I am pleased to announce the winner of the First Annual Breitbart “Ambiguous Entity of the Year” award.

Our choice was inspired by the most under-reported story of the year: the dark side of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which the media attempted to hide.

From its origins, the Occupy movement has been riddled by rapes, sexual assaults, and countless other serious crimes–many of which were not reported to police because Occupy organizers understood that public police reports and media dispatches about crimes would hurt the movement’s image.

And, as one Occupier noted, “This is a battle over images, not just over the park.”

Had the Tea Party been ravaged by rapes, rampant drug use, vandalism, or assaults, those crimes would not only have been over-reported, they would have stopped the Tea Party in its tracks.

The mainstream media did its best to invent Tea Party misdeeds–imaginary “N-words” and all–where none existed. Prominent celebrities, athletes—even conservative ones, who support the Tea Party’s aims—have kept a low profile in the Tea Party for fear of being judged by the mainstream media’s double standard.

Yet the media-savvy, media-embraced Occupy movement used shout-outs from President Obama, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, rap impresario Russell Simmons, Alec Baldwin, Kanye West, Susan Sarandon, Roseanne Barr, Sean Lennon, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Tim Robbins, and Anne Hathaway to hide what was really going on at the makeshift encampments. (more…)

Let’s back up a little bit before we get to the list…

A few weeks ago in Denver I had the opportunity for some up close and personal time with the Occupy movement, and what I saw was about what you would expect. These are marginal and marginally intelligent people who have grown up conditioned by public educators and the welfare state to believe that they’re something special and entitled to the good life just because they’re special and entitled to the good life. And they’ve also been brainwashed to believe that if America doesn’t acknowledge their specialness and if, indeed, they’re not enjoying the good life, the problem must be a corrupt America.

Occupy is all about greed, self-actualization, and narcissism. The fastest and easiest way to feel superior is to assume the role of a victim … because a victim is always superior to his or her oppressors.

Occupy is also an army the left and Alinksy-style community organizers like Barack Obama have been breeding for decades. The formula is simple: feed enough self-esteem to those who don’t deserve it and you create an entire generation of entitled crybabies desperate to direct the frustration of their unfulfilled lives at whomever.

The left thought they had found the right moment to launch their Army of the Frustrated. With Obama’s poll numbers in the tank and the crippled economy unable to leap on a white stallion to save him, the idea was to launch Occupy in the hopes it would change the 2012 election conversation and media narrative from Obama’s failed record to ground upon which he might be able to win reelection: income inequality and those evil one-percenters on Wall Street who destroyed the economy.

And so the filthy, frustrated, and brain-fried, under the direction of their Adbuster Masters (more about this below), took to the streets, and for a few weeks the plan went perfectly. High-profile Democrats, including President Obama, endorsed and encouraged them, while the corrupt MSM worked overtime to cover up the movement’s hundreds of subhuman misdeeds (literally) and held it up as an example of all that is pure and righteous in America.

But then something happened the left and their media allies didn’t expect. They had woefully underestimated the power of New Media to expose the truth, and expose the truth we did, until the Occupy dream all came crashing down in an overwhelming narrative (overwhelming because it was true) involving Occupy’s frightening tolerance for rape, violence, vandalism, and public masturbation and defecation. (more…)

As I write this, my Android handset is flashing with Twitter updates. I have been engaging in a virtual “war” with a fellow user, who has accused me of being a conservative who wants to murder President Obama and his family ( his exact words). I have several tabs open in my internet browser: Facebook, Drudge Report, Google +. Each page is focused on something I care most about at this point in American political discourse: the economy, the GOP presidential debate, the constant barrage of ludicrous left-wing assumptions that the Tea Party is racist. Again, my phone alerts me that a new blog post has appeared on this very site, and I proceeded to read it. In fact, every little bit of my involvement in conservative politics was birthed from my deep connection to social media, and while I reside here in Dallas, it allows me to keep tabs on the Left, Washington politics, and the various conflicts worldwide.

But this article is not about me. It is about how social media seeks to engage those who have a desire to understand every shift in American politics, but don’t have the luxury of living in the political hotbed of Washington D.C. It does exactly that, but furthermore, it has altered our very perception of the political parties, world leaders, economic, foreign, and social policy, science, and history itself. Our means of communicating ideas has changed dramatically, allowing us to post 140 character statements of the things that matter to us, or create groups on Facebook to promote our beliefs and concerns, or even write lengthy essays on popular websites that push forth certain ideologies. Some would say that this doesn’t affect politics in any significant way, but when simple things, such as a video, have the ability to end corruption at the deepest levels, none can deny just how effective social media has become.

