CNN, And the Democrat Plants

David Freddoso at The Corner:

Look, we can blame CNN all we want. But there’s more to the sad fact that Democratic campaign and Party plants asked 11 of the questions in the last two debates, as though they were mere “undecided, concerned voters” from the “real world.”

CNN deserves much blame for it, but I doubt they actually colluded in letting this happen. They should have reacted, however, by castigating the Democrats for corrupting the process. Isn’t that what’s really going on here?

Yes, it IS what’s going on. But the fact that CNN did not react that way should be your first clue that the charge against CNN of collusion in the matter is accurate.  If CNN felt they were being wronged, they’d be screaming bloody murder, and going to wall to wall coverage mode about it.  Their silence tells us a different story altogether.

It’s like I told Ed Morrissey, yesterday; this is not a case of incompetence.  Incompetence, by definition, produces an inconsistent product.  CNN, I’m afraid, has been anything but inconsistent. They have been Clinton apologists for years and years, and have leaned left at every opportunity.  This is not a screw up on CNN’s part.  This is not a lapse of their selection process.  This is their operational policy, exposed to light of day.

In fact, were it not for the hostage situation developing in Rochester, New Hampshire a couple days ago this is a subject that we’d still be talking about, on every news network in the country, and the blogs would be all over it like water in a t-shirt.  As it is, the subject has all but disappeared.  Miraculous, isn’t it?

There’s an old adage which states that the reason that PETA goes after rich women in furs, as opposed to motorcycle gangs wearing leather, is because the latter is far more likely to get one killed outright.

I have to wonder in all candor, if something like that isn’t in force with modern day gender feminism.  I have been somewhat disturbed, of late, to note that gender feminists been awfully quiet of late as regards the abuses coming from within the Islamic world. If the commitment was there to stand up for women’s rights, why the silence coming from the gender feminist?
One such abuse, was this Teddy bear business, where an English schoolteacher allowed the children to name a the class Teddy Bear “Mohammed” because that was the name of a few of the students.

Another, involves our courts sentence of something like 50 lashes with a whip the crime of being raped.  Their version of justice, you see. Tammy Bruce makes an interesting point about all of this… a few snips….

British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons, an unimposing woman of 54, was found guilty of “inciting religious hatred” and sentenced to 15 days in jail and deportation by a court in Sudan’s Khartoum after allowing her 7-year-old students to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.”

In the meantime, Islamist fundamentalists have called for her execution, and her safety is in constant jeopardy. Demonstrations have increased, with crowds carrying machetes, shouting in part: “Execute her! Kill her, kill her by firing squad.”

…

What has NOW’s and the Feminist Majority’s response been to this obscene outrage? The same silence offered to Gillian Gibbons. Nothing, because God forbid we should be reminded that there is a disturbed enemy out there worth fighting, and God forbid that for one moment we should suggest that the United States might not be heinous imperialist the left casts us to be.

When I searched Smeal’s Feminist Majority website to get a statement about either situation, I found none. The Smeal site has a brief newswire story about the Saudi rape victim, but no position statement or condemnation. They have absolutely nothing posted about the Gibbons situation. A search of the NOW site reveals nothing posted about either outrage.

This wholesale abandonment of women by the American so-called feminist leadership on an issue that transcends party politics perfectly illustrates how vapid, and even malevolent, they have become. Where is Eleanor Smeal? Gloria Steinem? Kim Gandy of NOW has proven where she is — with the rest of her cohorts hiding behind the NOW couch, save she would be required to take a position that might “offend” Islamists.

…

Calling attention to abuse, violence and oppression is something the left claims it does, but these days they’re more than willing to throw those who need our voices under the bus. Their obsession is to make sure the leftist false construct of an evil George Bush and oppressive United States won’t be eclipsed by the truth — the truth of a world where our enemy targets women on a daily basis for terror, torture, oppression and murder as our troops risk and give their lives to banish that horror from the lives of tens of millions.

RTWT over at Fox… it’s a great article. But I wonder if the so-called feminist left will think it so.

What all this boils down to, is that the people in question are holding the value of the defeat of George Bush, and with him America, to be of higher import than the defense of the rights of women.

There are those who will suggest that this reflects a change amongst feminists in terms of their priorities.  I wonder if that’s true.  I wonder, personally, if their biggest priority was ever the rights of women per se’… I suspect it was not.  I suspect, rather, that promoting socialism in the form of American leftism was always the primary goal.  It’s the only way I can think of to explain their sliding into that “altered state” so quickly, and easily.

Put another way, it’s more important for these supposed feminists to project this fantasy of theirs:

….than it is to project the fact of abuse of women, such as this:

Makes you wonder about their priorities, doesn’t it?

(Bit edited to solve a layout issue)

Addenendum:(Bit)

I note LGF seeing the same Tammy Bruce Article.

Addenendum II:(Bit)

Welcome to Salon’s readers.  Have a look around at our latest offerings, here at BitsBlog.

COALITION FORCES TARGET FOREIGN TERRORIST FACILITATORS, CAR-BOMBERS, PROPAGANDA CELLS; ONE TERRORIST KILLED, 17 SUSPECTS DETAINED

Posted: 30 Nov 2007 02:34 PM CST

COALITION FORCES TARGET FOREIGN TERRORIST FACILITATORS, CAR-BOMBERS, PROPAGANDA CELLS; ONE TERRORIST KILLED, 17 SUSPECTS DETAINED

BLACK LIONS ARREST ALLEGED EXTREMIST LEADERS

Posted: 30 Nov 2007 02:18 PM CST

BLACK LIONS ARREST ALLEGED EXTREMIST LEADERS

I mentioned Tim Rutten’s article in the LA Times, earlier today. Captain Ed makes note of the same bit and says in part as regards the causes of the debate debacle:

Corruption?  Rutten doesn’t make the case.  As my partner Mitch said today on our NARN broadcast, don’t blame conspiracies for what can be explained by incompetence.

I tell him:

Sorry, Ed.
I’m not buying.
Incompetency, by definition, produces an inconsistent product.
The product under discussion, has been anything but inconsistent; it has constantly been leaning left for decades.

ABC News’ Eloise Harper reports:

A day after dealing with a hostage crisis, Sen. Hillary Clinton faced a tough crowd in Iowa. Clinton did not receive the warmest of welcomes at the Heartland Form in Des Moines, IA, and although the hostage scare was mentioned, the announcer brushed it off quickly in order to get to questions. Clinton, who was forced to call in to speak to the crowd of thousands because of weather difficulties, took questions on topics from healthcare to illegal immigration.

The senator was asked if she would “make a decision to give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship” during her first 100 days in office. Clinton responded saying, “I have been favoring a plan to citizenship for years. I voted for it in the Senate, I have spoke out about it around Iowa and the country and in my campaign. And as president comprehensive immigration reform will be a high priority for me.”

Soft booing could be heard from the audience. The man repeated his question about the first 100 days. Clinton replied, “Well you’ve to get congress to pass the legislation and the president to do as much as possible, which I will do.” Louder boos came from the crowd.

Moral of the story:

 Hillary Clinton is not getting the message on illegals.

It took thirteen pages of a fourteen page diatribe from Franklin Foer… most of which were him trying to save his job, but TNR has finally admitted that Beauchamp COULD have lied.

Bob Owens, of the Confederate Yankee, has the details posted at Pajamas Media.

As Owens suggests… it’s time to Foer to leave.

Now.

My personal congratulations to both Bob, and to Mike Goldfarb.

Congrats also go to Ace… of whom Michelle correctly notes this admission in Foer’s piece…

Fact-checking is a process used by most magazines (but not most newspapers) to independently verify what’s in their articles. Beauchamp’s anonymity complicated this process. Because we promised to protect his identity, we were reluctant to call Army public affairs to review his claims. What’s more, the fact-checking of first-person articles about personal experiences necessarily relies heavily on the author’s word and description of events.

