The NYT apparently couldn’t go on ignoring one of their usual “ignore this because it casts a liberal administration in a bad light” stories, so…

From Political Outcast:

New York Times Wakes Up, Admits U.S. Weapons Went to Islamists

It’s hard for most people to deny what’s right in front of them.

That hasn’t kept the New York Times from trying.

Months after all us “wingnut conservatives” realized the Obama Administration was arming Islamists in North Africa and the Middle East, the New York Times has finally run a story about U.S. weapons being sent to Libyan fighters and winding up in Islamist hands.

Don’t get too excited, though. It doesn’t mean the NYT has finally returned to the old-fashioned notion of journalism, asking questions and being the public’s government watchdog.

The NYT only goes so far as to admit that the Administration “secretly” approved giving arms to Libyans in Qatar and then became “worried” that some weapons were being put in Islamist hands by the Qataris.

The article blames the Qataris and a lack of CIA personnel overseeing the program for the “wrong” people being armed.

It also insists there’s no evidence that any of the U.S. weapons were involved in the murders of the ambassador and other U.S. personnel in Benghazi, Libya.

SNIP!

The money and weapons from Qatar, which we gave them. … First, it was a video’s fault, then it was Hillary Clinton’s fault, then it was everyone in the D.C. food chain’s fault, now it’s some unnamed Qataris’ fault. The buck certainly does not stop anywhere near this Oval Office, does it?

LOL!!!!

The entire piece is here.

“They” meaning the liberals who have been slowly usurping and expanding government authority over the last few decades, while Americans sleep. It creeps, one thing after another from the indoctrination of our children in the liberal run education system to the use of imagined racism, the loosening of morality in the very fabric of our society and the continuous attacks on Judeo-Christian values and the practice of Christianity, aided and abetted by a leftist media that runs interference for it all.

I may sound, here, like some kind of conspiracy theorist, but hey — “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” Any right thinker, observing the changes that have taken place in America, must acknowledge that there’s a pattern to all this that has to be too much for coincidence.

So we’ve come to a juncture where we actually have a bona fide America hating, lying socialist in the White House with kindred spirits for a Veep and a SecState, one for whom the traitors of the lefty media run interference on a daily basis.

Therefore, the only way you can expect to read anything truthful that’s damaging to the likes of B. Hussein Obama is if it has first been exposed on the right side of the aisle and made known “loudly” enough that the Mainstream media has no choice but to report something lest they be thought completely clueless.

This was the case where Fast and Furious was concerned, and it is the case where the Libya Kerfuffle is concerned. Suddenly, the Washington Post is on it!

RICHMOND, Va. — Mitt Romney criticized Vice President Biden on Friday for “directly contradicting the sworn testimony of State Department officials” during Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate, picking up on GOP attacks leveled at Biden in the hours since the exchange.

“He’s doubling down on denial, and we need to understand exactly what happened as opposed to just having people brush this aside,” Romney told a crowd gathered outside an auto dealership in Richmond. “When the vice president of the United States directly contradicts the sworn testimony of State Department officials, American citizens have the right to know just what’s going on.”

Biden said that “we” were unaware of security concerns in Libya. White House officials clarified Friday that the vice president was speaking for himself and President Obama. State Department officials, they said, had not passed on requests for more security.

Now, we have a White House that has been caught blatantly lying to us once again, among all their other transgressions, yet the media will still go to bat for them and millions of people who think they have the moral right to call themselves Americans will vote to reelect this travesty.

From our point of view here at Hard Astarboard, Romney and Ryan have both acquitted themselves as winners in their debates thus far.

Romney credited his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), for his debate performance, calling the lawmaker “thoughtful, respectful, steady, poised, the kind of person you want to turn to in a crisis.”

Referring to Biden later, Romney said: “The other candidate of course just attacked. The American people are looking for answers, not attacks.”

What does Mr. Romney expect?

The left, having no talking points to speak of, hide behind the refuge of attacks —
Racist! War Monger! Evil corporation! Liar! Whatever, just kep repeating it and the people will come to believe it.

