Free Republic

In the misty past of ten months ago, dissent was patriotic, mass protests were a sign of passionate civic engagement, and the greatest sin any politician could commit was questioning someone’s patriotism. But that was America, B.B.O. (Before Barack Obama). Now dissent is potential incitement, middle American protesters are Swastika-carrying yokels, and disagreeing with a president’s decision to put his hometown above the well-being of troops in Afghanistan demonstrates a “lack of patriotism.� On Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,� Ed Schultz blamed Chicago’s first-round rejection, not on Rio or behind-the-scenes maneuvering, but on American conservatives who questioned...

MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer on Wednesday angrily agreed with Democratic claims that the National Republican Congressional Committee made a sexist slam against Nancy Pelosi. Appearing on Morning Meeting, Brewer attacked the critique of the House Speaker as "not good" and a "poor move." [Audio available here.] After recounting how the GOP organization released a statement mocking the Democrat as "General Pelosi" and hoping that the top commander in Afghanistan will "put her in her place," a visibly annoyed Brewer complained, "Really? Put the first female Speaker of the House in her place? Not good." (Pelosi had given an interview in which...

Rarely does such an example appear brilliantly illustrating why Projection is one of the two official defense mechanisms of the Democrat Party (the other is Denial). The other day, NY Times editorialist (and, somehow, Economics Nobel Prize laureate) penned a piece accusing Republicans of automatically opposing any policy, action, or statement made by President Obama simply out of spite and he even claimed they would do so even at the expense of the good of the country. The piece starts: The Politics of SpiteOctober 5, 2009If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it whether or...

"Can you imagine this that some people actually went as far as to cheer [Chicago Olympic bid loss]? Sure. I mean, there are people that are actually trying to derail health care in order to take down Obama, even if it means half the country dies. So, of course, they don't care about Chicago’s Olympics. Are you kidding me?"

Some Chicago officials say anti-American resentments likely played a role in Chicago’s Olympic bid dying in the first round today. President Obama could not undo in one year the resentment against America that President Bush and others built up for decades before, they said. “There must be” resentment against America, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, near the stage where he had hoped to give a victory speech in Daley Plaza. “The way we [refused to sign] the Kyoto Treaty, we mislead the world into Iraq. The world had a very bad taste in its mouth about us. But there was...

SNIP Wow – I did NOT see that coming. The way I figured it, this White House is far too protective of the President’s strategically-crafted image to allow him to travel thousands of miles for only to fail on the world stage. I thought it a done deal - who's better at vote counting than the Obama people? I would have bet money that Rahm and Axelrod knew they had the numbers in the bag before they let him step on Air Force One. I was so very wrong. Not only did they fail, they failed in the first round!...

A new study by the National Newspaper Association has found that subscriber cancellations have dropped from previous levels. From FishbowlNY In an effort to survive their recent economic struggles, newspapers across the country have increased home delivery and single copy prices

In his latest video Bill Whittle compares the destruction of ACORN with one of the most brilliant military victories of all times: Hannibal's decimation of Romans in the Battle of Cannae. Whittle says that the main war is not with ACORN but with the media. The Media is no longer "news media", because, as it was highlighted, again, in the ACORN affair, is not just biased and selective, but now engaged in suppressing the news. It's not free media anymore.As Hannibal learned that fighting all powerful Rome is dangerous, Breitbart should also be worry - he'd drawn blood of...

Radical-left protesters outside the G-20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh last week underlined once again that our friends in the news media see no real enemy or extremist to their left. But conservative protests against Team Obama are an ugly sign of incivility, and according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, even impending violence. HBO talk show host Bill Maher exemplified the liberal-media attitude on his Twitter page on Sept. 24: "Even with a face full of tear gas, these G-20 protesters (are) better looking than the teabaggers." But there's a big difference between the sea of tens of thousands of conservative...

Click to watch Ed's latest nationally televised lie. On last night's edition of MSNBC's "The Ed Show," Ed Schultz and his guest "exposed" a shocking scandal: the National Republican Congressional Committee is harrassing doctors and placing their names on ads opposing Democratic health care reform against their will. An NRCC group called the Physicians Council for Responsible Reform, they claimed, is listing random physicians on their propaganda without their knowledge or consent, "because they want to deceive the public." In typical MSNBC/Ed Schultz “reporting� style, it is a false smear designed to discredit the physicians who oppose ObamaCare, which...

