As NewsBusters previously reported , Joy Behar called former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) a “big homophobe” on the HLN program bearing her name Monday. Santorum struck back Wednesday on WOR radio's “The Steve Malzberg Show” saying, “This is really the problem that we see on the left which is the personalization of politics” (audio follows with transcript and commentary): STEVE MALZBERG, HOST: I don’t know if you heard. I’m sure you did. Joy Behar talking to Don Lemon, a CNN, a CNN anchor… RICK SANTORUM: (Laughs) MALZBERG: …who just came out of the closet… SANTORUM: Yeah. MALZBERG: She gratuitously threw this in. Let’s hear cut one, Bobby. (BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) JOY BEHAR, HLN: Now, I know that you’re an objective newsperson. DON LEMON, CNN: Yeah. BEHAR: And so, you’re going to have people sit there with you like Rick Santorum who seems like a big homophobe and others because they’re running for president or whatever and will talk about gay marriage, etc. How do you feel that you’ll be able to handle that easily? (END AUDIO CLIP) MALZBERG: Alright, where does she get that you are a homophobe? SANTORUM: Yeah, ’cause I, I guess because you stand for traditional marriage and you believe that, you know, that people should, we should have a society that affirms one man and one woman as marriage, that makes you someone who’s a hater, someone that doesn’t, doesn’t like people. I disagree with people, by the way, who are gay and straight who believe in changing the marriage laws. But it’s a public policy discussion, and this is the, this is really the problem that we see on the left which is the personalization of politics. I mean, we have a policy disagreement, and, and which I am very passionate about. I admit that. Because I do believe the family, integrity of the family is important for the future of our country. But that does not mean that, that I don’t like people or I hate people or that there’s something wrong. The only thing that’s wrong is their opinion. MALZBERG: Yeah, so when you hear some, when you hear somebody like Joy Behar who typifies the Left, what do you think when you’re hearing this? SANTORUM: It’s, it’s, I think this is exactly the politics they play, which is they don’t want to have the discussion about what the real effects are. For example, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and now we see at least that was attempted for the Navy to make chaplains, you know, marry people in the Navy who are same-sex couples. I mean, they don’t want to talk about the logical consequences of the policy discussions that we’re having. They’d rather just attack people for being haters and not really talk about the substance of the problem. And that’s, that’s not going to further, you know, public discourse in this country, and certainly in my opinion doesn’t further their cause. Santorum hit the nail right on the head. Liberal media commentators these days are not only clueless about the issues, they really have no interest in discussing them. Everything from the Left now is ad hominem attacks – nothing more. Their speech and/or writing patterns have devolved to the way anonymous people of differing views flame each other on message boards. The difference is, of course, that these folks actually get paid for such assaults and are congratulated by their followers like gladiators hearing thunderous applause at the Coliseum. Seems like years since they were disingenuously calling for a toning down of the rhetoric after Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot. In case you have forgotten, that happened in January.