In November, we’ll see what effects the various revelations end up having on the results of the election…

H/T to Weasel Zippers.

In my various and sundry meanderings through the news this morning I ran across a column by Rich Lowry that bears reading by anyone who even dreams that most of the remnants of our once (long, long ago) great and reasonably fair/ impartial news media are even worth the time to peruse them, let alone pay for any of their publications.

Remember how the MSM and that “Hope and Change” presidential candidate, Barack Obama, criticized (nastily and mercilessly) Prersident George W. Bush for every last thing he decided regarding the handling of terrorists that didn’t fit into our own judicial system’s policies of prosecuting criminals (like purse snatchers, dope dealers, litterbugs, drunk drivers and those who tore the “do not remove” tags off their new bed mattresses)? How waterboarding, raising a voice to or otherwise not providing every murderous terrorist with every courtesy of a visiting VIP was a dastardly event?

Well, here we now have good ol’ “Barry” Obama, the good, all American hypocrite-next-door, firming up his own assassination policies.

“This,” he and his assassination czar will now decide, “is whom we’ll have killed…”

Killing has never been so discriminating, so urbane, so cool.

The New York Times and Newsweek both ran long, largely admiring articles on how President Obama selects individual terrorists to terminate with extreme prejudice. The administration’s “smart power” isn’t working out so well, but smart killing is a smash success.

Obama’s national-security team — as well as his top political adviser, David Axelrod — gather on “Terror Tuesdays” to go over an expanding “kill list” that the president examines with the aid of capsule biographies of the terrorists, or “baseball cards.” Then the president decides who lives and who — if we get him in our sights — dies.

Needless to say, had Dick Cheney consulted “baseball cards” to decide in weekly meetings attended by Karl Rove who deserved to have close encounters with drone-fired missiles, Nancy Pelosi would have drafted the articles of impeachment herself.

The Obama killings vindicate the core premises of the Bush War on Terror: This is a war, and the protections of our criminal-justice system don’t apply to the enemy.

In light of the kill list, it’s a wonder anyone ever objected to Bush-era detentions or interrogations. If we can pick someone off a roster of names and sentence him to death without due process, surely we can capture and hold that same person.

If we can execute someone — and any of his associates who happen to be in the vicinity — from on high, surely we can keep him awake at night and otherwise discomfit him should he fall into our hands.

The Times notes that “Obama’s record has not drawn anything like the sweeping criticism from allies that his predecessor faced.” True enough. It hasn’t been subjected to a highly politicized assault at home and abroad by people desperate to put it in the worst possible light and even make it a war crime.

As they say, SNIP!

For most of the left, the highest principle of just war theory is licet si Obama id faciat — it’s OK if Obama does it. This is how Gitmo, formerly a standing repudiation of all that we hold dear as a nation, becomes an afterthought when it is owned and operated by one Barack H. Obama.

As it happens, the president holds exactly the same Obama-centric view. So long as the kill list is overseen by him as judge and executioner, it’s beyond reproach.

The press tends to agree. Newsweek reports, “The choices he faces are brutally difficult, and he has struggled with them — sometimes turning them over in his mind again and again.”

Really? He thinks about who he is deciding to kill? The nation is blessed to have such a scrupulous leader.

The Times maintains that the president parses the kill list as “a student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.” If no anecdotes have yet emerged about Obama justifying a particular kill with reference to the Summa Theologica, it’s probably only a matter of time.

In authorizing the strikes, Obama is to be commended for his coldbloodedness, although no tactic is perfect or without costs. The war in Yemen is sliding the wrong way’ relations with target-rich Pakistan are at a low ebb. But there should be no doubt now that the commander in chief possesses fearsome powers in the War on Terror. All it took for Democrats to accept that was for President Obama to begin exercising them.

I wonder when Barack Hussein will write an executive order commanding that all people refer to him as Obama Rex…

I’ve always thought that a strange title for an organization that’s more a Murder Incorporated for defenseless unborn, but very much alive, babies.

