Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
CNN’s John King is attracting a lot of notice — and some ridicule — in the blogosphere for his on-air apology after a guest used the word “crosshairs” during a report on Chicago politics Tuesday. (The guest, a former Chicago reporter, referred to two rivals of mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel, saying Emanuel is “in both of their crosshairs.”) “We were just having a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race,” King told viewers. “My friend Andy Shaw…used the term ‘in the crosshairs’ in talking about the candidates out there. We’re trying, we’re trying to get away from that language. Andy is a good friend, he’s covered politics for a long time, but we’re trying to get away from using that kind of language. We won’t always be perfect, so hold us accountable when we don’t meet your standards.”
King’s statement comes after widespread discussion of whether Sarah Palin’s now-infamous “crosshairs” map targeting vulnerable Democratic candidates in last November’s elections somehow caused the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson January 8. There has been plenty of that kind of speculation on CNN, including on Tuesday, the day of John King’s statement, when one brief discussion of Palin used the word “crosshairs” five times.
Now, King says, CNN is “trying to get away” from such terms, suggesting that in the wake of the Tucson shootings, such language should no longer be part of the public conversation. But if Palin is to blame for using crosshairs in her much-discussed map, then CNN, by its own use of the allegedly inflammatory term “crosshairs,” might also share some blame for creating the atmosphere that led to the violence in Arizona. A look at transcripts of CNN programs in the month leading up to the shootings shows that the network was filled with references to “crosshairs” — and once even used the term to suggest the targeting of Palin herself. Some examples:
“Palin’s moose-hunting episode on her reality show enraged People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and now, she’s square in the crosshairs of big time Hollywood producer, Aaron Sorkin,” reported A.J. Hammer of CNN’s Headline News on December 8.
“Companies like MasterCard are in the crosshairs for cutting ties with WikiLeaks,” said CNN Kiran Chetry in a December 9 report.
“Thousands of people living in areas that are in the crosshairs have been told to evacuate,” Chetry said in a December 21 report on flooding in California.
“He’s in their crosshairs,” said a guest in a December 21 CNN discussion of suspects in a missing-person case.
“This will be the first time your food will be actually in the crosshairs of the FDA,” business reporter Christine Romans said on December 22.
“The U.S. commander in the East has Haqqani in his crosshairs,” CNN’s Barbara Starr reported on December 28, referring to an Afghan warlord.
“We know that health care reform is in the crosshairs again,” CNN’s Joe Johns reported on January 3.
Seven uses of “crosshairs” in just the month before the Tucson attacks, and just one of them referring to an actual wartime situation. And one reference to Sarah Palin herself as being in “crosshairs.”
And not just Palin. On September 14, Mark Preston, CNN’s senior political editor, referred to another controversial politician, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, as being “in the crosshairs.” “Michelle Bachmann is raising lots of money, raising her national profile,” Preston said on September 14. “She is in the crosshairs of Democrats as well.”
It turns out Preston was back on CNN’s air on Tuesday, discussing Palin’s recent interview on Fox News. “We saw her on Fox News last night where she is a paid contributor,” Preston said. “A kind of a friendly setting, but she defended herself from all the criticism that’s been directed at her regarding a Web site that she had put out where she had used crosshairs over 20 Democratic candidates. Now a lot of people said that her rhetoric is inciting violence. She said that that is not true…”
“Crosshairs” again. Just for the record, CNN anchors, reporters and guests did absolutely nothing wrong with their use of the word in the last month and before. It would be impossible, at least for any reasonable person, to argue that the network’s use of “crosshairs” in any of the various contexts it was used, was an incitement to violence by anyone, anywhere. But by announcing that “we’re trying to get away” from “crosshairs” and other allegedly incendiary language, CNN is aligning itself with those who blame “rhetoric” for the killings. And by doing that — plus inviting the public to “hold us accountable” — CNN could open itself up to an examination of its own uses of the word and accusations that it helped create an environment that led to violence. Does that make any sense at all?
In the bizarro world of Democrats and their propaganda allies in the mainstream media, truth and moral consistency are the very first “targets” that are placed in the “crosshairs” and killed.
I have said it again and again: the quintessential defining essence of liberalism is hypocrisy.
And it’s not just in the big picture, in which ‘to be a liberal’ means ‘to be generous with other peoples’ money.’ It’s in everything they say and do, like that little bit of yeast which works its way through the whole batch of dough (Galatians 5:9).
Today we have AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka showing us what a particularly vile species of hypocrite liberal looks like:
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will tell Alaskans on Thursday that there’s something “just not right” with their former governor, Sarah Palin, who he says is “getting close to calling for violence” in her rhetoric.
He’ll also predict that Palin will “go down in history like McCarthy,” referring to Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose unsubstantiated labeling of Americans as communists and communist sympathizers during the 1950s gave the world the word “McCarthyism.”
“Palinism will become an ugly word,” Trumka will say at a convention in Anchorage, according to prepared remarks. “Who is this woman, anyway? What happened to her?”
[snip]
“In this charged political environment, her kind of talk gets dangerous. ‘Don’t retreat … reload’ may seem clever, the kind of bull you hear all the time, but put it in context. She’s using crosshairs to illustrate targeted legislators. She’s on the wrong side of the line there. She’s getting close to calling for violence. And some of her fans take that stuff seriously. We’ve got legislators in America who have been living with death threats since the health care votes,” he will say.
For the record, “Trumkaism” has been an ugly word at least since 1993. You’ll soon know why, if you don’t already.
At least she didn’t call upon her followers to bring guns and gun down their opponents, like Barack Obama did, right?
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
But enough about talking about Obama and his own hypocritical demagoguery. Let’s keep our focus on AFL-CIO President Trumka and his massive demagogic hypocrisy.
The following astonishing video posted on WorldNews.com tells the story of the union’s Bizarro-world nonviolence answer to Gandhi:
Do you mind if I call you “Dick,” Richard? Because you surely are one in every derogatory sense of the word.
On the orders of the United Mine Workers (UMW), 16,000 miners went on strike in 1993. One subcontractor, Eddie York (who was not a UMW member), decided it was important to support his wife and three children and crossed picket lines to get to his job. He was shot in the head as he left the job site to go home. UMW President Richard Trumka (now Secretary-Treasurer at the AFL-CIO) told The Washington Times that “if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you’re going to burn your finger.” UMW strike captain Jerry Dale Lowe was found guilty of weapons charges and conspiracy in York’s death, and York’s widow Wanda sued the union for her husband’s wrongful death. The UMW fought the lawsuit for four years, but settled with Wanda York only two days after federal prosecutors announced that they would share evidence from the criminal trial with York’s attorneys.
As head of the United Mine Workers, Trumka ordered a nationwide strike against Peabody Coal in 1993. On July 22, a non-union worker, Eddie York, was shot in the back of the head and killed as he attempted to pass striking coal workers. Picketers continued to throw rocks after York was shot, preventing his would be rescuers from assisting him.[14]. Trumka and other United Mine Workers officials settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Mr. York’s widow out of court in 1997.
And it was following that vicious display of supreme ugly violence that Richard Trumka delivered his “he got just what he deserved” remark.
Which is to say, the man whose union thugs murdered a man, and then threw rocks at the rescue workers trying to save his life – the man who subsequently so callously said, “If you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you’re going to burn your finger” – THAT MAN IS DARING TO RAISE THE ISSUE OF SARAH PALIN INCITING VIOLENCE????
And this ugly, fat, loathsome pig of a man has the naked hypocrisy to claim that Sarah Palin is inciting violence? For using the word “reload” and for using what is now proven to have been surveyor symbols to pinpoint vulnerable Democrat districts? Really?
In promoting Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO demonstrated that they are perfectly at home with violence. Not only “calling for it,” but actively causing it. And until they fire this fat rat bastard, they can kindly keep their obnoxious hypocrite mouths shut when it comes to taking the moral high ground on anything, let alone accusations of inciting violence.
(CBS) President Obama has noticed the “vitriol” in the nation’s political atmosphere these days and says it’s time both sides cooled it.
In a brief interview with “The Early Show” co-anchor Harry Smith Thursday before they shot some hoops on the White House basketball court, Mr. Obama called the extreme nature of some of the barbs directed his way on conservative talk shows “troublesome.” He also said he’s “concerned about a political climate in which the other side is demonized” – an observation meant for both Republicans and Democrats.
The remarks came in response to Smith telling him he’s been listening to talk radio and “the kindest of terms you’re sometimes referred to out in America is ‘a Socialist.’ The worst of which I’ve heard is — called ‘a Nazi.”‘
Asked by Smith whether he’s “aware of the level of enmity that crosses the airwaves and that people have made part of their daily conversation” about him, Mr. Obama replied, “Well — I mean, I think that — when you’ve listened to Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck it’s …”
“It’s beyond that,” Smith interjected.
“It’s pretty – apparent,” the president continued, “and — it’s troublesome. But — you know, keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of — this kind of vitriol comes out. It happens often when — you’ve got an economy that is making people more anxious and people are feeling that there’s a lot of change that needs to take place. But that’s not the vast majority of Americans.”
We don’t know what Harry Smith was going to say after, “It’s beyond that.” It would seem he was going to point out the obvious fact that a LOT more people than just Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck listeners are white hot angry with Obama, based on all the polls. I would further point out that as someone who routinely listens to both programs I am fairly certain that neither Limbaugh or Beck have EVER called Obama a “Nazi,” and that in point of fact Obama is quite actually demonizing Limbaugh and Beck in making that implication.
Obama says we should cool the “vitriol,” and then immediately starts vitriolically demagoguery conservatives. I would tell Obama that if he doesn’t like vitriol, maybe he should stop using it so damn much. And if he doesn’t like demonization, why won’t he quit demonizing?
You want to know who DID specifically label the president a Nazi?
You want to hear another one? How about MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, who, in a rant specifically directed at George Bush said:
“There is a dictionary definition, one word that describes that toxic blend. You‘re a fascist—get them to print you a T-shirt with “fascist” on it.”
Then there was Sheldon Drobny, the financial power behind the ultimately failed liberal radio station Air America. He writes that “Very few Americans know that Prescott Bush, our president’s grandfather, supplied Nazi Germany with such assistance.” Based on what historical source? Lyndon LaRouche, socialist meathead. In the same article, Air America’s founder says:
The corporate masters and their current spokesman, George W. Bush, promote a dangerous policy of pre-emptive warfare. They use exactly the same excuses Hitler used to sell to the public his maniacal desire to conquer Europe. The real power for Hitler came from his corporate backers, who willingly supplied him the tools to execute his plan, their reward being profit.
Anyway, Chris Matthews apparently heard Obama talk about conservative “vitriol” and the name “Rush Limbaugh” and took it as a command from his messiah who makes his leg tingle to demonize Rush Limbaugh for whatever Matthews could twist as being “vitriolic.” And the evil-monger word of the day became “regime.”
On Friday, I asked Rush Limbaugh for his response to President Obama’s description of him as “troublesome” and of his program as “vitriol.” Limbaugh told me he does not believe Obama is trying to do what is best for the country and added, “Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people, purposely.”
By using the word “regime,” Limbaugh was doing something he does all the time: throwing the language of the opposition back in their faces. In the Bush years, we often heard the phrase “Bush regime” from some quarters of the left. So Limbaugh applied it to Obama.
Apparently some people didn’t get it. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews appeared deeply troubled by the word. “I’ve never seen language like this in the American press,” he said, “referring to an elected representative government, elected in a totally fair, democratic, American election — we will have another one in November, we’ll have another one for president in a couple years — fair, free, and wonderful democracy we have in this country…. We know that word, ‘regime.’ It was used by George Bush, ‘regime change.’ You go to war with regimes. Regimes are tyrannies. They’re juntas. They’re military coups. The use of the word ‘regime’ in American political parlance is unacceptable, and someone should tell the walrus [Limbaugh] to stop using it.”
Matthews didn’t stop there. “I never heard the word ‘regime,’ before, have you?” he said to NBC’s Chuck Todd. “I don’t even think Joe McCarthy ever called this government a ‘regime.'”
It appears that Matthews has suffered a major memory loss. I don’t have the facilities to search for every utterance of Joe McCarthy, but a look at more recent times reveals many, many, many examples of the phrase “Bush regime.” In fact, a search of the Nexis database for “Bush regime” yields 6,769 examples from January 20, 2001 to the present.
It was used 16 times in the New York Times, beginning with an April 4, 2001 column by Maureen Dowd — who wrote, “Seventy-five days into the Bush regime and I’m a wreck” — and ending with a March 6, 2009 editorial denouncing the “frightening legal claim advanced by the Bush regime to justify holding [accused terrorist Ali al-Marri].”
“Bush regime” was used 24 times in the Washington Post, beginning with a January 22, 2001 profile of Marshall Wittmann by Howard Kurtz — who noted that Wittmann served as “a Health and Human Services deputy assistant secretary in the first Bush regime” — and ending with an October 6, 2009 column by Dana Milbank which quoted far-left antiwar protester Medea Benjamin questioning whether the Obama administration “looks very different from the Bush regime.”
Perhaps Matthews missed all of those references. If he did, he still might have heard the phrase the many times it was uttered on his own network, MSNBC. For example, on January 8 of this year, Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak said that, “In George Bush’s regime, only one million jobs had been created…” On August 21, 2009, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz referred to something that happened in 2006, when “the Bush regime was still in power.” On October 8, 2007, Democratic strategist Steve McMahon said that “the middle class has not fared quite as well under Bush regime as…” On August 10, 2007, MSNBC played a clip of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan referring to “the people of Iraq and Afghanistan that have been tragically harmed by the Bush regime.” On September 21, 2006, a guest referred to liberals “expressing their dissatisfaction with the Bush regime.” On July 7, 2004, Ralph Nader — appearing with Matthews on “Hardball” — discussed how he would “take apart the Bush regime.” On May 26, 2003, Joe Scarborough noted a left-wing website that “has published a deck of Bush regime playing cards.” A September 26, 2002 program featured a viewer email that said, “The Bush regime rhetoric gets goofier and more desperate every day.”
Finally — you knew this was coming — on June 14, 2002, Chris Matthews himself introduced a panel discussion about a letter signed by many prominent leftists condemning the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror. “Let’s go to the Reverend Al Sharpton,” Matthews said. “Reverend Sharpton, what do you make of this letter and this panoply of the left condemning the Bush regime?”
Oops. Perhaps Joe McCarthy never called the U.S. government a regime, but Chris Matthews did. And a lot of other people did, too. So now we are supposed to believe him when he expresses disgust at Rush Limbaugh doing the same?
In other words, at the very, very worst, the left can really only accuse the right of doing the very things that the left themselves have repeatedly done. They are in effect saying, “How DARE you be loathsome vile cockroaches like us! WE’RE the loathsome vile cockroaches in this country. That’s OUR THING!!!”
If the mainstream media were in any way honest, they would be reporting, “Left accuses right of being nearly as vile as left.” But they AREN’T honest. So they report Bart Stupak’s receiving hateful phone calls from the right after voting for ObamaCare, but ignore the fact that Stupak received hateful phone calls from the left when he said he would vote against ObamaCare.
The media is largely comprised of fundamentally dishonest people distorting the actual picture due to very-left-of-center political ideology and worldview.
The mainline media does this crap so often it’s beyond amazing. They report mere contrived allegations of “right wing” violence even as they ignored documented facts of left wing violence. As one example, it was widely presented in the media that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver was spat upon at a tea party rally. It was assumed as a fact even though there was no actual evidence of spitting, and even Rep. Cleaver refused to claim that he had been spat at. No matter: the demagogic allegation was enough.
And Sarah Palin’s “reload” comment was every bit as “hateful” or “inciting” as Barack Obama’s “Fired up!” His statement was properly understood in context, while Sarah Palin’s statement was stripped of context and demonized, but a fundamentally dishonest media.
Most of the mainstream media are not journalists. They are propagandists.
And the double-standard they constantly fall back upon is demonic.
Start Thinking Right 