Obama's Enforcer

In Obama’s entire circle of advisers, one man rises above the pack, gaining the reputation as the most ruthless political figure in America today. This man is Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff. Instead of being an impassioned ideologue, he instead enjoys utilizing Machiavellian tactics to achieve more traditional political ends. A classic Chicago-style machine politician, Rahm will do whatever is necessary to get things done his way. With his aggressive tactics, he has earned the nickname of “Rahmbo.”He lost a finger at the age of 17, and since then Emanuel has been a driven man. Working at an Arby’s he sliced his finger but he insisted on attending his prom and swimming in Lake Michigan before going to the hospital. His finger became badly infected, forcing him to have it amputated during a lengthy stay in Children’s Hospital. Never the same after the incident, Emanuel lives with an intense passion for life and a drive that alienates people, but achieves results.Once a skilled and disciplined ballet dancer, he attended college on a dance scholarship. He became involved in his first campaign as an undergraduate, and his political career took off from there. His climb began while working on Richard Daley’s mayoral campaigns in the late ‘80s, where he proved himself an avid fundraiser. As Emanuel called donors, if they gave less than he thought they could, he would refuse to accept their contribution. Then, he resorted to goading them by stating that he thought they were wealthier and bigger donors. Oftentimes donors would call him back, apologize, and then give Emanuel’s desired amount.Cutting his teeth in Chicago machine politics helped him develop his no- holds- barred style of campaigning. As a member of the Daley machine, Obama’s chief of staff has been involved in his share of shady dealings. In Emanuel’s 2002 congressional race, Daley forced city patronage workers to run a get-out-the vote campaign that is still being investigated for campaign violations.Emanuel’s exploits are legendary. Once he had a disagreement with a pollster, so he sent him a rotten fish. At a dinner party in 1992, the day after Clinton’s hard-won election, Emanuel viciously attacked those whom he called betrayers. Spouting their name and shouting, "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" he plunged a knife into the table after each name. Now, he is bringing these tactics along with his foul mouth to the White House.This hardnosed political operative employs methods and tactics that would make Karl Rove blush. Rahm fights like a rooster in a cock fight. A political street fighter, he is the enforcer lurking behind Obama’s pretty words about bipartisanship and unity.Emanuel retired from the Clinton White House in 1998 and moved to Wall Street to make his fortune. He worked for Bruce Wasserstein, a major Democratic donor and Wall Street financier. Over the course of two and a half years, he milked his political connections to help broker deals, and he made $18 million. Emanuel is not ashamed to look out for number one. Once rich, he headed back to politics.As the chairman of the Democratic Campaign Committee in 2006, he is largely credited as the architect of the Democratic landslide. He did it, in large measure, by remaking the Democratic Party in his own image. He won by aggressively recruiting candidates and then relentlessly driving his candidates to raise money. With money in hand, they launched a series of negative ads that are unmatched in campaign history.Emanuel famously said, “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste…They are opportunities to do big things.” He is pushing Obama’s administration to do that now. Obama is the star of the show and Rahm is the one who is directing the play. Rahm is well connected inside DC and uses his friendships with John Podesta, James Carville and Paul Begala to great effect. Obama, the inexperienced “outsider,” is being taught the ropes by Rahm, the insider. One of the best examples of this inside- and outsid- the-White House coordination is the campaign to demonize and target Rush Limbaugh. You can bet that Rahm Emanuel helped to make it happen.Rahm has brought his aggressive attitude to work in implementing Obama’s agenda. He personally was instrumental in rounding up votes for the stimulus bill, by intensely pressuring three moderate Republican senators and threatening conservative Democrats. Now he is working hard to push through the $3.6 trillion Obama budget. Will he be successful? If the past is any indication, Rahm will shout, curse, stab and claw his way to victory no matter what the cost. Washington, D.C. has definitely gotten uglier as Rahmbo storms through it, hell-bent on taking no prisoners.

WHAT I BELIEVE IS COMING TO OUR COUNTRY!

“Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny” ~ Thomas Jefferson“The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” ~ Joseph Stalin“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.” ~ Abraham Lincoln“One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” ~ Vladimir Lenin
“Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.” ~ George Washington“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke “In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” ~ George Orwell“I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.” ~ Harry TrumanThe following is a fictional narrative of what could be or might be. While perhaps extreme, I doubt anyone would disagree with or discount the potential for some or all of these events to occur. Though none of us wishes for chaos, anarchy or bloodshed, we are only fooling ourselves if we ignore the course of current events.
Tipping PointSummer, 2009 – World financial markets and major corporations are collapsing under a wave of private and state-bank failures in Europe, the UK and the US. Asian markets are woefully anemic and many are teetering on insolvency. Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil, buffeted by a depressed oil market, have been forced to slash social services. In response, violent riots are daily occurrences. Hundreds are detained, dozens killed and maintaining order is slipping away from the overwhelmed governments. In Europe, France, the UK , Spain, the Netherlands and Italy have been forced to declare dusk to dawn curfews to curb violent demonstrations. In particular, France and Britain are the hardest hit due to high social services obligations and large Muslim populations taking advantage of the turmoil to agitate for more power within both governments.In the U.S., national unemployment has pushed ABOVE 10% and in California it’s over 15% and by all indications will rise to all time highs reached during the Great Depression (20%). Unable to stop the hemorrhage of citizens leaving the Golden State due to job losses, suffocating taxes and a devastating drought which has crippled its agricultural base--plus a demand for social services the legislature refuses to consider cutting--Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declares the state officially bankrupt: The world’s eighth largest economy is officially in default.
And So It BeginsFall, 2009 – Illegal immigration fueled by rival gang and drug cartel wars along the U.S. / Mexican border has reached epidemic proportions with Arizona and Texas calling up the entire Army National Guard to protect its borders. California begs for federal assistance, but the ACLU sues in federal court claiming federal assistance is excessive, unwarranted and the governor improperly requested help. Unable to control the raging border violence which has spilled across the border into San Diego, the California National Guard is mobilized to assist in protecting the city’s citizens. President Obama pleads for calm, but offers no federal assistance (fearing his leftist-base's anger at using force to stop the unrest). New Mexico’s governor quietly mobilizes its state’s national guard along its border but little notice is paid by the media.

