NC Media Watch

Ray Stevens- God Save Arizona

Russ Steele

To your battle station, one and all,  it is time to save Arizona. Enjoy Appreciate!

E-mails expose underbelly of liberal journalism

Russ Steele

The Climategate e-mails exposed the underbelly of climatology when thousands of e-mails leaked out of a university server. From these e-mails we learned that climate scientists in the US and UK were hiding data, making up temperature data, and writing fudge factors into climate change models to all to promote their views that humans were causing global warming.

Now some e-mails have leaked from the Journolist listserver that expose liberal members on the list plotted to spike the Rev. Wright story by re-framing the story about conservative racism. 

Hot Air has the story here: 

In the first of a series on Journolist, Daily Caller reporter Jonathan Strong lays out a strategy plotted by Journolist members to kill the Jeremiah Wright story during the 2008 primaries — and to smear Barack Obama’s critics as racists:

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Read the whole story here.

Does all this sound familiar?  We have had some racist labeling by local liberals on this blog, Rebane’s  Ruminations, and on the Union blogs.  Now liberals in Nevada County and across the nation are trying to use the same tactics to brand the Tea Party Patriots as a racist organization.

Exit Question:  Coordinated plot, or just liberals reading from the same Democrat talking points?

Opening Pandora's Music Box

Russ Steele

 
Painting by Warwick Goble

I like to listen to music when I am working on a project in my office, or just for relaxation when reading or napping. The music shuts off the noise of the outside world.  For years I have been using the XM Radio on the Internet, no commercials on most channels. We have XM in the our GMC Truck and Airstream Trailer, and for an additional fee we can listen on the Internet. Great listening on the road, choose the music that fits the road and scene.

Recently listening to XM on the Internet has become choppy, with lots of drop outs. Very annoying! In addition, with the merger of XM and Sirius, some of my favorite channels went a way to be replaced by music for the brain dead. A few weeks ago my son-in-law Darrin suggested trying Pandora Internet Radio.  Wow! What a difference. You get to create your own station (channel) by picking an artist. Enya, Jimmy Buffett, Dave Brubeck or Ray Lynch, these are some of my favorites. Or, just chose a genre: blues, classical, electronic, new age, hip Hop, etc, and be surprised.  

The results have been stunningly clear, crisp with no drop outs. Right now I am playing it through the Bose Radio Aux input, and the music fills the room. When relaxing I use my laptop and earphones, and last night it was a front row center experience. You could almost hear Brubeck's drummer sweat. Highly recommended. 

Pandora has mobile Apps for phones, including the iPhone. I am going to try it on my iPod Touch later today.  I will report the results