Free Republic

Giant mirrors positioned to reflect sunlight back into space may be needed to meet climate targets, according to a report from the United Nations. Solar radiation modification (SRM), also known as solar geoengineering, is among the proposals from the UN Environment Programme to use radical technology to avoid a climate emergency. “SRM is the only known approach that could be used to cool the Earth within a few years,” the report, compiled by an expert panel of climate scientists, stated. “Climate model simulations consistently show that SRM could offset some of the effects of increasing greenhouse gases on global and...

Yesterday, Mitt Romney gave an interview on Good Morning America in which he defended his tax plan from conjecture that it would force him to raise taxes on middle-income Americans. In responding to interviewer George Stephanopoulos, Romney said, "No one can say my plan is going to raise taxes on middle-income people, because principle number one is (to) keep the burden down on middle-income taxpayers... No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less." The left-wing media sniffed out a storyline: by dropping the last two words from that statement, it looks like Mitt Romney thinks that middle-class Americans make...

Last week, a "right-wing activist" (according to Michael Eric Dyson, guest-hosting for Ed Schultz on MSNBC) interrupted President Barack Obama as he explained his executive order that bars deportation for at least 800,000 illegal aliens who came to America -- "brought to this country by their parents" -- before the age of 16. As Obama stood in the White House Rose Garden and outlined the plan, Neil Munro, a reporter with a conservative website, shouted, "Why do you favor foreigners over American workers?" Based on his colleagues' reaction, one would have thought he'd thrown a shoe at the President. Reporters...

Unbiased my ass: Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton touted the Post’s Romney-haircut “scoop” as a “deeply reported story” that “holds up to scrutiny.” But the family of the haircut victims told ABC it was “factually inaccurate” and it shouldn’t be used as a political football. Pexton said nonsense: the Post has received “no specific complaint of inaccuracy.” Perhaps more shocking is that the Post shamelessly admits they timed this story precisely to echo on the day after President Obama’s big pro-gay announcement. They actually waited a day longer than planned to let Obama have the front page to himself...

The Associated Press, normally a vigorous defender of sunshine laws, appears to have lobbied behind the scenes to quash the release of e-mails that circulated among its reporters and press aides for New York Gov. David Paterson under New York's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). I reported yesterday that Hearst Corporation, which owns the Albany Times-Union, was threatening to object to a FOIL request I filed earlier this year seeking e-mails among Paterson's former communications director Peter Kauffmann, his former press secretary Marissa Shorenstein, and representatives of a variety of news organizations. The Hearst Corporation's justification for that stance was...

Ever since President Obama took office with his merry band of Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress, the media began reporting high unemployment in the most positive light they could find. NewsBusters exposed one such trick by Newsweek on December 10 that found a silver lining for unemployed dads to reconnect with their children. ABC News posted a column on their website Thursday that advanced the cause even further: now people who still have jobs are hoping to get laid off. Such was the case made by one Michelle Goodman in a piece cutely titled "All I Want For Christmas...

Washington gay and lesbian newspaper The Washington Blade has ceased publication and is closing Monday, along with its parent company, Atlanta-based Window/Unite Media LLC. Window/Unite published five gay and lesbian publications, including Southern Voice, South Florida Blade, The 411 Magazine and David Atlanta. All will stop publishing, and three of the company's offices will close. The news, first reported by Washington City Paper’s sister paper Creative Loafing Atlanta, was confirmed by a Washington Blade employee. The publication has also stated the news on its Twitter feed: “Washington Blade, like all Window Media publications, is closing today. Thank you for your...

Sarah Palin's new book "Going Rogue" is set for release on Nov. 17 and with that will likely come a media blitz of epic proportions. However, based on the cover of the Nov. 23 issue of Newsweek, someone felt a response was warranted. The wizards of smart at Newsweek took an image from a shoot of Palin that originally appeared in Runner's World magazine for the cover and splashed the headlines, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?" and "She's Bad News for the GOP - and For Everybody Else, Too." ...more (with bare-legged Palin cover)...