In the wake of overwhelming chaos and lack of leadership in Washington, seven Southern States—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and South Carolina—plus Wyoming and Montana officially file secession legislation in their respective legislatures if a companion of bills pending in Congress passes. The first bill would end-run the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution by allowing the president to seek third and successive terms if congress deemed the country’s economic and national security situation were “serious and consequential”. Determination for such circumstances would be the sole responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief. Essentially, the president could merely invoke the trigger of the amendment by executive order and run for a third term of office.The second bill would grant the President extra-constitutional powers during periods of “grave” national crisis, thus federalizing all state National Guard units, state and municipal bureaucracies, and manage all media outlets. Though congress would have the option to repeal this control at any time according to the bill, opponents, most media types and even some supporters (quietly) doubt it would be so easy.
Burn Baby BurnSpring / Summer, 2010 -- Both bills pass the House and Senate. Vice President Joe Biden casts the deciding vote. All Republicans in the House and Senate walk out and refuse to participate in any future legislative activity (including—surprisingly—Senators’ Olympia Snow, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter). In response to the vote, all seven legislatures plus Montana and Wyoming vote to secede from the United States of America. President Obama immediately retaliates by invoking his newly created power and federalizes the states’ Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine National Guard Armed Forces for all 50 states. Protests break out across the nation. Gun ownership—already difficult—is made nearly impossible by a Presidential executive order suspending all gun AND ammunitions sale; including gun shows and private exchanges.Long simmering racial tensions—fueled by gas and commodity shortages, and exorbitant prices driven by runaway inflation—explode in Miami, Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Boston and dozens of smaller cities. Governors and mayors in the affected states and cities declare martial law and install dusk to dawn curfews. Hundreds of civilians and law enforcement officers are injured—including over a dozen killed—in the uncontrolled rioting.Several high ranking Pentagon generals and admirals resign in protest of the congressional vote and declare the President in contempt of the constitution and guilty of high crimes and treason. The Obama administration has the Generals placed under house arrest and ordered to cease ALL communication with the media. White House vetted censors are placed within all media outlets. Fox News refuses and the government immediately blocks its satellite links and shuts down internet domains. Popular conservative talk-show hosts are forbidden to broadcast—particularly Rush Limbaugh—who is placed under house arrest and forbidden to talk to the media.As the severity of economic depression both quickens and worsens, wave after wave of violent and uncontrollable riots spread across the U.S. Several other states join the original nine secessionist states and declare independence. Obama orders all military stationed abroad to immediately return to the U.S. to bring “order and unity” back to a quickly fracturing U.S.A mass arrest of senior military officers is ordered by Obama after the Secret Service and FBI allegedly uncover a high-level military plot to remove him from office. To enforce loyalty, Obama has hand-picked political loyalists appointed to the Pentagon to monitor all troop movements. Senior military officers not arrested are threatened with imprisonment if they defy the president. Secret Service and FBI personnel are also attached to monitor the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence and federal police agencies.As essential services across the U.S. spiral to a standstill and race riots and counter riots intensify, Obama further clamps down by ordering the governors to use all necessary force to stop the violence, including “unrestricted” use of lethal force. Several governors refuse and in reaction, civilian militia groups form to counter heavy-handed federal activity and maintain local order.Taking advantage of the chaos, Iran declares the “Jewish state” must perish immediately and calls on all Muslims to become martyrs by invading Israel. Iran backs up its declaration by firing two nuclear tipped missiles at Israel Both are intercepted by state-of-the-art patriot ground to air missiles and Israel immediately retaliates by exploding high altitude nuclear devices (EMPs) over Iran and Syria. The result is a complete and total meltdown of everything that operates electronically. Iran and Syria are completely defenseless and Israel takes advantage of the situation. Within 48 hours, Israeli fighters and bombers have degraded the military capability and infrastructure of both countries to rubble. It’s estimated it will take 10 years or more to rebuild the countries.
In retaliation, the UN convenes an emergency meeting and demands—in an extraordinary action—that all member nations not only boycott Israel, but the Security Council take up resolutions that would in effect place the world body at a state of war with Israel. Obama’s UN representative advises calm and reason, but does not reject or protest these resolutions. In fact, she criticizes Israel for “excessive and unwarranted” actions in defense against the Iranian provocation.
Return of the JediSpring / Summer, 2011 – Civilian militia groups loyal to secessionist states begin to increasingly—and successfully—confront military units loyal to the Obama administration. These militia groups are often lead by state and local police officers (including federalized military deserters) with substantial military training. As these armed clashes increase in number and ferocity, the Obama administration orders the military to clamp down on “unpatriotic forces” by imprisoning local leaders and quarantining cities and towns that support the freedom fighters. Obama cites Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus as his precedent.Rumors of massacres and abuses by Obama’s forces circulate in dissident internet traffic, but are not officially reported by the media. In retaliation, heavily armed and well-trained secessionist units begin a campaign of successful hit and run attacks to demoralize and frustrate Obama’s nationalized army. Captured federalized officers are forced to confess atrocities—subsequently broadcast on a heavily censored internet.As Obama’s unfocused attention is split between a Middle East in the throes of all out war, Russian expansion back into Eastern Europe, the Baltic's and southern Europe, and Chinese opportunism against Taiwan, he prepares to attend a conference to seek foreign support to maintain domestic and regional order. In the wake of this unprecedented disorder, nervous administration allies secretly reach out to active and retired military officers. Despite intense Secret Service and FBI scrutiny, a plan is hatched to end the chaos and remove Obama and his administration.A heavily armed presidential security caravan departs the White House headed for Andrews AFB where Obama will board Air Force One for the conference. After all White House personnel and security are loaded and Air Force One is prepared to take off, there is a sudden and violence-free takeover of the air traffic tower. The tower takeover is immediately followed by the sudden emergence of four Apache helicopters from behind two idle hangers. The Apache’s are bristling with laser guided missiles locked on Air Force One and the escort F-15s. With no time to react or negotiate as the Apache’s computer-guided missile systems impatiently ping Air Force One and the surprised F-15s, the tower orders Obama to depart AFO immediately or the Apaches will fire. With no time to negotiate or compromise, Obama is forced to deplane. He reluctantly walks to the bottom of the ramp where a black SUV whisks him away. Two buses pull to within a short walking distance from the ramp of AFO to accept the Secret Service, FBI and White House personnel. Reporters are ordered to remain on the aircraft while patriot forces board and interrogate them.Back in DC, the Vice President and his security detail are ambushed and overwhelmed after leaving a speaking engagement. Unfortunately, though more violent and bloody than the capture of the president, the Veep is secured as well.On vacation in San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi—third in line for presidential succession—is alerted to the putsch and feverishly tries to organize an armed escort back to DC. Her chief of staff is told that if she leaves SF, her plane will be shot down. Military advisors confirm this and advise the speaker not to attempt a return. The Speaker is also cautioned to cease all legislative activities and not to resume her duties—or she will be stopped by any and all means. Forth in line for the presidency—Hillary Clinton—is also notified of the revolt while on official mission in the Middle East. After consultation with the Secret Service and her military attaché, she is advised not to return to the States. She is told that all incoming international air traffic has been stopped and ALL aircraft entering U.S.airspace will be considered hostile and shot down. Secret Service and intelligence services attached to her detail confirm this.
Meanwhile, military forces in the U.S. suspend national legislative activity, but request that state and local activity continue unrestricted. Media restrictions are lifted, but some media outlets are cautioned that they risk censor if they engage in promotion of the Obama administration or its policies. Israel is advised to mop up its operations in Iran and Syria but not to engage in further military activity. U.N representatives are ordered to their home countries immediately with no time-line for return.
All 50 states are ordered asked to send representatives to Washington to debate the future of the U.S. amid historic and nearly uncontrollable chaos. Against this backdrop of strong regional differences, ideological fissures, and U.S./ Mexican border turmoil (aggressively combated by army and civilian militia forces) several petitions are offered that would essentially break the U.S. into semi-autonomous regions. Beyond this series of scenarios, no one can theorize what might happen, but today’s headlines no doubt leave open the very real possibility that any or all of these events might come to pass. Let us hope and pray that we navigate these dangerous and unchartered waters of unfolding events safely to a desirable end.

