Sigh. Let me say that again: Siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

If you were unfortunate enough to watch Saturday night’s GOP debate in New Hampshire, you saw a pageant of feckless non-Romneys fail to step up to the plate and forcefully challenge Mitt Romney’s presumptive claim to the GOP presidential nomination. Newt Gingrich, who has spent the last week whining about the liberal media, hid behind the liberal media when asked about attacks of Romney’s private-sector record at Bain Capital:

NEWT GINGRICH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I — I haven’t seen the film, but it does reflect “The New York Times” story two days ago about one particular company. And I think people should look at the film and decide. If it’s factually accurate, it raises questions.

GINGRICH: That was, I think, “The New York Times” story two days ago. They took one specific company. They walked through in detail. They showed what they bought it for, how much they took out of it and the 1,700 people they left unemployed. Now that’s — check “The New York Times” story, but that’s their story.

Leaning on the Fishwrap of Record as a crutch instead of owning up? This isn’t just cartoon-ish behavior. It’s poltroon-ish behavior.

With his incessant bashing of how the private equity industry works in the real world, Newt (along with Rick Perry) is morphing into an Occupy Wall Street zealot.

Or a David Axelrod:

His rivals have sought to turn his Bain tenure against him. Rick Perry has run an ad saying Mr. Romney “made millions buying companies and laying off workers.” Newt Gingrich has said Mr. Romney should “give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain.”

Mr. Gingrich laced into Mr. Romney at this weekend’s debates, and a group associated with the former House Speaker plans to release a 28-minute documentary blistering Mr. Romney’s Bain tenure. Meanwhile, on ABC on Sunday, Obama strategist David Axelrod criticized Mr. Romney as “a corporate raider.”

Mr. Romney describes job losses and bankruptcies as an inevitable byproduct of the capitalist system, and has said that in some cases, eliminating some jobs may save the rest of the company. In response to Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Romney said: “Doesn’t he understand how the economy works? In the real economy, some businesses succeed and some fail.”

Asked in an interview about Bain’s bankruptcy and failure rate, Mr. Romney said that in buyout deals, “our orientation was by and large to acquire businesses that were out of favor and in some cases in trouble.” He added that Bain wasn’t the type of firm that stripped companies and fired workers, but instead, “our approach was to try to build a business. We were not always successful.”

FYI, the Wall Street Journal analysis of Bain’s mixed record during Romney’s tenure is here. Takeaway:

The Wall Street Journal, aiming for a comprehensive assessment, examined 77 businesses Bain invested in while Mr. Romney led the firm from its 1984 start until early 1999, to see how they fared during Bain’s involvement and shortly afterward.

Among the findings: 22% either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested, sometimes with substantial job losses. An additional 8% ran into so much trouble that all of the money Bain invested was lost.

Another finding was that Bain produced stellar returns for its investors—yet the bulk of these came from just a small number of its investments. Ten deals produced more than 70% of the dollar gains.

…The Journal analysis shows that in total, Bain produced about $2.5 billion in gains for its investors in the 77 deals, on about $1.1 billion invested. Overall, Bain recorded roughly 50% to 80% annual gains in this period, which experts said was among the best track records for buyout firms in that era.

All of that will get lost as the Occupy rhetoric seeps into attack ads by Republicans that will send tingles down the legs of anti-capitalists everywhere from Gingrich’s new favorite newspaper, the New York Times, on down. Click on that link to read about the $5 million boost to a pro-Gingrich super PAC (yes, super PACs — those evil entities that Gingrich was whining about last week after his Iowa drubbing) that will saturate South Carolina with Occupy-style demagoguery. With Newt’s explicit approval and endorsement.

The latest evolution of anti-capitalism bashing by pathetic GOP candidates? Distorting Romney’s remarks about the private-sector ability to fire people who aren’t doing their job:

CBS News reports via Twitter:

Huntsman tells reporters in Concord: “Governor Romney enjoys firing people; I enjoy creating jobs.”

It’s a reference to this:

Mitt Romney, who’s under attack for his business record, said Monday that he likes to have the option of firing people.

“I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,” he told business executives from the Nashua Greater Chamber of Commerce, adding if he isn’t getting a “good service, I want to say, I’m going to get someone else.”

The point will get lost down the demagogic rabbit hole:

He added: “You know, if someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say, ‘You know, I’m going to get someone else to provide that service to me.’”

Mitt Romney’s chronic flip-flopping political career is teeming with reasons to oppose his nomination — from his support for racial preferences, to government funding of abortion, liberal judges, global warming enviro-nitwittery, TARP, auto bailouts, the Obama stimulus, gun control, and of course, individual health insurance mandates that presaged Obamacare.

Instead of focusing on his long political record of expedience, incompetent non-Romneys have morphed into Michael Moore propagandists — throwing not just Bain Capital under the bus, but wealth creators of all kinds who take risks in the private marketplace.

We’re screwed.

***

More…

Lori Ziganto advises: “Fight like a girl or lose, candidates!”

Kurt Schlichter nails the depressing conundrum:

“Romney ought to turn Bain to his advantage. It should be a plus. But then, he’s handicapped by being Romney.”

My friend Jeff Emanuel makes a point that Bain is a general weakness for Romney in a jobs/class warfare general election race with Obama — and several other Twitter friends point out that it is useful for Romney to be forced to answer Bain-bashing attacks now rather than later — but Jeff also acknowledges that “pro-market Republicans aren’t the ones who should be beating” the anti-capitalism drum.

Jim Pethokoukis: Romney has nothing to apologize for in his Bain career…

Of course, Romney and Bain weren’t in the game to create jobs. They were in it to make money for their investors and themselves. Then again, the same would go for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Warren Buffett, and just about every other successful entrepreneur and investor you could name. But that is the miracle of free-market capitalism. The pursuit of profits by creating value benefits the rest of society through higher incomes, more jobs, and better products and services. This isn’t “destructive creation”—like, say, crippling U.S. fossil fuel production before “clean energy” sources are viable—but “creative destruction” where innovation and efficiency sweep away the old and replace it with a more productive and wealthier society.

Update: Good for Rick Santorum…

Leaving the frozen event, Santorum also declined to take a shot at Romney over a remark earlier from the front-runner that he “likes to fire” workers who are not doing a good job.

“We try to hire good people, we try to keep them employed. If someone if obviously not performing their duty and their mission, obviously a business has a responsibility for the greater good of the business and the other employees to make sure that everybody there is pulling their weight,” Santorum said.

Asked whether Romney’s corporate takeover experience at Bain Capital would be a liability, Santorum said: “I’m not making it a liability. I believe in the private sector.”

Via The Right Scoop, Rush Limbaugh takes Newt to task.

Heckuva job, non-Romneys…

National Journal headline via Allahpundit: Capitalism Comes Under Fire in Republican Primary Campaign

***

Via The Right Scoop on MRC, here’s a Fox News video montage of the Occupy Republicans:

People make honest mistakes. When right-leaning people make them, Soros-funded Media Matters turns it into Apocalypse Now and an opportunity to discredit all of conservatism.

But when liberal journos err, it’s like the proverbial trees falling in the forest. Does anybody hear the muffled sound?

Last night while I was on Twitter, a few left-leaning reporters fell for a hoax SEIU press release announcing the withdrawal of the union’s endorsement of Barack Obama. The timing alone — midnight-ish — should have raised eyebrows. But Marc Ambinder of the The Atlantic (who called it a “symbolic shot across the bow”) and Kenneth Vogel of Politico (who has erased his tweets about it) fell for the prank before being cautioned by Ben Smith of Politico, who quickly debunked the bogus statement. Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times also was targeted.

I asked those involved last night who they thought was responsible. My tweets were like trees in their forest. No replies.

Roll Call reports on the story this morning without mentioning who got punked:

A prankster sent reporters a fake press release Tuesday night claiming that members of the powerful Service Employees International Union had voted to take back the group’s endorsement of President Barack Obama.

The release hit inboxes just before midnight bearing the name of SEIU spokesman Mark McCullough. It included a fake quote from SEIU President Mary Kay Henry that claimed Obama hadn’t delivered enough change.

“Someone is playing a prank and using my email address,” the real McCullough told Talking Points Memo early this morning. He later issued a statement affirming the union’s support for the president.

Talking Points Memo also makes no mention of those reeled in. Lib media membership has its privileges.

SEIU’s real statement re-endorsing Dear Leader in response to the kerfuffle is here:

So just to be clear:

We stand by our November 16, 2011 endorsement of President Obama as part of a broader ’99 percent’ strategy to create good jobs now, end devastating cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and require everyone to pay their fair share.

Any reports to the contrary are simply false.

As those who have followed my coverage of SEIU and Obama for the past several years, it is inconceivable that one would disown the other. Ever. They’re stuck like glue.

But like I said: People make honest mistakes. In the end, the lightning-quick, self-correcting mechanism on Twitter worked as it should. This is the beauty of crowd-sourcing.

My question for journos on the lib side of the aisle, though: Why does it only redound to the benefit of lefties?

Something to dwell on the next time they’re tempted to hound and mock conservative bloggers, Breitbart, Fox, etc., as not “real” journalists.

Will the New York Times ombudsman respond to this serious charge from a fellow mainstream journalist — or will it be whitewashed away?

David Newhouse, editor of the Patriot-News, has blown the whistle on the Fishwrap of Record’s reckless disclosure of identifying details about one of Penn State accused child predator/rapist Jerry Sandusky’s victims:

The Patriot-News, the newspaper that broke the story of the child sex-abuse case against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, has been careful not to reveal the names of the alleged victims in its reporting.

But David Newhouse, editor of the Patriot-News, is livid that the New York Times revealed too much information about one of the alleged victims in a story last week.

Newhouse says that a Times’ piece (“For a Reported Penn State Victim, a Search for Trust”) written by Nare Schweber and Jo Becker published Wednesday is “so detailed,” a simple Google search of its contents “results in the young man’s name within seconds.”

Newhouse’s open statement is here. A damning indictment:

n Wednesday’s story in The New York Times, for example, a profile entitled “For a Reported Penn State Victim, a Search for Trust,” reporters Nate Schweber and Jo Becker write a profile so detailed that, even though they do not name him, googling certain information in the profile results in the young man’s name within seconds. The Patriot-News has learned that other news organizations, which did not have the young man’s name, have already done so.

