September 14, 2008

The Official Wasilla Banned Books List

Some panicky progressives keep claiming (erroneously) that while as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin banned book in the public library, or tried to ban books, and some of the rumors being passed around even attempt to named books that the rumor creators said were banned.

Want a full, official list of every book ever banned in Wasilla, AK?

Here you go, taken from the official source (PDF).

No books have ever been banned in Wasilla at the request of Sarah Palin, or anyone else. Further, only one of the five books challenged even occurred during her terms in office.

Reality, folks.

Try it sometime.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:45 AM | Comments (98) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

NY Times Advocates 3rd Bush Administration

After reading the NY Times rail against Sarah Palin's style of governance, making it very clear that they find it reprehensible when political appointees are replaced by incoming elected officials, I can only assume that they will protest loudly if the next President does not keep President Bush's appointees once he takes office.

It's good to know they support such a continuity in government, doesn't it?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:50 AM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 13, 2008

The Best They Can Get?

Air America talk radio host Randi Rhodes, last seen here almost a year ago when she claimed she was assaulted, before it was exposed that the culprit who knocked out her teeth was her own liver acting in self defense, is back in the news again.

Rhodes asserted Sarah Palin was a potential child molester, and sadly, no, I'm not kidding.

Rhodes is the same Air America host that recently claimed John McCain was treated well by the North Vietnamese that tortured him, and he has a lengthy history of other embarrassing rants that make liberals look like mean-spirited, ignorant fools... kinda like Obama's latest ad against McCain over email.

I'm not surprised at all that Rhodes would chose to stay in the gutter as that is very much her shtick. But is she really the among the best liberal talk radio has to offer?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:20 PM | Comments (39) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 12, 2008

The Outing of Barack Obama

If you can warp time to imagine Richard Nixon consorting with Eric Robert Rudolph for more than 20 years on public policy issues, then you can begin to understand the relationship between Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama and one of the men who made him in Chicago machine politics, Bill Ayers. What you may not be able to understand is why Obama's campaign is apparently working with Ayers to suppress the extent of their relationship.

Who was Bill Ayers?

Ayers was a founder and leader of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group that declared war upon the United States, bombed government buildings, murdered law enforcement officers during armed robberies, fire-bombed a judge's home, and had planned what could have been the largest terrorist mass murder in America prior to 9/11. That attack was only thwarted by the premature detonation of massive roofing nail-studded pipe bombs by Ayer's girlfriend and fellow terrorist, Diana Oughton, bombs destined for a non-commissioned officers dance at Fort Dix. The blast of just some of the pipe bombs leveled a four-story Greenwich Village townhouse; four more nail-studded bombs were recovered in the rubble, along with 57 sticks of dynamite. The anti-personnel bombs created by the Weathermen were designed to kill hundreds.

That Obama and Ayers have long had a relationship has never been in doubt, but until recently, Obama attempted to minimize that relationship, describing Ayers as little more than an college professor, someone who lived in his neighborhood, with whom he'd had minimal contact. A compliant media has even tried to claim the Weathermen never killed anyone other than their own members, a transparent falsehood.

But the facade of a distant relationship the Obama campaign has constructed between the candidate and the aging terrorist is slipping. In a recent interview with Bill O'Reilly, Obama admitted a bit more about the extent of his relationship with Ayers.

Ayers and Obama had partnered together at the Woods Funds on various projects as members of the board of directors, in the legislature on striking down a crime bill that would have sentenced youth offends to an adult prison for a second violent crime, and most interestingly, on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), a school reform project written by Ayers that collected $49 million from the Annenberg Foundation and was tasked with raising and distributing $98 million more.

According to the NY Times, Obama was nominated to the CAC board in 1995 and was elected chairman, despite having a paltry resume in regards to education experience, and in spite of the fact that the board had far more qualified education experts on the board for consideration, including two college presidents.

The same article notes that Bill Ayer's helped write the CAC proposal and that as soon as Obama was seated, the board was pushed to start approving enrichment program grant proposals "quickly," with little apparent regard for the quality of the proposals. A board member stated in 1998 that "the project proposals by and large were awful," and ran counter to the goals and educational strategy of the Chicago Public Schools.

As Patterico notes, the enrichment programs that the CAC doled out money to under Obama's watch seemed geared more towards indoctrination than education, as at least some of the money Ayer's helped secure was funneled to Ayer's peers, including fellow 1960s radical Mike Klonsky, who received one of the first CAC grants of $175,000 for his Small Schools Workshop (Klonsky's blog was recently removed form the Obama campaign web site when Klonsky's radical past was exposed).

What do we know about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge other than it was deemed a disastrously-run failure, and just how close were Ayers and Obama working together?

That is a question that Professor Steve Diamond of Santa Clara University Law School would like answered, but instead of getting answers, he's run into a wall of Obama supporters that he claims is a part of a secret unit of the Obama-Biden campaign similar to Richard Nixon's =""Plumbers," a group designed to prevent leaks of information that could be damaging to the campaign.

Obama's Plumblers are tasked with limiting access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents housed at the University of Illinois Library in Chicago, and according to Diamond, were behind attempts to blunt the efforts of Stanley Kurtz of the National Review to obtain the documents, some of which may have been removed before Kurtz was afforded access.

Who are Obama's Plumbers?

If a Democratic source of Diamond's is correct, the suppression effort is being led by none other than Bill Ayers himself, and includes other members of "Progressives for Obama" that have direct access to David Axelrod, Obama's campaign manager.

Another named member is former CAC executive director Ken Rolling. Rolling, as it turns out, was responsible for awarding the grant that brought Barack Obama to Chicago in his first job as a community organizer. Ayers later helped place Rolling as the CAC executive director.

It appears there is a distinct possibility that Barack Obama was brought onto the board the CAC by Bill Ayers and pushed into the chairmanship despite not being nearly as qualified as others of the board for one simple, central purpose; to help launder (for lack of a better word) grant money into the hands of Ayer's contemporaries in the far left extreme of Chicago's Marxist/Communist education community, such as the $175,000 funneled to Klonsky.

Ayers, Klonsky, and other radicals decided long ago that they cannot win with pipe bombs, and decided to continue their war against America by indoctrinating children via the application of Marxist educational theory. Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Mike Klonsky, and other radicals of the 1960s never gave up their attempts to undermine America.

They just went underground, until they had a suitably pliable champion to be their figurehead, and that champion, Barack Obama, would rather that relationship remain hidden.

Update: I contacted Professor Diamond via email to follow-up, and he is disputing substantial parts of what Batchelor attributes to him in the Human Events article, and I confused something Batchelor claimed and misreported it as Diamond's statement.

First, the mis-attribution I made.

Professor Diamond states that the does not have contacts in the Democratic Party, and he's right; it was Batchelor that claimed he had party sources. Diamond emphasises that based upon what he knows, there is "no basis to conclude... that Axelrod or anyone else from the campaign is involved" if such an effort is underway, and he did not hit any sort of a wall of Obama supporters, which was my attempt to describe the role of poltical plumbers as a barrier.

He further wants to clarify that he doesn't think anyone associated with Joe Biden would have anything to do with any CAC coverup attempt that may be underway, and he does not know if Obama's plumbers exist in fact. If they do, it doesn't seem they &qout;are committed to breaking the law" if necessary, as Nixon's were.

Everything else related to the Human Events article must stand or fall based upon John Batchelor's sources and claims.

And Barack Obama and Bill Ayers have a $150 million failure to explain.

Update: A closely related story of Obama using the Woods Fund to advance his career at Pajamas Media.

Oh, what a tangled web...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:41 PM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Naomi Wolf: Still Dumb as a Stump

On Fox News Live Desk discussing Sarah Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson, Wolf claimed that Palin "falsely linked al Qaeda to 9/11."

Uh-huh.

Drugs are bad, kids.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:43 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

WaPo Reporter Distorts Palin Deployment Speech

The willingness of the press to lie to undercut Sarah Palin is really getting obscene:

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

Anne E. Kornblut, just stop.

Unless Kornblut buried the lede, Palin said precisely nothing about Saddam Hussein or his government at all or any roll they may have had in 9/11. Kornblut simply made that up, because she wanted Palin to say that.

When Palin referenced "...the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans," is was an obvious reference to al Qaeda in Iraq, an offshoot of the parent al Qaeda organization that plotted and executed the 9/11 attacks, and while still funds and loosely controls the failing Iraqi branch.

And the parent organization is not happy with the branch office:

Al Qaeda's senior leadership has lost confidence in its commander in Iraq and views the situation in the country as dire, according to a series of letters intercepted by Multinational Forces Iraq earlier this year.

The letters, which have been sent exclusively to The Long War Journal by Multinational Forces Iraq, are a series of communications between Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second in command, Abu Ayyub al Masri, al Qaeda in Iraq's leader, and Abu Omar al Baghdadi, the leader of al Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq. These letters were intercepted by Coalition forces in Baghdad on April 24, 2008. One of the letters written by Zawahiri is dated March 6, 2008.

[snip]

"The letters confirmed our assessment that Al Qaeda has suffered significant damage and serious reverses in Iraq, including widespread rejection of [al Qaeda in Iraq's] indiscriminate violence, extremist ideology, and oppressive practices," General David Petraeus, the Commander of Multinational Forces Iraq told The Long War Journal. "Even Zawahiri recognized that [al Qaeda in Iraq] has lost credibility in Iraq."

Sarah Palin was obviously addressing the living al Qaeda terrorists that soldiers would face in Iraq, no the ghosts of a regime long dead. How biased or simply dishonest does a reporter have to be to twist that?

Here's a novel concept: why don't reporters limit themselves to reporting facts.

Or is that simply too much to ask for a media more interested in selecting a President than electing one?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:15 AM | Comments (38) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 11, 2008

Gibson Blows the Exclusive

You would think that a nationally-recognized news anchor who landed the most coveted interview of the 2008 elections would have done his research to be fully prepared, so that when the interview aired, he wouldn't look like a fumbling, pretentious ass.

And then there's Charlie Gibson of ABC News, a journalist I respected until just hours ago.

Given the opportunity to interview Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin—and some would argue, given the responsibility to be both thorough and fair—Gibson attempted to trap Palin with a question designed to portray her as a religious fundementalist:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.

That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.

But Gibson's "quote" of Palin's "exact words" was anything but an exact quote; the statement Gibson attributed to Palin was for all intents and purposes fiction, real sentences ripped apart and rearranged to mean exactly what journalists wanted them to mean.

Here is what Palin really said:

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That’s what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

The words in bold are those journalists simply removed from their report, in order to try to cast Palin as a religious extremist.

They tried turning a servant's simple prayer asking God for guidance, into the raving of a false prophet telling the congregation that she knows the mind of God.

Journalists doctored the quote so that this manufactured Palin would scare American voters.

Nice work trying to set a trap, Charlie.

And great work doctoring the original quote, Gene Johnson of the Associated Press.

I'm sure you've both made your bosses proud.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:25 PM | Comments (44) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Another Nice, Normal, Entirely Sane American For Obama

So right, so wrong, and yet so perfect on many levels.

Spot the celebrity, kids.

Do you get the feeling Boy George and Sully want to make Barack Obama the meat filling in a manwich?

h/t Ace, who is getting my cleaning bill... KRYMB!

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:39 PM | Comments (48) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Thank you, Joe Klein

If it wasn't for you, I would not have realized that the easily-fooled, knuckle-dragging rubes that I call my neighbors are delusional morons, that the small towns I've lived in and around for most of my life are nothing more than bland and unimportant suburbs, and that the farmers I know are just corporate shills. Further, I would not know that all of us are part of a mythical America that is subservient and somewhat less important that the magnificence of that metropolis you call home, and of far less importance than the power and majesty of The One.

Amen.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:37 PM | Comments (33) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

This Day

Many of my fellow bloggers are posting tributes to those who fell on 9/11, or recollections of a sort — mine is closest to Ace's, if you care — but I can't form anything of which I'm proud.

I hate to say it, but can't be sure I clearly recall 9/11 anymore, and in fact, I'm pretty sure I don't.

I remember flashes of details, but what I archived of that September morning were little more than a swirl of naked unformed emotions I've never been able to articulate and I know I never will, and I know the memories of that day were rewritten and rewritten again in my mind in the days that followed.

One thing I recall with perfect certainty, without reservation. How unbelievably, beautifully crisp and blue the sky was that morning in the Hudson Valley after it all happened.

I lived in a little town on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River at the time called New Windsor.

In the days and weeks that followed, as the rest of the country was coming to grips with the magnitude of the total loss, we were watching funerals of our neighbors in the surrounding small towns, and hearing the survival stories of others. Again, I don't trust the memories and can't channel the emotions, and I won't cheapen the memories of those lost with what I do recall with forced sentimentality.

Those of you who lost someone that day or part of yourself, you have my sincere condolences. For my neighbor across the street, the NYPD cop that aged years in the months that followed, I'm sorry I could not take on part of your burden.

For the rest, I simply have nothing worth saying.

Sorry.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:36 AM | Comments (44) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 10, 2008

Glass Houses

Sure, I can understand Fox News wanting to laugh at CNN for not being able to spot a Photoshopped picture of Sarah Palin's head on another woman's gun-toting, bikini clad body as a fake...

...but if they are going to mock the incompetence of other news organizations for not spotting a obvious fake, then should we let Fox off the hook for letting the description of the weapon she is holding as an "AK-47" stand, when it is decidedly not?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:53 PM | Comments (39) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I'll Ignore Media Requests, So Please Charge Me with Murder

I'm not going to link Andrew Sullivan nor The Atlantic, the magazine that continues to destroy their reputation by paying him a salary for unmitigated hate, but it is amusing, in an Amy Winehouse kind of way, as he allows his naked (and please, let it be only figurative) adoration of Barack Obama to combine with his irrational hatred of Sarah Palin to produce gemstone-quality insanity.

His latest?

In response to Sarah Palin's rather rational decision to not take questions from the same media that savaged her and her family for days after she was announced as John McCains running mate, Sullivan take umbrage with a primal squeak.

If you want to know what it's like to live in Putin's Russia, the Republican party is giving you a good taste. This is the most appalling dereliction of duty by the press that I have ever seen in my adult life. If they had any integrity, they would stop covering her at all under these conditions. We're now well into the second week in which someone who could be president of the United States next January has not been available to the press.

Why, it's a perfect metaphor, isn't it?

Freezing out those who attacked her and her family with a string of false rumors and innuendo (many of which can be traced directly to Sullivan itself) until she has a no-questions-barred interview with a talented journalist is exactly the same thing as journalists critical of Putin continuing to wind up dead!

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:36 PM | Comments (61) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Broken Man

Though he fronts a party that has tried hard to use the argument that John McCain doesn't have the temperament to be President, it is Barack Obama that seems to be falling apart under pressure:

Barack Obama responded Wednesday to the John McCain campaign's call for an apology concerning his "lipstick on a pig" remarks, by calling the controversy "phony and foolish" and defending it as an "innocent remark" that was taken out of context.

Obama said his comment was meant to compare the policies of McCain to those of President Bush, and was in no way a reference to Republican vice presidential Sarah Palin.

Obama accused the McCain campaign of "lies and phony outrage" and "Swift-boat politics." He said the "made-up controversy" was "cat nip for the news media."

The Illinois senator used the pig analogy at a campaign event in Lebanon, Va., on Tuesday while describing his Republican opponents.

"John McCain says he's about change, too, and so I guess his whole angle is, 'Watch out George Bush.' Except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics … That's not change. That's just calling something the same thing, something different," Obama said.

Oh, where to begin?

How about the accusation being levied by some that Obama's comment prior to the "lipstick" comment above was plagiarized from this Tom Toles cartoon? (h/t reader Andy B.)

Obama has already been accused of stealing lines from Deval Patrick, Mario Coumo, and Cesar Chavez, and chose a Vice Presidential candidate with his own history of oratory theft. If Barack Obama once again appropriated someone else's words, he is going to have some trouble finding credible people to explain it away this time.

As for his initial bad (whether by carelessness or malice) choice of words, the McCain-Palin campaign's charge of purposeful disparagement, and Obama's overly defensive, passive-agressive response, a clearly rattled Obama is becoming his own worst enemy.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:15 AM | Comments (34) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

FYI: Citizen Journalism Workshop at Blogworld

Dr. David Perlmutter, author of Blog Wars: The New Political Battleground and a really neat educator I've worked with in the past, asked me to mention the Citizen Journalism Workshop being held this year at Blogworld in Las Vegas.

