Seton Motley is the founder and president of Less Government.  Please feel free to follow him on Twitter (@SetonMotley) and Facebook.  It’s his kind of stalking.

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August 13, 2009, 10:56 AM EDT

Who says the media are monolithic in their thinking?

Yesterday we informed you of the media's serial misuse of an Obama-as-Hitler poster from esoteric left-winger Lyndon LaRouche's website, as outlets like NBC (on their Nightly News and Meet the Press), CNN and MSNBC all ascribed the poster to sentiments roiled up by talk radio host Rush Limbaugh specifically and conservatives generally. 

We were entertained by the fact that all of these highly trained, keen-eyed journalists missed the words "LaRouchePAC.com" - in fairly large type - printed at the bottom of every one of the placards they used for their little reporting projects.

Well apparently CBS hasn't yet learned the lesson we had hoped to impart.  In fact, last night they did the other networks one worse. 

For the words "LaRouchPAC.com" are prominently visible three times (screen captures below the fold) on two different Obama-as-Hitler posters during reporter Ben Tracy's segment, yet that doesn't stop him from blaming it on right-wingers.

As the second Obama-as-Hitler poster is shown, with LaRouchePAC.com clearly visible front and center, Tracy offers up:

August 12, 2009, 2:46 PM EDT

Update below the fold.

This is just a small entry, a blog-lette, if you will.  Because I happened to have seen this bit of broadcast flapdoodle live, which you now have before you at right (with the audio available here).

On this morning's MSNBC News Live, co-host Angela Burt-Murray - the Editor-in-Chief of Essence magazine -uncorks this absolutely wild pitch to Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Md):

Recently you released a report on women and health care, and taking a look at the very real issue that families are facing we have more than 64 million women who have lost health care due to loss of job or a spouse that has lost a job.  How do you see the Administration's plan being more able to effectively address this issue for women and children in this country?

64 million?  Just women?

We have repeatedly documented that the oft-cited 46 million people - men and women - without insurance is completely bogus.  But as you will find at the link's destination, the media's number on this vacillates wildly.

August 12, 2009, 9:04 AM EDT

The media have repeatedly stated how "angry," "hostile" and "ugly" town hall meetings across America are becoming. They are of course largely ascribing the nastiness to conservatives voicing their opposition to (among other things) President Barack Obama and Congress' proposed government takeover of the health care system.

The press has been particularly offended by the "extreme" use of references to Adolf Hitler specifically and Nazis generally. One image they have repeatedly used as an example of this alleged right-wing extremism is a poster of President Obama - on whose face a Hitler mustache has been Photo Shopped - bearing the caption "I've Changed."

We have compiled a video montage (at right) of just some of the recent news programs that have ascribed this Obama-with-Mustache poster to conservative town hall attendees. (The Obama-with-Mustache image itself appears just below the fold.)

August 7, 2009, 9:46 AM EDT

UPDATE: We have some video of the attack.  It appears that it is members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) doing at least some of the dirty work.

 

But it's conservatives who engage in violence and hate speech, right?

The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting that one of their own, reporter Jake Wagman, was one of six people arrested in connection with the beating of a conservative activist outside of a town hall forum held by Democrat Congressman Russ Carnahan.  

According to Dawn Majors, a Post-Dispatch photojournalist who witnessed everything unfold, an officer said that Wagman had been "interfering."

From the article:

Kenneth Gladney, a 38-year-old conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with “Don't tread on me” printed on them. He spoke to the Post-Dispatch from the emergency room of the St. John's Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was waiting to be treated for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face that he suffered in the attack. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack started.

"It just seems there's no freedom of speech without being attacked," he said.

That is some list of injuries, which means it must have been some beating.  And Gladney says he was attacked by "some of those arrested,"  which means there were probably more in the mob than just that.

And let us not overlook nor forget the racial slur Gladney additionally endured.

