Free Republic

"Wikipedia? Don't make me laugh." Video at link.

You know liberals are edging toward a full Jonestown-style meltdown when someone as smart as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman starts losing it. Last week Friedman worked himself up into a paranoiac frenzy over the tone of some of the criticism Obama and the Democrats have been facing recently.

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...

Memo to the Democratic leadership threatening to censure Rep. Joe Wilson if he doesn't publicly apologize on the House floor for calling President Barack Obama a liar on that floor: You don't have the moral authority to be demanding apologies. Not only has their own decorum in that very chamber been abysmal at times, such as when they booed President George W. Bush during his 2005 State of the Union address; they do much worse damage every week to this nation and its institutions than Joe Wilson conceivably could have done with his temporary breach of decorum. While Democratic leaders...

Bill Sammon points out what I reported on at length in my “Assassination Chic” chapter of Unhinged and in years of my Unhinged blog archives: Journalists don’t care about nutballs and extremely extreme extremists unless they can be used to embarrass conservatives.

If there's one thing about liberals, it's that they're predictably predictable. In their eyes, it is more than acceptable to mock Sarah Palin and her family, using descriptions that range from rude to crude. When President Bush was in office, he was the focus of daily ridicule from left-wing journalists and bloggers. However, no one better make fun of Barack Obama or the thought police will express "outrage" and brand you a racist. That's exactly what is happening now as a poster of Obama in "Joker" makeup is popping up on walls and city streets. My question to the lefties:...

The LA Weekly ”…only thing missing is the noose.”: A new poster depicting President Obama as a version of Heath Ledger’s Joker character in The Dark Knight has appeared in Los Angeles. It has a bit of everything to appeal to the drunk tank of California conservatism: Obama is in white face, his mouth (like Ledger’s Joker’s) has been grotesquely slit wide open and the word “Socialism” appears below his face. The only thing missing is a noose.

Are you outraged by these AIG bonuses? No, no. For Pete’s sake, you’re an A-list congressional bigshot. Try to get a bit of feeling into “outraged.” The president’s teleprompter puts it in italics, bold, capitalized, and underlined: OUTRAGED!

A defiant Sen. Chris Dodd defended his actions on bonuses for AIG executives Friday as news surfaced that a senior company executive was returning his $6 million bonus. Dodd said he was misled on the issue of bonuses for AIG executives. He claimed he would not have drafted key legislative changes allowing the bonuses to move forward if he knew the purpose of those changes. Meanwhile, a senior AIG executive said through a company spokesman that he will return his $6 million bonus. The executive, Doug Poling, is returning the money "because it's the correct thing to do," said Mark...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Barack Obama shares the "outrage and frustration" of Americans over the millions of dollars in bonuses that taxpayer-funded AIG handed out to its executives.

President Obama directly addressed the "outrageous" AIG executive bonuses during a town hall meeting Wednesday attended by 1,500 people in the economically battered heart of the state's Republican stronghold, saying "I'll take responsibility - I'm the president."

All the world's a stage, wrote Shakespeare, and in the world of Washington, the curtains have opened on the most elaborate farce of the year. Welcome, taxpayers, to the Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage -- where D.C.'s histrionic enablers of taxpayer-funded corporate bailouts compete for Best Performance of Hypocritical Indignation. Over the weekend, cloaked in their finest populist costumes, the Beltway's hair-sprayed and powdered politicians and White House aides took to the airwaves to inveigh against $165 million in employee retention payments made by the government-backed insurance giant. Those bennies were reportedly part of a larger $450 million round of...

NOW, that's cost effi ciency: It took a mere $165 million to dis credit the entire $11.6 trillion edifice of bailouts, capital infusions and guarantees that have accompanied the financial meltdown. The bonuses AIG wants to pay its employees are a pittance against the $170 billion it's received in government bailouts, a trifling .097 percent. But nothing so angers the gods of populism as the word "bonus" (surely some genius is formulating a suitable euphemism even as we speak). President Obama wants to try to block the bonuses, and other administration officials talk of making AIG pay back the government...

This is a tale that should serve as a cautionary one to all that inhabit the Internet. It's all about the instant outrage, the ginned up hatred, the immediate immolation, that one sees so often infesting the left in our fair country. It shows how unhinged many there are. It started on the Huffington Post on February 19, when poster Alex Leo found what he thought was a video of John Gibson of Fox News saying that new Attorney General Eric Holder was like a monkey with a "bright blue scrotum." In reality, though, what Huffposter Leo found was a...

Chris Matthews: "Do you think that The New York Post is calling the president of the United States a chimp?"

VIDEO MSNBC's David Shuster continued the attack on Governor Sarah Palin for not allowing reporters in on meetings she attended at the United Nations. Fellow Newsbuster Ken Shepherd pointed out recently the media never complained over not having full access to Barack Obama's meetings with foreign leaders during his tour through the Middle East and later Europe. However, Shuster's attack included a very edited down tape of Palin and Dr. Henry Kissinger, which attempted to make Palin look like she knew little of what was being discussed. Moreover, Shuster seemed to take delight in pointing out Palin's spokeswoman misspelled Kissinger's...

<p>Perhaps more than any presidential candidate in recent history, Barack Obama’s pious rhetoric has focused on his concern for ‘the little people’ and his disdain for the big money represented by corporate America.</p> <p>I’d like to take a brief look at the words/deeds comparison of this man, and then pose a few crucial questions regarding not only Senator Obama’s honesty, but also his personal and professional affiliation with an organization that bears much of the responsibility for the sub-prime mortgage crisis and subsequent financial meltdown, and his fitness to hold office of any kind.</p>

If nothing else, we now know what it takes to make a Democrat go nuts. One word: "appeasement." Notwithstanding that President Bush named no names in his speech to Israel's Knesset on Thursday, Barack Obama instantly called it a "false political attack." On him, of course. To House Speaker Nancy Pelosi it was "beneath the dignity of the office of the President." "Offensive and outrageous," thundered Hillary Clinton from somewhere in South Dakota, followed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: "reckless and irresponsible." [Barack Obama] When the party's top four Democrats come roaring out of the blocks in unison, something...

Am I the only one that finds Hillary Clinton's supposed outrage over the "pimped out" comment just a tad disingenuous? At this point, Chelsea is a grown woman (27 years old!) and if she's going to play a role in a political campaign, she has to be fair game. Is this really more harmful to her than what her father put her through with the Monica Lewinsky scandal? And why does Hillary seem to get outraged and cry whenever its politically expedient?

WASHINGTON - A House of Representatives committee issued a subpoena Thursday for Jose Rodriguez, a former CIA official who directed that secret interrogation videotapes be destroyed. The House intelligence committee ordered Rodriguez, former head of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, to appear Jan. 16 for a hearing. The Democratic committee chairman, Silvestre Reyes, said Rodriguez "would like to tell his story, but his counsel has advised us that a subpoena would be necessary." The CIA also cracked open its files to congressional investigators Thursday, inviting them to the agency's headquarters in suburban Virginia to begin reviewing documents and records related...

Code Pink recently put up footage of Jes Richardson of San Francisco getting arrested at the Judiciary Committee hearing on the Mukasey nomination for attorney general. The footage shows an outraged Jes Richardson, but his outrage is clearly phony.

The dirty little secret about Sen. Harry Reid's failed character assassination attempt against my brother, Rush Limbaugh, is just how contrived the Senate Democrats' outrage was about the fraudulent allegation that Rush had impugned certain soldiers. I won't rehash the facts in detail, but essentially, Rush was falsely accused of calling troops who had expressed opposition to the Iraq War "phony soldiers." Not only was Rush not criticizing soldiers, but he was defending soldiers who had been criticized by pretend Iraqi War veterans who had lied about their combat service in Iraq to gain credibility when they accused the actual...

In the latest effort to target Rush Limbaugh, the left-leaning group Media Matters has manufactured yet one more false — and by now yet one more tiresome — controversy. This one has to do with Limbaugh’s use of the phrase “phony soldiers.” According to the Media Matters narrative, on his September 26 program Limbaugh accused troops who want to withdraw from Iraq of being “phony soldiers.” Once Media Matters published this charge, key Democrats dutiful echoed it. In a public statement, Senator John Kerry said this: “This disgusting attack from Rush Limbaugh, cheerleader for the Chicken Hawk wing of the...

Bloggers jumped all over a comment made by Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday, in which he supposedly called military personnel who oppose the war in Iraq "phony soldiers." Immediately, voices on the Left rushed to defend the honor of men and women in the military, accusing Limbaugh of insulting their integrity. In fact, the same blogs who had no problem with MoveOn's ad accusing General David Petraeus of potentially traitorous conduct reacted with outrage to Rush's comment. However, unlike the "Betray Us" ad, Rush' critics took the comment out of context. Let's take a look at the transcript from the broadcast...

WASHINGTON -- Recent remarks from WTOP commentator Cal Thomas have sparked controversy in the Muslim-American community. Now, an Islamic advocacy group is responding to Thomas' commentary. In his weekly commentary on WTOP Radio Monday, Cal Thomas discussed the recent thwarted terror attacks in the United Kingdom. "How much longer should we allow people from certain lands, with certain beliefs to come to Britain and America and build their mosques, teach hate, and plot to kill us?" Thomas asked. "Okay, lets have the required disclaimer: Not all Muslims from the Middle East and southeast Asia want to kill us, but those...

Some say Dick Cheney is toast. He's too hot to handle, throw him over the side if he won't drop himself into the waves. Don't look now, but that isn't water surrounding the Bush ship of state. It's gasoline. Have you ever noticed how on a scale of one to 10, every untoward event in the life of the Bush presidency goes straight to a 10? The Abu Ghraib photos? A 10 forever. Dick Cheney catching a hunting buddy with some birdshot? An instant 10. The Bush National Guard story? Total 10. How can it be that each downside event...

The original illustrations, September 30, 2005. "U.N., E.U. and Muslims link in call to curb protests," read the Financial Times headline last week. A "U.N.-brokered statement," the paper reported, was issued "in an effort to curb days of protests, some violent some peaceful, at the publication and republication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. 'The anguish in the Muslim world at the publication of the offensive caricatures is shared by all individuals and communities who recognise the sensitivity of deeply held religious belief,'" the statement said.Oh, the anguish! And why not? You remember--don't you?--the wave of bloody pogroms against...

It seems like only yesterday that every high-minded politician, pundit and professional activist was in high dudgeon about the threat posed to national security by the revelation that Valerie Plame was a spook. For daring to reveal a CIA operative's name — in wartime, no less! — they wanted someone frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs, preferably headed for the gallows. Since then there have been some considerably more serious security breaches. Major media organs have broken news about secret prisons run by the CIA, the interrogation techniques employed therein, and the use of "renditions" to capture suspects,...

I have no doubt that revelations in the New York Times that the NSA has been conducting selective and limited surveillance of terrorist communications crossing into or out of the United States will be immensely valuable to our enemies. I also have no doubt that these and similar actions can be legal, even when conducted without warrants. How could that be? From the sound and fury of the last few days from politicians and pundits, you would think this is a development as scandalous as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's authorization to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr. But the legality...

Boxer’s letter is as follows: On December 16, along with the rest of America, I learned that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge. President Bush underscored his support for this action in his press conference today. On Sunday, December 18, former White House Counsel John Dean and I participated in a public discussion that covered many issues, including this surveillance. Mr. Dean, who was President Nixon’s counsel at the time of Watergate, said that President Bush is “the first President to admit to an impeachable offense.” Today, Mr....

Despite liberal Senators on both sides of the aisle claiming the pretense of "shock and awe" over the NSA "secret spying" actions, Congressional leaders were briefed on it--a long time ago. As far as Democrat and Republican Congressional "leaders", there was nothing secret about the program. Even ultra-liberal news services, including the New York Times and Associated Press, have reported that these leaders knew about the NSA practices of trying to identify and track conversations conducted by terrorists--in the US over a year ago. However, it now seems the only purpose for the Senate is to conduct endless and bogus...

Nearly the entire conservative establishment has determined that Harriet Miers is not sufficiently conservative for the Supreme Court and, thus, unqualified. First, the establishment has issues with her conservative pedigree. With an almost single voice, it has bemoaned the failure of President Bush to select Judge Michael Luttig, who sits on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative in the nation. But what not a single conservative commentator has yet addressed is whether such an appointment would have the necessary votes to survive an up-or-down vote in the Senate. A candidate such as Mr. Luttig is the...

CNN PRODUCERS TOLD ON-AIR GUESTS:Ê GET ANGRY Mon Sep 12 2005 12:42:11 ET After weeks of over-the-top Katrina coverage from the mainstream media, LA TIMES'S oped guru Michael Kinsley divulges that CNN has been coaching guests to artificially enhance their on-air emotions! The TV news networks, which only a few months ago were piously suppressing emotional fireworks by their pundits, are now piously encouraging their news anchors to break out of the emotional straitjackets and express outrage. A Los Angeles Times colleague of mine, appearing on CNN last week to talk about Katrina, was told by a producer to "get...

Comments about Hurricane Katrina victims by the mother of President George Bush have fuelled the ire of some Americans, who see the Bush family as out-of-touch patricians. The refugees in Houston, Texas, were "underprivileged anyway" and life in the Astrodome sports arena is "working very well for them", former first lady Barbara Bush said in a radio interview. "Almost everyone I've talked to says: 'We're going to move to Houston,' " Mrs Bush said late on Monday after visiting evacuees at the Astrodome with her husband, former president George Bush. "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they...

The Anti-Defamation League ostensibly exists to oppose anti-Semitism. And it does – on occasion – when it isn’t too busy bashing evangelicals, fighting Christianity and creating double standards.Despite its reputation, the ADL is not a Jewish organization. There’s nothing distinctly Jewish (i.e., grounded in Jewish law) about its operations. It’s really just another left-wing group, with a leftist agenda. Politically, it is virtually indistinguishable from the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, or Americans United for the (so-called) Separation of Church and State.As a conservative Jewish activist told me recently of the ADL’s National Director and principal...

Need more proof that the wolves nipping at Karl Rove's heels are ba sically out- for-blood Democrats? Joseph Wilson, the widely discredited, Bush-bashing former CIA consultant whose wife was "outed" as an agency employee, yesterday demanded that Rove's security clearance immediately be lifted. And he did so standing shoulder-to-shoulder with New York's senior senator, Chuck Schumer — head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, whose chief responsibility is to elect more Democrats to the Senate. And the DSCC's Web site is flogging an online petition demanding that the White House "stop the Karl Rove coverup" — and, by the way,...

Democrat partisanship disguised as moral outrage Yes, I know, “Democrat partisanship” is redundant. Nonetheless, the Democrats are in high dungeon since investigators have released an email showing that Karl Rove possibly, might have, allegedly done something that, if the Democrats keep saying so, if they can stretch the law far enough, might, just might be a violation of the law. The rumor is that in 2003 Rove allegedly “leaked” the name of a “CIA Operative” to some reporters, thereby maybe putting said “Operative”, a “warrior on the front lines of the War on Terror” in danger. Consequently, Karl Rove must...

2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Friday she was "outraged" that President Bush hasn't spent more money to beef up security on New York City's mass transit system in the wake of Thursday's train bombings in London. "I'm absolutely outraged by the failure of the administration to release the [rail security] funding that Congress approved last year," the top Democrat complained. "We are woefully behind where London and other subway systems are because London does have the video surveillance," she fumed. "I just don't understand what the holdup is." Even before the smoke cleared in London, Clinton was on the...

LOS ANGELES, May 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A hate message scrawled on the inside cover of a Qur’an copy has rekindled fears of increasing discrimination against American Muslims in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. “I was taken back to 9/11, my fear that somebody is going to hurt me,” Azza Basarudin, a graduate student, told a news conference at the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles, reported Los Angeles Times on Thursday, May 19. She had discovered a “Death to all Muslims” message on the inside cover of a Qur’an copy she ordered from...

If one is to judge by the pronouncements of certain European commentators or Europhile American ones, the path to trans-Atlantic reconciliation passes through the repudiation — and preferably dismissal — of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Apart from the president himself, Mr. Rumsfeld is unquestionably the member of the current American administration who is most vilified in the mainstream press in the would-be Franco-German "heart" of Europe. What has earned him this distinction? Well, in this connection, too, judging by the frequency with which the matter is mentioned, there is not any doubt. It is not his resolute advocacy of the...

First, go to the outrageous opinion piece, published in our local rag, yesterday at http://www.jonesborosun.com/archivededitorials.asp?ID=871 Following is my response to this desperate-to-be-relevant jerk: Gaping Irony Rarely have I seen such a well-reasoned, insightful opinion column in "The Daily Fishwrap" as our esteemed editor's "Behind the news" of January 11. In "He crossed gaping line", our editor excoriates TV/radio host, and opinion columnist, Armstrong Williams, for having accepted a sizeable stipend from the Department of Education for promoting the Bush Administration's -- and Teddy Kennedy's -- No Child Left Behind legislation. Not mentioned in the piece was that nothing illegal was...

If you repeat a rumor enough times, people assume it's true. That's what's happening now, with allegations of voter intimidation surrounding the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's investigation into the Orlando mayoral election. The March election, you'll recall, was marred by allegations that Ezzie Thomas -- a consultant whom Buddy Dyer paid $10,000 -- manipulated the absentee ballots of old, black voters. Dyer's challenger, Ken Mulvaney, challenged the election results, saying that Thomas' alleged chicanery boosted Dyer to victory.The FDLE opened an investigation to see if Thomas illegally pressured absentee voters to vote for Dyer, and if he violated a...

US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war Inquiry into Tehran's role in starting conflictTop Pentagon ally Chalabi accused Julian Borger in WashingtonTuesday May 25, 2004The Guardian An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday. Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq. According to a US...

From a policy perspective, the Iraqi prisoner abuse situation can be summed up in a few sentences. The mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison was unquestionably counter to United States policy, and thus forbidden. Those engaging in it did so in violation of clearly established standards of conduct. Their actions have been condemned by officials at the highest levels of government. They should be held accountable, and they will be. Case closed. Admittedly, the perverse nature of the particular incidents is highly disturbing. That certain men and women who wear the uniform of the United States military...

Relatives of the Sept. 11 victims ripped into Condoleezza Rice yesterday after she insisted the Bush administration had no clue the U.S. would be attacked. "Shame," Terry McGovern, a New Yorker whose mother was killed, yelled at the national security adviser during Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission. Other relatives ridiculed Rice's assertion that she had no idea that Osama Bin Laden's men would hijack planes and crash them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. "How could she not know that?" asked Kristen Breitweiser, who lost her husband in the attacks. She noted that several similar threats were made,...

There are a lot of stories around right now, about how surviving relatives of 9/11 victims are complaining about Bush's first round of campaign ads, featuring 9/11-related footage. As it turns out, this is a fun game for warbloggers. First you find one of these stories. Then you google each interviewee, and almost invariably it turns out to be a serious activist or political foot-soldier. Of course, there's no reason why the relatives of 9/11 victims should refrain from political activism. They have opinions, and as they stand metaphorically on the front line of our war, they deserve a hearing....

Your partisan behavior at the 9-11 Commission is a grave disgrace to all citizens of the United States. Rather than turn this into a Soviet style show trial, YOUR group, of all people, should be demanding clear honest answers from ALL parties. You are not doing that. Instead, out of PURE partisan political bigotry, you are engaging in a transparent smear attack on President Bush. Your posturing as a "non-partisan" group fools NO ONE. Your clapping and carrying on during the hearings shows clearly that you are MORE intrested in a partisan witch hunt then real answers. I wll be...

Who are the most important judges of the investigation of what went wrong before September 11? The media elite have provided one consistent answer on who is in the political driver's seat: the relatives of the victims. But not all of them. In recent weeks, the networks have interviewed a selected set of 9-11 widows and other relatives, and most have focused the lion's share of their outrage at the Bush administration. Viewers at home might assume that a poll of 9-11 families would find they almost uniformly blame Bush more than the terrorists and want him to lose in...

Boycott MSNBC and Chris Matthews!!! I was flipping around during the 9/11 coverage, and Chris Matthews on MSNBC had on 4 9/11 widows who were so critical of Bush that I had to scream. No other 9/11 widows with opposing views. Matthews did not ask any tough questions. My jaw dropped when I saw one of the carefully-chosen 9/11 widows say this afternoon that "we know" that John Ashcroft and Willie Brown were warned not to fly on 9/11. My jaw hit the floor when Matthews just sat there and didn't challenge any of this. Here is what NRO wrote...

WASHINGTON, April 8 (Reuters) - Some relatives of Sept. 11 victims responded in anger on Thursday to what they described as the White House's failure to accept responsibility for the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Family members were among those in the crowded hearing room to listen to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice tell the 9-11 commission that bureaucratic structure was to blame for the administration's inability to counter the attacks. "No one wants to take any responsibility. Three thousand people died, and all they want to talk about is structural problems," Bob McIlvaine of Oreland, Pennsylvania, whose...