Click here to view this media Newt Gingrich (R-GA) loves the country so much that it has caused him to stray from his marriages. At least, that what the former House speaker seemed to be saying in a recent interview with CBN’s David Brody. “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate,” Gingrich said. “What I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them,” he said. Gingrich has been married three times and divorced twice. His second wife, Marianne, revealed to Esquire last year how the former speaker had presented his first wife with the terms of their divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from surgery for uterine cancer in 1980. Rumors about Gingrich’s fondness for oral sex with other women have circulated for some time. A 1995 Vanity Fair profile explained how Anne Manning had claimed she had been intimate with him. In 1999, over the Mother’s Day weekend and on the same day his second wife had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Gingrich informed her he had found someone else. In fact, he had reportedly been having an affair with Callista Bisek for six years. Gingrich divorced his second wife in 2000 and married Callista that same year. The Georgia Republican has launched a website to take donations for a possible 2012 presidential bid, but he will have to work hard to get conservative votes. “He’s the last person I’d vote for for president of the United States,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) told the Tulsa World in August. “His life indicates he does not have a commitment to the character traits necessary to be a great president.” Gingrich “doesn’t know anything about commitment to marriage,” he added.
Continue reading …New Media Strategies: Get Yer Koch Sock Puppets and Chrysler Corp F-Bombs Right Here
March 9, 2011 No Comment
enlarge Mashable had this interesting little blurb about Chrysler’s official Twitter account and the f-bomb earlier today, so I decided to look at New Media Strategies a little closer for two reasons: First, because it amazes me that anyone calling themselves a “new media strategist” could send a tweet like the one pictured above, as retweeted. And second, I wanted to see what other companies NMS has as clients. After reading their executive bios , it was abundantly clear that they are a right-wing firm with many conservative ties. After all, when the public affairs VP has to be specific about overseeing a “bipartisan group”, you’ve got to wonder why that disclaimer is there, since one would assume that a public affairs director would naturally be bipartisan? I wondered aloud on Twitter about why Chrysler, of all companies, would hire a right-wing new media firm and was met with some derision and scorn over my characterization of NMS as such. Then this crossed my tweet stream , courtesy of Lee Fang at Think Progress. Last year, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an Internet PR firm that specializes in “word-of-mouth marketing” for major corporations including Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford. It appears that, ever since the NMS contract was inked with Koch, an NMS employee began editing the Wikipedia page for “Charles Koch,” “David Koch,” “Political activities of the Koch family,” and “The Science of Success” (a book written by Charles). Under the moniker of “MBMAdmirer,” NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party movement, to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy theories surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets. After administrators flagged the MBMAdmirer account as a “sock puppet” — one of many fake accounts used to manipulate new media sites — a subsequent sock puppet investigation found that MBMAdmirer is connected to a number of dummy accounts and ones owned by NMS employees like Jeff Taylor . In a bid to undo a Wikipedia-imposed ban, the MBMAdmirer account now acknowledges that it works for Koch Industries. The tactics used by Koch’s PR firm clearly violate the ethics rules laid out by Wikipedia against sock puppet manipulation. Soren Dayton , a GOP operative and executive at New Media Strategies, is reported to be the contact for Koch Industries at NMS. Reached by phone yesterday by ThinkProgress, Dayton exclaimed, “I’m not going to talk about this, thanks,” before hanging up. Lyndsey Medsker, a senior account director for NMS, spoke to ThinkProgress today. She explained that NMS also maintains the Koch Industries Twitter page, Facebook page, and has an active team working on promoting Koch Industries in the comment section of blogs and news websites. Well, yeah, I guess I wasn’t completely out of line in my original assessment and question, now was I?