But there was one avoidable problem with our Beauchamp fact-check. His wife, Reeve, was assigned a large role in checking his third piece. While we believe she acted with good faith and integrity-not just in this instance, but throughout this whole ordeal-there was a clear conflict of interest. At the time, our logic-in hindsight, obviously flawed-was that corresponding with a soldier in Iraq is logistically difficult and Reeve was already routinely speaking with him. It was a mistake-and we’ve imposed new rules to prevent future fact-checking conflicts of interest.

Says Michelle:

It was blogger Ace of Spades who first reported on this gobsmackingly obvious conflict of interest and pushed it persistently. He and others were derided as “ludicrous.”

Michelle has more , and is apparently updating this as she goes. As you may imagine, Memeorandum is getting crowded, too.

Final comment from me…

Patterico: “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the fallout. In fact, I think it may be just beginning.”

Yeah, well, here’s hoping.

Addendum: (Bit)

Swamp Stomper Gaius over at Blue Crab has a great drawing describing Foer’s attempt at escape….

Hewitt calls CNN:

“The Most Busted Name in News”

No serious anchor would want to be where Cooper is today, at the center of a vast train wreck which cannot be explained away as the inevitable result of the sudden appearance of big news in a difficult setting, as with hysterical Katrina coverage of bodies stacked in freezers and gun fights in the Superdome, or the result of the input of bad data, as with the early call of Florida for Gore in 2000.

No, this premeditated mediocrity. The network had months to prepare and consider and execute.  But even with all that time, it lacked the minimal talent necessary to produce a serious debate about important issues using new technology. All it could deliver was a carnival of bad taste, trick questions, and full frontal left wing bias.

That is precisely why CNN’s ratings have been dropping for some time now.  The people are wise to this stuff.

Tell you what…

I propose we label them as what they are… and I’ve even gone to the trouble of giving them a new logo. What you guys think?

Addendum: (Bit) Check out Tim Rutten’s article in the LA Times, today.

There’s an awful lot on the line in Venezuela tomorrow.

It amounts to a constitutional referendum , which, if passes, will give Crazy Uncle Hugo the unlimited power he seeks. if on the other hand, that referendum gets voted down, it would end up being the largest smack down of government in recent times.

Pajamas Media has a fairly decent right up on the subject I’ll commend to your reading,  from Daniel Duquenal.

Chavez knows he’s in trouble, and has started making threats. CNN:

CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) — President Hugo Chavez on Friday wrapped up his campaign to push through broad constitutional changes with a broadside attack against adversaries at home and abroad — including a threat to cut off oil exports to the United States.

Chavez told a crowd gathered in the center of Caracas that if the referendum was approved and the result was questioned — “if the ‘yes’ vote wins on Sunday and the Venezuelan oligarchy, playing the [U.S.] empire’s game, comes with their little stories of fraud” — then he would order oil shipments to the United States halted Monday.

Of course, since oil is a fungible commodity,  this thread is symbolic only.  It does, however, stand in rather stark contrast to the moves he made a year ago saying he would sell oil to American for that reduced prices.

He renewed his harsh criticisms of Juan Carlos and Uribe, with whom he has had recent high-profile disputes, and threatened to take independent Venezuela television network Globovision off the air if it broadcast partial results during the voting. He also threatened to take action against international networks, accusing CNN in particular of overstating the strength of the opposition’s numbers.

“If any international channel comes here to take part in an operation from the imperialist against Venezuela, your reporters will be thrown out of the country, they will not be able to work here,” Chavez said. “People at CNN, listen carefully: This is just a warning.”

It’s clear that crazy uncle Hugo doesn’t know who is friends are.  CNN, trust me, is going to be the last “news” organization to rise up against the communist dictator-thug.

