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*NEA conference call full audio and transcript here** Should the National Endowment for the Arts encourage artists to create art on issues being vehemently debated nationally? That is the question that I set out to discuss a little over three weeks ago when I wrote an article on Big Hollywood entitled The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?” The question still requires debate but the facts do not. The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable. But some have claimed that...

If you see anybody publicly opposing President Obama’s plan to implement a government-centric overhaul of the health care system, the White House wants you to report that person (or persons) ASAP. From the White House website: There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see...

I'm not sure I believe this. Credit to Drudge of course, but reproduced here as Matt's "smoking gun" page gets changed from time to time, and this one is too important to let slip beyond the inevitable 30-second-long public attention span. As far as I am aware this has never happened before in any administration - Democrat or Republican. A free and independent press is one of the legs on which all representative governments rest. If we have lost it, The American Experiment's remaining time is short indeed. UPDATED: I have personally authenticated the purported letter from the RNC via...

You want a blatant example of the Old Media's over-the-top, gobsmacked love affair with Obama? Well, one would be hard pressed not to see Time Magazine's latest piece by Nancy Gibbs as a perfect example of the media ignoring all ills and of projecting only what is wonderful onto the dearly beloved as this piece represents. The lionization of Obama is bad enough, but the selective memory of the writer is even more appalling. Writer Gibbs begins her column trying to "place" Barack Obama in a "cultural map." Most famous people are remembered for a certain place that formed their...

What could go wrong? Seriously, Tapper’s being a tiny bit paranoid about this in my opinion, but don’t let me stand in the way of a good hand-wringing about Obama starting his own nascent propaganda bureau. Besides, JT’s honest enough to wink at how much the media slobbers over The One: Read the TV pool report: “Your Pool was not allowed to go over and shoot POTUS with the team shooting hoops. We protested loudly.”Now we know why: Obama White House officials decided to do their own media report on the visit, complete with cuts, interviews, and chyrons identifying who’s...

The sitting Speaker of the House of Representatives has accused the CIA of lying to Congress. She is ensnared in a web of conflicting accounts. Her very hold on power could be under a cloud. Meh. Guess we can find some room on A20. But pot pies need to be heated to 165 degrees to be safe? Hold the presses: put it on the front page! Such is the news judgment of the New York Times. The Morning Joe crowd had a field day with Gray Lady and Pelosi’s travails during the show’s opening half-hour today, Joe Scarborough having great...

For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public's mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future. Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington. Nobody knows how long...

Washington Times - Letter to the Editor 6/7/95 - Arlington Thomas Colton Ruthford During the past several months in the American press, the Democrats have frequently denounced the Republicans as Nazis due to their attempts to control runaway federal spending. How very ironic. I remember the Nazis. Let me share a little about them and recall some of their exploits. First of all, "Nazi" was gutter slang for the verb "to nationalize". The Bieder-Mienhoff gang gave themselves this moniker during their early struggles. The official title of the Nazi Party was "The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany". Hitler and...

A top U.N. official accused the United States of committing inhuman "atrocities" in Iraq and Afghanistan during a speech Wednesday to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. "The aggressions against Iraq and Afghanistan and their occupations constitute atrocities that must be condemned and repudiated by all who believe in the rule of law in international relations," said U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann. • Click here to see the speech. D'Escoto claimed that U.S. actions have directly led to more than a million Iraqi civilian deaths since 2003, a vastly inflated figure that does not correspond with the...

The traditional newspaper is dying. The Evening Standard has been sold off for a pound to a former KGB agent, the Los Angeles Times is bankrupt and even the New York Times is in trouble. Mexican plutocrat Carlos Slim may become its largest shareholder in return for financing the paper's billion-dollar debt. Except for the financial press, newspapers have failed to convince readers to pay for online access – and there is no reason to think that readers will suddenly succumb to the charms of PayPal. The newspaper bust has been good for one business. Policy wonks have been charging...

The Arab fabrications and spinning is now in overdrive, as the terrorist-associated media has article after article each with more ridiculous claims than the one before. Paltoday describes scenes of dead women and children, of course killed with "phosphorus bombs," being eaten by dogs in the streets of Gaza camps. Many terror-supporting doctors are throwing in their expertise in these claims, such as one who said that "white phosphorus kills brain cells" which explains why otherwise lightly injured children are dying. Another "eyewitness" describes how the IDF poured gasoline on his body and threatened to light him up. Of course,...

