Category: Politics

Boehner 1, Obama 0

Posted on Comments

The White House caused a ruckus Wednesday by attempting to schedule President Obama for a speech to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 7 — which just happened to be the date, scheduled months ago, of a GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.

Say hello to “separation of powers”: Nobody at the White House had bothered to clear the Sept. 7 date with the Speaker of the House, who suggested moving the date to Sept. 8 and — after some partisan grumbling — the administration was forced to back down:

“Today, the President asked to address the Congress about the need for urgent action on the economic situation facing the American people as soon as Congress returned from recess. Both Houses will be back in session after their August recess on Wednesday, September 7th, so that was the date that was requested. We consulted with the Speaker about that date before the letter was released, but he determined Thursday would work better. The President is focused on the urgent need to create jobs and grow our economy, so he welcomes the opportunity to address a Joint Session of Congress on Thursday, September 8th and challenge our nation’s leaders to start focusing 100% of their attention on doing whatever they can to help the American people.”

What was this childish stunt all about? Nobody really knows, but Allahpundit gauges the Left’s predictable reaction:

Coming soon to a left-wing blog near you: “He caved again.”

It’s as if the administration, unwilling to fight for anything important — or too politically weak to win any important fight — with the Republicans, decided to fight for something trivial. And the fact that they lost even this juvenile pissing match will only further erode the presidential image.

Which means it’s time for the liberal media to produce another story about how dumb Republicans are.

Iowa Conspiracy Theory

Posted on Comments

Two different people sent me this photo:

This photo — showing Texas Gov. Rick Perry talking to Ken Crow — was taken Saturday by Lisa Krantz of the San Antonio News-Express at a Polk County (Iowa) GOP fundraising event in Des Moines.

Crow is the president and founder of the Tea Party group that is hosting this weekend’s Indianola rally with Sarah Palin. In discussing the controversy surrounding that event, I mentioned earlier one friend’s conspiracy theory that Perry’s campaign was secretly orchestrating that controversy to undermine Palin. One of the people who sent me this photo included an e-mail comment:

This guy Crow has to be doing this all on purpose, for one reason: to make Palin look bad, for the benefit of someone who wants to make Palin look bad.
Remember: if they can make the narrative “Tea Party Woman=Christine O’Donnell=Sarah Palin” stick, then who wins? Rick Perry.

Way too far-fetched for my tastes. Is Team Perry really so crafty that, months in advance, they would dispatch a clandestine operative to insinuate himself among Iowa Tea Party activists, persuade them to invite Palin to a big rally, and then wreck the whole thing on purpose just to make Palin look bad?

Well, I don’t believe it — although some very intelligent people do believe it — yet I pass this along just to illustrate what kind of bad vibes have resulted from this disorganized Indianola situation.

UPDATE: Want some more paranoia?

The guy who supposedly put the hook in to get O’Donnell booted off the Indianola rally was Palin chief of staff Michael Glassner. Here’s his biography — total GOP Establishment guy, worked 15 years for Bob Dole.

Make of this what you will.

No Honor Among Thieves, No Curiosity Among Journalists: Perez Hilton Re-Pirates Video, CBS News Repeats Smear

Posted on Comments

The piracy of my video and the smearing of Michele Bachmann continue, despite my having done two posts — here and here — explaining the true story. Here is a screen-cap from Perez Hilton’s site, showing that he downloaded and re-uploaded the pirated/edited “Who likes white people?” video, imprinting it with his own watermark:

Look closely, and you’ll see that Perez’s re-pirated version had already gotten more than 30,000 views (the screen-cap was done at about 8 p.m. ET today) which is of course in addition to the many thousands who had viewed the first ripoff/smear version at the “On Knees” anti-Christian blog. But wait — it gets better:

Yeah — Michelle Castillo of CBS News (!!) made this smear job the No. 1 selection in “Top 5 Viral Videos of the Week.” You can skip ahead to about the 40-second mark of the video:

Castillo writes:

Everything that comes out of Michele Bachmann’s mouth is gold. A new video has her asking a crowd of people, “Who likes white people?” It doesn’t make any sense, so many explanations are surfacing from “White People Soul Power” being the band that played before, to the fact it was raining and Bachmann is asking about “wet” people.

