Based on a map presented during a recent MSNBC broadcast, I'm left wondring why there's all this hand-wringing over a "two state solution" in the Middle East.
After all, according to that MSNBC map and the host of the program involved, "Palestine" has been around for almost 70 years, existing since 1946 (HT Sooper Mexican at the Right Scoop):
The conventional wisdom is that Joe Biden has been staying on the sidelines, waiting to see how bad the email scandal gets for Hillary. But while that might be true, consider that Biden need not just be a passive player in the game. There is a plausible theory by which Biden's entry into the race by its very fact would increase the odds of Hillary encountering legal travails.
One reason that President Obama might be holding off on having his DoJ go after Hillary is that he doesn't want to destroy the candidacy of the only plausible Dem candidate in the race. As brilliant and charismatic as is Lincoln Chaffee, still he might just not do.
As I noted on Friday, the New York Times has become the de facto head cheerleader for Truth, the movie which purports to tell the story behind CBS News's 60 Minutes report on President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service in the early 1970s aired in September 2004.
The Old Gray Lady has hosted a TimesTalk video in which one of the film's lead actors, Robert Redford as Dan Rather, claims that the movie gives the offending journalists "their day in court." (Trust me, Bob. The last place they want to be is in a real courtroom; Rather found that out the hard way several years ago.)
The New York Times has not merely climbed aboard the bandwagon of Truth, which exalts the fraudulent September 2004 CBS 60 Minutes report about President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service. It's now serving as the film's de facto lead apologist.
The most recent example demonstrating how deeply in the tank the Old Gray Lady has gone is Stephen Holden's Thursday film review published in Friday's print edition. Holden's praise comes from an alternative universe where genuine "truth" clearly doesn't matter, and uses a tortured analogy which in reality disproves his attempt at making a point (bolds are mine throughout this post):
On Friday, Salon featured two articles taking fire to presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Authored by Heather Digby Parton, one piece was titled, “Paranoid Rise of the Militant Right: Inside the Growing Threat of Domestic Extremism” and examined the Department of Justice’s new focus on domestic extremists, and the author zeroed in on right-wing extremism. The second was written by Simon Maloy, who offered the slippery-slope argument against Cruz under the title, "Ted Cruz's Crazy 'Jackboot' Talk: When Inflammatory Rhetoric Starts Getting Dangerous."
Joe Scarborough swung a double-edged sword on today's Morning Joe, swiping simultaneously at his MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews and at radio host and debate panelist Hugh Hewitt. The subject was Marco Rubio, with Hewitt calling him "the most dynamic speaker the Republican party has seen ever, since Lincoln." "Since Lincoln," asked Scarborough incredulously—"do you have a tingle going up your leg?"
Scarborough said that rather than recalling Lincoln, "when I see Marco speaking, I'm seeing a guy that's running for student government." Interesting aside: Hewitt predicts that Republicans will have an open convention, with no candidate having wrapped up the nomination before the delegates get to Cleveland in July.
The disgraceful determination of Hollywood to rewrite history not favorable to the left, its causes and its personalities has perhaps reached its nadir with the laughably misnamed movie Truth.
The film is about Dan Rather's September 2004 60 Minutes report on President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service during the 1970s. In Rather's words, "The nuanced, not preachy, script makes clear our report was true." The script may say that, but the historical record doesn't. On October 2, John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson's writeup detailing how bogus that report was from top to bottom appeared online at The Weekly Standard. Reading that essay in its entirely is undoubtedly important; but in this case, so is ridicule. Megan McArdle at Bloomberg View supplied that back in July.
Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has insisted that she consulted with all of her vice-chairs before deciding on the number of Democratic presidential primary debates would be held.
John Heilemann of Bloomberg Politics, in what Hot Air's Jazz Shaw described as "a rare moment of" someone in the press actually "doing their job" in fact-checking leftists, reported this morning that "I cannot find a vice-chair who was consulted in advance by Debbie Wasserman Schultz." The rest of the press appears to be completely disinterested in reporting on the DNC chair's obvious and blatant falsehood.
The last thing the press wants low-information voters to learn is that there has been far more interest in the contest for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination than there has been in the Democrats'.
That disparity has naturally carried over into the size of the audience watching the respective parties' debates. Despite months of buildup to the first left-side debate of the season and relentless hype all week long in the establishment press, last night's Democratic debate drew an audience of only 15.3 million compared to 25 million and 23 million in the first two Republican debates. Naturally, CNNMoney's morning email had no interest in communicating that disappointing (to the left) reality:
Wow: an MSMer who not only has "many" conservative friends, but is willing to admit it on live national TV?
On today's Morning Joe, in the course of praising Anderson Cooper's performance as debate moderator, Geist let drop that prior to the debate "many of my conservative friends" thought CNN would go easy on the Dems, but that five minutes in, they told him "oh, I guess he's not going to go easy."
First Sanders, now Trumka—are there any capitalists left on the left? On the most recent Meet the Press, Bernie Sanders made news when Chuck Todd asked him if he was a capitalist. "No," shot back Sanders, "I'm a democratic socialist." Mark Halperin was obviously taken enough by the question as to pose it on today's With All Due Respect to Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO.
"No, I'm a trade unionist, quite frankly," retorted Trumka. When Halperin tried to pursue the issue, Trumka laughed it off, calling it a "silly question." Silly? The biggest union boss in America opposes the economic system that made this country great and which creates the private sector jobs his members fill? Employers have to bargain with people who reject the very premise upon which their businesses rest? Silly? You're killing us, Richard. Or should we say "Mr. President," which was the obsequious way in which Halperin and co-host John Heilemann addressed Trumka. But kudos to Halperin for posing and then pursuing the question.
On Tuesday's Live with Thomas Roberts, the MSNBC host relayed the recent decision by Planned Parenthood to no longer seek "reimbursement" for tissue from aborted fetuses. Roberts asked NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell if the move was simply to “calm critics out there and ease pressure off of Planned Parenthood?” O'Donnell pointed out that this has been a "summer of rhetoric" and that Planned Parenthood was seeking a way to alleviate Congressional pressure. O'Donnell would read on air the Planned Parenthood written statement that the new policy "takes away the smokescreen that extremists have been using to attack Planned Parenthood."