The national news has found its newest way to slam Governor Sarah Palin and that is to report heavily on any untoward actions made by her relatives by marriage — or even soon to be marriage, for that matter. Next the Old Media will be strenuously looking for Palin neighbors that are unruly, Palin hairdressers that have parking tickets, Palin dog groomers that steal pens from work, and Palin fans that talk too loudly on cell phones while in a theater.

Now, it is beyond me why a person who is not yet even an official in-law by marriage of a public official is a major news story for a low-level drug bust. I can see where it might interest local media for a brief minute, but for this story to have spread all across the wires and the Old Media with nearly 1,000 stories on the national scene… well, it is rather silly, really. Evidence of the worst in tabloid maneuvers.

It’s silly, of course, until one realizes that it is just another lame attempt by the Old Media to slime Governor Palin, even if it does have to be guilt by association. And it isn’t even association by color of official government business, either. It is family business. In its zeal to slam Sarah Palin, Reuters even initially misreported the story to be Palin’s daughter getting arrested for drugs instead of the soon to be Mother-in-Law. (my bold)

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The humor site The Onion, the offbeat weekly The Chicago Reader, and Time Out Chicago have discovered that some of their articles have appeared in total on Arianna Huffington’s mega web outlet The Huffington Post. And they are none too happy about the wholesale lifting of their material, either.

Wired.com has the full story about the Huffington Post’s unwelcome lifting saying that Huffington Post is “being accused of slimy business practices by a handful of smaller publications who say the site is unfairly copying and publishing their content.” And this wholesale stealing of others’ work seems strange when the latest news about Huff Post is that it was graced with a $25 million capital infusion by investors. With that kind of cash flow, you’d think they could hire a few out of work MSMers and give them a job, wouldn’t you?

For its part, the Huff Post is claiming that it only uses part of an outside publisher’s articles and then links back to their site for the rest. While it is certainly true that the Huff Post has links to the original source, the argument has been made that the Huff Post folks use nearly the entire article, instead of mere headlines or short segments. This is what is raising the ire of the print media folks that have found their on-line articles poached in total on the Huff Post site.

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Of course we are all roaming around trying to figure out what will work, what hasn’t worked and whose fault it all is. Powell blasts Limbaugh, Limbaugh replies, voters blast McCain, the moderate Republican illiterati try to blame it all on Palin and the social conservatives, the conservatives say the country club set has destroyed us, and EVERYONE knows that the GOP acted like drunken sailors on the spending side… there is enough finger pointing all around, for sure.

But, how are we going to get it all back? How are we going to win at the ballot box? That is the question, naturally. There is a model of how to achieve that victory, though, if we have the good sense to utilize it.

David Frum appeared on the Hugh Hewitt show on December 16 and said that, in his opinion, the “base” of the GOP is no longer enough to get a president elected. He defined the base as comprising white males that make over $30,000 a year and are not college graduates. He said that the more college a voter has the more likely that they will vote Democrat.

Now, Frum is 100% wrong on a lot of things — like Sarah Palin, for instance — but he is dead on with his assessment about what a college “education” does to an American. A college education turns an American into a Democrat for the simple reason that there isn’t anything truly American taught in the largest number of our colleges and universities. They are taught to be Euro-like, non-traditional Americans and the main outlet for that ideology is the Democratic Party.

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I don’t know. Maybe the Associated Press thinks that no one is aware that John McCain lost his race for the White House? Maybe the AP thinks no one is aware that his choice for VP, Governor Sarah Palin, lost right along with him? Maybe the AP thinks that hardly any American has gotten the word that Obama and slow Joe Biden won on November 4th? The AP sure acts as if they think people still need it pointed out that Governor Sarah Palin is “the failed Republican vice presidential candidate.” At least if its current report on the latest doings in Alaska is concerned, anyway. After all, right in the middle of a report on Alaska state workers having sent around some race tinged joke emails, the AP helpfully reminds us that Palin is that aforementioned “failed Republican vice presidential candidate.” I mean, who knew she lost?