The reason he’s getting louder, and more shrill now?   Have you ever seen a raccoon backed into a corner?

My guess is, that the vote is going to go against him.  The real one, that is.  The one that will be reported to the press, particularly based on his commentary as regards CNN, will be nearly unanimous in favor of Chavez.   It’s how such fraudulent regimes work.

Memeorandum has some good stuff up on this one… but pay particular attention to the New York Times article that they link, from Raul Isaias Baduel who sounds remarkably like a man who has screwed up big time, and is just beginning to realize the depth of his  sin:

Hugo Chávez and I worked together for many years. I supported him through thick and thin, serving as his defense minister. But now, having recently retired, I find myself with the moral and ethical obligation as a citizen to express my opposition to the changes to the Constitution that President Chávez and the National Assembly have presented for approval by the voters tomorrow.

The proposal, which would abolish presidential term limits and expand presidential powers, is nothing less than an attempt to establish a socialist state in Venezuela. As our Catholic bishops have already made clear, a socialist state is contrary to the beliefs of Simón Bolívar, the South American liberation hero, and it is also contrary to human nature and the Christian view of society, because it grants the state absolute control over the people it governs.

…

The answer is that all Venezuelans, from every social stratum, are responsible for the institutional decay that we are witnessing. The elite never understood — and still fail to understand — the need to include, in every sense, the millions who have been kept at the margins of the decision-making process because of their poverty. At the same time, President Chávez led the poor to believe that they are finally being included in a governmental model that will reduce poverty and inequality. In reality, the very opposite is true.

The thing is, of course, but that is the relationship of every leftist movement in the world, to the poor and excluded. That this point has been proven so often, and so irrefutably, makes one wonder why the subject keeps coming up as a possible solution to the troubles of mankind.

The answer, of course, is that desperate people will believe anything they are told .  Even by a proven liar such as Hugo Chavez.  How far that misplaced trust goes, the world will witness tomorrow.

I suspect, that if the vote goes against Chavez and his “reforms” things will turn bloody down there very quickly.   At that point it becomes a question of what the rest of the world , particularly the non communist world, proposes to do about it.

The Telegraph:

 A Chilean prostitute has become an instant celebrity in the Roman Catholic country after auctioning 27 hours of sex to raise money for a disabled children’s charity.

Maria Carolina has made headlines and appeared on talk shows since she announced her donation to the televised Teleton, Chile’s largest fundraising event that will run for 27 hours this weekend.

Ummmm.. Yeah….

More on WeSmirch

OK, I’ve apparently cured the outstanding issues we had with the Google Sitemap plugin, and so we can now proceed to the new version of WordPress. Unsure yet when that will happen. I’ve got the upgrade process automated, but I’ve not decided when to throw the switch. Perhaps Sunday, perhaps Monday.

Another offshoot of the fix on the Sitemaps thing is that they will be updated for more often now than they were.  As it was, Google and Ask only got updated when I remembered to do it. Now, it’ll be automatic, with every new post that goes up.

I’ve noticed WP is a little balky in some of the situations where a nested blockquote is called for… not sure what that’s about, yet, though I’m going to hold off on that until after we get the new version in… that may cure the problem for us.

Database issues are solved, finally, and the DB is running as smooth as I can make it… quite an accomplishment, since I’m no DBA by any means.

It keeps getting better, here…. slowly.

I note with some amusement that Red State and Human events are proposing a do-over for the Republican YouTube debate.

Red State adds an interesting twist:

 Let’s see which of the Republican candidates really want to take questions from real Republican voters.

In fact, that was my biggest objection to the whole deal.  It seemed to me that the entire deal was designed to make the more liberal of the Republican candidates comfortable with the situation.   Huckabee, for example.

Captain Ed has noticed that Hillary Clinton decided almost immediately to make a political event out of the hostage situation, yesterday. He quotes a note posted at the Politico

And as soon as it ended, Clinton took full advantage of the opportunity she had unexpectedly been handed.

In her New Hampshire press conference, she stood before a column of police in green and tan uniforms. She talked of meeting with hostages. She mentioned that she spoke to the state’s governor about eight minutes after the incident began.

The scene was one of a woman in charge.

“It looked and sounded presidential,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “This was an instance of the White House experience of this campaign. They knew how to handle this.”

That the crisis was outside Clinton’s control gave it a rare quality in this era of hyper-controlled politicking, Sabato added.

“What’s most important about it is that it’s not contrived. It’s a real event and that distinguishes it from 99 percent of what happens in the campaign season.”

Says Ed:

Er, what? Sabato, who usually gives intelligent political analysis, must have inhaled a little deeply. Clinton was nowhere near New Hampshire during the entirety of the crisis. What was presidential about having the Rochester PD talk a hostage-taker out of a building? What “leadership” did Hillary show in Virginia during this crisis? She canceled a speech!

Well, look, Ed; let’s give Larry a little credit here.  For you and I, and about half the country, looking presidential, means a vastly different thing, then it does to the other half.  To the half containing you and I, looking presidential means there’s some substance there.  To the other hand, not so much. Put another way, some of the people are easier to fool with appearances, than are others.  Hilary knows that, and so does Sabato.

So I think from a strictly clinical point of view, Larry is quite right.  She played this one just that she had to.  He knows, as you and I do, that most of that kind of thing doesn’t have to involve any substance at all.  It’s all about perception, and positioning.

Hillary Clinton canceled a speech, simply because the appearance at a news conference in Rochester was going to give her more news exposure than that speech would have.  She knows full well that the press is going to be speaking of her actions , whatever they were, in reverent tones , and her loyalists outside the press were going to be lapping that message up. And in that sense, who can argue his point?

I agree there is no substance there.  Then again, that wasn’t Larry’s point.

And let’s remember, too, that this kind of usurping of responsibility is a Clinton specialty.  I said it often enough when Bubba was in the WH… that he had developed a knack for jumping in front of the Lynch mob, and convincing everybody that it was a parade that he was leading. This is simply more of the same.

Memeorandum has the conversation threaded. I note particularly that fellow Swamp Stomper Gaius over at Blue Crab Blvd has a decent reax roundup.

Bit wondered if the strange “hostage” situation in Rochester, New Hampshire the work of some demented Ron Paul supported.   Err,  I repeated by myself.   Paul supporter.

Acoording the account given by the New York Times, I doubt it:

Mr. Eisenberg was described by friends and relatives as despondent, with his wife recently asking for a divorce. One person said he had been drinking for 72 hours before he entered the campaign office. Mr. Eisenberg also called CNN to rant about the state of the nation’s mental health system, the network reported.

Does not seem likely to be Paul supporter.   They think they are sane.   This nut job was looking for a platorm to talk about healthcare, a democrat issue and what looks like yet another plant.

Examine Eisenberg’s profile.   He is sad.   Souinds like a ‘rat.   He thinks he is owed mental health care,   Sounds lke somebody from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.   If Eisenberg is not insane, he surely is a political goon and Mrs. Clinton has a history of hiring political goons, such as Craig Livingstone.

COALITION FORCES TARGET FOREIGN TERRORIST FACILITATORS, ASSASSINS, SENIOR AL-QAEDA ASSOCIATES; 12 DETAINED

Posted: 29 Nov 2007 11:07 AM CST

COALITION FORCES TARGET FOREIGN TERRORIST FACILITATORS, ASSASSINS, SENIOR AL-QAEDA ASSOCIATES; 12 DETAINED

I must admit, I’ve not thought of this guy in some time.

CLEARWATER, Fla. —AP- Evel Knievel, the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over crazy obstacles including Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho’s Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

Of course, in more recent years, his ride was a bit more tame…

Oh, what the heck… a sense of humor was never a shortcoming on his part. It’s one thing I always liked about him.