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When Vallejo Mayor Osby Davis told the New York Times in a recent interview that gay people don't get to heaven, he broke not one, but two cardinal rules of politics in a single sentence. With a simple phrase, Davis breached the separation between church and state and grabbed the electrified "third-rail" in Bay Area politics with both hands. He told the reporter that gays are "committing sins and those sins will keep them out of heaven." After the Nov. 20 article, the mayor claimed his words were taken out of context. The Times responded by providing an audio link...

"But as I realized back in my Wasilla mayor days, life is too short to hold a grudge." By the time the reader reaches that pronouncement on page 321 of "Going Rogue," Sarah Palin has nursed enough grudges to last a lifetime. She describes the McCain campaign's chief strategist Steve Schmidt's "rotund physique" and his penchant for smoking to "keep his cognitive connections humming along." She claims that her Troopergate nemesis Hollis French earned the nickname "Gunny" after he listed himself as a Marine Corps private when he "merely attended a weeks-long military course during college." Media strategist Nicolle Wallace...

The photographer who shot the picture violated his contract by reselling them to Newsweek. That photographer, Brian Adams, could not immediately be reached, and his agent, Kelly Price, declined to comment, saying, "I keep all of my clients' business private." But a spokeswoman for Runner's World confirms that Adams's contract contained a clause stipulating that his photos of Palin would be under embargo for a period of one year following publication -- meaning until August 2010. "Runner's World did not provide Newsweek with its cover image," the spokeswoman said. "It was provided to Newsweek by the photographer's stock agency, without...

Gay newspapers in several U.S. cities, including the Washington Blade, shut down on Monday, as the company that owned them, Window Media, abruptly went out of business. Window Media had been in serious financial trouble, but employees said they had expected a reorganization or sale, not a liquidation. “We found out when two of the corporate officers were waiting for us when we got to work this morning,” said Kevin Naff, editor of the Blade, a 40-year-old paper that was one of the most important publications written for a gay audience. “It’s not a complete surprise. The abruptness of it...

Newsweek intentionally left out Obama from the list (that he would save the world.) And no surprise, 3 of the 10 are Republicans (or maybe more.)

Virginia Muslims are calling on McDonnell (R) to disavow comments made by the Virginia Beach religious broadcaster last week in response to the shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., in which Robertson asserted that Islam is "not a religion" but a "violent political system" and that those who practice it should be treated like members of a communist or fascist party.

Freepers!...we're losing the image war. Photographs of the wounded at Fort Hood do not circulate among the major media. The wounded in Vietnam were commonly depicted in a way which maximized the public disgust with the war effort but the victims of jihadists are not shown in such an emotional way. The blood of civil rights demonstrators and marchers were commonly shown in the '60s and the image of the murdered and mutilated Emmett Till is a common icon to this day. But there is a lack of circulation of 9-11 pics (outside conservative media), mall shootings, Jihad victims, and...

Islam Remains Innocent thelastcrusade.org A conservative media watchdog organization says for the most part, the mainstream media networks have downplayed the Muslim connections with terrorism in the Fort Hood massacre.The Media Research Center (MRC) says that when authorities first announced the Fort Hood shooter was Major Nidal Malik Hasan, CBS and NBC purposefully avoided mentioning his name for fear of offending Muslims. The Center points out that ABC's Charles Gibson suggested Hasan was a "Muslim convert," which was not a correct statement, but adds at least Gibson was not trying to play "hide and seek" with the facts.The MRC...

Dan Calabrese notices a scolding tone coming from the Associated Press in reporting its latest polling. It headlines the report by noting that “a grouchy public [is] sticking with Obama,” having seen a 54% job approval rating in its survey — but some bad numbers on the issues. Does the AP report those falling levels of support as a consequence of Barack Obama doing a poor job? No, as emphases from Dan and myself show: The public grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, including war and the economy, continuing the slippage that has...

It’s an Obama infomercial! No, a Lesbian Night on the Fox channel? Wait, it’s a soft porn comedy hour on a major American television network. Actually, it's none of the above. It’s the premiere of the Wanda Sykes Show, a new one-hour program competing in the late night lineup. But at this juncture, it’s hard to tell what the show really is. The much buzzed “late-night show by the first gay black woman” with warnings of adult language and content conjures up an array of possibilities. Sadly, none of them really go anywhere in this perplexing presentation masquerading as hip....

Leah Rabin, the late widow of assassinated premier Yitzhak Rabin, used words such as "nightmare," "monstrosity," "corrupt" and "liar" to describe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in letters she wrote over a decade ago that have recently been obtained by Haaretz.

Amid the worst recession in generations, Karl Marx, who famously described religion as “the opium of the people�, got a thumbs up from the Vatican overturning a century of Catholic hostility to his creed. Marx, who predicted that capitalism would be destroyed by its internal contradictions, has joined Galileo, Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde on a growing list of historical figures to have undergone an unlikely reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church, The Times newspaper said on Thursday. The British daily, quoting the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, said Marx’s early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the “social alienation� felt by...

In the wake of the news that radio host Rush Limbaugh was hoping to buy a chunk of the St. Louis Rams, Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote a column containing the now-infamous quote, supposedly from Limbaugh, regarding the notion that slavery "had its merits." We first became aware of the quote not from perusing the copy of the Post-Dispatch that arrives in our mailbox every morning in West Virginia, but because Limbaugh mentioned the issue during the Monday broadcast of his radio show. (Indeed, if Limbaugh had never talked about the quotes on his radio show, we...

Rick Sanchez: i've know rush. in person,i like him. his rhetoric,however is inexcusably divisive. he's right tho. we didn't confirm quote. our bad.

American taxpayers are planning to storm more than 100 mainstream media offices and stations across the nation next week in protest of a media blackout of the growing movement against Obama administration policies. Following sparse coverage of a massive 9/12 march on Washington, talk show host Rush Limbaugh urged citizens to bring their protests to the front doors of major media outlets. "The media [are] no longer reporters. They are repeaters," Limbaugh said on his Sept. 14 show. "There have been hundreds and thousands of protests by conservative groups that haven't been covered, and tiny turnouts by the Left that...

Limbaugh is going to change the name of the team from the Rams to the Nappy-Headed Hos..Rush Limbaugh might one day own the St. Louis Rams. Hell, sometimes these column thingies write themselves. The only thing that could make this news even more fantastic is if in his first two acts as owner Limbaugh traded for Donovan McNabb and made Jesse Jackson the head coach. Followed by Ann Coulter's hiring as general manager. My head exploded after hearing this Limbaugh news. How exactly will Limbaugh address the team after he purchases them? "I just want to introduce myself and say...

A libertarian non-profit organization in Washington today announced it was filing suit against the Obama administration for failing to adequately disclose global warming documents. As we reported two weeks ago the Competitive Enterprise Institute deemed inadequate the Treasury Department's response to a Freedom of Information Act request for documents on cap-and-trade. Months after the FOIA request, Treasury responded by giving CEI five documents and emails, when the group had expected 50. "Your response fails any reasonable test for compliance with FOIA and constitutes an effective denial of our request," CEI's Christopher Horner stated in the notice of appeal filed with...

It’s not just conservatives who accuse the media of showing a liberal bias. A new survey from the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute shows that 89.3 percent of Americans believe the national media played a sizable role in helping to elect President Obama. And 69.9 percent of respondents view the national news media as intent on promoting the Obama presidency, while 26.5 percent disagreed, and 3.6 percent were unsure. More than half of those surveyed, 56.4 percent, said the news media are promoting Obama’s healthcare reform without objective criticism. Another 39.3 percent disagreed, and 4.3 percent were unsure. A majority,...

The current debate over whether Barack Obama’s opponents are motivated by his policy or his race dominated the Sunday news shows, with a general consensus emerging that policy was the main factor. It was nonetheless conceded that racism was a disturbing presence in many of the protest events. Sadly, no Republican spokesperson on the shows said anything to condemn the organizers that allowed and may have encouraged the ugly manifestations of racism. Many of the recent protests reminded me of rallies last fall at which Sarah Palin would talk about “taking back our America” and accuse Obama of “palling around...

A couple in California turned over their 2001 Nissan X-Terra for the Cash for Clunkers program, but a few weeks later they discovered that the dealer decided to put it back up for sale instead of destroying it as per the program's rules. The dealership says it never asked for the government credit and decided instead to treat the X-Terra as a trade-in. They never told that to the customers, however, who thought the X-Terra would be destroyed. The customers told the U.S. Department of Transportation that they participated in the program specifically to get the 17 MPG X-Terra off...