The AP is reporting on some race-y emails that were reported to them by a state worker, using it to needlessly jab the governor. At one point the AP sternly tells us all that, “State officials were unaware of the e-mails until asked about them by the AP,” as if something untoward was going on in the Administration itself. But, even the AP’s own report seems to show that a mountain is being made of a mole hill.

Naturally, the AP found Reverend Alonzo Patterson, Alaska’s own homegrown race baiter, to scold the Governor for not yet having said anything about an issue that is neither much investigated at this point, nor even in her initial purview in the first place.

It looks like these joke e-mails with racially tinged humor were sent from outside the state computer system and then forwarded by several state workers inside the state’s system. Palin’s spokesman, Bill McAllister reminds everyone that the matter has to be investigated by the state’s personnel and employment office adding that said office has nothing at all to do with the office of the governor.

But, let’s just get one thing straight, shall we? Palin is a “failed vice presidential candidate.” Failed, do you hear? THAT is the important point here. To that important reminder, we are given this line tucked into this piece of… reporting:

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Paul was 66 when he passed this morning. His work is well-known in conservative circles as he was the first president of the Heritage Foundation.

Mr. Weyrich is credited with being at the forefront of conservative thinkers that helped create and guide the Reagan revolution.

Weyrich had suffered a spinal cord injury in 1996 and had been dealing with complications from that injury ever since. 66 is much too young, still. His expertise and intelligence will be missed.

During the recently completed presidential campaign, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff was all excited over his “web exclusive” piece on staffers with the McCain campaign that had connections with past lobbying efforts. Back in those days Newsweek was all about the evils of those darn lobbyists. For their part, Obama supporters at the time ballyhooed the pledges that Barack Obama had made stating that his was going to be a kinder, gentler campaign, one that chased those evil lobbyists away. Phooey on those lobbyists, became the popular mantra. But, now that The One has made a successful and historic run for the Oval Office, Newsweek has suddenly discovered a newfound respect for that most venerable and important institution of lobbying.

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A recent AP piece lauded the fact that the envirosocialist movement and American labor unions are at long last beginning to walk hand in hand. At the “climate talks” in Poland, several American union groups sent representatives to announce common cause on going green.

The AP report noted that the Sierra Club, a longtime environmentalist group, announced support for the inaptly named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that features the undemocratic card check provision.

For example, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club have endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act, a union-backed bill that would protect workers’ rights to join unions. The Sierra Club has mobilized members to write to their Congress members to support the bill.

This is an effort for the enviro folks to enlist the deep pockets of the unions to further squander their membership’s dues money on things that have nothing to do with their employment.

Good strategy for the environuts, granted, but what does it get the unions to team up with the jobs killing enviro movement? Well, if worked properly, it gets the unions to be in a position to concoct legislation covering “renewable” energy schemes that puts the work force in union hands before there even IS such a workforce in existence!

Yes, the unions plan to organizers workers that don’t have jobs in industries that don’t yet even exist. That’s a pretty nifty trick, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, that sort of ground floor unionism will also make such future industries start off at a major loss in competitiveness and capabilities right off the top effectively strangling them at birth. Not a very smart way to go if you really want to foster these industries. But, as unions and envirosocialists know, there is no such thing as “business” when government opens up the pig trough of mandates and laws “for our own good.” Unions are hoping to cash in big time before the game even gets rolling on that big government action.

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Betcha didn’t know that the elected office of Senator of the United States of America was a color coded position? Apparently, Laura Washington of the Chicago Sun-Times thinks it is, anyway, because she is warning that Obama’s “black Senate seat” will be lost because of this mess with Governor Rod Blagojevich getting arrested for trying to sell that “black seat” to the highest bidder.

In hers headlined “Black leaders see Senate seat being hijacked,” Washington is ostensibly reporting on what black community leaders and politicos in Chicago are saying about who should be appointed to fill Obama’s vacant seat. Still, Washington injected quite a lot of her own feelings into the tale of this gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth over the fate of that same seat to the effect that she endorses the idea that Obama’s position in the Senate is officially a “black seat” and should stay that way.