Consider this a PSA for an excellent idea:

Citizen Journalism Workshop
An Exclusive Event at BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008
Date: Sept. 19, 2008 – 10:00AM – 4:45PM
Location: Las Vegas Convention Ctr., Upper South Hall Conference Rooms; Room 221

PROGRAM OVERVIEW:

As blogs take their place as legitimate and respected sources for news, information and analysis, BLOGWORLD & NEW MEDIA EXPO 2008 introduces a new Citizen Journalism Workshop.

There are about 112 millions weblogs worldwide, and while many are blogging for casual reasons or for just a short time, others, especially news and information bloggers, are serious about their blogs' success in the greater marketplace of ideas.

How can someone "break in" as a news, politics or current events blogger and build a readership, get attention from major bloggers and mass media, and more important perhaps, affect or influence the traditional press agenda, politics, and public opinion?

Traditional news media outlets and bloggers have not always had the best relationship. And yet traditional media has tried to learn from the blogs. In 2008 most mainstream media outlets have blogs, or have their journalists blogging independently.

Now it's time for the bloggers and other new media journalists to mine the history, tradition and most importantly, the knowledge base of traditional journalists.

In 2008 BLOGWORLD & NEW MEDIA EXPO 2008 is introducing a journalism training certificate workshop for bloggers seeking to deepen and broaden their skills. This workshop focuses on tools and skills news and information bloggers can use to improve the quality, and impact of their blogs.

Bloggers will learn techniques of traditional journalists, including styles of opinion writing, investigative reporting techniques and fact-sourcing, avoiding legal pitfalls, and tips on what makes a post most likely to get one quoted or cited by larger blogs and even the mainstream media.

The instructors for the sessions are accomplished news & information practitioners and educators who have established skills in practical and applied areas of professional journalism training. Participants will receive a Citizen Journalism Certificate and Web icon that will allow them to display their dedication to improving their journalistic skills, and providing them with a distinct brand differentiation from the millions of other news and information bloggers.

WORKSHOP SESSION DESCRIPTIONS:

10:00AM - 11:15AM
Journalism Content & Style: How to Write & Sound for Impact (CJ1)
[Professor Steve Berry, U. Iowa]
You'll learn why substance and clarity trump flash and flair in the battle for readers. This session will teach you how to give your writing the power, lively freshness, style and needed to win hearts and minds. We'll talk about how you can focus your writing to a specific audience, how broadcast, print and website writing differ and why; and how you can use this knowledge to better target specific groups. We'll also examine the rhythms, structure, and succinctness of superior writing and provide you with examples of how the best writers make people see instead of just read.

11:30AM - 12:45PM
Finding What's Out There: Searching, Sifting, and Selecting the Best Information Online (CJ2)
[Professor Jay Perkins, LSU]
Finding information isn't a problem anymore, but avoiding suffocating under all that information can be. Investigative journalists know that government collects a ton of information that most people never find and that Google and Wikipedia can't touch. This session will look at some of the free, hidden treasure chests of information. You'll learn how to assemble a background profile on someone from public records, how to trace property, cars, boats and other transactions, and where to go to find people who can help you find these items. You also will learn how to obtain information from local and national federal agencies through the Freedom of Information Act and how to get around the bureaucrats when they bar the front door and refuse to hand over the key. We'll also talk about fact-checking and source-credibility strategies that will keep you on the path of accuracy--and hopefully, out of someone else's blog.

2:00PM - 3:15PM
Top 10 Ways to Blog Your Way Into a Lawsuit (CJ3)
[Nina Yablok, Law Office of Nina Yablok]
A fast paced romp through the biggest legal risks that both individual and group bloggers face. Emphasis will be on recognizing problems early, assessing risks, self-help measures to minimize risk, when not to call an attorney, and when to make the call and how to use attorneys efficiently. Detailed legal analysis will not be provided. This is very much a "how to reduce risk in the real world" program.

3:30PM - 4:45PM
Getting Mainstream Media Attention: How to Reach Out to Journalists (CJ4)
[Professor David Perlmutter, U. Kansas]
In a crowded online world, how does an independent blogger stand out and be heard? Being cited, quoted, published or used as a source by mainstream media is a significant way to build a larger and wider audience. We will review the basic selection techniques of how journalists deem someone an "approved source" or expert; we discuss how bloggers can enter the Rolodex of reliable sources for major media. Second, we show ways to have blog content picked up by traditional media, from blasting out a press release to writing and submitting an op-ed to contacting and working with mainstream reporters on stories. Finally, we will look at the ethical issues that affect how your blog is perceived by mainstream media.