Civility … Nuance. Just much too much in one short sound bite. NBC’s David Gregory wonders if protesters are budding Tim McVays … Obama calls for civil discourse (I’m sorry?) and then says protesters just want TV time ( I know, I know) …But we start with … “We have examples of anti government violence in the mid 90’s .. do you worry about that?”. Yup … those grandmas and grandpas and housewives I saw … no question … I can see the link between them and Tim McVay. Scary.

NBC's Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd does not fault the state-run media for ignoring the communist-Truther Van Jones controversy. He says it was a waste of time. For the record-- Van Jones was in charge of doling out $80 billion of Stimulus money to selected green projects. He was certainly no low level czar as Chuck Todd suggested.

Ill will against former Vice President Dick Cheney still runs high in some circles. So high, in fact, that when the University of Wyoming decided to name an international student center after him, Suzanne Pelican began circulating a petition against it last year. One year later, that petition has earned 150 signatures and an Associated Press story. In a story titled “Protest brews over Cheney center at Univ. of Wyo.” AP reporter Mead Gruver writes:

More than $10bn in advertising disappeared from US media markets in the first six months of this year, according to new data that show intense pressure on media owners and ad agencies as they search for other business models. Preliminary figures from Nielsen show a 15.4 per cent year-on-year decline in US advertising revenues, the largest drop for any period in the decade since the marketing and media measurement group began compiling such reports. The study showed sharp differences in the behaviour of different media and product categories, with cable television the only medium on which ad spend increased, up...

Picture a recovering alcoholic falling off the wagon. First he says he can handle a few drinks... But eventually he turns mean... As a drunk is to alcohol, the Bush administration is to budget deficits. During the 2000 campaign George W. Bush often pledged to maintain fiscal responsibility... [H]is people said they could cut taxes, pay for new programs... and still pay off most of the federal government's debt... Now the budget director, Mitch Daniels, has admitted the obvious: The federal government faces the prospect of large deficits as far as the eye can see. And sure enough, the drunk...

Network Edits Clips of a Black Man with Guns at an Obama Rally to Support Race Narrative In their statement yesterday explaining why they were removing their ads from ALL "political talk shows" on cable, Clorox said per their standards, they do not advertise on programs which "present facts inaccurately or distort them to blatantly partisan advantage". Well I commend the executives at Clorox and indeed all other advertisers revising their ad placement standards over the Glenn Beck brouhaha, to see what MSNBC did during their morning show on August 18th. continued...

Several conservative bloggers, including Hot Air, RedState, and NewsBusters, have taken MSNBC to task for not identifying a man with a gun at an Obama event as an African-American in a segment that discussed the "racial overtones" of those packing heat at presidential town halls.

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire recently, a man carried a handgun a few blocks away from the site where President Obama was scheduled to hold a town hall a couple of hours later. Was it a danger or not? The man carrying the gun, William Kostric, even had permission to have the gun on private church property while he was protesting Obama's appearance. Everybody from the New York Times to USA Today to CBS News expressed their outrage, interpreting it as a hot head threatening the president and linking it to militias and conservative talk radio. A prominent liberal radio talk...

I'll give it to you in one word: Independents. If House Democrats want to avoid losing 20 seats in 2010, they know they will have to fight and hold on to as many Independents as possible, period. Lose them and they will lose the House, it's just that simple, and they know it. Thus the creation here of late in the mainstream press of the local militia and Nazi memes. It's an old political trick. Fanaticize the right with a bogus militia scare, throw in a couple of swastikas and watch the Independents stream back into the fold. So get...

Er, yes. That was precisely the problem. So lame that it barely qualifies as spin: Following the shot of the African American man focusing specifically on the gun, MSNBC host Contessa Brewer said that “you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waists or to their legs.”… [B]y raising the racial issue in this context, bloggers claimed that MSNBC was purposely misleading viewers by not showing that at least one African-American man has also carried a gun to an event. An MSNBC spokesperson responded to POLITICO: “Contessa was speaking...

On Tuesday, MSNBCs Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: "A man at a pro-health care reform rally...wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip....there are questions about whether this has racial overtones....white people showing up with guns." Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.

When George W. Bush was President, ABC and Charles Gibson, like most media members, couldn't get enough of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan. Now that Barack Obama is in the White House, the host of "World News Tonight" is no longer interested in Sheehan, even telling WLS radio in Chicago, "Enough already." I guess she served her purpose as reported by the Washington Examiner's Byron York Thurday: In an appearance August 18 on WLS radio in Chicago, ABC News anchor Charles Gibson was asked about anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan's plans to travel to Martha's Vineyard next week, where she will protest...

I missed this yesterday at Newsbusters but Treacher, rightly aghast, tipped me to it this afternoon. Never will you see a starker example of MSNBC getting away with the sort of deception for which Fox News would be pilloried, especially in the context of race. If you missed Monday’s post about this, go watch the footage (or look at this photo) and see if you can deduce why they wouldn’t want to show the guy with the rifle from the neck up during this particular segment. For all the well-deserved heat that MSNBC’s primetime line-up has taken for its demagoguery...

Palmer, Alaska (AP) -- The mother of the man former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol had planned on marrying has reached a plea deal in her drug case. Sherry Johnston pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of possession with intent to deliver the painkiller OxyContin. Five other felony counts were dropped. Johnston was placed in pink handcuffs and taken to a correctional facility where she'll be held until her Nov. 20 sentencing.

Try this on for size: Palinism. What is it? It is an updated version of McCarthyism, which takes its name from the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin liar, demagogue and drunk, and means, according to Wikipedia, "reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries." As far as we know, Sarah Palin is not a drunk. But she certainly shares McCarthy's other attributes -- and this one as well: the ability to drive the debate. In McCarthy's day, it was anti-communism coupled with national security, and it hardly mattered that he frequently...

The Obama White House is abuzz with talk of witchcraft by first grandmother, 72-year-old Marian Robinson, who lives in the White House residence. A close friend of Michelle Obama says the president is furious at his mother-in-law after learning that she was practicing Santeria, an African spirit cult, in the White House. "The president is quite upset about this on two different levels. First, he is a committed Christian, no matter what his critics say about Reverend Wright. He is adamant that Sasha and Malia be raised with Christian influences. He does not want them to be involved with African...

U.S. Capitol Police investigating pair of harassing messages Monday, August 17 | 10:24 p.m. BY TOM VOGT COLUMBIAN STAFF WRITER Police continue to investigate a pair of threats against U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, according to a member of the congressman's staff. The Vancouver Democrat has emerged as a high-profile player in the ongoing discussion of health care reform. In return, the congressman has received two messages characterized by Baird as death threats. Both have been forwarded to the U.S. Capitol Police, a federal agency based in the District of Columbia that protects members of Congress and their families. One harassing...

On her MSNBC show last night, the left-wing Air America host Rachel Maddow took a swipe at the conservative Shirley & Banister Public Affairs firm, specifically President & CEO Craig Shirley. Maddow accused Shirley of being behind a grassroots Web site funded by the group Grassfire.org, based on research provided by the "independent watchdog group Public Citizen," and she showed still images from an incendary "Obama=Hitler" video that's still posted on the Grassfire's ResistNet.com Web site. BUT MADDOW WAS WRONG. THE PUBLIC CITIZEN WEB PAGE SHE CITED IS SEVERAL YEARS OLD. Shirley & Bannister hasn't represented Grassfire.org since 2004, and...

Experts who track hate groups across the U.S. are growing increasingly concerned over violent rhetoric targeted at President Obama, especially as the debate over health care intensifies and a pattern of threats emerges.

Dear MoveOn member, Right-wing mobs aren't just disrupting congressional town halls—their outlandish lies are now making their way into mainstream news coverage, too. We need to set the record straight. The majority of Americans support real health care reform. And no wonder, given the incredible cost of inaction. In Michigan alone, 620 people lose their coverage every day. And for those with insurance, yearly premiums will hit $22,579 in a few years if we don't act. We can't let right-wing extremists ruin the biggest opportunity in a generation to get real reform. Can you send a quick letter to the...

Bill Sammon points out what I reported on at length in my “Assassination Chic” chapter of Unhinged and in years of my Unhinged blog archives: Journalists don’t care about nutballs and extremely extreme extremists unless they can be used to embarrass conservatives.

Here's a story I talked about while recording a guest host spot on Raisin' Hale (for my good friend Tabitha Hale) on RFCRadio.com last night. Michelle Malkin explores it today with some bonus material. The free press in the United States once stood for something. The Constitution ensured its freedom so it could act as a vigilant watchdog for the citizens of this country. The classic modern example is Watergate, of course. An unhinged, dishonest president thoroughly abused his position and would have gotten away with it had it not been for the efforts of two newspaper reporters. That's the...

When I saw this video interview of Bill Burton, White House Deputy Press Secretary, I could not help but be reminded of one of old Saul Alinsky's favorite fake-em-out tricks of the revolutionary trade. Burton is reinforcing Pelosi's earlier claim that people were carrying Swastikas at townhalls, but goes even further and claims that folks are actually "dressing up like Hitler." You got to give ole Saul a little credit. He was one wily deceiver, right after his hero, Deceiver in Spades, Lucifer. Saul Alinsky, crusader for the downtrodden, darling of the Auxiliary Archbishop of Chicago, was just an underachieving...

Obama's twin brother host on MSNBC tells us the meaning of all those town hall mobsters calling Obama a "socialist".....Memo to MSNBC:(when all else fails, play the race card)

This is no time for jokes or trivial banter. The stakes are getting higher by the nanosecond. As tensions are inflamed at health care town hall meetings across the country, a dangerous trend of Hitler comparisons, Stalin comparisons, and all-around dictator comparisons to President Barack Obama is taking shape. The most probing question at this juncture might be uncomfortable to some, but it must be asked: Do conservative, hard-right demagogues, whose hatred for President Obama has hardly ever been subdued, secretly hope for--and are hard at work toward--the assassination of the nation's first Black president. The sheer thought that a...

The L.A.Times' Dan Neil is confused. He thinks that the so-called progressive movement is right on all the issues, but he just cannot understand why they can't win the public debate. Neil laments that they have all the "English majors" on their side but cannot win "any war of words." Just what is going on here, he wants to know? He's so frustrated that he took to his keyboard to ask these questions in a Pittsburgh Gazette article from August 9. In his piece, Neil wonders, for instance, why the "progressives" are so inept at debate and cannot convince the...

Ah, democracy! It never works better than when informed citizens gather in town hall meetings to discuss and debate the issues of the day. But, oh, democracy! It's never more damaged than when partisan zealots plot to disrupt town hall meetings in order to prevent any honest debate of the issues. And that's exactly what's happening in health care forums held across the nation by members of Congress. We've seen it in Philadelphia; Austin, Texas; Georgetown, Del.; Salisbury, Md; and other communities. Taking a page right out of a Nazi playbook, organizers bus in professional protestors and arm them with...

The execrable Keith Olbermann had a segment on health care last night—well, no, not really on health care per se, since that is a subject requiring basic cognition and a capacity for linear thought, but on the “organized right wing” protests springing up around the country against Obama’s planned takeover of our medical system. Olbermann presented video snippets from town hall meetings where grass roots protests (actually, such authentic greenery can only be a left wing growth, so make that “astroturf” protests) have made life unpleasant for Congresspeople trying to defend the possible legislation on this issue now being considered...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent her chamber home for the summer recess with a list of talking points to respond to constituents' questions about pending health care legislation. But those traditionally sleepy town hall meetings have become rowdy shout-fests across the nation, including Northern California, with opponents hanging members in effigy and mocking them with Nazi and devil imagery in an effort to derail discussions of health care. They're organized in part by conservative think tanks like FreedomWorks, which offers tips on how to disrupt a meeting ("Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early,"...

Keeping The Cable Guys Honest * Home * About MSNBC: Chris Matthews “Sees” Bush Scandal while Turning a Blind Eye to Clinton, Obama Transgressions 2009 August 3 Leave a comment tags: Chris Matthews, Karl Rove, News, Politics by johnperazzo Inspector General Gerald Walpin, whom President Obama fired without good cause Inspector General Gerald Walpin, whom President Obama fired without good cause On his most recent Hardball program, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews explored a long-forgotten controversy that evidently continues to haunt him – the role that Republican strategist Karl Rove may have played “in the firing of those federal prosecutors [by President...