Barack Obama Doodler-In-Chief

"Americans coming together" is a theme of this week's Democratic National Convention. People stop to look at a mural by artist Shepard Fairey on Monday, September 3. Image Credit: CNN/Zoran Milich

Barack Obama Doodler-In-Chief

This article published in the New York Times is just priceless. If anyone reads this article titled "The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else" and questions the President as to the factual nature of this article, one may find out that this is a man many people just could not warm up to.

The article opens up with this following paragraph; As Election Day approaches, President Obama is sharing a few important things about himself. He has mentioned more than once in recent weeks that he cooks “a really mean chili.” He has impressive musical pitch, he told an Iowa audience. He is “a surprisingly good pool player,” he informed an interviewer — not to mention (though he does) a doodler of unusual skill.

Where was this article in 2008 during the run up to the last presidential election? Oh yes ... this article was where the actual colleagues, friends, teachers, and grades achieved by Barack Obama during his college years were stored!

This article from Forbes, which analyses the New York Times front page article, serves as great reading while filling time between speakers who stand up and talk at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina over the next three days. If the speakers do not make you realize we have operated under the wrong leadership over these last three and a half years ... this article will.

This excerpted and edited from Forbes -

New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct -- Obama Is Lousy CEO
BY  Rich Karlgaard, Forbes Staff - 9/03/2012 @ 12:34PM

A New York Times front page story today — New York Times! — might have killed President Obama’s re-election hopes.

The story is called “The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else.” It is devastating.

With such a title, and from such a friendly organ, at first I thought Jodi Kantor’s piece would be a collection of Obama’s greatest political wins: His rapid rise in Illinois, his win over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, the passage of health care, and so on.

But the NYT piece is not about any of that. Rather, it is a deep look into the two outstanding flaws in Obama’s executive leadership:

1. How he vastly overrates his capabilities:

     But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities. The cloistered nature of the White House amplifies those tendencies, said Matthew Dowd, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, adding that the same thing happened to his former boss. “There’s a reinforcing quality,” he said, a tendency for presidents to think, I’m the best at this.

2. How he spends extraordinary amounts of time and energy to compete in — trivialities.

    For someone dealing with the world’s weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores. He decompresses with card games on Air Force One, but players who do not concentrate risk a reprimand (“You’re not playing, you’re just gambling,” he once told Arun Chaudhary, his former videographer).

    His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.

Kantor’s piece is full of examples of Obama’s odd need to (a) dominate his peers in everything from bowling, cards, golf, basketball, and golf (104 times in his presidency). Bear in mind, Obama doesn’t just robustly compete. The leader of the free world spends many hours practicing these trivial pursuits behind the scenes. Combine this weirdly wasted time with a consistent overestimation of his capabilities, and the result is, according to NYT’s Kantor:

    He may not always be as good at everything as he thinks, including politics. While Mr. Obama has given himself high grades for his tenure in the White House — including a “solid B-plus” for his first year — many voters don’t agree, citing everything from his handling of the economy to his unfulfilled pledge that he would be able to unite Washington to his claim that he would achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.

    Those were not the only times Mr. Obama may have overestimated himself: he has also had a habit of warning new hires that he would be able to do their jobs better than they could.

    “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Though he never ran a large organization before becoming president, he initially dismissed internal concerns about management and ended up with a fictionalized White House and a fuzzier decision-making process than many top aides wanted.

Kantor’s portrait of Obama is stunning. It paints a picture of a CEO who is unfocused and lost.

Imagine, for a minute, that you are on the board of directors of a company. You have a CEO who is not meeting his numbers and who is suffering a declining popularity with his customers. You want to help this CEO recover, but then you learn he doesn’t want your help. He is smarter than you and eager to tell you this. Confidence or misplaced arrogance? You’re not sure at first. If the company was performing well, you’d ignore it. But the company is performing poorly, so you can’t.

With some digging, you learn, to your horror, that the troubled CEO spends a lot of time on — what the hell? — bowling? Golf? Three point shots? While the company is going south?

What do you do? You fire that CEO. Clint Eastwood was right. You let the guy go.
[Reference Here]

With the "Debt Clock" streaming past $16 Billion dollars during the Democratic National Convention, with over 1/3 of this amount added by this Doodler-In-Chief in only four years, some decisions just seem simpler to make, during this Carter's Second Term, than others when the light of truth shines upon them.

Let 'im go.


** Article first published as Barack Obama Doodler-In-Chief on Technorati **

Establishment Media Guide To "White Hispanic"

In Chicago, Cleveland, Washington DC and Philadelphia, demonstrators supported Martin's family by wearing hoodies like the one Martin was wearing when he was shot. The Civil Rights Heritage Center in the Natatorium is asking people to do the same thing here [in South Bend Indiana] by hosting the Million Hoodie March. Image Credit: IU South Bend Civil Rights Center website

Establishment Media Guide To "White Hispanic"

Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot last month in the town of Sanford, Florida by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman, who has claimed self defense and has not been charged.

The Trayvon Martin death at the apparent hands of a neighborhood watch individual named George Zimmerman has become a most troubling episode in American media culture. It reveals what happens when facts are over-run, unimportant, and only selected deaths of young black men are important when it seems to rise to the level of political exploitation by the forces that support a liberal, divide and control mentality. Under this view, in order to keep government front and center in the minds of all Americans, American unity must be broken down and marginalized so that we may never recognize each others value as an individual ... but only value a single person to their value toward the advancement of a single group in the eyes of, and favorable treatment by, governmental powers and laws, alive or dead.

To this end, the New York Times decided to describe George Zimmerman as a "White Hispanic", a term that on its face has hardly ever been used to describe a person's ethnic heritage. Rush Limbaugh's staff performed a nexis/lexis search of New York Times articles that may have used the term before and could only find three previous references of this nature in the paper's publishing history ... very telling on how this establishment media outlet wishes to promote the liberal, divide and control mentality.

In order to educate the establishment media on skin color and bring a little American-natured levity to an ugly situation that involves race and color, conservative Hispanic blogger and cartoonist, el SOOPer @SooperMexican, posted this graphic to help guide some to proper conclusions for their articles.

This excerpted and edited from Soopermexican.com -

The Sooper Guide to “White Hispanic” Skin Color for the Gringo Media!
Date: 3/26/2012

It’s amazing the lengths of race-baiting that the Leftist Liberal News Media Industrial Complex will go to in order to re-elect their savior, Obama. They’re going so far as to call a Hispanic man “White Hispanic” in order to incite a race war! How tolerant and inclusive of them.

Well, I thought I’d help them out and give them this easy to understand guide to classifying Hispanic skin colors!

Enjoy gringos - Full Size Image HERE!


[Reference Here]

Other points that were made while reading 140 character (or less) "Tweets" from Twitter ranged from:

"Why is it that the ONLY photo of Trayvon Martin is of a 13 yr. old boy and not the 17 yr. old grown male? Jus' askin' #tcot #tlot #p2"

to

"If Zimmerman is White and Obama is Black, race must be pat-ri-lo-cal only."



** Article first published as Establishment Media Guide To "White Hispanic" on Technorati **

Tea Parties - When Citizen Journalism Is The Only Outlet

"Citizen Journalist Wanted" - banner ad on PJTV - Photo Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2009)

Tea Parties - When Citizen Journalism Is The Only Outlet

Today, April 15, 2009 … a day when all Americans are supposed to have their taxes filed with the Internal Revenue Service (headed by Timothy Geithner – a man who was allowed to cheat/then pay-up on his taxes), 750 gatherings of citizens are scheduled throughout the nation and not one mention on the front pages of Main Stream Media newspapers.

Examples:

New York Times Front Page

Image Credit: NYT.com

Boston Globe Front Page

Image Credit: Boston Globe, Online

The Los Angeles Times Front Page

Image Credit: LA Times online

Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan, A Day Without An Immigrant, Million Man March, and other demonstrations that will have way less people showing up to attend to show support in getting a message of displeasure out routinely get front page spreads and advance information as to the event(s) and what the issues of protest are about from the MSM jungle drumbeat.

This tea party movement has had no such 4th Estate involvement.

A brief history excerpted and edited from Michelle Malkin –

A Tax Day Tea Party cheat sheet: How it all started
By Michelle Malkin • April 15, 2009 08:14 AM

For the Johnny-Come-Latelys in the MSM who will be dispatched by their editors to file obligatory stories about the hundreds of Tax Day Tea Party protests across the country today, here is a cheat sheet to get you up to speed.

Feb. 15: Keli Carender, who blogs as “Liberty Belle” spread the word about a grass-roots protest she was organizing in Seattle to raise her voice against the passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus/porkulus/Generational Theft Act of 2009. It’s the first time she had ever jumped into political organizing of any kind. She is not affiliated with any “corporate lobbyist” or think tank or national taxpayers’ organization. She’s a young conservative mom who blogs. Amazingly, she turned around the event in a few days all on her own by reaching out on the Internet, to her local talk station, and to anyone who would listen.

Feb. 16: An energetic crowd of about 100 people came downtown to lambaste the Chicken Little process and the lard-up of the stimulus bill:

Word of the Seattle protest spread across the blogosphere. Readers suggested there should be a Denver protest on Feb. 17 to greet President Obama for the porkulus signing. Separately, the local chapter of Americans for Prosperity was already working to put something together on the fly. I met the head of the state AFP for the first time on the steps of the Capitol. No conspiracy here, tinfoil hatters. It was a union of like minds in an impromptu show of outrage against the legislation-without-deliberation process in Washington. Also there: Jon Caldara of the libertarian Independence Institute on one end of the spectrum and Tom Tancredo on the strict immigration enforcement end (hundreds of the protesters were mad about the absence of E-Verify standards for the stimulus funding):

On Feb. 18, 500 fed-up taxpayers showed up in Mesa, AZ to oppose President Obama’s campaign for massive expansions of the government mortgage entitlement and to mock what SC Gov. Mark Sanford rightly called savior-based economics. No top-down organization. Just the effort of local talk radio station KFYI. No Beltway GOP involvement. Zero national media coverage.

On Feb. 19, reader Amanda Grosserode e-mailed that she was organizing a tax revolt protest in Overland Park, KS the following weekend. More than 400 people showed up in freezing weather to protest Rep. Dennis Moore’s vote for the bill. Glenn Reynolds did the reporting the MSM didn’t do.

On Feb. 19, CNBC’s Rick Santelli issued his now-famous “Tea Party” call — prompted, many people forget, by Obama’s mortgage entitlement expansion plans (proposals I’ve protested whether from Democrats or moron Republicans):
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On Feb. 21, the grass-roots Internet group, Top Conservatives on Twitter, founded by Michael Patrick Leahy and powered by Rob Neppell, announced “simultaneous local tea parties around the country, beginning in Chicago, and including Washington DC, Fayetteville NC, San Diego CA, Omaha Nebraska, and dozens of other locations”.
----
And along the way, detractors have fumbled and bumbled over how to discredit the Tea Party organizers — first blaming a cabal tied to CNBC, then jeering at the amateurishness of the participants before crying “astroturf,” then claiming the events were “financed by Fox News” or (fill-in-the-blank) conservative conspiracy, then smearing the protesters as crazed gun nuts (FNC’s Bob Beckel) and racists (FNC’s Geraldo Rivera).

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if MSM coverage refrained from parroting all the lazy, groundless, uninformed canards and reported the simple truth?
Reference Here>>

Again, large gatherings of Americans - NOT just Republicans, NOT just Democrats – are gathering in over 750 cities throughout the United States, and in most cases, Politicians have been dis-invited. Pretty much a definition of GRASS ROOTS, and all of this activity after the Department of Homeland Security has labeled this type of activity as part of the list of recruitment threats to Radical Right-Wing political activity and terrorism.

Don’t Tread On … Us!

Rise up and report Citizen Journalist!


UPDATE:

Tea Party Tax & Government Revolt Event - Glendale, CA, USA - Report, Photo, & Video Assets Here>>

CNN's "Reporting" of a Tea Party event - Example Here>>

Tea Party Event tally as of the beginning of day April 24, 2009 - (Pajamas Media):

Number of Events: 1,003
Overall Attendance: 847,651

NEWS FLASH – Palin Reads New York Times. Finds Ayers

Gov. Palin and Katie Couric get real and adorable in this Saturday Night Live skit featuring Tina Fey as Palin and Amy Pouler as Couric (Ctrl/Click to launch video). Image Credit: NBC/ Saturday Night Live (screenshot from video)

NEWS FLASH – Palin Reads New York Times. Finds Ayers

Yesterday, on the campaign stump, Gov. Sarah Palin answers her critics on several fronts.

Last week Palin was interviewed by CBS News Anchor Katie Couric and Katie asked Sarah if she read newspapers and/or magazines (yes) and what were the names of some of the newspapers and/or magazines – Sarah did not mention any specific newspaper or magazine feeling that this line of questioning was a trap.

Saturday Night Live and Tina Fey have made a lot of hay from this incident, lampooning Palin’s responses in her televised interview with Couric and gaining ratings points along the way.

Sarah Palin is beginning to gain a few rating points of her own and she is doing it by admitting that she reads the New York Times.

At a campaign rally scheduled for Monday, October 6, 2008, Coachman Park in Clearwater, Florida, the Vice Presidential running mate to Senator John McCain admitted to actually reading the New York Times.

"And according to The New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the US Capitol.' Wow," she said.

She said Obama was "someone who sees America as 'imperfect enough' to work with a former domestic terrorist who targeted his own country."

Obama, she said, was "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

No wonder Sarah did not want to tell Katie Couric what resource newspapers she reads to inform her; it turns out that by reading the New York Times, she would find out that a candidate running for President of the United States is a person who worked along side of and was appointed by William Ayers to become the Chairman of an educational grant fund that promoted the political radicalization of children through the handing out millions of dollars. As Chairman, Barack Obama directed where the monies were to go with the shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration of William Ayers.

"From now and until Election Day, hang onto your hats because, you know, it may get kinda rough here," Sarah Palin said with her signature sass. "Campaigns have to step up and kinda take the gloves off and start telling the truth."

Funny thing … that the truth can sometimes be found through reading the New York Times!

The Audacity Of Liberal Defeatist Attitudes

By March or April 2008, the 6000 gold, silver and bronze medals for Beijing 2008 were ready. China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation in Shanghai, China, was the maker of the medals. /// The raw materials for creating the medals came from BHP’s mines in Chile and Australia. Escondida mine in Chile provides the copper concentrate which contains gold for the gold medals. Spence mining operation, also in Chile, supplies copper cathode which can turn into bronze medals. Cannington mine in Queensland, Australia, supplies silver and lead for crafting silver medals. Image Credit: beijingolympicsfan.com

The Audacity Of Liberal Defeatist Attitudes

In an op-ed piece written by New York Times columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof, we are treated to a world view of praise for the potential growth of China as a country that will own the successes found in the advancement of humanity for the 21st Century.

He sites as part of his arguments … the flexibility of this centralized, totalitarian rule which by its very nature, is inflexible.

Ask the people who traveled to Beijing to see the Olympics … who hold their faith and the book that helps to inform them of their faith in high regard, how flexible the Government of China is after the flexible Government of China stripped them of their Bibles.

He goes on to extol the virtues of a winning China in the Olympics and then lectures us Americans to “Get Used To It”!

The trouble Mr. Kristof has with his analogies and trek through the history of man and his societies is the recognition of the power of the very real flexibility of a government system based on human rights and personal freedom.

Further, he ignores the conservative and competitive spirit of Americans who never assume that they are in the game … any game, to play for Bronze, or Silver – we all play for Gold.

We, at MAXINE just love it when we are lectured by liberals to just accept a future world view that does not have the United States continuing to win … and win big.

"Tank man" blocks a column of tanks heading east on Beijing's Chang'an Boulevard (Avenue of Eternal Peace) near Tiananmen Square during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Image Credit: Jeff Widener - 1989 (The Associated Press)

This excerpted and edited from the New York Times -

China’s Rise Goes Beyond Gold Medals
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF - Published: August 20, 2008

China is on track to displace the United States as the winner of the most Olympic gold medals this year. Get used to it.

Today, it’s the athletic surge that dazzles us, but China will leave a similar outsize footprint in the arts, in business, in science, in education.

The world we are familiar with, dominated by America and Europe, is a historical anomaly. Until the 1400s, the largest economies in the world were China and India, and forecasters then might have assumed that they would be the ones to colonize the Americas — meaning that by all rights this newspaper should be printed in Chinese or perhaps Hindi.
----
Now the world is reverting to its normal state — a powerful Asia — and we will have to adjust. Just as many Americans know their red wines and easily distinguish a Manet from a Monet, our children will become connoisseurs of pu-er tea and will know the difference between guanxi and Guangxi, the Qin and the Qing. When angry, they may even insult each other as “turtle’s eggs.”
----
This transition to Chinese dominance will be a difficult process for the entire international community, made more so by China’s prickly nationalism. China still sees the world through the prism of guochi, or national humiliation, and among some young Chinese success sometimes seems to have produced not so much national self-confidence as cockiness.

China’s intelligence agencies are becoming more aggressive in targeting America, including corporate secrets, and the Chinese military is busily funding new efforts to poke holes in American military pre-eminence.
----
Mr. Bush should have spoken out more forcefully on behalf of human rights, including urging Beijing to stop shipping the weapons used for genocide in Darfur.

It’s a difficult balance to get right, but China’s determination to top the gold medal charts — bespeaks a larger desire for international respect and legitimacy. We can use that desire also to shame and coax better behavior out of China’s leaders.

When the Chinese government sentences two frail women in their late 70s to labor camp because they applied to hold a legal protest during the Olympics, as it just has, then that is an outrage to be addressed not by “silent diplomacy” but by pointing it out.
----
On this visit, I dropped by the home of Bao Tong, a former senior Communist Party official who spent seven years in prison for challenging the hard-liners during the Tiananmen democracy movement. The guards who monitor him 24/7 let me through when I showed my Olympic press credentials.

Mr. Bao noted that Communist leaders used to actually believe in Communism; now they simply believe in Communist Party rule. He recalled that hard-liners used to fret about the danger of “peaceful evolution,” meaning a gradual shift to a Western-style political and economic system. “Now, in fact, what we have is peaceful evolution,” he noted.

That flexibility is one of China’s great strengths, and it’s one reason that the most important thing going on in the world today is the rise of China — in the Olympics and in almost every other facet of life.
Reference Here>>

It is funny how being able to show “guards who monitor him 24/7 let me through when I showed my Olympic press credentials” as being a sign of Communist flexibility when this Communist (Bao Tong) Mr. Kristof is visiting is still under guard (house arrest) in his own country for speaking out about the lack of freedom and the adoption of Western style democracy and human-rights since 1989!

The economic base of China may be shifting to one more closely based on Capitalism (this does not mean we'll be seeing a similar outsize footprint in the arts, in science, in education) but the Government is still a central-rule Communist government where basic human-rights do not exist ... where is the outsized argument/demand for this "flexibility"?

What does this have to do with a possible second term of the Carter Administration? Barack Obama believes that China has a "vastly superior" infrastructure than does the United States.

NY Times & McCain – Secures Expected "Flatline" Response

John McCain and his wife Cindy refute a critical story in The New York Times at a press conference in Toledo, Ohio, Thursday. Image Credit: AP Photo

NY Times & McCain – Secures Expected "Flatline" Response

Nobody really thinks that the New York Times … or any mainstream newspaper … actually pursues reporting (just the facts) or working in a professional journalistic manner any more. Especially on topics that involve the Government and Politics. What the MSM has trouble doing is separating the liberal, socialist agenda biases and activism with the job of providing useful information based upon true investigative and written journalistic ethics.

John McCain is a target for the New York Times because he holds his attitude and character out to be hallmarks of un-impeachable behavior.

The New York Times sat on this “story” until now because John McCain, for the first time just this last week, took off after the Democrats in their bid to become the preferred candidate for the office of President of the United States.

It is the opinion here, at MAXINE, that the New York Times wanted to place the first “brush back” move on John McCain in order to have him shrink back into his familiar “Maverick” territory and move back to his more liberal center positions.

Again, this week, on the campaign stump, John McCain began to position himself with a little more of the conservative base perspective when he spoke against the prospects of a Democrat controlled Presidency. What better way to have John McCain become more beatable than to have him become more supporting of liberal policies of the Democrat Party? By hitting McCain and smearing his character, McCain will go back to being more McCain like! If all we have is liberal policies and agendas to vote for … WHY NOT JUST VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT – or not vote at all.

When John McCain came out for his first news conference in front of reporters to answer questions, what we were treated to was a flatline response from John McCain. It was DEAD and without passion … one word responses without a clear indignation of the tactics of the New York Times. He was agitated, but without edge.

It is just this motive and response from John McCain we think the New York Times has moved this week with this smear story against John McCain.

The NYT got exactly what they wanted without much of a mark on them because this is what WE, the reading public, come to expect.

John McCain, left, and Vicki Iseman. Published reports later suggested a possible relationship between Ms. Iseman and John McCain. Both have denied it. Image Credit: Getty Images

This excerpted from CBS Broadcasting –

McCain: Reports Of Relationship 'Not True'
Reports Question His Relationship With Lobbyist Vicki Iseman
TOLEDO, Ohio (CBS)

John McCain denied a romantic relationship with a female telecommunications lobbyist and said a report by The New York Times suggesting favoritism for her clients is "not true."

"I'm very disappointed in the article. It's not true," the likely Republican presidential nominee said as his wife, Cindy, stood alongside him during a news conference called to address the matter.

McCain described the woman in question, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as a friend.

The newspaper quoted anonymous aides as saying they had urged McCain and Iseman to stay away from each other before to his failed presidential campaign in 2000. In its own follow-up story, The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with lobbyist Iseman and urged her to stay away from McCain.

Weaver told the Times he arranged the meeting after "a discussion among the campaign leadership" about Iseman.

McCain said he was unaware of any such conversation.

The Arizona senator said he won't allow the report to distract him from his presidential campaign.

"I will focus my attention in this campaign on the big issues and on the challenges that face this country," he said.
----
"This is like the worst kind of tabloid journalism," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told CBS' The Early Show. "We think it's unfair, unjust and inaccurate."

The published reports said McCain and Iseman each denied having a romantic relationship, and the paper offered no evidence that they had, saying only that aides worried about the appearance of McCain having close ties to a lobbyist with business before the Senate Commerce Committee on which McCain served.

The story alleges that McCain wrote letters and pushed legislation involving television station ownership that would have benefited Iseman's clients.
----
McCain defended his integrity last December, after he was questioned about reports that the Times was investigating allegations of legislative favoritism by the Arizona Republican and that his aides had been trying to dissuade the newspaper from publishing a story.

"I've never done any favors for anybody - lobbyist or special-interest group. That's a clear, 24-year record," he told reporters in Detroit.
Reference Here>>

This updated information from Bill Bradley at PJM's New West Notes -

** A MCCAIN STORY IRONY, AND A BIG CALIFORNIA CONNECTION**

The New Republic has a brand new story on the back story of the New York Times’ publication of the story. Some say the planned New Republic publication prompted the New York Times to publish late yesterday.

The New Republic reports that the Washington bureau chief of the Times, Dean Baquet, played the key managerial role in pushing the story forward, against the skepticism of Times editor Bill Keller.

What the New Republic piece doesn’t say, since it’s written by an Easterner, is that, prior to becoming the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, Dean Baquet was the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. And in his role at the LA Times, Baquet was deeply involved with and a key internal advocate of the late-breaking LA Times story during the 2003 California recall slamming Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That story proved to be a major backfire, as Schwarzenegger not only survived but went on to a landslide victory, with most not buying the convenient late timing of the story and its prior awareness by top Democrats. The LA Times and its influence has been on a steep downslope ever since.

I wonder if the McCain story will have a similar effect on the New York Times.
Reference Here>>

You know, when one has a chance to reflect:

That since it is well known that the New York Times editorial staff was “sitting” on this story for several months now (according to the New Republic) and that the paper had just given their formal endorsement as their choice as the Republican Party candidate they would like to see as President (if it had to be a Republican, presumably) just before the Super Tuesday primaries …

… This whole episode of a smear story about John McCain, of eight (8) years ago, published by the New York Times says a lot more about the character of the New York Times than it does about the character of John McCain.

Animals Don't Kill Animals - PETA Kills Animals

Animals kill animals to eat - PETA kills animals to kill animals

On Wednesday afternoon in a North Carolina courtroom, defense lawyers for two animal-cruelty defendants asked a judge to dismiss dozens of criminal charges. The judge was unimpressed. The defendants, former -- or perhaps still (AP story below) -- employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), stand accused of killing adoptable dogs and cats in the back of a van in 2005 and discarding their bodies in a trash dumpster.

While the saga continues to drag on without a firm trial date, it's now settled that defendants Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook will indeed face felony charges that carry lengthy jail sentences. (ht: Consumer Freedom)

This from Associated Press via Myrtle Beach Online -

Judge declines to dismiss animal cruelty charges in PETA case
Associated Press

WINTON, N.C. - A judge has declined to dismiss felony animal cruelty charges against two PETA workers accused of dumping euthanized animals into a trash container.

Defense lawyers argued Wednesday in Hertford Superior Court that the charges should be dropped because the animals were killed humanely. They also argued that Andrew B. Cook and Adria J. Hinkle are being unfairly prosecuted because some people don't agree with the work of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Cook, of Virginia Beach, Va., and Hinkle, of Norfolk, Va., were arrested last June by Ahoskie police officers who were staking out a trash container in which animal carcasses had previously been found. Detectives testified Wednesday that they arrested Cook and Hinkle after watching them throw several bags of dead animals inside the trash bin.

They also said they found more dead animals in the pair's van, a digital camera with images of living and dead animals and substances later determined to be euthanasia drugs.

Cook and Hinkle each face 21 felony counts of animal cruelty, seven counts of littering for illegally disposing of dead animals and three counts of obtaining property by false pretenses.

PETA spokesman David Perle said in an e-mail Thursday that the organization is confident its employees will be acquitted. Hinkle was suspended pending the outcome of the criminal case, he said. Cook, a new employee at the time, remains with PETA.
Links Here and Here>>

For more background information about this disturbing case, visit http://www.petakillsanimals.com/.

In addition to photos of PETA's furry victims (and the "death kit" tackle box they allegedly used), you can see government reports filed by PETA describing the 14,419 dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens the group has admitted killing since July 1998.

MAXINE says, "It's Good To Be The Pious People Who Claim To Be The Protector Of Animals, PeTA ... NOT"

PeTA workers Andrew Cook and Adria Hinkle hug in Hertford County Criminal Superior Court Friday, Feb. 2, 2007, in Winton, N.C., after a jury found them not guilty of animal cruelty for euthanizing animals they picked up from shelters, but guilty of littering for dumping the animals' bodies. Image Credit: AP Photo/Calvin Bryant

UPDATED 1-22-2007:

From the Department of Irony: PETA Kills Animals
Center for Consumer Freedom's Full-Page Ad in The New York Times and Mobile Billboard Provides Publicity PETA Doesn't Want

WINTON, N.C., Jan. 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are facing felony animal-cruelty charges today in Hertford County Superior Court. And the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) is running a full-page ad in The New York Times simply stating the fact that PETA KILLS ANIMALS.

In addition, CCF is sponsoring a mobile billboard to remind Winton and Ahoskie residents about the only Internet website devoted to day-to-day coverage of the trial:

PetaKillsAnimals.com. The billboard truck will be visible outside the Hertford County Courthouse this morning and at the end of the day; it will tour Ahoskie during the early afternoon.

PETA employees Andrew Cook and Adria Hinkle each face 22 counts of Cruelty to Animals and 3 counts of Obtaining Property By False Pretenses. If convicted, they could face between 25 and 30 months in prison for each animal- cruelty count.

On June 15, 2005, Ahoskie police witnessed Hinkle and Cook throwing trash bags containing the bodies of 18 dead pets into a shopping-center dumpster. After arresting them, police recovered 13 additional dead animals from the PETA-owned van in which the two were traveling. Witnesses from the Ahoskie Animal Hospital and the Bertie County Animal Shelter confirmed that Hinkle and Cook had collected the animals, including puppies and kittens, earlier that day with the promise that PETA would find them adoptive homes.

"This trial will really open the eyes of people who don't know about PETA's darker side," said David Martosko, Director of Research at the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit watchdog that monitors the animal rights movement. "This is an animal rights group that takes in $25 million and kills 90 percent of the pets it receives. That's not ethical. It's hypocritical."

Mr. Martosko will be available to media in Winton this week. To arrange an interview, contact Sarah Longwell at 202-463-7112. Daily updates from the trial will be available at http://www.petakillsanimals.com/.

Public records from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services show that in 2005, the Norfolk-based PETA killed 90 percent of the animals it took in for adoption. By comparison, the nearby Norfolk SPCA killed less than 4 percent of its animals in that same year. The state average was 43 percent. Since 1998, PETA has put down over 14,400 dogs and cats. PETA's 2006 statistics will be made public by the end of January.

For more information about PETA's felony charges, including photographs from the scene of the 2005 arrests, visit http://www.petakillsanimals.com/.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies, and consumers, working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.

Website: http://www.consumerfreedom.com/
Website: http://www.petakillsanimals.com/
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