Nobody in their right mind believes the future of the news business involves paper and ink rather than pixels on a screen. We all know where the news business is headed, and what's more, we've known it for at least a decade. So why on earth are people talking about a bailout for newspapers? Why is President Obama saying he'd consider it? Why is Congress holding hearings and considering "The Newspaper Revitalization Act" in a bid to save these ailing old rags with tax breaks and other handouts? It's like introducing legislation to save horse-drawn carriages, or steam engines, or...

“You’re all racists!” That’s the meme sweeping the mainstream media and left-leaning Web sites these days. Conservative opposition to the Democratic policies championed by President Obama. Everybody is saying it. Former President Jimmy Carter is saying it. Frank Rich of The New York Times is saying it. Orlando Romero of the Santa Fe New Mexican is saying it. All the cool people are saying it, so it must be true, right? The fact is, conservatives oppose leftist politicians because they try to enact leftist policies. Barack Obama is a leftist politician and therefore conservatives oppose his policies. Because the swing...

You can say this for Glenn Beck: He's charismatic, he was right on ACORN and Van Jones, and he's correct to point out that the government in Washington doesn't work for the common good. The affable Beck articulates the legitimate anger and frustration millions of Americans feel when faced by the fact that the country is in a hot mess of trouble. But here's the thing: Beck is a white Jeremiah Wright, a crazy-pants conspiracy theorist whose worldview is rooted in the paranoid teachings of a far-right Mormon political guru named W. Cleon Skousen. Before signing up as a recruit...

BREITBART: Podesta spends Soros' money stupidly Every journalism inquiry from the mainstream media continues to focus on the successful operation that exposed ACORN, not on ACORN itself, as if there is no evidence to sift through or common traits to be found in the videos. Why is the story about journalistic process rather than institutional corruption? The Washington Post and the Associated Press have had to issue embarrassing retractions for falsely implying Mr. O'Keefe's motives were racist. The New York Times, too, had to issue a retraction on an issue raised to impugn his tactics. It was so predictable that...

** PRESS RELEASE ** (Now Follow OCYHUN on Twitter!) On October 17th, 2009 the "Main Stream Media" (aka: Fringe Stream Media and State Run Media) will go on trial in numerous venues across the United States. At present, over 60 locations are on listed on the dockett with more added daily. Suit has been filed in the Court of Public Opinion by attorneys (protestors) on behalf of the Plantiff (American Public). The presiding judge will be the Honorable Common Sense. The Defendants (MSM outlets) have been charged with the following misconduct: Journalistic Malpractice Yellow Journalism Extreme Bias Unfair and Unbalanced...

Obama seems to believe that if he explains his positions slowly and clearly enough, their fundamental logic will inevitably win the day without the need for arm-twisting.

A damaging poll confirms the obvious … 8 out of 10 don’t want taxpayers bailing out newspapers. Editor and Publisher reported on a study conducted by Sacred Heart University that came to that conclusion. Nearly 8 out of 10 Americans would oppose any plan to spend tax dollars to aid failing newspapers, according to a poll on news media trustworthiness released Wednesday. "That reluctance might have something to do with the fact that 38.1% of respondents to the poll by Sacred Heart University said they are reading newspapers less often than five years ago. Or the fact that nearly half,...

It is troubling that our president is a pathological narcissist caught up in the thought patterns of Darwin, Marx, and Alinsky. Even more troubling is the fact that the Mainstream Media (MSM), suffering from an Obama-inspired narcosis, shirks its duty, refusing to publish or even explore any aspect of Obama's dark side. There is room for much optimism, however. If the ancient story of Narcissus and Echo plays itself out as Ovid recorded it, and Obama and the MSM are their contemporary counterparts, both will fade away in the not too distant future. Narcissus did not fall in love with...

The Daily News-Miner has had its agreements and disagreements with now-former Gov. Sarah Palin at various points during her time serving the state of Alaska. We have tried to maintain respect for the office of governor and to be generally civil when discussing Mrs. Palin, her policies and the actions she took while serving as governor. The same has been true for the time since she left office. Today I must apologize to Mrs. Palin personally and on behalf of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner for the choice of words used on the bottom of Wednesday’s front page regarding her speaking...

People live in their own little worlds and have a tendency to shut out or ignore information that makes them uncomfortable. This is particularly true of liberal politicians and journalists, who find it easier and easier to ignore facts and developments that run counter to their view of how things ought to be. This fact has been on stark display recently as liberals have dismissed anyone who questions the wisdom of President Barack Obama’s demands on our national priorities as cranks or, worse, racists. One can easily demonstrate one’s racist tendencies these days by simply attending town hall meetings or...

In the first half-hour of today's show, MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough accused Fox News Channel and radio talk show host Glenn Beck of spreading hatred and whippping up raced-based assassination hysteria against Barack Obama, demanding Republicans renounce Beck.Scarborough, a former conservative Republican congressman from Florida, attacked the libertarian Beck for spending the summer telling viewers there were FEMA detention camps being built and for saying that Obama hates "all white people."Scarborough said the "hatred" Beck is spreading would make him responsible should Obama be assassinated. Though he didn't speak explicitly of Obama's assassination, it was clear what Scarborough...

The "MSM" label has stuck and gets a lot of play, but we need to revise it. It is not enough to imply that "Main Stream Media" means liberal lapdogs. The MSM is no longer just biased, they are partisan. We need to press this issue and to that end I believe it would be very effective to replace the "MSM" referece with "PLM" i.e. Partisan Liberal Media. PLM, or another suitable name, needs to become the next commonly understood household name. The DNC is simply the political wing of the PLM and we need to go after the PLM's...

San Antonio - The Express-News is now fully immersed in the ACORN story, or at least the pimp and prostitute part of it. The story went from a national brief on Sept. 11 to Page 14A last Tuesday, to 7A on Wednesday to 2A Thursday — and would have been on Page 1 had local TV icon Chris Marrou not picked the day before to announce his retirement from KENS-TV. The question is, does it deserve Page 1 status, as scores of you — many proudly identifying yourselves as members of the anti-big government San Antonio Tea Party — have...

"Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?" is the title of a July 2009 U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report by Congressman Darrell Issa. The report draws some shocking conclusions: "The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud. Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors..." It is a shocking statement to absorb: “to conceal a criminal conspiracy." Yet you won’t see this on your TV unless you happen to be...

I believe this was posted in another manner elsehere, but i noticed parties over at the DU are taking part in this, as i spotted it posted there. Hate to see them have all their say. but i think they for some reason beleive newspapers are right winger propaganda machines. We don't mind a good fight with a liberal. As touched on in The Hill's - Blog Briefing Room. President Obama may be open to a newpaper bailout. We can image how many conservatives will feel about such an action. With the liberal leanings of so many of these companies,...

James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles are the young activists who have blown the lid off the criminal left-wing enterprise known as ACORN. If they were left-wingers exposing some conservative or religious organization, government-funded or not, the mainstream media would have hailed them as heroic whistleblowers, perhaps worthy of a Time cover. Instead, the media are doing their damndest to slime them. Michael Barone reflects here on how the Washington Post has treated O'Keefe and Giles in the context of the ACORN story: The Post's Thursday news story (headlined "ACORN to review incidents") helpfully identifies Giles as "the eldest daughter of...

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, - "Newspaper Revitalization Act," that would the news outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations, it has one cosponsor, - Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D). The White House is playing down the idea of government assistance for news organizations, due to dwindling ad revenue in the economic climate. They are now LAME - this means Fox, Limbaugh, Hannity, Malkin, Free Republic and Drudge are the MAIN STREAM MEDIA. The paradigm has now completed it's shift! Use the term "Lame Stream Media" anytime you can and pass it...

POLL ON ACORN Freep away!

Kudos to Jon Stewart, who doesn’t sugar-coat the embarrassment at all — to the apparent delight of his audience, who get kudos of their own. How can the national news media ignore the many allegations of corruption at ACORN, which gets millions of dollars in federal funding, and allow a couple of independents with $3,000 and a bad wardrobe scoop them on the undercover story of the year? It’s easy when newsrooms are more concerned with political direction than truth. Stick around to the end, when Stewart zings Michelle Malkin haters:

Cable news ratings, September 14, 2009: Check out the highlights, and see the full ratings below: • Fox News topped all its cable news competitors – CNN, HLN and MSNBC – in prime time last night, in total viewers and the A25-54 demographic. The top program was Bill O’Reilly’s 8pmET FNC hour in both categories. • The #1 non-FNC show was MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann in total viewer’s and Nancy Grace’s HLN show in the demo. • The #2 show on cable news was Glenn Beck’s 5pmET hour in total viewers and Sean Hannity at 9pmET in the demo.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted in the three days following President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress about his health care plan found that 54% say the more they hear about the plan, the less they like it. This particular poll result was not mentioned anywhere in the story about the poll that was posted by the Washington Post on its Web site on Monday.

Obviously, the "main stream" media are hard of hearing and seeing. About 2 million mad-as-hell taxpayers assembling in Washington, D.C. for the largest-ever (most well-behaved ever, most respectful ever) protest did not make it onto their radar screens (or our TV screens). They need our help. Maybe we cannot repeat an assembly of 2 million mad-as-hell taxpaying patriots in one place, but surely those who longed to go and couldn't would love to be a part of Operation "Can You Hear Us Now?" I'll bet for every one patriot who went to D.C. there are 10-20 more who wished they...

ACORN Watch: Charlie Gibson and the ostrich media By Michelle Malkin • September 15, 2009 09:52 AM Several Chicago readers and Twitterers report that ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson told WLS-AM Chicago talk show hosts Don Wade and Roma this morning that the reason he hasn’t covered the ACORN scandal is that he didn’t know about it. Reader Patrick M. e-mails: "While listening to Don Wade and Roma this morning on WLS AM Chicago, they had Charlie Gibson on as their usual Tuesday morning guest. Don asked Charlie, why, after the senate last night voted to halt funding to ACORN...

Bruce Springsteen once wrote: “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).” I doubt he expected that story of love gone wrong would become ideal political commentary for the group known as ACORN. The small scandal showing an embarrassing video of Baltimore ACORN staffers looking like they were giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel, is now national news. -- This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings! Only almost no one is covering it....

The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 71% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last...

Journalism Is Dead: Part 1,749,212. The Associated Press must have wandered too far outside of its Obama Comfort Zone last week when it attempted an open act of journalism after the president's health care speech. Not to worry, their lips are dutifully crowding the executive derriere once more. Assessing the ever-dimming prospects for the Democrats in 2010, AP reporter Beth Fouhy (my guess: registered Independent but has never even looked at a Republican's name on a ballot) creates the illusion of doing her job objectively but maintains her Obama cred with the use of a few craftily employed words and...

The news media's credibility is sagging along with its revenue. Nearly two-thirds of Americans think the news stories they read, hear and watch are frequently inaccurate, according to a poll released Sunday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. That marks the highest level of skepticism recorded since 1985, when this study of public perceptions of the media was first done. The survey found that 63 percent of the respondents thought the information they get from the media was often off base. In Pew Research's previous survey, in 2007, 53 percent of the people expressed that...

Glenn Beck, the hottest right-wing voice on the air, worried aloud to his listeners the other day that powerful, sinister forces trying to destroy America might soon "shoot me in the head." But there's fear among his critics, including calmer conservatives, that the victim more likely will be one of Beck's many broadcast targets. After a summer of mob anger at town hall meetings on health care - some of which featured gun-toting protesters - and a burst of Beck-fanned hysteria over President Obama's back-to-school speech last week, the former top 40 deejay has emerged as a goofy dark prince...

Glenn Beck, the hottest right-wing voice on the air, worried aloud to his listeners the other day that powerful, sinister forces trying to destroy America might soon "shoot me in the head." But there's fear among his critics, including calmer conservatives, that the victim more likely will be one of Beck's many broadcast targets. After a summer of mob anger at town hall meetings on health care - some of which featured gun-toting protesters - and a burst of Beck-fanned hysteria over President Obama's back-to-school speech last week, the former top 40 deejay has emerged as a goofy dark...

NEW YORK (AP) - Some of the world's most prominent technology companies are offering suggestions to publishers on how they can charge readers for news online. IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and Google Inc. - a company some newspapers blame for helping dig their financial hole - responded to a request by the Newspaper Association of America for proposals on ways to easily charge for news on the Web. But building the infrastructure for charging readers is one part of the equation. The other part looks more challenging: getting publishers to make the leap and stop giving news out...

ACORN is the latest victim of Fox news personality Glenn Beck's racist smear campaigns. Beck aired a staged video on his program entrapping a couple of low level members of ACORN. ACORN is a non-profit organisation that works to serve low income and working Americans. ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation's largest community organization of low and moderate income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities. These are good Americans working for the benefit of those less fortunate. ACORN has over 400,000 members and more than 850 neighborhood chapters in over 100...

ABC's World News on Tuesday night bemoaned the impact of conservatives and citizen journalists in derailing President Barack Obama's agenda. Pivoting from the reaction to Obama's address to students, anchor Charles Gibson observed “today's speech was really the latest target of some conservative groups taking on the President” and “their tactics are having an impact.” Reporter Dan Harris asserted “the conservative echo chamber is not new, but,” he fretted, “this White House is operating in a vastly accelerated media environment where you no longer need to be in the presence of reporters to make news, as we saw with the...

Think about that for a second. Are they a death panel? I think they are. On a day to day basis...... hourly.... they kill information. They kill A LOT of information. Whatever gets deemed too inconvenient gets omitted and ignored and suppressed. Whatever is unavoidable they propagandize and spin away to make it fit the template, or they just poo poo and down play it. They are a body which keeps rationing and rationing information that they don't approve of. Think about some of those commonly heard talking points regarding the drive bys: "If it bleeds it leads" Except when...

After Glenn Beck scored a touchdown for the right with the announcement this weekend that Obama's Green Czar Van Jones had resigned, liberal MSNBC host Keith Olbermann came out swinging. In a post made to his Daily Kos blog, Olbermann says he wants readers to help him did up dirt on Beck, as well as Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. Olbermann promised his fans: "Tuesday we will expand this to the television audience and have a dedicated email address to accept leads, tips, contacts on Beck, his radio producer Burguiere, and the chief of his TV enablers, Ailes."

The Easton Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wants the State Theatre to cancel a talk by television bloviator Glenn Beck. Granted, Beck is a pompous little troll, has no self control on the air and will regret, over time, being defined as the man who called America's first black president a racist. But he is what he is, a TV talking head who is now being marketed as an entertainer. At any one moment he's no different than Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olbermann or Lou Dobbs. They all, to one degree or another, market degrees...

You might think a major metropolitan newspaper that boasts "The Midwest's largest reporting team" on its front page would report on a suburban demonstration attracting thousands of people. In the case of the Chicago Tribune, you'd be wrong. Today's Tribune print edition makes no mention of yesterday's Tea Party Express protest in New Lenox, Illinois, located only 36 miles from Chicago's Loop. The Southtown Star did cover the event on its Web site, noting: About 6,000 people packed the hillside venue at The Commons Performing Arts Pavilion for the protest, part of a nationwide Tea Party Express tour that includes...

Most of the major news outlets, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, ignored the swelling heat surrounding former White House environmental adviser Van Jones and the videos surfacing of his controversial statements. CBS News became the first of the three broadcast networks on Friday to note the controversy, but ABC's "World News" and "NBC Nightly News" again failed to report the story. After Jones' midnight resignation over the weekend, all three networks aired the story on their Sunday evening newscasts. The Washington Post offered its first story on Saturday yet The New York Times' print edition didn't...

MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann is looking for dirt on Fox News' Glenn Beck. "Find everything you can about Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere, and Roger Ailes," Olbermann posted on The Daily Kos. (Burguiere produces Beck's radio show; Ailes is the head of Fox News.) Read about the top 5 talk-show controversies of 2009 Olbermann's request for fact-finding was a somewhat cheeky reply to Beck's own similarly phrased, ALL-IN-CAPS request, on his Twitter feed, for his followers to dig up some dirt on Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd and Carol Browner, President Barack Obama's nominees to fill the positions of the head of...

I happened to be flipping through radio stations when the thought occurred to me: The lack of local news can in some ways be attributed directly to the growth of government. Prior to progressive governance, as is constitutionally prescribed, local governments had the power. Therefore, local focus from media on local government made sense and was the focus.(and the laments from the left make it clear they actually do seem to miss local focus on governance in the news) Now that everything is washington, everything in the news is washington too. If it matters, I was listening to something on...

If people relied on the mainstream media, especially print media, to keep up to date on the government, then they must have quite a shock this morning with the resignation of Van Jones. For instance, the New York Times makes its first mention of the Jones controversy this morning — by reporting his resignation: "In a victory for Republicans and the Obama administration’s conservative critics, Van Jones resigned as the White House’s environmental jobs “czar” on Saturday. Controversy over Mr. Jones’s past comments and affiliations has slowly escalated over several weeks, erupting on Friday with calls for his resignation." Did...