Free Republic

The MSM continues to fawn over this outrage at Ground Zero to show us common folk how “progressive” they are…Via Pundit Press:NBC and its affiliates have been trounced in ratings over the last several years. With stations like MSNBC under their belt and liberals such as Matt Lauer and Keith Olbermann hosting programs, NBC is clearly disconnected with the average American. Another clear sign of their mismanagement: naming Sharif El-Gamal, developer of the Ground Zero Mosque, one of their “People of the Year.” In an interview set to air on Thanksgiving Day, Matt Lauer sat down with El-Gamal and discussed...

Fox News pays Sarah Palin as a contributor to their network. And apparently to be “fair and balanced,” they also pay Judith Miller and Liz Trotta to make fun of Sarah Palin: LINK TO THE VIDEOUPDATE: Here’s what was said: LIZ TROTTA: “Alessandra Stanley [of the New York Times] had the best line [in her Nov. 11 review]. She said the new [Palin TLC] show was like ‘The Sound of Music’ without the Nazis, without the romance and without the music.” JUDITH MILLER (laughing): ”Oh, the Washington Post hated it, too . . . [Post TV critic Hank Steuver] said...

No bargaining, no deals, no compromise — that's the hard-line stance that Republicans have staked in the days since seizing control of the House. Their prescription for the sluggish economy — lower taxes, huge spending cuts, less regulation, and repeal of the sweeping healthcare law just taking effect — excites the party's conservative base. But a long and ugly fight with President Obama and Senate Democrats, starting with next week's lame-duck session, could end up alienating the large number of Americans more interested in jobs than ideological battles. The midterm vote was "an expression of anger and impatience," said James...

Wow, is Chris Mathews now starting to see the light of truth about President Barak Obama and the Democrats in light of the upcoming mid-term elections come tomorrow? I sense that Chris Mathews is waking up to the reality that as Americans go to the voting booths tomorrow, Tuesday November 2, 2010 for Election Day and the mid-term elections that is starting to look like a major political earthquake that will make the mid-terms of “1994″ look like a walk in the park. From what I have seen in this video, Mr. Mathews is NOT VERY HAPPY with how President...

Imagine the furor if a televangelist went on TV and told viewers Christianity would conquer the world and that the flag of Christianity would fly over the White House. Network reporters would seize the moment as an example of the evils of America’s supposed Christian theocracy. Radical Islamists would likely do as they did during the Koran burning episode or after the Danish cartoons were published. People might die. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. What did happen is far scarier. ABC News held a townhall meeting, bringing on experts to ask the question: “Should Americans fear Islam?” Thanks to ABC, we...

In trying to understand how so many Americans adore people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh I have come to this critical understanding: Poorly educated, terribly informed, intellectually deficient and downright stupid people need idols. They feel angry, frustrated, ignored, cheated and disillusioned by so much going on in American society. They find the emotional, political and philosophical rants by talk show, loud mouth celebrities matching and justifying their feelings. Of course, those celebrities work hard to fan the flames of all that unhappiness and discontent, and also perpetuate ignorance. They sell stupidity to gullible dummies,...

Boiling Mad: A surprising and revealing look inside the Tea Party movement—where it came from, what it stands for, and what it means for the future of American politics They burst on the scene at the height of the Great Recession—angry voters gathering by the thousands to rail against bailouts and big government. Evoking the Founding Fathers, they called themselves the Tea Party. Within the year, they had changed the terms of debate in Washington, emboldening Republicans and confounding a new administration's ability to get things done. Boiling Mad is Kate Zernike's eye-opening look inside the Tea Party, introducing us...

A new poll released by Gallup shows that American distrust in the mass media has reached a record high. This is the fourth straight year that a majority of respondents have said that they have little or no trust in the media, but the 57% who say that this year is a new record for the poll. According to the poll, 48% of respondents say the media is too liberal, 15% say it is too conservative and 33% say it is “just right.” You can see how the responses have changed over the years here: (snip to picture of chart)...

I don't think I ever want to meet Steven Thrasher in person. Aside from the fact that the NPR and Village Voice contributor has an ominously violent last name, this dude is p!ssed. Despite this, I'll admit that while reading his recent Voice cover essay on the insanity of white America, I occasionally pictured myself giving Mr. Thrasher a hug. Don't worry, Steven, I'd whisper: Christine O'Donnell is down 15 percent in Delaware. The Islamic community center near Ground Zero will soon be a reality. A single tweet from Sarah Palin doesn't signal the end of white American sanity. (In fact, there is...

Forty-four percent of Americans now see the upstart "tea party" movement in a favorable light, according to a new Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll. What's more, about 40 percent of tea party sympathizers say they would not attend a tea party event, meaning they are essentially "closet admirers" of the small-government movement, says TIPP pollster Raghavan Mayur. "The general party line says the tea party is fringe, but I think most of the public hasn't bought that point of view ... and sees the tea party movement in a positive to neutral light," says Mr. Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence...

A look inside a teacher's mind could help you understand lesson plans and maybe even guide your child to perform better. 1. If we teach small children, don’t tell us that our jobs are “so cute” and that you wish you could glue and color all day long. 2. I’m not a marriage counselor. At parent-teacher conferences, let’s stick to Dakota’s progress, not how your husband won’t help you around the house.

The Huffington Post has pulled an article published this morning targeting Glenn Beck with a $100,000 bounty after news of the threat was broken on Free Republic.The article, titled $100,000 For Glenn Beck's Sex Tapes has been replaced with the following message:Editor's Note: This piece was published directly to the Huffington Post by its author. It didn't meet our editorial standards and has been removed from the site.The URL for the pulled article reflects the title: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beau-friedlander/100000-for-glenn-becks-se_b_698724.html The author of the threat, Beau Friedlander, is the former editor-in-chief of Air America.Here is the text of Friedlander's call for information to...

One may think that someone as well connected as long-time Washington correspondent and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell might also connect the dots. After an unseasonably rough DC winter occurring right in the midst of the ClimateGate scandal, she would be aware of doubt being cast over the idea of manmade global warming. But if you want evidence her mind is made up regardless of any of this, you could detect from her reaction to a report from Politco's Jim VandeHei that some Republican candidates are using the climate change debate to advance their campaigns. (Snip) ''"It just seems that I

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is actually about to win an award for her "civility" and "tolerance." "The Walter Cronkite Faith & Freedom Award, established by Interfaith Alliance in 1998, recognizes individuals who courageously promote democratic values, defend religious freedom and reinvigorate informed civic participation," reads a statement released by the organization Monday. "The award recognizes individuals whose actions have embodied the values of civility, tolerance, diversity and cooperation in the advancement of public dialogue and public policy on traditionally controversial and divisive issues."

White House reporters are keeping quiet about an off-the-record lunch today with President Obama — even those at news organizations who've advocated in the past for the White House to release the names of visitors. But the identities of the lunch's attendees won't remain secret forever: Their names will eventually appear on the White House's periodically updated public database of visitor logs. The White House posts them with a three-month lag, so records of August visits won't be available until late November. (Although, since many of those invited already work in the White House every day, their lunch visit may...

President Obama spent much of the week harvesting bits of good news from some of his short- and longer-term initiatives. In Chicago, he showcased the revived U.S. auto industry that he bailed out last year. And here in Washington his senior advisers highlighted a federal report showing that most of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico is gone, suggesting a less-grave scenario than had been predicted. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called that "good news" and said the federal response to the spill had played an important part in containing the potential damage. Obama even dropped in on...

Conservatives have long claimed that the media is biased against them and tries hard to shape stories in ways that help Democrats and hurt Republicans. This has sometimes been dismissed as paranoia - as in my former MSNBC co-blogger Eric Alterman's book, "What Liberal Media?" - but it turns out to be truer than they imagined. If this were a Hollywood movie, there would have been clandestine meetings in basements or bars or parking garages. But since it was real life, it was just an e-mail list, called "JournoList," set up by the Washington Post's Ezra Klein. It had over...

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would. But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all. In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed...

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign. The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public –...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is being urged to monitor "hate speech" on talk radio and cable broadcast networks. A coalition of more than 30 organizations argue in a letter to the FCC that the Internet has made it harder for the public to separate the facts from bigotry masquerading as news. The groups also charge that syndicated radio and cable television programs "masquerading as news" use hate as a profit model.