You won't find this news on big 3 US TV networks: IRS admits targeting groups with 'anti-Obama rhetoric'

USA Today reported on Wednesday that the IRS has admitted that it flagged political groups for 'anti-Obama rhetoric' (Hat Tip: Carl and  Bad Blue). And the big 3 of US network television refuses to report it.

ABC, CBS and NBC have so far refused to report the latest bombshell in the IRS scandal - a newly released list from the agency that showed it flagged political groups for “anti-Obama rhetoric.” On September 18 the USA Today, in a front page story, reported the following: “Newly uncovered IRS documents show the agency flagged political groups based on the content of their literature, raising concerns specifically about ‘anti-Obama rhetoric,’ inflammatory language and ‘emotional’ statements made by non-profits seeking tax-exempt status.”

Not only have ABC, CBS and NBC not reported this story they’ve flat out stopped covering the IRS scandal on their evening and morning shows. It’s been 85 days since ABC last touched the story on June 26. NBC hasn’t done a report for 84 days and CBS last mentioned the IRS scandal 56 days ago on July 24.

The article by Gregory Korte went on to report: “The internal 2011 documents, obtained by USA TODAY, list 162 groups by name, with comments by Internal Revenue Service lawyers in Washington raising issues about their political, lobbying and advocacy activities. In 21 cases, those activities were characterized as ‘propaganda.’ The list provides the most specific public accounting to date of which groups were targeted for extra scrutiny and why. The IRS has not publicly identified the groups, repeatedly citing a provision of the tax code prohibiting it from releasing tax return information.”

Fox News parent co. funneling money to Left

(According to data accumulated from the Federal Election Commission by the Center for Responsive Politics and published on OpenSecrets.org,) the total contributions by News Corp political action committees, employees and their families favored Democrats by a more than 2-to-1 margin in the 2012 election.

Two new studies: Gun crime has dropped dramatically over last 20 years — and most Americans have no idea

Behold the power of this fully armed and operational propaganda machine. First, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics: (Hot Air)

Firearm-related homicides declined 39 percent and nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69 percent from 1993 to 2011, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. Firearm-related homicides dropped from 18,253 homicides in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011, and nonfatal firearm crimes dropped from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011.

For both fatal and nonfatal firearm victimizations, the majority of the decline occurred during the 10-year period from 1993 to 2002. The number of firearm homicides declined from 1993 to 1999, rose through 2006 and then declined through 2011. Nonfatal firearm violence declined from 1993 through 2004 before fluctuating in the mid- to late 2000s…

In 2004 (the most recent year of data available), among state prison inmates who possessed a gun at the time of the offense, fewer than two percent bought their firearm at a flea market or gun show. About 10 percent of state prison inmates said they purchased it from a retail store or pawnshop, 37 percent obtained it from family or friends, and another 40 percent obtained it from an illegal source.

Bear that two percent figure in mind the next time Obama or Biden starts wheezing about the gun-show loophole. Now, from Pew, the kicker:

Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades…

Despite national attention to the issue of firearm violence, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is lower today than it was two decades ago. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, today 56% of Americans believe gun crime is higher than 20 years ago and only 12% think it is lower.

You can’t appreciate the magnitude of the decline without seeing it in graph form. Click here and make your way through Pew’s interactive table. In virtually every demographic, gun homicides and violent firearm crime are either lower or way, way lower than they were 20 years ago — and this despite the fact that, as Charles Cooke notes, gun laws were liberalized during that period. Remember stern warnings from the media in 2004 that if the assault-weapons ban were allowed to lapse, all the gains that had been made in reducing gun violence in the late 90s and early 00s would disappear.  Have a look at Pew’s table. In fact, per the BJS numbers above, gun homicides actually rose during the second half of the AWB’s 10-year tenure before declining again a few years after the ban lapsed. After wading through the BJS data, J.D. Tuccille of Reason dug up another interesting data point:

“[M]ilitary-style semiautomatic or fully automatic” firearms, of the sort targeted by Sen. Feinstein at the federal level, and by new laws in Colorado, Connecticut and New York, make up a whopping 3.2 percent of the weapons possessed by federal inmates, and 2 percent of the weapons possessed by state inmates, at the time of their offense.

And yet, per Pew, just 12 percent of the public has any clue about the dramatic decline in gun crime. On the contrary, a clear majority thinks it’s gone up — despite dutiful news reports whenever the FBI releases its crime data, despite endless (and justified) coverage of the “broken windows” theory and NYC’s celebrated turnaround in crime under Giuliani and Bill Bratton. Partly that might be due to a general default assumption among the public that social problems tend to get worse, not better. Society seems to get coarser all the time, ergo there must be more violence. Wrong, although you can understand how that conclusion is drawn. It’s probably also partly due to the saturation coverage of horrendous mass shootings. Columbine, Virginia Tech, Newtown — it feels like gun violence is exploding, especially at schools, even though it’s much reduced nationwide. (Per Tuccille, the BJS data shows fewer homicides at schools annually now than 20 years ago.) And of course, partly the false perception is owing to the sense of crisis/opportunity inculcated by Obama and his media allies after Sandy Hook to push their broader gun-control agenda even though the measures they proposed would have done zip to stop Adam Lanza. If you’re a low-information voter watching Obama’s various pressers over the last five months, why wouldn’t you assume that gun crime is spiralling ever upward? Rhetorically, at least, he’s spent more time on gun control than he has on any other issue — more than unemployment, North Korea and Syria, immigration, you name it. The problem must be getting worse to justify making it his tippy top public priority; otherwise, one might be forced to conclude that he’s demagoging it simply as a handy bludgeon to try to use against the GOP in the midterms. And that can’t be true. Can it?

More #MediaBias from the #BostonMarathon Bombing

Like Nicolas Kristoff:

Or Michael Moore:

(it gets worse... read on)
I was experiencing this as it happened. Usually I'm off by a few minutes... this was totally surreal.

#NewYork: #Muslims prove #Islam is a #ReligionOfPeace by handing out #flowers

Well, this is a relief! Saudi Muslim students handed out flowers in Times Square to prove that Muhammad's message was one of peace, mercy and love! So all that you have read about Muhammad calling for warfare against non-Muslims, ordering the assassination of his enemies, predicating the coming of the End Times on Muslims killing Jews, and the rest of it, you can forget about it all: Muslims were handing out flowers!
What would happen to a group of Christian students who went to Riyadh and started handing out flowers to explain the message of Christianity? They would be arrested, imprisoned, and possibly killed.
And why would that happen to them? Because of the message of the Muhammad on whose behalf these Muslims were handing out roses, for the same Muhammad whose message was one of mercy, peace and love said: "I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim." (Sahih Muslim 19.4366)
Also: if there were such a group of Christian students handing out roses anywhere to promote the message of Jesus, would CNN care? And why is this report so riddled with grammatical errors? Was CNN so avid to get it online that they couldn't even pause long enough to make sure it was written in proper English?
The whole campaign has a The-lady-doth-protest-too-much-methinks air about it. Christians and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists don't go around handing out flowers to prove that their religions are peaceful. They don't have to, because there aren't armed groups of believers justifying violence worldwide by reference to their scriptures. And no effusion of bouquets will erase the fact that there are Muslims all over the world who are doing just that.
"Voice of Muslim Students," by Sunsetlady for CNN iReport, March 26 (thanks to Blaine):

CNN PRODUCER NOTE Saudi Muslim students in American colleges and universities launched a nation-wide campaign in February called "Mohammed is a Prophet of Mercy: Sharing the language of peace and love". The aim of the campaign is to emphasize the similarities between Muslim and other religions through simple statements of love, said Waleed Ali Aljohani, a medical student who coordinated the New York event. Muslim students carried out the campaign in Times Square on Sunday, March 24. iReporter Sunsetlady says she happened to be in Times Square and shot these photos. - dsashin, CNN iReport producer Muslim students in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and England formed a campaign to explain Prophet Muhammad’s message of peace by giving away roses.
On March 24, a group of students from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemman, led by Dr. Waleed Ali Aljohani and Ghazi Ali Al-Hassan, carried out the campaign in Times Square.
According to Dr. Aljohani, “After 9/11, a lot of people linked between Islam and violence.

Yeah, especially guys like bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

We decided as Muslim students to introduce our true religion and show how Islam is a religion of love, mercy and peace by distributing flower with cards stating about love, respect and mercy. We are not asking people to be Muslim but at least we can show what the similarities between Islam and other religions. The similarities between Muslim and other religion, nations and culture are more than different; No reason for Islamophobia. Muslim could be anyone – family, friend, or neighbor. So you can look to what we are sharing together – love, peace and mercy.”

Jihad Watch

via docstalk.blogspot.com

Lars Hedegaard Assassination Attempt was ignored by Western Media for days

(US media ignore Muslim assassination attempt on Danish writer)
(Creeping Sharia)

via Andrew Bostom’s blog – Hedegaard Interviewed by Sun TV’s Michael Coren (But Not Fox News).

Once again illustrating how Canada’s Sun TV is far bolder than any US television network in dealing with Islam’s threat to Western free speech, Michael Coren, uniquely, interviewed Lars Hedegaard, who survived an assassination attempt earlier this week. Coren underscored my own sentiment that the failure to cover this assassination attempt against a major Western journalist by television media—including conservative television outlets Fox News and The Blaze—is a lingering disgrace.

I am very grateful to Michael Coren for doing the interview, but have a minor quibble with his introduction, which in fact does not (watch for yourselves) comport with these expressed sentiments on Islam by my colleague and friend Lars Hedegaard (during September, 2010):

We [the International Free Press Society] have made no bones about the fact that we consider Islam — as it is presently being preached by all influential clerics and ideologues — a deadly threat to all our freedoms among which are freedom of expression. For this consistent stance we have been vilified and called every name in the book, but we will not budge. I’m aware that some of my friends think that Islam can be reformed, domesticated, and civilized. I welcome that day, but must relate to the fact that it hasn’t happened yet — though Muslims have had 1,400 years to complete the project.

At any rate, we are all indebted to Michael Coren for interviewing Lars Hedegaard and airing his important story, which the legacy media, Fox News and The Blaze, and even the major US conservative talk radio blowhards, all continue to ignore, imperiling free speech by their craven behavior.

Will the #BBC follow suit? #UN cuts ties with official tied to false tweet @jondonnison @bowenbbc @pdanahar

NEW YORK – Khulood Badawi, a veteran public affairs officer in the Jerusalem branch of the United Nations Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), has been “separated” from the UN, according to officials in New York.

The de facto firing, publicly explained as a contract non-renewal, comes shortly after the conclusion of an internal investigation lasting almost a year.

The investigation conducted by the UN Development Program centered on a February 2012 Twitter post containing the photograph of a dead Palestinian girl, who Badawi insisted was killed by the IDF during its shelling of Gaza.

Subsequent investigations revealed that it was in reality an archived Reuters photo originally taken in 2006.

According to Reuters, the photograph was that of a young woman killed as the result of local clashes in Gaza, not as the result of any IDF action.

Badawi, it was later discovered, had been involved in several earlier controversial actions, including a 2006 demonstration in Jerusalem in which she labeled current Defense Minister Ehud Barak a “war criminal.”

UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Valerie Amos, while not disputing Badawi’s actions, publicly questioned whether the world body could be held accountable for “personal” tweets.

As such, she launched the inquiry that Israel’s UN mission charged was a “whitewash,” with Ambassador Ron Prosor repeatedly insisting that Badawi be fired.

Amos then explained she was awaiting conclusions and recommendations. Yet weeks turned into months, with the investigation having been concluded in October 2012, and repeated inquiries to Amos for updates produced nothing.

On Wednesday, an email from the UN revealed that all facets of the fact-finding mission had finally been completed, and that the organization had opted not to renew Badawi’s contract.

No other details were released.

Badawi was unable to be reached for comment, and Israel’s UN mission had no immediate reaction.

Lance Armstrong Oprah Interview Confession: Former Friends Turn on Star

Last week featured the shocking revelation that athletes had lied to the whole country for years in order to become rich and famous. In the absence of any notion of right and wrong, the only truly punishable offenses involve hurting people's feelings. That includes famous people "betraying our trust" by doing something that we didn't expect them to be doing thereby deceiving us into liking them for the wrong reasons.(The Authenticity of Fake) ...it is completely acceptable for a public figure to be amoral as long as they are honestly up-front about it.

This Time Warner TV show can not be advertised on a Time Warner channel

Time Warner is barring ads with guns in them in the middle of shows that it runs that have guns in them

(Time Warner Cable) has announced a ban on ads with guns in them. “We no longer accept ads showing semiautomatic weapons and guns pointed at people,” Time Warner Cable said in a statement. “We stand by this policy. If it’s essential to a business owner to show this kind of imagery in their commercials, there are other advertising options in the marketplace.”

Gore Threatened To Accuse Cable Providers Of Being Anti-Muslim Bigots If They Dropped Al Jazeera After Current TV Sale

(Weasel)A play ripped from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson’s playbook on racial shakedowns.
Via Media Decoder: Al Gore’s Current TV was never popular with viewers, but it was a hit where it counted: with cable and satellite providers. When he co-founded the channel in 2005, Mr. Gore managed to get the channel piped into tens of millions of households — a huge number for an untested network — through a combination of personal lobbying and arm-twisting of industry giants.
He called on those skills again after deciding in December to sell Current TV toAl Jazeera for $500 million. To preserve the deal — and the estimated $100 million he would personally receive — he went to some of those same distributors, who were looking for an excuse to drop the low-rated channel, and reminded them that their contracts with Current TV called it a news channel. Were the distributors going to say that an American version of Al Jazeera didn’t qualify, possibly invoking ugly stereotypes of the Middle Eastern news giant?
“The lawyers for the carriers couldn’t find their way around it,” said a person briefed on the negotiations who described them on condition of anonymity.

Synergy: Al Jazeera Buys Al Gore's Current TV

Some Current personnel will continue on with the Al Jazzera America channel, but most of its programming will be, ahem, original.

What can you say? The suitors found each other.

So smoothly does the transition of a liberal propaganda cable news network that no one watched proceed to an Islamist propaganda cable news network that no one watches.

Al Jazeera is a propaganda network for the Qatari tyranny which has a hand in backing every Islamist terrorist group from Hamas to Al Qaeda.
Qatar has enough money to burn that it’s decided that it wants a finer control over the liberal message with its own ‘left of left’ news network. Considering that Current TV was meant to appeal to lefties in that sweet spot between MSNBC (too right wing) and RT (too crazy), this is a tricky balancing act.

Al Jazeera is finalizing a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore and his business partners seven years ago.
If the deal is completed, Current will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms. Current is available in about 60 million of the 100 million homes in the United States with cable or satellite service.
Rather than simply use Current to distribute its existing English-language channel, called Al Jazeera English and based in Doha, Qatar, Al Jazeera will create a new channel based in New York, according to people with knowledge of the deal negotiations. Potentially called Al Jazeera America, roughly 60 percent of the programming will be produced in the United States while the remaining 40 percent will come from Al Jazeera English.
Al Jazeera may absorb some Current TV staff members, according to the people, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But Current’s schedule of shows will most likely be dissolved in the spring.
The plan will bring Al Jazeera, which is financed by the government of Qatar, into closer competition with CNN and other news channels in the United States.

I don’t see this as competition so much as Al Jazeera creating its own RT and PressTV, except with a bigger presence on American airwaves. But Current TV had a limited presence to begin with. And there’s no serious reason to think that Al Jazeera America will do much better than the BBC, from which it was originally born.

Like RT and PressTV and Xinhau, Al Jazeera is regime propaganda. The difference is that American leftist media has decided to ignore the fact that Al Jazeera is just another network owned by a totalitarian regime looking to spread its propaganda. Maybe now they’ll be forced to stop ignoring it.

via frontpagemag.com

An important reminder of right-wing betrayal from 2005

Caroline Glick reminds everyone of the "disengagement", how Ariel Sharon turned to committing sickening acts of anti-demoncratic behavior and how even the alleged supporters of Israel turned against them, leading to the very terrible fix we're in now:

