Immigration and its consequences

There are three major stories playing out in the new media today that the MSM/DNC will not discuss. All three are related, and it is up to the new media to connect the dots.

1. Rush Limbaugh has taken a stand against the Bush administration's open borders immigration policies. Hat tip to Michelle Malkin. John Fund believes that Rush has the clout to make a difference. By repeating the story here, I hope I am doing my part to spread the word.

2. Michelle Malkin also has posted more shocking details from the growing story of the murder of the Egyptian Christian family in New Jersey. The gruesome details are eerily similar to the murders so often shown on Al Jazeera.

3. These murders have led to the discovery of an Islamic website that tracks down and harrasses American Christians who are vocal about their beliefs or who argue with Muslims. This type of domestic terror can be successful only if immigration continues unchecked. We may succeed in liberating Iraq only to bring the same kind of terror to our own shores.

Our very survival as a civilization may depend on stopping the flow of immigration. The real danger comes not from hijackers with boxcutters, but from those who come here seemingly in peace, only to propagate and then eat away at the foundations of our culture. With time, the New Jersey murders may become as commonplace as roadside bombs in Tikrit.

When even Hillary realizes that this issue is a winner politically, why can't the rest of us realize that this issue means the difference between our survival as a people and the balkanization of our civilization?

With each new wave of immigration, our society changes. We may not like what we change into. By then it will be too late.
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Tuesday update

The New York Sun contains a story today about a Brooklyn mosque linked to terrorist fundraising and Wahhabist literature:

"In a book published by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and collected from the Al-Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn, New York, Saudi Arabia's official religious leader, the late Bin Baz, authorizes Muslims to kill converts to Islam who violate sexual mores on adultery and homosexuality," the report said.

According to the report's translation, Al-Farooq worshipers are told: "If a person said: I believe in Allah alone and confirm the truth of everything from Muhammed, except in his forbidding fornication, he becomes a disbeliever. For that, it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money."

This is not the first time Al-Farooq has been cited in conjunction with terrorism and terrorist ideology. Friday marked the beginning of the trial in Brooklyn federal court of a Yemeni sheik, Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad, who stands accused of conspiring to raise millions of dollars for Hamas and Al Qaeda. Some of the fund-raising activity was allegedly undertaken at the Al-Farooq Mosque.

A senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution of the ringleader of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Omar Abdel Rahman, spoke yesterday of Al-Farooq's other alleged connections to terrorism.

The mosque, Mr. McCarthy said, was a regular stop for the blind sheik on his fund-raising tours in the late 1980s, and in 1989, the former prosecutor said, several conspirators in the Landmark Bomb Plot - which aimed to blow up the United Nations and New York City's tunnels - met at Al-Farooq before heading out to Long Island to conduct jihadist training activities.

This latest revelation about Al-Farooq, Mr. McCarthy said, was "just another drop in the barrel."

The mosque "worshippers" might not hijack an airplane, but they provide support, money and cover for those who do.

Jihad Watch appears to be an excellent website that is tracking the New Jersey murder story. With attention from blogs like Powerline, Jihad Watch can help force stories like this into the spotlight.

MSM/DNC - a singular noun

In case you haven't noticed the trend, the MSM/DNC will henceforth be referred to on this page as a singular noun.

The new media, the blogosphere, talk radio, etc. have done a tremendous job in recent years of exposing left wing bias in the MSM. This work has been very important, but now we must move to the next level. We give the appearance of reinventing the wheel every time we present some example of left wing bias in the MSM. We have proven our case. For those we haven't reached yet, we require a different approach. We must take the next step. We must refer to and treat the MSM/DNC as one organization. We must refer to and treat the MSM as part of a political organization.

For a long time, the MSM has acted in lockstep with the DNC - with one exception. The MSM occasionally provides objective coverage of the news in order to appear fair and balanced. The MSM coverage of yesterday's Iraqi elections is a good example, with the MSM temporarily providing favorable coverage of a story that benefits both America and President Bush. The DNC arm of the organization would never do that. The DNC arm of the DNC/MSM is consistently anti-American and anti-Bush, no matter what the circumstances. If the DNC existed by itself without the MSM arm to lend respectibility, DNC propoganda would appear to be just that - propoganda.
But with the MSM arm pretending to be objective on occasion, DNC propoganda has a respectable front. The MSM arm is the credible delivery mechanism for the DNC.

How we treat the MSM arm is still to be determined. We must still expose left wing bias. We must still expose MSM lies. But we must change the way we talk about the MSM arm. We must recognize the DNC and MSM as two arms of the same beast. Only by changing the language and usage can we loosen the DNC/MSM grip on television, movies, newsprint and education.

The usage difference is subtle, but important. Referring to the DNC/MSM this way will act as a shortcut to the truth in many instances. [It doesn't matter whether one places "MSM" or "DNC" first in the name.] From now on, refer to MSM/DNC as one organization.

MSM/DNC is now a singular noun.
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Visit counter added July 15, 2008

Iraqi election - notes from around the blogosphere

I know I have warned about the oncoming MSM/DNC spin, but I feel like celebrating. I have linked below to various bloggers as they celebrate what we hope will be the birth of freedom in Iraq. Spreading the news and showing our numbers in the new media is the best way to head off the coming storm:

Sherri has posted numerous photos from Iraq.

RightWingSparkle has a number of short posts.

The Commissar adds some perspective.

More photos from Powerline.

The Nervous Harpist places some perspective on network television and the election.

Blonde Sagacity includes her thoughts and links.

Scylla and Charybdis writes on one of the more interesting footnotes to the election story. Apparently, the L.A. Times originally prepared a "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline and story suggesting that the elections were a failure. The Times had to scrub the story when their fondest wishes did not come true. The original version is available at S & C. We have always been at war with Eastasia! [For those of you that get all of your knowledge from the MSM, that is an Orwell reference].

Voting fraud in Illinois

Is there no end to the voting fraud?

This post is a little late, but it is essential to document these scandals as much as possible.

Check here and here for the East St. Louis scandal.

And don't forget about Wisconsin, Ohio, PA, Washington State, etc.

With each new state to be included in the DNC vote fraud scandal, I try to list previous posts that chronicle other states. It is important to follow each new story, but only if we provide context related to the entire DNC vote fraud picture.

These stories raise two questions:

1) On which subject has the MSM spent more time - voting fraud in almost every blue state - or Armstrong Williams?

2) Which election saw less violence, irregulary, fraud, etc. the Iraqi elections or the U.S. elections in the blue states?

The constitutional crisis is upon us.

Kerry makes one true statement.

I am really tired of and bored with John Kerry. Big Trunk at Powerline deserves credit for having the patience and endurance to listen to Kerry this morning on Meet the Press. But thanks to Trunk, we now are aware of one true statement that Kerry has made:

But, you know, there's a new communication structure in America.

Ten words of truth buried in an interview full of slander, spin, excuses and once-and-future-broken promises to sign form 180. Despite the spin surrounding that statement, it is telling when even someone as mainstream as John Kerry is forced to admit the relevance of the New Media.

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update
Wizbang posts a blurb about Senator Thune acquainting Senators with the blogosphere.

I predict that these kind of "firsts" will no longer be newsworthy in a year. The new media will soon no longer be "new." These references are barely newsworthy now.

Iraqi elections - waiting for the MSM spin

It would appear that the Iraqi elections have been a success. Click on the Powerline links for the details.

It would also appear that the MSM is reporting the Iraqi elections as a success. The coverage on ABC and NBC this morning was generally favorable.

Before we celebrate and breathe a sigh of relief, we should remember the way that the MSM operates. The negative spin won't start right away. The MSM/DNC is biding their time. How long after the initial victory in Iraq did the MSM wait before their campaign of sniping began? How long was it before they started chipping away at the victory in order to try to make Iraq into an albatross for George Bush? This happened both after the April 2003 victory and the March 1991 victory.

How long after 9-11 did the MSM/DNC begin to abandon the national unity theme and start using the attacks as a way of sniping at Bush?

The answer in each case is a little different, but they differ only in degree.
- MSM/DNC waits for more bombing and American casualties.
- It awaits infighting among the winning candidates.
- It awaits anti-American comments and policies from the winning candidates.
- It awaits stories of irregularities or problems with the voting.
The news stories are already written. MSM/DNC needs only a few incidents, real or imagined, to take those stories to press.

Pay close attention to today's news cycle. Never again will the MSM provide such favorable stories (flawed though they are) about today's elections.

The story of the "failed Iraqi elections" will become accepted history unless we do our job over the coming months.
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update - midday Sunday.
Click here for Wizbang's post and a Wizbang link to one leftist who says what the rest of the left/MSM/DNC wishes they could say today.

Michelle Malkin has posted excellent compilations of stories documenting the success of the elections and the leftist response - or lack thereof. Mark my words - the left/MSM/DNC is biding its time.

A loose Dutch translation related to the downed plane.

Michelle Malkin has a detailed post with some alarming background on the downed plane near San Antonio.

She asks for a Dutch translation of one article. Here is a loose translation from Babel Fish:

Moslem extremists savages flying lesson on Rotterdam Airport by Jolande Westdorp

ROTTERDAM -

a fly school on Rotterdam Airport has proven to be since April from several extremist Moslem countries in the Middle East harassed with applications for pilotentrainingen. The requests done by e-mail to be originating from pakistan, Algeria, Libya and the United $arab Emirateses: states where Islamic terreurorganisaties recruit such as those of Osama bin drawers strijders, or sympathisanten enjoy large-scale financial support.

The original article is here.

Check Michelle Malkin for the trail from the plane to an American flight school to Manila to a plot to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners.
---------------------------------------------

Here is another translation from Dictionary.com

Moslem extremist savages flying lesson opRotterdam Airportdoor
Jolande Westdorp
ROTTERDAM - a fly school on Rotterdam Airport has proven to be since April from several extremist Moslem countries in the Middle East harassed with applications for pilotentrainingen. The requests done by e-mail to be originating from pakistan, Algeria, Libya and the United $arab Emirateses: states where Islamic terreurorganisaties recruit such as those of Osama bin drawers strijders, or sympathisanten enjoy large-scale financial support.

Election fraud 2004 - Washington State

The Washington State story has significance not only in the overall DNC/MSM election fraud 2004 picture, but also because the story has now been forced into the mainstream.


hat tip to Superman's Cape and Powerline.

Bloggers have been all over this story for months. The appearance of this headline is further testimony to the power of the blogosphere and the new media. We can force any issue into the mainstream if we persist long enough. This story is about more than the facts of one election. This story is about agendas and control. The MSM can no longer set the agenda by defining the issues. Now, the new media can define the issues. We must continue to follow through, but this headline indicates a great victory by itself.

[Click here for a discussion of election fraud in Wisconsin and related issues.]

Election fraud 2004 update - Wisconsin.

hat tip to Brainpost

Brainpost reports that there were over 8,000 more votes counted than actually cast in Milwaukee on November 2d. The story is much worse than I am making it sound. Click here for Brainpost's history of Milwaukee vote fraud since November 2000.

Meanwhile, Captain Ed reports on prosecution of those who conspired to slash tires on buses in a conspiracy to prevent Republicans from voting in Wisconsin on election day. The Kerry campaign angle is interesting.

What did you want to tell us about Ohio, Senator Boxer?

Click here for some of my previous posts on Democratic voter fraud in 2004.

Two 9-11 related films

Blonde Sagacity recommends two 9-11 related films, The Path to Paradise and the Hamburg Cell. She describes both movies as chilling and eerie:

Both movies (based on the facts that are available) completely debunk the liberal mantra that "Poverty breeds terrorism"... Rich kids... The whole lot of the highjackers.

