It’s the most important election of our lifetime. Now, more than ever before, it is important to understand what the Presidential candidates believe, what their policies are, and the differences between themselves and the current administration. The Republican National Committee knows this, yet they have decided to turn over the entire process of informing the populace to the Democrat Media Complex. Rather than answering questions about job creation, executive orders, energy, or Fast & Furious, our candidates are spending precious time on the national airwaves discussing Terri Schiavo, sugar subsidies, and the Everglades Project.

Take a look at the questions from the past debate (just the questions). Is this really helping send the message the RNC must to deliver to win in November?

(more…)

Even most native speakers of English don’t realize how many of our commonest clichés—phrases you hear verbatim in venues as diverse as a gabfest on The View, an Elvis Presley song, or a political debate in Wolf Blitzer’s urgently-named “The Situation Room”—were actually invented by 18^th and 19^th-century British poets.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Marv Albert on ESPN describing a triple play? Not exactly. It’s the justly famous first line of John Keats’ pastoral poem Endymion (1818) about a shepherd lad loved by the moon goddess Selene. “Fools rush in.” Elvis, right? The first three words, maybe. But the entire pearl—”Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”—actually hails from Alexander Pope’s brilliant 1711 poetic treatise An Essay on Criticism. And who first warned us “A little learning is a dangerous thing?” Einstein? George Washington? Sorry. Pope, once again. From the very same poem—and to think he was only 23 when he scribbled these sterling epigrams that stubbornly cling to our lips nearly 300 years later.

But what about that ubiquitous ornithological metaphor we all bandy about so freely? You know—the albatross, inextricably wrapped around some poor wretch’s hapless neck? Surely dead bird imagery is too macabre, too contemporary to have crawled out of some centuries-old British poem—right?

Not if the poet is the opium-addicted mystic Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the poem is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). With his surreal tale, Coleridge unwittingly gave us the perfect proxy for President Obama, entangled in his own personal albatross—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

When Obama signed the bill into law on March 23, 2010, with the stroke of a pen he became the doomed sailor in Coleridge’s supernatural, foreboding poem. Little did the President know at the time that his pen was the equivalent of the cross-bow with which Coleridge’s mariner killed the fated albatross. (Word to the wise: be careful what you lobby for. Word to the foolish: ignore the word to the wise.)

(more…)

The mainstream media were complicit in their coverage of the ACORN scandal. Their behavior was and continues to be an insult to democracy and journalistic responsibility as the Fourth Estate has ignored facts, engaged in one-sided sourcing, and avoided basic and inherently important journalistic questioning.

First, there was avoidance. Some media outlets simply ignored the story. On Sept. 15, five days after the Maryland tape was released, ABC’s Charlie Gibson said, “I don’t even know about it… so you’ve got me at a loss” and said that the story might be “just one you leave to the cables.” But, Gibson was not alone in his lack of knowledge. The New York Times did not cover the story for nearly a week. On Sept. 26, Clark Hoyt, The Times’ Public Editor, acknowledged the paper’s tardiness, but insinuated that the story was lacking in facts:

But for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still.  Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire…But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.

(more…)

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis has taken on the (daunting) task of defending ACORN in the mainstream media. Her Politico bio is here. **UPDATE** MSNBC videos have been removed from the site. They are a couple days old at this point and we aren’t certain the explanation at this time.

**UPDATE**
TODAY Show vid recovered here: