Author: JT

A Reader Responds to John Carroll's Cluelessness

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The strange dust-up over ‘Beat the Press’ – News – The Phoenix:

Personally, if blogging didn’t come with any media attention of any sort, I’d be happier. I deliberately followed my heart in my English BA and avoided the Journalism concentration like the plague. I liked poetry. That sort of writing you do in a little dark room at the back of the house where no one can see you, and since no one reads poetry anymore no one knows about you even if you publish. See, the core issue is that bloggers build up reputations over time, by writing and being held accountable. By not doing due dilligence on their story and subsequent (very hostile) commentary, they were attacking the one thing that Jerome and others have when blogging that keeps readers trusting you. I honestly was fooled by the story myself, and it would have colored my view of Jerome had I not the reading habits that lead me to the truth. You could say the same thing about the runup to the Iraq war, come to think of it…if it weren’t for my blogging habits, I might have been fooled like the rest of America. But I knew from the start that we were being lied to – because of people like Jerome, who connected the dots of SOME mainstream media reports and other experts out there who weren’t being covered. Without them, I’d have been a sheep too. The mainstream press thinks it doesn’t have to keep earning our trust. Well, John Carroll showed us it should be forced to. Why this keeps getting portrayed as an ego trip for said bloggers entirely misses the point, but it’s a typical MSM tactic to pick a story and make everything fit the narrative, so I guess in that respect yeah, we’re not going to take it anymore.

Apparently, when we call for good and honest reporting we're hypocrites

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Crooks and Liars » 2006 » December » 14:

Adam Reilly
By: John Amato @ 3:05 PM – PST Submit or Digg this Post

Apparently, when we call for good and honest reporting we’re hypocrites because we also praise good and honest reporting. Does he eat Zombie brains too?

Jeff Greenfield is wrong

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The Washington Monthly:

Dear CNN,

Jeff Greenfield is wrong:

“Most of what happened here, I think, is a demonstration of the hair-trigger instincts that have grown up among some of the bloggers (not to mention the need to fill all that space every day, or hour, or 15 minutes).”

It is the 24 hour cable news cycle that has to fill time. Bloggers can say as little or as much as they want.

And we pay attention.

When one of the smartest, potentially progressive political candidates in the country is repeatedly associated with America’s vilest enemies, it’s not a joke.

And we are paying attention. Jeff Greenfield can’t stand the idea of an intelligent, black, progressive, American President.

What if the working class were taken care of? What if we understood that our policies had an effect on the environment? What if America was a place that stood for its ideals?

The corporate news culture can’t handle this and so it assassinates anyone who doesn’t fit the mold.

We have the most corrupt administration in the history of the country, having done more harm to the processes of democracy, the environment, international relations, economic policy, scientific development, and a black man wears a suit jacket without a tie and has a name that can easily be manipulated and that is where our focus is?

Again, you and Greenfield should be ashamed of yourselves.

Spin it any way you want, but you and he know what you are doing and we are paying attention and we find it reprehensible.

KILLER RABBIT!!

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The Blog | Mark Joseph: Jimmy Carter & That Killer Rabbit | The Huffington Post:

The “killer rabbit” bunk was an early-on right wing hate response to an amusing anecdote Pres. Carter gave about a rabbit that swam toward a canoe he was in. They claimed rabbits can’t swim, which is city-boy ignorance. I’ve spooked rabbits that jumped in water and swam away.
Anyone who attacks truth with ignorant conjecture owes everyone an apology.

Smearing Hillary

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Salon News | Smearing Hillary:

Even more damning was a “Nightline” report broadcast that same evening. The segment came very close to branding Hillary Clinton a perjurer. In his introduction, host Ted Koppel spoke pointedly about “the reluctance of the Clinton White House to be as forthcoming with documents as it promised to be.” He then turned to correspondent Jeff Greenfield, who posed a rhetorical question: “Hillary Clinton did some legal work for Madison Guaranty at the Rose Law Firm, at a time when her husband was governor of Arkansas. How much work? Not much at all, she has said.”

Up came a video clip from Hillary’s April 22, 1994, Whitewater press conference. “The young attorney, the young bank officer, did all the work,” she said. “It was not an area that I practiced in. It was not an area that I know anything, to speak of, about.” Next the screen filled with handwritten notes taken by White House aide Susan Thomases during the 1992 campaign. “She [Hillary] did all the billing,” the notes said. Greenfield quipped that it was no wonder “the White House was so worried about what was in Vince Foster’s office when he killed himself.”

What the audience didn’t know was that the ABC videotape had been edited so as to create an inaccurate impression. At that press conference, Mrs. Clinton had been asked not how much work she had done for Madison Guaranty, but how her signature came to be on a letter dealing with Madison Guaranty’s 1985 proposal to issue preferred stock. ABC News had seamlessly omitted thirty-nine words from her actual answer, as well as the cut, by interposing a cutaway shot of reporters taking notes. The press conference transcript shows that she actually answered as follows: “The young attorney [and] the young bank officer did all the work and the letter was sent. But because I was what we called the billing attorney — in other words, I had to send the bill to get the payment sent — my name was put on the bottom of the letter. It was not an area that I practiced in. It was not an area that I know anything, to speak of, about.”

ABC News had taken a video clip out of context, and then accused the first lady of prevaricating about the very material it had removed. Within days, the doctored quotation popped up elsewhere. ABC used the identical clip on its evening news broadcast; so did CNN. The New York Times editorial page used it to scold Mrs. Clinton, as did columnist Maureen Dowd. Her colleague William Safire weighed in with an accusatory column of his own: “When you’re a lawyer who needs a cover story to conceal close connections to a crooked client,” he began, “you find some kid in your office willing to say he brought in the business and handled the client all by himself.” Safire predicted the first lady’s imminent indictment.

Obama And Biden

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The Washington Monthly:

The MSM is the viciousness of junior high cliques amplified and concentrated a thousandfold but operating by the same rules. They dislike anyone who dares to be brighter, better informed, or even more attractive. It’s pack behavior.

Dean Swift indentified this tendency long ago in ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting”:

“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

Not that I believe Obama meets the standard of genius mind you.

Senator Joe Biden’s Unite Our States : Blog » Blog Archive » “Democracy Is More Than An Election; It Involves Fundamental Compromise” Says Biden:

BIDEN: I don’t believe he has the capacity to change, because, in fairness to him, he’s had a fundamental view, George. He concluded our meeting by saying, ‘I believe in freedom and liberty, universal principles everyone agrees are the same principles.’ My comment was, Sistani’s view of liberty is different than our view of liberty.

He has this wholesome but naive view that Western notions of liberty are easily transposed to that area of the world. As long as he thinks the Iraqis are about ready to jump up and embrace our notion of liberty, democracy might come into the present (inaudible). But Mr. President, democracy is more than an election. It involves fundamental compromise. And if you believe you are compromising your liberty if you conclude that you should move in one direction, then your notion of liberty is different than my notion of liberty.

Look, George, as I said to the president when he asked me a while ago, if every jihadi, every terrorist in all of Iraq was eliminated, the Lord came down and sat in the middle of this table and said, ‘They’re all gone,’ we still have a major war in Iraq that has nothing to do with terror.

MyDD :: John Hinderaker unhinged::2005 REDUX::

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MyDD :: John Hinderaker unhinged
Jerome Armstrong wrote:
 John Hinderaker,  who writes for Time magazine’s “Blog of the Year”, dived into calling Jimmy Carter treasonous (“Jimmy Carter isn’t just misguided or ill-informed. He’s on the other side.”) This week, Hinderaker has become unhinged:

You dumb shit, he didn’t get access using a fake name, he used his real name. You lefties’ concern for White House security is really touching, but you know what, you stupid asshole, I think the Secret Service has it covered. Go crawl back into your hole, you stupid left-wing shithead. And don’t bother us anymore. You have to have an IQ over 50 to correspond with us. You don’t qualify, you stupid shit.
……………………………………………..John Hinderaker via email
So I fired off an email:
Hindrocket, you need to take your meds, your sounding and reading LGF now, roflmao.
Waiting for a response…

Gassed His Own People

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Gassed His Own People:

The Justice Department announced new rules yesterday that will make it harder for prosecutors to bring criminal charges against companies, bending to intense pressure from business groups that claim the government has overreached in its pursuit of financial malfeasance.

In presenting the revised rules, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty called the changes a substantial and direct response to a lobbying drive by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, among others.

Since devastating bankruptcies at Enron and WorldCom prompted Congress to pass a stringent corporate accountability law four years ago, business interests increasingly have pushed back on efforts to police their operations, arguing that the government has imposed too many costs on companies with too few benefits for investors.

Will Jonah Goldberg pay up?

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Crooks and Liars » 2006 » December » 15:

Will Jonah Goldberg pay up?
By: John Amato
 02/05:

So, I have an idea: Since he doesn’t want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let’s make a bet. I predict that Iraq won’t have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I’ll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now). This way neither of us can hide behind clever word play or CV reading. If there’s another reasonable wager Cole wants to offer which would measure our judgment, I’m all ears. Money where your mouth is, doc. One caveat: Because I don’t think it’s right to bet on such serious matters for personal gain, if I win, I’ll donate the money to the USO. He can give it to the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or whatever his favorite charity is.

Cole was too smart to get sucked into a stupid bet on such an important issue and was repulsed by Jonah’s proposal.

I cannot tell you how this paragraph hit me in the gut. I was nearly immobilized by disgust and grief. This man really does see Iraqis as playthings. He is proposing a wager on the backs of Iraqis…

That being said, will Jonah pay up and donate the 1000.00 bucks for just being a complete wanker? He could always just join the military—oh wait—I forgot—he’s a coward too: