Left

New on NewsReal – Shepard Smith Goes Nuclear on GOP "Grinches" Over 9/11 Health Bill

Calvin Freiburger 9/11, Anthony Weiner, Congress, Democrats, dishonesty, GOP, Hannity, health care, Left, NewsReal, Shepard Smith

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

Many outlets, including the Huffington Post, Mediaite, and the Examiner, are increasingly taking notice of Fox News anchor (and longtime left-wing drama queen) Shepard Smith for his alleged courage and principle in distancing himself from the rest of the channel’s right-wing propagandizing. He’s currently being lauded for having taken up the cause of a controversial bill to provide medical care for 9/11 first responders, angrily unloading on Republican Grinches who would dare steal Christmas from American heroes:

We’re able to put a 52 story building so far down there at Ground Zero, we’re able to pay for tax cuts for billionaires who don’t need them and it’s not going to stimulate the economy. But we can’t give health care to Ground Zero first responders who ran right into the fire? Went down there to save people? Do people know what this city was like that day? People were walking over bridges, they were covered in ash, they were running for their lives, they were crying, their family members were dead. And these people ran to Ground Zero to save people’s lives. And we’re not going to even give them medicine for the illnesses they got down there? It’s disgusting, it’s a national disgrace, it’s a shame and everybody who voted against should have to stand up and account for himself or herself.

The Examiner’s Elliot Levin compares Smith to several of his Fox News colleagues, including Sean Hannity, who has endorsed the bill’s purpose but expressed reservations about the particulars, such as concern for potential abuse by illegal immigrants, suspicion about the Democrats’ refusal to pass it via simple majority in the House when they had the chance, and scorn for Rep. Anthony Weiner’s unwillingness to allow that reading a bill might be an important prerequisite for supporting it. Levin says:

While Fox’s primtime lineup of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and to a lesser degree, Greta Van Susstren, are all card-carrying Republicans and openly use their shows to press a conservative agenda, Smith, who anchors the 3pm and 7pm shows, is well-known and liked throughout the TV news world for his passionate and apolitical perspectives.

He has also broken away from the typical conservative line in the past on issues such as torture.
Smith is at his best when it comes to hard news stories, such as car chases, wars, and natural disasters, but when he steps into politics he epitomizes the Fox News slogan of ‘fair and balanced,’ speaking his mind regardless of what his fellow anchors may be saying or believing.

Smith’s caterwauling certainly makes good on the “balance” part of the Fox promise, but “fair” is questionable.

Read the rest at NewsRealBlog.

What Is Marriage?

Calvin Freiburger debate, gay marriage, homosexuality, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, marriage, social issues, society
Scholars Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Ryan Anderson have a lengthy new paper on the question, to which NYU’s Kenji Yoshino responds here, proclaiming that the “best argument against gay marriage” has failed. I haven’t had time to sit down with the original piece, but I have read Yoshino’s response, as well as the trio’s counter-response. Judging from them, “What Is Marriage?” and its follow-ups seem like required reading, no matter where you stand on gay marriage. (Hat tip: American Power)

New on NewsReal – Celebs Butting Into Politics: Jon Voight Isn’t the Problem

Calvin Freiburger Barack Obama, conservatism, Democrats, foreign affairs, Hollywood, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jon Voight, Left, Mediaite, NewsReal, nuclear weapons, Russia, START Treaty

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

They may be outnumbered by their leftist counterparts, but Hollywood does have its share of conservatives. Among the most vocal and unapologetic is Jon Voight, who appeared on last night’s “Hannity” (guest-hosted by the incomparable Mark Steyn to discuss President Barack Obama’s deadly ineptness on nuclear proliferation, as characterized by the White House’s precious START Treaty:

VOIGHT: I hear Obama trying to convince the American people that if we give up our nuclear weapons, this will set a fine example and all other countries will follow suit. What a dangerous and naive notion that is. If President Reagan wasn’t such a powerful force of strength, we never would have seen Premier Gorbachev take down the Berlin Wall […] every American citizen should be up in arms and calling their senators to reject this Obama’s START Treaty. It’s, you know, without our nuclear might, we would be subject to becoming a weak nation and what would follow would be much more severe than what we are currently going through with 9.6 unemployment, add that to the idea that our allies are very concerned about their safety and they are warning us not to reduce our nuclear power because their very protection is dependent on our strength.

At Mediaite, Mark Joyella is perplexed that Fox News would bring in a mere actor to discuss foreign affairs…


Read the rest at NewsRealBlog.

New on NewsReal – Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’s Repeal Reminds Us That Joe Lieberman’s Still a Leftist

Calvin Freiburger Democrats, Don't Ask Don't Tell, homosexuality, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, military, NewsReal

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

With the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell finally coming to pass, the long-disgruntled gay Left finally has something to show for their support of Barack Obama. But right now the spotlight and accolades are going to a different Democrat with an estranged relationship to the Left. At the Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz sits down with Sen. Joe Lieberman to discuss his leadership on the issue, and whether or not it makes up for his heresy on the War on Terror:

Andrew Sullivan, the gay Atlantic blogger who has championed repeal of DADT, dubbed Lieberman a “civil rights hero.” But Alex Pareene, a liberal blogger for Salon, declared that “it’s still OK to hate Joe Lieberman”—the “single most annoying man in the United States Senate”—because he remains a “sanctimonious troll.”

Lieberman says he doesn’t know whether the battle will help him politically, and his relationship with home-state Democrats may have deteriorated beyond repair. A Quinnipiac poll last January gave him a 27 percent approval rating among Democrats, and several Dems are weighing a primary challenge for 2012.

I have no principled objection to political parties and movements establishing litmus tests—even single-issue litmus tests—for their candidates. That’s their prerogative. But it is telling that left-wing Lieberman haters have chosen national security of all issues with which to divide allies and enemies. Once upon a time, Americans on both sides of the aisle believed that politics stopped at the water’s edge; the Left has since fallen so far from that ideal that today, no cause, principle, or value is safe from partisan venom or opportunism.

Speaking of those principles, Lieberman’s critics also suffer from fatal tunnel vision. Sure, he agrees with conservatives on several foreign policy issues, but on just about everything else, he’s a true-blue leftist.

Read the rest at NewsRealBlog.

Doctors Make New Inroads in Fight Against HIV; Media’s Prognosis Still Hopeless

Calvin Freiburger dishonesty, HIV, Huffington Post, Left, liberalism, media, media bias, medicine, pro-life, science, stem cells

The Huffington Post reports that a stem-cell treatment is thought to have not only treated, but actually cured a man’s HIV infection – obviously a major development.

However, HuffPo being HuffPo, they neglect to mention one tiny detail: the stem cells came from bone marrow. No destruction of human life required.

The stem-cell battle has been fading away in recent years, thanks in part to it becoming increasingly clear that human embryos aren’t needed. This story should continue that trend, but it’ll be interesting to see if any other media outlets choose instead to follow HuffPo’s lead.

New on NewsReal – NewsHounds’ Spitballs Couldn’t Hit the Broad Side of Sean Hannity’s Mansion

Calvin Freiburger blogosphere, capitalism, class warfare, Fox News, Hannity, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, NewsHounds, NewsReal
My latest NewsRealBlog post:
Remember NewsHounds? These Fox-hating peddlers of arguments that are really, really lame even by lefty standards (the most spectacular of which was falsely accusing Johnny Dollar’s Place of supporting plagiarism using one of my own quotes) never seem to run out of spitballs to shoot at Sean Hannity. In the blog’s latest petty attack, Ellen pulls Hannity over for a TWR—Talking While Rich:

In his Great American Panel segment Friday night (12/3/10), one of many discussions in which Hannity whined about the unfair tax burden on the rich, Hannity asked, “So does the issue of class warfare… does this work, is this a winner for the Democrats?”

Frank Donatelli, GOPAC chairman, said no, but that it would “mobilize the liberal base… It just drives them crazy… They’re demanding tax increases on the most productive citizens.”


Of course, Hannity did not consider THAT class warfare.

Er, no. Talking about class warfare is not engaging in class warfare. Leftists are so pathetically desperate to paint conservatives as hypocrites that they’ll settle for anything, no matter how little sense it makes. Ellen might throw around “class warfare” to describe simply bringing up the subject of wealth in the context of one’s political opponents, but the term actually means something: pitting one economic class against another, urging one to hate and resent the other simply for having more. To demonstrate, I give you…Ellen’s own words.

Read the rest at NewsRealBlog.

New on NewsReal – "Hispanic Radicals Giving Beltway Democrats Nightmares Over DREAM Act

Calvin Freiburger Democrats, DREAM Act, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, illegal immigration, immigration, Jeff Sessions, Left, liberalism, NewsReal, progressivism

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

Congressional Democrats are determined to do something with their power while they still have it, and since they’re on the way out anyway, it might as well be something the American people really don’t want, like “comprehensive” immigration reform. This week, Sean Hannity spoke with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) about the latest push for the DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act would offer a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants who meet the following criteria:

  • Must have entered the United States before the age of 16 (i.e. 15 and younger)
  • Must have been present in the United States for at least five (5) consecutive years prior to enactment of the bill
  • Must have graduated from a United States high school, or have obtained a GED, or have been accepted into an institution of higher education (i.e. college/university)
  • Must be between the ages of 12 and 35 at the time of application
  • Must have good moral character

Under the proposal, “good moral character” basically means being a law-abiding citizen, though “we cannot be 100% positive on which crimes would impact one’s application,” since the Act “has not outlined specific guidelines” on the subject. In other words, it’s another bill we have to pass in order to find out what it does. That’s progressive governance for you—let the democratic process decide vague, feel-good goals, but leave the little matter of how laws actually work to the unelected “experts” who’ll be implementing it.

Read the rest at NewsRealBlog.

Another Cultural Wake-Up Call for the Right

Calvin Freiburger abstinence, children, culture, feminism, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, library books, Megan Fox, NewsReal, propaganda, sex, society
My NRB colleague Megan Fox (no, not that one) has an extremely important post today highlighting ten examples of kids books from her public library, that are chock-full of left-wing propaganda and disgustingly immoral and destructive lessons about sex. Be sure to take the time to read them all:

It is not a coincidence that the majority of literature written for children is this type of smut. There is a real effort to control your child’s mind to turn them into masturbating plebeians who are more focused on orgasms and cell phone accessories than on the ever-approaching shackles of government.  If leftists can rope your children into behaving in ways that will ruin them financially, spiritually and intellectually then they will own them and their votes forever.

Children are ruled by their wants and childish impulses. They need guidance from stable parents in order to grow into  strong, responsible adults able to make good decisions and leave their corner of the world better than how they found it. None of the books on this list will help any child grow into a decent human being.

Amen, Megan! I’ve tackled this sort of thing before, too. I fear too many conservatives are AWOL on many of the crises they arguably have the most control over. Saving America begins with waking up to what’s going on right in front of you and standing up to restore sanity within your own community. The Right needs to understand that we shouldn’t expect to win major or lasting political victories if we don’t address the many ways in which the Left poisons our culture.

Civility Is Overrated

Calvin Freiburger character assassination, civility, conservatism, debate, demagogues, Democrats, extremism, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, integrity, Left, liberalism, morality, political correctness, politics, respect, tone
At Politico, PR guy Mark DeMoss laments the lousy reception to the Civility Pledge he and Clinton hack Lanny Davis have been circulating:

It’s only 32 words. Yet, only two sitting members of Congress or governors have signed the civility pledge.


So what was it about civility that all the other 537 elected officials couldn’t agree to? Read it and decide for yourself.

  • I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior.
  • I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them. 
  • I will stand against incivility when I see it.

In May, Lanny Davis, my friend and co-founder of the Civility Project, and I sent a letter to all 535 members of Congress and 50 sitting governors inviting them to sign a civility pledge.


We made it easy, enclosing a response form, return envelope and fax number. I’m sorry to report, six months later, that only two responded: Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

This is a shame, DeMoss says, because the American people are sick of how nasty the political discourse has become, and because incivility is just plain wrong:
We share a conviction about the importance of at least trying to change a polarizing, uncivil political culture that now appears to be the norm.

Call it old-fashioned, but we believe debates should be won on the strength of ideas and words — not on the volume of our voices or the outrageousness of our ads. Yet some emails I’ve received on our website are so filled with obscenities that they could not be printed in a newspaper.

Incivility is not just a political problem, according to Yale law professor Stephen Carter. “Rules of civility are thus rules of morality,” Carter said, “it is morally proper to treat our fellow citizens with respect, and morally improper not to. Our crisis of incivility is part of a larger crisis of morality.” 

I hate to fit someone’s definition of “morally improper,” but the fact is, there’s way too much hand-wringing over civility in politics these days. For one thing, sleazy invective, while lamentable, has been around since the beginning, so not only is this not some new development, but if it was going to destroy the country, it would have done so by now.
That’s not to say politicians should be given a pass for trafficking in lies and rumors, far from it. But that brings us to the second, and far more important, reason these guys are barking up the wrong tree: we currently define negativity and incivility so broadly that they’re not only virtually meaningless, but they actually serve to stifle a lot of things that need to be said.
Simply put, there are a lot of bad people active, and bad things done, in politics today, things that deserve not just disagreement, but demand moral condemnation. Advocating the murder of unborn babies, lying about an issue, defaming someone, trying to violate the Constitution, controlling free speech…all these things run deeper than mere disagreements between equally-decent people. These are things that should shock and disgust men and women of goodwill, and compel them to drive them out of the sphere of public respectability – along with their practitioners.
Instead, our “civility” obsession all too often leads to pitiful spectacles like playing dumb about the integrity of backstabbers, and meekly wondering why opponents believe vicious lies about us (here’s a hint: they don’t). Such rhetorical cowardice and incompetence enables the dishonest and the hateful to go about their business without serious challenge, all but ensuring a culture that’s less civil, not more.
Real civility is a fine value, but a healthy political culture needs to understand it’s not the highest value. Every American must hold truth and justice as more important than decorum.

Ann Coulter Speaks, Despicable People Lie About It. Film at Eleven.

Calvin Freiburger conservatism, Coulter, dishonesty, GOProud, homosexuality, Left

Remember that speech to gay conservatives Ann Coulter was going to give? Well, it happened the other day, and just as I expected, Ann proved her critics full of it, as usual. I’ll have a more thorough follow-up on NewsReal a little later (UPDATE: here it is), but for now, let’s look at one example of the shamelessly-dishonest reactions the gay Left has dished out in response. At some worthless magazine called Instinct, some degenerate called Jonathan Higbee writes:

As expected, the “Judy Garland of the conservative base,” Ann Coulter, displayed nothing short of offensive anti-gay rhetoric at GOProud’s Homocon event over the weekend. What hundreds of wealthy GLBT paid GOProud (and therefore paid Coulter) to hear? That “gay marriage” is wrong, that gay babies should be aborted and that parents don’t want their children learning about the GLBT community in school. Where else could the $150,000 speaking fee GOProud paid Coulter have gone?

Jonathan Higbee, you are as contemptible a liar as they come. For one thing, believing that civil marriage has a societal purpose connected to procreation isn’t anti-gay, and if you had a conscience, you’d admit it. But we know you don’t have a conscience, because your next lie – accusing Coulter of saying “gay babies should be aborted” – is even more foul. I know you know it’s a lie, because you posted her actual words just a few inches lower. And given your obvious hatred of truth and independent thought, I’m sure a conversation with you about a parent’s right to decide when his or her child is ready for sexual subject matter would be another exercise in futility.

Jonathan Higbee, it’s not your sexual orientation that makes you an individual society should look upon with shock and revulsion. It’s your utter lack of integrity. The same goes for whatever publication so devoid of ethics that they’d give your filth a platform.