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An endangered baby black lion tamarin monkey has been bred in a wildlife park on the island of Jersey, United Kingdom. The male baby monkey is the first to have been born outside its native Brazil for eight years. (May 18)
Continue reading …Mexican police saw something shocking when they aimed their X-ray scanners at a pair of tractor trailers at a checkpoint in Chiapas. The trucks were jammed full of 513 illegal migrants, many of them suffering from dehydration, the AP reports. Though air holes had been cut in the top of…
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Welcome to NewsFeed’s weekly highlight of the vocabulary of our lives — including useful, new, hilarious and surprising words (as well as some that are just fun to roll off the old tongue). Most semi-horrifying term used in the news: self-driving car This week’s news highlighted Google’s lobbying efforts in Nevada, where the tech giant
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Dan Mitchell’s latest video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity walks through the choices facing political leaders on reforming the Medicare system. This is a timely and well-done walk-through on the real choices we face for this system. “Would you be a cost-effective shopper if you were told I’d pay 80% of the cost the next time you buy a new car?” Watch and learn! Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Red State Discovery Date : 17/05/2011 15:30 Number of articles : 5
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His theories on society were fashionable 200 years ago, so why are British politicians such fans of this New York Times columnist’s new book? When David Brooks was a boy, he had two turtles named Gladstone and Disraeli. How come? “There’s a New York Jewish culture that has a saying ‘Think Yiddish, act British’,” says Brooks. “My background was filled with Anglophile Jews. Jews of a certain generation, really my grandfathers’ generation, gave each other names they thought would help them fit in – Irving, Sydney, Milton and Norman – and now in the US those are not English names any more, they’re Jewish names. And I was brought up in that culture. Hence the turtles.” Hence much more than that. Brooks, though a 49-year-old Canadian-born, suburban New York-raised, Chicago university-educated and now so much of a stellar New York Times columnist that the White House sometimes rings him to ask what he’s planning to write about, is deeply Anglophilic. “I am very British in that I’m reticent. There’s a survey of how many times people in different countries touch each other during an hour over coffee. In Rio it was 180, in Paris 120. London, zero.” How about new York? “Maybe 40? I feel very at home here.” We’re sitting in the Cinnamon Club, an Indian restaurant in Westminster frequented by policy wonks, and he looks more diffident than the only Englishman at our table. I resist the counter-cultural urge to play footsie. But what’s important about Brooks is not so much that he acts British, but that he thinks British. His new book, The Social Animal: A Story of How Success Happens, is steeped in the anti-rationalist philosophical reflections of the British Enlightenment. And this is no ordinary book: even before publication this week it has become, according to Times columnist Rachel Sylvester, “the must-read text for politicians searching for a new prism through which to examine the apparently intractable challenges of social immobility, school dropout rates, welfare dependency and crime”. Education secretary Michael Gove believes it contains vital clues for turning around failing schools; universities minister David Willetts reckons it may help define modern Conservatism; policy minister Oliver Letwin thinks it articulates the cherished Tory notion of the Big Society. The book is so hot that both David Cameron and Ed Miliband are meeting Brooks this week, and Steve Hilton, the PM’s top strategist, has invited him to hold a
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Diplomat says Benghazi committee plays key role in air strikes, fuelling suspicions British officers are ‘target-spotting’ on ground Nato’s bombing campaign against the Libyan regime is relying strongly on information supplied by rebel leaders in Benghazi with advice from a growing numbers of British officers, according to a senior European diplomat. Nato denies the rebel military has any target-spotters on the ground to direct the air strikes against Gaddafi. But the diplomat, familiar with the situation in Benghazi, said the main function of the rebels’ military leadership committee, the joint operations centre (JOC), was to help the Nato campaign. “The JOC is just below the [supreme] military council,” said the diplomat. “Its main job is to co-ordinate and make more effective the processing of military and tactical information back into Nato so air operations are based on the best information available.” The UK mission in Benghazi, inaugurated last month by Christopher Prentice, a former ambassador to Iraq and Jordan and currently the British envoy in Rome, started with a staff of six. This has expanded to around 40, most of them military officers advising the rebel leadership. In a sign of the struggle which still lies ahead for the rebels and the Nato mission, Gaddafi’s forces have intensified their campaign to take strategic ground in the western mountains. A road used by many of those fleeing the fighting was targeted, forcing the temporary closure of the border crossing into Tunisia. Jaber Naluti, a volunteer who has been trying to assist people in the area, told the Associated Press seven rebels had been killed. Other reports said that some shells fell inside Tunisia. Much of the fighting centred around the town of Yafrin, where locals said rockets and missiles were fired. In nearby Zintan, rebels repelled an advance by Gaddafi’s forces, killing eight and taking one prisoner, a local activist said. Disclosure of the growing British role in Benghazi is likely to reignite warnings of mission creep from those worried about David Cameron’s hawkishness and may fuel suspicions that British officers are acting as Nato target-spotters. Nato’s spokesman, Wing Commander Mike Bracken, said: “We do not have boots on the ground in Libya.” France, Italy and Turkey are also active in advising Benghazi’s government-in-waiting. Despite its deep reluctance to get involved in Libya, the German government said this week it was also sending a “liaison team” to Benghazi. Amid mounting exasperation among the UK’s military top brass that the bombing campaign has proved ineffective and may be helping to entrench a stalemate, Nato officials and European diplomats familiar with Libya are cautiously optimistic. TThree months after the first student protests in Benghazi were bloodily suppressed, triggering a mass revolt against Gaddafi, the western sources spoke of increasing “disarray and dissent” in the capital, Tripoli, and said the balance of morale had tipped strongly in favour of the revolutionaries. The rebels had “more people wanting to fight than they had weapons”, said the diplomat, while “Gaddafi increasingly has to resort to mercenaries and possibly conscripted schoolboys”. A Nato official said the Libyan leader was utterly dependent on a shrinking military and security apparatus whose days were numbered. “The sense of strangulation of the regime is there,” said the diplomat, although he conceded that Gaddafi loyalists were showing “remarkable resilience”. Arming the rebels was not a central factor in turning the tide, the source said. “Military supplies won’t be the key. More important will be a comprehensive push on strangulation of the regime politically and economically.” Despite the perception that the US was taking a back seat and leaving the anti-Gaddafi campaign to the Europeans, Nato officials said this was for public consumption and that the US remained the sole indispensable force in the operations. Around half of the 7,000 Nato sorties flown since the end of March were said to be by US forces, including attacks on ground targets, especially air defence sites and surface-to-air missile batteries. “The Americans are the rear end of the cow and we are the front end,” said a European Nato officer. Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Muammar Gaddafi Middle East Africa Nato Foreign policy US foreign policy Europe Military Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Ben Stein is taking an Internet whipping for his defense of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the American Spectator . Among Stein’s arguments: “If he is such a womanizer and violent guy with women, why didn’t he ever get charged until now? ” and, skeptical of claims that DSK overpowered the woman: “How? Did…
Continue reading …Chris Matthews Attacks Gingrich as ‘Evil Joker,’ Praises Obama as ‘Our Hero Batman’
May 18, 2011 No Comment
Just when you thought MSNBC's Chris Matthews couldn't stoop any lower he magically finds new ways to trash his political opponents while praising the man that gives him a thrill up his leg. On Wednesday's “Hardball,” the host in his concluding segment attacked Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich as the Joker looking “for ways to manipulate public opinion, interrupt the TV news, and bring his evil intentions and motives and instincts into reality” while praising President Obama as “our hero” Batman full of “goodwill, generosity and glamour” (video follows with transcript and commentary): CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with the Joker. Remember him? He was played by Jack Nicholson in that great “Batman” movie by Tim Burton. He was the key to the movie. Why? Because his dark world of malevolence and revenge set in contrast the goodwill, generosity and glamour of our hero. He was to the movie on the bad side what Batman was on the good. Batman stands on tall buildings looking for evil to be perpetrated, people to be saved. The Joker looks for ways to manipulate public opinion, interrupt the TV news, and bring his evil intentions and motives and instincts into reality. Maybe the President today is our Batman, trying to do good, a bit mysterious, a bit cool and technocratic, a bit removed from the world of emotions, but right, right there on the side of good, always using his brains and wit to look out for the people in trouble. Well, maybe he's not that good. No, Newt Gingrich is a far better Joker than Barack Obama is our Batman, that wide demonic smile of his, too much smile, not even a twitch of heart behind it, all guile, all dark delight in the menace he can dredge from the afternoon newspaper, the fears of people on the street, the midnight dread of what might be coming in an uncertain world and time. Newt Gingrich, like all the bad guys of the Batman world, has now gotten caught up in his own nasty ploys. He’s just so instinctively looking for the next chance to attack he loses control even on his own bad attitude. “Life’s been good to me,” the Joker tells us on his comeback from the past, his face repainted to cover the horror, his smile deluding none of us instead being an unintended warning. The joker is out there again, and no one's safe from his menace, least of all himself. Are you kidding me? The former Speaker of the House is a malevolent, vengeful, manipulative, evil, demonic, heartless menace and Obama is our hero? Is this really the level of discourse acceptable to a division of NBC News? Where does this end?
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