Erick Erickson's Blog, page 24

Keep Running Joe: American Crossroads Hits It Out of the Park

I’ve been critical of a lot of the Super PAC ads, but I have to say that American Crossroads has hit it out of the park today:

That is staggeringly awesome. Go give them some cash so they can get that ad up everywhere.

Observe the Democrat Puppeteers of the New York Times and Washington Post

The writer Emma Bull is quoted as saying, “Coincidence is the word we use when we can’t see the levers and pulleys.” I’m not sure if it is levers, pulleys, and strings moving Maureen Dowd, Katrina vanden Heuvel, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, or just hands up the nether regions like controlling a muppet, but if we look carefully enough I think we are seeing an orchestrated messaging machine from the Democratic Party.

On August 14, 2012, writing in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd wrote, “He’s the cutest package that cruelty ever came in.”

On the very same day writing in the pages of the Washington Post, MSNBC’s favorite Marxist Katrina van den Heuvel wrote, “[B]eneath that Ken doll head of hair, behind the carefully cultivated image of a brave pseudo-policy wonk, lies a cruel ideologue. And it’s Ryan’s GOP now.”

Hmmmmm . . . two columns by two feminist oriented writers as the two big narrative setting newspapers both focused on Paul Ryan being cute and cruel — a shared word choice and theme.

Maybe there is nothing there. But then, also in the pages of the Washington Post, we have Katherine Boyle, also on August 14th, writing about Paul Ryan’s fashion choices and slightly rumpled, “sloppy” dress. Ms. Boyle gives heavy emphasis to the comparison between Romney and Ryan’s styles.

The very next day, in the pages of the New York Times, Cathy Horyn writes about, well, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s styles. Notably, Ms. Horyn admits her “editor asked me to write a critique.”

Ms. Boyle, at the Washington Post, referred to Paul Ryan as “wear[ing] a suit that looked two sizes too big.” Ms. Horyn noted Mr. Ryan “swimming in his coat.”

One might say it is a random act of reportorial coincidence, but the New York Times and Washington Post running two leftwing columnists and two style section writers at the same time on the same topics with the same themes with one admitting it was an editor asking for it? I’m putting my money on levers, pulleys, and string.

Morning Briefing for August 17, 2012

RedState Morning Briefing

August 17, 2012

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. Observe the Democrat Puppeteers of the New York Times and Washington Post

2. Paul Ryan: Radical American

3. Special Operations OPSEC targets Obama for reckless intelligence leaks

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1. Observe the Democrat Puppeteers of the New York Times and Washington Post

The writer Emma Bull is quoted as saying, “Coincidence is the word we use when we can’t see the levers and pulleys.” I’m not sure if it is levers, pulleys, and strings moving Maureen Dowd, Katrina vanden Heuvel, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, or just hands up the nether regions like controlling a muppet, but if we look carefully enough I think we are seeing an orchestrated messaging machine from the Democratic Party.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Paul Ryan: Radical American

If there’s anything we’ve come to expect from the Obama administration and his media lackeys, it’s demonizing those opposed to his agenda. So it was no surprise when his campaign’s immediate response to Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential pick of Paul Ryan was to label him “radical”. In the same predictable fashion, Democrats cheered at another chance to play the radical card.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Special Operations OPSEC targets Obama for reckless intelligence leaks

A group of former special operations and C.I.A. officers accuse President Obama of spiking the football — taking credit for killing Osama bin Laden, and recklessly leaking intelligence information about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and other security matters solely to gain political advantage.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

On for Neal Boortz

I will be filling in for Neal Boortz today from 8:30am to 1pm ET. You can listen live tonight on the WSB live stream and call in at 1-877-310-2100.

I’ll get into the shooting at the Family Research Council, the President’s now near habitual lying, the Navy SEALs speaking out against the President, and at 12 o’clock our own Jeff Emanuel joins me to talk about heightened tensions between Israel and Iran and the implications.

Consider this an open thread.

Barack Obama Is A Liar

Look at the first bullet point here. He claims Paul Ryan wants to ban common forms of birth control.

That is a lie.

It is also a lie to claim that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to “drag us back to the 1950s.” Does the President really believe that crap?

Apparently so. It’s on his website. And yes, if you are going to make crap up about Paul Ryan and make hyperbolic claims that Paul Ryan wants to drag us back to the 1950s, I do get to call you a liar even if you are the President of the United States.

By the way, this “back to the 1950s” crap is the rhetoric they were using against Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. It’s about as unoriginal is Barack Obama’s recycled Jimmy Carter economy.

The Liberal Guardian ( @GuardianUS ) Stands Up for Free Speech

This morning the Guardian, a liberal newspaper out of London, announced it was hiring one of RedState’s co-founders, Josh Trevino, as a conservative columnist.

Since the announcement was made, the Guardian has come under withering assault for daring to hire Josh.

I know a thing about that. To this day there are still folks trying to drive me off television. Luckily, CNN was kind enough to give me a chance.

I hope the Guardian will do the same with Josh Trevino. The attacks are not about what Josh has said or tweeted, but about Josh being at a liberal organization to begin with. The attacks are about silencing an alternative opinion, which the Guardian, to its credit, has been willing to hear out and give voice to.

Conservatives do not go out of their way to shut down and silence alternative voices. Conservatives are not out boycotting MSNBC or canceling Comcast subscriptions because of MSNBC. They are not avoiding Avery printing labels because one of the Avery family members funds left wing causes. The Guardian hired the far-left blogger Glenn Greenwald of sock-puppet fame and you don’t see conservatives storming the Guardian to have him fired. Hell, unlike Trevino, Greenwald’s sock puppets actually did violate what most would consider journalistic standards and none of us much care that he’s there.