Naturally, since baby murder goes well, somehow, with the doctrine that’s become popular among our intellectual elite and the “progressive” politicians they elect, it is also supported by the mainstream media who, as we know, have a habit of reporting only what is convenient for the public to know in order to press their political agendas. As often as not, there are a few twists, spins and, to those who actively seek the truth, some profoundly loud omissions.

Fortunately, there are a few honest journalists out there, including those who write for the Culture and Media Institute.

Speaking of which…

Media Ignore Planned Parenthood’s $1.3 Billion Federal Funding Discrepancy

Networks and newspapers silent on government report contradicting abortion group’s taxpayer funding figures.

If $1.3 billion is unaccounted for and the media don’t report it, did it really happen?

According to an American Life League review of Planned Parenthood’s annual reports, the organization received more than $2 billion in federal grants and contracts between 2002 and 2008. A June 16 Government Accountability Report, however, found that the organization spent just $657.1 million of taxpayer money in the same time period.

The $1.3 billion discrepancy failed to catch the attention of the nation’s major media outlets. None of the networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) or major newspapers (Los Angeles times, The New York Times, USA Today and The Washington Post) reported it.

A Culture and Media Institute review of coverage found that only one newspaper listed among Nexis’ “major newspapers” – The Houston Chronicle – even mentioned the GAO report. The Chronicle’s June 16 article noted that Planned Parenthood spent $657 million of federal money over seven years, but did not mention the income/outlay discrepancy.

Amazing, here are all these media institutions in whom the public place their (I would say “our”, except I don’t trust those leftist turds, not me) trust for news, and only one of them even seems to “know” about a “discrepancy” on the part of an organization that our government siphons hundreds of millions of our hard earned tax dollars to.

Don’t Follow the Money

The media have made Planned Parenthood a go-to source for several stories over the last six months, including debate over abortion language in health care reform legislation, the trial of the activist who killed abortionist Dr. George Tiller, and the 50th anniversary of the Pill.

From Dec. 28, 2009, to June 28, 2010, the broadcast networks and the “Big 4” newspapers mentioned Planned Parenthood 56 times in news stories. None of those stories mentioned the GAO report, and only one article reported the amount of federal money going to Planned Parenthood.

The February 27 article in The New York Times mentioned an investigative operation by pro-life activist Lila Rose which found Planned Parenthood clinics willing to accept donations from people who wanted African American babies aborted. A separate New York Times report on January 28 characterized the investigation as “prank calls” to Planned Parenthood.

Four reports referred to state funding of Planned Parenthood, but did not mention federal resources granted to the organization.

Planned Parenthood’s 2008 Annual Report says $349.6 million in taxpayer-funded grants and contracts accounted for more than a third (36 percent) of the organization’s income that year, second only to health center revenue. Federal funding for Planned Parenthood has increased by 45 percent since 2001-2002, when it received a reported $240.9 million from taxpayers.

While federal orders mandate that government money not be used directly for abortions, pro-life advocates point out that federal money used to cover non-abortion costs frees up private money to pay for abortions.

“Frees it up.”

Favorite Experts

Planned Parenthood is by far the most cited pro-abortion group when it comes to national media coverage. In the last six months, 30 broadcast and print reports have quoted Planned Parenthood representatives and another 26 have mentioned the organization.

The 56 mentions of Planned Parenthood dwarf other pro-abortion groups, including the National Organization for Women (30) and NARAL Pro-Choice America (15).

When abortion was a major focus of health care reform debates, the media turned to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and other affiliated representatives to statements and analysis. When the media celebrated the 50th anniversary of “the Pill,” the media commemorated Planned Parenthood’s role in making it possible.

A February 26 profile in The Washington Post painted a glowing picture of abortion doctor Carol Ball. The article described a “difficult time” for Ball and other doctors who perform late term abortions in South Dakota.

When Planned Parenthood produced an ad in response to Focus on the Family’s pro-life Super Bowl ad, the media praised it. USA Today noted it “defend[ed] abortion rights,” although the Focus on the Family ad did not target abortion “rights.”