Israeli media reports that Hamas took over the first floor of the building that the BBC offices in Gaza last night and fired rockets from there, trapping the journalists above. Despite the fact that their reporters have now escaped the building, the BBC has so far not said anything about this. When I was interviewed on the BBC last week, I commented on the pervasive intimidation of the MSM in Gaza, which is one of the reasons that there were none there when the hostilities broke out. I pointed out that the last journalist resident in Gaza, Alan Johnston, now...

Ontario's largest university workers union is proposing a ban on Israeli academics teaching in the province's universities, in a move that echoes previous attempts to boycott goods and services from the Jewish state. The resolution, proposed by CUPE's Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee, is in protest of a Dec. 29 bombing that damaged the Islamic University in Gaza. "In response to an appeal from the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, we are ready to say Israeli academics should not be on our campuses unless they explicitly condemn the university bombing and the assault on Gaza in...

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance. The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable. As tough as the...

UPDATED CBS News and Knowledge Networks have conducted a nationally representative poll of 473 uncommitted voters to get their immediate reaction to tonight's vice presidential debate. After the first presidential debate, a similar survey showed that more uncommitted voters identified Barack Obama as the winner Final numbers from tonight's poll have yet to come in, but we do have some early results. (These numbers may change as more respondents complete the survey.) They suggest that once again more voters have responded favorably to the Democratic candidate. Forty-six percent of the uncommitted voters surveyed say Democrat Joe Biden won the debate,...

An early review is in for HBO's upcoming movie, Recount, about the Bush-Gore battle in Florida after 2000 election. Gillian Flynn in Entertainment Weekly, which like HBO is part of the Time-Warner family, has described the film, to premiere next Sunday night, as tilted against the Republican characters. In her review in the May 23 edition of the magazine, Flynn asserted: “Recount may not be downright blue, but it's not as purply as it wants to appear.” Saying “Recount is an underdog story, and thus a Democrat story,” Flynn reported that the “Republican players here are coolly calculating -- Tom...

If you’ve wondered why so many mainstream media stories about Islamic issues omit important details and draw spurious morally equivalent conclusions, wonder no more. They’re doing it on purpose. This was apparently released by the Society of Professional Journalists shortly after the 9/11 attacks: Guidelines for Countering Racial, Ethnic and Religious Profiling. On Oct. 6 at its National Convention in Seattle, the Society of Professional Journalists passed a resolution urging members and fellow journalists to take steps against racial profiling in their coverage of the war on terrorism and to reaffirm their commitment to: — Use language that is informative...

The U.S. military confirmed yesterday that it was holding an Afghan reporter, Jawad Ahmad [pictured right], because of his extensive ties to the Taliban. Jawad was a stringer for Canadian Television (CTV). Apparently his cell phone had Taliban phone numbers on them and indicated that the journalist had done extensive interviews with them. He also was in possession of Taliban propaganda videos. Have we just met the Afghani Bilal Hussein? Reporters Without Borders, of course, is outraged that a journalist--a journalist!--is being detained. After all, aren't all journalist--journalists!--immune from any and all suspicion? To be honest, this may be one...

Remembering Kristallnacht, the 'Night of Broken Glass' By Hilda Pierce November 9, 2007 Crystal Night is a beautiful name for an evil event that took place in Austria and Germany on the night of Nov. 9, 1938. It was orchestrated on the orders of Adolph Hitler's minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels. Adolf Eichmann also had a part in organizing the “Night of Broken Glass,” the night of burning synagogues, smashing windows of Jewish stores, looting, killing or torturing Jews on the streets and in their homes, 69 years ago today. It is a historical date because it was also the...

LOOSE CHANGE 2: Warning: Contains disturbing scenes. Was 9/11 a government set up? You decide. Everyone's talking about it so we thought you'd like to see the film that started out as a home movie and became one of the most downloaded documentaries of all time. Was 9/11 a government set up? Were the twin towers brought down in a controlled explosion for an insurance payday? These questions and more are posed in this controversial film, seen by millions, derided by many. Now it's your chance to make up your own mind.

Britian's National Union of Journalists has voted at its annual meeting for a boycott of Israeli goods as part of a protest against the Second Lebanon War, the British daily Guardian reported on its Web site Friday evening. The vote was carried 66 to 54 - a result that met with mixed responses from the NJU delegates present. The motion came during a series of motions on international affairs and read: "This ADM [annual delegate meeting] calls for a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions and the...

A BBC mole has sent me this briefing for BBC staff from the BBC's Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, on what lies ahead this year. It’s all too predictable. The "fragmentation" of Palestinian society has, in Mr Bowen’s view, nothing to do with the Palestinians and everything to do with Israel (“the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building – and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government”). Indeed, Israel is to blame for almost everything. The Palestinians are not responsible for anything; Israel is the culpable party. He...

Reporting for the Tuesday edition of CNN’s "Newsroom," correspondent Arwa Damon labeled Saddam Hussein’s execution "an act of sheer revenge" and predicted it would have only negative consequences. Damon now joins NBC reporter Richard Engel who last week also described the death of the tyrant as "revenge." Additionally, Ms. Damon characterized the grainy cell phone footage of Hussein’s death as "chilling" and noted that onlookers "taunted" Saddam. The CNN reporter suggested that the execution of the former Iraqi leader would further split the country apart: Arwa Damon: "With Shia chants defining Saddam Hussein's last moments, it turns his execution into...

WASHINGTON - New White House Press Secretary Tony Snow is starting off in a combative mode against the press by issuing detailed rebuttals to what he considers unfair coverage of Bush. “The New York Times continues to ignore America’s economic progress,” blared the headline of an e-mail sent to reporters Wednesday by the White House press office. Minutes earlier, another e-mail blasted CBS News, which has had an unusually rocky relationship with the White House since 2004, when CBS aired what turned out to be forged documents in a failed effort to question the president’s military service. “CBS News misleadingly...

Something is very wrong at our elite universities. Last month Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard; today Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi will speak by video to a conference at Columbia University that his regime is cosponsoring. (Columbia won't answer questions about how much funding it got from Libya or what implied strings were attached.) Then there's Yale, which for three weeks has refused to make any comment or defense beyond a vague 144-word statement about its decision to admit Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi--a former ambassador-at-large of the murderous Afghan Taliban--as a special student. The three backers of the foundation that,...

Reviewing Mary Mapes' new book, Truth and Duty, in the November 2 National Review, Byron York opens with a description of the 60 Minutes II story that got her fired from CBS last year. That story said CBS had new documents shedding light on an old story--that George W. Bush had spent the Vietnam War years in a playboy unit of the National Guard and skipped out when he got bored. "CBS aired the documents in a 60 Minutes II report on September 8, 2004, and all hell broke loose," York writes in his review. "Within hours, the papers were...

LONDON (AFP) - An Irish journalist working for the British newspaper The Guardian has been kidnapped by armed men in Iraq, the London-based newspaper said. "Rory Carroll was... kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad. Carroll, 33, an experienced foreign correspondent, had been conducting an interview in the city with a victim of Saddam Hussein's regime. He had been preparing an article for today's (Thursday's) paper on the opening of the former dictator's trial yesterday," the paper said in its online edition. "Carroll, who was accompanied by two drivers and a translator, was confronted by the gunmen as he left the house...

When Army Spc. Bobby Hillen arrived in war-torn Iraq in January 2004, he saw small children playing in bomb craters in the streets. As he was leaving Iraq a year later, Hillen, a National Guard soldier from Brookline, recalls seeing children being shepherded into new schools that were part of the U.S. and coalition forces' reconstruction effort. "It was a drastic difference," said Hillen, 22, who believes most Americans never see such accomplishments because the media generally ignore positive developments in Iraq. "It's a slap in the face to a soldier when you turn on the news and all you...

WHAT THE BRITISH ARE READING ABOUT US THIS TODAY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] From a friend in London: this is from The Sun, the UK's largest newspaper, on saturday, Sept 10 2005, in a column by Jeremy Clarkson. I quote this verbatim (it's not up on their website, so i'm typing it in) "Hollywood has taught America that the military can solve anything. It's full of chisel-jawed heroes who never leave a man on the field and never fail to get the job done. So they'd have New Orleans sorted out in a jiffy. Unfortunately, on the street you've got some...

Local girl takes second place in 9/11 art contest Advocacy group gives her $100 prize for artwork with a statement By Tara Ramroop, STAFF WRITER SAN MATEO — Hannah Stutz, 11, turned her love of art into a heavy political statement that earned her second place in a peace organization's art contest. The soon-to-be Borel Middle School student recently beat out a handful of youth applicants in the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance's "9/11 Truth for Peace and Justice" art contest, picking up a $100 prize. The group believes that the U.S. government isn't telling the whole truth or giving...

