J.R. Dunn: JournoList and the Leftist Mentality

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When Tucker Carlson published a few of the JournoList discussions on The Daily Caller, he put a spotlight on what had previously been one of the darker inner sanctums of the left. But more than that, says J.R. Dunn in an American Thinker commentary, the exposé provided a glimpse into the workings of the the JournoLeft's minds:

In a way, the JournoList scandal is old news. It's something long suspected on our side of the aisle, something we've occasionally seen brief glimpses of (as in the identical slogans and taglines that just happen to appear in stories, columns, and headlines with amazing synchronicity).

[...]

And the JournoList scandal has confirmed -- or rather, reaffirmed -- a number of things concerning the legacy media.

The first is their stifling sense of moral superiority. These people truly believe they are moral paragons, fully qualified to act as guides to the Neanderthal rabble, even if they have to cheat, lie, and manipulate to do it. Signs of this are found throughout the e-mails, no matter what the ostensible topic. Sara Mead (Aug 30, 2008, 12:24am) asserts, "I'm not at all a fan of Palin, either, but as liberals and decent human beings, we should be respectful in how we refer to people with disabilities." Even if we're using them as a club to beat the opposition, evidently.

Katha Pollitt (Sept 8, 2008, 3:11pm) moans that the Dems are simply "too lofty" to get down in the gutter with the GOP. (The inclusive "we" is used throughout when referring to JournoList, the Democrats, or the Left in general.)

Harold Pollack (Aug 30, 2008, 11:43am) piously recommends turning to the Talmud for guidance -- in a lengthy posting trying to justify the "Trig is really Bristol's kid" story. Hillel and Maimonides would no doubt have approved.

The second point is that they truly believe all their own propaganda. The U.S. is run by "racists" (as one of them states bluntly), and Bush is the reincarnation of Hitler. The Republicans are throwbacks out to force Americans into serfdom. This is Gospel Truth, so solid it requires neither evidence nor debate. The world works exactly like an Oliver Stone movie, and in no other way.

[...]

(Reading the original posts, by the way, is well worth it. Page after page of people earnestly pretending that they're not doing exactly what they're doing -- that is, distorting the news. Founder and chief guru Ezra Klein is particularly adamant: No message discipline here, he insists. We're just a discussion board! Then you get this, from veteran lefty academic Todd Gitlin [Sept 8, 2008, 9:37pm]: "On the question of liberals coordinating, what the hell's wrong with some critical mass of liberal bloggers & journalists saying the following among themselves: McCain lies about his maverick status. Routinely, cavalierly, cynically. Palin lies about her maverick status. Ditto, ditto, ditto. McCain has a wretched temperament. McCain is a warmonger. Palin belongs to a crackpot church and feels warmly about a crackpot party that trashes America ..."

[...]

They know the truth. They are fighting on behalf of a "better world," so no crime exists for them. They are absolved before they even act.

So any action is justified. Attacking Sarah Palin's family. Calling for FOX to be shut down. Giggling as you imagine Rush Limbaugh's death. Or these immortal words from Spencer Ackerman, written in the world's leading democracy in the first decade of the third millennium: "[F]ind a rightwinger's [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically." (Obviously, as anybody who has seen a photo of little Spencer is well aware.)

Read J.R. Dunn's full op-ed at American Thinker.

- JP

Mark Judge: Sarah Palin and the Men of JounoList

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Mark Judge, a Washington writer and author of God and Man at Georgetown Prep, after veiwng the photos of the Men (and Women) of Journolist, had just one question, "Who let the dogs out?":

Andrew Sullivan’s obsessive hatred of Palin goes far beyond the cynicism of a journalist; there is a kind of primordial spasm of rage against something so marvelously lovely, so downright awesome. It’s like that guy a few years ago who took a hammer to Da Vinci’s sculpting of David. The beauty was unbearable! Palin is an archetype that the left does not know how to contain or control: the hot female jock who also happens to be cool. The left hates good-looking Republican women and jocks, so combining the two is like an exorcist hitting a demon with not only prayers, but water blessed by the Pope.

There’s usually one hot female jock like Palin in every school. It’s a girl who is so stunning that even teachers find themselves staring, yet she is too modest to acknowledge her beauty. She plays it down or changes the subject when someone brings it up. It may be because she was raised with good values, the desire to be humble, but it could also be because she wants to be taken seriously as a jock. Palin is a triple threat: a pretty jock who is also incredibly sexy (pretty and sexy are two different things). In high school she was the kind of girl that the school newspaper nerds – the future Journolisters – despised. Pummeled with so much raw beauty, athleticism and sex appeal – and she’s nice, too, g****** her – these fearless chroniclers of reality were left sputtering – and seething.

Beauty also offers some explanation of the left’s dizzy crush on Barack Obama. Sweet Mother of Pearl, they said when he arrived, here we have a beautiful man who is athletic and a liberal. And black. It was a Bizarro World from the one they had known their entire lives. It was a chance at retribution for all the Sarah Palins that didn’t go to the prom with them, for every Saturday night spent playing Dungeons and Dragon, for all those atomic wedgies endured in the locker room. It didn’t hurt that they could indulge their white guilt and puff themselves up with moral righteousness by evoking the last thing they were right about, the Civil Rights movement. It’s no surprise that Pillsbury Doughboy Chris Matthews expressed his love for Obama in sexual terms – “I just felt this thrill run up my leg.”

I’m not surprised that there are no female TV journalists on the Journolist. Most of them are just too hot for the list. And this leads to the one exception to the Journolist troll theory. Liberals female journalists can be hot if they are on TV. In fact, they would not be on TV if they weren’t. But in order to compensate for their hotness – not to mention keep their jobs – they make sure to bring the liberalism extra hard. Soledad O’Brien began as a charming Smurf on the “Today” show; now she harangues America for its racism on her endless series of specials about being black/Hispanic/clubfooted in America. Diane Sawyer started working for Nixon, and now she’s all gushing sentiment and gee-whiz lefty emotionalism. Norah O’Donnell, turbo hot, began as a grunt at Roll Call. O’Donnell lost her composure on MSNBC the day Sarah Palin’s book was released. “We have to find out if Sarah Palin IS TELLING THE TRUTH!” she bellowed.

Poor Norah. She wasn’t the hottest girl in class anymore.

Read the full, funny Mark Judge commentary at The Daily Caller.

- JP

More Quote of the Day Honorable Mention, Part 84

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Special JounoGate Edition: "She who must be destroyed VI"...

Curt at Flopping Aces:

"[Joe] Klein would later pass off the words of fellow Journolisters as his own for [an] anti-Palin piece. This is how insidious the Journolist cabal was. They conspired to send a message through all forms of media, and make it in unison so any and all opposition is drowned out in response... How often have we on the right said that our universities are infested with liberal nut professors? Now here is a man [Todd Gitlin of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism], a man who teaches the future journalists of this country, urging all the other journalists to secretly coordinate a specific message on behalf of the Democrat party."

Patrick S. Adams at Liberty's Lamp:

"When Palin's light shined for the first time on the national stage, the liberal media wanted to keep her and America in that darkness that existed before her selection for VP. The Journolist emails show a mainstream media that was dead set on dimming the light that was now emanating from the Republican presidential campaign."

Chris Bounds at Liberty Juice:

"John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-president running mate sent the liberal media scrambling. Attack plans were likely already worked up for Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and other better known potential candidates believed to be on McCain’s short-list, but when McCain surprised everyone and selected the governor of Alaska, a woman with deep conservative values with faith, family, and country it was clear that the left was not ready for that... Think about this – it took two years for this information to reach the public. The damage has already been done. Can you trust them with anything they say now?"

Frank Miele at the Daily Inter Lake:

"To the media elite, you and I are just morons. That’s why everything that happened to Sarah Palin in the 2008 campaign should be questioned... The problem is, when the Fourth Estate works for the chief executive, not for the truth, then what we have is no longer a free press, but rather a Ministry of Propaganda."

FoxNews.com:

"Liberal journalists and commentators on an exclusive web group coordinated ways to discredit Sarah Palin on the very day she was nominated as Sen. John McCain's vice presidential pick in 2008... After one member wrote that women should take 'umbrage' at the idea that putting 'any woman on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views' could win them over, Mother Jones' Jonathan Stein urged others to echo that point."

Canadian Sentinel:

"No wonder so many people have been brainwashed into wrongly thinking Sarah Palin is 'stupid' and even much worse. They depend on the likes of such liars as recently exposed via their echo-chamber email listserv 'JournoList', now defunct. It's just the tip of the iceberg."

desertgardens at Sea to Shining Sea:

"It is beginning to appear that some participants in the listserv were going in to active 'non-official' campaign mode, discussing ways to negatively report on Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign..."

Elephant Owners:

"The Daily Caller has released 'journolist' discussing Sarah Palin around the time that she was picked as John McCain’s running mate. What is striking to me is that the discussions sounds like something that happens on the campaign trail. They are simply looking for a way to discredit her in their efforts to elect Obama."

Don Surber at the Charleston Daily Mail:

"JournoList shows that [Sarah Palin] was never given a chance. And the rumor came early enough to set the tone for the coverage... It is hard to make the case that this was a few outlier souls when the majority is silent about the terrible things said about a teenage girl and an infant."

Joshuapundit:

"To be fair, some of the e-mails actually expressed some common decency, like one by Ezra Klein, who wrote: 'By all accounts she’s a wonderful mother, and devoted to her fifth son [sic]. Leave this be.' ... But what struck me about a number of the comments was the sentiment that the chief reason for not touching this was not because it was indecent but because it could be a Republican 'trick' that could backfire politically:The whole sordid saga would be sad and pathetic if these people weren't so inherently dangerous to the whole idea of a free press that [is] supposed to help guard our liberties."

SusanAnne Hiller at 73 Wire:

"But let’s forget about the JournoList for a moment and turn our eyes to another listserv out there in Google. I’m referring to Matt Stoller’s private, invitation-only TownHouse listserv. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Stoller, he’s a progressive blogger-turned-senior policy advisor for Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL)... With the embarrassing emails from the JournoList, I’d really love to see the TownHouse emails, wouldn’t you? Especially the ones about Sarah Palin."

Keith Burgess-Jackson:

"Keith's Law... Authoritativeness is inversely proportional to partisanship... We now know why journalism is in such low repute. Many journalists have... decided that they'd rather be players than impartial reporters, either because they're oblivious to Keith's Law... Sarah Palin [commented] on what she calls the 'darkness' and 'sickness' of contemporary journalism. Unlike so many others, she gets it."

Gregory of Yardale at Teh Resistance Blog:

"AIDS-Addled Crackpot Andrew Sullivan claims vindication for flogging the insane conspiracy theory that Sarah Palin is not actually Trig Palin mother, because as it turns out, the left-wing cabal known as Jornolist was flogging the same conspiracy theory. Note: Trig Palin was born April 18 2008. Bristol Palin gave birth to Tripp Palin on December 27 2008. How the Hell did she get pregnant with Tripp before she gives birth to Trig? Or am I just using that silly hatred-for-Sarah-Palin-does-not-bend-the-laws-of-nature logic again? "

Sissy Willis at Liberty Pundits:

"We headed over to Memeorandum to get a bite of what’s getting other bloggers’ panties in a twist... The top story was [particularly] delicious: In the wake of The Daily Caller’s latest Journolist revelations, former Journolista Andrew Sullivan — who’s been waging a long, lonely battle at his Atlantic blog... trying to prove against all odds that Sarah Palin’s baby boy Trig was actually born of daughter Bristol — realizes he’s been thrown under the bus, the object of ridicule by those he took to be his friends."

Brent Bozell at NewsBusters:

"The second liberal self-defense of JournoList was that Klein claimed there was no plan for partisan 'message coordination.' But the Daily Caller showed how no one on the list was really paying attention to that alleged plan. After Sarah Palin was picked for the GOP ticket in 2008, Suzanne Nossel of Human Rights Watch insisted 'I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views.' Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones insisted the entire Left should spread that spin: 'That’s excellent! If enough people – people on this list? – write that the pick is sexist, you’ll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket,' he wrote. No message coordination there... What’s most shocking is the silence. How many in the 'mainstream' press are publicly denouncing those members of JournoList for their blatant disregard of journalistic ethics? Listen to the crickets..."

Bonus Quote...

Jim Treacher at The DC Trawler:

"The people on JournoList claim they were just social networking, so let’s start calling it SociaList"

- JP

More Quote of the Day Honorable Mention, Part 83

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Special JounoGate Edition: "She who must be destroyed V"...

Jennifer Rubin at Commentary Magazine:

"The Beagle Blogger was not the only one obsessed with Sarah Palin’s pregnancy and her son Trig; it just turns out he was the only Obama cheerleader foolish enough to make an issue of it. If you want to see just how inane is the blogospheric left, take a gander at the pages and pages and pages of discussion on the Palin pregnancy and her son Trig in the latest installation of the Journolist Chronicles. It’s not a pretty sight, although it’s nice to know that even Ezra Klein could figure out it was a topic they all should stay away from (because like the Borg, they do not think independently). Yes, children, it’s either her son or, if not, (because they can spend hours mulling if it’s all a hoax) there really is no upside for the Obama camp in making a big deal of a politician who welcomes a Down Syndrome child into her home."

Jimmie Bise at Sundries Shack:

"Speaking of the JournoList, it’s heartening to see how filled with compassion... they were to learn that Sarah Palin’s child, born prematurely and with Down’s Syndrome is the healthy delight of his family."

Anthony Bialy at Smart Girl Nation:

"It would be easy to feel sorry for the JournoListers were they not so miserably hateful... JournoListy types will still try to damn the evidence and convince us that their cunningly nerdy spin reflects reality. It is their custom. They do the same thing when they proclaim that Sarah Palin said all the dumb things Tina Fey actually did, the free market and not Barney Frank-led intervention pushed us to the brink of collapse, and that Tea Partiers are racist for wanting to reduce the debt to 13 figures or less... Being the target of dirt clumps thrown by dirt bags is a badge of honor, as Palin clearly knows."

CJ at An Angry American:

"Fifteen pages of journolist crap about whether or not Trig Palin is Sarah Palin's son... Fifteen pages of gossip, innuendo, and crap. Good grief. How far can the media fall?"

John Hinderaker at Power Line:

"I had thought that the belief that Trig was really Bristol's baby was an insane idea held only by Andrew Sullivan. It is an insane idea all right, but it turns out that it was believed, or at least taken seriously, by a number of liberal journalists--while some others, to their credit, tried to restore a sense of decency to the liberal press. Beyond that, the tactics of how to spin Palin's fifth child in a way that could damage the Republican ticket was seemingly an obsessive concern of these journalists. It is a sad spectacle."

William A. Jacobson at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:

"In their email exchanges the Journolistas were worried that assailing Sarah Palin over Trig's birth might backfire. At least the Journolistas were right about one thing."

Lachlan Markay at NewsBusters:

"Jared Bernstein... unpaid ‘surrogate’ adviser to the Obama campaign, was a member of JournoList... So not only was Bernstein privy to vitriolic discussions about Sarah Palin after her selection as the GOP vice presidential nominee, but he was also cued into the liberal media attack plan against the Governor... Daniel Levy could not have made JournoList's talking-point-formation role any clearer: ‘This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say... scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia [sic] wing-nut a heartbeat away... bang away at McCain’s age making this unusually significant...’ Bernstein was privy to this message and to the entire back and forth concerning how best to collectively address Palin's nomination. And sure enough, we see remarkably similar talking points show up in a Huffington Post piece written by Bernstein in October 2008: Palin as ‘a newcomer on the national scene with scant governing experience, little knowledge of the major issues, and few deeply held views … [and] unfettered, thin, talking points.' You know, unlike Obama, with his swathes of executive experience (less than Palin) and concrete, substantive policy positions (Hope and Change)."

Doug Powers at MichelleMalkin.com:

"At this point, put me down for Palin. In the universe that exists parallel to ours but where anything can happen, put me down for Herman Cain. Come to think of it, a Palin/Cain ticket could single-handedly save JournoList..."

James DeLong at the Waterbury American-Republican:

"The real problem with Journolist is much of it consisted of exchanges among people who worked for institutions about how to best hijack their employers for the cause of progressivism. Thus, the Journolist discussions revealed last week in the Daily Caller were about how the group could get their media organizations to play down the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair, and how to embarrass Sarah Palin, to help elect Barack Obama. Were I an editor of one of these institutions, I would instantly fire any employee who participated in this gross violation of his duty."

Serr8d at Serr8d's Cutting Edge:

"JournoListers promulgated two lies: that Sarah Palin was unqualified, and that Barack Hussein Obama was qualified."

Moe Lane at RedState.com:

"‘Trig Troofers’ are people who believe that former Governor Sarah Palin did not actually give birth to her son Trig Palin; they instead believe that the child is Bristol Palin’s, despite the fact that Ms. Palin herself had a child at about the same time. (This fact infuriates a large number on the Left, as it utterly failed to trigger any sort of firestorm of condemnation and anger among social conservatives. The netroots hate it when their prejudices are demonstrated to be unjustified.) This has thus become a particularly bizarre conspiracy theory, on the level of the ‘we faked the Apollo moon landing...’ I wanted to make it clear that people who believe this nonsense are crazy. And apparently some of them are riddled through the ranks of the leading liberal magazine The American Prospect."

Mitch Berg at Shot in the Dark:

"What a very, very trite group of people they are: ‘Libermann [sic] would have been a better choice... At least he has experience and can find Eastern Market for Sunday brunch.’ ... Knowing DC’s social circles is the dispositive criterion for a potential President?"

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

"The Daily Caller offers another installment of its Journolist exposé, only this one may be most notable for the praise given … Sarah Palin. After her speech at the Republican convention in 2008, the list members admitted their respect for the VP nominee, with one calling the speech “gangbusters.” Palin had them worried enough that a proposal floated among members to use the listserv explicitly to coordinate efforts to get Barack Obama elected."

K. E. Grubbs Jr. at Investor's Business Daily:

"Then came the plot, largely successful, to depict the engagingly competent governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin... as a soap-opera bimbo. The narrative would be about McCain's cynically sexist choice. The narrative's creators were themselves devolving into something sickly sexist."

dakinikat at The Confluence:

"I found the release of the raw conversations on the list about Sarah Palin and Baby Trig. I just HAD to look. There it was. A bunch of snooty men (and a few women) talking about a woman and a difficult pregnancy with a challenging outcome in the most inhumane way possible. No, make that the most uncivil way possible. Oh, I don’t know, it just all came out mean and creepy to me... The first comment I really noticed came from Sara Mead who wanted every one to be politically correct when dealing with the Down’s Syndrome issue. Odd that, considering the rest of the conversation [is] about how to skewer Sarah Palin using poor Trig. Most of the comments bear no resemblance to any decent level of compassion afforded to a mother who is dealing with a child with special needs.... Granted there were a few folks in the “leave the kid alone” category... The problem is that most of them couldn’t leave it alone. The entire conversation just takes one bizarre turn after another."

- JP

Mainstream?

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It's not often that we find ourselves disagreeing with NRO's Jim Geraghty, but this is one of those times. Last week on his NRO blog Campaign Spot, Geraghty wrote this about the Journolistas:

I don’t think anybody begrudges liberal activists and journalists their right to free association, either in the physical world or the Internet/e-mail world. But hearing that the Marc Ambinders, Ben Smiths, Mike Allens, and other non-liberal correspondents were on the list is eye-opening and potentially troublesome.

Let’s say you’re one of these guys, and while JournoList existed, you wrote an article arguing something like, “Sarah Palin just completely mishandled this issue.” I find it likely that the JournoList crowd would respond in their chat board, “Great piece by [JournoList Participant X], he really astutely lays out how she screwed up, etc.” Now let’s say he wrote, “Palin just hit it out of the park.” The response on JournoList, I suspect, would be or was quite negative, accusations of stupidity, dishonesty, hackdom, etc. Sure, journalists are always getting feedback and criticism from all quarters. But the mainstream folks on JournoList were hanging around a crowd that pretty clearly was determined to influence the conversation about the presidential race, touting some stories as important and blocking off others as unfit for serious news attention.

Which leads us to ask, what evidence is there that Ambinder, Smith, Allen et al are "non-liberal" in any way, shape or form? These three and others like them may be in the "mainstream" of contemporary journalism, but the journalistic mainstream is liberal. What we have seen from Ambinder, Smith and Allen has been decidedly left of center and condescinding at best toward Sarah Palin. That's what led libertarian journalist Bernard Goldberg to coin the term "lamestream media" and Gov. Palin to adopt it with open arms.

Frankly, we're amazed that Jim Geraghty, whom we've always considered to be a very perceptive fellow, doesn't get this. But then again, his employer is not William F. Buckley's National Review anymore.

- JP

Delusional Dionne displays all the intellect of a dust mite

- by ehvogel
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In an opinion piece today for the Washington Post titled "Enough right-wing propaganda," the esteemed intellect of E. J. Dionne, Jr. comes up with this gem:

The mainstream media and the Obama administration must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its propaganda to be accepted as news by convincing traditional journalists that "fairness" requires treating extremist rants as "one side of the story." And there can be no more shilly-shallying about the fact that racial backlash politics is becoming an important component of the campaign against President Obama and against progressives in this year's election.

What planet does this guy live on? Does he not have the slightest idea about the existence of the JournoList expose, where liberal media members conspired to destroy Sarah Palin with innuendo and falsehoods, like here, here and here?

To have a discussion about right-wing "propaganda" without also providing the context of the damning revelations from the JournoList emails smacks of partisan hackery to the highest degree. Why this guy has a job in ANY news organization speaks volumes as to the state of the lamestream media.

It is no longer in question that the Washington Post and the rest of the LSM are in its death throes. As Sarah said in a Facebook post today, it's a "journey into the media's heart of darkness."

- ev

Tx4P contributor ehvogel resides in North Texas where he presides over Generational Dysfunction.

Journolistas got it bassackwards on Fannie, Freddie, and Sarah Palin

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The Daily Caller has released yet another batch of Journolist emails in which the Journolistas discuss Gov. Palin's remark that "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." Although McClatchy newspapers reported, along with the governor's comment, that the two "Non-Governmental Agencies" (NGOs) "aren’t taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization.”

There was indeed a taxpayer bailout, as Judicial Watch explains:

On September 7, 2008, in a joint press conference with former FHFA Director Jim Lockhart, then-Treasury Secretary Henry "Hank" Paulson announced that after examining "all options available," Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be placed under "conservatorship" by the federal government. "Based on what we have learned about these institutions over the last four weeks -- including what we learned about their capital requirements -- and given the condition of financial markets today, I concluded that it would not have been in the best interest of the taxpayers for Treasury to simply make an equity investment in these enterprises in their current form," Paulson said. Lockhart expressed support for the Treasury Secretary's decision, indicating that he told the Treasury Secretary "conservatorship was the only form in which I would commit taxpayer money to [Fannie and Freddie]."

To date, there has been little information released regarding the internal assessments used by federal officials to justify the takeovers. For example, nothing has been detailed regarding why the option of conservatorship was chosen over another option under law: placement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into receivership, a form of outright liquidation. Meanwhile, taxpayers have "invested" $145 billion dollars in Fannie and Freddie so far, with some analysts estimating the total cost could ultimately be hundreds of billions of dollars higher. The FHFA requested additional funding for Fannie and Freddie in its recent report to Congress. Last December, the Obama administration pledged an unlimited amount of taxpayer dollars to keep Fannie and Freddie afloat, a commitment that was formerly capped at $400 billion.

Notice that the announcement of the takeover was made on September 7, 2008, the day before this thread on Journolist started. But a likely federal bailout of the two NGOs had been a topic of national discussion for months prior to the announcement that it was a done deal. As liberal columnist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times on July 14, 2008:

"Fannie and Freddie probably will need a government rescue."

That same day economics professor Willem Buiter complained, on his Financial Times blog:

"The bail-out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the combined forces of the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board is the ugliest exercise of its kind I have ever observed outside early transition economies and mature banana republics."

More than a month earlier, in a Bloomberg analysis by Lorraine Woellert and John Gittelsohn, the authors predicted:

"The cost of fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies that last year bought or guaranteed three-quarters of all U.S. home loans, will be at least $160 billion and could grow to as much as $1 trillion after the biggest bailout in American history."

We see that a federal bailout using taxpayer money has been a hot topic for more than two months before Gov. Palin was even announced as McCain's running mate on August 29 of that year. Thus her remark that Fannie and Freddie had been too expensive for the taxpayers. was both correct and justified. Contrary to the Journolista's claims, the governor's statement on the NGOs was neither a gaffe nor a miscue. And contrary to 'Lister Adam Doster's sneer that her comment "just shows her policy vapidness," she actually showed that she was right on top of the issue and prescient about the likely outcome. Doster's remark, on the other hand, shows typical leftist hubris.

The complete document containing raw Journolist emails on Governor Palin's remark about Fannie Mac and Freddie Mae are here.

- JP

Ziegler: Journolist list scandal proves media bias

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John Ziegler is feeling vindicated these days:

After having spent over a year of my life and most of my savings trying to spread the truth that the news media single-handedly elected Barack Obama and went on a search and destroy mission to target Sarah Palin (via my feature documentary “Media Malpractice”), I have pretty much stopped even bothering to chronicle this obvious media reality which continues to impact news coverage to this day. Since citing anti-Palin media bias is now roughly like continuing to build the case that O.J. was guilty, I have actually gotten kind of bored with it and left the duty of being outraged to many others more than willing to fill that void.

However, when something is revealed which particularly vindicates my film and where I can shed further light on the historical record, I feel a compulsion to come forward. Such is the case with the Daily Caller’s series last week on the treasure trove of “Journolist” e-mail that was recently uncovered.

While I took great interest in the evidence that liberal “journalists” had conspired to spike the numerous bombshells regarding Rev. Jeremiah Wright during the 2008 presidential primaries (my film goes into greater detail on that subject than any other I am aware of, but I can assure you my investigation indicates the entire story there has yet to be fully told), I was most intrigued by part three of the series which dealt directly with the targeting of then Governor Sarah Palin.

Specifically, I felt an “Ah Ha!” moment when the details about the role of Time magazine’s liberal writer Joe Klein were exposed.

I have always had a special suspicion of Joe Klein... So when I read about his special efforts to galvanize his media friends against the V.P. candidacy of Sarah Palin, a giant bell went off in my brain.

Read Ziegler's full op-ed at The Daily Caller.

- JP

The JounoListas' Trig Obsession (Updated)

In a 15-page document containing raw emails revealed today by The Daily Caller, the leftist media types who hung out on JournoList are revealed to be obsessed with the moonbat conspiracy theory first offered up by wacko-left blog Daily Kos (and later scrubbed) that Trig Palin was not Gov. Sarah Palin's child.

To his credit, UCLA professor Mark Kleiman argues that "chasing this story, even if it’s true, is morally dubious and politically misguided."

Katha Pollitt, feminist writer and columnist for The Nation, even went so far as to concede, "Unfortunately, palin is kind of cool. she’s not a brittle pastel-suited nut, like some of the eagle forum types. if she weren’t in politics, we would probably really like her."

Several others, sadly, showed no such ethical concerns.

Michael Cohen, who writes for The New Republic and is with the leftist New America Foundation, dared to dream big: "The upside is that if this is true she is done and so is McCain. It will be like McGovern in 72. The GOP won’t be able to survive this."

Huffington Post contributor and former communications director for the Democrat staff of the House Homeland Security Committee Moira Whelan thought the conspiracy theory was plausible because "The woman is from the sticks and didn’t even go to Juneau–let alone anywhere else–until she was in high school. Having lived in the sticks, I can attest to the fact that people make wacky decisions like this... I’d rather not talk about this crap in an election, but I am suspiscious (sic)."

Lindsay Beyerstein, who was covering the election for Firedoglake, said if she had evidence to support the story, she would not only report it, but would do so proudly: "So far, there’s not enough evidence for any responsible commentator to discuss this... However, if some reporter thinks this rumor is worth investigating further, and he or she absolutely nails this story, that would be great. If I had the smoking gun, I’d proudly publish the evidence." In a another posting, Beyerstein warned that the rumors could be part of a trap: "It wouldn’t surprise me if the McCain campaign were to leak doctored evidence for the sole purpose of discrediting it and destroying the journalist who published it."

Talking Points Memo blogger Kathleen Geier was also suspicious, and spewed a shot of venom in the direction of the GOP: "When I first heard this story, I thought it was preposterous... And maybe I really am losing it, driven over the edge at last by my hatred of all things Republican, but at this point I’m starting to believe it." In another email, Geier wrote, "I am really hoping Palin will self-immolate and bring down the ticket with her. Because if she proves to be a popular choice who doesn’t screw up too badly, she could be really, really dangerous in the years to come."

Blogger Dylan Matthews, took it as a personal affront that Gov. Palin got on a plane in Dallas to fly home so that Trig would be delivered by her trusted personal obstetrician and even opined that a government intervention was in order: "Her conduct on the plane... is so grossly irresponsible that it suggests that the baby couldn’t possibly be hers... That offends me. That sort of thing warrants a social services call."

Rick Perlstein, a senior fellow at the left wing and Soros-funded Campaign for America's Future suggested that "an enterprising reporter" visit the hospital in Wasilla and find an "indiscreet hospital employee" who might be willing to divulge details of an imagined cover up.

Shannon Brownlee of the New America Foundation, ignoring Obama's lack of experience and his extremist views, proposed that the lefty listers do some fear-mongering: "This woman has almost no experience and extremist views on many fronts. Americans should be afraid of a McCain-Palin White House and the possibility of her having to step in as president. So we should be sowing fear."

