while 29% disagree. White voters disagree by a 3-to-1 margin.

Forty-five percent (45%) say that Obama’s comments reflect an elitist view of small town voters. Thirty-seven percent (37%) disagree. Republicans overwhelmingly say that the statements are elitist and most Democrats disagree. Among unaffiliated voters, 40% say they represent an elitist view while 34% disagree.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Biased Media | Out of Touch — Comments (7)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:43am on Apr. 2, 2008 'Distortion,' 'Rank Falsehood,' 'Seriously Misleading' and 'Outright Lying'

A lie told often enough becomes truth

By California Yankee

UPDATED, Again:Today on MSNBC's "Hardball," Barack Obama continued his prevarications:

John McCain got upset today apparently because I had repeated exactly what he said, which is that we might be there [Iraq] for 100 years if he had his way.

That is not "exactly" what McCain said as you can see in the original post. RNC spokeswoman Liz Mair called Obama on his old-school deceive-and-distort politics:

Despite Barack Obama's apparent recognition the other day of his own twisting of John McCain's words, he continues to mischaracterize John McCain's statements with regard to a continued US troop presence in Iraq, having done so once again on MSNBC today. Given that the substance of Obama's assertions has been debunked by non-partisan fact-checking groups and media outlets alike, it's becoming increasingly hard to take seriously Obama's claims to offer a 'new' brand of politics. In fact, Obama is engaging in old-school deceive-and-distort politics of the type he purports to oppose, and doing so routinely.

UPDATED:The Washington Post's FactChecker agrees -- Obama's false claims do not pass The Pinocchio Test:

McCain has never talked about wanting a 100-year war in Iraq. … [T]hey have twisted his words, by claiming that he 'wants' to fight a 100-year war.

Original Post

Obama's "new kind of politics" amounts to nothing more than "distortion to the point of rank falsehood" and "seriously misleading voter -- if not outright lying to them."

Obama continues to falsely state that McCain "wants" another 100 years of war in Iraq. Even though at least two non partisan entities have found that Obama is grossly misrepresenting what Senator McCain actually said.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center's nonpartisan FactCheck.org "says Obama's claim that McCain wants 100 years in Iraq is a "serious distortion to the point of rank falsehood."

In the Columbia Journalism Review, Zachary Roth writes the "Press needs to call Obama on distortion of McCain’s statement:"

Obama is seriously misleading voters—if not outright lying to them—about exactly what McCain said. And some in the press are failing to call him on it.

Here’s McCain’s full quote, in context, from back in January:

Questioner: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years…

McCain: Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred. We’ve been in South Korea, we’ve been in Japan for sixty years. We’ve been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it’s fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

It’s clear from this that McCain isn’t saying he’d support continuing the war for one hundred years, only that it might be necessary to keep troops there that long. That’s a very different thing. As he says, we’ve had troops in South Korea for over fifty years, but few people think that means we’re still fighting the Korean War.

Read on, there's more.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Biased Media | Iraq — Comments (4)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:50pm on Feb. 25, 2008 Journalism By Insinuation

By California Yankee

Appearing on CNN's "Late Edition," Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty called the New York Times slanderous hatchet job on John McCain "journalism by innuendo."

In the Sydney Morning Herald Paul Sheehan writes "Anatomy of a Smear," in which he makes Governor Pawlenty's point dissecting the Times slander, highlighting each of the 54 points where the Times manipulated the narrative to support the insinuation in the Times headline and the opening paragraphs, regardless of the facts. Here's a sample:

"William Black, one of the banking regulators the senator met with, argued that Mrs. McCain's investment with Mr. Keating created an obvious conflict of interest for her husband. (Mr. McCain had said a prenuptial agreement divided the couple's assets.) He should not be able to "put this behind him," Mr. Black said. "It sullied his integrity."

[23. Rather than quote the official report into this matter, the Times quotes Mr Black, a tangential figure, as the only authority worth quoting.]

[. . .]

"He sent two letters to the commission, drawing a rare rebuke for interference from its chairman. In an embarrassing turn for the campaign, news reports invoked the Keating scandal, once again raising questions about intervening for a patron.

[51. Omitted here is that McCain did not seek to influence the Commission on how to make a decision, but merely urged them to make one. This was impatient, but not unethical.]

Mr. McCain's aides released all of his letters to the F.C.C. to dispel accusations of favouritism, and aides said the campaign had properly accounted for four trips on the Paxson plane. But ...

[52. For the seventh time, the story undermines a positive fact with the immediate qualification of "but".]

" ... the campaign did not report the flight with Ms. Iseman. Mr. McCain's advisers say he was not required to disclose the flight, but ethics lawyers ...

[53. Anonymous and negative attribution number 13.]

I encourage you to examine all 54 instances of manipulation.

Read on, there's more.

Posted in 2008 | Biased Media | Hatchet Job | John McCain | new york times — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:23pm on Feb. 21, 2008 Bob Bennett: Times Article A 'Hatchet Job'

Where's The Beef

By California Yankee

Noted Democratic attorney Robert Bennett, who represents Senator McCain, calls the Times' "non story" a "hatchet job."

Bennett offers the following points to back up his assertion that the Times article is a "hatchet job:"

• The New York Times was provided with approximately a dozen instances in which Senator McCain took positions adverse to Iseman's clients. The Times didn't even refer to those instances.

• There is no evidence that Senator McCain breached the public trust.

• There is no evidence the senator took any position that is contrary to his long-held beliefs.

Asked about rumors that the Times printed the allegations today because the New Republic was preparing an article about the Times delaying this story, Bennett replied that a lot of newspaper people would rather be wrong than be scooped:

I believe the reason this story came out to day was because the New York Times did not want to be scooped.

Bennett also served as the Democratic counsel to the Senate Ethic Committee in the 1980s, when the committee investigated the savings and loan scandal. Bennett said that "after investigating McCain for a year and a half, looking under every rock, I concluded that this was an honest, honest man and recommended to the Senate that he be exonerated."

Watch the following video of Matt Lauer's interview with Bob Bennett:

Posted in 2008 | Biased Media | Bob Bennett | John McCain | new york times — Comments (72)/ Email this page » / Read More »