The Hamburg Cell is playing on HBO currently. The Path to Paradise is available on Amazon.com or on e-bay. I haven't seen either one, but I will take her word when she recommends these films.

The Path to Paradise is more rare because it depicts the first WTC bombing in 1993. The film cannot help but make Bill Clinton look bad, as it serves to remind us that a major attack was predictible as far back as 1993. The MSM would like to relegate this one to the memory hole.

Classics of Conservatism - part III

This month's book recommendation is Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt. [My previous recommendations are found here and here.]


originally published in 1946

Americans, conservatives and bloggers need a deeper understanding of freedom and capitalism than what we can obtain through discussion of the latest polls or listening to talk radio. The classic books can bring us that understanding.

I read this book early in my college days. As an economics major, I knew that I was in for an onslaught of leftism for which I needed to prepare. I approached both sides of economics arguments with an open mind, but I knew that I would need a deeper understanding of the free market approach than the leftist professors and textbooks would allow or provide.

Economics in One Lesson is a relatively basic introduction to economics and leftist economic fallacy. This small book made its mark on the world long before Ronald Reagan popularized free market economics. The book reveals two economic fallacies:

(1) the tendency of government to focus its policy only on short term goals and (2) the tendency of government to focus economic policy only on the group immediately affected, instead of those who suffer the hidden effects.

Hazlitt uses numerous practical, easy-to-follow examples to demonstrate these fallacies.

Economics in One Lesson has enjoyed numerous reprints and a 50 year anniversary edition. By remembering the lessons of this book, we can dissect more easily the latest speeches from leftist politicians or the local high school teacher.


Henry Hazlitt 1894-1993

Henry Hazlitt was as well known as any free market economist could have been in the 1930's, 1940's, 1950's and 1960's.

MSM lies of 2005

The MSM war on truth and America never ends. I have decided to begin cataloging MSM lies as they appear during the year. I will add each one to this post so that we will have them in one place for future reference. This post should make interesting reading by December.

1) January 14, 2005. Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist Matt Davies falsely writes that Conservative pundits are "lining up" to defend Armstrong Williams and the administration. Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

2) January 17, 2005. Seymour Hersh uses numerous falsehoods to back up his claim that the U.S. is preparing to invade Iran. This one is a little unique in that I wish it were true. I hesitated to include this one also because Seymour Hersh may not qualify as "mainstream". The MSM does not hesitate to use him when it suits their purpose. Here are some experts from the DOD press release:

The post-election meeting he describes between the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not happen.

The only civilians in the chain-of-command are the President and the Secretary of Defense, despite Mr. Hersh’s confident assertion that the chain of command now includes two Department policy officials. His assertion is outrageous, and constitutionally specious.

Arrangements Mr. Hersh alleges between Under Secretary Douglas Feith and Israel, government or non-government, do not exist. Here, Mr. Hersh is building on links created by the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists. This reflects poorly on Mr. Hersh and the New Yorker.

Mr. Hersh cannot even keep track of his own wanderings. At one point in his article, he makes the outlandish assertion that the military operations he describes are so secret that the operations are being kept secret even from U.S. military Combatant Commanders. Mr. Hersh later states, though, that the locus of this super-secret activity is at the U.S. Central Command headquarters, evidently without the knowledge of the commander if Mr. Hersh is to be believed.

3) January 12, 2005. The allegedly anti-war soldier that committed suicide-by-police. The MSM portrayed a gunman in California as desperate to avoid a return to combat, while failing to mention that he had never seen combat, was not headed for combat and had a history of violence before ever entering the military under murky circumstances:

There's just one thing wrong with the sympathetic spin about the anti-war Marine. It's all dead wrong.

This much is true about Raya: The 19-year-old man did in fact serve with the Marines' 1st Intelligence Battalion's motor transport unit as a driver in Iraq.

But contrary to the impression left by initial media reports, Raya had never seen combat. And he was not headed back to Iraq. He had been transferred to a new unit scheduled for deployment to Okinawa. "During our investigation, we found he wasn't due to go back to Iraq, never faced combat situations and never even fired his gun," Stanislaus County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Woodman said.

Raya was high on cocaine at the time of the ambush, according to police reports. He was reportedly affiliated with the prison gang Nuestra Familia. Investigators found photos of Raya wearing gang colors and a shopping list in his bedroom safe that included body armor, assault rifles, and ammunition.

The drug use, the gang ties, etc. - all went unreported in the MSM in the MSM/DNC attempt to undermine the war effort.

4. January 26, 2005. Washington Post uses the term "centrist". The Washington Post describes several Senators that voted against Rice's confirmation as "centrist", including Tom Harkin, Mark Dayton and Carl Levin. Who wouldn't the Washington Post consider "centrist" [aside from Republicans, that is]? Who would the Washington Post refer to as "leftist"?

5. Late January/ Early February 2005 - Easongate. CNN executive Eason Jordan falsely claims that American soldiers are targeting journalists in Iraq. MSM/DNC refuses to cover the story until Jordan is forced to resign by the resulting blogosphere storm.

6. January 30, 2005 - L.A. Times prepares slanted story and headline in advance of the election. The headline had to be scrubbed from later editions due to the success of the elections, but the original version was rescued from the memory hole by S & C.

I include this item not because a headline was "slanted" [that happens every day], but because the slanted headline was prepared in advance of the actual events, thus making the headline a lie. Also, the L.A. Times' subsequent attempt to make the headline disappear down the memory hole consitutes another lie.

7. January 31, 2005 [This lie actually occured in 2004, but the story didn't break until January, 2005] - Bill Moyers misrepresents old testimony of James Watt. See also here and here.

8. February 10, 2005 - BBC reports a bogus story of a man who was jailed by the Israeli Army for refusing to shoot children. The only problem is, the story is false. BBC later retracted the story, but refused to back off claims that Israeli policy is to shoot children. Hat tip to LGF.