Read the complete document here. Then take a shower. You'll need it.

Update: At Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, William Jacobson agrees with us that the Journolistas, whether they thought the meme should be pursued or not, were obsessed with Baby Trig (whom some on the list referred to as "it"). And, according to Prof. Jacobson:

Of all the banter, perhaps the most important big picture item is that the discussion frequently centered on whether the story was worth running. This is the type of coordination and groupthink which has generated the criticism of the Journolist.

[...]

The emerging picture of the Journolist is that it served as a place where like-minded people who had great influence on how the media portrayed events were able to coordinate their story lines for the benefit of the Obama campaign.

We saw the media bias on the surface; the Journolistas helped frame that bias below the surface.

- JP

Leftist 'Lister lament: 'Palin is golden'

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The Daily Caller has released more emails from Journolist. In this latest batch, after her speech to the 2008 Republican National Convention, the listers discuss Sarah Palin and debate coordinating their anti-McCain/Palin, pro-Obama message:

Sarah Palin’s speech to the 2008 Republican convention impressed more than a few doubters, including even some members of Journolist, an online community for liberal journalists.

“This speech is gangbusters,” wrote Ari Melber of the Nation. “Her tone is pitch perfect.” Adele Stan of the Media Consortium agreed: “Palin is golden.”

The exuberance appeared to unnerve the Guardian’s Michael Tomasky. “People get a hold of yourselves!” Tomasky wrote to his fellow Journolisters. “It’s a very good speech with good lines. But there’s very little substance.”

Rebecca Traister of Salon wrote to say she was grateful for Tomasky’s message discipline. (“This is a reassuring sentiment, since at the moment, I feel like we’re in End Times.”) But the rest of the country apparently didn’t agree. Polls a few days later showed Obama’s lead in the race had narrowed to virtually nothing.

Palin’s speech had been remarkably effective. This troubled members of Journolist. On Sept. 8, 2008, five days after Palin’s national debut, some members of the group discussed producing coordinated propaganda designed to wound Palin and boost Obama.

At an appearance in Colorado immediately following the convention, Palin had remarked that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive for the taxpayers,” a point that seems commonplace now, but that at the time struck some as controversial.

Read the rest here.

- JP

More Quote of the Day Honorable Mention, Part 82

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Special JounoGate Edition: "She who must be destroyed IV"...

Investor's Business Daily:

"And so it went — journalists from the Nation, Mother Jones, Time, Politico, Bloomberg cooking up approaches, arguments, ‘narratives’ and templates to paint a false picture of the candidate. There are so many things wrong with this, we hardly know where to start. Nominally competitors, these supposedly impartial media mavens colluded in a way that would put airline or insurance officials in the dock for anti-competitive practices. They engaged in activism instead of fact-finding and mixed incestuously with activists whom they also should have been covering impartially. Worst of all, they deprived millions of Americans of the information they needed to size up this new face on the political scene and determine if she really was a candidate who represented their interests."

Mr. Curmudgeon at More Than Right:

"The JournoList smear campaign against Palin still echoes to this day, but Palin is having the last laugh."

Shawarma Mayor at Weasel Zippers:

"On Megyn Kelly’s show, America Live, pops up liberal non-icon, public joke — Alan Colmes. Arguing there’s nothing wrong with the Journo-List scandal and that the right wing does the same. However, there’s a mountain of evidence to establish a conspiracy by many in the media to smear Palin. Would someone please explain why The Soup on E! went to so much trouble to push Palin jokes? Never has this dumb show presented any political viewpoint — all of a sudden there was a barrage of ‘Palin’s dumb’ nuance. It was all over the place and the Journo-List scandal reconfirms conspiracy... Classy Colmes in 2008 viciously maligned Palin..."

Bob Clark at Palousitics:

"I talked to an insider in Washington DC yesterday and the word is that some of these reporters are going to be investigated by the Federal Election Commission. The actions some of them took to try to do damage to Sarah Palin could be violations of Federal Law."

Counterculture Conservative:

"The now infamous JournoList provides us an absolutely priceless look into the sausage factory that is the Liberal media. This is how the talking points are gathered and the memos written to create what I’ve always thought was a suspiciously consistent media narrative. And consistent (with but a few exceptions) in a highly convenient way for Libs... When McCain picked Palin as his VP, members of this online forum began to formulate the most effective way to attack her and defeat the McCain campaign. Much of what you see in the JournoList emails will sound familiar to you because this is the narrative the media promoted... I wonder if Peter Wallsten is part of Journolist. He is the reporter at the LA Times that refused to release the video of the Obama/Khalidi/Ayers/Dohrn lovefest. No, it was more important to bash Palin for her clothing budget."

Doug at A Million Monkeys Typing:

"The one thing I found interesting is the discussions on how to discredit Sarah Palin before these clowns knew anything about her."

Freedom Fighter at Joshuapundit:

"Among the other sordid revelations of the JournoList scandal is [an] in depth view of the way its members collaborated with the Obama Campaign's concerted effort to destroy Sarah Palin personally and to bankrupt the Palin family... What we had here was a group of reputed journalists colluding with openly leftist opinionators to distort and shape the news by burying things like the Jeremiah Wright story while coordinating talking points to destroy Sarah Palin... These people, of course, aren't ‘journalists’ They're simply flacks with expensive J-school degrees who shill for the Ruling Class."

Gary P Jackson at A Time For Choosing:

"It’s really interesting how [one] female member of the ‘Ministry of Truth’ went straight for the sexism angle. Must have been out of race cards that day..."

Anchoress at First Things:

"No wonder the j-listers went into immediate damage-control mode when Sarah Palin made her appearance. They listened; they watched. Palin was attractive; her story was the story of non-Ivy America. Even worse, she told Americans that they were energetic can-doers, not hapless victims and dupes. That could not be permitted. A vice-presidential candidate with a non-elite but leadership-packed curriculum vitae born of entrepreneurship and PTA meetings could not be allowed to fly freely against a presidential candidate who had never run anything, never created a job, never met a payroll. Palin was such a staggeringly ‘weak’ candidate that the terrified press had to pull out every resource to stop her; dehumanization and Alinskian class-mockery went into overdrive."

Banner at Semper Fi:

"I loathe injustice, politically expedient lying, cruelty, viciousness, and oppression. The journalists involved in this smear campaign aimed at Sarah Palin are guilty of all of these and more."

Greg Gutfeld at Big Journalism:

"So, thanks to the Daily Caller, more emails are emerging from ‘Journolist,’ that secret list of liberal media hacks – and guess what, they’re about Sarah Palin. And surprise: they aren’t positive... The real point: With the exception of Fox News, a few mags, a handful of talk radio hosts and some vital websites -the idea of free-thinking journalism is dead. These chuckleheads – Adler, Ackerman, that toolbag Jeffrey Toobin – try sooo hard to swagger via email, yet they come off less rebellious than Kenneth from 30 Rock. They’re the Eddie Haskells of modern media: slobbering kittens reeking from the desperate sweat of sycophancy."

katiadog at Katia the Conservative Dachshund:

"You gotta love her spunk. She lets these liberal media dummies have it right between the eyeballs."

Anita MonCrief at Hot Air:

"For a number of years traditional print media has been on life support, but after the revelations from Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller, it looks like someone finally pulled the plug. The expose on Journolist, a now defunct, listserv that included hundreds of liberal journalists, detailed... their baldly partisan effort to coordinate liberal talking points that would discredit Sarah Palin and John McCain, while helping to elect Barack Obama president... Considering that Journolist included journalists from Washington Post, the New York Times, National Public Radio, New Republic, and Time, one has to wonder if the biggest story covered up in 2008 was the illegal coordination between ACORN and the Obama campaign."

Soccer Dad:

"Should I be more upset that the 'listers tried to frame a narrative that was damaging to Palin... or that their effort couldn't be differentiated from ‘straight’ reporting?"

LEL at Fiery Spirited Zionist:

"The Leftist Media Colluded to Destroy Sarah Palin... More disgusting revelations are coming out about the media conspiracy to aid Obama during the 2008 campaign. The media’s contempt for Sarah Palin is a reflection of their hatred of the American people, our values and America itself. The msm was essentially Obama’s campaign headquarters. Obama need not have bothered with an official campaign team since they had most of the networks and newspapers to do their dirty work."

- JP

Noel Sheppard: Will the media elites ever learn?

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NewsBusters Associate Editor Noel Sheppard finds it remarkable that on the same day news broke of the JournoGate scandal, revealing the smoking gun which provided proof that leftist "journalists" conspired to destroy Sarah Palin, Politico's Roger Simon declared she's at the top of the Republican Party. Simon, unlike the JournoListers, is an old school real journalist with an actual record of accomplishments. The irony of it all was not lost on Sheppard, who detected a pattern and wonders if the leftist media types will ever learn:

Media elites have been attacking the intellectual capacity of Republican presidential candidates for years. According to them, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush were all too stupid to be Commander in Chief.

But what these so-called journalists have been missing for so many years is that most Americans don't have college degrees and don't necessarily identify with those that do. According to the Census Bureau, only 27 percent of our citizens has a bachelor's degree; only ten percent has a masters or doctorate.

Yet, the elites in the media keep wondering why so-called "intellectuals" typically fare poorly at the polls.

Despite such lack of success, press members continue to bash the intelligence quotients of those on the right.

In 2008, it was Palin's turn, and they've been doing it ever since. These folks had a field day recently with the former governor's new word "refudiate"

To be sure, the attacks on her character, along with a number of disturbingly dishonest press tactics, got Barack Obama elected in November 2008. But in the long run this strategy might have backfired - and badly.

After approaching 24 months of incessant Palin bashing by the media, as Simon noted, her popularity continues to rise. At the same time, polls show Obama and the Democrats hitting new favorability lows.

Irrespective of the press's support for a failing administration, Americans seem weary of this hopey changey thing.

Which bring us to the moral of the story: the more the media denigrate a conservative's intelligence, the more popular he or she becomes.

Read Noel Sheppard's unabridged original article here.

- JP

Video: 'Journolist' Casts Doubt on Mainstream Media

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The "Fox News Watch" panelists debate the Journolist-hatched conspiracy against Gov. Palin:



Notice how Democrat hack Kirsten Powers not only defends the indefensible, but she talks over the other panelists and steals their air time. In the words of Elmer Fudd, "How wude!"

- JP

Video: Journolist Posts Expose Palin Plot

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Here's "America Live" host Megyn Kelly and The Daily Caller's Jamie Weinstein in a discussion of the Journos' plot to destroy Sarah Palin mere hours after she stepped onto the national stage August 29, 2008:



- JP

More Quote of the Day Honorable Mention, Part 81

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Special JounoGate Edition: "She who must be destroyed III"...

Shane Vander Hart at Caffeinated Thoughts:

"The Daily Caller has broken the JournoList scandal wide open. First they uncovered an attempt to kill stories on President Barack Obama’s pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright. They rejoiced at Obama’s victory, they appreciate free speech unless it’s Fox News and then, not surprisingly, they coordinated the best line of attack against Sarah Palin. I understand that there were op/ed writers who were a part of this, but not all of those involved. Only the most irrational, Palin Derangement Syndrome sufferers out there would disagree that it is inappropriate to coordinate a strategy to shape news in order to get ‘your guy’ elected. This is hardly shocking for people who have been following media coverage of Palin the last couple of years. Those of us who have defended her from erroneous reporting sensed a coordinated effort to smear her, and now we have proof."

Jill Stanek:

"While these emails detailing MSM's attack on Palin come as no surprise, the verification provides some semblance of satisfaction... I don't begrudge these liberals calloused political conversations... But I do begrudge their persistent protests of innocence over the years against charges of bias, which they'll no longer be able to get away with."

Vicki McClure Davidson at Frugal Café Blog Zone:

"So, these statist junkyard dogs revved up a hate campaign, mired in lies and character assassination. They worked zealously against her in a media attack that has defied comparison, resorting to vicious attacks on her from a number of angles — they criticized her as a woman, as a mother, they railed against her political experience, her folksy accent and vocabulary, her physical appearance, her Christian faith, her conservative values, her marriage, her pregnant teenage daughter, even her Downs syndrome baby… nothing was off limits. The liberal media dished up or fabricated any and all vitriol they could throw at her. They thought she’d go away. She proved them wrong."

TheRightScoop:

"The cat's out of the bag now. America knows that Sarah Palin has been vindicated of everything the media has said about her."

Susan Duclos at NewsReal Blog:

"Obama’s ‘non-official campaign’. Think about that for a second; members in that thread, journalists from publications such as Bloomberg News, [Politico], CNN, TIME, The New Yorker, Nation, Mother Jones, New America Foundation, Human Rights Watch, discussing Sarah Palin and just how to approach negating her impact on Hillary Clinton supporters and on Obama’s campaign... Admittedly, with the announcement of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate, it was guaranteed that there would be a tremendous amount of ink dedicated to the pick and there is no doubt in my mind that some of the ‘themes’ used were coincidental in nature. But all of them? All [just] hours after members of Journolist discussed the best line of attacks?"

Andrew Breitbart at the Hope For America:

"Did Lamestream Media Plot To Undermine Sarah Palin? Uh... yeah"

T. D. at Terrance this is stupid stuff:

"The Journolist controversy is exposing the nasty side of modern journalism. It's a journalism without honor. It's a journalism not concerned with communicating facts and truth but with how to help one party over another, one candidate over another. Just hours after the announcement of Sarah Palin's pick as Republican VP candidate, before anyone knew much about her, journalists were plotting how to bring Sarah Palin down and negate the historicity and impact of her pick as the first woman Republican VP candidate and the second major party female VP candidate in US history."

Conservatarian at The Voice of Reason:

"On the Daily Caller, a conspiracy has been cracked. Journolist: a listerv list on which so-called mainstream left wing ‘journalists’ conspired (uh, discussed) how to rip Sarah Palin, Obama opponents, Fox News, and conservatives in general."

Ann Kane at NewsReal Blog:

"We knew the mainstream media was in collusion in an all out attack against Sarah Palin, but we just couldn’t prove it – now we can. Daily Caller’s Jonathan Strong has exposed Journolist’s gang-up against Palin as the only way to usher in their pick for the White House. Imagine that. All the biggies in the mainstream, the Economist, Time, Newsweek, Politico and many others worked together to influence voters in a ‘non-official campaign’ for the future President Obama... Journolist colluders homed in on the target, Sarah Palin, and kept their boots on her neck until their man was in the Oval Office."

Kent at Right From Left:

"Journolist coordinated, planned and executed the smear campaign against Sarah Palin. Tucker Carlson and the Daily Caller are doing God's work..."

Jimmie at The Sundries Shack:

"Lest you think that the life of a JournoLister consisted solely of trying to fix the election for Barack Obama, attacking Sarah Palin to help Barack Obama, rooting for Rush Limbaugh to die, and cheering the election of Barack Obama with slightly less dignity than a bunch of 14 year old girls backstage as a Justin Bieber concert, let me dissuade you of that notion. Thanks to some in-depth reporting by John Tabin of The American Spectator, we know that JournoListers also had a playful side, that involved geeking out over a computer game. Oh, and a member wondering about Japanese tentacle porn."