Washington is worried most that if the seat is left to be filled by an actual vote of the people of Illinois, instead of an appointment by the governor, it will spell the end of the “black seat.” At one point, Washington even claims that “white voters” are uninterested in why they might “deserve” a black senator and so cannot be counted on to vote black. That despite the fact that when Obama ran he was overwhelmingly elected by those same white voters — not to mention that the other party also put up a black senate candidate to face him. Wouldn’t it seem obvious that voting black is not much of a problem for white voters in Illinois?

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You may heave heard of the saying “nature abhors a vacuum”? In essence, it means that once something disappears nature quickly fills the hole left behind. Well, in history there is another axiom about “vacuums.” It is that nothing occurs in one. In this short piece, we’ll take a moment to find out why the Boston Massacre was one of the final straws that severed the bonds of affection between the American Colonists and the British Crown and we’ll see that it didn’t occur in a proverbial vacuum. Far from being a sudden action or one that happened without precedent, the Boston Massacre was the culmination, at least philosophically so, of actions of a similar nature that had been happening in both England and the Colonies for months beforehand.

Any student of the American Revolutionary era knows of the Boston Massacre. It was that incident that occurred on March 5, 1770 in Boston, Massachusetts during which five colonists were killed by a contingent of skittish British Infantry. It was an incident inextricably linked to the beginning of the Revolution that founded the United States of America.

The row began when British Infantry private Hugh White was confronted by a townsman claiming that the soldier hadn’t paid a debt. The argument went on for some time during which more colonists gathered. At one point, Private White struck a young man with his musket butt angering the crowd further. Eventually, several hundred Bostonians gathered and began hurling insults at the beleaguered soldier causing several more British troops to come to White’s aid. Momentarily, one of the British troops was struck with a club and, once he regained his feet, the angered private fired his musket into the crowd. This startled the rest of the soldiers causing them to follow suit. It became clear later that the officer among them did not order his troops to open fire, but five colonists were killed in the incident nonetheless.

Soon afterward, the British soldier involved were arrested and charged with murder. At length, the imprisoned soldiers were represented in court by John Adams with the result that the men were acquitted of the crime. But Adams’ successful defense of these soldiers was not the sort of solution that allowed the Colonists to forgive and forget, nor was the final verdict looked upon by many as justice properly carried out. To the most suspicious of the Colonists, it appeared as if the fix was in.

By itself, it might seem odd that this one incident led inexorably to the American Revolution. A cynical review of that history might make one suspicious that the colonists merely inflated this messy conflict into far more than it really was to serve their separatist purposes. However, the Boston Massacre was not a lone, solitary incident but was of a piece with a series of events that led to this attack being a final straw of sorts.

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A pattern has emerged concerning the expansion of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and that is one of rushed contracts that supposedly “give too much away” to the employers. Of course, I won’t comment of the supposed “giving too much away” aspect, but one thing that I will comment on is the propensity of the SEIU to get their contracts by hook or by crook.

This plan is of a piece with SEIU President Andy Stern’s quest to make the SEIU the biggest union in the nation. His has been a plan to simply glom onto as many new contracts and new members as possible no matter what else is going on. His avarice to gain new members and for adding locals by gobbling up lesser unions is so strong that he hasn’t paid much attention to the specifics of the contracts being signed. This sort of slipshod, barreling forward despite the specifics of the actual contracts has angered many of his membership.

The anger has grown quite a bit over the last year especially. Union members complain that they are being sold down the river and that the SEIU national is too cozy with management. And, since the SEIU is being operated as a top down concern, the local members have no power over themselves and their own contracts.

But, and I have said this before, it’s all a bait and switch. Who can doubt that Stern is operating in the long term here? His obvious intention is to give management favorable contracts now to cajole them into allowing their places of business to be unionized. And, as he placates businesses, he rampages across the country gobbling up smaller unions and killing them off by absorbing them gaining amazing size and growing power over the workforce as he grows. At some point, however, Stern has every intention to paralyze the businesses he now has sway over by holding over the heads of management the sheer size of his membership as newer contracts come up for negotiation. These businesses are signing their own death warrants by imagining that the SEIU has any long term interest in working with management.

The scariest thing about this plan is the fact that the SEIU is the largest employees union for workers in government. Eventually, we will have this outright socialist, Andy Stern in a position to utterly paralyze every state in the union by being able to control a walk out of the workers of every state at once. This man will be able to leverage any contract he wants from every government and it will be us, the taxpayers, forced to pay his King’s ransom!

In any case, a recent Market Watch article had a short list of some of the SEIUs ills that is interesting and worth repeating:

• Links to the corruption scandal involving Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. SEIU is Blagojevich’s top campaign contributor, with donations totaling over $1.8 million. Blagojevich helped SEIU by ordering the state to negotiate with SEIU to represent 49,000 in-home child care workers.
• Corruption charges involving leaders of major SEIU locals in Los Angeles and Michigan. The president of SEIU’s largest local was forced to resign after an expose by the Los Angeles Times found the local paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by his wife and mother-in-law. Much of the money went to businesses suspended by the state tax board for failing to file tax returns and other public documents.
• That scandal has also led to the resignation of the head of SEIU’s California State Council over alleged financial improprieties involving her and a former boyfriend, and the head of SEIU’s largest Michigan local after reports that a nonprofit housing corporation he filed had been suspended for doing business for failing to file tax reports.
• Federal investigations of election rigging at SEIU locals in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The Las Vegas investigation resulted in preliminary findings by the Department of Labor that included illegal use of SEIU funds to help elect a slate favorable to SEIU International at the expense of local activists promoting greater union democracy.
• Deals with large corporate chains that undermine worker and public protections in exchange for sweetheart agreements to signup more dues-paying members. Under a pact with California nursing homes, for example, SEIU agreed to lobby against reforms to require better patient care conditions in nursing homes, and to give management the “exclusive right” to set pay, discipline employees, reassign or eliminate jobs, and outsource work.
• Alliances with controversial large corporate employers such as Wal-Mart which subvert genuine healthcare reform.
• Silencing dissent of its own members through lawsuits, sham elections, and physical intimidation.

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From the diaries by Erick

**UPDATE** Duncan tied to same Chicago Annenberg Challenge that employs terrorist William Ayers

So, how often do you think that the Old Media will mention that Barack Obama’s choice for Secretary of Education, Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan, supported to be opened in Chicago a gay, lesbian and transgender high school? Any takers?

I have looked over many of the stories on Obama’s pick for Sec of Ed, but seen mention of his support of the gay high school only a few times. Only three stories mentioned it out of the first 20 I checked. Even the Wall Street Journal didn’t mention it in their announcement of the Obama pick.

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From the diaries, by Erick.

Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press seems to be setting the table for a certain amount of failure from Barack Obama by helping lower expectations among the people. Her latest AP report is as much as warning that, since he is facing “heady challenges,” we shouldn’t expect too much from him. In other words, before he has even really faced anything at all, Sidoti is making excuses for him almost in the mold of an affirmative action hire. It seems a perfect example of using the soft bigotry of low expectations to make preemptory excuses for Obama.

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Last week, Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers union, threatened to foster riots if the $900 billion bailout didn’t get through Congress. “If we have Republicans who oppose us, we are going to take to the streets, we are going to occupy places. We are not going to allow any more of our members’ lives to be destroyed,” he warned in a conference call to journalists over the weekend.

A new coalition of union welfare seekers has been formed that goes by the name Campaign for America’s Future (CAF).

CAF, made up of more than two dozen labor unions, 127 lesser-known economists and assorted activists, hosted a press conference call to announce the proposed $900 billion Main Street proposal, which the group hopes will be ready for President-elect Barack Obama’s signature when he takes office on Jan. 20.

Yes, it’s all supposed to be legitimate and grown up of these folks lining up in front of Congress with their hands out for our tax dollars to be stuffed into their pockets to come together in a democratic styled coalition. But, as soon as a reporter seems to question these union thugs at all, the yelling begins.

On the CAF conference call, when Monica Showalter, a reporter for Investor’s Business Daily, pointed out that exports are the strongest sector of the U.S. economy (according to the National Association of Manufacturers, exports accounted for 46 percent of the growth in the U.S. economy in 2007), and asked why Gerard’s union opposes the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, he answered: “My union and I, and most of the labor movement, are not opposed to trade. What we are opposed at [sic] is the kind of trade that throws our jobs on the altar of this ideological dialogue. The fact of the matter is we can’t sustain a strong industrial base or a strong manufacturing economy if we are running ongoing trade deficits on an annual basis.”

When Showalter asked what blue jean factory workers in Medellin might have to do with the agenda of the United Steelworkers, Gerard shouted at her, “We should not do deals with countries that allow the shooting of people who represent the workers!”

A few minutes later, when the Sunday Paper asked him what the United Steelworkers union has done for the past 20 years to make the U.S. more competitive in the global market, Gerard said the union has reduced man-hours for production.

“Do you know what that means? Do you know?” he said, raising his voice.

“That there should be fewer employees?” I asked.

To which Gerard angrily responded, “Do you want us to work for nothing?”

In other words, these guys don’t care about any legitimate, democratic process. If they don’t get their pockets filled with our tax dollars, they’ll take to the streets and riot. Yeah. That’s really adult of them.

Figures.

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This debacle of Governor Rod Blagojevich endeavoring to sell a U.S. Senate seat for mere personal enrichment proves once and for all that the state of Illinois is no longer an American state. It is so far around the bend that there is no longer any legitimacy to either the state or any local government. Illinois is no better than the worst banana republic.

We have arrived at a time when lucrative state posts have been multiplied without necessity, when people have become pensioners of the state without bounds, and government is the single largest employer summarily supplanting any hint of capitalism. We are mired in a universal policy of governing by bribery and corruption, with all businesses being ignored and trampled under the foot of regulators and their open palms. All offices here are bought and sold at extravagant prices and the debt for this thievery is laid on the shoulders of the people with the highest taxes in the country.

Yet, even as the money flows uninhibited into the pockets of our “elected” officials in both parties, Illinois is falling apart. Roads, bridges, hospitals and schools are crumbling and those that have been built are of the lowest quality because so much of the money has gone to grasping unions, bribes and graft.

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The Associated Press is as much as blaming the victim for the attack again with theirs headlined “Obama says he wants to ‘reboot’ America’s battered image among Muslims.” In this report we get the AP saying that the reason the Muslim world is mad at us is because of George W. Bush. But not a word is mentioned about why Bush might have been in a position of interacting so heavily with the Muslim world in the first place. How soon the AP forgets a little thing we like to call 9/11.

Why is it that we have to apologize for our nation to Muslims is anyone’s guess. Was FDR groveling at the feet of Nazism, fascism and Shintoism in the middle of WWII?

Using Obama’s claim that he’ll use his full given name, Barack Hussein Obama, as he’s sworn into office, the AP trumpets how Obama will “repair America’s reputation worldwide” after that dastardly Bush leaves the Oval Office. AP’s thoughts on why Obama must undertake this grave effort, though, are interesting.

The U.S. image globally has taken a deep hit during President George W. Bush’s two terms in office, primarily because of opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, harsh interrogation of prisoners, the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and mistreatment of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Here we go again. To the AP the Muslim world is all mad at us because of George W. Bush. But not a word is written by the AP about The many thousands of atrocities, provocations, declarations of war, and terrorist actions by Muslims across the globe against Americans and westerners or anyone else for that matter. No, according to the AP the whole focus on why there is a conflict between the US and the Muslim world is all because of George W. Bush.

But, the sun will come up tomorrow because The Lightworker is coming to town…

Obama promised during his campaign that one of his top priorities would be to work to repair America’s reputation worldwide, and that one element of that effort would be a speech delivered in a Muslim capital.

Gosh. Who could doubt that all animosities will be dispelled in a flash of Obama’s pearly whites?

Still, one is struck at the complete lack of attention by the AP as to just why there was any conflict between the US and Muslims. Did this George W. Bush fellow just decide out of sheer pugnacity to pick a fight with the whole Muslim world? Is this Bush fellow just a bigot? We don’t know because the AP gives us no balanced information of what caused the supposed rift between the Muslims and the US that they claim Obama will heal.

Worse is this claim that just showing up at some “Muslim capital” will prove the salve that the AP is reporting it may be. To what capital does he go? Just about any choice is due to anger any number of people. Does he chose the capital of an autocratic or despotic state and give legitimacy to tyranny? Does he go to Indonesia, the veritable backwater of Islam and anger all those states that feel they represent the more traditional home of Islam? Does he go to a failed state or one that no longer holds a prominent place in the Islamic world? Would he go to an enemy state like Iran? Should he?

It’s all rather vague and ridiculous, really. But the AP and many other news outlets seem to be presenting this campaign promise as something of great merit.

Another odd feature of the APs report is that it links Obama’s past stated desire to “re-boot” America’s relationship with Muslims to his using his full name as he’s sworn in. As if using his full name is somehow a direct statement of Obama’s support for Islam even though no one in the administration has ever said such a thing. In fact, this assumption is being made by many news outlets.

But of using his middle name, Obama told the L.A. Times, “I think the tradition is that they use all three names and I will follow the tradition, not trying to make a statement one way or the other. I’ll do what everybody else does.” Obama is saying directly that this is no big deal and means nothing.

As Newsbuster Michael Bates reminds us, not every president used his full given name while being sworn in, but what is fascinating is that every news outlet is repeating that using his middle name is an “olive branch” to the Muslim world. In other words, the Old Media are creating a positive message for Obama without his saying that it is so. The media are looking for ways to assist Obama to “heal” the supposed rift created by that evil George W. Bush.

So, now Obama doesn’t even have to announce an idea or policy and the Media will read into his actions the exact positive program they want to see that may or may not even really exist. I am wondering if anyone can find an example where some statement of George W. Bush was taken as some obvious “olive branch” to any adversary without the administration having directly stated that it was the case?

And, again, with all this happy talk of the healer, lightworker, Obama fixing all the world’s ills and making it a happy place again, not a word is said of why this crisis arose in the first place. Nothing is said of Muslim aggression and atrocities.

How soon the Associated Press has forgotten 9/11.

And now for a comedy break…

 
(Cartoon found at conservativepunk.com)

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The wires services and the rest of the Old Media have also been reporting on a scandal that doesn’t have to do with Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich. But, like the Blago story line, the media seem to be forgetting one small aspect of the story of Wall Street rip off artist Bernard Madoff. Like Blago, Madoff’s connections to the Democrat Party seem to be of little interest to the media.

Very few media stories of the fraud perpetrated by former Nasdaq chairman Madoff mentions the heavy financial support that Madoff has donated to the Democrat Party. Campaign contributions by Madoff show many thousands of dollars going to Democrat candidates and causes. Including $100,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign, thousands to Charles Rangel (D, NY), Charles Schumer (D, NY), and $6,000 to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Madoff also gave generously to Senator Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) who runs a charitable foundation that invested with Madoff.

With the money that Madoff spread around in contributions is it really surprising that his actions went ignored by regulatory agencies?

In any case, the media seems wholly uninterested in the fact that Madoff is a big Democrat contributor. I found no mention of Madoff’s past support of the Democrats in any of the following stories.

The Associated Press: “List of potential victims grows in NY fraud case“

ProPublica: “Losses Unknown From Madoff’s ‘One Big Lie’“

Gawker: “A Bloodthirsty Public Finds the Villains We Want“

The New York Times: “Standing Accused: A Pillar of Finance and Charity“

New York Magazine; “Bernard Madoff: ‘It’s All Just One Big Lie’“

Forbes: “Fleeced Madoff Investors Face Cold Winter“

… these among many others.

