Free Republic

As Tuesday’s vote revealed, Americans are strongly devoted to individualism, one happy aspect of which is that they are possessed of an abhorrence to being told what to think, a truth that explains why people are drawing their own conclusions regarding this question: Which Americans are behaving with anti-intellectual, hateful ignorance in the debate regarding the Obama/Pelosi/Reid healthcare bills making their way through Congress? To answer that question, common sense folks begin by stipulating some of what is currently known about the bills, for example — The final version will be advertised as costing $1 trillion over the next decade....

Originally, the New York Times reported on President Barack Obama’s visit to Dover AFB and the arrival of fallen serviceman by explaining that the White House wanted Obama to be seen as concerned and aware of the sacrifices made in America’s war policies: A small contingent of reporters and photographers accompanied Mr. Obama to Dover, where he arrived at 12:34 a.m. aboard Marine One. He returned to the South Lawn of the White House at 4:45 a.m. <…> The images and the sentiment of the president’s five-hour trip to Delaware were intended by the White House to convey to the...

Democrats lost a big test vote on health care legislation on Wednesday as the Senate blocked action on a bill to increase Medicare payments to doctors at a cost of $247 billion over 10 years. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, needed 60 votes to proceed. He won only 47. And he could not blame Republicans. A dozen Democrats and one independent crossed party lines and voted with Republicans on the 53 to 47 roll call. The Medicare bill has become a proxy for larger issues in the debate over legislation to overhaul the health care system.

The path towards irrelevancy and future insolvency taken by The New York Times continues at a frenetic pace. Democracy Now! is reporting that the publication has announced the elimination of another 100 newsroom positions, or about eight percent of the paper’s news staff, due to declining advertising revenues and circulation numbers that are in freefall.

Leftist Democratic Party front group Media Matters put a hit out on Rush Limbaugh this afternoon. Politico and Paul Krugman at the New York Times pimped the Media Matters character assassination of Rush to the political world. They take his comments out of the context of illustrating liberal hypocrisy to paint him as a violent person.This is a perfect example of how the Democratic party and the media work hand in glove to attack conservatives and try delegitimize them in the public arena.First Politico, then Krugman, then Rush and at the end a response from Revkin.Glenn Thrush Pimping for Media...

I read the news that the New York Times is going to cut another unexpected 100 staffers from it’s “news room”. While sad that these organizations are continuing to bleed staff I find it curious that none of the solutions to the tanking of the newspaper included any sort of recognition that perhaps the brain surgeons behind most every story that emanates from that crap hole of a newsroom are so ideologically one sided that half the nation wouldn’t read them unless paid to do so. It’s called “expanding your reach”.

How This Reluctant Whistleblower Decided to Tell All The more I spoke about Obama and the Democrats part in the ACORN scandal, the more I drifted away from the ACORN 8. I never thought that their mission was bad, but ACORN’s subversive nature is rooted in pay for play politics and if one is to clean house, it has to be across the board. I was proud when Marcel appeared on Glenn Beck but often dismayed at the picture she painted of ACORN. Yes, the members are great people, but they do not need an ACORN to help them. Local...

Well, if it's in the Times, it must be true, right? Floyd Norris: Over all, the surveys indicate that the manufacturing sectors of China, Taiwan, South Korea and India had begun to grow by April, but that the United States did not follow suit until August. In Europe, France is reporting growth, and Britain is hovering near the midpoint, indicating the deterioration has stopped but growth has not yet begun. Although the German government estimates that its gross domestic product rose in the second quarter, the manufacturing survey indicates continued weakness in that country. New orders and production have turned...

Britain has hit its reality moment. The Brits are ahead of us when it comes to public indebtedness and national irresponsibility. Spending has been out of control for longer and in a more sustained way. But in that country, the climate of opinion has turned. There, voters are ready for a politician willing to face reality. And George Osborne, who would become the chancellor of the Exchequer in the likely event that his Conservative Party wins the next election, has aggressively seized the moment. In a party conference address earlier this month, Osborne gave the speech that an American politician...

After months of hunting for a buyer, The New York Times Company said on Wednesday that it had decided not to sell The Boston Globe, the newspaper it threatened last spring to close because of mounting losses. The Globe did not draw high bids, and the company chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said last month that the paper’s finances had improved enough that the company no longer believed it had to sell if the offers were not attractive enough. Executives said this year that the paper was on track to lose $85 million in 2009, before making painful cost cuts that...

Earlier this week the National Republican Congressional Committee released a statement on Nancy Pelosi's sudden departure from her insistence that the war in Afghanistan was the "real central front" in the war on terror: "If Nancy Pelosi’s failed economic policies are any indicator of the effect she may have on Afghanistan, taxpayers can only hope McChrystal is able to put her in her place." Nancy Pelosi and her fellow democrats responded like, well... liberals. They ignored the facts and made an emotional appeal. They ignored the first part of the statement, and played up the meaningless ending. In short, Pelosi...

In an occasional column, The Mormon Media Observer will look at the times when Mormons and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have made news in the New York Times. Here's a sample of front page headlines and stories since the 1970s: SNIP Mormon church strikes down ban against blacks in priesthood, June 10, 1978 (one of the few stories that have led the Times' front page) "The 148-year-old policy of excluding black men from the Mormon priesthood was struck down by the church's leaders yesterday. "Spencer W. Kimball, president of the 4.2 million members of the worldwide...

Has the New York Times finally seen the writing on the wall and decided to take what it can get and avoid further political damage to the Obama administration? It looks that way. Today's edition features this article by Nelson Schwartz on the Swiss model, the only European plan that does not feature a fully government-run health care option: Swiss Health Care Thrives Without Public Option Like every other country in Europe, Switzerland guarantees health care for all its citizens. But the system here does not remotely resemble the model of bureaucratic, socialized medicine often cited by opponents of universal...

In a meeting of New York conservative activists earlier this month, Andrew Breitbart received a raucous standing ovation for doing something many conservatives never dreamed possible. He beat The New York Times.As video upon video were released showing ACORN employees eagerly helping two conservatives (Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe) set up prostitution as a legitimate business, file false tax statements and engage in the trafficking of underage illegal immigrants, much of the major media remained silent. For conservatives, the rationale was simple: the major media were uninterested in exposing an organization linked with President Barack Obama. There may have been...

What else could it be when the Time’s new ombudsman Clark Hoyt prints a laughable correction account story about having been scooped and downright embarrassed multiple times by conservative bloggers on some of the years biggest stories concerning scandal of the liberal Democrat (i.e. OBAMA) persuasion. (H/T Michelle Malkin) Be prepared, the ombudsman column is a bi-weekly event and from what we can tell it reads exactly like the made up stories from The Onion.

Even when the Fishwrap of Record is admitting how out of touch it is, its editors still can’t get the story right. Hapless ombudsman Clark Hoyt writes in his Sunday column that his paper was guilty of unnecessarily politicizing a legitimate breaking story and suffering “slow reflexes:”

Wolf and Mellett in their Talk origins paper, The Role of ‘Nebraska man’ in the creation-evolution debate,[1] claim Nebraska man was a careless mistake by an honest scientist. However, the evidence suggests that Osborn deliberately overstated the find because the theory of evolution was centre stage in a struggle for control of education policy in America...

On Friday in the New York Times, above the fold, right side, a three-deck headline: Obama Reshapes A Missile Shield to Blunt Tehran Bush Plan is Scrapped Shorter-Range Rockets Become Focus of the System in Europe

Angry. Bitter. Desperately trying to avoid irrelevance. Clinging to past glories. The average American, the beleaguered taxpayer in the age of Obama? No, welcome to the world of Maureen Dowd. Dowd is the signature columnist for The New York Times and Cardinal Richelieu to the King Moe (a dynastic line that includes Larry and Curly) of its publisher, Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. Dowd faces a new information age in which readers continue to turn their backs on her and her employer of 26 years, leaving a shrinking readership of aging elites from academia, politics and media. Her readers are disappearing...

Whom do Democrats trust more for news: Fox News or the New York Times? With all the vitriol directed against Fox News, one would think that it is a no brainer. But a new Pew Research Center for the People & the Press poll shows that it is Fox News. While 43 percent of Democrats have a positive view of Fox News, 39 percent of Democrats feel the same way about the New York Times. Of course among Republicans or Independents it isn't even a close contest. 72 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of Fox News compared to...

Who do Democrats trust more for news: FOX News or The New York Times? With all the vitriol directed against FOX News, one would think that it is a no brainer. But a new Pew Research Center for the People and the Press shows that it is FOX News. While 43 percent of Democrats have a positive view of FOX News, 39 percent of Democrats feel the same way about The New York Times. . . . .

Discourse: The reaction to the congressman's outburst shows what happens when you judge this president by the content of his character. In a post-racial presidency, charges of racism are the new last refuge of scoundrels.When Joe Wilson, the decorum-challenged South Carolina Republican, reacted to President Obama's assertion that there was nothing in health care legislation giving coverage to illegal aliens by shouting "You lie!" he knew, as his critics ignore, that there was nothing requiring proof of citizenship either. A nonpartisan Congressional Research Service study found that the House health care bill at that moment did not restrict illegal immigrants...

There was a huge protest against Obama's big-government plans at the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, but one was hard-pressed to find evidence of it on the New York Times home page Sunday morning: A small headline tucked under the Political subhead. The print edition wasn't much more forthcoming. Although the Washington D.C. Fire Dept. estimated 60,000 to 70,000 people attended the 9/12 protest, and many estimates are higher, the Times made do with one medium-sized story buried on page A37 of the Sunday paper, "Thousands Attend Broad Protest of Government," teasing it on the front page in a below-the-fold photo...

“Mr. Obama didn’t lie. The bills before Congress declare illegal immigrants to be inelligibile for subsidized benefits. It is impossible to imagine any final bill doing otherwise.. Mr. Wilson was a boor, but some Republicans still insist that he was right because the bill doesn’t ensure that the undcocumented have no insurance. Time for a reality check.” So editorialized the New York Times on Friday, September 11th. As the furor continues over the cry of “You lie!” by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) during President Obama’s address on health care on Wednesday (September 9), the national media omits two important details:...

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman again showed a disturbing affection for China's dictatorship in his Wednesday column attacking Republican stubbornness on health care and climate change legislation ("Our One-Party Democracy"). Friedman pleaded for "enlightened" autocrats, able to get things accomplished against the will of the people, for their own good. Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when...

Stephen Farrell, a New York Times reporter held captive by militants in northern Afghanistan, was freed in a military commando raid early Wednesday, but his Afghan interpreter was killed during the rescue effort.

Two things that would end hypocrisy and make the world a better place: Priests should be allowed to get married, and the New York Times should update its Ethics Policy. The venerable and vulnerable newspaper finally starts talking about the “Pogue Problem” out loud to its readers. For years David Pogue has covered Apple (and other tech companies). And for years he has been authoring books on Apple products. He doesn’t get paid by Apple for the books, but his bias is clear and he has been accused to conflicts of interest more than once by other mainstream media. Dan...

If it’s not Frum and Bruce Bartlett demanding greater outreach from Republicans while sneering at them at every turn, it’s Brooks breaking his arms patting himself on the back for being an intellectual … who happens to find political portent in how well Barack Obama irons his pants. That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.”...

Recently in the New York Times, mystery writer Sara Paretsky published “Le Treatment,” the story of how she took her husband, suffering from chest pains during their vacation in France, to a local hospital, where he was treated without delay. A cardiologist correctly diagnosed the problem, pneumonia, and administered the necessary medication. The hospital charged no money up front, though the doctor apologetically said that he would have to bill the couple, as they were not citizens. Six months later, an invoice arrived for $220. Paretsky expresses one minor reservation about what she sees as a nearly perfect health-care system:...

The public option is comatose, the death panels are expired, and a reconciliation bill may resemble Swiss cheese, but the rumors of ObamaCare's demise have been greatly exaggerated. And so it was quite a surprise to read a short blog piece in the Sunday New York Times, of all places, under the heading of "Causes of Death (Just in Case)." Curiously, the piece ran in the print edition, but is no longer on the Times web site. (see below) The column cites four possible causes to include in the obituary for ObamaCare: - The absence of former Senator Tom Daschle,...

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire recently, a man carried a handgun a few blocks away from the site where President Obama was scheduled to hold a town hall a couple of hours later. Was it a danger or not? The man carrying the gun, William Kostric, even had permission to have the gun on private church property while he was protesting Obama's appearance. Everybody from the New York Times to USA Today to CBS News expressed their outrage, interpreting it as a hot head threatening the president and linking it to militias and conservative talk radio. A prominent liberal radio talk...

For more than two years, House Judiciary Committee Democrats and the New York Times editorial board have argued that I personally arranged for Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman to be prosecuted in 2004 for corruption and ordered the removal of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006 for failing to investigate Democrats. The Washington Post editorial board also echoed this last charge. The Times and the Post have published a combined 18 editorials on these issues, which were also catnip to House Judiciary Committee Democrats. Politico's Ryan Grimm reported last year overhearing the Committee's chairman, John Conyers of Michigan, tell two others, "We're...

Karl Marx Is 'Back in Vogue,' NYT Book Reviewer Enthuses By Scott Whitlock (Bio | Archive) August 19, 2009 - 17:35 ET     New York Times book critic Dwight Garner on Wednesday enthused over a new biography of Friedrich Engels, cooing that Marxism is "back in vogue" and adding that the founding communist comes across as a "jovial man of outsize appetites" in Tristram Hunt’s new biography "Marx’s General." Garner opened the review by insisting that decrying capitalism is now hip again: "Thanks to globalism’s discontents and the financial crisis that has spread across the planet, Karl Marx...

The New York Times had another in a string of embarrassing moments this weekend, part of a steep descent for the "paper of record," much like that of President Obama's approval numbers. And neither seems to have bottomed yet. In reality, the Times' latest disaster is quite closely related to the Obama approval ratings free fall. A significant majority of Americans (54%-35%) ) now favor doing nothing as far as health care reform, if the alternative is one of the bills working its way through Congress (each of which is a thousand page or more monstrosity, with untold consequences for...

On Friday, the New York Times ran a front-page story about the origins of what they called the "stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama's health care proposals would create government-sponsored 'death panels' to decide which patients were worthy of living." The article listed The Washington Times editorial board as one of the sources of the "death panel" notion. The New York Times noted two of our editorials. Neither of those articles used the expression "death panels."

If you haven't noticed, a lot of media outlets have gotten worked up into a tizzy over the mere mention of death panels. The New York Times got so worked up, it went after a few conservatives outlets by name in its Aug. 13 issue. "But the rumor [that Obama's health care proposal would create death panels] - which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false - was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists," Jim Rutenberg and Jackie Calmes wrote...

1 CULTURE OF CORRUPTION, by Michelle Malkin. (Regnery, $27.95.) President Obama and his team of tax cheats, petty crooks, influence peddlers and Wall Street cronies. 2 OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) Why some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunity as well as talent — from the author of “Blink.” 3 IN THE PRESIDENT’S SECRET SERVICE, by Ronald Kessler. (Crown, $26.) Agents and the presidents they protect. 4* CATASTROPHE, by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann. (Harper/HarperCollins, $26.99.) Stopping President Obama before he transforms America into a socialist state and destroys the health care system....

The New York Times is generally loathe to dignify conservative-leaning books with an official review. That stance is getting dicier these days, especially since the newspaper’s own nonfiction bestseller chart is chockablock with conservatives luminaries like Michelle Malkin, Dick Morris and Mark Levin. President Barack Obama has only been in office for roughly eight months, but he’s already inspired multiple conservative bestsellers. Malkin’s Culture of Corruption sits atop the list, followed by Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny in the two slot and Catastrophe by Morris and Eileen McGann at number four. Marji Ross, president and publisher of Regnery Publishing, isn’t surprised...

The front page of the New York Times is filled with hope about the nation's economic situation. The lead story, "Job Losses Slow, Signaling Momentum for a Recovery," reporting a decline in the unemployment rate from 9.5 percent in June to 9.4 percent in July, begins by declaring that, "The most heartening employment report since last summer suggested on Friday that a recovery was under way -- and perhaps gathering steam." "Employers are no longer in a panic," one expert tells the Times. The paper reports that Obama administration officials "credited the stimulus package" for the improvement, and "some said"...

The last couple posts were largely written from the perspective of me trying to put forth what I thought Clinton's summit meant now and what it could mean in the future. But, for today's post -- and I'm trying very hard to refrain from posting for the sake of posting, I'm going to have to criticize probably the worst editorial I've come across in a long time and try to undo the disservice to the American public that the New York Times has just committed. It's definitely worse than the fairly recent editorial from the Los Angeles Times on which...

This piece ran in the New York Times last Friday. It purported to make the supposition that a feud between GE and Fox that mostly pitted cable news anchors Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann in an often included serious and harsh charges leveled by the two at each and at each other's employers. The piece made it seem as though higher ups talked to both Olbermann and O'Reilly and had them tamp it down on the other. The piece even claimed that stories by one of the other had gone down since mid June.

She told me a few hours ago but it wasn’t made public until Hannity did it here. What an achievement. Thanks so much to everyone who bought a copy. In the vast gray cloud that is Hopenchange, there’s only one tiny silver lining. But … it’s pretty silvery. CLICK ABOVE LINK TO SEE VIDEO...

The New York Times public editor conducted a self examination after seven errors appeared in a single article recently. From the New York Times THE TIMES published an especially embarrassing correction on July 22, fixing seven errors in a single article — an appraisal of Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchorman famed for his meticulous reporting. The newspaper had wrong dates for historic events; gave incorrect information about Cronkite’s work, his colleagues and his program’s ratings; misstated the name of a news agency, and misspelled the name of a satellite. “Wow,” said Arthur Cooper, a reader from Manhattan. “How did this...

The New York Times recently editorialized on The Settlements Issue The last American president to openly challenge Israel on settlements was George H.W. Bush and we commend President Obama for demanding that Israel halt all new construction. The controversy must not obscure Mr. Obama’s real goal: nudging Israel and the Palestinians into serious peace negotiations. Apparently the NYT is preparing the ground for Obama to back away from his absolutist demands and claim victory when negotiations start. I disagree. Had Obama never attempted to bring down the Netanyahu government by using settlements as a wedge issue, negotiations would have had...

Many NY Times readers seem to be bashing Congress's cash for clunker program. That's surprising because comments posted to NY Times articles usually run 9-1 (rough guess) in support of wacky left-wing causes. Here's an example: This is classic American legislation: 1. Reward the wrongdoers (i.e., those who bought and drive gas hogs). For this crowd: Drive a polluting, climate-changing, Al Qaeda-supporting pick-up or SUV for a few years, then get a $4,500 credit toward a new car. 2. Punish the responsible citizens (i.e., those who made frugal choices, but are enlisted to help pay for the free ride given...

The New York Times/CBS poll is one of the most biased, poorly sampled polls out there and this one is no exception. But if you are going to use a sample that is designed to give the Democrats good numbers, and the numbers still turn out really badly, you know the Dems are in huge trouble.

The conspiracy theorists who have claimed for more than a year that President Obama is not a United States citizen have found receptive ears among some mainstream media figures in recent weeks. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the country’s most popular talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners on Tuesday that Mr. Obama “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen.” Lou Dobbs of CNN said that Mr. Obama should do more to dispel the claims. Larry King, also of CNN, asked guests about it. Chris Matthews debated it with guests on MSNBC, and “NBC Nightly...

Here’s another one of those wonderful examples of how the Old Media will use a headline that makes a stark claim about how rotten Republicans are for opposing a Democratic plan while at the same time conveniently ignoring the opposition to the same idea among Democrats. This time it is the “partisan divide” in the healthcare debate. The Times tsks Republicans for solidly lining up to oppose Obama’s wild grab for nearly 20 percent of the nation’s economy through his healthcare plans. Yet not once does the Times mention the many areas in which Democrats are disagreeing with Democrats on...

Congressional liberals must think Americans have very short memories. For years the Left trashed the Bush administration for not capturing and killing Osama bin Laden. Democrats claimed they could get the job done. Campaigning for president, Barack Obama made “We will kill bin Laden” a regular part of his foreign policy stump speech. But as the political winds have shifted, so has the nature of the Left’s indictments. Congressional Democrats continue to attack the Bush administration. Only now they are blaming it for trying to kill Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders. Theirs is a dangerous game. The Democrats’...

Reported during Your World that Steven Rattner would step down and be replaced by a member of the Auto Task Force. No print story currently available at site.