What about the explanation “surfacing” from the guy who was there with the video camera, huh? But never mind that now. Before I continue excoriating Castillo and CBS News specifically, let me say that I have no earthly idea who originated this bizarre supposition that Bachmann was referring to the name of a band. She actually said, “Who likes wet people?” — a joking reference to the fact that it had been raining all day at the Aug. 5 Christian music festival — and there was no band performing with “White” in its name.

Because here is the weird thing: The lineup for the entire concert is online! Bachmann had been scheduled to be there about 6 p.m. but ran late, and so she didn’t speak until after 8 p.m., following Tim Cooper & Friends on the main stage. I know this because I was at the festival to cover Bachmann’s appearance, but it doesn’t take Woodward and Bernstein investigative reporting skills to discover, on the Spirit Midwest Ministries site, under a tab labeled “news,” that their media contact person is Julie Barnes, whose phone number is 515-577-8035.

So any reporter who had seen that silliness about the “White People Soul Power Band” — c’mon, really? I mean, really? — could have spent less than five minutes online, learned that there was no such band at that festival, and called the festival’s promoters to ask them the blindingly obvious question: “Did Michelle Bachmann actually say that stuff about ‘white people’?”

Evidently, however, Michelle Castillo of CBS News doesn’t know how to do a Google search, or browse a Web site, or pick up a fucking phone — what a brilliant journalistic innovation that would be — and call Bachmann campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart (whose contact information is not top secret) and ask her what this is all about.

No, not at all. But please notice this curious fact:

Yeah, the time-stamp: “6:44 p.m. Aug. 30,” by which time Chris Moody’s accurate post at Yahoo News — identifying my video as the source from which the pirated/edited smear video was stolen — had been a top item at Memeorandum for more than 24 hours!

But wait, it gets better, because here are my two posts on this topic:

  1. Monday Aug. 29, 9:10 p.m. — MY VIDEO of Michele Bachmann’s Christian Testimony Used in SMEAR JOB
  2. Tuesday, Aug. 30, 10:58 a.m. — Lowlife Who Pirated My Video Apologizes for Smearing Michele Bachmann

If Michelle Castillo has the advanced journalistic skills necessary to click that second link, she will discover that, when informed that his copyright infringement was the subject of contemplated legal action, the video pirate had published an apology and deleted the video from his YouTube channel early this morning, more than 12 hours before Castillo included his piracy as the No. 1 selection in the CBS News “Top 5 Viral Videos of the Week.”  

As a veteran of 25 years in the news business, I promise you that if I were Michelle Castillo’s boss, I’d have several choice words to say to her, the mildest of which would be, “YOU’RE FIRED!”

And I’ll have a few more things to say about the egregious incompetence being practiced by the mainstream media in regard to this story, but first I’ve got to call my lawyer. CBS is going to be getting a letter from my lawyer P.D.Q., and if Michelle Castillo is not instantly terminated for this astonishingly shoddy excuse for journalism, I’d be greatly surprised.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! As for the Professor’s remark about funding my retirement, it may take years of expensive litigation to force the thievish scoundrels to pay up, and in the meantime I’ve got bills to pay, so please hit the freaking tip jar.





UPDATE II: Linked by Bob Belevedere at The Camp of the Saints — thanks!

Just got off the phone with my lawyer, who was finishing up the demand letter to Perez Hilton, whose site has a statement about their willingness to protect the intellectual property of others, with contact information for complaining about copyright violation.

In such letters, it is customary to demand that a retraction/apology be published with the same prominence as the original item about which complaint is made. But having included pirated video in their “Top 5 Viral Videos” round-up, what will CBS News do?

Besides firing Michelle Castillo, I mean . . .

UPDATE III: Thanks to Dana Loesch at Big Journalism for this link to a corrective video by our friends at the Media Research Center:

See? That’s what’s called “fair use” — employing a brief clip from my video in pursuit of truth, as opposed to recycling the pirated ripoff smear video in pursuit of a lie, which is what CBS News has done without even the slightest suggestion of effort toward what lawyers call “due diligence.” (Take notes, kids, this could be on the final exam.)