More from the article:

August 6, 2009, 6:47 PM EDT
NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center

The Best Censorship Weapon of All

UPDATE: Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin read this piece in nearly its entirety last night.  His on-air stylings can be found here.

 

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced a new "Chief Diversity Officer," communications attorney Mark Lloyd.   

But Doctor of Jurisprudence Lloyd is far more than merely a communications attorney.  He was at one time a Senior Fellow at the uber-liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), for whom he co-wrote a June 2007 report entitled "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio."

Which rails against the fact that the American people overwhelmingly prefer to listen to conservative (and Christian) talk radio rather than the liberal alternative, and suggests ways the federal government can remedy this free-market created "problem."

  • Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations.
  • Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing.
  • Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.

These last two get perilously close to the use of "localism" to silence conservative (and Christian) radio stations, about which we have been warning for quite some time. 

August 4, 2009, 6:33 PM EDT

<div style="float: right"><object width="240" height="194"><param name="movie" value="http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf?v=GdnzIrvkIr&amp;c1=0x1DBA77&... name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf?v=GdnzIrvkIr&amp;c1=0x1DBA77&... allowfullscreen="true" width="240" height="194"></embed></object></div>For Congress, the August recess almost always means a round of town hall meetings and other gatherings at which our elected officials get to hear from the citizenry on what they have done thus far in session.  <p>This summer, for those Congressman and Senators voting for or supporting government-run ObamaCare, the cap-and-trade tax and regulatory regime, the $787 billion alleged &quot;stimulus&quot; package and other huge government-tiny result programs, these constituent encounters have been very unpleasant indeed.  So unpleasant, in fact, that some are defying <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32987" target="_blank" title="NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center">orders from Nancy Pelosi</a> and <a href="http://www.27east.com/story_detail.cfm?id=224167&amp;town=&amp;n=Congres... target="_blank" title="NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center">beginning to bail</a> on them.   </p><p>The instances of taxpayer revolts at these meetings have been mounting, with <a href="http://eyeblast.tv/channels/Recess%20Protests" target="_blank" title="NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center">new videos gone viral</a> appearing it seems almost daily.  They must make it on the digital underground, you see, for outside of the gathering for Senator Arlen Specter (D/R/D-PA) and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the Lamestream Media have been largely reluctant to report on them.</p>

July 30, 2009, 4:32 PM EDT

NewsBusters.org | Media Research CenterIn an open letter sent today to ABC News President David Westin, NewsBusters.org Publisher Brent Bozell questioned the ethics of ABC as a "news" network and wondered "how in the world can anyone take ABC seriously" after it was announced that ABC News has hired Democratic donor Dr. Richard Besser to be their new Senior Medical Editor.

The letter begins here, and continues in its entirety below the fold. 

July 30, 2009

Dear Mr. Westin,

It was reported today that you have hired Dr. Richard Besser as your new Senior Medical Editor. By now you also know Besser is a Barack Obama donor, having contributed $400 to his campaign in 2008. 

As your new senior health correspondent, he will play a pivotal role in your coverage of the health care debate going forward. How in the world is this ethical? 

July 30, 2009, 9:02 AM EDT
NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center
A Buyers' Market
It is a bit of an understatement to say that when it comes to dominating the media, President Barack Obama is perhaps unequalled by any politician ever.  Michael Jackson was the King of Pop, Obama the King of Pols.

The Publisher of NewsBusters.org, Brent Bozell, wrote his syndicated column about the media's full-court Obama press just this week.  In which he accurately points out that while the journalistic class remains utterly infatuated with the man, it appears that the American people are begining to reach their saturation point.

So let us now turn our attention to an item in yesterday's Daily Times Herald in Carroll, Iowa entitled "Carroll woman's answer to highly visible Obama: Selling her televisions."

A 78-year-old Carroll woman says she's so tired of seeing President Barack Obama on the airwaves that she's selling her television sets - two of them.

