Great interview with Andrew Breitbart in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. Who? Andrew Breitbart. He's the guy who disseminated (but did not create) the videotaped sting operation that revealed Acorn to be an immoral, ends justify the means organization.
Dressing up as a pimp and prostitute in order to seek Acorn's help in starting a child sex-slavery ring wasn't Andrew Breitbart's idea. But without the Internet entrepreneur's flair for publicity, the hidden-camera sting might not have produced such impressive results. Within days of his publishing the video exposé, government agencies were cutting ties with the left-wing advocacy and community-organizing group, Congress was voting to end its federal funding, and news organizations were rushing to catch up with a sensational story they had initially resisted or ignored.
Breitbart leaked the videos to Fox News and posted them on his website, BigGovernment.com. Bookmark it! The website carries videos of the Acorn stings in Baltimore, Washington D.C., New York, San Diego, and San Bernardino.
"This plan wasn't just a means to defend against the (news) media's desire to attack the messenger. It was also a means to attack the media and to expose them … for the partisan hacks that they are."
Want proof? On September 11, the Census Bureau dumped Acorn as a promoter of the decennial census. But no broadcast network evening newscast mentioned the Acorn videos until September 15 - the day after the Senate voted 83-7 to defund the corrupt organization. The New York Times did not bestir itself until a day later.
Breitbart says, "At every step of the way, we were correct. At every step of the way, the mainstream media took the lies of Acorn. At every step of the way, the mainstream media attempted to cover up for Acorn." [Wall Street Journal: Taking on the Democrat-Media Complex]
Fox in the henhouse
That is why it is so hilarious that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel Sunday made one of the most absurd comments to date about the Administration's fight with the Fox News Channel. In his "State of the Union" interview with CNN's John King, Emanuel said, "It's not a news organization so much as it has a perspective."
The only thing more ironic is The Capital Times criticizing Fox for being biased. Now that is chutzpah!
The Acorn debacle is not the only evidence of a corrupt and complicit news media:
- Supposed First Amendment crusaders twiddle their fingers when a radio commentator is denied a business opportunity because of his political beliefs (yes, Rush Limbaugh).
- Supposed journalists hero-worship Al Gore who, infamously, will not debate his theories.
While we're at it, here's Rush Limbaugh in the weekend Wall Street Journal:
There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives that reflects the blind hatred espoused by Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson. "Racism" is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don't share the left's agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests.
Here is another site that should be bookmarked: NewsBusters, the work of Brent Bozell's Media Research Center. It reports that MSNBC on Friday acknowledged that it could not verify the "slavery had its merits" quote. Until that point …
During Wednesday's Morning Joe program on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough warned of false Limbaugh quotes being touted by his own network: "And a lot of those comments were actually not true. The quotes that we heard the most of, the people we interviewed on our shows came with articles, waving articles with quotes completely made up. And Mike Barnicle, the dangerous thing is, that the media just flew right into it."[MSNBC Admits: 'Unable to Verify' False Limbaugh Quote; No Retraction or Apology]
This makes sense
Paul Ryan's health plan, courtesy of the Cato Institute, because you're not going to get this from the Mainstream News Media:
On the public option:
If we do go down the path toward a public option, it will inevitably, mathematically, actuarially, become a government-run monopoly. When the government is put in the position to compete against the private sector, the government is both the referee and the player in the same game.
It's a stacked deck against which the private sector cannot compete. The private sector has to pay taxes. It has to pay for salaries and benefits. The private sector can't dictate to the provider network what it's going to pay. We're hearing that this public plan option will base its payments on Medicare, with maybe a modest increase. But keep in mind that Medicare underpays providers by 20 to 30 percent. It is simply a question of when, not if, a public plan option, if set in place, completely displaces the private sector. At least under the status quo, you can fire your insurance company. If the only insurer is the government, you're stuck.
The Problem: One reasons health care is not doing well right now, one of the reasons health inflation is so high, one of the reasons there are so many distortions in health care, one of the reasons millions of Americans don't have access to affordable insurance, is because we've displaced the fundamental tenets of a free market. What are those tenets? Transparency on price, transparency on quality, and an incentive to act on both. Currently, you don't know what services cost, or who's good at providing them and who's bad.
The fix: Under our plan, the money workers get by having deductibility on their employer sponsored health insurance goes to them in the form of a tax credit: $5,700 for families and $2,700 for individuals. You keep your job, you change your job, you lose your job, you go work for yourself - the tax benefit stays with you. It's portable.
Bring it on
Ladies and gentlemen, we have our next Republican presidential candidate. I give you, Denny Crane:
"I like sex, I like women, I'll hump anything, even get down on the floor right now with you if you turn off the lights. The American public will find it refreshing to find a Republican candidate who's not a moralistic sexually repressed sexual hypocrite who cruises airport men's rooms late at night. Denny Crane rides high in the saddle."
