New Media Alliance - Warner Todd Huston

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Denver Post seems to have decided that “the Lord” should not be allowed in its paper. In a January 5 report about Illinois Senator wannabe Roland Burris, the unwelcome Burris is quoted by the AP as saying “the Lord” had “ordained” that he get his Senate seat. At 3AM the Post had the full religious quote featured on its site, yet by 8PM the religious reference was purged from the story. One wonders why reference to the Lord was scrubbed from the report?

The report by David Espo of the Associated Press originally quoted Burris as saying that, “We are hoping and praying that they will not be able to deny what the Lord has ordained.” Obviously, Burris is convinced that God wants him to be a Senator. (The full AP report with the religious reference can be seen here.)

In the early morning hours of January 5 the Denver Post featured the full David Espo penned, AP story with the religious quote intact. I know this because quite a few websites, message boards and blogs made notice of the religious allusion and used the Denver Post link as their source for the quote. Even the nutcases at the extremist website Democratic Underground were mad that Burris said that God wanted him to be a Senator and pointed back to the Denver Post as the source of their ire. (Not that I care about their opinion, but just that it shows that the original Denver Post piece had the religious reference in it earlier in the day.)

As I said, however, by the evening of the 5th, the Denver Post updated the story cutting it short before the spot where Espo originally inserted Burris’ religious quote.

One has to wonder why the Denver Post felt that half a day later it was a good idea to censor Burris’ God talk? Was the Post trying to run flak for Burris, excising his religious reference so that Post readers wouldn’t have the same extremist reaction that the haters at the Democratic Underground had?

Some of the posters on DU were quite upset that Burris would fall on a religious reference. Poster olkaz said of Burris, “It sounds like Bush. It also reeks of mental illness.” One Webster Green slobbered the following: “The f_ _king “Lord” has ordained this a_ _hat to be a senator? :wtf: This dude needs a rubber room!” Well, needless to say, the inarticulate halfwits at DU had even more off color garbage to spew about Roland Burris, but you get the ugly picture.

As I searched the web for the Post’s version of the story, several Democrat leaning and liberal sites revealed how miffed they were that Burris invoked God in the story and nearly every reference I found linked back to the Denver Post story.

And yet… and yet by evening the Post had eliminated the talk of religion.

Quite a curious thing, unless you realize that the Post was belatedly trying to clean up Burris’ inconvenient religious expression for its readers. We must conclude that the Post was more interested in not upsetting the left than in reporting the news.

The left’s scrubbing bubbles strike again.

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Rob Carr via the Denver Post)

-By Warner Todd Huston

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, Inexperienced is as inexperienced does. At least that is what comes to my mind when hearing that Barack Obama has picked the inoffensive, completely inexperienced and unqualified Leon Panetta to be the new director of the CIA. Really. Leon Panetta? The onetime director of the Office of Management and Budget Panetta, that Leon Panetta? This old Clinton partisan has absolutely no experience whatsoever with intelligence gathering or the administration of the same. None. Zip. Nadda.

Now, if George W. Bush had picked such an inexperienced man for any government position much less one at cabinet level, the media would have crucified him – in fact, it did if you recount the Harriet Meyers for SCOTUS debacle. So, in “Obama’s intel picks short on direct experience” does the Associated Press scoff at the pick? Do they lambast Obama for picking such a completely unqualified man for CIA in a day when we are besieged on all sides by enemies from whom our ability to gather intelligence is a major weapon of protection? Do they decry this pick of a man with not even the tiniest amount of experience for one of the most delicate and important positions of the day?

Nope. In fact, the AP celebrates it as some sort of proof that Obama made this pick to show he is making a “clean break from Bush administration.” A clean break? How is picking a man with no experience with the intelligence or law enforcement communities to be the new head of the CIA any kind of proof that Obama is breaking with Bush?

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama’s decision to fill the nation’s top intelligence jobs with two men short on direct experience in intelligence gathering surprised the spy community and signaled the Democrat’s intention for a clean break from Bush administration policies.

If the AP means that by picking Panetta, Obama is breaking with Bush because Bush actually picked qualified candidates for that position, well, then they have a point. But that would hardly be something to celebrate would it? And obviously that is not the AP’s take on this absurd appointment.

The AP goes on to cover for Obama’s long avoidance of this most important pick, pretending it is good that The One waited so long to fill this position.

The Obama transition team’s long delay in selecting CIA and national intelligence directors is a reflection of the complicated demands of the jobs and Obama’s own policies and priorities.

More likely it’s proof that Obama hadn’t a clue what to do and had been dithering over it because he was lost as to what to do.

Even more ridiculously, the AP somehow sees in its tea leaves that this is some “unequivocal message” that he will stand against “torture” and “rendition.”

Obama is sending an unequivocal message that controversial administration policies approving harsh interrogations, waterboarding and extraordinary renditions – the secret transfer of prisoners to other governments with a history of torture – and warrantless wiretapping are over, said several officials.

Really? Leon Panetta? Has Leon Panetta been a leading voice against torture and the rendition program (the very program that Clinton started in the 1990s)? If he has no one was ever aware of this brave Panetta stance!

And then the AP gets even more “stupid is as stupid does.” The very next paragraph is almost a contradiction to Panetta’s choice.

The search for Obama’s new CIA chief had been stalled since November, when John Brennan, Obama’s transition intelligence adviser, abruptly withdrew his name from consideration. Brennan said his potential nomination had sparked outrage among civil rights and human rights groups, who argued that he had not been outspoken enough in his condemnation of President George W. Bush’s policies.

So, the solution to Brennan not being “outspoken enough” against torture is to pick Panetta who has uttered barely a word about torture at all? What sense does that even make? Why isn’t this lapse in Obama’s logic a cause for the AP to throw a dig at the Obammessiah?

Then we find the AP casually mentioning that Obama did not consult with the incoming head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D, CA). The AP reports that the pick surprised her.

Again, if a Republican had made such a rookie move it would have raised the AP’s eyebrows, but since The One made it the AP reports it as mere matter of fact.

So, what is going on with this ridiculous pick? How does Obama explain it?

A former senior CIA official who advises Obama defended the surprise choice of Panetta, who has no direct intelligence experience beyond a two-year stint in the mid-1960s as a U.S. Army lieutenant. The official said Panetta had been a consumer of CIA intelligence when he was at the White House. He said he was selected for his administrative, management and political skills which will allow him both to control and advocate for the agency.

Because Panetta once read a CIA report, he is now fully qualified to lead the CIA? That sounds like the same sort of logic… or lack thereof… that Obama used to say he himself had foreign policy experience because he once lived in Indonesia as a child!

I’ve not in my life seen so many backflips to avoid even the appearance of criticism in anything that isn’t mere advertising copy. This is a most ridiculous AP effort, to be sure. It is so absurd, in fact, that one is suspicious that Obama wrote it for them and the AP just slapped its imprimatur upon it and then threw it up on the Internet unaltered!

One last point can be made to reveal the media’s hypocrisy here. Remember the universal mantra chanted by the media about Gov. Sarah Palin? The media decried her supposed lack of experience to take on the role of vice president. But now, all of a sudden, experience doesn’t matter in the case of Panetta? Is the role of vp so much more important than that of CIA chief, especially in this day and age?

Yet, now no experience at all in the most delicate and important position for our times is a virtue. It’s simply unbelievable. This is sycophancy of the sickofanciest kind.

(Photo credit scu.edu)

-By Warner Todd Huston

The weekend edition of Good Morning America found a fellow that decided to try and live for one year “like Jesus would” but what host Bill Weir found keenly interesting is that this guy voted for Barack Obama because he felt that living like Jesus compelled him to do so. Weir also wondered if the Jesus emulator had to “forgive” his Christian community for any reaction they might have had over the fact that he voted for Barack.

Former pastor Ed Dobson of Grand Rapids, Michigan appeared on the weekend edition of GMA to briefly discuss his year of living like Jesus in a segment called “What Would Jesus Do?” Dobson talked about how hard it was to walk in Christ’s path and was shaken by having to forgive and bless the terrorists in Iraq that took the life via a roadside bomb of a soldier friend of his son.

But, Dobson’s vote for Barack Obama was an issue that GMA host Bill Weir was very interested in.

Bill Weir: “And you voted for Barack Obama.”

Ed Dobson: “I did, indeed.”

Weir: “Why?”

Dobson: “I decided since I had read through the gospels at that point over 30 times, I wanted to know who best represented the fundamental teachings of Jesus, and I felt that he more than any other candidate represented the teachings of Jesus, so I voted for him, my first vote for a Democrat.”

Weir: “Which brought some scorn I imagine from your Christian community there? Which then led to you having to forgive them.” (Weir laughs)

Fortunately, Dobson said that he wasn’t necessarily saying that Jesus would vote for Obama. I would imagine a better case could be made that Jesus would not be voting at all for this earthly kingdom, though to be sure Jesus did not advocate that Christians should shun government entirely – after all, he beseeched us all to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” and to obey our earthly laws for the most part.

I am also quite dubious that Jesus would vote for Obama since Obama has the most extreme pro-abortion record of nearly any politician around. Supporting killing babies born alive after a botched abortion is not something I could see getting Jesus’ vote. But, who am I to presume what goes on in the mind of God?

The most interesting thing here is that host Bill Weir felt that Pastor Dobson would have to “forgive” a negative reaction to his vote by his “Christian community” as Weir put it. Does Weir imagine that Dobson’s Christian friends would attack him over a vote for Barack Obama?

Apparently he does. Naturally, only the worst is assumed about the “Christian community” at ABC.

It is sad that this guy and ABC GMA had to take what could have been an uplifting and interesting story and turned it into political partisanship.

(Photo credit: USA Today)

-By Warner Todd Huston

**UPDATE**

Before we get into this op ed, I have to relate a bit of history first. I originally posted this on Sunday on my NewsBusters.org posting. It raged all day Sunday and into the night among Palin fans and center right bloggers. Lucianne.com, FreeRepublic and many other sites linked to the story. Gretta Van Susteren even posted about it on her FoxNews blog (It garnered 4 pages of comments there, too).

Well by the time Monday morning arrived, CNN quietly and without explanation or apology erased Sarah Palin from the article I describe below.

Showing they have no sense of morality, no grasp of corruption and no understanding of what defines a criminal, CNN gives us another one of those ubiquitous year in review stories, this one titled “Politicians who fell from grace in 2008.” In this one, CNN has decided to reveal for us their top eight politicians that found 2008 to be a “career-buster” because of their “crimes and misdemeanors” or their outrageous controversies.

CNN features corruption mired Rod Blagojevich, the sex crazed Elliot Spitzer and John Edwards, and the criminal bribe taker Ted Stevens among four others. Each of these men in the CNN list have either been convicted of criminal actions, are indicted for corruption, lost their positions, been drummed out of their party, or are soon to face jail time. Among these eight criminals, however, is a name that doesn’t belong among this class of serial abuser of the public trust. It won’t be shocking to note that among the worst sex criminals, bribe takers, liars and thieves in politics for 2008, CNN ridiculously included the name of Governor Sarah Palin.

Palin, however, has done nothing remotely like what these other political ner-do-wells have done. She did not take bribes, she did not indulge in sexual dalliances with co-workers or call girls, she did not get booted from her party or lose her job as Governor. She is not under indictment nor does she face jail time, yet CNN includes her in a list with Rob Blagojevich, John Edwards, Kwame Kilpatrick, Larry Langford, Tim Maloney, Elliot Spitzer and Ted Stevens.

This CNN slide show is based on the idea that these eight politicians have fallen from grace because of their criminal actions. Many of them have lost their political office either by being thrown out, voted out or having resigned. Some of them are about to go to jail and nearly all of them took bribes and illicit freebies and then made false statements to investigators as well as filing false tax statements. Seven of these politicians are criminals and right there, before our eyes, CNN has Sarah Palin among them.

Of course, there is no legitimate reason at all to lump Sarah Palin among these creeps as she has done nothing even remotely like what they have done. Each of the other seven at the very least have been disowned by their party. None of them could rally 10 people to their side should they try to make a public appeal. On the other hand, Palin has been an in demand participant in rallies all across the country as well as a sought after media guest.

Just this past December, for instance, Palin was asked to go to Georgia to rally voters to return Senator Saxby Chambliss to office in a runoff election. This request was fully a month after she lost her bid to become vice president on the McCain ticket, yet Chambliss has repeatedly said that he won the reelection in part because she rallied the voters to his side. If Palin had a “fall from grace” as CNN claims, how was this possible?

Palin is even supposedly an odds on favorite to be nominated president in 2012! How is that evidence of her being disgraced in 2008?

