Yeah, I know, that’s a cliche line if there ever was one, but the smear by the New York Times on John McCain is only the latest, and perhaps one of the most egregious, example in this election cycle.  They endorsed him while preparing this story, and now that he has the nomination essentially sewn up, they tossed a bunch of innuendo about him from disgruntled former aides on the front page.  The blogosphere has been all over this story, but Captain Ed gives a good post-mortem on the whole thing today.

So what do we have? We have salacious but completely unsubstantiated gossip, combined with a rehash of at least one old Times smear, placed on the front page of what used to be the premiere newspaper in America. And what exactly does that do for the Times’ credibility for the rest of this electoral cycle? They can’t run anything on McCain now without it being seen in the context of what the Times itself calls a "war" between the Times and McCain. Keller and company declared war on McCain yesterday, and it fired a bazooka of effluvium as its opening salvo. They’ve marginalized themselves for the next nine months.

Ed notes earlier that the Times has done what the Republican party couldn’t; fire up the base for McCain.  Blogger punditry on the Left still wants to milk this for all what it’s worth, but it’s unlikely their words will be taken seriously when trying to prop up rumor as some sort of "I told you so" moment.  Not gonna’ happen. 

Technorati Tags: John McCain, New York Times, politics, liberal media

And those who need blood transfusions pay the price.

San Jose State University’s decision this week to ban blood drives on the 30,000-student campus over discrimination concerns is drawing a gush of criticism from local blood banks.

Stanford Blood Center officials said they actually agree with San Jose State President Don Kassing that the federal Food and Drug Administration is wrong to prohibit blood donations from gay men.

But in a statement Friday, the center called his decision to suspend campus blood drives for that reason "a terribly misguided tactic that could have a devastating impact on the blood supply, and therefore, patients in our community."

Kassing’s stand — based on the university’s non-discrimination policy — has focused attention on a longstanding FDA rule that many say is overly restrictive. Critics, however, worry it sets a bad example that could exacerbate blood shortages if others follow his lead.

It’s one thing to stand up for your principles, and it’s certainly San Jose State’s prerogative to do this, even though I disagree with the principle.  But to shut down blood drives on campus is just entirely misguided and ignores the very real cost of this particular type of stand.

Gay rights groups on several college campuses, including Stanford’s, have held protests on the issue in recent years. At San Jose State, it was an employee’s complaint last year that prompted Kassing’s office to investigate whether the rule made blood drives discriminatory.

They decided it did, since gay men were being treated differently than other groups of people with similar risk factors.

There is no inherent "right" to give blood, but fair enough; let’s assume some sort of evil "discrimination".  Who’s paying the price?  Certainly not the blood banks.  While we’re never really awash in too much donated blood, they’ll still do their jobs as best they can.  Not the FDA.  How does this really affect them?

No, the folks who are really getting punished for this restriction (and pardon me if the regulations regarding the nation’s blood supply err on the side of caution) are those who actually need the blood.  The patients in hospitals who need it to live and who, I’m pretty sure, are quite happy not to have to worry about AIDS-tainted blood. 

These are "bleeding-heart liberals" who care more about hurt feelings over donating restrictions (and really, that’s the only harm I see here) than they do people whose lives may depend on them.  How revealing.

Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, Don Kassing, FDA, homosexuality, blood donations, AIDS

Of course not, you might say.  No government has the right to do that.  Agreed, but one particular government, of a very specific political persuasion, seems to think that it does.  Read "A Libertarian Perspective on the Berkeley v. Marines Showdown", especially the part where he puts the shoe on the other foot.  (I wouldn’t call myself a libertarian, but we do agree on many things.)

Yeah, right, this is the first thing I think about when I hear the word "freedom".

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.

The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC’s "This Week," she said: "I think there are a number of mechanisms" that are possible, including "going after people’s wages, automatic enrollment."

I’m sorry, but that does not give me a warm fuzzy about what other freedoms Hillary might take away from us for "our own good". 

That’s what many folks think that Hollywood produces, and it’s the excuse given when others lament what comes out of the movie industry.  The public wants it, and the movie houses’ job is to make money, so the produce what does it best.

If that’s so, it’s time for a change of direction in Hollywood.

Americans flock to movies with patriotic, moral content, according to a study that looked at thousands of movies released by Hollywood in recent years, but they avoid those with socialist and anti-capitalist themes in droves.

"Movies with very strong Judeo-Christian values, capitalist ideals, patriotism and pro-American attitudes do much better at the box office than movies promoting socialism, Marxism, left-wing political correctness and atheism," said Ted Baehr, publisher of MOVIDEGUIDE©: A Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment, and chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission ministry in Hollywood.

The article goes on to note that the type of movies that Baehr supports make a lot more money, on average, that the others, and this trend goes back at least as far as 2002.  If that’s the case, Hollywood would be making more of them; that’s what the public wants. 

This also goes back to the fact that G and PG rated films make more money than R and NC-17 ones.  Shouldn’t we be seeing more of the ones that bring in the cash?  Well, we’re not likely to see that.

[Baehr] said the results also show that there are two reasons Hollywood releases movies. The first is to entertain and make a profit, while the second is to "show you’re just as Hollywood PC as the next producer."

"If you’re making a movie like ‘Redacted,’ you’re cruising for a box office failure," he said.

He said such projects will only do filmmakers good "in the small inner circle of the elite system that is contrary to the values of faith and tolerance and grace."

The results show the "average movie-goer" has more common sense than the average person who considers himself among those "elite," he said. He also noted that those are only a portion of the Hollywood industry, because "there are a lot of good people, producers, writers and directors" in Hollywood.

I think, too, that the PC ones are as much for indoctrinating and influencing the culture as they are for ideology’s sake.  As such, the excuses for the Hollywood Left don’t hold water.

Technorati Tags: Hollywood, movies, Ted Baehr, MOVIEGUIDE

Well, maybe they’re not being vocal about it, but Investor’s Business Daily did not something in Nancy Pelosi’s press release on the economic stimulus package making its way through Congress.

We’re so used to Democrats pushing tax hikes as the answer to all of America’s problems that we were taken aback to find the following words buried in Pelosi’s release on the stimulus deal: "Economists estimate that each dollar of broad tax cuts leads to $1.26 in economic growth."

Gee, that sort of sounds familiar. It’s almost, though not quite, like what the much-reviled supply-side economists have been saying for, oh, 30 years or so.

Pelosi, and other Democrats now suddenly touting tax cuts, may be on to something. We might demur on the notion that all tax cuts must be "broad" to be effective. Evidence really lies more strongly with giving tax cuts to those who would start new businesses or expand old ones. But it’s refreshing to hear a Democrat admit the obvious — that tax cuts work.

Now, their base may have other thoughts on this, which is why I’m sure we haven’t heard much about this being trumpeted by Pelosi’s office.  It has been Received Wisdom, from the Democrats’ point of view, that tax cuts — letting people keep their own hard-earned money back to them — is somehow bad, economically and morally.  Here we see that, behind closed doors (and within unread papers), they may, in fact, not think that, at least economically. 

IBD, though, notes that not every tax cut has the same effect.

But not all tax cuts are created equal — something, unfortunately, Democrats don’t seem to get. They think giving tax cuts — or, more accurately, cash — to those with lower incomes results — presto! — in stimulus. That’s not the case. Rebates are like welfare checks.

In fact, investors and entrepreneurs create economic growth, new jobs and higher incomes. They’re the risk takers who build our economy. But today they’re taxed at the most punitive rates.

The biggest bang for the tax-cut buck, therefore, comes from lowering rates for those who will actually take the money and create or expand a business with it — not just spend it at Wal-Mart.

New research shows this to be true. In the broadest such study ever, University of California economists Christina and David Romer looked at every tax change in the U.S. after World War II.

Their unambiguous conclusion: "Tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects." Indeed, a tax cut of just 1% boosts GDP by about 3% for several years, they found.

This is a truth that the Democratic base really isn’t ready for, but baby steps are good.

Technorati Tags: tax cuts, Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, Investor’s Business Daily, economy

Whew, I’m sure we feel better after this report.

Canada’s foreign ministry, responding to pressure from close allies, today said would remove the United States and Israel from a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured.

Both nations expressed unhappiness after it emerged that they had been listed in a document that formed part of a training course manual on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats.

The article goes on to note it was all a misunderstanding, though it’s not quite clear if the misunderstanding was that the US and Israel were on the list, or that anyone found out that the US and Israel were on the list.

And what were those things that got us on the list in the first place?

Under ”definition of torture” the document lists US interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and blindfolding prisoners.

Folks, if that’s "torture", the word no longer has meaning.  Blindfolding?  You want to debate waterboarding, that’s fine.  But if that debate is going to take us down a road that leads to the banning of blindfolding, then the Left needs to come clean on this before the debate starts. 

Some say they’ll know torture when they see it, and for most people that ain’t it.

Identity politics may not make a whole lot of sense, but it sure makes choosing a Presidential candidate easier.

The dozen or so Spelman College women had come together in a basement classroom, after hours, to hash over a choice unimaginable just a few generations back.

Fliers posted across campus summed up the thrust of their conversation: “Should you vote for Barack Obama because of your race, or should you vote for Hillary Clinton because you are a woman?

With Democratic primaries quickly approaching, black women throughout Atlanta and across the nation are asking each other that question. They are debating it as they post blogs, meet for political round tables, host fund-raisers and whip out their checkbooks.

It’s an ongoing discussion that, for many black women, stirs visceral emotions as they weigh their racial and gender identity.

At Spelman that evening, Shayna Atkins, 19, cut to the chase, pointedly asking her peers: “Would you feel like a sellout if you didn’t vote for Barack?”

“Maybe if it were 1963,” shot back Marquise Alston, another 19-year-old who is a Clinton supporter.

(Spelman College is an historically black liberal arts college for women.)

So, according to this mindset, black women have never had any candidate that would speak for them. Ever. Amazing, then, that a bunch of white guys overturned segregation in public schools and gave us Brown v Board of Education.

Identity politics is only skin deep. How about choosing a candidate based on, oh let’s say, their ideas. Not the color of their skin but the content of their character? Well, we can at least dream.

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Democrats, identity politics

Hollywood is finding out.

The public isn’t going to Hollywood’s antiwar movies – and it’s not just the hicks if you look at the amazingly-consistent comments on Breitbart.com beneath the article: “Hollywood is casualty of war as movie-goers shun Iraq films.” It’s everybody and his brother from Tacoma to Tallahassee, not to mention a large number from abroad. As of last Saturday night, the Agence France Presse report had over 500 comments and counting.

The article itself, not surprisingly anonymously written, is filled with the usual shopworn explanations for the audience’s disinterest. For Lew Harris of Movies.com, it’s the canard that movies are escapism only. Serious films are just too heavy for the great unwashed. For Gitesh Pandya of boxofficeguru.com, it’s that audiences don’t want to pay for what they already see for free on television (Iraq). Veteran television producer Steve Bocho says it’s hard to gain audience interest in a “hugely unpopular war.”

These liberal folks just can’t believe that anyone disagrees with them. You’d almost expect to hear, “But everyone I know thinks like me.” But, as the comments note, there is another explanation.

The audience members themselves – that is the Breitbart commenters – are having none of this nonsense. The third one down, “Extremely Bored,” puts it this way: “Let me correct this point – I am not weary of war news at all. I am shunning these movies – and many others- because I am tired of Hollywood’s anti-American stance on absolutely everything. However we got into the war, and whatever mistakes were made up to this point, we are one country. We need to win and we need to remain tough against terrorism. It doesn’t benefit anyone to do otherwise. I will go see a movie that reflects that point.”

He is echoed almost immediately by commenter “Lee”: “The real answer – the obvious one that liberals can’t bring themselves to accept – is that most Americans are tired of liberal spinmeisters trashing their country, our soldiers, and our way of life. The Redfords of the world sit in their ivory towers and try to tell us how to think and react based on their own prejudices …”

And so it goes down the page… hundreds, soon thousands.

The problem here is that the Left finds whatever fits their narrative and blows it out of proportion, as I have noted before with the movie “Redacted”. Brian De Palma found a horrifying incident, but then he calls it “the reality” of what’s happening in Iraq, and by extension (i.e. by not showing the positive things happening in Iraq) he and all these writers and directors paint a horrendously proportioned and one-sided picture of the war.

Essentially, all this anti-Americanism does not interest the public. Further, it plays into the hands of our enemies. We are producing their propaganda films for them! (But don’t question their patriotism.)

One other thing this exposes is the canard that Hollywood is a strictly money-making machine, and they only produce what the public wants. You hear this excuse trotted out when someone complains about the excessive and gratuitous sex and violence. But these anti-war movies are not making nearly the money others do, yet they keep making them. Flop after flop hits the theaters, even with big stars in them. If this explanation of Hollywood’s subject matter were true, they’d stop hitting their heads on this particular wall, and they’d also make more G and PG movies.

Truth is, they know the influence they have, and will, in many cases, take the loss to get their views out there, dressed up and made up to look respectable. But it’s still just a pig with lipstick, and the American people are not buying the propaganda this time.

Technorati Tags: Hollywood, war movie, Iraq war, Lew Harris, Gitesh Pandya, Steve Bocho, Robert Redford, Brian De Palma, Redacted, movie ratings

That capitol of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Harvard University, came to the conclusion that, in the current presidential campaign, the media tilts…well, wouldn’t want to spoil it for you. Read on.

Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which “produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans.”

The most flagrant bias, however, was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative.

On cable news, the tilt was not quite as severe, but not for the reason you’re probably thinking.

The gap between Democrats and Republicans narrows on cable TV, but it’s there nonetheless. Stories about Democrats were positive in more than a third of the cases, while Republicans were portrayed favorably in fewer than 29%. Republican led in unfriendly stories 30.4% to 25.5%.

CNN was the most hostile toward Republicans, MSNBC, surprisingly, the most positive. MSNBC was also the most favorable toward Democrats (47.2%), Fox (36.8%) the most critical.

And for those who hold up Public Radio as the last refuge of the truly dispassionate, prepare for your bubble to be burst.

The anti-GOP attitude also lives on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” There, Democrats were approvingly covered more than a third as often as Republicans. Negative coverage of Democrats was a negligible 5.9%. It seemed to be reserved for Republicans, who were subject to one-fifth of the program’s disparaging reports.

This, of course, is not exactly news to those of us on the Right that have known this for quite some time. But for Media Matters, and the “Reality-Based Community” of the Left, reality will continue to be denied. There are none so blind as those who don’t want to see, and as long as the tilt is their way. You can almost hear Sergeant Schultz intone, “I hear nnnnothing, nothing!”

Technorati Tags: media bias, Project for Excellence in Journalism, Joan Shorenstein Center, Harvard, journalism, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, National Public Radio, Morning Edition, Media Matters