Free Republic

Journalism: Bloomberg News has published a piece designed to shame GOP White House hopefuls for fingering government housing policy in the crisis. But it's Bloomberg that needs schooling. Its lengthy article scoffs at top Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich for laying much of the blame on federal regulations. It argues their view "has been rejected" by the Washington punditry, as well as the Democrat-appointed "commission that investigated the meltdown." While true, the prevailing wisdom is dead wrong. And the business wire not only parroted this false Democrat narrative, but conveniently omitted key facts. Take Bloomberg's analysis of the...

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has posted a bombshell article detailing how the Obama administration has greatly increased gun sales to the Mexican military. But further investigation into Attkisson’s discovery points toward the padding of a gun-control statistic — one frequently mentioned by the Obama administration — as the motive behind the increased sales. Writes Attkisson: One weapon — an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle — tells the story. In 2006, this same kind of rifle — tracked by serial number — is legally sold by a U.S. manufacturer to the Mexican military. Three years later — it’s found in a criminal...

(CNN) - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will not release more Freddie Mac-related documents, according to campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond. Though the contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination said Wednesday that his campaign would "do what they can" to release more information about payments he received as a consultant from the government-backed mortgage group, Hammond backtracked later in the evening. When asked via email whether the campaign would release more Freddie Mac-related documents or if a fact sheet it released in the afternoon was the last word on the issue, Hammond responded to CNN, "last word."

Coming off her week-long One Nation bus tour that was widely seen as a test-run for a presidential campaign, Sarah Palin says she’s starting to see that running for president might not be the best fit for her. “Not only do I love my freedom of not having a title and being a declared candidate — that is liberating — I know you can make a difference as an individual,” she said. “Hopefully, I can inspire others to know that you don’t need a title. You don’t need to be in office to effect positive change.”

According to NBER.orgthe National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession officially ended June, 2009. Yet unemployment just went UP to 9.8%. So we are not in recession folks; we have been out of it since mid-2009. What is keeping unemployment so HIGH?

The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks and has overseen an economy that has grown for the past five quarters. Most voters don’t believe it.

This morning Ben Smith of Politico posted a story that essentially mislead readers about what newfound conservative hero Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey thought about immigration. Smith's article spun Christie into an "amnesty" supporter when it doesn't seem he is. One has to wonder why Smith did this? Among many other issues, in the multipage interview with Gov. Christie Smith broached the immigration issue. Being a governor, Christie is faced with as much trouble over the issue as any other, of course, but Smith's characterization of Christie's position on immigration would tend to make one feel that Christie is...

Cadmium. Sounds like a super cool name for a new car, doesn't it? Wow, here the voiceover on the commercial: "Be the first on your block to drive the new Cadmium." Actually, you likely would not want to because of what that name means. According to HealthLine.com, Cadmium can be very toxic, and is dangerous if it is swallowed or inhaled. It is used in a large number of industrial applications. In the United States, over 10 million pounds of cadmium are used industrially every year. While spontaneous recovery from mild cadmium exposure is common, doses as low as 10...

Gov. Palin posted a Facebook Note on June 1, 2010 which described in detail how NBC twisted and distorted a printed statement she had supplied them. NBC sought an interview with Gov. Palin and her husband Todd regarding the fence they built to protect their border from stalker Joe McGinnis. NBC promised Gov. Palin to run her statement as a full-screen graphic, then broke their promise. Par for the course with an agenda-driven media. Purposeful Distortion is Malicious It’s one thing to distort or misrepresent words as they’re spoken, especially if the subject is a fast talker. Cub reporters covering...

When Annabel Park imagined what it would be like to head a new national political movement, here is what she had in mind: a coming together of engaged, intelligent citizens who had tired of the angry rhetoric and accusations of the Tea Partiers; Americans of all political persuasions joining in a spirit of equanimity to discuss the nation's problems, and maybe even share a laugh. It was this beautiful vision that danced in Park's head on a recent Saturday as she made her way to Busboys and Poets, a cafe in Washington, D.C., for one of nearly 500 Coffee Party...

Tea Party rallies: thousandsTea Party participants: millionsTea Party squabbles with Law Enforcement: 0 Tea Parties confronted by riot police: 0 Tea Parties dispersed by tear gas: 0 Tea Party arrests: 0 Tea Parties causing violence/injuries: 0 Tea Parties causing property damage: 0 Tea Parties responsible for the death of anybody: 0

Are we surprised> This lying idiot said he as at the DFW Tea Party event in Grand Prairie Tx. maybe he wa but some facts of his artilce don't add up. he said he saw diveristy , until he realized it was the stadium workers. BS unles he got there early afternoon there were no workers. only Tea Party Volunteers. Then he said he was asked as he walked in if he was a worker. I was not at the gate but i am calling BS on that too. He said he sat on the front row. this I know...