9. Ongoing lie dating back to 2003 and continuing probably throughout 2005 - "There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Without getting into the arguments over the justification for the war, this myth is simply false. American and coalition forces found enough WMD's to kill more people than the number that died on 9-11. The real question is, what happened to the WMD's that we didn't find and that were taken away while we were debating in the UN in 2002 and early 2003.

update - The New York Times admits (on 3/13/05) the existence of WMD's in Iraq at the time of the U.S. led invasion, but only for the purpose of attacking Bush over something else. Once NYT has finished attacking Bush, the WMD's disappear down the memory hole.

update - What has been found in Iraq.

10. February, 2005. PBS documentary falsely claims that Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) had something to do with the investigation that discredited Alfred Kinsey and the Rockefeller Foundation.

11. February, 2005. NYT columnist Maureen Dowd falsely claims to have been denied a White House press pass while Jeff Gannon received such a pass. Dowd failed to tell her readers that she was talking about two different types of passes. Dowd was denied a permanent pass while Gannon received a daily pass (the type that anyone can get).

12. February 25, 2005. Washington Post cartoonist Ted Rall falsely attributes comments on LGF to LGF itself.

13. March 6, 2005. AP uses a video of an unrelated car to bolster the claims of the Italian communist Sgrena regarding the shooting by American troops.

14. March 7, 2005. CNN falsely translated the words of Italian communist shooting "victim" (Sgrena) so as to misrepresent the speed that Sgrena's car was traveling when it approached the U.S. military checkpoint. CNN then removed the mistranslation from the story without acknowledging the "error" after Michelle Malkin noted the false translation.

15. March 13, 2005. The Philadelphia Inquirer, as if on cue from Ted Rall (see lie #12), has falsely attributed quotes from the comments at LGF to LGF itself.

16. March 19, 2005. The Minneapolis Star Tribune falsely claims that Little Green Footballs tried to deny any credit to Powerline for Powerline's role in exposing Rathergate.

17. Late March, 2005. Person(s) unknown created and circulated a fake memo purporting to show that the Republican Senate leadership would like to capitalize on Terri Schiavo's murder for political purposes in the next election. The MSM/DNC immediately condemned the Republicans but fell silent once the story started to implode. Update. Although a Republican lawyer now has stepped forward and taken credit for the memo, The Washington Post's original story attributing the memo to Republican "leaders" remains a lie.

18. March 28, 2005. CBS falsely reports that Terri Schiavo died and included in the story the claim that her husband was at her side at the time of death. While it was a mistake, rather than a lie, to print the obituary before Terri's murder is complete, the lie occurs because CBS includes a reference to Michael remaining at her bedside. CBS has no idea whether that will happen or not. Michael's faithfulness to his wife (and fitness to decide whether she lives or dies)continues to be at issue in the ongoing proceedings. CBS has obviously made up its mind and doesn't mind fudging an obituary to see that it happens. Hat tip to Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck.

19. March 31, 2005. The New York Times acts in concert with Columbia University to cover up abuse by Arab professors of pro-Israel students.

20. April 1, 2005. The AP lied in stating that Sandy Berger destroyed only "copies" of crucial intelligence documents and that the originals remain in the government's possession. In fact, each of the three copies that Berger destroyed contained unique notes that now are gone forever. "Obviously he reviewed the notes on the five documents and destroyed the three that contained information damaging to the reputation of the Clinton administration."

21. April 11, 2005. AP published a story this morning that described Senate confirmation hearings that have not yet taken place. All such references then disappeared from the online version once AP was outed by Drudge and Lucianne. Maybe this story will earn AP another Pulitzer.

22. April 12, 2005. L.A. Times columnist invents a story about the Bush administration dispatching William Bennett to the Vatican to drum up support for the Iraqi invasion two years ago. In fact, no such thing occurred and William Bennett made no such trip. Click here, here and here.

23. Mid - April, 2005. A Boston Globe writer invents a story about a seal hunt in Canada (including graphic detail) and passes it off as actual news. Click here, here and here.

24. April 29, 2005. MSM/DNC refers to Bush' proposal for different indexing of SS benefits for upper income recipients as a "cut" in benefits. That is not mere spin, it is a lie. See Michelle Malkin and the Loudest Cricket for a summary of the liers.

25. April 30, 2005. The L.A. Times edited a Reuters report by omitting the speed of Guiliani Sgrena's car as it was fired upon by American soldiers. The omitted piece of information was crucial to the entire story.

26. May 3, 2005. The Detroit News falsely reported that a terrorist has been deported, even though the terrorist remains in the U.S. This story follows months of biased coverage and whitewashing of the terrorist threat and terrorist prosecutions in Detroit.

27. May 12, 2005. CBS falsely reports that Ken Starr opposes the Republican position on the filibuster rule. In fact, Starr was strongly critical of the Democrats' tactics and CBS falsely attributed that criticism to the Republicans.

28. May 12, 2005. Sacramento Bee columnist resigns after her habit of inventing characters is exposed.

29. May 14-15, 2005. Newsweek runs a false story that U.S. soldiers flushed the Koran in front of Islamic detainees. 15 people die in the "Newsweek riots." Newsweek lied - people died.

30. Mid-May, 2005. Linda Foley, President of the Newspaper Guild, falsely claimed that American soldiers are targeting journalists in Iraq. She made this claim even after Eason Jordan went down in flames on a similar claim earlier in 2005. She made this claim even though a terrorist training manual places a high priority on terrorist killing of journalists.

31. June 28, 2005. AP wrote in the past tense about a Bush televised address that had not yet been delivered. AP, of course included its usual spin. H/T Michelle Malkin and LGF.

32. July 1st, 2005. Molly Ivins falsely claims that Americans have killed more Iraqi civilians than Saddam Hussein ever did. Ivins later retracts and apologizes after she is outed by an indignant blog stormlet.

33. July 9, 2005. AP inserted words into a Tony Blair quote that Blair never said, thus weakening the anti-terrorism message in the wake of the July 7th attacks. [My original post misnumbered the lie as #32.] AP "corrected" a day later, but the damage was done.

34. July 15. 2005. L.A. Times falsely asserts that the White House Supreme Court short list is composed only of "White Men." This false assertions is later airbrushed without acknowledgment in the online edition. [The original post is misnumbered as #33].

35. July 6, 2005. The New York Times misquotes a military officer in an effort to make Bush' policies look bad and undermine the war effort. The Times would continue to feel backlash throughout July.

36. July 16, 2005. Seattle Times misrepresents a Senate report in an effort to rescue Joseph Wilson's reputation and salvage some sort of case against Karl Rove.

37. August 3, 2005. L.A. Times refers to the Federalist Society as "somewhat secretive." This statement is a lie.

38. August 12, 2005. New York Times finally attempts to spin the Air America scandal, but in doing so they edit out an admission from an Al Franken radio interview and they put words in Michelle Malkin's mouth.

39. August 15, 2005. The Detroit News inflates the numbers of "Palestinians" living in the Detroit metro area so as to inflate Muslim political influence.

40. August 16, 2005. Various MSM/DNC outlets, including NBC news, refer to the Israelis giving Gaza "back" to the Palestinians. But the "Palestinians" never had Gaza in the first place. Israel took it from Egypt in 1967.

41. August 19, 2005. Paul Krugman of the New York Times repeats the Florida recount lie. Krugman would spend at least one more column trying to explain this column.

42. September, 2005. Michael Kinsley reveals that CNN has coached its guests to sound angry during discussions of Katrina.

43. September 4, 2005. A Washington Post book review falsely claims that the biography in question accused Charles Colson of "cashing in" on his ministry. In fact, the book makes no such claim.

44. October 14, 2005. NBC's Today show stages a canoe stunt in which the reporterette pretends to be sitting in dangerous New Jersey floodwaters. In fact, her canoe was sitting on the ground in 4-6 inches of water.

45. October 16, 2005. ABC news falsely claims that weekend rioters in Toledo were white.

46. October 26, 2005. Warner Brothers movie "North Country" falsely claims to be a true story, yet claims to have been inspired by the Anita Hill affair, even though the events on which "North Country" are based took place 6 years prior to the Anita Hill affair.

47. October 26, 2005. USA Today alters a photo of Condoleezza Rice by adding demon eyes.

48. October 26, 2005. The New York Times published a small portion of a letter from deceased Corporal Jeffrey Starr, while omitting the remaining portions. The omitted portions supported the U.S. war effort. The Times sought to use the one small quoted portion as ammunition in its ongoing anti-war campaign.

49. October 29, 2005. The New York Times falsely represents Robert Novak to be a war hawk who sought to support the administration's war position and sought to obtain retribution against Joseph Wilson. Novak's anti-war position is well known.

50. November 11, 2005. MSNBC falsely claims that Bill O'Reilly advocates the terrorist destruction of San Francisco.

51. November 11, 2005. Chris Matthews misrepresents the administration's reasons for attacking Iraq and removing Hussein from power. The administration never claimed that Hussein planned 9/11, but Matthews and the MSM/DNC continue to use this strawman as a basis to snipe at the President.

52. November 19, 2005. Harper-Collins publishing house alters a photograph of an illustrator so as to satisfy anti-smoking PC concerns. The Columbia Tribune reported this on November 19th.

53. November 23, 2005. "Cartoonist" Walt Handelsman falsely claims that Bush and Cheney are smearing John Murtha's war record.

54. December 13, 2005. Various MSM/DNC outlets, including UPI and the San Francisco chronicle, falsely state that 30,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the American invasion. These outlets falsely attribute this statement to President Bush, who said nothing about civilians, but spoke of all Iraqi deaths, including military deaths. The Chronicle then changed its headline after the blogosphere pointed out the lie, but failed to note the change. UPI continued repeating the lie through December 30, 2005.

A spontaneous random unspoken coordinated effort

I have written extensively about the Democrats' nationwide effort to stuff the ballot boxes during the past election. These efforts took place in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington and elsewhere.

Powerline this week provides a warning:

Electoral fraud. It is a grave and growing threat to our democracy. Major elections have turned on it, and it is only a matter of time until voter fraud precipitates a constitutional crisis.

Powerline quotes Sound Politics for its description of Distributed Vote Fraud [emphasis added]:

While doing the previous post, I ran across this very clear example of what I have begun to call distributed vote fraud. The New York Daily News found last August that 46,000 people were registered to vote in both Florida and New York. Of those 46,000, 68 percent were Democrats, 12 percent were Republicans, and 16 percent were neither. (And no, the newspaper does not explain why the numbers don't add up to 100 percent.)

No Democratic party leader organized these voters — at least as far as I know. Instead, they decided, by themselves, perhaps after talking with friends, to vote twice. And, just as I argued below, far more Democrats than Republicans decided, on their own, to commit vote fraud.

Anyone want to guess how many fraudulent votes Al Gore received in the 2000 election from this group?

[Sound Politics is quite possibly correct. We don't know of any national Democratic leader that encouraged voters to register and vote in two different states - although I think it is clear that the Democrat political machines are responsible at the local level for the Washington state fiasco, Philadelphia's 104% registration total, the Ohio ballot box stuffing attempts. Moveon.org apparently has ties to the Iowa fraud, etc. It is important to point out that much of the fraud involved more than mere dual registration. Much of the 2004 fraud involved phony registration of nonexistent individuals, illegal aliens and terrorists. Other examples involved identity theft from institutionalized senior citizens. These efforts involved more than mere spontaneous action from dishonest individuals. It takes time and effort to organize that kind of fraud.]