Here’s a touching scene, featuring Cindy Sheehan and the Reverend Al Sharpton, in front of crosses, looking solemn and sad.Now let’s zoom out and see the media swarming around this manufactured event: (Hat tip: Bill P.) UPDATE at 8/28/05 5:36:04 pm: More pictures of this moving tableau at Getty Images. Co-starring “Army Mom.”UPDATE at 8/28/05 5:42:51 pm: Several LGF readers point out the Jewish star at lower right of the second photograph. Somebody tell CODEPINK not to let the Nazis know.

 (click here to see it reeeeeeeally large)  here is a link to the news article thread, posted by FReeper Interesting Times: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1459552/posts  

I ran across an interesting article by Jared Ede at CNSnews.com about yet another gala affair the left held this last week in D.C. for liberal students so they will have the tools they need to fight the conservative movement. There were several quotes in the article from Paul Begala which exemplify the absence of thought on the left. Mr. Ede added a few facts that show what I said to be true in the Article Disharmonic Convergence is really just the same ole thing all over again. First, here are the Paul Begala quotes: “I was driving past the...

Oprah: Daytime Talk’s Jihadi Sister May 25, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel Ann Coulter says Katie Couric is “the affable Ava Braun” of daytime TV. But Couric’s got nothing on Oprah Winfrey. **** Cheating husbands don’t get off as easy as Islamic terrorists, murderers, and torturers in Winfrey’s world. **** Last month, Oprah’s “O” asked readers to understand “The Heart of a Destroyer,” Mohammed Atta. You remember him—the Al-Qaeda ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers who murdered 3,000 Americans. But that’s not exactly the way “O”’s “reading room” wants you to remember him. Beneath a picture of young Mohammed and his smiling...

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley. It was a strange coincidence that Terri Schiavo’s ordeal took place during Holy Week. What she went through, and the nation’s reaction to it, taught us a sobering lesson about suffering and redemption. The things that ordinary, sensible Americans were saying about Terri’s case were shocking and upsetting. “Let the poor woman die” was one of them. But Terri was not dying before her food and water were taken away. She simply needed to eat and drink, just like the rest of us. Then there were the various media...

If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? (James 2:15-16) When you sit down for dinner tonight and enjoy a nice meal with your family, please remember that Terri Schiavo, though hanging onto life by a thread, is still starving to death. Please remember that, at this precise moment, her body hungers terribly, and she is suffering from gross dehydration. Remember that she...

Terri Schiavo's medical condition is in dispute, she left no living will, we don't know her present wishes, and yet the courts are ordering that her husband has the right to kill her? This outrage simply couldn't happen in a culture that considered human life sacred. "Objection," you say. "The courts are exhibiting their ultimate respect for life by carrying out the wishes of a person to terminate her own life and die with dignity." Even the "pull the tube" advocates, then, are agreeing that we can't remove the feeding tube unless the patient has previously indicated her intent, either...

Angered by the lastest political developments in Washington, Michael Schiavo said Saturday that it isn't just the governor who should visit his wife to learn about the case.'Come down, President Bush,' Schiavo said in a telephone interview. 'Come talk to me. Meet my wife. Talk to my wife and see if you get an answer. Ask her to lift her arm to shake your hand. She wont do it.' She won't, Shiavo said, because she can't.He made a similar offer last week to Florida Governor Jeb Bush saying lawmakers interfering in his wife's life know nothing about the case.So far,...

Posted on Mon, Mar. 21, 2005 R E L A T E D C O N T E N T LAST-MINUTE ACTION: David Gibbs III, the attorney for the Schindler family, holds a copy of the lawsuit filed in the Terri Schiavo case outside the U.S. Courthouse early Monday morning in Tampa. CHRIS O'MEARA/AP R E L A T E D L I N K S • Read the legislation • Some churchgoers see case's shades of gray • Protest outside husband's house • Mom: It's about love, not 'yes' or `no' • Is Congress overstepping its limits? Legal experts...

Though the legal wrangling in the Terri Schiavo case has been loud and contentious, the brain-damaged woman's physical response to having her feeding tube removed is likely to be very serene. "The process of starving to death seems very barbaric but in actuality is very peaceful," said Dr. Fred Mirarchi, assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. "The patient's experience is really pretty benign," said Dr. Joanne Lynn, a hospice physician associated with Americans for Better Care of the Dying, a group working for improved end-of-life care. "Overwhelmingly, what will happen is nothing."...

