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Olympics coverage: "Abide with me," but don't tell the great unwashed.

"Our program is tailored for the U.S. television audience. It’s a credit to [London Olympics opening ceremony producer] Danny Boyle that it required so little editing,” an NBC Sports spokesperson smarmily responded to critics of the network's cutting out — for their American audience — a tribute to the London terrorism victims of 2005 ("Abide with me" above).

"Get used to stuff like this," writes USA Today Sports reporter Michael Hiestand, explaining why CBS decided to skip the UK's Olympic tribute to victims of the Jihadist London bombings of Summer '05 and go straight for the ratings jugular:

Which is more likely to encourage U.S.viewers to stick around for your feel-good TV show: chit-chat between mega-celebs Ryan Seacrest and Michael Phelps or a tribute to victims of an overseas terrorist attack that happened seven years ago?

"An overseas terrorist attack that happened seven years ago"? How yesterday is that? Not to mention the International Olympic Committee's decision to bow in dhimmitude to our Islamist masters and pretend the first shot across our bow back in ancient history — the horrific Munich massacre of 1972 — never happened.

 

We're obviously not CBS Sports' target audience — much less an acolyte of the Church of See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil of Islam — but thanks to Mediaite we've got the story:

During the portion of the performance that was not broadcast in the U.S., the BBC announcer asks the audience to observe a moment of silence. “The excitement of that moment in Singapore seven years ago when England won the games was tempered the next day with sorrow from the events of July 7th that year,” says the BBC announcer. “A wall of remembrance for those no longer here to share in this event.”

The poignant "Abide with me," sung by Emeli Sande in the Olympic tribute, is a Christian hymn by Scottish Anglican Henry Francis Lyte, most often sung to William Henry Monk's tune "Eventide":

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me …

Thou on my head in early youth didst smile,
And though rebellious and perverse meanwhile,
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee.
On to the close, O Lord, abide with me.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Robert Reich to the twittersphere: "Put Fox out of biz"

"People are moving away from Obamanomics, they're moving away from Reichonomics and they're moving towards Kudlow/Moore-onomics, and that's really shown by those population shifts" from north to south, free marketer Steve Moore (right) told tax-the-rich class warrior Robert Reich (left) on The Kudlow Report last night. "If you look at the new Rust Belt, it's not the Midwest. [It's] those New England and northeastern states … the kind of epicenter of liberalism."

"FCC: Stop tinkering with Internet and return to the 'fairness doctrine' requiring broadcasters to provide equal time. Put Fox out of biz," twittered President Clinton's Labor Secretary Robert Reich this morning. Horrified, we twittered back:

Is that you, Big Bro? How is it the business of a govt that works for me to put my fave TV station out of business?

"Astonishing how shameless our homegrown totalitarians are in tweeting their desire to repress free speech," we twittered Reuters Money and Politics columnist James Pethokoukis, who replied:

Agree ... I am actually surprised though I probably shouldnt be.

Indeed. The tormented Berkeley savant and class warrior sounds like he's coordinating his talking points with the latest iteration of Journolist/Cabalist. Random recent post from Professor Reich's blog:

And the vitriol emanating at all hours from rage radio, yell television, and Fox News – against immigrants, intellectuals, “coastal elites,” gays, and the President.

We’re better than this. This is not respectful disagreement. It’s thuggery. It has no legitimate role in a democracy. And most Americans are fed up with it.

A tired litany, but here's a suggestion for the man whose Wikepedia entry names him "one of America's foremost political economists." If you can't take the more flamboyant promulgators of constitutional conservatism who amuse us unthinking Dittoheads "juiced up with emotion, fear, guilt and racism," sir, then how about tuning in to the reasoned arguments of the above-mentioned James Pethokoukis? Yes, he's appeared from time to time on Fox, but like you he's been a welcome guest on CNBC and PBS as well. How's that for fair and balanced? His latest, "Net neutrality rules a blow to free markets," would be a good place to start. Or how about this from a month back, "Paul Ryan and the conservative economic mind":,

What’s fascinating about Ryan is that he keeps saying things that should get him into political trouble, but they don’t. He wants to rework Social Security. He wants to restructure Medicare. He  thinks a cheaper dollar is a bad idea.  And he won reelection with 68 percent of the vote in a district that Obama carried by four points. Good ideas expressed well and with conviction are powerful things.

Update: Doug Ross's Larwyn's Linx links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Barney Frank and the Code of Ethics for Government Service

The tortured shape of Barney Frank's Massacusetts 4th District (above) calls to mind the original gerrymandered congressional district of 1812 that gave the tortured political sleight of hand its name. It included our own Chelsea-by-the-Sea as the tail of the serpent. As we blogged last April, we've chosen our next political battle, skipping over our own far less powerful MA 8th District Rep. Michael Capuano, to go straight for the jugular of the man who did so much to precipitate the nation's current economic woes. Frank (MA-4) has three Republican challengers, including businessman and US Marine Sean Bielat, our candidate of choice.

Barney "Frank wrote a special provision into the TARP legislation designed specifically for OneUnited Bank," writes Jonathan Well at Bloomberg Opinion, shedding a little light on the culture of corruption that must be rooted out in the "term limits by other means" that are the November elections (h/t Sean Bielat):

For all the strange details to emerge in the Maxine Waters bank-bailout scandal, this one might be the most surprising: It turns out members of Congress are prohibited from doing “special favors” for anyone, even if they receive nothing of value in return.

Who knew? Here I had been living under the impression that handing out special favors is something Washington lawmakers do all the time — be they free pens, tax breaks or earmarks. And, of course, it is.

Yet under the Code of Ethics for Government Service, it is against the rules for any federal employee to “discriminate unfairly by the dispensing of special favors or privileges to anyone, whether for remuneration or not.” That’s what it says in Count III of the ethics charges against Waters, which were unsealed this week by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. The House of Representatives adopted the code in 1958.

No wonder Waters and Charlie Rangel are crying "Racism!" It's the last refuge of scoundrels:

The bank eventually received $12 million under the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, in December 2008. That’s because an even more powerful lawmaker intervened, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

Frank wrote a special provision into the TARP legislation designed specifically for OneUnited. It instructed Treasury to consider assisting banks with less than $1 billion of assets that had suffered severe capital losses on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred shares …

The reason OneUnited wasn’t healthy is it made poor investment decisions. But for Frank’s efforts, the bank would have collapsed.

Enter stage right Sean Bielat, an authentic small-government American original who speaks for us tea partying red staters hunkered down here behind deep blue enemy lines in Taxachusetts. We'll be interviewing Bielat tomorrow or Monday, so please let us know any questions you'd like us to ask him. Meanwhile, twitter/blogfriend Brian O'Connor of Red Dog Report attempts to answer the question "Who is Sean Bielat?":

Barney Frank has been in the United States Congress since 1981, and he has been collecting a taxpayer funded paycheck for the last 37 years.

Sean Bielat, on the other hand, has served in the Marine Corps and has actually taken a paycheck from the private sector; first at McKinsey & Company and later at iRobot …

Barney Frank recently spearheaded the White House's massive Financial Regulation Bill, which restricts how banks can make profits, but then funds bank bailouts if the CEO's make bad decisions, causing the bank to fail.

Sean Bielat, on the other hand, would rather see free market solutions to business and industry.

"The unemployment rate in Barney Frank’s district is particularly high, at over 12% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics," notes the Massachusetts Conservative Feminist, who adds "The Commonwealth’s average unemployment rate has remained between 9.2 and 9.5% for the year, starting at 5.6% in January of 2009, according to the Boston Globe." It calls to mind the fact that the bluer the state — that is, the more heavily a state went for Obama in the 2008 election — the greater the per capita debt today.

A reminder: Let us know your questions for Sean Bielat. This from our inside source:

Just be fair and not afraid to ask tough questions, like, can he win, etc? Given that I see myself as an advocate, I often give them some leeway, discuss the interview first off-record, telling them, I don't mind helping them to get their message out — but I won't let them make me look like a shill, either. I would think his big goal is convincing people he can win — that impacts fundraising — so he shouldn't duck the question. To some extent, I want to hear their rationale for themselves and for their campaign being able to win. That usually serves both me and them to put out there.

Update: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Tea Party grizzlies vs JournoList wolf pack

Fred Barnes's WSJ op ed today got us to thinking about the difference between liberal and conservative journalists. Twittering about it this afternoon, we came up with the metaphor of wolf pack behavior for the JournoList folks on the left side of the aisle. Working as a team, they select their quarry and close in for the kill in a coordinated attack from all sides. Sarah Palin is calling them "sick puppies." But what animal works best as a metaphor for journos on the Tea Party side of the aisle? See below for some answers.

"My experience with other conservative journalists is that they are loners," writes Fred Barnes in "The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy" in today's WSJ. Getting his readers up to speed on JournoListGate, a vaguely bemused "Freddie the Beadle" reluctantly acknowledges there's something rotten in the state of American journalism:

Not to say there's a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism …

The first call I got after the Daily Caller unearthed the emails involving me was from Karl Rove. He said he wanted to talk to his "fellow racist." We laughed about this. But the whole episode was also sad. I didn't sputter at the thought of being called a racist. But it was sad to see what journalism, or at least a segment of it, had come to.

 

"Grizzlies are generally loners, but they are still North America’s most social bear. They gather at food sources and often forage in family groups," according to the Bronx Zoo website. Sarah Palin's metaphor for common-sense conservative women — "Mama Grizzlies" fiercely defending their young — resonates beyond female political candidates to become a perfect metaphor for everyday fellow Americans and social-networking citizen journalists like the Tea Partiers, both women and men, who are entering the political fray to battle the fear-and-smear machine that would douse the lights of the Shining City Upon a Hill.

Lone grizzly vs. wolf pack. Individualism vs. collectivism. The metaphors fit. On the other hand, a case can be made, as we've done before, for social networkers as flocks of birds wheeliing and swooping in unison. As with Adam Smiths "invisible hand," individual choices add up to something that redounds to the benefit of the larger community:

"Individuals, but moving in a single entity. And the reason for this behavior? Well, thousands of eyes looking for predators on the roost site. Nothing could escape their gaze, no raptor could surprise this soaring mass of bird flesh … The birds are also maneuvering for position, social position."

SAD isn't going to do it, Fred. Think of the Mama Grizzlies and Papa Bears: First you get MAD, and then you strike back. Special Forces Commander Dan Riehl has the goods at Human Events in a take-no-prisoners "Defense of Andrew Breitbart." Read it, Mr. Barnes, and take heart.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update II: The Anchoress links under "Unrelated Weekend Fare."

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Have you noticed what superb writers we have on the Tea Party side of the aisle?

The invasion of Smooth Crabgrass (Digitaria ischaemum) amidst the carefully-laid bricks of the terrace metaphorically evokes the part of human nature that lurks in the darkness beyond the Shining City Upon a Hill. Ben Franklin's attributed answer to a query as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation comes to mind: "A Republic, if you can keep it."

"Britain's Home Secretary has decided Islamic terrorism should be renamed 'anti-Islamic activity,'" reports Dale Hurd of CBN News from London. Twitter friend The Right Scoop of Right Scoop TV calls it "your wakeup call America!":

CBN News is really doing great reporting these days. In this report, CBN News details how political correctness and multiculturalism run amuck are allowing Islam to take over Britain to the detriment of those who are living there. It is very eye opening.

Listen to the full, hair-raising CBN report here. Meanwhile stateside the NAACP is trying to rename peaceful Tea-Party dissent "violent racism." Fortunately, on this side of the pond "we're mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore!" Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft, blogging about the St. Louis Tea Party's nipping the toxic racist weed in the bud, speaks for us all in a rousing Tea Party Moment:

We will not be silenced.

We shocked the elites. We shocked the radicals and extremists. They knew they had to react and they lashed out at us. They called us mobsters, Nazis, radicals, and racists. They wanted us to pipe down; to be good little drones as they continued to wreak havoc across this great nation with their radical agenda. But, we gathered on street corners and met them at town halls.

We will not be silenced.In January they rammed through their nationalized health care plan. They lied to us. They said it would save us money. It won’t. They said it would not cover abortion. It did. They said your insurance plan won’t change. It will. We met them in Washington. And their state-run media lied about us and made up stories that we were racists. Despite the proof they continue this lie still today. But …

We will not be silenced.

Today they reach a new low. They publicly ridicule us as racists at their far left NAACP annual convention. We are hurt. We are angry. We are upset with this horrible lie.

We will not be silenced.

"The Tea Party's principles are simple and clear, explains Bill Hennessy, co-founder — along with our own intrepid Dana Loesch — of the St. Louis Tea Party:

Smaller federal government
Lower taxes
Fiscal responsibility
National defense
Federalism

Those are precisely the tools to lift all Americans out of poverty. They’ve worked every time they’ve been tried. In America, we just haven’t tried them in awhile, due in large part to the NAACP’s advancement of socialism.

Each of these First Principles protects the rights of every American—the rights inherent in our humanity, not phony “rights” invented by a bureaucrat. We stand for rights given by God that no man, no government, can justifiably deny or diminish. Our principles are the very same principles that the NAACP stood for in 1909 but has wandered away from since the 1970s.

Have you noticed what superb writers — and thinkers! — we have on the Tea Party side of the aisle? Compare the heartfelt, luminous prose exerpted above with the false narrative approach of "One Nation," the left's latest lame attempt to mount a top-down challenge to the bottom-up tsunami that is the Tea Party. The WaPo reports:

"They promise to "counter the tea party narrative" and help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of floundering …

"The groups involved represent the core of the first-time voters who backed President Obama -- including the National Council of La Raza, NAACP, AFL-CIO, SEIU and the United States Student Association. (The effort is separate from the Democratic Party's plan to spend $50 million trying to reach those same voters.

Good luck. In high school English back in the good old days, we were taught that muddy writing reflects muddy thinking, and to become a good writer you studied good writing. Must be all that Glenn Beck Book Club stuff, from Adam Smith and the Founding Fathers to Friedrich Hayek and Lucianne Goldberg's boy Jonah. Eat your heart out, Oprah!

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update II: Memeorandum Top Items discussion.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

NASA: Heavenly bodies go behind the veil?

Playing with the Muslim practice — as we understand it: correct us if we're wrong — of covering up women's bodies to avoid having to deal with men's inconvenient impulses, Fred Fry put NASA's current logo behind the veil, a brilliant metaphor for the Obama administration's "New Arabic Sensitivity Administration."

Blogger Fred Fry's design (above) for Michelle Malkin's NASA logo makeover competition is a masterpiece of the graphic designer's art, suggesting layers of meaning with just a few bold colors and shapes. Here was the challenge:

Since NASA’s new mission involves pandering to Muslims, it’s time for a new logo photoshop contest.

We were amused to note that even Fox News Special Report's progressive-in-residence Mara Laisson was at a loss for words last night to explain what planet weak horse Obama might have landed on when he instructed NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to "find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."

Can you say condescending?

Michelle reports that logo entries are pouring in:

Thanks to all the entrants! No doubt they’ll all be on Janet Napolitano’s unacceptable "controversial opinion" master list before sunrise.

Update: Good advice from logo designer (above image) Fred Fry in the comments:

Thanks much for the link! Someone needs to take our President and make him watch 'The Right Stuff' (for starters). Then again, maybe the President needs to take a trip on the Shuttle to get inspired about what NASA should be doing!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Janet Napolitano beware: "Just let Big Sis try and block Big Sissy!"

While Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (AKA Big Sis, above) dithered, Arizona Governor Janet Brewer was disintermediating the federal powers that be via the internet: "The best thing government can do is to create a stable, predictable environment, governed by an easily understood set of rules or laws," she wrote on Facebook this evening in response to the Justice Department's suit against Arizona on its new immigration law, filed today.

"Just let Big Sis try and block Big Sissy! :)" tweeted Twitter buddy chickelit a moment ago in response to this outrageous Drudge headline, top of the fold left:

BIG SIS BLOCKS WEBSITES WITH 'CONTROVERSIAL OPINIONS' …

Here are the facts from CBS News Investigates:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is blocking certain websites from the federal agency's computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a "controversial opinion," according to an internal email obtained by CBS News …

It states that as of July 1, TSA employees will no longer be allowed to access five categories of websites that have been deemed "inappropriate for government access."

Rush Limbaugh was not amused:

TSA employees cannot visit gaming sites, sites that promote extreme violence or criminal activity, which is... (chuckles) On certain days they can't access the WhiteHouse.gov website. Controversial opinion? None of these things are defined, by the way. What big category is not blocked? (interruption) Porn sites, exactly right!

But here's the kicker:

The email does not specify how the TSA will determine if a website expresses a "controversial opinion."

Sounds like the TSA folks are well along their way on the road to Cass "Nudge" Sunstein's "libertarian paternalism." Rush and us rubes out here recognized "controversial" in this context right away as code for ideas the White House doesn't like:

You can't go to Drudge; you can't go to RushLimbaugh.com; can't go to American Spectator; can't go to National Review Online, you name it. Anywhere there are opinions that differ from those expressed officially by the regime you are not allowed to visit.

First they came for the TSA employees …

Update: Maggie's links:

Creepy dude.

Update II next day: "CHALK UP ANOTHER WIN FOR DRUDGE," says Instapundit (no credit at all to us!):

TSA withdraws ‘controversial opinion’ restriction on web use.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

DNC's Accountability Project: Obama 2008 warmed over?

"Democrats want you to catch Republicans in awkward moments," says Bret Baier in the teaser before a break on Special Report this evening, catching the spirit of the post that follows.

"Don't misrepresent who you are or why you are there. Always tell the truth. Never state that you are an employee or agent of the Democratic National Committee or any campaign or that you are working on their behalf," read the instructions at the DNC's hopenchangey "Accountability Project," protesting too much gushing that their cynical scheme to enlist you — "because it's about YOU" — gratis as a dirt-digging DNC agent is a "grassroots, volunteer project to hold Republican candidates accountable for their claims." We signed on to see what they were up to. More about that below.

We first heard about the Accountability Project from our go-to source inside the Beltway, Dan Riehl, way ahead of the curve as usual in an early-morning post tearing his hair out over the GOP's cluelessness when it comes to new media:

I thought they [the Democrats] disliked this kind of thing when Etheridge was recently caught on tape? Actually it's something I've been expecting and why I continue to insist that the DNC gets new media in ways the GOP still refuses to embrace. It's intent on controlling the narrative, while the DNC is more interested in fueling constituent and blog-based activism from the Left.

"For too long, our politics has been poisoned with misinformation, lies and double-speak," keens The Accountability Project introduction with a wink and a nod, projecting the DNC's own modus operandi onto the opposition: "The most powerful way to combat these tactics is to drag them into the light of public scrutiny."

A little background from The Huffington Post's excellent coverage and then our critique of Dan's take and a few more thoughts:

In a move that could add a broad new element of accountability to elections — or simply make the political process even more gaffe-centric — the DNC is encouraging its followers to upload video, mail pieces or audio recordings of GOP officials to a DNC-run site.

If carried out as planned, the new online tool could drastically alter the landscape of the 2010 elections, with campaign functions contracted out to hundreds of free volunteers. At a minimum, it is a vivid illustration of the modern-day campaign, where a slip-up by a candidate caught on video could have profound impacts on his or her electoral prospects. Aides freely admit that the goal is to create another "Macaca moment" — in which former Senator George Allen (R-Va.) famously doomed his reelection hopes by belittling an opposition videographer with a racial slur — or at least to unearth a viral nugget such as those that changed the course of the health care debate at town halls last summer.

We signed on and quickly found a potential target more or less in our neck of the woods, a Strafford County Republican Committee summer picnic with Tim Pawlenty scheduled in Dover, NH at noon on Saturday, July 10. Hey, that might be fun. We could post some insidiously innocuous footage to foil the DNC's nefarious plotting.

Access to The Accountability Project site's inner functions and imperatives was a piece of cake and also a revelation for a mole like us. Once you get past the disingenuously plain-Jane "grassroots" gateway page, you're right back into President Obama's ultra-sophisticated Organizing-for-America territory, all smiling, politically correct victim-group faces and hope-and-change red, white and blue.

Now a friendly but firm critique of blogbuddy Dan's take. We agree with Riehl and Glenn Reynolds that the GOP establishment's "afraid of losing control" to us tea partiers and grass-roots types, but not to be upset about the Democrats' being so far ahead of us in exploiting new media. Our delvings suggest the sophistical new-media machinations of our friends on the left side of the aisle are just retreads of old stuff from campaign 2008. Whether there's still a beating heart in their moldering email lists is unknown. We placed ourselves there way back when, again, just to keep an eye on what the opposition was up to and got this pathetic piece, obviously timed to coincide with the debut of "Accountability," today:

Dear Sissy, I'm Ann Marie Habershaw — and as the chief operating officer here, I know you don't normally hear from me.

But this election season, we're putting together one of the most ambitious midterm campaign programs in American political history!

We've never had this much staff on the ground in a non-presidential election, and we're doing everything we can to reach out to the 15 million folks who voted for the first time in 2008 to get them back to the polls this fall.

Good luck, Ann Marie. Meanwhile Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform (above) is on the case.

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link.

Update II: Retriever links. Thanks, dear friend!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

And then they came for the free press …

And when I came to the room with shoes, nothing but empty shoes, I broke down," wrote Jeff Jarvis of his epipany at the Holocaust Museum in DC a few years back. We blogged about it in "The city upon a hill shines through" and "The timeless hysteria of the history-challenged multitudes."

"Good job! Being deleted is a sure sign that you've hit someone in the twelve ring," Michael Hasenstab twittered Ruth Anne Adams this morning in response to Ruth Anne's shocking tweet about ABC Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper. Michael and Ruth Anne, regular purveyors of wise and witty twitter banter, had stopped laughing. The precipitating event was Helen Thomas's "coming out party." Here's Ruth Anne re "Tappy":

He's another hack. Not worth my time. His true colors came out with that exchange and his deletion of his @ reply to my Q.

We were shocked because Tapper has seemed that rare thing, a member of the "legacy media" whose work is "fair, balanced and unafraid," his newsy, breezy tweets a follower's delight. Only this morning we'd retweeted in approval:

JAKE "FEET-TO-FIRE" TAPPER SCORES! RT @jaketapper: Allen Has Ordered 'Uninhibited Access' to Oil Spill Operations http://tinyurl.com/2agqkh

But Tapper's apparent failure to sanction fellow White House Correspondent Thomas had exposed his left flank, and Adams wasn't holding her fire. A few snippets from their earlier thrust and parry:

Jake Tapper: For those asking, it's not my role to "condemn" comments, whether by pols or reporters. and if i do it for one person, it opens a door. Thx

Ruth Anne Adams: Is there a journo equivalent of a locker room whereby people are ostracized?

Tapper: i could start...but i would never stop! That isn't my job. My job is to bring you the news fairly and impartially.

Adams: If I had an anti-Semitic co-worker,you can bet I'd complain to HR. Certainly, I'd distance myself. Don't feign neutrality, Jake … Sometimes, silence is seen as approval. Feel free to disagree … Helen Thomas is the news. You also serve in an editorial position. You're skirting this cowardly … You know what, Taptap? You don't owe me an explanaton. My esteem-o-meter for you registers zero now.

In his defense, responding to twitterer srbryson, Tapper asks rhetorically:

and my job as a WH correspondent means I'm supposed to condemn every reporter who says something i find offensive?

Not EVERY reporter who says something you find offensive, sir, but we would sincerely ask you to consider Jeanette Pryor's sobering words in "Helen Thomas and the Definitive Answer to Why the First Holocaust Happened" at David Horowitz's NewsRealBlog:

Helen Thomas is a perpetrator. Perpetrator, because the most important aspect of the War Against Israel is the War to erode American support for Israel, the War for public opinion …

Certainly, the White House Press Corps is full of those who have thus reacted to the Nazi Holocaust. And yet, they will sit down to dinner with Helen Thomas. They will continue to say, “Good Morning,” to her, and will treat her like an icon worthy of respect. She will stoop in her throne in the Press Corps galley. She will not be shunned in the halls of the White House, and senators and representatives will still curry her favor or, at the very worst, attribute her rant to notorious spunk.

This is why the Holocaust happened.

And then they came for the free press …

Cross-posted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Old is the new beautiful

Loving it that the oldsters, now known in polite society as the politically correct "seniors," are finding their voice. Never ever dreamed of being old, but now that we are, it's a revelation. We've been tea partying from day one.

 

The young and ignorant, schooled in the stealth Gramscian, anti-Founding-Fathers curriculum, know nothing about nature or nature's God. They're prolly buying POTUS's unspeakable assertion that "We are God's partners in matters of life and death." Everyone in the whole wide world should read Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism before saying another thing. Fortunately, us old folks still remember a thing or two about the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. PLUS. As old and decrepit as we may become, the pater familias, 89-year-old Goomp, keeps on keeping on. Proud to be a scion of a grand old Yankee/Finnish family of honest and true Mercans.

Update: Instalanche. Being old is all it's cracked up to be!

Update II: "Goomp 89?" gasps Elisson incredulously in the comments:

Why, that means 89 is the new 59.

That would make us still wet behind the ears.

Update III: Modulator's Friday Ark now boarding.