But as we accept just how invaluable social media is to our political discussion, we also must accept just how damaging it can be. While both the Left and the Right have turned to Twitter and Facebook to combat each other, the Left has used these tools more for accusing the Right of immense racism, homophobia, sexism, elitism, and terrorism, and less for espousing rationality and reason. Some even advocated lying for the purposes of winning political debate at one point or another. It isn’t hard to see just how erratic some liberals behave through social networking sites.

Even with the addition of Twitter and Facebook to the equation, blogging is the defined medium for expressing political views. Blogs are where the most impassioned debates on current events take place. Most blogs, such as the ones controlled by new media leaders like Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, Matt Drudge ( and of course this very site ran by our own Andrew Breitbart), have succeeded in presenting a new type of conservative thought, with a fair perspective on our ever shifting political scene. They hold no punches, and at times, are critical of people within our own movement. If only such civility were commonplace throughout the entirety of the blogosphere. Big name liberal sites like Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Talking Points Memo have used soaring rhetoric and violent language when talking about the things that conservatives care most about, and when discussing conservatives themselves.

(more…)

If we are going to win this thing, this battle to retake our culture and our country, you are going to have to learn to love to fight.

This battle can’t be left to a few champions who do battle on the airwaves or on cable or on the Internet, or who just do their part tweeting and Facebooking.  While we Constitutional conservatives, Tea Partiers, or whatever we call ourselves have been punching above our weight – the merely crappy debt ceiling deal would have been an unholy abomination of a deal if not for the intransigence of our Congressional allies supported by our voices from outside the Beltway – the fact is that we need more warriors.  That’s you.

And to be a warrior you need to want to fight.  You need to need to fight.  I’m not talking about punching and kicking – though if someone wants to go there, hey, let’s rock.  This is spoken or written combat, whether the battlefield is a cocktail party or a Facebook page.  And it’s vital.  These are serious issues that are worth fighting over.   Our Founders didn’t think they were making a country for a bunch of simpering, goody-goody wimps who go all wobbly at a harsh word or a raised voice.  Democracy requires guts.  Nut up.

People whine about fighting, cry over “bickering,” stammer out clichés about “bipartisanship,” “compromise” and being “reasonable.”  Well, I reject bipartisanship, compromise and reasonability, and so must you.  I want to fight and to win; death or glory.  Compromise is for losers – half a turd is still 100% turd.  But enough about the debt ceiling bill.

(more…)

INTRODUCTION

I. Whoever Controls “The Narrative,” Controls the National Political Conversation

When it comes to most of today’s mainstream media we are no longer talking about an entity that reports truth or facts. Everything about the MSM is now about The Narrative. Even though they’re supposedly made up of separate and competing newsrooms, there’s a very good reason why the MSM as a whole is usually covering, emphasizing and amplifying the exact same stories. This is what The Narrative is and its usefulness to the MSM is how it pushes particular stories to the forefront of public awareness in order to further a political agenda — an agenda that 90% of the time is meant to aid the Left and damage the Right.

Another part of The Narrative is what the MSM chooses NOT to cover; what they willfully ignore.

You can see The Narrative at work as I write this. The same MSM that assured us that when it came to Barack Obama, the church he attended for two decades didn’t matter, is now obsessing over a church Rep. Michele Bachman’s hasn’t attended in over a year. Here you have two separate (and wildly hypocritical) narratives at work: one meant to protect a Democratic presidential candidate, the other meant to damage a GOP presidential candidate.

On the other hand, you can also see The Narrative working by what’s NOT being covered today. The same MSM that obsessed over the Valerie Plame non-story is currently all but ignoring Obama’s brewing “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal –mainly because it’s exactly the kind of scandal that can swamp a presidency into paralyzing, under-40 approval ratings.

II. How Alternative Media Created the MSM’s Need for a Media Matters for America

Prior to the rise of the Internet, the Left almost completely owned the narrative. The simple truth is that before Al Gore’s invention was fully realized, other than a few esteemed columnists, the media had no serious ideological competition from the Right. The rise of the Internet, however, changed all of that as citizen journalists — many of whom are motivated by the MSM’s liberal biases — found this new tool invaluable when it came to both debunking the MSM’s latest lie (the most famous being RatherGate) or reporting on stories the MSM chose to ignore for ideological reasons.

(more…)

After hearing news the other day that the Obama administration had appointed a new position to monitor and push back against negative online press we thought some liberals in DC might think it wasn’t enough. So we sent Joe Schoffstall out to see just how far liberals would go to silence conservative speech. Joe went around Georgetown in DC with a petition to “Ban Conservative Hate Sites” that said this:

The undersigned hereby adamantly demand that the United States government shut down right wing hate sites. The hate speech propagated by sites like the Drudge Report, Hot Air, Instapundit, Big Government, and others must not be allowed to corrupt our political discourse any longer. These sites are dangerous not only to truth and freedom but also to our society as a whole. BAN THEM NOW!

That is pretty radical rhetoric that no reasonable, freedom-loving, red-blooded American could possibly agree with, right? Well, see for yourself:

It’s shocking isn’t it? Then again, perhaps it shouldn’t be.

After all Exposing Leftists, um, exposed that liberal college student in California were willing to ban conservatives from talk radio.

(more…)

This week President Obama revealed his latest attempt to control the media, the Internet, and the information revealed to the people of the United States by creating a new “press” office of sorts, an Obama ministry of truth, if you will. Obama’s grandiose name for this new office is the Progressive Media & Online Response department. Also named was its new director, Jesse Lee. Lee, it turns out, has an interesting connection to one of the most outrageous anti-American, anti-military media efforts in recent memory.

Jesse Lee, you see, is married to Nita Chaudhary, one of the people responsible for the 2007 MoveOn.org newspaper ad that maligned General David Petraeus as “General Betray Us.”

That’s right, the guy that President Obama has chosen to “correct” the Internet and media and to relay the president’s “truth” is connected to one of the most anti-American, anti-military, left-wing activist groups in America. Lee and his wife are typical, hardcore, leftist extremists yet now they are in the People’s House with Lee responsible to “correct” the people themselves when they dare to question The One.

As David Steinberg notes, “Lee’s relationship with Chaudhary was not a negative for his White House career.” On the contrary, the man married to the woman that helped head an attack on the very general Obama himself has given greater duties has found her baleful influence to have either helped him reach a position inside the White House, or at the very least been a non-factor.

(more…)

Andrew Breitbart’s recent epic battle with the forces of liberal tolerance is not the most important lesson he offers – not by a longshot.  There has got to be someone surprised by the way the Huffington Post fell to its figurative knees to kiss the figurative asses of Van Jones and his commie pals the second they started whining about how Breitbart was speaking his mind, but that someone likely believes in climate change and unicorn rodeos.  Liberals treat concepts like “freedom of speech” and “diversity” like lonely teenage boys treat Kleenex; their floor is littered with wadded-up, discarded principles like free expression that have out-lived their usefulness.  If you are shocked that the liberal media is anything more than a Ministry of Truth promoting the lamest collectivist clichés du jour, you either haven’t been paying attention, or you are really, really dumb.

No, Andrew Breitbart’s most important lesson – one he’ll happily tell you about and which his bestselling book will describes in depth – is that ten years ago, he was just some regular guy.  He wasn’t a Harvard grad or a congressman or a TV anchor.  He was just a normal American citizen who had had enough.  The only difference between him and everyone else is that he chose to get into the fight by leveraging his growing political maturity with the exploding phenomena that is the internet.  And that’s a decision you can make too.

At a superficial level, what my boring communications professors droned on about while my buddies and I took Bacardi hits off a flask in the last rows of the UCSD lecture halls, is true – the medium itself is the message.  Supported by talk radio, conservative think tanks and Fox News, the internet and the social media it has made possible – the Facebooks, the Twitters, the podcasting and the blogs – represent the destruction of the old order of political discourse.  And that creative destruction is what we represent – the new paradigm that has turned the once mighty New York Times into a pathetic brochure that today sets the agenda for no one but the Manhattan-bound, neo-Pauline Kael set whose members can’t believe those Tea Party barbarians prevailed last November because they don’t know any.

The issue is not whether you can be part of the fight.  You can.  You can organize, to the extent the Tea Party movement lends itself to organization (Chaos is its best defense against co-opting!).  You can start a blog, you can tweet, or you can Facebook (Is that a verb yet?).  The number of internet radio shows and podcasts like Jimmy Bise, Jr.’s “The Delivery” are exploding.  New radio hosts are coming out of the movement, like Larry “Stage Right” O’Connor, Dana Loesch and Tony Katz – and they are crossing into terrestrial radio.  Your opportunity is unlimited.

