‘Media Mutters’ Declares War On Fox News

Not that Media Mutters had much credibility to begin with, but now what little it may have had as a media watchdog organization just got tossed out the window.

The Politico’s Ben Smith reports on MMFA’s dumpster-diving operation, in which the George Soros-funded organzation is conducting so-called opposition research on FNC personalities, reporters and producers. Also, MMFA is doing the same to several influential conservative blogs and websites as well.

MMFA’s David Brock describes it as a campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage.” In other words, they have declared war.

In an interview and a 2010 planning memo shared with POLITICO, Brock listed the fronts on which Media Matters — which he said is operating on a $10 million-plus annual budget — is working to chip away at Fox and its parent company, News Corp. They include its bread-and-butter distribution of embarrassing clips and attempts to rebut Fox points, as well as a series of under-the-radar tactics.

Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor.

We’ll take issue with Smith’s description of the campaign against Beck as successful. Why? Beck is still on the air. The alleged boycott has had all the effect of a fart in  the wind, to quote Ron Wolf.

The rest of this amounts to campaign of intimidation. In other words, silence yourself or we will ruin you.

Media Matters, [Media Matters Executive Vice President Ari Rabin-Havt] said, is also conducting “opposition research” on a dozen or so “mid- and senior-level execs and producers,” a campaign style move that he and Brock said would simply involve recording their public appearances and digging into public records associated with them.

And Brock’s 2010 planning memo offers a glimpse at Media Matters’ shift from media critic to a new species of political animal.

“Criticizing Fox News has nothing to do with criticizing the press,” its memo says. “Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”

Fox News is not the de facto leader of anything, let alone the Republican Party, any more than is Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or even Sarah Palin. It’s a news organization that makes an honest attempt to present something other than the Beltway spin and usual assortment of lefty views. There’s a clear dividing line between Fox News anchors such as Shepard Smith and its opinion based shows such as those hosted by Beck, Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.

Brock admits it’s sabotage. Webster’s Dictionary defines sabotage as:

1. destruction of an employer’s property (as tools or materials) or the hindering of manufacturing by discontented workers
2. destructive or obstructive action carried on by a civilian or enemy agent to hinder a nation’s war effort
3. a : an act or process tending to hamper or hurt b : deliberate subversion

None of that is the legitimate job of a media watchdog organization, but then MMFA is no more a media watchdog organization than PMSNBC is a news organization. It’s funded by the Left’s Dr. Evil, George Soros himself, with the goal of destroying the opposition. It’s now a de facto political organization and should be treated as such. They’ve even hooked up with MorOn.org in this campaign:

The group hired an executive from MoveOn.org to work on developing campaigns among News Corp. shareholders and also is looking for ways to turn regulators in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere against the network.

In other words, MMFA and MorOn.org are looking for ways to have the government suppress Fox News. So much for that thing called the First Amendment. Free speech for me, but not for thee.

Warner Todd Huston (via Fred at RDW) says:

[The Politico story] shows just how illegitimate, how low down, how filled with vitriol and hate its efforts to push George Sorros’ left-wing agenda is. Media Matters, you see, has quietly revamped its operations to go from mere media criticism to outright enemy and saboteur of Fox News. They are even going to far as to research the lives and financial holdings of even the lowliest Fox employees in order to “sabotage” Fox and to blackmail employees.

You Stay Classy, Lena Taylor

State Sen. Lena Taylor (U-Milwaukee) — “U” is for “Union” — continues to display a level of class not seen in most politicians. In other words, about as classy as placing whoopee cushions under the chairs at a formal dinner party.

From Patrick at Badger Blogger:

Undoing Light Bulb Mandates

House Republicans are trying to undo damage done in the past by attempting to repeal the federal ban on incandescent light bulbs.

Is the traditional 100-watt incandescent light bulb about to go the way of the Tyrannosaurus Rex?

Some Republicans on Capitol Hill hope not.

They want to overturn the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed by then-President George W. Bush. The law requires all 100-watt incandescent light bulbs to be almost 30-percent more energy efficient by Jan. 1, 2012.

Since that means higher production costs, manufacturers in America have stopped making the traditional bulbs. Some consumers have already started stockpiling the old-model bulbs, complaining that the replacements cast a unattractive light compared to the warmth of incandescent bulbs.

It’s not just light bulbs, as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) points out. It’s the Algore low-flush toilet — or terlet, if you are Archie Bunker. It’s your shower head. Your refrigerator. Your washing machine.

The Kentucky Republican began making the link between the personal, the political and the plumbing-related when he asked Kathleen Hogan, the DOE deputy assistant secretary on energy efficiency, “I was wondering if you’re pro-choice?”

“I’m pro-choice of bulbs,” Hogan responded.

“Actually, that’s the point,” Paul said, during an appliance efficiency hearing at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

“The point is that most members of your administration probably would be frank and characterize themselves — and upfront — as being pro-choice for abortion,” he said, “but you’re really anti-choice on every other consumer item.”

Paul continued on a string of attacks against federal regulations and labeled the lighting efficiency standards set by a 2007 energy law as just another government overreach.

“Light bulbs, refrigerators, toilets, you name it. You can’t go around your house without being told what to buy,” Paul said. “You restrict my purchases. You don’t care about my choices. You don’t care about the consumer.

“Frankly, my toilets don’t work in my house, and I blame you and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house,” Paul said. He added, “I find it insulting.

“I’m all for energy conservation but I wish you’d come here to extol me, to cajole me, to encourage,” he said. “But you come instead with fines [and] threats of jail.”

The Left is decidedly anti-choice when it comes to anything other than abortion on demand. Then, it’s “Hands off my body!”

The Left thinks you are too stupid to choose the “correct (as they see it)” light bulb, the “correct” toilet, the “correct” shower head, the “correct” refigerator, the “correct” washing machine. Heck, as evidenced by the First Yeti herself, Moochelle, they don’t think you are smart enough to make the “correct” decisions when it comes to feeding yourself.

Republicans had a hand in the light bulb fiasco. The ban was co-authored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and signed by El Presidente Bush. Now, Upton claims to have seen the light and admits he was mistaken. He was rewarded with being named chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

At least they are trying. Not that it will do much good with Democrats in control of the Senate and Our Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama in the White House.

We’ll have to wait until January 2013 to finish reversing this mistake.

Who Rules Wisconsin

Wisconsin native Jim Nolte has a piece up at Big Government about what is at stake in the April 5 elections. Will Wisconsin be ruled by the voters, who elected the government in November 2010, or by judges elected by powerful special interests whose sole responsibility will be to protect those special interests.

In other words, the Left is trying to undo the November 2010 election because the voters put people in power — namely Gov. Walker and Legislative Republicans — who won’t advance their agenda. They want the State Supreme Court to be able to overturn that election.

Nolte differentiates between the use of the federal courts to overturn ObamaCare and the use of the Wisconsin judicial system to overturn the election.

Had the federal government passed a law (in the best interest of the people, naturally) mandating that every household in America purchase a handgun and learn how to use it in order to protect themselves and in turn save the government money on police protection, that law would be a constitutional issue for the courts to decide in the exact same way ObamaCare — a real federal law requiring every American purchase health insurance — is also a constitutional issue. Regardless of your political persuasion, any intellectually honest individual understands that the government requiring an individual purchase something is exactly why our founders created a judicial branch. That’s what they’re there for. What they’re not there for, however, is to use judicial fiat to overturn an election. But that is exactly what the Left in Wisconsin is counting on happening just a few days from now on April 5th.

What 26 states are doing in the federal court system is to seek a ruling on the constitutionality of a federal mandate requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance. That is the role of the judiciary from a conservative perspective.

What the Left is trying to do in Wisconsin is overturn the results of last November’s election through the use of the state courts. In other words, should Justice David Prosser be defeated on April 5, the liberals will have a 4-3 majority on the state’s highest court and as such would be able to block every effort by Walker and the Republicans to reform state government. Good-bye, conceal-carry. Good-bye, Photo ID at the polls. Good-bye, any meaningful attempt to reduce state spending. And so on.

Nolte goes into how the Left is spreading the lie that the budget repair bill is an attack on workers’ rights.

By far, though, the most controversial and necessary part of the bill is the stripping away of public employee collective bargaining rights in all matters other than wages. Opponents say collective bargaining has nothing to do with the budget, that it’s just an attack on workers’ rights.

That’s a lie.

It is a lie. Why? Because even federal workers don’t have those rights. What the process amounts to is legalized extortion and money laundering. Here’s how it works:

You have a gummint union thug on one side of the table and a politician bought and paid for by the union thug on the other side of the table. Notice who is not represented: the taxpayer/gummint union worker. The union thug extorts money from the union worker through forced union dues that are automatically deducted from their paychecks. You have the politician who has access to money extorted from taxpayers in the form of taxes. The politician gives the tax money to the union thug in the form of generous salaries and benefits, while the union thug gives his money from workers’ dues to the politician in the form of campaign contributions, thus keeping the politician in office and beholden to the union and obligated to doing Da Union’s bidding.

Read the rest of it. It goes on to detail why the current collective bargaining process is bankrupting states, why the Obama Regime is involved (hint: Der Fuhrer needs Wisconsin in 2012 and as such needs that free flow of mandatory-collected union dues into his coffers), why the Left and Big Gummint Unions are afraid of Walker’s agenda and how the April 5 election plays into all of this, including the dirty tricks the Left is using in its attempt to steal a Supreme Court seat in its efforts to thwart the will of the people.

Over the next few days, I will break this article up into sections and offer some thoughts and insight on each part of it.

The entire piece is worth the read. It reminds us of what is at stake in nine days.

Attacks On Parenthood

One of the passions of the Left is the continuing assaults on the idea of fatherhood and motherhood over the past four decades.

It started with the concept from the 1960s that a father could be replaced by a government welfare check. The attack on fathers continued through the media, as virtually all positive role models for fathers disappeared. As if the entertainment industry wanted to reinforce the Left’s view that men were not needed as husbands and fathers. From the likes of Ward Cleaver, Jim Anderson and Mike Brady on TV in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s to Cliff Huxtable and Jason Seaver in the 1980s, Americans saw positive images of Dad on TV. Now where are they? Gone. At best, Dad is an idiot. A moron. If he’s even there. Sorry, but Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin are not positive role models for a father.

It continued with the assault from the Feminazis that men were nothing more than predators — remember the campus campaign from the 1990s that all men were potential rapists? — and that any woman who chose to stay at home and be a wife and mother was somehow not a real woman, that a real woman could have it all, especially a career. That meant, of course, putting children in day care — preferably government funded — to be raised by strangers with the values of those strangers — again, preferably government bureaucrats.

Not content to destroy men, the Feminazis also attacked women who chose the traditional role of wife and mother. Especially the latter. We have attacks on women who dress and behave like, well, women. We have attacks on women who choose to have children. Somehow, women who chose to stay home and raise children were somehow traitors to their gender and inferior to those who chose a career. Breaking news: being a parent — mother or father — is a full-time job unto itself.

Never mind the other attacks on gender identity, the idiotic notion that somehow boys and girls were the same and that if we got girls to play with trucks and G.I. Joes and play football and got boys to play with dolls, things would be better. What did we wind up with? A generation of women under 30 acting and behaving like men and the same generation of men that aren’t very masculine and refuse to lead, not to mention the freaks known as the transgendered — men who want to be women and vice versa.

Now, we have this piece from Virginia Postrel in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “‘Mommy Track’ Without Shame,” as if there should be any shame in choosing to be a mother. But that’s what two generations of girls have been told, that there is something inherently wrong with them if they want to be mothers. It may also provide a partial explanation of why we have girls and young women giving birth yet showing little if any maternal instincts.

Says The Other McCain’s Smitty:

I submit that the real problem here is that women are fed a logical OR here: motherhood OR career. This is steeped in falsehood. Motherhood IS a career, and anyone who’d condescend toward my mother for raising three well-adjusted children has outed him- or herself as a godforsaken fool.
Furthermore, I’d assert without proof that those saying that parenthood in general and motherhood in particular are somehow worth less than materialistic career pursuits:

• are directly responsible to the cratering of the birthrate,
• hasten the insolvency of the bogus social welfare programs they espouse,
• are among the least happy members of the Brave New World they’ve created,
• systematically project their failure on conservatives,
• foam at the mouth when they hear the name “Sarah Palin”.

Kasich, Too, Moves Against Gummint Unions

Following the lead of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Ohio Gov. John Kasich is also moving to eliminate the ability of public sector unions to extort money from taxpayers and launder it to friendly politicians.

And Kasich’s actions will limit gummint unions even more so than in Wisconsin.

From The Architect himself, Karl Rove:

Under the Ohio bill, government workers can only bargain for pay increases based on merit and performance, not years of service. Wisconsin’s law allows workers to negotiate wage increases on seniority, but it limits increases to inflation. Anything more would require voter approval.

Ohio would limit bargaining on health insurance and reduce sick leave and holidays to what’s allowed for nonunion government employees. Wisconsin has no similar provision.

Public employees in Ohio wouldn’t be able to negotiate on hours, discipline issues, transfers, equipment and outsourcing of services, staffing levels, and teacher-student ratios—all areas Wisconsin’s law doesn’t address. Police, firefighters and other public safety personnel would be covered by Ohio’s law. They are exempt in Wisconsin.

Ohio also ends binding arbitration to settle contract disputes. Unions like arbitration because it takes power away from elected legislatures, city councils and country commissions. Wisconsin allows binding arbitration for local and county employees.

Finally, Ohio would broaden its current ban on strikes by police and firefighters to cover all government workers—as is already the case in Wisconsin.

It’s about time. This combination of legalized extortion and money laundering has gone on far too long. The process as it currently exists prevents the person actually paying the bill from having a seat at the table and a voice in the process: the taxpayer, You have on one side of the table the gummint union thug, extorting money from the membership under forced payment of dues automatically withheld from paychecks. On the other side, you have the politician, bought and paid for by the union thug on the other side of the table. He has at his disposal the money collected extorted from the taxpayers. The politician generously gives the tax dollars to the union thug in the forms of more generous salaries and benefits, while the union thug redistributes the money extorted from his members to the politician in the form of campaign donations to stay in an office to which he is now beholden to the union thug to do his bidding.

Extortion. Money laundering. And elected officials like Scott Walker and John Kasich want to put an end to it.

More Attacks On … Girl Scouts?

Apparently more and more cranky citizens are lighting fires under the jackbooted thugs that are many gummint bureaucrats in attempts to shut down sales of Girl Scout cookies.

Now it’s Hazelwood, Mo., that is attempting to shut down sales of Girl Scout cookies using a zoning ordinance prohibiting sales from homes.

HAZELWOOD, Mo. (KMOX/al-AP) – The city of Hazelwood says they do support the Girl Scouts but not when they are violating the home occupancy code.

They’d been warned, but the city says the Girl Scouts Abigail and Caitlin Mills continued to sell Girl Scout cookies from a stand in front of their home. A neighbor complained anonymously because of all the people and the traffic and the dogs barking at all the people and the traffic.

“Based on this complaint, the city of Hazelwood had to take action,” says spokesman Tim Davidson. He says it is also against city code to sell products from home.

And while he has heard some complaints from residents that Hazelwood is being too harsh on the teens, Davidson says others have pointed out that one tenet of the Girl Scouts is good citizenship.

“The fact that we did have this code in place, it’s the responsibility of every good citizen to respect the laws that we have,” said Davidson.

Using the bureaucrat’s logic, that means products such as Avon and Pampered Chef are illegal because they are sold from homes. It’s the same twisted logic that the government uses to demand the right to regulate and even prohibit rummage sales — and yes, tax them. Nothing can take place without the sanction of the Almighty Bureaucracy. With the required licenses and permits, of course. Government can’t do without its extortion money.

We see attacks like that made all too frequently on something as innocent as kids running a lemonade stand. Shut down by bullying bureaucrats under a myriad of regulations.

The sanctimonious Davidson lectures the kids about the responsibility of a good citizen. Someone needs to remind him, as well as the other bullying bureaucrats and cheap, two-bit thugs who run bureaucracies everywhere just for whom they work. They are public servants, not public masters.

Besides, isn’t the Left particularly fond of civil disobedience? I hope the girls continue to sell their cookies.

As we wrote here:

Say “Sieg Heil!” to the nice people.

Caliph Obama

The latest Day By Day cartoon from Chris Muir:

Obama Akbar!

 

New Union Thug Intimidation Tactics

Check out the latest intimitdation tactics practiced by union thugs at an appearance by Gov. Walker: videotaping of Walker supporters.

Yes, unionistas are videotaping. This may be the first step in setting up counter-intelligence databases to be used against Americans citizens based on their political inclinations. How does this all work? First, a few feckless law enforcement folks will have to illegally access the Wisconsin DMV for the names and home addresses of these drivers. Then using a reverse address directory, the unionistas will get access to landline phone numbers, followed by a quick look at a public campaign databases, which will yield the amounts of their political contributions. With this much information, a good opposition security search could easily access property tax records, arrest records, credit reports, children’s names and ages, employers’ names, and in many cases, social security numbers.

There are no limits to the nasty financial mayhem that could be brought against these GOP attendees. Of course, blackmail and extortion are the well-worn tools of the union movement. Old school union tactics usually meant slashing tires; these new school unionista’s know that messing up your credit, boycotting your employer, and reducing your ability to find another job would be just as effective as sending a goon with a baseball bat to break a few windows.

Really, would any of this surprise anyone on our side if it started happening? To any of us who oppose the Obama Regime?

Kloppenburg Doubles Down On A Smear

Apparently Joanne Kloppenburg has no problem with one of her supporters putting our false, defamatory information about her opponent, State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser.

Via Charlie Sykes, Kloppenburg refused to denounce the Greater Wisconsin Committee’s smear in Friday night’s debate with Prosser, a story we wrote about here.

Prosser asked Kloppenburg to call for the ad to be taken down. She declined to do so.

“It’s not my ad,” Kloppenburg said. “Like it or not, third parties have a First Amendment right to run ads of their own choosing.”

The ad by the liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee cites Prosser’s decision as Outagamie County district attorney in 1978 not to prosecute Father John Patrick Feeney after hearing allegations Feeney had molested boys. Feeney was convicted in 2004 of sexually abusing one of the boys and attempting to sexually abuse the other.

Prosser called the ad despicable and said it lies about what happened. He implied during the debate that he was considering legal action against the group. Afterward, he said he was “absolutely” thinking of doing so.

“There are statements that are highly misleading and put me in a false light,” he said. The ad also includes “an outright, objective lie, and it’s inexcusable.”

During the debate, he said: “It is false factually. It is malicious beyond belief. It is the worst ad we can think of that has ever been run in a judicial campaign.”

Some background on the ad:

While serving as Outagamie County, Prosser deferred prosecution of a Catholic priest accused of sexually molesting two young boys over concerns over the emotional trauma of making the boys testify in open court and the promise of the Green Bay Archdiocese that internal disciplinary steps would be taken against the priest.

Eventually the priest, Father John Patrick Feeney, was convicted on similar charges and sent to prison with testimony from both victims as adults and with assistance from Prosser.

The Sentinel Journal’s Patrick McIlheran says the best way to counter the smear is to tell the truth.

The anti-Prosser ad appears to be wrong or misleading on several points – it says he told police not to investigate when in fact they’d done so; it implies Prosser knew the priest had a long history of abuse, something that didn’t come to light until decades later – but the Greater Wisconsin Committee ought to be free to put its low, edge-of-dishonest argument on the air. The cure for such stuff is truth, such as (Troy) Merryfield has offered in response.

That truth – that Prosser acted correctly on what information was available in 1979 – can be the standard by which voters judge the anti-Prosser case.

Troy Merryfield was one of Feeney’s 1979 victims. He has spoken out with a letter demanding that the GWC pull the sleazy ad and defending Prosser’s actions.

Merryfield’s brother issues a statement in defense of his brother here.

Patrick at Badger Blogger calls it: “The hateful, vindictive, win-at-all-costs mentality of Liberalism.”