[H/T Toby Toons for the image.]

This past week in the wake of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by Jared Lee Loughner (that killed six people and wounded nine others–including the congresswoman), the mainstream/liberal media instantly pounced on “the violent rhetoric” by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party as the cause of Loughner’s mad shooting spree. Oh, and they did this within half an hour of the victims being shot, before any of the facts of the case had come in. To be specific, the likes of Andrew Sullivan (he of “Trig Truther” fame), Markos Moulitsas, Matthew Yeglesias, Paul Krugman, The New York Times Editorial Board and just about everyone at MSNBC immediately implied that “right-wing rhetoric”, and specifically Sarah Palin, were accessories to this tragedy. In fact, Markos Moulitsas even went so far as to tweet out “Mission Accomplished Sarah Palin” immediately after the shooting, and blamed her based an obscure map that she had put out almost year ago on her Facebook page “targeting” certain districts for the 2010 election. To quote Alex Knepper, according to liberals, “Guns don’t kill people, Sarah Palin’s metaphors do”. (See an image of her Facebook map below.)

Except that it didn’t take conservative bloggers long to learn that the Democrats had put up a similar “target” map in 2009 (before Palin did) stating which Republicans they wanted to “target” for opposing the now infamous stimulus bill.

Furthermore, as Patterico points out Markos Moulitsas, himself, put a bulls-eye on Gifford’s district (because she’s a moderate Democrat).

Then, Michelle Malkin responded by cataloging all of the shockingly hateful and violent rhetoric towards Sarah Palin and John McCain courtesy of the Left–not to mention, she unearthed a plethora of leftist assassination fantasies about President Bush. (H/T Karl–be sure to read his excellent column.)

And finally, Bill O’Reilly swung into action by promptly calling out the left-wing charlatans participating in this hateful farce. Moreover, O’Reilly pointed out how Democrats have no problem using gun metaphors–and how Joe Manchin even shot the stimulus bill in an ad–and, that MSNBC is actually ground zero for hateful rhetoric. (Hat tip to Allahpundit for the video.)

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

["Oopsy daisies. Quick, quick--backtrack in the other direction! Let's now just denounce all heated rhetoric and free political speech."]

So now it’s official–court is in session and the verdict is in. According to public opinion polls, the MSM has “botched the coverage” of the Tuscon shooting by immediately and ignorantly blaming “right-wing rhetoric”. However, what’s even further evidence that the MSM has disgraced themselves with their coverage of the Arizona shooting, is that many liberal pundits are now calling out the MSM/liberal media for it’s repugnant coverage–not to mention, in his speech, President Obama wisely cautioned people against blaming “incivility” for the tragedy.

For instance, Jon Stewart, Jack Shafer of Slate, and T.A. Frank of The New Republic all blasted the liberal MSM meme of blaming “conservative rhetoric” for causing the Tuscon tragedy (T.A. Frank wrote that the MSM “botched the coverage”). Furthermore, Kirsten Powers came out with a column in The Daily Beast where she wrote that President Obama didn’t go far enough in his speech to “shut down the nonsense about how Sarah Palin or right-wing talkers caused the shooting.” Moreover, Democratic strategist Pat Caddell referred to Paul Krugman as….well, let’s just say a “sphincter” for writing that God-awful column where he blamed conservatives for the Tuscon murders (the column that O’Reilly easily debunked above). To be specific, Caddell said the following:

“People are dead, and the first thing they have to do is go to politics. No wonder the country hates the media.”

And finally, yesterday, Charles Blow (yeah, the guy that called minorities in theTea Party “a minstrel show”), wrote a column where he accused the Left of participating in “a witch hunt” after the Tuscon shooting spree.

So, now the question becomes, not, “Did the media botch the Arizona shooting?” (the obvious answer to that question is, “Yes”)–but rather, “Why did the media botch the coverage of the AZ shooting”? Well, after giving it much thought, I have come up with four reasons why the liberal MSM disgraced themselves so badly with regard to the AZ massacre.

1.) Many liberals are elitists and automatically assume that they are the smartest people in the room, so, therefore, they can get caught mindlessly flapping their gums on a subject about which they know very little.

I know nothing about ichthyology or rocket science, so therefore, I would never go on national television and try to sell myself as an expert on ichthyology or rocket science. However, this past week, there were a plethora of liberals on TV speaking about mental illness as if they were psychiatrists (stating that “angry rhetoric set off the killer”). Well, Charles Krauthammer (who is a Harvard trained psychiatrist) explained Jared Lee Loughner’s state of mind best when he wrote the following in a recent column:

“The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the “climate of hate” created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.

The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence.

As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings – and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him – there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder.

Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.