But time and time again, the left tries to silence the right. They take offense, they scream, and they complain. They want to be the arbiters of acceptable voices and, slowly but surely, will whittle away all opposition in the name of “reasonable dissent.” Arbiters of the opposition rarely want opposition.

Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia, in a Lenten Letter to his pastoral flock, said that evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant and then tries to silence good. What we are seeing in this organized campaign to get Josh Trevino thrown off the pages of the Guardian, Rush Limbaugh thrown off the airwaves, etc. is an organized campaign by so-called tolerant showing their intolerance.

The majority of Americans are conservatives and the media increasingly does not relate to any of them except Beltway conservatives who are increasingly not like the rest of America’s conservatives. My hat is off to the Guardian for being willing to engage the majority of Americans and have the views of that majority reflected in their pages.

I Just Donated to FRCAction — the Political Wing of Family Research Council

I just donated to FRCAction, the legislative/political wing of the Family Research Council.

I hope you will join me in support and solidarity with this group that came under an attack today from a gunman who, based on what we know so far, hates FRC for standing for traditional values.

Human Rights Campaign Maintains Family Research Council is a “Hate Group”

I got this email from Fred Sainz, the Vice President for Communications and Marketing at the Human Rights Company:

I have a great deal of admiration for you and like watching you on CNN. These Tweets are beneath you.

It’s really unseemly to insinuate — in any way — that HRC had anything to do with the violence that occurred today at FRC.

FRC IS a hate group. It’s not HRC that calls them that; it’s the Southern Poverty Law Center that has classified them as such – years ago. Have you seen the things that FRC says about gay people? I think if you did you wouldn’t be so quick to associate yourself with them:

http://www.glaad.org/cap/tony-perkins

http://www.glaad.org/cap/peter-sprigg

I’m more than happy to have a dialogue with you on the issue but would ask that you not make irresponsible connections that are completely illogical.

He is referencing several tweets I made noting that just yesterday the Human Rights Campaign called Family Research Council a “hate group.” (See here and here)

I noted that if a gunman had entered the Human Rights Campaign’s offices a day after being labeled a “hate group” by a conservative organization, the media would be denouncing the conservative group as inciting the shooting and spend a week on homophobia, etc.

To be clear, I do not think the Human Rights Campaign incited the shooter. I generally don’t think conservative or liberal groups incite violence — the crazy does it all on its own.

But I have absolutely no doubt that the media would engage in handwringing had the situation been reversed.

I would also note the Human Rights Campaign is doubling down today on calling the Family Research Council a “hate group.” They might as well label mainstream (not mainline) Christianity a hate group as Family Research Council does nothing more than reflect the orthodox tenets of Christian faith.

I’d also note that the Southern Poverty Law Center long ago stopped being a useful organization for anyone other than the left with only rare exception, but gives cover to the media and the left to label many conservative groups that are well within the mainstream as hate groups. That’s not to say the Southern Poverty Law Center does not accurately label some groups as hate groups, but it paints with too broad a brush.

Oh, and Tony Perkins and Pete Sprigg are friends.

Conservatives All Look Alike to ABC News

This appears on the twitter feed of @ABCPolitics

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James Dobson’s former organization is called Focus on the Family.

Family Research Council is run by Tony Perkins.

The news organization that immediately concluded the Aurora, CO shooter was probably a tea party activist has a real problem telling conservatives apart.

By the way, Jackie Bensen of NBC 4 in Washington, DC reports the shooter had Chick-Fil-A related stuff in his backpack.

I expect at any moment ABC News will hear this and conclude it must have been a crazy Christian doing the shooting.

Shooting at the Family Research Council

The Family Research Council is one of my favorite organizations. I consider Tony Perkins a friend and he and his staff are in my prayers today, as they should be yours. A gunman entered the building this morning, took issue with the work FRC does (no motive is known other than the gunman uttering a complaint about what FRC does), and began to shoot. A security guard was shot in the arm, but managed to get the shooter down.

It is not a political statement, but a fact that for years the left inside and outside the media has ridiculed the family values the Family Research Council defends. It is not a political statement, but a fact that had this been at an abortion clinic or the Human Rights Campaign’s headquarters instead of the Family Research Council’s headquarters, we’d be in for a week of handwringing in the media about homophobia and right wing nuts. But because the Family Research Council promotes the values shared by a majority of Americans, but only a minority of the left in and outside the media, this story will move on off the radar.

Instead, the Human Rights Campaign, which aggressively supports gay rights, will go on calling the Family Research Council a hate group, which it did the day before the shooting, the media will give the shooting a passing reference, and it will all be forgotten until Brian Ross and ABC News can figure out a way to pin it on the tea party. Notes one nut on twitter, “a shooting at #FRC HQ was a long time coming. Though I’m surprised the #AFA wasn’t 1st. Hate begets hate. #NOH8 #Bigotry”

Ironies about in the “NOH8″ contingent. Here’s another one. And this one is from a social studies teacher.

The nut job leftist who took hostages at the Discovery Channel and this person are not worth as much attention as those who can be portrayed as right wing nuts because there are no lessons that can be learned about right wing extremism from today’s shooting or that mess when it happened.

In the same vein, Joe Biden saying the GOP wants to “put y’all back in chains” will be out of the news faster than if MItt Romney or Paul Ryan had said it because, again, it is not about values or speech, but about what the left, in and out of the media, presumes are the correct values and correct speech.

This is further typified by disgust at Chick-Fil-A for promoting traditional values, but delight with Ben & Jerry’s promoting “correct” values.

That’s not a political point. That’s a fact.