Continue reading …NPR’s own weak knees let lying bullies like James O’Keefe score another easy victory
March 9, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media So James O’Keefe, the lying criminal scam artist whose deceptively edited videos — along with a complicit media who swallowed them whole — brought down ACORN has scored another scalp with his latest hit job targeting NPR : Not only has Ron Schiller, the fool caught on video being way too frank with strangers, stepped down in advance of his planned departure, but NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation) is out, too. Not a bad day’s work for a lying criminal scam artist. Naturally, Fox News was all over the story, with every one of its evening-show hosts — O’Reilly, Hannity, and Van Susteren — featuring segments on the video. Of course, there was only scant mention of the fact that O’Keefe was a lying criminal scam artist whose track record of deceptive editing was well-established. As Ellen at Newshounds puts it : “Who Cares If James O’Keefe Is A Lying Creep With A Criminal History? He Hates ACORN And NPR, So What’s Not To Like If You’re Fox News?” But really, what can you expect from a news organization with such a sterling record of running like scared sheep whenever conservatives get out their Full Umbrage schtick and run at them and their federal funding with it? Sure enough, the first people to toss Schiller under the bus were his colleagues at NPR. No doubt at Fox this will be spun as a defeat of a “liberal” media organ, except that NPR is anything but a liberal entity. They specialize in classic spineless-Beltway-liberal behavior — hippie-bashing, conventional-wisdom genuflection, he-said-she-said ‘balance’ in its reporting and the-left-does-it-too false equivocation. It’s why Juan Williams managed to hang on as long as he did, and why Mara Liasson is still there. And in this case, it’s pretty funny. As the WaPo’s Stephen Stromberg noted, it’s hard to see exactly what it is we’re supposed to be outraged about. After all, what has the Fox folks outraged were his comments about the Tea Party — which actually were perfectly defensible renditions of cold fact. Are Greta and Byron really trying to pretend that there weren’t Tea Partiers bringing loaded weapons out to public rallies? Really? All in all, it’s a classic one-day non-story. Hope the Fox reporters enjoy their bit of breathlessness. Who knows what piece of recycled propaganda from lying criminal artists they’ll treat as legitimate news next.
Continue reading …As the fights in Wisconsin and Ohio rage on over efforts to strip workers of their rights, everybody has an opinion. It’s interesting to see the difference. Rich Lowry’s op-ed in the Columbia Tribune was most representative of the disdain the right has for union workers. Here’s a taste: No, the most important measure at stake in Wisconsin is the governor’s proposal for the state to stop deducting union dues from the paychecks of state workers. This practice essentially wields the taxing power of the government on behalf of the institutional interests of the unions. It makes the government an arm of the public-sector unions. It is a priceless favor. Wisconsin doesn’t collect dues for Elks lodges or the NRA. What makes these organizations different from public-sector unions is that people freely choose to join them and freely choose to pay their dues. They are truly voluntary organizations that don’t rely on the power of the state for their well-being. Walker wants to give members of public-sector unions a measure of this same autonomy. Public-sector unions are a creature of government, and the Democrats are the party of government. The two of them have identical interests and worldviews, and both want to leverage government to swell their campaign coffers. How to characterize this? The word “shame” comes to mind. Lowry of course fails to note that unions must disclose each and every penny they spend on campaigns, independent ad expenditures, and other political activity. That doesn’t seem to faze him as much as the outrage that union dues are collected by payroll deduction. Is he also outraged that insurance companies’ coffers are fattened by private corporations who take payroll deductions for their employees’ health insurance? Of course not. Now here’s the view from the left side of the aisle, via Thos Payne at MyAuburnJournal : The fact that Americans for Prosperity is now going on the air makes it clear that this is about something far larger going on than getting Wisconsin’s finances under control; it underscores the degree to which this has become, for the Republicans, an ideological battle of elite corporatism verses the working class – oil industry billionaires are pitted against union workers; their ideological ally a rented governor who is intent on destroying trade unions. This kind of struggle needs to be called what it is – class warfare. What’s happening in Wisconsin is no accident. Class warfare depends on the suppression of democracy. The Koch brothers depend on corruption within the Supreme Court. The extreme right-wing judicial activism that was the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision was just the opening salvo. Buying elections didn’t stop in Wisconsin and the agenda isn’t confined to the Koch brothers. It’s the entire Republican agenda – an agenda that is threatened by America’s demographic evolution. This agenda has always has depended on suppressing the vote, and now it depends on the suppression of democracy itself. Make no mistake, this is class warfare. It’s a war on democracy itself, and Wisconsin is just the first battle. Wisconsin is symbolic to both sides. To the right, it’s an effort to weaken the power of collective voices by de-funding unions. To the left, it’s a class war. The right wing takes away. The left wing gives back. In Wisconsin, they’re looking to take away people’s voice and their power. The left (and most independents, too) are giving back that voice and power by the only means available to them — protest. Which is why it shouldn’t surprise you to discover that Jim DeMint is hedging Governor Walker’s bet by introducing a federal right-to-work bill. Evidently states’ rights only matter when they’re exercised to rob ordinary people. “No American should be forced to join a union and pay dues to get a job in this country,” said Senator DeMint. “Many Americans are already struggling just to put food on the table, and they shouldn’t have to fear losing their jobs or face discrimination if they don’t want to join a union. Forced-unionism shields unions from member accountability and has a detrimental effect on the economy. In states where companies are forced to hire only union workers, businesses have struggled to compete while they deal with counterproductive work rules.” Funny thing. Statistics prove that workers in states which are not right-to-work states have more job security, and those states have lower unemployment rates, which means Senators DeMint, Coburn, Hatch, Lee, Paul, Risch, Toomey and Vitter are big fat liars. But we knew that.
Continue reading …As the fights in Wisconsin and Ohio rage on over efforts to strip workers of their rights, everybody has an opinion. It’s interesting to see the difference. Rich Lowry’s op-ed in the Columbia Tribune was most representative of the disdain the right has for union workers. Here’s a taste: No, the most important measure at stake in Wisconsin is the governor’s proposal for the state to stop deducting union dues from the paychecks of state workers. This practice essentially wields the taxing power of the government on behalf of the institutional interests of the unions. It makes the government an arm of the public-sector unions. It is a priceless favor. Wisconsin doesn’t collect dues for Elks lodges or the NRA. What makes these organizations different from public-sector unions is that people freely choose to join them and freely choose to pay their dues. They are truly voluntary organizations that don’t rely on the power of the state for their well-being. Walker wants to give members of public-sector unions a measure of this same autonomy. Public-sector unions are a creature of government, and the Democrats are the party of government. The two of them have identical interests and worldviews, and both want to leverage government to swell their campaign coffers. How to characterize this? The word “shame” comes to mind. Lowry of course fails to note that unions must disclose each and every penny they spend on campaigns, independent ad expenditures, and other political activity. That doesn’t seem to faze him as much as the outrage that union dues are collected by payroll deduction. Is he also outraged that insurance companies’ coffers are fattened by private corporations who take payroll deductions for their employees’ health insurance? Of course not. Now here’s the view from the left side of the aisle, via Thos Payne at MyAuburnJournal : The fact that Americans for Prosperity is now going on the air makes it clear that this is about something far larger going on than getting Wisconsin’s finances under control; it underscores the degree to which this has become, for the Republicans, an ideological battle of elite corporatism verses the working class – oil industry billionaires are pitted against union workers; their ideological ally a rented governor who is intent on destroying trade unions. This kind of struggle needs to be called what it is – class warfare. What’s happening in Wisconsin is no accident. Class warfare depends on the suppression of democracy. The Koch brothers depend on corruption within the Supreme Court. The extreme right-wing judicial activism that was the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision was just the opening salvo. Buying elections didn’t stop in Wisconsin and the agenda isn’t confined to the Koch brothers. It’s the entire Republican agenda – an agenda that is threatened by America’s demographic evolution. This agenda has always has depended on suppressing the vote, and now it depends on the suppression of democracy itself. Make no mistake, this is class warfare. It’s a war on democracy itself, and Wisconsin is just the first battle. Wisconsin is symbolic to both sides. To the right, it’s an effort to weaken the power of collective voices by de-funding unions. To the left, it’s a class war. The right wing takes away. The left wing gives back. In Wisconsin, they’re looking to take away people’s voice and their power. The left (and most independents, too) are giving back that voice and power by the only means available to them — protest. Which is why it shouldn’t surprise you to discover that Jim DeMint is hedging Governor Walker’s bet by introducing a federal right-to-work bill. Evidently states’ rights only matter when they’re exercised to rob ordinary people. “No American should be forced to join a union and pay dues to get a job in this country,” said Senator DeMint. “Many Americans are already struggling just to put food on the table, and they shouldn’t have to fear losing their jobs or face discrimination if they don’t want to join a union. Forced-unionism shields unions from member accountability and has a detrimental effect on the economy. In states where companies are forced to hire only union workers, businesses have struggled to compete while they deal with counterproductive work rules.” Funny thing. Statistics prove that workers in states which are not right-to-work states have more job security, and those states have lower unemployment rates, which means Senators DeMint, Coburn, Hatch, Lee, Paul, Risch, Toomey and Vitter are big fat liars. But we knew that.