A climate of hate? This man lived within his very own private climate. “His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world,” said the teacher of Loughner’s philosophy class at Pima Community College. “He was very disconnected from reality,” said classmate Lydian Ali. “You know how it is when you talk to someone who’s mentally ill and they’re just not there?” said neighbor Jason Johnson. “It was like he was in his own world.”

His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with “unnerving, long stupors of silence” during which he would “stare fixedly at his buddies,” reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through “grammar.” He was obsessed with “conscious dreaming,” a fairly good synonym for hallucinations.

This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder – ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.

These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one. A classmate found him so terrifyingly mentally disturbed that, she e-mailed friends and family, she expected to find his picture on TV after his perpetrating a mass murder. This was no idle speculation: In class “I sit by the door with my purse handy” so that she could get out fast when the shooting began.

Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner’s fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who had begun an article thus: “I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it.”

Now, if any of you still have any doubts as to Mr. Loughner’s state of mind, then look no further than the video below where Loughner rambles in a disconnected stream of consciousness about “the torture of students”, “illegal wars”, “mind control by using currency”, “losing his freedom of speech”, his school being a “genocide school”, how “they control the grammar” at the school bookstore….well, you get the picture. The saddest part of the video is halfway through where Mr. Loughner utters the phrase, “I’m in a terrible place”. I have no doubt in my mind that he was/is. (H/T to The Other McCain for the video.)

On a personal note, in my third year of medical school, I did a psychiatry rotation. Now, I would never pretend to know as much about psychiatry as Dr. Krauthammer, but do I know a heck of a lot more than the average MSNBC pundit. In my psych rotation, I saw plenty of paranoid schizophrenic patients. I saw patients who called 911 when they had a bad dream, because they thought they were being murdered. I saw patients who thought that the Bush Administration was out to get them, because of something as simple as maybe a policeman giving them a ticket. And, I saw patients who threatened their spouses with weapons, but couldn’t tell you why they did it. Oh, and I even read about a patient in a medical journal who would see a python on the wall, in place of a curtain rod, if the patient missed their meds. So basically, what I’m trying to tell you is that both nothing and everything sets these patients off. You can ban target maps, Glenn Beck, Moveon.org, policemen giving people tickets, 911 calls, dreaming and curtain rods; however, unless these patients get the help that they need and are properly medicated, they will still have uncontrollable psychotic episodes.

Robert Stacy McCain has done some excellent work on his blog this week reporting on the sanity component of this story. And, one of the things that McCain reported on was the fact that Jared Lee Loughner took Salvia and watched a paranoid 9/11 truther film called Zeitgeist. However, taking Salvia and watching Zeitgeist didn’t make Loughner crazy–Loughner was already mentally unstable, which is why he became obsessed with Zeitgeist and self-medicated with Salvia in the first place.

Does anyone remember James Lee, the mentally unstable man who took hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters and was eventually shot by the police? Lee claimed that he was motivated by Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth. You didn’t see conservatives blaming Al Gore for that insane act, did you? That is because A.) it goes against our nature to try to blame people after a tragedy (as if anyone had any control over Lee’s actions in the first place)–or try to ban things, like documentaries or political speech–and B.) because Lee didn’t become crazy by watching An Inconvenient Truth. He was already mentally unstable, which is why he became obsessed with An Inconvenient Truth in the first place. You see, a sane mind can take in all kinds of information and stimuli, and it won’t drive him or her to murder.

2.) It is the raison d’etre of many liberals to control people. They think that if they can control more people and create a larger nanny state, then they can stop bad things from happening.

Don’t believe me? Well then, just take a look at the recent ban on Happy Meals in San Fransisco as proof. (The video below is hilarious.)

<td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;' colspan='2'San Francisco’s Happy Meal Ban

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You see, a lot of liberals have good intentions. They think that if they ban Happy Meals, then there won’t be anymore obese children. However, what they don’t realize (and what I learned on my pediatrics rotation in medical school) is that most obese children have obese parents, and consume the majority of their fatty foods at home.

Liberals also think that if they ban guns, then crime will automatically go down. However, what they don’t realize is that criminals still will find a way to get guns, and then 76 year old men will become defenseless prey to street gangs.

So therefore, it’s only natural for liberals to also think that if they can control what people, say, watch or listen to, then that will somehow stop paranoid schizophrenics from going on murder sprees. (Well, not what they say so much–just what you say. Liberals want to be able to use “target” maps and have pundits on MSNBC be able to use incendiary rhetoric–they just don’t want you to be able to do the same thing, because….well, you know, they are just so much smarter and more enlightened than you, so they can do it, but you can’t.)

Liberals always talk about wanting to help the downtrodden. Well, this tragedy in Tuscon would have presented a perfect opportunity to discuss mental illness. The other night on The O’Reilly Factor, Charles Krauthammer discussed how, since the deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals that took place in the 1960′s, many mentally ill people have been left homeless and freezing to death on the streets. John Hawkins also made similar points in an excellent column. It seems that if liberals really cared so much for the poor and the downtrodden, then they would have first mourned the victims of the shooting, and then tried to find some good in this tragedy by using it as an opportunity to provoke a national debate with regard to mental illness (i.e., how to get people the help that they need without violating anyone’s civil liberties). Instead, they used it as an opportunity to bash Sarah Palin and act like the thought police by suggesting that we should “bring back the fairness doctrine”. These actions demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the primary focus of modern liberalism is not helping the “little guy”, but bashing Sarah Palin and controlling how people live their lives.

3.) This whole Tuscon Tragedy was the big, red “Do Not Push” button for liberals.

What do I mean by the above statement? Simple. Somehow or another, liberals were able to drag Sarah Palin and the Tea Party into this story (even though they had absolutely NOTHING to do with it). Furthermore, they were able to use this tragedy to discuss gun control, as well as speech control (two ideas that are dear to their hearts). Palin, gun control and controlling conservative speech is the liberal trifecta; therefore, with regard to this story, they just couldn’t control themselves.

David Brooks (of all people) explained this phenomenon perfectly when he wrote the following:

“All of this evidence, which is easily accessible on the Internet, points to the possibility that Loughner may be suffering from a mental illness like schizophrenia.

In short, the evidence before us suggests that Loughner was locked in a world far removed from politics as we normally understand it.

Yet the early coverage and commentary of the Tucson massacre suppressed this evidence. The coverage and commentary shifted to an entirely different explanation: Loughner unleashed his rampage because he was incited by the violent rhetoric of the Tea Party, the anti-immigrant movement and Sarah Palin.

Mainstream news organizations linked the attack to an offensive target map issued by Sarah Palin’s political action committee. The Huffington Post erupted, with former Senator Gary Hart flatly stating that the killings were the result of angry political rhetoric. Keith Olbermann demanded a Palin repudiation and the founder of the Daily Kos wrote on Twitter: “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” Others argued that the killing was fostered by a political climate of hate.

These accusations — that political actors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl — are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness.

Yet such is the state of things. We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leans toward political explanations. We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. We have a segmented news media, so there is nobody in most newsrooms to stand apart from the prevailing assumptions. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons.

I have no love for Sarah Palin, and I like to think I’m committed to civil discourse. But the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.”

4.) Ever since Obama has come on the scene, liberals have gone overboard with their incivility and have gotten in the habit of substituting slurs, libel, personal attacks and name-calling for actual political debate.

We are all familiar with the vitriol directed at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Now, fast forward to the 2008 Democratic primary where the Clintons were accused of racism, and Chris Matthews called Hillary Clinton “witchy” (see the image below that was popular on many liberal blogs). Then, other Democrats tried to pressure Mrs. Clinton to get out of the race and accused her of wanting to have Obama assassinated (sound familiar?). And finally, Keith Olbermann got fed up and demanded that someone just kill her/beat her up. (To be specific, Olberman said that, “Someone should take her in a room and only he comes out”.)

Next, came the general election where John McCain and Sarah Palin basically faced the same sentiment from the liberal media that the Clintons faced. (That sentiment being, “How dare they actually try to beat Obama!”) To be specific, one liberal blogger captured the Left’s sentiment perfectly when he wrote that his “jaw dropped” when John McCain brought up Bill Ayers in the debate. In other words:

“How dare that mean, old fart try to actually win the debate?! Why doesn’t he just walk away and let Obama win the election already? Don’t he and his stupid supporters know that we liberals know what’s best for them and the rest of the country anyway?”

However, nothing quite prepared me to see members of the MSM calling patriotic Americans, who were private citizens exorcising their First Amendment rights, “teabaggers” (which is a vile sexual slur) night after night after night. I recoiled in horror, and thought that this was lowest that the liberal MSM could possibly sink–but I was wrong.

This past week, when liberals in the MSM accused Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and conservatives in general of being somehow complicit in a mass murder…..well, that was their bottom, which is why they are now experiencing such a strong “backlash” (to quote Peter Wehner).

The liberal MSM so badly botched the coverage of the Tuscon massacre, because–for so very long–they have been trying to throw water on that “witch” Sarah Palin, but she simply refuses to melt like the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz did.

Instead, Palin is more like Elphaba from the Broadway musical Wicked–she just keeps coming back stronger and stronger after each setback and attack, managing to fly above it all and help the Republicans win elections. (H/T to the Hillbuzz for the video.)

And now, here was finally their chance–nay, their golden opportunity–to have someone take Palin into a room and only he comes out. The liberal MSM finally thought that they could be rid of Sarah Palin once and for all. And, it was more important to them than anything else–even more important than mourning for the victims of this senseless tragedy.

