While all three broadcast networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, highlighted MoveOn.org protestor Lauren Valle being stepped on outside Monday's Kentucky senate debate, only CBS reported new video showing Valle running up to Rand Paul's car and trying to shove a sign into the Republican candidate's face.
The morning and evening newscasts on Tuesday all pointed to the scuffle as evidence of the 2010 campaign getting "ugly." On ABC's Good Morning America, correspondent Jake Tapper declared: "In the Kentucky senate race, the bitter and heated contest between Democrat Jack Conway and Republican Rand Paul, continued in a debate...The tensions spilled into the crowd, when Rand Paul supporters attacked a Jack Conway supporter wearing a Rand Paul wig." On CBS's Early Show, correspondent Nancy Cordes remarked: "...there was an ugly scene outside the debate, when what appeared to be Rand Paul supporters grabbed a protester from the liberal organization MoveOn.org. After wrestling her to the ground, one of them stepped on her head."
MoveOn.org
[Update: New video Shows Lauren Valle shoving sign into Rand Paul's face.]
On Wednesday's CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith interviewed MoveOn.org protestor Lauran Valle, who was stepped on during a protest outside of the Kentucky senate debate on Monday: "Less than a week before election day, the races are heating up, some even turn ugly. We'll speak exclusively with a woman who was stomped on the head during a campaign melee."
While CBS was eager to talk to Ms. Valle, in September 2009 the network failed to give any coverage to a man having his finger bitten off by a MoveOn.org supporter at a California ObamaCare rally. At the September 2 event, 65-year-old William Rice, an ObamaCare opponent, got into an altercation with an unidentified MoveOn protestor, who proceeded to bite off the tip of Rice's left pinky finger. Not only did CBS not interview Rice about the violent attack, but it offered no mention of the incident at all.
Just days after MSNBC President Phil Griffin claimed his cable network does not use air-time to support Democratic candidates and liberal causes, evening host Lawrence O'Donnell yielded over two minutes of his eponymous program to feature MoveOn.org's latest anti-Republican advertisement in its entirety.
O'Donnell introduced the partisan attack ad as a get-out-the-vote push: "Sometimes you have to take unusual steps to get out the vote. MoveOn.org, with the help of actors Olivia Wilde from 'House' and Romany Malco from 'Weeds,' has produced a warning from the future to show you what could happen if Republicans win this election because you didn't vote."
After playing the entire ad uninterrupted, which urged voters to "STOP THE REPUBLICAN TAKEOVER!!" and predicted that if the GOP takes back control of Congress in November because liberals don't go to the polls, Republicans will merge with "the big corporations that fund them to create RepubliCorp," the MSNBC host immediately cut to a commercial break.
Instead of analyzing the attack ad on its merits, O'Donnell gave MoveOn.org free ad time.
When Bob Schieffer invited Liz Cheney and Howard Dean on "Face the Nation" to discuss a number of issues related to the upcoming midterm elections, he must have had a feeling sparks were going to fly.
But he certainly couldn't have known bringing up the Administration's claim the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling foreign money into Republican campaigns would lead to Cheney exposing the former Vermont governor in a lie about who helped bankroll his 2004 run for the White House (video follows with transcript and commentary):
The White House attack on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce isn't about "disclosure." It's about disarmament. While posing as campaign finance champions, the ultimate goal of the Democratic offensive is to intimidate conservative donors, chill political free speech and drain Republican coffers.
Chamber of Commerce official Bruce Josten tried to educate the public. "(W)e know what the purpose here is," he told ABC News. "It's to harass and intimidate." Josten cited protests and threats against chamber members as retribution for ads the organization ran opposing the federal health care takeover.
But this isn't the first time liberal bullyboys have targeted right-leaning contributors. Far from it.
In August 2008, a former Washington director of MoveOn.org — the smear merchant group that branded Gen. David Petraeus a traitor for overseeing the successful troop surge in Iraq — announced a brazen witch hunt against Republican donors. Left-wing political operative Tom Matzzie told The New York Times he would send "warning" letters to 10,000 top GOP givers "hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions." Matzzie bragged of "going for the jugular" and said the warning letter would be just the first step, "alerting donors who might be considering giving to right-wing groups to a variety of potential dangers, including legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives."
Advocacy groups have increasingly labelled their opposition as "astroturf," or corporate-funded fake grassroots, groups in order to demean them and lessen the fact that both sides enjoy some measure of public support. Many of the organizations throwing around accusations of astroturfing, such as the Marxist net neutrality advocacy group Free Press and the liberal ThinkProgress not only engage in astroturf strategies, but are financially supported in ways they decry as astroturf. The media, unsurprisngly, has often chosen to ignore leftist astroturfing and focus on accusations of rightist astroturfing. The Daily Caller reported Wednesday on a pro-neutrality letter circulated around Capitol Hill by Free Press which was a product of the same astroturfing tactics Free Press has decried.
The "signatories" of the letter had no recollection of the letter and had no idea they had signed it. One of the signatories, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation wrote to the Federal Communications Comission, The Hill reported, asking to be removed from the list of signatories. Tellingly, a Free Press spokeswoman suggested that they were pressured to do so. Presumably by the Satan-worshipping board of directors of some telecommunications company.
In a classic example of liberal hypocrisy, the far-left leaning, George Soros-funded group MoveOn.org has removed its controversial "General Betray Us" ad from its website.
For those that have forgotten, shortly after General David Petraeus issued his report to Congress in September 2007 concerning the condition of the war in Iraq and the success of that March's troop surge, MoveOn placed a full-page ad in the New York Times with the headline, "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?"
This created quite a firestorm with media outlets on both sides of the aisle circling the wagons to either defend or berate both the Times and MoveOn.
Now that President Obama has appointed Petraeus to replace the outgoing Gen. Stanley McChrystal to lead the war effort in Afghanistan, the folks on the far-left that castigated Petraeus when he worked for George W. Bush have to sing a different tune.
With that in mind, the ad, which has been at MoveOn's website for years, was unceremoniously removed on Wednesday as reported by our friends at Weasel Zippers:
The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.
Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."
The woman that poses as Barack Obama on all his social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter is connected to the far-left organization MoveOn.org.
For those scratching their heads, the President in theory is a member of these websites. However, he obviously isn't responsible for typing in the little messages that are going out to his followers almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal revealed the identity of the current Twitterer as Mia Cambronero.
Our friends at Sweetness & Light have discovered that she is a senior fellow at the New Organizing Institute which is described by Discover The Networks (h/t Story Balloon):
A liberal Washington Post columnist laments today of the loss of civility in the public discourse. Strange that he is suddenly outraged that Americans would dare call Obama a socialist or a fascist, given that Bush-Hitler comparisons were widespread during the previous administration.Liberals in the media spent the summer and early fall bemoaning signs at town hall protests and tea party rallies calling Obama a socialist or communist comparing him to Hitler (incidentally, many of these signs were actually created by supporters of uber-leftist Lyndon LaRouche, as reported by Seton Motley here and here). These pundits had no such admonitions for signs at anti-war rallies during the Bush administration comparing him to Hitler and the Devil, and calling the president a fascist.
So the Post's E.J. Dionne's complaints about the loss of civility in the debate over federal politics fit right in with the narrative liberal pundits have been pushing since last year: comparing an American president to a murderous dictator is unacceptable...if that president is a Democrat.
"Democrats should support President Obama's effort to call out FOX. Please stay off FOX for as long as he does."
So reads a petition created and disseminated by MoveOn.org Tuesday.
I kid you not.
Full text of this abomination is below the fold (h/t Michelle Malkin):
Hard-left "anti-war" protesters – so far to the left that they’re protesting Barack Obama – were awarded the top left of The Washington Post on Wednesday. This "event" protesting the eighth anniversary of war in Afghanistan not only topped page one, it covered about 75 percent of page A6, including four color photographs.The headline was "For Antiwar Protesters, the Cause Isn't Lost: But Will D.C.