Continue reading …This just rolled in: In a surprise move late Wednesday, Senate Republicans voted to move forward with the governor’s controversial budget repair bill, sending the measure into a conference committee scheduled for later in the day. Republican leaders would only say the Senate bill differed from the Assembly bill and indicated it was possible lawmakers could strip fiscal elements from the proposal and pass only the measures dealing with collective bargaining. Such a move would allow Republicans to pass the governor’s bill without the 20 Senate members needed to vote on fiscal matters. Currently 14 Democratic senators remain in Illinois, hiding out in an effort to deny the quorum and stall the vote. If the Republicans move forward with their plans, it would be a major reversal for Gov. Scott Walker and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau. Both have contended that the bill is fiscal in nature and thus the collective bargaining could not be stripped from the measure. Democratic Senators on Wednesday immediately criticized the move, saying it proves Republican attempts to end collective bargaining for public employees are not about balancing the budget. “They have been saying all along that this is a fiscal item, we’ve been saying it is not,” said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Waunakee, from Illinois. “They have been lying. Their goal is to bust up the unions.” Actually, Dems are furious. “They have been saying all along that this is a fiscal item; we’ve been saying it is not,” said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Waunakee, from Illinois. “They have been lying. Their goal is to bust up the unions.” Sen. Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, called the maneuver undemocratic and “almost barbaric.” “There’s going to be a public hanging of public employee unions at the Capitol tomorrow if it comes out as I expect,” he said, referring to the provisions meant to strip most collective bargaining rights from public employee unions.
Continue reading …This just rolled in: In a surprise move late Wednesday, Senate Republicans voted to move forward with the governor’s controversial budget repair bill, sending the measure into a conference committee scheduled for later in the day. Republican leaders would only say the Senate bill differed from the Assembly bill and indicated it was possible lawmakers could strip fiscal elements from the proposal and pass only the measures dealing with collective bargaining. Such a move would allow Republicans to pass the governor’s bill without the 20 Senate members needed to vote on fiscal matters. Currently 14 Democratic senators remain in Illinois, hiding out in an effort to deny the quorum and stall the vote. If the Republicans move forward with their plans, it would be a major reversal for Gov. Scott Walker and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau. Both have contended that the bill is fiscal in nature and thus the collective bargaining could not be stripped from the measure. Democratic Senators on Wednesday immediately criticized the move, saying it proves Republican attempts to end collective bargaining for public employees are not about balancing the budget. “They have been saying all along that this is a fiscal item, we’ve been saying it is not,” said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Waunakee, from Illinois. “They have been lying. Their goal is to bust up the unions.” Actually, Dems are furious. “They have been saying all along that this is a fiscal item; we’ve been saying it is not,” said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Waunakee, from Illinois. “They have been lying. Their goal is to bust up the unions.” Sen. Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, called the maneuver undemocratic and “almost barbaric.” “There’s going to be a public hanging of public employee unions at the Capitol tomorrow if it comes out as I expect,” he said, referring to the provisions meant to strip most collective bargaining rights from public employee unions.
Continue reading …Bill O’Reilly tries to argues that Obama had ‘huge advantage’ of being ‘the first black’ to run for President. WRONG!
March 9, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Mike Huckabee had a really bad week when he kept opening his mouth and sewerage kept coming out. he tried a phony apology by saying he misspoke. Nobody believed that one either. Now, here comes the anointed King Of Kabletown, Bill O’Reilly, really knocking a whopper out of the park to Charles Krauthammer. They were a bit down as they discussed George Will’s column on the lousy Republican candidates that Will believes are valid at this point. Krauthammer largely agreed with Will, and it seemed O’Reilly did too; the main point of contention they had was that nobody knew any of these Republican governors. I guess O’Reilly sensed that it was a motley crew of candidates, so to make his audience happy he said that President Obama had an advantage because he was the first African Americam to run for President as they discussed the GOP 2012 list of candidates. Krauthammer: It’s not a strong field. Not being known now is not dispositive — nobody had ever heard of Barack Obama at this time in the cycle. O’Reilly; That’s what they always said, but let me challenge you. Barack Obama, a black man. OK, I mean he’s half black and half white, but his appearance is black. The first black to ever run, OK? Huge, huge advantage in a campaign. Enormous. The press loved him. LOVED HIM, alright? Promoted him, actively promoted him. NBC News actively promoted his candidacy and so did their parent company General Electric. HUGE advantages Nobody on that list has anything. Krauthammer: All of that is true, although Jesse Jackson actually was the first who ran. Congratulations to Krauthammer for at least having a memory cell still remaining — though a slightly faulty one at that, considering that Shirley Chisholm was actually the first black person to run as a candidate in either of the two parties. Still: Bill, the King of Kableland, has a huge staff at his disposal and the entire saving account of Ailesbucks available to him, so what’s his excuse for being so wrong? I thought at least everyone remembered Jesse Jackson, because he scared the Bejesus out of the GOP so badly that they purged the voter rolls after his run. How could BillO not know this? Jesse has been a guest on BillO’s own show. Wikipedia: In 1888 Frederick Douglass was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention . Afterward during the roll call vote, he received one vote, so was nominally a candidate for the presidency. In those years, the candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency were chosen by state representatives voting at the nominating convention. Many decisions were made by negotiations of state and party leaders “behind closed doors.” Douglass was not a serious candidate in contemporary terms. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm was the first African-American major party candidate for president. She was a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination and participated in the Democratic primaries in numerous states. [1] She campaigned in 12 states and won 28 delegates. [2] In 1984 and 1988 , Jesse Jackson was the first major party black candidate to run nationwide primary campaigns . He also ran as a Democratic Party candidate. [3] In 1992 Alan Keyes was the first African-American candidate to run in the Republican presidential primaries.[ citation needed ] Keyes ran again, unsuccessfully, in 1996, 2000, and 2008. In 2004, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton ran as unsuccessful candidates in the Democratic primaries. But you know — being black is a real advantage when you run for president. Uh-huh.