Euthanasia is enjoying its greatest renaissance in the Western world since Nazi Germany. Together with so many other social ideas first popularized in modern times by Nazis and Communists — from abortion to easy divorce — euthanasia's time may have come. Doctors in the Netherlands are euthanizing disabled infants even without parental consent, and Britain's Labour government may be about to legalize widespread euthanasia there. Our own state of Oregon has a physician-assisted suicide law. Hollywood's elite, ever on the cutting edge of evil, gave their implicit imprimatur to exterminating the unfit to live by granting Academy Awards the other...

The forerunner of "Million Dollar Baby" was the very entertaining Nazi movie "I Accuse," which won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and was the propaganda that Dr. Goebbels used to convince the German people to switch their vote from "vehemently opposed to the holocaust" to over 60 percent in favor of so-called "mercy killing." In fact, "I Accuse" is a very subtle film that inspired the killing of millions of people. Dr. Joseph Goebbels was the National Socialist (Nazi) propaganda minister from 1933 to 1945. He exploited radio, press, cinema and theater in Germany to destroy the...

MEMRI TV Project Monday January 17, 2005 LATEST CLIPS ADDED TO WWW.MEMRITV.ORG INCLUDE: *Clip #489: Tsunami Reactions (13) - Yemeni Professor Al-'Ajai: Global Zionism Abducts Children Who Survived the Tsunami for Slave Trade An excerpt: "As for the issue of child abduction in places hit by the earthquake and tsunami in Southeast Asia this is what the organizations of global Zionism are accustomed to, and this is what they do. But it is done in secret. They commit a crime and then place the blame on the Arab and Islamic nation. Of course, the capital of many of the companies...

The New York Times, once ironically known as the "Newspaper of Record", has a problem. But they aren't lonesome. The same problem threatens CBS news, and the rest of the "mainstream" media. Though Dan Rather will soon be freed from his many duties in the news manufacturing division, and thus be able to enlist the aid of O.J. Simpson in finding the real perpetrator/hoaxer, there remains to the liberal media that nagging problem. And that is "the record". In the past, engineered crises and hard hitting ambushes, once they had accomplished their intended purposes, could be safely laid to rest,...

Events of this past year have shown the need for a special award in journalism for those who think that the purpose of reporting news is to cause the public to adopt the political views of those who do the reporting. Therefore this column announces the first annual Joseph Goebbels award for that journalist who best exemplifies the spirit and the practice that Dr. Goebbels pioneered.  For people too young to remember or too unschooled in history to know, Dr. Joseph Goebbels was the minister of propaganda in the Nazi regime back in the 1930s and 1940s. Facts never distracted...

For ordinary Palestinians Tony Blair's visit was generally seen as little more than a publicity stunt that had less to do with them than the British electorate. Standing near Israel's concrete security barrier in Abu Dis near Jerusalem, Raed Masri, an engineer, watched as Palestinians scrambled to find a way around it to get to schools, hospitals and work. "I wish Blair had spent just half an hour here to see how we have to jump like sheep, to see the humiliation we face every day," he said. "It's all just blah, blah, blah, it's all about him having his...

ABC Deceivingly Paints Bush Haters as Average Military Families In a Sunday night ABC story, the brother and mother of soldiers killed in Iraq denounced Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for having an auto-pen machine sign his letters of condolence. But while World News Tonight/Sunday anchor Terry Moran portrayed the two as representative of how "some military families" are "upset" with Rumsfeld, the two are dedicated Bush and Rumsfeld haters with a political axe to grind. Ivan Medina spoke in June at a pro-Fahrenheit 9/11 publicity event and in May took part in an anti-Rumsfeld protest where he charged: "This...

Hezbollah slams Paris for decision to take “al-Manar” off the air Movement's deputy general secretary, Sheik Naim Kassam, says, “The case has proven that France is still an imperialist nation”. NRG Maariv Hezbollah's flag. In response to France’s decision to take the Hezbollah affiliated television station “al-Manar” off the air in the republic, the Lebanese terror organization’s deputy general secretary, Sheik Naim Kassam, slammed Paris and said, “The case has proven that France is still an imperialist nation”. According to Kassam, “If France thinks that it can block “al-Manar”, it is deeply mistaken. It is no more than a tool...