A Trip Down Memory Lane 31 March 2010 Not too long ago, taking to the streets to protest your government was considered a patriotic act.It’s true!But it seems that publicly airing your grievances stopped being patriotic right around noon on January 20th, 2009.Once President Obama was sworn in, protesting became incitement to violence.If you’ve opened up a newspaper or watched a cable news program in the past week or so, you’ve probably seen members of the media painting Tea Party activists as dangerous bigots. That’s because disagreeing with President Obama on issues like government spending and high taxes makes...

(CNSNews.com) - Contrary to reports that a coffin was placed on Rep. Russ Carnahan’s (D-Mo.) lawn on Mar. 21 while the House voted on the health care bill, the casket was never put on his property and was not used to signify a threat against him, according to the tea party activists who used it.   The coffin, in fact, was used as a prop at a prayer vigil on Mar. 21 to symbolize the “loss of freedom and the loss of lives due to government medical rationing,� said the activists. Further, the coffin, made of wood and stained a...

New research in the US suggests a large minority of Americans hold extreme opinions on president Barack Obama. A poll by market research company Harris Interactive shows that not only do two in five Americans believe Obama is a "socialist", but one-third still believe he is Muslim. A full 38 percent believe he is going to take away US citizens' right to hold arms; 29 percent that he wants to sell-out the US to a "one-world government"; 27 percent that he resents the country's heritage; and 23 percent that he is a racist and anti-American, alike. But this is just...

I'm calling Reps. John Lewis, Andre Carson, Emanuel Cleaver and the news media liars. Despicable liars. It's been nealy 48 hours since the three Democrat Congressmen made their claims that they were called "n*****" by Tea Party protesters.The trio described a scene straight out of Bull Connor as they walked through protesters on Capitol Hill, claiming that a "chorus" of voices chanted "n*****" fifteen times at them.With all the news media on the Hill, with all the protesters and liberal operatives on the Hill with video recorders and cellphone video devices there is no proof that has been presented. There...

It's sad but not surprising that some of those protesting Saturday against health-care overhaul legislation literally spit on at least one congressman and shouted racial and homophobic epithets as well. Some of us have long suspected that at least part of the opposition to the overhaul is part of the free-form hostility some Americans feel towards the political ascendancy of people who don't look like them or who have a different sexual orientation. When anti-overhaul protesters start abusing African American lawmakers with the "n" word or gay lawmakers with the six letter "f" word, then it starts to appear that...

Is The Washington Post playing favorites with causes that inspire people to exercise their First Amendment rights and take to the streets to protest? When it comes to opposition to Democratic efforts to reform health care versus opposition to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it appears so. In a March 20 Washington Post story headlined "Obama delivers plea to 'help us fix this system,'" Ben Pershing, Paul Kane and Lori Montgomery suggested House Democrats were gaining momentum in their pursuit of the 216 votes needed to pass health care reform legislation, despite "hundreds" of "tea party" protesters rallying outside the...

If anyone thinks for one second that Sarah Palin is not a political genius, well, they need to think again! One thing we all know for sure is the democrat party and the media (yes, yes, I know, same thing) hang on her ever word, every action. Sarah Palin can walk out her front door and it makes headlines. Sarah is so far into these people’s heads. She is living there rent free. Better still, she knows it and is constantly using that to her advantage....

WASHINGTON – WND Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah today publicly called on Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham for a retraction of a statement in the magazine falsely claiming Farah is a proponent of a "conspiracy theory" that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. "It's just a bald-faced lie and misrepresentation of anything and everything I have written and said about the eligibility issue," Farah said. Farah is issuing the retraction demand,........

Today is the day that I have been invited to go on MSNBC for the very first time. At no point during the ACORN story was I put on the hot seat to defend the work of James O’Keefe. My thesis from day one has been that the mainstream media is biased in favor of the left and MSNBC is its most obvious case study. So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized...

I thought I would be in a better mood in 2010. I mean, you can't do much worse than 2009. But after only 24 days, I'm deeply cranky about several things on the food radar. Watercress-gate: Earlier this month, Food Network aired an episode of "Iron Chef America" starring White House chef Cristeta Comerford competing with Bobby Flay against Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse. The hook: The chefs were to use vegetables harvested from the White House kitchen garden started by Michelle Obama. Only they didn't. Sure, they showed the four chefs tromping through the garden picking and snipping and...

In January 2009 we brought a six-camera crew to Washington to create a documentary on the subject of the annual March for Life called Thine Eyes. What motivated Steve Sanborn, the organizer of the project and a March veteran, was the media's historic failure to capture the numbers, the demographics or the spirit of the marchers. With the advantage of rooftop cameras, we estimated there were about 350,000 participants, about 75 percent of whom were under 25, with more females than males among the young people. I also assigned our six cameramen to find as many pro-abortion protestors as they...