Although the Times story has been all over the web, and of course the Times web site draws a huge amount of traffic on its own, we decline to link to it here.

The story quotes his next-door neighbor and names his neighborhood. It describes the detailed circumstances of a car accident which was reported in local papers at the time. It says he liked to wear tie-dyed socks.

None of these details have the slightest to do with why or how the boy was allegedly befriended and then assaulted over several years by Sandusky. They do not serve the story of Jerry Sandusky. They only serve to make an alleged victim of sexual assault easily identifiable.

You could call the anonymity maintained in the story a polite fiction, but there is nothing polite about it.

To be clear, the Times story is not alone. It is just the latest and most prominent example so far of such reporting.

The pledge of most news organizations to withhold the names of sexual assault victims – men and women, children and adults – is not some journalistic game of who can say the most while following some arbitrary rule. Most media have adopted it because, tragically, reporting sexual assaults still carries a stigma. It is no accident that Victim One was only the second boy to come forward to authorities in what is alleged to have been more than 15 years of assaults by Sandusky. Stories like these, if anything, could discourage future victims from speaking up.

Victim One told the grand jury that he had been victimized by Jerry Sandusky. Now one could argue that he is being victimized again – this time, by frenzied news media who essentially name the victim in the pursuit of salacious details, all done in the name of anonymity.

Via The American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson: “The Times is now under the supervision of executive editor Jill Abramson, the first woman to occupy this post. She’s not off to a good start.”

Over to you, NYT ombudsman.

The last time I blogged about David Brooks’s bloviations, I opened by asking:

“How much of a tool is New York Times columnist David Brooks?”

Brooks answers the question himself in his latest column:

I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.

When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.

I liked Obama’s payroll tax cut ideas and urged Republicans to play along. But of course I’m a sap. When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill.

You’ll recall — I do, anyway — that Brooks admitted last October that President Obama told him a year ago that he knew that the “shovel-ready project” propaganda he employed to pass the first, massive porkulus bill was a steaming load of bullcrap.

Brooks’ New York Times colleague Peter Baker reported the newsworthy admission in a Sunday magazine piece. It’s an admission that received much deserved attention here in the blogosphere this week and that invited much deserved derision from Republican critics of the stimulus boondoggle.

Why didn’t Brooks report Obama’s damning admission sooner? In another serving of steaming bullcrap, he claims it’s because Baker was more skilled at getting Obama to talk on the record. Seems to me the real reason Brooks didn’t report it is because he had his nose so far up his bromance love object’s you-know-what that he didn’t see the scoop dropped right in his lap.

The news that Brooks is an “Obama sap” is news only to the other smarty pants and panting smarties ensconced at the the Fishwrap of Record.

His ridiculous drool stains have been showing for years:

That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” In the fall of 2006, two days after Obama’s The Audacity of Hope hit bookstores, Brooks published a glowing Times column. The headline was “Run, Barack, Run.”

Over to you, T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII!

The editor of the New York Times just got religion: He thinks it’s time to ask GOP presidential candidates “tougher questions about faith.” Oh, brother, where wast thou in 2008? The Fishwrap of Record led the whitewashing of Barack Obama’s wacky black liberation theology pals and freaky-deaky Chicago pastors.

Now, the skews-paper is ready to start asking “tougher questions about faith?”

Snortalicious, dear readers. Snortalicious.

Just a reminder before I get to his latest doozy: NYT editor Bill Keller is the same one who claimed “we are agnostic as to where a story may lead; we do not go into a story with an agenda or a pre-conceived notion. We do not manipulate or hide facts to advance an agenda. We strive to preserve our independence from political and economic interests, including our own advertisers. We do not work in the service of a party, or an industry, or even a country. When there are competing views of a situation, we aim to reflect them as clearly and fairly as we can.”

In his latest demonstration of journalistic agnosticism, Keller writes that GOP candidates are members of “mysterious or suspect” churches who deserve greater scrutiny:

This year’s Republican primary season offers us an important opportunity to confront our scruples about the privacy of faith in public life — and to get over them. We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a “cult” and that many others think is just weird. (Huntsman says he is not “overly religious.”) Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity, which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.

“Fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity?” Newsflash: Santorum is a member of the same fervid church that Keller grew up in — the mysteriously suspect Catholic church.

As for getting over their “scruples about the privacy of faith in public,” what on earth is Keller talking about? When have lib journalists ever let their “scruples” get in the way of plumbing the faiths of Republican politicians? When? Ever?

I also love how it’s safe for Keller to hide behind the “many…have been taught” Mormonism is a “cult” so that he doesn’t have to say it himself. Can you imagine if he substituted Islam for Mormonism? Nah. The Dhimmi Times would never dare.

Clay Waters at Newsbusters adds:

His newspaper certainly wasn’t at the forefront of dissecting Barack Obama’s Christian beliefs, during the 2008 campaign, especially the then-senator from Illinois’ relationship to his racially inflammatory and conspiracy-minded pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Keller downplayed the Wright controversy in half a sentence, making sure to balance it with a John McCain reference: “In the last presidential campaign, Candidate Obama was pressed to distance himself from his pastor, who carried racial bitterness to extremes, and Candidate McCain was forced to reject the endorsement of a preacher who offended Catholics and Jews.”

The Times didn’t do much pressing of Obama on his toleration of Wright’s radicalism. It took the paper months to accurately quote one of Wright’s most inflammatory sermons: “Not God bless America, God damn America!” The Times also glossed over Wright’s despicable ranting “sermon” five days after the 9-11 attacks. In Wright’s rant, September 11 was a sign that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and for supporting “state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans.” After Obama was obliged to address the issue in a speech on March 18, 2008, the Times fell over itself to praise the politically necessary address as Lincolnesque.

You can see Keller’s extensive questionnaire for each GOP candidate about all their religious beliefs, readings, and relationships with various controversial pastors.

I’d link to his questionnaire for Obama about the following mysterious and suspect religious leaders in his life, but there isn’t one.

Funny that.

***

Flashback May 30, 2008 — Greatest hits: All of Barack Obama’s men of bad faith…

Here’s a handy little video guide to Barack Obama’s various men of bad faith–a quick blog cheat sheet with all the poison preachers in one place, each accompanied by a trademark demagogic YouTube clip, for easy reference and ranked in order of unhingedness. It’s getting crowded in the crazy uncle attic, sweetie.

4. Current Trinity pastor and N-word-spouting Ice Cube fan Otis “At war with the enemy” Moss, whom Obama refers to as a “wonderful young pastor:”

3. James Meeks.

“We don’t have slave masters. We got mayors. But they still the same white people who are presiding over systems where black people are not able, or to be educated.”

“You got some preachers that are house niggers. You got some elected officials that are house niggers. And rather than them trying to break this up, they gonna fight you to protect this white man.”

2. Embarrassment to the Catholic Church Michael “There’s a black man stealing my show!” Pfleger.

1. And the one and only Jeremiah “God damn America!” Wright, with thanks to the North Carolina GOP for defying the McCain camp and spreading the word:

See also Stanley Kurtz’s probe of Wright’s Trumpet.

How many more?

It only stands to reason that if the 4th of July is more of a Republican holiday, it must be inherently bad for the environment. I mean, that’s what Republicans are all about, right?

Fortunately, an op-ed in the New York Times is there to help “green” our Independence Day feast:

FOOD is responsible for 10 to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. By many estimates, cooking represents more of a meal’s carbon footprint than transport. For certain vegetables, it accounts for more emissions than agriculture, transport and disposal combined.

Fourth of July, the national celebration of combustion, presents an opportunity for atonement.

I’m not advising you to forsake grilling this holiday and join the ranks of raw-foodists. Nor do I believe that we can reverse climate change by eating burgers rare instead of well done. But a little creative thinking can reduce this year’s Fourth of July carbon emissions without gustatory sacrifice. And maybe that awareness will carry into other days and other parts of our lives.

Read on and discover all the things you should take into account when planning your July 4th cooking, from how to prepare the potato salad to skipping the baked desserts (unless a rare FLOTUS pie waiver is obtained). The list of considerations is so long that you could end up accidentally hanging yourself from the eco decision tree:

Now for the burgers and dogs. First, a green disclaimer. Beef is an environmental disaster, no matter how you cook it. However, if you can’t resist grilled cow, your big decision is between charcoal and propane.

This guy must be a blast to party with.

He goes on to point out so many things you should take into consideration that, if you took the time to ponder them all, by the time you actually started cooking it would be July 6th.

For other ways to “green” your 4th, I suggest printing several copies of the above article, setting them on fire, and cooking burgers and hot dogs over the flames. That way none of it will go to waste. Also, instead of environmentally unfriendly traditional fireworks, try blowing up an electric car. You’ll still get the “boom,” plus you’ll be helping get those carbon nightmares out of circulation. It’s a brand of “green” firework serves as its own offset.

(h/t Fox Nation)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBeremember being

My heart goes out to the families. Our family knows the kind of hell they are going through right now.

Praying for a safe return:

Four New York Times journalists covering the fighting in Libya were reported missing Wednesday, and the newspaper held out hope that they were alive and in the custody of the Libyan government.

Editors last heard from the journalists on Tuesday as they were covering the retreat of rebels from the town of Ajdabiya, and Libyan officials told the newspaper they were trying to locate the four, executive editor Bill Keller said in a statement. The Times said there were unconfirmed reports that Libyan forces had detained the foursome.

“We are grateful to the Libyan government for their assurance that if our journalists were captured they would be released promptly and unharmed,” Keller said.

The missing journalists are Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony Shadid, the newspaper’s Beirut bureau chief; Stephen Farrell, a reporter and videographer; and photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario. In 2009, Farrell was kidnapped by the Taliban and later rescued by British commandos.

“Their families and their colleagues at The Times are anxiously seeking information about their situation, and praying that they are safe,” Keller said.

Chick-Fil-A isn’t the only one in the restaurant industry targeted by the progressive mob over the past month.