The Real Che Guevara!

Hollywood is kicking off 2009 with a monumental deception: Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour Spanish-language epic Che, rendering a sadistic Marxist killer as, according to the New York Times, a “true revolutionary through the stations of his martyrdom.”[1] The word “stations” suggests the adoration of Christ in the Stations of the Cross. The movie’s protagonist, Benicio del Toro, does indeed compare “the Cuban Revolution hero Ernesto Guevara” with Jesus Christ.[2]

Soderbergh’s Che is a fiction once created by the KGB community, including my Romanian espionage service, the DIE, and at that time that placed me squarely in the picture. The real Che was an assassin who presided over communist firing squads and founded Cuba’s ghastly gulag system. He was also a coward who called upon others to fight to the death for the communist cause and sent to the scaffold hundreds who did not do that, yet he surrendered himself to the Bolivian army without a fight even though he was armed to the teeth. “Don’t kill me,” Che begged his captors. “I am worth more to you alive than dead.”[3] Soderbergh’s movie omitted this part—it would have demolished his Che.

I could write a book on how the terrorist Che was built into an inspiring leftist idol—like a beautiful monarch butterfly emerging from a disgusting caterpillar—and someday I may well do so. For now, here is a summary of how the KGB community created its fictional Che.

In the 1960s, the Soviet bloc’s popularity stood at an all-time low. The Soviets’ brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and their instigation of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis disgusted the world, and every bloc ruler tried to save face in his own way. Khrushchev replaced the “immutable” Marxist-Leninist theory of the world proletarian revolution with a policy of peaceful coexistence, and pretended to be an advocate for peace. Dubcek gambled on a “socialism with a human face” and Gomulka on “Let Poland be Poland.” Ceausescu announced his “independence” from Moscow and portrayed himself as a “maverick” among communist leaders.

The Castro brothers, who feared any liberalization, decided to just plaster a romantic revolutionary façade over their disastrous communism, which was starving the country. They chose Che as poster-boy, because he had been executed in Bolivia, at that time a U.S. ally, and could be portrayed as a martyr of American imperialism.

“Operation Che” was launched to the world by the book Revolution in the Revolution, a primer for communist guerrilla insurrection written by French terrorist Régis Debray, which praised Che to the skies. Debray dedicated his life to exporting Cuban-style revolution throughout Latin America, but in 1967 a Bolivian special forces unit trained by the U.S. captured him, along with Che’s entire guerrilla band.

Che was sentenced to death and executed for terrorism and mass murder. Debray was sentenced to 30 years in jail, but he was released after three years following the intervention of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, a communist romantically involved with the KGB, who was also the ideologue of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist band. Sartre proclaimed Guevara “the most complete human being of our times.”[4] In 1972 Debray returned to France, where he served as adviser for Latin America to French president François Mitterrand, and he dedicated the rest of his life to spreading hatred against the United States.

In 1970, the Castro brothers shifted Che’s sanctification into high gear. Alberto Korda, a Cuban intelligence officer working undercover as a photographer for the Cuban newspaper Revolución, produced a romanticized picture of Che. That now-famous Che, wearing long, curly locks of hair and a revolutionary beret with a star on it, and looking straight into the viewer’s eyes, is the logo advertising Soderbergh’s movie.

It is noteworthy that this picture of Che was introduced to the world by a KGB operative working undercover as a writer—I. Lavretsky, in a book entitled Ernesto Che Guevara, which was edited by the KGB.[5] The KGB entitled the picture “Guerrillero Heroico” and disseminated it throughout South America—Cuba’s area of influence. Italian millionaire publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, another communist romantically involved with the KGB, flooded the rest of world with Che’s picture printed on posters and T-shirts. Feltrinelli became a terrorist himself, and he was killed in 1972 while planting a bomb outside Milan.

I first heard Che’s name in 1959 from General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the former chief Soviet intelligence adviser to Romania, who afterwards directed Castro’s “revolution” and was rewarded by being promoted to head the almighty Soviet foreign intelligence organization, a position he held for fifteen years. He landed in Bucharest with his boss, Nikita Khrushchev, for consultations on West Berlin and “our Cuban Gayane.” Gayane was the overall code name of the operation for Sovietizing Eastern Europe.

At that time, the Soviet party bureaucracy believed that Fidel Castro was just an adventurer, and it was reluctant to endorse him. But Sakharovsky had been impressed by the devotion to communism of Fidel’s brother Raúl and of his lieutenant, Ernesto Guevara, and he made them the main protagonists in “our Cuban Gayane.” The two were brought black to Moscow to be indoctrinated and trained, and were given a KGB adviser.

Returned to the Sierra Maestra, Che proved to be a real, cold-blooded assassin in the mold of the KGB—which killed over 20 million people in the Soviet Union alone. “I fired a .32 caliber bullet into the right hemisphere of his brain that came out through his temple,” Che wrote in his diary, describing the execution of Eutimio Guerra, a “traitor of the Revolution” whom he shot in February 1957.[6] Guerra was the seventh person Che had killed. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is not necessary,” he explained. “These procedures are archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolution must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”[7]

On January 1^st, 1959, the “Cuban Gayane” succeeded, and the KGB charged Che to cleanse the whole Cuba of “anti-revolutionaries.” Thousands were sent to “el paredón” (the wall) and shot. Javier Arzuaga, who was chaplain at La Cabaña prison in early 1959, wrote in his book, Cuba 1959: La Galeria de la Muerte, that he had witnessed “the criminal Che” ordering the execution of some two hundred innocent Cubans. “I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy who was only 16 years old. Che did not budge. I became so traumatized that at the end of May 1959 I was ordered to leave the parish Casa Blanca, where La Cabaña was located. … I went to Mexico for treatment.”[8]



Che in Moscow in November 1964, just before he secretly left to fulfil his dream of spreading communist revolution to Bolivia.

According to Arzuaga, Che last words to him were: “When we take our masks off, we will be enemies.”[9] It is now time to take off Che’s smiling mask and reveal his true face. The Cuban Memorial displayed at Tamiami Park in Miami, Florida contains hundreds of crosses, each bearing the name of an identified victim of Raúl’s and Che’s communist terror.[10]

It is also time to stop the fifty-year-long lie, reinforced by Soderbergh’s movie, that the Castro brothers and their hangman Che were independent nationalists. In 1972 I attended a six-hour public speech in which Fidel preached the same lie. The next day I went ocean fishing with Raúl. The other guest on the fishing boat was a Soviet who introduced himself as Nikolay Sergeyevich. “That's Colonel Leonov,” Sergio del Valle, my Cuban counterpart, whispered into my ear. Earlier he had identified Leonov to me as Raúl’s and Che’s KGB adviser in the 1950s and 1960s. There, on that boat, it hit me more clearly than ever before or since that the KGB was holding the reins of the Castros’ revolutionary wagon. Ten years later, Nikolay Leonov was rewarded for his handling of Raúl and Che by being promoted general and deputy chairman of the whole KGB.

In the 1970s, the KGB was a state within the state. Today the KGB, rebaptized FSB, is the state in Russia, and Soderbergh’s Che is manna from heaven for its Latin American surrogates. A couple of months ago two Kremlin’s puppets, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, expelled on the same day the U.S. ambassadors to their countries. Thousands of people carrying the portrait of Soderbergh’s Che took to the streets calling for Russian military protection. Russian military ships are now back in Cuba—and newly in Venezuela—for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis.

“Deception works like cocaine,” Yury Andropov, the father of contemporary Russia’s era of deception, used to tell me when he was KGB chairman. Then he would explain. “If you sniff it once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it day after day, though, it will make you into an addict, a different man.” Mao put it his own way: “A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth.” Soderbergh’s movie on Che is proving both correct.

Notes:

[1] A. O. Scott, “Saluting the Rebel Underneath the T-Shirt,” The New York Times, December 12, 2008.

[2] Guillermo I. Martínez, “Guevara biopic belies his ruthlessness,” The Sun Sentinel, January 1, 2009, p. 13A.

[3] Idem.

[4] Idem.

[5] I. Lavretsky, “Ernesto Che Guevara, “Progress Publishers, 1976, ASIN B000B9V7AW, p. 5. Initially published in Russian in 1973.

[6] Matthew Campbell, “Behind Che Guevara mask, the cold executioner,”The Sunday Times, September 16, 2007.

[7] Mark Goldblath, “Revenge of Che: no amount of Hollywood puferry will change the fact that commies aen’t cool,” The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2008.

[8] “The Infamous Firing Squads,” p. 1, as published in http://therealcuba.com/page5.htm.

[9] Idem.

[10] Ibidem,

THE WAR AGAINST JEWS!

The unspoken truth about the fighting in Gaza, which began on December 19, 2008, when Hamas rockets broke a voluntary truce, is that this is the frontline of a much larger war. This war began 30 years ago with the Islamic Revolution in Iran and is now global in scope. Its agenda is the extermination of the Jews and the destruction of the West.

The Islamic terrorist organization Hamas makes no secret of this agenda. Its Egyptian founders and Palestinian inspirers were active followers of Adolf Hitler and enthusiasts of the Nazi Holocaust. The founding charter of Hamas, which promises that “Islam will obliterate Israel,” memorializes the Egyptian admirer of Hitler, Hassan al-Banna, as “the martyr…of blessed memory.” The same document contains the genocidal incitement of the Prophet Mohammed to “kill the Jews,” to hunt them down “until they hide behind the rocks and the trees, and the rocks and trees cry out ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”

In 2006, these Islamic Nazis took possession of the Gaza Strip, which is unoccupied except by Hamas and is Jew-less (because the Palestinians would kill any Jews that moved in their state). Hamas has turned Gaza into a terrorist fortress, launching rockets into Israeli schoolyards, hospitals, and townships, and launching them from Palestinian schoolyards, hospitals, and townships to ensure that the maximum number of civilians – both Jews and Muslims – would die for their cause. They will win the Armageddon they are planning, they boast, because “the Jews love life and we love death.”

And all around the world, and across Europe and throughout the United States, Muslim and secular radicals are rallying to this Nazi cause, supporting Hamas and attacking Israel and the Jews. The unholy alliance formed by Muslim fanatics and socialist radicals is the face of the terrorist future in the West. It is a coalition for whom no party is so evil that it does not deserve aid and comfort if its enemies are Israel and the United States, and if it is willing to attack them.

The wars in the Middle East are the frontline of the Islamic Nazi offensive – a 60-year aggression of Muslim Arabs against the Jews, rationalized at each turn by epic lies that resonate with radicals in the West: that the Arab aggressors are the victims; that the Jews stole Arab land (Israel in fact was created out of the ruins of the Turkish empire); that there is a Palestinian entity that wants peace with the state of Israel (there is none – there is not a single Palestinian leader – who supports the existence of a Jewish state).

The Palestinians are the only people in history to have a majority support a national death cult, to worship the murderers of little children (including their own), and to proclaim the murderers saints and “martyrs.” The father of Palestinian Nationalism, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was an acolyte and ally of Hitler who preached the extermination of the Jews and planned to construct his own death camps for Jews in the Middle East. The miseries Palestinians have suffered are self-inflicted, the inevitable consequence of staking their national ambitions on the genocide of another people, while embracing a death cult for themselves.

Their allies in the West are either stupendously ignorant or morally blind. Here is the self-revealing declaration of the Associate Director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin (both an ignoramus and a moral defective): “The state terror unleashed from the skies and on the ground against the Gaza Strip as we speak has nothing to do with Hamas. It has nothing to do with ‘Terror.’ It has nothing to do with the long-term ‘security’ of the Jewish State….” What it has to do with is the evil Jews and their evil American supporters: “Strip away the clichés and the vacuous newspeak blaring out across the servile media and its pathetic corps of voluntary state servants in the Western world and what you will find is the naked desire for hegemony; for power over the weak and dominion over the world’s wealth. Worse yet you will find that the selfishness, the hatred and indifference, the racism and bigotry, the egotism and hedonism…the callousness with which we indulge in them all are endemic to our very culture; thriving here like flies on a corpse.”

The author of this repulsive, traitorous statement, Wisconsin Professor Jennifer Lowenstein, is herself a Jew, but obviously a self-hating member of the tribe, the likes of which have a sordid lineage going back to the “capos” who shoveled their companions into the ovens and collaborated with their murderers. Like many of her political comrades in the secular and religious Left, she has joined the forces of Islamic barbarism that are ranged against the civilized people of America and Israel. And she is only one of many. In the midst of the global war that radical Islam has declared on the West, the conflict in Gaza has revealed the presence of a fifth column in the West so detached from its own communities and civilized values that it now constitutes a clear and present danger to our survival.

OBAMA'S FIRST BIG TEST? BALTIC MISSILE CRISIS!

In his first State of the State address on November 5, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that the Kremlin would soon deploy short-range Iskander missiles right next to the Polish border, in order “to neutralize if necessary the antiballistic missile system in Europe.” On its face, the provocative move was a response to this August’s U.S./Polish missile deal, which the Kremlin has vocally opposed. But the timing of Medvedev’s announcement was transparently deliberate. It was a Russian-made test of mettle directed at America’s new president elect, Barack Obama.

Obama’s supporters were still celebrating his victory when Medvedev delivered a message designed not to congratulate the new president, but to put him on notice. Describing the speech as “belligerent,” The Economist reported that the date of the televised address “had changed twice before the Kremlin settled for November 5th. This timing was meant to show that Russia’s agenda is unaffected by such trivia as America’s presidential election. But it also smacked of rival attention-seeking: even as the world listened to Barack Obama’s victory speech, Medvedev was laying out a Russian version of democracy.”

In a notable breach of the usual niceties and protocols, Medvedev didn’t even acknowledge Barack Obama’s election win. Instead, he blamed the U.S. for “dragging the rest of the world down with it” during the recent economic crisis, and for supposedly “encouraging Georgia’s barbaric aggression,” a reference to the Russian war over South Ossetia this summer. “The August crisis only accelerated the arrival of the crucial moment of truth. We proved… that we are strong enough to defend our citizens and that we can indeed defend our national interests,” Medvedev said, adding ominously, “we are being tested to the limit.” Medvedev said that the era of American dominance after the collapse of the Soviet Union was over. “The world cannot be ruled from one capital,” he warned. “Those who do not want to understand this will only create new problems for themselves and others.”

Both the timing and the content of Medvedev’s address were “particularly odd,” said military analyst Alexander Golts, who noted this is the first time since the Cold War that Russia has raised the specter of military threat to the West. “Even Soviet hawks used to wait for six months after an American election to make big statements of military strategy,” Golts remarked.

David Satter of the Hudson Institute told FrontPage that Medvedev’s remarks were “essentially posturing, but posturing that is intended to push the new administration into abandoning” missile defense projects in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Satter explained that the Kremlin needs to “exploit the notion of a hostile West,” for domestic consumption, “the better to consolidate its own hold on power.”

Even non-expert observers couldn’t help but think back to some cryptic statements made by Obama’s vice presidential running mate, Senator Joe Biden, in the final weeks of the election campaign. In a speech to key donors, Biden warned that if elected, Barack Obama would face a serious “test” early in his first term. “Mark my words,” Biden said. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember, I said it standing here, if you don't remember anything else I said: Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

Obama’s supporters enjoy comparing him to JFK, without quite realizing that their slain hero experienced many embarrassing, costly failures. Biden is not so historically illiterate; in that candid statement to Obama donors, he was harkening back to President Kennedy’s fateful first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev just a few months after taking office in 1961. The older, cagier Khrushchev took the measure of the new president and found him wanting. Kennedy himself admitted that during that uncongenial first encounter, Khrushchev “beat the hell out of me.” As for the Soviet Premier, he later recalled “feeling sorry” for his youthful American counterpart – but not so sorry that he would cut Kennedy any slack. Within weeks of that meeting, the Soviets erected the Berlin Wall. Within months, they’d installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, aimed at the United States. The result was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war for thirteen days in October 1962.

When considering the comparison between Kennedy and Obama, it is important to note that unlike Obama, Kennedy was a decorated Navy veteran who’d seen combat in a shooting war. Kennedy had also served far longer as a U.S. Senator, and boasted a family background of high-level diplomacy. None of that adequately prepared him to deal with a ruthless Russian leader.

Doubts about Obama’s views on military affairs first arose during the campaign. For instance, his wavering response to the Russian invasion of Georgia left some voters doubting Obama’s leadership in times of crisis. In an August meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, he vowed to uphold the new missile defense treaty. However, he expressed doubts about missile defense research during the primaries (claiming he’d support it if “it works and if it can be financially feasible,” according to one adviser) and was then accused of “flip flopping” on the issue. In one speech, he vowed, “I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.”

In the same speech, Obama declared, “I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.” Of course, any such negotiations will have to wait until after his inauguration on January 20. In the meantime, the White House issued a statement on November 6, declaring their eagerness to sit down with Russia for a “robust dialogue” in “the next couple of weeks.”

Besides setting new limits on the size of Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals, the White House hopes to assuage Russian objections to the new European anti-missile system. Yet with President Bush now reduced to “lame duck” status, the Russians may well stall for time until they can meet with the next occupant of the Oval Office.

When that inevitable meeting occurs, says David Satter, Obama must avoid showing weakness at all costs. Agreeing to delay or even to cancel the Eastern European missile defense system would be interpreted by the Russians as a sign that “pressure on the U.S. works, even when it is a matter of American defense interests.” The Kremlin would make “new and more outrageous demands in the future."

In other words, Medvedev’s address may well be recorded by historians as Obama’s first crisis, the one his running mate warned Americans would come. How a President Obama responds when the time comes will determine whether more will follow.

DISTORTION OF THE TRUTH: MEDIA BIAS!

During the 2008 presidential election, even center-left observers have noted the unmistakable bias of the prestige news media toward Democratic candidates and the Democratic Party in general. As we shall reveal, the bias of the media is pervasive, ideologically motivated, and quantifiable: that is, it has been admitted, measured, and analyzed in statistical terms. Those results reveal a media doggedly out-of-touch with the political center and tilted decidedly leftward.

One of the most striking aspects of the current presidential campaign is the news media’s assault on Sarah Palin. The Republican vice presidential candidate has been portrayed as a ditzy know-nothing; a Christian fanatic who uses her office to vengefully carry out personal vendettas and who may even have faked her motherhood of her son Trig. From the media coverage of Palin, readers and viewers would never know that she effectively ran an important state, or that she had the highest voter-approval ratings of any governor in the U.S.

But the double standards of the media in their election coverage are as striking as their bias. Scant attention has been paid to the litany of idiocies that have flowed from the tongue of Palin’s vice-presidential opponent, Joe Biden. Some lowlights include the following:

a) Biden exhorted a wheelchair-bound state senator at a Missouri campaign rally to stand up and take a bow;

b) He told interviewer Katie Couric that in times of crisis, it was incumbent upon the U.S president “to demonstrate that he or she knows what they are talking about,” in the tradition of President FDR, whom he said “got on the television” to allay Americans’ fears “when the stock market crashed” in 1929. Of course, Herbert Hoover was president at the time (FDR would not take office until early 1933), and TV would not be introduced to the public until 1939;

c) At a pair of October fundraisers, Biden advised supporters to “gird your loins” because, within six months after Barack Obama’s inauguration, an adversary somewhere in the world would undoubtedly manufacture a “crisis” in order to “test” the young president “like they did John Kennedy”;

d) During his debate with Sarah Palin, Biden stated authoritatively: “Vice President Cheney…doesn’t realize that Article One of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the executive – he works in the executive branch. He should understand that.” But in fact, Article One of the Constitution defines the role of the legislative branch of government, not the executive branch; and

e) At a recent campaign appearance, Biden said that John McCain’s “last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-1 job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack [Obama] says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S.”

None of these gaffes are important. But neither is Gov. Palin’s wardrobe. And unlike her new clothes, Biden’s slips – like the reporting of his infamous plagiarism of a speech by British Labor leader Neil Kinnock in his abortive 1988 presidential run, a plagiarism so thorough that it resembled identity theft – received little mention in the mainstream media.

To understand why this is so, we need only to look at the many major studies of the media which have been conducted over the past three decades. These studies have pointed, with remarkable consistency, to a single, unmistakable, overriding reality: The professionals who constitute America’s mainstream news media – the reporters, editors, anchors, publishers, correspondents, bureau chiefs, and executives at the nation’s major newspapers, magazines, radio networks, and television networks – are leftists and Democrats in far greater numbers than they are conservatives or Republicans. These studies have of course excluded commentators, editorialists, and opinion columnists – all of whom make it quite clear that they are giving their opinions and analyses of the news as they view it. Rather, the focus of the research has been on those individuals whose ostensible duty is to impartially and comprehensively present the various relevant facts and perspectives – and to leave the task of analyzing the information to the readers, listeners, and viewers.

But the American news media no longer serve this function. Instead they have been transformed – by virtue of the one-sided, passionately partisan worldview shared by editors and reporters alike – into mouthpieces of the political Left. And their biases are all the more insidious because they present themselves as unbiased reporters. Those biases have been in place for several decades, but have never been more pronounced than they are in this election cycle.

A useful way of understanding the news media’s political and ideological makeup is to examine what the professionals in that field believe about a wide array of social, ethical, and political issues. Let us look at some of the major findings of the research exploring those beliefs:[1]

• Between 90 and 97 percent of news media professionals have consistently deemed themselves pro-choice on the matter of abortion. More than half of the respondents said that abortion should be legal under any and all circumstances, including the late-term procedure commonly known as Partial Birth Abortion, where the abortionist punctures a living baby’s skull and suctions out its brain before the infant’s head passes from the birth canal. Only 4 percent of journalists said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.[2]
• Fully 81 percent of news media professionals favor affirmative action in business and academia.[3]
• More than half of respondents said that adultery could be acceptable under certain circumstances; only 15 percent said it was always wrong.[4]
• Between 67 and 76 percent were opposed to prayer being permitted in public schools.[5]
• Some 71 percent agreed that the “government should work to ensure that everyone has a job.”[6]
• 75 percent agreed that the “government should work to reduce the income gap between rich and poor.”[7]
• 56 percent said that the United States exploited the nations of the Third World.[8]
• Three-fourths disagreed with the notion that the West, on balance, had been helpful to the Third World.[9]
• 57 percent said that America’s disproportionate consumption of the world’s natural resources was “immoral.”[10]
• Nearly half agreed that “the very structure of our society causes people to feel alienated.”[11]
• Only 30 percent agreed that “private enterprise is fair to workers.”[12]
• Between 6 and 8 percent attended religious services regularly, a tiny fraction of the corresponding rate for the public at large.[13]
• 78 percent said the use of torture was rarely or never justified in dealing with suspected terrorists.[14]
• In the 1980s, 84 percent of journalists supported the nuclear freeze movement, which would have frozen military superiority in place for the Soviets; 80 percent opposed increased defense spending by the United States; and three-fourths opposed U.S. aid to the Contras, who were fighting the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.[15]
• In 1996, 59 percent of journalists dismissed the Republican Party’s 1994 Contract with America as “an election-year campaign ploy,” while only 3 percent considered it “a serious reform proposal.”[16]

It is equally fascinating to examine the degree to which members of the news media have supported Democrat or liberal/Left candidates and causes, both at the ballot box and with their checkbooks:

• In 1964, 94 percent of media professionals voted for Democrat Lyndon Johnson over Republican Barry Goldwater.[17]
• In 1968, 86 percent voted for Democrat Hubert Humphrey over Republican Richard Nixon.[18]
• In 1972, 81 percent voted for Democrat George McGovern over the incumbent Nixon.[19]
• In 1976, 81 percent voted for Democrat Jimmy Carter over Republican Gerald Ford.[20]
• In 1980, twice as many cast their ballots for Carter rather than Republican Ronald Reagan.[21]
• In 1984, 58 percent supported Democrat Walter Mondale, whom Reagan defeated in the biggest landslide in presidential election history.[22]
• In 1988, White House correspondents from various major newspapers, television networks, magazines, and news services supported Democrat Michael Dukakis over Republican George H.W. Bush by a ratio of 12-to-1.[23]
• In 1992, those same correspondents supported Democrat Bill Clinton over the incumbent Bush by a ratio of 9 to 2.[24]
• Among Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents, the disparity was 89 percent vs. 7 percent, in Clinton’s favor.[25]
• All told, White House correspondents during the late ’80s and early ’90s voted for Democrats at 7 times the rate at which they voted for Republicans.[26]
• In a 2004, poll of campaign journalists, those based outside of Washington, D.C., supported Democrat John Kerry over Republican George W. Bush by a ratio of 3-to-1. Those based inside the Beltway favored Kerry by a 12-to-1 ratio.[27]
• In a 2004 nationwide poll of 300 newspaper and television journalists, 52 percent supported Kerry, while 19 percent supported Bush.[28]
• In a 2008 survey of 144 journalists nationwide, journalists were 8 times likelier to make campaign contributions to Democrats than to Republicans.[29]
• A 2008 Investors Business Daily study put the campaign donation ratio at 11.5-to-1, in favor of Democrats. In terms of total dollars given, the ratio was 15-to-1.[30]

These numbers are nothing short of astonishing. It is exceedingly rare to find, even in the most heavily partisan voting districts in the United States, such pronounced imbalances in terms of votes cast or dollars earmarked for one party or the other. As the longtime CBS News reporter (and author of the 2002 book Bias) Bernard Goldberg puts it: “They love diversity in the newsroom. That’s what they say, anyway. They love diversity of color, diversity of gender, diversity of sexual orientation. But God forbid someone in their diverse newsroom has a diverse view about how the news ought to be presented.”[31] Goldberg adds, “[I]f long ago we came to the conclusion that newsrooms with too many white men were a bad idea because all we got was the white male perspective, then why isn’t it just as bad to have so many liberals dominating the culture of the newsroom?”[32]

The figures cited above are entirely consistent with how news media professionals identify themselves in terms of their political party affiliations and ideological leanings:

• In a 1988 survey of business reporters, 54 percent of respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 9 percent as Republicans.[33]
• In a 1992 poll of journalists working for newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, 44 percent called themselves Democrats, 16 percent Republicans.[34]
• In a 1996 poll of 1,037 reporters at 61 newspapers, 61 percent identified themselves as Democrats, 15 percent as Republicans.[35]
• In a 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation poll, media professionals were nearly 7 times likelier to call themselves Democrats rather than Republicans.[36]

We see precisely the same ratios in studies where news people are asked rate themselves on the left-to-right political spectrum.

• In a 1981 study of 240 journalists nationwide, 65 percent identified themselves as liberals, 17 percent as conservatives.[37]
• In a 1983 study of news reporters, executives, and staffers, 32 percent identified themselves as liberals, 11 percent as conservatives.[38]
• In a 1992 study of more than 1,400 journalists, 44 percent identified themselves as liberals, 22 percent as conservatives.[39]
• In a 1996 study of Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents, 61 percent identified themselves as liberals, 9 percent as conservatives.[40]
• In a 1996 study of 1,037 journalists, the respondents identified themselves as liberals 4 times more frequently than as conservatives. Among journalists working for newspapers with circulations exceeding 50,000, the ratio of liberals to conservatives was 5.4 to 1.[41]
• In a 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation study of media professionals, the ratio of self-identified liberals to conservatives was 4.2 to 1.[42]
• In a 2004 Pew Research Center study of journalists and media executives, the ratio of self-identified liberals to conservatives was 4.9 to 1.[43]
• In a 2005 University of Connecticut study of 300 journalists, the liberal-to-conservative ratio was 2.8 to 1.[44]
• In a 2005 Annenberg Public Policy Center poll of nearly 700 journalists, the liberal-to-conservative ratio was 3.4 to 1.[45]
• In a 2007 Pew Research Center study of journalists and news executives, the ratio was 4 liberals for each conservative.[46]

When the media report on various issues, they invariably interview, quote, or cite the positions of think tanks and policy groups whose views they deem authoritative, or at least worthy of consideration. If left-wing bias were pervasive, we would expect to find that America’s leading media outlets cited, with disproportionate frequency, the reports, publications, and statements issued by think tanks and policy groups whose political leanings were left-of-center.

And indeed we find precisely that.

The most comprehensive investigation of this subject, completed in 2004, found that such outlets cited the views of liberal/leftist organizations at fully 3 times the rate of conservative groups.[47]

In 1990, a similar landmark study had been conducted examining the political leanings of the individuals, rather than the organizations, who were most often cited or quoted as experts on various topics in the news. It was found that on the subject of welfare and related issues, liberal experts were quoted 75 percent of the time, conservatives 22 percent. On consumer issues, the liberal-conservative ratio was 63 percent to 22 percent. On environmental issues, the ratio was 79 percent to 18 percent. And regarding nuclear energy, the ratio was 77 percent to 20 percent.[48]

Bias in the news media manifests itself most powerfully not in the form of outright, intentional lies. Instances like former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair’s premeditated fabrications and plagiarisms are rare. Rather, media bias is most often a function of what reporters choose not to tell their audience; i.e., the facts they purposely omit so as to avoid contradicting the political narrative they wish to advance. As Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo put it: “[F]or every sin of commission…we believe that there are hundreds, and maybe thousands, of sins of omission – cases where a journalist chose facts or stories that only one side of the political spectrum is likely to mention.”

By no means is such activity the result of an organized campaign or conspiracy. Bernard Goldberg explains: “No, we don’t sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we’re going to slant the news. We don’t have to. It comes naturally to most reporters.”[49]

And why does it come so naturally? According to Goldberg: “A lot of newspeople…got into journalism in the first place so they could change the world and make it a better place,” and to use their position as reporters as a platform from which to “sho[w] compassion,” which “makes us feel good about ourselves.”[50]

Expanding upon this point, Goldberg quotes researcher Robert Lichter of the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs, who said, “Increasingly, journalists see themselves as society’s designated saviors,”[51] whose mission is to “awaken the national conscience and force public action.”[52] Or as ABC News anchor Peter Jennings admitted to the Boston Globe in July 2001: “Those of us who went into journalism in the ’50s or ’60s, it was sort of a liberal thing to do. Save the world.”[53]

Bernard Goldberg asks some vitally important questions about the degree to which media bias affects the content and the tenor of the news Americans receive. The answers are self-evident:

Do we really think that if the media elites…were overwhelmingly social conservatives instead of liberals…that the evening newscasts would fundamentally be the same? Sure, they’d still cover tornadoes and plane crashes pretty much the same way, but do we really think they’d cover abortion and affirmative action and gay rights the same way? Or would their conservatism, reinforced by their surroundings, their friends and neighbors…influence how they see the world and how they report the news?[54]

Had Sarah Palin, rather than Joe Biden, made any of the previously cited gaffes, errors, or dire predictions, the news media would have depicted her – even more thoroughly than they already have – as an incompetent moron, a ticking time-bomb, and everything else in between. This is to say nothing of how the late-night TV comics, who have had a field day poking fun at Palin and McCain, would have reacted. A study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs actually counted the number of jokes which Jay Leno and David Letterman told about the four major candidates during the five weeks immediately following McCain’s announcement that Palin would be his running mate. The totals: 180 jokes about Palin and 106 about McCain, compared to 16 jokes about Biden and 26 about Obama.[55]

Unfortunately, there is nothing funny about the distortion our media have unleashed on the American public and the disabling impact it has on national discourse.

---

[1] Summaries and analyses of most of the research cited in this article can be accessed from the Media Research Center, which does an outstanding job of documenting media bias and its many ramifications.

[2] Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman’s 1981 survey of 240 journalists at top media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS; Los Angeles Times 1985 survey of 2,700 journalists at 621 American newspapers; Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman’s 1986 study of the media’s attitudes and their influence on society, as published in the National Federation for Decency’s Journal; Indiana University journalism professors David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit’s 1992 survey of 1,410 newspaper, magazine, television, and radio journalists; Stanley Rothman and Amy Black’s 1995 study of the media elite.

[3] Los Angeles Times 1985 survey of 2,700 journalists at 621 American newspapers, Op. cit.

[4] Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman’s 1981 survey of 240 journalists at top media outlets, Op. cit.; Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman’s 1986 study, Op. cit.

[5] Los Angeles Times 1985 survey of 2,700 journalists at 621 American newspapers; Journalist and Financial Reporting’s 1988 poll of 151 business reporters from 30 major publications.

[6] Stanley Rothman and Amy Black’s 1995 study of the media elite.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman’s 1981 survey of 240 journalists at top media outlets, Op. cit.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman’s 1986 study of the media’s attitudes and their influence on society, Op. cit.; David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit’s 1992 survey of 1,410 journalists, Op. cit.; Annenberg Public Policy Center and Annenberg Foundation Trust’s 2005 survey of 673 journalists from newspapers, television, magazines, radio, and Internet; Pew Research Center’s 2008 survey of 222 journalists and news executives.

[14] Pew Research Center / Council on Foreign Relations 2005 study of 72 top journalists.

[15] Los Angeles Times 1985 survey of 2,700 journalists at 621 American newspapers, Op. cit.

[16] 1996 Freedom Forum survey of 139 Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents by Chicago Tribune writer Elaine Povich, titled “Partners and Adversaries: The Contentious Connection Between Congress and the Media.”

[17] Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman’s 1981 survey of 240 journalists at top media outlets, Op. cit.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid.

[21] California State University survey of reporters from the 50 largest U.S. newspapers.

[22] Los Angeles Times 1985 survey of 2,700 journalists at 621 American newspapers, Op. cit.

[23] U.S. News & World Report writer Kenneth Walsh’s 1995 study of 28 White House correspondents.

[24] Ibid.

[25] 1996 Freedom Forum survey of 139 Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents, Op. cit.

[26] U.S. News & World Report writer Kenneth Walsh’s 1995 study of 28 White House correspondents, Op. cit.

[27] New York Times columnist John Tierney’s 2004 survey of 153 campaign journalists covering the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.

[28] University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy’s 2005 survey of 300 television and newspaper journalists nationwide.

[29] MSNBC investigative reporter Bill Dedman’s study of the campaign contributions of 144 journalists.

[30] William Tate’s July 2008 report in Investor’s Business Daily.

[31] Bernard Goldberg, Bias (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2002), p. 32.

[32] Ibid., p. 121.

[33] Journalist and Financial Reporting’s 1988 poll of 151 business reporters, Op. cit.

[34] David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit’s 1992 survey of 1,410 journalists, Op. cit.

[35] American Society of Newspaper editors 1996 survey of 1,037 reporters at 61 newspapers of all sizes nationwide.

[36] Kaiser Family Foundation 1996 poll of 301 “media professionals,” 300 “policymakers,” and 1,206 members of the general public.

[37] Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman’s 1986 study of the media’s attitudes and their influence on society, Op. cit.

[38] David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit’s 1982-83 study of more than 1,000 reporters, executives, and staffers nationwide.

[39] David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit’s 1992 survey of 1,410 journalists, Op. cit.

[40] 1996 Freedom Forum survey of 139 Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents, Op. cit.

[41] American Society of Newspaper editors 1996 survey, Op. cit.

[42] Kaiser Family Foundation 1996 poll of 301 “media professionals,” 300 “policymakers,” and 1,206 members of the general public, Op. cit.

[43] Pew Research Center 2004 poll of 547 journalists and media executives, including 247 at national-level media outlets.

[44] University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy’s 2005 survey of 300 television and newspaper journalists nationwide, Op. cit.

[45] Annenberg Public Policy Center and Annenberg Foundation Trust’s 2005 survey of 673 journalists, Op. cit.

[46] Pew Research Center’s 2007 survey of 222 journalists and news executives at national outlets.

[47] Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo, “A Measure of Media Bias,” 2004.

[48] Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter, The Media Elite: America’s New Power Brokers (New York: Hastings House, 1990).

[49] Bernard Goldberg, Bias, p. 13.

[50] Ibid., p. 68.

[51] Ibid., p. 69.

[52] Ibid., p. 71.

[53] Ibid., p. 213.

[54] Ibid., pp. 119-120.

[55] Jennifer Lawinski, “Late-Night Comics Skewer Republicans 7-to-1, Study Finds,” Fox News (October 16, 2008).

ARIZONA'S SHAM IMMIGRATION INITIATIVE!!!!

The opponents of immigration enforcement have stooped to a new low in Arizona with their latest attempt to undermine the state's workplace verification laws. After exhausting their usual tactics, they are resorting to outright and intentional deception of the voters. This November, Arizonans will vote on Proposition 202; which will be described to them as such:

"Stop Illegal Hiring" Act is an initiative designed to crack down on unethical businesses who hire illegal immigrants. This initiative targets employers who hire workers and pay under-the-table in cash, which fuels illegal immigration in Arizona. It revokes the business license of employers who knowingly or intentionally hire illegal immigrants. This initiative increases penalties for identity theft, as illegal immigrants often use stolen identities to conceal their undocumented status…

If this were all I knew about Prop 202, I'd wholeheartedly support it; and the initiative backers are hoping that voters won't learn anything about the initiative beyond the title.

Arizona does not need a new law against illegal hiring. It already has the toughest workplace enforcement law in the country. The Legal Arizona Workers Act ("LAWA"), which was enforced in the beginning 2008, is the first state law to require all employers to use the E-Verify worker identification system. E-Verify is a nearly fool proof electronic data-base system that makes sure a job applicant is here legally. Arizonians on both sides of the immigration issue agree that the law has had a huge impact in keeping employers from hiring illegal aliens and, in turn, causing the illegals to leave the state.

The Stop Illegal Hiring Act effectively overturns Arizona' current employer sanction laws. It completely removes the E-Verify requirement that was central to the success of LAWA. It forbids Arizona from acting against employers until the federal government does so first, but it's the federal government's failure to act that makes the law necessary in the first place. On top of all this, it gives amnesty to employers of illegal aliens, and bans whistleblowers from alerting the authorities to illegal hiring.

The importance of preserving laws such as LAWA cannot be underestimated. During my ten years in Congress I have fought in vain to get the federal government to take action against illegal immigration. States and localities, however, have had a great deal of success in cracking down on illegal immigration. From small towns like Hazelton, PA and Farmers Branch, TX to states like Georgia, Oklahoma, and my home state of Colorado; patriotic citizens and legislators have taken action when the government refuses to do its duty. As the illegal immigrants leave states that get tough, they bring pressure on neighboring states and the federal government to take action as well.

Arizona has been in the vanguard of this movement. It passed Prop 200 in 2004, which took away many taxpayer benefits to illegal aliens; and then passed four other initiatives that got tough on illegal immigration in 2006 with well over 70% of the vote.

Usually the pro-immigration groups try to overturn the will of the people in the courts. With both the Arizona and Greater Phoenix Chambers of Commerce as well as heavily funded left wing legal outfits like the ACLU and Mexican American Legal Defense Fund as plaintiffs, and government executives who are often just as eager to have the laws overturned charged with defending them; any state law against illegal immigration immediately faces an uphill legal battle.

The business lobby tried this tactic with both Proposition 200 and then with LAWA, but after the most left wing Federal Appeals Court in the country upheld the law, their last resort is outright deception of the voter. With little fanfare, a business group called Wake Up Arizona—who were one of the primary plaintiffs against the current employer sanction laws—have managed to sneak the misleading initiative on the ballot.

Recent polls show that when given the title of the act and the misleading description, voters would support Prop 202 by a margin of 2 to 1. However, when explained that it guts the enforcement mechanisms in LAWA, voters oppose Prop 202 by 5 to 1.

If there was ever a case of a wolf in sheep's clothing, this is it. Even citizens who oppose LAWA should be outraged by how dishonest and undemocratic the tactics used by Wake Up Arizona.

Unfortunately, Arizonans who want their laws against illegal hiring preserved do not have multimillion dollar legal groups to try to keep the proposition off the ballot. The only hope is to educate the voters before they go to the polling booths that if they want to stop illegal hiring, they need to vote no on Prop 202, the Stop Illegal Hiring Act.