AN OPEN LETTER TO SENATORS FLAKE, COLLINS, & MURKOWSKI

Derek Hunter is a husband, father, and author of the book, “Outrage, INC.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood”, which examines the ways, both obvious and subtle, liberals use emotional manipulation to override rational thought and influence the American people: Dear Senators Flake, Collins, and Murkowski

From Amazon:

There are three institutions in American life run by gatekeepers who have stopped letting in anyone who questions their liberal script: academia, journalism, and pop culture. They use their cult-like groupthink consensus as "proof" that science, reporting, and entertainment will always back up the Democrats. They give their most political members awards, and then say the awards make their liberal beliefs true. Worse, they are using that consensus to pull the country even further to the left, by bullying and silencing dissent from even those they've allowed in.

How ‘Convicted Criminal’ James O’Keefe Came to Be ‘Discredited’

Investigative reporter James O’Keefe is admittedly a repeat offender. Over and over again he has committed old-fashioned gumshoe journalism. Worse, he has gone after targets grown fat, soft, and corrupt from years of media protection. In the process, O’Keefe has embarrassed the mainstream media and enraged their political allies. Now the whole lot of them wants his head.

READ MORE

This is a Woodward-Bernstein sized opportunity for a young investigative journalist or two who wants to dig, and for a publisher looking for a best-seller if released about 11 months from now.

Hugh Hewitt: "The Smell of Cover-Up In The Morning"

This is what good journalism looks like

Poor Colleen Long. She works for the Associated Press. And she just doesn't understand what's going on with that 'Occupy Wall Street' protest.

Occupy Wall Street Protests -- This Is What Stupidity Looks Like

Obama sez: If we don't tell you what to think you'll be stupid

From Neville Awards: Net Neutrality -- Killing the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg

From Sultan Knish: Obama's Great Airwave Robbery

The Journolist has started to leak like an overripe diaper...

Just in case you've been living in a cave, or if you only get your news from MSNBC, here's the story...

NEWSMEAT 2008 Presidential A-List Donor Chart: Contributions by America's most famous and powerful citizens.

107 ELITE ASSHOLES WHO THINK THEY KNOW BETTER THAN THE REST OF US:

1. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington
Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect
2. Ben Adler – Newsweek, POLITICO
3. Mike Allen – POLITICO
4. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America
5. Marc Ambinder – The Atlantic
6. Greg Anrig – The Century Foundation
7. Ryan Avent – Economist
8. Dean Baker – The American Prospect
9. Nick Baumann – Mother Jones
10. Josh Bearman – LA Weekly
11. Steven Benen – The Carpetbagger Report
12. Jared Bernstein – Economic Policy Institute
13. Michael Berube – Crooked Timber (blog), Pennsylvania State University
14. Lindsay Beyerstein – (blogger)
15. Joel Bleifuss – In These Times
16. John Blevins – South Texas College of Law
17. Sam Boyd – The American Prospect
18. Rich Byrne – Playwright and freelancer
19. Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic
20. Jonathan Chait – The New Republic
21. Lakshmi Chaudry – In These Times
22. Isaac Chotiner – The New Republic
23. Michael Cohen – New America Foundation
24. Jonathan Cohn – The New Republic
25. Joe Conason – The New York Observer
26. David Corn – Mother Jones
27. Daniel Davies – The Guardian
28. David Dayen – FireDogLake
29. Brad DeLong – The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkley
30. Ryan Donmoyer – Bloomberg
31. Kevin Drum – Washington Monthly
32. Matt Duss – Center for American Progress
33. Eve Fairbanks – The New Republic
34. Henry Farrell – George Washington University
35. Tim Fernholz – American Prospect
36. James Galbraith – University of Texas at Austin (professor)
37. Todd Gitlin – Columbia University
38. Ilan Goldenberg – National Security Network
39. Dana Goldstein – The Daily Beast
40. Merrill Goozner – Chicago Tribune
41. David Greenberg – Slate
42. Robert Greenwald – Brave New Films
43. Chris Hayes – The Nation
44. Don Hazen – Alternet
45. Michael Hirsh – Newsweek
46. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect
47. Michael Kazin – Georgetown University (law professor)
48. Ed Kilgore – Democratic Stategist
49. Richard Kim – The Nation
50. Mark Kleiman – The Reality Based Community
51. Ezra Klein – Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect
52. Joe Klein – TIME
53. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University
54. Lisa Lerer – POLITICO
55. Daniel Levy – Century Foundation
56. Alec McGillis – Washington Post
57. Scott McLemee – Inside Higher Ed
58. Ari Melber – The Nation
59. Seth Michaels – MyDD.com
60. Luke Mitchell – Harper’s Magazine
61. Gautham Nagesh – The Hill, Daily Caller
62. Suzanne Nossel – Human Rights Watch
63. Michael O’Hare – University of California, Berkeley
64. Rick Perlstein – Author, Campaign for America’s Future
65. Harold Pollack – University of Chicago
66. Foster Kamer – The Village Voice
67. Katha Pollitt – The Nation
68. Ari Rabin-Havt – Media Matters
69. David Roberts – Grist
70. Alyssa Rosenberg – Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive
71. Alex Rossmiller – National Security Network
72. Laura Rozen – Politico, Mother Jones
73. Greg Sargent – Washington Post
74. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun
75. Noam Scheiber – The New Republic
76. Michael Scherer – TIME
77. Mark Schmitt – American Prospect
78. Adam Serwer – American Prospect
79. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun (columnist), University of Maryland, Baltimore County (professor), FiveThirtyEight.com (contributing writer)
80. Julie Bergman Sender – Balcony Films
81. Walter Shapiro – PoliticsDaily.com
82. Nate Silver – FiveThirtyEight.com
83. Jesse Singal – The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly
84. Ben Smith – POLITICO
85. Sarah Spitz – NPR
86. Adele Stan – The Media Consortium
87. Kate Steadman – Kaiser Health News
88. Jonathan Stein – Mother Jones
89. Sam Stein – The Huffington Post
90. Jesse Taylor – Pandagon.net
91. Steven Teles – Yale University
92. Thoma – The Economist’s View (blog), University of Oregon (professor)
93. Michael Tomasky – The Guardian
94. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker
95. Rebecca Traister – Salon (columnist)
96. Cenk Uygur – The Young Turks
97. Tracy Van Slyke – The Media Consortium
98. Dave Weigel – Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent
99. Moira Whelan – National Security Network
100. Scott Winship – Pew Economic Mobility Project
101. Kai Wright – The Root
102. Holly Yeager – Columbia Journalism Review
103. Rich Yeselson – Change to Win
104. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly
105. Jonathan Zasloff – UCLA
106. Julian Zelizer – Princeton professor and CNN contributor
107. Avi Zenilman – POLITICO

THE STORY OF O

From HillBuzz:

It was interesting to see Ben Smith, from Politico.com, listed as a member of Journolist — the committed Obama operatives in the Media who banded together to make sure negative stories about their Lightbringer were quashed while attacks were coordinated to label anyone opposing Obama “RAAACIST” during the 2008 campaign.

We had a brief encounter with Smith during September and October of 2008, where he repeatedly refused to run a story we were involved in that would have damaged Obama and drawn closer attention to his continued and longstanding ties to terrorist bomber William Ayers.

Here in Chicago, we’re friends with a woman who used to give the Obama girls swimming lessons. She, and others who worked in the Obama/Rezko Mansion for various projects and assignments, was a source for a lot of what we know about The Lightbringer personally (his affinity for men, his Parkinson’s disease, his chain-smoking and continued drug use, etc.). Between people who’d worked for the City with Michelle, people who attended Trinity United with the Obamas, and people who lived and worked in Hyde Park near the Obama/Rezko Mansion, we collected many anecdotes that raised a lot of questions about the man the Media was pushing to be our next president…if any journalist wanted to follow any of these leads.

The McCain campaign approached us with a story they had on Obama, which needed a second source to confirm. They had found a young woman in Hyde Park who had played with the older Obama girl on occasion, and knew about babysitting William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn did for the Obama girls. The young woman was the daughter of a McCain supporter in Hyde Park (probably the only McCain supporter in Hyde Park), and was barely a teenager. The McCain camp went to Ben Smith with this story, but he refused to look into it because the only witness to the Ayers/Dohrn babysitting operation was a teenaged girl who happened to be the daughter of a McCain supporter.

We were charged with finding someone else who could verify that Ayers/Dohrn babysat the Obama girls. We brought their old swimming instructor up, and Ben Smith shot that person (now a respected advertising executive) down because she, too, was a Republican and a McCain supporter. So, Ben Smith refused to do a write-up on the Ayers/Dorhn babysitting…despite getting two different people who didn’t know each other to verify that this happened on more than one occasion.

When you look at a map of the Hyde Park area, you see Louis Farrakhan, the Obama/Rezko Mansion, and the William Ayers residence in very close proximity to one another…about as close to each other as The Gap, Banana Republic, and Express are to each other in a typical suburban mall. Walking distance. So close, young children could easily walk between the houses without parents worrying about them.

It was impossible to prod the Media into doing any sort of investigative story on Obama, in any way, shape, or form. Ben Smith was not the only reporter we went to with this story. But, he’s the most memorable because he kept playing games with us. ”Get me someone else, someone more important, someone who is not a Republican, and I’ll do the story,” he said. Which made us waste a great deal of time running through contacts and leads trying to do the work of actual reporters, trying to flesh out this story.

To this day, the majority of people in Chicago won’t talk about the Obamas, for fear of their careers being ruined. The Left is vindictive and irrational. Anyone seen as working against Dr. Utopia, The Lightbringer, must be taken out. People are afraid to talk, and will probably remain that way until Obama leaves office. At which time, we expect all the flood gates to open. Secrets can’t be hidden forever.

Ultimately, every “journalist” involved with Journolist or who otherwise served as an Obama operative in 2008 will be exposed, and their careers will be ruined.

We hope the public makes the connection that absent the Journolist members and the support they gave Obama, perhaps he would not have been elected and then maybe many in the public would still have gainful employment in an economy that was not deliberately ruined so our wealth could be redistributed.

We hope the public’s ire is turned full-blast at people like Ben Smith. That’s long overdue.

Our experience with Journolist member (and committed Obama operative) Ben Smith during the 2008 general election

Hairs standing on the backs of necks across the nation...

...all because of a a wildly laughable rationale for government intervention that would prop up the failing newspaper model in a manner that would put the entire industry at the mercy of the federal bureaucracy it’s supposed to keep in check.

Think: George Orwell.

Democrats trying to criminalize citizen journalism

By: Mark Hemingway
Commentary Staff Writer
12/03/09 5:10 PM EST

An amendment to a bill currently being considered by the Senate would deny ordinary citizens doing vital investigations in the public interest the same legal protections as professional journalists. If it were to become law, the change could significantly stifle important citizen journalism efforts similar to the recent ACORN expose.

The Senate is currently considering a new press shield law sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa. The bill would "maintain the free flow of information to the public by providing conditions for the federally compelled disclosure of information by certain persons connected with the news media." Except that Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Cal., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., want to ensure that any new journalistic protections would only apply to professional journalists and not regular citizens. An amendment filed by Durbin and Feinstein would modify the legislation to define journalists thusly:

AMENDMENTS intended to be proposed by Mrs. FEINSTEIN (for herself and Mr. DURBIN)

Viz:

In section 10(2)(A), strike clause (iii) and insert the following:

(iii) obtains the information sought while working as a salaried employee of, or independent contractor for, an entity—

(I) that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, 1or other means; and

(II) that—

(aa) publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical;

(bb) operates a radio or television broadcast station, network, cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier;

(cc) operates a programming service; or

(dd) operates a news agency or wire service;

In section 10(2)(B), strike ‘‘and’’ at the end.

In section 10(2)(C), strike the period at the end and insert ‘‘; and’’.

In section 10(2), add at the end the following:

(D) does not include an individual who gathers or disseminates the protected information sought to be compelled anonymously or under a pseudonym.

While the ACORN story has stung congressional Democrats and pointed out the deficiencies of the mainstream media, there's no basis for Durbin and Feinstein's amendment that seems anything other than vindictive or an attempt to protect the powerful. It's telling that bloggers on both the left and the right are in total agreement this is very bad law.

www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Democrats-trying-to-criminalize-citizen-journalism-78461812.html

Famed Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez now target of Castro's thugs

Here's proof that Michael Moore--and all those other ignorant fools who worship dictators--is full of shit

WHITE HOUSE ORGAN

Did White House pressure NYT into changing Dover story?

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

Orson Scott Card OpEd piece.

Orson Scott Card is a brilliant writer who has written some of the best SciFi there is. He is also a Democrat. He wrote this opinion piece for a local paper where he lived in North Carolina:

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

http://noodledaddy.livejournal.com/27883.html