John Crowell at Worth Reading:

"JournoList... Where the vast left-wing media conspiracy exists. But except for denials and obfuscations, you won’t read about it in the mainstream media..."

John Guardiano at TAS AmSpec Blog:

"Don't make excuses for the Journolisters. They subverted journalism and the pursuit of truth for politics and the pursuit of power... [John] Tabin agrees that much of what the Daily Caller has reported about this cabal is extremely troubling and reprehensible.... [including] their baldly partisan effort to coordinate liberal talking points that would discredit Sarah Palin and John McCain, while helping to elect Barack Obama president... Now, Tabin agrees that this is all very bad and certainly wrong for journalists who purport to be independent and fair-minded. However, he insists, ‘these people were buffoons.’ They were ‘utterly ridiculous’ and thus should not be taken seriously... I might agree with Tabin if the Journolisters were solitary bloggers venting in the backwoods in lonely isolation. But in point of fact, they were not. The Journolisters are professionally employed journalists who work at some of America's most prestigious and influential newsrooms: the Washington Post, New York Times, National Public Radio, New Republic, Time, Newsweek, et al. Thus, they wield tremendous cultural clout and influence."

Jedediah Bila at The Daily Caller:

"Not only were so many in the media nauseatingly awe-struck by Obama, but some formed an organized coalition to target his opponents and to suppress news stories that might have brought down the hope and change brigade. I guess they didn’t take the time to consider that the man they were tirelessly promoting wasn’t fit for the job. Or that the woman they were targeting was."

Jonah Goldberg at Real Clear Politics:

"In 2008, participants shared talking points about how to shape coverage to help Obama. They tried to paint any negative coverage of Obama's racist and hateful pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as out of bounds. Journalists at such ‘objective’ news organizations as Newsweek, Bloomberg, Time, and The Economist joined conversations with open partisans about the best way to criticize Sarah Palin... JournoList is a symptom, not the disease. And the disease is not a secret conspiracy but something more like the ‘open conspiracy’ H. G. Wells fantasized about, where the smartest, best people at every institution make their progressive vision for the world their top priority."

More to come...

- JP

Quote of the Day (July 23, 2010)

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contento at Boom Boom Boom:

"I rolled into Texas yesterday. The panhandle. Amarillo... seeing things one nevah, evah sees in California: Gas at $2.659 a gallon, and trucks with Palin stickers. Yes, the lady pumping her gas said sure, you may take a pic of my Sarah sticker. Me? I'm liking being back in the Republic of Texas, liking being back in America..."

- JP

More Quote of the Day Honorable Mention, Part 80

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Special JounoGate Edition: "She who must be destroyed II"...

TheRightScoop:

"Sarah Palin wasn’t even ‘warm’ yet, but that didn’t stop the liberal ‘journalists’ on Journolist from conspiring to destroy her from the get go... Even this week I’ve noticed the MSM jumping all over Palin’s ‘refudiate’ tweet, yet when Obama pronounced corpsman as ‘corpse man’, twice, they completely ignored it. There are a lot more double standards than just that, but you get my point. My friends who scoff at me for suggesting liberal bias in the media should be eating their words now."

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit:

"I like the way they referred to themselves as the ‘non-official’ Obama campaign..."

Lori Ziganto at NewsReal Blog:

"The revelations uncovered by The Daily Caller in regard to Journolist have been damning... The latest involve Sarah Palin and while anyone with a speck of honesty already realized that the media has been out to marginalize her from the very beginning, Journolist members took it to an even more egregious level... While it is obviously not unheard of for colleagues to discuss stories of the day, that wasn’t the case here. This was a group of reputed (or refudiated!) journalists colluding with openly leftist opinionators to not report the news, but to shape it... Worse, the goal of the framing of the narrative was to marginalize and diminish a woman by using her womanhood itself against her for political means... What followed was a clear attempt to... dehumanize and demean Sarah Palin and her accomplishments."

Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy:

"The latest quotes from the JournoList emails are on the initial response to Sarah Palin. I remember being shocked at the viciousness of the attacks at the time."

theblogprof:

"In the hours after McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate, Journolist was hard at work to smear her... There was also talk among leftist journalists of smearing Palin as unqualified, until one of them raised the flag that Obama didn't have any qualifications for the presidency. Some went ahead with that meme anyway, leading to Obama's assertion in an interview in the fall 2008 that he was more qualified by Palin because he ran a campaign with a bugger budget than Wasilla, Alaska, completely ignoring that Palin was Alaska's governor..."

DaTechguy:

"If the Sherrod story can last one more day... Then it will push any non-fox coverage to Journolist to Friday, the news dump day. This is a story that has the potential to destroy what little is left of the media’s credibility..."

Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters:

"The Daily Caller shows us how the JournoListers conspired to create a coordinated attack on Sarah Palin after getting picked by John McCain... Now some people are defending the JournoListers by saying these are mostly opionators not true reporters. Thus sharing opinions is no biggie. Wrong. As lefty partisan hack Joe Klein shows these ‘shared opinions’ become the talking points of the day... This is how all these anti Palin themes get out into the public... It should be noted that a new JournoList 2.0 has sprung up albeit smaller than the original but nonetheless sinister."

Ruby Slippers:

"In the case of Sarah Palin these early coordinated attacks shaped the opinions of a public that held few if any preconceived opinions about the second woman to be nominated [as] Vice President."

Confederate Yankee:

"The latest JournoList dump from the Daily Caller reveals the collusion of the liberal media as they worked together to find ways to attack Sarah Palin, right after the Alaskan governor was named John McCain's surprise pick to be the Republican Vice Presidential candidate... Months of this shaped the narrative and the pop-culture view we have of Sarah Palin, a skilled politician that rose through the ranks of Alaskan politics based upon a foundation of integrity, grit, and courage to become—for a time—a governor with the highest approval ratings [at the time]. This now-exposed collusion between members of the media, shared with their co-conspirator politicians and Hollywood allies, was used to create a purposely warped view of who Sarah Palin is, and what she represents."

Nice Deb:

"All of this was in the hours just after the announcement was made. It must have gotten considerably worse in the days following the announcement, when McCain’s poll numbers finally overtook Obama’s."

Jeff Dunetz at The Lid:

"While many rank and file Republicans cheered John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his choice for Vice President, the members of the liberal media cabal Journo-list immediately got to work trying to discredit the Governor of Alaska... You can see how many of the the themes used to attack Palin during the campaign were developed. Very few of these themes were fair, but then again, when you read this post you will find that they even called themselves ‘the unofficial campaign headquarters...’ There always was a suspicion that the media conspired to attack her unfairly, now we know for sure. Sadly the public never got the opportunity for an honest vetting of the Governor of Alaska. That is America's loss."

ZIP at Weasel Zippers:

"Repeat after me: ‘Liberal media bias is a myth’…"

Hillbuzz:

"K. remembers seeing Palin emerge and walk onto the stage, dressed in a sharp black suit, as the crowd in Ohio went wild. In Chicago, the Liberals around him cringed, as that excitement and energy reverberated through the large screens and smacked them in the face. K. will never forget two Liberal women, clutching each other, faces blanched, with true dread in their eyes. ‘What are we going to do now? She’s incredible. He can win now, with her. What are we going to do?’. ‘We need to destroy her. We need the media to destroy her’. ‘They need to do their job. They need to destroy her’. And try to destroy her the Media did. Just like those two Chicago Libs wanted them…expected them…to do."

