MCCAIN IS LATEST TO RIP TIMES

NY Post ^ | 4 July 2006 | DEBORAH ORIN

[Aussie Dasher]

July 3, 2006 -- Sen. John McCain yesterday joined the chorus of critics who say The New York Times was wrong to out a top-secret terror money-tracking program, and he called for prosecuting the leakers.

"Tracking the money is always a vital tool, and members of Congress were kept informed and agreed to this program," McCain (R-Ariz.) told ABC's "This Week."

"So, no, I don't think [the Times] should have published it."

McCain also challenged the Times' claim that it didn't reveal any real secrets, saying, "If The New York Times thinks the story was inconsequential, the legitimate question is: Why was it on the front page?"

[Aussie Dasher]

Half-hearted attack at best!

[muawiyah]

McCain knows a US Senator was the source. He's getting out ahead of the pack on this one ~

[taxesareforever]

Half-hearted attack at best!

I agree. All we are hearing is a bunch of barking and no biting.

[proxy_user]

That's just it. If even the wishy-washy moderates attack The NY Times, then it is losing the respect of large segments of the public, not just hard-core conservatives.

[SnarlinCubBear]

and you know this how?

[muawiyah]

How?

I think about these things ~ even have a candidate although it might have been one of his staffers, or even his stock broker, who notified the NYT.

The leaker need not be a career employee of the government, nor even a Democrat.

[Cinnamon]

NYT is dying a Dan Rather death... credibility and respect have gone out the window

[Enchante]

McVain could have been a lot stronger on this, but at least he said it - hope some of his colleagues start showing some spine. As for Bill Keller, I just heard an amazing tape on Hugh Hewitt's radio show a little while ago - Keller was on one of the Sunday talking head shows, I think it was "Face the Nation" and he was asked if he wanted to say anything to the US public as the July 4 Independence Day arrives (obvious invitation to convince people "No, we don't really hate America, we are patriotic Americans too"). Keller's answer was hilarious, he couldn't manage one word of affirmation of pride in his country..... all he could say was something like "People think we are neutral in this, but we have friends and colleagues die in Iraq and we are not neutral." That's not an exact quote, but it's the gist - invited to affirm his patriotism and his sincere opposition to the terrorists, etc. and all he could mutter was "We're not neutral" (that part IS an exact quote). OK, maybe he's not neutral, BUT HE DIDN'T SPECIFY WHICH SIDE HE IS ON!!

[Phibes]

About McCain, If I ever have to vote for this guy, I'll be doing so holding my nose and only for the less of two evils. I would love to see Condi run but will settle for G. Allen or Newt.

[Brilliant]

He's pandering. Took him several days to figure out that it was good politics, though.

[muawiyah]

Using simple logic and a bit of research, it's quite easy to find McCain, Lugar, Hagel and Graham taking unified positions against "W".

Lugar, for example, is the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

He has outside, non-governmental cultural, social and business links with individuals closely associated with NYT, including more than one member of the NYT board of directors.

I don't really need to know his staff members personally to understand that there's gotta' be a couple of them with "extra knowledge" about Lugar's relationships with the NYT ownership class (essentially the Sulzburger family and its cousins).

The "path" from what the Senator knows from his committee chairmanship to "Punch" Sulzburger s pretty clear.

So, the only question is about if that was the route the information took, or was it something more obscure.

For Senator McCain, given his previous dealings with Lugar, it'd be in his best interest to get out front in condemning the NYT and backing away from his previous entanglements with Lugar.

That's the lowest energy cost pathway I was able to find that would explain both the story and McCain's statement.

Maybe you can do better.

[mrsmith]

"If The New York Times thinks the story was inconsequential, the legitimate question is: Why was it on the front page ...instead of a story about me?"

[SERKIT]

McCain knows a US Senator was the source. He's getting out ahead of the pack on this one ~

I smell a Durbin...

[muawiyah]

Why Durbin? Is he in tight enough with the Sulzburger family that they'd trust information coming from his office?

[ARealMothersSonForever]

McCain knows a US Senator was the source.

Has he had lunch with Patrick Leahy?

[ARealMothersSonForever]

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/patrick_j_leahy/?inline=nyt-per
"News about Patrick J. Leahy, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times."

[PerConPat]

He's pandering. Took him several days to figure out that it was good politics, though.

Precisely. McCain knows that the backlash against the Treasonous Times has legs, and he's just thrashing around in the middle --again.

[bnelson44]

We need to prosecute the Times. This will never stop until the journalists realize they cannot get away with treason. The politicians are just too scared of the media.

[AmeriBrit]

Well since the laptop was found and no information had been taken from it, Sen. Leahy will have to find something else to b**ch about.

[daviscupper]

I saw that. I think it was even more disturbing than you assume. He actually said "We are not agnostic on the war..." Which even sounds condescending and a little unclear.

Anyway, he left Bob Schiefer hanging. Bob thought he was going to say something patriotic about the country so there was this awkward moment of silence. Finally Bill raised his eyebrows as if to say "I am done here." Bob then went on and thanked him for being on the show. Yeah, that was weird.

[Enchante]

I'm glad I didn't see it on Sunday (just heard a bit of the audio) -- it would have been major barf alert country and I was really enjoying my weekend......

fwiw, here's some info on how Bill Keller went from counter-culture pinko to the top of the NY SLimes...... yeah, this guy is definitely for winning the War on Terror, I am certain of that:

---

from www.discoverthenetwork.org


...Keller co-founded The Collage, a counter-culture newspaper that Keller says "existed mainly to indulge our young political leanings." "Ostensibly, I majored in English literature," Keller told an interviewer. "Actually, I guess I majored in eclectic studies with a minor in serendipity."



.....

Keller's opinion columns revealed political views that as an editor he says he strove to keep muted. "[Republican] Senators Helms, Gramm and Thurmond," he wrote on January 12, 2002, "have in common the fact that they harnessed their collective century of seniority to the Taliban wing of the American right."



"We've got a [Bush] administration," Keller wrote on August 10, 2002, "characterized by blind faith in crony capitalism, a drunken spendthrift's version of supply-side economics, and a secretive, country-club executive style….on the merits wasn't Mr. Gore right?"



In that same column, Keller wrote that 2000 Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore "ran a bone-headed campaign. A bone-headed campaign he WON, don't forget. He got 537,179 more popular votes, and only lost the Electoral College thanks to a lot of well-documented funny business. The best estimate of the various investigative post-mortems was that an honest statewide recount would have awarded Florida to Mr. Gore and denied [Supreme Court Justice] Antonin Scalia the role of American kingmaker."



Keller's easy conviction that 'Gore won,'" wrote Clay Waters of TimesWatch.org, a project of the Media Research Center, "is contradicted by his paper's own reporting." Continued Waters: "On November 12, 2001 Times reporters Ford Fessenden and John Broder reported on a review of the Florida vote conducted for a consortium of news organizations: 'A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.'"



In 2003, following Raines' resignation, Keller was chosen to be Executive Editor by Sulzberger over contender Frank Rich, the Times Arts & Leisure columnist who had been promoted by Raines to the position of Associate Editor. "While Raines was indeed a liberal activist," wrote Clay Waters, "Keller may have even less love for conservatives."



As one of his first acts as Executive Editor, Keller joined his boss Sulzberger in opposing the return of a Pulitzer Prize awarded in 1932 to the Times Soviet Union correspondent Walter Duranty. Duranty's reporting covered up Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's systematic starvation of millions of Ukrainian kulak farmers. The leftwing Duranty took favors from the Communist government, including a mistress, in exchange for concocting this pro-Soviet propaganda.



The Times' hired expert on this matter, Columbia University History Professor Mark von Hagen, an expert on 20th Century Soviet history, wrote: "For the sake of The New York Times' honor, they should take the prize away."



"But rather than apologize for publishing pro-Stalinist propaganda and take steps to discredit and disown it," wrote an investigative reporter for FrontPageMagazine.com, "Sulzberger and Keller have made the surrealistic argument that to exorcise this bloody ghost haunting their house and tainting the honor of the Pulitzer Prize would itself be a Stalinistic act of historical revisionism. To correct a lie with the truth would itself be a lie. To right a wrong is to commit a wrong. This sick Leftist mindset able to see up as down, white as black, peace as war and freedom as slavery, is what George Orwell in 1984 called 'DoubleThink.' Nowadays no knowledgeable person doubts that the New York Times is a very Orwellian newspaper."



Keller acknowledged that Duranty's reporting was "dreadful, a parroting of propaganda." But, he told one interviewer, "As someone who spent time in the Soviet Union while it still existed, the notion of airbrushing history kind of gives me the creeps."



Following the resignation of the scandal-engulfed Howell Raines, the Times created a new temporary position of Public Editor to help restore its credibility and named Daniel Okrent to the position as ombudsman for reader complaints and open critic of Times policies.



But when Okrent criticized the Times for reporting its own polls as front-page news while not reporting different or contrary poll results from other news organizations, Keller dismissed his criticism as "an ill-informed swipe" and told his reporters that they did not have to listen to Okrent. Keller thereby undermining the newspaper's own watch-dog.



Keller has described himself as a "collapsed Catholic" who is "well beyond lapsed." He has criticized President Bush's "public piety" and described Republican Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum as a "Catholic theocrat."



Keller wrote that Roman Catholic Pope John-Paul II "shaped a hierarchy that is intolerant of dissent, unaccountable to its members, secretive in the extreme and willfully clueless about how people live." (Accuracy in Media reported that Catholic League President William Donahue said Keller's statement "Sounds like the [New York Times] newsroom commenting on Keller's predecessor, Howell Raines.")



Keller wrote that the Catholic Church, like the Soviet Communist Party, "exists first and foremost to preserve its power." Keller also wrote: "This is, after all, the church that gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition."



"My stumblebum's great luck has brought me into contact with some very large people," said Keller in a 2002 college commencement speech. "Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, Andrei Sakharov, who designed the Soviet nuclear bomb and then became one of Russia's bravest defenders of human rights, and Nelson Mandela. I keep pictures of all of them in my office."



Contrary to the conclusion drawn by Public Editor Daniel Okrent, Keller echoes Sulzberger in denying that The New York Times has a liberal bias. It just has an "urban" perspective in its values and political views: "Traditionally, because our origins are urban, urban cultural liberals tend to come across [in coverage] as more three-dimensional than conservatives or suburban Republicans," said Keller in a November 2004 interview with USA TODAY. "But we have made a concrete effort, for a while, to make sure we are doing the America stories as well as the urban stories."

[clintonh8r]

and a little late to the party...

[ExTexasRedhead]

I won't vote for McCain under any circumstance.

[Unam Sanctam]

Keller wrote that the Catholic Church, like the Soviet Communist Party, "exists first and foremost to preserve its power." Keller also wrote: "This is, after all, the church that gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition."

Contrary to the conclusion drawn by Public Editor Daniel Okrent, Keller echoes Sulzberger in denying that The New York Times has a liberal bias. It just has an "urban" perspective in its values and political views: "Traditionally, because our origins are urban, urban cultural liberals tend to come across [in coverage] as more three-dimensional than conservatives or suburban Republicans," said Keller in a November 2004 interview with USA TODAY. "But we have made a concrete effort, for a while, to make sure we are doing the America stories as well as the urban stories."

What a loathesome individual! As if no one could possibly actually believe in the Catholic faith -- nah, it's all just about preserving power. And the snide and condescending point about conservatives not being able to be "three dimensional". And note the dichotomy between "America" and "urban". My father always used to say New York City wasn't really America, so perhaps Keller's right there.

[Parley Baer]

Yep this is one reason why McPain is better than most any dimocRAT. He is low on my list of Replublican presidential candidates.

[funkywbr]

(JULY 3RD) YESTERDAY????

[potlatch]

[demkicker]

Yep, McCain's put his pinko thumb in the air and sniffed the outrage Americana feels about the NY Times and trying to take political advantage. He's trying to jump on the conservative bandwagon, but it's already left him in the dust and he's still transparent.

[KoRn]

"He's pandering. Took him several days to figure out that it was good politics, though."

Behavior typical of a 'moderate'. They wait for a consensus and 'go with the flow'.

[Smartass]

Kids will be kids...huh!

 

[Phibes]

Yeah I know, but if it came down to McCain and Hitlery, which way would you go? The choice sickens me.

[potlatch]

That's a funny one!

[devolve]

[potlatch]

Very nice. I like your new things, the text and the fire!

[Smartass]

Thanks...
Ahh, I like your's better. Mine was a little off topic!

 

[CyberAnt]

"McCain knows a US Senator was the source."


And how do you know that information ..??

My best guess would be the dem leader on the Senate Intel Committee (Rockefeller) because he already has a track record of doing it. And .. if anybody remembers the guy's memo about using their positions on this committee to destroy Bush .. this leaking of classified stuff really fills the bill.

Trouble is .. HE'S NOT DESTROYING BUSH .. HE'S DESTROYING AMERICA - what an idiot.

[jackieaxe]

NYT is dying a Dan Rather death... credibility and respect have gone out the window.

Maybe a few more Pulitzers will help! Bwhahahahahahahahahaha!

[GOP_Raider]

Attacking his base. How bold of him.

[ntnychik]

Great cartoon, potlatch!

[ntnychik]

Great graphic! I particularly like the little pop-in of F'n Kerry in his lounge lizard garb.

[bitt]

'"We're not neutral" (that part IS an exact quote). OK, maybe he's not neutral, BUT HE DIDN'T SPECIFY WHICH SIDE HE IS ON!!'

heard that too, replayed on Drudge last night - WHAT A MAROON!!!!

Keller et al. need to spend some time with some of the Alihu Akbars in a 6 X 8 cell -

or maybe joining a cell pod with some of the super drug gang members that they have been ignoring reporting about -

or maybe...with some of the young Asian women that have been brought into the country as sex slaves...

or maybe with some of the relatives of those massacred by Saddam that the Slimes chose not to report upon...

[potlatch]

Thanks, that was my latest. Glad you could see it.

[bitt]

# 27

wow, you are terrific at these .gifs!! Absolute genius!

[NutCrackerBoy]

Keep rippin' em.

[potlatch]

Thankyou bitt, you liked my Murtha on the ship too. I love doing it.

[DakotaRed]

McPain had harsher words against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth than he does against the Slimes.

What else would we expect from King RINO?

[devolve]

Hardest part of making that one was getting that tiny revolving skull - "Heads on stakes!" to fit perfectly in Kerry's right hand when he "pops up"

[potlatch]

Yes, I'll bet that was!! You think of details that most would miss!

[TigersEye]

He's either a patriot or a panderer. If you're not sure then click the link.

What is it with McCain?

[grapeape]