The New York Times on January 27 turned to Richards on the increase in teen pregnancy rates, and she used the opportunity bash abstinence education. “This new study makes it crystal clear that abstinence-only sex education for teenagers does not work,” Richards said.

In addition to news reports related to Planned Parenthood, newspapers published five letters to the editor from readers mentioning the organization and fives letters to the editor from Planned Parenthood executives.

Another seven op-eds and entertainment reviews mentioned Planned Parenthood, as well as 15 death notices, and a couple of comedians’ jokes. All told, the networks and newspapers mentioned Planned Parenthood more than 80 times in the last six months.

But when someone noticed a $1.3 billion discrepancy in Planned Parenthood’s handling of federal money – crickets.

See what I mean about the mainstream media?

The Sound of Silence

One letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times February 7 illustrated the effect the media blackout has had on public perceptions of Planned Parenthood.

Responding to the media-manufactured controversy over Focus on the Family’s pro-life Super Bowl ad, a reader wrote, “If I had it, I would give millions to Planned Parenthood to advertise on CBS during the Super Bowl.”

Well, dear reader, your wish has already come true. You might not know it from reading the Times, but Planned Parenthood already receives more than $350 million every year from you and every other American taxpayer, with no oversight from the “watchdogs” in the media.

$350 million every year!!!!

Of yours and my tax dollars, monies we could find much better uses for than having a bunch of “progressive” politicians give it to Planned Parenthood.

More than enough in any reasonable man’s book to justify giving every politician involved his or her just desserts.

That expression, spawned by a bunch of reporters whose goals are less about keeping “the people” informed and more about selling their most lucrative product (advertising space, whether print, broadcast or Internet) and/or pressing a political agenda and making a name for themselves, is pure, unadulterated bullsh-t.

The First Amendment does not, whatever some irresponsible scumbag with press credentials might insist, contain text to the effect that “the people have a right to know”.

I say irresponsible because the reporting of certain events or procedures can pose threats to human life, the protection of the people or the enforcement of the law, vital intelligence or military strategies or the simplification, by terrorists or criminals, of finding their way around obstacles to the commission of their illicit operations.

Yet there are reporters and editors who could care less about the cost of irresponsible reporting.

Remember the New York Times not long ago and repetitively where their reporting of secret counter-terrorist electronic surveillance Ops endangered those government intelligence operations, for example? And how that treasonous lefty propagandist pea-brain turd Bill Keller actually had the pelotas to defend the practice?

Jeff Kamen has an excellent OpEd on responsible reporting, as well as the responsible conduct of the police and other public protection agencies in informing members of the media about their ongoing activities, in today’s Washington Times.

The all-but-traitorous leaking and reporting of police tactics during the hunt for the Times Square bomber nearly let him escape and may have allowed others to do just that. The damaging relationship between cops and reporters in this case reminded me of a moment in my own journalistic career when I somehow managed to keep my mouth shut and not broadcast a juicy exclusive that could have had the unintended consequence of encouraging terrorist attacks on Americans. No question that it was easier to do the right thing in the absence of competitive pressures, which fueled the bad press behavior over the intense 53 hours of the manhunt in New York City and Connecticut last week.

Some years back, while reporting on a major news event overseas, I stumbled upon the fact that the nearest American military base was being guarded by U.S. soldiers with empty guns. They had been neutered by their captain, a female officer who decided on that bizarre and utterly inappropriate form of group punishment after one of her troopers had accidentally fired his duty weapon. Fortunately, his mistake had caused neither bodily harm nor property damage. But his boss decided to teach all of her “boys” a lesson by taking their bullets from them, despite the fact that the same soldiers were responsible for defending the compound from attacks by terrorists and ordinary criminals.

Next day, I had a previously scheduled interview with the base commander, a rising star in the U.S. high command. Privately, I told him about his military police without bullets who were still patrolling the base perimeter. His face turned beet red and his normally booming voice sounded tight and pained: “What are you going to do with the story?” I told him that since I could not figure out a way to tell it without creating an elevated risk of terrorist attack on his troopers and their families, there would be no story. The general immediately checked the facts and after confirming them, ordered the captain shipped back to the U.S. for a lot more leadership training.