Meanwhile, our fellow fedora-wearer Ed Driscoll takes a walk down Memory Lane, to that long-ago era when Ken Layne was interested in truth.

UPDATE IV: Maetenloch at Ace of Spades HQ:

Even though it wasn’t what she said and made no sense in context, Ken Layne of Wonkette ran with it proclaiming Bachmann to be a crazy racist. But when it was shown to be a blatant hoax (with the original poster apologizing) he refused to make any corrections and has doubled down on the snark.

Now, I think some people may be misunderstanding my end of this situation. Bachmann is the one with the case for defamation, and that’s her business. My lawyer is pursuing action for copyright infringement, and you see how — with the pirated/edited video having been re-uploaded by Perez Hilton and recycled by CBS News — the original pirate set in motion a chain of events that is now beyond his control.

Already, I’ve seen at least two other versions of the pirate’s ripoff version re-uploaded to other YouTube accounts. (My lawyer is sending takedown notices as quickly as time permits.) Evidently, people do this kind of stuff — re-uploading ripoff videos — all the time, seeking to gain extra views to their YouTube accounts through online thievery.

The YouTube pirates may be doing this in ignorance of copyright law. Ignorance of the law is no defense, of course, but in most cases the original copyright owner is a big commercial enertainment outfit — Time/Warner for example — and once the pirated video is deleted from YouTube, their interest in the pirate ends.

In my particular case? Not so much.

“Good Lord these people are stupid.” You can say that again, brother. This left-wing anti-Christian jackwagon ripped me off and dishonestly edited my video to create a false smear against Michelle Bachmann, an honorable member of Congress, deserving of admiration and respect. The pirated smear video was then posted at numerous Web sites, recycled by other pirates, and included as the top item in a “viral video” roundup by a major news organization.

Dude.

I rattled the tip jar to get enough money to travel to Iowa to cover the campaign leading up to the Ames Straw Poll. I stood in the rain and mud at that festival to get video of Bachmann’s Christian testimony. And you’re going to take my hard work, funded through contributions from my loyal readers, hijack it and pervert it into a vicious smear?

Don’t you see what an overwhelming incentive I have to extract the maximum legal penalty from your sorry ass? And don’t you know that there are many thousands of people — including some very shrewd lawyers — who have been waiting many years for just such an opportunity as this, with some anonymous blog-pest like you caught red-handed in undeniable wrongdoing?

You had better pray God will have mercy on you.

Because my lawyers sure as hell won’t.

UPDATE V: Linked by Donald Douglas at American Power — thanks!

UPDATE VI: Mike at Cold Fury mentions the “fake but accurate” standard that CBS made infamous.


Lowlife Who Pirated My Video Apologizes for Smearing Michele Bachmann

Posted on Comments

Nothing like an attorney’s letter to produce contrition:

I want to apologize for misusing Stacey Robert McCain’s original video . . . I was angry so I decided to take Mrs. Bachmann’s line out of context to make her seem more overtly racist in light of her recent signing of that Iowa marriage pledge that said black children were better off under slavery than in Obama’s America. Whether or not I dislike Michele Bachmann, it wasn’t right to deliver a dishonest blow like that. I wanted to apologize to Mr. McCain and all of you directly. . . .
I have removed the video from my Youtube channel.

My attorney is considering what further action will be necessary, and I have contacted the Bachmann campaign. There are two injured parties, you see. This “On Knees” blogger’s claim that his misleading distortion of Bachmann’s speech was retaliation for her having signed the Iowa marriage pledge is rather interesting in terms of demonstrating malice. But Bachmann’s potential claim for libelous defamation is irrelevant to my potential claim of copyright infringement in having my video pirated for such a purpose.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!


MY VIDEO of Michele Bachmann’s Christian Testimony Used in SMEAR JOB

Posted on Comments

This is so shocking I don’t know how to begin to describe it. Regular readers will recall that on Friday, Aug. 5, I covered an appearance by Michele Bachmann at the Spirit Midwest Christian Music Festival in West Des Moines, Iowa. It had been raining all afternoon before Bachmann arrived and gave her Christian testimony, which I recorded on video and posted the next day.

Some vicious monster ripped off my video and edited it, so that when Bachmann begins by jokingly asking the crowd, “Who likes wet people?” — because everybody was soaked to the bone, including me — instead there is a caption, “Who likes white people?”

Ken Layne of Wonkette then spread that smear all around the Internet.

Thank goodness, Chris Moody of Yahoo News spotted the lie and posted the truth.

Now, who do I sue for copyright infringement, piracy and fraud?

UPDATE: Linked by Da Tech Guy, by Eternity Matters and by Lisa Graas at The American Catholic and welcome, Instapundit readers! I’ve also written this up at Right Wing News and cross-posted at the Hot Air Green Room, concluding:

[A]fter I learned that my video had been stolen and misused for such a defamatory purpose, I put up a blog post denouncing the smear, and sent an e-mail to the anonymous proprietor of the “On Knees” Web site. He then deleted his first lie and substituted another vicious smear as a “correction.” But his pirated and re-edited version of my video — a clear violation of my copyright, and of YouTube’s terms of service agreement — is still online. I have spoken to an attorney and fully intend that the perpetrator of this crime will be brought to justice.

And I want the creep who did this to understand that he has just forfeited whatever legal right he had to anonymity. In pursuit of legal action, my attorney informs me, we can subpoena YouTube to get the actual name of this pseudonymous monster, who has made the mistake of picking the wrong dude to rip off in pursuit of his vile purposes.

By the way, Bachmann’s campaign manager is Ed Rollins, a guy who isn’t likely to take this kind of crap too kindly, either.

UPDATE II: Linked by Roxeanne de Luca and by Joy McCann at the Conservatory — thanks!

UPDATE III: Linked by Duane Lester at All American Blogger and by Bob Belvedere at The Camp of the Saints — thanks!

UPDATE IV: Lowlife Who Pirated My Video Apologizes for Smearing Michele Bachmann — we’ll see what my attorney says about this.

Linked at Pirate’s Cove — thanks!


‘Self-Appointed Republican Elites’

Posted on Comments

Nothing says “grassroots populism” quite like a column in Politico:

A wave of fear has come over Washington — and it’s not the earthquake or the hurricane. Self-appointed Republican elites, fretting Hill Republicans and left-wing carnival barkers all have one thing in common: Perryphobia.
It’s an acute condition, with different manifestations. But it has the same root cause – arrogance toward Texas Gov. Rick Perry. . . .

A list of “Perryphobia” sufferers ensues and then . . .

Finally, and this is my personal favorite, we have those self-appointed Republican elites. You know the type: they wear the Adam Smith tie; yammer at us on FOX News all day; read the Journal with devotional religious fervor; skip church to watch “Meet the Press,” and make their living off the generosity of people they secretly look down on with benevolent disdain.

OK, so let’s skip down to the Politico columnist’s bio blurb:

Curt Anderson is a Republican strategist and a partner at OnMessage Inc., a GOP media and polling firm.

Anderson’s polling/PR/strategy firm is based inside the Beltway, in Alexandria, Virginia, and lists among its clients the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican Governors Association. Anderson is former political director of the RNC, worked on the Bush-Cheney campaigns in 2000 and 2004, and also worked on Mitt Romney’s 2008 campaign.  

So if you’re looking for a grassroots anti-elitist who courageously stands up to the GOP Establishment, then obviously Curt Anderson’s your man.

Professional Republican consultants: Vox populi, vox dei.


Are You Smelling What He’s Stepping In?

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

The mighty Iowahawk:
The Politico link has some follow-up:

Kay Henderson has more on this, emphasis mine:

Another reporter pressed the issue, asking if Perry believes Medicare is “unconstitutional” as well.

“I never said it was unconstitutional,” Perry said. “I look at Medicare just like I look at Social Security. They’re programs that aren’t working and we ought to have a national conversation about it. You know, those that have said I’ve said they’re unconstitutional — I’m going to have them read the book. That’s not what I said.”

In his book, Perry called Social Security something akin to a “bad disease” that was created “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

The whole episode underscores how difficult “Fed Up!,” which strongly favors states’ rights and is getting picked over by reporters and opposition researchers alike, will be for Perry to explain on the trail.

Discussions of major changes to Social Security are alarming to seniors, and while there hasn’t yet been public polling data on how the “Ponzi scheme” point plays in Florida, there likely will be.

For Perry, saying a version of “that’s not what I said” is unlikely to do the trick.

I’ll grant our over-reaching federal government this much nuance: these leech-like socialist programs are legal, insofar as legislation was excreted, signed into law, and has passed SCOTUS muster when brought up for review.

Past that, it’s long since time that we call the bluff on the Ruling Class cretins. The unicorn math doesn’t work outside the Beltway. The more Perry tells the truth, the more he paves the way for truth to leak into the settling pond of our current political discourse. (Readers who have been to Kandahar know what I mean.)

This blog strongly approves of any candidates with the guts to call ‘nonsense’ on the steaming pile of unsustainable crap comprised of our federal entitlement programs.

The interesting question raised by the Politico article is whether the Boomers are sufficiently enslaved by entitlements. Are they indoctrinated into beliefs about ‘rights’ to Social Security and Medicare that have become velvet handcuffs over time, so that the Boomers can be manipulated into turning against a candidate like a Perry, or a Cain, or a Santorum, who has the courage to speak the truth? I wish that ideas of liberty and American Exceptionalism were sufficiently strong to make that a silly question, but they are not.

O’Rourke famously noted that 2010 was not an election; it was a restraining order. 2012, therefore, will be liberty on trial, prosecuted by a Progressive werewolf in bespoke and Gucchis. Will conservatives rally around a McCotter, or even Palin? Or will they be deceived and support Romney, whose hair is perfect?

In Fairness to Ace …

Posted on Comments

. . . having decided to side with Pamela Geller in her dispute with Ace over Rick Perry, I am nevertheless obliged to say Pamela struck a low blow in blogging about her allegation that Ace publicly referred to her (offline and in person) as “Atlas Juggs.”

Ace strenuously denies this.

In general, ladies: Don’t ever do that to a guy. And by “that,” I mean casually slinging accusations of sexual harassment. You can file a lawsuit or call the cops or have your boyfriend punch somebody in the nose, but whatever you do, don’t use such accusations as a weapon of personal revenge. I very much empathize with Ace’s indignation at having his character impugned. No argument over mere politics is worth that kind of bad mojo.

It’s bad enough to have my friends at war with one another. It’s worse when they make it personal. Nobody ever asks my advice about this stuff, and nobody ever listens to my advice when I volunteer it, so I cannot be blamed for anyone’s errors but my own.

As to the present unpleasantness, I blame Rick Perry.

Or maybe Grover Norquist.

UPDATE: But having said that . . . I talked to both Ace and Pamela about this fight, and don’t know what can be done to end it. The problem is that someone seems to have issued a Prime Directive: Destroy any conservative who criticizes Rick Perry.

I exaggerate only slightly. There is a lot of pressure being brought against Perry’s critics. The governor of Texas is being sold as All That and a Stack of Pancakes, and anyone who isn’t buying the product is automatically accused of disloyalty or bad judgment.

There have been only a comparative handful of people in the conservative blogosphere — Michelle Malkin’s name leads the list — who have criticized Perry, and you might think that Team Perry would be content to ignore the criticism. But they seem very defensive, and this defensiveness results in harsh attacks on Perry’s critics. I’m sure Malkin was understating matters when she said she’s “gotten heat for not falling in line with the latest GOP bandwagon.”

Judging by the blowback I’ve gotten, I know how viciously personal the attacks can be. Like I said: Nobody ever asks my advice, so it’s not my fault what other people do.

Question: Who’s working on Perry’s campaign? Who are his consultants and top operatives? Because somebody needs to tell them to back the hell off.

UPDATE II: Lisa Graas adds her two cents, offering as the solution to the problem — you guessed, didn’t you? — Rick Santorum. And in all fairness, if what you want in a GOP candidate is a tough stance against the Religion of Peace, Santorum’s worth a look.