I found but two mentions of Madoff’s support of Democrats. One brief mention in Time Magazine and one in a Bloomberg report.

So, what we are seeing is the Old Media conveniently forgetting that this guy was a big Democrat donor. Who can doubt that if Madoff was a big donor to the GOP we’d see this fact featured prominently in every story? Yes, it’s another sad but true name-that-party parlor game.

(Photo credit: hedgeweek.com)

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Looks like we can possibly thank our meddling media for another possibly bungled investigation, this time over the selling of Barack Obama’s Senate seat by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojavich. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune was working with Fitzgerald’s office on the investigation but decided to stop doing so in favor of printing the sensational story they were sitting on. This forced the arrest early so that the paper wouldn’t blow the whole investigation.

The story everyone thought they knew was that Fitzgerald moved when he did to stop a crime about to be committed. But, the WSJ reports that this isn’t the case. Apparently the WSJ found that members of Fitzgerald’s team wanted to let things roll for a little while longer so that they could catch the actual selling of the Senate seat with Governor Blagojevich, his facilitators and who ever was going to try to buy the seat all on the tape at once. But, the Chicago Tribune informed the prosecutors that they wouldn’t wait any longer to put off publishing their story on the investigation. Once the Trib reported on the investigation, it was over for Fitzgerald and his folks for the investigative phase of the case.

Members of Fitzgerald’s team are livid the scheme didn’t advance, at least for a little longer, according to some people close to Fitzgerald’s office. Why? Because had the plot unfolded, they might have had an opportunity most feds can only dream of: A chance to catch the sale of a Senate seat on tape, including the sellers and the buyers.

The precise timing of Tuesday’s dramatic, pre-dawn arrest was not dictated by Fitzgerald, nor was it dictated by the pace of Blagojevich’s alleged “crime spree.” It was dictated by the Chicago Tribune, according to people close to the investigation and a careful reading of the FBI’s affidavit in the case.

At Fitzgerald’s request, the paper had been holding back a story since October detailing how a confidante of Blagojevich was cooperating with his office.

Gerould Kern, the Tribune’s editor, said in a statement last week that these requests are granted in what he called isolated instances. “In each case, we strive to make the right decision as reporters and as citizens,” he said.

But editors decided to publish the story on Friday, Dec. 5, ending the Tribune’s own cooperation deal with the prosecutor.

It’s quite possible that, because the Trib moved to print their story too early, we won’t ever find out who was about to buy themselves a Senate seat.

Had it not been for the Tribune’s Dec. 5 story, the meeting Blagojevich’s brother was arranging might have proceeded. Mr. Blagojevich is quoted as citing the story, in the affidavit, then calling off the meeting. At a minimum, the FBI’s recorders would have been rolling when he reported back. The feds also probably would have tried to bug the session live, or at least to tail the participants and secretly film or photograph them. That’s what feds do. Jurors love video.

To me, this shows how our media all too often would rather serve their own interests than serve the interests of good governing and those of the people.

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The country awoke to surprising news that President George W. Bush had flown off to visit Iraq in a sort of farewell tour of the place that drove his presidency. With an early report, Reuters gave a few backhanded slaps at Bush that we are sure to see grow throughout the Old Media as the day progresses.

In its very first sentence, Reuters reminded us all, as if we didn’t already know, that the war in Iraq is the “unpopular Iraq war” that Bush has bequeathed to Barack Obama. Even as the war has rebounded in approval ratings among the American people over the last year, Reuters is still stuck on portraying the war as troubled.

President George W. Bush made an unannounced farewell visit to Baghdad on Sunday, just weeks before he leaves office and bequeaths the unpopular Iraq war to President-elect Barack Obama.

Later on, Reuters gives us this gem of a non-sequitur.

The brief visit was meant to showcase recent security gains in Iraq but was also a stark reminder of how heavily the war will weigh on the Republican president’s foreign policy legacy.

How this visit serves as a “stark reminder of how heavily the war will weigh on the Republican president’s foreign policy legacy” is unclear except in the minds of those that insist on coupling this visit with their own thoughts on Bush’s foreign policy legacy.

Next, Reuters unleashes what is not quite a truthful exposition of the facts.

It will now be left to Obama, a Democrat and early opponent of U.S. military involvement in Iraq, to sort out an exit strategy after he takes office on January 20.

This is not necessarily so. Obama could easily simply allow the already agreed upon withdrawal to occur and do nothing else. It is NOT necessarily “left to Obama” to figure out how to remove U.S. troops from Iraq because there is already an agreement between the U.S. and Iraq in place.

Now, Obama can certainly attempt to revisit this agreement, but it is NOT “left to Obama” to create one.

A little farther down in the article, I was struck on how this piece refutes its own earlier statement. Remember above where I note that the piece says that this visit “was also a stark reminder of how heavily the war will weigh on the Republican president’s foreign policy legacy”? Well, close to the end we get the following:

U.S. Gen. David Petraeus said last week that violence in Iraq in the past few weeks had fallen to its lowest level since mid-2003 and that security gains, while still at risk of reversal, were less fragile than before. Car bombings and suicide blasts are still common.

Wait a minute. If things are so incredibly better, how will this “weigh heavily” on Bush? It would seem rather the opposite if the facts are considered. In fact, since it seems such a success at this time, it should rather vindicate Bush, not “weigh heavily” on his legacy, wouldn’t you say?

Yes, this is just the earliest of many such Old Media attacks as Bush makes his last victory lap around Iraq today. Expect many more to come.

(Photo credit: The New York Times)

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In another ridiculously lionizing report, the Chicago Tribune has capitalized on the silly 1998 claim by Toni Morrison that Bill Clinton was the “first black president” by finding an Obama sycophant that is claiming Barack Obama is the “first Jewish president.” Will this nonsense ever cease?

Sadly, the report barely mentions the anti-Israel stances that Barack is taking much less the many close Obama associates, advisers and transition team members that are virulently anti-Jew. The piece does mention terror cheerleader Rashid Khalidi, but does not mention folks like Susan Power and Hamas booster Robert Malley, both on Obama’s foreign policy team. Any anti-Jewish sentiment that Obama has thus far shown in policy ideas and associates was given little notice by this Trib article in favor of the Jews pushing for The One.

But, this “first Jewish president” claim is the central foolishness here. In fact, to use Toni Morrison’s example is not even an apropos comparison. In 1998, Morrison wasn’t lauding Clinton as a “black” man as if he was the perfect representative of her fellows politically. It was no honorific.

Here’s the part in her piece in which she outlined why Clinton was “like” a black man in her opinion.

African-American men seemed to understand it right away. Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.

You see, Morrison was saying that the evil Republican attack machine was treating Clinton as they would a downtrodden black man. She was not saying Clinton was an honorary black man or one that should be thought of as their best representative at all. She was using the point to push the trope that all whites hate black men and that the attacks on Clinton was similar to how black men are treated by whites.

So, are these guys the Trib is reporting on feel that Obama has been persecuted just like Jews have been to make him into the “first Jewish president” in keeping with the Morrison theme concerning Clinton? If they are, it would be rather insulting. But, they employ even less “intellectual” reasoning applied to Obama than Morrison did with Clinton. They are merely making gratuitous claims, unlike Morrison who at least had a serious point to make, no matter how far off she was in the truth of the matter.

In the end, this flight of fancy is just proof once again that no one really knows anything about this man and are childishly willing to bestow upon him what they want to see, not what he is or is not. And for the Tribune’s part, it amounts to simple, gauzy hagiography and not serious reporting.

(Cartoon credit: huffingtonpost.com)

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Sorry for the double post. I can’t seem to be allowed to delete it.