That is what’s known as being responsible, where the Fourth Estate is concerned. The same rules should be applied to Law Enforcement and other government entities involved in an ongoing situation that would be better served observing the old “Loose Lips Sink Ships” adage.

In the Times Square bomber case, serious retraining is required for the federal and local anonymous law enforcement sources who fed true, real-time, tactical information to journalists who then broadcast the intel to everyone - including the suspect, who was listening to the radio as he fled. Will we ever really know if the terrorist had local supporters beyond the under-the-table bankers? The same news reports about the cops figuring out who bought the bomb car and then alerting the public to the stakeouts at the suspect’s two residences could easily have sent any co-conspirator into hiding and then, out of the country.

As a card-carrying member of the press for more than 30 years with many good friends in law enforcement as well, it is painful to write critical words about my own community. But what happened in the press-law enforcement relationship during the hunt for the Times Square bomber signals even bigger trouble ahead for the public, which depends on cops and reporters to be responsible and capable of thinking past the excited moment and their own self-interest. Why did the cops leak so fully and so foolishly? A continuing tension and competitive drive between federal and local agencies for credit and favor with the press is the simple, though pathetic answer.

Had alleged Times Square Bomber Faisal Shahzad been better trained in the tradecraft of terrorism, that information might easily have led him to completely escape the multilayered dragnet that had his name on it. I’m not going to write here what steps he could have taken and gotten away, but count on some other journalist to gleefully pour forth a prescription for more effective escapes by terrorists. (Not because that writer sympathizes with terrorists - he would be shocked at the assertion - but because there is loose in the land of the free and the home of the brave the catastrophically stupid notion that all information is essentially morally neutral and that there is a right to know all things at anytime - no matter whose life it might cost, or who might escape prosecution and be able to strike again.)

Like it or not, in the digital universe in which we all live these days, even the smallest newspaper and radio station is read or heard around the world via their websites, making the press the real-time-look-down intelligence service of anyone being hunted by law enforcement. That makes it essential for law enforcement - no matter how hungry for credit in the press they might be - not to tell reporters their next move.

After the capture is time enough to tell it all. There is no constitutional guarantee of live access to tactical information. No one outside the intel-law enforcement community has a legitimate need to know.

Bravo!

One trend I’ve noticed for quite some time is that of the mainstream media’s OpEds tending to echo whatever the agendas of our farthest-left politicians happen to be. The farther these anti-America intentions list to port, the more likely the MSM is to “go for the gusto”.

That said, the Grey Lady is at it again.

The next big thing in heart surgery are replacement valves, which can be implanted without open-heart surgery. But instead of evaluating this as a straightforward boon to humanity, the Times maintained its year-long push for health care rationing, emphasizing the new technology as a “costly valve for the frail” that may drive up health care spending even further with costly new procedures.”

Okay, they’ve said it, a “costly valve for the frail” that may drive up health care spending even further with costly new procedures.”

They’re not concerned with the damage done to our economy by massive illegal immigration, cap-&-trade legislation, government controlled healthcare or any number of social services that gouge the taxpayer, but here they are complaining about the cost of a specific procedure for “the frail”, which can only, or mostly, mean senior citizens.

A race is on to develop the potentially next big thing in heart surgery: a replacement valve that can be implanted through thin tubes known as catheters rather than by traditional open-heart surgery.

The contest pits two major companies, Edwards Lifesciences and Medtronic. Analysts estimate a market for the product that could exceed $1.5 billion within six years. But if the valves catch on, their benefits for the nation’s aging population could be substantial — even if the impact on the nation’s health care bill may be hard to calculate.

Our “compassionate” liberals evidently feel that since the old folks are beneficiaries of the system (never mind all the Social Security taxes and so forth they’ve had extracted from their paychecks over the years, like it or not) and no longer paying into it, they are some sort of parasite better expunged.

God protect Grandma and Grandpa from the New York Times and their ilk…

That’s right.

Columnist Mona Charen (also an author I love to read) tells it spot on:

Arguably violating its embed agreement, the near universal press practice since 9/11, and the expressed wishes of the family, the Associated Press went ahead and published a photograph of mortally wounded Marine Lance Corporal Joshua “Bernie” Bernard, killed in action in Afghanistan. The AP also ignored the pleas of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had implored the press agency as a “matter of judgment and common decency” not to publish the photo.

This is one of the reasons I have always had a bad taste in my mouth at the idea of “embedding” these lefty “journalists” among our brave troops in combat zones.

They are nothing but a bunch of feckless assholes with a political agenda that takes the place of things like good sense, tastful sensibilities and patriotism.

Bernard, 21, a devout Christian and Iraq War veteran from Maine, was described by his squad leader as “a true-heartedly very good guy . . . probably one of the best guys I’ve known in my entire life.” Bernard served as his unit’s point man and navigator. He lost his life on August 14 when he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade that blew off one leg and badly mangled the other. The AP photo captured Bernard lying on the ground, two buddies attempting to help — a splash of red where one leg had been.

The AP’s justification of its decision is both pompous and dubious. “Images of U.S. soldiers fallen in combat have been rare in Iraq and Afghanistan, partly because it is unusual for journalists to witness them and partly because military guidelines have barred the showing of photographs until after families have been notified.” AP says it waited until after Bernard’s funeral to publish the photo, but the same could have been done before. There must have been hundreds of mortal injuries and deaths captured on camera by war correspondents since 2001.

Arguably violating its embed agreement, the near-universal press practice since 9/11, and the express wishes of the family, the Associated Press went ahead and published a photograph of mortally wounded Marine Lance Corporal Joshua “Bernie” Bernard, killed in action in Afghanistan. The AP also ignored the pleas of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had implored the press agency as a “matter of judgment and common decency” not to publish the photo.

Bernard, 21, a devout Christian and Iraq War veteran from Maine, was described by his squad leader as “a true-heartedly very good guy . . . probably one of the best guys I’ve known in my entire life.” Bernard served as his unit’s point man and navigator. He lost his life on August 14 when he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade that blew off one leg and badly mangled the other. The AP photo captured Bernard lying on the ground, two buddies attempting to help — a splash of red where one leg had been.

The AP’s justification of its decision is both pompous and dubious. “Images of U.S. soldiers fallen in combat have been rare in Iraq and Afghanistan, partly because it is unusual for journalists to witness them and partly because military guidelines have barred the showing of photographs until after families have been notified.” AP says it waited until after Bernard’s funeral to publish the photo, but the same could have been done before. There must have been hundreds of mortal injuries and deaths captured on camera by war correspondents since 2001.

The AP contends on the one hand that “the stories and photos” of Lance Corporal Bernard “conform with military regulations surrounding journalists embedded with U.S. forces” but then reminds us that “Critics . . . maintain some of the rules are aimed at sanitizing the war, minimizing the sacrifice and cruelty which were graphically depicted by images from the Civil War to Vietnam where such restrictions were not in place.” Which is it? Is the AP defying the embed agreement because they are no longer willing to “sanitize” the war, or are they simply publishing the first dead Marine photo they’ve ever laid hands on?

“AP journalists document world events every day,” the statement continued. “Afghanistan is no exception. We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is.”

Right, sure. These mainstream media pukes are so transparent when they bullshit that all it does is help you realize how little they respect our intelligence.

There is something else that the AP perhaps did not consider. While for them a photo of a mortally wounded Marine is testimony to the brutality of war; and while for the family it is “disrespectful” (the father’s word); to America’s enemies it is a triumph. There are no universal standards. Our enemies are known to carry videos of the beheading of Nicholas Berg on their cell phones. And for those who’ve forgotten, Nick Berg was a completely innocent American noncombatant. Joshua Bernard would want to be remembered as he lived and served. Instead, the photo of his last moments will doubtless go viral on Islamist websites, where his suffering will be exulted over.

Why should that worry the AP? They are far left liberals, so anything that will help the enemy that they can explain away as “legal and acceptable” is all they need.

