Iraq

Tom Brokaw Goes Tom Friedman: Raise Gas Taxes to Fight Terror
By Mark Finkelstein | November 25, 2015 | 8:19 AM EST

You name the problem, Tom Friedman's got the answer: raise taxes on gasoline. Looks like Tom Brokaw's caught Friedman's gas-tax raising fever.

On today's Morning Joe, Brokaw proposed, as part of fighting the war on terror, raising gas taxes by five cents per gallon. Brokaw argued that it is wrong that the burden of fighting falls on just 1% of Americans, and that the result of his tax increase would be that "every time you go to the pump you have to think about what's going on elsewhere."  For liberals, any event is a good excuse to do the thing they love best: raising taxes.

IBD Slams Liberals for Their ‘Deadly Denial’ of the Threat Posed by Radical Islam
By Curtis Houck | November 24, 2015 | 4:45 PM EST

An editorial in Tuesday’s print edition of Investor’s Business Daily firmly took President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the rest of the Democratic Party to task for their “deadly denial” of radical Islam and the prominent role it’s played in the war on terrorism and terrorist attacks from 9/11 to Fort Hood to Paris. 

Daily Kos Writer: Republican Response to Paris Attacks ‘More Tragic’ Than Attacks Themselves
By Tom Johnson | November 24, 2015 | 11:25 AM EST

Liberals sometimes say that law enforcement’s approach to the Mafia offers a model for how to deal with jihadists, even though the latter tend not to limit their demands to protection money. This past Sunday, Egberto Willies claimed that if terrorist attacks were “treated as they should be, like organized crime, it would neuter ISIS. After all…the group is no more powerful than a large band of thugs with weapons.”

But crimefighting methods weren’t the main concern of Willies’s piece. Rather, it was his belief that “neocons” wish to exploit fear of terrorism in order to start a war which would “transfer wealth from the masses to the few owners of the defense industrial complex.” Willies also ranted that conservatives don’t take a back seat to Islamist fanatics when it comes to lethality: “America's right-wing mass killers and gang bangers have killed more people in the West than ISIS has.”

NYT Whines Terrorism, Breaking News Have ‘Hijacked’ Obama’s Trips; ‘Another Distraction’
By Curtis Houck | November 23, 2015 | 8:08 PM EST

The New York Times earned its keep as a foot soldier for the Obama administration as White House correspondent Michael D. Shear offered a piece in Monday’s paper lamenting that many of the President’s foreign trips have been “hijacked” by breaking news stories with the Paris terror attacks “spawn[ing] another distraction” from Obama’s agenda. 

CNN's Cuomo Boosts Kristof's Slam: U.S. Has Been Anti-Refugee Since '1938'
By Matthew Balan | November 23, 2015 | 5:51 PM EST

On Monday's New Day, CNN's Chris Cuomo attacked both Donald Trump and the majority of the American public for their stance against allowing 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country. Cuomo asserted that Trump was "playing into an us versus them mentality," and spotlighted the latest Bloomberg poll result on the issue: "Look at the numbers on the Syrian situation. Look at what the American people say...We haven't seen numbers like this in America since 1938, when people were obviously desperate; obviously, running for their lives."

CBS Touts Syrian Refugees 'Feeling Misjudged;' Hypes Armed Protest
By Matthew Balan | November 23, 2015 | 1:03 PM EST

Manuel Bojorquez zeroed in on the plight of a Syrian refugee family in Texas on Monday's CBS This Morning, and played up how they "feel misjudged after the Paris attacks, and after Texas recently ordered volunteer organizations that help resettle refuges from Syria to discontinue those plans immediately." Bojorquez later spotlighted how "about dozen people — some armed with long guns — protested in front of a mosque outside Dallas" against the Obama administration's plan to bring 10,000 refugees from Syria.

Mother Jones Blogger: Obama’s Response to ISIS Hardly His ‘Finest Hour,’ But GOP ‘Much Worse’
By Tom Johnson | November 21, 2015 | 11:56 AM EST

President Obama deserves high marks for his ISIS policy only if you’re grading on a curve and the other students are Republicans who “can't be bothered to take any of this seriously,” suggested Kevin Drum in a Thursday post.

Drum charged that GOPers “blather about Obama being weak, but when you ask them for their plans you just get nonsense…Obama's ISIS strategy has [not] been golden. But Republicans make him look like Alexander the Great. They treat the whole subject like a plaything, a useful cudgel during a presidential campaign. Refugees! Kurds! Radical Islam! We need to be tougher!...That isn't leadership. It barely even counts as coherent thought. It's just playground jeering.”

CNN's Costello Hounds Democratic Rep. Over Syrian Refugee Vote
By Matthew Balan | November 20, 2015 | 5:30 PM EST

On Friday's CNN Newsroom, Carol Costello badgered Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader over his vote in favor of additional scrutiny for Syrian refugees applying to enter the U.S. Costello spotlighted how "some on Twitter have not been kind — calling you a traitor to Oregon and...xenophobic," and how "some say the intent of this bill is to really create so many checks that it will be impossible for any Syrian refugee to come into this country any time soon." She later touted how "some say that's just one part of what some call what's becoming a disturbing climate in America."

CBS Hints at GOP Double Standard on Gun Control vs. Syrian Refugees
By Matthew Balan | November 20, 2015 | 1:01 PM EST

Friday's CBS This Morning hyped that "thousands on the government's terrorist watch list...bought firearms in the last decade...and all of the sales were legal." Nancy Cordes played up that a bill to "close that loophole" that has been introduced for eight straight years has "gone nowhere" due to opposition from the NRA and congressional Republicans. Cordes later hinted that House Speaker Paul Ryan and his GOP caucus had a double standard on national security, for opposing closing the "loophole," but supporting a bill to "beef up screening of Syrian refugees."

CNN Suspends Reporter for Biased Twitter Post on House Refugee Vote [UPDATED]
By Matthew Balan | November 19, 2015 | 8:08 PM EST

Politico's Hadas Gold revealed on Thursday that CNN suspended correspondent Elise Labott for two weeks, after she decried the 289 to 137 vote on Syrian refugees by the House of Representatives: "House passes bill that could limit Syrian refugees. Statue of Liberty bows head in anguish".

CNN Reporter: 'Statue of Liberty Bows Head in Anguish' After House Refugee Vote
By Matthew Balan | November 19, 2015 | 3:56 PM EST

CNN correspondent Elise Labott bemoaned that the House of Representatives voted to "to intensify security screenings of Syrian refugees and suspend Obama's program to admit 10,000 of them in the next year," as Reuters reported on Thursday. In a Thursday post on Twitter, Labott linked to her network's reporting on the 289 to 137 vote, and added her own over-the-top commentary: "House passes bill that could limit Syrian refugees. Statue of Liberty bows head in anguish".

Liberal Journalists on CNN: U.S. Has Been 'Racist' To Refugees Since 1939
By Matthew Balan | November 19, 2015 | 3:20 PM EST

On Wednesday's CNN Tonight, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times and liberal analyst Rula Jebreal bewailed the latest poll that found that 53 percent are opposed to letting in 10,000 Syrian refugees. Kristof hyped that "this almost exactly matches up a poll in January 1939 of whether or not to admit 10,000 mostly Jewish children into the U.S.....in retrospect, we clearly acknowledge that was a shameful period in American history." Jebreal slammed this majority as "racist," and cried, "They're weaponizing fear! That poll reflects fear."