Gwen Ifill Oughtta be Fired!

Gwen Ifill’s profile at PBS begins:

Gwen Ifill is moderator and managing editor of “Washington Week” and senior correspondent for “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” She is also frequently asked to moderate debates in national elections, including the Vice Presidential debate during the 2004 election and the upcoming Vice Presidential debate scheduled for October. Ifill is also the author of the forthcoming book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.

Notice that she is both the moderator for the Oct 2 VP debate and the author of an upcoming hagiography of Barack Obama. I choose the word hagiography with care. She argues that Obama is imbued with such numinous power, importance, and charisma that he is the Hero-Saint of the Age who lends the Age his name. This book is scheduled to be released on January 20, 2009. This is Inauguration Day. If Obama is elected president she stands to earn a lot of money. If he loses, not so much. This is like the person who shoes all the horses at the racetrack placing big-money, long-shot bets and hitting winners. In other words, it is fundamentally dishonest.

I have no idea whether Ifill intends to be unfair, but she certainly was perceived as unfair to Dick Cheney when he debated the adulterous John Edwards in the 2004 VP Debate. Even Democrats thought so, and they cheered for her because of it.

Ifill drew some criticism when Edwards attacked Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton, and the vice president said: “I can respond, Gwen, but it’s going to take more than 30 seconds.”

“Well, that’s all you’ve got,” she replied.

Ifill says now that Democratic partisans were delighted because they “thought I was being snippy to Cheney.” That, she says, was not her intent. Still, the consensus was that she acquitted herself well. [Wash Post]

Ifill was partisan once previously, when she moderated the 2004 VP debate. Democrats and Republicans both thought so. It’s not a party line opinion, but a considered judgment. Now she is publishing a book that will make her more money if one of the debaters she moderates wins than if the other prevails. This is a conflict of interest that should disqualify her from moderating the debate. Yet she carries on.

Both Gwen Ifill and the Debate Commission are responsible for this embarrassment. This will be a black mark on their reputations forever.

At the debate, Sarah Palin should hold up a copy of The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama and ask Ifill to sign it, and then ask her if she can put her obvious political predilection aside and treat both debaters without partiality.

And then Ifill ought to be fired!

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Related: Gwen Ifill and the Vice Presidential Debate; VP debate moderator Ifill releasing pro-Obama book; VP debate moderator’s impartiality questioned; The Obamas: Portrait of an American Family, by Gwen Ifill; Ifill: I never told the Commission about the book; Controversy brews up around VP moderator

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Technorati Tags: Media Bias, Corruption, Politics, Gwen Ifill

Barack Obama Sex-Ed for Kindergartners Open Trackbacks

The Mouth Peace really, really, really wants to know what the evidence shows. Watch and find out.

If the embedded video doesn’t work go to the YouTube channel.

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Technorati Tags: Obama, Media Bias, Neocommunism, Video

Wile E. Coyote: New York Times reporter

Iowahawk is, as usual, brilliant.

Doo-dee-doo-dee-doo… now where did I put that protractor? Ahh, here it is! Let me see… if the hypotenuse the parabola of a pregnant teenager… is inversely proportional to the approval ratings of the religious Right… then if I set the azimuth of the baby scandal catapult to 72.415 degrees, she’ll be crushed as flat as her barren Alaskan tundra. Muwahahaha! 

…Egads! I must say, sometimes I astonish even myself with my own genius!

And now, to bait the hook. Simply load in this explosive charge into the cup… unghhhh… pull the lever and…   

SPROING

FLIPPFF

KROONFFFFCH

ow.

KERSPLOOOOWWWM

Wfwell, Backh to tphe oldl drawbling bloard.

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Technorati Tags: Satire, Funny, Media Bias, Sarah Palin

When is Tag Not Tag? Updated

When it is a game called “Jailbreak.”

“This is not the old-fashioned tag, where you could use two fingers and you would be it and move on to someone else,” Hooker said. The game, she said, has become much more aggressive. “I call it the nouveau tag.”

This tag involves grabbing people who do not necessarily know they are playing and possibly bumping them to the ground. “Then the kids do ‘pyramiding’ or ‘towering.’ They pile on each other. [Sometimes] they call it ‘jailhouse’ or ‘jailbreak,’ ” because the child has to break out, she said.[Michael Alison Chandler at the WaPo]

This doesn’t sound like tag at all. It sounds like assault and battery on the playground.

Michelle Malkin responded a few days ago to an abbreviated version of this story, her emphasis being on the wussification of the American child. While I agree that American children are being wussified by feminism and legalism, in this case the issue is the barbarity of some American children.

The principal of the school banned these violent variations of tag during recess and convinced the PE teacher(s) to teach the kids how to play basic touch tag without adding assault and battery into the mix. And yet this article presents it as if the principal was in the wrong, and out of his her mind for banning an innocent child’s game such as tag.

More references at Sphere.

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Technorati Tags: Education, Media Bias, Tag

Good News from Afghanistan

Via Michelle Malkin, Ray Robinson argues that the biased western media is spinning progress in Afghanistan as failure (for instance by spinning the fact that the Taliban have been kicked out of towns and villages and live in the desert as the Taliban having control of vast swathes of [desert] land) and lists some of the metrics of progress in Afghanistan.

1. The Afghan Army is growing in size, experience, and leadership capabilities.
2. A recent study found that 90% of the Afghan population trusted the country’s military force.
3. More than 4,000 km of roads have been built where only 50 km existed in 2001.
4. The rehabilitation of the North-East power system has advanced and access of the rural households to electricity has been significantly increased.
5. In 2007 alone, ISAF nations completed 1,080 civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) projects.
6. 2,000 schools were built or repaired in the last five years and around 6.4 million children (including 1.5 million girls) are now in schools.
7. Since 2001, both infant and under-five mortality has declined by 26% and 22% respectively.
8. In 2001, 8% of Afghans had access to some form of healthcare. Now more than 80% of the population has access to medical care.
9. The non-opium economy has grown at an average of 12% over the past four years; the number of poppy-free provinces has grown from six in 2006 to 13 in 2007.
10. Afghan public support for international involvement in Afghanistan remains high with around 70% of Afghans supporting the presence of international forces.
11. The majority of Afghans believe their country is going in the right direction and 84% support their current government (as opposed to 4% who would support the Taliban).
12. They also maintain a positive view of reconstruction efforts with 63% saying that reconstruction efforts in their area have been effective since 2002.

Apology

I have spread plenty of bad news about Afghanistan and Pakistan here, and some of these posts have been the most popular posts on my blog for a long time. To some extent this is because of fascination with the evil propagated by some of the Afghans who match bin Laden and Zawahiri for evil, such as Hekmatyar and the Dadullah brothers, Mullah and Mansoor. But that is not an excuse for despairing in the face of the relentless media bias. I’m sorry I despaired and doubly sorry if I led any others to despair.

Do not despair, dear reader. Be strong, be faithful, know thyself and that which dwells in thy heart. Be an active consumer of the news. Don’t simply fall for what is in the news, especially do not do as I did and lend extra credence to local news from Pakistani and Afghan publications simply because the sources are exotic. News product from dictatorships and monocultures does not come from a free media. It is a different kind of product entirely.

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Technorati Tags: Media Bias, Afghanistan, Good News

Pity Party: AngryJournalist.com

First, visit angryjournalist.com. Then come back. If you have an emotional feeling, think on it. What is it?

Some call the feeling schadenfreude. Some merely have a tough time wiping the big grin off their faces. Others feel sorry for those poor “journalists” who trained in college to do something that used to be a bottom-of-the-barrel job that guys got after they failed at their first career.

Others may feel inspired to imitate Dana Carvey. Well, I feel inspired to imitate Dana Carvey. Specifically, the Church Lady and her “superior dance.”

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Good times…

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Gangbusters in Basra

What in the world has been going on in Basra? Sadr’s men didn’t have to disarm. And yet they were told not to fight. There was a truce between Sadr’s organization and the IA, but the IA continued to pursue attacks against Sadrist bad guys. Sadrists were patrolling the streets/hiding in their lairs. Sadr won/lost. Maliki won/lost. Iran won/lost. The US lost/lost, or maybe pulled off a draw. Is there any surprise that European and American observers are confused?

Only Nibras Kazimi appears to have the facts in hand. His explanation is that the Basra expedition was intended to hunt down the gangsters, some of them who have had unserved arrest warrants them since 2004, who had intertwined their criminal organizations with Sadr’s Iraqi Shiite nationalist organization, and that it has succeeded to a great extent. Hundreds of the gangster leaders are dead and their organizations are in tatters and will not recover. The rule of law has taken a great step forward in the south of Iraq. The next step is to crush the gangsters in the rest of Iraq. This explains why the Green Zone was getting mortared. The gangsters know that they will soon be taking the worst of it and they wanted to try to throw a wrench in the gears first.

most western media outlets are declaring Muqtada al-Sadr and Iran as the victors of Operation Cavalry Charge. Nothing could be furthest from the truth.The United Alliance List delegation comprising Ali al-Adib of the Da’awa Party, Hadi al-Ameri of the Badr Organization and (I think…) Qasim al-Sahlani representing a group that had splintered from the Da’awa Party, evidently made al-Sadr an offer he couldn’t refuse when they sat down for a friendly chat in Tehran two days ago: the Iraqi state was willing to go all the way in smashing the Sadrist movement—arresting all the leaders and shutting down all the offices—if he didn’t play along with Operation Cavalry Charge and hand over those operatives whose names appear on the wanted lists.

See Maliki went to Basra with a long-ish list of names comprising all those involved in oil smuggling, drug dealing and the various other crimes that have wracked Basra. It just so happens that many of them claim to be Mahdi Army commanders.

Gangbusting is a great development for Iraq. Go Maliki! Go!

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Technorati Tags: Crime and Punishment, Iraq, Media Bias

What’s the problem?

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Pentagon announced Tuesday that the United States mistakenly shipped to Taiwan four electrical fuses designed for use on intercontinental ballistic missiles, but has since recovered them.The error is particularly disturbing, officials said, because of its indirect link to nuclear weaponry and because of the sensitivity of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which China regularly denounces as provocative. The Defense Department said an investigation of the incident is under way.

OK, call me dense, but what’s the problem with sending fuses to Taiwan? Is the US at war with Taiwan? Is Taiwan an enemy of America, or one of America’s most valued and established trading partners? Is Taiwan threatening to attack its neighbors, or is it constantly being threatened by a huge neighbor that would like nothing more than to crush Taiwan under its boot?

What’s at risk? Olympic gold metals? Medals even?

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Technorati Tags: China, Media Bias

Would-be (Religion?) Woman Hijacker Stabs Kiwi Pilots

It happened down in New Zealand, according to the AP.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A knife-wielding woman tried to hijack a regional domestic flight in New Zealand Friday, stabbing both pilots and threatening to blow up the twin-propeller plane before she was subdued, police said.

The wounded pilots were able to land the plane safety in Christchurch, causing chaos at the popular tourist city’s airport as police and emergency crews rushed onto the tarmac to arrest the suspect, evacuate the six passengers and search the plane for bombs.

What about the woman? A few paragraphs later the story describes her.

Christchurch police Commander Dave Cliff said the 33-year-old woman, originally from Somalia, attacked the pilots about 10 minutes into the flight from the regional city of Blenheim, 40 miles south of the capital of Wellington, to Christchurch, about 220 miles south of the capital.

Roughly 100% of Somalis are Sunni Muslim, according to the CIA World Factbook. Interesting what the AP decides to leave out of headlines. Maybe that’s why I don’t write for AP, because it would never occur to me that nobody would care if an armed plane hijacker was a Muslim. I would tend to think that fact would go into the headline. In fact, I’d think it would go with the subject of the phrase. Something like this.

Somali Muslim Woman Knifes Pilots in Unsuccessful Hijack Attempt

There. That’s better.

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Technorati Tags: Media Bias, Hijacking, War on Terror

Name that Party: Top Aide to Mass. Governor Charged With Sexually Assaulting Boy

Name that Party is a game everyone can play. Whenever a scandal occurs that involves a Republican, the party affiliation of the suspect is trumpeted and the suspect is presumed guilty, guilty, Guilty, GUILTY! But when it involves a Democrat the suspect remains innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and the party affiliation is hidden by the press. In other words, name that party is a game that exposes the media bias in editorial content disguised as news reporting.

In this case “D” is for Degenerate.

Carl Stanley McGee (D) “married” his gay hubby John Finley IV (Anti-“W” R) in November 2005 and the “gay marriage” was covered in the New York Times. McGee is the assistant secretary for policy and planning in Gov. Deval Patrick’s (D) government. He was a Rhodes scholar and a Harvard Law graduate, a Clinton-supporting rising star in the Patrick administration, who led the counterattack to defeat efforts to overturn the Massachusetts courts’ imposition of gay marriage on the state, and was named one of Boston’s Ten Most Stylish Men last year. McGee was arrested in December after sexually assaulting a 15-year old boy at a Florida resort hotel. If it happened in December, why is it news in February? Because the Massachusetts government covered it up!

Read the AP story, Wonkette, or this and this at Deval Patrick Watch for particulars.

I thought the idea was that gay marriage was a good idea because it would bring stability and monogamy to gays who didn’t have it otherwise. But here we have a big-time advocate for gay marriage betraying his gay spouse to indulge his gay pedophilia.

This must be the third way between monogamy and tramping around like a big old slut, the same third way that Bill Clinton espoused.

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Technorati Tags: Degeneracy, Democrats, Media Bias, Name that Party