Now, let’s have a quick review what the other seven have done:

• Rob Blagojevich (D-IL)- Caught in a criminal bribe taking pay-to-play scheme to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat to the highest bidder
• John Edwards(D-NC)- Had an affair with an underling as his wife was dying of cancer, an affair he hid from public knowledge as he ran for president
• Kwame Kilpatrick (D-MI)- Sentenced to 4 months in jail for obstruction of justice for impeding a criminal investigation into his actions as Detroit’s mayor
• Larry Langford (D-AL)- Birmingham, Alabama mayor arrested on charges of bribery, fraud, money laundering and filing a false income tax statement
• Tim Mahoney (D-FL)- Replaced sex crazed Rep. Mark Foley in Florida while hiding his own extra-marital affairs from the voters, then lost his bid for reelection once the truth came out
• Elliot Spitzer (D-NY)- Caught with a prostitute, lost his job as governor of New York
• Ted Stevens (R-AK)- Faces jail for bribery and making false statements to the feds

How does Sarah Palin fit in with these criminals and scum? Well, truth is, she does not. Yet CNN placed her among these criminals anyway and termed her a disgraced politician!

The only thing “exposed” here is CNN’s hate for Palin, its leftist agenda to destroy her and its extreme bias.

**UPDATE Continued**

So, as I was saying in the intro, it appears that CNN has thought better of including Governor Sarah Palin’s name among the other criminal politicians of 2008. They quietly and without explanation removed her from their slide show. We have a small victory for holding the Old Media accountable here, I suppose, but it is awfully interesting that CNN just rewrote history without explanation. Don’t you think?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Some new tough questions are being asked about Black Lake Golf Club, the luxury golf course owned by the United Auto Workers union in Cheboygan County, Michigan. Along with the multi-million dollar golf resort, the UAW also funds what it calls an “education center” with the funding connected to the resort.

As the UAW cried that it needed a bailout from Congress, its ownership of this luxury resort was revealed to the chagrin of union employees everywhere. Millions of dollars of union member’s dues money have been pumped into this project over the years, but now there are questions being raised as to just where large portions of this funding is disappearing to.

Research by Laborpains.org and Zarko Research and Consulting is raising several vexing questions of the UAW’s resort golf project. Large amounts of money seems to be unaccounted for and it even seems to show that pension benefits are being paid to “shadow employees” that do not seem to exist.

There is also a charge that the UAW is defrauding property tax receipts from the County and township in whose jurisdiction the luxury golf resort is situated. Records show that Cheboygan County and the township of Waverly are receiving property taxes based on a total property value of $13.7 million but on federal tax papers the UAW is claiming that the resort is worth $33.6 million. So, on one hand the UAW is telling the feds that they have a $33million dollar property while only paying local taxes on a value of $13 million.

According to Laborpains.org:

The difference between the UAW’s LM-2 and the Tax Tribunal filings amount to more than $21 million dollars, which would translate to around $770,000 in property taxes the UAW isn’t paying to Waverly Township each year, if you accept their LM-2 appraisal (the township’s treasurer advised me that the rate is around 3.6%).

That’s quite a difference. It should be remembered that these taxes are used for local schools and the like, so the UAW doesn’t appear to be a very good neighbor in Cheboygan County, does it?

But, according to Chet Zarko of Zarko Research and Consulting there is even more hanky panky at the resort than a mere evasion of local property taxes. It seems that there is a very large discrepancy in the reported costs of employee wages and the pension funding at the education center connected with the golf resort project.

It’s that the pension fund expenses appear to be really out-of-line with overall wages. So far out of line that you have to wonder exactly who is doing the work to get pension fund contributions. There’s a key piece of context here - the $5.91 million in pension fund contributions compares $3.25 million in wages. Normally, you’d expect the wages to be much higher than the pension contribution - 10 times or perhaps as little as 5-6 times. But not the other direction. And of the 3.25 million, 2.6 million is “general labor” - there is no way the room custodians and general labor are getting that gold-plated of a pension deal. The other half million is “administrative” wages - but even the hotel administrators are unlikely to be able to get away with such a self-dealing (unless they are something more than that to the union leadership).

So how does the UAW justify this “out-of-line” accounting with the educational center pension funds? Where and to whom is all this benefit money going, anyway?

It appears that there is a lot of shaky record keeping and shadowy operations connected with this Black Hills luxury golf club owned by the UAW. And, again, all the money tied up in this property is the money taken from the pockets of the hard working rank-and-file members of the American auto industry, the same industry in such dire straights this year.

As autoworkers across the country face an uncertain future, as pension funds every day appear on shaky grounds, someone needs to force the United Auto Workers union to account for these millions of dollars in accounting discrepancies.

The biggest question is this: will the Obama administration so beholden to the millions of dollars donated to his campaign by unions be able to hold unions accountable for their criminal actions and fraudulent accounting practices?