Daily Archives: December 20, 2011

December 20, 2011 · 7:06 PM

The Racist Newsletters Return To Haunt Ron Paul

I remember the rumblings during the 2008 campaign season in which reports of Ron Paul’s newsletters were revealed to contain some damning evidence of racism.

After the 2008 election, nothing else was mentioned about them until now…

TPM2012

As Ron Paul rises in the polls, he is once again fending off questions about those pesky newsletters where racist material appeared under his name. This time around, rather than expressing much in the way of regret, Paul is instead slamming the media for rehashing what he considers an old, irrelevant story.

To recap, back in the 1990s, Ron Paul produced a series of newsletters, all with his name on them, which published a ream of racist and anti-Semitic columns. Among a long list of offensive comments, one notorious column about the LA riots said that, “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.” Another pilloried Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as “Hate Whitey Day.” Paul has always denied writing them and insists he doesn’t know who did. He has expressed regret that the comments were printed.

But asked about the newsletters in an interview with CNN Tuesday morning, Paul expressed little contrition and attacked the media for revisiting the issue. The candidate suggested that the only reason the newsletters were in the spotlight again is the popularity of the rest of his platform:

I think people dig these up when people think that, oh, his economic policies are winning. His foreign policies are winning and his monetary policies are winning. They have to dig these things up…

For two decades, Paul has denied knowing who wrote racist comments. Since Paul had six to eight people working under him on the newsletter, why couldn’t he have found out from them? “Possibly, I could,” Paul admitted Tuesday.

But he doesn’t seem to feel the need. “So, yes, it wasn’t good. I didn’t write them and those aren’t my beliefs. So, I sleep well,” the candidate said.

Continue reading…

 

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,

· 1:11 AM

Herman Cain: The liberal media forced me out of the race

Herman Cain got it wrong, the “liberal media” would have loved for Cain to be the nominee.  His “pals” Newt, Rick and Willard forced him out.

Bye-bye Mr. Cain, now go away quietly, please.

Democratic Underground

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain told a conference call of tea party activists on Sunday night that it was the liberal media that forced him out of the 2012 presidential race.

“I am as broken hearted as others about having to pull out,” Cain said, “but I couldn’t continue to try and run a race when you have a liberal media and others who did not want to see me succeed and to see us succeed — constantly fighting false accusations.”

Cain suspended his campaign for president following a series of news stories about women who accused him of harassment and infidelity dating back to the 1990s.

He made the comments as an introductory speaker on a tele-forum with activists associated with the Tea Party Patriots organization.

More at: http://news.yahoo.com/herman-cain-liberal-media-forced-race-225904127.html

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Herman Cain

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

· 12:06 AM

General Tells Republicans What’s What

 

Hats off to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey for speaking truth to a bunch of lying, fear-mongering, cow-towing Republican candidates who only want to feed red meat to their base during the primary.

I suspect whoever wins the Republican nomination will not be so free with their lies and dog whistles.

Mario Piperni

Here’s the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, slapping around Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and every other Republican who believes that the commander-in-chief’s role  is one of following the advice of the generals.

“I’ll probably make news with this but I find some of those articles about divergence or control of the generals to be kind of offensive to me,” Dempsey told reporters traveling with him in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

“And here’s why. One of the things that makes us as a military profession in a democracy is civilian rule. Our civilian leaders are under no obligation to accept our advice; and that’s what it is. Its advice. It’s military judgments, it’s alternatives, it’s options. And at the end of the day, our system is built on the fact that it will be our civilian leaders who make that decision and I don’t find that in any way to challenge my manhood, nor my position. In fact, if it were the opposite, I think we should all be concerned.”

It’s actually debatable as to whether Romney and the rest believe half of what they’re saying.  Their main concern these days is sounding tough and saying the exact opposite of whatever it is Barack Obama is saying. So knowing for sure what anyone of them actually believes (with the exception of Ron Paul) is anyone’s guess.

Whatever the case, it’s kind of refreshing having the military telling Republicans they’re full of crap.

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

· 12:03 AM

Poynter’s Biggest Media Corrections Of 2011

The Huffington Post

Poynter’s Craig Silverman released his annual roundup of the year’s biggest media errors and corrections on Sunday.

The President Obama/Osama Bin Laden gaffe topped Silverman’s list for the biggest typo of 2011. In the wake of Obama’s Sunday night announcement on May 1st, media organizations scrambled to break news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. For reasons Silverman described in a piece for Columbia Journalism Review, anchors became tongue-tied and repeatedly said “Obama” when they meant to say “Osama.” Editors also committed the Obama/Osama typo, with “Obama Bin Laden” appearing in print and online media publications.

The false reporting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ death was Silverman’s “media error of the year.” According to Silverman, news broke that Giffords was dead afterNPR tweeted that the congresswoman and six others were shot and killed. The news spread on Twitter like wildfire, creating a lot of confusion shortly after news of the shooting broke.

View the rest of Silverman’s list at Poynter, including some lighthearted, mistakenly profane gaffes. Remember this one?

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Media Distortions

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

· 12:02 AM

Man Brain Dead After ‘Excessive Force’ Used At Jail Overseen By Arpaio

It looks like Arpaio’s days as the Maricopa County Sheriff may be numbered, with this latest newsreport…

Think Progress

On the heels of a Justice Department report accusing Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio of violating the civil rights of Latinos, Arpaio’s department is under fire after an inmate became unresponsive while in custody and is now likely brain dead, according to media reports.

The victim, Ernest M. Atencio, was brought to the Phoenix jail at 3 a.m. Friday when he became “abusive and combative, forcing police and sheriff’s deputies to use ‘defensive efforts’ in restraining him.” Officers took Atencio to a “safe cell” to calm down, and when medical staff checked on him 15 minutes later, he was unresponsive.

The Daily Mail reports that officers used “excessive force,” and Atencio’s family claims he suffered a heart attack after being Tasered by police and did not receive treatment soon enough. “We have to do an investigation,”Arpaio said about the incident. “We do it all the time, we have an incident in the jails…we’re going to do this one too, very professionally.”

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under U.S. Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

· 12:01 AM

Perry Calls Wall Street Bailout “Biggest Theft In U.S. History”

Once again, poor Rick Perry gets the whole thing  backward.  It was the banks who performed the biggest heist in global history.

Rick Perry knows this, but since he’s a member of the 1% club, he blames it on the government…

News One

Seeking a late surge, Texas Gov. Rick Perry sought Monday to tar GOP presidential rivals Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney for supporting the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and said the billions loaned to banks and other financial institutions at the height of the 2008 financial crisis amounted to “the single biggest act of theft in American history.”

Most of the money has been paid back.

In the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, Perry stressed his credentials as a Washington outsider – someone who he says understands Main Street and is not beholden to the wealthy Wall Street set.

Perry said the values he learned growing up in rural Texas shaped his views.

“No one was going to bail out a dry-land cotton farmer” and no one should have bailed out Wall Street, Perry said in northeastern Iowa.

“This Wall Street bailout is the single biggest act of theft in American history,” he told voters at a pizza buffet. “And, you know, Newt and Mitt, they both were for it. That’s one of the reasons I say that if you really want an individual who is an outsider, someone who has not been engaged in part of that process, I hope you’ll take a look at me.”

Romney and Gingrich supported the Wall Street rescue that was shepherded into law in fall 2008 by Republican President George W. Bush. They have since become critics of the program, which conservative voters tend to loathe.

Perry joined the presidential contest in August to great fanfare but lost his luster following what was widely viewed as erratic behavior and lackluster performances in debates. He is hoping to achieve a comeback by pitching himself as “an outsider who truly believes that we’ve got more taxes and more regulation and more government than most Americans want.”

“We need to make the decision that we’re not going to support bailouts and these wasteful earmarks,” he said.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, has remained steady in polling and also has a sizable campaign fund. Gingrich, the former House speaker, has surged in recent weeks as voters started watching the race more closely.

Perry is hoping to leapfrog them both by casting former business executive Romney as a Wall Street insider – although his venture capital firm was based in Massachusetts, not New York – and Gingrich as a Washington elite.

“If you’ll have my back on Jan. 3 at the caucuses here in Iowa,” he told voters. “I’ll have your back for the next four years in Washington, D.C.”

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Gov. Rick Perry

Tagged as , , , , , , ,