Free Republic

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- Former Sen. Bob Kerrey said Tuesday he will not run for the Nebraska Senate seat he gave up more than a decade ago, shutting down hopes for a bid both parties called Democrats' best chance to hold the seat but that Kerrey himself described as a longshot. The 1992 presidential candidate and former Nebraska governor had considered seeking the Democratic nomination to succeed Sen. Ben Nelson, who replaced Kerrey in the Senate in 2001. Nelson's decision not to run for a third term this year came as a boon to Republicans, who must net four seats...

It's the Renaissance, stupid. The economy is not what ails us today. No, what ails Americans is what Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and their artistic spawn have wrought in the culture, starting 500 years ago. The Renaissance has dragged us all down. Tea party queen and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is convinced that America is sinking into tyranny. Why? In a remarkable profile of the candidate appearing in the Aug. 15 issue of the New Yorker magazine, the artistic flowering of the Italian Renaissance takes a beating for having done away with the god-fearing Dark Ages. Bachmann "belongs to...

Profiles of Michele Bachmann have been plentiful since the congresswoman became a legitimate contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And now, in the latest issue of The New Yorker, Ryan Lizza delivers a "terrific" and "disturbing" look at Bachmann's worldview, intellectual influences, and life history. Granted unprecedented access to Bachmann and her campaign, Lizza explores the roots of Bachmann's beliefs. Here, six of The New Yorker's best revelations: 1. Bachmann's beliefs were shaped by an evangelical filmmaker Bachmann calls the film series How Should We Then Live? by Francis Schaeffer — who was very influential in the 1970s and '80s...

Georgetown University professor C. Christine Fair has written a post at Registan.net alleging that Nicholas Schmidle’s New Yorker cover story detailing the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound may be a fraud. At the very least, Fair alleges, Schmidle failed to interview the Navy SEALs involved in the operation–which is not mentioned anywhere in the article, but is apparent from a close analysis of the text. Is that really the way bin Laden dyed? (pun intended)

After authoritatively and wrongly claiming the United States would go to war to halt Iran's nuclear program six times during the Bush administration, The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh is back at peddling conspiracy theories. His latest: Former Vice President Dick Cheney personally ran an "executive assassination ring."

Missing American Feared a Victim of 'Dirty War' April 13, 2007 The Financial Times Guy Dinmore in Washington and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran Just why Robert Levinson, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and now private investigator, should venture into Iran to meet a American fugitive wanted for murder in the US remains a mystery that the highest Bush administration authorities are trying to unravel. As the Financial Times revealed this week, Mr Levinson disappeared on March 8 after a six-hour meeting on the Iranian island of Kish with Dawud Salahuddin, an American who converted to Islam and was...

This country, in the best sense, went from a sort of purgatory, to liberal hell, and now it just clawed itself back into purgatory. Despite Obama's snark about not giving the GOP the keys to the car, it is more clear than ever that he definitely not allowed to do the driving. Oh, that's cute....Johnny B is trying to fit in with the cool kid.... So does the New Yorker live in Wonderland or what? What are they trying to say here? That Boehner will be seeking approval from a no-nonsense Obama? They clearly missed the part where the...

During the presidential campaign, the uber-lefty New Yorker magazine mocked the concerns of common-sense Americans with its cover portraying Barack Obama and his charming wife as a pair of anti-American radicals. The framed portrait of Osama bin Laden, the burning American flag, Obama dressed as an Arab -- Democrat elites found it all hilarious. Now that the President has endorsed a radical imam's plan to build a huge mosque at Ground Zero, It's now so funny now, is it?

Oh brother. Just when you think Obama’s ego can’t get any bigger, you find out otherwise. Here is video of New Yorker Editor David Remnick talking with Howard Kurtz on “Reliable Sources,” where he revealed that President Obama ordered a signed copy of the magazine’s cover earlier this year of him “walking on water.” To make it worse, this is the same President Obama who unceremoniously got rid of the bust of U.S. World War II friend and ally Winston Churchill, but has now brought in an art piece of himself walking on water. Republicans have to find a way...

Washington (CNN) - The Republican who wants to be the next governor of California has a message for the state's Latinos: "Meg Whitman es una candidata diferente." Translation: "Meg Whitman is a different kind of candidate." The former eBay CEO released two Spanish-language television ads as part of a calculated courting of the state's 13.5 million+ Hispanics. "She is the Republican who opposes the Arizona law…" an announcer says in one of the ads. Many Latinos have vented anger at Arizona's passing of the nation's toughest immigration law. It requires law enforcement agents to "determine the immigration status" of anyone...

One of the media elite's most whispered-about scandals went public Wednesday when married CNN correspondent Jeffrey Toobin squared off with a woman who says he's the father of her baby. Yale-educated lawyer Casey Greenfield - the daughter of eminent CBS News analyst Jeff Greenfield - had a chilly faceoff with Toobin in Manhattan Family Court. The ex-lovers barely spoke in the waiting area before joining their lawyers behind closed doors with a court referee to hash out custody and money issues. Toobin, who glumly sat several rows away from Casey Greenfield before the hearing, is said to have privately admitted...

Can't post libelous item itself, but here's the link to same. The left's shrill, hysterical panic, re: Sarah, continues.

FLESH OF YOUR FLESH

"Personal integrity is making a hard decision and sticking with it. It's about digging down deep and holding onto your faith, even when you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel." - Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska "Life will test your integrity. There is a cost for doing what's right." - Todd Palin, First Gentleman of Alaska On September 3, 2008 at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Sarah Palin exploded onto the national political scene as John McCain's surprise pick for running mate. Stepping confidently to the podium-and into the history books-as the GOP's first female...

OK fellow Freepers, I just got back from the local book store. The current issue has 8 cartoons of Rush Limbaugh as a crying baby on the cover. I couldn't find an article about Rush in the magizine and the article about the republicans made no sense to me. Am I the only one that doesn't get it. Is this a continuing effort to make Rush an enemy of the state. Thanks CDP

(You've got to see the image of Ghandi Obamaized, or is it Obama Ghandized?) In a February 23 articled titled “Partisanship, by the bye,” The New Yorker compares President Obama to Mahatma Gandhi. “Fifty years ago,” the New Yorker said, “the civil-rights movement understood that nonviolence can be an effective weapon even if–or especially if–the other side refuses to follow suit. Obama has a similarly tough-minded understanding of the political uses of bipartisanship, which, even if it fails as a tactic for compromise, can succeed as a tonal strategy: once the other side makes itself appear intransigently, destructively partisan, the...

The screencap sums things up nicely. It portrays Joe Scarborough’s reaction to the news that Pres. Obama reminds the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg of . . . Gandhi. It was the president’s bi-partisanship in the face of Republican partisan hostility that made Hertzberg think of the non-violent Indian leader in a column in the New Yorker’s current issue. For good measure, the New Yorker editor claimed to see a parallel—in the way Pres. Obama has reacted to Rush Limbaugh—to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s interaction with . . . Bull Connor [though Hertzberg was careful to state he was not claiming...

Vanity Fair is not to be outdone by fellow Condé Nast publication The New Yorker in the arena of political parody. After The New Yorker's controversial cartoon satirizing views of Barack Obama and his wife, Vanity Fair has posted a cover online that pokes fun at rival presidential candidate John McCain. McCain is shown leaning on a walker with his head bandaged, bumping fists with his wife, Cindy. Cindy McCain is carrying an armful of painkillers, a sad portrait of George W. Bush hangs over the mantel and the constitution burns in the fireplace. Vanity Fair describes the cartoon by...

<p>In a little intramural joshing in the magazine world, Vanity Fair today posted a send-up of the by-now infamous New Yorker cover meant to be a satire of attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism.</p> <p>The New Yorker's version showed Democrat Obama in Muslim garb fist-bumping his wife Michelle while the American flag burned in the fireplace under a portrait of Osama bin Laden.</p>

Link only, original Vanity Fair content not allowed on FR. Spoof McCain magazine cover

<p>The New Yorker's Washington correspondent has been denied a press place on Barack Obama's tour of the Middle East and Europe after the magazine depicted the presidential candidate as a terrorist on its cover.</p> <p>The Obama camp said there was not enough room on the aircraft but the move is being seen as a snub to the magazine.</p>

There's probably no connection whatsoever. But the New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, whose long, long article on Barack Obama's early political days in Chicago's ward politics (available here) was the reason for the magazine's controversial cover by Barry Blitt depicting Obama as a Muslim, has been barred from traveling with Obama on his foreign field trip this week.

<p>But the New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, whose long, long article on Barack Obama's early political days in Chicago's ward politics (available here) was the reason for the magazine's controversial cover by Barry Blitt depicting Obama as a Muslim, has been barred from traveling with Obama on his foreign field trip this week.</p>

By now you've seen the cover of the New Yorker depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as depicted in wingnut Internet lore. It's a cover the Obama campaign was quick to condemn. "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree," said Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman. Methinks Burton doth protest too much. After all, this latest campaign kerfuffle was the perfect distraction to mask what's...

A week has gone by since the "controversy" over the New Yorker cover featuring Barack and Michelle Obama broke and the media is still wringing their hands in excruciating microanalysis over it. The ironic thing is that the true target of the New Yorker wasn't even Obama and his wife. They meant to satirize a "simplistic rightwing" attitude about the Obamas. Or at least how the left thinks the right views the Obamas. At this point, your humble correspondent will cease comment on the New Yorker cover to avoid the risk of falling into the overanalysis of humor trap that the...

Oh, for a good riposte. Barack Obama's levity-free reaction to the now-famous New Yorker cartoon leaves one reluctantly wondering: Is he humor-challenged? Perchance, does he take himself too seriously for a nation of wits and wags? So soaring has been Obama's rhetoric and so dazzling his smile that we've missed the possibility that the Illinois senator is less the lanky rock star and more the purse-lipped church lady, clucking his tongue in disapproval of the chuckling masses.

To watch the contortions over that New Yorker cover cartoon of the Obamas is to understand whom it is impermissible to offend in the America of 2008. The cartoon is a caricature of Michelle as an urban terrorist in an Angela Davis afro with an AK-47 slung over her back and a bandoleer of ammo in the Oval Office doing a fist-bump with a Barack decked out in turban and Muslim garb. On the wall hangs a portrait of Osama bin Laden. Blazing away in the fireplace is the American flag. "President Obama and First Lady -- as Seen From...

Oh, for a good riposte. Barack Obama’s levity-free reaction to the now-famous New Yorker cartoon leaves one reluctantly wondering: Is he humor-challenged? Perchance, does he take himself too seriously for a nation of wits and wags? So soaring has been Obama’s rhetoric and so dazzling his smile that we’ve missed the possibility that the Illinois senator is less the lanky rock star and more the purse-lipped church lady, clucking his tongue in disapproval of the chuckling masses. His campaign’s angry reaction to the magazine cover shows a stunning lack of political dexterity. It wasn’t always so. In earlier days, Obama...

The MSM brain freeze caused by that infamous New Yorker cover cartoon has finally thawed and the humorless prigs who are in the tank for Barack Obama realized that it doesn’t look good when journalists denounce other journalists for exercising their free speech rights. The Obama campaign also belatedly realized its reaction to the broad satire was “really dumb damage control,” writes Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times: It was a huge PR mistake by a campaign that doesn't make many. The denunciations by both presidential campaigns accomplished one thing: They pushed a simple cartoon to the top of...

Andy says Obama is "no Jack Kennedy" HOW OBAMA BOTCHED THE "NEW YORKER COVER" ISSUE ANDY MARTIN Executive Editor ContrarianCommentary.com 'Factually Correct, Not Politically Correct' AMERICA'S #1 POLITICAL BLOG ON THE 2008 CAMPAIGN How Obama fumbled the New Yorker cover story "Senator Obama, I knew Jack Kennedy, and you're no Jack Kennedy" (NEW YORK)(July 17, 2008) One of the great lines in American political history is Senator Lloyd's Bentsen's 1988 retort to Senator Dan Quayle, "Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy, and you're no Jack Kenney." Senator Barack Obama daydreams that he's the "new Kennedy." In your dreams. The remnants of...

Oh, for a good riposte. Barack Obama's levity-free reaction to the now-famous New Yorker cartoon leaves one reluctantly wondering: Is he humor-challenged? Perchance, does he take himself too seriously for a nation of wits and wags? So soaring has been Obama's rhetoric and so dazzling his smile that we've missed the possibility that the Illinois senator is less the lanky rock star and more the purse-lipped church lady, clucking his tongue in disapproval of the chuckling masses. His campaign's angry reaction to the magazine cover shows a stunning lack of political dexterity. It wasn't always so. In earlier days, Obama...

July 17, 2008 Call Me a Proud, Scared Conservative By Kyle-Anne Shiver Since the day I visited Barack Obama's church home in Chicago last January, listened to Jeremiah Wright, read a slew of the books in the "church" bookstore and then most of what I could find on the abbreviated history of this candidate for the Presidency, I have believed that America as we now know it could completely cease to exist within a very short time under his leadership, especially with the bonus of a packed, liberal House and Senate. This is not an out-on-a-limb, slim possibility. It is,...

Not funny. There's Barack and Michelle Obama fist-bumpin' in the Oval Office. He's in Islamic garb -- a turban, tunic and sandals. She's a study in radical chic -- Afro, combat fatigues and boots, AK-47 strapped to her back. A portrait of Osama bin Laden gazes down on the first couple. An American flag burns in the Oval Office fireplace. Not funny. Obama's team was spot on in calling The New Yorker cover "tasteless and offensive." John McCain was right to call it "inappropriate" and "offensive." I'm a big fan of cartoon kicks and giggles and no fan of either...

Bigots Aren't Laughing, So We Shouldn't Either By CONNIE SCHULTZ [Wife of US Senator Sherrod Brown, (D) Ohio]Oh, if only. If only I'd known the New Yorker would run a cover depicting Barack Obama as a winking, tunic-garbed Muslim and his wife, Michelle, as an Afro-wearing, AK-47-toting terrorist. If only I'd known that Barry Blitt's cartoon would show the Obamas fist-bumping in an Oval Office where a portrait of Osama Bin Laden hung over the mantel. If only I'd known that editor David Remnick thought most Americans would celebrate this caricature as harmless satire. If I'd known any of this,...

That’s right; Barack Obama and the Saudi-funded radical Islamic front group calling itself the Council on American Islamic Relations are on exactly the same page: Obama says New Yorker insulted Muslim Americans.

One feels almost ashamed to be setting out upon the 10,000th editorial written about the compromising effects of political correctness and short-fused indignation on the arts of humour, irony and satire. What, after all, did the first 9,999 accomplish? You can't win the argument because there is never anyone to take the other side. No one on Earth thinks of themselves as being humourless, or as being an enemy of art and wit. Who knows, maybe there is a singularly honest feminist out there who thinks that the world really would be better off without funny. But for the most...

IN all the brouhaha over the New Yorker's cover car toon satirizing Barack and Michelle Obama, a truly "tasteless and offensive" passage in the magazine's feature article got lost. The piece quotes Obama's recommendations for how to stop jihad, which he had previously published in a local Chicago newspaper eight days after 9/11. It's a self-parody of blind, deaf and dumb Kumbaya liberalism: "We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of...

Barack Obama to the New Yorker: It's your right - but you weren't right. In his first substantive talk about the magazine's inflammatory cartoon depicting him and his wife as fist-bumping terrorists, Obama told CNN's Larry King the image fueled misconceptions and insulted Muslim Americans. "I know it was The New Yorker's attempt at satire. I don't think they were entirely successful with it," Obama said. "But you know what? It's a cartoon ... and that's why we've got the First Amendment." The presumptive Democratic nominee said he wasn't personally stung by the cartoon. "I've seen and heard worse," Obama...

Satire, according to Jonathan Swift, is "a mirror wherein every man will commonly discern every face but his own". The New Yorker’s cartoon of Barack Obama and his lady wife, according to its editor David Remnick, "takes a lot of distortions, lies and misconceptions about the Obamas and puts a mirror up to them to show them for what they are." Swift’s satire on satire could hardly have been better, er, illustrated. The cartoon, by veteran satirist Barry Blitt, omitted no detail in showing the Obamas kitted out as a combo of Muslim and Black Panther, with a photo of...

A big red-headed guy in a pickup pulling a fishing boat stopped in front of Barack Obama headquarters here — loaded for bear, as they say. Land Tawney, a fifth-generation Montanan with a gap-toothed smile, was wearing a plaid shirt and a camouflage cap atop his head. He belongs to Sportsmen for Obama, which sounds like Facebook Users for McCain, or Linguists for Bush. I asked him whether fellow members of the hook-and-bullet community are concerned about Obama’s race, or the depictions of him as un-American. Montana, after all, has a black population of less than one-half of one percent....

Barack Obama launched a Web site that fact-checks “smears” about him, his wife and his career. It remains to be seen whether this is an effective tactic against negative campaigning, but it certainly isn’t very funny. The New Yorker did much the same thing with its cover depicting President Obama - in full Muslim regalia - doing the “fist bump” with First Lady Michelle - sporting a ‘70s-style Afro and with an assault rifle slung over her shoulder – as the American flag burns in an Oval Office fireplace, above which hangs a portrait of Usama bin Laden. It is...

The New Yorker Cover Is More Offensive Than Dangerous, as It Cements Prevailing Negative StereotypesMy wife called as I was staring at the cover of this week's New Yorker, trying to decide whether the depiction of Barack Obama dressed in traditional Muslim garb giving his machine-gun-toting wife a fist tap in the Oval Office was "tasteless and offensive" (as both the Obama and McCain camps stated) or mere humorous satire. I am a loyal New Yorker reader and not easily offended, but something she said gave me pause. Driving through central Illinois on a business trip, my wife could not...

Democrat Barack Obama said Tuesday that the New Yorker magazine's satirical cover depicting him and his wife as flag-burning, fist-bumping radicals doesn't bother him but that it was an insult to Muslim Americans. "You know, there are wonderful Muslim Americans all across the country who are doing wonderful things," the presidential candidate told CNN's Larry King. "And for this to be used as sort of an insult, or to raise suspicions about me, I think is unfortunate. And it's not what America's all about." Obama blamed himself for not being forceful enough in challenging some of the rumors about him,...

Campaign '08: The New Yorker magazine thought it was doing Barack Obama a favor with its over-the-top right-wing caricature of the candidate. But the liberal publication underestimated his self-absorption.The unrestrained absurdity of the cartoon that graces the New Yorker's latest cover has to be seen to be believed. There's the soon-to-be nominated Sen. Barack Obama, dressed in Islamic garb in the Oval Office, Old Glory engulfed in flames in the fireplace and the portrait of George Washington on the wall above replaced by that of Osama bin Laden. The new president knuckle-bumps the new first lady, who sports a full...

Dignified, yes, but there is no way that he is a saint Well, at least that's out of the way. The July 21 New Yorker magazine cover of a turbaned Barack Obama, Angela Davis-Afroed, AK-47 accessorized spouse Michelle, Osama bin Laden portrait on the wall, and American flag burning in the fireplace drew predictable howls of protest from the Obama and opponent McCain presidential camps. With the "Politics of Fear" satirical take on the Obamas, didn't the magazine publish what many people are thinking, figuratively, or literally? I'm not satisfied with the complaints that the New Yorker gave comfort to...

If the point of putting something on the cover of a magazine is to sell copies, then the folks at The New Yorker are surely smart to have put the most controversial stereotypes about Barack and Michelle Obama front and center. Primary results and polls suggest that the electorate has found much to like about the Illinois senator and his wife. But the voters who will decide whether to make the Obamas the country's "first couple" don't know a whole lot about the people they might install in the White House in January. That ignorance is the last remaining hope...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Obama campaign, they continue to be in a tizzy over this New Yorker cartoon. Let me ask you a question. Obama and his team are upset over a cartoon on the cover of The New Yorker, a leftist publication, that makes him look like a Muslim, that makes his wife look like a terrorist Muslim, that has the American flag burning in the fireplace, under the portrait of Osama Bin Laden in the Oval Office. The Obama campaign and The Messiah himself were said to be very, very upset over this. Let me ask you...

It has become axiomatic among liberals and on the Left that Democrats are somehow just too nice to win presidential races — that they get slimed and don’t slime back, that they get attacked and don’t counterattack, etc. They believe in ideas, you see, in calm persuasion, not in demagoguery, and therefore do not deign to stage a mud-wrestling match in the fever swamps. It was said of Michael Dukakis, it was said of Al Gore, and it was said of John Kerry. They were all just too high-minded to allow themselves not to be “swift-boated.” This has become such...