Amid the rash of appeals for Haiti donations has come a call from one of the most prominent voices on the American right for people to hang on to their cash because Barack Obama might steal it. Rush Limbaugh, the most popular radio talkshow host, who is sometimes described as the real leader of the Republican party, says Americans should not give a penny to a population struggling for survival after the earthquake. Limbaugh agreed with a caller suspicious that the White House website was being used to direct funds to the American Red Cross. "Would you trust the money's...

Give Greg Sargent credit over at the Plum Line blog for a good catch here.  Read the following exchange, for which Sargent will have audio shortly, and see what it means to you: QUESTION: “Scott, what do you think about the Tea Party movement and what they are trying to do?”SCOTT BROWN: “I am not quite sure what you are talking about, what are they trying to do?”QUESTION: “The anti-smaller government, sort of anti-establishment organization that is trying to take over the country.”SCOTT BROWN: “Taking over the country. I think that is a little bit of an exaggeration.”QUESTION: “Well, they...

Yeah, I know, nothing new for Tingles. But Brooks is taking a beating in the other tea-party thread so I thought I’d give him a break by reminding you that accusing tea partiers of having issues with the “educated class” is actually pretty mild compared to the usual insinuations. Also, in fairness, employees of MSNBC are probably contractually obligated to call them “teabaggers.” I’m giving you two clips, actually. The second is short, but an essential — and timely — gloss on the first. Update: Remember, MSNBC’s been known to edit video in order to obscure unhelpful facts that contradict...

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow launched an error-riddled attack against the John Birch Society in her December 18 show, nominally because the John Birch Society has become a sponsor of the upcoming February 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

CNN: Sarah Palin's 'Death Panel' Comment Wins 'Lie of the Year' By Noel Sheppard Created 2009-12-20 18:44 If President Obama or any Democrat had actually won the dubious honor of committing PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year," do you think CNN would have reported it? Fat chance, right? Before you answer, consider the glee exhibited by CNN's Josh Levs Sunday when he announced Sarah Palin had "won" for her Facebook comment concerning a "death panel" in healthcare reform legislation (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Story Balloon [1]): BETTY NGUYEN, CO-ANCHOR: Well, let's talk about politics, shall we? Something...

And of course, stories that Joe Klein makes up get recycled in Palestinian propaganda. Ben Smith reports: U.S. and Israeli officials are dismissing an eyebrow-raising claim from a prominent Palestinian activist and official, Mustafa Barghouti, in today's International Herald Tribune. "The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, stands up and walks out on the U.S. envoy, George Mitchell, every time the American envoy mentions East Jerusalem," Barghouti wrote in an op-ed deploring "U.S. and European inaction" in the face of Israeli intransigence. Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, through a spokesman, dismissed the claim as "nonsense." "I have never heard such a thing,"...

The Media's Top 10 Worst Economic Myths of 2009 From jobs 'saved or created,' to stimulus saving the economy, to 'deficit neutral' health care reform; here are ten biggest stories the media got wrong this year. By Julia A. Seymour Business & Media Institute 12/9/2009 12:18:20 PM Each year the Business & Media Institute looks back on the year's news and selects the top 10 worst economic myths. Here is our 2009 list: 10. CBS, NY Times Support Ecuadorian Shakedown of U.S. oil company 9. Media Fail to Scrutinize Obama’s Job Claims 8. Government Stimulus is the Answer to Our...

While CBS and NBC ignored yesterday’s expansion of the federal definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation, ABC’s Charlie Gibson reported it, explaining that the amendment was “named for Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming college student killed 11 years ago because he was gay.” It’s true that the amendment, attached to a defense spending bill, was named for Shepard but Gibson ignored his own network’s investigation of the Shepard case that revealed sexual orientation was not the sole motive behind his murder. ABC’s “20/20” investigation in 2004 found that drugs fueled Shepard’s brutal murder, not homophobia, as is widely believed....

The NYT is calling Marcus Brauchli, the executive editor of the Washington Post, a liar. The NYT has reported this morning -- in a brief, buried "postscript" in the corrections column -- that it now has evidence that Brauchli lied last July when he told the NYT that he didn't know the paper's controversial corporate-sponsored dinner parties would be off-the-record. The NYT doesn't state flatly that Brauchli lied. But the juxtaposition of the two Brauchli statements in the postscript make clear the NYT's position that he misrepresented the truth in interviews with the NYT. [UPDATE: In an email to The...

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...

Now that they played their part in smearing Rush Limbaugh and creating a firestorm that resulted in Limbaugh being criticized by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and eventually being dropped from the group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams, some in the media are admitting they used alleged "quotes" that they cannot confirm. First, here is Rick Sanchez at CNN apologizing for using quotes against Limbaugh that he now admits he cannot independently confirm . . . MSNBC's David Shuster admitted on air today that they cannot verify the quotes they used either, be he did not apologize . ....

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.

"We want to be fair to Rush" - no, you don't.

Veteran Washington Post reporter Daryl Fears, part of a two-person writer team, unmistakably wrote that filmmaker John O'Keefe had “said” he “targeted” ACORN, the advocacy group, for his candid-camera expose, because it registered voters to defeat Republicans. O'Keefe said no such thing. It was a non-quote made out of whole cloth by reporter Fears, and published as fact on Sept. 17. Making the falsehood exponentially worse, the Post story then was retailed worldwide by the Associated Press.

The whispers among some of his allies: that those who loathe Obama are driven in part by racism. Demonstrators are shown during a rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington on Saturday. Photo: AP AUSTIN – Eight months into Barack Obama’s presidency, as criticism of his administration seems to reach new levels of volume and intensity each week, the whispers among some of his allies are growing louder: That those who loathe the nation’s first African–American president, and especially those who would deny his citizenship, are driven at least in part by racism. It’s a feeling that’s acutely felt among...

TELL THE TRUTH TELL THE TRUTH TELL THE TRUTH NO MORE LIES NO MORE LIES GO HOME CNN

Supporters of the President have been bragging all day about the CNN poll which claimed that among people who watch the Health Care speech there was a 14-point gain in support for the plan read the report below.. pay extra special attention to the final paragraph:

I have not found one person in the major media-and that includes on the "conservative" Fox News Channel-who has dared to tell the ugly truth about Walter Cronkite's disastrous record in favor of defeat in Vietnam, unilateral disarmament in the face of the Soviet threat, and one-world government. His press has been as good as that of Barack Obama. However, many people are aware of Cronkite's real record, primarily because of the work of AIM founder and long-time AIM Report editor Reed Irvine. Here are just a few of the messages I received in response to my column, "The Terrible...

For once, mainstream journalists did not retreat to the studied neutrality of quoting dueling antagonists. They tried to perform last rites on the ludicrous claim about President Obama's death panels, telling Sarah Palin, in effect, you've got to quit making things up. But it didn't matter. The story refused to die. The crackling, often angry debate over health-care reform has severely tested the media's ability to untangle a story of immense complexity. In many ways, news organizations have risen to the occasion; in others they have become agents of distortion. But even when they report the facts, they have had...

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...

Last week, there were several instances of protesters showing up outside of town hall meetings openly carrying firearms. Anti-gun activists and the media were flabbergasted not only at the audacity of the protesters, but that the carrying of firearms happened to be perfectly legal where it occurred. (Eleven states allow unlicensed open carry, with 12 more requiring a permit.) MSNBC, not content to simply say, “Golly, guns are scary!” decided that there must be something racist going on. After showing close-cropped video footage of a protester with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, MSNBC host Contessa Brewer went...

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.

"Here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waists or to their legs." -- MSNBC Editor's note: The man was black.

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...

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee on Thursday distanced herself from a University of Houston graduate student and Texas Obama delegate who falsely identified herself as a pediatric physician at the congresswoman's health care reform town hall meeting this week. “I've never met her,” Jackson Lee said as she prepared to take questions from doctors and other health care workers in a session at St. Joseph Medical Center. Roxana Mayer, who warmly embraced Jackson Lee at the close of Tuesday's session at a Fifth Ward community center, had spoken in favor of the president's health care package. The Texas Medical Board,...

http://www.thebigfeedblog.com/2009/08/bustedagain-democrats-caught-planting.html http://46in08.blogspot.com/2009/08/democrats-have-fake-doctors-at.html Not only was Mayer not a doctor, Roxana Mayer was an Obama delegate, as Patterico discovered with some digging. What’s more, the Houston Chronicle apparently knew this and failed to include it in its glowing coverage of Mayer’s appearance. The reporter, Cindy Horswell, has admitted that she knew Mayer was an Obama delegate and that Mayer didn’t live in Jackson-Lee’s district when she wrote the Chronicle story. After getting exposed, the Chronicle quietly changed the caption on the photo without issuing a correction, removing the reference to Mayer being a doctor.

Yesterday we informed you of the media's serial misuse of an Obama-as-Hitler poster from esoteric left-winger Lyndon LaRouche's website, as outlets like NBC (on their Nightly News and Meet the Press), CNN and MSNBC all ascribed the poster to sentiments roiled up by talk radio host Rush Limbaugh specifically and conservatives generally. Well apparently CBS hasn't yet learned the lesson we had hoped to impart. In fact, last night they did the other networks one worse.