So, in conclusion, if I had to get inside the mind of the average liberal journalist/elitist and translate their thoughts into liberalese, it would sound something like this:

“Why don’t these stupid racist, redneck teabaggers just sit down and shut up? Why do they even think that they have a right to participate in the political process anyway? Don’t they realize that we liberals know so much more than them? Besides, the Founding Fathers would have hated their guts. I mean, they are so crass and vulgar with their “target” maps and using phrases like, “Don’t retreat, just reload.” Sure, we use target maps, gun metaphors and incendiary rhetoric (like wishing someone would blow up Rush Limbaugh’s head with a CO2 pellet), but we are so much more educated, so it’s less offensive coming from us. And sure, we might have over-reacted with the whole “Sarah Palin and the Tea Party are accessories to murder” bit, but those teabaggers should just turn the other cheek when we attack them, because they listen to white trash like Sarah Palin and talk radio, so they kind of have it coming anyway.”

OK–well, maybe I might be a bit guilty of stereotyping liberals in that above paragraph. But hey, liberals have been stereotyping conservatives for the last two years with the whole “racist, redneck teabagger” bit. It stings a tad when someone does it back to you, huh?

So, if you lefties are really serious about the whole “new tone” thingy that you all have been whining about this entire week, might I suggest that you do two things. First off, you all really need to apologize to Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and conservatives in general for implying that we were all accessories to mass murder (as well as for all of the degrading insults that you’ve thrown our way for the last two years). I mean, that was really appalling behavior and was totally beyond the pale. To quote Charles Blow (who I never thought that I’d quote):

“Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”

Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.

You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.

Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof. “

Second of all–and most importantly–you guys in the liberal MSM really owe the victims of the Tuscon shooting, their families and the American people an apology. Most Americans probably didn’t even learn the names of the victims until the president’s Wednesday night speech–four days after the shooting took place. Michelle Malkin has the victims’ names and ages on her blog, but I will list them here so that we may mourn them and pray for them–as well as for Congresswoman Giffords:

The deceased have been identified as: Judge John Roll ,63; Dorthy Murray, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; Christina Greene, 9; Phyllis Scheck, 79; and Gabriel Zimmerman, 30.

Furthermore, until several days after the incident, most Americans probably had no idea about Jared Lee Loughner’s obvious signs of mental illness. So therefore, the American people were denied the debate that our country deserves with regard to how to recognize the signs of mental illness, as well as what to do about it (as Benjamin Kerstein explained in his poignant column).

In other words, the media’s need to “get the witch” was so strong, that it overpowered even their need to report the basic facts of the case. Everyone was talking about Sarah Palin’s “target” map, but no one even knew the victims’ names. (And to make matters worse, Sarah Palin is now getting death threats.) Seriously, shame on you guys in the press. If you all want your “new tone”, then you need to man up, suck it up and apologize first–otherwise, all of your pleas to “end the divisive rhetoric” will sound insincere. Like Mr. Blow said, you can’t claim the moral ground while standing in quick sand. Your “by any means necessary” approach has failed. If you call out for help and reach out an arm by offering a sincere apology, then we will help pull you up. Otherwise, you can all continue to sink in the muck together. The choice is yours.

Cross-posted from Parcbench.

“I got a lot of problems with you people, and now, you’re gonna hear about it!!”

The above quote was uttered by Frank Costanza, the father of George Costanza of Seinfeld fame. Costanza invented the holiday Festivus, because he wanted to remove the traditional and commercial aspects of Christmas. Instead of a traditional Christmas tree, there is simply an aluminum pole. (Mr. Costanza said that he found tinsel to be “distracting”.) And, instead of a traditional Christmas dinner, there is the “airing of grievances” where you tell all of your friends and family how much they have disappointed you over the last year. And finally, at the end of the evening, there are the “feats of strength” where you attempt to pin one of your friends or family members to the floor. (See embed below for the story of Festivus.)

Now, in 2004, The New York Times ran a column reporting that some people actually celebrate Festivus. Well they should know, because Frank Rich apparently celebrates it in July instead of waiting until December. Honestly, it’s completely understandable. I mean, why tell just your friends and family how pissed off you are at them when you can tell off the entire country? Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.

So, without any further ado, here is Frank Rich’s airing of grievances against America, uh I mean a quick summary of his latest column about America and its history–

–When the Declaration of Independence was signed 234 years ago, slavery was still allowed.

–Fast forward to 1964, you got lynchings in Mississippi, Barry Goldwater voting against the Civil Rights bill, and Robert Byrd filibustering it for 14 hours.

–Now, Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t employ enough minorities, yada yada yada.