Like the NYT, AP, the alphabet networks, L.A.T., WaPO, CNN and the rest of that crowd are the nearest thing to traitors any news media can get without being prosecuted for treason.

‘Nough said, my blood’s boiling more than it needs to!

Read the column in its entirety.

There’s no other way to describe the majority of today’s journalists. If I were a reporter, I don’t think I’d be able to tell anyone about it and look them in the eye at the same time.

Chuck here, by the way, still having a problem with the dropdown contributor menu.

This piece from the Media Research Center says it all.

With President Obama and congressional liberals facing loud protests over their big government health care plan, journalists are casting the anti-ObamaCare forces as “ugly,” “unruly,” “nasty” mobs, with reporters presenting the most odious images (like pictures of Obama drawn as Hitler) as somehow representative. But when President George W. Bush faced left-wing protests, the media scrubbed their stories of radical voices and depicted demonstrators as mainstream, and even “prescient.”

In January 2003, all of the broadcast networks touted an anti-war march organized by the radical International ANSWER, an outgrowth of the communist Workers World Party. Signs at the rally read: “USA Is #1 Terrorist,” “Bush Is a Terrorist,” and “The NYPD Are Terrorists Too.” National Review Online quoted several protesters who claimed 9/11 was a Bush plot, “like when Hitler burned down the Reichstag,” and argued Bush would “build a worldwide planetary death machine.”

Bush would “build a worldwide planetary death machine.”

Come on, now, is that quotably sourced from a mature mind?

Regardless,

Reporters bypassed all that hate and showcased the protesters as everyday Americans. On ABC, Bill Blakemore stressed how the protest attracted “Democrats and Republicans, many middle-aged, from all walks of life,” while CBS’s Joie Chen saw “young, old, veterans and veteran activists — all united in the effort to stop the war before it starts.”

In Feburary 2003, CNN donated two hours of programming, “Voices of Dissent,” to another International ANSWER event. Correspondent Maria Hinojosa enthused: “It’s an extraordinarily diverse crowd. I have seen elderly men and women with mink coats carrying their posters.” ABC’s John McKenzie painted the protesters as idealistic: “So many voices, filling the streets, struggling to be heard.”

Is that the best a supposedly responsible, fair and balanced media can do in the way of reporting, or were they just having a bad news day or several?

On March 22, 2003, CNN offered 38 separate reports on a demonstration that day, but managed to never show any of the radical rhetoric from the podium. Over on ABC, Chris Cuomo saluted the leftists converging in New York City: “While protesters like today are a statistical minority, in American history protests like this have been prescient indicators of the national mood. So the government may do well to listen to what’s said today.”

In October 2003, the far left rallied again in Washington, this time with a rapper leading a chant of “F**k George Bush!” and speakers praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The next day’s Washington Post ignored all of that in favor of a soft feature: “In D.C., a Diverse Mix Rouses War Protest.”

In D.C., a Diverse Mix Rouses War Protest.

I believe the correct response to that, in computerese, is LMFAO!!!!

In 2006, the left demanded money for New Orleans, with one protester wearing a George W. Bush mask adorned with Satan horns and a Hitler moustache. CNN reporter Susan Roesgen thought it comic, calling it a “look-alike” for the President. But covering the anti-big government tea parties in April 2009, Roesgen was aggrieved to see a picture of Obama with a Hitler moustache: “Why be so hard on the President of the United States though with such an offensive message?”

I detest having to call anybody a hypocritical, human shaped chunk of hedge hog feces, so I’ll give Susan Roesgen the benefit of the doubt and just assume that she has something of a faulty memory where some of her past excretions expressions of opinion are concerned.

Today’s protesters are being portrayed as crazy and even dangerous. Ex-CNN reporter Bob Franken called the anti-Obama protesters “a crazed group” engaged in “organized intimidation.” An August 10 graphic on MSNBC wondered: “Conservatives Coming Unhinged?” Chris Matthews saw racism: “I think some of the people are upset because we have a black President.” And ABC’s Bill Weir on Friday warned “the rising anger is now ramping up concerns over the President’s personal safety.”

These people are the ones to whom the majority of Americans go for news and informed opinion. Frightening, isn’t it?

The double-standard is obvious. How can professional journalists possibly justify it?

They can’t, because they’re not professional journalists, no matter what their credentials may indicate.

So, what are they?

My best guess? An unpleasant flotsam of some sort.

In any case, the media needs to be purged of these political whores if it wishes to regain its former status as a dependable source of information and knowledgeably, responsibly formed opinion.

There are a number of links in the Media Research Center article that is linked near the top of this post, this link, in fact, that quantify various references in the quoted narrative.

…so short-changed by the mainstream media in almost every area that can be equated with politics, but none so much as our involvement in Iraq.

They deny that we’re fighting an enemy there, peddling a story of pure civil war in which U.S. servicemen are dropping like flies, the Iraqis want us out of there, Iraqi civilian deaths at the hands of terrorists are 100% our fault, etc, etc.

They ignore every positive event that occurs over there.

They make an instant buffet of the slightest allegation that any U.S. troops have committed a wrongdoing, slandering the troops in the most extreme ways before any investigation has even begun.

Since the majority of Americans count on the MSM to deliver them accurate and complete news, the propaganda they actually receive gives them leftward slanted and highly inaccurate reports of the state of affairs in Iraq, and this is the information upon which they rely when it comes time to vote.

The latest example?

Water boarding, keeping interrogation subjects in uncomfortable positions, other techniques that do no physical damage to said subjects, the “plight” of captured terrorists at GITMO, which the left has compared with gulags, concentration camps and the killing fields of the Pol Pot regime, and the embarrassment to which still other jihadi murderers were subjected at Abu Graibh commanded a lengthy and aggressive crusade by the mainstream media, yet graphic pictures of fiendish tortures from a captured al-Qaeda interrogation manual and of the tools of the trade don’t even warrant honorable mention from the MSM. Whose side are they on, again?

Since the left would have the American people believe that there is no al-Qaeda activity in Iraq (that would indicate that we actually have an enemy to fight in Iraq), they ignore other stories that place al-Qaeda in the country.

The mainstream media is doing an outstanding job as a propaganda tool for the left. They are also a discerning lot — the only rank and file soldiers and Marines we ever hear from on that quarter seem to be the scarce few they can find who are against the war. Otherwise, most so-called liberal intellectuals will tell you that the folks who are over there fighting have been duped by Bush & Cheney and don’t know what they’re talking about when they support their mission in Iraq. They ignore the large numbers of volunteers who stick around for a second tour, they ignore our troops’ contributions to the betterment of education, lifestyles and infrastructure in Iraq, and the progress they’ve made in training Iraqi police and military personnel to eventually take over all law enforcement and national security duties. They ignore the courage and spirit of the Iraqi people who turned out twelve million strong to vote in a democratic government. They ignore the success of the post Saddam stock market, the copious publications of the burgeoning free press…

…yet when an American soldier is killed, they crow gleefully and shout about it from the rooftops, adding the casualty to their one-sided scorecard. If a U.S. military unit waxes thirty five terrorists, it is: 35 Dead in U.S. Firefight rather than Marines Kill 35 Terrorists.

Over at And Rightly So, Civil Truth has posted a lengthy but well worth the read compilation of beliefs on the war and U.S. politics by a man who not only survived the destruction of 9/11, but a full tour as a Marine in Iraq as well.

Although I haven’t been what one would term “pro-draft”, the writer makes some convincing points in favor of a draft that have me reevaluating my point of view on that score, and other than his choices for President in 2008, I largely agree with most of what he has to say.

President Bush’s veto of the pork-ridden, cut & run, head for the tall timber, tails between our legs, whimpering surrender redeployment deadlined Congressional rendering evidently backed the Democrats far enough into a corner that they were forced to submit a much more sane and acceptable bill.

Of course, this is only a brief respite from the sabotage tactics crowd over on the port side and their mainstream media hacks, those tenaciously anti-American scumbags progressive souls, to borrow a line from a governor I once successfully voted for, “will be bock!”