(more…)

As School districts across the nation face what administrators are claiming is a lack of funding, Texas Conservatives counter such claims in their own state by citing examples of irresponsible appropriations and misuse of funds on top of gargantuan administrator salaries.

As scores of teachers are either being laid off or forced to dig deeper into their own pockets for classroom supplies, some Texas school administrators and left of center political interests have been quick to direct blame at Texas Governor Rick Perry for his defending of the state’s educational sovereignty. By refusing federal dollars, Governor Perry also rebuffed the attached efforts of the Obama administration to further regulate the education and curriculum of Texas students.

In an indicting editorial posted today on Texas-based texasgovote.com, a young Army National Guardsman named David Bellow took his local school board administration to task for the blatant mishandling of tax-payer funds. Bellow went further to shine light on another Texas school district’s blatant wasting of monies. He pointed out that Texas’ Beaumont ISD serves a city of approximately 100,000 individuals, yet the superintendent receives an annual $360,000 salary. He also pointed out that this gargantuan salary is amongst the highest of any public-sector official in the state and well over two times what the Texas Governor earns overseeing the entire state.

When trying to understand how such disrespect for tax-payers and their dollars could exist, it’s important to note that both of the school districts referenced by Bellow reside in long-time, good ol’ boy, Democrat-controlled counties where liberal fiscal irresponsibility abound and are the norm. Though many in the referenced counties vote conservative in national elections, they have historically voted for Democrats in local races. This has allowed a network of cronies and what would now be called “Chicago-style” politics to thrive without accountability. And much like their national party, local Democrats spend irresponsibly and make every effort to frame the problem as not having had enough tax-payer money in the first place. This dynamic is not unique to Texas and the feasible solution is not unique to the state either. (more…)

The race is over.  Republican Renee Ellmers has defeated incumbent and Democrat Bob Etheridge in the hotly contested NC-2 congressional race.

Back in June, Big Government’s Mike Flynn broke this explosive video on Rep. Etheridge where he assaulted a college student for asking him if he “supported the Obama agenda.”  Flynn closed his article with this:

Let’s recap what we saw on this video. A sitting Congressman–a presumed living extension of James Madison and other founding fathers–was asked on a public street whether he supported the President’s agenda. His response was to hit away a video camera and assault a student. The age of Pericles this ain’t.

It is going to be a long, hot summer. But, you’ve been shown a politician who can be beaten this November. Act accordingly.

And “act accordingly” NC voters did–even though some in the liberal media did try to spin that Etheridge was ambushed by GOP operatives–offering that narrative without any proof whatsoever.

Proof we do have, however, is that of Etheridge’s character.

(more…)

In this week’s edition of of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, we’re talking about the latest unemployment numbers, the coming political conflict across class and generation, and why the iPad won’t save old media. We’re brought to you as always by Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Yousefzadeh: A Disconnect on Unemployment Numbers
Tracinski: The European Welfare State
Chris Christie: Best Governor in America?
London Times: Generational Warfare
Paul Krugman: About That Conventional Wisdom
TNL: Why the iPad Won’t Save Newspapers

President Obama delivered the commencement address at Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday and, for those accustomed to his usual dose of narcissism, hypersensitivity, and self-serving historical revisionism, the Kvetcher-in-Chief didn’t disappoint. Here’s the text of the speech, courtesy of WaPo.

You have to give the President credit. Even when delivering a speech designed to inspire the leaders of tomorrow, Obama can still sniff out a way to complain about his perceived ill treatment at the hands of the media. Whether it’s Onstar or Garmin, this man’s persecution GPS has pinpoint accuracy. Judge for yourself:

With so many voices clamoring for attention on blogs, on cable, on talk radio, it can be difficult, at times, to sift through it all…to figure out who’s telling the truth and who’s not. ..Even some of the craziest claims can quickly gain traction. I’ve had some experience with that myself.

Notice the provenance of those “clamoring voices” which Obama insidiously cites: blogs (read new media journalists), talk radio (read Limbaugh, Levin, Medved, et al.), cable (read Fox News). Not the network MSM which coddles Obama, not hoop-shooting Harry Smith or soft-balling Brian Williams, whom Obama himself— at last year’s White House Correspondents dinner –joked about being in bed with.

It’s difficult to remember a whinier American president. If this man’s skin were any thinner, it would be diaphanous. You’d think one of his handlers would have told him: in the eyes of followers, victimhood lessens a leader. Did Patton complain of the desert heat? You bet. To the troops? Never.

(more…)

Last week, Andrew Breitbart sat down with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network and articulated his position that the media is the primary adversary to those fighting for traditional American values.

Watch the whole thing: you’re sure to enjoy when Andrew discusses that while the New Media may well save the Republic (and perhaps the world), it has already saved him personally.

The Brody File show airs tonight on the CBN Newschannel.

A full profile of Andrew Breitbart will air on The 700 Club show May 13th.

Some highlights/discussion points below:

“By aiming everything at the media, I’ve pretty much done the one thing they ask you not to do: ‘please accept the premise that we’re fair and let’s move on.’ No, I’m not going to accept that premise.” (more…)

“Where were you when George Bush was President?”   You know that question well.  It’s been asked of each of us more times than any of us would care to count.  Do you know how I usually answer it?

I was home, enjoying my life.  I went to work every day and focused on doing the best job that I could do.  When I wasn’t working, I hung out with family and friends.  I went to baseball games, and barbecues, and obscure little hole-in-the-wall joints to hear some of my favorite live music over a couple of Guinnesses.  Yum.

Why?  Because while George Bush was president, we had a media establishment that was challenging our government, not our citizens.

I wasn’t necessarily happy with the direction of the country in those days.  But I could sleep at night, knowing that we had media that pressed George Bush and our Congress on every single issue.  I could know at any given moment what the “death count” was in Iraq because just about every channel splashed a persistent counter in the bottom corner of the television screen.  When bills like the Patriot Act were first introduced in Congress, I never lacked for any detail on the dangers of the legislation.  There was barely a single detail that went uncovered in the daily political grind.  When there was a scandal to research and report, I certainly never had to do that myself.  There were reporters who did all that.

Yep, I’m actually missing the Bush days now.  I had so much more free time.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always done my homework and researched issues on my own anyway.  I recognize that all media is biased to some degree (and has been for quite some time).  But I could always count on the media to challenge the government in the days of George Bush.  I wrote my fair share of letters, I called and complained about the spending, even attended a few protests, but I can’t say that I ever felt there just wasn’t anyone challenging the president in the mainstream media.  Quite the contrary, there was never any lack of DC pushback from the collective press in those days.

But we live in extraordinary times today.  There now exists this giant, open cavity where that healthy pushback against government used to be.  And when the mainstream media stepped away from that opening in 2008, two things happened:

(more…)

From NPR’s “All Things Considered”:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Conservative Blogger Faces Criticism Over Protege, by DAVID FOLKENFLIK

The conservative online news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart is, for the moment, doing little to dispel stereotypes about bloggers. During a recent visit to his home on the west side of Los Angeles, Breitbart, 41, is working from his own basement. Barefoot. At the beck and call of his own kids.

But that basement is light and airy, with a decent view of the city. A young assistant works there with Breitbart to help funnel wire service stories to Breitbart.com, his main news aggregation site. And his reach, thanks to a brawling rhetorical style and a protege who taped the undercover ACORN videos last year, is only expanding.

Over the past year, Breitbart has hired editors to run a new network of conservative blogs called BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com and BigJournalism.com. No matter the focus, the media are a prime target throughout. (more…)

The 2010 elections represent an enormous opportunity for Congressional Republicans.  As I pointed out in Part I of this series,  The Lessons of ’66 and ’94 Loom Over the Democrats, the average loss for the President’s Party, when the President’s approval rating is below 50%, is 40+ House seats. The past, however, is no guarantee of the future – just a possible guide.  If Republicans are to realize the full potential of this election, they will need to overhaul their recent election strategies.

The Top 4 changes they should employ are:

4.  Oppose.  It has long been said that the first duty of the opposition is to oppose.  Given that the outset of 2010 will be dominated by the health care bill which will then give way to a pork barrel “jobs” (read government jobs) bill and then on to cap and trade, immigration/amnesty and then taxes – Congressional Republicans will have ample opportunity to oppose the Democrats’ bad policies.  More than merely oppose them, however, the magnitude of the “Change” being pushed by the Democrats requires the Congressional Republicans to demonstrate valor and determination in defeating those measures as if the Constitution depended upon it – because it does.

(more…)