At this point, he takes a time out from his airing of grievances to praise my home state of South Carolina for the recent elections of Nikki Haley and Tim Scott. However, he immediately gets right back in the Festivus spirit by bringing up the Confederate flag and saying that “we shouldn’t read too much into these low turn-out primaries.” This from a man who reads racism into every Tea Party protest and any opposition to Obamacare, and hears racial slurs uttered when none were captured on any recording devices, but I digress.

So, in the spirit of Frank Costanza, Frank Rich is basically saying the following with regard to SC–

“Hey South Carolina–don’t go getting all full of yourself and thinking that you’re so high and mighty with the elections of Nikki Haley and Tim Scott! Remember the Confederate flag?! I still got a lot of problems with you!!”

Now, back to Festivus in July–or the rest of Rich’s column.

–Frank Rich is very disappointed in some Republicans for opposing Elena Kagan. It must be because they are racists who hate Thurgood Marshall (and we’re flashing back to the 1960′s again).

–Rich compared John Kyl, Tom Coburn and Orrin Hatch to Strom Thurmond, because if you have questions about Elena Kagan, then you are against Thurgood Marshall and, therefore, pro-Thurmond.

–Strom Thurmond is the father of the “Southern Strategy” and we can still see that today because Virginia governor, Bob McDonnell, brought back Confederate History Month, blah blah blah.

–Strom Thurmond had a daughter with an African-American teenage maid, yada yada yada….

…It was at this point that my eyes started to glaze over and I realized that I agreed with Kramer when he said, “Frank, no offense, but this holiday of yours is a little out there”. In other words, Festivus sucks. From here on out, I’m gonna just stick to celebrating Christmas and the Fourth of July and leave Festivus alone (no offense to anyone else–I am quite tolerant of all religious practices). In other words, let’s focus on what’s good about America instead of only what’s bad–like us recently electing the first African-American president, or Tim Scott (the likely first black congressman since Reconstruction) beating Strom Thurmond’s son to represent SC’s 1st Congressional District. There is a lot to celebrate about America. Let’s ditch the aluminum pole and go light some firecrackers!

PS–Oh, I almost forgot. Happy Festivus in July Mr. Rich! I hope that you didn’t tire yourself out too much by airing your grievances with us, and that you saved some energy so Charles “Minstrel Show” Blow doesn’t get the best of you during the feats of strength.

This diary was originally posted on NewsReal and The Minority Report.

OK–we’ve all seen small children put their hands over their ears and wail when they are told something that they don’t want to hear, like “eat your vegetables” or “take your medicine”. However, this is quite strange behavior to behold in adult journalists who work for mainstream media outlets. Now granted, anyone who reads newspapers, and doesn’t live under a rock, is somewhat aware that there is a left-wing tilt to the MSM. For instance, there have been the recent embarrassments involving the infamous JournoList–a sophomoric clique of left-wing journalists and bloggers. And, most people are aware that the MSM has a tendency to throw a fit whenever anything negative is said about President Obama or his Administration.

But now, it’s come to this. A few days ago, Megyn Kelly broke a huge story on Fox News where she interviewed former Department of Justice attorney, J. Christian Adams. Adams has blown the whistle on the Obama Administration’s DOJ for dismissing the infamous voter intimidation case against the Black Panthers, after he had already won the case (the Black Panthers never even showed up in court to answer the charges). Adams claimed that the main reason why the DOJ didn’t want to prosecute the Panthers was for racial reasons. Now, one would think that this would be an explosive story and that the mainstream media would be all over this, but instead they are like a toddler putting his fingers in his ears when he is told to eat his vegetables.

Wait–it gets better. In addition to Adams, Megyn Kelly also interviewed renowned civil rights attorney and life-long Democrat, Bartle Bull (who was Robert Kennedy’s campaign manager). Bull claimed that he witnessed the Black Panthers threatening voters and shouting racial slurs at the polling place, telling Kelly that, “Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy didn’t die so that uniformed thugs could be blocking polling places with weapons”. Not to mention, Mr. Bull also claimed that the Black Panthers were working in collusion with ACORN (you know, that lovely group that agreed to aid and abet a child prostitution ring) in order to intimidate the poll-watchers, because ACORN had registered a bunch of illegal voters. (See the embed below.)

Now again, you would think that the MSM would be climbing all over each other to be the first ones to put this story on the front page of their paper. Well, you would be wrong. In fact, The Washington Times recently wrote an op-ed titled, Media blackout for Black Panthers where they wrote the following–

“Where is the New York Times? Where is The Washington Post? Where are CBS and NBC? A whistleblower makes explosive allegations about the Department of Justice; his story is backed by at least two other witnesses; and the allegations involve the two hot-button issues of race and of blatant politicization of the justice system.”

In other words, with regard to this story, the MSM are acting like bunch of petulant children who are putting their fingers in their ears and screaming “LA, LA, LA–I can’t hear you!!”. Why, you ask? Because simply put, it makes the Obama Administration look corrupt. Not to mention, there is nothing that guilty white liberals in the MSM would hate more than having to report about criminal allegations against two African-American organizations. I’m guessing that many of them would rather shave their head with a cheese grater than report on this story.

Allow me put this another way. Suppose that two white Bubbas from Mississippi (wearing overalls and carrying baseball bats, instead of jackboots and nightsticks) were intimidating black voters outside a polling station and shouting racial slurs at them. Now, let’s suppose that George W. Bush was still president, and his DOJ dropped the charges on the thugs–after one of its attorneys had already gotten a conviction–for “racial reasons”. If you don’t think that the MSM would be all over this story and screaming for the resignation of Bush’s attorney general (and rightfully so), then I have a blind bird dog and some underwater real estate to sell you.

By the way, it’s a little ironic that ACORN turned out to be involved in this story, because, figuratively speaking, this is the ACORN story all over again. In the hilarious video below, Jon Stewart mocks the MSM for letting “the cast of High School Musical 3” scoop them on the ACORN story (or really, drag them kicking and screaming into covering the ACORN story).

Furthermore, after the ACORN story became too big to ignore, The New York Times dragged out its public excuse maker, uh I mean public editor, to explain why they had been so late to the party. No one should be surprised if Clark Hoyt has to write another op-ed in a week or so explaining why the Times neglected this story, but I digress.

And finally, what really galled me about this story was the mealy mouthed excuses that Obama’s DOJ put forth for not pursuing this case. According to the previous video of Kelly’s interviews with Adams and Bull, Obama’s DOJ claimed that there “were not enough facts to support the case” and that their lawyers just had “good faith disagreements”. (They also accused Mr. Adams of “having and agenda”–oooh, sounds scary.) Well, I decided to dig up the original video of the Black Panthers intimidating voters and watch it again.

Now, I don’t have one of them fancy Harvard law degrees, but that looked to me like a clear cut, undeniable case of voter intimidation that left nothing up for interpretation.

Hey MSM–it’s time to stop pouting, take your fingers out of your ears and eat your vegetables/report this story. Because with or without you, this story is going to get out. We, in the conservative blogosphere, are not going to stop talking about it until you stop ignoring it. You can get on board now, or you can be dragged kicking and screaming–again. The choice is yours.

This diary was originally posted on NewsReal and The Minority Report.

Now below, I have embedded a video of Jake Tapper’s coverage of President Obama’s Apologolooza part III tour throughout Latin America. First, Tapper begins by explaining the “Obama Doctrine”, and one of the things that he quotes President Obama as saying is that “We need to confess when we don’t live up to our ideals” (translation–”We need to apologize and flagellate ourselves a little more”).

Next, Jake Tapper ironically shows a clip of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (hardly a right-wing bomb thrower), in 2007, when she was running for president. In the clip, Clinton stated that we don’t want to meet with dictators without preconditions because “We don’t want to see the power and the prestige of the US Presidency put at risk by rushing into meetings with Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad”. Well, it’s really too bad that President Obama didn’t heed her warning, because after his handshake/backslap with Hugo Chavez (what–no bow? Chavez got shafted), his allowing Chavez to humiliate him by giving him an anti-American book in front of a gathering of cameras and world leaders (that Jake Tapper writes about in his blog), and his sitting there for an entire fifty-two minutes while Daniel Ortega, the dictator of Nicaragua, trashed the United States (oh, and the socialist Bolivian president accused the US of trying to assassinate him), President Obama did a whole lot more than just put “the power and the prestige of the US Presidency at risk”–he pretty much let these third world tyrants give the middle finger to our “prestige”, but I digress. Now, of course, President Obama stated that he was just trying to be “courteous”; however, I thought that Nevada Senator John Ensign hit it out of the park when he said that it was “irresponsible for President Obama to be seen laughing and joking around with” a tyrant like Hugo Chavez.

Oh, but I almost forgot. Jake Tapper did have a ray of sunlight to shed on President Obama’s Latin American Apologolooza/America sucks world tour. Tapper reported President Obama stating that, “We are making progress”, because Raul Castro is “willing to discuss human rights and political prisoners”. (Yes, Raul Castro is such a benevolent leader and a trustworthy man, that I’m sure that we can count on him to keep his word because he told Obama that he would).

And finally, in the end of the video, Jake Tapper explains that President Obama didn’t understand the full gravity of the insult that Hugo Chavez was throwing his way by giving him the anti-American book (titled, “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent”) in front of an audience and TV cameras, because “President Obama doesn’t speak Spanish”. Well, I just got a big belly laugh out of that one, because wasn’t it Obama who said last summer that “we should teach our children Spanish and be embarrassed that we don’t know French”? That’s some irony for you there boys and girls.

Click here for Jake Tapper ABC News video.

Now, the previous video of Jake Tapper’s reporting on Apologolooza III was really just the appetizer–the main course is coming up next. Below, I have embedded a Fox News Mobile video with Megyn Kelly. In this video, Kelly interviews Doug Schoen, a former Democratic pollster for President Clinton (again, hardly a right-wing bomb thrower), who was there to discuss his new book on Hugo Chavez titled, “The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the Threat Against America”. In this interview, Schoen points out that, “We should have been in touch with the Venezuelans to make it clear that it’s not acceptable, without preconditions, for the two leaders to embrace”.

Next, Megyn Kelly shows footage of Hugo Chavez, in a 2006 speech at the U.N., buffoonishly calling President Bush “the Devil” and stating that he “could still smell the sulfur”. Kelly then goes on to quote Hugo Chavez as stating, one day after 9/11, that “the US brought the attacks on itself”. Doug Schoen responded to her by saying that, “You really can’t excuse this kind of behavior, as well as the drug trafficking, the support of Iranian nuclear ambitions, the support of Hamas, and the massive limitations on political freedom in Venezuela”. I tend to agree with Schoen–especially since Iran is killing American soldiers. Then, Schoen further adds that Hugo Chavez has never renounced, nor recanted, any of his offensive statements regarding the US.

Towards the end of the interview, Megyn Kelly asks Doug Schoen if “Obama is in fantasyland” thinking that he can change how these dictators, like Chavez, operate. Schoen responds by stating that, “If Obama can not get Chavez to make conscious changes in his policies, then he is in fantasyland, because hugs, exchanges of handshakes and exchanges of books don’t do anything other than support Chavez at home and help him to implement policies that undermine freedom and democracy in Venezuela”.

However, the best part of this Fox News footage came in the very beginning of this video. I’m just mentioning it now, because I believe in saving the best for last (you know, go out with a bang). In the first fifteen seconds of this interview (watch these first fifteen seconds carefully), you can see Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary and Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser, sitting behind Obama and to the immediate left of him (but to the viewer’s right) when Hugo Chavez gregariously comes up to President Obama to hand him the infamous book in front of the throngs of reporters. As you watch this video, one cannot help but notice the look of intense disgust on Larry Summers’ face as Chavez sticks it to President Obama by handing him the anti-American book in front of the media. Furthermore, as Obama just humbly smiles and accepts the book, you can see Summers roll his eyes and toss his head in complete and utter revulsion that our president would allow some tin-pot dictator to make him look like a weak-kneed pansy in front of the whole world.

[If you want to see Larry Summers’ face clearly, I suggest clicking on the link to the same video (that I placed under the embed) and watching the first fifteen seconds again, because the video will be much larger and will, therefore, show more detail.]

Click here for Fox News Megyn Kelly video.

I just have one question after viewing this–AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO NOTICED THIS FOOTAGE OF LARRY SUMMERS’ FACE?! I find it extremely hard to believe that someone, somewhere, in the the MSM didn’t notice this as well. Oh, who am I kidding. I’m sure that some of them noticed it, they just chose not to report on it (you know, you can’t make The One look bad), but I digress.

So, in conclusion, I could probably write a one thousand page thesis on why President Obama should have manned up and knocked off the whole Apologolooza world tour that he’s got going on–but hey, more is not always better–sometimes it’s just more. No, I think that in this particular case, I will let Larry Summers’ face do the talking for me. Come to think of it, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

Now below, I have embedded a video of Jake Tapper’s coverage of President Obama’s Apologolooza part III tour throughout Latin America. First, Tapper begins by explaining the “Obama Doctrine”, and one of the things that he quotes President Obama as saying is that “We need to confess when we don’t live up to our ideals” (translation–”We need to apologize and flagellate ourselves a little more”).

Next, Jake Tapper ironically shows a clip of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (hardly a right-wing bomb thrower), in 2007, when she was running for president. In the clip, Clinton stated that we don’t want to meet with dictators without preconditions because “We don’t want to see the power and the prestige of the US Presidency put at risk by rushing into meetings with Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad”. Well, it’s really too bad that President Obama didn’t heed her warning, because after his handshake/backslap with Hugo Chavez (what–no bow? Chavez got shafted), his allowing Chavez to humiliate him by giving him an anti-American book in front of a gathering of cameras and world leaders (that Jake Tapper writes about in his blog), and his sitting there for an entire fifty-two minutes while Daniel Ortega, the dictator of Nicaragua, trashed the United States (oh, and the socialist Bolivian president accused the US of trying to assassinate him), President Obama did a whole lot more than just put “the power and the prestige of the US Presidency at risk”–he pretty much let these third world tyrants give the middle finger to our “prestige”, but I digress. Now, of course, President Obama stated that he was just trying to be “courteous”; however, I thought that Nevada Senator John Ensign hit it out of the park when he said that it was “irresponsible for President Obama to be seen laughing and joking around with” a tyrant like Hugo Chavez.

Oh, but I almost forgot. Jake Tapper did have a ray of sunlight to shed on President Obama’s Latin American Apologolooza/America sucks world tour. Tapper reported President Obama stating that, “We are making progress”, because Raul Castro is “willing to discuss human rights and political prisoners”. (Yes, Raul Castro is such a benevolent leader and a trustworthy man, that I’m sure that we can count on him to keep his word because he told Obama that he would).

And finally, in the end of the video, Jake Tapper explains that President Obama didn’t understand the full gravity of the insult that Hugo Chavez was throwing his way by giving him the anti-American book (titled, “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent”) in front of an audience and TV cameras, because “President Obama doesn’t speak Spanish”. Well, I just got a big belly laugh out of that one, because wasn’t it Obama who said last summer that “we should teach our children Spanish and be embarrassed that we don’t know French”? That’s some irony for you there boys and girls.

Click here for Jake Tapper ABC News video.

Now, the previous video of Jake Tapper’s reporting on Apologolooza III was really just the appetizer–the main course is coming up next. Below, I have embedded a Fox News Mobile video with Megyn Kelly. In this video, Kelly interviews Doug Schoen, a former Democratic pollster for President Clinton (again, hardly a right-wing bomb thrower), who was there to discuss his new book on Hugo Chavez titled, “The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the Threat Against America”. In this interview, Schoen points out that, “We should have been in touch with the Venezuelans to make it clear that it’s not acceptable, without preconditions, for the two leaders to embrace”.

Next, Megyn Kelly shows footage of Hugo Chavez, in a 2006 speech at the U.N., buffoonishly calling President Bush “the Devil” and stating that he “could still smell the sulfur”. Kelly then goes on to quote Hugo Chavez as stating, one day after 9/11, that “the US brought the attacks on itself”. Doug Schoen responded to her by saying that, “You really can’t excuse this kind of behavior, as well as the drug trafficking, the support of Iranian nuclear ambitions, the support of Hamas, and the massive limitations on political freedom in Venezuela”. I tend to agree with Schoen–especially since Iran is killing American soldiers. Then, Schoen further adds that Hugo Chavez has never renounced, nor recanted, any of his offensive statements regarding the US.

Towards the end of the interview, Megyn Kelly asks Doug Schoen if “Obama is in fantasyland” thinking that he can change how these dictators, like Chavez, operate. Schoen responds by stating that, “If Obama can not get Chavez to make conscious changes in his policies, then he is in fantasyland, because hugs, exchanges of handshakes and exchanges of books don’t do anything other than support Chavez at home and help him to implement policies that undermine freedom and democracy in Venezuela”.

However, the best part of this Fox News footage came in the very beginning of this video. I’m just mentioning it now, because I believe in saving the best for last (you know, go out with a bang). In the first fifteen seconds of this interview (watch these first fifteen seconds carefully), you can see Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary and Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser, sitting behind Obama and to the immediate left of him (but to the viewer’s right) when Hugo Chavez gregariously comes up to President Obama to hand him the infamous book in front of the throngs of reporters. As you watch this video, one cannot help but notice the look of intense disgust on Larry Summers’ face as Chavez sticks it to President Obama by handing him the anti-American book in front of the media. Furthermore, as Obama just humbly smiles and accepts the book, you can see Summers roll his eyes and toss his head in complete and utter revulsion that our president would allow some tin-pot dictator to make him look like a weak-kneed pansy in front of the whole world.

[If you want to see Larry Summers’ face clearly, I suggest clicking on the link to the same video (that I placed under the embed) and watching the first fifteen seconds again, because the video will be much larger and will, therefore, show more detail.]

Click here for Fox News Megyn Kelly video.

I just have one question after viewing this–AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO NOTICED THIS FOOTAGE OF LARRY SUMMERS’ FACE?! I find it extremely hard to believe that someone, somewhere, in the the MSM didn’t notice this as well. Oh, who am I kidding. I’m sure that some of them noticed it, they just chose not to report on it (you know, you can’t make The One look bad), but I digress.

So, in conclusion, I could probably write a one thousand page thesis on why President Obama should have manned up and knocked off the whole Apologolooza world tour that he’s got going on–but hey, more is not always better–sometimes it’s just more. No, I think that in this particular case, I will let Larry Summers’ face do the talking for me. Come to think of it, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

But hey, it’s probably for the best with him being a “right-wing extremist” (translation-veteran) and all, right?

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.