After both the Oslo process and the withdrawal from Lebanon left Israel strategically and diplomatically weakened, with its politicians, generals and its very existence brought before international tribunals and targeted by diplomatic pogroms, there was no basis for the empty claim that by withdrawing from Gaza, Israel would gain international legitimacy to defend itself.
By leaving Gaza, Israel was saying - as it had in Lebanon - that it had no right to be there. And if it had no right to be there, it had no right to return.
To force this mad initiative through, Sharon had to explicitly disavow the platform he was elected to implement. Sharon won the 2003 elections by pledging never to surrender Gaza.
After he betrayed his voters, Sharon demonized and, when possible, fired everyone in positions of power and influence who opposed him.
He called a referendum of Likud members to vote on his plan, and when his opponents won the vote overwhelmingly, he ignored it. He fired Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, then IDF chief of General Staff. He fired his cabinet ministers. He castigated as "rebels" his party members who opposed his plan.
Moreover, with the active collusion of the legal system, Sharon violently repressed his political opponents. Young girls were thrown into jail without trial for months for participating in anti-withdrawal demonstrations. Privately chartered buses en route to lawful demonstrations were interdicted by police and prevented from traveling.
Protest organizers were arrested in their homes at 3 a.m. And with the active collusion of the media, all debate on the merits of the withdrawal plan was stifled.
As bad as it was in Israel, the situation in the US was arguably even more devastating. Since Oslo, Israeli opponents of the Left's strategic insanity were intellectually and politically buoyed by their conservative counterparts in America.
The latter helped legitimize political opposition and enabled the conceptualization and maintenance of alternative policies as viable options.
Despite government repression, some 45 percent of Israel's Jewish population actively participated in anti-withdrawal protests. In the US, virtually no one supported them. The absence of opposition owed to the fact that in America withdrawal opponents were boycotted, demonized and blacklisted by the American Jewish community and the previously supportive conservative media.
During the years of the fake peace process, conservative US Jewish groups and conservative publications led by Commentary, The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal forcefully opposed it. But when Sharon joined the radical Left by adopting its plan to withdraw from Gaza, these formidable outlets and institutions enthusiastically followed him.
Leading voices like former Jerusalem Post editor and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Bret Stephens, Commentary editors Norman Podhoretz and Neal Kozodoy, commentator Charles Krauthammer and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol not only lined up to support the dangerous planned withdrawal. They barred all voices of opposition from the pages of their publications.
To greater and lesser degrees, their shunning of voices that warned against the Gaza withdrawal continues to this day.
So, too, with the exception of the Zionist Organization of America, every major American Jewish organization supported the withdrawal.
Like the editors of Commentary, the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal, they barred voices of opposition from speaking to their groups.
All commentators who warned of the strategic calamity that would befall Israel in the aftermath of a withdrawal from Gaza were marginalized and demonized as extremists.
In a notable gesture, this week, Stephens along with Commentary's Max Boot, acknowledged their error in supporting the withdrawal from Gaza. Their recantations are noteworthy because most of their colleagues who joined them in pushing Israel down the garden path and cheered Sharon's "democracy" as 8,500 Israelis were thrown out of their homes and off their land in order to free it up for a terrorist takeover, continue to deny that they were wrong to do so.
But Stephens's and Boot's belated intellectual integrity on Gaza is not enough to make a difference for Israel today.

Of course not. For now, that these so-called defenders of democracy refused in any way, shape or form to speak out against a disgusting man who committed undemocratic behavior in his last days of living is shameful, and puts their support for democracy under a question mark. How are we really supposed to believe that they even want China to become a democracy if they're going to even remotely support totalitarian movements like the PLO, which has more or less run their own enclaves with sharia tactics? And supposing Sharon made racist statements against blacks? Would they have suppressed that info as well because this is Sharon who might've uttered blasphemy? If they did that, they'd be stooping to dark paganism.
If there's anybody Stephens, Podhoretz, Boot, Kozodoy, Kristol, Krauthammer and even Jonathan Tobin owe an apology to, it's the Jews once living in Gaza at whose expense they supported this whole sham, and contradicted their alleged belief in democracy as a result. How can they say they support freedom and then fully throw their weight behind the notion of turning Gaza over to an entity that's more than 99 percent the opposite of that? I'd say they have a lot of explaining to do, and one could reasonably argue that this is exactly why the GOP failed to win the election this year too. Just how do they expect to be truly successful if they cannot take a clear stand on what they believe in? Glick was absolutely correct to take them to task for their own shameful behavior, which is as disrespectful to Americans as it is to Israelis. They shouldn't even be working as columnists for major papers if they cannot or will not comprehend the real enemies and are willing to sacrifice their beliefs for the sake of dhimmitude. What they did is exactly what Benjamin Franklin considered abhorrent:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

That's exactly what the so-called conservatives supporting the "disengagement" did, and in doing so betrayed even Arabs in Gaza with common sense.

via telchaination.blogspot.com

Daily Mirror (UK) silently deletes article blaming Israel for child death

(EOZ) has previously discussed the case of Mahmoud Sadallah, the 4-year old boy whose the world media blamed on Israel - when in fact he was killed by a Hamas rocket.
One of the examples (EOZ) gave was the Daily Mirror (UK), which showed a photos the grieving Egyptian prime minister Kandil cradling the head of the child, and had written "Egypt's Prime Minister wept today as he kissed the forehead of a boy killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza."
CNN and others made the same accusation, but they sort of retracted (reluctantly) when confronted with the facts.
The Daily Mirror did not, as far as I know.
So (EOZ) was surprised to find out today that the link to that article is now broken, and cannot be found using the search engine on the Mirror website.
Instead of admitting the mistake, the Daily Mirror consigned the article to the proverbial "bit-bucket." It simply erased the article and pretended that it never made the mistake to begin with.
Puts your faith back into journalism, doesn't it?
It always amazes me that major, reputable media act with such immaturity when faced with their mistakes. They don't realize simple psychology: properly issuing corrections does not detract from their reputation, it enhances it.
The original CNN video with the same mistake is still online. Some 1350 people "Liked" it on Facebook. There is no indication that the report is based on a lie on that same page. People can Google it a decade from now and the lies that Sara Sidler spouted will still be there. CNN's retraction/clarification, as it were, is not even placed on the same page as the original video, where people can see the full picture. Instead, it was buried in paragraph 16 of an unrelated article. The impression that one gets isn't that CNN doesn't care about accuracy, its reputation is the driving force behind its correction policy and instead of doing proper fact-checking they instead try to minimize and hide their mistakes.
People understand that the news media can make mistakes.  But when the same media is seen trying to hide or bury those mistakes, they appear small and petty. The obfuscation is in some ways worse than the errors, because it shows that the outlets care more about their reputations than about the accuracy that they pretend is their primary goal.
I don't know which is worse - the Daily Mirror pretending that the mistake never happened, or CNN which buried its clarification but which still features the mistake in a video that people can watch in blissful ignorace on their site.
Either way, though, it explains why people increasingly do not trust the mainstream media and are relying more and more on alternative outlets, like blogs.
(h/t Emet)

Took Him Long Enough: Scarborough Finally Scolds CNN’s Crowley for ‘Making Up History’ on Benghazi

It took more than a month -- and an intervening presidential election -- but it appears as though MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough has finally joined the chorus of conservatives criticizing Candy Crowley for covering for President Obama’s false statements on Libya during the presidential debates.
Speaking on Monday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough strongly rebuked the Obama administration’s handling of the post-Benghazi coverage.  [See video below page break.  MP3 audio here.]

Scarborough started off the segment by ridiculing the idea that the White House couldn’t say the attack on our embassy was Al-Qaeda-related:

They're like, oh, you know, we couldn't say it was Al-Qaeda because that might expose some of our assets on the ground. Andrea Mitchell, the term Al-Qaeda, like, if there's a terror attack in the Middle East, and you say Al-Qaeda, that's going to expose some of our assets on the ground? That does not, as my professor said, Professor Pearson, that does not pass the straight-face test.

Scarborough followed this up by strongly criticizing the CNN reporter and presidential debate moderator for falsely claiming President Obama immediately classified the attack on Libyan Embassy as terrorism:

Andrea, what I don't understand is that Susan Rice said this five days in. The president -- remember, the president at the debate saying, you know, and Candy Crowley for some reason basically making up history on the run, said, well, the president did say this was a terrorist attack the day after, which he really didn't say that at all. So there's an inconsistency even there. In the debate, the president said, we said this the day after that it was an act of terror. No, no, he didn't. And five days later, Susan Rice is reading a supposedly Intel that says it wasn't a terror attack. I mean, there are -- there's confusion.

Colleague Andrea Mitchell used much softer language to excuse Susan Rice, instead placing the blame on the intelligence community:

I think the problem here is what this has exposed is the bureaucracy of the intelligence community. The fact that the intelligence community waters down what can be said in a declassified setting and that Susan Rice, I mean the criticism is that she took what they handed her and didn't challenge it, which her defenders, Dianne Feinstein on Meet The Press and others say is really really unfair. 

Mitchell’s blame is misguided, as it was the White House, NOT the CIA which edited the post-Benghazi talking points memo which Susan Rice relied on when she went around blaming a YouTube video for the attack in Benghazi.
For once Scarborough didn’t go along with the usual MSNBC agenda of covering up or excusing White House failures.
It would have been nice to see more of this before the election, but better late than never, we suppose.

See relevant transcript below.

MSNBC
Morning Joe
November 19, 2012
6:11 a.m. EDT
 MIKA BRZEZINSKI: You mentioned Benghazi. Let's go to the developments now in the ongoing controversy over the administration's response to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Members of Congress are now vowing to find out why the CIA's conclusion that terrorism was to blame for the attack was removed from U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's talking points. In the days following the deadly assault, Ambassador Rice said the administration believed the attack was a reaction to an anti-Islamic video. But, an associated press report says former CIA Director David Petraeus testified on Friday that he believed all along that the attack on the consulate was a terrorist strike.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So let's -- before we set up these clips, let's make sure we set this up right. So we've been hearing, Mark Halperin, that Susan Rice said what she said because she was just reading straight Intel basically from the CIA. We find out after David Petraeus’ testimony, this just isn't true. That immediately David Petraeus and Intel officials knew this was an Al-Qaeda attack. Right?
MARK HALPERIN: It's still kind of confusing.
SCARBOROUGH: By the way, I'm basing that on The New York Times reports and everything I read through the weekend.
HALPERIN: Yeah, the totality of the reporting, there was another line coming out of that closed hearing which was they didn't want to say everything they knew in public because they didn't want the terrorists to know that the U.S. government was on to them.
SCARBOROUGH: Well I heard that. But, I mean, seriously, Al-Qaeda. They're like, oh, you know, we couldn't say it was Al-Qaeda because that might expose some of our assets on the ground. Andrea Mitchell, the term Al-Qaeda, like, if there's a terror attack in the Middle East, and you say Al-Qaeda, that's going to expose some of our assets on the ground? That does not, as my professor said, Professor Pearson, that does not pass the straight face test.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Or the smell test. I think the problem here is what this has exposed is the bureaucracy of the intelligence community. The fact that the intelligence community waters down what can be said in a declassified setting and that Susan Rice, I mean the criticism is that she took what they handed her and didn't challenge it, which her defenders, Dianne Feinstein on Meet The Press and others say is really really unfair.  You're pilaring this woman.  She says it is, Feinstein's words, character assassination, to suggest that she would read anything other than the unclassified version of this. A lot of people are asking where was Hillary Clinton that weekend?  She knew better than to go out into the middle of this.  She doesn’t do the Sunday talk shows.  So they gave Susan Rice this assignment. She went on all five shows.  And it was supposed to be an important venue for her. And by going with these declassified talking points, she has now taken the hit. This reminds me very much, Joe, Mika, and everybody, of what happened in the month leading up to the Iraq war when the declassified version was different in thrust than what was known about WMD and what the Senators should have been reading. And the intelligence community has to be asked why do you tell the American public something that is different in meaning? It should be perhaps leave out details, leave outsources and methods?
SCARBOROUGH: Again, though, the details here were Al-Qaeda.
MITCHELL: Exactly.
SCARBOROUGH: Just so people at home don't think that this is just Lindsey Graham and John McCain going at it, Maureen Dowd was especially tough yesterday on Susan Rice because Susan Rice read the Intel briefings, she knew what the truth was and she chose to read something.  If the script was handed to her, Maureen Dowd’s point Steve Ratner was if the scripts was inaccurate, misleading, she shouldn't have read it.
STEVE RATNER: Okay but look. I think we have to go through this logically. What we know -- I think what we know is that the CIA produced a set of talking points that included Al-Qaeda, included more specific references to what happened. Somewhere during an interagency process, and I've been through a bunch of these interagency processes, these drafts get handed around. People mark them up. They mark them up for all different kinds of reasons. Somewhere along that way those words were changed.
SCARBOROUGH: Al-Qaeda was taken out.  Now the suggestion, of course, is by republicans, that –
RATNER: That it was political.  That’s one suggestion. 
SCARBOROUGH: In the middle of the campaign. And, again, the president's punch line for a lot of speeches, GM's alive, Osama Bin Laden's dead.  Al-Qaeda’s on the run. 
RATNER: That’s one suggestion.  But it seems to me,
SCARBOROUGH: It’s a pretty strong suggestion.
RATNER: But before you get to the question of what Susan Rice should or shouldn't have said, I think we need to know the answer of who changed their talking points and why.  And then I think we'll know a lot more about what went on.
HALPERIN: I agree with that but this is not just a one off where ambassador rice went on the Sunday shows and said this.  Jay Carney was asked for a week about this and gaffe substantively the same answer.
SCARBOROUGH: And again, Andrea, what I don't understand is that Susan Rice said this five days in. The president -- remember, the president at the debate saying, you know, and Candy Crowley for some reason basically making up history on the run, said, well, the president did say this was a terrorist attack the day after, which he really didn't say that at all. So there's an inconsistency even there. In the debate, the president said, we said this the day after that it was an act of terror. No, no, he didn't. And five days later, Susan Rice is reading a supposedly Intel that says it wasn't a terror attack. I mean, there are -- there's confusion.
BRZEZINSKI: Why is this important, Andrea?
SCARBOROUGH: First of all, and why can't they get their stories straight a month and a half later?
MITCHELL: Well, one reason is it's important for us to know about the intelligence failure leading up to and coming out of Benghazi, according to the both Republicans and Democrats, there really wasn't an intelligence failure, they knew what was happening.  Then why didn't the State Department ask for more security and, more broadly, how should we handle regions like this where we want to have diplomatic and intelligence missions and we're asking people to serve where they cannot properly be protected.  So there are big issues.  There's also a proxy war going on here because Susan Rice had a very sharp tone during the 2008 campaign against some people like John McCain. And there is a disagreement there that is now being exaggerated all out of proportion, some people say, because they just are seeing this as a trophy where they can get a prominent nominee, potential nominee, for one of the top cabinet positions, there’s Treasury, there’s State, Defense.
SCARBOROUGH: That's one side of it. The other side of it would be -- and I hate to say this -- but I wonder if that would be the media narrative if George W. Bush, we're accuse of doing, what, I don't know, politicizing –
BRZEZINSKI: It's not a narrative. It's just a point that Andrea made.
SCARBOROUGH: I'm not talking about Andrea. I'm hearing this a lot though coming out of the White House and I'm hearing it also that, again, there is -- there is no doubt it is personal. I agree with Andrea completely, it is personal between John McCain and Susan Rice. I agree with that completely. What is surprising is it's been a month and a half maybe, two months, and this -- this looks to some, including Maureen Dowd, like it was a politicizing of Intel, the death of an American ambassador and we can brush it aside if we want to.
BRZEZINSKI: There's the other side to it where you see Republicans going after someone they want to bring in?
RATNER: We shouldn't glide too quickly over Andrea’s other important point, which is the security failure, that we had the Intel, knew what was going on in Benghazi and yet we did not protect our people there adequately.
BRZEZINSKI: Exactly.
JON HEILEMANN: To me that's always -- that's the most troubling aspect of the entire thing. And it's the thing that Senator Feinstein was clearest about on Meet The Press yesterday, was the notion that there had been months of concerns raised by people on the ground that the consulate itself was not well protected enough and that people crying out for more security and that those decisions were not made to protect those people as they should have been. To me that actually is almost the more substantially troubling thing about the entire episode.

via newsbusters.org

Sympathizing With The Arab Agressors on Israeli News, No Way!

I quickly changed channels and not for the first time.  It seems that I'm always changing channels when watching the news nowadays.  At least I have a choice of news channels.  I know it's really a war on here in Israel, because all of the channels are offering war coverage, news, interviews etc.
The problem is that most of the politicians and "experts" we are offered are from the far Left.  I'm really not interested in some Meretz MK or "thinker" telling me that it's our fault because we haven't "made peace" with the Arabs.  And I don't see the point in interviewing some Israeli Arab who has family in Gaza to ask him how he feels about Israeli bombing his sweet loving relatives.  That's especially when he answers claiming that "nobody supports this cruel war" Israel has imposed on the Arabs.
My fingers go hyper clicking looking for something else to watch when our Israeli TV keeps showing Arab demonstrations abroad protesting our self-defense.  I haven't caught any reports of pro-Israel demonstrations or meetings.  I can't believe there haven't been any.  Nu, have there?
On rare occasions there are even some coalition MK's and even ministers, but they are rarely permitted to complete a sentence.  The so-called journalists interviewing them are rude to say the least.  They argue as if they are the experts and the MK's and ministers are just a bunch of idiots.  Well, at least the politicians were elected, which is more than any of those TV people can say for themselves.

Meir Amit site

The television news is our internal hasbara, information campaign.  Its job is to keep the public confident and motivated not to encourage sympathy with the enemy nor unwarranted fear.
On occasion they have done well, especially when interviewing Israelis of all ages from the south.  Ordinary people, even kids, seem to have a better grasp of security and the actual situation.  There were some teenagers interviewed who very easily made the tv journalist look scared and ridiculous.  That's a clip that should be repeated over and over.  The younger generation is fantastic.
If you're not in Israel or are but don't have television, then you can access Israeli news here in English and here in Hebrew.  Generally the English news is more pro-Israel and less multi-cultural than the Hebrew.  And of course there are other Israeli news sites.
I needed the rant, sorry and thanks.

via shilohmusings.blogspot.com

Audiences Fleeing MTV, Comedy Central

Two of the most prominent channels on your cable or dish system are suffering from significant audience decline.

Here's a hint: one channel features a "news" duo who famously tilt to the left, while the other is known for foisting The Situation and Snooki on an unsuspecting public.

Comedy Central's prime-time audience fell 19% in the four weeks through Oct. 21, while MTV's viewership declined 32% in the same period, according to Nielsen.Signs of slight ratings erosion were evident at both channels earlier this year, but the recent numbers show a much greater decline. So far this year, Comedy Central's average daily viewership is down 10% while MTV's is off 18%. Nickelodeon's audience, meanwhile, is down 23% for the year to date although the drop-off in September was narrower than in previous months....
MTV's ratings falloff has come even before the channel loses its popular "Jersey Shore." The reality show is in its last season and the network hasn't developed any monster hits to replace it.

via breitbart.com

that would explain why the show is attempting more balance. It might be too little too late... and also no... not really

Mainstream media watchdogs are toothless covering Obama and Libya scandal

(EYE)(Fox News) When Mitt Romney chose not to directly engage President Obama on Libya in last Monday’s third presidential debate, the mainstream media wrote it off as over-caution on the Republican challenger’s part.That might be true. Certainly a lot of Republicans think so. But what is the mainstream media’s excuse for cautiously engaging the president on Libya? Aren’t we supposed to be watchdogs? The ongoing story is story focused on whether the Obama administration provided, or refused to provide, adequate protection for the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya when it faced the threat of attack on Sept. 11. The attack left the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans dead. Subsequent conflicting accounts coming from the administration on how the White House responded, or didn’t respond, are tailor-made for a full-blown media feeding frenzy.
Yet, the so-called media watchdogs so far have been mostly toothless.
Case in point: On Friday, FoxNews.com reported that it “learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command... -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.”
That’s a very chilling story. And if correct, it could be very damaging to the President Obama’s re-election chances. But looking at the websites Friday of other major news outlets, the story is mostly ignored.
It was not picked up or reported by The New York Times. The Washington Post didn’t cover it either. Same for USA Today. Neither did NBC, CBS, CNN or ABC.
CNN had a link on its Website front page to a story that says “doubts surface” on whether claims of responsibility for the Benghazi attacks was the work of terrorists. The story mostly supports administration accounts and refutes Republican critics such as Sen. John McCain, (R-Ariz.)
NBC’s only Friday story on Libya said in its headline. “Libya Disappears from Romney Stump Speeches.”
CBS’s latest story on Libya had House Speaker John Boehner asking Obama for “answers” about the attacks.
On Thursday, the major media were loaded with stories and videos in which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta defended the administration saying that the US military did not respond to the attack because in did not have adequate “real-time information” to put American forces at risk. Not much follow-up on that.
Also on Thursday, NBC’s Brian Williams interviewed Obama on “Rock Center” asking him what can only be described as a “softball” question on Libya: "Have you been happy with the intelligence, especially in our post 9/11 world? The assessment of your intelligence community, as we stand here, is that it still was a spontaneous terrorist attack and were you happy with what you were able to learn as this unfolded?"
A tougher question might have been, “Why have the administration's explanations of what really happened, and how you responded, been all over the map?”
So what’s going on here? Are the media just protecting Obama at a critical time in this election campaign, or are they just not following the latest CIA story because they would have to give credit to Fox News?
Whatever the reason, it is not good watchdog journalism.

The Rats Are Leaving the Ship

Conan O'Brian showed his true colors by calling Romney "Mittler". This is a good sign for the Governor because whenever the opposition starts to compare you to Hitler or a Nazi you know you've turned the corner. In politics it's a jump the shark moment.
O'Brian's late night competition seems to be choosing to jump the ship.
Jay Leno made a disparaging joke about Obama Tuesday night on The Tonight Show. This has been a rarity for pretty much every comedian in the country over the last five years.

JAY LENO: One of President Obama's winning points last night was about how sanctions against Iran are crippling their economy. And believe me, if anyone knows how to cripple an economy it's President Obama.

Leno wasn't alone. Late night's other huge Obama Fanboy, David Letterman, on Late Night With David Letterman in a conversation with Rachel Maddow had this to say:

DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST: Here's what upset me last night, this playing fast and loose with facts. And the President Obama cites the op-ed piece that Romney wrote about Detroit, "Let them go bankrupt, let them go bankrupt," and last night he brings it up again. "Oh, no, Governor, you said let them go bankrupt, blah blah blah, let them go bankrupt." And Mitt said, "No, no, check the thing, check the thing, check the thing."
Now, I don't care whether you're Republican or Democrat, you want your president to be telling the truth; you want the contender to be lying. And so what we found out today or soon thereafter that, in fact, the President Obama was not telling the truth about what was excerpted from that op-ed piece. I felt discouraged.
RACHEL MADDOW: Because the "Let Detroit go bankrupt" headline you feel like was inappropriate?
LETTERMAN: Well, the fact the President is invoking it and swearing that he was right and that Romney was wrong and I thought, well, he's the president of course he's right. Well, it turned out no, he was taking liberties with that.

"Not telling the truth"... "Taking liberties" = LYING, LYING. Say it Dave, " Obama was L-Y-I-N-G. "
I doubt if Dave is going to switch teams when he pulls that lever on November 6, but at least he's beginning to recognize the deception and he isn't afraid to bring it up. Unfortunately he's still trying to provide some layer of cover for his regular guest star though by not invoking the "L" word.
Quite possibly the wall around Obama is coming down. The Lefties in the media are subtly trying to distance themselves from BO. They want to be able to say, "Hey, look, I was tough on the guy."
I wonder how many more of Obama's media minions will be scurrying for the gangplanks like rats from a sinking ship.
Obama is making the rounds at NBC (and MTV but who cares). Let's see if Leno, Brian Williams or the crew at The Today Show spend as much time talking Benghazi as they do Michelle, his kids, dog and White House Beer. All the things undecided voters really want to know two weeks from the election.
Or will Williams get Obama to admit that he knew on day one what was really happening in Benghazi or that he was "taking liberties" during the debate when he stated that it was Congress that requested sequestration and that "it will not happen."
From the folks a Heritage:

Obama declared that "the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that the Congress has proposed." This was characterized as "mistaken" by Bob Woodward, who stood behind the account of the genesis of this problem in his book The Price of Politics, in which high-ranking Obama aides brought the entire concept to Reid and then sold it to congressional Republicans. Woodward reiterated later, "What the President said is not correct."
Obama next flatly stated, "It will not happen." This stunned the wonks and legislators listening, because-despite Press Secretary Jay Carney's protestations that this has been Obama's position all along-this is a huge departure from the President's repeated declaration that he would veto any solution that did not include massive new tax increases.

"Mistaken"..."Not telling the truth"... "Taking liberties" = LYING, LYING, LYING. Say it Bob, " Obama was L-Y-I-N-G. " Stop making excuses for the POTUS. He knew exactly what he was saying and it was nothing but a big fat lie.
In the meantime, as the lies and deceptions keep coming the rats continue to leave the ship.

via americanthinker.com

Is this the blue print in Israel that the progressive Left in America wants for the #NYTimes? A media bailout.

When the media loses readers because it lies to the people about two state delusions.... why a bailout for the MEDIA... of course! (jpost) MK Shama-Hacohen says law must safeguard workers against wage defaults: "not 1 shekel can remain owed to even 1 worker."

Photo: ben hartman

The government is obliged to prevent scenarios such as the current one in which Ma’ariv workers have not received payments owed to them by law, Knesset Economics Committee Chairman Carmel Shama-Hacohen (Likud) said Thursday.
“Should such scenarios occur, justice must be found so that not one shekel is owed to even one worker, and if somebody knowingly acted against them, they must be brought before the law,” Shama-Hacohen said at a special hearing on the fate of Ma’ariv employees.

Related:

• 'Ma’ariv' employees clash with police in Tel Aviv

Shama-Hacohen argued that the government must examine whether there is a public interest in supporting the media, saying that otherwise “the trend is obvious.” He added that on top of the imminent entry into the job market of around 2,000 Ma’ariv employees, the fact that all Israeli media outlets are at risk of closing “does not strengthen democracy.”
Last Thursday, Ma’ariv Holdings filed for a stay of proceedings at the Tel Aviv District Court, reporting a debt of NIS 408 million – of which almost one-quarter is owed to employees. The company filed the application after completing the sale of Hebrew daily Ma’ariv and associated publications to businessman Shlomo Ben-Tzvi for up to NIS 74m.
Court-appointed trustee Shlomo Ness told the committee that “there are all sorts of complicated allegations,” and promised that he and co-trustee Yaron Arbel are trying to examine all of them. He elaborated that Judge Varda Alshech has frozen the Ben-Tzvi deal, and that the trustees are looking at “other options.”
Tal Raz, CEO of Ma’ariv Holdings, said that he too has more work to do, given that he has only been at the newspaper for eight months, and that parent company IDB Holding Corp only took control of the newspaper one year and three months ago.
IDB has made all allocations and deductions in an orderly manner since taking control, Raz said, adding that he is certain this was also the case under the newspaper’s previous owners. He stated the problem was not what was deducted from workers’ salaries, but that in the past they were not paid retrospective supplementary income.
Veteran Ma'ariv Knesset reporter Arik Bender was the first speaker at the Economics Committee meeting, saying that after 27 years of covering committee meetings, this was the first time he has participated, and that he hoped this would be the last.
“We need to save the print media,” Bender said, his voice trembling.
“We need a free, established, strong media. Otherwise, all we will be left with is a pro-government newspaper that is handed out for free,” he added, referring to Yisrael Hayom.
Bender suggested that the government look to France for ideas to support the print media, such as giving free newspaper subscriptions to citizens for their 18th birthdays and increasing government print advertising.

NY Times' Dowd Accused of Anti-Semitism in Sunday Column

(NewsMax) New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd @NYTimesDowd came under fire Sunday night for what some on both the left and the right said were words that came dangerously close to anti-Semitism.
Dowd’s Sunday column, about the Republican ticket's foreign policy proposals, accused Mitt Romney of being a tool of neo-conservative puppet masters.
The problem, critics said, was that many leading American neo-conservatives are Jewish and that Dowd’s turns of phrase were reminiscent of anti-Semitic slurs of the 20th Century, Politico reported.
Late Sunday night, the editorial page editor of the Times, Andy Rosenthal, responded via email that "No fair-minded reading of Maureen Dowd's column supports the allegations" that Politico reported. "She makes no reference, direct or implied, to anyone's religion."
Dowd, a liberal who has made of career of mocking conservatives, wrote that neither Mitt Romney nor Paul Ryan are experts in the field of foreign policy. She then asserted their strategy was orchestrated by a "neocon puppet master" who was leading the neocon effort to "slither back" into power.
Those words struck experts as a seeming appeal to anti-Semitic stereotypes. They seemed especially offensive ahead of the first night of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.
"Dowd's use of anti-Semitic imagery is awful," Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on Twitter.
"Maureen may not know this, but she is peddling an old stereotype, that gentile leaders are dolts unable to resist the machinations and manipulations of clever and snake-like Jews," Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic columnist and leading journalist on Israeli issues, wrote.
"[A]mazing that apparently nobody sat her down and said, this is not OK," Blake Hounshell, the managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, tweeted.
On the right, The Weekly Standard's Daniel Halper called it "outrageous," while Commentary's Jonathan Tobin described it as "particularly creepy."
"Dowd’s column marks yet another step down into the pit of hate-mongering that has become all too common at the Times," Tobin wrote, according to Politico. "This is a tipping point that should alarm even the most stalwart liberal Jewish supporters of the president."