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Click here to view this media While Rep. Peter King (R-NY) busies himself holding hearings on the alleged radicalization of American Muslims, Jon Stewart suggests King’s own shady past of openly supporting the Irish Republican Army (IRA) makes him a curious choice, to put it mildly. Presumably King is doing so for political advantage in singling out and stigmatizing Muslims with such a broad brush, using (or misusing) the spotlight King now enjoys as the incoming Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. However, such a cynical ploy may backfire. The NY Times has more. WASHINGTON — For Representative Peter T. King, as he seizes the national spotlight this week with a hearing on the radicalization of American Muslims, it is the most awkward of résumé entries. Long before he became an outspoken voice in Congress about the threat from terrorism, he was a fervent supporter of a terrorist group, the Irish Republican Army. “We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry,” Mr. King told a pro-I.R.A. rally on Long Island, where he was serving as Nassau County comptroller, in 1982. Three years later he declared, “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.” As Mr. King, a Republican, rose as a Long Island politician in the 1980s, benefiting from strong Irish-American support, the I.R.A. was carrying out a bloody campaign of bombing and sniping, targeting the British Army, Protestant paramilitaries and sometimes pubs and other civilian gathering spots. His statements, along with his close ties to key figures in the military and political wings of the I.R.A., drew the attention of British and American authorities. A judge in Belfast threw him out of an I.R.A. murder trial, calling him an “obvious collaborator,” said Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist and author of “A Secret History of the I.R.A.” In 1984, Mr. King complained that the Secret Service had investigated him as a “security risk,” Mr. Moloney said. UPDATE : John Amato What I find to be truly amazing is that if a Democratic politician was linked to a high school essay that they wrote twenty years in the past, they could be ostracized and made to resign, but if you’re a Republican, you say that you had a change of heart, ask for forgiveness and then run for President at a later date. I’m not even bring up sex scandals like Elliot Spitzer and David Vitter were linked to. One is still in Congress and the other is on CNN. It wouldn’t be hard to figure which one ended up where. Ask the British people who experienced IRA violence and see how they feel about that time in their history. Salon Reports that King supported Noraid, which was linked to a bombing that killed an American. Now, King’s standard of good versus bad terrorism seems to have a lot to do with whether King supports the cause in question, but has also specified some characteristics of acceptable terrorism . Here’s what he told the Times : Of comparisons between the terrorism of the I.R.A. and that of Al Qaeda and its affiliates, Mr. King said: “I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel. The fact is, the I.R.A. never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States.” It may be that the IRA never attacked inside the United States. But it’s not true that the group never claimed any American victims in attacks targeting civilians. In the notorious December 1983 strike on Harrods in London, for example, an IRA car bomb was set outside the department store in the early afternoon during the busy Christmas shopping season. The bomb killed six people — including an American citizen — and injured another 90 : Peter King should be ousted from running this committee as he tries to whip up the fear in America just because of his past IRA ties in which he gets to differentiate what type of terrorism is good and bad.
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Click here to view this media You all remember that “isolated event” on MLK Day in Spokane, where someone left a bomb in a backpack along the day’s parade route, a bomb that would have been extremely lethal if it had not been discovered. Well, there’s been a break in the case : A significant break in Martin Luther King Day backpack bomb investigation in Spokane occurred this morning when an FBI SWAT team executed a search warrant and reportedly made one arrest Wednesday morning in the small northeastern Washington town of Addy. FBI officials weren’t immediately available for comment, but indicated the name of the suspect would be forthcoming in a news release. The case has been investigated as a case of domestic terrorism. Addy is a community in Stevens County, in the northeastern corner of Washington state, bordering Canada. The county has long been a hotbed of extremist and Christian Identity activity. The arrest was being reHowever a source has confirmed with The Spokesman-Review that the suspect is 36-year-old Kevin Harpham, originally of Kettle Falls. The Souther Poverty Law Center confirmed that Harpham in 2004 was a member of the National Alliance, which is one of the most visible white supremacist organizations in the nation. It was founded by the late William Pierce, who authoried the Turner Diaries, a novel about a future race war. That book was believed to be the blue print behind the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh. “What to me this arrest suggests is that the Martin Luther King Day attack is what it always looked like: A terror-mass murder attempt directed at black people and their sympathizers,” said Mark Potok, who is the director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project that tracks and investigates hate groups. ported by Spokane media, including The Spokesman-Review and KXLY-TV. Methinks Bill O’Reilly owes Potok an apology. Of course, in Spokane, no one was calling this an “isolated event. More details as they arrive. UPDATE: The Spokesman-Review reports the first man arrested is a 36-year-old Stevens County man named Kevin Harpham:
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