But for those voters that simply registered themselves twice without direct help from the DNC/MSM, there is an additional explanation that we need to address. All of us express surprise at every wierd moonbat action that the Dems continue to take, such as Barbara Boxer's recent actions in the Senate, anything that Howard Dean might do, John Kerry's kowtowing to terrorist supporters in the mideast, MSM continuing attempts to justify the forged Bush documents, etc. These actions aren't designed to broaden the DNC/MSM base. These actions are designed to rally those leftist voters who might go to extremes on their own when sufficiently egged on by petulant DNC/MSM outbursts. The DNC/MSM doesn't need a majority. It needs only a few crazy followers willing to commit violence, fraud and intimidation in order to accomplish its goals.

What are those goals? I will repeat my comment from several earlier posts:

Just as the terrorists in Iraq are content to kill a few people at a time for the sake of preventing an election, the leftists are content to undermine such elections as they can in this country for the sake of undermining the entire democratic process. Once the voters are thoroughly demoralized, the left can go back to ruling the nation through unelected leftist judges, bureaucrats and the back rooms of the New York Times.

The constitutional crisis that Powerline warns of is upon us. It is moving in slow motion, but it is here.

The role of the "religious right"

If I can take a break from the Rathergate scandal for a moment [that scandal really is the gift that keeps on giving!], there is an interesting debate going on about whether Kid Rock should be included in the Bush inaugural festivities. I do not really have a strong opinion on that issue. Blonde Sagacity summarizes the debate pretty thoroughly.

I only mention the Kid Rock issue because it may become a springboard for those who think that the so-called "Christian Right" might be weighing down the conservative movement, while providing nothing meaningful in return. I would like to get beyond the immediate issue and look at the entire forest. I would ask those Republicans who do not approach conservatism from a religious perspective to step back a moment and consider the big picture. The religious issues, the values issues, morality, whatever you might call it, definitely is tied in to all other issues. [There is a reason that the Dems, Hollywood and the MSM are so vehemently opposed to Christianity.] Check out Joe Sobran's recent article in which he draws the connection between the sexual revolution and all that has followed (and will follow):

Liberalism is taking us back to the Dark Ages it scorns — not to the era when the Church dominated Europe, but to the beginning of that era, when the Church’s civilizing task was still ahead. Over several long centuries she discredited or abolished the common evils of a pagan culture: abortion, fornication, infanticide, pederasty, divorce, and many others.

Today, as these evils are reintroduced in the West, liberalism calls it “progress.”

It’s actually the reversal of the greatest period of progress in human history.

I realize I am far afield from Kid Rock here, but conservativism is about a lot more than today's headlines. I ask modern Republicans to keep an open mind. Much knowledge was lost in the decades that the MSM had complete control of our learning. The MSM, Hollywood, the education establishment, etc. lied to us all about a lot more than Dan Rather's fake memos.

Here is another example from Debbie Schlussel. The movie "Million Dollar Baby" promotes the idea of euthanizing a young adult woman because she has been paralyzed and is an amputee. Hollywood promotes this idea in the disguise of a female version of "Rocky." Not only does Hollywood promote euthanasia, they do it by deception. The idea itself would be unpalatable to viewers who know what to expect. The implications would be unpalatable to anyone that studies history:

The Nazis victims didn’t just include six million Jews. They murdered the handicapped and infirm, some as handicapped as “Baby’s” Maggie. The handicapped, a burden on society and flaw in the master race, weren’t entitled to live, the Nazis posited. That disturbing message is more palatable when the victim is “Baby’s” broken female Rocky with no future, and a likeable religious father-figure is the euthanasia-committing hero.

MSM deception has occured on all fronts for decades. Now that we have been liberated by the new media, it will take years of dispassionate thought to sort out all of the ramifications and to understand the full implications of each of these deceptions. Let's start by finding out what the "religious right" really has to say - instead of MSM's watered down version.

Rathergate - the CBS independent panel report

Click here for the CBS story on the report and the resulting four firings.

Compare the report portions cited at CBS with the questions raised by Powerline last week:

There is a story to be told here: a story about how CBS coordinated its attack on President Bush with the Democratic National Committee; a story about how fake documents were put into the hands of a mentally ill, obsessively anti-Bush crank named Bill Burkett; a story about how Burkett (if he can be believed) not only got the documents into the hands of 60 Minutes, but also into the hands of the Kerry campaign, via Max Cleland; a story about how left-wing CBS producer Mary Mapes pursued the Bush National Guard "story" for five years, beginning when he was Governor of Texas, without finding anything worth reporting until the fake documents came along; a story about how 60 Minutes was warned that the documents appeared to be fakes, but published them anyway; a story about how CBS relied on interviews with people who had neither met President Bush nor seen the documents, like Robert Strong, but carefully avoided talking to the key witnesses who actually had knowledge of relevant events, like Gen. "Buck" Staudt. Whom, by the way, they carelessly slandered in their broadcast.

But I doubt whether Thornburgh and Boccardi will tell that story. To conduct this investigation, you needed an investigator. An old-fashioned investigator who would go to Texas, track down Bill Burkett, and persuade him to talk. Who would immerse himself in the corrupt politics of Travis County, Texas, and pursue leads on who created the forgeries. Who would demand to see Mary Mapes' telephone records for the last two years, and track down every number she called. Who would make witnesses like Max Cleland either answer questions, or go on record as refusing to talk. Who would, in short, investigate.

CBS didn't employ an investigator. They employed a couple of distinguished 70-year-old gentlemen: exactly the wrong sort of people. Maybe Thornburgh and Boccardi had the sense to hire investigators, but I doubt it. My guess is that their "investigation" consisted essentially of interviewing CBS employees. At one point, I saw a news item where they proudly announced that they had talked to 36 CBS employees. Wow. What they needed to do was forget about CBS for a while, and go to Texas. If they only talked to CBS people, they would inevitably come away with the impression that 60 Minutes was well-intentioned but regrettably failed to be sufficiently critical of the documents' authenticity, and therefore fell for a possible hoax.

I say "possible" because I doubt that the Thornburgh/Boccardi report will draw any conclusion about the documents' falsity. I suspect that they will be agnostic about the documents, much as Mr. Pein was in his recent Columbia Journalism Review article. If I'm right, the report will be useless.

The fundamental question here is whether CBS was the victim of a hoax, or the perpetrator of a hoax. It has been our view for a long time that Rather and his colleagues were perpetrators, not victims, in part because the documents were such obvious fakes that it strains credulity to suppose that they were actually fooled. When you read the Thornburgh/Boccardi report, keep that question constantly in mind: victim, or perpetrator?

Compare the questions that Powerline asked with the response that the Thornburgh/Boccardi report provides. Based on what I have read, the Report is inadequate and fails to address the real issue. The Report chalks up the whole affair to competition and journalistic haste to get the story on the air. The Report ignores the 5 year effort of Mary Mapes to dig up just such a story about Bush. This was not the product of haste, but of deliberate falsification at some level. The Report fails to address the question of how high of a level.

On a bright note, the Report apparently credits the New Media to some extent and provides some context regarding how quickly the exposure of the forgery spread:

. . Finally, by about 3 P.M., Matt Drudge, the author of the widely read Drudge Report website, had joined the fray, and, thereafter, the onslaught of attacks on the authenticity of the Killian documents was unrelenting . . .

Keep this in mind the next time the blogosphere and the new media need to right some wrong.
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Tuesday morning update.

Powerline weighs in with commentary here:

The other thing I'd really like to know, though, is why CBS moved the 60 Minutes program up from the end of September to September 8. The Thornburgh report talks about this change, and blames it for the fact that the show was put together in too much of a hurry.

But why? Someone made the decision to move the program up; the report doesn't tell us who. I'll give you a hypothesis as to why it happened: the Kerry campaign was dying because of the Swift Boat Vets' attacks, and CBS was desperate--with or without explicit communication with the DNC and the Kerry campaign--to do something to stem the tide. To "change the momentum of an election," as Michael Smith emailed to Mary Mapes.

If that hypothesis isn't right, can someone give us another one?

Click here for Powerline's big summary - 95 trackbacks and counting. [Who needs the MSM anymore?]

Click here to see how Mapes takes advantage of the holes in the Thornburgh report.

Weekly Standard has a good summary of the report's shortcomings and a roundup of blogosphere opinion.

And finally, click here for Powerline's take on the New York Times' whitewash of the whitewash:

And so on, ad nearly infinitum. But, because virtually everyone in the CBS News organization shared Mary Mapes's politics and objective (i.e., the election of John Kerry), skeptical questions were not asked. If there is a single overriding explanation for how a fake story, intended to influence a Presidential election through the use of forged documents, could have been promulgated by 60 Minutes, it is the lack of diversity at CBS News.

For some years now, the party line of the mainstream media has been: of course we're pretty much all Democrats, but that doesn't influence our news coverage. If nothing else, Rathergate should put that defense to rest once and for all.

In a couple of weeks, I will be participating in a conference at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, sponsored by the Kennedy School along with the Harvard Law School and the Shorenstein Center on Press and Politics. The subject will be journalism, blogging, credibility and ethics. Judging from the list of participants, I suspect that most of the discussion may be about how bloggers can become more credible by adopting the standards of mainstream journalists. My own perspective will be a bit different. So far, the blogosphere has a far better record of honesty and accuracy than mainstream organs like the New York Times and CBS. This isn't entirely a matter of personality; it is also a function of the checks and balances of the blogosphere, which are far stronger and more effective than the alleged "checks and balances" of the mainstream media, which, in the absence of political and intellectual diversity, may not operate at all.

That last paragraph makes a great transition into a discussion of where the blogosphere is headed in the wake of MSM's greatest defeat. More later.

Another Rathergate summary

Michelle Malkin has posted a summary of Rathergate. It's a great summary, but it is not as thorough as mine. Plus, with mine, you get a summary of other MSM outrages from election 2004. Keep them both in your list of favorite URL's.

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midday update. Shameless plug warning. David Limbaugh has referenced Michelle Malkin's post. Maybe I can get him to link to mine by trackbacking.

See also Scrappleface - Dan Rather's integrity malfunction and IMAO.

Another flip-flop

It had to happen sooner or later. Someone was bound to tie the tsunami relief efforts to a Kerry flip-flop. Even though we were expecting it and we have heard the flip-flop jokes so many times before, it is still funny. Broken newz has the story of John Kerry voting "against a tsunami relief package immediately after voting for it." Kerry will never live down that image.

Richard Gere and company.

“The Jews are destined to be persecuted, humiliated, and tortured forever, and it is a Muslim duty to see to it that they reap their due. No petty arguments must be allowed to divide us. Where Hitler failed, we must succeed.”

“Islam is escalating and cannot be resisted. I pray that Allah may tear apart America just as the Soviet Union was torn apart.”

Who am I quoting here? The only reason we don't immediately guess "Hitler" is that the speaker invokes Hitler in one of the quotes. Actually the speaker's name is Sheikh Taissir Rajab Al-Tamimi and he is co-starring with Richard Gere in a commercial in which Gere speaks for the "entire world" in imploring Palestinians to vote in the rigged election that originally offered the choice between a Holocaust denier and a mass murderer [I forget which thugs are running now]. Hat tip to Debbie Schlussel for digging up these old quotes.

The memory hole is a wonderful device for the MSM, until some spoil sport ruins it by digging up embarrassing facts that the MSM would like to ignore.

Actually, I have less contempt for Gere than other Hollywood leftists. His movie (I forget the name) that exposed the Chinese legal system was panned by MSM critics for obvious reasons. It was almost unheard of for a Hollywood actor to engage in such a project. Usually, the left reserves all of their hatred only for America. Now if only Gere would make a similar commercial exhorting the Iraqis to vote (not that it is needed) or a commercial exhorting Democrats to stop cheating in American elections, I could almost forgive him entirely.

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update - The Movie was called Red Corner and I enjoyed it very much.
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afternoon update - Michelle Malkin is the only other blogger I have seen to pick up on this story.

Protein Wisdom too.

War tactics, media tactics, election tactics

Wizbang has identified the similarity in military tactics between the Iraqi terrorist insurgency and those who would foul the blogosphere with "vile invective and insults."

. . . if you kill enough Americans (but not too many), and seasoned it with a healthy dose of barbarity, you could get the Americans to leave you alone.

And that is what we are facing now in Iraq. There is no way our enemies can hope to defeat us militarily. Nor can they pose any threat to our ability to sustain our forces. And nearly all reliable reports indicate the morale of our forces in Iraq is very high, and the efforts in Iraq is overwhelmingly supported by the troops.

The only way our enemies can win is to attack and defeat the resolve of the American people to continue to support the war. It's a battle like no other in history, with no clearly-defined combatants or fields of battle.

(I had a personal experience with this tactic recently, in the comments section of another blog. I went in prepared to calmly argue facts and positions; I was greeted with vile invective and insults. I briefly gave in and fought back in kind, but I finally gave up in disgust. That's when it hit me; my opponent wasn't attacking my facts or style, but me personally, in an effort to discourage me from continuing the argument. He wasn't looking to win the argument on its merits, but to drive me off, and I was letting him.

It was what I've started calling the "chamberpot defense." When his position was attacked, my opponent so thoroughly befouled the argument that it simply became too vile to be worth fighting over. He won the argument, but he has to live with the mess he created in the process. It's related to the scorched-earth defense in war and the poison-pill defense in business.)

Wizbang has identified the political tactics we have seen in this country for a long time, but which began to reach fever pitch during the Clinton administration, as leftists and the MSM implemented this scorched-earth policy.

The most prominent example of this policy was Al Gore's Florida challenge in 2000. Even though Gore lost, he achieved his objective. He so discredited the political process that Bush' administration was undermined throughout the entire first term. Only with Bush' victory in 2004 can we begin to repair the damage. But the MSM/DNC remain committed to scorching the earth. The left continues to try to scare up an Ohio challenge. Only if we turn their attacks against them will we avoid further damage. Any leftist who challenges Bush' legitimacy should be known as one who tilts at windmills in Ohio.

A worse example can be found in Washington, where Democrat voter fraud threatens to install a Democrat governor. The governor's office is only secondary in the DNC calculations. First and foremost is the ability to discredit the election process. Not that we should let them have their way for the sake of preserving the public's faith in the process. We must fight them, win and prosecute the offenders. We must use the blogosphere, talk radio, etc. for the purpose of telling the full story of how the Democrats work.

More evidence of Washington State election fraud

Sound Politics reports that King County, Washington has reported more votes than actual voters. King County is the heavily Democratic County that threw the election in favor of Democrat Gregoire.

Even the Seattle Times has reported on this aspect of the controversy.

Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.

Digital Brown Pajamas provides good perspective on this situation.

The gall of Mrs. Gregoire is almost beyond comprehension. The sheer chutzpah of telling ROSSI that it's time HE concede even though she lost every recount prior to this is mindblowing. The sad and bitter fact is, though, that Washington state is so besotted with cars bearing bumper stickers like "ReDefeat Bush!" that shenanigans like what occurred in this election will not cause an outrage.

I repeat my own comments from ten days ago:

Just as the terrorists in Iraq are content to kill a few people at a time for the sake of preventing an election, the leftists are content to undermine such elections as they can in this country for the sake of undermining the entire democratic process. Once the voters are thoroughly demoralized, the left can go back to ruling the nation through unelected leftist judges, bureaucrats and the back rooms of the New York Times.

A final thought. The concept of the Democrats coming up with more votes than actual voters is consistent with the 104% registration in Philadelphia prior to the November 2004 elections.

2005

Today we begin the first full year of blogging in the post-Rathergate world.

I realize that many bloggers have been blogging for several years. But it is impossible to compare blogging today with what it was at the beginning of this decade or even 6 months ago. The Rathergate affair changed everything. Blogging is much more popular now than it was prior to forgerygate. Bloggers (including even conservative bloggers) have received much more MSM attention than they ever did prior to forgerygate. More new bloggers (including myself) have popped up since September than . . . well, I don't really have any numbers to support a conclusion, but you get the idea.

The question is, where do we go from here? Now that the blogosphere and the new media as a whole have obtained a degree of the country's attention for the benefit of conservative ideas, what next? How do hold on to our gains? How do we promote a deeper understanding of conservativism? How do we move further into the mainstream without parroting the previously "mainstream" beliefs that we seek to replace? How quickly will the MSM fade? How will the MSM respond?

We are only beginning to frame and answer these questions. Just as the five years following WWII were the most important in framing the cold war and the post-war world, 2005 will be crucial in framing the post-MSM world. Rathergate was only the beginning.

In the spirit of looking forward as we begin 2005, I provide the following peek around the blogosphere. This is where we begin the year:

Powerline comments on MSM attempts to bury news of a Bush stock market rally.

Powerline also provides non-MSM assessment of Tsunami relief and the status of Iraq.

Belmont Club comments on UN tsunami relief efforts.

Cold Beverage's most recent post is an item reflecting growing public reliance on the internet - instead of the MSM - for news.

Digital Brown Pajamas has provided some of the blogosphere's best coverage of the Washington State election fraud.

Free Will comments on 2004.

La Shawn Barber remembers what is most important of all.

Michele from New York comments on her year.

Michelle Malkin comments on how Chris Matthews just can't let it go.

The Commissar talks about his own blogging future.

Sortapundit comments on UN aid favoring areas with heavy Islamist terror cell affiliation.

Uncivil Rights laments the increased minimum wage in Illinois.

What will we learn by looking back at all of this at the end of the year? I don't know. We will find out in one year. Happy new year.