Deloris Nissen, a retired nurses' aide and former Kmart employee who was raised on a farm near Audubon, placed a classified advertisement with The Daily Times Herald for Friday's paper.

In the $5.50 ad, Nissen tells readers she has two television sets for sale.

The reason: "Obama on every channel and station."

July 29, 2009, 9:26 PM EDT

Newsweek magazine had yesterday a web exclusive entitled "What Green Jobs?

Subtitled:  "Washington is spending $60 billion to create the careers of the future, but not a single green job yet exists. Obama's 'green czar' explains."

The Leftist publication deserves some plaudits for exploring this $60 billion gaping hole in the $787 billion "stimulus" package President Barack Obama signed into law in February.  But there are many points in the article where they could have done better. 

It would have been nice, for instance, if Newsweek had exhibited some of the scrutiny they show here in advance of the massive plan's passage. They begin with an interesting realization:

July 28, 2009, 11:39 AM EDT

The New York Times' Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and staunch champion of government medicine a la the Canadian model of our neighbors to the north. 

Just this past Saturday in "Toyota, Moving Northward" he flogged the advantages of the single-payer system Canada offers.  He postulated that one reason why the Japanese auto maker is locating it's new RAV4 plant in Ontario is their government medicine:

Canada's other big selling point is its national health insurance system, which saves auto manufacturers large sums in benefit payments compared with their costs in the United States.

Suddenly Krugman the Leftist is all for huge government subsidies for big business. 

Krugman's Nobel-prize winning economic mind then offers up:

So what's the impact on taxpayers? In Canada, there's no impact at all: since all Canadians get government-provided health insurance in any case, the additional auto jobs won't increase government spending.

Really?  Adding workers brought in from outside Canada to the government rolls won't increase government spending?  A little of Krugman's new math: X plus 5,000 still somehow equals X.  

July 9, 2009, 3:29 PM EDT
NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center
He's Got It
Is this what Time magazine meant with their July 6th cover, What Barack Obama Can Learn From FDR?

Not one to let "a serious crisis to go to waste," Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the onset of the Great Depression as an excuse to immediately begin delivering New Deal dollars in unprecedented amounts - with laser-like political precision to electorally important parts of the country.  He sailed to landslide reelection in 1936 on a federally-funded tailwind.

The New Deal is now an old one - as direct mail guru Richard Viguerie describes it, "We've got money, you've got votes, let's talk." If this is what Time had in mind for Obama to learn, he has proven to be an apt pupil. 

And USA Today seems to have picked up on it. 

We at the Media Research Center always love to give journalistic credit when and where it is due. And the USA Today today deserves serious credit for Brad Heath's look into how:

"Billions of dollars in federal aid delivered directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year's presidential election."

That quote is in fact the first sentence of the article.  No burying the lede or mincing of words here. 

A little later, Mr. Heath offers:

June 30, 2009, 6:48 PM EDT
NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center
For the Matador Media,
One Side Fits All
As the media walk hand-in-hand with the Left towards their fantasy-addled government medicine Utopia, they routinely forget that there is another perspective out there as to whether or not the government should commandeer the nation's private health care system. A perspective on which they, had they not already chosen sides on the issue, would (and should) be reporting. 

The most recent high-water mark in media health care bias was last Wednesday, when ABC broadcast on four separate occasions from the White House during what they said was a day of their "moderating" a health care "conversation" with President Barack Obama.  Good Morning America, World News and Nightline all satellite-beamed their video images from within the confines of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

And all of that was in addition to a one hour prime time special entitled Questions for the President: Prescription for America.  During which the queries posed to Obama were for the most part fairly difficult, but given the home-field advantage format he was able to deviate from the intent of each question as much as he wanted, filibuster as long as he wished and in every instance had the last word on each issue.

This all-day Obama domination of the "conversation" ABC was claiming to "moderate" inspired in us a notion.  After all, one doesn't "moderate" a "conversation."  What IS moderated - and what is certainly called for on something as important as the decision whether to allow the government to shanghai nearly 20% of the private sector (and arguably it's most important portion) - is a DEBATE.  And ABC wasn't having one. 

So we decided to offer up the other side of the deliberation in which ABC - and the media as a whole - aren't engaging. Working with Americans for Tax Reform and the Health Care Freedom Coalition, we put together a rock star panel of legislators and health care experts to put forward free market-based health care reforms.  And to identify the myriad problems with and debunk the many myths and canards about government medicine - which the Left repeatedly offer up and the Matador Media let go by them with barely a wave of the cape.

June 2, 2009, 2:13 PM EDT
Media Research Center (MRC) President and NewsBusters.org Publisher Brent Bozell yesterday recorded a video thanking the MRC Grassroots Action Team - made up of more than 600,000 individual activists - for their signing nearly 400,000 Free Speech Alliance (FSA) petitions which were delivered yesterday to the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The petition in part "urge(s) members of Obama's Federal Communications Commission (the FCC) and everyone in Washington to reject any and all efforts to censor, limit, or restrain conservative or Christian talk radio."

Mr. Bozell also discusses the MRC's Four Day Call-A-Thon to the offices of Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid - which is taking place right now and runs through close of business Thursday - where MRC Action Team members, many, MANY members of the FSA and a whole host of individual radio stations and hosts are having their grassroots/members/listeners place calls to their offices demanding a full, fair stand-alone vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act (BFA), which would prohibit the FCC from reimposing the Censorship Doctrine, also mis-known as the "Fairness" Doctrine.

And we are asking you to join in the festivities.  Please, in true Chicago voting fashion, call early and often.  Speaker Pelosi's number is (202) 225-4965, and Leader Reid's is (202) 224-3542. 

We humbly suggest you say something along the lines of:

May 19, 2009, 5:24 PM EDT
NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center
The Upside Down Ratings World of NABOB
On April 9 we wrote of an asinine assertion made about the new Arbitron radio ratings system by soon to be transferred Democratic Federal Communications Committee (FCC) Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein.  Well now President Barack Obama has put the imprimatur of his FCC and Administration on Adelstein's addled notion.

Since the inception of tracking those who listen to Guglielmo Marconi's marvelous invention, Arbitron had relied on a personal pen-and-paper diary system and the journal-keepers' honor and memory as to what they had listened and for how long they had done so.  The potential for misremembering and book-cooking was simply staggering.

So Arbitron came up with a pager-esque device called the Portable People Meter (PPM).  This gadget automatically tracks to where the radio dial is tuned, thereby virtually eliminating human error and the ability to cheat.  

Obviously, this is far more accurate way to establish who is listening to whom, right?  If you do find this to be a self-evident truth, you are not a master of the obvious, you are - according to the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) - a racist bigot.

How so?  Because the ratings under the new regime revealed that the numbers for hip-hop, urban and other racial minority stations had long been incorrectly inflated (and conversely the listenership of talk radio had long been underreported).

And this, you see, is not the better results of technological advancement, this is racism.

May 1, 2009, 2:15 PM EDT
NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center

The Left's Idea of Diversity

Behold one of the new "Fairness" Doctrines - "media diversity" - coming soon to a radio station near you. 

President Barack Obama's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released the names of the thirty-one members of their Advisory Committee On Diversity For Communications In The Digital Age.  This May 7 gathering is made up of a laundry list of left-wing grievance groups, with a smattering of radio and television companies included to break up the monotony.

Not a single conservative organization is taking part in this Commission - more than a dozen Leftist groups are. A little ironic for a "diversity" panel, is it not?

Chairing the meeting is Henry Rivera, a former FCC Commissioner who was (and presumably still is) a strong proponent of the Censorship Doctrine, also mis-known as the "Fairness" Doctrine.

Many, many liberals in Washington have over the last several years called for a reinstatement of the Doctrine.  But push-back from people who have read and actually understand the First Amendment led the Left to realize that the political price to bring it back was too high, so they MovedOn.org.

Of course, their desire to silence the lone voices of their opposition had not lessened in the slightest.  They're still just as dictatorial, just pragmatically so.

April 28, 2009, 4:40 PM EDT
NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center
Here's Hoping
- or -
Wishful Thinking
There are those who hang their First Amendment hats on President Barack Obama's statement that he isn't for reinstating the Censorship Doctrine, also mis-known as the "Fairness" Doctrine.  These people are ignoring ever mounting examples of the censorious intent of this Administration on all things information.

They are playing the Ostrich Defense despite the fact that nearly every Obama appointee to anything that has anything to do with regulating anything is a strident Leftist whose first impulse is to loathe the American people exercising the freedoms the Constitution affords them.

Just three days after his November victory, President Obama floated the name of Henry Rivera - a virulent "Fairness" Doctrine proponent - to head his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) transition team.  An outcry by we at the MRC and many others caused Obama to move Rivera elsewhere in his transition pantheon a week later.

Now we have Cass Sunstein, President Obama's nominee for "regulatory czar."  Who has written:

April 22, 2009, 6:20 PM EDT

NewsBusters.org | Media Research CenterNewsBusters.org Publisher and Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell today - in his private capacity as concerned individual citizen - joined with a list of other conservative luminaries on a letter (in full below the fold) to the members of the United States Senate calling on them to vote down President Barack Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services - current Democratic Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

(Sorry, Sunflower Staters who thought they might soon be rid of her.)

Governor Sebelius began her testimony before the confirmation Committee yesterday.

The list of letter signatories is impressive:

April 22, 2009, 4:20 PM EDT
NewsBusters.org | Media Research Center
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Lamestream Media
The media coverage of the more than 800 Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party protests that took place in all fifty states on April 15 ranged from disdainful dismissal of their nature, significance and import, to outright hostility towards the events and individual participants, to sexual innuendo-based full-on ridicule.

In this summary, we focused on the three major networks - NBC, ABC and CBS, the two left-of-center cable news networks - CNN and MSNBC and the three major "national" newspapers - the USA Today, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

While not an exhaustively comprehensive oeuvre of TEA Party bias, it contains many, many examples which serve to illustrate the broader antipathetic themes.

To wit:

April 19, 2009, 12:11 PM EDT

ABC's Sam Donaldson let a little of his inner-conspiracy theorist out this morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos

In a discussion of President Barack Obama's lessening the sanctions on Fidel Castro's Cuba, Donaldson began his analysis with one of a number a Kennedy-Truther notions that have been knocking around ever since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

Ever since Lee Harvey Oswald first squeezed the trigger, there have been numerous others for whom he was the alleged fall guy.  The Grassy Knoll, the Zapruder films, etc. 

Then-Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson has been mentioned, as has the Mafia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, Howard Hunt and the Eastern Bloc of Soviet States, or some cabal of some or all of the above.

Another wild card in this crazy deck was Cuba's El Presidente, Castro.  The theory being that Castro was upset with JFK's woefully planned and executed Bay of Pigs attempt at ending his nascent dictatorship, and therefore exacted his revenge by executing the 35th President.

Donaldson's buy-in for this house-of-cards game is apparently the Castro connection.

To wit:

April 17, 2009, 4:48 PM EDT

CNN's Susan Roesgen has had a rough week, what with all the ordinary American/First Amendment practitioners bashing she so passionately and obnoxiously delivered in her TEA Party reporting.

Perhaps it was the sniping at the place she twice applied in 2005 - Rupert Murdoch's House of Ratings, otherwise known as Fox News - that put her over the edge.

Or whether or not her email box was so overwhelmed with what was undoubtedly an endless stream of love letters and fan mail that it caused a server meltdown. 

Whatever it was, CNN has announced that Miss Roesgen's "tak(ing) a break."

TVNewser gives some of their possibilities for the hiatus: