Politiks As Usual: In The News 8/20/12

'Solid South' No Longer Just All-Red Or All-Blue

Rick Santorum Says Biden Played The ‘Race Card’

Soledad O’Brien’s Progressive Nostalgia and the Collapse of CNN

Eight Arguments You've Probably Heard Against Mitt Romney

The Liberal Sisterhood of the Plundering Hacks

HuffPo Attacks Family Research Council as ‘Hate Group’ Even After Shooting

Peggy Noonan: If Biden Were Republican Meet the Press's Topic Would Be 'How Stupid Is This Person?'

Trump Fires Back at Obama Campaign Smear

Liberal 'Media Matters' Writer Calls SEALs Gutless for Criticizing Obama

DC Shooting: Evidence of Media Bias? 

Is PolitiFact Campaigning for Obama? 

Does Ryan Have a “Catholic Problem”?

John Sununu Takes Down Obamabot Soledad O’Brien Over Using Donald Trump 'Birtherism' Card: ‘Why Is CNN So Fixated On This?’

Mediaite.com:

Following a contentious opening segment on CNN’s Starting Point on Wednesday, former New Hampshire Governor and Romney surrogate John Sununu clashed with Soledad O’Brien over CNN’s Donald Trump coverage.


“Why the birther thing?” O’Brien questioned Sununu. “I don’t know,” Sununu shot back. “Why is CNN so fixated on this? Why don’t we talk about the jobs issue in this country?”


“Sure and we’ll get to that in a moment but let’s start with this,” O’Brien pressed.


“It’s CNN that wants to bring it up. I don’t want to bring it up. Mitt Romney made it clear that he believes that President Obama was born in the U.S. You had Donald Trump on last night. And now you are asking the question this morning. It’s CNN’s fixation,” Sununu responded sharply.


“You don’t think it’s a valid question of someone posing as a supporter/surrogate?” O’Brien countered.


“He’s a high level big funder. He’s talking about millions of dollars he’s thinking of donating. You don’t think it’s a big deal that person talks about the fact that the President of the United States is not a citizen of the country?”


“I think it’s equivalent an issue as Bill Maher, who gave a million dollars to President Obama talking with such a foul mouth about women,” Sununu explained. “But you can’t pick your supporters in this country.


The fact is that this country has a jobs problem and supporters of the President like CNN keep wanting to talk about other issues.”


O’Brien doggedly stuck to peppering Governor Sununu with questions relating to birtherism.


“Come on, let’s talk jobs,” Sununu said.


“Is that because you don’t want to talk about the fact that a major fund-raiser is a birther?” O’Brien asked.


“It’s not an issue,” Sununu argued. “There is nobody in the Romney campaign that believes that the president was not born in the United States.”


“So then how come someone doesn’t say, Donald Trump is wrong?” O’Brien pressed.


“Donald Trump is wrong,” Sununu acknowledged. “The President was born in the United States.”


“That may be the first time,” O’Brien grinned.


“No it isn’t, ma’am,” Sununu snapped. “It’s just because you don’t read enough.”

RELATED:  O’Reilly And Panel Clash Over Legitimacy Of Soledad O’Brien Asking About The ‘Stupid Birth Certificate’

Obamabot Soledad O'Brien Tries (And Fails) to Debunk Romney's Women Job Loss Claim

Newsbusters.org:

CNN's Soledad O'Brien once again tried to fact-check numbers she took issue with, and once more she failed to refute them. On Monday's Starting Point she took aim at Mitt Romney's claim that women have accounted for 92 percent of the job losses under President Obama.


"That would be a shocking number if it were true, which it really isn't exactly overall," O'Brien began. Yet even ABC's George Stephanopoulos admitted the report was "accurate."


O'Brien claimed that since the numbers were counted beginning with January 2009, they included a three-week hemorrhage of jobs before Obama's January 20th inauguration, and thus he was held accountable for jobs lost during Bush's administration.


However, even if the numbers accounted for this and began in February 2009, women still lost 484,000 jobs in Obama's term, compared with a net gain of 468,000 jobs for men. Thus under President Obama, beginning a few days into his presidency, women lost jobs overall while men gained nearly as many jobs. So while Soledad is trying to refute the "war on women" Obama is being blamed for, she isn't doing a very good job.


In addition, she stated that men lost more jobs in the recession than women and most of their losses occurred before 2009, and thus the numbers should have begun when the recession commenced in December of 2007. However, the Romney campaign was specifically counting job losses for Obama's term – which is not uncommon for judging a presidency – and Soledad could not refute it as false even though she tried.


O'Brien is no stranger to defending Obama. She made headlines for a spat with Breitbart editor Joel Pollak over Obama's connections with radical professor Derrick Bell, tried to deflect blame away from Obama toward President Bush as the "food stamp president," and challenged "The Obamas" author Jodi Kantor over her book's claims – but was refuted by her own network's reports.

RELATED: Stephanopoulos Agrees 92% Women Job Losses Statistic ‘Accurate’ After ABC’s World News Called It ‘Mostly False’

What’s the matter with Soledad O’Brien?

MichelleMalkin.com:

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien isn’t used to criticism. In the world of media elites, she’s a beloved figure and an award-winning news anchor. But last week, she revealed her true, decidedly non-neutral colors. And she’s not happy about the hoi polloi questioning her hallowed journalistic objectivity.


On Thursday, O’Brien interviewed Joel Pollak, editor-in-chief of the late Andrew Breitbart’s online empire. Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com released a 1991 video of Barack Obama (then a 30-year-old law student) at a Harvard rally embracing radical racialist Derrick Bell and his push for more aggressive race-based hiring at Harvard. Bell is a proponent of critical race theory (CRT), which posits that America remains a hopelessly racist country dominated by Jews and white supremacists.


O’Brien lost her cool when Pollak shed light on Bell’s fringe legal theories. Acting more like an Obama campaign surrogate than a disinterested host, she angrily jumped on Pollak’s mention of CRT. “That is a complete misreading of critical race theory,” she shrieked. “That’s an actual theory. You could Google it and some would give you a good definition. So that’s not correct!”


When viewers took to Twitter to pepper O’Brien with follow-up questions about critical race theory, the CNN star had a twit fit. She invited a liberal professor, Emory University’s Dorothy Brown, on her television show to back her up and then lashed out: “See? That was our critical race theory 101. Stop tweeting me. We have moved on, people.”


Not so fast, sister.


Turns out that O’Brien, a Harvard grad, has a rather emotional connection to Bell. As documented at my new Twitter curation/aggregation site Twitchy.com, O’Brien tweeted that it was a “rough day” for her when Bell passed away last fall. She wrote that she had “just started re-reading” one of his books and mourned again: “RIP Prof. Bell.” O’Brien also shared tributes to Bell from fellow Harvard prof and friend of Obama Charles Ogletree. That’s the same Professor Ogletree who bragged that he “hid” the Obama/Bell video during the 2008 campaign.


O’Brien failed to disclose her pro-Bell bias to viewers before her segments.


O’Brien also failed to disclose that the liberal prof who denied on her show that critical race theory had aaaaaanything to do with bashing America as a white supremacy-ruled government actually wrote the exact opposite. In one of her own books, Brown asserted that the purpose of CRT was to “highlight the ways in which the law is not neutral and objective, but designed to support White supremacy and the subordination of people of color.” Oops.


O’Brien is entitled to her opinions, of course. The problem is that she masks her political activism under the banner of corporate media “diversity.” Of multicultural heritage, O’Brien has won countless accolades for her “Black in America” and “Latino in America” documentaries for CNN. The medical school at historically black Morehouse College created the “Soledad O’Brien Freedom’s Voice Award” to honor “outstanding catalysts of social change.” The first recipient of the activist award? Soledad O’Brien, of course.


O’Brien is also a card-carrying member of two racial/ethnic-centered journalism lobbying groups: the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. These organizations are inherently politicized entities that enforce a skin color-deep ideological solidarity and push a social justice agenda of advocacy journalism. I know because I’ve fought their collective herd mentality for the past 20 years.


Liberal minority journalists have themselves acknowledged their slavish fealty to Obama and his progressive agenda. During the 2008 campaign, the NABJ, NAHJ and Asian American Journalists Association held a “journalists of color” confab where then-candidate Obama was welcomed with Justin Bieber-style mania. One journalist squealed, “He touched me!” after Obama’s address, which was interrupted multiple times with standing ovations, cheers and whistles by the press.


Organizers were so concerned about public displays of Obamedia affection that they issued several warnings to their news professional members that the speech would be broadcast live on (Soledad O’Brien’s) CNN. “Professional decorum” was encouraged. One wire story even fretted: “Can minority journalists resist applauding Obama?”


Nope, liberal minority journalists simply can’t resist carrying water for Obama. That’s because their journalistic unity demands political unanimity. If you don’t accept the left-leaning agenda of “social change” journalism, you’re enabling racism. If you don’t support the pursuit of racial hiring goals as a primary journalistic and academic goal, you’re selling out.


Now you know the reason for O’Brien’s thin-skinned reaction to Obama’s critics. When you vet the president, you vet the media. And they don’t like the narrative table-turning one bit.

RELATED: CNN’s O’Brien goes for a do-over

Soledad O’Brien And Breitbart’s Joel Pollak Clash Over Critical Race Theory

Mediaite.com:

CNN’s Starting Point got heated Thursday as Breitbart.com’s Editor-In-Chief Joel Pollak clashed with host Soledad O’Brien about the significance of the video of President Obama hugging a Harvard professor. O’Brien didn’t quite understand why the recently publicized video was a “bombshell.”


“What part of that was the bombshell? Because I missed it. I don’t get it,” O’Brien exclaimed. “What was a bombshell?”


“Well, the bombshell is the revelation of the relationship between Obama and Derrick Bell,” Pollak pointed out.


“Okay, so he’s a Harvard Law student and a Harvard Law Professor, yeah.” O’Brien added.


“Derrick Bell is the Jeremiah Wright of academia,” Pollak stated. “He passed away last year, but during his lifetime, he developed a theory called critical race theory, which holds that the civil rights movement was a sham and that white supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown.”


“So that is a complete misreading,” O’Brien interrupted. “I’ll stop you there for a second — then I’ll let you continue. That is a complete misreading of critical race theory. That’s an actual theory. You could Google it and some would give you a good definition. So that’s not correct. But keep going.”


“In what way is it a critical misreading?” Pollak countered. “Can you explain to me? Explain to your readers (sic) what it is,”


“I’m going to ask you to continue on,” O’Brien quickly replied. “I’m just going to point out that that is inaccurate. Keep going. Tell me what the bombshell is. I haven’t seen it yet.”


“Well, wait a minute!” Pollak interjected. “You’ve made a claim that my characterization of critical race theory as the opposite of Martin Luther King is inaccurate. You’re telling your viewers that, but you’re not telling them what it is.”


“Critical race theory looks into the intersection of race and politics and the law and as a legal academic who would study this and write about it, he would advance the theory about what exactly happened when the law was examined in terms of racial politics,” O’Brien explained. “There is no white supremacy in that. It is a theory. It’s an academic theory and as one of the leading academics at Harvard Law School, he was one of the people as part of that conversation. So that is a short definition.”


“I’m glad we’ve got you saying that on tape because that’s a complete misrepresentation,” Pollak hit back. “Critical race theory is all about white supremacy. Critical race theory holds that civil rights laws are ineffective, that racial equality is impossible, because the legal and Constitutional in America is white supremacist.”


The two argued over the relevancy of critical race theory to the conversation, with O’Brien trying to move things back to the “bombshell” and Pollak saying, “You can’t derail this, Soledad.” O’Brien eventually concluded that Pollak wanted to make the connection between Obama and the “radical” Bell. Pollak accused O’Brien of obfuscating the real issue, which was the media sweeping things under the rug, and O’Brien began to accuse Pollak of still not understanding critical race theory.


Then Panelist Jay Thomas interjected. He asked if Pollak was afraid that a secret black movement was going to rise up and murder him. Pollak responded by saying he was just accused of being a racist and afraid of black people, but answered Thomas’ query anyway.


“At every point in his life when he could have followed the path of Martin Luther King, he threw in his lot with the Jeremiah Wrights and the Derrick Bells of the world,” Pollak said.


GBTV’s Amy Holmes then chimed in, wondering why the raw video didn’t surface in 2008.


“Of what?!” O’Brien exclaimed. “Of hugging Derrick Bell, the renowned Harvard Law Professor?”


Holmes countered by saying that it should have been something, “for the public to decide, not the media to decide,” and that the media, “did not allow this to be put into the public square.” She then made a stellar observation that she was a vegetarian in college and now enjoys prime rib. It’s not about digging something up on Obama, Holmes explained, it’s about the media not putting it out there.

What a lying, condescending prick that Soledad is. Anyone who ever prescribed to critical race theory in college knows full damn well that it heavily involved white supremacy semantics.

RELATED: Video: CNN beclowns itself painting Breitbart editor-in-chief as racist

Jesse Jackson to Idiot Soledad O'Brien: 'You Don't Count as Black'

Newsbusters.org:

CNN personality Soledad O'Brien revealed in her new book that liberal activist Jesse Jackson put her down for her skin color during a private meeting in 2007. During the meeting, Jackson complained to O'Brien, whose mother is a black woman from Cuba, that there weren't any black anchors on CNN. When she pointed out that she was the anchor of American Morning, the activist replied, "You don't count."

O'Brien, who is now a special correspondent for CNN, recounted the 2007 incident in "The Next Big Story," which CNN.com excerpted on November 3. Just before her meeting with Jackson, the journalist had obtained "exclusive access to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s papers," as the lead-in for the excerpt underlined. Soon after this, as O'Brien recalled, "Jackson calls with an invitation to meet and talk." The two met at a restaurant "on the first floor of a famous hotel" and in the course of their conversation, the subject of the racial makeup of her network came up:

Today he is angry because CNN doesn't have enough black anchors. It is political season. There are billboards up sporting Paula Zahn and Anderson Cooper. He asks after the black reporters. Why are they not up there? I share his concern and make a mental note to take it back to my bosses. But then he begins to rage that there are no black anchors on the network at all. Does he mean covering the campaign, I wonder to myself? The man has been a guest on my show. He knows me, even if he doesn't recall how we met. I brought him on at MSNBC, then again at Weekend Today. I interrupt to remind him I'm the anchor of American Morning. He knows that. He looks me in the eye and reaches his fingers over to tap a spot of skin on my right had. He shakes his head. "You don't count," he says. I wasn't sure what that meant. I don't count- what? I'm not black? I'm not black enough? Or my show doesn't count?

The CNN personality continued by describing how affected she was by the remark:

I was both angry and embarrassed, which rarely happens at the same time for me. Jesse Jackson managed to make me ashamed of my skin color which even white people had never been able to do....If Reverend Jesse Jackson didn't think I was black enough, then what was I? My parents had so banged racial identity into my head that the thoughts of racial doubt never crossed my mind. I'd suffered an Afro through the heat of elementary school. I'd certainly never felt white. I thought my version of black was as valid as anybody else's. I was a product of my parents (black woman, white man) my town (mostly white), multiracial to be sure, but not black? I felt like the foundation I'd built my life on was being denied, as if someone was telling me my parents aren't my parents....The arbiter of blackness had weighed in. I had been measured and found wanting.

O'Brien might have been angry as well because early in 2007, the same year she had this racially-charged meeting with Jackson, she had defended him and his counterpart, the Reverend Al Sharpton, on-air during a February 19 segment on American Morning:

O'BRIEN: There will be people who might think watching TV that you and Jesse Jackson are the only black leaders in this country practically. Every time there is an event, a shooting, something to be said, something to respond to the black community, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are there in front of the microphones....But do Reverend Sharpton and Reverend Jackson speak for all African-Americans? One lawmaker (Rep. Maxine Waters) says if it seems that way, blame the media.

Hate to admit it, but Jesse's on point here and Soledad's an idiot for pretending not to know what context he made his statement in. CNN does have a problem when it comes to diversity within its news staff and while they're not as indelibly white as say MSNBC, passing off light-skinned negroes to fill in your quota form just doesn't fly in the black community.

Woman Sues Church For Performing Gay Unions

How embarrassing. While Ms. Moore deserves kudos for sticking to her faith and suing her blasphemous, non-Christian church, for a woman who claims to have attended church for over 30 years, it's sad to watch her fall prey to the leftwing trap of equating homosexuality with race. 

In reinforcing her decision to sue her church Ms. Moore could've easily quoted one of the many Bible verses condemning homosexuality. Even if she couldn't think of a verse right away, she should've been able to state that for her being a Christian is more than just a title, but a way of life in accordance with God's word as reflected in the same Bible that her pastor now dismisses. 

Thanks to a radically leftwing President backed by a liberal ideological Congress with a mainstream press in their back pockets, we live in a time where true Christians can not afford to be lax in their views. The final step to total 'normalization' for the gay mafia is the church and with their propaganda and lies combined with our own needs for social acceptance, over the last decade or so "progressive Christianity" has taken on a life of its own and divided the church. Also, while Ms. Moore couldn't have known, the woman who interviewed her, CNN newswoman Soledad O'Brien, is a huge Obama stan and supporter/activist for gay "rights". Conservatives and Christians in general need to be more aware of just how the liberal press works, but all in all props to Ms. Moore for taking a stance more Christians need to take.

CNN's Soledad O'Brien: In The Tank For Barack Obama

"So, looks overwhelming."?!? This is right after last week's VP debate. Now people who can actually count would be able to notice in this clip that about the same amount of hands went up for Sarah Palin as did Joe Biden. But when you're a member a liberal press yearning for Barack Obama to win the presidency, what does something like facts matter? Mind you, this isn't the first time that Soledad O'Brien has shown her bias against Sarah Palin.