Tag Archives: online media

AP: ‘Famed Flight Attendant … Captured the Nation’s Imagination’

The Essential Global News Network’s fascination with Steven Slater continues. Mr. Slater (picture at right is from his Facebook page) is the JetBlue flight attendant who reportedly “grabbed the plane’s intercom and made an expletive-laced speech, grabbed a beer from the galley, opened the door and slid down the emergency evacuation chute.” Slater was charged with “criminal mischief and reckless endangerment.” Three weeks ago (covered at NewsBusters ; at BizzyBlog ), Associated Press writer Samantha Gross rhapsodized over how Slater’s actions had fulfilled “a working man’s fantasy … rekindled memories of workers’ liberation … (and) sparked wistful excitement among workers who have long fantasized of choosing pride over pay.” Before getting to the AP’s latest sympathetic piece, let’s take a look at something originally associated with a magazine report about Slater that is not currently present in that story. In a Google Web search on “Steven Slater” (not in quotes), here is the sixth result returned: Really? But when you go to the referenced People Magazine article , the statement cited in the result isn’t there, nor, as best I can tell, is it in the readers’ comments. Perhaps the statement was never written, but I doubt it, as the Internet has a funny way of leaving tracks. A search on the exact sentence involved (“On his Facebook and MySpace pages, he boasted about flying high and taking a five year break from the skies” — entered with quotes) returned 15 items (Google’s header says it’s 130, but it’s really 15, before adding “similar items”). Was everyone who noted this, especially this link , which appears to have captured People’s RSS feed, just making it up? With that little nugget as background, here is selected text from an unbylined AP story early this morning reporting that Slater will not be getting his job back (bolds are mine): Sometimes there’s no going back. JetBlue Airways says that there will be no second exits for famed flight attendant Steven Slater – who captured the nation’s imagination with his profanity-laced loudspeaker tirade and jump down a plane’s emergency chute, beer in hand. Spokeswoman Jenny Dervin said Saturday that Slater is no longer employed by the airline. She said the airline won’t release further details out of respect for Slater’s privacy. Slater’s lawyer had said he loved flying and wanted to return to work, and Slater’s folk-hero status among tens of thousands of online fans had led some of them to urge the airline to keep him on. The airline said at the time of the incident last month that Slater was suspended pending an investigation. It told employees in a memo that press coverage was not taking into account how much harm can be caused by emergency slides, which are deployed with a potentially deadly amount of force. The former flight attendant still has to navigate the criminal justice system. Given how sympathetic the wire service has been to his plight, and assuming he avoids jail, I have a perfect suggestion for who should be Slater’s next employer. He apparently won’t have to worry about whether he has a supportive environment. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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AP: ‘Famed Flight Attendant … Captured the Nation’s Imagination’

AP Howler of the Day: Kasich ‘Keeping Pace’ With Strickland in OH Guv Race

Talk about an in-kind contribution. In a short item about a Democratic Governors Association election complaint about Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, the Associated Press’s Julie Carr Smyth showed that she is willfully ignoring Buckeye State reality, or has been living a hermit’s existence for the past few months. In describing Kasich’s standing against Democratic incumbent governor Ted Strickland, Smyth claimed that Kasich “is keeping pace with Strickland in polls and fundraising” (a picture of the relevant paragraph is here ). As you can see , that’s sort of like a baseball writer claiming that “The Cincinnati Reds are keeping pace with the Chicago Cubs this year”: For those who aren’t following baseball closely, the Reds have a 21-1/2 game lead on the Cubs with less than 30 games remaining. Who do you think you’re foolin’, babe? (Answer: Relatively disengaged voters who need to given the impression that the sinking Strickland campaign is really on track to victory, instead of heading towards the first defeat of an incumbent governor in the Buckeye State in 36 years.) Democrats are upset that Kasich appeared on Fox News and was able to give out the name of his web site and encourage viewers to donate to his campaign during Bill O’Reilly’s show on August 18. Awwww. The election complaint is carried at a Huffington Post item courtesy of Sam Stein , a former NewsWeak (spelled that way on purpose) reporter . Two years ago, Stein claimed that Republican presidential nominee John McCain couldn’t possibly have vetted VP pick Sarah Palin because no one had visited her town’s local newspaper and looked through its archives. Well Sam, that just might be because the paper’s archives going back a decade were available online , and contained hundreds of entries. This Internet thing is pretty cool when you have a clue about how to use it. Ben Smith at Politico, who is not being linked because of his outfit’s outrageous attempt to shut down the College Politico, seems to think that this complaint has as much validity as Stein’s unproven claim against Team McCain two years ago: It seems to hinge on a chyron and, to my eye, is more in the great tradition of thin, high-profile election-year litigation than about winning in court. Speaking of “in-kind contributions,” maybe Julie Carr Smyth can estimate how much value favoring Strickland we should place on her demonstrably false claim in a national news story that Kasich is only “keeping” pace with him, when the fact is that Kasich has an averaged-out double-digit lead? Cross-posted at Bizzyblog.com .

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AP Howler of the Day: Kasich ‘Keeping Pace’ With Strickland in OH Guv Race

Shirley Sherrod Rejects Return to USDA; Media Rejects Reporting Relevant Info

The theater of the Sherrods continues. Earlier today, Shirley Sherrod, who, according to the current version of ruling class wisdom, was prematurely evacuated from the USDA by Director Tom Vilsack, decided not to accept an offer to return to the agency. Instead, according to Politico’s Matt Negrin , “she hasn’t accepted the department’s offer to work there again, but that she wants ‘some type of relationship’ with it later.” We wouldn’t closure or anything, would we? Five weeks or so have intervened since Andrew Breitbart posted a video excerpt of Sherrod’s speech at an NAACP event. (It should be noted USAactionnews.com actually posted the video earlier; though their link has been taken down, their original July 15 tweet is here .) In that time, the establishment press has either seriously downplayed or totally ignored the several important items relating to the background and outlook of Ms. Sherrod and her husband Charles. The earliest discovery was Shirley Sherrod was appointed to her position as Georgia Director of Rural Development on July 25, 2009. That appointment came mere days after her former co-op farm New Communities, Inc. (NCI) ” won a thirteen million dollar settlement in the minority farmers law suit Pigford vs Vilsack .” This settlement included “$150,000 each to Shirley and Charles for pain and suffering.” How odd, to say the least, for a victorious plaintiff to end up working for the losing defendant. Then, about a week after Breitbart’s video drop, another video surfaced , this time of Charles. Delivering the keynote address at a “race and law conference” at the University of Virginia School of Law, Sherrod his audience: (To young African-Americans in the audience) “Please find a way, find a way that we can trust each other. So that our monies can work for our total liberation. … Our labor and our monies and our contracts usually end up in white folks’ hands and pockets. When will we trust our own?” “… we must stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections. We must not be afraid to vote black.” Charming. Finally, there were the shocking accusations by black activist and Cal State professor Ron Wilkins at Counterpunch that during at least the late 1960s and early 1970s, NCI “under-paid, mistreated and fired black laborers–many of them less than 16 years of age–in the same fields of southwest Georgia where their ancestors suffered under chattel slavery.” Wilkins cited tangible, same-time evidence that NCI was struck by the United Farm Workers. An article in a September 28, 1974 UFW publication (“Children Farm Workers Strike Black Co-op”) leveled the following accusations directly at Charles Sherrod (the first word in the original is “through,” which is erroneous): Though several of the cooperative’s funding organization’s are pressuring Charles Sherrod, the farm’s manager, to reach a settlement with the strikers, he remains unwilling to negotiate. With so few scabs left in New Community’s (sic) fields, the UFW first strike in the southeast area (outside of Florida) may bring the first of many UFW contracts to these fields that were once harvested by slave labor. NCI employed scab labor, and somehow that’s not worth reporting. Uh-huh. Wilkins makes it clear that Shirley Sherrod was also heavily involved in NCI’s operations: “Shirley Sherrod was New Communities Inc. store manager during the 1970s. As such, Mrs. Sherrod was a key member of the NCI administrative team, which exploited and abused the workforce in the field.” For this, the Sherrods and NCI deserved $13 million? As of about 3 PM Eastern Time, a Google News search on “Sherrod Vilsack” (not in quotes; sorted in date order) returned 290 items (search results saved at my host for future reference). A search on “Sherrod Vilsack Wilkins” (not in quotes; sorted in date order) returned one result ( also saved ) — my August 3 Washington Examiner blog post about NCI’s alleged worker exploitation. Update: As of 6:20 p.m., the search results ( sherrod vilsack ; sherrod vilsack wilkins ) were virtually identical. If the non-coverage of the items raised above continues, this journalistic dereliction of duty will end up at or near the top of the list of the most disgraceful establishment press cover-ups I’ve ever seen. I’d love to be proven wrong. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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Shirley Sherrod Rejects Return to USDA; Media Rejects Reporting Relevant Info

Roger Ebert: Palin Uses ‘Coded’ Tweets, Employs ‘Mein Kampf’ Tactics on Twitter

In a passionate and politically-charged post on his blog, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Glenn Beck is a “zealot” who makes “daily insinuations” that President Obama is a secret Muslim and that Sarah Palin uses “Mein Kampf” tactics and “coded words” on Twitter. “One buried motive for the attacks on Park51 is exploitation of the insane belief of 20% of Americans that President Obama is a Muslim,” wrote Ebert in the Aug. 19 blog post. “Zealots like Glenn Beck, with his almost daily insinuations about the Muslim grandfather Obama never knew and the father he met only once, are encouraging this mistaken belief.” Ebert also slammed Sarah Palin, writing that “her tweets are mine fields of coded words; for her, ‘patriot’ is defined as, ‘those who agree with me.’ When she says ‘Americans,’ it is not inclusive.” The film critic posted a screen shot of two of Palin’s recent Tweets that defended radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger for using racial slurs on the air. “These two [Tweets] must have been carefully composed in advance to be tweeted within 60 seconds of each other,” Ebert speculated, noting that “by using the evocative word ‘shackles’ [Palin] associates Dr. Laura’s use of the N-word with the suffering of slaves.” But then Ebert took an even more bizarre turn, writing that “By implying Dr. Laura was silenced by ‘Constitutional obstructionists,’ [Palin] employs the methodology of the Big Lie, defined in Mein Kampf as an untruth so colossal that ‘no one would believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.'” Ebert also called out Fox News, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh for “distorting” the Bill of Rights “as an everyday practice.” However, in the same paragraph Ebert had a few kind words for Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. “[T]o his credit, [O’Reilly] doesn’t indulge in this,” the film critic wrote.

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Roger Ebert: Palin Uses ‘Coded’ Tweets, Employs ‘Mein Kampf’ Tactics on Twitter

Time Celebrates Methodist Seminary’s Move to Train Imams and Rabbis Too

For centuries, theological seminaries minted trained and licensed ministers of their respective religious traditions. They took seriously their creedal and confessional commitments to their respective faiths and denominations. While comparative theology may have been taught, it was with a view to understand and critically evaluate them as rival truth claims, not equally valid truthful claims. But those dark, backwards days may be behind us if Claremont School of Theology successfully paves the way. Or at least that’s the sentiment conveyed in Time magazine writer Elizabeth Dias’s August 22 article, “Training Pastors, Rabbis, and Imams Together.” Dias’s 10-paragraph-long August 22 article portrayed Claremont president Jerry Campbell as a “classic American” entrepreneur who took a novel approach to the school’s “low enrollment and in-the-red” balance sheet: “end isolated clerical training” by “bring[ing] toegether Claremont, the Islamic Center of Southern California (ICSC) and the Academy for Jewish Religion California.” Of course, religious training deals in matters of eternal verities, not marketplace commodities, so that sort of approach is unwise, religious conservatives would argue. Yet Dias excluded any dissent from her examination into the newly inclusive Methodist seminary.  Indeed, Dias’s word choice in the following passage seems to hint conservative critics are opposed to religious tolerance (emphasis mine): To be sure, Claremont’s push to desegregate religious education has encountered its share of roadblocks . The most notable to date occurred in January when questions about Claremont’s commitment to Christian education nearly cost the school its funding and sanction from the United Methodist Church. After a five-month investigation, Campbell prevailed. “We explained clearly to the [Methodist] review team that in fact our United Methodist character continues intact throughout this program,” he said. ” We intend to be the Christian partner in this endeavor, and so we are not changing our United Methodist character essentially in any way.” But how can a Christian seminary grant divinity degrees to persons of religious traditions that it views as false religions? And if Claremont views other religious traditions as equally valid, wouldn’t that by definition be a denial of the truth claims of Christian Scripture, which holds forth Jesus Christ as the only “name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). A thorough religion reporter would explore these questions; sadly Dias failed to do just that.

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Time Celebrates Methodist Seminary’s Move to Train Imams and Rabbis Too

Time Compiles ‘Best Viral Campaign Ads of 2010’, Pans Most of the Republican Entries

It was inevitable that someone with enough time on their hands would compile a list of the best viral campaign video ads of 2010 . There sure have been some doozies this year, so I can’t fault Time magazine for including hits like “Demon Sheep” and the Dale Peterson ad in their top 20 list. That said, of the 15 Republican ads in the list, most were panned by Time staffers. By contrast, two Democrats’ ads — Rep. Tom Perreillo (Va.) and  Sen. Pat Leahy (Vt.) primary opponent Dan Freilich — were panned,  yet neither candidate’s Democratic affiliation was mentioned in the blurbs about the ads. By contrast, Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (S.D.), who’s presenting herself to voters as a fiscal conservative , was praised for an ad featuring her toddler son, and Time’s FeiFei Sun cheered Colorado Democratic gubernatorial nominee John Hickenlooper for his “Clean Campaign” in which he humorously promised to eschew negative campaign ads. Sun did get in a few digs at the infamous Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) , whose anti-Republican attack ad she labeled as “hyperbolic,” but she also joked that James Cameron should direct feature-length versions of his campaign ads.  By contrast, a Republican primary candidate hoping to spar against Grayson in November, Dan Fanelli, was roundly denounced by writer Katy Steinmetz for his “terrorist profiling ad”: We can’t tell if Florida congressional candidate Dan Fanelli is being serious with this ad. He opens with some pretty intense racial profiling he points to a nerdy white guy and a stacked Arab guy, and asks which one looks like a terrorist. Then he moves on to deluded narcissism. Grinning, Fanelli approaches the camera and says, “Let’s face it. If a good-looking, ripped guy without much hair was flying airplanes into the Twin Towers, I’d have no problem being pulled out of line at the airport.” Sorry, Dan; you might be as bald as Bruce Willis, but you’re lacking in just about every other department.

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Time Compiles ‘Best Viral Campaign Ads of 2010’, Pans Most of the Republican Entries

CNN and Time Promote Accusation That ‘Bigotry’ is Driving Mosque Debate

CNN’s American Morning and Newsroom programs on Thursday brought on Time magazine’s Bobby Ghosh to highlight his “Is America Islamophobic?” article and help promote his accusation that ” hate speech ” and ” bigotry ” have ” come out into the mainstream ” during the course of the debate over the proposed New York City mosque near Ground Zero. During his American Morning appearance, anchor Kiran Chetry hailed Ghosh’s article, which is the cover story of the upcoming August 30th issue of Time, as ” a very thoughtful piece .” Anchor Ali Velshi, who conducted the second interview of the Time deputy international editor, went further than his colleague: ” Okay, you’re American- Time magazine is required reading ….Bobby Ghosh… wrote the Islamophobia piece that I think everybody is going to have to read because if you are in this country, it’s part of the dialogue that we are involved in at this point .” But only days earlier, in an August 3 Time.com article about the imam behind the mosque, Ghosh stated that the “last legal hurdle to the proposed Islamic center near the site of the World Trade Center has been removed, but ignorance, bigotry and politics are more formidable obstacles …. Criticism [of the mosque] spans the gamut, from the ill-informed anguish of those who mistakenly view Islam as the malevolent force that brought down the towers to the ill-considered opportunism of right-wing politicians who see Islam as an easy target .” So the “thoughtful” Time editor whose latest is “required reading” even had the gall to criticize the families and the friends of those who died on 9/11, or who are generally emotionally-touched by the carnage of the attack. Ghosh didn’t speak so sharply during his two CNN appearance on Thursday, but he still went after what he labeled as “hate speech” in the controversy over the planned mosque. During the American Morning segment 15 minutes into the 8 am Eastern hour, Chetry first asked the editor, “Do you believe that this debate…typifies how people feel on larger scale about Muslims in America?” Ghosh seemed to walk back what he said on August 3: GHOSH: Well, let me clarify. You don’t have to be an Islamophobe to have reservations about this particular project. You don’t have to be prejudiced to have very genuine concerns about it . But what we have seen in the process of this debate and about mosques- not just here in New York, but all over this country- is that there has been a vicious- some very vicious hate speech has entered the mainstream of discussion in this country, and that is- certainly, we are seeing some Islamophobic views being expressed by people who we wouldn’t have expected it from – when you have legitimate political figures comparing the religion of Islam to Naziism. That is something on a scale that we have never seen before. The Time deputy editor pushed this point throughout this first interview: GHOSH: There are lots of people who feel- not unreasonably, they feel emotionally attached to that particular space. There are people who are concerned genuinely for the feelings of the families of the victims at the World Trade Center. There are people who have- as I said, perfectly legitimate reasons to have concerns. But what this debate has done is that has brought out- from previously, what was in the fringes into the mainstream, along with reasonable people- a lot of hate speech and a lot of very vicious hate speech that we haven’t heard before . CHETRY: And not just the mosque debate- the controversy over this one- but we’ve seen a bit of a change, many say, over the past few years. Any of it linked to the fact that we’ve seen more instances of either attempted or homegrown terror that we thought- I mean after 9/11, a lot of people said this is a problem the United States doesn’t have- what Europe has, problem with radicalization within our borders- and we have the Times Square bomber and a few other thwarted attempts or plots- has that added to this fear and feeling that Islam in America, perhaps, is radical in some way? GHOSH: Absolutely. There is certainly alarm that has grown in concern and suspicion. But there are also people who are taking advantage of this for political reasons- who are taking advantage of this concern- who are take advantage of the fact that a lot of Americans don’t know very much about Islam. It is a very small religion in this country, compared with some other places in the world. So many Americans- and we have a poll that shows this- we don’t really know that much about it. So- and now you have people, who for political reasons, are taking advantage of the combination of fear and lack of knowledge, and adding to this- this toxic language, and are spreading- sometimes, knowing full well- spreading lies and misrepresentations about the faith, and are tarring an entire community- an entire religion with the brush- that they are all from- that they’re all potentially terrorists . That your neighbor, who is an American citizen, and- by all polling, who’s proud to be an American citizen- happens to be a Muslim- may potentially be someone who’s plotting against us. Five and a half hours later, at the bottom of the 1 pm Eastern hour of CNN’s Newsroom, Ghosh repeated his main points, and even added an accusation of “racism” against the opponents of the mosque and other Islamic projects in the country: GHOSH: There’s a lot of Islamophobia growing in this country . It’s not as bad as some parts of Europe. There are no neo-Nazi thugs going around beating up American Muslims. But there is a lot of hate speech, and it’s getting louder and more vicious . And in these mosque protests, not just the one here in the New York, but all over the country- in these mosque protests, we’ve seen that hate speech take on a new and more venomous tinge to it. And here’s the worst part: it’s now come out into the mainstream and we’re listening to figures- not fringe lunatics, if you pardon the expression- but we’re listening to people who are held in wide respect in this country, say things that, in other contexts, would be considered completely inappropriate . VELSHI: Have you been able to come up with contexts to give examples of where it would be appropriate- inappropriate? Where we wouldn’t use this kind of language to talk about another identifiable group? GHOSH: I don’t think any identifiable group but the Muslims in this country. I don’t think Newt Gingrich could say that- could compare them with Nazis. I think that would be considered- he- it would never occur to him. But as somebody who I spoke to during the story told me, Islamophobia is now the accepted form of racism in this country. Muslims feel that people are allowed in the public sphere to say whatever they want to say about Islam, and they can get away with it. The editor then gave an example of what he saw was “hate speech” against Islam and/or Muslims: GHOSH: Things did get quite a lot worse after 9/11. We weren’t paying that much attention because there was a war coming. There was enormous human tragedy in the city. And so, we didn’t pay that much attention when someone like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell compared the prophet Muhammed to a terrorist, and somebody else said he was a pervert. But if you were a Muslim-American, you were paying attention . Then things did quiet down, and to a substantial degree, the credit goes to President Bush, who made it clear right from the get-go, from the 12th of September- VELSHI: Our war is not with Muslims- GHOSH: It’s not with Muslims. It’s a religion of peace. It’s just a small band of extremists that we are fighting. But then more terrorist acts took place- more recently, there have been acts committed by Muslim-Americans. America went to war in two Muslim countries. You started hearing about suicide bombings on television every day. So, a certain fear and sense of alarm crept in, which is all right- which is permissible. But then you have people who have made it their business to capitalize on that sense of alarm for political gains- who have stoked up this thing and sort of deliberately spread very poisonous lies about the religion and about the people who practice that religion, and put it out there into the public theater . So Robertson and Falwell’s historically-accurate assertion that Mohammed was a 7th century-version of a terrorist, particularly in his treatment towards the Jews of the Arabian peninsula , is “hate speech” in Ghosh’s book. Furthermore, it is completely legitimate to point out that Muhammad was a pervert according to many culture’s standards, as his wife Aisha was betrothed to him when she was six or seven years old, and their marriage was consummated when she was nine or ten, according to the very hadith writings held up by Islam . One might guess it’s “hate speech” to point that out as well. Velshi, who worried on Wednesday’s Newsroom that if a government helped moved the site of the planned mosque, other governments  would ” entertain petitions of moving Catholic churches away from the Oklahoma bombing site ,” since Timothy McVeigh was baptized Catholic, actually helped forward some of the editor’s talking points later in the interview: GHOSH: Four in ten Americans have a negative view of Islam, and that’s a very dangerous proportion . And so, some of the challenge for the Muslim community is to communicate better, is to give a better sense of what Islam really is, is to persuade people that they’re not all to be tarred with one brush. And ironically, that is what the people behind Park 51, the cultural center here in New York- that’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to communicate that Islam is not what many Americans perceive . That it is a- VELSHI: Right-right. But every part of their message has been lost? GHOSH: At the moment, yes. VELSHI: The name Cordoba- some people are associating it with Muslim rule and bloody battles, when, in fact, Cordoba was one of the finest times in relations between the major religions . GHOSH: Exactly right- in interfaith discourse- VELSHI: Yeah- GHOSH: And the great mosque of Cordoba that people are talking about and that Newt Gingrich was talking about- the man who built it, the Muslim prince who built it, bought it from a Christian group- paid money for it and bought it from a Christian group. And there was not a lot of alarm and anger raised then. It’s- as I said, we- I’m afraid, at this point, no rational discussion seems possible- VELSHI: Right- it’s just too hot. GHOSH: It will take us a little while, and temperatures have to cool down. Maybe we have to wait for this election to get over (unintelligible)- VELSHI: What’s difficult- and I was going to say- what’s difficult is that it’s been difficult for people who would like to have a reasonable discussion about this to do so, because they are then lumped with being politically correct or things like- in fact, it’s hard. We’ve heard politicians who have come out in defense of letting this mosque be built sound like they are apologists or some sort. Now, everybody now is backing away from the positions that defend free speech. GHOSH: No less a person than the president of the United States, which, for many Muslims, is quite disappointing. It will take an act of statesmanship. Statesmanship is when you can rise above the public sentiment and bring people along with you. If we went with the majority, there would still be segregation in this country. If we went with the majority- VELSHI: Women wouldn’t vote in this country . GHOSH: Exactly- American Jews would still be- still not have all their rights. So, it’s time for leadership. It’s time for our politicians- and if it doesn’t come from politics, it may have to come from somewhere else- it’s time for Americans to step up and say, this will not be allowed in this country. This country was built on finer principles than this, and we are going- we’re not going to tolerate this kind of prejudice, this kind of bigotry, and this kind of Islamophobia.

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CNN and Time Promote Accusation That ‘Bigotry’ is Driving Mosque Debate

Former Majority Leader Dick Armey Credits CNBC’s Santelli for Sparking Tea Party

February 2009 was a pretty dark time for the conservative movement. The arguably most liberal president in the history of the United States has been sworn in to office just weeks early. The Congress had solid Democratic majorities in both chambers. And there were overtures that only way to save the nation from suffering the worst of a downtrodden economy was through an avalanche of costly legislation that would create huge budget deficits and ever-expanding bureaucracy. But in the midst of that dark spell, CNBC’s Rick Santelli lit the spark that ignited the conservative pushback. On CNBC’s Feb. 19, 2009 “Squawk Box,” Santelli called for a “tea party” in Lake Michigan to protest the idea the Obama administration was preparing to enact a massive housing bailout to reward people who took part in risky behavior by purchasing a home they couldn’t afford. According to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, now the chairman of FreedomWorks , often portrayed as a Tea Party villain by the American left , Santelli really is a father of the movement. Armey, along with Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, credit Santelli in an Aug. 17 Wall Street Journal op-ed and more extensively in their book “Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto.” And on CNBC’s Aug. 19 “Squawk Box,” Armey explained the importance of Santelli. “The Santelli rant, which we talk about with great affection in our book, immediately went to the Internet and the Internet is so important to this movement, in terms of the baffled liberals who can’t understand what’s going on without a George Soros,” Armey said. “It’s the Internet, because that went viral. And everybody said – and that’s where the term ‘tea party’ comes in.” Armey explained that his organization served as a mechanism for the activists to coordinate the Tea Party movement. “So what we found happening very soon is with people who had found us because they said, ‘I like that guy on TV. I want to have a tea party. How do you do it? Well, let’s go see who does it.’ That’s how they found FreedomWorks and they asked us, ‘Give us some, you know, advice how to do this, how to put it together,’ and so forth. And we developed this mentoring relationship.” Despite accusations of opportunism , Armey explained his organization predated the Santelli rant and the entire movement. “We’ve been doing this since 1984, and we are the best there is at,” he added. Later in the program, Santelli responded Armey’s appearance on “Squawk Box.” “[T]he rant was a year and a half ago,” Santelli said. “The Tea Party movement is really moving along. It’s pretty cool after a year and a half.”

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Former Majority Leader Dick Armey Credits CNBC’s Santelli for Sparking Tea Party

Newsweek ‘Thought Experiment’: Why Not Cut Alaska Loose From the Union?

Back in September 2008, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews floated a specious allegation that then-Governor Sarah Palin had ties to an advocate of Alaskan secession named Joe Vogler. Although the charge was roundly discredited, it was one of the many early attempts to smear Palin as a wacky extremist. Two years later, it appears at least one writer for a liberal magazine thinks Alaskan secession would be a fun little topic to bat around the Web. ” Thought Experiment: Should Alaska Secede From the U.S.? ” asked the headline for Daniel Stone’s August 18 The Gaggle blog post at Newsweek.com: August is slow around Washington, so we figured it’d be high time to toss around the idea of kicking Alaska out of the union—or the state leaving on its own accord. The reason? Those darn Alaskans are too conservative, too critical of federal government intrusion, yet they are net recipients of federal aid from Washington spending: A New York Times report from today points to the reason why: Alaskan politicians love to slam Washington for its over-the-top taxes, spending, and regulation of the state’s hefty reserves of natural resources. But when it comes to Washington giving back, Alaska is happy to take more money per capita than any other state. As of May, the Last Frontier, as it’s called, accepted $3,145 of stimulus funding per resident—money, mind you, that one of its senators and its sole member of Congress voted against. That’s not to say all Alaska lawmakers turn up their noses at D.C., but with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country—7.9 percent, which is still high, but not as high as, say, Michigan at 13.1 percent—there’s an implicit question of how much Alaska needs Uncle Sam, and how much Uncle Sam needs Alaska. If the 49th state were to leave the union, the impact would be, at first, economically devastating, according to Gov. Sean Parnell. But over time, could Alaska, by taking control of its own regulation over oil and gas, open the state for new business, perhaps allowing it to boom in a way that, until now, Washington has apparently stifled? Let’s hear what you think. Open forum below.  This sudden academic interest in secession wouldn’t have anything to do with Palin Derangement Syndrome on the part of the media, would it?

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Newsweek ‘Thought Experiment’: Why Not Cut Alaska Loose From the Union?

USA Today Blogger Annoyed by Ground Zero Mosque/Auschwitz Convent Analogies

“Ground Zero is not Auschwitz, so why all the analogies?” USA Today religion blogger Cathy Lynn Grossman asks that question with the headline of her August 18 Faith & Reason post . Grossman explained that the comparison stems from conservatives who pointed out an incident in the early 1990s when Pope John Paul II halted a planned convent near the Auschwitz concentration camp. The nuns had every right to build the convent, but it was unwise and insensitive to do so, leading the pontiff to scrap the plan. By way of analogy, Muslims have every right to build a mosque near Ground Zero, but the insensitivity of doing so blocks from the site of the deadliest radical Islamic terror attack in U.S. history should lead Muslim leaders to call for the project to be scrapped. But Grossman then went on to quote two liberals who reject the Auschwitz analogy as invalid before she conflated the Ground Zero mosque issue with isolated incidents across the country where other folks are raising NIMBY objections to mosques in their hometowns (emphasis Grossman’s): Meanwhile, none of the analogies flying about address whether people who are enraged at Islam care about individual Muslms or mosque zoning — from Manhattan, to Murfreesboro, Tenn., to Temecula, Calif., where a Baptist pastor objects to a mosque planned for near his church. And New York Gov. David Paterson will soon meet with Cordoba Initiative planners behind the lower Manhattan community center to discuss the location. Does this sound familiar? Are we still on the post from earlier this week? Is anywhere far enough away to suit critics? How do you apply the First Amendment here?

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USA Today Blogger Annoyed by Ground Zero Mosque/Auschwitz Convent Analogies