24Ahead.com:

"If Klein were just learning facts about Palin from Journolist that would be one thing; however, some Journolisters wanted to portray her as an extremist nut, and Klein at least was starting to head in that direction. For later similar attempts from others, see the Sarah Palin Smear page..."

Ian Lazaran and Kelsey at Conservatives 4 Palin:

"The e-mails prove that members of the media... coordinated and advocated for false and despicable attacks on Governor Palin and Trig Palin... This latest batch also proves that these people did in fact take from the ‘Journolist’ when writing their articles. So much for that whole, ‘It was just an innocent discussion group’ thing. This was their first scramble to come up with the narratives that we saw regurgitated over and over again for the rest of the campaign. It pretty much just confirms what we already knew."

More to come...

- JP

Morrissey: From JournoList to Brian Williams' Lips

Although the JournoListers are in denial, it's clear that talking points from the leftist listserv frequently found their way into the more "mainstream" media. Sometimes, major blogs served as the distribution point for the memes brewed up on the list. Ed Morrissey illustrates one such case where JournoLister Joe Klein took ammo from the armory that was JournoList, posted it in his blog at TIME magazine, and "mainstream" journalist Brian Williams fired the bullet points on NBC:

Keep that in mind when watching this clip from How Obama Got Elected, shown at the front end of an interview between Bill O’Reilly and John Ziegler, who pointed this Brian Williams report out to me. The meat of the point comes right at the beginning:

Now, I seriously doubt that Brian Williams ever participated in Journolist, and it’s not exactly a shock to see a network news anchor use a Time Magazine article as the basis of analysis on a major story. However, it does show that Klein successfully turned a Journolist strategy into media coverage on Palin, which makes his lack of honesty in sourcing those talking points even more of an issue.

The clip shows a scenario that was repeated on many media outlets, including, but not limited to the alphabet networks and major newspapers across America. The Journolisters' entire defense hinges on their claim that the list members who wrote for "progressive" websites and publications were distinct from the more "mainstream" media. But the clip blows enough holes in that argument to fill Albert Hall. Contrary to what Ezra Klein, David Korn and other Listers maintain, memes developed on JournoList were posted on nutroots blogs, and a willing "mainstream" media was only too willing to uncritically give them a much larger audience.

- JP

Full of Corn: Lefty Journo Attacks Sarah Palin in Wake of JournoGate

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Leftist journo David Corn unleashed an attack on Sarah Palin from his perch at Politics Daily Friday, apparently in retaliation for comments the governor made or was presumed to make in a Daily Caller interview. Gov. Pain was asked for her reaction to Thursday's release of JournoList emails, in which the leftist listserv members had discussed various avenues of attack against her only hours after she was named as John McCain's 2008 running mate.

Corn's attack piece includes a disclaimer that he was a JournoList member, but he tries to downplay his part in the online cabal:

"(Membership declared: I was a mostly nonactive member of Journolist; I haven't used it in years.)"

Corn doesn't bother to explain what "mostly nonactive" means in this contact. Nor does he say how many years it has been since he "used" the list, nor exactly what "use" he made of it. But even though Corn felt the need to back away from JournoList in his disclaimer, he nevertheless attempts to defend the lefty listserv and his comrades who were members.

Corn argues that the Journolisters were liberal writers for liberal publications, a distinction he tries to draw from those who write for more mainstream media outlets. But the lines between the two are at best blurred. It has been documented that the media overwhelmingly votes Democrat and that most journalists who will admit their personal political leanings (at least 20 percent of them refuse to do so) describe themselves as liberal. Further, a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center reported that two-thirds (67 percent) of Americans say the press is biased, and in April, 2010, Rasmussen reported that a majority (55 percent) of U.S. voters think that media bias is an even bigger problem in politics today than big campaign contributions.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the avenues of attack cooked up on Jounolist managed to inundate "mainstream" media reporting. Indeed, one does not have to read between the lines of the JournoListers' comments with a looking glass to see that it was their intention to influence press coverage of Sarah Palin, and in this respect, at least, they succeeded.

As The New Ledger's Ben Domenech explains:

"Essentially, we’re learning that Journolist functioned as a gigantic lobbying shop, providing liberal bloggers and academics with unprecedented and near-constant access to leading media figures—pairing those who work to persuade America of their rightness with those who still possess the largest megaphones—empowering ideologues to pass along their activist take on news (dismiss this, highlight this, call this fellow racist, this pick sexist, etc.) to those who loudly and continually proclaim the fairness of their reporting."

But Corn is one of those diehard liberal media elitists who continue to try to make the case that the media is not biased. That train left the station a long time ago. No one buys it anymore, except for the minority in this this country who still consider themselves liberals, or in their new-old-speak, "progressives." Here is Corn's other big argument:

In responding to The Daily Caller piece, though, she conceded a major point about herself: She does not posses a hardy enough constitution to be president. In that interview, The Daily Caller reports, Palin

said the media became a key reason she decided not to finish out her term as governor.

Consider that for a moment. Eight months after the grueling 2008 campaign was over, Palin, by her own admission, was not tough enough to handle the media and had to quit her job as Alaska governor. After confessing that, how can she possibly present herself as presidential timber?

Notice that Corn is not directly quoting Sarah Palin here, but rather the Caller's Jonathan Strong, who paraphrases what Gov. Palin told him. As the left argues in the recent Shirley Sherrod flap, context, context context is critical. Here's the relevant portion of Strong's article, one which Corn's attack piece ignores:

Palin says the feeding frenzy culture of the media galvanized her political opponents in Alaska. “The media incentivized political opponents to file false ethics charges and expensive, wasteful, frivolous lawsuits against me, my family and my staff, in an obvious attempt to destroy us,” Palin said.

When those lawsuits — which Palin said she won, but the media didn’t cover — caused legal costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Palin had finally had it, she said.

“I said, ‘Enough. Political adversaries and their political friends in the media will not destroy my State, my administration, nor my family. Enough.’ I knew if I didn’t play their game any longer, they could not win. I would not retreat, I would instead reload, and I would fight for what is right from a different plane.”

Parsing the Strong sentence that Corn chose to use as his killer quote reveals it to be lacking in firepower:

"She said the media became a key reason she decided not to finish out her term as governor and faults, in part, the McCain campaign for failing to vigorously defend her."

Notice Strong's wording that the media became "a key reason" -- not the key reason Gov. Palin resigned. As she has made abundantly clear, the key reason she resigned as Governor of Alaska was the series of frivolous lawsuits and bogus ethics complaints filed against her, and all other considerations were consequences of those cases, not her resignation's raison d'être.

The media rather gleefully reported on the suits and complaints, details of which were leaked to the press in many cases in violation of Alaska statute. Even though nearly every one of the cases has been dismissed, the perception drawn from such reporting undermined her administration, which was already diverted from effectively governing because it had to devote more time, human resources and taxpayer money to deal with the phony charges than to actually run the state. Corn also rather conveniently omits any mention of the more than a half million dollars in legal fees Gov. Palin became responsible for as a result of such legal harassment. This was before she signed a book deal and at a time when she could not legally collect speakers fees, and her family, though hardly destitute, did not have the financial resources available to pay her attorneys.

The bottom line is that Corn, like some of his fellow JournoList travelers, is just angry that the online safe house was exposed as the Obama campaign war room that is was. Their exchanges speak for themselves. Which are you going to believe, Corn and the other left-listers or your lying eyes?

- JP