PRESENTER BIOS:

STEPHEN J. BERRY, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter, is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Iowa, where he specializes in investigative reporting. He recently completed a stint as coordinator of the basic journalistic reporting program and taught a section in it for four years. His book, Watchdog Journalism: The Art of Investigative Reporting [Oxford University Press], was released July 2008. Before entering academia in 2003, Berry was a journalist for 33 years, having worked last at the Los Angeles Times. While at The Orlando Sentinel, he and a colleague won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He has won numerous other honors for investigative and daily reporting, including the Associated Press Newspaper Executive Council Award for public service; the Benjamin Fine award for education reporting; the Los Angeles Times' Top of the Times Award, one of its Pulitzer nominations and its Editor and Publisher Prize; Society of Professional Journalists Award [Atlanta Chapter]; and others. His projects have examined race relations, the criminal justice system, police abuse of power, school district merger, medical malpractice, stock-car racing safety, guns, government and illegal drugs. More recently he has published "Reclaiming Objectivity" and "CBS News Lets the Pentagon Taint its News Process" in Nieman Reports. He holds an M.A. in American history from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

JAY PERKINS is an associate professor at the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University. He specializes in teaching students how to find and use governmental documents and how to cross-check Internet sources. He has taught investigative, governmental and computer-assisted reporting classes at LSU for the past 25 years. He also teaches classes in the summer in the United Kingdom, has conducted seminars for reporters in Zambia twice, and frequently lectures on using Internet databases and sources to foreign journalists who are visiting the States on sponsored tours. Prior to coming to LSU, he was a political reporter in Washington, D.C., for the Associated Press.

DAVID D. PERLMUTTER is a professor at the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications, University of Kansas. He received his BA and MA from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He has served as a Board member of the American Association of Political Consultants and now sits on the National Law Enforcement Museum Advisory Committee for its Media Exhibit. A documentary photographer, he is the author or editor of seven books on political communication and persuasion: Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Framing Icons of Outrage in International Crises (Praeger, 199; Visions of War: Picturing Warfare from the Stone Age to the Cyberage (St. Martin's, 1999); (ed.) The Manship School Guide to Political Communication (LSU Press, 1999); Policing the Media: Street Cops and Public Perceptions of Law Enforcement (Sage, 2000); Picturing China in the American Press: The Visual Portrayal of Sino-American Relations in Time Magazine, 1949-1973 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); (ed., with John Hamilton) From Pigeons to News Portals: Foreign Reporting and the Challenge of New Technology (LSU Press, 2007) , and Blogwars: The New Political Battleground (Oxford, 200. He has also written several dozen research articles for academic journals as well as over 150 essays for U.S. and international newspapers and magazines. He writes a regular column, "P&T Confidential," for the Chronicle of Higher Education. He has been interviewed by most major news networks and newspapers, from the New York Times to CNN and ABC and, most recently, The Daily Show. He is editor of the blog of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas (http://www.doleinstituteblog.org/) and his own blog about online politics, http://policybyblog.squarespace.com/.

NINA YABLOK is an attorney in private practice. Her firm provides a full range of legal and related services to privately held businesses in a wide range of fields. Areas of advice include, but are not limited to, business development, merger and acquisition consulting, licensing, labor, contract, business entity choice, independent contractor and intellectual property law. Nina has been general counsel to Pajamas Media since it was a twinkle in Charles Johnson's and Roger Simon's eyes. She still represents PJM as well as several other well-known blogs. Nina's first online client was one of the largest and busiest forums on Compuserve. There, she dealt with legal issues on message boards, file libraries, chat rooms and IMs before the term "Social Networking" had been invented, and 11 years before Facebook was launched. She received her law degree from St. John's University, School of Law. Her own blog is at http://www.bizblawg.com/.

It certainly sounds like something worth checking out.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:59 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

BBQ'd

Ouch. From the McCain campaign.

I can't read Barack Obama's mind.

I can't tell you with certainty whether his use of the time-worn phrase "you can't put lipstick on a pig" was an innocent use of the phrase as it has traditionally been used, or if it was a not-so-subtle slap at Gov. Sarah Palin.

I can tell you that using such a loaded phrase, when so many Democrats are still furious at Obama's perceived disrespect towards Hillary Clinton (especially considering his previous incidents of sexism, such as when he dismissively addresses a reporter as "sweetie", is the work of someone who is either a neophyte, or who has a political deathwish.

He may have thought he was being coy with his "pig" comment, but if he keeps generating controversial statements that can reasonably be interpreted as a personal attack, it's his campaign that is going to get cooked.

Update: CBS forced YouTube to remove the McCain ad linked above,but it can still be seen here.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:19 AM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 09, 2008

The Left's Rhetorical Suicide Bombers

Sarah Palin fired the librarian who didn't want to let her ban books.

Sarah Palin was once part of an Alaskan separatist political party.

Sarah Palin cut funding for special needs students in schools.

Sarah Palin faked a pregnancy to cover up for her oldest daughter.

Sarah Palin is a racist who openly utters ethnic slurs against Eskimos.

Sarah Palin endangered her son's military unit by announcing his deployment to Iraq.

When Governor Sarah Palin burst onto the national stage as John McCain's Vice Presidential pick, it set the journalistic and political pundits classes that considered her a dark horse candidate back on their heels in shocked surprise. The immediate, visceral delight among conservatives, moderates, and even a surprising number of Democrats to Palin's selection and unique biography triggered an immediate shift in media coverage.

Palin's coming out also triggered panic on the political left as they saw the "buzz" of the Democratic National Convention vanish into the ether, and the backlash against "Caribou Barbie" on the left was vicious and immediate as slur after slur were slung at her and her family the overwhelming majority of them false.

Palin never fired the Wasilla librarian or wanted to ban books, and the list of books  she is accused of wanting to ban was a list of books copied from a university Web site, and included books published after Palin became mayor.

Palin first registered as a Republican in 1982 and has always been a Republican; the Alaskan Independence Party official who first claimed Palin was a member quickly admitted her mistake the next day.

Instead of cutting spending for special needs programs as claimed in a Washington Post article, Palin actually increased funding by more than $3 million.

Sarah Palin did not fake her pregnancy with her youngest son Trig to cover up her daughter's teen pregnancy. Sarah and Bristol had concurrent pregnancies for a month, and Bristol is still carrying her child with Levi Johnston.

Sarah Palin is far from being a racist who slurs Eskimos; her husband's family and her children are part Yup'ik Eskimo.

While the venom and volume of the slurs begin launched against Sarah Palin are notable, they are unsurprising in today's politics. Barack Obama and John McCain have both had rumors and slurs directed against them during the campaign, some of them quite fierce.

What separates the smears against Sarah Palin from the directed at Obama and McCain is the apparent willingness of some of those creating and propagating the smears to put their names on the line in order to impeach Palin's reputation as a form of rhetorical suicide bombers.

Foremost among them is Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic. Sullivan is openly a Barack Obama supporter, and has been a key conduit of taking obscure smears into the public spotlight. Sullivan has attacked Palin as a Christian extremist, and went so far as to link and repost portions of a sermon from Palin's minister that were doctored to make him sound like Barack Obama's racist conspiracy theorist former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Sullivan helped push the slur that Palin engaged in an extramarital affair with her husband's former business partner without any credible shred of evidence supporting such a claim, and was also among the first to actively promote the conspiracy theory that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy, claiming that her youngest son, Trig, was actually her daughter Bristol's child. Even after it was revealed that Bristol Palin was pregnant concurrently with her mother, Sullivan still pushed for Sarah Palin to release her medical records. In continuing to foist up on improbable smear after another against Sarah Palin no matter how obtuse or unhinged the attack was, Sullivan went a long way to destroying his reputation. He has also tarnished the reputation of The Atlantic in the process.

Paul Kane of the Washington Post infamously and daftly misrepresented a spending bill where Palin exercised her line item veto, and claimed that as governor, Palin "reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent." The reality is that Palin increased funding for Covenant House by $3.9 million, a three-fold increase. Despite widespread criticism and a debunking by FactCheck.org, Kane and the Post have refused to correct the false representation of Palin's record.

Jon Soltz, a former U.S. Army Captain, Iraq War veteran, and chairman of Votevets.org, is claiming that gov. Palin violated operational security by revealing that her eldest son, Track, would be deploying to Iraq. Soltz repeated the smear on another prominent political web site, the Huffington Post.

But the claim Gov. Palin violated operational security is demonstrably false, which Soltz, as a former soldier, should have know before posting his claims. CNN's Anderson Cooper dismantled Soltz's transparently partisan attack, pointing out that the Pentagon announced Track Palin's unit was deploying to Iraq back in May, and that the unit itself had announced a public deployment ceremony a month before Palin was announced as John McCain's running mate. Two separate field-grade officers contacted have confirmed that Palin in no way violated operational security.

Some news agencies have released far more about Track Palin's deployment and his unit, including claiming to know to which province his unit would be deploying in Iraq. Without the benefit of any evidence at all, Soltz claims that the McCain-Palin campaign must be behind this disclosure. Though it damages his credibility and tarnishes the veteran's group he chairs, Jon Soltz has put his credibility and that of VoteVets.org on the line in hopes of undermining a proud soldier's mother for releasing already public information.

Despite these smears directed at Gov. Palin--and some that are worse--Palin and John McCain have surged in the polls. In months to come, those who have sacrificed their reputations in hopes of tarnishing Palin's name may wonder if the sacrifice was worth it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:22 PM | Comments (31) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Yon: Where Eagles Dare

I had a few minutes with Micheal Yon this morning via IM. Mike is in Afghanistan, and joined up with a British unit several weeks ago. He has already seen lots of combat that the mainstream media simply isn't covering — rural and urban, ambushes and hit-and-run attacks, mostly small arms and RPGs that have cost the Taliban dearly. Organizationally, they simply aren't as sophisticated as the Iraqi insurgency was, and they're taking heavy casualties.

A case in point explaining the kind of fighting ISAF forces are facing in Afghanistan might be the battles that took place on a humanitarian mission Michael covered in Where Eagles Dare. Several hundred Taliban died trying to stop a convoy that had no other purpose than to help the Afghan people by providing them with more electric power.

It's well worth a read, and if you can donate a couple of bucks please do, as his coverage is all supported by reader donations.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:21 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

But Wasn't he Worried It Was A Plot to Give Him AIDS?

Rev. Jeremiah Wright finds a use for part of the US of KKK-A.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:30 PM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 08, 2008

Schooled

Barack Obama took the day off from campaigning Monday to accompany his daughters to their first day of school Monday, in Chicago's prestigious University of Chicago Lab School , a large, private facility.

It seems that the $50 million in Annenberg Challenge money he blew through creating social welfare programs for old leftist terrorists and other Ayers' allies couldn't quite bring Chicago's public schools up to his standards.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:52 PM | Comments (26) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Confirming the Obvious: Palin Race Smears a Steaming Pile of Moose Hooey

It's been debunked, the author discredited, and key players in the smear apparently linked to the Obama campaign.

The smear is now being deleted fast and furiously by the very same liberal bloggers who hoped the manufactured hate would dupe moderates and independents into thinking Sarah Palin is a racist.

To go ahead and drive the stake deeply into the heart of this smear, through the coffin, and into the earth beyond, I contacted those who would know Sarah Palin the best, journalists in and around her hometown of Wasilla, AK.

Kari Sleight, publisher of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, Palin's hometown newspaper kills the slur dead, responding via email:

I have not heard the rumor about Barack Obama. Rumors of the Eskimo slurs surfaced during Gov. Palin’s gubernatorial campaign and were quickly dismissed as such.

I have personally known Sarah Palin for 11 years and have never heard her utter anything remotely racist. Her husband, Todd, is half Yup'ik Eskimo, and her children share the same heritage.

This slur is as dead, but don't worry... I'm sure others are just around the corner.

Update: Sean Cockerham, state politics reporter at the Anchorage Daily News concurs that the racist slurs against Palin are false, with a to-the-point:

We've heard nothing like this.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:10 PM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Processing 0.03, elapsed 0.189 seconds.
37 queries taking 0.1616 seconds, 283 records returned.
Page size 204 kb.
Powered by Minx 0.8 beta.