The SEIU has been waging open-borders attacks on restaurant chain Chipotle simply because the company complied with federal immigration law and fired employees unable to provide valid documentation that they’re here legally. Less than two weeks ago, the Purple Army dispatched its goons to Minneapolis to disrupt business at a downtown Chipotle. Similar protests were staged at Chipotle locations in CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, IL, NY and VA. Judging from this video, the Big Labor business-bashers are having quite the party making a living by impeding the work of others:

Persuasion of Power (TM).

While the White House rushed this week to promote entrepreneurship and help businesses grow, the administration should have been telling its radical allies to do the economy a favor: Leave law-abiding American businesses alone.

***

A Christian business in the Left’s crosshairs
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

Here’s a modest proposal for liberals who say they support job creation: Stop smearing successful, law-abiding private companies whose values don’t comport with yours. I’m looking at you, New York Times.

Chick-Fil-A is an American success story. Founded by Georgian entrepreneur Truett Cathy in 1946, the family-owned chicken-sandwich chain is one of the country’s largest fast-food businesses. It employs some 50,000 workers across the country at 1,500 outlets in nearly 40 states and the District of Columbia. The company generates more than $2 billion in revenues and serves millions of happy customers with trademark Southern hospitality.

So, what’s the problem? Well, Chick-Fil-A is run by devout Christians who believe in strong marriages, devoted families, and the highest standards of character for their workers. The restaurant chain’s official corporate mission is to “glorify God” and “enrich the lives of everyone we touch.” The company’s community service initiatives, funded through its WinShape Foundation, support foster care, scholarship, summer camp, and marriage enrichment programs. On Sunday, all Chick-Fil-A stores close so workers can spend the day at worship and rest.

For the Left, these Biblically-based corporate principles constitute high social justice crimes and misdemeanors. Democrats are always ready to invoke religion to support their big government, taxpayer-funded initiatives (Obamacare, illegal alien amnesty, increased education spending, and FCC regulatory expansion, for starters).

But when an independent company – thriving on its own merits in the market place — wears its soul on its sleeve, suddenly it’s a theocratic crisis.

Over the past month, several progressive activist blogs have waged an ugly war against Chick-Fil-A. The company’s alleged atrocity: One of its independent outlets in Pennsylvania donated some sandwiches and brownies to a marriage seminar run by the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which happens to oppose same-sex marriage.

In the name of tolerance, the anti-Chick-Fil-A hawks sneered at the company’s main product as “Jesus Chicken,” derided its no-Sunday work policy, and attacked its operators as “anti-gay.” Michael Jones, who describes himself as having “worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School,” launched an online petition drive at www.change.org “demanding” that the company disavow “extreme anti-gay groups.” Facebook users dutifully organized witch hunt drives against the company on college campuses.

Over the weekend, New York Times reporter Kim Severson gave the Chick-Fil-A bashers a coveted Sunday A-section megaphone – repeatedly parroting the “Chick-Fil-A is anti-gay” slur and raising fears of “evangelical Christianity’s muscle flexing” with only the thinnest veneer of journalistic objectivity. Severson, you see, is an openly gay advocate of same-sex marriage equality herself and the former vice-president of the identity politics-mongering National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association. In a bitter op-ed on gay marriage laws not changing quickly enough, she asserted: “I don’t want the crumbs. I want the whole cake.” Severson has voiced complaints about her social and economic status as an unwed lesbian with a partner and child in several media publications.

None of this was disclosed in Severson’s advocacy journalism hit job on Chick-Fil-A. But therein lies the unofficial motto of the Gray Lady: All the ideological conflicts of interest unfit to print.

Progressive groups are gloating over Chick-Fil-A’s public relations troubles exacerbated by the nation’s politicized paper of record. Not because they care about winning hearts and minds over gay rights or marriage policy, but because their core objective is to marginalize political opponents and chill Christian philanthropy and activism. The fearsome “muscle-flexing” isn’t being done by innocent job-creators selling chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. It’s being done by the hysterical bullies trying to drive them off college grounds and out of their neighborhoods in the name of “human rights.”

Remember: These were the same tactics the left-wing mob used in California to intimidate supporters of the Proposition 8 traditional marriage initiative. Individual donors were put on an “Anti-Gay Black List.” Businesses who contributed money to the Prop. 8 campaign were besieged by fist-wielding protesters. The artistic director of the California Musical Theatre was forced to resign over his $1,000 donation.

Message: Associate with the wrong political cause and you will pay. So much for national “civility.”

***

Related: Peter Wood takes on campus anti-Christian bigotry.

Organized bullying has become almost a settled feature of American college life. It draws much of its sense of legitimacy from professors who extol victim-group self-empowerment and who offer valorous stories from past protests to gin up enthusiasm for turning disagreements into grievances and grievances into demands. The moral capital of the Civil Rights struggle and the Women’s Movement is spent again and again in ever-more trivial protests: this one against a vendor of chicken sandwiches. Collective action targeted against people and institutions that cannot easily defend themselves is a tactic honed to perfection by the campus left. It works all too often.

Higher education, however, is ill-served by this spirit of censorship. If we want students to learn the principles and arts of governing our republic, for starters they will need to learn the importance of living alongside those who hold views that clash with their own. The campaign against Chick-fil-A also illustrates the tendency of higher education to lose itself in symbolic causes at two or three removes from reality. Attacking Chick-fil-A for the religious beliefs of its owners makes about as much practical sense as banning trays from the cafeteria to save the world from global warming. Higher education ought to teach students to recognize the difference between effective social advocacy and make-believe. These campaigns erase that distinction.

Higher education has recently seen some strenuous efforts to elevate “civic education” to a key concern of the undergraduate curriculum. The Association of American Colleges and Universities last fall issued a “national action plan for civic learning,” and the Lumina Foundation last week presented “civic education” as one of its five benchmarks for all of higher education. Should we consider the campaign against Chick-fil-A as an illustration of this new spirit of campus civic-mindedness? It looks rather like no-holds-barred political activism. I wonder whether higher education is losing its ability to tell the difference.

Latest update: A glimmer of common sense and decency prevails.“Chick-fil-A is back at the two main dining areas at Indiana University South Bend.”

Flashback: Christian-targeted dating website eHarmony is forced to offer same-sex dating services.

Last week, it was the Washington Post spilling the beans on the nation’s post-9/11 top-secret infrastructure.

Today, it’s the NYTimes dutifully splashing vengeful Wikileaks’ massive document dump on our Afghanistan military strategy.

The Times tries not to break its collective arm patting itself on the back for its valiant struggle to publish the documents. As if it could resist.

Remember: From September 11, 2001 to the present, the terror-tipping blabbermouths of the New York Times have repeatedly undermined national security by disclosing sensitive/classified information about many key counterrorism programs. The paper has gone to court to force the government to release such information. The paper has shown reckless disregard for the consequences of disclosure.

The only time it has shown any restraint is when disclosure would endanger one of its own reporters.

The Fishwrap of Record: Our enemies’ favorite rag.

Commenter corkie quotes from the NYTimes’ disclaimer:

Information that is marked “secret” has been determined to be information or material that the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause “serious damage” to the national security.

So the New York Times is freely admitting that they don’t concern themselves with risking serious damage to national security.

The fact that this information wasn’t marked Top Secret allows the Times to pretend that they wouldn’t have published material that has been determined to cause “exceptionally grave damage” to the national security. It’s nice to see that they deny contributing to exceptionally grave damage while being complicit in contributing to serious damage.

Flashback: From our 2006 Blabbermouth NYTimes photoshop contest (more here)…

The Peoples Cube:

HA affiliate Sanctuary Bryan:

John McG.:

Bob D.:

Verum Serum:

Slublog:

Xardoz (hat tip –
Impacted Wisdom Truth):

Richard Pucillo:

Are We Lumberjacks?:

George Ratton:

Previous:

Supreme Court to NYTimes: Buzz off
Terrorist-tipping NYTimes wants Ruth Ginsburg’s help
Blabbermouth damage, again
When blabbermouths lie: question the timing
The newspaper of wreckage
How about a nice big glass of…
The terrorist-tipping Times
More blabbermouth posters
Messages for the blabbermouths
Backlash against the blabbermouths
NYTimes blabbermouths strike again

At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House.

Here’s video of Blumenthal saying he served in Vietnam.

And here’s video of him saying he didn’t:

What a total crapweasel.

As this blog has long reported, the Left has had repeated issues with telling the truth about military service.

Winter Soldier Syndrome is a chronic disease among many Democrats and their fakers.

It is worth noting that the NYTimes spilled barrels of ink attacking the Swift Boat Veterans for pointedly questioning some of John Kerry’s Vietnam war claims.

Savor the irony when bogus war story-teller Richard Blumenthal, with nothing but desperate spin for a defense, starts accusing the Swift Boat Veteran-bashing Times of… “Swift-boating.”

***

(hat tip to commenter txvet2)

This is Charles Blow. Blow is an African-American columnist for the New York Times. He flew down to the Dallas Tea Party to see what he could see. He saw what he wanted to see and he might as well have used the new smear term from Tea Party-bashers that I noted last week: “Tea Klanners.”

The title of his screed? “A mighty pale tea.”

Blow used his column from his hallowed perch at the Times to malign minority conservatives as minstrel tokens and puppets for the movement. How…original. He singled out my friend Alfonzo “Zo” Rachel — the young, delightfully talented conservative comedian — and essentially accused every non-white activist who opposes endless bailouts, massive new entitlements, and Obama’s culture of corruption of being incapable of thinking for himself/herself:

The juxtaposition was striking: an abundance of diversity on the stage and a dearth of it in the crowd, with the exception of a few minorities like the young black man who carried a sign that read “Quit calling me a racist.”

They saved the best for last, however: Alfonzo “Zo” Rachel. According to his Web site, Zo, who is black and performs skits as “Zo-bama,” allowed drugs to cost him “his graduation.” Before ripping into the president for unconstitutional behavior, he cautioned, “I don’t have the education that our president has, so if I misinterpret some things in the founding documents I kind of have an excuse.” That was the understatement of the evening.

I found the imagery surreal and a bit sad: the minorities trying desperately to prove that they were “one of the good ones”; the organizers trying desperately to resolve any racial guilt among the crowd. The message was clear: How could we be intolerant if these multicolored faces feel the same way we do?

It was a farce.

You want “farce?” I’ve pointed out many times over the years that the loudest preachers of skin-deep diversity work for media institutions that fail to practice their own social engineering sermons.

See, for example: The indelible whiteness of MSNBC.

Or: White anchor at indelibly white network decries “white tribalism”.

Or: GOP-bashing Associated Press goes bean-counting…Now, let’s turn the tables on the AP; Update: Your final AP Bd of Directors bean-count.

Or: Let’s make a holiday gift guide for New York Times executives.

In that last post, I poked fun at the Times for publishing a separate but equal gift guide for people “of color” — and pointed to the Fishwrap of Record’s own “practice diversity as we say, not as we do” philosophy as illustrated by its own board of directors:

I noted then that the NYTimes editorial board is similarly complected.

Blow, of course, is silent on the tokenism practiced by his mighty pale newspaper.

And as Tom Maguire at Just One Minute notes, by the Times’ own measure, the Tea Party movement is “a lot more diverse than the Times Board.”

Live by bean-counting, die by bean-counting. The monochromatically-dominated liberal media never learn.

***

Related: Do these two “doughy white men” not realize how asinine they are?

Bill Maher and Chris Matthews, on Wednesday’s Hardball, denigrated Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann as merely “attractive” women with very little smarts with the HBO host even going as far to use a vulgar euphemism to describe them as he claimed: “They’re attractive especially to the Republican Party, which is not known as a party that really does well with the opposite sex. Usually they’re doughy white men and I think they look on Michele Bachmann and, and Sarah Palin, as you know, M.I.L.Fs and I agree, they’re Morons I’d Like to Forget.”

I mean, really. Can you get any “whiter” or “doughier” than those two?

Oh, wait.

Yes. Yes, you can.

***

Update: Listen to Blow(hard) make a fool of himself on the Laura Ingraham show.

The AJC’s Cynthia Tucker blogged today about a testy exchange we had last summer on ABC’s “This Week” regarding government unemployment benefits and the effect that endless extensions have on reducing the incentive to seek a job. Once again, she mistakes standard economic arguments for moral judgments: “Does the right really believe the unemployed are lazy?”

What offended Tucker’s sensibilities was the blunt manner in which I summed up taxpayer-subsidized inducements: “If you put enough government cheese in front of people, they are just going to keep eating it.”

As I said in August and reiterated last week during the Bunning Senate floor showdown, the question is where do we draw the line? There is no such thing as a “temporary” entitlement in Washington and there are precious few politicians willing to challenge the permanent, ever-expanding Nanny State (quoting from the WaPo article: “under multiple extensions enacted by the federal government in response to the downturn, workers can collect the payments for as long as 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates — the longest period since the program’s inception.”)

None other than Paul Krugman of the Fishwrap of Record acknowledges that generous unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to seek jobs.

As he put it exactly:

“Everyone agrees that really generous unemployment benefits, by reducing the incentive to seek jobs, can raise the NAIRU” [the minimum rate of unemployment consistent with a stable inflation rate].

“Everyone agrees.” “Everyone?”

Tell it to Ms. Tucker. Or the nutroots and Democrat demagogues who went bananas when Sen. Jon Kyl basically said the same thing last week.

Or, um, perhaps Paul Krugman should tell it to himself. Last August, he sniffed that “Ms. Malkin’s theory of unemployment is no crazier than what’s coming out of some of our leading universities.”

Or out of crazy textbooks like…this one authored by none other than Paul Krugman and noted by the WSJ’s James Taranto:

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman takes note in his New York Times column of what he calls “the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties”:

Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.

“What Democrats believe,” he says “is what textbook economics says”:

But that’s not how Republicans see it. Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”

Krugman scoffs: “To me, that’s a bizarre point of view–but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.”

What does textbook economics have to say about this question? Here is a passage from a textbook called “Macroeconomics”:

Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of “Eurosclerosis,” the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries. (emphasis added)

So it turns out that what Krugman calls Sen. Kyl’s “bizarre point of view” is, in fact, textbook economics. The authors of that textbook are Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. Miss Wells is also known as Mrs. Paul Krugman.

It seems Krugman himself lives in two different universes–the universe of the academic economist and the universe of the bitter partisan columnist. Or maybe this is like that episode of “Star Trek” in which crewmen from the Enterprise switched places with their counterparts from a universe in which everyone was the same, only evil.

Like Spock, the evil Krugman is the one with the beard.

Krugman argues that right now the situation is different because unemployment is high. His position seems to be that the need for short-term stimulus trumps longer-term worries about raising the NAIRU.

The problem, as more learned economists than I will point out, is that once you’ve established that unemployment benefits will be extended during recessions, then that policy gets incorporated into workers’ expectations. And you can’t easily undo those expectations once the economy improves.

But never mind all that. Evil conservatives hate unemployed people! Bad, bad conservatives!

Longtime readers know that fearless young conservative firebrand Jason Mattera has been a great friend of mine and of Hot Air’s for years. You also know from his countless videos that he’s got a Brooklyn accent thickah than an old-growth redwood tree. Yesterday, he gave a rousing, raucous speech at CPAC in Washington, D.C.

To the apparently untrained ears of a New York Times reporter, Jason’s Brooklyn accent = RAAAACIST!

No, really.

Read it here.

And here’s the “Chris Rock” impersonation to which the delicate NYT reporter referred:

Jason responds to the NYT in an interview with Ed Morrissey.

I have a feeling this interlude with the Fishwrap of Record isn’t over.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.

It was unclear whether he was talking, but the officials said his capture had provided a window into the Taliban and could lead to other senior officials. Most immediately, they hope he will provide the whereabouts of Mullah Omar, the one-eyed cleric who is the group’s spiritual leader.

Disclosure of Mullah Baradar’s capture came as American and Afghan forces were in the midst of a major offensive in southern Afghanistan.

His capture could cripple the Taliban’s military operations, at least in the short term, said Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer who last spring led the Obama administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan policy review.

Details of the raid remain murky, but officials said that it had been carried out by Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and that C.I.A. operatives had accompanied the Pakistanis.

…The officials said that Pakistan was leading the interrogation of Mullah Baradar, but that Americans were also involved. The conditions of the questioning are unclear. In its first week in office, the Obama administration banned harsh interrogations like waterboarding by Americans, but the Pakistanis have long been known to subject prisoners to brutal questioning.

Two quick questions:

What would Eric Holder say?

And if capturing this jihadi in a violent raid is worth trumpeting and celebrating, why doesn’t the Obama administration free the Navy SEALS who are accused of far less in their battle against terrorism in Iraq?

Wait, one more question. Check this out:

The New York Times learned of the operation on Thursday, but delayed reporting it at the request of White House officials, who contended that making it public would end a hugely successful intelligence-gathering effort. The officials said that the group’s leaders had been unaware of Mullah Baradar’s capture and that if it became public they might cover their tracks and become more careful about communicating with each other.

The Times is publishing the news now because White House officials acknowledged that the capture of Mullah Baradar was becoming widely known in the region.

Fancy that. The terror-tipping NYT blabbermouths who repeatedly undermined national security during the Bush years by disclosing sensitive/classified information about many key counterrorism programs are now sensitive to ongoing counterterrorism operations. The paper that went to court to force the government to release classified information about jihadis and has shown reckless disregard for the consequences of disclosure is now delaying reports at the request of White House officials.

How generous and patriotic of the Fishwrap of Record to see the light, isn’t it?

New York Times columnist David Brooks will never let an opportunity pass to remind you that he is an intellectual and you are a grimy member of the unwashed masses. His column today pays a back-handed tribute to the success of the Tea Party movement…while bemoaning the decline of influence among the “educated class” (e.g., David Brooks and Friends).

A taste of the bitter whine in the Fishwrap of Record:

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.

…The Obama administration is premised on the conviction that pragmatic federal leaders with professional expertise should have the power to implement programs to solve the country’s problems. Many Americans do not have faith in that sort of centralized expertise or in the political class generally.

And David Brooks has the audacity to paint Tea Party activists as the immature, mentally-challenged ones? Instead of acknowledging, for example, that man-made global theories are in peril because the data manipulation, suppression, and intimidation tactics of conniving, eco-radical academics have been exposed, Brooks paints public skepticism on the issue as a reactionary tantrum.

I remind you of Brooks’ fatally impaired powers of discernment regarding Obama’s “pragmatic federal leaders with professional expertise.” While he derides Tea Party participants as “teens,” he has slavered over Barack Obama like a lovesick tween from day one.

Remember this?

Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).

The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law)…

… Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists. They typically served in the Clinton administration and then, like Cincinnatus, retreated to the comforts of private life — that is, if Cincinnatus had worked at Goldman Sachs, Williams & Connolly or the Brookings Institution. So many of them send their kids to Georgetown Day School, the posh leftish private school in D.C. that they’ll be able to hold White House staff meetings in the carpool line.

And yet as much as I want to resent these overeducated Achievatrons (not to mention the incursion of a French-style government dominated by highly trained Enarchs), I find myself tremendously impressed by the Obama transition.

– Smarty pants/panting smarty David Brooks, NYT, 11/21/08

And this? From “The Story Behind the Brooks-Obama Bromance”…

That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” In the fall of 2006, two days after Obama’s The Audacity of Hope hit bookstores, Brooks published a glowing Times column. The headline was “Run, Barack, Run.”

***

He recognizes something similar in the current president. “Obama sees himself as a Burkean,” Brooks says. “He sees his view of the world as a view that understands complexity and the organic nature of change.” Moreover, after the Bush years, Brooks seems relieved to have an intellectual in the White House again. “I divide people into people who talk like us and who don’t talk like us,” he explains. “Of recent presidents, Clinton could sort of talk like us, but Obama is definitely–you could see him as a New Republic writer. He can do the jurisprudence, he can do the political philosophy, and he can do the politics. I think he’s more talented than anyone in my lifetime. I mean, he is pretty dazzling when he walks into a room. So, that’s why it’s important he doesn’t fuck this up.”

It’s David Brooks who needs to grow up. His Ivy League idol is an incompetent phony fermenting in a culture of corruption. You don’t need a PhD to see it.

***

Flashback: Iowahawk’s classic satire of Brooks…T Coddington Van Voorhees VII.

***

For a non-bitter, informed, and in-depth account of the Tea Party’s rise, check out John O’Hara’s new book: A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes.