The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

MSNBC: The Network America Turns to for Irresponsible Speculation About News

Posted on | April 14, 2013 | 50 Comments

You can call Chris Matthews anything you want — “dimwitted political hack” would be entirely appropriate — but please don’t insult an entire profession by calling Chris Matthews a “journalist.”

On March 30, Kaufman County, Texas, district attorney Mike McLelland and his wife were shot to death at their home. Five days later, Chris Matthews invited Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center onto MSNBC to promote speculation that McLelland’s murder was committed by the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.

In other words, the important thing about this crime — the thing that made it worth eight minutes of national network air time — was that it gave Chris Matthews a chance to stoke the paranoia of MSNBC viewers with the bogeyman specter of dangerously violent racists who (as all MSNBC viewers know) are the core constituency of the Republican Party.

Fast-forward 11 days, and Chris Matthews is completely discredited by the latest headlines:

What? It wasn’t scary white supremacists highlighted in an eight-minute MSNBC segment? Nobody that Mark Potok warned us about? Not even a Tea Party member? No, a disgraced lawyer with a personal grudge:

A former justice of the peace who had been prosecuted for stealing computers was arrested Saturday on charges of sending threatening e-mails to officials in Kaufman County, Texas. Authorities are reportedly prepared to charge disgraced lawyer Eric Lyle Williams, 46, with three murders that had inflamed fears that members of a white supremacist prison gang were targeting law enforcement officials.
Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia McLelland, 65, were shot to death two weeks ago at their home, two months after Assistant District Attorney Mark E. Hasse, 57, was shot to death in a parking lot near the county courthouse. Haase had prosecuted Williams last year, and McLelland had told investigators that they should focus on Williams as a suspect in Haase’s murder.
Williams’s law license was suspended after he was convicted of the theft charges. He was arrested early Saturday and is being held in the Kaufman County jail on $3 million bond. Williams will be charged with three counts of capital murder, Dallas CBS affiliate KTVT reported, citing unnamed sources. . . .

Read the whole thing at Viral Read, and don’t ever try to tell me that Chris Matthews is a “journalist.” That’s an insult.

UPDATE: KFAA-TV in Houston reports the latest news that MSNBC and Chris Matthews will ignore:

News 8 has learned that 20 weapons were recovered from a unit at a Seagoville self-storage locker in connection with the unsolved Kaufman County murders.
Sources said the locker had been rented on behalf of former Kaufman County Justice of the Peace Eric Williams, who is curently jailed on unrelated charges.
A source tells News 8 federal investigators are conducting ballistics tests on the weapons, which are similar to those used to kill Kaufman County prosecutor Mark Hasse on January 31 and District Attorney Mike McClelland and his wife Cynthia, who were found dead at their home on March 30.
Sources said investigators also seized a Ford Crown Victoria sedan from the storage facility that was allegedly purchased by Williams back in February under a false name.
Sources said they have surveillance video of that vehicle driving into and out of the McLellands’ neighborhood on the day they were slain.

Remember: Murders are only important to MSNBC when they can be exploited to advance a political agenda.

Chris Matthews won’t say another word about this case — unless it can be proven that Eric Williams is a Republican.

UPDATE II: Ed Driscoll quotes Buffalo Springfield (a rock band from the Sixties, in case you youngsters were wondering) and I believe the word for this is, “Heh”:

UPDATE III: Headline by Doug Hagin at Daley Gator:

MSNBC: When you want your
news completely fabricated

Patterico is on the story, which is now a Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE IV: Linked by Moe Lane — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

Meanwhile, I’ve added a new post: How the Left’s Online Meme Machine Helped Create a Murder Myth in Texas

 

 


Category: Crime, Media Bias, MSNBC, Texas

FMJRA 2.0: Sunday Morning Edition

Posted on | April 14, 2013 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Bill Schmalfeldt, Violentacrez, Barrett Brown and the Scourge of ‘Troll Rights’

E-Mail From a Former Maryland Resident to Howard County (Md.) State’s Attorney

‘Defeat? I Do Not Recognize the Meaning of the Word!’ Margaret Thatcher, R.I.P.

Rule 5 Sunday: Super Double Coverage Illness Makeup Edition

Harassment Is Not Journalism

The Little Girl Was Kidnapped and Raped — Thank You, Governor Jerry Brown!

LIVE AT SIX: 04.08.13

LIVE AT SIX: 04.09.13

Homophobic Bigotry Update

A Great First Sentence

Holy Crap — I Was Right! Republicans Considered Craziness Issue With Judd

What ‘Choice’ Really Means

President Finally Unites Americans: Everybody Hates Obama’s Budget

Senate Slouching Toward Compromise

Dog Bites Man; Man Rapes Girl: Journalism and Other Crimes

Why Don’t We Just Go Ahead and Nuke Those Vicious Communist Bastards?

‘Democrat Ethics’

UC-Irvine English Lecturer Kaufman Demonstrates His Psychic Powers

LIVE AT SIXEIGHT: 04.12.13

The #Gosnell Horror Prompts Flashback to Bush Derangement Syndrome

Stop the Killing. Stop the Crying.

Anybody Else Starting to Suspect @AmandaMarcotte Eats Dead Babies?

Top linkers this week:

  1. Lonely Conservative (6)
  2. Lowering The Boom (5)

Lots of near-misses this week; perhaps next week the list will be longer.

Deadline to submit links for next week’s FMJRA (a necessity for those of you on Blogspot and other platforms WordPress hates) is Friday, April 19.

Category: FMJRA Award

The World’s Youngest Blogger’s Impression Of The Senate Trying To Pass Immigration Reform

Posted on | April 13, 2013 | 14 Comments

immigration_reform

“Isn’t this how they do it on Crapitol Hill?”

Category: World's Youngest Blogger

Anybody Else Starting to Suspect @AmandaMarcotte Eats Dead Babies?

Posted on | April 13, 2013 | 62 Comments

Just briefly noted last night that The Beast Who Wears Bangs had made an obnoxious fool of herself blaming pro-lifers for the heinous crimes of Kermit Gosnell, but even I didn’t really expect that she would be so eager to double down on bloodthirsty stupidity:

Man, the feeding frenzy over Gosnell is a sobering reminder of how much hatred there is out there towards women.
— @AmandaMarcotte, April 13

In this rhetorical formulation, the normal and expected reaction to pregnancy is to seek an abortion, so that “women” exist only insofar as they are defined by their right to abortion choice.

This conveniently defines out of existence any woman who is pro-life: To be a woman is to be pro-abortionchoice.

In this bizarre Manichean dualism, there are only (a) people who share Amanda Marcotte’s gruesome death-fetish for maximizing the number of abortions, and (b) people who hate women. Somehow, within her rigid worldview, she must rationalize headlines like this:

Abortionist Slit Necks Of Babies Born Alive
In Front Of Teenage Employee, Told Assistant,
“That’s What You Call A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off”

It is the attempt to rationalize such brutality — to think of themselves as humanitarian philanthropists for defending this cruelty — that makes Amanda Marcotte and her comrades so manifestly insane.

She sees dead babies and thinks “feeding frenzy“? As a Rorshach inkblot test, that result speaks volumes about Amanda Marcotte.

 


Category: Abortion

Because Satan Is a Yankees Fan

Posted on | April 13, 2013 | 4 Comments

The Orioles had two men on base and nobody out in the top of the 8th. The Yankees were leading 5-2, but the O’s had the tying run at bat and the count went to 3-and-2. And then something happened that had never happened in the entire history of Major League Baseball:

Triple plays of any kind are rare: The Yankees hadn’t turned one at home since 1968, and the O’s hadn’t hit into a triple play since 1996, but this particular sequence for a triple play had never occurred, period. ViralRead sports editor Jeff Gurner on the historic play:

By the way, if you were keeping score at home, you can mark that gem as a 4-6-5-6-5-3-4 in your books.

Damn Yankees!

 

Category: Sports

Stop the Killing. Stop the Crying.

Posted on | April 13, 2013 | 57 Comments

Trang Bang, South Vietnam, June 8, 1972 (Photo: Nick Ut, Associated Press)

Did I ever mention that I can’t stand to hear children cry? It’s rather odd, considering I’m a father of six, that I can’t stand the sound of a crying child. When my kids were babies, I’d take them for long walks, rocking them in my arms until they fell asleep, rather than hear them cry.

As they got older — and this was especially true with the twin boys, who would beat each other up for fun — my trick for dealing with this problem was to strike a pose of callous indifference to their pain: “Is it bleeding? Are there any broken bones? No? Then shut up or go to your room.”

The thought of my children actually being injured horrifies me, and seeing them suffer the inevitable dings and bruises of childhood — the stumble on the playground, the cut or scrape — was so traumatic that I can’t actually recall any specific incident. Evidently, I’ve blocked these psychic wounds from memory. And the fact that one of my sons is now a 20-year-old Army private in training to become a front-line warrior involves risks I prefer not to think about.

Ever.

All this is as a preamble to quoting Megan McArdle’s reflection on her admitted role in the media’s Gosnell blackout:

[T]he MSM has barely covered a story that could plausibly be named “The Trial of the Century”. And that demands explanation. So I’ll tell you why I haven’t covered it.
To start, it makes me ill. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read the grand jury inquiry. I am someone who cringes when I hear a description of a sprained ankle.
But I understand why my readers suspect me, and other pro-choice mainstream journalists, of being selective—of not wanting to cover the story because it showcased the ugliest possibilities of abortion rights. The truth is that most of us tend to be less interested in sick-making stories—if the sick-making was done by “our side.”
Of course, I’m not saying that I identify with criminal abortionists who kill infants and grievously wound their patients. But I am pro-choice.
What Gosnell did was not some inevitable result of legal abortion.

Except that it is, just as legal abortion is the inevitable result of the Contraceptive Culture, which was sanctioned by the “penumbras, formed by emanations” that Justice Douglas miraculously discovered in 1965, and if you are “someone who cringes when [you] hear a description of a sprained ankle,” you really ought to think about why these results are inevitable, including The Law of Large Numbers.

Having spent many years thinking this through, and unwilling to deliver a sermon on the topic, I am content to let others think through it for themselves, if only I could get them to pay attention to what is actually happening — “What ‘Choice’ Really Means” — and trace these horrors back to their philosophical and historical origins. Read more

Category: Abortion, Contraceptive Culture, Intellectuals, Media Bias

Like Freshman Orientation at Harvard

Posted on | April 13, 2013 | 2 Comments

Chilling images from inside
the mass indoctrination ceremonies
where communist ‘cult’ leaders
brainwash North Korea’s children

Category: Education, Intellectuals, North Korea

The #Gosnell Horror Prompts Flashback to Bush Derangement Syndrome

Posted on | April 12, 2013 | 24 Comments

As the feminists say: “Trigger alert!”

Wow! The communications director of Salon — their dismissive treatment of this horror turned into a talking-point on CNN where Erin Burnett helped make excuses for the dreadful Philadelphia baby-killer — suddenly erupts into a deranged Bush-bashing rage? On the same day that the story finally breaks through the orchestrated cone of silence?

Questions about why major news organizations were refusing to cover gruesome revelations in the trial of Philadelphia abortion clinic operator Dr. Kermit Gosnell finally boiled over today: A Washington Post health reporter told blogger Mollie Hemingway that Gosnell’s trial was a “local crime” story, not a matter of policy and Breitbart.com’s John Nolte posted a photo of empty seats in the reserved press section at Gosnell’s trial. Finally, Conor Friedersdorf, a writer for the liberal Atlantic Online published a column with the headline: “Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story.“

Read the rest, including the part about how Salon’s been losing money practically since the beginning of the Internet.

Meanwhile, you may remember that on Tuesday, I tried to get feminists to comment on this heinous homicidal butchery:

And you will perhaps be pleased to learn that Amanda Marcotte has finally commented on the Gosnell story — by blaming this baby-killing monster on pro-life conservatives!

You just can’t make this stuff up . . .

 


Category: Abortion, Media Bias
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