American taxpayers are planning to storm more than 100 mainstream media offices and stations across the nation next week in protest of a media blackout of the growing movement against Obama administration policies. Following sparse coverage of a massive 9/12 march on Washington, talk show host Rush Limbaugh urged citizens to bring their protests to the front doors of major media outlets. "The media [are] no longer reporters. They are repeaters," Limbaugh said on his Sept. 14 show. "There have been hundreds and thousands of protests by conservative groups that haven't been covered, and tiny turnouts by the Left that...

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele called New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman a “nut job” on Thursday for suggesting that current fury in among the conservative grassroots is creating the “same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the [former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin assassination.” After being read Friedman’s comments during an interview on CNN’s “American Morning,” Steele lashed out at the Times’ columnist. “Where do these nut jobs come from?” Steele said. “I mean, come on, stop this.” Asked by host John Roberts if Steele was calling Friedman specifically a “nut job,”...

Maura Flynn points out that Canada's National Post covered a story that almost the entire US media establishment looks to have missed: in his remarks last week at the UN Security Council, French President Nicolas Sarkozy verged on the edge of mocking President Obama over his idealistic rhetoric on nuclear disarmament. Sarkozy did not mince words, saying: The people of the entire world are listening to what we're saying, to our promises, our commitments and our speeches, but we live in a real world, not a virtual world. We say: reductions must be made. And President Obama has even said,...

It’s not just conservatives who accuse the media of showing a liberal bias. A new survey from the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute shows that 89.3 percent of Americans believe the national media played a sizable role in helping to elect President Obama. And 69.9 percent of respondents view the national news media as intent on promoting the Obama presidency, while 26.5 percent disagreed, and 3.6 percent were unsure. More than half of those surveyed, 56.4 percent, said the news media are promoting Obama’s healthcare reform without objective criticism. Another 39.3 percent disagreed, and 4.3 percent were unsure. A majority,...

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...

JERUSALEM – The Associated Press is delivering to its subscribing 1,500 American newspapers content, it has emerged, penned by groups with financing from philanthropist George Soros and another far-leftist billionaire who not only campaigned for President Obama but also topped donor lists to groups like ACORN and MoveOn.org. The AP announced last month it will allow its subscribers to publish free of charge work by four nonprofit groups, the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica. Controversial Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a friend of President Obama who...

...watch this absurd attack "interview" of Peter Schiff.

The template from the SRM (State Run Media) now appears to be "it's all orchestrated." That is what they said about the Tea Party/Tax Day protests, and what they are now saying about the town hall protests. When conservatives have grass-roots level protests it's all "orchestrated." It's all orchestrated. Didn't you know that? Oh, by the way... if you don't support Obama's policies then you are a racist. Why? Because the SRM says that, too. And we all know that's good enough.

For MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the ratings trend is not his friend. It was to be expected that his ratings would fall from the election boosted heights in late 2008, but his latest adults 25-54 demo (targeted by cable news advertisers) averages for July, 2009 are below those of July, 2008 (when only the last few moments of drama remained to be squeezed out of the Democratic nomination contest). Any hopes that the election year surge would be boosting his long term audience seem to be fading.

For a Monday morning snort-sntart, check out the video via Newsbusters of African journalist Nkepile Mabuse fact-checking anchor Don Lemon over the weekend. Aptly named. Lemon certainly looked like he had swallowed something sour after Mabuse rejected his obsequious suggestion that President Obama’s warm welcome was somehow “unprecedented.” Golden moment: Mabuse: “It’s not unprecedented. When President Bush was here, you will remember, in February, there were people who were drumming, there were dances, and President Bush joined some of them.”

[Evan Thomas:] "...he [Obama] has a very different job from Reagan was all about America and you [Chris Matthews] talked about it. Obama is 'we are above all that now.' We're not just parochial. We stand for something. I mean in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above the world, he's sort of God."

The Main Stream Media is no longer; dead as a leech out of water on a 100 degree day… Once a source of daily stories and information for millions of citizens, this dinosaur has joined the ranks of respected and feared beasts that once roamed the earth searching for prey. Taking the place of the print media formerly knows as the MSM, is the State Run Media, or SRM abbreviated. Yes some faces look familiar. Yes some voices sound familiar. But don’t let any of that fool you, as the boss of this industry now resides in Washington DC and...